1 10 52 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/9430b80127c6293781407ff8cd2c6c07.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=PIya-b%7E%7EkB3kL0ykYcv5tu%7EBlvrQJf4-oRezhyi9a6nr8Sdhur8q-knBwPRdNu83Hy7hD9ktRU667mZRGYWwEDToN9YQ2y3Iw89RTEAX6tMGawyBQSAMsTq3ItrRT5lcWFvCmVMOR52eIKiPVouYMhcE-37KTw9KZOZjOwZEVfZCmTt0E55JE7EK9NWnKfKDUgCwuxWhV6-fjYMOdeNdmfKVvJTBRzpWRY6dnvV3h-RwDbTlzyXBp5%7E10F2wxE3M4sCj1Fif68Zw3Q3-bUe80pkCiYEWdl3%7E4OdxetDeXZdTVmYMUDj6umBnYmp5zHGEa8Ve0fA9Op5KpOlsjo8xHQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4ac589f2ac1a1207e00ef2a7742d92cb PDF Text Text ON ITS A REPLY TO PROFESSOR FLINT. PRICE ONE PENNY. EDINBURGH : ^rottxsl) nnb Xabflxir jbRngue, 4 PARK STREET. 1 8 8 7. �“Justice is the freedom of those who are equal: Injustice is the freedom of those mho are unequal.” ~Jacobi. �SOCIALISM ON ITS DEFENCE A REPLY TO PROFESSOR FLINT. r-T^HE community is indebted to Professor Flint for calling its attention to Socialism, and for this ser­ vice Socialists must be specially grateful. We have confidence in our position. The more our system is con­ sidered, the wider will be its acceptation. The prelates were recommended by a sagacious observer during the Reformation to burn the martyrs in cellars, and the news­ papers, in the exercise of a similar discretion, generally exclude the utterances of Socialists from their columns. We must, however, thank Professor Flint not only for lecturing on the subject, but for the kind things he has said with respect to us—-a fact we are apt to forget in the midst of his misrepresentations. Socialism has hitherto been received with ridicule and reviling by many ignorant but important people among us, who will now, after the assurance of an eminent theologian, believe there is some­ thing in it. Dr Flint has at least confessed the importance of the subject, and has therefore led many to its considera­ tion. It does seem singular, however, that it should have been left to the faculty of Divinity to undertake this work, but the persistent indifference of the lecturer on Economics is more than a sufficient excuse for entering on his pro­ vince. He seems engrossed with the depreciation of silver, �— 4 — and only recognises the existence of Socialists to denounce them, on the authority of imperfect statistics, for repeating the conclusion of Fawcett and other orthodox economists, that in relation to the increase of wealth the rich are grow­ ing richer, and the poor, poorer. The statement may be true or false, it matters little to Socialists, and has no special bearing on their system. To the credit of Dr Flint, economics is rather more to him than a question of the currency. He does not seem to believe the condition of the people is much aflectecl by the comparative value of metals; and in this respect the disciple of the Master cer­ tainly shows to better advantage than the nominee of the merchants. Even this, however, does not exhaust our reasons for gratitude to the Professor. Socialism is a vague word under which some shelter themselves with whose opinions and methods few of us can sympathise. The system, like every other, has its dangers, and it is well to face them : it has also its false and foolish friends, and it is well to know them. A good critic would at present be a true benefactor to us, but, unfortunately, it is only in a very modified sense we can apply this term to Dr Flint. We frankly admit a real value in his lectures, but they are vitiated at the outset from want of a proper definition, and rendered ineffective throughout from want of sufficient discrimination. It may seem daring to question the information of the learned Professor, considering the reputation he deservedly enjoys in all circles, but our imputation of ignorance is sufficiently justified in his treatment of Socialism. With the origin and history of the movement, up to within fifty years ago, he shews a certain familiarity, but this sketch of it stands in striking contrast to his superficial acquaintance with its �— 5 — modern revival. It would, however, be as reasonable for one ignorant of the physiology of the last half-century to undertake its instruction to the students of to-day, as it is for one to speak of the Socialism of the present from a study of its literature in the past. Mere reading indeed gives one little insight in either case. Words half conceal as well as half reveal the thoughts of men, and it is only after mixing much with them you can be very confident about their ideas. We not only suffer from misrepresentation, but, the fact is, we hardly ever experience anything else. Much of this is no doubt the result of ignorance more or less culp­ able, but some of it is produced on purpose to discredit us. Our sayings are perverted and our doings defamed. It is difficult, therefore, for an outsider like Dr Flint to know much about us with accuracy, but even he would have known more if he had come to his subject with the sym­ pathy of the critic instead of the partiality of the polemic. There has in fact been rather much logic in his treatment of Socialism, and this concession is not meant by way of ■compliment; for conclusions drawn rigorously from defec­ tive premises are bound to be erroneous. We venture to affirm, there is not a Socialist of any intelligence prepared to accept the definition of it given by Dr. Flint, or willing to admit any validity in the objections urged by him against it. He may, of course, affect to despise the one, but he cannot be indifferent to the other. No controversy can be conducted to any satisfactory issue, unless the combatants agree about the point in dispute. Argument otherwise is a mere beating of the air. The Socialism of these lectures however, is, in the opinion of Socialists, partly an anachron­ ism and partly a figment; while the reasons of his opposi­ tion to it resolve themselves into its interference with the �— 6 — liberty of the individual, and of its realisation by violence. Now, we do not altogethei’ deny the applicability of this criticism to certain forms of Socialism and its supporters, but a definition must not confound a part with the whole. It would really be much fairer to say that all Christians believed in the Mass than to bring such objections against Socialism ; for they not only do not belong to the essence of the system, but, even as accidents, apply to a very limited number of its advocates. As a matter of fact, there are many Socialists averse to war in every shape and form, nor could Dr. Flint find one disposed to prefer war to peace in the realisation of his ideas. The worst one can say about the most of them is, that they will not turn their cheek to the smiter. Force will be met by force. The Socialists of Germany for example were constitutional reformers till Bismarck passed repressive measures against them; and Britain has nothing to fear from violence on our part so long as her military and police do not interfere with our rights of pub­ lic meeting and political action. It is scarcely candid, more­ over, to represent even the militant attitude of Socialism as peculiar. History unfortunately shows the sword has been a frequent and efficient instrument of enfranchisement. There were circumstances when even Christ seemed to think it would be the duty of His disciples to part with their gar­ ments and buy one, and certainly much has been yielded to violence that never was given to entreaty. It was the battle-axe of the barons that compelled a craven king to sign Magna Charta. The Commons of England could only get its Petition of Rights by the Ironsides of Cromwell. There were riots enough before even the middle classes secured the Reform Bill of ’32. Nor are the powerful any wiser to-day. Ireland has triumphed by dynamite as well �7 — as organisation, and the action of our politicians must be held largely responsible for the spread among the people of the deplorable conviction that petitions are mere paper unless presented on pikes. The language of the most sanguine Socialist indicates nothing worse than the belief that history will in this respect repeat itself in connection with his movement. Let us hope he may be mistaken, and there is no reason in fact for the fulfilment of his prophecy. The Government has only to treat Socialists with justice to avert this calamity. Their scheme could be realised to­ morrow with felicitation instead of fighting, if our mer­ chants and manufacturers would simply resolve to use their influence and power for the welfare of all instead of for their own. The capital and intelligence so much wasted at present in internecine competition would then be concentrated for the benefit of the community, instead of employed for the glorification of individuals. Let them continue, on the contrary, to exploit the workers for their own profit, as well as oppose the machinery of law to the demands of justice, and violence will characterise the triumph of Socialism, as it has done that of every great and good movement. May God, however, avert the omen ! We shrink from the contemplation of such a conflict, but must protest with all possible vehemence against Dr Flint throwing on Socialism the responsibility of such a result. If he is in earnest about the maintenance of peace, let him preach to the originators of war, and this, if all stories are true, will mean plain speaking directed to high quarters. May we shed our blood for the restoration of a Battenberg and not spare a drop for the emancipation of our brethren ? The curse of Capitalism, however, is even worse -than the influence of Courts. It sent out our soldiers to Egypt to �— 8 — slaughter the poor peasants for not paying exorbitant taxes to meet the claims of avaricious bondholders. They gave their money freely to minister to the sensuality of a vicious Viceroy on condition of receiving a high rate of interest wrung from the extreme poverty of his industrious subjects, and would, for the same inducement, supply the sinews of war to the greatest enemy of their own country. So much for the morality of Capitalism, which at this very moment is anxious to get up a Continental war for the sake of im­ mediate gain. It must all, however, be done under the name of patriotism. Patriotism ! It would burn the palladia of the country to cook its potatoes. It would be worthier, therefore, of Dr Flint to attack, in our exchanges and cabinets, the promoters of war, than to make sport for the Philistines by throwing ridicule on the lovers of peace. Even Goethe, with all his heathenism, saw in the conduct of the rulers the real cause for all popular risings, and a nation like Scotland, honouring the Covenanters for resist­ ing with then- blood the imposition of a liturgy, is not likely to censure their descendants in contending for a living. In connection, however, with violence, we may be par­ doned a passing reference to the revolutionary character of Socialism. Dr Flint said very truly it was not “ A system merely of amendment, improvement, and reform.” It holds the condition of society to be “ essentially one of anarchy and injustice,” and for this reason it is impossible to tinker at it, as if it were essentially sound. Industry must be carried on for the good of all instead of the gain of one, and nothing short of the realisation of this ideal will content Socialists. We are certainly revolutionary in this sense but in no other. Such a term neither of necessity implies �— 9 the use of violence nor indifference to circumstances. We know full well theories cannot be carried out unless in har­ mony with the nature and surroundings of men. We are in no danger, therefore, of degenerating into doctrinaires. Our revolution is based on evolution, and is no more “ momentous and unparalleled ” than other changes through which industry has already passed. The movement from competition to co-operation is really in no way greater than that from communal to private property in land, and will be accomplished from the same motive, and perhaps by the same method. Socialism can only be realised by people believing it to be for their interest. We are not likely to imitate the conduct of the Emperor of Russia in construct­ ing a railway between Moscow and St Petersburg. He merely asked for a map and drew a strait line from the one town to the other, utterly regardless of the condition of the country lying between. It is not after this fashion we desire or expect the institution of Socialism. There are signs of decrepitude about the system of Competition. Grey hairs are upon it. The crust is cracking, and multitudes are going down to the abyss. Society is groaning under its insecurity. Infinite mischief is produced by its periodical crises and its limited companies. Capital is being con­ centrated. Manufacturers and merchants are collapsing around us, and falling into the ranks of the workers, while the workers are, by the extension of machinery, being driven to the streets. The drones are drawing dividends and the industrious are eating dust. This inequality, however, has stimulated the sentiment of justice. The better nature of rich and poor is rising in rebellion against our oppressive circumstances. Righteousness can alone exalt a people, and the effect of iniquity in the land is to �induce many to cast their idols of silver and gold to the moles and to the bats, in order to lift the beggar from the dunghill and set the poor among princes. The forces of our revolution are thus busily at work, and cannot be stopped by a mere arrangement of words. It is for us to secure control over them and guide them to a speedy and salutary issue. Destruction need not be known within our borders. The stones of our temple are being fashioned in the quarry, and if only the wealthy and powerful would see it to be their interest, as it undoubtedly is, rather to further than to frustrate our efforts, the stately edifice would forth­ with be erected amid the jubilation of a harmonious people. Industry has but to follow the advice given by the lec­ turer, and organise itself to secure this consummation so devoutly to be wished. It would then become conscious of its power, to the dismay of the idlers ; and, gathering round it the wisdom and integrity of the community, its victory would neither be doubtful nor difficult. But, whatever may betide, the Socialists will be true to themselves. *■ We are they who will not falter, Many swords or few, Till we make this earth the altar Of a worship new. We are they who will not take From palace, priest, or code, A meaner law than * Brotherhood,’ A lower lord than ‘ God.’ ” We come at last to consider the definition given by Dr Flint. He played, with his usual logical ability, between the terms Individualism and Socialism, and reached, as every sensible person might have expected, the somewhat barren conclusion that the one was the opposite of the other. He was, of course, wise enough to see that if the one pole meant slavery the other stood at savagery, and �— 11 therefore, he argued, we must have a judicious mixture of both. The commonplace philosopher always comes to the same conclusion. There is a good deal to be said on both ■sides. No doubt, but there must be some order in dealing with them if we are to arrive at any satisfactory result. The social toddy will never be perfect without this treat­ ment of the separate ingredients. Dr Flint set himself to pour out the whisky of Individualism and the hot water of Socialism, as well as to add a little sentiment by way of sugar, but he got scalded in the operation, and dropped the kettle. It is impossible on any other supposition to account for the energetic but irrelevant remarks that escaped him at this time. He insisted upon paying no attention to the method of mixing the several ingredients together, forget­ ting that hot water is the basis of all good toddy. Enter­ prise can only be mischievous unless inspired by justice, and this is really the essence of Socialism. Nothing could well be more erroneous than the idea of the two poles sug­ gested by the lecturer. The Socialism of to-day, unlike that of yesterday, is in no way opposed to liberty. It really differs in this respect little from politics ; for just as in politics you have one party inclined to favour and another to oppose the action of Government, so is it with Socialism. There is, however, a difference between the two, and it is •one telling still more strongly against the statements of Dr Flint. There is no system so anxious as Socialism to secure the liberty of the individual. One of the planks of the ■Governmental or Marxist party is the extension of freedom to every member of the community, while the devotion of the Anarchists to the same idea puts even Herbert Spencer to shame. These, however, are all Socialists. They are all agreed in their love of liberty, as well as in their opposition �— 12 to the .tyranny of majorities, and differ only about the steps necessary to its realisation. Not only so, they are at one in thinking the present system of competition is altogether inconsistent with any sufficient measure of freedom to the great mass of the people. Hunger enslaves one to purpose, and so long as we are dependent on the few for the means of livelihood, so long will they remain our masters. Social­ ism sets itself to the solution of this problem. It proclaims liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound. Instead of having any desire to' interfere with our freedom, it is inspired throughout by a purpose to extend it. The principle, therefore, repudiated by all Socialists is really, by a strange perversity, the one constituting the definition of Dr Flint, while that on which they are all agreed is the one he systematically ignores. Socialism is simply neither more nor less than an at­ tempt to transfer the means of production and distribu­ tion from the possession of the individual to the control of the community, in order that every one willing to work may get it, and be paid the full value of his labour. In proof of this let me quote from an article in the Nineteenth Century for February, by our comrade, P. Kropotkin, on “The Scientific Basis of Anarchy.” “ In common with all Socialists,” he says, “ the Anarchists hold that the private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time.” The watchword of Socialism is, “ Economical freedom as the only secure basis for spiritual freedom.” In spite of such explicit definition, however, we find Dr Flint assuring his admiring audience of exploiters and exploited that the central idea of Socialism is, that labour is the source of all wealth, and that labour is often confounded by us with the mere use of our hands. There are no doubt ignorant �— 13 — people among us, and one would not like to become respon­ sible for all their statements, but would the learned Pro­ fessor not object if we went for an exposition of his creed to a street preacher ? Intelligence, we maintain, on the contrary, is essential for every operation, except the draw­ ing of dividends, and ought to be rewarded if applied to public welfare. This is the doctrine of Socialism. It is really too absurd to blame us at one time for indifference to land and capital in the creation of wealth, and at another to denounce us for desiring to get possession of them by legal means if possible, but by all means since necessary. We know the value of these things in the production of wealth, and maintain not only the right of all to what has been created by none, but that every modification of natural agents for human welfare has been brought about by com­ bined labour, and ought not therefore to be in the posses­ sion of individuals, but under the control of the community. Capital, for example, is wanted very badly at present to provide the poor with nourishing food, warm clothing, and decent houses, but cannot be had for such purposes, since its owners find it more remunerative “to supply the Khedive with harems, and the Russian Government with strategic railways and Krupp guns.” It would seem, how­ ever, we ought to acquiesce in such an arrangement, and refuse to say to any member of society, “ I have no need of thee.” It is impossible for us to do so, and we presume Dr Flint himself is not prepared to fully carry out this prin­ ciple. It is really a platitude, meaning anything or nothing, and therefore worthy of the ignorant applause with which it was greeted. Are we willing, for example, to apply it to the criminals in our midst ? Do we actually require thieves? Certainly not. But if not, why not? �— 14 — The answer is of course obvious. They are taking what belongs to others, and either living in Idleness themselves ■or devoting their energy to the production of mischief. Just so ! We can do very well without them, and they constitute a very large category. Mr. Ruskin somewhere •divides society into robbers, beggars, and workers. It ■seems to us the last class should set itself to get rid of the other two, for in so doing it would not only perform a duty to itself, but confer a benefit on them. Nor should this be a difficult task to accomplish, for the workers really number two-thirds of the community, and are sufficiently generous to keep only one-third of the national income to themselves. The lynx eye of the lecturer, however, sees the cloven hoof in such statements. He would turn in holy horror from our figures and suggestions. We are, according to him, indifferent to the intellectual, moral, and religious mission of society. Such objections do certainly surprise us. Are we not doing, with our miserable resources, much to persuade the community to consider its own interest ? Can Dr Flint really believe people have much intelligence who submit to such a chaotic and iniquitous state of matters, or would he find a greater proof of it in their familiarity with metaphysical problems ? Moral ! Do we know any morality that can dispense with justice in our relation to each other ? It is at least the aim of Socialism to extend this principle, and we utterly fail to understand how any society can be conscious of a moral mission that does not set herself to deliver the oppressed from the spoiler. Has not the in­ equality of the classes much to do with the immorality of both ? We must have neither the luxury of the rich nor the privation of the poor, if we desire virtue to prevail in �15 the community. Wise man was he who sought neither poverty nor riches, for the one brings temptations to extra­ vagance and the other to avarice. Religious ! May wepresume to differ on this point from a doctor of the Church ? We will not venture to discuss with him questions of dogma, ceremony, or institution. These, we submit, are not of the essence of religion. We read somewhere in an old book for which, along with himself, many of us profess, the greatest respect, that what God really requires of one is to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly beforeHim. This is the principle of Socialism. We are bold enough, in fact, to number in our ranks the Son of Man Himself, and certainly His immediate followers went very much farther than our present proposals. The religion of Christ did not consist of sermons and sacrifices, nor did it ever become indifferent to our temporal condition. One was not only taught by Him to love his neighbour as him­ self, but commanded to leave his gift at the altar till he had been reconciled to his brother. There are religions, of' course, indifferent to all moral and social considerations,, but we generally speak of them as superstitions, and con­ trast them, to their disadvantage, with Christianity. The elementary principles of it demand that we stand in a right relation to each other. It is, however, the desire of Social­ ism to promote this, and therefore the statement of Dr Elint that “ At present the main body of the Socialist army ” looks on “ religion with a jealous and hostile eye,” may be met with a direct negative. He is too good a logician and theologian not to know the ambiguous use he is here making of the term “religion.” What is religion? Is it to be identified with Popery or Presbyterianism? Must it be connected with temples and tithes? Many Socialists of �— 16 — course, like other sensible people, have grave doubts about the value of much connected with our ecclesiastical religions. They are not enamoured of priestcraft and dogma. This suspicion, however, of what has proved so mischievous, makes them prize all the more the evangelical religion of justice and mercy opposed to it. Dr. Flint had also a sneer at the “ so-called Christian Socialists,” for looking on Christ as “a mere Social Reformer,” but, so far as any relevancy in it was concerned, he might as well, like a popular orator, have applied it to “this so-called nineteenth century.” Our Christianity is a reality, and this is more than, with all our charity, we can confess to be the case with much of the re­ ligion sheltering itself under the segis of the Professor. There was more of cavil than candour in contrasting to their dis­ advantage the Christian Socialists of the present with Maurice and Kingsley. It is impossible to admire either the spirit or the accuracy of such remarks, for there is really no essential difference between the Christian Socialism of to-day and that of a generation ago. Maurice was intensely opposed to the principle of competition—to buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market—to every one for himself and none for his neighbour. It was to him an inspiration of Antichrist—utterly inconsistent with the command to “look not every one on his own things, but every one also on the things of others.” Competition appeared to Maurice diametrically opposed to Christian precept as well as example, and had therefore to be corn, pletely rejected. Attempts to correct the evil results of it are simply efforts to make Satan respectable, and are there­ fore doomed to failure. We certainly agree in this view of competition, and desire with him to substitute for it the principle of co-operation. This, however, is the aim of �17 — Socialism. It is true he was not in favour of confiscation or violence in carrying it out, but no more are the Christian Socialists of to-day. They cannot, however, altogether de­ termine the course humanity will take, or be allowed to take, in the realisation of its ideals, but in doing what they can to persuade the rich to consider the condition of the poor and act justly towards them, they deserve not only to be complimented for their noble purpose, but also for their excellent method. Nor is it by any means the case that Christ is reduced by them to “a mere Social Reformer.” There is not only liberty to hold every variety of opinion about His person and work, but the variety exists. Trini­ tarian and Unitarian meet on the same platform of evan­ gelical morality, and believe it is better to carry out the gospel precepts on which they all agree, than dispute about the theological dogmas on which they differ. Controversy with Dr. Flint is not a pleasure to us, but Caesar must yield to Rome. We expected larger know­ ledge and wiser counsels from him. The community ought to know the meaning of Socialism, and these lectures, with all their merits, will only make “confusion worse con­ founded.” They have certainly done harm to the lecturer. Many familiar with the subject, and not without respect for himself, have been asking in perplexity an explanation of his statements, reluctant to account for them either through ignorance or intention. It is not for us to deal with the causes, but with the errors themselves. We can, however, easily account for them without the imputation of any unworthy motives to the lecturer, for Dr. Flint is, unfor­ tunately, not the only wise and good man in the community capable of saying foolish things about Socialism, and we do not despair of his conversion. There were times, indeed, �— 18 — when even he seemed to kick against the pricks of his conscience in his condemnation of our system, and we can only hope that by the exercise of his trained intellect, as well as under the inspiration of his better nature, he will be speedily led to embrace it. None would receive a warmer welcome into our ranks, and few could do more for our cause. It is in this spirit of conciliation we desire to criticise his statements. He has far too much good sense ever to be influenced by the applause of an ignorant multi­ tude, most of them in broad-cloth and seal-skin, while we can wish him no greater honour than to become a leader in our beneficent movement, for its aim is not merely the elevation of man to the stature of Christ, but the realisation of the Kingdom of God upon earth. “ Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a’ that, That sense an’ worth o’er a’ the earth May bear the gree an’ a’ that. For a’ that, an’ a’ that, It’s cornin’ yet for a’ that, That man to man the warld o’er Shall brithers be an’ a’ that.” “be just and FEAR NOT.” A. Hossack, Printer, 71 Bristo Street, Edinburgh. �� 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 &amp; 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 Socialism on its defence: a reply to Professor Flint Description An account of the resource Place of publication: Edinburgh Collation: 18 p. ; 19 cm. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Scottish Land and Labour League Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1887 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T466 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Unknown] Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Socialism on its defence: a reply to Professor Flint), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><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 Flint Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/a47983de9b4aadee5d28c21cf85bf4f7.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=NQhZGm-8rLjB%7EolCYi7QkxmqbQmFlPcRZ6yOss1I9fbJ2ExJQIR4QdRiLbbysjPZ-hIHj2syDGAhgjoloYH1MzHFGPH-z2EXsQ4m3jDbpdYKnrjzaGSr6YoBCIQoA43L8JKDWkgw31PPyWEr3MHFpb2N-OI0FsMp4dXlKTVC0S93sRefFUdVmOcS%7ESF9JPauMp2xvhnKAKXztheb-KIHB5NY06Y%7EGXciDOEfrv9pD77u0Zt3kACuLvEysnc7OF07tzuYukNXL%7EvY0NQ05uCVvl%7Ez-i7Q%7EAn6NLBw08kHBHzYfE4wFSXeZduhA90fU3QogaaNu4gYIgOm69iW9wMPJw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 9ea70a55215aacf463295e5c7b16add3 PDF Text Text Az CAPITAL AND LABOUR; THEIR RIGHTS AND DUTIES: A ^RETROSPECT OF THE TAILORS’ LABOUR AGENCY ^jonUnir: WILLIAM FREEMAN, 102, FLEET STREET. 1861. �T. e* vr? »VP CO., Iirst-XTSK ASB GSSEXKL PSSTSSSj, �[CAPITAL AND LABOUR; THEIli RIGHTS AND DUTIES. Ten years’ experience, and the signal success of the “Tailors’ Labour Agency,” may j ustify a few words of self-gratulation, and warrant a simple statement of past achievement and future expectancy. To look back upon the hindrances which have obstructed us, the encouragements which have cheered us, and the accomplishment of many of our purposes, will be a retrospect not unpleasing to ourselves, and may have something of profit in it for others. We would like to speak with diffidence on a subject on which there is not entire unanimity of opinion, and while we admit that in carrying out our views we may not always have done the fitting thing at the fittest time, yet we are confident that our purpose has been a good and a righteous one, and we still cling to it hopefully and unflinchingly, thankful for the (measure of success which has attended our efforts, and in no degree dismayed by thajloubts and scepticism of well-tried friends, or the ill-disguised hostility of mistaken opponents. It were well, perhaps, that working men generally were better acquainted with the science of political economy, a science which has, in the main, established itself on principles of commercial and social soundness; though some of its expounders have driven their dogmas so hard and heartlessly, that many have been justi­ fied in their aversion to the investigating those principles upon which much of their welfare depends. Money, and how to get it, has become of far greater importance than labour and how to live by it; and while the working classes deem themselves excluded from the sentiments and sympathies which make life �4 cheerful and useful, the opinion is entertained by many that it is the interest and desire of the high and the wealthy to oppress the poor and the lowly; that position, power, and influence are ^associated only with the possession of money—that it is the ■destiny of the worker to work on for the enrichment of those that employ him—and that while capital is increasing in the hands of a few, and one class advancing in opulence and living in luxury, there is another and far larger class whose labour •can barely find them subsistencej who are living continually •on the verge of pauperism, into which they drift at last, leaving the like hopeless toil and cheerless prospects as the “heritage of woe” which the working man bequeaths to his 'children. This view of the matter is rather gloomy, and is certainly to some extent erroneous, but any one who has mixed considerably with our working population, our average working men, neither those who are leading vicious lives, nor those whose vocation is dubious and uncertain, must be aware of much in their condition that is unsatisfactory, and even perilous. With all our national greatness, our freedom of commerce, our vast achievements in science, and the growing intelligence among all classes, it surely ■cannot be that the claims of society, the progress of business, or •even the spirit of competition itself requires that our millions of workers, who are the right arm of our strength, and our bulwark -of defence, should be crushed in their struggle for bread; that the body should be exhausted by daily toil till the mind become paralysed, and the moral nature be overborne by physical wants and necessities, rendering the higher aims, enjoyments, and even duties of life a bitter mockery, and a stern impossibility. If this be the fate of labour—if there are laws inexorable in their ■demand, and unyielding in their requirements, which assert this •condition to be inevitable—then is the fate a hard one indeed. But we do not believe it There are some men whom much political economy has made ’unreasonable and unfeeling, who would not deny that in many •trades the workmen may be inadequately remunerated, and in ■some scarcely remunerated at all, but they would leave all that �5 alone. ’’These things, they think, will ultimately adjust themselves by some laws of their own, and any meddlesome inter­ ference with their operation they earnestly deprecate. Such mem opposed any interference with the employment of children of' tender years in factories, and of women in coal mines, and they would rather support the working man from the poor-rates, as a. pauper, than countenance any effort by which the wages of' labour might bejkept above starvation point. They cannot deny the right of the working class to combine to fix the price of their labour, but according to them this is never done at the right time, nor in the right way; and if hostilities are provoked between Lcapital and labour, capital generally contrives, by calling to its aid some extreme maxims in political economy, to get the best in the conflict. This has come to be considered by a large class of operatives as more owing to the power of the moneyed interest than to any inherent justness of the cause in the question at issue,, and antagonisms have thereby been provoked and embittered to the manifest detriment of both parties in the conflict. But, after all that can be said, money has a power—will always, have a power—as the representative of accumulated savings, and the engine by which commercial enterprise is set in motion, and labour made productive; and working men would have long er© now seen their true interests in relation to capital, but for the selfishness of a certain class of employers who look upon their workmen only as the means of money-getting for them­ selves, who think that to be rich is the best thing, and Ke next, best thing to appear to be rich; whose political faith is that “ Poverty is disgraceful, and hard cash covers a multitude of sins,”—whose regard for the workers is dictated by the same­ consideration which makes them oil then machinery—who view them only physically and socially, and overlook those moral relations which are the bond of a common humanity, and the only means by which a people may become happy and virtuous. We are no unqualified adinirers of Trades’ Unions, on the principles by which they have hitherto been conducted; and speaking as working men ourselves—whom, perhaps, fortunate circumstances* �6 and somewhat of an aptitude for business have raised a shade above the merest operative—we deplore the errors into which they have led those connected with them, and the deep suffer­ ing which their unwise counsels have often produced; but we do say that it will be a happy day for this country when the millions of those who sweat and toil, shall have intelligence and union enough among themselves, to combine for securing the same con­ sideration for their labour, as the capitalist can secure for his money; and by prudent, well-regulated lives, promote those measures of social progress, which shall give them a power in the ■commonwealth to which they have never yet attained. These views are not mere sentimentalities. Some of the sternest of political economists have put forth opinions to the same effect. Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, asks :— “ Is an improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage, or as an inconveniency to society?” “The answer,” he continues, “seems at first abundantly plain. Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up by far the greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as any inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.” Mr. M’Culloch, in his Principles of Political Economy, says:— “ The best interests of society require that the rate of wages should be elevated as high as possible; that a taste for the comforts, luxuries, and enjoyments of human life should be widely diffused, and, if possible, interwoven with national habits and prejudices. Very low wages, by rendering it im­ possible for any increased exertions to obtain any consider­ able increase of comforts and enjoyments, effectually hinders them from being made, and is, of all others, the most powerful cause of that idleness and apathy that contents itself with what �7 •can barely continue animal existence.” Again, in his Principles of Population he has this remark :—“ I really cannot conceive •anything much more detestable than the idea of knowingly con­ demning the labourers of Great Britain to rags and wretched­ ness, for the purpose of selling a few more broadcloths and ■calicos.” Dr. Wade, too, in Iris History of the Middle and Working Classes, says:—I am .a great admirer of political economy, but do not implicitly adopt all its dogmas. National happi­ ness is more important than national wTealth very unequally ■apportioned. Repudiating witlheontempt the idea that the rich are in a conspiracy against the poor, and that they do not ■wish to improve their condition; still, I think, that in all fiscal and •domestic measures the maxim should be acted upon, that it is 'better a hundred persons live comfortably than one luxuriantly. High wages are, therefore, more important than high profits •, it is better—should they ever be at issue—the people •should be happy than foreign trade prosperous. It is less an evil that the minority should undergo a privation of the luxuries, <than the majority of the necessaries of life.” With respect to the feeling which ought to obtain between employers and the employed, a writer in a late number of the Quarterly Review has the following :—il Employers ought not to stand too strongly upon their rights, nor entrench themselves too exclusively within the circle of their own. order. Frankness and cordiality will win working men’s hearts, and a ready explanation will often remove misgivings and dissatisfaction. Were there more trust, and greater sympathy between classes, there would be less disposition to turn out on the part of men, and a more accommodating spirit on the part of masters.” And so, in organising and conducting the “ Tailors’ Labour Agency,” it has not been our aim to propound any new scheme of a societary or communistic kind, or any involved or abstruse doctrines; but, believing that practice was more at fault than principle, we have sought to deal with old facts and sub­ sisting relations, and taking the ordinary intercourse and arrange­ ments between the employer and the employed, endeavouring �8 to rear o-ut of that, a scheme of co-operation which should enhance the interests of the workmen, while it promoted the success of the business which gave them employment. For it is certain, that even in tailoring, depreciated and maligned though it be, there is as much scope for excellence in taste and skill, as in occupations of a more artistic kind; and were a body of workmen got together, stimulated and encouraged by an em­ ployer, bound to him by some tie more enduring than the precarious one of here to-day and away to-morrow, were they sufficiently educated in mind and eye, and fully alive to the. importance of earning and sustaining a reputation for superior workmanship, why, a business, steady, certain, and amply remu­ nerative, would reward their application and industry, realise for them what the life of a competent honest artisan ought to be, and surround them with manifold comforts and enjoy-J ments to which a large number of working men are too often strangers. Fair wages for the worker we therefore hold to be of the first importance, necessary as a matter of policy and justice, demanded by the rights of labour, and enforced by the duties of capital. There may be some law of supply and demand which-, would appear to take it out of the category of ordinary obliga­ tions, but justice and fair dealing are amenable to a higher law,, and will not be set aside by arithmetical figures, or mathematical, definitions. The supposed existence of a law in our social economics, by which every relation in life is defined with mathematical precision, has a tendency to destroy that sympathy and kindliness of feeling, which should be for the interest of all classes, and produce a cold and hard exaction on the part of those, who, making haste to be rich, seek to increase their profits out of the wages which labour ought to receive. The man of contracted and ungenerous nature, who is dead to the sympathies of his kind, and has never been raised above himself' by one wave of impassioned feeling, seizes with avidity upon an argument, or seeming argument, by which his selfishness may be dignified with the name of prudence, shrewdness, or common sense ; in this mood of self-complacency he is regardless and �9 Indifferent about the misery, the want, and wretchedness, the debasement which under-paid labour produces among the numerous class of workers whose interests and well-being are vitally important to the community. It is reported that a member of a tailoring firm in this metro­ polis has lately purchased, a landed estate at a cost of nearly ■£30,000. For making a coat, known by the name of “ Oxonian,” that firm pays its workmen six shillings. The time required for making such a garment, is about two days, and the price paid for making it by most other houses in the trade is ten shillings. Now, would not a portion of that £30,000 distributed among the workmen in increased wages, and expended by them on bread and meat, On better clothing, better house accommodation, and more suitable furniture, on the education of their children, and surrounding them with happier, healthier influences, have been a greater social benefit than one man rising to speedy affluence, and becoming the ancestor of a landed proprietary ? It is, no doubt, necessary that wealth should be accumulated, and very necessary that there should be security for retaining it when it has been Btauired; but surely it is more worthy, more noble, more honest to be content with small gains, that labour may have its Equivalent, that the working man may stand erect with a sense of manhood and self-respect about him, than by taking advantage of a supposed redundancy in the population, and pitting the labour of one man against another, seek to extract from that labour the means of sudden wealth, while those who produce it are compelled to feel that increasing labour and decreasing pay are a condition of slavery, most real and degrading. It is a question for politicians how far the franchise may be ex­ tended to the working classes ; but it is miserable trifling, and Something more, for those to whom capital has given a power over labour, and who use that power solely for tffigir own aggrandisement, to contend that working men cannot be the safe custodians of power, and ought not to be entrusted with it. The working­ classes, no doubt, have their vices, many of them arising from want of sympathy and encouragement in the numerous ■difficulties that beset them, but we question if they are worse �10 than the extreme selfishness manifested by many of their employers, which has separated interests which ought to have been in harmony with each other, creating and fostering asper­ ities which have occasionally threatened to disturb the peace of society, and have been at all times the source of much angry feeling. There is nothing in the relation which ought to. subsist between the employer and the employed that implies a right on the one side to domineer, or a duty on the other to be over-obsequious, and it is certain that a kindly consideration and regard on the part of the one would produce a respectful attach­ ment on the part of the other, and make the situation of both much more agreeable. At all events, it would appear that some such principles^ sincerely entertained, and honestly avowed, are in unison with the feelings and sympathies of many thoughtful and reflecting men, as evinced by the magnitude of our business, (Appendix A,) and the increasing power and influence, which, in various ways, it has been able to put forth; and this second report of our proceed­ ings is issued in answer to inquiries which reach us from many­ quarters, and which we hope will remove some misapprehension,, and impart some information as to the exact position we have taken up. The origin and conduct of “ The Tailors’ Labour Agency ” does not rest upon the purely benevolent or philanthropic idea; we might rather describe it as the result of a mind speculative and theoretical, flitting about somewhat vagrantlyand restlessly in quest of a social system free from the extremes of affluence and indigence, which make such a wide gulph in the present aspect of society, and then in utter disappoint­ ment settling down upon the old system, and in the sphere which seemed to open itself up to us, resolved that the men whose labour we had to purchase, should, by a commingling of interests, a gentle compulsion, and a genial intercourse, be helped to wipe away the reproach that their order is more indifferent to the duties of life, and less capable of discharging them, than those in other classes of society. “ The Tailors’ Labour Agency,” then, is simply a proprietary establishment, conducted like any other- �11 "business for the benefit of its promoter, but recognising in various ways the duties which capital owes to labour, and com­ bining several projects, which, while seeking our own interest, may conduce also to the interests of those with whom we are associated. Let us state these a little in detail:— 1st—The system of employment, and its remuneration. 2nd.—Means for the intellectual improvement of the workmen. • 3rd.—Provision for the education of their children. THE SYSTEM OF EMPLOYMENT, AND ITS REMUNERATION. The condition of the working tailor has been for some years greatly deteriorating. Various reasons have been assigned for this decadence. Some have traced it to the strike of 1834, which disorganised the trade societies, and introduced a number of women into the employment; others have attributed it to the excessive competition in the show shops, the “sweating” system, or the employment of middlemen, and the consequent giving out of the work to be done upon the premises of the workmen. These have undoubtedly been great evils. With the sweater, and those who work under him, one cannot associate the idea of respectability, comfort, decency, or any of the homely virtues which are the stamina of domestic felicity. This home-working, in its worst iorm, has got the name of “sweating,” because a scheming and unscrupulous middleman interposes between the employer and his workmen, and, by means, more iniquitous than any truck system, contrives to get the most of their earnings into his own pocket. He feeds and lodges them, after a sort, and the miserable abode in which they work, and sleep, and eat, is redolent of odours neither pleasant nor wholesome ; it is in truth, a cheerless, hopeless, miserable life, alternating between excessive working and excessive drinking, a life physically debilitating, and morally debasing, and folk which, what­ ever he may think of it, the employer who perpetuates it is morally responsible. Several years ago, the iniquities of the practice were ex­ posed in the columns of the Morning Chronicle; and sub­ sequently Mr. Kingsley, in his “Alton Locke” drew a fearful �12 picture of a “sweaters’ den,” somewhat over coloured, per­ haps, but in the main, painfully true; and yet the evil will continue while it saves money to the employers, and while gentlemen, inconsiderate and unthinking about the matter, are content to have their garments made up under circumstances which, could they but sec them in the process of manufacture, they'would recoil from wearing. We determined, as far as we were concerned, to lay the axe* to the root of this great evil, and to restore the workman’s home to that comfort which the undivided attention of a tidy house­ wife seldom fails to give it. We have, therefore, our workshops on our own premises, built with all the requisites for convenience, cleanliness and healthfulness, which the most eminent skill could suggest, and our men come to work and return to their homes with the same regularity that artisans in other trades do, or that is done by men holding situations in mercantile or trading houses ; nor can we refrain from saying that, as a body, -whether as regards character, conduct, or respectability of appearance, they are a sample of the honest, intelligent working-class of this country, of which any employer might feel proud (Appendix B). Why, then, is the pernicious system of home working continued ? Well, you see a workshop is rather an expensive affair. Besides the cost of erection, the implements of trade, and the usual wear and tear, there is a considerable item for certain sewing trimmings, which the employer who gives his work out, generally makes the men find for themselves ; and besides, if a man is at work on your premises, it is necessary that at the end of the week, when you put his wages in his hand, they should be in some measure adequate to the support of himself and family; and hence, in the case of home working, in its least objectionable form, where a man takes out only as much work as he can execute himself, the scanty earnings of the man have to be supplemented by the aid of wife and children, to the manifest neglect of other duties, which are not so claimant perhaps as the bread and butter question, but which are very important nevertheless. In fact, it does seem socially to be of great importance, that a working man’s employment should take him out into the world, to undergo �13 a discipline by conflict and contact with others, which very discipline makes all the more a man of him, and to find the home a retreat and relaxation from the turmoil and cares of a working life, rather than making that home the arena of every conflicting element, the scene of jarring and discord, a place rather to be dreaded and escaped from than longed for and enjoyed. And we find respectable Workmen to hold pretty ' much the same opinion; for, although nearly all the men in our employ had previously worked at home, we can recollect only one or two cases where men have left us to return to their former practice. But then, of course, the 'wages must be fair honest wages, as between master and man, fair too as compared with those of workmen in other trades, and fair in relation to the ordinary necessities of a working man and his family. We do not enter upon any crotchets on the wages question; we disclaim any idea of fixing a standard of wages, or of influencing the labour market; we simply avow our design to carry on our business upon certain principles, and that of helping to sustain the value ©f our workmen’s labour is one of them. It is true, that indirectly we should like to see this influencing' others ; indeed, it has already done so, for we have maife-it necessary for men who never dreamt of such a thing before, in seeking the suffrages of the public, to profess that they pay good wages to their work­ men ; we can only say that we hope their workmen will see to it, that they practice what they profess. The wages in the tailoring trade has now been for many years paid by the piece. What is technically called a “log ” is agreed upon, that is a certain number of hours for every description of garment, and the wages fixed at so much per hour ; the higher priced houses pay at the rate of sixpence per hour, we pay fivepence ; the lower priced houses adopt the more convenient plan of saying, “ Here is a certain garment, the price for making it is so much, and you find your own trimmings.” According to our k “log” the calculation is that a man of average ability shall earn 306'. per week, or 5s. per day of 12 hours, which is a journeyman tailor’s day ; and we have found that calculation a very fair one �14 for the workmen, clever men will considerably exceed it, and slow men will hardly get up to it, but it is such that ordinary men arenot overtasked to accomplish. And then, having a large demand’ for made up goods, we are enabled during the periodical depres­ sion in the trade, by replacing the stock sold in the busy season,, to keep up pretty fairly the earnings of our workmen, so that wehave no need to discharge any of our people in the slack season, but would rather have them attached to our establishment, as much as the workman of any factory in a provincial town ; indeed we would wish to displace the migratory habits of the journeyman tailor, by a desire to fix himself down in a locality, and acquire those influences and opportunities which are necessary to the proper up-bringing of a family, and attaining a social position which may give life a purpose, and enjoyment a reality. In this matter of wages too, we are anxious that the public should be satisfied as well as the workmen. There are many per­ sons keenly alive to the principle of buying in the cheapest market, who don’t desire their articles lessened in price at the expenseof the workman who manufactures them. We know that at the time that public attention was directed to the distressed condition of the needle women, there were many gentlemen who said, that they bought their shirts at respectable shops, and gave a fair price for them, and then were not sure after all that they were not produced at the cost of the poor suffering sempstress. The price for making every article that leaves our premises is vouched by the signature and address of the workman who made it, (Appendix C,) so that should any doubt exist about our pro­ fessions, it is open to an easy solution. We are anxious to say, too, that in being thus explicit upon this subject, we are taking no credit for excessive generosity ; we are quite satisfied that the course we have adopted has been conducive to our own interests,, and moreover, the several schemes which we have in operation for the benefit of our workmen, rest for their success on thebasis of fair remuneration to the worker. �15 Means for the Intellectual Improvement of the Workmen. f The question of the day is said to be social progress, and a very perplexing and undefinable sort of question it is. In its general acceptation it is held to have reference to the respectable work­ ing class, and to the indescribable working class, which is not so respectable. As a theory, it involves a problem which it is difficult to solve, while it has the merit of instituting agencies, and enlisting sympathies, which have had a genial influence on a class which is not “ working.” The well-to-do people, and the scantily-supplied people, have become better acquainted with each other, and there is no doubt that the advantages of their intercourse have been reciprocal. It is avowed on all hands that the working class has made great progress during the last thirty years. Their intelligence, thoughtfulness, and provident habits,. have well nigh extinguished the occupation of the agitator and the stump orator; they are more disposed and better qualified to investigate those subjects which have a bearing upon their own interests, and less inclined to take their opinions on trust from any man or set of men. The Press has undoubtedly exerted a great influence to this end. Mr. Charles Knight, the Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh, and John Cassell, have been the knirveyors of a literature which was not poprdar, but which has held on its way, and done its work, to the almost extinction of' the diluted trash which used to be the current literature at the poor man’s table. Literary institutions, too, have not been all the failures they are sometimes said to be. In provincial towns especially they have been the centre of attraction for youthful, sardent, and inquiring minds, and stimulated now by the Society of Arts and its annual examinations, they promise to be of’ increasing interest and usefulness. And yet the subject of adult instruction for working men is very difficult, if not discouraging. With but few opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge systematically, with habits formed, and tastes acquired, which make it necessary to unlearn much, before much can be learned ; the utmost one can hope to- �16 do, is to impart something of a relish for intellectual enjoyment, and, by a little training, accustom, the mind to reflecting and reasoning, so as to direct the judgment to right conclusions on those important subjects with which it is necessary to be well acquainted; an education, too,which can cast an en lightenment upon the conscience, and quicken the moral as well as the intellectual faculties ; in fact, such an education for the working classes as will make them better as working men, rather than induce a desire to be something better than working men. When we erected our Hall, eight years ago, it was intended chiefly as a day school for our workmen’s children, with a kind of vague design, that it should be sometimes used by the men for discussing topics in which they took an interest, or for hearing lectures on both sides of a debatable subject, that they might form their opinions for themselves. A little after­ reflection convinced us that something more than this would be necessary, and therefore we took means to organise for ourselves a regular Literary Institute, with its Lectures, Classes, Readingroom, and Library, and such other adjuncts as experience might, show to be needful. The premises which are occupied by our Institution havebeenfound to be well adapted for our purpose, and we are now recognised as the “ Tailors’ Labour Agency Literary Institute,” in union with the Society of Arts. Although as yet we can point rather to means than to results, still, our Institution has in various ways exercised a wholesome influence, and in some cases has effected a decidedly educational improvement. Our classes have been Arithmetic and English Grammar, English History, Literature and Biography, Music and Erench. The number of persons in our employ is about 110, who are members of the Institution, and the attendance at the •classes has fluctuated from 10 to 40, those for English History, and Literature and Biography, being the most popular. Our Lectures have necessarily been of a miscellaneous sort, but the Lecturers have been men of high attainments, who have attracted large audiences, and done some measure of good. In our Library and Reading-room we are amply provided with the means of passing our evenings in an interesting and profitable way; �17 and experience has deepened our conviction, that could we get our people more disposed to avail themselves of such advantages, much good in every way would come out of it. Working men have many arguments, which cannot easily be set aside, for seeking enjoyment of a different kind; it is only, after all, a small per centage of their number who have the taste or desire for the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, or who would make any sacrifice for a course of mental training, which does not promise them a present good pow and then a man will start out from among the rest in pursuit of some subject which has arrested his attention, and if he has the courage to apply himself to it, and the resolution to persevere in the application, his intellectual faculties get quickened, and by intercourse with others who are like-minded, he gets “ a little knowledge,” which opens up to him a new life and prospects, affording him sources of pleasure which the illiterate can neither understand nor enjoy. Such a man be­ comes a power among other men : the salt which in a great measure has preserved the working classes, has been the intelli-gent, self-taught men who have sprung up among themselves— the “ little leaven ” which may yet help to leaven the whole mass. We have often said that we would stand by our Institution while there were six men interested in it and likely to be pro­ fited by it. We have been frequently disappointed of large re­ sults, but we know that it has been to some a haven where they have found solace and shelter, and we would rather go on hoping ever, than abandon the principles which have sustained us hitherto, or lose faith in the efficacy of working and waiting for an outcome of our labours. PROVISION FOR THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN. It was not because we supposed that there was any deficiency in the means of education in our neighbourhood that we opened a day-school in connection with our Institution—we have seve­ ral excellent public schools and many private ones; but we thought that a school, supported by our own people conjointly, �18 attached to their own Institution, and to some extent under their own management, would have for them a greater interest than any school of which they had a knowledge only hy common report. We thought, too, that from various causes the attendance of the children would be more regular, and longer continued than at an ordinary school; and, that as our members were all acquainted with the schoolmaster, whose interests and sympathies were with them, who conducts an adult class among themselves, and is editor of a manuscript journal, to which they are contributors, he would be more accessible, if they needed to consult him on matters affecting the education and habits of their children, than an entire stranger would be. In all these respects we thought rightly. Whatever difficulties we may have had about adult instruction, we have had few, if any, with the children—our school has been the most encouraging feature in our enterprise, •and we would respectfully ask those interested in the cause of •education to pay it a visit, assured that half-an-hour would con' vince them that this experiment, so interesting to ourselves, has not been altogether fruitless. The number of scholars vary from 70 to 80, boys and girls, some of them being the children of neighbours who have sought admission to the school, and been received at a fee of 6<7. per week. The instruction given includes the ordinary branches, with history, geography, and social eco­ nomy. In addition, the girls are taught plain, useful needlework, with some little fancy affairs included. Some of the lads whom we have trained have now entered upon the business of life with every promise of success, and others, ■who have been with us five or six years, are preparing to follow them. For the especial use of those we intend to have evening classes twice a week, for the study of such subjects as may be most useful to them, and to keep up that pleasant intercourse to which we have looked for­ ward as one of the results of the educational efforts w’e have been making at our Institution. May we here add, deferentially, a kind of practical solution of the much vexed question of voluntary education and state paid education ? If every trading firm, employing a large number of workmen, were to build a school-room as a matter of �19 course, as they build their workshops, and encourage their men to provide duly for the education of their children, it would do the “ State some service,” and might save somewhat in the expense of the machinery by which enthusiastic educationists seek to establish their theory of voluntary education. We have now a few words to say respecting the pecuniary resources by which these various schemes are sustained. Apart altogether from the business premises, and on the1 other side of the way, we have two houses, in one of which is the hall and committee room, library, class and chess rooms, with warm baths on the basement beneath^ ThA enlargement and altera­ tions necessary in this part of thfe j/r'einfises cost'krver £1,000. In the other house running parallel with the hall, and of the same extent, is the workshop, large enough for 80 men, and which with its conveniences, cost £800. The burrent expenses of the Institution are defrayed by a charge upoit 'Ofc member of 6tZ. on every twenty shillings of wages he barns. Thus, a man earning thirty shillings a week, would have to pay 9d., and for this he would be entitled to all the benefits of the Institution, and to school instruction for all his children, what­ ever their number may be. Then, again, we 'hive a weekly penny paid to the library fund, which is expended on books, and in supplying the reading room with newspapers, magazines, &c.; these pennies usually amount to about £20 yearly. We will put this matter in a form which will be readily understood, and we are the more anxious to do so because it will appear that while an Institution like ours may need to be helped a little during its infancy, it is sure to become self­ -supporting, and able to walk alone. Income. Per Centage on Wages ... Letting Hall ... ... ... Extra Scholars ... ... Library Pennies ... ... Rooms let at top of House ...£150 45 ... ... 35 ... 20 ... ... 18 ... ... £268 �20 Expenditure. Bent and Taxes School Master and Mistress Books and Newspapers Lighting and Warming Lectures, &c. Cleaning and Attendance Bepairs and Sundries ... ... £70 102 ... 20 25 10 20 ... 10 £257 We ought to remark that the sum set down for Lectures is only the incidental expenses connected therewith, the Lecturers sympathising with our objects, having given their services gra­ tuitously. This was a necessity which cannot continue. The source of our income is an expansive one, and will grow with the growth of our business, and the small surplus we have now, will soon become a fund out of which we can pay for the services of eminent Lecturers, and enable us to make Lectures a feature of our Institution, and a boon to the neighbourhood. We feel bound in this place to record our obligations for very valuable services, to the Bev. F. D. Maurice, the Bev. Sydney Turner, the Bev. Paxton Hood, the Bev. G. Bogers, the Bev. D. Thomas, Messrs. Henry Vincent, Appleby, Liggins, J. C. Plumptre, Gearey, Edevain, &c., and for wise counsel and generous encouragement we have been indebted to many whose names and labours have long been associated with the progress of education and the social, well-being of the people. We hope that we have set forth what will sufficiently indicatethe theory and practice of the “ Tailors’ Labour Agency,” and that the one will not be considered altogether visionary, nor the other quite unfruitful of results. It has certainly been our aim to make the worker more satisfied with his condition, by making' that condition more worthy of his satisfaction. It is true that our sphere is but limited, but within that sphere, we would like to become an influence for good to those around us, convinced, that wherever such an influence has been put forth zealously and disinterestedly, benefit has never failed to ensue. It is a trite �21 remark, but we believe it to be true, that the present times are -auspicious for working men putting forth their strength, and rising to the true dignity of that position which they are destined yet to occupy. “ On all hands we see a stir and movement in the public mind which is becoming more alive to the necessity of social ameliorations. Evils which forty years ago would never have been the subject of remark, are now examined with a care that betokens a wide spread intelligence and philanthropy. Every well considered measure, brought forward in a right spirit, not only does good in itself, but makes it easier to do more good. Difficulties which appear insuperable, doubts which cannot now be solved, vanish of themselves when we grapple boldly with the -duty which lies nearest at hand. The evils of society, as of the individual, are of our own creation, and are already half con-quered when we look them in the face. No society ever yet perished which had the will to save itself. It is only where the will is so enervated, that a, community had rather shut its -eyes to the dangers which menace it, than make the necessary ■•sacrifices to avert them, that its situation is desperate. Let every one who in his public or private capacity can do anything to relieve misery, to combat evil, to assert right, to redress wrong, -do it with his whole heart and soul, and trust to God for the result.” Newington Causeway, May, 1861. �22 APPENDIX. (A) The amount paid in wages, in each of the last will show the progress of the business :— 1854 ............... ... ... £3952 1855 ... ... 4035 ... 1856 ............... ... 4086 ... 1857 ...3494 ... 1858 . ... 4171 1859 .. ... ...4976 1860 ............... 4 d if’ ... 6709 seven years-* 19 2 0 51 2 2 9j 11 3 11 6. 10 a (B) The following extract, from the “ Conditions on which theWorkmen are employed at the Agency,” will illustrate the kind of connection we seek to establish between them and our­ selves :— “ 5. The first three months’ employment on the establishment will he probationary. After that time, no Workman will be liable to immediate discharge ; but, in case of negligence, imperfect work, or any impropriety of conduct, the Foreman may suspend till the charge be investigated by the Manager, the Foreman, and any one of his fellow-workmen whom the offending party may nominate : and, if dismissal should be the result of such investigation, that Workman shall not, under any circumstances, be again employed on the Establishment. “ 6. A decided preference will always be given to those who are careful and industrious in their habits, and clean and orderly in their appearance. It is, therefore, earnestly desired that the Workmen cultivate habits of per­ sonal and domestic cleanliness ; as it is the avowed design of the Agency, through its entire proceedings, to make connection with it uncomfortableand uncongenial to men of irregular habits and confirmed intemperance.” �23 We may mention, also, that for several years we have had an Annual Holiday ; on which occasion our premises are entirely closed; and the Workmen, with their Wives, are conveyed, by railway, some twenty or thirty miles in the country, where an, ample Dinner and abundant rational enjoyments are provided for them. We have, also, a Christmas Soiree, at our own Hall, when Tea, Coffee, and a Vocal and Instrumental Concert are the entertainments for the evening, These re-unions have had the happiest effects amongst us, and are always anticipated with pleasure and enjoyed with propriety. (C) DUNN’S TAILORS’ LABOUR AGENCY, 12, 13 and 14, NEWINGTON CAUSEWAY. WORKSHOPS—39 and 40, Bridge House Place, Opposite. For Mr_______ ____________________________ No________ Price of Garments_____________________________________ Wages-----------------hours, at five pence per hour. This form of Ticket is intended to verify the amount of Wages paid to the workman, and will accompany every garment, with the maker’s signa­ ture and private address for inquiry. A®" The Wages are calculated at 5s. a Day of Twelve Hours. Printed by P. Grant & C'O., Red Lion Square, HoILorn. � 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 &amp; 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 Capital and labour; their rights and duties: a retrospect of the Tailors' Labour Agency Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 23 p. ; 20 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by F. Grant & Co., Red Lion Square, Holborn. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available William Freeman Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1861 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5212 Subject The topic of the resource Labour Movement Working conditions Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Unknown] 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 (Capital and labour; their rights and duties: a retrospect of the Tailors' Labour Agency), 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 Capitalism Conway Tracts Labour Movement Socialism Wages Working Classes https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/fb3aecf685690786d860f89cc48eef15.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=bXoYHs3m0EAjKdd9Lfl-dIw4Ilo1Lmn3i2p16rd6eZEXrG7iWWpDptI2dNMrtSmpOPWHHgYrS9EuU7lQoeodJEiOqc6IZx%7EpxfoD73YTvHpvrRaa1wdOi5PJrjJ1BmQeSfE3uElZeLjJXSt9q7UpNymZYJiXlDqAu82RWbdhwzXQoB3Q2qRHLd%7E1I%7E5QGnjhBKfU6TpQJC8%7EmX84V9YEFLvCh97%7ExiPaE11h9p9W-TGKRSRzoBuJRLsTz59hWNQ0my%7EBQGWg6npj-G4gKGqbSIEHw6WeAR1JPrnFbu7BAr9lGzNKTBJwAJ74dzOBfjyVkcANXHZFJWcjs2ReIMMNDw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3e23999882c849314f3347b154d2e8e5 PDF Text Text AGAINST SOCIALISM. BY HUMANITA8.” Author of “ Is God the First Cause? ”, “ Follies of the Lord’s Prayer Exposed ”, Thoughts on Heaven”, “Jacob the Wrestler”, “Mr. Bradlaugh and the Oaths Question ”, “ How the British House of Commons treated Charles Bradlaugh, M.P.”, “ Charles Bradlaugh and the Irish Nation ”, “ Socialism a Curse ”, “A Fish in Labor ; or, Jonah and the Whale ”, “ God: Being also a Brief Statement of Arguments Against Agnosticism”, etc. LONDON: FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING 63 FLEET STREET, E.C. 1 8 8 9. PRICE ONE PENNY. COMPANY, �LONDON: PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH, 63 FLEET STREET, E.C. r �AGAINST SOCIALISM. [The following remarks were originally written in the form of a letter, which, however, I did not dispatch, coming to the conclusion that it might be useful as a small pamphlet against Socialism. This must be my plea for its brevity, and also for what may be deemed its somewhat fragmentary character.] Since writing my pamphlet against Socialism1 (now nearly six years ago), which partook of the nature of a reply to Dr. E. B. Aveling, my mind has, if anything, been strengthened in the belief that State Socialism would really be a curse rather than a blessing. I think the larger half of those who adopt Socialism do. so. without examining it, and also without carefully weighing the theories put forward by leading Socialists. I do not doubt for a moment that these theories are sincerely and honorably held by their principal exponents. I am confident such is the case in some instances. But I do not think the subject is sufficiently weighed and understood by the majority of those who throw up their caps in favor of it. The possibility of My Lord having, in some dim and indescribable manner, to share his riches with the ordinary hard-working — and often out-of-work — journeyman, is doubtless a very taking bait to dangle before the latter. I am here leaving out of the question the very large leaven of those who are not hard-working, but who hope to profit by any change, quite regardless as to whether it be for the better of for the worse. But if the ordinary working man, who is tickled by this delusion, looks below the surface he will see that it would not only not work, but that it is simply madness to dream Cq1 <la®oc^a^sm a f-'urse-” Price 3d. Freethought Publishing �4 AGAINST SOCIALISM. of its ever coming about. He will find that his salvation lies in the direction of Co-operation, rather than in that of confiscation. For my own part, I believe that, although the movement may do some harm—perhaps much harm— its ultimate and complete adoption is simply an impossi­ bility. State Socialism means State serfdom, and State espionage carried into every act and effort of one’s life. It means the complete annihilation of each individual’s individuality ; and, if enacted to-morrow, would by sheer necessity be ignored the day after. I believe the advocates themselves would, if successful, find the condition of affairs they had brought about so intolerable as to compel them to be amongst the first to undo their own work. Some of them, at least, could not by their very nature sink themselves to the necessary State level which would be demanded by what they themselves had set up. Some few there might be willing to sink themselves for what they thought to be the general good; but it is expecting too much of human nature to suppose that the bulk of the brightest, best, and fittest would submerge themselves in the slough of medio­ crity and inferiority at the bidding of a State (by which I mean the executive for the time being) composed of those who, despite the Socialistic government regulations, had, by their individuality, come to the top. Practically, I think Socialists hold, in common with most of us, that it is the duty of the State to guarantee each individual in the free and safe enjoyment of what he may, by his superior industry, thrift, and intelligence, earn. This at least is what they profess to desire; and it is possible that the main difference between us consists in the method adopted to attain that end. Whilst giving them credit for sincerity, I hold that Socialism would not only not do this, but would actually make its being done impossible. It would squeeze, or try to squeeze, all down to a kind of worse than State mediocrity, and thus rob each of his individual merits. If it did not do this, but allowed each to possess what he individually earned or produced, there is an end of Socialism, because it would then be allowing individual accumulation of capital, which it is its particular mission to destroy. It would seem to me that the very essence of Socialism is that an individual (or even a voluntary company formed of individuals) must not possess what he earns either by �AGAINST SOCIALISM. 5 brain, sinew, or actual moral worth, because one man will, by the greater exercise of these, earn ten-fold what another will. And this always strikes me as being strangely at variance with the great Socialistic complaint, that the workman does not receive what he is justly entitled to do. I am bound to admit that in many cases he does not; but will Socialism give it to him ? Will robbing the intelli­ gent, the industrious, and the better man, by levelling him down to the standard of the worser, give it him? And bear in mind that if you reduced the profits of the employer to the level of the average wage of the workmen, you would still have the question of extra merit, and con­ sequent extra worth, of the men themselves to deal with ; so that robbing the employer of the fruits of the position to which he had possibly slaved and toiled would not settle the injustice as between the workmen. The fact would still remain that all men are not equal : they are not equally wise, industrious, virtuous; nor are they equally fit in any respect whatever. Equality before the law is good, but it does not mean that all are equal in worth, either intellectually, morally, or even commercially, and no government stamp can make them so. Keeping this in mind, I do not see how robbing one man to balance another can be just or reasonable, whether that man be a duke, capitalist, government official, working man, or man in any other position. If Socialism will not permit me to possess the fruits of my brain, and enterprise; of my sobriety, and greater application, where is the freedom—not to mention the right ? [I would here remark that I am not forgetting the duty of the individual to the State, and to the general well-being.] But if, on the other hand, Socialism will allow me such possession, which means the possession of individual property—and you cannot logically draw the line between a trinket and a mansion—what becomes of it ? You are admitting the very principle that your Socialism is set up to kill; and bear in mind that whether you admit the principle or not, it will live; and rightly live. Nature herself will not allow even a government to command : Thus much shalt thou earn, produce, or possess, and no more ; or if thou producest more, thou shalt give it up, and go back to the level of the less active and deserving mass thou hast left behind. If a government could do this, and so deprive the more energetic and better �6 AGAINST SOCIALISM. man of the fruits of his greater energy—and with them .the incentive to that energy—it would at the same time be encouraging the mass to depend not upon their own efforts, but upon the efforts of others ; thus inducing and helping all—as per Socialistic law—to be indolent rather than otherwise. “ Open your mouth and shut your eyes, and see what the State will send you ”, is not a wise doctrine to preach. The large heap of money shared all round, with Jack’s notion of sharing it over again as occasion may require, is however, although the very backbone of Socialism, too absurd for any practical purpose, or for serious considera­ tion. Of course it is held that Socialism does not mean anything of the sort: but when explained (?) this is found to be what is really meant; because the moment you dis­ card it, you are landed in individual accumulation. I am aware that Socialism is held to be not yet thoroughly defined: but 1 believe it to be undefinable ; and that the more you endeavor to define it, the more unworkable you find it. Imagine for instance the arts and sciences being worked upon a kind of huge out-door relief system, the products not belonging to the producers, but to the State I Do you suppose you could by process of law—I am not asking ought you to do so—but could you make the great painter, inventor, sculptor, musician, engineer, physician, etc., etc., satisfied with the same remuneration as you would give to the railway porter, or the stable man ? Indeed, the intrigue, the red-tapeism, the discontent and rebellion which would be certain to form part of the ques­ tion as to which should become the stable boy, and which the engineer or philosopher, is something ludicrous to picture. The phrenologist might possibly be brought into requisition with some advantage; but not all the State paid (?) phrenologists, nor Government Boards that ever existed, or will exist, could make the great of brain, and the great of power, (in every calling)—mostly begot of perseverance and application—satisfied to be placed upon a par with the mass. The thing is simply a joke. The idea of finding sufficient reward—plus a “ leather medal ” —in the knowledge of having served mankind, shorn of all other and more substantial considerations, is nothing better than twaddle, and practically all, even including Socialists themselves, proclaim it to be so. �AGAINST SOCIALISM. 7 But if you do propose to remunerate the great and meritorious in something like proportion to their work, or services rendered to the State; might they spend or put such remuneration to further use, with an eye to immediate comfort, or to — perchance — future interest 2 Or would they be compelled to simply sit upon it, not even daring to hatch it into 2^ per cents. ? Perhaps a method of rewarding extra merit might be found in a system of awarding dummy medals—or, if really valuable, accom­ panied by criminal consequences in case of the recipient converting them into money or other valuables. For my own part I regard Socialism as the cry of the poorer and less able—and, alas ! larger—half of humanity —and I might go so far as to say : the worse half— against its own poverty and wretchedness. And it is this wretchedness, together with the hope of being able to remedy it, which constitutes the strength of the Social­ istic craze, and commands the sympathy and support of many to whom the merits of the scheme, as a means to an end, would certainly fail to appeal. Let us by all means do what in us lies : let us legislate with a view to reducing poverty and its consequent suffer­ ings ; but let us not do it at the expense of the liberty and the commonest rights of the people themselves. What we want is reform, not serfdom. We want an extension of individual liberty ; greater freedom of contract in the matter of the sale and transfer of land ; fewer restrictions upon trade, commerce, markets, etc.; the re­ adjustment of financial matters, with a view to a more equitable mode of taxation. These and many other changes calculated to directly benefit the working man, we un­ doubtedly require ; but we do not require a retrograde movement into primitive (now called scientific) Socialism. The science which shall thin some down and thicken others up to some kind of State regulation standard, making all good boys and girls, each being satisfied with the government dole, and also satisfied with that station and calling in life which it pleaseth—not God in this instance, but the State—to place them, is yet to be dis­ covered. The ism, whether Socialistic or other, would have to be very scientific indeed to prevent the eagle from soaring and the race-horse from outstripping the ass. And it would be very mad to attempt to legislate in that direction. �8 AGAINST SOCIALISM. But Socialism, whilst endeavoring to bring some down, would also necessarily have to prevent others from rising. It is in principle quite as adverse to a small capital as to a large one. The ability to produce wealth would be of no use; the main incentive to thrift and effort would be removed. Under the Socialistic regime individual possession of valuables of any kind whatever would be impossible. This is denied, because the idea is too ridiculous on the face it for standing-room; but the denial is simply a repudiation of the thing in behalf of which it is made. If Socialism should ever reign, our very language would have to be reconstructed: I, mine, and me, with all that belongs to them and is understood by then^ would have to be erased from our grammars as well as from our institutions; and every explanation offered by Socialists against this view is, though not so intended, essentially an argument against the feasibility of Socialism. Perhaps one of the worst features of Socialism is, that it would create a gigantic swarm of State officials, whose duty it would be to “inspect”, i.e, pry into the private business of every individual in the State, to such an extent as would be insufferable to any people claiming, in the smallest sense of the word, to be free. Nay, I doubt if there could be, such a thing as private business ; it would all have to be public, with a Government detective in every shop, house, or factory. It would be State vassalage, pure and simple. It might, I think, be safely prophesied that should we ever “ evolve ” into State Socialism, we should speedily evolve out of it again. Therein lies some consolation. And, as I have remarked, some of the leading Socialist luminaries would be the first to attract and draw the smaller fry into the outward course. These leaders are in some notable instances, and for this they deserve honor, the very personification of self-help, self-assertion, and self-reliance. It is true their great individuality is in direct opposition to the principle of Socialism, and is so far inconsistent with their creed ; but should that creed ever be generally and practically adopted, it would at once either kill or convert them into anti-Socialists. � 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 &amp; 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 Against socialism, by "Humanitas" Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ball, William Platt [1844-1917] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Shows signs of having been detached from bound volume. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Freethought Publishing Company Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1889 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N054 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Against socialism, by "Humanitas"), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><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 NSS Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/28a01b9a8c58a74a237258bbe9d3e3a8.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=Wm949ziRXm5S1desFv9DBNBO5KeUikdAmgtZRkTjUQJj%7EVCvOqLQZ3w5N3fZthF8RZhGyx450Bm6eU2eZ97E9b4KkQfs2O6YzkD-1iTaRaEl2-VgUzc-OBgCkQFX7VL0VDovPPAszdVWYxdaHr%7E7diA8agopJ6GKbwz%7EsE8OtR9Mt8BSyc3KFyf7b3NrtuxOk1lBZudYJxNAJFGU3LC21zH2LNVt6kY15k%7EMBtwyvjtqfHOB1VbSFlnkwnsOdD8vQqJtaFUS-mtfIxgV6JezKJodmaeSrqAEQgjeF-JmYC3tLw4Y1FabOlyD3SWnZseW3Lvdmmb79Vyen-vfEzdLgw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 8d87645b9f7c154eeb20194318a338d2 PDF Text Text WITH SOME COMMENTS ON THE ARMY ENLISTMENT FRAUD. By GEORGE BATEMAN, Late 2nd. 23rd. (Royal Welsh Fusiliers,) With an Introduction by H. H. CHAMPION, Late Royal Artillery. LONDON: THE MODERN PRESS, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C Anp W. L. ROSENBERG, 261, East Tenth Street, NEW YORK CITY. 1887. �YMflA 3HT ? X XX x.VJL JL A X -w • <r!//.H) .11 .h HDHOMO yS -v 5\ srtnl • .oil jfjboijfil H£ fUi/f ’tsW\VsK \n\jofl siv)A / t f 1 �PREFACE The account, which appears in the following pages, of the circum­ stances which go so far to make the life of a private soldier unbearable agrees with my experience gained during four years as a commissioned officer in the army. The fault, to my mind, rests chiefly with the system of appointing the superior officers. Choosing the profession of arms because it confers a certain amount of social distinction and necessitates very little work, as a rule they know little or nothing of the men they command, and confer promotion or inflict punishment on the advice of the non-commissioned officers who save them trouble. “ Discipline must be maintained,” impartial enquiry is tedious and difficult, and it is so much easier to take the word of the sergeant or corporal than to sift the matter to the bottom. Consequently much gross injustice goes on. I know of one instance when in India some hundreds of high caste natives were enlisted, as they sincerely believed, to become cavalry soldiers. They found to their dismay that instead of this they were to act as mule drivers. They protested and finally mutinied when unable to obtain redress, and as many as half-a-dozen a day for days together were flogged for disobeying orders in consequence. When the mule battery, with which they were compelled to serve, on its way to the front reached the district from which these men had been recruited, they deserted in shoals. A similar result is sure to follow whenever men who know they are treated unfairly see an opportunity of revenging themselves on their oppressors. It is one of the “ facts not generally known ” that the Reform Bill of 1832 would not have been passed, had not a confidential circular sent to all commanding officers in England been answered to the effect that, if the Bill were refused, and the people then rose as they threatened to do, in that case it would be impossible to count on the soldiers to obey orders in repressing disturbances. The certainty that they would put their duty as citizens before their duty as soldiers saved our country at that time from all the horrors of civil war. Is it not at least as likely that on a definite social, and not merely political issue, the sympathies -of the troops with the people may do England as great a service in the future ? It is not possible to reform our military system so as to ensure the comfort and content of the private soldier. Of this I am glad for I feel certain that it can only be rendered useful for honest purposes and impo­ tent for evil, by converting it from a mercenary to a real volunteer system. When we have no standing army, and every citizen who votes for war knows that he will have to take his share of danger and hardship we shall have no more of these piratical expeditions against weaker.nations, while England will be infinitely more able to speak to her enemies in the gate, should they ever pick an unjust quarrel with her. Till that day it is better for all that our army which, small though it be, is a standing menace to the liberties of those who exercise no power in the State, should be inefficient, disorganised, and discontented—as it certainly is. H. H. Champion. �SOCIALISM AND SOLDIERING. N a panic born of cowardice, and consciousness of wrong done to the mass of the people, Sir Charles Warren and those who employ him to protect the property they and their forefathers have wrung from the present and past generations of workers, applied to the military authorities on two recent occasions for troops to “assist in maintaining order” at the Lord Mayor’s Show, and the pro­ posed counter demonstration of the unemployed and suffering; and at another meeting called in Trafalgar Square by the Social-Democratic Federation, on November 21st, 1886, for the purpose of demanding from the Tory Government relief works and reduction of the hours of labour, to enable the starving workers to earn sufficient to feed them­ selves and their families. Although the troops were brought from Windsor and elsewhere on the first occasion, in consequence of a letter sent by the Socialist party exposing the authorities to the jeers of the whole world, it was thought better at the last moment to countermand the order for the attendance of troops on the 21st inst., and although our comrades in red and blue were deprived of their holiday in many instances and strictly forbidden to attend our meeting, they were not exposed a second time to the sneers of the assembled multitude, many of whom, on Lord Mayor’s Show day, very foolishly exhibited considerable ill-will towards the men who were but acting under compulsion, and much against their own inclination. But sufficient has been : aid and done by the robbing classes and their Christian (?) servant, Sii Charles Warren, to show that, if conflict between the workers of Great Britain, and their comrades in the Army and Police, is avoided in the near future, it will not be because the “ respectable classes” are loth to use physical force to suppress any attempt on the part of the wealth-producers to come by their own ; but because of other influences which are at work, causing both constables and redcoats to ask themselves whether, after all, they have anything to gain by the continuance in power of the useless classes. That these influences are. at work, and that they are beginning to be felt by our soldiers, is a fact known to many of our comrades, and we propose in the following narrative of the everyday life of a man in the army, to show that from the moment when he joins the Depot of his regiment, he is a more or less discontented man, and a fit subject for revolutionary propaganda to take bold of. “ One Volunteer is worth twenty Pressed Men,’ Is a motto that holds good in the case of an army as well as in many other instances, and it is often boasted that ours is a volunteer system of enlistment, and, so far, superior to that of Germany and other neighbour­ ing countries. Like the “ freedom of contract” theory, this statement �5 has one grain of truth to a whole bushel of (to put it mildly) sheer nonsense. How far it is truth may be judged from the fact, that of seven men spoken to when met accidentally in the street, everyone had entered the service because “ he was hard up.” And so far from men entering the army from any foolish notion of loyalty or patriotism, a great pro­ portion of them would gladly leave the “ honourable profession ” of a soldier, and take their place among the “ degraded ” toilers of our civil­ isation, could they but get discharged by any other means than purchase or “discharge with ignominy,” with its accompanyment of 2 years impri­ sonment. To talk of men as volunteer soldiers when they have been compelled to enlist by the semi-starvation and suffering of civilian life, is as incorrect as speaking of the “gift” made by the traveller in the olden days when met by some half dozen highwaymen armed with pistols, who, with more determination than divine right, insisted on the surrender of his “ money or his life.” Our soldiers then commence their service not as men who have chosen their professions, but as men forced into an irksome position by their bad circumstances of life—as men who have already been wronged by Society, and thus have a debt to pay. Having made up his mind to try and get a living as a soldier, our recruit attends before a doctor, after passing through the disgusting pre­ liminary of a bath in the same tank in which some twenty or thirty more have “ washed ” before him. After being weighed, hopping about on one leg, and going through a very disagreeable examination (which is of such a character as to try a sensitive man exceedingly) he is either passed or rejected. If the former is the case he is sent off in due course to the head recruiting station of the regiment to which he is posted. And now commences the making of a discontented fighting machine. From the moment he arrives at his Depot he finds that he has been Enlisted by Fraud and Wilful Misrepresentation, and that henceforth he is a mere machine, expected to obey any orders which may be given him without questioning, to submit to any amount of degradation and insult, and in fact to sell his manhood with his civilian clothes, and become part of the great army of “ Christian England,” to assassinate men with whom he has no quarrel, to protect those who are crushing his father and brother, and, should occasion arise, to shoot at a mass of people, among whom is mother, sweetheart, sister or friend. For such self-sacrifice as this, in return for such complete self-abne­ gation, there must surely be corresponding rewards or benefits. So thinks the intending soldier, and for the purpose of discovering what these are he commences to study a very attractive looking bill, issued by Her Majesty’s ministers, and headed, “ Advantages of the Army.” Pro­ minent among these advantages is seen the statement that the soldier receives “ Free Kit,” “ Free Rations,” and pay to commence with at is. id. per day, and comparing this regular supply of the necessaries of life with his miserable condition as an unemployed workman, the balance seems in favour of the red coat and the necesaries of life, as against his present light pockets and liberty. But the Will-o-th’-Wisp is no harder to catch than these advantages are to obtain. Arrived at the Depot the recruit receives orders to parade at the Quartermaster’s Stores, where he has given to him His “Free Kit,” consisting of two shirts, three pairs of socks, one pair of serge trousers, �6 0 I n i one pair of cloth trousers, one cap or shako, or whatever may be the headgear in use in his regiment, one serge frock, two pairs of boots, a hold-all complete containing small necessaries. Fitting on his new cloth­ ing our embryo Commander in Chief finds that all his clothing requires alterations, and he is told to parade at the tailor’s shop, where the alterations necessary are noted—and made if the recruit is enough a man of the world to understand the use of “palm oil.” This issue of clothing with a further supply of trousers, serges, and boots, at very long inter­ vals, completes the “ Free Kit ” promised by the “Fly-papers” (so-called because they are spread to catch the unwary by their promises of good things to come) issued by the government. The future, as Charles Bradlaugh used to say when he was an atheist, is left to take care of itself. Thus we find a very considerable outlay necessary before the “ Free Kit ” is completed. From, his own pocket the deluded recruit finds he has got to provide a duplicate hold-all with necessaries, as the one issued to him must be kept clean and spotless for “ Kit inspection,” as woe betide the unlucky wight whose spoon is not polished like bur­ nished silver, or whose knife and fork show signs of having been used, although the inspection takes place at the meal time when the things are wanted in use. Meals over he starts to work to clean his accoutrements, but finds to his dismay that he wants polishing paste, oxalic acid, pouch blacking, pipeclay, sponge, soap, white and coloured rags, “ Cleaning­ trap bag,” and a thousand other articles of kit which are not included in the “ Free ” issue. To complete his dismay he learns in the course of conversation that any shirts he may require to replace those worn out will have to be purchased out of his own pocket. The same rule applies with regard to socks, towels, braces, caps, small articles, such as razors, knives, etc., etc., so that, as a matter of fact, our young soldier finds that so far from getting his kit free he has continually to apply to the colour­ sergeant of his company for “ necessaries ” for which he has the pleasure of paying. Another evil from which he finds constant inconvenience and expense is the exceedingly slovenly and careless work put into the clothing by those who make them up. . The work, thanks partly to the strain in every stitch while the man is doing “ extension motions ” and “ setting-up drill ” generally, is continually giving way, and it is not at all unusual to see the men coming from drill of that description (which includes throwing the arms back violently, swinging them round and round, and bending over until the fingers touch the toes, keeping the legs quite straight) with jackets open under the arms, and trousers hardly capable of covering the man’s nakedness. Doubtless the new order to the police, which is to the effect that they are to go through these drills, is as embarrassing to them as to their red-coated brothers, and it certainly borders on the ridiculous to see a constable who has not been able to see below the fourth button of his tunic for some years trying his best to “ get right down ” in order to touch his toes. Another reason, doubtless, for the tendency to give way observed in the sewing of government clothing, is that much of it is done on the sweating system, in which the hands employed get such wretched wages that they cannot possibly put in decent work if they are to live honestly, and are to be able to remain outside the ranks of the 80,000 or 100,000 victims of capitalism who infest our streets and minister to the lusts of our spiritual pastors and masters. In this, as in very many other cases, our present wretched system of society brings its own Nemesis. But turning from this, our soldier at once comes in contact with i �7 another evidence of the fraud and misrepresentation which have been used to induce him to join the service. One of the first bugle calls which the new recruit learns is the “ Grand Charge,” or meal bugle, and hearing the call which announces the meal hour, he takes his place with his comrades, and for the first time comes face to face with His “ Free Rations.” Sitting down to breakfast, he finds provided for him by government nothing whatever but a pound of dry bread (not always of the best) and water ad lib. This will hardly be credited by the civilian, but can easily be verified by a few enquiries addressed to any soldier casually met in the street. But says our reader, “ I myself have seen the soldier with tea, coffee, or cocoa for his breakfast, and also with some little relish such as fish, corned beef, or at any rate a little butter.” Quite true, friend; and had you been by his side a minute after his dismissal from the early parade, you would also have seen him at the canteen buying those little delicacies, or at the barrack room door cheapening fish or some other relish with a native from the town. And had you been present with the orderly man or the cook of the company the day before you would have seen them drawing the material with which to give taste to the warm water which alone is supplied by government for its soldiers to drink. But making the best of the job, he sets to work and very soon demolishes what is set before him, in blissful ignorance of the fact that the bread he has found insufficient to satisfy an appetite of the finest possible quality, even for the time being is supposed by the Government who have been mean enough to trick him, to serve him for breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper. Dinner time having arrived, he is introduced to the second portion of the “ Free Ration ” fraud, inasmuch as govern­ ment sets before him for his meal nothing whatever but a very meagre portion of some substance, which in life probably had more acquaintance with London cabs than country cowsheds, but which is popularly supposed to be three-quarters of a pound of meat, the bone of which is limited to two ounces. Again appearances (to the looker-on) are in favour of the authorities, as a fair portion of potatoes is placed on top of the meat, and sometimes even a basin of soup placed by the side. But these favourable evidences are somewhat discounted when he learns in answer to his enquiries that not only the potatoes but the soup and even the salt, pepper, and any other seasoning in use are all provided out of a common fund called the “ Grocery Book,” and are paid for in equal proportions by the whole company. Tea time arriving, our young hero finds that Her Majesty’s Government have thought two meals (save the mark) per day sufficient for a healthy growing lad, and have made no provision for satisfying his hunger from i p.m. until 7.45 the next day, thus giving the stomach nearly 19 hours in which to digest the abundant feast which has been provided. Thus we find the powers that be, with unexampled meanness taking advantage of the wretched and semi­ starving condition of the victims of society to entice them by lying promises and statements which are known full well to be untrue, to enter into an engagement • to serve “ Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, her heirs, and successors.” The “ Free Ration ” statement is a gross fraud, inasmuch as the total allowance made by the official regulations is one pound of bread and three-quarters of a pound of meat per man per day, not more than enough for the morning meal when it is re­ membered that the man has been up two hours or more and has done a good sharp hour’s exercise in the shape of drill. That the food is �8 miserably insufficient is proved by the one fact that nearly every “ duty man (that is men who have no employment as servant, groom, or otherwise) buys at least one pound of bread per day, besides cheese or other food, so long as he has money to do so. For some short period of his service the writer was engaged as kitchen man at the officer’s mess, and it may relieve the consciences of those gentlemen whose luxurious dinners he was allowed to assist in preparing to know that during the time m which he was so engaged he found many opportunities of ministering to the temporal wants of his comrades by the assistance of their superfluities. They may be surprised to hear, too, that even the coarse palates and vitiated tastes of their humble companions in arms could appreciate the beauties of codfish and oyster sauce, and that even the raw oysters did just as good a service when consumed by “ yours truly as when put into their sauce. It may also open their eyes and the eyes of civilian readers not a little when we tell them that so insuf­ ficient and poor is the food supplied to the “ defenders of the country ” that when sent on “ fatigue ” to assist in cleaning at the officers’ mess their first duty was invariably to search for any scraps of cold meat or sh, or in fact anything eatable, which might have been rejected by their more dainty officers at dinner overnight. The coffee-pot was always a first object of interest, and there was generally a sharp competition for the honour of cleaning the “ ante-room ” in which it was possible they might find some half-consumed cigar or forgotten tobacco pouch. ShocKing! says my middle-class reader. Yes, dear friends, very shocking ; and these are the men whose hearts are so full of love and gratitude to you and your class that they are going, at your bidding, to use their cold steel and leaden bullets against the men from whose ranks they are drawn, to whose ranks they must return, and among whom are all those towards whom they feel the love of the son for the mother, the lover for the sweetheart, the man for his mate with whom he went to school, by whose side he toiled, with whom he fought side by side in their common quarrels, and who is to him as a dear brother. Are you sure, my wealthy, idle friend, that these men will act as your blind unthinking tools in crushing out the aspirations of their comrades, their brothers, their class ? Do you feel quite satisfied that they will never think, and that, if they think, they will not act on their convictions ? Sufficient has been already said to show that the soldier's life is not so bright as it might be, but the greater part has yet to be told. The tale of the petty tyranny, the crushing degrading insults, and the heart­ breaking impossibility of doing right, and giving satisfaction. And besides all this we have yet to examine the next count in the indictment, the deceiving promise of One Shilling and a penny per day as his pay. Reading the announcement of the rate of pay, coupled as it is with the statement that he shall have “Free Rations” and “Free Kit,” it is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that the pay becomes pocket money to be expended in the purchase of any little •comfort or luxury which may conduce to the happiness of our friend Tommy Atkins. Looking at the announcement as it stands one naturally supposes that the man can go to the pay table at the end of the week, and draw seven shillings and sevenpence as his pay. Any such notion is soon knocked out of his head, and he finds that in point number three those who are responsible for the issue of the “ Fly papers ” have made filse statements to him, and have deceived him, and he is made Stillmore morose, discontented, and unlikely to make a good soldier. The first two �9 deductions made are 3d. per day for “ messing” and a halfpenny per day for washing. Now what is this messing ? Simply a compulsory payment by the soldier which goes to buy potatoes, coffee, flour, pepper, salt, etc., in fact to provide him with a large portion of what should be provided free in fulfilment of the promise that he should have free rations. Another deduction is for “ barrack damages,” which varies from 4d. to 6d. per month per man, and which goes (in whole or in part) to repair damages and replace losses (real and imaginary) which may have taken place during the month. Again we have a stoppage of the subscription to the Library and another for haircutting; add to this the replacing of worn out clothing, the repairing of the same, and repairing of boots ; the purchase of various materials for cleaning accoutrements, etc. ; the repairing of any accidental injury to arms, and a hundred and one other matters, and it will readily be seen that the statement that a soldier gets one shilling and a penny a day is a deliberate misstatement made in order to get the men to join. In closing this part of my subject I may say that referring to my account book I find three months in which I “ signed accounts” in debt, instead of having money to come. But now I come to matters which, as affecting the general contentment and happiness of our soldiers, are of still greater importance. And first among these I shall place the system of Petty Tyranny on the part of Non-Commissioned Officers. What this means to the men will be seen in the number of habitual bad characters, the number of men “ discharged with ignominy,” and the extraordinary number of desertions in a year. The promotion of men from the ranks seems to be arranged on the principle most likely to cause discontent, and least likely to ensure the good conduct, efficiency, and soldier-like behaviour of the men. And the bad effects of the present injudicious promotions of extremely young and unqualified men, to the rank of Non-Commissioned Officer, will readily be seen by my readers, when they hear that a man who has only joined the service three months, and has received his first step in promotion—being appointed lance-cor­ poral—is absolutely and completely the master of every man who is still a private, and has it in his power to make a man’s life most miserable, or, on the contrary, very happy, in proportion as he himself may be in a good or bad temper. By “ Queen’s Regulations ” it takes a man two years of absolutely irreproachable service to get his good conduct stripes, for which he gets one penny per day extra ; it takes him four years more (or six years altogether) to get his second stripe, for which he gets another penny per day; twelve years to get three stripes ; eighteen years to get four stripes ; and twenty-one years of absolutely perfect soldiering to get five stripes—the highest possible. Now suppose a man to have served without a single regimental entry for eighteen years, and by so doing to have won the four good conduct stripes. On a certain occasion a young jack-in-office, who has just got his lance stripe, comes into the barrack room, and full of his new authority warns our old soldier for a certain “ fatigue ” duty. Knowing that he is not first on the duty “roster” for fatigue our friend with the good conduct stripes ventures to expos­ tulate with him, and to refer him to the “roster.” The pride of our eighteen-year-old three-month’s-service youngster is in arms directly, and without taking the trouble to ascertain whether the man is right or not, he puts him between a file of men, and confines him to the guard room, with the charge against him of refusing to obey the orders of the Acting Orderly Sergeant. On going to the orderly-room in the morning the veteran’s explanation is met with the parrot-cry “ no-excuse,” and �IO probably finds himself with enough punishment against him to take off his arm the whole of the stripes it has cost him eighteen years good soldiering to obtain. And thus a good soldier is turned into a discontented, disheartened men, who will sit and brood over the hardship of his case until fresh provocation being offered, he strikes the man who has degraded him, and finds himself sentenced to two years imprisonment and to be discharged with ignominy. In this case the Government would save a pension (and thus help to show a good budget), and would turn loose to prey upon society a man whose every particle of self-respect has been crushed out of him merely by the tyranny of some boyish non­ commissioned officer, who had been promoted before he knew his duty. But this is an extreme case ! ’ says the reader. Granted ; but it may be the case of every man who enters the service—it is a possibility which may occur to each. And although this may be an infrequent case, it is not so with the continual bullying, the degrading and insulting language and the monotonous punishment drill which is the lot of nearly every man in the service. I am under the difficulty in explaining this that I cannot put on paper the filthy expressions which are not uncommonly used by the drill instructors to the men in their squads. But anyone who may desire to know the truth of these statements has only to go to a place like the Citadel barracks at Plymouth, and there from the ram­ parts watch the recruits at drill between the hours of two and three in the afternoon. On one occasion in those very barracks, I was one of a squad under a man named Harvey. The drill was between seven and eight one morning, and because the squad could not please this man, (whose principal qualifications were his power to yell, and his unlimited capacity for swearing and bullying) he gave the word to fix bayonets, charge bayonets, and then to double, and he kept the men so long at this very distressing drill, that several of the squad dropped their rifles from sheer inability to hold them any longer, while others fell out unable to keep it up. “ But why not appeal ? ” Simply because it would be no good, and would only bring down the wrath of every Non-Commissioned officer in the regiment on the head of “ the fellow who lagged.” The non-commissioned officer’s best chance of getiing on is to show his smartness, and regimentallism, which is best done by “ wheeling ” men before the officers for frivolous crimes, and not allowing those under him a moment’s rest, or time for recreation. It is an old saying that if a man goes in for promotion “ he must be ready to ‘shop’ (or make prisoner) his own brother.” But the curse of authority, unfortunately, is not confined to the NonCommissioned Officers. It is often said that our army is not what it used to be, and that were we to be engaged in an European war, we should not find the same dogged never-know-when-thev’re-beaten sort of pluck which characterised our men in the past. If that be so, the blame for such a lamentable state of affairs would be found to lie very much with Bad Commissioned Officers. As I write my mind goes back to the year 1881, and I see again a regiment which has been complimented by General Napier at Gibraltar on its smart soldier-like behaviour. Stationed at Plymouth the “ Goats ” were mounting the main guard. The smartest and best men had been picked for this guard by the Orderly Sergeants (as was the invariable rule) because it was one on which they came under the notice of the General commanding the whole of the Western Division (at that time Major General Pakenham). Formed up for inspection by the Adjutant, “ clean, smart, and fit for anything,” instead of being sent off to their �II duty with a cheering word of advice, that worthy spent some twenty minutes in fault-finding, then told the men they were “beastly dirty,” and finished up by declaring that if they did^not turn out smarter he would “ make their lives a burden to them ! ” On another occasion (I think in August 1881) the regiment was on Commanding Officer’s parade in full marching order, which means something like 60 pounds weight to be carried. So extremely hot had been the season that all parades were ordered to be stopped at Aidershot between io a.m. and 4 p.m. Not­ withstanding this intense heat the men were kept in marching order, and drilled from 10-30 a.m. until 1-15 p.m., the morning’s drill including skirmishing, and doubling. Although this drill was not finished until after 1 p.m. some of the men who had made mistakes had to parade again at 2, thus allowing only three quarters of an hour to clean their accoutre­ ments and have dinner. So bad did the treatment become at this time that the discontent of the men found vent in a long letter by the author of this pamphlet, and another by a Corporal who afterwards deserted, both of which the Editor of the Western Morning News, an influential Plymouth daily, inserted in his columns, although by so doing he ran considerable risk. It may be objected that these cases concern only one regiment, but I reply that the broad facts contained in this pamphlet are in a greater or less degree (according to the officers) descriptions of the soldier’s every-day life all through the service. True it is that all officers, or all non-commissioned officers are not bad; and I would here bear testimony to the exceedingly good character borne by one officer especially, Mr. C. A. Boughton Knight, among the men of his company. But in his particular regiment he was an exception. When he ex­ changed into the Scots Guards, there was hardly a dry eye in the com­ pany as they said good-bye to the man who had treated them as fellow men and thus won their respect and (laugh if you will) their heartfelt love. Such men as he are the salt of the service who keep the men just below the point of insubordination. But bad as is the treatment of soldiers at home it is sometimes even worse when on foreign or active service, and if a soldier is treated in such a way at home as to make him disgusted and discontented, he sees such sights and receives such examples of neglect while abroad that at times it is hard to keep his indignation within bounds. Not only does he find that he is ordered to risk his life in such brutal struggles and butchery as those of Ashantee, Zululand, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Burmah, but he soon understands that even while doing his duty there are some around him whose sole employment consists of Robbing the sick and wounded. One instance, vouched for by one who saw the exposure, will suffice to show to what an abominable extent this sort of thing is carried. Charitable ladies and gentlemen in England, who interested themselves in our soldiers in Egypt, sent out for the use of the sick and wTounded several cases of oranges and other “ medical comforts.” Oranges were a very great luxury in that hot climate, and the civilian storekeepers who supplied such things from tents to those who could afford to purchase, used to retail them at about fourpence each. One old Maltese especially did a very good business, and on one occasion some of our navvies who were engaged in building the railway determined to see if they could not steal some of the old gentleman’s stock. The oranges were kept in boxes which were stacked at the back of the tent, and for their purpose the navvies attacked the back, and having loosened the tent they began to raise the canvas for the purpose of extracting some of �12 the coveted fruit. What was their surprise and disgust on discovering marked on every one of the boxes the following words: “ For the sick and wounded in Egypt ” ! Whose was the fault I know not, but there is the fact. The oranges sent for the sick had been disposed of to the Maltese who was selling them at fourpence each, while our brave fellows were in hospital with parched tongues and throats. We also know, though in very small part, of the sufferings of our men who are away fighting the Burmese in order to open fresh markets for the shoddy goods of the manufacturing community of which John Bright is a member. News has just come to hand that In Burmah men are dying like rotten sheep, the totals so far ascertained showing fatalities 372, only 23 of which are from wounds in action, the remaining 349 being from disease. Besides this we have invalided home 575 of all ranks, a very large proportion of whom are probably cases which will always leave the seeds of disease behind, which will sooner or later carry off other victims to the mad effort to obtain new markets. If ever the real history of our wars of conquest and aggrandizement is written by a competent pen, it will form a record of crime and suffering which will have no equal in modern times. Another section of our forces is engaged in a still more disgraceful work. The men who enlisted to protect this country against her foes are to-day found Executing “ sentences of death ” in Ireland ; English workmen fighting their Irish brothers, and thus assisting in collecting the rents of men who rob the English and Irish democracies, and who use the money thus stolen to debauch the wives and prostitute the daughters of their victims. But in the fraternising of the Marines at Skye with the Crofters whom they were sent to coerce, and in the rumbling of discontent which was recently heard among the troops engaged in Ireland, the watchful ear recognises the commencement of the strike of our troops against the degrading work to which they are being put; and one begins again to hope that our men will shortly realise that though they may wear red coats, the battle of the Irish peasants is their battle, and that they will refuse to prostitute their strength in the effort to crush a people “ rightly struggling to be free.” The men who are now fighting under the same flags which cheered on those who fought for the relief of the oppressed, will, looking on those flags, remember that their duty is to be ever found on the side of right. “ Obedience is the first duty of a soldier,” is the motto in the soldier’s book : yes, obedience to the call of right, obedience to the call of justice; obedience when appealed to on behalf of the suffering and oppressed ; but not obedience to the call of peers who evict women in the pangs of labour, and who spend the money wrung from the suffering Irish in debauchery in the brothels of Chelsea and Pimlico. Soldiers, do your duty ; but first be sure what your duty is. The above are but a few of the incidents which make a soldier’s life unhappy, and make the men discontented, miserable, and fit subjects for the truths of Socialism to make an impression upon. But the tale of petty spite and tyranny, of injustice and fraud, of drill never-ending and punishment undeserved might be prolonged until it would fill a book of several hundred pages. But why go on ? Enough has been said to answer my purpose,—to show to those who oppress the soldiers as they oppress the workers how weak is the force they threaten to use to �B prevent the class to which our soldiers belong from making an attempt to free themselves from their slavery. Think a moment, my middle-class readers, do you not think the men whom you call your army will some day refuse to prostitute their strength to fight against father or brother, mother or sister. Do you imagine that at your bidding these men will fire into the ranks of men and women with whom they have eaten and drunk ? Will they not remember that among those men, are their brothers; that the people on whom they are told to charge are the people among whom they will take their place when they leave the army, only a few years or may be months hence ? Are you not a little rash in supposing that these men whom your government has defrauded, whom the officers drawn from your class have embittered against themselves and you, will never remember that if they refuse to fight for you (and instead of doing so go and join their brothers who are struggling for freedom for soldiers as well as civilians, police as well as citizens, sailors as well as all others drawn from the working classes) you are absolutely powerless and at the mercy of those against whom you fight. Your short service system is filling the ranks of the army with thinking men, men who have already heard the truths of Socialism, and by discharging the men at the end of three or seven years you are giving us trained and discontented men, and are hastening the time when Socialists and Soldiers will shake hands and unite in bringing about by their unity in peace or war (as you of the middle and upper classes shall decide) the happier and better time when all shall labour usefully, and not too long, and when each shall have the full value of his toil. Soldiers and policemen, sailors and marines, all classes are beginning to understand that Social-Democrats are fighting a just battle. That our cause is a strong one because based upon the eternal foundation of truth and justice. That our cause is their cause because we are struggling on behalf of their dear ones, and are doing our honest best to make it possible for al! men to live decent happy lives as the return for their useful labour. You of the class who live without labour, on the labour of others, you are the only people who will not shortly be convinced of the justice of our cause. Your army, your police have but to announce their determination not to use their strength against us, and you cannot by any possibility force them to do so. Why should they ? They soon will be found in the ranks of the unemployed—we are to-day fighting the battle on behalf of those who have no work. Every man in army or police has suffered from the system which makes one man to live in luxury at the expense of the misery of the many,—against that system we alone are battling. Pause while there is time; think is it not the cause of humanity, justice and right which we are struggling for? Is there any other hope of ridding society of the jails full of what might have been the brightest manhood of our country ? Is there any other means by which you can bring back to their place as honest citizens the 80,000 women of this great London, who have found it impossible to live by honest toil ? Is there any other way by which you can give comfort to the children of the unemployed workmen of to-day? If this be the only way—whether you be wealthy or poor, soldiers, police, or what not —if you be men, take your place, and accept your share of the necessary burden, in the struggle for that cause which will bring in peace, happiness, and comfort, and which will build up a new society which shall be based upon the universal brotherhood of man, and whose motto shall be “ Each for all, and all for each.” �i4 And, after all, what is this great mass of evil against which we are told the forces of the army and police are to be used ? What is this terrible thing Social-Democracy? How many know, bow many have sought to know the truth as between Socialism and Capitalism ? It is so easy to condemn a thing—a man—a system as criminal, but it is so wearisome to argue out fairly and honestly a somewhat difficult problem, especially when it is quite possible the real solution when found may tell against oneself, one’s own pet theories, one’s own comfort, one’s own idle luxurious life. Who are the men whom we see branded as mischievous agitators, stirrers up of class hatred, and disturbers of the “harmonious relations between labour and capital?” Simply, in the majority of cases, men who have lived and suffered among the “ masses,” who have felt the terrible grinding of the heel of capitalism as it crushes out of their lives all that makes life bright, and happy, and worth living. Simply men who have stood, without the power to shed the tears which would have given relief, by the side of the little plain coffin containing all that is left of the little one who used to make home happy, even when stomachs were empty and the body shivered for want of the clothes which had been parted with for food, and who have cursed with bitterest curses the cruel selfishness of the system which has slowly and surely murdered the darling of their life. Who are they ? Men who have seen the infant sucking the empty breast while the mother’s eyes have appealed to them for the food they could not give. Who have seen their, sisters damned in this world, and—if we are to believe those who call themselves our spiritual pastors and masters—damned in the world to come. Who are they ? The brothers of the men forced into the criminal classes, the fathers of sons compelled to thieve to live ! These are the men against whom you who are not with us are fighting. Are they dangerous ? It is you—whether workman or idler—who are propping up the system which causes suffering and degradation, it is you who make them so. Are they madmen ? It is you, middle-class man, aristocrat,, it is you who have made them mad by the hellish cruelty of your oppression, by the degradation of their womanhood, and it is against you—if they be mad, their madness will turn and avenge itself. But they are not mad. They are those who, taught by men from your class but not of it, have determined that come what may, whether by peace or war, through weal or through woe, they are going on with the struggle for liberty, for life, for happiness. These are the men against whom you must fight, or with whom you must unite in the struggle. Fanatics if you will; violent if you like ; but fanatics in their confidence in the justice of their cause, and violent only in their hatred of seeing what they believe to be truth crushed down by your blind folly. What are they striving for ? Do they seek fame? No, or they would sell their voice or pen to a party as the Broadhursts, the Howells, and the Cremers ha.ve done in the past I Do they seek riches ? No, for every one of them in a greater or lesser degree is giving of his small earnings to help in his cause ! .For what then are they spending their lives ? For the hope of better things in the future ; for the hope of gaining for themselves and those who suffer with them some of the glorious possibilities of life ; for the hope of lighting up with joy the thousands of lives which to-day are full of dark dangerous despair. For this hope they strive ; for this hope they �15 fight on ; for this hope they will be found struggling though all the powers of earth are fighting against them ; for this hope they will sacrifice all that makes life happy; and by their striving, their fighting, their struggling, and their sacrifice they will assuredly conquer. IS THE BATTLE WORTH FlGHTING ? To you of the classes who never labour, but who are living upon the labour of others, what will a victory mean? Think just a moment! You can but gain a continuance of your present aimless existence, your life of hypocrisy, hollowness, rottenness, of which, even now, when you are honest enough to think seriously, you are sometimes.ashamed; especially when you remember how mean, how contemptible, is your life if you are living—not on your own labour, for you do none—but on the labour of your fellow men and women. And what does a continuance of this throat-cutting system mean to the great mass of the men and women of the world. It means continuous toil, continuous misery and suffering, continuous degradation, for you cannot point to a remedy, or even to anything like a sufficient palliative, outside of that proposed by the Socialists whom you despise. It means to the “people” lives of dull grinding poverty, without education, without pleasure, and, worst of all, without hope ! Do you who read- this belong to the middle class, the wealthy class ? I ask you are you prepared to use your energies, your strength, your skill to gain a victory, to support a system, which will condemn your fellow men and women to such a life as this. Men of your class in other countries have sacrificed everything for this cause, and men like Peter Krapotkine, men like Stepniak, appeal to you to give up your mean despicable existence and take your share in the fight, success in which means happiness for so many. Nor is your own country without noble examples for you ; think then whether you can resist the appeal of thousands of blighted lives, thousands of weak voiced children, who cry to you to help them to live as decent men and women a life of happiness and peace. Is it such a crime to ask that men should enjoy the fruits of their own toil ? Is it so great a wrong to forbid a man, a class, to take that which belongs to another without returning him a full equivalent. If a member of a family will not work, what is the result ? That family turns the lazy one into the streets to starve—until he works. And if labour applied to nature is alone the source of wealth how comes it that the idle classes, who do no useful work, are found in possession of the wealth produced by industrious toilers ? How comes it that those who produce so much enjoy so little ? Answer truly, and the confession must come, that it is because labour is robbed of that which it produces ; because those who toil not steal from those who labour. Call it profit, call it interest, call it rent, and.it remains, notwithstanding all your arguments, robbery, because no equivalent is returned to those from whom it is taken and to whom it belongs. We seek but Justice and Fair Play. We ask not for that which is another’s, but simply the right to labour usefully, and to enjoy the fruits of our labour. How can this be secured ? A man wishes to apply his labour to nature—in order to be able to live he must do so, but he finds himself prevented because the implements of production, and even the gifts of nature, are controlled by someone else, who refuses him access to them unless he will allow him a large share of the produce of his labour. What then ? Since it is absolutely necessary that labour and nature should come together, the barrier between them �i6 —private ownership—must be removed, and the people—the Statemust assume the position of its own trustee. Surely our position is reasonable. If the welfare of the great mass of the people demands self-sacrifice on the part of the few, the sacrifice must be made. If the life of ease, and luxury, and idleness of the wealthy classes can only be maintained at the expense of the unhappiness and robbery of the poor, then they must give up their luxury and ease, and raise themselves to the position of honest useful toilers, taking their part in the battle of life, and cheered by the knowledge that they are helping to give better,’ brighter, and happier lives, to those who have suffered so much in the past. Do any want an ideal for which to strive ? we put before you the highest possible ideal—the greatest possible happiness and culture of the human race. Does anyone want to spend his life in practical efforts to raise up his down-trodden fellows ? We show you a certain path to success. Search it, try it, examine it honestlyj; forget that it is called Socialism, and see only if it be right, if it be just, if it be good. And if so, if you see no other way out of the difficulty, take your place—whether you be workman or middle-class, aristocrat or beggar, in the forefront of the battle ; and with perfect freedom as your motto, with hearts filled with hope, with hand clasped in hand and shoulder to shoulder, fight with all your strength—not the battle of the bondholders, not the fight of the usurers—but the battle of the workers of all nations, the battle of SocialDemocracy, and you will thus be hastening the time when the peoples of the world will stand side by side, without strife, without quarrelling, happy, contented, free. Note to Second Edition.—Since the first edition was issued, an appeal has been made to various sections of the community for funds with which to erect the “ Imperial Institute,” in commemoration of Her Majesty’s fifty years’ reign. Among others, the men of the Army and Navy, and even the inmates of Chelsea Hospital have had issued to them what is tantamount to an order to contribute of their small means to this object. Refuse they dare not, and thus they are to be robbed still further. Why not appeal to the widows and children of men killed in action, and to the young women who have been forced on the streets because their fathers have “ died for their country? ” It is to be hoped that men in all the services will resolutely refuse to contribute to such an object as this, while their fellows, their women­ folk, and their children perish for want of bread. Many letters from Non-Commissioned Officers and privates have been received, corroborating the statements contained in this pamphlet, and the author will be glad to correspond (in confidence) with any who can further expose the frauds, deceptions, and tyranny practised upon the rank and file either of the Army or Navy. All communications should be addressed to George Bateman, care of the Publishers. [Those who wish to know move about Socialism should send to the\ Modern Press for a list of pamphlets on the subject. On receipt of One Shilling a dozen different pamphlets will be sent post-free.] � 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 &amp; 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 Socialism and soldiering; with some comments on the army enlistment fraud Description An account of the resource Edition: 2nd. ed. Place of publication: London Collation: 16 p. : ill. (front. port.) ; 23 cm. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bateman, George 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 1887 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G4978 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Champion, H.H. Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Military 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 (Socialism and soldiering; with some comments on the army enlistment fraud), 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 Armed forces Armed forces;Enlistment Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/12a974651e2c4cfed05f6db2819d1b09.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=pFOekVw5ljppNc348c5EPDhm4oCfsA15QpvNFOWkGAfSbFd5aAq88ReZqU3n0woYq8Brqv5hMzTdejW-FHC%7E1u4c4jWbcEV3kx1bxzAR4gyOeYC5u5x0CBizJy7zAmxsK%7E6NIPdV3n3dqgV1Nj91W75Ii20fZjdLI5LalVi1Ozfkq6or8UX07SwsLg7055YJth6dkPUXWBDY7O1rXcfeHqq0AVqnPI%7Ey49J0qHFzVUtdL%7Eww2%7EjoavQQrg4xyGNcNwsa6u43oveaZoLmiAcMtPIMd5noFquaRpKoh4ehiMtXLbCKf39UxG-DD2j7HQLiENeUNdL62uRVm5dKFPQktA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f9f712daa758baf04cf9c2d9de037b92 PDF Text Text THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE . WORKING CLASS. * *\ & ftttert Delivered to a Meeting of Trades Unionists, May 7, 1868. BY EDWARD SPENCER BEESLY, PBOEESSOB OP HISWEY IN UNIVEBSITY COLL EC®, LONDON. “ The working class is not, properly speaking, a class at all, but constitutes the-body of society. From it proceed the various special classes, which we may regard as organs necessary to that body.”—-Auguste Comte. Reprinted from the “Fortnightly Review.” LONDON: E. TRUELOVE, "256, . . HIGH HOLBORN. ± 1869*1^ ��THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS.1 We live in a day when social questions are for the first time con­ testing precedence with political questions. In the first French revolution the distinction was not apparent; at all events it was not recognised even by sharp-sighted observers, though we, looking back to those times, can detect the signs of it. During the reign of Louis Philippe—from 1830, that is, to 1848—the distinction became every year more marked. It is the fashion to speak of the revolution of 1848 as a very small affair—as a feeble imitation of the old revolu­ tion. If looked at from a political point of view, in the narrowest sense of that term, it certainly was a much smaller affair than the old revolution. But to those who have realised in their minds that there has been in truth but one revolution, which began in 1789 and has been going on ever since, and that the year 1848 marks its transition from the purely political to the social phase,—to such persons, I say, the last epoch will seem even more momentous than the first. The attempt of 1848 was a failure, no doubt. But the history of the French revolution was not closed in 1848, as most of us here present will live to see. In England we have travelled the same path, though hitherto without such violent shocks. We are all of us, French and English alike, moving rapidly towards the most fundamental revolution Europe has yet undergone ; a revolution in comparison with which the great political changes in the time of our grandfathers, and even the great religious changes three centuries ago, were, I had almost said, insignificant. I will not pretend to say how far workmen may have clearly realised to themselves this prospect. I am inclined to think that not many of them have more than a vague conception of it, although they are instinctively working towards it. But the middle class have no conception of it at all. I am not speaking of the stupidly ignorant part of that body, but of its more enlightened and active members. They sincerely believe that the series of political changes which they commenced in England forty years ago is nearly completed. When they shall have abolished the State Church, reduced taxation somewhat, obtained the ballot and equal electoral districts or something like it, they think reform will be completed, and that England will enter upon a sort of golden age. (1) This lecture was the last of a series of three delivered last spring, by request of the London Trades’ Council, to meetings convoked by that body. The first two were "by Dr. Congreve and Mr. Frederic Harrison. �2 THE SOCIAL FUTURE 0$ THE WORKING CLASS* They do not contemplate any serious change, either political or industrial. Politically, we are still to be governed by Parliament. In industry we are to have the reign of unlimited competition. ' Now we can all of us understand that some men, either from education or mental constitution, do not believe in progress at all. They think that all change is for the worse, unless it is a change backwards; and they are convinced that nothing but firmness is wanting to resist change. There always have been such men, and we can understand them. But what is less easy to understand is that there should be men who believe heartily in progress, and yet shut their eyes deliberately to the goal whither we are tending. The truth is that their belief in progress does not rest on any reason­ able basis. It is nothing better than a superstitious optimism, a lazy semi-religious idea that the world must have a natural tendency to get better. As for what getting better means, that they settle by their own likes and dislikes. Consequently the middle-class man interprets it to mean a reign of unlimited competition and individual freedom; while the workman understands it to be a more equal division of the products of industry. Although the workman’s circumstances have led him to a truer conception of progress, perhaps he has not arrived at it on much more reasonable grounds than those on which the middle-class man has arrived at his. For, after all, it does not follow because we long for a certain state of society that therefore we are tending towards it. The lot of the poor is a hard lot; there is no denying that. With a very large number of them life is absolute misery from birth to death. Though they may not actually starve, they are more or less hungry from one week’s end to another; their dull round of toil occupies the whole day; their homes are squalid and frightful, seldom free from disease, and the heartrending .incidents of disease, when aggravated by poverty. For them life is joyless, changeless, hopeless. “ They wait for death, but it cometh not; they rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave.” Those who have mixed with the very poor, and have been startled by the strange calmness with which they contemplate and speak of death, whether of themselves or their relatives, will not say that this picture is much over-drawn. But it is not of this poorest class that I now wish to speak. I say that the lot of the skilled artizan earning his 30s. or 35s. a week (when he is not out of employment) is a hard lot. Perhaps it may seldom or never happen to him to go for a day with his hunger only half satisfied. But his position compared with that of a non-workman is one of great discomfort. People often seem to forget this. It is not uncommon for rich men, when addressing an audience of workmen to say, “ My friends, I am a working man. I have been a working man all my life. I have been working with �THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. 3 my brain as you have with your hands.” Yes, but there is just that difference. The one man has risen, say, at eight in the morning, from a comfortable bed, has come down-stairs to a comfortable breakfast, read his newspaper, reached his place of business towards eleven o’clock, and then worked perhaps hard enough for some hours, but in a comfortable office, and with interest in his work so intense that he perhaps prefers it to any amusement, and then back to his comfortable dinner and bed. The other man has risen perhaps before daylight, has toiled ten or twelve hours, it may be under a broiling sun, or a chilling rain, or under other conditions equally disagreeable, and at work which cannot have very much interest for him, first, because it is monotonous, secondly, because the product will not be his when he has produced it. He has snatched his coarse food at intervals during the day, and has returned at night to an uncomfortable home. I think rich people are too apt to forget that, though habit counts for much, a poor man’s, muscles, lungs, and stomach,.are, after all, not very unlike their own, and that no amount of custom makes such a life Otherwise than disagreeable and even painful to him; and that the main question for him in reference to civilisation will be, how it alleviates his condition. How are we to answer that question? Everyone is familiar with the hymns of triumph that are raised from time to time on the platform and in the press. We need not enter into particulars, because no one disputes that, so far as they go, they do point to progress of a certain kind. No one disputes that the production and accumulation of wealth is an element of progress J but it is only one element, and if even this is confined to a comparatively small section of the com­ munity, it must be admitted either that society as a whole is not progressing, or that its progress must be proved by somewhat better evidence than the statistics paraded in budget speeches and news­ paper articles. There is no question about the material progress of the non-work­ man class. There are many thousands of houses in London infinitely more commodious and luxurious than the palaces of Plantagenet kings. But there is very great question whether the workmen generally have made any real progress in comfort. Some of them have, no doubt. The skilled artizan in London gets enough to eat. He is perhaps no better lodged than his forefathers, but he dresses better, and he has greater opportunities of enjoying himself and moving about to better himself. But among the agricultural labourers what state of things do we find ? In many parts of England they are positively worse off than they were a hundred years ago. In the Eastern Counties, where agriculture is carried on by the newest lights of science, the horrible gang-system has come into existence within the present century. Nor is such misery confined . b 2 �4 THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASSJ to agricultural labourers. It has been proved in official reports that ' the workmen in such extensive trades as shoe-making, silk-weaving, and stocking-weaving, are on an average worse fed than the Lancashire operatives were during the cotton famine.1 Now, wretchedness of this terrible kind does not exist even among barbarous nations and savage tribes. The child of the North American Indian, or the Caffre, or the Esquimaux, does not begin to work in a mill or in an agricultural gang almost as soon as it can walk. It gets better food than the English child, and leads a healthier and more enjoyable life. The West Indian negro has been treated as an irreclaimable savage because he will not toil like an English labourer, and the reason assigned is that he has plenty to eat and drink without working hard for it. I fancy most English labourers wish they could say the same. Really, if progress and civilisation mean nothing but an increase of wealth, irrespective of its distribution, Rousseau had much reason to prefer the state of nature. It is childish to remind the poor man that his ancestor under the Plantagenet kings had no chimney to his hut, no. glass in his windows, no paper on his walls, no cheap calico, no parliamentary trains, no penny newspapers. He was no worse off in these respects than the Plantagenet king himself, who was equally without chimneys, glass windows, calico, railways, and penny newspapers. There are parts of the world now where the labourer is still in that condition. But he gets sound and healthy sleep out of the straw spread on the floor of his windowless hut, which is more than three or four families huddled together in a single room in St. Giles’s can do, though they may have a glazed window and a chimney. A poor Englishman might be ashamed to walk about in a good stout sheepskin; but he is often clad in garments much less warm and durable. What sort of progress is this, in which the larger part of the community remains as miserable, if not more miserable, than in a state of barbarism ? If progress is necessarily so one-sided, it were better—I say it deli­ berately—it were better it ceased. It were better that all were poor together than that this frightful contrast should exist to shake men’s faith in the eternal principles of justice. Happily, we are not shut up to so discouraging a conclusion. If . we look at the whole history of our race in Western Europe, instead of studying one short chapter of it alone, we shall soon see what its progress has been. The labouring class have steadily advanced in dignity and influence. Once they were slaves, with no more rights than horses and oxen. Then they were serfs, with certain rights, but still subject to grievous oppression and indignities. Then they became free hired labourers, nominally equal with the upper class before the law, but in practice treated as an inferior race, and them(1) Public Health; Sixth Report, for 1863, pp. 13, 14. �THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. 3 selves looking on the rich with much deference and awe. Now we have come to a time when the workmen are almost everywhere standing on their rights, and resisting what they deem unfair or oppressive. They have learnt the secret of combination. With freedom and dignity has come confidence—confidence in each other. They have grasped the idea that the main object of government and industrial organisation should be their comfort and happiness. What is more, everybody is beginning to hold the same language. Every proposal publicly made, whether to destroy or to create, is represented as for the good of the lower classes. The very employers who are trying to destroy your trade societies profess to be doing it out of pure love for you. How astonishing and incomprehensible would all this have been—I do not say to the ancient slave-owner, or to the mediaeval baron—but to the wealthy men of the last century. Is not this progress ? What if a minority only of the workmen have as yet derived any benefit from the increased production of wealth ? Is it nothing that the arms are being forged with which all shall at length get their share ? Material improvement has always begun, and always will begin, not with. those who need it most, but with those who need it least; and the higher classes of workmen are now making the experiment which the lowest will repeat after them. Once firmly grasped, this truth throws a flood of light on history, and makes clear what at first sight, is so obscure—the unbroken, continuous progress of society. We see that even in the so-called dark ages, when the splendour of Roman civilisation appeared to be extinguished by the barbarian—when science, art, and literature were lost and forgotten, and the world seemed to have retrograded ten centuries—even then, in that dark hour, our race was accom­ plishing the most decided step forward that it has ever made. When the philosophers and poets and artists of Greece were lavishing their immortal works on small communities of free men—when the warriors and statesmen of Rome were building up the most splendid political fabric that the world has seen—the masses were sunk in a state of brutal slavery. . But when savage tribes, with uncouth names and rude manners, had poured over Europe,. when a squalid bar­ barism had superseded the elegance and luxury of ancient society, when kings could not read, and priests could not write, when trade and commerce had relapsed into Oriental simplicity, when men thought that the end of a decayed and dying world was surely near —then were the masses, . the working men, accomplishing un­ noticed their first great step from slavery to' serfdom. What I have already said amounts to this: that the improvement of the condition of the working class is the most important element of human progress—so important that even if we were to make it �6 THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. the sole object and test of our public life we could not justly be said to be taking a one-sided view of political and social questions. I shall endeavour presently to draw a picture of the workman’s life, as it ought to be, and, as I believe, it will be in the future. But I must first examine some of the means by which the transition is being effected. I will put aside the various schemes of Socialists and Communists., which have found so many supporters on the Continent. Widely as they differ from one another, I believe they all agree in demanding that the State shall intervene, more or less, in the direction of industry. Now that' opinion has never found much favour in England, nor is there at the present time any large body of workmen who support it. In France the first idea of every reformer or innovator is to act through the Government. This tendency arises partly from the jealousy with which all Governments in that country have repressed voluntary association, but partly also from the logical and orderly character of the French mind, which abhors anything partial or patchy either in thought or action. But in England, where there has always been considerable facility for private and associated action, it is our way rather to depend upon ourselves than to wait till we have a Government of our way of thinking. Hence the only two methods which have any serious pretensions to promote the elevation of workmen in England have both of them sprung, not from the brains of philosophers, but from the practical efforts of workmen themselves. This is shown by the very language we employ to describe them. In France the labour question has meant the discussion of the rival schools, the Economic School, the school of Fourier, the school of Proudhon, the school of Louis Blanc, of Cabet, of Pierre Leroux, and so on. In England we do not talk of schools, but of Unionism and Co-operation, which began in a practical form, and have continued practical. There can be no doubt that all work­ men who care for the future of their class are looking to one of these two methods for the realisation of their hopes. Here, as on the Continent, there is no lack of thinkers with elaborate schemes which, in the opinion of their authors, would ensure universal happiness. But whereas the French philosophers, whom I have mentioned, had each his thousands of ardent disciples among the workmen, our theorists cannot count their disciples by dozens, and are therefore not worth taking into account. But Co-operation and Unionism are real forces, and to pass them over in silence would be to deprive this lecture of all practical value and interest for such an audience as I am addressing. The first thing to be noticed about Co-operation is that the word is used for two very different things. There is the theory, and there is the practice. The theory, as you know, is that there should be no �THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASSI 7 employer-class, that the workmen should divide the profits of produc­ tion amongst themselves, and that whatever management is necessary should be done by salaried officers and committees. Co-operation, nowever, in that sense, does not get beyond a theory. The nobleminded men who founded the celebrated mill at Rochdale did indeed for some years manage to put their principles in practice; but even their own society at length fell away from them, and began to employ workmen who were not shareholders at the market-rate of wages; and I believe there is not in England, at the present moment, a single co-operative society in which workmen divide the profits irrespective of their being shareholders. Co-operation, in this sense, then, may be dismissed from consideration with as little ceremony as the Socialist and Communist theories before alluded to. Like* them it supposes a degree of unselfishness and devotion which wedo not find in average men, and it does not attempt to create those qualities, or supply their place by the only influence that can keep societies of men for any length erf time to a high standard of morality, the influence of an organised religion. The Co-operation which actually exists, and is an important featureof modern industry, is something very different. We must strip it mercilessly of the credit it borrows from its name, and its supposed connection with the theory above described. It is nothing more than an extension of the joint-stock principle. In what respect does the Rochdale mill differ from any other joint-stock company ? A con­ siderable number of its shares are already%eld by persons who do not work in it, and it is very possible that in course of time all, or most of the workmen employed in it, will be earning simply the market­ rate of wages. A certain number of men, by the exercise of industry, prudence, and frugality, will have risen from the working class into the class above. How is the working class the better for that ? What sort of solution is that for the industrial problem ? We set out with the inquiry how the working class was to be improved, not how a few persons, or even many persons, were to be enabled to get out of it. We want to discover how workmen may obtain a larger share of the profits of production, and the Rochdale Co-operative Mill, which pays workmen the market-rate, has certainly not made the discovery. The world is not to be regenerated by the old dogma of the economists masquerading in Socialist dress. The history of Co-operation is this. The noble-minded men who first preached the theory in. its purity, were deeply impressed with the immoral and mischievous way in which capital is too often employed by its possessors,, and instead of inquiring how moral influence might be brought to bear on capitalists, they leaped to the conclusion that capitalists as a separate class ought not to exist. In making this assumption they overlooked the distinction between the- �8 THE SOCIAL FUTURE OB’ THE WORKING* CLASS! accidental and the permanent conditions of industry. Collective activity among men has had two types—the military and the indus­ trial, the latter of which has gradually almost superseded the former. Military organisation has undergone many and great changes, from the earliest shape in which we find it among savage tribes down to its most elaborate form in our own time. But its one leading characteristic has remained unchanged. There has never been a time when armies weje not commanded by generals with great power and great responsibility. Wherever there has been the slightest attempt to weaken that power and diminish that responsibility, there it is admitted that the army has suffered and the work has been so much less efficiently done. Whether the soldiers were mere slaves as in Eastern countries, or free citizens as in the republics of Greece and Rome and America, or mercenaries fighting for hire as has often been the case in modern Europe, the principle of management has always been the same. Discipline was as sharp among the citizen soldiers of Grant and Sherman as among the conscripts of Frederick and Napoleon. Such a thing as the co-operative management of an army has never been heard of. Now in the other type of collective activity-—the industrial—a similar organisation has constantly prevailed. The analogy is striking, and it is not accidental, for the conditions are fundamentally the same. Fighting and working are the two great forms of activity, and if you have to organise them on a large scale, it is not strange that the same method should be found best for both. And workmen will do well to notice this analogy, and insist on pressing it home to the utmost of their power; for the more logically it is carried out, the more striking and overwhelming are the arguments it supplies for their side of the labour controversy. There is not a phase of that controversy which it does not illustrate, and invariably to their advantage. As one instance out of many, I may mention the sanc­ tion afforded by military practice for a uniform rate of wages to the rank-and-file of labour—an argument which was put by one of the Trades’ Union Inquiry Commissioners to the Secretary of the Master Builders’ Association, and which completely shut his mouth on that questioh. But it is for another purpose that I am now referring to this analogy. Special skill and training, unity of purpose, prompti­ tude, and, occasionally, even secrecy, are necessary for a successful direction of industry just as much as of war. “ A council of war never fights ” is a maxim which has passed into a proverb, as stamping the worthlessness of such councils. Yet councils of war are not composed of private soldiers, but of skilful and experienced officers. They are more analogous to our boards of railway directors, whose incapacity, I must admit, does not take exactly that form. Whether the efficiency of our railway management would be improved �Khe soUIAIj future of the Working class. 9 by an. infusion of stokers and plate-layers into the direction, I will leave it to the advocates of Co-operation to say. Another no less important advantage of the old industrial system over Co-operation is that it transfers the risk from the workman to the employer. Capital is the reserved fund which enables the employer to carry on his business' with due enterprise, and yet to give a steady rate of wages to the workman. Great as have been the changes through which industry has passed—^-slavery, serfdom, and free labour—this fundamental characteristic has remained unaltered. In all ages of the world, since industry began to be organised at all, the accumulated savings which we call capital ha^e been in the hands of comparatively few persons, who have provided subsistence for the labourer while engaged in production. The employer has borne the risk and taken the profits. The labourer has had no risk and no share of the profits. Though in modern times there appears to be some desire on the part of the master to make the workman share the risk, he will soon come to see that such a policy destroys the only justification of capital, and thus strikes at the root of pro­ perty itself. The workmen will help him to see this by their com­ binations, if he shows any indisposition to open his eyes. It is one among many ways in which they will teach him in spite of himself what is for his own good. In point of fact, in the best organised trade—that of the engineers—the rate of wages is subject to little if any fluctuation. The separation, then, between employers and employed, between capitalist and labourer, is a natural and fundamental condition of society, characteristic of its normal state, no less than its preparatory stages. We may alter many things, but we shall not alter that. We may change our forms of government, our religions, our language, our fashion of dress, our cooking, but the relation of employer and employed is no more likely to be superseded in the future by Communism in any of its shapes, than is another institu­ tion much menaced at the present time—that of husband and wife. It suits human nature in a civilised state. Its aptitude to supply the wants of man is. such that nothing can compete with it. There may be fifty ways of getting from Temple Bar to Charing Cross; but the natural route is by the Strand; and along the Strand the bulk of the traffic will always lie. ' And so, though we may have trifling exceptions, the great mass of workmen will always be employed by capitalists. Now this was what the founders of Co-operation refused to see; and in their enthusiasm they fancied they could establish societies, the shareholders of which would voluntarily surrender to non-share­ holders a large part of the profits vhich their capital would naturally ^command. But the shareholders were most of them only average �10 THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. men; they were not enthusiastic, or their enthusiasm cooled as the money-making habit crept over them. The co-operative theory was not bound up with any religious system, or supported by any spiritual discipline ; and they soon fell into the vulgar practice of making the most of their capital. What is the lesson to be learnt ? Whatever there was of good in the movement belonged not to the industrial theory, but to the social spirit of the men who started it. If those men had been employers, or if any employers had had their spirit, the workmen would have reaped the same advantages without any machinery of co-operation. Therefore we must look for improvement, not to this or that new-fangled industrial system, but to the creation of a moral and religious influence which may bend all in obedience to duty. When we have created such an influence, we shall find that it will act more certainly and effectually on a small body of capitalists than it would on a loose multitudinous mob of co-operative shareholders. Before leaving the subject of Co-operation, let me say that, while I cannot recognise its claims to be the true solution of the industrial question, I heartily acknowledge the many important services it may render to the working class. Even as applied to production, in which I contend it can never play an important part, it will do good for a time by throwing light On the profits of business. As applied to distribution in the shape, that is to say, of co-operative stores, its services can hardly be exaggerated. It not only increases the comfort of workmen, by furnishing them with genuine goods and making their money go further, but it gives them dignity and independence by emancipating them from a degrading load of debt. Moreover, it sets free, for the purpose of reproduction, a large amount of labour and capital which had before been wasted in a badly arranged system of distribution. If we turn now to the other agency by which the labouring class in this country is being elevated, I mean Trades Unions, we shall find more enlightened ideas combined with greater practical utility Unionism distinctly recognises the great cardinal truth which Co­ operation shirks—namely, that workmen must be benefited as work­ men, not as something else. It does not offer to any of them opportunities for raising themselves into little capitalists, but it offers to all an amelioration of their position. Co-operation is a fine thing for men who are naturally indefatigable, thrifty, and ambitious —not always the finest type of character, be it observed in passing— but it does nothing for the less energetic, for the men who take life easily, and are content to live and die in the station in which they were born. Yet these are just the men we want to elevate, for they form the bulk of the working class. They are in very bad odour with the preachers of the Manchester school, the apostles of self-help. �THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. 11 To my mind there is not a more degrading cant than that which I incessantly pours from the lips and pens of these wretched instructors. Men professing to be Christians, and very strict Christians too—■ Protestant Christians who have cleansed their faith of all mediaeval corruptions and restored it according to the primitive model of apostolic times, when, we are told, “all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need ”—these teachers, I say, are not ashamed to talk of making money and getting on in the world, as if it were the whole duty of a working man. Thus it comes to pass, that while they are bitter opponents and calumniators of Unionism,1 they patronise Co-operation, because it enables their model workman to raise himself, as Lord Shaftesbury expressed it not long ago, “ into a good and even affluent citizen,” a moral eleva­ tion to which it is clear a primitive Christian never attained. But you who are workmen, and have a little practical experience of the thing, you do not want me or anyone else to tell you that the men who raise themselves from the ranks are very often not distinguished by fine dispositions or even by great abilities. What is wanted for success of that sort is industry, perseverance, and a certain sharpness, often of a low kind. I am far from saying that those who raise themselves are not often admirable men ; but you know very well that they are sometimes very much the reverse—that they are morally very inferior to the average workman who is content with his posi­ tion, and only desires that his work may be regular and his wages fair. Now the merit of Unionism is that it meets the case of this average workman. Instead of addressing itself to the sharp, shifty men, who are pretty certain to take care of themselves in any case, it undertakes to do the best that can be done for the average man. And not only so, but it attends to the man below the average in industry and worthiness: it finds him work, and insists on his working; it fortifies his good resolutions; it strengthens him against temptation; it binds him to his fellows;—in short, it regulates him generally, and looks after him. Nor is even this the full extent of the difference in this respect between Co-operation and Unionism. While the benefits of the former are exclusively reaped by shareholders, the union wins its victories in the interest of nonunionists just as much as of its own members.. I noticed as a fatal error of Co-operation that it regards the relation of employer and employed as a transient and temporary arrangement which may and will be superseded, whereas it is permanent, and (1) “ God. grant that the work-people may be emancipated from the tightest thraldom they have ever yet endured. AR the single despots, and aU the aristocracies that ever were or will be, are as puffs of wind compared with these tornadoes of Trades Unions, j BufeJ^.have small hope. The masses seem to me to have less common-sense than they had a year ago.”—Zcfter of Lord Shaftesbury to Colonel Maude. �12 THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASSI destined to survive all attacks. It is an eminent merit of Unionism that it recognises this important truth. The practical good sense of workmen has here shown itself superior to all the cleverness of philo­ sophers. They have instinctively grasped the maxim that we shall best serve the cause of progress, whether political or social, by striving not to displace the actual possessors of power, but to teach them to use their power for the interests of society.1 And there is this further advantage of a practical kind, that Unionism is not obliged, like the schemes of the philosophers, to hover impotently in the air, as a mere speculative phantom, till such time as it can command the assistance of the State to get itself tried in practice. A few dozen men can commence the application of it in their own trade any day they please. Nor is it a cut-and-dried scheme in which every detail is settled beforehand with mathematical exactness; it is of infinite elasticity, and can adapt itself spontaneously to the circumstances of each case. I It is desirable that the workman’s wages should be good, but it is still more desirable that they should be steady. A fluctuating income in any station of life is, as everyone knows, one of the most demora­ lising influences to which a man can be exposed. When an outcry is raised against the unions because -they maintain that wages ought not to fall with every temporary depression of trade, it always seems to me that in so doing they are discharging precisely their most useful function. I have already alluded to the duty of the capitalist in this respect, and Unionism supplies exactly the machinery required for keeping him up to his duty, until a religious influence shall have been organised which will produce the same result in a more healthy and normal way. No doubt unions might offend deplorably on their side against this principle of a steady rate of wages. It is conceivable that they might screw out of the employer every year or every month wages to such an amount as would leave him only the bare profit which would make it worth his while to continue in business. It is manifest that on those terms he could not amass such a reserve fund as would enable him to tide over temporary depression without reducing wages. Every fluctuation in trade would cause a corre­ sponding fluctuation in wages, which would vary from month to month. If Trades Unions were to act in this way they would lose their principal justification. They are charged with doing so now, but the charge is perfectly groundless. Probably in no case do they extract from the employer anything like the wages he could afford to give if he was disposed. I do not believe that unions, extend them as you will, will ever be strong enough to put such a pressure on the employers. I believe that an organised religious influence will here­ after induce employers to concede to their men, voluntarily, a larger (1) Comte Pol. Pos. i. 163 (p. 173 of the translation by Dr. Bridges). �THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. 13 sh^?e ofxhew profits than any Trades Union could extort from them. An additional security that unions will never go too far in this direc­ tion is to be found in the fact that some masters, whether from larger capital, greater business ability, or higher reputation, make much larger profits than others. But unions do not pretend to exact higher wages from such masters. The tariff, therefore, is evidently ruled by the profits of the least successful employers. It might have been supposed at first sight that employers would have looked with more favour on Unionism, which leaves them in full possession of their capital, their authority, and their responsibility, than on Co-operation, which proposes to supersede them altogether. But, as you all know, the contrary is the case; and there could not be a more instructive test of the relative efficiency of the two methods. Unionism maintains that capital has its duties, and must be used for a social purpose. Co-operation shrinks from asserting a doctrine so distasteful to the propertied classes, and seeks to evade the necessity for it by the. shallow fallacy that everyone is to become a capitalist. Although everyone will not become a capitalist, no doubt some will, and the net result of the co-operative movement will be that the army of capitalists will be considerably reinforced in its lower ranks. Will that army so reinforced be more easy to deal with ? An exaggerated and superstitious reverence for the rights of property, and an indifference to its duties, is the chief obstacle to the elevation of the working class. The fewer the possessors in whose hands capital is concentrated, the more easy will it be to educate, discipline, and, if need be, gently coerce them. But when the larger capitalists have at their back an army of little capitalists, men who have sunk the co-operative workman in the co-operative shareholder, men who have invested their three or four hundred pounds in the concern, and are employing their less fortunate fellow-workmen at the market rate of wages, why, it stands to reason that the capital of the country will be less amenable to discipline than ever. A. striking example is to be seen in France at the present time. You know that the immediate effect of the old revolution was to put the cultivators in possession of the soil. A vast number of small proprietors were created. Doubtless many advantages resulted from that change. France got rid of her aristocracy once and for good. The cultivators identified themselves with the revolution which had given them the soil, and defended it fiercely against the banded sovereigns of Europe. If the people had not been bribed with the land, the revolution might have been crushed. But there has been another result from it, of more doubtful ^advantage. The whole of this class of small proprietors is fanatically devoted to the idea of property; and in their fear that property should Ue attacked they have thrown their weight on the side of conserfeailSKL and against further political and social progress. The wealthy �14 THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASSI middle class plays on their ignorance and timidity. All who desire to initiate the smallest social reform, who express any opinion adverse to the tyrannical power exercised by capital, are denounced as Com­ munists and apostles of confiscation. The small proprietors are worked up into a frenzy of apprehension, and fling themselves into the arms of any crafty impostor who talks big words about saving society. Thus the artizans and small proprietors, men whose interests must be essentially the same, for they are all alike workmen living by the sweat of their brow and the labour of their hands, are pitted against one another, and the middle class alone profits by the dissen­ sion. If the manufactures of this country were to get into the hands of a number of small shareholders, simple workmen would soon find the rein tighter and the load heavier. Their demand for the repeal of unjust laws would encounter a more stubborn resistance; the progress they have been making towards comfort and dignity would be abruptly checked. Fortunately, as I have already endeavoured to 1 show, there is no likelihood that so-called Co-operation will ever drive the capitalist employer out of the field. Such are the reasons for which I hold Unionism to be by far the most efficient of all the agencies that have as yet been largely advo­ cated or put in practice for the purpose of elevating the working class, and preparing it for its future destinies. The French workmen have much to teach us ; but I think in this matter they might take a lesson from our men with advantage. I hope they will signalise their next revolution—for which, by the way, I am getting rather impatient—by abolishing all those laws which so iniquitously obstruct their right to combine. Indeed, Unionism cannot be said to have had a fair trial in England until it is established in the other countries of Europe also? It remains to consider what the destinies are for which our work­ men are thus preparing themselves, and to picture to ourselves what their condition will be when society shall approximate more nearly to its normal state. We may do so without indulging in Utopias or extravagant estimates of our capacity to shape the course of human development, because we are not postulating springs of action in individuals, which, as a matter of fact, do not exist, or do not exist in sufficient strength—we are not spinning theories out of a priori notions of what society ought to be, but we are feeling our way by an examination, on the one hand, of the permanent facts of our nature, and the conditions imposed upon us by the external world ; and, on the other hand, of the steady, continuous progress of society in the past. And if it has occurred to anyone that I have been a long time coming to what professed to be the subject of this lecture— namely, “ the future of the working class ”—I must plead, in justi­ �THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. 131 fication, that I have in effect been dealing with it all along, and that nothing now remains but to give some practical illustrations of the conclusions already arrived at. That the position of the workman will ever be as desirable as that of the wealthier classes seems, as far as we can see, highly impro­ bable. Some people are shocked when such a proposition is plainly enunciated. They have a sort of hazy idea that the external condi­ tions of our existence cannot be inconsistent with the perfection and happiness of man. They have been taught that this is a world where only man is vile, and it sounds to them immoral to talk as if there was any insurmountable obstacle to an ideal state of society except what they are accustomed to term our fallen nature. The fact is, however, that this is very far from being the best of all possible worlds, and we must look that fact in the face. Human society might arrive much nearer perfection, both moral and material, if there was not so much hard work to be done. It must be done by some; and those to whom it falls to do it will inevitably have a less pleasant life than others. But though to annul or entirely alter the inflnone.es of the world external to ourselves is beyond our humble powers, we can generally either modify them to some extent, or, what comes to the same thing, modify ourselves to suit them, if only successive generations of men address themselves wisely to the task; just as an individual may by care preserve his health in a pestilential climate, though he can do little or. nothing to alter the climate. And so, though there will probably always be much to regret in the workman’s lot, we may look forward to improvements which will give him a considerable amount of comfort and happiness. I will enumerate some of these which we may reasonably expect will be reached when present struggles are over, and when employers and workmen alike have learnt to shape their lives and conduct by the precepts of a rational religion. Employers, though exercising their own judgment and free action in their industrial enterprises, will never forget that their first con­ cern must be, not the acquisition of an enormous fortune, but the well-being and comfort of the labourers dependent on them. Hence there will be an end of that reckless speculation which sports with the happiness, and even the life, of workmen and their families— displacing them here, massing them there, treating them, in short, as mere food for powder in the reckless conflicts of industrial compe­ tition. We shall no longer see periods of spasmodic energy and frantic over-production first in one trade, then in another, followed by glutted markets, commercial depression, and cessation of employ­ ment. For capital being concentrated in comparatively few hands, it will be possible to employ it with wisdom and foresight for the general good; which is quite out of the question while the chieftains �16. THE SOCIAL .FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. of industry are a disorganised multitude, swaying to and fro in the markets of the world as blindly and irrationally as a street-mob at a fire. Thus the workman will be able to count on what is more precious to him than anything else—steady employment, and an income which, whether large or small, is, at all events, liable to little fluctuation. The demoralising effects of uncertainty in this respect can hardly be overrated. Large numbers of workmen at present, from no fault of their own, lead as feverish and reckless an existence as the gambler. When this state of things ceases, we may look forward with confidence to a remarkable development of social and domestic virtue among the working class. To give the workman due independence, he ought to be the owner of his abode, or, at all events, to have a lease of it. In some instances at present we find men living in houses belonging to their employers, from which they can be ejected at a week’s notice. This _is often the case among colliers and agricultural labourers, and what grinding tyranny results from it, I need not tell you. It is not desirable in a healthy, industrial society that labour should be migratory. Ordinarily, the workman will continue in the same place, and with the same employer, for long periods, just as is the habit with other classes. Fixity of abode will naturally accompany fixity of wages and employment. Here, again, we may expect an admirable reaction on social and domestic morality. A diminution of the hours of work is felt by all the best workmen to be even more desirable than an increase of wages. All of you, I am sure, have so thoroughly considered this question in all its bearings, that I am dispensed from dwelling on it at length. I merely mention it that it may not be supposed I undervalue it. If the working day could be fixed at eight hours for six days in the week, and a complete holiday on the seventh, the workman would have time to educate himself, to enjoy himself, and above all to see more of his family. Let us next consider how far the State can intervene to render the position of the workman more tolerable. That ought to be the first and highest object of the State, and therefore we need have no scruple about taxing the other classes of the community to any extent for this purpose, provided we can really accomplish it.1 But of course it must be borne in mind that by injudicious action in this direction (1) As I have had some experience of the criticism (always anonymous) which seizes a detached passage and draws from it inferences directly excluded by the context, I desire by anticipation to protest against any quotation of the above sentence apart from at least the three which immediately succeed it. Taken by itself (although even so it is guarded by a strictly adequate proviso) it might be misunderstood. In the context the proviso is carefully and fully expanded into an argument on social grounds against excessive taxation of the rich. Arguments from the individualist point of view I entirely reject, as I trust my audience did. �THE’ SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. • 17 we might easily defeat our own benevolent intentions. For instance,' it is conceivable that such taxation might become so heavy as to approximate in effect to the establishment of Communism, and the springs of industry and frugality, in other words the creation of capital, would be proportionately affected. Again, the State must not afford help to workmen in such shape as directly or indirectly to encourage on the one hand idleness, and on the other a reckless increase of the population. For example, it must not interfere to lower the price of food or houses; because common sense and experience alike show us that such interference would rapidly pauperise the class it was intended to benefit. But there are, I believe, many ways in which it may add most materially to the comfort and happiness of the poor without at all relieving them from the necessity of exercising prudence and industry. As regards their physical comfort, it may carry out sanitary regulations on a scale hitherto not dreamt of. It may furnish them in London, and other large towns, with a copious supply of good water free of expense. It may provide medical assistance much more liberally than at present. I would add, it may exercise a close supervision over the weights and measures of the shopkeepers and the quality of the goods they supply, did I not hope that the spread of co-operative stores may render such supervision unnecessary. The State may also do much to make the lives of the poor brighter and happier. It may place education within their reach; it may furnish an adequate supply of free libraries, museums, and picture galleries; it may provide plenty of excellent music in the parks and other public places on Sundays and summer evenings. I think that a London workman in steady employment, earning such wages as he does now, working eight hours a day, living in his own house, and with such means of instruction and amusement as I have described gratuitously afforded him, would not have an intolerable lot. His position would, it is true, be less brilliant than that of his employer. But it does not follow that the lot of the latter would be so very much more desirable. His income, of course, will be lessened in proportion as his workmen receive a larger share of the profits of production. He will live in greater luxury and elegance than they do, but within limits; for public opinion, guided by religious discipline, will not tolerate the insolent display of magnificence which at present lends an additional bitterness to the misery of the poor. His chief pleasure will consist, like that of the statesman, in the noble satisfaction of administering the interests of the industrial group over which he presides. But the responsibilities of this position will be so heavy, the anxiety and the strain on the mind so severe, that incompetent men will generally be glad to take the advice that will be freely given them, namely, to retire from it to some humbler occupation, The workmen, on the other hand. �18* THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASSI will lead a tranquil life, exempt from all serious anxiety; and although their position will be less splendid than that of the (employers, it will not be less dignified. For in that future to which I look forward, the pressure of public opinion, directed, as I have several times said, by an organised religion, will not tolerate any idle class living by the sweat of others, and affecting to look down on all who have to gain their own bread. Every man, whether he is rich or poor, will be obliged to work regularly and steadily in some way or other as a duty to society; and when all work, the false shame which the industrious now feel in the presence of the idle will dis­ appear for ever. I am addressing an audience, which, whether it calls itself Republican or not, has, I am sure, a thoroughly Repub­ lican spirit, and a keen sense of the insolent contempt with which labour is regarded by those whose circumstances exempt them from performing it. You will therefore agree with me that of all the changes in the workman’s condition which I have enumerated as likely to be realised in the future, this is by far the most precious— that his function will be invested with as much dignity as that of any other citizen who is doing his duty to society. There are some men who are inclined to be impatient when they are asked to contemplate a state of things which confessedly will not be of immediate realisation. They are burning for an immediate reformation of all wrong in their own time. They think it very poor work to talk of a golden age which is to bless the world long after they are dead, buried, and forgotten. They are even inclined to resent any attempt to interest them in it, as though dictated by a concealed desire to divert them from practical exertions. “ Tell us,” they say, “how we may taste some happiness. Why should we labour in the cause of progress if the fruits are to be reaped only by posterity ? ” I do not wish to speak harshly of workmen who have this feeling. There has been too much of such hypocritical preaching in times past, and it is not strange if they have become suspicious of exhorta­ tions to fix their eyes on a remote future rather than on the present. So conspicuously unjust is their treatment by the more powerful classes, so hard and painful is the monotonous round of their daily life, that the wonder is, not that some men should rebel against it, but that most should bear it with calmness and resignation. Never­ theless, it is necessary to say firmly, and never to cease saying, that such language as I have alluded to belongs to a low moralityJ Moreover, it defeats its own object. For whatever may be the case with individuals, the people will not be stimulated to united action by arguments addressed to its selfishness. The people can only be moved to enthusiasm by an appeal to elevated sentiments. If leaders �THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. 19 of the worst causes find it necessary to invest them with some delusive semblance of virtue that may touch the popular heart, shall we who have put our hand to the sacred task of helping and accelerating social progress, shall we deal in cynical sophisms and play on selfish passions ? We owe it to our race that we should leave this world in a better state than we found it. We must labour for posterity, because our ancestors laboured for us. What sacrifices have we to make compared with some that have been made for us ? We are not called on to go to the gallows with John Brown and George William Gordon, the latest martyrs in the cause of labour; or to mount barricades, like the workmen who flung away their lives in Paris twenty years ago next month. Is their spirit extinct ? Were they men of different mould from us ? Or did they enter upon that terrible struggle on some calculation of their personal advantage ? No ! but so short a time had wrought them up to an heroic enthu­ siasm which made it seem a light thing to pour out their blood if they might inaugurate a happier future for their class. And shall we who live in times less stormy, but not less critical for the cause of labour, shall we complain if the fruits of such small sacrifices as 1 we may make are reserved for another generation ? The worst of this unworthy spirit is, that the exhibition of it is an excuse to the self-indulgent and frivolous for their neglect of all serious thought and vigorous action. One is sometimes ready to despair of any good coming out of a populace which can fill so many public-houses and low music-halls ; which demands such dull and vulgar rubbish in its newspapers; which devours the latest news from Newmarket, and stakes its shillings and pots of beer as eagerly as a duke or marquis puts on his thousands. This multitude, so frivolous and gross in its tastes, will not be regenerated by plying it with fierce declamation against the existing order of society. You will more easily move it by appealing to its purer feelings, obscured but not extinct, than by taunting it with a base submission to class injustice. The man whose ideas of happiness do not go much beyond his pipe and glass and comic song, knows that the sour envious agitator will never be a bit the better off for all the trouble he gives himself; and he sees nothing to gain by following in his steps. But there are few men so gross as not to be capable of feeling the beauty of devotion to the good of others, even when they are morally too weak to put it in practice. And though a man may lead an un­ satisfactory life, it is something if, so far as his voice contributes to the formation of public opinion, it is heard on’ the right side. This is the ground we must take if we wish to raise the tone of workmen. We must place before them, without reserve, the highest motive of political and social action——the good of those who are to come after �20 THE SOCIAL FUTURE OF THE WORKING CLASS. us. We must hold out no prospect of individual advantage or reward other than the approval of their own consciences. Those who complain most bitterly of the slow rate of progress towards an improved industrial state, would sometimes do well to reflect whether their own conduct does not contribute to retard » it. The selfish spirit follows us even into our labours for others, and takes the form of vanity and ambition. Probably all of us have had frequent occasion to observe how the cause of labour has suffered from ignoble jealousies and personal rivalries. Yet it is the greatest spirits who are invariably most ready to.t^ke the subordinate position ' and to accept obscurity with a noble satisfaction. The finest type k of theocratic government, the lawgiver of the Hebrew nation, was ready to be blotted out of God’s book, so that the humblest and lowest, the rank-and-file of his people, might enter the promised land. The greatest of the apostles wished that he himself might, be accuised from Christ, if at that price he might purchase salvation for an obscure mob of Jews. “ Reputation,” said the hero of the French revolution, “ what is that ? Blighted be my name, but let France be free.” So speaks a Moses, a Paul, or a Danton, while petty ambi­ tions are stickling for precedence, and posturing before the gaze of their contemporaries. Devotion, forgetfulness of self, a readiness to obey rather than an eagerness to command—-if a man has not these qualities he is but common clay, he is not fit to lead his fellows. Det us school ourselves into a readiness not merely to storm the breach, but to lie down in the trench, that others may pass over our. bodies as over a bridge to victory. It is a spirit which has never been found wanting whenever there has been a great cause to call it forth; and a greater cause than that of the workman of Europe advancing to their final emancipation, this world is not likely to see again. � 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 &amp; 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 The social future of the working class: a lecture delivered to a meeting of Trades Unionists, May 7, 1868 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Beesly, Edward Spencer [1831-1915.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 20 p. ; 23 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Reprinted from Fortnightly Review. "This lecture was the last in a series of three delivered last spring, by request of the London Trades' Council, to meetings convoked by that body. The first two were given by Dr. Congreve and Mr. Frederic Harrison". [p. 1]. Title page brown and paper acidified. Tears at edges of title page. Printed by Virtue & Co., London. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available E. Truelove Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1869 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5208 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 (The social future of the working class: a lecture delivered to a meeting of Trades Unionists, May 7, 1868), 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 Subject The topic of the resource Labour Movement Socialism Capitalism Conway Tracts Labour Movement Political reform Social Reform Socialism Working Class-Great Britain https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/5a90f1aa17b5551b2adf43813e012b4e.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=AT1%7EwnPKG-Pe8ZJvHHtX8f21ERzUvNMGtwhtnWlO5HhewPogwviwes1Xyz-SxwM79fx9OsyCfdfKQteOXKyf8TyUSY2j12npo9spV8Lv14d-r8cLlBe2J6qnmhnt5PgxA5mhP2TLY%7E7jPWCrjslZSmK6TmXa5aZsmROzLUtXDgWlfPtPh6hXWh5UJl7lDdIXef0XTBRziQGhkCfAeHqOmiC26jPnh8RgnQ-JphW08OFqaioda4FrXHHvx3v3M0XJraKtiQKbrra-2-PJ37FZnzkVV2ed0SosQWNTlbZmAgJj442YGD%7E-UwUcT90vkBwa41bUiMByrg%7Ek9GLLRABEQQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4d080b4e091009f620fa86f0b3fa4dea PDF Text Text AN EXAMINATION OF SOCIALISM By HILAIRE BELLOC, M.P? Socialism is a political theory according to which people would be happier and better if the means of production—that is, the land of a country and its buildings, ships, machines, rails, &c.—belonged to the Government instead of belonging, as they now mainly do, to private citizens and private corporations. That is the only exclusive meaning of Socialism. All the other wobbly ideas that have been tacked on to it by its enemies or its friends—that it is “ atheistic,” or that it involves sexual “ immorality,” that it is “ progressive,” that it is “ Christian ”—have nothing to do with the one proposition which alone distinguishes it from all other policies. A Socialist State need be neither more democratic nor less democratic than the present state of affairs. A State in which all the means of production were owned by the Government might be under a despot or under an aristocracy, or it might be managed as a democracy. However it was managed it would be 1 Reprinted by permission from 'die St. George's Review and revised by the author. �2 An Examination of Socialism a Socialistic State if the means of production were owned and controlled by Government. Socialism does not in its essence imply that nobody should own anything. There is no reason why a man in a Socialist State should not own a great quantity of things for his own private enjoyment. The only thing that would be denied to private ownership would be something commonly used or usable as a means of production ; something which, when one part of the community owns it and the other part does not, permits the owning part to live upon the labour of the non-owning part. A man in a Socialistic State would be allowed to own ornaments and purely personal possessions such as pictures and furniture, watches, and even productive machines should they be used for his own enjoyment alone ; but he would not be allowed a share, large or small, in a factory, or a shop, or a railroad, or a commercial steamship, or a piece of land (to be used for profit), except that share which he might be said to own as a member of the community whose Government owned and controlled all these things. Again, a State could be Socialistic and yet have very different degrees of enjoyment among its citizens. The Government might reward men according to merit, distributing very unequally the wealth produced by labour applied to the capital and land it owned. The Government might give large amounts of the good things to a few people whom it thought deserved them, and very little to the mass of mankind whom it might think so wicked as not to deserve them. It might make an unequal distribution by giving high rewards to the talented, the good organizers and the �An Examination of Socialism 3 good managers, in order to secure efficiency of produc­ tion, and very little to the general mass of labourers. It might act purely by caprice, giving large amounts to its favourites and small amounts to the rest of the community. , It might (as many confusedly think that it must') distribute to each according to his need ; it might make a rigidly equal distribution to each family in the community according to the age and number of its members. Whatever form the distribution took, whether there were great differences between the amounts distributed or exact equality in them, whether the distribution were determined by competition in talent or by caprice, or by the sense of human equality, the State would still be a Socialistic State if the means of production were owned and controlled by the Government. This is the main point to seize ; for it is in this, and in this alone, that Socialism differs from other political theories. It is certain that, whatever may have happened in other parts of the world, our ancestors here in Western Europe never had anything of the kind. There was plenty of co-operative production in the Middle Ages ; there was plenty of common land (as there still is) side by side with land privately owned. There existed for a short time a legal fiction, which still theoreti­ cally survives, that the land of the country ultimately belonged to the Crown ; but in practice no Socialistic State can be discovered in. the past history of men of our own blood. Many have thought to discover it, and guessed it to be present in certain ill-understood and very obscure primitive customs, but the evidence in favour of this kind of guesswork was never strong �4 An Examination of Socialism enough to convince a close critic of evidence, and, as research proceeds, gets weaker every day. The proposal, then, which is the Socialist proposal, to convert all private property in the means of produc­ tion—that is, in the factories, machines, land, houses, &c.—into Government property is a novel proposal. It is a proposal to do something quite new and as yet untried by men of our descent with our inherited tradi­ tions and instincts and ways of looking at things. Why has so revolutionary a proposal been made, and what arguments can be brought forward in its favour ? This revolutionary proposal has been made because the present state of society is in itself a novel one, suffering from evils new in the history of our country, and, for that matter, of the world ; and the arguments in favour of it—the arguments, that is, by which it is attempted to prove that England would be a better and a happier country under Socialism, are many and strong. As things now are in England, a small propor­ tion of the inhabitants of the country possess by far the greater part of the means of production. It is very difficult to obtain exact figures, and all general state­ ments made in this connection must be received with caution. But I think the following general state­ ment is not very wide of the mark, though, of course, it does not pretend to be rigidly accurate. I think one may say that less than two hundred families at the very most control one-quarter of our means of produc­ tion. Another quarter is in the hands of perhaps two thousand families at the most. And the remain­ ing half (unless we are to include properties so small that they hardly count as capital) cannot at the utmost be made to include as much as a �An Examination of Socialism 5 sixteenth of the whole community. The rest consist of families working for a wage, and unlikely, save in exceptional individual instances, to be anything other than wage-earners, either now or in the future. Side by side with this concentration of ownership in few hands you have a highly competitive system of pro­ duction under which security of employment is at its minimum. Thus a great and an increasing proportion of the population—so it is maintained—has no share in the permanent wealth of the country, and can only enjoy what it does on condition of continual labour for others who own that permanent wealth ; while the workers, though not perhaps becoming actually poorer, are becoming relatively poorer compared with the owning classes, and with all this they are less and less secure of permanent employment as trade competition extends over a wider and wider area of the world’s surface. A good crop of some product on the other side of the globe may suddenly throw out of employ­ ment any number of men employed here in the pro­ duction of a similar article. The cessation of demand for something produced by us, but consumed by people whom we have never seen, in India or in China, may suddenly destroy the livelihood of a whole group of artizans in England. Every progress even, every new invention, tends to bring into the experience of some group of labouring men a period of insecurity at the best, and at the worst of acute distress. Meanwhile there is a constant tendency for property to amalgamate still further, there is a constant tendency for the big business to swallow up the small one, and it is the main Socialist argument that if we leave things as they are we shall end in a state of society where quite a �6 An Examination of Socialism small number of exceedingly rich men will control the destinies of all the rest of their fellows. It will, more­ over (they say), be a state of society in which competi­ tion for employment will always maintain the average earnings of the labouring class at an exceedingly low level, and the power of enjoyment of the mass of the community will be miserably small compared with the power of enjoyment of the few owners who control it. It is to avoid a consummation of this kind that Socialists propose the fundamental transformation of our social system, towards which transformation they are working with such enthusiasm and conviction. Now let us look at another aspect of the matter, and consider certain consequences that would follow upon Socialism were it ever brought into being. In the first place, no man in a Socialistic State would be what we now call free. This is a proposition very hotly denied by many Socialists, because they believe it to be an unfair and a misleading one ; but no clear thinker can deny it, and by far the best arguments used in this connection by the clearest thinkers upon the Socialistic side are to the effect that, though the citizen in a Socialist State would not be “ free ” in the sense in which an old independent owner of land and capital used to be, he would be much freer than the mass of the population is to-day. Before returning to that, however, it is well to repeat the first and fundamental objection to the Socialist solution of our modern diffi­ culties. No man under a Socialist State would be what we call free. He could not exercise his will as to where he should go, what he should consume, what he should do with his time, to what activities he should direct his energies. �An Examination of Socialism 7 There is a rather muddle-headed habit, but a com­ mon one, present not only in Socialist discussion but in most other political discussion, which may be briefly described as trying to have your cake and eat it too. Men like to believe that some ideal of theirs would have all the advantages inherent to itself, and also the advan­ tages in contradiction with its very nature. All men love individual freedom—even such a remnant of it as the modern artizan may claim is very dear, and the threat of losing it is a serious one. It is, therefore, not surprising that those who see in Socialism the only remedy for the appalling evils which .we suffer to-day try to reconcile that remedy with individual freedom. But consider for a moment how impossible such a re­ conciliation is. A man in a factory under a master may, if he choose, leave that factory and look for work else­ where. If he prefer, for the sake of security, to remain in that one employment, he is in many things at the disposal of his master’s will during the hours of his labour. He cannot go to the manager or to the master and say : “ I don’t like this job ; I feel inclined for that other one. Be good enough to give it me.” At least he can go and say it, and perhaps in certain cases if he shows large aptitude for the new job and is able to convince his master of. it, or if he finds a special favour extended to him, that liberty of choice will be conceded; but it is obvious that it could not be universal. You could not have every employee in Mr. Jones’s mill saying exactly what he would do and for how long he would do it, or choosing his job according to his private inclination. So far liberty is already largely restricted by the industrial system, and the rich man is far freer than the poor one. But now go a step further. Work �8 An Examination of Socialism is done, and the man goes out into the street. He thinks he will have a glass of beer ; but all the public­ houses in the neighbourhood are owned by Mr. Jones just as much as the mill is, and Mr. Jones will or will not let him drink, according as he sees fit. He goes home, and, finding something not suitable to him in his present house, he decides to move into another which has caught his fancy, and which is more convenient to him for some reason. He finds, to his astonishment, that not only is Mr. Jones the owner of his present house, but of the other house too ; and can deny him the faculty of exchanging his old residence for the new one. He thinks he will use part of his wages to get a pair of boots ; but he can only get boots of the sort provided by Mr. Jones, and Mr. Jones can allow him to have a new pair, or not, just as he thinks fit. He will go to a music-hall. He finds that Mr. Jones owns that, too, and decides on his entertainment. Wherever he turns, all the things he desires to get, all the places in which he desires to move and to have his being, belong to the same man as owned the mill where his working hours were spent, and wherever he goes, no matter how far afield, this omnipotent being is every­ where the owner and controller, not, indeed, of his person, but of the food by which his person remains alive, and of the shelter by which he remains alive, and of every recreation or necessity relative to his being. Now Mr. Jones is, under Socialist conditions, the Government; and to the loss of freedom which every man feels during those hours which he gives as a wage­ earner to the capitalist who employs him must be added, under a Socialist system, a similar loss of freedom in all �An Examination of Socialism g the other hours of his life. There is no way out of that truth. To this criticism the Socialist has an answer. The answer is as follows : “ I admit that the ownership of all the means of production by the Government would be a bad thing, if it were used despotically, as such ownership is now used by individual owners. But I would never tolerate a Socialist ideal unless that ideal ir.sluded democratic management.” Note at this point that the two ideas of Government ownership and democracy have no connection. We have all of us met Socialists who were not in the least democratic, and it is perfectly easy to be a Socialist and a most rabid anti-democrat, especially if you are keener on people being made to do whatever you think is good for them than you are upon their being free to choose between good and evil. Still, it must be admitted that the desire for Socialism, springing as it nearly always does in hearts powerfully affected by the misery of the people, is usually associated with a democratic ideal of government; and most Socialists will say to you : “ The man will not be free as regards the Government, but since he will, as a citizen, be the master of the Government, he will be really just as free as the most independent owner is to-day, and much more free than the ordinary wage-earner is to-day. He will be able to make or unmake the regulations which shall control his life.” The critic of Socialism at once replies that this will not be the case. A man voting as one of many thou­ sands or millions is quite a different thing from a man enjoying elastic and immediate personal control every moment over his own actions. No one would be so �io An Examination of Socialism insane as to say that the actions of a modern Govern­ ment, on however democratic a base, are invariably consonant with the will of the great majority of its citizens. Most people would say that usually the actions of the Government were out of touch with the will of the great majority of the people. This, they would say, was true even of the very limited sphere of Government to-day, and of the very slow and imperfect action which it can take in quite a few matters. Those who believe this to be true even of Government as it is cannot believe that Socialism, no matter how democratic the political system with which it was combined, would give freedom of action even to the majority of citizens. The critic of Socialism asks a further question : What about the minority ? Either you must have a constitu­ tion where nothing can be done without an overwhelm­ ing majority, in which case you would be perpetually coming to a deadlock, or else you must work by ordinary majorities, in which case you would be per­ petually creating hearty and intolerable discontent in large minorities opposed to you. Further, this system of majority voting, even if it worked, could only apply to the very large decisions of life. In all the innumer­ able minor details that make up our circumstances we should necessarily be in the hands of officials. I am not saying that would be a bad thing, or that it would be worse than the state of affairs that exists now for most of our citizens. I am only pointing out that this is an absolutely inevitable result of Socialism, and a result that cannot be avoided save by a process of confusion of thought: by trying to believe that a thing can both be and not be at the same time. Nor has �An Examination of Socialism 11 any one ever been able to show how so clear and obvious a resultant of the Socialist system could possibly be avoided. The next criticism offered to Socialism is of a more subtle and profound kind, but is none the less very real. As Socialism would destroy what we call free­ dom, so it would destroy what we call the satisfaction of the desire for property. Now here two very im­ portant arguments used by Socialists against their opponents must be immediately noted. First, they say, under present conditions the vast mass of our fellow-citizens cannot satisfy that human desire for property in so far as it exists • their whole efforts are directed—and God knows under what an anxious strain of body and mind !—to satisfy the bare necessities of human appetite—the necessary food, and clothing, and house room. They would, under a Socialistic State, if it were democratically managed, own, not indeed any of the means of production, but far, far more of the enjoyable permanent possessions of life than they do to-day. This is perfectly true, and all that the critic of Socialism can set against it is a repetition of the undoubted truth just stated—namely, that under a Socialist State the desire for property which can now in theory be satisfied by all, and is in practice satisfied by some, would not be satisfied by any if private property in land and the means of production were abolished. But even to this the Socialist has a second and a very strong reply. He can say: “The desire for property does not exist very strongly in the case of land and of machinery. The desire to have these things is only a desire to be what is called ‘ rich ’—that is, to be able to �12 An Examination of Socialism exchange the product of land and capital so owned against daily enjoyments. The desire is not for the things themselves, for the land itself, or for the machinery itself ; and those things which a man really does desire to own, the things which are part of his permanent possessions, and with which he is constantly in contact, and out of which he obtains a permanent enjoyment because he is their owner, those things—his books, his furniture, his ornaments, his pictures, perhaps even a little plot of land (if he promises to produce nothing for sale with it)—he could possess under the Socialist State; and then everybody would have such personal possessions, whereas now very few do.” There is but one reply to this very powerful conten­ tion, which is that, as a fact, men do desire to own land and the means of production, and to own them absolutely, not only in order that they may be what is called “ rich ”—that is, that they may command passing enjoyments—but for the pleasure and consequences of owning the things themselves, and that for the following reasons : First, that you cannot distinguish between the desire of ownership in a thing according to whether that thing is productive or not. It is true the interest which a man takes in a share of a business is not the same as the interest he takes in a particular instrument which he himself handles and uses. Still, it is a personal interest, and not a mere crude sense of superior opportunity for enjoyment. This is particularly the case with regard to land, which arouses the most powerful sentiment of affection and interest in the possessor, quite inde­ pendently of whether it is cultivated for profit or �An Examination oj Socialism 13 not, and quite independently of the amount in which it is owned. Secondly, this general desire to own is connected with certain human consequences which have nothing to do with whether the thing owned is capable of exploiting the labour of others or not. Of one of these human consequefices, economic freedom, mention has been made above. Another well worth noting, and closely attached to it, is the preservation of personal honour. Where few own, the mass who do not own at all are under a perpetual necessity to abase them­ selves in a number of little details. That is why industrial societies fight so badly compared with societies of peasant proprietors. The mass of the population gets trained to the sacrifice of honour; it gets used to being ordered about by the capitalist,, and partially loses its manhood. If there were but one capitalist, the State, this evil would certainly be exaggerated. Men might be better fed, better clothed, and materially much happier ; they might be brighter in spirits, better companions, and healthier men all round, but they would necessarily have lost all power of expression for the sentiment known as personal honour; they would have one absolute master, all forms of personal seclusion from whom would be im-' possible. This, when it is stated in the midst of modern evils, appears a very small point; but those who have passed by compulsion from a higher to a lower standard of personal honour can testify how vital a point is that honour in the scheme of human happiness. It must, however, finally be asked of the man who criticizes the Socialist proposal: “ If you will not accept this positive and clear remedy for the in­ �i4 An Examination of Socialism tolerable conditions of modern industrial society, what alternative have you ? ” It is as though a man suffering from a bad limb were to hesitate to have it amputated, and the surgeon were to say to him : “If you will not let me cut it off, what other course do you propose to pursue in order to be cured ? ” • This question is a strong and insistent one; it is the root question of the whole affair, and it requires reply ; for any one who pretends that the present con­ dition of society in England is tolerable, or has even the least chance of enduring, is of a mental calibre worthy rather of what is called “ practical politics ” than of serious and vital discussion. Let us see, then, what the answer is which the serious opponents of Socialism (not the politicians, for they do not count) make to its demand. What they say is, that if you could make a society in which the greater part of citizens owned capital and land in small quantities, that society would be happy and secure. They say (as every one must) that such a subdivision is quite possible with regard to land; but they also believe it to be possible with regard to shares in industrial concerns. When they are told that a high division of this sort would necessarily and soon drift again into a congested state of owner­ ship, with a few great capitalists on the one hand and a wretched proletariat upon the other, they answer that, as a matter of fact, in the past, when property was thus well divided, it did not drift into that con­ dition, but that the highly divided state of property was kept secure for centuries by public opinion trans­ lating itself into laws and customs, by a method of �An Examination of Socialism 15 guilds, of mutual societies, by an almost religious feel­ ing of the obligation not to transgress certain limits of competition, &c. When they are told that a State in which property was highly divided would involve more personal responsibility and personal anxiety than would the Socialist State, they freely admit this, but they add that such responsibilities and anxieties are natural to freedom in any shape and are the price one must pay for it. Consider carefully this alternative theory. It is valuable because—First, it is the only possible alter­ native ; secondly, because it is one which has hardly entered into the consciousness of English people. So few English people have ever owned anything during the last few generations that the idea of highly divided capital is not present as a social experience. It is hardly an historic memory. Nevertheless, it remains with English people, just as much as with any other Europeans, an instinctive ideal. And I repeat, between that ideal of highly divided capital and Socialist collec­ tivism there is no possible third ideal ; we must go one way or the other. Every reform, every little tinkering and futile Bill which people maunder through in the House of Commons necessarily tends one way or the other. The whole contention of the future in Europe lies between these two theories. On the one hand you have the Socialist theory, the one remedy and the only remedy seriously discussed in the industrial societies which have ultimately grown out of the religious schism of the sixteenth century—that is, the industrial societies of North Germany, of the Northern United States, and especially of England and the lowlands of Scotland. �i6 An Examination of Socialism On the other hand, you have the Catholic societies whose ultimate appetite is for a state of highly divided property, working in a complex and probably, at last, in a co-operative manner. That is certainly the way the Irish natioii is going. The Irish people— unlike the aliens of the North—have steadily refused to turn themselves into a proletariat, whether in the modern industrial phase or in preparation for the final Socialistic phase. The Irish are determined to own. The same solution appeals to the great mass of the French people (with the exception of certain plague spots such as the mining and spinning districts of the North), and the interest of all our debates in the near future in Western or European society will lie, I think, in the victory of one or other of these two ideals—the Socialist ideal, in which the diseased industrial world will attempt to heal itself upon lines consonant with its existing nature ; the ideal of widely-diffused owner­ ship, in which the healthier and older world, which has survived outside the modern industrial system, proposes to build up its new life, until it can see its way to basing an intensive production upon highly divided individual property. Which of the two systems will win no one can say. The Socialists, of course, do the most prophesying : but then they have grown out of that Biblical enthusiasm in religion and philosophy to which prophecy is native. But prophecy has always Been worthless in human affairs, save where it regarded transcendental things. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. U.—Dec., 1908. � 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 &amp; 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. 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Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Socialism Socialism and Religion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/53b25632583f1763222bc31436bcddcb.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=it4rtVO%7E7NkkV6RfvRfm6-RWkxzBGXnI616Fr2%7Ecobi28PziYzXkifPhTKT%7EqxDtNDx83hbTzUyQQZ2iDJefOMk%7E97PGdhBuPb5EEfE3lIZEfHVvx7KCALaDiBE7q-Z4AmQ%7EylFRemB4YQ%7E55Wvw7eEVK6II1mVRn-kCzSaKnuGXXBstvfxe5vGD7pGzus20jimuWkH7hkrRiXLMeBIj3Hvw-5ihvaWXQxapRUnoEfLU7ObjEwTPXpDmqCQYoI1celMhkBHjATQHSalCy064VDbRxkHz7e6QFG-cdCcyen9g9zQgjBiMaxZiAPqRLQoR6TdX5DIJNF2w40N9lGGAaQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3fc66693b8ec348a7fd283341a863e38 PDF Text Text irit­ is SOCIALISM SOUND? VERBATIM REPORT OF A FOUR NIGHTS’ DEBATE BETWEEN ANNIE BESANT and 6. I. FOOTE, AT THE HALL OF SCIENCE, OLD ST., LONDON, E.C. On February ‘ nd, 9th, 16th, and 23rd, 1887. I REVISED BY BOTH DISPUTANTS. LONDON: FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 63, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1 8 8 7. �LONDON : PRINTED BY ANNIE 3ESANT AND CHARLES ERADLAUGH, 63, FLEET STREET, E.C. �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? FIRST NIGHT. William Morris in the Chair. The Chairman : Ladies and gentlemen, we are met here to-night to open an extremely interesting discussion on what, I think, you will probably all agree with me is in point of fact the question of the day—(cheers)—the question which practically includes all questions, whether you call them politics or whether you do not. And it is, further, made more interesting by the fact that both the debaters are skilled and practised debaters with very great talent; and I think I may be perfectly certain that the subject will be treated in a thoroughly serious and satisfactory manner. As chairman, before such a debate it is clearly my business to say as little as I possibly can; and I will only add that the subject is so very interesting that it may jperhaps make some rather excited at what goes on. I hope therefore that we shall all remember that we came here to hear the two debaters; and if we have to give voice to our feelings on any occasion we shall do so at the end of sentences, so as to interfere as little as possible with the debaters’ arguments. (Hear, hear.) I have only now to tell you the conditions under which the debate is to take place. Annie Besant will open the debate and speak for half an hour. Mr. Foote will then speak for half an hour.And after that Annie Besant will speak for a quarter of an hour and Mr. Foote for a quarter of an hour, and so each debater will have two quarters of an hour, and that will, conclude the debate of this evening. I will now call upon Annie Besant to open the debate on “Is Socialism Sound?”.' .(Cheers.) B2 �4 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? Annie Besant : Friends; in taking the affirmative of' the question, 4‘Is Socialism Sound?”, I propose to divide into two parts that portion of the debate which falls under my conduct. I propose to-night to deal with the economic basis of Socialism, and to try to show that that is sound. I propose on this night fortnight to deal with the historical evolution of Socialism, and to try to show that it is a ne­ cessary result of the evolution of the past. In the othertwo nights of the debate it will be my duty to follow Mr. Foote—the duty of leading it falling upon him. And I must at the very outset ask you to bear with me duringmy first speech, in that it will be necessary to put with extreme terseness the arguments which I must lay beforeyou. Any argument stating the economic case for Socialism, compressed into half an hour must necessarily be very inadequate, and I can only give you a rough outline,, leaving you to elaborate the details for yourselves. (Hear, hear.) And I will commence by asking you to distinguish, in thought between that form of Socialism which has been described as Utopian, which is thought out by the student in seclusion, and which gives a complete scheme full of' elaborate details on every possible point—a scheme which, it is proposed to impose from without upon society. That is not the form of Socialism that I defend here to-night. Over against that is the more modern form of Socialism which has been described as scientific Socialism, and that form of Socialism, in common with every system that can fairly be called scientific, is an attempt to go to the root of' the matter; to try to understand thoroughly the causes of the effects that we see around us; to trace back—just as a geographer may trace a river to its source—to their real source certain facts that we find in the society around Us. The chief fact it deals with is the fact of poverty. It strives to trace back poverty to its source, and having, as ft believes, done that—having found out the cause of poverty in modern society—scientific Socialism lays down a fresh economic basis for society; and then, assertingthat new principle as basis, it believes that from it there will gradually be developed a healthy social organism, not produced from without, but growing from within, by the action of the natural social and economic forces which are at work in society itself. (Cheers.) And this distinction is not invented by myself for the purposes of this debate. I will �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 5 •take Emile de Laveleye, a writer who is not a Socialist, .although I might refer to a Socialist like Engels, who was, I believe, the first to state this distinction clearly. ■■Writingon Socialism in the Contemporary Review, April, 1883, Emile de Laveleye pointed out the extreme difference be­ tween modern Socialism and the earlier forms in which Socialism presented itself. He said: “Ricardo, Mill, in fact all the representatives of orthodox science, show that with free competition, in a country where both the popu­ lation and the wealth are on the increase, the revenues of proprietors will also steadily increase, while wages will fall to what is strictly necessary............ Political economy has thus furnished Socialism with a scientific basis, and has been the means of its quitting the region of Com­ munistic aspirations and Utopian schemes.” And M. de Laveleye warns these who are against Socialism that they must beware of “ mixing up this system with Communistic Utopias ”. I submit that Socialism is no longer a dream. It is a reasoned scheme based on political economy. It proposes to change our economic basis. It proposes to do this by rational -and thoughtful argument, convincing the brain of man. And those who do not appreciate this change of position—those who merely go round the outside of the •question, who take the old schemes and deal only with matters of detail on every point—such have not grasped the real centre of the question; they are simply beating the air, and never touch the chief point with which we are -concerned. (Cheers.) Now, many definitions of Socialism have been given, and they cover a large amount of ground. You may start from the wide definition of Proudhon, “ Every aspiration for the amelioration of society is Socialism”, but that is somewhat too general to serve as a practical definition. It is very possible that various definitions may be advanced by Mr. Eoote, and it will then be my duty to deal with them as he puts them forward ; but so far as I am concerned to-night, I lay down one principle as the differentia of Socialism, as that on which •every Socialist is agreed—that which I maintain is the economic basis of Socialism; and I allege that Socialism . is the theory which declares that there shall be no private property in the materials which are necessary for the provduction of wealth. "Whatever your Socialistic school—let �6 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? it be Anarchist or Communist, let it be Collectivist, Evolu­ tionary or E evolutionary, or both, you will nowhere find a Socialism which will disagree with that fundamental statement, or which will not proclaim, as the basis of all proposed changes, the destruction of private property in the materials which are necessary for the production of wealth. (Cheers.) The next question arises as to what we mean by these “materials ”. And I propose to divide them under two heads, practically following the usual divisions of political economy, although using phrases to describe them which are not those of the ordinary economic books. I describe as raw material everything which the political economist describes as land—that which Mill said “no man made”, including, of course, in that raw material, ah ore and minerals, and other natural material for the production of wealth, so long as it has been untouched by man. The whole of that will come under my definition of raw material. And I put over against that the material upon which human labor has been employed, and I class the whole of that together as wrought material. That will include of course what is generally known as “capital” ; as “ means of production ”; or as “ instruments of produc­ tion ”. And I take every case in which raw material has been transformed by human labor into wrought material as the second division of the materials for the production of wealth with which we have to deal to-night. Now every Socialist claims all this as common property. He declares of raw material plus wrought material—that the claim to make that common property differentiates the Socialist from every non-Socialist school. He alleges that the essential difference—which is what we want to get at hereto-night—the essential difference between Socialism and Individualism is that the Socialist says that these materials ought to be public property, whereas Individualism declares that they ought to be private property; and between these two logical and opposite schools you will find a number of schools under different names which tend more or less in one direction or in the other. Some only claim raw material as common property, and would leave the wrought as individual property. But I assert to you that everyone who claims these, or part of these, as common property has begun with Socialism, and is bound by logic to go on step by step until the whole becomes public property. I allege �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 7 that land nationalisation is essentially a Socialistic plan; and here again, instead of putting it on my own authority, I fall back once more on M. de Laveleye, quoting from his article on “The European Terror” in the Fortnightly Review of April, 1883, I find him, without apparently the smallest notion that anyone would challenge him, stating: “ Collectivism may be conceived as more or less completely applied, according as the State hold only the soil, and this is the system which is being now so much discussed in England, under the name of nationalisation of land, or as the State hold all fixed capital, and in this latter case, all that is reserved to individuals is the enjoyment of what they can purchase with the immediate produce of their labor ”. I take it then that this is the absolute differentia between the Socialist and the non-Socialist, and it is with respect to this raw and this wrought material that every Socialist is a Communist. And I use that word deliberately, because of the misconception with which it is often regarded in a country like this. If we take the “ Manifesto of the Com­ munists ” put forward by Karl Marx and his friend Fried­ rich Engels in 1847, in which he proclaims himself to be a Communist, and where according to the common view he would destroy all property and take away all individual claims, what are Karl Marx’s own words ? They are: “It has been said of Communists that we wish to destroy property which is the product of a man’s labor—earned by his own work; that property which forms the basis of all personal liberty, activity, and independence—personally earned, personally acquired property”. But, he goes on to point out that as capital is a collective product, “ Capi­ tal is therefore not a personal factor; it is a social factor. Therefore when capital is converted into common property belonging to all members of society, personal property is not thereby changed into social property.” And he adds : “ Communism deprives no one of the power to appropriate social products for his own use; it only deprives him of the power to subject others’ labor by such appropriation” (pp. 13, 14, 15, ed. 1886). (Cheers.) Whether or not you agree with that definition of Marx’s, whether or not you may carry Communism, as some writers do, very much farther than Marx has carried it, and may use the word as negating private property completely, still I submit that if you are going to argue against Socialism, instead of cari­ �8 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? caturing it, you must take the words you attack with the limitations put upon them by the writers who used the words, and must distinguish Marx’s Communism from that of some others. And if you fail to do this, and merely use it to rouse prejudices in the minds of the ordinary citizen against the system, and thus mislead the understanding, you may gain a temporary triumph on the platform, but you do nothing towards bringing the argument to a satis­ factory conclusion. (Cheers.) I pass from that, and the next point I put for your consideration is this. It is im­ possible to separate in practice raw material from wrought material, so that you can nationalise the one and leave the other as private property. I have sometimes thought that the opposition between land and capital which has been so much dwelt upon by a certain school is really nothing more than a survival from the mercantile system, in which capital was regarded merely as money, and the distinction between land and money being apparently very clear these two things were taken as fundamentally distinct. I believe that the view taken of land and capital to-day is very much colored in the minds of many by that old and discredited mercantile theory. (Hear, hear.) If raw material is to be land which “no man made”—which is, as we say, given by Nature—where are you going to get that in an old country ? How are you going to find out the so-called prairie value which persons talk about so readily but under­ stand so little? How, in a country like ours, are you going to find out the economic rent, if you are going to use the old Ricardian definition and call rent that portion of the produce which is paid for the use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil? Take a marsh. That is raw material which is useless for agricultural purposes, having, of course, no economic rent. But if you drain the marsh, it is no longer raw material, for Turman labor has changed the raw material into wrought material for the use of man. And I am going to try to show you presently that you cannot draw any dis­ tinction economically between your marsh made into fertile land by human labor, and your iron which was as much raw material as the marsh, until by human labor it was moulded into the machine for the sake of the greater productive power it would not otherwise have possessed. (Hear, hear.) What is it that the State is to have if you �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 9 are going to nationalise the land ? Is it to have the rent of the undrained marsh ? That is nothing. Is it to have some economic rent ? Then you must extend your Ricar­ dian definition to include not only the original and inde­ structible powers of the soil, but also the acquired powers which the soil has gained by the labor of man. If you only claim for the State the rent of your raw material, then your whole scheme of land nationalisation becomes absurd and hopelessly impracticable. (Hear, hear J But if you are going to claim for the State rents which are based upon the present differences of the value of the land—of land which has been made fertile by generations of laborers—land on which human power has been ex­ pended and which in its present condition is the result of the employment of human energy—then I submit to you that you are nationalising the rent of wrought material and not only the rent of raw. And when you have once done that you have started from the Socialist basis and you will find yourself unable to distinguish between the wrought material of the land and the wrought material of the machine. And now instead of taking this improved— this wrought—material in the shape of land, I will take it in the shape of a machine. A man invests money in a machine and he demands that payment shall be made to him for the use of that machine. Payment made for the use of capital is generally termed interest, but I prefer to term it rent. Using different words for the same thing tends to confusion of thought, and I want to try to make our views here to-night clear and not confused. What is rent ? Payment made for differences of productive power. What is interest paid for capital but payment made for •differences of productive power ? It is essentially a form of rent. There is no difference in principle between the extended doctrine of the Ricardian rent which makes it The part of the produce paid to the landlord for the original plus the acquired powers of the soil—that is for advan­ tages of productivity—and the interest which is paid to the ^capitalist also for advantages of productivity, only the ad­ vantages are in the form of a machine which produces more, instead of in the form of the more fertile land which produces more than the less fertile. I submit then that such payment—payment of rent for advantages of fertility, payment of rent for advantages of productive �10 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? power, that these payments are just and rational payments, equalising to the laborer the results of his labor, because by paying rent for an advantage you stand on the same ground as your brother who does not share that particular advantage, and the rent is merely the payment you make for the advantage you have that he does not share, so that both of you are practically on the same level, receiving for equal amounts of labor equal results of your toil. (Hear, hear.) Now, under the Individualistic system these rentsgo to the individual, and they keep up an idle class which need never work at all, because other persons work for it. Under Socialism these rents would go to the community, and the only persons they would support would be the ser­ vants of the community who were told off to perform dif­ ferent non-productive functions for the benefit of those whom they serve. (Cheers.) And that is our essential difference—that is the point on which Mr. Foote must meet me to-night. (Hear, hear.) I pass to my next point —that all rent for the material of production should be paid to the State. Private property in these being de­ stroyed, common property, or—if you prefer the word—Communism takes its place. Thus we reach Collectivist Socialism, the Socialism I am defending to-night. At this point the question—a perfectly fair one—is asked very often by our opponents : “ How far will private property in anything survive the destruction of private property in the materials for wealth production?”. Now on that point the Collectivist is completely within his right if ho says boldly and plainly that no other private property need be destroyed at all save private property in these materials for wealth production. Emile de Laveleye puts fin's very strongly, and shows how Collectivism could be worked leaving untouched private property in every­ thing, saving in that which I have called raw and wrought materials. There would be nothing against the Socialist theory in such private property. But it is perhaps as well to speak perfectly frankly and with absolute straight­ forwardness on this point. And I, for one, confess that realising the enormous change which the acceptance of the principle of common property in the materials for wealth production will inevitably work—a change not merely in society as a whole, but a change which will touch men’s minds and morals quite as much as it will touch �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? II their views on economics—I admit freely and frankly that it is perfectly possible that men who are educated in the Collectivist system will after a while grudge the enormous waste of labor which is implied in constantly dividing off' to each man his exact share; and that private property will survive just as far as convenience, as desire, as expe­ rience keep it alive, and no farther. (Hear, hear.) That is to say, that it is perfectly possible that—after being trained in the Collectivist system—that, after realising some better ideal than the mere scramble which is the con­ dition of society at the present time, you will very largely weaken the desire for what is called private property. That exaggerated love of private property which has grown into a disease, a morbid extreme, in many civilised countries—what does it grow from ? It grows out of the struggle for existence. It grows out of the fear that you will not have enough, unless you are always grabbing as much as you possibly can, to keep you in the time when you are unable to work. Once let men feel that there is enough foi' all; once let men feel that there is no neces­ sity laid upon them to seize by strength from their brother lest they, or those nearest to them, should suffer in the strife; once let the idea spread that co-operation in. brotherly fashion is a nobler ideal than that of cut-throat competition, and I believe that you will enormously weaken the sense of private property. (Cheers.) And, after all, would it be so much the worse for society if such a weakening took place ? Is our highest ideal to be that of a number of pigs at a trough, struggling with each other, pushing each other aside, for fear the trough should be too small for every pig’s dinner, and that unless the strong can push aside the weaker he himself may gohungry ? I cannot help thinking that it is not a very im­ possible ideal of society that, instead of that strugglinground the pig-trough, you may rather have human beings sitting around a board where there is enough for all; where every man knows that he will have his share; where he is willing to await his turn, ready to pass what is wanted by his neighbor; and where the appetite of thediner, rather than the weighing-machine, shall measurethe ration that is given to him. (Great cheering.) The Chairman: I will now call upon Mr. Foote to answer. �12 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? Mr. Gr. W. Foote : One thing to-night gives me exceeding pleasure, and that is, for the first time in my life, to meet ■a, lady in debate. It shows that whether we are driving towards Socialism or not, even our individualistic state of society, rotten as it is said to be, is somehow consistent with a growing recognition of the natural rights of a sex which has through history been down-trodden. (Cheers.) 'Therefore I think that, on the whole, the system, in that very fact, shows that it is not incompatible with progress. Mrs. Besant is here to-night to advocate another system, that of Socialism, which she undertakes to show to us is sound. And to-night she has given us what she calls the economical basis of Socialism. But I frankly confess, without in the least intending to be ironical, that I have heard of nothing in this economical basis which is not a part of the economical basis of every other system. I have listened and I have heard nothing—I use the words without meaning anything invidious—but commonplaces •of political economy, most of which I am prepared to admit, although I do not admit with Mrs. Besant the policy of calling things which, according to present usage, pass under one name, by some other name in order to suit an argument or a purpose. It may be convenient to Mrs. Besant, but it seems to me inconvenient to other people. Now, bas Mrs. Besant told us what the system of Socialism she thinks to be sound really is ? (“ Yes ”.) Well, every­ one is entitled to his opinion. I think not. Mrs. Besant has given us one definition of Socialism, which I admit is perfectly intelligible, and which I am glad to receive ; but it appears to me that a system like Socialism which claims to supplant the present system altogether, root and branch •—which proposes to deal with millions of people and thousands of millions of capital and land upon an entirely new foundation—ought to give something more in the way of explanation than a bald definition covering not more than two lines of print. Mrs. Besant says that her system of Socialism is not a Utopian scheme. I have not the slightest doubt that she thinks so; but I certainly differ from her. Whenever mankind is fitted for any particular social system, it will inevitably live in the midst of that social system. Outward institutions are merely the expressions of inward thoughts and feelings. It is quite true that the environment in which a man �IS SOCIALISE! SOUND ? 1& lives largely moulds his character; but it is also truethat man’s internal nature acting with and against his environment — in accordance with the well-known laws of Biology and civilisation, with which Mrs. Besant is acquainted—produces that progress which. is recorded on the pages of universal history. And Individualism has been the very essence of that progress. Competition algo’ has been the essence of that progress. It is not such an alarming thing as Mrs. Besant dreams. She has quoted from Emile de Laveleye—who is not a Socialist, but who, in my opinion, dreads it too much, because I believe it is a great deal farther off than he imagines. She quotes from him to the effect that Socialism will put an end—or. at least proposes to put an end—to this system of competition by means of which some are pressed down and others are elevated. Gronlund—whose book on Socialism is justly one of the favorites of Socialists, and in some sense may be called their New Testament, as Karl Marx’s book may be called their Old Testament — Gronlund, seeing that competition is essentially indestructible, seeks to restore it under the new name of emulation. We are not to compete with each other, but we are to emulate each other. (Cheers.) In what is the radical distinction ? It is simply the difference between the concrete object of desire and the abstract object of desire. If I compete with my fellows it is for success in business, say.; but if I emulate, for what is it ? Eor success in procuring public opinion on my side ; an opinion which we all value more or less, which some persons value above all things, and which the foremost in the race of emulation must get, and all the others to some extent greater or less, exactly as in the competition for material objects, must lose. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant was candid enough—and I think it is greatly to her honor—to admit towards the conclusion of her speech that it was highly probable that a Collective state of society would somehow or other result in Communism. I was glad to hear that, because it saves me a great deal of trouble. I should otherwise have had to show from the works of Mr. Bax, Mr. Morris, and others distinguished in present-day Socialism, what the system would ulti­ mately lead to. Now, if you admit that it will ultimately lead to something, you are bound to consider whether what it leads to will be agreeable, and for the advance- �14 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? Dient of man’s moral or intellectual character. Mrs, Besant thinks Communism would ultimately be a good thing. But I fancy I have seen somewhere in her writings—and, if not, she will correct me—that a system of Communism would mean that the unfit would live at the expense of the fit. I admit, with Mrs. Besant, that there are many hard things in Nature. But I did not make Nature. No Individualist made it, any more than any Socialist. If I were at the top of a fifty-foot ladder, it would Be extremely absurd for me to declaim against the laws of gravitation and then descend in a somersault. (Laughter.) I should admit that the law of gravitation was a very hard fact, and come down rung by rung. And so I see in human nature that the Darwinian law of the struggle for life in some form or another cannot be abolished. It is the wisdom of men and women to recognise the fact as unalterable, as a thing which cannot be changed “by all the blended powers of earth and heaven ”. Mrs. Besant says Socialism is intended as a redress for poverty. What does she mean ? Does she mean that poverty can, by the adoption of a certain system, be imme­ diately changed or removed ? Certainly, if you passed a law to-morrow that everybody should be entitled to go to a national workshop and there get what is called productive work, you would, for a time, be able to feed everybody; but unless you took into account, unless you carefully con­ sidered, unless you carefully provided for, something which Mrs. Besant has not mentioned to-night, but something she has been very eloquent about on other occasions, viz., the law of population, which I think she will admit with me is inevitable and is a natural fact which cannot be blinked, then in the course of time you would not be able to find employment, and this system would bring on in an exaggerated form the very same poverty which you wish to remove. (“ Oh!”, and cries of cfissent.) Mrs. Besant speaks of people being like pigs round a big trough, some of whom cannot even get their feet in. (Laughter.) Well, that is the attitude in which pigs always eat. Now, supposing there be only enough food for ninety-nine pigs out of a hundred—I merely suppose it hypothetically—which is preferable in the long run, that the weak, unfit pig should perish and leave no offspring, or that a strong one should suffer that fate ? I put the �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 15 case as one of hard fact, whether we like it or not. If people to-day were content to come under some sensible adjustment with regard to the population question, neither Socialism nor Communism would in this economical respect —although it might in other respects which I shall speak of next Wednesday night—be fraught with much evil. .But if a man who is unfit—Mrs. Besant used the word— and a man who is fit were put on exactly the same level, and if society insured them the same amount of subsist­ ence, what would be the result ? The problem affects posterity as well as yourselves. We are stewards for posterity. (Cheers.) We know that the law of heredity is a scientific truth which cannot be gainsaid. We know that the unfit, will transmit their characteristic quali­ ties of unfitness to their offspring. It is better for the race that the unfit should not so transmit these qualities, and if Mrs. Besant removes the law of natural selection, which provides for the gradual improvement of the race, .she is bound to provide in her new scheme something which is adequate to replace it. Why, as a matter of fact, under the present law—which in some respects is too Socialistic—boys of fourteen and girls of twelve years of age can go and get married. Mrs. Besant thinks perhaps they do not. Mr. Arnold White, who knows as much about London poverty as any man, gives an analysis of a hundred and seventy-six cases which were investigated in Clerkenwell. In eleven cases the wife was fourteen years ■old. In two cases the husband, and in twelve the wife, were fifteen. In twelve cases the husband, in forty-six the wife, and in three cases both, were sixteen. Twenty-seven husbands and forty-eight wives were seventeen when they began housekeeping, and in thirteen cases both of the happy pair boasted of that age. Let me give another statistical fact. In 1884—not so very long ago—14,818 men married under age in England, and 74,004 married at the age of twenty-one. And the practice of marriage by men under age has increased since 1841 from 4’38 per 100 to 7’25 in 1884. Now, is it any wonder if this causes a frightful deterioration ? If boys and girls rush into mar­ riage at a time when they are utterly unfit economically to support their offspring ; and if those who marry at a later age are—as Mrs. Besant knows full well—grossly impru­ dent in the number of their offspring, is it any wonder �16 IS SOCIALISM SOUXD ? that the trough should be over-swarmed ? And is it any wonder that some should be turned away through the operation of a natural law which can no more be defeated than the Alps can be removed. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant says that she would not only nationalise land, but also wrought material. And then she subsequently told us there was no distinction in a country like ours between land and wrought material. Is it a fact that the nationali­ sation of the land is Socialistic ? Does it in any way involve that wide regulation of human affairs which the confiscation and seizure of all capital would entail ? It does not. Suppose the land were nationalised to-morrow, rent would necessarily be paid still. Rent cannot be abolished. It is the difference between rich and poor land and good and bad convenience of site. No man could claim a plot of rich land for the same value as another man paid for a similar plot of poor land. That rent would have to be paid; but instead of going into the pocket of a few private individuals who did not assist or co-operate in making the land, this rent would go into the national exchequer, and every man would as a citizen become a part owner of the land which is the gift of Nature to all, (Cheers.) It is a curious fact that before the present phase of English Socialism was heard of, and long before its chief advocates appeared in the field, the nationalisation of the land was advocated by Mr. Herbert Spencer, the protagonist of Individualism. In his “ Social Statics”, published so far back, I think, as 1850, he argued that the equal right of all to access to nature, and to the exercise of their faculties in the gratification of their wants, logically led to the State-ownership of the soil. “ Equity,” he wrote, “ does not permit property in land. Eor if one portion of the earth’s surface may justly become the possession of an individual, and may be held by him for his sole use and benefit as a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then other portions of the earth’s surface may be so held, and eventually the whole of the earth’s surface may be so held; and our planet may thus lapse altogether into private hands”. He further argued that the doctrine of collective ownership of land may be car­ ried out “without involving a community of goods”, or causing “ any serious revolution in existing arrange­ ments ”, and he concludes the chapter by saying, “ that �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 17 the theory of the co-heirship of all men to the soil is con­ sistent with the highest civilisation; and that, however difficult it may he to embody the theory in fact, equity sternly commands it to be done ”. Surely, then, if the greatest living opponent of State Socialism writes in this way, it is idle to assert that the nationalisation of the land is a Socialistic measure. (Cheers.) Sir Henry Maine tells us that the idea of land being a chattel in the market is very recent. It is probably not more than two centuries old. People will probably recur to the collective owner­ ship of the soil, which will stand in a different position to capital. Mrs. Besant says that capital is a social product. The watch in my pocket is a social product. Mrs. Besant’s dress is a social product. Everything conceivable is a social product under a system like ours where the division of labor obtains. Well, if no social product could come under private ownership, Mrs. Besant is landed in sheer Communism—not in the far future—but to-night, accord­ ing to the principles which she lays down. What is a social product ? I want to eliminate the personal element from the illustration as far as possible. One man with capital might engage fifty men without capital to work upon certain raw material, which his capital has provided. What do they work for ? They produce a manufactured article, but the essence of the contract on the workman’s part was not any specific amount of produce, but a cer­ tain proportion of his time given for a certain monetary consideration. At the end of it the workman gets his stipulated sum, and the capitalist holds the product. But suppose the product turns out to be a drug in the market—suppose the product has to be sold without a profit. The workman will not lose. It was not part of his contract that he should bear any risk or re­ sponsibility. In other words, his fate was not bound up with the product. He contracted to do certain work at a certain price, and was paid for it. The product rightly remained with the person who undertook the responsibility and risk. Now, if the workman is prepared to undertake the responsibility and risk, he also can become, in the fullest sense of the word, a capitalist as well as his employer. (Cheers and “No”'.) I believe in co-operation as much as Mrs. Besant. Civilisation is co-operation. We could not have been in this hall to-night unless we had co- �'is is SOCIALISM SOUND ? operated to produce common results. Division of labor means co-operation. But Mrs. Besant’s co-operation is co-operation by law. My co-operation is voluntary co­ operation. I distrust law. Mrs. Besant seems to place implicit reHance on it. She thinks probably in the future, if the law is made by the many, it will be absolutely just and wise. I do not think so. The many can be mistaken as well as the few. The many can go wild for a time as well as the few. I say that no man ought to be handed over bound hand and foot to that maj'ority which calls itself society, but which can never be more than a majority, large or small. The majority has no right to do every­ thing and anything. It has no just power to rule the minority arbitrarily, leaving them with no power to settle their fate for themselves. (Cheers.) Mr. John Stuart Mill thought—and everybody who agrees with Mrs. Besant must honor him—that the individualistic system would survive and gradually develop into voluntary co-operation. Now, supposing Mrs. Besant’s system were established, one of two things must happen. Either she would have to seize the whole of the present capital, or she would have to pay for it. (A voice : “ Seize it! ”.) I should like to know how this is to be done. Suppose the property of the country were obtained by either of these means, what would the Collectivists gain in either case ? They would, possibly, have the capital. But capital is a very tender plant, reared with difficulty, and easily killed. It is not, like the land, indestructible. It has to be continually renewed. What is at present the value of capital ? Mrs. Besant speaks as if all the profits of manufacturing and commercial enterprises were really a return on capital. That is a fallacy. Capital is worth what it will fetch in the open market in good security—no more and no less. The railway companies in England are getting on the average four per cent. First-rate security will give you, I think, about three per cent., and that security is considered practically firm. Now if, in addition to the capital, a capitalist has to provide himself the trained capacity, the result consists of three things. First, the interest on the capital which would be paid by any other man -who used it; secondly, insurance against risk; and, thirdly, the cost of direction which, if he did not direct the concern himself, he would necessarily incur in the �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 19 payment of other persons who did. Under yonr Socialist system, this cost of direction would still remain. If you ■elect directors, how would you pay them? If you paid them at the same rate as a day laborer, the probability is they would do just about as much labor, and just as valuable labor, as that of day laborers. (Cries of dissent.) I say that, of course, without any disrespect to day laborers. But a man who cannot draw a distinction between laying bricks and writing “Hamlet”, for instance, has something yet to learn. (Hear, hear, and applause.) Now, this direction would have to be paid for; men with directing capacity would make you pay their price. You could not help it. Generalship is indispensable. Caesar’s legions locked up in Gaul were worth nothing until Caesar came. And so it is with any great commercial enterprise. Unless you have the directing capacity, the ordinary run of workers could not possibly work with a profit. You may see two mills standing side by side in a town like Oldham. The one will be bankrupt in two years ; and the other, in the same period, will be paying ten per cent. What is the cause of the difference ? One is in the hands of a skilled management, carefully watching the markets and generally exhibiting sagacity in the conduct of the business; the other is deficient in this controlling wisdom. If you were a capitalist, and did not head the enterprise yourself, choosing the managers and watching personally over every­ thing, all you would be entitled to, and all you would obtain, would be three or four per cent, at the outside which is the market interest on capital. Then, is this big revolution worth working for three per cent. ? (Cries of “No, no”, and “ Yes ”.) I think not. As a redress for poverty, Socialism would, in my opinion, wholly fail. All the Socialists, I believe, with one or two trifling exceptions, consider that the Malthusian theory of population is a delusion and a snare, a middle-class or upperclass invention. (Hear.) Well, Charles Darwin — the greatest naturalist of our age—did not think so. One of his greatest successors, Professor Huxley, does not think so. And, what is more to the purpose to-night, Mrs. Besant does not think so. You could not, as human nature is, provide restraints. H so, I should like it proved. I deny the possi­ bility of it. But Individualism is gradually lessening the pressure of poverty. (“ OhI oh! ”) Nothing is so easy as to �20 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? confine attention to what has occurred within a few months, rather than to extend observation over a number of years. Speak to an old man in any great manufacturing centreand ask him the difference between fifty years ago and now. Nay, do not go to any old man; go to absolute­ statistics which cannot be refuted. I shall show you if Mrs. Besant questions it, because I have the figures under my hand, that during the last fifty years the wages of skilled artisans have nearly doubled; I shall show you that the wages of unskilled laborers have increased nearly forty or fifty pei’ cent. I shall show you that the prices of nearly all commodities have diminished instead of rising. (Cheers, and “No, no”.) I shall show you that the only twothings that have risen are the prices of meat and rent. Now, if the profits of the capitalist have increased, they have increased in the mass, and not in proportion. (A laugh.) It is very easy to laugh at statistics and BlueBooks. But, if you look at the last Blue Book, with respect to the Royal Commission on Trade—(laughter)—I suppose, then, that we are to take not only Socialist argu­ ments but Socialist facts—you will find that during the last fifty years, in the various changes that have taken place, the condition of the worker has improved, and pauperism has diminished. When you hear of men being out of work, it is only a small proportion of them who are out of work. And as I understand the state of things, I contend that it is the Individualistic system which is working such improvements. The fate of the workers lies in their own hands. (Cheers.) Why wait until you convince everybody that the millennium is at hand ? Why not begin with co-operative experiments to-morrow, and gradually bring society to the truth by experiments which will con­ vince, and cease indulging in extravagant schemes and excited declamation which will do no good whatever? (Loud applause.) Annie Besant : Friends, I must ask Socialists who are present to be good enough for my sake even more than for their own not to interrupt in the way some are inclined to do. Your flag to-night is in my hands, and I cannot keep it unsoiled if you interrupt my opponent. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote has said, and said truly, that Individu­ alism has not been incompatible with progress. That istrue; it is a historical fact; and it would be idle to deny �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 21 that in evolving from the more savage and. brutal forms of society the Individualism through which we have passed, is tk necessary stage. But I hope to be able to show you later on that real Individualism that makes for progress can only be secured by the Socialist. That I am prepared, to defend this day fortnight. (Cheers.) Then Mr. Foote said that I was dealing only with the commonplaces of political economy, and that he had but little trouble in admitting most of them. But surely he was acute enough to see that my claim for the whole of the raw and wrought material included the claim for the whole of the capital of this country ? So that while at the beginning of his speech he said that my claim was a mere commonplace, at the end of his speech he urged you not to take the step I am striving to induce you to take. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote complains that my definition was not full enough. It included the whole of the land and all the capital; and that ought to be full enough. (Laughter, and hear, hear.) In dealing with the economic basis, and seeing that I care­ fully confined myself to the economic aspect of Socialism, I fail to see what further definition Mr. Foote can require. He made another statement, however, with which I agree, when he said that when mankind was fitted for a system then it is that they will live in that system. That is exactly why I believe that Socialism is now approaching. I learn from Emile de Laveleye that the majority of French workmen in every town are Socialists; that the professors of nearly every university in Germany and Italy are up­ holding Socialism. Even in this country the conception as to property hitherto held will have to be completely given up, according to Professor Graham: and I believe Social­ ism to be absolutely inevitable, although I try to hasten its coming by pointing out the advantages that will accrue from the acceptance of it. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote says, is competition so evil a thing ? And I do not propose to waste time over the difference between competition and emulation. Competition is an evil thing under present ■conditions. (Hear, hear.) Competition under Socialism might possibly not have many evil results. And I will tell you why. So long as you have your raw and wrought materials in the hands of a class, then that class can practi­ cally fix the remuneration of labor. (Hear, hear.) Upon that, too, I will not be content with my owa opinion, but �22 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? will take the authority of Emile de Laveleye, who pointsout that “in every contract he who advances the where­ withal to labor, i.e., land and capital, will fix the terms he chooses; and will, of course, so fix them that the profits will be at a maximum and the wages at a minimum”. (Cheers.) Take, too, the declaration of Cairnes—that there is no possibility of the laboring class, as a whole, rising out of the position of suffering and distress in which it is to-day, so long as it continues to be composed of wage-laborers. When you have your com­ petition hampered by absolute proprietorship in the whole of the materials of wealth production on the one side, and on the other a proletariat without property—a proletariat who must get at the land and capital or starve—then your pretence of free competition is a fraud and a hypocrisy, for one of the competitors has a clog around his neck which makes it impossible for him to swim against the other. (Cheers.) And that is not all. So long as you have these proprietors and the proletariat, the proletarians will have to work for the proprietors as well as for them­ selves. And the difficulty is that the proprietors can wait, and the proletarians cannot. The proprietor has got hisland. He can cultivate it himself if the worst comes to the worst. He has got his capital. He can utilise that if the worst comes to the worst. And land and capital give him credit, and that will keep him well-clothed and wellfed for years and years. But the proletarian cannot wait, for he wants food and can only get it by taking the wages offered to him. He starves if he waits. And to say that these parties are equal, and are able to make a fair con­ tract, is to fly in the face of every fact of our present society. (Cheers.) That brings me-—following Mr. Eoote step by step—to the statement that he remembers a pas­ sage of mine in which I stated that Communism would mean the living of the idle on the industrious. I presumehe was quoting from my pamphlet on “ Modern Socialism,” in which I stated what I stated to you to­ night—that it was likely that society would evolve into Communism. But I added—and this Mr. Foote omitted to mention—“ that stage of development man has not yet attained ; and for man as he is, Communism would mean the living of the idle on the toil of the laborious”. (Hear, hear.) I hold that immediate complete Communism is. �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 23: utterly impracticable, but that through Collectivism you may come to Communism. Mr. Foote says the struggle for" existence is necessary; the fact of the struggle for existence must be recognised. That both Darwin and Huxley realise it is true; but it was because Darwin realised it that he was against those checks to undue in­ crease of the population which I propose. He says, if you limit the number of competitors and soften the struggle for existence, progress will be arrested. He would leave the old brute struggle to go on among men, trusting that thus, despite the suffering, improvement will result. Is Mr. Foote prepared to take up that position, and to deny everything we have striven to do to lessen and regulate this strife by substituting rational for natural selection ? (Hear, hear.) But Mr. Foote also says—and here I agree with him—that if the law of population is not recognised poverty will once more result. Mr. Foote is right. Many of my fellow Socialists—not thinking as carefully and thoughtfully as they should — ignore or deny that indisputable truth. But I allege that when you have Socialism, the fact that unless you regulate the relative numbers of producers and consumers you will overburden your producers, will be a fact so patent and obvious that the blindest will be compelled to see it. (Hear, hear.) Well, but says Mr. Foote, suppose there is enough for every ninety-nine out of a hundred, is it not better for the unfit to perish and not transmit their unfitness to their offspring ? But do you kill out the unfit in the present condition of society ? Is it the unfit who go to the wall in the social struggle for existence ? Why, it is your idlers who five; your idle aristocrats who cannot earn their own living ; the lazy women who cannot sweep a room or clean a saucepan. (Hear, hear.) These are the men and women who live under your present social system, and it is the fit who are crushed out—those who could work and who long to work; those who are industrious and pray for work; those you kill off by your competition, and your idle vagabonds it is who live. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr. Foote says the poor marry very young. I know that. And why ? Because they are crowded together in small rooms where no separation of the sexes is possible, and where in consequence the sexual instinct is awakened at an age when it should still be sleeping; because in their �24 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? miserable life their poverty makes them old when they ought to be young, and the longings of manhood and of womanhood are roused in them when they should be still almost in their childhood. (Hear, hear.) There is no blame to them. Forced in this impure hothouse of poverty; with no pleasure save that of the sexual relation; with no relief for their feelings save in sexual intercourse; shut out from art, from beauty, from education, and from everything that might make life fair to them as to others, they cling to this one joy of their manhood and their womanhood as all of happiness that is open to them. (Cheers.) But Mr. Foote says—Why not go in for land nationalisation? it is more simple. Mr. Foote did not think it worth while to deal with the difficulty of national­ ising the rent of land. He ignored the fact that in nationalising the rent of land—which is capital as well as land, a point he had apparently forgotten—he has the whole of the Socialist difficulty to face. (Hear, hear.) I will take Sidgwick on this head. He points out that capital and land cannot be separated; that land is capital, and is largely the result of accumulated labor. Take, for instance, a railway. Is the railway running through a county land or capital ? Does not the land over which it runs represent part of the capital of the railway company ? And Mr. Foote, in an eloquent passage, said that those— the idle class—who took the rent of the land did not make the land ; that they did not even co-operate in making the land. I can find no better words than his to describe the class that lives on the capital made by the labor of others ; “They did not make the capital; they did not even co­ operate in making it They have taken it unfairly, by force and fraud, that is, by theft, and we want to take it back from them. (Cheers.) But Mr. Foote says that all who work to make the capital work with their eyes open, and that they have no right to quarrel with the result. Is that true ? Surely not. Even with their eyes open men prefer a poor wage to absolute starvation. But it is not a case of freedom of contract. They are forced into the contract by the absolute pressure of their bodily necessities. (Hear, hear.) It is not a case of willingly accepting a contract which you have power to refuse. You are driven into it with the whip of starvation, and you must take it or starve. (Cheers.) �IS SOCIALISM SOUXI) ? 25 Mr. Foote : To-night Mrs. Besant naturally circumscribes -the limits of the debate : I follow her and must do so.. Next Wednesday night I trust to alter to some extent the character of the debate. I shall then go a little further into the Socialistic scheme, and see how it would work in practice—or rather how it would be likely to work in practice. (Hear, hear.) For the present I confine myself to the duty of following Mrs. Besant. She admits that Individualism is not incompatible with progress. I cannot say that the admission was wrung from her, because it is one that no student of history could possibly refuse to make. But the fact that the progress the world has made during the last three centuries—the great era of progress —has been achieved under the system of Individualism ought to make innovators pause before they propose to substitute something for it, unless they can clearly show— not in mere words but almost in the visualisation of imagi­ nation—that what they propose to put in its place will be far better than what they wish to remove. (Cheers.) Under the present system we do somehow hold on ; we do not go from bad to worse; we keep making some little improvement year by year and generation by generation. (Hear, hear.) If you cannot cultivate, under purely arbitrary conditions of your own making, a special variety ■of a plant in a short time, how are you going to cultivate, under what cannot be purely arbitrary conditions, a special new variety of human nature in a short time ? Mrs. Besant says present human nature is not fit for her whole scheme. Her whole argument is founded on prophecy. Some day or other human nature will be fit for it I I think that, some day the forces which have elevated man in the past will bring him to higher things. I know Individualism is not incompatible with social elevation. It is an essential requisite for a man to assist anyone else that he shall be strong and self-helpful himself. You cannot have a really strong society when everybody is a leaning-post to everybody else. (Hear, hear.) In .some parts of the world where they five under a system which is very much nearer Socialism than ours, they look upon the suffering and peril of their fellow creatures almost with amusement. But in a country like ours where In­ dividualism so predominates, our instincts are such that brave fellows will leap into the water, and brave firemen �26 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? will run up the fire-ladder, and men will go out in the lifeboats to sinking crews, and women will send their dearest to save the fives of others. (Hear, hear.) These things are done under Individualism—it is not incompa­ tible with the highest development of human nature. Mrs. Besant says I cannot separate land from wrought material. Now land is not wrought material in the ordinary sense of the word—that it can be carried about. Whatever improvements you make in the soil you cultivate, by digging, manuring, and planting, you cannot carry them away with you. They remain on and in the land. And that is one of the reasons why the law interferes, and gives the tenant compensation for whatever improvements he has made when his lease is terminated by the landlord’s action. Now, if the land were nationalised, is it true that we could not possibly separate the value of the land, for the pur­ poses of statemanship, from the value of other things ? A railway runs over a certain amount of land. Supposing we wanted that bit of railway. The company is not in the true sense of the word “ a bloated capitalist ”. (Laughter.) Thousands on thousands of persons have small sums of money invested in it as shareholders. Heaps of money are invested in railway security by life assurance societies. If you were to take it you would make these bankrupt, and ruin the expectations of almost everybody who assured their lives for the benefit of their wives and children. These things are talked about without the consequences of what is proposed being seen. A laugh is cheap and a sneer is easy. But when you find yourselves face to face with the consequences you never foresee, you might feel a little less jubilant. (Cheers.) If the land w§re bought under Act of Parliament, and a price given for it, any State that took possession of it would be bound to compensate for it, otherwise it would injure thousands who have invested their money in it. Socialists may claim their right to take it without compensation. I for one deny their right to do it. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant may differ from me. Well, in that case we must both appeal to such feelings of fair play , as men may possess. (Cheers.) It would not be very difficult to take over a railway. My opinion is that it is confusion to sup­ pose that because the State can do one thing well it can do everything well. You might as well say that because a �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 27 man can build a house well he could paint a picture well. (Hear, hear.) There is no natural reason for believing it. A municipality can supply us very well with water and also with gas. But what municipality could supply. uswith anything except what had been simplified for it through long experience and experiment under individual­ istic enterprise ? If any one tried to get municipalities to take up the electric fight he would be laughed at. In­ dividualism has to work it up, and risk the money, and by and by when it has succeeded society will step in and reap the advantage of it. (Hear, hear.) There are certain things that must be monopolies. Mrs. Besant may say that capital is a monopoly too. But what I want to point out is, that although for the moment the amount of capital existing is determined, the amount of capital that may exist is indeterminate. The amount of land that exists in England is determined; but land is also deter­ minate—it cannot be more to-morrow than it is to-day. But capital can. (Hear, hear). While the land is now practically the same as in the time of William the Con­ queror, capital is probably a thousand times as much as it was then. I hold that what is a natural monopoly the State should undertake, and the State has never relinquished that right. There is no such thing in English law as private ownership of land; there is no such thing in Eng­ lish law as an absolute private right to work a public monopoly. A railway has only a right given to it by Act of Parliament. A water company has only the right given to it by Act of Parliament. It is simply a question of prudence whether it is better to give a public com­ pany a right of working a monopoly under Parliament, within legal conditions, or for a municipality or State to take the direct management of it itself. But the prin­ ciple of it is the same whether the company work understatutory limitations, or whether the State provide the directors. (Hear, hear.) The State is the ultimatesovereign of all monopolies. I hold, as an Individualist, that they should be regulated by the State, and that they should be actively conducted by the State. Now let us try to separate our land from the wrought material. What would be the actual problem ? Here is some land the State proposes to take. All the State has to do is to* lay down what it considers just principles of compensation, �■28 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? which, of course, it is impossible to argue out in detail at present. Besides, Mrs. Besant is a land nationaliser as well as I. The State would have to lay down broad principles of fair compensation. And commissioners would have to apply them in particular cases, just as commissioners did when they fixed the judicial rents in Ireland, or as the Land Court does when it adjudicates on the question of a tenant’s unexhausted improvements. There would be no difficulty in it at all. I cannot understand how Mrs. Besant can so dwell upon a difficulty which is, after all, mainly of her own creation. (Hear, hear.) Why is the land different from capital ? Mrs. Besant says capital is a social product. Admitted. She says that land and capital are both used for production. Yes. But there is this difference. Land is naturally a monopoly. Land was not created at all. Nobody co-operated in the making of it. But people did co-operate in the making of capital. The difference between capital and land is, that in the one you have a vast mass of value created by the volun­ tary cooperation of employers and workmen under all varieties of association, while in the other you have an uncreated and indestructible gift of Nature to all her children. You have the right to take for all the prime gift of Nature. But I cannot see your right to take for all what has been created by separate bodies of men after giving such consideration for the raw material as the law of the land declared at the time to be just. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant says that under the present system ■ capital fixes the terms upon which labor shall workI Bid she never hear of trades’ unions ? Mr. Thornton’s fine book, “On Labor”, showed how it was that trades’ unions were able, in spite of the mistaken notions on the subj ect of most political economists, to affect the price of labor. Mrs. Besant says the capitalist fixes wages! Is there no such thing as supply and demand? Mrs. Besant must know that it is one of the commonplaces of political economy, as you will find in Mill, that under a highly-developed economical system like ours, with im­ mense accumulation of capital and increasing skill in labor, wages tend to rise and profits to fall to a minimum. That is a commonplace of political economy. And the proof of lies in the fact that the profits are falling. Statistics �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 29' show it. And wages have risen a hundred per cent.—in some cases more and in others less—during the last fifty years. Further, the return on capital, which, as I said, is simply interest—the market rate for the use of capital— gradually gets less and less. You cannot now get for invested capital, unless you conduct the enterprise your­ self, what was obtained ten years ago. Interest now is so low that bankers have been declining to give interest at all, and depositors have often been glad for the bankers to take charge of the money for them without any percentage. (Laughter.) Mrs. Besant says that the proletariat cannot rise—that it is the unfit, the idle, who five. Not all of them, I hope. It is rather too sweeping a condemnation. I am in favor, as a Radical, as much as Mrs. Besant can be, of abolishing all privileges created by law. (Cheers.) And what is more I have always been in favor, in all public reforms, of adopting the wise German proverb of sweeping the stairsfrom the top downwards. But it is not true that it is simply the unfit who survive and the fit who are killed out. What is the fact ? According to the income tax table, schedule D, incomes from £200 to £1,000 have in­ creased in number, from 1874 to 1885, from 162,435 to 215,790; incomes from £1,000 to £2,000 from 11,944 to 13,403 ; and so on right up the scale. But you find a decrease when you come to incomes from £5,000 to £10,000. These have diminished from 2,035 to 1,928. (Hear, hear.) And the incomes above £10,000 a year have diminished from 1,283 to 1,220. So that there is a great increase of' incomes from £100 upwards to £5,000, and a decrease atthe wealthier end of the scale. The wages of the workman have also increased. (“No, no.”) I say yes. If Mrs. Besant denies it I will prove it, but not otherwise. I say then that under the circumstances it is not the fit who are killed out and the unfit who survive. The fact is the mass of the people are better off. The workers are in an improved condition. The income tax returns show an increase of small incomes and a decrease of big ones. That is in­ consistent with Mrs. Besant’s position. It is corroborative of mine. (Cheers.) Annie Besant : Mr. Foote alleged—I am going back to the speech made before the last, when he was dealing with, the conditions under which men accepted labor for which. �30 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? they took wage—that if the product was a failure the loss fell on the capitalist, and not on the worker. If Mr. Foote will think that question out he will find that if a product •is a failure—that is, if the capitalist cannot sell that which has been produced and a glut is caused—that while the capitalist may lose his profit the workman loses his live­ lihood, which is a much more important thing. And it is looking excessively superficially at the subject to say, that because a man receives a certain amount of wage he runs no risk from the failure of the market. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote went on to urge that capital is easily killed, and that it is a very tender plant. That is a favorite phrase of the capitalist. But capital is not a tender plant. Look at the way France was treated at the Franco-German War, and see how soon she replaced the wealth of which she was then robbed. The making of capital lies in the productive power of the nation, and you cannot frighten away capital in the fashion some persons imagine. You have it left behind you after your big capitalists are frightened, and the sooner they are frightened off the spoil the more chance there is for the worker who really creates the capital. Then we are told that the capitalist’s profits must cover insur-' ance against risk, interest on capital, and the cost of pro­ duction ; and Mr. Foote might have added the rent. It is true that they cover these things, but when Mr. Foote goes on to urge the enormous value of generalship and of business ability, and to declare that the man, who cannot distinguish between the value of the labor of laying, bricks and that of writing Hamlet, is apparently not worthy of having an opinion on a scientific problem, one cannot help asking two questions. Are not the wages of superintendence enormously higher than they ought to be, judged by comparison with the value added to the product by the business manager? And is it not possible that, valuable as Hamlet is, the laying of bricks is even more necessary to the community; and if society wants to be served both by the bricklayer and the poet, it must be content to take from each that which his natural capabilities enable him to give ; and not to give enormous extra advantages to the man who, being an artist, has joy in his work as part of his payment, but whose work is not more necessary to the community than is that of the humbler members who do the actual manual �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 31 labor on which our lives depend. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote argues that the wages of skilled workmen have doubled, and those of unskilled workmen have risen; and we all know these figures come from Mr. Gillen. When he says so scornfully, 11 Is it worth while to make a revolution for 3 per cent ?”, I turn to Mr. Giffen, and I see he puts rent and interest, without a penny of wages of superintend­ ence, at £407,000,000 ; and I am inclined to say that as the total produce per year is only £1,250,000,000, then to rescue from the idle class even one-third of that total is worth trying hard for by law, and might even, if it could be effected thereby, excuse a revolution. (Cheers.) Then we are told that under the present system we at least go on—we do not go from bad to worse. Why, that phrase is used by every tyranny, as well as by every Tory as an excuse for opposing the wicked Radicals whenever they propose a change. They use it by the necessity of their position; but it is, indeed, strange, for a Radical to use against Socialism the very argument he would scoff at if it came from a Tory against himself. (Hear, hear.) Then we are told that Mrs. Besant admits that human nature is not fit for it—what is “it”? Mrs. Besant admitted that human nature was not yet fitted for Communism, but not that it is not fit for collectivist Socialism. Mrs. Besant thinks it is fit for collectivist Socialism. (Hear, hear.) Then I am told that in the savage state—which for some mystic reason is like Socialism—men look on unmoved at drowning men, whereas under Individualism they plunge in to the rescue. I think I have read not so very long ago of men walking away from a pond whilst children were drowning. But that is not argument — it is only an attempt to raise prejudice against the system at which it is aimed. (Hear, hear.) Under your Individualism also the wealthy people look on unmoved in the great cities at the poor, as they slowly die of that which is a worse death than drowning. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr. Foote urges that if you take the railways you will rob people of the insurance they are hoping to leave to their widows. But this difficulty is not special to Socialism. The insurance offices have a large number of mortgages on freehold land. When you nationalise the land, are you going to steal from these offices ? or is it not true that just the same difficulties will occur in the �32 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? nationalisation of land as in the nationalisation of capital ? and that while these difficulties are a good reason for pro­ ceeding with caution, they are not the slightest reason for not moving at all ? (Cheers.) In any such change you will have to be careful as to the method; but the diffi­ culties placed against the nationalisation of capital are of equal force in dealing with the nationalisation of the land. Then Mr. Foote says that municipalities can only take up things when experience has shown them to have been successful. I was told only the other day by the secretary of a company for the raising of water by hydraulic power that their machines were only taken by municipalities which had the water supply in their own hands, and that these were ready to take the cost in this instance which private companies refused to incur. (Hear, hear.) Next, Mr. Foote argues that the land differs from capital in that it is a fixed quantity, while capital is not. The soil of England, he says, has not increased since the time of William the Conqueror. Does Mr. Foote mean to say that the soil is not more productive now than it was in the time of William the Conqueror ? If his argnment as to the land is good for anything, that is the meaning of it. You measure your soil by its power of production; and if you increase the productive power and get more food from it than before, then the increased productivity is the measure of the increased land ; and it is only throwing out words to those who look at words rather than things to say that, because the outline of the country is very much the same, therefore the land has not increased. (Cheers.) The land has increased in everything that makes it valuable. Thousands of aeres have been brought under cultivation, and those cultivated have been made more productive. Land is increasing in productive power. Capital, says Mr. Foote, cannot be limited. I was under the delusion that capital could only be obtained by applying labor to raw material, and Mr. Foote expects me to believe that the material is limited, and that that which is made out of it is unlimited. I find myself unable to accept that view. (Hear, hear.) Then, against the argument I put at the end that the wages of the laborers as a class could not rise very high—Mr. Foote asks me if I have not heard of trades unions and whether I do not think they can affect the rate of wages ? To a very small extent. Mr. Foote �33 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? quotes Mr. Mill, but he knows that Mr. Mill’s political economy has been discredited in point after point, and is in much given up to-day by every economist of repute. You cannot now quote Mill as a final authority. You must take the arguments of Cairnes and Sidgwick and Jevons, who have taken up the science where Mill dropped it, and you must meet and refute their arguments. And what is it that Cairnes has said on this subject? Cairnes distinctly tells us that “nothing is more certain than that taking the whole field of labor, real wages in Great Britain will never rise to the standard of remuneration now pre­ vailing in new countries” ; that the “possibilities of the laborer’s lot are confined” within “very narrow limits”, “ so long as he depends for his well-being on the produce of his day’s work. Against these barriers trades unions must dash themselves in vain.” (Hear, hear.) And then he says, if you deal with the relative position of the in • dustrial classes you find that inequality is continually in­ creasing ; that “unequal as is the distribution of wealth already in this country, the tendency of industrial progress is towards an inequality greater still. The rich will be growing richer, and the poor, at least relatively, poorer ” (“Some Leading Principles of Political Economy”, pp. 337, 338, 340, ed. 1874). And he winds up his argument on this point by declaring that ‘‘ if workmen do not rise from dependence on capital by the path of co-operation, then they must remain in dependence upon capital ; the margin for the possible improvement of their lot is confined within narrow barriers which cannot be passed, and the problem of their elevation is hopeless ” {Ibid., p. 348). (Hear, hear.) These are Professor Cairnes’ words. I ask Mr. Foote to meet Professor Cairnes on his own ground, and give us the authority which will show us that Cairnes’ judgment is wrong. It is true that profits tend to fall because of the competition between employers. But when Mr. Foote says that wages still tend to rise, then he speaks against the deductions of political economy, and against the knowledge of facts of every practical man who hears him. Wages do not now tend to rise in the fashion which has been put. By com­ bination something can be done. But as Sidgwick points out—a man worthy of careful thought—Sidgwick points out that if you are going to deal with the condition of D �34 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? wage-laborers, then you must recognise that the tendency of our system is to press their wages down to a minimum, and to a minimum which is below what is necessary .for healthy life. (Cheers.) Mr. Sidgwick points out that wherever laborers belong to the capitalist—as the horse and the ox belong to him—then they have a fair subsist­ ence to keep them in working order ; but he says that the pressure of competition has forced the wage-laborer below a fair subsistence; and that is the point to which the wage continually tends. (Hear, hear.) And I submit that on that point you find that the views deduced from the prin­ ciples of political economy as to the results of the present competitive system have been really borne out by all the facts of the society you have around you, and that what Professor Sidgwick says is true. And whilst you have more absolute money going into the laborer’s hands in some trades to-day than before, it is also true that the share of the produce obtained by the worker is not growing greater but smaller. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote says that he is in favor of abolishing privileges established by law. I ask him to come over then to the Socialist ranks, and join us in abolishing the privileges conferred on the landlords and the capitalists by giving them these unfair monopolies. And when he says that the salvation of the workman lies in his own hands, I endorse that with all my power. I say your salvation does lie in your own hands. Till you are edu­ cated, till you understand your own condition, till you are loyal to each other, till you unite to win your own liberty, you will remain oppressed ; and only as you band yourselves together, and realise the changes you should seek to bring about, will you raise yourselves from your position of dependence. The workers must save them­ selves. We can only talk; but you must act. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote : I notice in this debate that up to the present Mrs. Besant is fonder of relying upon other person’s opinions than on statistics and facts that cannot be ques­ tioned. I submit that the question before us to-night is not what Mill or Cairnes thought. We are here to think for ourselves, and it is the business of the debaters to lay before you grounds upon which you can form your own judgment. And the best of all grounds, and in the long run the only ground, is fact. Now Mj?s. Besant has not denied the truth of my statement, that during the last �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 35 fifty years mechanics’ wages have risen in the majority of cases nearly a hundred per cent., and that during the same period the wages of unskilled labor have increased nearly fifty per cent. (Hear, hear.) Cairnes’ opinion cannot avail against those facts. It is useless for Cairnes to say that the workman’s elevation is impossible if, during those fifty years, the workman has been elevated. Again, you have heard I daresay a good deal about the distress in the shipbuilding trade, and I know many of the hard-working men of the Tyneside have suffered seriously owing to the glut of ships in the market. There are ships lying idle there because there is no carrying trade for them. And the shipbuilding trade has consequently suffered very much. But still, with all that, what is the fact as to the wages ? Before the Royal Commission, Mr. Knight (the secretary of the Amalgamated Boilers and Engineers Society, with whom I had the honor of speaking once at the Crystal Palace) was interrogated as to the recent strike, and he said that the reason of it was that the men com­ plained that upon the piece work they had accepted they could not manage to earn as much as they thought they should according to the rate of day wages. Now the question was put to Mr Joseph Knight ££ What do you call a fair day’s rate for rivetters for piece work ? ” ££ I should say”, he replied, ££a fair day’s rate, working at piece work, is 8s. per day”. Now if you take five and a half days a week, which leaves at least one day and a half leisure a week for a man, to say nothing of his evenings, you get a wage of £2 4s. per week. Because they could not get that sum they had gone out on strike. Now, does that look as if the working classes in the main were in such a truly deplorable case as Mrs. Besant endeavors to depict ? I admit that there are evils and suffering in society, and everyone of us thinks that something should be done to remedy them. (Hear, hear.) But I see no use in exaggerated pictures of blackness and despair. Mrs. Besant said I used forms of words to appeal to your pre­ judices. I say she has painted a black picture so as to appeal to your finer feelings of sympathy to foist upon you an economical system which is to be judged according to pure scientific canons of criticism and not according to sentiments excited by one side or the other. Mrs. Besant said that capital was not a tender plant, and she d 2 �36 IS SOCIALISE! SOUND ? said, “see how quickly France recouped herself after the war with Germany ’ ’. Why, that ‘ ‘ exploded ’ ’ political economist John Stuart Mill explained it himself. If a war in civilised times leaves the land, the plant employed in manufac­ tures, the canals, the railways, the docks, and all the per­ manent instruments of production, all the people have to do is to set to work again. But how soon would France have recovered herself if Germany had spoiled all her canals and railways and docks, ruined her machinery, destroyed her buildings, broken down her hedges, and devastated her vineyards ? France would not be in the position she is in to-day. It would be found that capital was hard to accumulate. It would take generations of hard effort to remedy the result of one single devastating campaign fought on the old barbarous methods that were practised three or four centuries ago. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant says that generalship is necessary, but that it should not be rated too highly. Do I rate it too highly ? I do not rate anything except at its market value. I know of no other method. If a man asks me how much a bricklayer’s work is worth, or an artist’s, I say I do not know. What does he get in the market? That is the only means I have of judging of its value. All the economists who have learnedly explained or be­ fogged the question have got no further than old Butler, who wrote “ Hudibras ”, and who said : “ The value of a thing is just as much as it will bring ”. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) Generalship can be rated too high! Now supposing you have industrial armies, as Socialists are fond of advocating, these armies would have to be com­ manded. (“No, no.”) But you cannot have armies without commanders. Why use the word army, if you do not mean a similar mode of direction from head­ quarters ? Why not find some other term ? Mrs. Besant said she preferred to find new terms. Why not find a new term for that ? Is it a fact that an army is of much use without its general ? No. A general in military matters and a general at the headquarters of an industrial army would be of similar value. Such a general in military matters is often of more worth in a struggle than another army as large as the one he commands. The difference between the genius of command on the one hand and on the other will often make a small army more valu­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 37 able than a big one. What was it made the difference between Oliver Cromwell, with a small sick army shut up on the peninsula of Dunbar, and David Leslie, with nearly three times the number ranged on the heights ? The English soldiers were brave, but the Scotch were also brave; and they fought after at Worcester as bravely as men ever fought on this earth. But the difference lay in this, that at the head of the smaller army there was the sleepless vigilance, the military genius, the unfaltering and invincible mind of one of the greatest generals that the earth ever produced. (Cheers.) Although he was down below and David Leslie had a better position on the heights, the result was that Cromwell’s army, by a splendid stroke of generalship, defeated the other army, losing itself only a few men, and taking ten thousand of the others as prisoners. (Cheers.) I say that the captain or general of a great industrial enterprise may be of as much importance to its success as the whole army put together, and under any system you must pay him somehow. Mrs. Besant said society must fix the wage. But supposing the man objects and walks off, and goes elsewhere. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) It is very well to speak of altruism, but even under the selected communisms of America, as Noyes tells us in his history of those institutions, what he called general depravity—in other words, personal interest —even among the elect divided them again and again. One concern—a big one—broke up because the artisans themselves complained that the value of their product was twice that of those who worked in the fields, and they should therefore only work half as long as agriculturists did. Mrs. Besant says that human nature is fit for'Collec­ tive Socialism. In my opinion Collective Socialism is not fit for human nature. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) Mrs. Besant proposes to wrest capital and land from the idle classes. It is well to understand not only what they propose to do, but how they propose to do it. Wrest­ ing means taking away, and taking away without com­ pensation. (Cheers.) Now the wealth is to be taken from the idle classes. What idle classes ? (A voice: “Those who do not labor”). Do you . mean the English aristocracy? (Cheers.) I am as ready to deal with them by law as you are. Why, Mr. Bradlaugh, who is opposed to Socialism, is quite ready to deal with the �38 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? English, aristocracy, if he gets the chance. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) Surely we do not need Socialism as a revelation to inform us that the English aristocracy should be removed. Radicals have known that long. But some whom Mrs. Besant includes in this idle class are not idle. Was Josiah Mason idle, who worked as he did, and, having made a fortune, founded the best institution in Birmingham, erecting out of his fortune a splendid monu­ ment of his wise generosity ? Was Whitworth idle ? Was Bessemer idle ? But why go through a long list of these ? Mrs. Besant knows and you know, as I know, that many of these men included in the idle classes work in their way, and contribute in their way to the production which is the result of labor and capital and superintendence. Without their guidance, and without the capital which their ability helped to get together and increase, the work­ man would really be worse off than he is to-day. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant says that I should not scoff like the Tories, who say that we should do nothing fresh because we still go on. I never said we should do nothing because we still go on. What I said was that if we do go on under the present system, you must show us some very clear reason for believing that the new system will supplant it with immense benefit before we give up all we now possess. That is very different. I am surprised that Mrs. Besant could not see the difference. Mrs. Besant also thought that it was not right for me to insinuate that certain barbarous or savage people were somehow in. a state of Socialism But if Socialism means an omnipotent State, that the State regulates all industry, that the State owns all the land and all the capital employed in produc­ tion, then nearly every primitive form of society is more or less in a condition of Socialism or Communism. (Hear, hear.) The Individualism of the last three centuries has revolutionised the modern world and done more in that time than the Socialism of the lower states has done in as many thousands of years. (Cheers.) Again, Mrs. Besant holds me wrong for saying that the soil of England is of the same extent now as it was in the time of William the Conqueror. I said “soil” ; I did not say its productive­ ness, nor did I say cultivated soil or uncultivated soil. _ I I said simply soil. And the soil of the earth means all its �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 39 surface and what is under it that can be got out. Now, is the soil of England in that respect any greater than it was in the reign of 'William the Conqueror ? On the contrary, some miles of coast on the east have been washed away by the sea. (Laughter.) But it is true that the capital has increased a thousandfold. Mrs. Besant says she cannot understand that, but if the fact is true, not understanding it will not alter it. The explanation is not so difficult. There is so much raw material got somehow from the land, either from plants, or from animals that consume the vegetation, or from the surface of the ground, or from the bowels of the earth. Now that raw material so worked might be consumed the very same year, or a portion of it might be kept over for further production. That amount so kept over goes on accumulating—the abstinence of each genera­ tion from consumption causes an accumulation of capital. And that process goes on to an extent which is practically illimitable; although at any one moment it is determined. If that explanation does not make it clear, my power to do so fails me. Mrs. Besant says it is not true that the workman can emancipate himself. I say it is. That is the grand dis­ tinction between us to-night. She wants to call in an omnipotent State to provide the brains which we have not got, to provide the moral cohesion which we have not got. But where is it to come from ? When we have the moral cohesion, when we have the intellectual capacity, we can join together. We do not want to wait for the mil­ lennium. Any Trades Union could, if it had the necessary mental and moral qualities, begin co-operative production to-morrow. When we are sufficiently advanced we shall go in the right direction, and the workers will find in voluntary co-operation the way to elevate themselves from the dependence of the wage system. But until we are sufficiently advanced we must not expect the reward, and no social mechanism will ever supply us with the qualities we lack. (Cheers.) A vote of thanks, proposed by Mr. Eoote and seconded by Mrs. Besant, having been accorded the chairman, the debate was adj ourned. �40 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? SECOND NIGHT. Mr. Arthur B. Moss in the Chair. The Chairman : Friends, to-night we are to listen to the second instalment of this interesting and instructive discussion on Socialism. Mr. Foote will open the proceed­ ings with a speech of half-an-hour’s duration. Mrs. Besant will follow with a speech of the same length. There will then be two subsequent speeches of a quarter of an hour for each disputant, and that will terminate the proceedings. As I know from personal experience that audiences who assemble in this hall are for the most part trained listeners, I have only to ask you to give to the consideration of the subject all the attention which the importance of it undoubtedly demands. I have great pleasure in calling upon Mr. Foote to open the discussion. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote : Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen, in opening this discussion to-night I have the opportunity of settling the lines upon which it is to go. I am glad of the opportunity, because it is highly necessary not only that I should be able to reply to what Mrs. Besant advances on behalf of Socialism, but that I should also be able to urge objections against it in my own fashion, which she will have to reply to in return. First of all, let me say—not for the instruction of all, but for the instruction of some— that Socialism is by no means a new thing. Almost all the Socialistic pills that are prescribed in our age have been tried by the human race again and again in various stages of its career. The peculiar American sect of Free Lovers, for instance, is only teaching something which was taught long, long ago, which is always tried more or less as society is in a low condition, and is always left behind as society advances into what is called civilisation. So it is with Socialism. What is, after all, the essence of Socialism ? It is the omnipotence of the State : the de­ claration that the State is rightly lord of all, that no �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 41 citizen has any rights excepting those which the State allows him, and that even the family itself only exists by the toleration of the State. If that is the essence of Socialism, it is to be found amongst savages, amongst bar­ barian nations, and is still to be found amongst peoples in Oriental lands. An extreme instance of it was found in ancient Peru, where everything was managed by State officials, and where every department of the life of the citizen was absolutely under the control of those who were in authority. (Hear, hear.) There is, then, nothing new in Socialism. Further, ever since Christianity had any power Socialism has been a commonplace of its teaching. I am not here for the purpose of dealing with theology, but simply to deal with the relation of the system to social matters. Mrs. Besant kindly drew my attention, in fur­ nishing me with a list of books she would use, to two articles by Emile de Laveleye, one in the Fortnightly Review and one in the Contemporary Review, both for the same month of April, 1883. I was exceedingly glad of the references, because they had very naturally escaped my attention, having been published at a time when, owing to the law of the majority, which of course is supreme, I was secluded for my country’s good. (Laughter.) Now Laveleye, in the second of those articles, cannot understand why Socialists reject Christianity, which ad­ mits a great deal of their claims, and accept Darwinianism, which denies the very equality they urge. He says, “ Christianity condemns riches and inequality with a vehemence nowhere surpassed” ; and (on page 565), after citing a long and eloquent passage from Bossuet, a great French divine, he gives the following brief quotations from the early Christian Fathers. “The rich,” says St. Basil, “ are thieves ”. St. Chrysostom says, “ the rich are brigands. Some sort of equality must be established by their distributing to the poor of their abundance ; but it would be preferable if everything were in common ”. St. Jerome says, “ opulence is always the result of a theft; if not committed by the actual possessor, it has been the work of his ancestors”. (Cheers.) I am glad to see so many Socialists in accord with these early Christian Fathers. (Laughter.) St. Clement says, “ H justice were enforced there would be a general division of property”. Mrs. Besant must, of course, be also aware that the �42 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? founder of Christianity taught the precept, “ Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor”. She must be further aware that the early Christian Church practised Com­ munism ; but as soon as it grew large—as soon as the fanatical bond of the small community was broken—this teaching had to be relinquished in the interest of the very order itself. (Hear, hear.) Again, we have had no dearth of paper Utopias—from Plato, whose Republic is a classic, down to Gronlund, the American writer, whose “ Social Commonwealth ” I referred to as a sort of New Testament for Socialists. If you invest ninepence in one of Routledge’s shilling series, you will get a little collection of more modern Utopias than Plato’s, beginning with Sir Thomas More, going on to Lord Bacon, and ending with Thomas Campanella, whose “ City of the Sun ” has some affinities with More’s work, and also some differences, which I have not time to dilate upon now. In more recent times still we have had the Utopian schemes of Owen, Fourier, and St. Simon; and essentially Utopian schemes even by men like Comte. Then there have been attempts to reduce their teachings to practice in France, in England, and in America. Curiously enough, in every case, unless the community was held together by some bond of religious bigotry, or fanaticism, or as I should sometimes prefer to say, of sheer imbecility, they have always broken up and had to resolve themselves into the general competitive system of mankind. (Cheers.) While it is perfectly true that many noble natures have been attracted by Socialistic Utopias, it is also a fact that a very different class of persons are attracted by them. Horace Greeley, who at one time belonged to a Socialist community in America, and who after he ceased to be a practical Socialist assisted some Socialist communities with his money, wrote from bitter experience as follows : “A serious obstacle to the success of every Socialistic experi­ ment must always be confronted. I allude to the kind of persons who are naturally attracted to it. Along with many noble and lofty souls, whose impulses are purely philanthropic, and who are willing to labor and suffer reproach for any cause that promises to benefit mankind, there throng scores of whom the world is quite worthy— the conceited, the crotchety, the selfish, the headstrong, the pugnacious, the unappreciated, the played-out, the idle, �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 43 and the good-for-nothing generally; who, finding them­ selves utterly out of place and at a discount in the world as it is, rashly conclude that they are exactly fitted for the world as it ought to be.” (Laughter.) There cannot be any doubt in the minds of those who know Mrs. Besant that she belongs to the first and better class of those whom Greeley mentions. (Cheers.) But I am decidedly of opinion that even in England there is a large contingent of the second class. Watching the antics of some of the more forward class of Socialists, who do not follow the example of the Fabians, but go out into the streets and advertise themselves lustily, I am inclined to think that Horace Greeley wrote from a very accurate and very painful observation of Socialists and of mankind. (A. voice: “Apply it to yourself”.) Socialism I urge, is really a case of recrudescence. In my opinion it might be described as economical atavism. In our country, curiously enough, every time there is acute distress, Socialism comes to the front, and every time the distress disappears it recedes until it becomes invisible. (Hear, hear.) If the trade of England improves—and it has shown signs lately of improving—the probability is that Socialism will have to wait until distress is again acute. (“No, no.”) I know that some Socialists think differently, but that is my opinion and as I am in possession of the platform I shall say just what I think—(cheers)—and it will be well to leave Mrs. Besant the opportunity as well as the right of replying to me. (Cheers.) In defining Socialism last Wednesday, Mrs. Besant said that you might take the definition of Proudhon. Now Proudhon was certainly a writer of great power, and nobody can read his writings without feeling that he lived habitually in a lofty moral atmosphere ; but it would be as well, if we are to judge of his economics, to take his own definition of property. La propriete c'est le vol, he says :— “ Property is theft ”. I do not know whether Mrs. Besant accepts that definition of property ; if not, I do not know why Proudhon was referred to at all. But really Mrs. Besant’s definition comes to much the same thing. She says that “ Socialism teaches that there should be no private property in the materials used in the production of wealth”. That is, not only the land, but also the capital of the country is to be appropriated by the State. �. 44 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? (Hear, hear.) I deny that such a definition leaves any right of private property at all. (Hear, hear.) I deny the possibility of any separation of wealth into two classes —one capital and the other simply wealth. Every particle of wealth is capable of being used as capital for the pro­ duction of fresh wealth. The line is arbitrary. Only a certain amount of wealth is used as capital at a certain time, but the whole is capable of being so used. Mrs. Besant’s definition would result in the complete abolition of private property, a result which, I think, Socialism must eventually come to if we accept it. I agree with Mr. Bradlaugh in saying that no definition of Socialism is accurate except that which includes the abolition of private property. Any other definition is divided from this by a thin sheet of tissue paper, which probably is set up in order that we may not see all that Socialism means, and thus be led to accept its best side without seeing its worst side, which is inseparably connected with it. (Cheers.) Now, how is capital to be appropriated by the State ? I said last Wednesday that we not only want to know what Socialists propose to do, but how they propose to do it. If a man wants me to go to Manchester, it is a matter of importance to me to know whether he wants me to go on a bicycle, by train, by stage-coach, or to fly. Unless he goes my way, I shall not go his way. Now, how is this appropriation to be made ? Mrs. Besant says it will be taken somehow, but she does not tell us how. I should like to know how it is to be done. Our friends of the Social Democratic Federation say, for instance, of railways, that they are to be appro­ priated by the State “with or without compensation”. (Cheers.) Now that implies that “with or without” are equally right, and if it be right to appropriate with­ out compensation what utter fools they must be to include the possibility of compensation. (Cheers.) I submit that we have no right to deal with interests that have been allowed by law without compensation. (Cheers.) Of course, if Socialists say, as Gronlund does, that the State has a right to do everything; if they urge that there are no rights antecedent to the State, and that there are no rights which are inviolable by the State ; there is nothing more to be said. That, however, is not my philosophy, nor, if I read mankind aright, is �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 45 that the philosophy of mankind. All of us recognise that there are personal rights over which the State has no just control or authority. Mrs. Besant recognises it every day of her life. Mrs. Besant stands every day of her life in opposition to the declared law of the land. Mrs. Besant writes and prints and publishes what, according to the law, is illegal. She justifies by her conduct—and I, of course, quite approve of the position she takes up—the principle that there are imprescriptible rights of mankind, which altogether transcend the power of the State, whether the power be exercised by a single despot or by a multi­ tude that transforms itself into a despotism. (Cheers.) One of the French Socialists, called Clement Duval, an Anarchist, who is now unfortunately paying the penalty of his mistakes in a prison—(cheers)—he has evidently two or three friends here who, I hope, will never share his fate—committed a burglary at the house of a widow lady, abstracted money that did not belong to him, and stood by while his comrade set fire to the house. That looks like an ordinary case of ruffianism. When a man profits by his theories in this way, it certainly looks as though self­ interest had a great influence among some Socialists. But on his trial Duval said: “I declare from my point of view I am not a thief. Nature, in creating man, gives him a right to existence, and he is justified in availing himself of it. If society does not supply him with the means of living he is entitled to take what he requires.” (Cheers). He did not, however, quite approve of the house being set on fire, whereupon his comrade reproached him by saying : “ Then you are not a true Anarchist”, to which he answered: “lam. Why burn down houses which, after the great revolution, will afford shelter to the workers ? ” (Cheers.) I am pained to think that robbery by individuals like this can find any justification. (Hear, hear.) Do our Socialist friends propose to carry this right through ? Do they propose to do by a majority what many of them would censure when done by an individual ? If an individual had no right to help himself, what right has the majority to help itself ? I do not believe that majorities have a right to do anything they like—(hear, hear)—although I admit that their power to do so is unquestioned. I say that the majority have only the right to act within the lines of those purposes for �46 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? which, all society is formed. All society is, in my opinion, formed for the protection of life, of liberty, and of property. (Cheers.) Gronlund says: “We shall not trouble our­ selves overmuch about compensation ”. Mrs. Besant does not, so far as I know, give her views on that point at all. I beg her to-night to give us some idea of how she would have the State appropriate the possessions of private indi­ viduals. (Cheers.) The motive of this appropriation is the redress of poverty. Assuredly poverty should be redressed if possible. (Hear, hear.) And assuredly poverty is being redressed. (Cries of “ Oh, oh,” and Hear, hear.) Now I am quite prepared for the “oh’s,” and I will give the “oh’s” a few facts which they can digest at leisure. Birst of all the removal of ignorance is one means .for the redress of poverty. (Cheers.) In my opinion ignorance is simply the mother of all the preventible ills that human flesh is heir to. (Hear, hear.) In 1851 in England (excluding Scotland and Ireland) there were 239,000 children at school; in 1881 there were 2,863,000 at school. (Cheers.) Look for a moment at the statistics of crime. In 1839 there were 24,000 prisoners committed for trial in England, and in 1881 there were only 15,000, although the population had largely increased. Now look at the statistics of pauperism. In 1849—from which date our statistics become accurate— there were 934,000 paupers in England; in 1881 there were 803,000—that is, a decrease of 131,000, although in the interval there had been a large increase in the popula­ tion. (Hear, hear.) In the whole of the United Kingdom in 1849 there were 1,676,000 paupers, but in 1881 there were only 1,014,000. Now look at another class of figures. In 1831 there were 429,000 depositors in our savings banks, and the amount of their deposits was £13,719,000. In 1881 the number of the depositors had increased to 4,140,000, and the amount of the deposits had increased to £80,334,000. (Cheers.) In 1862 there were 90,000 members of co-operative societies with a paid-up capital of £428,000, and annual sales of £2,333,000. In 1881 there were 525,000 members, with a paid-up capital of £5,881,000, and total sales of £20,901,000. (Cheers.) In the various building societies in the country there were as many as 500,000 members. (Hear, hear.) Now these statistics are facts. They are not fancies. They are not Individualistic �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 47 dreams to set against Socialistic dreams. They are things that have already happened. If this accumulation of wealth —this saving practically by the working classes—has been effected during the last twenty or thirty years, what reason is there for supposing that the improvement may not go on with accumulating power, gathering momentum as it goes, until by self-help, and personal thrift, and the sense of individual responsibility, the social problem is solved on the lines of Individualism—without transform­ ing the State into an almighty and omnipresent tyrant, ruling every person and everything with a rod of iron ? (Cheers.) If Socialism were inaugurated, you would not settle the question. It is only the few in every generation who do the forward work. The mass simply mark time. It is the few who go ahead and point the way. When they have convinced the rest by experience, when their ideas are proved to be true, the rest take advantage of the demonstration and join them. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant complained that the great instrument of Individualism is cut-throat competition. There is an old adage that if you give a dog a bad name, that is sufficient to secure his destruction. Now why cut-throat? Of course it makes competition look ugly. It suggests a razor and blood. But why not say simply “competition”. Competition may be a very bad thing for those who cannot keep up. It does not follow that it is for those who can. Competi­ tion may be a bad thing for a man who runs in a race and loses ; but it is not so bad a thing for the man in front. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) And unless you are going to abolish all competition, which Mrs. Besant proposes to do ; unless you are going to remove it as she proposes from every department of human life ; I do not see how you can object to the principle at all. (Hear, hear.) John Stuart Mill who, although, according to Mrs. Besant, he is a discredited economist, is not by any means a discredited thinker—for his writings will probably live when both Mrs. Besant and myself are forgotten-—John Stuart Mill says:—“Instead of looking upon competition as the baneful and anti-social principle which it is held to be by the generality of Socialists, I conceive that, even in the present state of society and industry, every restriction of it is an evil, and every extension �48 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? of it, even if for the time injuriously affecting some class of laborers, is always an ultimate good”. (Hear, hear.) I agree with Mill in this. If competition is to be removed, what do you propose to substitute for it as a method ? Are you going to base society on pure dis­ interestedness ? Gronlund himself, the writer of the New Testament of Socialism, says: “Morals are not the founda­ tion, still less religion. They are the top of our system. Interest—self-interest—is the foundation, the prime motor, the mainspring of our actions, so it is, has always been, and will always be.” Self-interest, then, is to be the mainspring of our actions even under Socialism. It must be, and I will tell you why. You may do disinterested actions and practise generosity—the more the better. But daily life can only be organised on permanent motives. And the only permanent motive which will keep the average man at work, prevent him from idling, and make him thrifty, is the desire of his own personal advantage—the desire of the advantage of his own family—without infringing on the equal right of all others to work for the same ends for themselves. (Cheers.) I have a number of other points for Mrs. Besant, but if she goes over these I shall be satisfied. Meanwhile let me ask her, above all things, to tell us how she proposes to carry out the appropriation of all the wealth of the country by the State. (Hear, hear.) How is it to be done ? On what principles is it to be conducted ? For until you tell us that, you are working with one hand behind your back. Show us the hidden hand. (Cheers.) Annie Besant, who was received with cheers, said: In Mr. Foote’s last speech, on Wednesday night, he threw out a challenge which I was then unable to answer, as I had no further right of speech; and, with your permission, I will accept that challenge very briefly before passing on to the points which were raised in the speech to which we have listened to-night. Mr. Foote then asked me to ex­ plain how we were going to deal under Socialism with what, he said, were the necessary “ generals” of industry, and he compared Oliver Cromwell in his generalship of the army to the best of those men who organised industry, and who because of their special ability were highly paid. I would submit to Mr. Foote first that in that comparison he confused two things, which are very different—the �49 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? wages paid for exceptional ability and the interest paid for the use of capital held by idlers. It is not wise to mix up different things in that fashion if you desire to seek clear­ ness of thought. Wages for exceptional ability might exist under Socialism, where the interest for capital was abolished as a payment to idle individuals. Not only so, but it must be also remembered as to generalship that history tells us that the greatest generals were not those who were attracted merely by high pay ; and I read Oliver Cromwell’s character very badly if he was moved to his devotion to his country by the hope of the cash pay­ ment that he might receive, and not by his enthusiasm for the cause which he thought was the nobler cause at that time in England. Then Mr. Foote, arguing on the ques­ tion of the “tenderness” of capital, asked me what would have happened in France had Germany destroyed the canals, and generally the fixed capital of the country. There would have been a far slower revival of prosperity. But I desire to reassure Mr. Foote on this head, and to tell him that when the Socialists take over the land and capital here they do not propose to destroy, before taking over, the canals and fixed plant, but to keep them for the benefit of the people to work with, so that they shall start with the advantage of the past accumulation, and use it for the facilitation of present and future labour. (Cheers.) Then Mr. Foote challenged me on the question of the rate of wages. Here I am obliged to go over the point very quickly, and I would suggest to Mr. Foote that in dealing with Mr. Giffen’s figures there are certain points he over­ looked. Mr. Foote stated that the wages of skilled labor had risen 100 per cent., and that that of the other forms of labor had risen 50 per cent., and he asked me to explain the cause of that. But Mir. Foote did not state that which Mr. Giffen put with great frankness— that his figures were, to a considerable extent, guess-work rather than absolute certainty. His statement was that un­ fortunately there was no account drawn up that would give full statistics on the question save from the date of about fifteen or sixteen years ago, and he explained that in dealing with this matter, he was dealing with figures drawn from local trades and then he takes from these an average which he admits himself might not be really accurate. (Hear, hear.) He then goes on to say that the wages have risen variously E �50 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? from 20 per cent, up to 50 and 100 per cent. And after he has admitted that variation of percentages, for the rest of his pamphlet he speaks of the rate of wage as having doubled. Instead of taking into account the small increase of 20 per cent, he takes the highest percentage for the purpose of his argument, and uses that as if valid for the whole of his argument. But I am willing to admit a very considerable rise of wages. That has, however, been largely balanced by the enormous rise of rent. It has also to some extent been balanced by the very great rise in the price of meat which is used to a considerable extent in this country. The rise of rent is simply enormous. If you take the rent in 1843 it amounted only to £95,000,000 ; if you take it now it has run up to at least £200,000,000 ; and if you are going to put the gain of the workers on the one side, you must take into account the gain of those who live on the workers on the other side. (Hear, hear.) Nor is that all. Mr. Giffen himself admits that while wages have risen in this fashion, the returns from capital have risen from £188,500,000 to £407,000,000. He admits that the wages which are paid to the workers among the upper and middle classes, the wages of the highly paid, have risen from £154,000,000 to £320,000,000; so that you have your returns from capital more than doubled ; your returns of these higher wages more than doubled, and I ask you with what pretence, after admitting figures of that sort, can Mr. Giffen say that the whole of the material advantage of the last fifty years has gone into the pockets of the manual workers? (Cheers.) But even this is not all; in order thoroughly to understand how the rise has come about, you must investigate the surrounding condi­ tions, and you will find that you are dealing with a time when an enormous impetus was given to trade. You are covering the whole of the time when trade was expanded by the first rush consequent on the free trade movement. You are dealing with a. period in which England prac­ tically stood alone as the workshop of the world; when her coal and her iron went everywhere; when she was the maker of nearly all the improved machinery, and had nearly all the other nations of the world as her customers to give her laborers work. All these things must be taken into consideration when you are dealing with the rise of wages that, as I admitted, has been con­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 51 siderable. But that is now no longer the case. You have come to the end of the tether of your prosperity, for other countries now raise their own coal and produce their own iron. Your coal and your iron are getting lower down, and therefore harder to work, while other countries are not coming to you now as formerly for your machinery. You used to be the world’s workshop, but you are now com­ petitors with other nations; and the result of that is that as you are competing with men whose wages are lower, your wages will have to sink to the level of those which are paid to the worst paid workers in foreign countries. (Hear, hear.) That is my position. The past was a time of unexampled prosperity, but that time is over, and now the share to be divided among the workers is less than it has been; the workers feel the pinch of poverty, and that is the problem with which you have to deal at the present time. Nor still is that all. During the time over which Mr. Giffen has taken his figures you have had a growing Socialism with all its advantages. There has been the great benefit of trades unions, which fifty years ago were illegal. They were combinations of workmen struggling together to obtain the legal right of combining, the right to work with each other for a rise of wages. Trades unions are essentially Socialistic. (Hear, hear.) They do away among the members with that competition of which Mr. Foote is so strong a supporter; they tell the stronger men not to use their strength for the injury of their weaker brethren, but to hold together so that the advantage of the strength may spread over all, and not be taken by the stronger to the detriment of the weaker. The same sort of attack as that of the Tories on trades unionism is now being made on Socialism, and the same reasons are given for the attack, namely, that trades unionism was tyrannical, that it held back the stronger, and tended to equalise the earnings of the more and the less skilled workers. There is one other point as to the growing Socialism that I wish to refer to, and that is the passing of various Factory Acts, which have practically, to a certain extent, limited the power of plunder of the propertied classes. These Acts, which came between the capitalist and the worker limiting the hours to a considerable extent, have, by their influence on public opinion, even limited the hours n2 �52 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? of labor in places outside the statutory scope. You have the whole of these matters operating on this question of the rise of wages, and simply to say that the wages have risen and to leave out of consideration everything that has been a factor in that rise, is really not to go to the root of the question, but to deal with it with absolute superficiality. And I contend that these figures are used against the workers in a fashion that even Mr. Griffen— holding a brief for the capitalist as he said he was accused of doing—would have been ashamed to use them. (Hear, hear.) I will conclude this brief answer to Mr. Foote’s challenge by reminding him of that which of course he must know, the relative position of workers and of capital­ ists in the matter of increased incomes. He submitted to you figures as to the rise of incomes amongst the poor folk. Why not have laid some stress on the enormous rise of incomes amongst the wealthier persons as well ? Why not have told us of the fortunes of £50,000 and upwards, that whereas there were only eight of these in 1843, there were sixty-eight in 1880 ? Why not have told us that the fortunes ranging from £1,000 to £5,000 have enormously increased during that time, having risen from 6,328 in 1843 to 15,671 in 1879-80? Why did he only lay stress upon the increase of small incomes and not on the increase in the large incomes? and why not have pointed out that, according to Mr. Giffen, you will find that out of sixteen and a half millions of different incomes, there are only one and a half millions over £150 a year ? Why not also have pointed to the shocking extravagance that has been one of the signs of that fifty years’ growth, and the shameful luxury and waste which have characterised the aristocracy of wealth ? And why not have cast one thought towards a point of serious importance in dealing with the possibility of change—to that wise remark of De Tocqueville, that the French made their Revolution when their condition was improving ? He suggested that people do not rise in revolt when crushed down by hopeless misery, but that it is as they improve, as their position gets somewhat higher, as they have hope in their life, that then it is the hope that sometimes pushes them into the revolution which they would never have dreamt of making in their days of utter degradation. (Cheers.) I pass from that to deal with the speech of to-night. �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 53 Mr. Foote says Socialism is old. So is man. But it does not necessarily follow that because a thing has been long in the world it is bad. (Hear, hear.) How ought history to be used ? History is the record of the experiences of our race. Are we to read it only to abuse our ancestors and to say what fools they were? Or are we to read it to learn wisdom from their experience ; to utilise only what was proved to be right and true, and to avoid falling into their errors by marking the places where they stumbled? (Cheers.) Mr. Foote passed on to what he called the peculiar American sect of “Free Love”. . I fail to understand why any mention of that sect was in­ troduced into this debate. (Hear, hear.) It has nothing to do with our discussion. The phrase “free love” raises in England a very bitter feeling, largely because the views implied by it are not sufficiently understood. And I quite fail to understand—and Mr. Foote did not give us any explanation—why he dragged that particular sect into a discussion on the question “ Is Socialism Sound? ” (Cheers.) Mr. Foote says that Socialism is the character­ istic of a low state of civilisation ; and to some extent it is true that you will find in the low stages of civilisation a very crude form of Socialism as well as of Individualism. (Hear, hear.)- But if it is true that you are to condemn Socialism because among some tribes of low civilisation you will find a community of goods, are you then to condemn Individualism because in some tribes in low stages of civilisa­ tion you find it in the crudest form, and see the strongest man preying upon the weaker and using his imprescriptible right of eating his neighbor for his dinner ? Because, if you are going to argue in that way then Socialism and Individualism are alike to be rejected; where is the path along which humanity is to walk ? (Cheers.) But Mr. Foote says that according to Socialism the State is every­ thing ; everything is to be done by the State. I cannot help regretting that Mr. Foote did not define what he meant by the State. If by the State he means a bureau­ cracy ruling over the people, or a despotism like that of Peru—a despotism in which the workers had no political or social power whatever, but were merely a class tyran­ nised over by an absolute sovereign and a hierarchy of priests and aristocrats-—then I deny that such a State has anything to do with Socialism. (Hear, hear.) But �54 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? if by the State he means the whole of the community organised for self-government; if he means a society organised for the good of the whole of society; then I agree with him that it is of the essence of Socialism that that organised community shall be supreme over itself. And I fail to see any difference there can be between the Socialist and the Radical on this head, when the Socialist says that the community should be the controller of itself, and the Radical desires the government of the people, by the people, and for the people. (Cheers.) We ought not in this discus­ sion to merely play with words. (Hear, hear.) We want to get to facts, and it is necessary for Mr. Foote to define what he means by the State before I can deal with his statement as to the tyranny implied. Then Mr. Foote went off to touch on Christianity, and stated that ever since Christianity had begun Socialism was a part of it. But this need not be any accusation against Socialism, since he also says that it existed long before Christianity was in existence, and it was very likely to be partly taken into Christianity when Christianity became one of the religions of the world. It is possible that if I had lived in those times I might have approved of some of the doctrines which were put forward by those fathers of the Church which Mr. Foote quoted. (Hear, hear.) And if Christianity walked on the same lines as Socialism then Socialists would be willing to welcome it on these points of agreement, as they are willing to-day to welcome Christians as workers for this common purpose. (Hear, hear.) But if we are to bring theology into this discussion, it is as well to remember that Jesus Christ not only said, “ Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor ”, but also, “ Blessed be ye poor ”, and that Socialism considers as an absolute curse that poverty which the founder of Chris­ tianity is said to have blessed. But will it not be wiser to try and deal with the thing itself rather than say whether or not it enters into a religion to which both Mr. Foote and myself are known to be antagonistic, and which can hardly be introduced here without unfairly prejudicing the view I am advocating? (Hear, hear.) I pass from this about Christianity to the statement that many Utopian schemes of Socialism have been suggested in the past. That is so. Is it wonderful that men, grieving sorely at the sorrow of their present, should strive to picture some nobler life on �IS SOCIALISM SOUND 55 earth, where the sorrow and the misery should have passed away ? (Cheers.) Remember it was the noblest men who did this. Utopian dreamers or not, they were the nobler outcome of humanity. All who long for a nobler life on earth must at times dream of some Utopia. (Hear, hear.) And it was better to have noble dreams even, than to rest satisfied with the brutal gratifications of gain and greed. Is it therefore, because some have made their Utopias too perfect, that we shall not strive to realise something better than the Pandemonium we have now ? (Cheers.) But Mr. Poote says they were not only Utopian, but that many of those who have started Socialistic experiments were only held together by the bands of fanaticism, or religion, or by sheer imbecility. I am not so sure that the desire of persons to make a life of brotherhood—although imperfectly carried out—should be characterised as an attempt in which they were only held by sheer imbecility. (Cheers.) And I doubt whether the use of words such as that will lead us to any satisfactory result in this debate. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Poote said that some of the nobler minds now approve of Socialism, and that large numbers of the ignorant and the poor also join them from baser motives, and he was kind enough to say that I was one of the dreamers of the former class, while he put the mass of Socialists in the other. He also said that many of the members of the Social Demo­ cratic Federation were going into the streets to advertise themselves. And is it in this hall—the hall which is the very centre in London of Preethought, of aggressive Radicalism—that the going out into the streets to reach the poor is to be pointed and scoffed at as being an un­ worthy attempt at self-advertisement? (Cheers.) How else are we to reach many of the poor? Mr. Poote may say that I do not go out street-preaching. It is true I do not speak in the streets, because I have not the physical strength, and because I believe that the work I do is more useful when I speak in this hall and elsewhere, and when I use my pen—(cheers)—then if I did work others can do more effectively. But if. there were no others to do the street-work—if there were no Socialists able and willing to do it—then would I too take my share in it and speak in the streets. (Cheers, and cries of “Bravo”.) But whilst there are others willing to do it, and whilst they are also willing that I should do the other part of the work for �56 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? which I am more fitted, I will not scoff at them because some of them may not always be wise in their speech, be­ cause some may be even reckless in their utterances. (Hear, hear.) I will thank them, despite even their recklessness and their passion, for that they at least see the evil of the present, and long for some nobler and better form of brotherhood, instead of the struggle in which the weaker are trampled out of life. (Cheers.) M e are next told that Socialism is a symptom of distress, and there is truth in that. The desire to make things better comes from the recognition of the sufferings of others. While everything goes on smoothly and easily, it is quite possible that men’s minds may not turn towards a change. But I think that trade depression has lasted quite long enough to teach the lesson of Socialism, and that the lesson being learned that poverty must grow out of the form of proprietorship to which Socialists object, an improvement in trade will only make the workers stronger to effect the necessary change. (Cheers.) I am a little surprised at—if Mr. Foote will pardon methe phrase—what seems to me Mr. Foote’s somewhat rough and inaccurate translation of Proudhon’s phrase “la pro­ priety c'est le vol”, as “property is theft”. Mr. Foote, is, I know, well acquainted with the French language, and he will bear me out in saying that “property ” in the English sense is not the equivalent of “propriete” in the French. A Frenchman would no more speak of his hat or his stick as his “propriete” than an Englishman would say that similar articles were his “estate”. In fact, the word estate is a nearer equivalent for “propriete”, and it is used for land, or for wealth in a wide sense, not for the personal property of individuals in small articles. I put this, not as agreeing with Proudhon, but as doing him justice in a matter in which he is very generally misunder­ stood. (Hear, hear.) As to Mr. Foote’s remark that my presentation of the Socialist arguments is designed to hide the bad side of my case, I cannot help thinking that the debate will proceed more smoothly if such imputations be omitted. The distinction that I made between wealth in general, and wealth which is set apart for purposes of pro­ duction, is not a distinction invented by myself, but is one which is made by every political economist. There is a very wide distinction between the ownership by the com­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 57 munity of land and capital, that is, of the raw and wrought materials for the production of wealth, and the enjoyment by individuals of their share of the products of labor. It is perfectly possible to have public property in the one existing simultaneously with private property in the other. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote, as a land nationaliser, is face to face with a similar difficulty with respect to the land. He surely thinks that a man might pay rent to the State, and yet remain owner of a vegetable he had raised on State land. That is, that there might be public property in the material for wealth production, and private property in the wealth produced. Then why might not the distinction be equally maintained between public property in capital, and private in the products of labor when once they had been acquired? The difficulty is of words not of things, and affects all change in the ownership of raw, as much as it does change in the ownership of wrought, material. Ought I then to say to Mr. Foote, in his own words, that his argument was a sheet of “thin tissue paper” in­ tended to hide the true state of his case ? (Laughter and applause.) In my next speech I will say something on the possible methods of appropriation of the material we claim for society, though on questions of method there is much divergence of opinion among Socialists, and in dealing with them I can give only my personal views. Let me, in conclusion, express my dissent from the doctrine of the natural, or imprescriptible rights of man. These supposed rights have no historical basis, they have no answering realities in life. The natural right of a man is to grab as much as he can, and to hold all he can grab as long as he can. “The spoils to the victor” is the natural law. Rights were not anterior to society, but grew slowly out of society. They grew out of the desire of each to be safe and free from oppression, and from the union of many to restrain the aggressor, from public opinion codified as law. Anterior to society and to law there were no rights. The doctrine is an idle metaphysical theory, and what we now call the “ rights of man ” are those conditions which bn man experience has shown to be most conducive to happiness. The idea of a “ right ” has been slowly evolved in, slowly recognised by, society, and society exists to secure these rights for the weaker, who can only obtain them by law, �58 IS SOCIALISM SOW ? and to guard for all those advantages which are naturally enjoyed only by the strong. (Loud applause.) Mr. Foote : Mrs. Besant seems to have perverted many things I said, or perhaps she misunderstood them. A little sense of humor would have prevented these blunders. Mrs. Besant might, for instance, have seen that I was speaking as euphemistically as I could of the Social Democratic. Federation ; that I meant a good deal more than I said, but I did not care to use strong language. Since I must speak plainly, however, to make myself properly understood, I will do so at once. I did not complain simply because the more eager Socialists went into the streets. Mrs. Besant says she would go into the streets and speak herself if there were no others to do the work. Well, I have gone into the streets. (Cheers.) I have done it repeatedly, and when the summer months come round I shall probably do it again. (Applause). But I have never assembled men and led them to places of worship, where neither they nor I have any business. (Hisses and cheers.) I have strongly op­ posed the teaching given in such places, but I have no right to obtrude my opinions there. (Hear, hear.) bl or have I ever sought to gain a hearing by appealing to the basest passion of the human mind, the passion of envy. (Hear, hear.) I have never addressed half-starved men, or men out of work, in such a way as would encourage them to ■commit offences which the law would punish; nor after­ wards, when brought before a jury, have .1 pitifully pleaded “ It was not I that did it ”. (Loud and repeated applause, hisses, and cries of “order”.) I have stood before juries, and I may have to do so again. Who knows ? What has happened may happen once more. But what­ ever I may be tried for, in the matter of advocacy of opinion, I shall, as before, defend what I have done. (Loud applause.) Mrs. Besant says I mistranslated the sentence I quoted from Proudhon. But I had at least the honesty to give the French original before I gave my translation. It is impossible to translate with absolute precision from one language into another, especially in the case of two such different languages as the French and English. I might have said “Owning is theft”, or “Ownership is theft”—which is perhaps the nearest translation. But really, what difference is there between that and “Pro­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 59 perty is theft?”. It is simply a quarrel about words. (Hear, hear). Mrs. Besant also said I was unfortunate in my reference to Cromwell. But was I ? It is true he did not work simply for mercenary motives, but there was in him a mix­ ture of regard for his own interest. Cromwell did not refuse substantial rewards. He was exceedingly well paid for what he did. He had something like £10,000 a year, a palace to live in, and many acres of confiscated royalist estates. I do not deny Cromwell’s earnestness, but I say it was not unalloyed; and there are other generals who would be patriots on the same terms. (Cheers.) Again, I adhere to all I said about the destruction of French capital by the Germans. They did not destroy the permanent capital of the country, but only some of its floating capital, and that chiefly food. In fact, they merely helped to consume what the French would otherwise have consumed by themselves. When the French were left in peace with their railways, docks, canals, fields, houses, and machinery, all they had to do was to go on working as before, and the replacement of floating capital was an easy task. (Hear, hear.) I have been accused by Mrs. Besant of not representing Mr. Giffen fairly. Well, Mr. Giffen gives a great quantity of figures, and I could only select what suited my purpose. With respect, however, to the proportion of the national income taken by labor as against capital, Mr. Giffen distinctly says that he has, if anything, understated it. I am also aware that he says the early figures are not quite satisfactory. But they are satisfactory as far as they go. Mr. Giffen takes the actual wages, for instance, of many parts of the country. They are numerous and far apart, so that he gets a very fair average. How otherwise would you have him proceed ? (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant says that Mr. Giffen holds a brief for the capitalists. I don’t quite see it. But suppose he does; might I not reply that Mrs. Besant holds a brief for the Socialists ? (Hear, hear.) It seems that we must listen to nothing here but Socialist facts, and”by a judicious selection and a judicious use they may be made to prove anything. (Cheers.) If Mr. Giffen’s figures are wrong, let the Socialists furnish other figures that are right and that will controvert his. (Cheers.) �60 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? Mrs. Besant said that trade unions are carried out on Socialistic lines. But is thst so ? Any member of a trade union may leave it to-morrow if he chooses. But if you socialise everything, the only way to leave it will be to go to another planet. (Laughter.) Then trade unions do not prescribe an absolute uniformity of wage, but only a minimum, and even that breaks down where piece-work is taken. The reason of the uniform minimum is obvious. Trade unions are to some extent fighting organisations, and under a fighting system you must submit to the com­ mon law of the machine, otherwise united action in warfare would be impossible. But I maintain that if it were not for that necessity there would be nothing like uniformity of wage, and the men themselves would reject it. The tailors’ establishment at Clichy started by Louis Blanc, despite his sentimentalism, gave up equal payment. It was found to be unworkable. The men would not put up with it. In the great house of Leclaire, which is worked on the co-partnership principle, the men would laugh at you if you suggested that they should all have the same wages. The difference in the skill and application to the work makes all the difference in the result of the man’s labor, and, as Mrs. Besant says everyone should have the result of his labor, why should not everyone in the ideal state of things have the wage for which he honorably works and which he has actually earned? (Applause.) It is not fair to say that I did not refer to the increased incomes of the rich during the last fifty years. I stated that the rate of the working men’s wages had increased during the last fifty years to counteract Mrs. Besant’s picture of the gradual deterioration of the workman and the poverty in which he was found now. Next, Mrs. Besant wishes me to give her an explanation of how the land is to be nationalised without falling into the very evils which she will fall into with her nationalisation of capital. I dealt with that last Wednesday, when I stated that if land were to be nationalised, the use of it would would have to be paid for as now. There would be com­ petition amongst those who wanted to use the land, and those able to give the best rent would get it. But there would be this difference—that rent, when paid by the in­ dividual cultivators of the soil, competing against each other in the open market, instead of often going as un­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 61 earned increment into the pockets of the absolute idlers, who do not co-operate to produce the general result, would go into the national exchequer, for the benefit of all. (Cheers.) What is the State ? asks Mrs. Besant. The State, always and everywhere, is a body of men appointed by other men, or self-elected, or coming in by what is called hereditary right, to manage the affairs of the people. (Hear, hear, and “No, no”.) That is not a State? Then I will ask Mrs. Besant to give me her definition of a State. I know what some of you may mean. You may have in your mind the idea of society. But society, consisting of every­ body under the State, is a very different thing. (Hear, hear.) The State itself is the government of the country, no matter how it be appointed or held.. It involves coer­ cive power. That coercive power is rightfully used for some things, and is wrongfully used for others. The dif­ ference between us is that Mrs. Besant says it rightly covers everything, while I say it only rightly covers some things. Against its exercise in some things she rebels, and I rebel, and every man or woman here also rebels. (Applause.) But let us return to our old friend “cut-throat compe­ tition”. (Laughter.) Mrs. Besant is, of course, aware of the fact that we largely depend upon foreign trade. Until the world is Socialised—and that will be a very long time, for before you convert the Chinese and the Hindoos, the Central Asians, the South Americans, and the Central Africans, a good period must naturally elapse, even under the most hopeful prospects—(laughter)—we shall have to depend largely on foreign trade. How are we to hold our own in that open market of the world where we are noy obliged to trade, unless we compete with the foreigner in respect to the prices at which we can offer our goods for sale ? And if we are obliged to compete as to prices, we must compete as to labor, and consequently, to that extent at least, competition is inevitable. (Hear, hear.) Now, I come to a point which Mrs. Besant did not deal with, although I invited her to do so last Wednesday, and that is, What are you going to do with the population question ? Mrs. Besant says, in her pamphlet on Social­ ism, that “Under a Socialist regime the community will have something to say as to the numbers of the new �62 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? members that are to be introduced into it I urge that the community must say its wordyzrsh All your construc­ tion, if you do not settle the population question, is like erecting castles on the sand of the sea-shore in front of an advancing tide. (Hear, hear.) It is a peculiarity of Socialists that they laugh at the population question. Gronlund says of Malthus that ‘ ‘ This doctrine of his is a vicious monstrosity, hatched in the saloons of the wealthy, and flattering to the conscience of the ruling classes, and therefore it has been so widely accepted”. Mrs. Besant does not argue thus. She argues quite to the contrary. The law of population is an absolute fact, and if anyone cannot see it it shows the deficiency of his sight. If the State finds everybody with work—and Mrs. Besant holds it must—the Socialist state, with respect to population, would be in the same position as a Communistic state; because, if it cannot provide everyone with work, it must provide everyone with food ; for, if it takes all the capital and leaves none for private enterprise, it is bound to fur­ nish food for the starving. (Hear, hear.) If you find everybody with food, how are you going to prevent over­ population by those who have no sense of responsibility ? Under the present system, conjugal prudence and parental responsibility prompt those who possess them not to pro­ duce a larger offspring than they are able to rear, and they have thus an advantage in the struggle for existence. I know the struggle is hard. Therefore it is better to breed from the fit than from the unfit. It is better for posterity that the stronger should survive than that the weaker should hand down their weakness to subsequent generations. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant and her friends must settle this problem, not after but before they ask us to inaugurate Socialism. She understands the vital importance of this point, and I ask her to speak out clearly. She was never grander than when she defended the right to publish the truth on this subject. It is one of the regrets of my life that I misinterpreted her motives, and I take this public opportunity of saying so. But I also ask her to be true to the great cause now as she was true to it then, to champion still the theory of population which she maintained in the face of danger and in front of the gaol. (Loud applause.) Annie Besant : Mr. Foote asks me, How do you pro­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 63 pose to nationalise the land and capital ? and he quotes a phrase—I think it is from the manifesto of the Social Democratic Federation—about taking over the railways “ with or without compensation ”. The phrase is not difficult to understand. If the change be made in peace, it would be possible to make it with reasonable compensation to the holders, the unjust holders, of land and capital. But if the change be made, not by law but by force, then the question of compensation would be swamped in the rush of revolution. That is probably what is meant when the phrase is used “ with or without compensation ”. If the present holders are wise, then, remembering that society has made them, and that, unsatisfactory results as they are, we are responsible for them, we may still keep them for the remainder of their unprofitable lives ; but if they are not wise, and set themselves against the people, then they will have to take their chance in the struggle which they have provoked. (Hear, hear.) How should we make the change ? I grant that is a question for dis­ cussion. My point, as a Socialist, is to persuade people it would be a good thing to make the change, and until that is done all the talk about the methods of doing it is almost useless. (Cries of “No, no”.) You say no. But Radicals’ proposals for sweeping changes are open to a similar objection. Do you mean to say that in dealing with proposals for change that you do not always first try to persuade people that change is desirable before going into the methods ? How many imperfect schemes of nation­ alisation of the land are there? The land nationalisers are not agreed as to the method, although they are agreed on the principle. (Hear, hear.) Socialists are not agreed as to the method, although they are agreed that they must do something to bring that nationalisation about. (Hear, hear.) My view of the easiest way to do it is to try and make a reasonable allowance to the present holders of land and capital, to terminate with their lives. That is. more than just; it is generous in the extreme. You must remember that in dealing with human affairs you have not always the choice between good and evil, but you have to. choose the lesser of two evils. At the present time a small class lives idly because they possess these monopolies. It would be better that that small class should be deprived of that monopoly without compensation, rather than �64 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? myriads of the people should continue to live as they live to-day. (Cheers.) But I do not believe that absolute confiscation is necessary. I believe we can find a method by which, with the least possible suffering to any, this great change can be made. But I say frankly that this question needs very full and very complete discussion. It is a question for Socialists to discuss amongst themselves rather than for Socialists to discuss with their antagonists. We want to convince you first that it would be well for us to cross to the other side of the river, and when that is done we will consult as to the best methods of building the bridge that will take us over. (Hear, hear.) But, as I have said before, it may be done simply by making a number of those persons life-charges on the rents of the monopolies. I believe it might be done in that fashion to a large extent. Then the National Debt should be gradually paid off, so that those who five on the interest of the National Debt may be got rid of even though it be done by very considerable taxation. I should not propose to continue to pay interest, but to pay off the value of their stock; because I know that when you have once closed the source of idle living by stopping the interest, small harm would be done by letting them have what they originally invested; but you must stop them from levying a perpetual tax upon industry by the interest which they are able to draw. I put it to you that these and similar methods of turning these people into life annuitants is a practical reasonable way of making the great transition, and of getting rid, in a generation, of the idle class. I admit there are many difficulties, but they are not always insuperable. What is wanted is, first to get the idea clearly before the people that these monopolies for the few mean poverty for the many, and that we must use our brains to discover the best method of destroying them, and so of striking at the root of our social evils. (Hear, hear.) After dealing with that point, Mr. Foote went on to the case of Clement Duval, but I fail to follow his argument. Clement Duval was said to be an Anarchist, and was clearly a thief. But is it because a thief calls himself an Anarchist that Socialism is to be condemned ? If so, as Individualism produces most of the thieves, Individualism stands condemned in the same way. (Hear, hear.) And I must remind you that your legalised thievings breed �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 65 illegal thefts. If a man. like Clement Duval sees a wealthy man taking wealth that he has not earned, how is he to distinguish in principle. between the capitalist’s right to take the wealth he has not earned from the worker, and his own right to take that for which he gives no equiva­ lent from a private house ? If you destroy men’s sense of honesty by your legalised system of thieving—called capitalism—you cannot wonder that men, with somewhat muddled brains, imitate on a small scale what is done on a large by the leaders of society. (Hear, hear,) Mr. Foote says that the majority has only the right to protect life, liberty, and property. But society, in its supreme right over its members, very often tramples on the whole of those rights, and I think with the approval, to some extent, of Mr. Foote himself. What about taking the life of a man who has committed a murder ? I do not say it is right. I do not think it is consistent with the highest morality ; but if society is formed for the protec­ tion of life, speaking generally and universally, it seems strange that the life of man should be taken by society, and this action seems to support the view that society can claim supremacy even over the lives of those who are its mem­ bers. Mr. Foote says that society defends liberty and property. Liberty and property are very fine words, but we complain that the present organised system defends neither liberty nor property for the majority. We allege that instead of defending property, it confiscates the property of the workers, and places it in the hands of those who do not labor. We allege that it only protects the property of the rich, and authorises the constant robbery of the poor. When you are dealing with this question of property, has it ever struck you to turn to some statistics—not made by Socialists, but issued by a benevolent Government for the instruction of its subjects—and to read there that out of every 1,000 persons who die—I am dealing with the probate and legacy returns—only thirty-nine leave behind them £300 worth of personal property, including furniture. So that, on the whole, the protection of property in our country is scarcely satisfactory, since it can hardly be con­ tended that the worker in a whole life would not have made more than that to leave behind him when he dies. And again, when you have the idler who leaves hundreds and thousands of pounds behind him when he dies, u �66 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? although, he has done nothing, then your view as to the value of society in protecting property will have to undergo some modification before being accepted. (Hear, hear.) I am told that poverty is now redressed, and stress is laid on the spread of education and on the decrease of crime, and when Mr. Foote urged that I found myself very much in agreement with him. The statistics quoted as to education and diminution of crime are such as we must all be glad to know ; but as to the decrease of pauperism, the statistics are not so satisfactory, because we know how it has been caused; we know that the poor-law officers have made the conditions of relief much more stringent, and the taking away of out-door relief has diminished the number of paupers, in consequence of the shrinking of the people from going into the workhouse. This has made the diminution shown by the statistics not so real as it looks. (Hear, hear.) Then we are told as to the growth of savings in banks, and so on, and we are asked why not go on in this particular line. I answer, because if we go on in this line the masses will continue to get so little and the few will still get so much ; because although in savings banks you may get a large sum in the aggregate, if you work it out and compare it with the number of the popu­ lation you will find it amounts to a contemptibly small amount per head, and even then we have no right to say that all is the savings of the workers. But still all those points are points which show some sort of slight improve­ ment here and there. But they are balanced by an amount of misery, by an amount of wretchedness, that surely should urge us to some method of dividing the nation’s produce which shall not leave only one-third of it in the hands of 5,000,000 families, while the remaining twothirds go to 2,000,000 families to keep them in wealth. (Hear, hear.) But, Mr. Foote says, why use the phrase, “cut-throat competition”, and he says it suggests a razor and blood. But how many of our people are killed out in this struggle for life ? (Hear, hear.) I speak of cut-throat competition, and I base that phrase, not on Socialist figures, but on the report of the Registrar-General, where I find the average life of the workers is very little more than one half the average age of the idlers, and it makes no difference to me in looking at the effect of things whether a man has his �67 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? life cut short by direct violence, or if his throat is cut by the razor of semi-starvation carried on during a great part of his childhood and manhood, sinking him to the grave sooner by half a life than if he shared the better food and sanitary conditions of the wealthy class. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr. Foote made another attack on the Social Democratic Federation, into which I will not again follow him, for this debate is on the question, “Is Socialism Sound?”, not on whether it is wise for persons to enter a church and hiss at the Queen. Supposing these things were done over and over again by foolish persons that does not touch the subject of this debate. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr. Foote tells me that Oliver Cromwell was well paid in the end. Mr. Foote will not say that that payment was Cromwell’s motive in his work. In fact, all the great works of genius are done because the genius is there, impelling the man to act. It was not money that made Mil ton write “ Paradise Lost ”. It is the imperious faculty in the artist that makes him create, and makes him find a joy in his creative work. Little cares he whether money come to him as payment; his payment comes in men’s love, in men’s gratitude, and the memory they keep of him ; he knows that the future is his, and herein is his reward, rather than in the mere cash amount that may be paid over to him. (Cheers.) Mr Foote : I have again and again heard Mrs. Besant say what the facts of life strictly disprove—that men of genius are simply moved by theijs creative impulse. If Mrs. Besant went and told the members of the Royal Academy that they only painted for public applause, they would probably all laugh at her. Certainly the artist does like public applause, just as Mr. Gladstone or any minister of the crown likes public applause. But somehow they all like to be as well paid as possible too. (Hear, hear.) Gronlund supposes—and I have heard the same thing from other Socialists—that it would be absurd to think of a great man of genius painting or writing for payment. The name of Raphael was given as one instance, but Raphael painted for popes and cardinals, and other men of great eminence and great wealth. It is well to keep the facts of history before you. (Hear, hear.) When Mrs. Besant says that the suffering of to-day is a balance against the improvement that I indicated, she is f 2 �68 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? also conflicting with the facts of history. I have read some­ thing of the history of my country, and Mrs. Besant pro­ bably has too. I have also spoken to old men belonging to the party with which I have the honor to work, up and down the country in the manufacturing districts, who remember what was the state of things thirty and forty years ago, and they corroborate what I have read in the pages of recent history. If I may trust these reports, the state of the worker forty years ago was greatly worse than it is to-day. (Hear, hear.) It is easy enough for a man who feels the distress to-day to exclaim like mourners are always apt to do, “Never was grief like unto mine”. But if you look at the real facts you will find that in your deepest misery others suffer as greatly; and if you now suffer from distress, there was greater distress forty years ago. However, Mrs. Besant says—and true it is—that poverty is to be redressed. But it does not at all follow that mere benevolence is likely to redress it. It does not follow that rash action is likely to redress it. (Hear, hear.) If a man is in dire agony, it does not follow that the first half-a-dozen persons who drop in to see him in a neighborly way, and to sympathise with him, will do him any good. The surgeon who is called in must keep his sympathy in the background. He must use his skill with the utmost callousness. He must not allow his sympathy to affect his nerves. He must work in the cold, dry light of the intellect. Unless he does that the patient will suffer more, from his sympathy than he will gain from it. So with this great social question. You cannot eradicate the evils of human nature in a moment or in a generation. I tell Mrs. Besant she takes too optimistic a view of human nature. I know there are heroes in the world, but there are also cowards; there are wise men, and there are fools; there are Shaksperes, and there are Silly Billys. (Laughter.) You cannot with the same old human nature work a new scheme simply because you have devised it on the strictest rules of altruism. (Hear, hear.) The same human nature that produces to-day’s evils will reassert itself. No matter what your social mechanism is, it will show the same old fruit. Covetousness will not be abolished by Socialism. Idleness will not be abolished because the whole com­ munity will find work or food. Thrift will not be increased �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 69 because you say that a man should work for all instead of for himself. (Applause.) If this human nature could be twisted and turned like dough, and we were to agree that the most benevolent scheme of the loftiest dreamer should be put into operation, we might perhaps do some good. But if it were applied to ordinary human nature it would not, it could not, work. (Cheers.) Why, if ever a Social­ istic experiment could have succeeded, surely it would have been the Brook Farm in America. Surely it might be thought that persons like Emerson, Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and the others assembled together in a Socialistic system, had the wisdom and the lofty nature for the pur­ pose. But there was the old human nature in every one of them. There it was, deeper down than their intellect and their aspirations, and asserting itself in its own way. In the end the experiment broke up, as all others have done, except when supported by fanaticism and religious bigotry. (Applause.) Mrs. Besant says that she does not quite understand my saying that society, or rather the State, exists for the pro­ tection of life, liberty, and property. She carefully refrains from saying a word about liberty. In the last night of this discussion, when my turn comes to open again, I shall perhaps have enough to say about liberty, which I believe Communism, Socialism, or any such system, would crush from off the face of the earth. (Cheers.) Meanwhile, I will say that I cannot understand how Mrs. Besant thinks that hanging a murderer is a violation of the principle that the State is organised for the protection of life. Why is the murderer hanged or incarcerated for the rest of his days ? Because he has taken life; because he has violated the very principle for which the State is organised. Unless the State protects the people, you have anarchy instead of organised society. (Cheers.) It may, perhaps, be clever, but it is on the whole a little too clever, to say that the protection of property means merely the protection of idlers. Are all the members of building societies idlers ? Are all the men who own—as many do throughout England—the freehold of their houses, idlers ? Are all the men who deposit in savings banks, idlers ? Are all those who have paid money year by year in fire and life insurance societies, idlers ? (Cries of “ No, no ”.) You will find that if John Smith thinks the fate of his �70 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? fifty pounds is bound up with that of the Duke of Bedford’s millions, he will fight in defence of his own and the Duke’s too. (Applause.) It is easy enough to under-estimate the power which is held by those who own small properties in this country. Socialists may laugh, but the moment they thought they were in the majority, and tried to put their proposals into execution, they would find a million bayonets lifted in defence of property. (Cheers.) The right of property is not simply a principle that’ covers the idler; it covers the worker too. Mrs. Besant allows that we both agree that poverty should be redressed. Before this debate is over it will be my duty to show that I am not simply occupying a nega­ tive position, although I am doing so to-night. (Hear, hear.) I will attempt to show that without the Collectivist system, or any of its dangers, by a gradual and sure process we can emancipate the worker in the true sense of the word. Bor what is it he suffers from ? Compe­ tition? I say, nonsense I (Hear, hear.) Competition gives a hard-working man an advantage over a lazy man. Competition gives a skilful man an advantage over a man who will not take the trouble to be skilful. What the worker really suffers from is the subordination of labour to capital. Aye, and that subordination can be remedied just in proportion as the workers show that they possess the moral and intellectual qualifications without which their emancipation is an impossibility. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant has not yet touched the population question. I want to know how she proposes to deal with it. She says that under Socialism the necessity of conjugal prudence would be obvious to the blindest. Why is it not obvious now, when the parents have to bear the whole responsi­ bility, unless the poor-law or private benevolence inter­ venes ? How will it be obvious to the blindest when the whole burden is thrown on collective society ? I did not make the world, and I am glad of it. I did not lay down the law of natural selection, and I am glad of it. But nature has laid it down. It is a sure sign of a fool to fancy that if you walk and talk round a fact it will change or vanish. Facts must be met. H you go on breeding population you must meet the question somewhere. H you keep all that are not working, or for whom work cannot be found, you will have the unfit, the scrofulous, the con­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 71 sumptive, the indolent, and the stupid, exactly on a par, as respects their offspring, with the more capable and energetic, from whom it would be far better that the race should be continued. It is better to face these facts instead of blinking them. (Cheers.) In concluding my last speech to-night, let me draw your attention to something curious in Socialism. In every other system, persons all say “ experiment will show the thing can be done ”, Why do not the Socialists try an ex­ periment and see whether they can manage to succeed. (A voice: “We are not organised”.) In this world we do not make discoveries, we do not make inventions, we do not make any progress, except by the one method of ex­ periment. We try fifty or a hundred wrong ways until we find the right one. By closing the avenues to experiment with a cut-and-dried universal system, you really block progress. Instead of doing this, let the Socialists show us by experiment that Socialism can succeed. Why wait for the whole world to join you before you make a move ? Why don’t the Socialists give their scheme a trial on a fair if modest scale, and show us that they can produce better results than are obtained under Individualism. (Cheers.) But Mrs. Besant’s Socialism cannot be practised tilll the whole world is converted. There never was such a Gospel before. She invites us all to ascend Mount Pisgah, or some other height, and view the beauties of the Socialist promised-land. Some of us think it is nothing but a mirage, a mere haze on the horizon, or only a dream of the prophet’s brain. But Mrs. Besant asks us to ascend with her, and she will provide us with a patent Socialistic flying-machine. We are not to go on in the old plodding way, step by step, but we are to try our wings, we are to fly instead of walking. It will be fortunate for those who hold back when the flight begins. (Laughter.) There is only one true method of progress in this world. It is step by step, line upon line, here a little and there a little. (Applause.) Pessimism is probably false, and Optimism is probably false, but there is sound philosophy in Meliorism, or making things a little better day by day. When Louis Blanc, after years of sentimentalising, had an opportunity of doing something after the fall of the Empire, he went on sentimentalising as before. He kept talking and writ­ ing about “the social question ”, until he provoked Gam- �72 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? betta into saying: “ There is no one social question ; there are many social questions, and each must be dealt with when it is ripe”. Every stimulation of the intellect and higher feelings of the people, every fresh advance in public education, every new political reform, every gradual im­ provement of the relations between labor and capital, every sure step of the workers in the direction of self-help through voluntary co-operation, is of more advantage to the world than all the fanciful Utopias ever spun by metaphysical spiders. (Loud applause.) Annie Besant : Let me dispose first of the Royal Academy. I quite grant that the members of the Royal Academy paint for money. My words only applied to geniuses. I quite admit that where you are dealing with mental ability short of genius, it may be necessary for some time to come to have some difference of remunera­ tion. That is not in any sort of way necessarily antagon­ istic to Socialism, and the confusing of the two things may give a dialectical triumph, but will hardly stand much in­ vestigation. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Eootesays I take too opti­ mist a view of things. Socialism urges itself upon the world, not because it takes an optimist view, but because it tries to take a real one. It believes that where one man can live idly on the labor of others, that man will live idly on other’s labor. That is, it realises that unless you can make it impossible for men to live in idleness, and can thwart men’s evil instincts by arrangements which do not permit of their having full play, these instincts will triumph and cause misery in society. It is because we believe this that Socialists propose to take away the pos­ sibility of idle living, so as to be able to say to a man, “ If you do not work you will starve (Hear, hear.) It is because we know men will live idly if they can, that we want to destroy the means of their living on the labor of others. (Hear, hear.) Socialism tries to destroy the monopolies in the material for wealth, because only by that destruction can the men who own them be prevented from preying on their fellows. Hear, hear.) Well, Mr. Eoote says that the Socialistic experiment at Brook Farm did not succeed, and that, if that failed, where can we hope for success. And he asks, why do you not try your Socialist experiments yourself ? We say that the failure of the previous experiments has convinced us that small �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 73 Socialist societies living in the midst of a competitive system can never realise our idea of what true Socialism is. It can only be done by the conversion of the majority to Socialism, and by that majority taking over the means of production already in existence. And when we are asked why do we not now make our experiment, we say that we are not going to surrender our right to the accu­ mulations of previous labor, and that by leaving these in the hands of the present owners, and starting afresh, we should be only playing into the hands of the plunderers. (Cheers.) The workers have already made the capital; why should they leave it in the hands of the appropriating class, and set to work to build it all up anew ? Then Mr. Foote challenges me—and rightly—to speak on the popu­ lation question, and he uttered words of generous recog­ nition of what I have done in the matter in the past, for which I earnestly and cordially thank him. (Hear, hear.) I do not move from the position I took up in 1877. I would stand as readily on my trial now, as then, for the right to teach the people how to limit their families within their means. I know I am in a minority on this question in the Socialist party. I know that the majority of my Socialist friends, realising rightly, as they do, that the population question alone cannot solve this problem of poverty, at present shut their eyes too much on this matter, and turn their backs too angrily on a truth which they ought to realise. (Hear, hear.) But none the less is it true that if you solved the population question to-morrow your people would still remain exploited for the benefit of others; if the population were so reduced that the masters were left to compete for labor as laborers now compete for employ­ ment, justice would still be left undone. Why do masters try to get hold of the laborers but in order to make a profit out of them—that is, to deprive them of some of the result of their labor ? and whilst, given the same amount of employment, the laborer’s wage with a small population would be higher than with a larger population, it would still only be a wage—a share of what he earned—and the idler would still live on the industrious man. (Cheers.) Socialists see this ; but they very unwisely, as I often tell them, go out of their way and put themselves into a false position by setting themselves against a law of nature, instead of recognising and utilising the truth for them­ �74 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? selves. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote says, how will your Socialist State prevent over-population ? and I might answer him by saying, How would your Individualist State prevent it ? But that is no answer. The Socialist State would probably prevent it by law. (Laughter, and “Oh, oh”.) Yes, by law. The Socialists will be forced to understand that the children are a burden on the com­ munity ; education being supported out of the taxes and education going on from childhood until the citizen is almost an adult—education will be a very heavy burden which the producers will have to bear. When they feel that the undue increase of their families makes that burden too great, when they realise that the multiplication of non­ producing consumers means more work, less leisure, more hardship for themselves, can it be pretended that they will be likely to leave the comfort of the community at the mercy of its most reckless members ? And when you are dealing with society organised as we propose it should be organised, it will be far easier to stop these mischiefs even by public opinion than it is now. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote speaks about breeding from the fit and from the unfit. But is it from the fit only that the population is recruited under the Individualist system ? Are the Brunswicks then among the fit ? The idlers of the country add largely to the numbers of the population, and we want to strike at all idle living, and we believe that by doing that we shall be able the sooner to educate the people to realise the full scope of this question of population. But I say again, as before, that every system which does not realise or recognise this law of population will break down. (Hear, hear.) Socialism without it would break down, and even Bebel himself, who speaks against Malthusianism now, admits that under the Socialist regime we shall come face to face with this increase of population, and that the time will come for dealing with it. (Hear, hear.) I will now pass on from that to another point raised. Mr. Foote says why not have free competition ? You can­ not have free competition whilst you have monopolies in land and capital. You can only get anything of the value of free competition when every man shall be able to reach the land and have the use of capital, so that each shall be really free. (Hear, hear.) There is no freedom of con­ tract between the proprietors and the proletariat. For one �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 75 is clogged by the absolute necessity of having to get his livelihood from the other, and to talk of free competition under such conditions is a mere hypocrisy. Then Mr. Foote says that the State under Socialism would interfere with everything. We do not allege that the State should do everything and interfere with everything. We allege that you should have an organisation elected by the people, responsible to the people, removable by the people, which should administer for the general good the material for the production of wealth in the country. (Hear, hear.) But such a State, or rather the Executive of such a State, would be nothing more than a body or bodies of officers elected by the people, much as your municipalities are now elected to discharge certain functions for the benefit of the towns whose business they administer. (Hear, hear.) Next, Mr. Foote asks, what about foreign countries ? and he says truly that it will take a long time before China, India, and various barbarous races will be socialised. Then, he says, we should have to compete with these non­ Socialist States in the markets of the world. I am not aware that we compete with the negro or with these lower races in the world’s markets ; and is it quite fair to use the argument that it will be a long time before these lower races are socialised, and then the next moment to speak of them as if they were our competitors, whereas the only relation between us and them is that we plunder and murder them, and that they resist us? (Hear, hear.) It will indeed be a long time before the negro is socialised; but we hope it will not be long before England, France, Germany, America, and Italy will be socialised. (Cheers.) These are the nations with which we have to compete in the world’s markets, and these are the nations in which the Socialists are winning over the majority of the working population, and are obtaining adherents in every circle of society. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr. Foote says, poverty will not be redressed by benevolence and sympathy. I admit it; and it is because of that that Socialism tries to trace the poverty to its source. I reiterate the statement that the source of poverty is private ownership in the material necessary to produce wealth, and so long as private ownership in this material continues, so long will poverty be found to be its inevitable result. (Hear, hear.) That is not talking �76 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? benevolence; that is not simply acting on sympathy or appealing to yonr emotions. It is laying down a hard economical fact out of which the whole of Socialism grows, and that fact it is with which our opponents must deal. And Mr. Foote has not attempted to do so. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote finally spoke about liberty. Mr. Foote urges apparently, and he has said that he will strengthen his contention hereafter, that under Socialism liberty would disappear, that tyranny would override society. Never from my lips shall come one word of attack upon liberty— that liberty which is the source of human progress, which is the condition of human growth. (Hear, hear.) But even liberty is not all. Nearly one hundred years ago a cry broke out from an awakening people, and that cry had in it the word “liberty”, but it had joined with it as watchword for the Revolution “Liberty, equality, fraternity”. (Cheers.) That cry rang over to England, and the Radicals caught it up, and on their banner they put the motto, they named the indivisible three which make human progress safe. (Cheers.) And are the modern Radicals going to drop the last two words, and in the exaggeration of the importance of liberty forget that of equality and fraternity, which are its sisters and inseparable? (Cheers.) Liberty! What liberty under your Individualistic society for the poor sempstress stitching in the garret for the pittance of a shilling a day ? (Cheers.) What equality possible between your duke and your dock laborer? What fraternity to be hoped for between your millowner and-his hands? (Hear, hear.) Is equality to become only a word ? Has fraternity passed into a dream for the modern Radical? 0 my Radical brothers, who turn deaf ears against our Socialist plea: you who dream in your zeal for liberty that by this you will win everything, no matter over what human lives your car travels, I remind you of your older days ; I recall you to your older traditions. (Cheers.) I appeal to you for help for the movement which began a hundred years ago, and which is going on among us still; I appeal to you— do not use against us the weapons which of old Toryism used against you; do not throw at us the old taunts and scoffs which were thrown at you by our common enemies. I appeal to you to remember your past. (Hear, hear.) If you would have liberty to work for progress have also �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 77 fraternity and equality, and let us work together for that nobler society where all shall be free, where all shall be equal, and where all shall be brothers because masterhood shall have passed away. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote : I beg to propose a hearty vote of thanks to our chairman. Annie Besant : I second it. The vote having been carried, The Chairman said: I thank you for your vote of thanks, and I ask you to attend in large numbers next week, when Mrs. Besant will open the discussion. �78 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? THIRD NIGHT. George Bernard Shaw in the Chair. The Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen; our business to­ night is the continuation of the debate on the subject, “Is Socialism Sound?”. Mrs. Besant says that it is sound. Mr. Foote contends that it is not. The arrange­ ments of the debate this evening will be : each debater will speak three times—once for half-an-hour, and twice for fifteen minutes, the speakers speaking, of course, alternately. On the last evening the debate was commenced by Mr. Foote. It is therefore Mrs. Besant’s duty to open to-night; and I now call upon her. Annie Besant : Friends, as I said on the first night of the debate, I propose to deal to-night with the historical evolution of Socialism, and with the absolute necessity for its adoption in this and in other civilised countries, if the civilisation of the present is not to break down as past civilisations have done. I am, of course, aware that there is something of rather portentous impudence in the attempt to sketch the evolution of society in the space of half-anhour ; but as I am limited to that time, I must do the best I can, merely giving you the landmarks of the chief stages through which, as I contend, society has passed. And to begin with, we will go back to that condition which Mr. Foote fairly enough described as the condition of primitive Communism; this you find in a few cases of tribes in a very low condition of civilisation ; this is found only where life-conditions are easy, where the soil is fertile, and where food is abundant, and can be obtained without very much trouble. Under those conditions you will occasionally find what may be called primitive Communism—a condition of things in which private property has practically no exist­ ence, and there being abundance for everyone, each man takes according to his own needs. These communities, however, are very few in number, for the simple reason �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 79 that the parts of the earth where such abundance is easily obtained, are themselves very limited in number. And the moment that you come under harsher life-conditions, then over the greater part of the habitable globe you will very soon find a struggle for existence going on amongst men, which makes anything like Communism absolutely im­ possible. You then get the right of the strongest to take what he can and to keep what he can. Thus you get what we may call a primitive Individualism, where strength is the supreme law, and where the individual’s rights are only measured by his power of enforcing them. (Hear, hear.) Under those conditions private property very rapidly springs up ; for when a man has to work hard for that which he obtains, he naturally feels resentment, and desires to punish those who, without labor, would deprive him of the results of his own toil. And so, as practically there is only one man who is the strongest in the tribe and only a few who are above the average strength, the resentment of the majority who are plundered finds expression in the form of law and of punishment; and private property becomes recognised as a right by the limitation of the power of the stronger and by the defence of the weaker who form the majority of the community. (Cheers.) And when that stage has been reached, the next one is the condition in which civilisation, having somewhat advanced, and the cultivation of the ground having taken the place of hunt­ ing and fishing, and of that particular form of war in which war and the chase are united—-I mean the institu­ tion of cannibalism—when society has passed beyond that stage into the agricultural stage, you find appear in prac­ tically every early community a form of labor which is known as slavery. (Hear, hear.) Men who are taken in war, instead of being used as food immediately, are used as food in a less direct fashion. And you find the owners of these captives taken in war setting the captives to labor, turning them into slaves who produce for their master’s benefit, and who have no rights beyond those which their masters may bestow upon them for their own advan­ tage. And you then get this property in man. This is one of the results of the growing civilisation under the Individualistic condition, and you find society divided into the propertied and the non-propertied classes—the nonpropertied class in these early conditions being literally �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? slaves—chattel slaves—who produced for their owners, who took the result of their labor, giving back in return suffi­ cient to keep them in healthy working order. (Hear, hear.) If you look back to the various stages of civilisa­ tion which we should class as ancient, you will find that they were all very largely based on this institution of slavery. You will find that in Greece and in Rome you have a vast mass of the population absolutely without property, absolutely without rights; and the nation was considered to consist of the higher classes of the com­ munity who owned the slave, no rights of the commonest citizenship being given to the slaves themselves, who labored for their masters. (Hear, hear.) And on that rock of utter division of classes—of the breaking up of society into practically two nations in every community—on that rock ancient civilisations split, and every one of them in turn went down before a flood of barbarism. (Cheers.) I pass now to the next stage that I mark on this brief sketch of historical evolution. Of collective property in land you find traces practically down to our own time, and I must ask you in thought to distinguish between the less numerous cases where the property in land was really of a collective kind, and the far more numerous cases which were more analogous to peasant proprietorship, where families inheri­ ted certain plots of land to which they had a special right, in which each member of the community had his own piece, as it were, of the ground, none being left absolutely landless. But still all the community, with this sort of limitation, owned property in land, though not having absolute collectivism. But you do find in some communi­ ties absolute collective property in land, and I suppose there is no better instance of that at present than you will find in the case of some Slavonic tribes, such as you may see a good example of in the Russian Mir. In the western parts of Europe the property in land was of a very different character. There you find—in countries like our own, in France, and in other western lands of Europe—there is a kind of holding of land known as feudal, that is practi­ cally the result of the military state in which the people lived. The nations of the north, urged on by the necessity for subsistence and the pressure of the population, were constantly overrunning the more fertile lands, and the con­ quering tribes set up the system which grew into feudalism �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 81 in the lands of which they were the conquerors. And then you find the Danes and the Northmen spreading over France and settling in England; and then some passing from Normandy into England, destroying the old fashion of land-holding and establishing feudalism in its stead. (Hear, hear.) Under these conditions the king was really the one owner of the whole of the soil. I know that it is said that the king was the representative of the nation. But that is a myth, a mere figure of speech. The king was really the owner, for he granted the land to his barons. (Hear, hear.) What is, however, very important to us is that the baron’s rights in these lands were strictly limited, and under feudalism these barons had duties con­ nected with their ownership of the soil, and one special duty was that of defending it from all outside attack. (Cheers.) In Scotland and Ireland the method of hold­ ing land was somewhat different. There you had the clansmen living on the land. There were clans under a chief who was autocratic, but still the clansmen had cer­ tain rights in the soil, and the very chief himself would have been careful how he touched them. (Hear, hear.) And the result of that was that there was a feeling on the part of those who then dwelt on the land that they had rights in the soil as sacred as any of the rights of their chief. And if you enquire into the traditions of these people—which are now held by men like the Scotch crofters and the Irish peasants—you will find that the root of these men’s resistance to the modern landlord is not so much that they are fighting against the rights of property of the landlord, as that they are fighting for their own right of property in the soil upon which they were born. (Cheers.) And you will never convince a Highland crofter or an Irish peasant that justice is not on his side, however much landlord-made law may be against him. (Hear, hear.) In passing from the feudal system, I pause for a moment to remind you of that great act of robbery whereby the landlords conveyed the land into their own complete possession, throwing off the rental which in the feudal days they had to pay in dues and various charges to the king, and they thus became practically absolute owners of the soil. (Hear, hear.) I am of course aware that there is no such thing as absolute ownership of land known to our law; but for all practical purposes the landlords are �82 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? absolute owners ; and that act of theirs was really a great act of expropriation, a robbery, whereby they made them­ selves the real owners of the land which they had up to that time only held by payment of dues. (Hear, hear.) We find, upon turning from these various stages through which this land-holding went, that the claim for collective property in capital is of comparatively very modern origin. (Hear, hear.) And naturally so, because until very modern times there have been no vast accumulations of capital for the purpose of wealth production. You have the small industries of the Middle Ages—you have the handicraftsmen banded together in guilds, but you have no great accumulations of capital; nor have you any­ thing which is at all analogous to our modern system of factory labor of gathering together great crowds of men to co-operate in the formation of a common product. And it is only from the sixteenth century upwards that you will find the struggle beginning between traders and landowners; and only practically from the end of the last century will you find the true beginning of the industrial difficulties with which we are dealing at the present time. (Cheers.) From 1760 to 1781 you get the great age of invention in machinery; the destruction —not of industries themselves but—of the small methods of manufacture, and the putting in their stead of the modern method of manufacture by which hundreds of men work together to make a common product, dividing the various parts of the labor amongst them. It is thus only for the last 100 years that society has been face to face with this great difficulty of the aggregation of capital in the hands of a few. (Hear, hear.) What was the im­ mediate result of this sudden outburst of mechanical energy ? It was the revival of slavery under a new name. (Cheers.) Just as when society, taking up agricultural pursuits and working on the land, found that by enslaving men and making them work their masters would be raised to a position of wealth and of luxury which they could not reach by their own toil, so in modern times, when this sudden productivity of machinery was discovered or prac­ tically started—we may say just about a century ago—then you get the beginning of a similar division of propertied and unpropertied classes — the employing class and the employed class—the one completely at the mercy of �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 8. the other. (Hear, hear.) And although it is true that the slavery was a wage and not a chattel slavery, still fun­ damentally the two things are identical; for you have in each case one man taking another man and using his labor for his own purposes—taking the product that the laborer has produced and giving back to him only enough to keep him in working order. (Cheers.) It is true that in the chattel slavery the produce—or the share of the produce— that the laborer got was given to him in the form of food, clothing, and shelter. It is true that in the modern sub stitute for slavery that part of the produce the laborer gets is given to him in the form of money, with which he buys food and clothing and shelter. But the principle is exactly the same—(hear, hear)—men working for a master not for themselves; men with no control over the product of their own labor, but the product passing into another man’s hands, and the laborer in each case getting in return the possibility of subsistence; getting in return sufficient to keep him in fair working order. (Hear, hear.) But there is this difference. Under the old system the slave really did get sufficient to keep his body in the best possible condition for labor. (Cheers.) Not only so, but as a child he was maintained, as an aged man he was fed and he was sheltered. The chattel slave was a valuable property as the horse is valuable and the ox— (hear, hear. A Voice : 11 And no more ”)—and the owner of the slave kept him in a condition of the highest effi­ ciency. (Hear, hear.) But the modern slave owners have found out a cheaper method than that of breeding and of owning slaves. (Cheers.) They have found that it is cheaper to hire than to buy them. They have found that it pays better to take them only for their working life and to have no responsibility beyond it. (Hear, hear.) And the advantage is a very simple one. James Nasmyth, the great engineer, was being examined before a Parliamen­ tary Committee on the subject of trade unions, and he ex­ plained that he constantly increased his receipts by sub­ stituting apprentices at a low wage for able-bodied men who demanded payment of the full wage that was paid in their trade. And the questiou was asked him, “What becomes of the men you discharge : of their wives, and cf their families ?” Nasmyth answered: “I do not know. I leave their fate to the natural forces that govern society”. g2 �84 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? Now that is exactly what the slave owner could, not do. (Hear, hear.) But it is what the modern capitalist can do, and does do, although very few of them are honest enough to speak out as frankly as James Nasmyth spoke before that Parliamentary Committee. (Cheers.) I pass for a moment from that to the next point in my argument. We have to trace in that growing industrialism the growing interference of the State. I will just remind you of the early attempts of the State to regulate Middle Age industries. You will remember that the first edict fixing wages was in the Fourteenth Century, and that the Statute as to laborers that followed it tried to fix the laborer’s wage at a definite sum, and that it failed, and Jailed for a very simple reason. (Hear, hear.) It failed because the men wanted higher wages than were specified, and because it paid the masters to give a higher wage. (Hear, hear.) And as the men were anxious to get the higher wage and the masters were ready to give it, the law became practically inoperative. It was a regulation between two classes, neither of whom was willing to accept that regulation of the State. But it is not because that one case failed that any student of history can pretend that it is true that all attempts at wage-fixing have been inoperative. (Hear, hear.) Take, for instance, the Statute of Apprentices. It was successful to such an ex­ tent that when it became an anachronism it was difficult to get rid of it. And one half of the difficulty of the adminis­ tration of the old Poor Law was due to the attempt to circumvent in some sort of fashion this Statute with its fixed wages, and out of the rates they tried to make up more than the wage which ought legally to have been given. Then you have a mass of laws interfering with workmen’s combinations. And then, going on again, we come to the time which I previously spoke of, when machinery was in­ troduced, and you have the struggle between the workmen who were fettered by the laws against combination, and the employers, who were absolutely free—absolutely un­ fettered by law. (Hear, hear.) What was the result of this condition of things ? Vast fortunes on the side of the propertied class ; frightful degradation on the side of the unpropertied class—(cheers)—degradation so horrible as to frighten Parliament itself. The death-rate of children so great; the deterioration of the factory population so �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 85 terrible, that even Parliament itself—composed as it was chiefly of the propertied class—found itself forced to pass the first Factory Act, which interfered with this condition of so-called free contract and free labor. (Cheers.) Then you had—first, interference with child labor; next, inter­ ference with woman labor. And the result of this inter­ ference with the child’s and with the woman’s labor was practically a limitation of that of the man’s. (Hear, hear.) Because since these three worked together in the factories —and since the female and the male labor were practically complementary to each other—the limitation of the women’s hours of labor indirectly brought about a limitation of the men’s hours. (Hear, hear.) And so this legislation went further than those who initiated it intended, and it acted as a very general limitation of the hours of labor. (Hear, hear.) And then you had still further State inter­ ference—interference with contracts over and over again, as when rent-courts and so on were established in Ireland and in the northern parts of Scotland. And step by step as that legislation has progressed, the condition of the laboringclasses has to some slight extent been improved. (Hear, hear.) That is to say : the growing Socialism has brought about a growing improvement, and the gradual inter­ ference of the community to make the conditions more equal on the side of the men has really given them oppor­ tunities of rising which were utterly out of their reach in the earlier years of the present century. (Cheers.) Nor has that been all. There has been a growing recognition on the part of the community that it is concerned with something more than the regulation of business relations. The responsibility of the community for the feeding of its helpless members had long been recognised. (Hear, hear.) The recognition of its responsibility for the curing of its sick members had also to a considerable extent been recog­ nised. But the fault in both these cases has been that the conditions for getting food or medicine were, with the object of discouraging people from embracing them, made so degrading that those who may be considered the least worthy accepted the opportunity of relief, whereas those who were self-respecting and independent found the con­ ditions so insulting that many a one would rather starve than condescend to accept the relief. (Cheers.) Next, society recognised its duty in matters of education. It �bG IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? recognised that it was a thing in which the community had a right of interference, and it went on the plan of taxing everyone, although only some had the immediate benefit of the taxation. (Hear, hear.) And rightly so; because you cannot divide off society into small cliques and tax each for its own necessities. And although it may be true that only some profit directly by the taxation for education, yet the whole community profits indirectly ; not only in the greater utility of the educated man or woman, but also from the decrease of crime which is one of the most marked results of our Socialist plan of national education. (Cheers.) Next came the acceptance of re­ sponsibility to a considerable extent on the part of society even for the health and amusement of its members ; and parks were made and kept up out of the public rates ; galleries and museums were provided out of the national taxation; libraries were adopted by parish after parish taxing itself directly for this benefit to all. And so, step by step, and more rapidly than ever during the last twenty years, this growth of practical Socialism has been spreading amongst our people, so that John Morley truly said, in his “Life of Cobden”, that England, although Socialism was little spoken of, had a greater mass of Socialistic legisla­ tion than any other country in the world. (Hear, hear.) And at the same time the Socialist spirit is spreading in the smaller representative bodies in our country; corpora­ tions and municipalities, passing beyond their at first very limited duties, have been gradually taking over more and more administrative and trading work into their hands. And so you find municipalities now beginning to trade in water and in gas ; and wherever that has commenced, the advantages of that kind of Socialist trading become patent to the town that adopts it. And the result is a gradual but more and more rapid growth of Socialist feeling. (Cheers.) Take a town like Nottingham—a town I hap­ pened to visit recently. There the municipality has taken over the supply of gas. What has been the result ? Not only that the gas has been very much cheapened to the citizens—although that is something—but that out of the profits obtained from the cheapened gas-rate, at the same time that the people of Nottingham can get their light for very much less than ever before, instead of the profits going to the shareholders of a company and being divided �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 87 amongst them, and. so keeping in idleness men who did nothing for the town, those profits on the gas have been utilised to build a great college, fitted up with everything that is wanted for literary, for scientific, and for artistic training. (Hear, hear.) There in that college, paid for out of the profits of the town’s gas, are professors for instruction in the various branches of learning ; and there every night classes are held at merely nominal prices, to which every citizen of Nottingham can go and train himself into wider know­ ledge, into deeper enjoyment of life. (Hear, hear.) And that is the result of Socialist legislation. (Cheers.) Under Individualism the profits would go to enrich shareholders. Under Socialism the profits go to be used for the benefit of the town, and that grand educational experiment is the result of practical Socialism in Nottingham. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote : Last Wednesday evening Mrs. Besant occu­ pied the first half of her first speech in replying to what I had said on the previous evening. She cannot therefore complain if I follow her excellent example to-night. And I feel that I shall be all the more entitled to do so because a considerable quantity of Mrs. Besant’s first speech to­ night is the kind of thing you may read in any primer of universal history, and which therefore I do not feel called upon to dispute. (Hear, hear.) It will be remembered that last Wednesday I pressed Mrs. Besant in two speeches to say how she proposed to take over capital and land, and how she proposed to deal with the population question. Now either by design or inadvertence—I prefer to think the latter—Mrs. Besant left these two questions unanswered, although she had two opportunities of replying, until her last speech, when of course I had no opportunity of rejoin­ ing, and therefore it had necessarily to be left until this evening. Now how does Mrs. Besant propose to take over capital and land ? A great many Socialists say, following Gronlund, 11 the matter of compensation will not trouble us much”—(hear, hear, and laughter)—and evidently when Socialists speak out in unguarded moments—(hear, hear)— Mr. Gronlund and the Social Democratic Federation have a very large amount of sympathy. But Mrs. Besant says— and in this as in so many other points she follows Gronlund —“we would give capitalists and landowners life annui­ ties”. Gronlund’s proposal is a little more sensible, if Mrs. Besant will allow me to say so. By Mrs. Besant’s �88 IS SOCIALISM SOUXD ? plan all the capitalists would be given life annuities. Some of them would live a great while, but some of them would die to-morrow, and their wives and families would be swept among the wreckage of society—(“Oh, oh”)— to find some kind of compensation of a character which I think it is far better to contemplate than to realise. (Cheers.) Gronlund proposed that they should all be paid off; so that, supposing Vanderbilt were worth eighty millions, he should have a million a year for eighty years. I very much doubt if a Socialistic Society would have the million a year to pay for eighty years—(hear, hear)—I still more gravely doubt whether the ease with which the first measure of confiscation were passed would not speedily raise an agitation for complete repudiation of the obliga­ tions that were incurred. The great difference between Mrs. Besant and myself on this point is that I deny her right to do this; I say that the man who owns property under the existing law, which he has not stolen in violation of any law, has a right not only to get his price for it, if someone else demands it, but a right to withhold it from sale if he chooses. (Cheers.) So that there is a moral difference here between myself and Mrs. Besant, and I do not see how it can be easily bridged over. I fancy it must leave Mrs. Besant and myself on two different sides of a chasm, across which she strikes me in vain, and across which I strike her in vain. And I can only leave the moral aspect of that question to every man and woman, to be decided by such instincts of justice and fair play as they may happen to possess. (Hear, hear.) With respect to the population question, which Mrs. Besant does not appear to treat with quite her old serious­ ness, she says that the new society—whatever that may be; it is largely a question of prophecy—will deal by law with the progress of population. But if law can deal with it, why does not the law deal with it now ? And how are you to get your law ? Under Socialism everybody will have a vote. Of course, everything will be decided by the vote of the majority. If Mrs. Besant thinks that the human nature, which we all know, will by a majority of voters pass a law making the procreating of offspring over a certain number penal, she is a great deal more sanguine than I happen to be. (Cheers.) But if human nature can assent to such a law, why does not human nature �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 89 assent to such a law now ? Mrs. Besant says that the workers only breed slaves for the capitalist. (Hear, hear.) She says that all their children are kept, or nearly all of them—the exceptions being hardly worth counting—in the state of society in which they are born. Well, if this is so, and if the fact is obvious, how is it that the workers do not voluntarily restrict population now ? Because it is much easier to ask somebody else to come under a law than to come under it yourself. (Cheers.) I cannot help contrasting the almost Bacchanalian fury with which Mrs. Besant incites the workers to take possession of other people’s property—(cries of “No, no”)—and the bated breath and whispering humbleness with which she reminds her Socialist friends that they really do not attach quite sufficient importance to this law of population. Mrs. Besant did not use to speak so. She spoke in sterner accents years ago. (Cries of “Oh” and “Question”.) Is it not a fact, after all, that great as may be the courage required to face juries and judges and prisons, a still higher and rarer courage is required to turn on friends who are mistaken and tell them in the stern accents of verity what they have neglected or forgotten ? (A Voice: “She has the courage”.) A gentleman, who has I fancy inter­ rupted me more than once, says Mrs. Besant has courage. I have not said she has not. (Cheers.) Now, what kind of law is it to be that will deal with population ? Are you going to have public committees watching young couples ? (Laughter.) Are you going to say a husband and wife shall have two, three, or four children as the case may be? And if they have more children than the law prescribes, how will you deal with them ? Are you going to put them in prison ? If so, you must keep them there. And when they come out they will violate the law with the same equanimity as before. (Cheers.) This law of population is the rock on which all com­ munistic and Socialistic schemes must founder. (Cries of “No, no.”) Suppose you have Socialism inaugurated to­ morrow. Suppose you remove the competition which Mrs. Besant detests. Suppose you guarantee, as she un­ dertakes to guarantee, productive work for everybody. Suppose you monopolise all the means of subsistence. You are then bound to do what the law of England does at present: make the possessors of the means of sub­ �90 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? sistence find food for those who are out of employment. (Cheers.) The State would be obliged to feed everybody who was starving for want of work. (“Oh, oh.”) The lady or gentleman who disputes that is really without a rudimentary acquaintance with the subject. Persons out of work have to be fed now, and persons out of work under Socialism will also have to be fed. (A Voice: “There will be none”.) A gentleman says, “ there will be none”. Well, he and I differ on that point. You will have to find food for all your population. You remove competition, and you remove parental responsibility for offspring. The feeding of the children will be done by the State if the parents are unable to do it, and what will be the result ? (A Voice: “Enough to eat”.) The result will be— (dissent)—Well, really, it appears that the manners of economical atavism are quite what one might expect. (Laughter.) You would have to do one of two things. Either you would have to weed out the utterly incapable— the semi-idiotic, the scrofulous, the consumptive, and all those whom a sensible doctor would declare to be unfit to procreate—and sternly forbid them to do so. Otherwise you would have a perennial supply of the unfit, who would all flourish; whereas, under the present competitive system, notwithstanding our hospitals, our charities, and our work­ houses, they get gradually eliminated, because the odds are against them from the very beginning. (Cheers, and cries of “No, no”.) If you are not prepared to do that, you would have swarms of population beyond your power to maintain. Then what would happen ? Either there would be such anarchy, such poverty, that society would remould itself round some stable centre—perhaps in the form of a military conqueror—figuring once more as a savior of society; or else the more vigorous and more progressive members would separate themselves from the rest, form new communities of their own, strike out in fresh direc­ tions, and so restore the old competive system which was abolished in a moment of Socialistic folly. (Cheers.) I am very sorry to spoil a pretty peroration. I am very sorry to throw a cold shower of common sense upon what was a glowing piece of rhetoric. But at the same time I would ask Mrs. Besant, who accuses me of mistranslating Proudhon without giving a better translation herself, how she comes to read Liberte, Egalite, et Eraternite as meaning �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 91 anything Socialistic? “Egalite”, which we translate equality—very roughly, hy the way, though—has never meant in the mouths of the French people who used it anything like equality in the Socialistic or Communistic sense. Nor has “ fraternity ” meant anything like Com­ munism. Liberty and equality were both meant as a protest against the privilege created by law under the ancien regime. Egalite. meant equality before the law for everyone, high and low, rich and poor; the aboli­ tion of all law-created distinctions; the placing of everybody on what Thomas Paine called the “democratic floor”, where he is entitled to no more consideration than his own energy, intellect, and character entitle him to. (Cheers.) Perhaps Mrs. Besant will tell me what great leader of the French Bevolution used the word egalite as meaning anything like Socialistic equality. If she cannot point to any such leader, and if the word has never been used in that sense, it appears to me that her peroration was far more mis­ leading than my translation of Proudhon’s definition of property. My translation was as near as possible, con­ sidering the difference between the genius of the two languages, which makes it utterly impossible to translate epigrams from one into the other without some roughness and some loss of the finer shades of meaning. (Cheers.) Practically Mrs. Besant, in one of her remarks, gave up the whole of the debate. She said that it was perfectly absurd—and I agree with her—to start Socialistic experi­ ments in the midst of a competitive society; or, as Mr. Hyndman grandiosely called it in his debate with Mr. Bradlaugh, “making Socialistic oases in a howling desert of competition”. By the way, Arabs and other people do keep up oases in the desert, where they cheer and refresh the traveller with palm trees and water. Mr. Hyndman and his friends might try to do the same kind of thing. But what is their admission ? Why is it that Socialistic experiments cannot succeed in the midst of a competitive state of society ? Because competitive society is more robust and virile, calling forth the energies of the people, and producing grander results. Socialism cannot succeed by experiment because competitive society would beat it and kill it in the open field. (“Oh, oh.”) Mrs, Besant shows a wise and true instinct in asking that every­ body shall join Socialism at once before it is carried out. �92 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? Socialism could never hold its own unless, by means of an overwhelming majority, it got the power to make the laws into its own hands, and used that power to proscribe every form of rivalry with itself. (Cheers.) Monarchy, aristocracy, and such things, I am quite as much prepared to deal with as Mrs. Besant can be, and therefore they may as well be eliminated from the debate. (Cries of “ No, no ”.) My opinion is that if many things Mrs. Besant and I equally object to were remedied there would be very little distress now or at any time. But we need not dwell upon these. They are common points of agreement. But let me say that Mrs. Besant attaches a little too much economical importance to a Duke with £200,000 a year or a rich capitalist with £50,000 a year. As a matter of fact, a man with that immense income cannot eat it and drink it. (Laughter.) A laborer once facetiously remarked, though with a great deal of truth, when some­ one was talking to him about a rich man: “Well, I guess he has not a bigger stomach than I have”. (Laughter.) Now, what does a rich man do with his wealth ? He spends nearly all of it in employing some kind of labor. (Laughter and cries of “Oh, oh”.) One moment. It may be the labor of domestic servants; it may be the labor of men engaged in various forms of fine art, it may be the labor of men engaged in painting pictures, it may be the labor of men engaged in carving statuary, it may be the labor of men employed in one or other of the twelve thousand different trades that are tabulated by the Registrar-General. Well if this be so, and all the rich men were immediately abolished, all the persons who follow the trades they maintain would be thrown helplessly on the labor market. (“ Oh, oh.”) I say they would if it were done at once. (“Oh, oh,” and cheers.) I say that the peculiar kind of work they do is only such as rich men can pay for. (Hear.) That is no argument against any kind of reform, but it certainly is an argument for gradual proceeding, instead of revolutionary haste. (Cheers.) The real grievance is that so much is spent in non-productive labor. That is the true economical grievance ; and I should very much like to see less money spent in non-productive labor. But there will always be a great deal of money spent in that way, unless you widen the term productive so as to include everything that can be �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 93 done. Mrs. Besant might think that publishing a book is productive work. It is in a sense, but I doubt whether it is in a Socialistic sense. I do not know what particular value a book has. If it is printed and sells, it is worth something; but if it is not instructive or interesting, or too good for the public, and does not sell, it is only worth waste paper. It is not like a commodity turned out in the open market which has a natural value, and will always fetch it. I will turn to another point. Mrs. Besant over­ estimates the amount which would be distributed amongst the workers if capital were appropriated by them “with or without compensation”. A fact is worth any quantity of theory, especially if the theory conflicts with it. (Laughter.) I have taken the trouble, as I have on previous occasions, to put together a few statistics. I find that in 1884 our total output of coals and metals was of the value of £64,000,000. I find also that the number of miners was about 441,000. Now if you divide the out­ put by the number of miners, you will find it gives a total sum for each worker of £145 per year. But mark, the £64,000,000 is the total value of the output. In addition to the miners’ wages there are other expenses, a few of which I will recite. Birst taxes, including income tax, as now paid; secondly, rates on the property; thirdly, interest on the capital, or sinking fund ; fourthly, savings for increasing, maintaining, and extending the business; fifthly, extra payments for skill, such as foremen, engineers and managers ; sixthly, rent, or royalty to the Government; seventhly, payment for clerks, surveyors, etc.; eighthly, payment for materials, machinery and ventilating appa­ ratus ; ninthly, payment for tramways, horses, and so forth; tenthly, payment for insurance and employers’ liability. Now, if you took all those expenses for each colliery from the total output, you would find that they made a very serious diminution in the amount that would be available for distribution amongst the workers them­ selves. The total only comes to £145 for each worker, and the nett amount could not come to anything like that sum. Surely the difference between the wages now paid to the miners and the amount they would receive if the whole value of the output, minus the working expenses, were distributed amongst them, is not sufficient to justify Mrs. Besant’s revolutionary proposals. She asks us to leave �94 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? the shore we are accustomed, to, where great possibilities of improvement still remain, and embark with her for the opposite shore. It is politic to ask us all to go at once, for if we succeed in crossing safely the pilot will be universally praised, and if we sink there will be nobody to utter a word of blame. (Cheers.) I will deal in my next speech, and more fully, with what Mrs. Besant has advanced to-night. What she said does not seem to have any particular relation to Socialism. The great questions of universal history—how States arose and fell, how slavery originated, how it affected civilisations, how far it helped to break them up, the growth and pro­ gress of education, and so forth—have nothing to do with the distinctive question “Is Socialism Sound?”. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant has to deal with the economical and practical objections to Socialism. She has to show, by an effort of constructive imagination, how Socialism would work in practice. But she has done nothing of the kind. She has denounced evils that we all deplore; she has urged that they should be remedied, and we all wish to remedy them. The question at issue is: Is her remedy a good one ? Denouncing evil is beside the point. She must show that her remedy will cure it; and unless she does that, she has no right to invite us to follow her prescriptions. (Applause.) Annie Besant : I am almost sorry that Mr. Foote did not think it worth while to deal with the speech with which I opened, because one of the great differences be­ tween modern thought and older thought is the tendency of modern thought to study how things evolve. (Hear, hear.) And that can only be done by studying the past, and tracing through the past up to the present. The modern progress of science is based largely on that method. (Cheers.) And to renounce that, or to treat it with contempt, is to turn your back on the truth which has made the scientific progress of the last twenty years. (Hear, hear.) I pass from that, and I will deal very briefly with my peroration of last week, to which Mr. Foote objected. Now I am sure that Mr. Foote knows as well as I know that you cannot destroy the effect of a peroration after a week has elapsed. A peroration moves for the moment; it is the arguments before it that remain. A peroration is like the closing passage of a sonata, bring­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 95 ing the music to an effective conclusion. You remember the sonata, and you cannot destroy its effect even when the chord which concluded it no longer fills the ears that listened to it. I make Mr. Foote a present of my perora­ tion without any further remark, save this : that I admit at once that the Frenchmen who used that cry did not mean Socialism when they spoke of “liberty, equality, and fraternity They were not face to face with a condition of society in which Socialism was possible. But what I meant in applying their phrase was that just as in those days equality meant the destruction of the privileged classes, which were then kings and nobles, so the cry of equality now means the destruction of that aristocracy of wealth which is more highly privileged and more mis­ chievous to society than the old one. (Cheers.) I now come to the points raised by Mr. Foote in his speech. Mr. Foote spoke as to compensation. Let me put very clearly what I said. I said that I should be willing to give life annuities to the expropriated owners. The income of the Duke of Westminster will shortly, as the building leases fall in, reach a million and a half a year. The way in which I should deal with the Duke of Westminster would be something like this : I should say— “ My lord duke, you are not of the very least good in the world; you are the result of a very bad system, and we are even more responsible for that than you are, because you are only one and we are many. We have practically made you the very unprofitable creature that you are. You cannot use your hands to keep yourself. You cannot earn your living by any useful work. Although this is our fault more than yours, we cannot allow you to keep on robbing others for an income. We will therefore give you for the rest of your unprofitable life a decent little income, say of £500 a year.” (Hear, hear, and laughter.) That is the sort of compensation which I meant when I spoke of life annuities. And I should be willing, in a case where a man died and left a widow, to continue the annuity to her; and I might be generous enough, if there was a son left about forty years of age, too old to learn to be of any use, to continue the annuity to him. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) I do not desire to make these people a wreckage on society— I see too much social wreckage as it is. (Cheers.) And I do not desire to add one single life to it. (Hear, hear.) �96 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? But what I do desire is to prevent these men continuing to make wreckage of thousands in order to keep them­ selves. (Cheers.) Then Mr. Foote says man has a right to withhold his property from sale if he chooses. Would he have used that argument in the Southern States of America to defend slavery ? I deny that a man has any absolute right to withhold property from sale if he chooses. (Hear, hear.) The rights of property were made by society, and society is supreme over them. No man has a right to hold his property to the injury of the greater number among whom he lives, and you do not even now allow ~Hm “so to hold it. (Hear, hear.) You force men to sell now by law, if they will not sell of their own good will, when their property is wanted for the community; and you must, if you are going to have society at all, admit the right of society to control the property of the members of the community to an enormous extent. (Hear, hear.) And if a man usurps property which he has not made, that he has no right to—property which he only holds by virtue of bad laws—then the majority has the right to repeal those laws and destroy his power of exploiting, and thus, by destroying his property in man, to free the men who must remain slaves whilst he holds them. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote says there is a moral difference between us. I grant there is an enormous moral difference between Socialism and Individualism, and the whole of the moral difference is this—that from Mr. Foote’s point of view a small num­ ber of persons have the right to rob other persons and get the result of their labor, whereas Socialism says that theft is wrong in the prince as much as in the peasant, and that neither shall be allowed to rob his neighbors and live upon the labors of the industrious. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote challenges me again on the question of the law of population, and asks me how it is possible by law to limit the population, and why not pass such a law, and why don’t the workers see the difficulty now. There are several reasons why the workers of this country do not see the bearing of the law of population. In the first place, they have so little property themselves that they do not see the mischief done by making too many claimants among whom it is divided. They are already so poor that they cannot well be poorer, and they are careless and indifferent, thinking it matters comparatively little �97 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? whether twelve are starving on 12s. a week or four are starving on the same sum. (Cheers.) One important step towards limiting the population is to raise the standard of comfort; because when you do that you make the people anxious not to fall back from the comfort they have obtained. (Hear, hear.) But if always on the verge of starvation they do not feel the fall, because practically they cannot fall very much further in position. (Hear, hear.) And, unfortunately, through our history there has been an opposition from the time of Malthus between those who consider that the remedy for poverty lies in State interference and those who believe it lies in limita­ tion of the family. The result of that has been a certain antagonism between those who would improve matters by legislative action, and those who would only deal with the law of population. And that hereditary antagonism, like the fighting of dogs and cats, comes out rather as a matter of instinct than of intelligence. Nor is that all. I ask Mr. Foote to notice that in France where you have, to some extent, raised the standard of comfort for a great part of the population, that part of the population has re­ cognised the law of population, and has voluntarily limited its own increase. (Hear, hear.) And in every Socialist experiment in America it has been found neces­ sary to recognise the law by the very condition of their living. And whatever steps they took—whether by pre­ ventive checks of various kinds—in every case limitation of the population has been one of the primary conditions insisted on in these communities. That is, the moment you establish Socialism, even among a limited number of persons, they recognise that you must keep the balance between the arms that produce and the mouths that eat. (Cheers.) Another reason why I think the law of popu­ lation is not now seen by Socialists as it ought to be, is because of the bluncFfing way in which it has been put by many economists. I think I have mentioned before that the old wage-fund theory on which it was based has been given up. But as this law was based by economists on an economical theory now discredited, it is not wonderful that with the discredit of the theory the other theory based on it disappears from the thoughts of Socialists. And when you take these facts into consideration—the raising of the standard of comfort; the recognition that society H �98 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? must maintain its members, and that therefore every man is interested in the limitation of the family; it being then seen—as it will be then seen—that for every large family there is less leisure and more labor for the producing community, then you will have made a public opinion in favor of the limitation of the family, which is utterly impossible at the present time. (Hear, hear.) Then, again, Mr. Foote asks : How are you going to limit the number ? Are you going to imprison the parents ? H you do, the multiplication will go on as soon as the people come out of prison. (Hear, hear.) But you don’t use such arguments against imprisonment for theft. (Hear, hear.) We know that penalties practically make conscience and public opinion. But, at the same time, I very much doubt whether for the limitation of the family you would want anything more than the education, especially, of the women, and a rather stern social boycotting for those who trans­ gressed the limit too recklessly. (Cheers.) Nor is that all. I believe that one of the strongest arguments in favor of the limitation of the population will come from the women ; as you educate your women more highly, as they take part in public life, as they become more economi­ cally independent than they are to-day, your women will refuse to be mere nurses of children throughout the whole of their active life. (Cheers.) They will be willing to give all the care that is necessary for two or three children, but will refuse to have their health ruined, and the whole of public life shut to them, by having families of ten or twelve, which are practically destructive of motherly feeling as well as of happiness and comfort in the home. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote suggests that under the present con­ ditions the sickly, the scrofulous, and so on, get killed out amongst the poor. You do not kill them out from among the rich. And what I want is a public opinion to make it a crime for a diseased man or woman to transmit their disease to a child. (Cheers.) And it is public opinion that will do this better than any other way; and that public opinion I am trying to make. (Cheers.) But Mr. Foote says that I used to use stronger language on this question than I do now : and that it requires more courage to speak out to friends things they do not like, than even to face a judge and jury. I do not think I have softened my language on the population theory. (Hear, hear.) �99 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? I say now, as I said long ago, that the limitation of the family, if it stood by itself, would never remedy poverty. I pointed then to the changes which we wanted in the land laws and in other ways, side by side with the law of population, and I say the same still. I say the law of population alone is not our most important matter. It.is more important to get the right idea on the production of wealth to-day even than it is to press—as I still press— the duty of the limitation of the family. (Cheers.) I thoroughly agree with Mr. Foote, that it does need more courage to speak unpalatable truths to friends than to face judge and jury. (Hear, hear.) And I can assure him that, in my own experience, I stood before judge and jury, and lay under sentence of imprisonment, with a far lighter heart, and with a far less troubled mind, than I have felt in taking the name of Socialist, and thus setting myself against some of those with whom I have worked for the last thirteen years—(hear, hear,)—and when I have seen faces grow cold and friends grow distant, because I have dared to speak a truth unpalatable to them. (Cheers.) The Chairman : Ladies and gentlemen, in calling upon Mr. Foote this time will you allow me to say that the way in which you have listened to Mrs. Besant’s speech is very greatly to the credit of those who disagree with her. I want to appeal therefore to those who disagree with Mr. Foote not to allow themselves to be outdone in patience and courtesy. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote: Unfortunately, I and the chairman mis­ understood each other towards the close of my first speech. He said something about my having half-a-minute more, but he told me afterwards that I had three and a-half minutes, so I am to have my compensation in this speech. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant says you cannot spoil the effect of a perora­ tion a week after. It depends upon the circumstances. She says a peroration is something that influences people at the moment. That is not quite my notion of a perora­ tion. If a peroration is something that cannot subsequently be defended, I do not think it is a right thing to try to influence people with it at any moment. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant says she would compensate the Duke of Westminster in the way you heard. It is a curious thing that Mrs. Besant avoids all the ticklish parts of her case. h2 �100 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? The Duke of Westminster, as an English nobleman, has no right whatever in the land except the right which he holds legally under the Crown. The Duke of Westminster, as a peer of the realm, can be dealt with by Parliament, with the Crown’s sanction, differently from men who have purchased the land, or men who are holders of land in the sense that their small moneys, collected together in fire and fife insurance and other societies, are invested in that way. I want Mrs. Besant to tell us, not how she proposes to deal with the Duke of Westminster—with whom I, as an Individualist, believe we can deal by law—but how she proposes to deal with the hundreds and thousands of poorer persons who own smaller quantities of land—(hear, hear)— and how she proposes to deal not only with the big capita­ list who makes a fortune, but with the thousands of little capitalists, some of whom only get a bare living, and others not a much better living than the highest form of skilled labor which they happen to employ. Mrs. Besant says a man has no right to do as he pleases with his property. Aye, but what property ? Mrs. Besant has referred to land, but the law of England does not recognise private property in land—not absolute private property. The soil of England is always held under law. But I do not hold my watch under law. A capitalist does not hold his capital under law, except in the sense that the law protects him against the thief who wishes to appro­ priate it. The land, of course, has to be sold if it stands in the way of a public improvement, but the Bill which empowers the public improvement also provides for fair compensation. I want Mrs. Besant not to be merely facetious about the Duke of Westminster—as to whom I don’t care very much—but to deal with the interests of all these other persons—hundreds and thousands of our fellowcountrymen, as honest as Mrs. Besant and I, as honest as all of us here—who, with their wives and children, if they have any, must all be considered in your scheme, unless a ou are going to violate all the instincts that throb in the heart of every man with a feeling for his fellows. (Cheers.) As to population, Mrs. Besant says she would somehow deal with it by law. But she takes particularly good care not to tell us what kind of law she would put in operation. She trusts more to public opinion, however, in the long �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 101 run. That is exactly what I trust to, and public opinion grows under our Individualist system quite as much as it could under a Collectivist system. (Hear, hear.) It is true that the prejudiced jury, representing a mistaken majority, found Mrs. Besant guilty of an obscenity which she never committed. Yet at the same time, notwithstanding these occasional outbursts of bigotry, Individualist society is more and more willing to act fairly, and to allow discussion on vital subjects. (Hear, hear.) The proof of it lies in the fact that Mrs. Besant can go on, despite that verdict, advocating the very same principles for which .the jury condemned her. (Hear, hear.) Public opinion is growing, and it cannot very well be forced. Collectivist social machinery won’t, as Herbert Spencer says, produce golden actions out of leaden instincts. You have to wait. Progress is slow. Jumping at the moon is sport for lunatics. Our way in this world, set for us by nature, is steady plodding, step by step. We make some advances even on the question of population. Mrs. Besant says byand-bye women will be educated. But we are not waiting for Collectivism to educate women. (Hear.) The Education Act of 1870, passed under an Individualist state of society, provides for the education not only of every boy, but of every girl, in the State. (Hear, hear.) Girton College, University examinations for women, education in the fine arts for girls, and tutorship even at the Royal Academy— these things are not the gift of Collectivist Socialism. (Hear, hear.) Women are being educated, and all of us are glad of it. (Cheers.) I quite believe with Mrs. Besant that as women become more educated, and take a larger interest in public affairs, and think more about general questions, they will not oppose that prejudice, which they now oppose more than men, to a prudent restriction of offspring. (Cheers.) They will refuse, as Mrs. Besant well says, when their standard of comfort and feeling and education is raised, to become mere domestic drudges from the beginning to the end of their married life. We do not want Socialism to tell us that. We see the improvement of woman going on now. If Socialism disappeared to­ morrow, and was never heard of again, the cause of woman would be safe. When a great cause has raised its head from the dust, and begun to boldly challenge opposing prejudices, it must win in the long run, unless you can �102 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? crush, it by law. But the time for that is gone by, and the elevation and emancipation of woman is assured. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant says that under a Socialistic state of society the workers would see that if they bred too fast they would injure themselves. Here is a man who is earning two pounds a week. He has four children, and the fifth is coming. He says “It is hard ” ; he knows his two pounds a week is becoming relatively less and less. He knows he must keep himself and all the children he brings into existence. Yet although the burden of keeping them falls directly, obviously, perceptibly, beyond all question, upon his own shoulders, Mrs. Besant says he has no in­ ducement to refrain from breeding, but that under a Col­ lectivist state of society the inducement will be perfectly clear. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) I will deal now with Mrs. Besant’s first speech. She told us how tribes began, and as I think, quite wrongly. She said that in the tribe one man was stronger than the others and he gained the predominance. But one strong man cannot terrorise five thousand by his physical power. The five thousand could break him in a moment. Why is he the head of the tribe ? The whole explanation of it is, that tribes war against tribes, and military organisation is necessary. The military machine must be worked from one centre, with one controlling mind. A debating society, as Lord Macaulay said, never fights. A general, whether he be a tribal chief, or a Duke of Marlborough, or a Napoleon, must have absolute control, otherwise the whole business will come to grief. Savages are subordinated to chiefs because everything must be subordinated to the tribal law of self-preservation. They are obliged to protect themselves against the attacks of the predatory tribes about them. There thus arises a military state of society, entirely because of the militancy of the populations sur­ rounding the tribe, and the constant necessity of selfdefence. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant told us quite rightly that slaves were origin­ ally captives in war. That clearly shows that slavery did not begin out of the mere lust of slavery. (Hear, hear.) Originally, as you will read in many ancient scriptures the captives taken in war were slain—immolated on the altars of cruelty. But as men got a little more intelligent and a little more humane they discontinued this, and all �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 103 the captives in war became slaves. All the various castes in India and elsewhere are simply the results of so many waves of conquest sweeping over the land, the conquerors establishing themselves as rulers, and subordinating those whom they conquered. But I do not see what that has to do with Individualism. I do not propose that we should go prowling over the world, and imposing ourselves on subordinate populations. Unfortunately we are in India, and we shall have to face many difficulties before we can ■clear out of it. (Hear, hear.) But if we were not in India, what sensible man would ever propose that Englishmen should go there ? (Cheers.) How slavery arose is a very long question, and how it developed is a longer question still. But when Mrs. Besant says that slavery broke up all the ancient civilisations, I have to differ from her. What broke the power of Greece ? The greater power of Borne. Both of them were founded on slavery. What ultimately broke the great power of Home ? Was it slavery? No. It was the employment of mercenary troops, by which the Romans themselves grew out of the habit of war, lost their old instinctive valor, and so the barbarians from the north were able to overrun them. The barbarians, who overran them, brought Feudalism. Feudalism was established by the Goths upon the ruins of the Roman Empire, and that Feudalism was slavery in another form. (Hear, hear.) The serf of the soil was no better off than the ancient slave. He was really in a worse position than the. slave in the best days of the Roman Empire, when many of the leading men—artists and thinkers—were slaves. They were protected by the law then. No owner was allowed to do as he liked with his slaves. If maltreated, the slave could appeal to the tribunals, and obtain his freedom or a better master. But under Feudalism the lord was practically absolute. Out of that Feudalism our modern system has arisen. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant points to the Act of 1694—I presume— by which the English aristocracy threw off from them­ selves the burdens of Feudalism, which went with the holdership of land, and practically threw those burdens upon the shoulders of the industrial community. I should be as glad to undo that as Mrs. Besant, but I do not see how the undoing of it conflicts with the principles of Individualism, which I am here to maintain. (Hear, hear.) �104 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? Let me now deal with, something which Mrs. Besant says is Socialistic and which she claims for the principle of Socialism. She speaks of the town of Nottingham. But she might, without going to Nottingham, have found at Birmingham many years ago that the Municipality had taken over the gas supply. The Municipality may also take over the water supply. But, as I said in a previous part of this debate, no Municipality, no State, ever did, or ever will, inaugurate a new thing. (Hear, hear.) The State and the Municipality can only take over what has been begun and perfected by individual enterprise. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant says that education is Socialistic. I hope not, I believe not. What is public education founded upon? Upon Socialism? No. Upon Individualism, upon the right of every individual brought into the world to have those duties performed that are involved in the obli­ gation which the parents undertake. (Hear, hear.) A parent is forced to find education for his child, but the duty had been so long neglected that the State had to say— “ The child, who is an individual as well as the parent, the child towards whom the parent has contracted obliga­ tions, shall be sent to school”. (Hear, hear.) And as the State made it compulsory, the State had to find the machinery. It was a question of ways and means. The easiest method was to establish School Boards all over the country. And that education does not in any way interfere with competition. Certainly that education does not dimi­ nish competition. That education gives all the children brighter minds, more knowledge, keener faculties, to start with some measure of equality in that great race of life, where the prize is to the swift, and the victory to the strong. And that law—the law of all struggle, and the law of all progress—cannot be set aside by all the devices of all the dreamers in the world. (Cheers.) Annie Besant : Doubtless, from the brevity with which I had to make my opening statements, Mr. Foote did not quite catch my idea in dealing with slavery in connexion with the downfall of the older civilisations. I alleged that they fell from the great division between the proprie­ tary and the unpropertied classes, caused by the slavery on which they were founded. And the reason why they fell was chiefly this: that those who did not labor, in their idleness grew luxurious, effeminate, and careless. (Hear, �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 105 hear.) That happened in Greece and it happened in Rome. (Cheers.) The earlier strength of Borne broke down Greece where the slave canker had existed longer, and had made these idle, useless classes unable to defend themselves. The younger vigor of the Goths broke down Rome when the sloth made possible by the slave-class had destroyed the manhood of those who possessed them. And so in England the upper classes are growing, as the upper classes of Greece and Rome grew, luxurious, effeminate, caring more for soft living than for hard thinking. And for them, living on a vast and degraded population, there is the danger of a similar fall to that which wrecked both Greece and Rome. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote repeated the state­ ment that no municipality had ever taken up a new thing. But he appears to have ignored the fact which I stated that the only bodies which had taken up the hydraulic machine for supplying water at high pressure were munici­ palities, and that that fact was fatal to the whole of the argu­ ment that the State can never inaugurate an improvement. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote ignores the fact, and simply repeats the statement. \ I go back to Mr. Foote’s earlier speech. He asks once more, Why do we not make a Socialist oasis, and he says: Because Socialism could not hold its own against competi­ tion. It is true that a small number of Socialists, who are poor, entirely without plant, without accumulated capital, cannot hold their own against the vast accumulated capital which is in the hands of the supporters of the competitive system to-day. (Hear, hear.) The competitors have the railways, the great carrying companies, the canals; they have a vast store of goods and of accumulated wealth of every kind. It is not reasonable that a few of those who have helped to make this wealth should go outside, and, practically without capital, begin a fresh accumulation with the hope of being able to hold their own against the results of the robbery of their rights for centuries. (Cheers.) Such a proposal is a pro­ posal utterly unworthy of consideration. The Socialists mean to have the railways and the canals and the plant that they and their fellows have made, and not to leave these to the competitive system whilst they go out naked into the wilderness to make more. (Cheers.) Then Mr. Foote stated that a very rich man cannot eat his income, �106 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? and he told us of a not very clear-sighted agricultural laborer who said that the rich man had not a bigger stomach than he had. The agricultural laborer wanted more education, and then he would have seen a little fur­ ther, for he would have seen that the rich man with his servants—the domestics, the gardeners, and the game­ keepers—has a hundred stomachs to fill, and fills them all out of the produce of the laboring classes who support him. (Cheers.) It is quite true that a Vanderbilt cannot eat up the whole of his income; but he can get a lot of lazy persons to hang on to him; and that is where the mischief of these very wealthy men is shown. And if the agricultural laborer had been able to see a little fur­ ther he would have seen a multiplication of stomachs feeding on other men’s labor, which is the result of the very wealthy classes. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr. Foote says that all the servants and others employed by the wealthy would be idle if capital were abolished. He threatened us with 12,000 trades—all the members of which would be thrown helpless on the world. But why so ? A large number of trades would, I admit, fall out of existence in a healthy and rational condition of society. Those trading in jewels, which have only their value for show; traders in many articles which are utterly worthless, and which are simply bought by persons who do not know how to waste their money fast enough—these useless trades would fall out under Socialism ; and the men who used to make so many articles of luxury for the idle and the rich would be employed in making useful and beautiful articles for the masses of the community whose wider wealth would enable them to purchase them, and would multiply a hun­ dred fold the commodities which would be wanted for the comfort of the whole of the community. (Hear, hear.) For what you have got is so much human labor to be utilised in the best way ; and while it makes useless articles and luxuries for the wealthy, you are depriving those who are wanting absolute necessaries of the results of labor in which they have a right to share. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote spoke of productive and non-productive work. I object to the phrase. Useful and useless work are better terms. It would be far better to speak of useful work, when the work done supplies anything to society of which society stands in need. (Hear, hear.) I draw no distinc­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 107 tion in usefulness between the teacher and the grower of corn, between the author of a great book and the man who builds a useful house. Society has many needs, and they all have to be supplied; and any man who fulfils a function that is useful—that man deserves his place in society. There is no sense in the distinctions between pro­ ductive and non-productive work, which took John Stuart Mill into the absurdity of calling the work of an artist who painted a picture productive work, whereas the work of the man who played a sonata on the piano he called non-productive work. These distinctions are idle and useless, and the sooner we get rid of them the better. (Cheers.) Then Mr. Foote says to me : I do not care what you do with the Duke of Westminster, but how will you deal with the poor men who have their own freeholds and a little money invested. Mr. Foote : As a point of order, I did not say I did not care, but that I did not care much. Annie Besant : I should suggest to Mr. Foote as I did before that that lies quite as much on him as a land nationaliser as on me as a Socialist. I challenged him on that point, and he avoided it. I said I should have the same law for the rich as for the poor. I should destroy private property in land completely and utterly. But I would make this distinction: Where a man had earned money and invested his savings in the land, I should admit that he had a right to the usufruct of that land during his life, oi’ else to receive back the sum he invested in it—without payment of interest—if he preferred so to receive it; and I should certainly in this case give full compensation on this principle, that you may compensate a man fully when you are dealing with what he has absolutely earned, but there is no need to compensate a man fully when you are taking from him what he did not earn and what he became possessed of by the labor of others. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote spoke of dealing with thousands of poor capitalists barely getting a living now. Socialism will put them in the way of getting more than a bare living, and so they will profit by Socialism. And the result, we say, of your competition is to make the fives of the poor capitalists a burden and misery; more and more of the wealth is going into the hands of the few, and all these little fishes will get �108 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? swallowed up by the big ones. (Hear, hear.) We want to save them from this misery by placing the distribution of wealth in the hands of organised societies, so that there may not be so many competing in getting a living out of a small amount of capital, but rather that they may be in the position of acting as functionaries of society, fulfilling useful work for which they would receive full and complete remuneration. (Hear, hear.) Then there again I ought to say that where any small capitalist had made his capital himself I should be prepared to fully restore to him any­ thing he had himself earned. The difference would be that he would not be able to employ it as he had been used to do in simply appropriating his neighbor’s labor, but would have the result of his own work without being able to get interest upon it—without being able to make money From another person’s labor. Then Mr. Foote says land is held under law, but he does not hold his watch under law. I do not understand in what other fashion he does hold it. If it were held without law probably that watch would not remain long in his pocket. As a matter of fact every right in a civilised community is based on and defended by law. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote says public opinion grows under Individualism. I have not denied it. I say that probably it would grow faster under Socialism if we may draw conclusions from analogy. Take the force of trade public opinion within a trade union. Public opinion where men are brought close to­ gether works far more strongly on them and influences them much more than it can do under our present condition of struggling. (Hear, hear.) And I agree again with Mr. Foote that public opinion cannot be forced. But public opinion can be educated, and Socialists are trying to edu­ cate the public opinion which they know will bring about changes in these matters. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr. Foote says that the Education Act was passed in an Individual­ istic State. Not quite so. The Education Act was passed in a State undergoing transition from Individualism to Socialism, and it is a mark of the growing Socialist feeling which is forcing these changed measures on the legislature. And the thorough Individualists—take men like Auberon Herbert and Herbert Spencer—admit this with regard to State education, and point to the growing Socialism in legis­ lation, which they contend is a danger. But Mr. Foote, in �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 109 legislation from his Individualistic standpoint, accepts the fruit of Socialism, and then abuses the very tree from which it comes. Mr. Foote says, “ We don’t want Collectivism to raise women”. Don’t you? The Socialist body, as a body, is the only one that claims complete equality in every respect for women. (Cheers.) The old Radicals are not sound upon it; some of them are in favor of it, and some are against it. You find some Radicals everywhere denying equality to women, and trying to keep them out even from the rights of citizenship. There is no body in the world save the Socialist, whether you take them in England, or in America, or in Germany, or among the Nihilists in Russia, there is no other body where you find the absolute independence and equality of women pro­ claimed as one of the cardinal points in their creed. (Cheers.) That was one of the things that attracted me to the Socialist party, because they do claim absolute economical independence for women; because they do claim absolute equality for her; and because in Russia, above all, they have never grudged to women the place of danger, but have stood side by side with her in conspiracy, in peril, aye, and in the very worst prisons and on the scaf­ fold. (Hear, hear.) They have never said, Your sex dis­ qualifies you for the post of danger; our strength shall guard your weakness. And this is the noblest thing which Socialism has to say—there is no distinction of class, no distinction of sex. It destroys every distinction and every enmity, and places men and women on one plat­ form of duty and of right. (Cheers.) And when Mr. Foote tells us we do not need Socialism to do this, my answer is, only under Socialism is that complete enfran­ chisement of women possible. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote says slavery existed under feudalism. It has existed under every Individualistic condition of society, and it must so be if the race is always to be to the swiftest and the victory of the battle always to be with the strongest; for if this is to be taken as meaning absolute muscular ability and absolute want of scruples of conscience and human sympathy, then, indeed, no true equality is possible. But, as I believe, real individuality will only become possible under Socialism —(hear, hear)—no Individualism is possible while men are struggling for bare life. So long as they have to think •only of food there is no possibility of that brighter day of �110 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? progress to a higher future. And only as you free them, from that continual want; only as you secure to them the necessities of existence; only as you destroy monopoly of that material for the production of wealth on which this controversy really turns; only as you destroy that mono­ poly can you have the leisure for the possibility of culture, the possibility of refinement, and the possibility of time, for that great effort which will change the masses of the people from the drudges they are to-day into the cultured men and women who shall form our Socialist Common­ wealth. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote: Mrs. Besant gave us another very glowing picture of what Socialism would do for women. It is all future tense with her. She plays the role of the prophet throughout. Socialism may do this and that, and Socialism may not do it. But when Mrs. Besant says that Socialists are the only body who proclaim, and have proclaimed, equality between man and woman—by which I suppose she means legal equality, for otherwise the word can have no meaning—I happen to remember that a body with which I have had the honor to work for many years, and with which Mrs. Besant had the honor to work before ever she joined the Socialists, not only proclaimed that equality, but in practice made no distinction whatever between the sexes. (Cheers.) The best way to promote the equality of the sexes is not to be always shouting it, but to practise it. If you treat women as though they were men’s equals you will do far more than by the most ardent declamation. (Hear, hear.) I happen also to belong to one of the largest Radical societies in London—the Metropolitan Radical Federation, which is an organisation of nearly all the workmen’s and Radical clubs in the metropolis. When the programme was drawn up one gentleman with­ drew because adult suffrage was carried instead of man­ hood suffrage. Only one withdrew, and all the rest laughed at him. So I do not think Mrs. Besant is quite right in saying that Radicals, here, there, and everywhere, are opposed to woman suffrage. (Hear, hear.) I know that Admiral Maxse and Mr. Cremer are opposed to woman suf­ frage; but does Mrs. Besant mean to say that every Socialist is prepared to defend it? (Cries of “Yes”.) I doubt it. Mt. Belfort Bax, who is one of the leading Socialist writers, calls woman suffrage a bourgeois superstition, and �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? Ill says that as women are numerically the majority, it would be handing over political power absolutely into their hands. (Cheers.) That is pretty much the view which Admiral Maxse takes. But I quite agree that neither Radicalism nor Socialism is to be judged by an individual member. The great body of Radicals are in favor of woman suffrage. I do not see what is to be gained by charging on them what they are not guilty of. (Hear, hear.) Again, we are told by Mrs. Besant that I claimed for my Individualism all that has been done from her prin­ ciples in a transition state of society. But how does she know this is a transition state of society ? How does she know that Socialism is going to win? (Hear, hear.) It is all prophecy. She cannot know that Socialism is going to succeed. I don’t say it won’t, but I don’t think it will —(hear, hear)—and I deny Mrs. Besant’s right to claim that we are in a transition state of society. Time will show. I have my opinion about it as well as she, and I have quite as much right to my opinion as she has to hers. (Hear, hear.) As to the difference between productive and non-pro­ ductive labor, Mrs. Besant says there is none, or it is not worth taking notice of. She says the difference is between useful and useless labor. Permit me to say that in the long run it comes to very much the same thing. When John Stuart Mill was dealing with productive and non­ productive labor, he was dealing with it simply as an econo­ mist, who was considering the laws of the production and distribution of material wealth. The man who plays a sonata does not produce a material thing, but the man who carves a beautiful statue produces something which has a market value—something which could be put into the market and sold. Mill was drawing a real and not a fanciful distinction, without being concerned at all, as an economist, with the moral or aesthetic aspects of the matter. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant comments upon my allusion to the facetious laborer, and says that he had a good deal to learn. Un­ doubtedly he had; but not as to the dimensions of their respective stomachs. (Laughter.) Mrs. Besant says that a rich man gets a lot of idle persons about him. They are not always idle. The real fact is, as I said, that the man of wealth gets about him a lot of persons whom he employs �112 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? in labor which in non-productive. That is the whole gravamen of the charge. I am not sure that all the rich men who employ labor are idle. Some of them have to work very hard, and some of the persons they employ have to work hard, although their labor produces nothing, and does not help to swell the material, or intellectual, or moral wealth of the community. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant thinks that a large number of the twelve thousand trades I referred to are useless. (Hear, hear.) But if she looks at the names of many of them she will see that most of them are not employed by rich persons. They are trades of all sorts and kinds and descriptions. It appears to me that Mrs. Besant does not really see the gravity of the proposals she is making. She does not seem to see that the labor in these industries will have to be organised. She does not seem to see that Collectivism, if it were agreed to, would have to face tremendous difficulties. She does not seem to see that it would have to provide by sheer foresight the machinery for carrying out all the multifarious labors of society, that are now done by indi­ viduals finding out the proper spheres for their operations. (Cheers.) Socialistic experiments, Mrs. Besant says, could not be expected to succeed. I know it. I agree with her. I think they will never succeed, except occasionally here and there, as in America where the ordinary laws of human society are contravened. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant referred to the way in which they dealt with the population question. Yes, and in one of the communities, owing to the religious principle, or, as I should prefer to call it, the principle of fanaticism, they had only two babies in twelve months among two hundred and fifty adults. (Laughter.) I know very well, in a small community like that, you can deal with the population question. I know that in a small community, which is recruited from all the cranks of the world, you can hold men together by a principle which the general run of humanity would not tolerate. Mrs. Besant says that Socialism would fail because it has not possession of all the railways, canals, etc. I fail to under­ stand this. The railways will carry your Socialist produce, as well as Individualist produce, and at the same rates to the same markets. You do not want to take over the railways in order to be put on an equality with Indi­ �113 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? vidualists. If your produce will compete successfully with theirs you will beat them, but not else. You know better than to try it. (Cheers.) You say you cannot get capital now. I pointed in my previous speech to the fact that trades unions have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in their strikes and in resisting lock-outs—in many cases justifiably, but in some cases not—but they have not started, as far as I am aware, a single concern for the production of commodities, under organised, voluntary, co-operative labor. (Cheers.) And why have they not done it? Because they are not yet ripe for it. Again, in the co-operative societies that distribute—and those are the general body of co-operative societies in our country—that sell goods in the course of a year to the amount of over £26,000,000 in value, you find that a great difficulty is to find proper managers, and a greater difficulty still is, how to keep them. (Hear, hear.) They have also found it exceedingly difficult to produce their own goods, for they generally find that they can buy in the open market the produce of Individualist enterprise better and cheaper than they can make for themselves. (Hear, hear.) If they could produce better and cheaper themselves, they would do so to-morrow. But distribution is one thing, and production is quite another. (Hear, hear.) What does the State produce ? What did the State ever produce ? What can the State ever produce? Water, gas? When Individualism has once produced these the question is mainly one of distribu­ tion. Mrs. Besant says that somebody has invented an improvement in water-supply and that municipalities are taking it up. Well, I have not much information on that point. Mrs. Besant does not say who the man is, or what the invention is. I should like to investigate it before I take a mere statement like that absolutely. Not that I distrust Mrs. Besant, but when a statement passes from one to another, although there may be no intention to ex­ aggerate, there may be some exaggeration. I should like to investigate it fully before I dealt with that improved machine. But meanwhile I will say this : No municipality invented it. It was invented by an individual seeking his own gain. (Cheers.) Then again, education is not pro­ duction. It is a question of distribution; the State does not produce its schoolmasters ; the State does not produce its scholars. All the State does is to put the children and i �114 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? the teachers into juxtaposition. It is a question of distri­ bution. (Hear, hear.) The Post Office itself is simply a question of distribution. Our Socialist friends often attach great importance to it, and I find Mrs. Besant’s colleagues introducing it as a very fine Socialistic experi­ ment. But let us see. The Post Office produces nothing. It distributes an article which is peculiarly imperishable. It is not like meat, or fish, or tea, or sugar. Letters, newspapers, and book-post parcels, whatever the climate or the temperature may be, whether it be wet or dry, hot or cold, arrive at their destination pretty much what they were when they were posted. (Hear, hear, and a voice : “What about the parcels post ? ”.) I will say a word about that in a moment. The Post Office is also protected by law against competition. The Post Office is allowed to charge its own price. And how is the work done under these conditions ? There is no datum to go upon in deciding whether the Post Office is cheap or not. You have no private enterprise competing with it, for competition is prevented by law. But here and there an illustration does sometimes arise which shows that the Post Office is not so cheap after all. The Post Office says it carries letters from one part of England to another for one penny, just as it carries a letter round the corner. But the cost is nearly the same, whether the letter is carried round the corner or to Newcastle. The difference is simply in the cost of the transit paid to the railway company. The labor of collecting letters, sorting them, and delivering them, is the same whether they go to the next street or to Scotland. (Hear, hear.) It was found, even in the old coaching days, that the cost of taking a letter to Edinburgh was only the fraction of a farthing, and that all the other expense was incurred in collecting and distributing and other forms of labor. The other day I had to send a parcel across London. The Post Office wanted eighteenpence, but the Parcels Delivery Company wanted fourpence. Of course, I sent it by the latter. This is a good illustration of the advantage of private com­ petition. Individualism will beat your Socialist produc­ tion or distribution right out. You know it. You are afraid to compete with it. Therefore you want the law to crush all rivalry. You would show Socialism the brightest star by darkening all the rest of the sky. (Cheers.) �115 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? FOURTH NIGHT. Mr. 2Eneas Smith in the Chair. The Chairman : Ladies and gentlemen, I am sure the debate to-night will require little preface from me. Will you allow me to impress upon you the absolute necessity of attention to the speakers ? The turn of a word, or even an emphasis, may affect the meaning; and as this debate is intended for others besides those who are here, I am sure you will see the necessity of paying attention to both sides. (Hear, hear.) I will now call upon Mr. Foote. Mr. Foote: Although we have occupied three evenings in discussing this question, there remains very much still to be said—so much, indeed, that I shall, if possible, keep straight on on my own lines this evening, leaving Mrs. Besant to reply in her speeches to what I say. As on last Wednesday, I prefer to begin with a few figures. Figures are facts—or should be ; and there can be little dispute as to the truth of the old proverb that an ounce of fact is worth a pound of theory. Mrs. Besant proposes as a Socialist that all capital as well as land should be appropriated by the State. (Hear, hear.) And I can quite understand that a large number of persons who are not much accustomed to analysing figures, and who see wealth which they cair never hope to possess often massed in the hands of one man, fancy that if the State did appropriate all the-land and all the capital, there would be such an extraA ordinary increase in the earnings, or at any rate in the • y receipts, of the masses of the people, that the millennium might almost be thought to have arrived. Now I am really sorry to say that figures do not support this enchant­ ing prospect. The Socialists are very fond of saying that Mr. Giffen holds a brief for the capitalists. (Hear, hear.) In fact, Mrs. Besant has said it in this debate. Yet I notice that whenever Mr. Giffen serves their turn, they use his figures without the least scruple, and only raise o'bjeci 2 �116 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? tions when the figures seem to go in the opposite direction. It seems to me that if Mr. Giffen’s figures are not correct, and the Socialists know it, they should compile a different set of statistics, and let us see what, according to Socialistic research, the real facts of the case are. (Hear, hear.) But fortunately for my purpose Mrs. Besant has, in one of her articles in her magazine, virtually admitted, with respect to Mr. Giffen’s division of the £1,200,000,000 at which he places the annual income of this country, that he is practically right. Now the £1,200,000,000 is divided as follows. Capital, according to Mr. Giffen’s figures, and according to Mrs. Besant’s admission, receives £400,000,000, although on that point, I think it only fair to say that Mr Giffen thinks the amount is relatively exaggerated; but still he puts it at the highest possible figure. Working incomes that are taxed amount to £180,000,000; and the working classes receive incomes which are not assessed amounting, to £620,000,000. Now that £400,000,000 which capital receives undoubtedly looks a large sum, At a superficial glance, it may seem that Mrs. Besant is perfectly right when she contends that what she calls idle capital ought not to receive this large amount every year in the shape of interest. (Hear.) But let us look'below the surface, and see what this £400,000,000 return on capital really implies. Of this amount, I think, Mrs. B esant is prepared to admit that something like£100,000,000 comes as return on English capital invested abroad. Now if the Socialists appropriated all the capital in this country, unless all the world were socialised at the same time— which is very much of a dream—it would be impossible to exploit that hundred millions. It is paid by foreign countries, and foreign countries would in all probability continue to pay the interest on these investments to the persons who made them. This sum must therefore be deducted. It is not a sum which can by any means be appropriated. Next, Mr. Giffen states—and I think he cannot be far from the truth—that about £200,000,000 every year are added to the amount of the national capital, which is, of course, required to find employment for the increasing number of the workers; for although the law of population is going to be dealt with in the Socialist millenium, it is not dealt with at present, and it requires more capital to keep a larger number of persons every �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 117 year in productive work. There would, therefore, only remain £100,000,000, if so much as that, to be seized, or appropriated, or rescued, according as Mrs. Besant pleases to term it, and to be distributed among the workers. Now if we take the workers as the main body of the population, and I presume Mrs. Besant would agree to that, this £100,000,000 would only amount to about one shilling a week, or less than three pounds per year. If the whole of the £180,000,000 at present received by skilled labor, either of hand or head, should also be appropriated, there would be a further sum of from five to six pounds a year for each person available, the total amount thus obtained coming to about eight pounds a year per head, or in other words about three shillings a week. Now is that three shillings a week anything like what Mrs. Besant’s picture of the Socialist millenium implies ? To my mind it is not. And that amount could not be increased unless we found some means of increasing, first the sum total of the capital of the country, and next the income of the country which arises from the productive use of that capital. (Hear, hear.) Now let us look at these figures in another way. The total income of the country, setting aside nearly £100,000,000 derived from foreign investments, and £200,000,000 saved every year to increase the capital for further production, amounts to about £900,000,000. Taking the entire popu­ lation of the country, it amounts, roughly speaking, to £20 per head. That is, for a family of five there would be an income of £120. Of course this implies that the present long hours of labor are to continue, and the extensive employment of women and children as at present. But if the hours of labor were shortened, if only the adult males were employed, if the females and the children were no longer allowed to engage in industrial pursuits as they now do, you would probably have little more than half that sum; that is something over £60 per family of five. (Hear, hear.) But I will take it at the outside, and regard the total for a family of five as £120. On the most sanguine estimate then, by equalising everybody all round, there would only be £2 6s. a week for every family; and that wage would have to be made up to the inferior workers by taking from the reward of skilled labor. There is no escape from this dilemma that I can perceive. Perhaps �118 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? Mrs. Besant. may be more sagacious. If so, all the better for her position. But if she cannot see any escape it simply comes to this: that unless you can exploit the wages of skilled labor, and give a portion of them to unskilled labor, the millenium would be as far off as ever. (Hear, hear.) Now I deny that that would be right, to begin with. And I deny, in the second place, that it would be economically sound. (Hear, hear.) Not only is skill necessary, but I venture to say the reward of unskilled labor is greater where skill directs it than it could be with­ out that direction, even if skilled labor takes what seems to unskilled labor a preposterous share. (Cheers.) If you contravene this, by all means let us see on what grounds you contravene it. It will not do simply to say the wages of superintendence are too high, or that skill receives too much. I say that skill will be paid. (Hear, hear.) I say that if you don’t pay in our country for skill it will emigrate to countries where it would find its proper reward. (Cheers.) Now having adduced these figures, which are at least worthy of some attention, I propose to deal with some of the practical difficulties of Mrs. Besant’s scheme. You will perhaps remember that I said she had not by an effort of constructive imagination attempted to show us that her scheme would work well in practice. But that is absolutely necessary. Any scheme can be made to look well on paper. (Hear, hear.) Any scheme which can put its good side forward, and never have any of its ill aspects presented, would naturally gain a great deal of acceptance among the unthinking, and a good deal of applause among those whose hearts on this subject are a good deal bigger than their heads. (Cries of “Oh, oh”.) I am sorry that any gentleman should resent the idea that he has a big heart, and if it pains him to think so I will retract the observation. (Cheers and laughter.) Unfortunatelv what­ ever scheme you propose would have to work in practice with the same old human nature we all know. (Hear, hear.) I have said that in my opinion Mrs. Besant takes too optimistic a view of human nature. That is not a matter we can easily discuss, because all people differ more or less in their estimate of human nature, and the thing must be left for overyone to decide for himself. But certainly there is a great deal of improvidence in human nature. �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 119 There is a great of want of forethought in human nature. There is a great deal of stupidity in human nature. (Laugh­ ter.) There is a great deal of idleness in human nature. (Hear, hear.) If you have a scheme which looks excellent on paper, promising to work with a brand-new form of human nature, in which all the old evils are eliminated and only its better qualities survive, naturally you have not a very difficult task before you. But taking human nature as we know it, leaving a slight margin for probable improvement in the immediate future, let us see how this scheme of Mrs. Besants would be likely to work. First let us deal with its economical aspect. Mrs. Besant holds— following Gronlund in this, as she follows him in so many other points—that the industries of the country would be conducted by groups of workers holding capital—that is holding all the machinery and all the tools, every kind of plant and every kind of structure necessary for carrying on their trade. Now as I pointed out in a previous part of this discussion there are no fewer than twelve thousand different trades tabulated by the Registrar General. At the outset it looks an extremely difficult thing for nominees of the State, public committees, or what not, to decide how much capital is the proper amount for each of these twelve thousand groups. I should be very sorry to sit on the committee myself. (Laughter.) It would tax more powers than I possess. But as very sensible persons are going to turn up in the immediate future, that may not be a very great difficulty after all. (Laughter and hear, hear.) Now I put it to Mrs. Besant that these groups would either be related to each other under a central Board, or they would be separate. In either case you would have to face one of two evils. If they are connected together under one Board, if they have all the capital necessary to conduct their enterprise, if they also have complete control over it so that they can fix their wages and decide the prices of the commodities which they will put into the market, all the community will be absolutely at the mercy of any particular group; and if the group be the producers of one of the prime necessaries of life, in a manufacturing country like ours, the dependence of the rest of the com­ munity upon it would be something shocking to contem­ plate. (Hear, hear.) Now suppose the groups are separate. Then the competition which Mrs. Besant so �120 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? much, dreads will simply continue—for group will still compete with group. I suppose people will not be obliged to purchase from whatever group the committee may specify. The better kinds of work would, of course, be done by the better kinds of workmen, and these would gradually find each other out. They would group together, and the most skilled groups would get the largest share of public support, while the unskilled would be gradually driven out of employment, and in all periods of commercial distress they would be thrown upon the community, whowould have to be responsible for their support. (Cheers.) Even if all your groups were connected under one Board, you would have the evils of competition, because the groups of persons in similar industries in other countries would compete with ours in the general market. In fact, as I have said before, you could not by any mechanism destroy that competition, which is not a hindrance to progress, but rather, as I hold, the very essence of progress, stringing the faculties of men in the great battle of life, where if occasionally the sluggish are left behind, there is reward for those who have the courage and the energy to hold their own. And this applies to the great mass of the people. Even in the greatest commercial crisis—and you hear so much now in the papers about public distress—the great majority of the workers are in fair remunerative employ­ ment. It is only a small percentage who are out of work, depending upon public or upon private charity. (Hear, hear.) I should like to know how these groups are going to settle prices. Suppose a group fixes the price of an article, and says, “ That is what it takes us to produce it ” ? Who is to estimate this ? There is a very good way of estima­ ting whether a thing is offered at the right price or not now. Supply and demand settles it in the open market. But if' the price is to be fixed by a group, then one of two things would happen—either that group would be able to exact something which under the present competitive system it would not be able to get from the community, or else all the other groups would raise their prices as well, and I need not say that a common rise of prices would leave things exactly the same as before, without the least advan­ tage to anybody concerned. (Hear, hear.) Next, I should like to know whether foreign compe­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 121 tition would not have something to do with the price of commodities in our own country even under Socialism. All the world is some day to be Socialised, but still it will take a good deal of time. Perhaps it may be said that the Social Democrats are making advances in Germany. (Cheers.) Well, perhaps so; but if you were to ask the Social Democrats of Germany to sit down and write out what they all want, you would find there are large differ­ ences between them. In my opinion, the social democracy of Germany is largely a reaction against the oppressive militarism of Bismarck and Moltke. (Hear, hear.) If the country were allowed, not only nominal, but actual free institutions, we should hear a great deal less of fanciful schemes and extreme ideas. (Cheers.) I should also like to know how wages are to be settled. Mrs. Besant says in one of her pamphlets that the worker would have control over the price of his own labor, exactly as he has now. Well, I fail to see this. Wages would have to be fixed by a committee, and from what I know of human nature I should think it highly probable, if there are eleven commonly skilled persons and one exceptionally skilled person, that they would pull him down to their economical level. (Hear, hear.) I believe that if salaries had to be fixed, salaries would be fixed by the vast majority pretty much on their own level, and in that case, as I have said before, I believe they would drive skill out of the market. (Hear, hear.) But how would the wages of the general run of workers be fixed ? How could it be fixed, in the long run, except by the market value of'lhe commodities they produced ? Well, that is exactly how wages are fixed, in the long run, now. There would have to be a return on capital, as there is now. There would have to be, if your industrial enterprises are to be fairly successful, the same payments for skill as at present. Then, if the groups were overrun, as many of them would be, owing to the pressure of popu­ lation ; if the lower unskilled labor-market were flooded by this growth of population—a disaster to which the higher skilled groups would be less subject; then wages would gradually get lower and lower. The only remedy would be to raise prices. But that is impossible. In the long run the only way of fixing wages is leaving it to be determined by the price of the commodity; and the price �122 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? of the commodity in the open market, no matter whatever Socialism may do, would inevitably be determined by the great economical law of supply and demand. (Cheers.) Next, I should like to know how you are going to settle the question of occupations. Mrs. Besant thinks it would be pretty much the same as now, and that if a particular trade were flooded, a man would have to go into something else—or rather a boy, for that is the end of life at which you begin learning a business. Well, that may seem very nice to some people, but to my mind it seems an intolerable tyranny. (Hear, hear.) Occupations are not so easily settled. There would, of course, be a rush for the best kind of work. Who is to settle who shall have them ? Would it not be a question of first come first served ? And would not those who got inside stand as a rampart to guard the rings, and keep outsiders from coming in and lowering the wages of their privileged groups. (Cheers.) The inferior groups would naturally take all the rest. But suppose you had a more ideal system, and the occupations were determined by fitness. How will you estimate the fitness ? Who is to decide whether a gloomy, melancholy youth like James Watt has in him the capacity which he manifests in after life ? Who is to decide whether Shakspere, running away from home, is going to be the mightiest poet in the world ? (Cheers.) Who is to decide whether Robert Burns at the plough-tail is to be the greatest glory of Scotland? (Cheers.) Who is to decide these things ? You cannot decide them by forethought. You can only allow them to be decided by Nature herself, giving free play and exercise to all quali­ ties, and letting the highest and the best come to the front. ■( Cheers.) Then, of course, in all societies there is a great deal of •dirty and irksome work to be done. (Hear, hear.) It is idle to shun facts. I have said before in this debate, and I repeat it now, that the sure sign of a man of judgment is the recognition of a fact as unalterable, and the sure sign of a fool is the inability to recognise that facts are unalterable. Now, this dirty and irksome work would have to be performed by somebody. Mrs. Besant thinks that in the Socialist State there will be a much greater mixture of labor than at present. She says the clerk will be as ready to fill the cart as a carter, and that the carter �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 123 will be as ready to handle the pen as the clerk. (Laughter.) I do not believe it. Still, I do not deny Mrs. Besant her right to believe it. What is the fact at present ? The fact is, human nature consists of all levels—from Newton and Shakspere to the lowest forms of mentality outside the walls of a lunatic asylum. There are all grades. What to one man is utterly disgusting, to another man is scarcely irksome. What to a man of very fine tastes and feelings would be simply intolerable, to another man would be simply something which he would perhaps rather avoid, but it does not make his daily life a burden, and his nightly life sleepless. (Hear, hear.) Now, at present the lower forms of human nature fall into positions where they do the more irksome and dirty work, and it is less irksome and disagreeable to them than to others. (Hear, hear, and “Oh, oh.”) If you were to put Shakspere, if you were to put a highly skilled physician, or a consummate artist, to the same kind of labor which is done as a matter of course by some of the coarser human organisms, it would be infinitely more distressing to them. (Hear, hear.) And I say that generally the finer intellect goes with finer tastes. (Hear, hear.) But suppose this dirty work, this irksome work—as Mrs. Besant proposes— should be divided among all. What would be the result ? Here is a skilled surgeon who has to perform the most delicate operations. With a sensitive touch, the lancet being inside the skin and invisible, he has to discriminate between one tissue and another, and the life or death of the patient depends upon his hand not swerving a hair’sbreadth from the right line. To tell me that that man can go out for half-an-hour to fill the place of a carter, and come back retaining his previous fine skill, is to tell me something utterly repugnant to common-sense. (Cheers.) I shall conclude this half-hour’s speech—for I have a good deal more to urge—by dealing with the question of amusements. All theatres, concert rooms, parks, public galleries, museums, etc., are to be regulated by State com­ mittees. Fancy a State committee trying to manage the Lyceum Theatre. (Laughter.) Fancy a State committee dictating what Mr. Irving shall play. Fancy a State committee deciding all these things. What would happen ? The great general average of low taste would swamp the better taste. The average taste, I believe, would not be �124 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? for Patti, but for Jenny Hill. (Hear, hear.) Those whowanted the higher and better forms of amusement would be asked if they were so much better than their neighbors, and whether what was good enough for Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson, was not good enough for all the rest. (Cheers, and hear, hear.) I am not surprised at that “ hear, hear ”, but I am sorry. I say that the better forms of amuse­ ment suit the better natures. The highest natures require the highest forms of recreation. Under the present system they can gratify their tastes. But if all the means of pro­ duction, all the capital of the country, all the halls, and all the theatres, are to be under State regulation, the great mass of lower tastes will swamp the superior. In­ stead of the world being advanced in all those higher qualities that are of the very essence of progress, it would be driven back, generation after generation, until in the course of time we should return to the savagery and anarchy from which we have emerged. (Great cheers.) Annie Besant : Friends, in making my last half hour’s speech in this debate, I propose to mark exactly the stage that we have reached; to note what are the difficulties that I have put before Mr. Foote, which he has not met, and to point out also how many of the difficulties that he has raised are difficulties of the nature of a nightmare rather than of reality. The position that I put first in this debate was, that so long as private property existed in the material necessary for wealth-production then whether you take the theory of political economy, or whether you take the facts of society around you, you find that that property in the material of wealth-production must result in the continued subjection of the wage­ earners, and in the impossibility of the masses rising far above the level of subsistence. I put that to Mr. Foote first as a fair deduction made by the leading economists of our own times ; and next, as proved by the facts of society visible to us as we study the pheenomena around us. I pointed out to him thefactthat in every civilised country that result had followed from the appropriation, that in every civilisation around you, you had the extreme of wealth and the extreme of poverty. That central proposition has only been met by raising difficulties in the details of its possible application, and not by grappling with it; not by showing us how these evils might be prevented while private pro­ �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 125 perty in those materials remained, but only by asking us how, in a variety of minute details, are you going to try to apply it, and how are you going to try to work out your new system; and my answer to that is, that difficulties in the way of application are difficulties in the way of every veforming body—(cheers)—and that while those difficulties are, as I put it to you the first night, a reason for caution in our movement, they are no reason for despair. And I pointed out to him, and he never tried to answer the diffi­ culty^—that every difficulty of detail that he put to me with regard to the total material for wealth-production was an equal difficulty on his own shoulders with respect to the nationalisation of the land, or to that half-and-half Socialism which he advocates without knowing the principle which underlies it, and the results that would flow from it. (Cheers.) I put to him on the next night on which I led the debate the historical difficulty, that every civilisation in which this private property had existed had its pro­ prietary and its slave classes. I pointed out to him that on that division of classes each civilisation in its turn had been wrecked; that the upper classes grew effeminate, lazy, and luxurious, while the lower class were degraded, helpless, without self-respect. I pointed out to him that in the older ones we had chattel slaves, in the Middle Ages we had serfs, and in our own times we have wage slaves ; and I showed him that the difficulties on which the other civilisations had been wrecked were difficulties in our own time. Yet he never tried to meet that position, but simply sneered at my raising a historical question. (Cheers.) I submit to you that in dealing with a question like this you must try and go to the root of the matter. I submit to you that the causes which have destroyed every previous Indi­ vidualistic society are at work in your own society. Take America, where the land in proportion to the population is practically boundless. The difficulties in America are as great as in our own country, the same extremes of wealth and poverty, the same sub] ection of the workers, the same ■divorcebetween classes; even wider divisions than we have here; for here they are modified by some of the old traditions of feudal duty on the one sideband feudal looking for help on the other; whereas in America you have your modern Individualistic system utterly naked, utterly un­ ashamed, and you have the whole mass of society there �126 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? restless and troubled, and giving rise to the same Socialist agitation that you find yourself face to face with at your own doors. (Cheers.) Your Individualistic society is being destroyed from within more than it is in danger of being overthrown from without. The causes of its failure are within itself, and those causes are becoming more and more palpable, and their results more clear. The result of the international capitalism is the driving of our home trades down to the lowest level of the worst paid foreign work­ men. (Hear, hear.) Even during the last week, with all the difficulties in our own coal trade, the difficulty is in­ creased by the joining together of a number of capitalists to bring over Belgian coal raised by Belgian miners at the starvation wage paid in the Charleroi basin; this is to be put on the London market at 2s. 6d. per ton cheaper than any coal which can be brought from South Wales. How are you going to deal with that under the Individualistic system ? It can only be met in two ways : either by your capital, or so much of it as can do so, leaving the country to be invested in lands where labor is cheaper than at home ; or in the way it will be chiefly done, by the sinking of your mining population to the level of the worst paid workmen; and the degradation of our Northumberland, of our Durham, of our Yorkshire, and of our South Wales miners to the miserable condition in which the Belgian miners are starving at the present time. (Cheers.) Not only so, but I say that the present system of competition leads to monopoly more and more. Your great industries are falling into fewer hands, more and more they are passing into joint stock companies, and in America you see this system carried further yet. But when they become monopolies, as they are becoming; when the smaller men are crushed out, as they are being crushed out at the present time ; then you will be face to face with an absolute tyranny over society as you have got it in America, where a ring of capitalists simply plays with the market for its own profit and plunders the community for its own gain. You must either submit to that or you must adopt the Socialist plan, and take over those monopolies into the power of the community, and make them social instead of anti-social as they are under your Individualistic system. (Cheers.) And at this point I naturally come to those figures with �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 127 which. Mr. Foote dealt in the early part of his speech. Mr. Foote stated—and stated accurately enough—that there would not be an enormous increase of wage if the pro­ portion of land and of capital he mentioned were divided up among the workers. But he will pardon me, I am sure, for saying that he very much understated it, because I have the figures here to prove the contention that I shall put to you. In the first place the 400 millions which Mr. Giffen gives include not only interest on capital, as Mr. Foote was putting it, but the whole of the rental also which goes into the pocket of the landlord. (Hear, hear.) These do not include the wages of superintendence at all. I am not dwelling on the fact that Mr. Giffen gives his figures on one occasion as 407 millions, and at another as 400 millions, because seven millions, are a trifle for the purpose of this argument. But I would point out to you that you practically get400 millions to dispose of by the admission of Mr. Giffen, and that Mr. Foote in his argument managed to whittle the 400 millions down to 100 millions, and then to base the rise that would take place in the wages of workers on the lower figure. And let me say why it is I take Mr. Giffen’s figures, although I—to quote his own phrase—think that he was fairly accused of holding a brief for the capitalists. I take them because, although they are understated and unfair to our side of the question, they are quite strong enough to bear the weight of the whole of the Socialists’ contention. (Hear, hear.) Out of our enemies’ mouth we can prove our case. For what are Mr. Giffen’s figures ? According to Mr. Giffen 400 millions go for rent and interest to idle capitalists— (cries of “Shame”)—out of the total income of 1,200 millions, from which we are to take 100 millions forinterest on foreign investments. The wages for special ability are variously reckoned by Mr. Giffen, Mr. Mulhall, and Professor Leoni Levi, but we find that they comeroughly to 350 millions. That is to say: that out of theproduce of the country, when you have taken interest on capital and rent of land, when you have taken higher salaries and wages, which are sometimes called rent of ability, then you have left to divide amongst the manual labor class only 450 millions out of 1,250 millions, with which you started ; that is 800 millions of pounds made by the workers go �128 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? completely out of their hands. And now what does that mean ? It means in the first place that those who get these three rents, as the economists call them—of land, of capital, and of special ability—numbering, as they do, ac­ cording to Mr. Giffen’s computation, two millions of families, take 800 millions out of the national income ; and the producers, numbering five million families, get 450 millions; that is, that the two million families get 800 millions, and the 5,000,000 get 450 millions. Then I find Mr. Giffen again stating that out of the 16^ millions of separate incomes, which are made in this country only millions are over £150 a year. I find Mulhall, in the ‘ ‘ Dictionary of Statistics, ’ ’ giving 222,000 families of the very rich, that is with incomes over £1,600 a year, and 604,000 families of the rich, that is with incomes of £320 a year, and 1,220,000 in the middle and trading classes; and that if those figures are added together you get two-thirds of the total income of the country. Now I submit that if you recovered even one-third of the income of the country for the producers, and distributed it among them in addition to the one-third already held by them, no twisting of figures can leave the wages at the point at which they are to-day, for you would at least increase them by bringing that onethird more within the workers’ reach to be used for their benefit. (Cheers.) No Socialist pretends that the whole of that rent and the whole of that interest on capital can ever under a Socialistic condition go directly into the hands of manual workers: but it says this—that while your economic rent must remain, while your payment for ad­ vantages in productivity in machinery must remain, to equalise the condition of the workers ; that that rent, and that interest on capital, instead of going to the support of the class who are absolutely idle, and who therefore act as a poison to the community, will go into the national exchequer to be used for national purposes, to remove the burden of taxation from labor, and to be utilised for the benefit of those from whom it came, and to whom it should go. (Cheers.) Now what is the result of your present industrial system ? Compare your death-rate of rich and poor. Mr. Foote wants figures. I intend to-night to give him some. You can go to the Registrar-General’s report and •compare the death-rates of rich and poor. I will first take �129 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? children under five years of age; you will find that ac­ cording to Dr. Playfair the death-rate of children of the upper classes is only 18 per cent., as against tradesmen 36 per cent., and workmen 55 per cent. (A Voice : “ Hor­ rible.”) That is, more than half the children of the workers die before they reach the age of five years. And it is not only amongst the children. The children, inheriting feeble frames from underfed parents, die very fast, and the un­ derfeeding, the slow starvation, of the parents shortens their lives even when they reach the adult condition; and I find in the report made by Dr. Drysdale to the Industrial Remuneration Conference that, comparing the average age at death among the nobility and professional classes with that of some classes of the poor, that the average age of death of the so-called higher classes was fifty-five years, while the average age amongst the artisan class of Lam­ beth only amounted to twenty-nine years. Now, I want to know why that is, if everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds; if the division of profits is so admirably made by the law of supply and demand, and by those laws of which we hear so much, why is it that those who supply the demand supply death also with so many ? (Cheers.) Why is it that the poor man’s child has so much less chance of life than the rich man’s, if it is not that your society is built up on the plan of putting at the base of your social pyramid a class which you exploit to the utter­ most, and of whose life you are absolutely careless ; while at the apex you have persons whom you point to as pro­ ducts of your magnificent civilisation, and who are as use­ less in their lives as they are mischievous in their action on society. (Cheers.) I admit that under any conditions life for some time to come will be a hard struggle. I admit that the conditions that surround us are such that life without hard labor is impossible; and I say that that fact is no reason for allowing a class that earns nothing to appropriate so much, and that the very fact that much work is wanted to produce the necessities of life is a reason for getting rid of the drones who eat so much honey while they do nothing to increase the store. (Cheers.) I will go a step further. I find Mr. Mulhall, reckoning the pauper class from the figures of paupers receiving relief in Eng­ land, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and reckoning the whole pauper class, put it at three million persons, or one K �130 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? in eight of the manual labor class. I find Mr. Giffen, the great authority, talking of the residuum of five millions whose condition is a stain on our civilisation. Mr. Foote talks of a small minority, but one in eight is not a small minority—when that means a pauper class in the midst of industrial civilisation, and when you take five millions of residuum whose condition is a disgrace to our civilisation. When you remember that the total number of manual workers in the country only amounts to not quite 16 millions, I ask you to think of the five millions who are, according to Mr. Giffen’s own account, a stain on our civilisation. (Cheers.) Well, but, says Mr. Foote, when you deal with this question how are you going to get on with your change ? I submit that if I show a grave cause for change; if I prove that the result of the present economical and indus­ trial system is the degradation which we see around us, and which is proved by figures, that then the question is no longer—“ is the change needed ?” but “ how shall that change be made in the most rapid and most efficient way?” (Cheers.) And I come to the points which were put by Mr. Foote. Mr. Foote states that I take a too optimistic view of human nature. No, it is because I do not take an optimistic view of human nature that I advocate Socialism. (Hear, hear.) I believe that men are selfish; I believe that men are apt to trample on their fellows; I believe that the result of centuries of struggling for life has been to make men much more hard-hearted than they ought to be, and that when they can take advantage of their fellows they will do so ; and therefore I want to do away with the opportunities of living on other persons which human selfishness, sloth, and greed will most certainly take ad­ vantage of. (Hear, hear.) I want to say to the selfish man living on his brother, “We will take away from you the possibility of living upon another by making you work for anything you desire to get ”. It is because I do not be­ lieve that human nature is perfect that I want to take away the opportunities of exploitation which are enjoyed by men under the present conditions of society. But Mr. Foote goes on to say that an unskilled man gets more by being directed by the skilled; and I am not prepared to challenge that statement. I believe the working together of skilled and unskilled is good for both, but I do not want �131 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? to try to keep the unskilled, class where they are, but to raise them up into the skilled ; and while I admit the value of skilled over unskilled, labor, I say that the amount it gets as proved by the figures of the other side is far too high. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Foote says that skilled, labor will emigrate ; but there are two sides to that question. If all the skilled persons go out of the country to foreign countries they will become a drug in the foreign market, and will drive down their own wages by competition among themselves. If they desert us, they will at least no longer exploit the laborers. (Hear, hear.) But I am in­ clined to think that it may be worth our while to keep some of them, and that until they are civilised into beings with higher sense of duty to society than they have now, it may be worth while to grant them some exceptional pay for the work that they do, and so keep some of them to direct our industrial enterprises. I believe amongst Social­ ists I am in a minority in thinking that the various forms of labor should be equally paid; I believe the majority are in favor of unequal payment, so that you may still be able to give some extra advantages to the extra skill. But however that may be, equal or unequal remuneration is not of the essence of Socialism. But it is of the essence of Socialism that you should not have any payment what­ ever made to an idle class. (Hear, hear.) And that is why I pointed out before that Mr. Foote was confusing wages of superintendence with the interest paid on capital to persons who do nothing at all. That 407 millions are rent and interest on capital without one stroke of work being done in return; and it is not fair to speak as though the whole or any of that came as remuneration for skill, when really it only comes as remuneration for being born the eldest son of your father and your mother. Let us take a step further. Mr. Foote raised a great many difficulties about occupations. He wanted to know how Socialists were going to manage the 12,000 trades; he wanted to know how prices were to be fixed either by the groups or federations of groups; he said if one group stood out you would have the whole community at its mercy, or the groups thrown on the community for support. But is there any reason why the Socialists should be such fools as Mr. Foote supposes ? He is good enough to tell us that our hearts are bigger than our heads, and then he G 2 �132 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? complained that his sneer was not taken as a compliment, as if he had dealt with the largeness of our hearts and not with the smallness of our heads. But I would point out to Mr. Foote that Socialists are not fools enough to believe that they can settle beforehand every detail of a future condition of society. (Hear, hear.) What the Individualist prefers to do is to get away from the central principle on which we stand, and put conundrums of this kind to which he challenges us to find an answer. Our answer is that you will have working then the natural laws of society as you have them now. Demand and supply will still exist; prices will still be fixed by demand and supply ; and when you deal with foreign goods taken in exchange for your own products, if the foreigner has a more limited amount to exchange and you are in need of it, his price will go up, that is, you will have to give more of your commodities in exchange for his goods ; and you will have to require more labor here from those who desire to possess a portion of that which has been obtained at the higher price. We do not propose to start a new heaven and a new earth with laws different from what they are now. (Hear, hear.) We propose to destroy private property in the material of production, and then to let economic forces mould the details of the new condition of things, as they have moulded the old. But we say, if we start on a basis which is sound instead of on one that is rotten, we may reason­ ably hope that the structure will be sounder than the one you have to-day. (Cheers.) Then Mr. Foote put the difficulty of the division of labor, and spoke about the refined man feeling the intolerable burden of heavy work and the lower human organism who is only fit for the work he does. Then I ask Mr. Foote whether he deliberately means that his Individualist society is based on the existence of a helot-class, in which every taste, every feeling of art, every longing for beauty and refinement, is to be crushed out in order that a small minority may usurp all. (Hear, hear.) If that be what he means, then the moral difference between us is indeed deep and wide. (Hear, hear.) We deny that there should be a helot-class. We do not ask that a physician with his delicate fingers should go into the streets and sweep up, nor do the scavanger’s work there, for every society must have division of labor. But we say that the physician is useful to society and the scavenger is �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 133 useful to society; that under Socialism the scavenger’s work will be honorable ; that he shall not be a mere helot, a mere drudge, but shall have the enjoyment of hearing a Patti and of higher art, and we say that the civilisation which is based on helotry will fall. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote : Sometimes I envy Mrs. Besant’s power of appealing to people’s feelings. (Hear, hear.) Fortunately this debate will be reported verbatim, and will be read in cold blood. Mrs. Besant says that she objects to a helot class. At the same time she says that under Socialism there will be men set apart for surgery and men set apart for scavenging. Exactly so. And why ? Because some are fit for surgery and some are fit for scavenging. Other­ wise you are going to appoint them because they are unfit for the special work they have to do. (Hear, hear.) But mark. Mrs. Besant says the scavenger who does this—I am but speaking the plain truth—disgusting work— (Interruption)—why this complaint, when under Socialism somebody will have to do it ? Mrs. Besant says that the scavenger shall, under Socialism, hear Patti. Well, if he has a taste for Patti, he can hear her now. (Cries of “ No, no ”.) Can’t he ? I can remember the time when my earnings were not greater than any scavenger’s in the country, yet I still saved my two shillings for a treat at the Italian opera, climbing the flight of stairs that led to the gallery. Although I did not sit in a luxurious seat, I heard Patti and Albani as well as the man who paid his guinea. (Cries of “No, no”.) I say, yes. I heard the music and the singing, and he could do no more. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant says that if we do not pay for skill, and it emigrates, it will bring down the value of the skill abroad. But that depends upon where the skill goes. There is Australia, there is South Africa, there are large parts of North America, there are other portions of the globe at present being colonised by the English-speaking race, which could take as much skill as ever the old countries could send them. (Hear, hear.) It is not skill that they object to. Skill can always find its reward. (Cries of “ No, no ”.) It is persons going there with no skill and no means that they object to. (Hear, hear, and “No, no”.) Why, even now, on the landing-stage at New York they turn emigrants back if they have not a fair prospect before �134 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? them, and make them return to the country they camefrom or anywhere else they can go to. Mrs. Besant also says there is a great deal of selfishness in human nature. She believes that human nature has a large amount of ingrained selfishness. Yet she proposes to take away all opportunity for using a faculty which is more or less in everybody. You will need a very stringent law to frustrate a faculty in everybody, and a faculty which has hitherto been legitimate, and will not therefore feel criminal all at once. It is very much like saying that be­ cause persons sometimes cut their throats with razors, no more razors shall be made. Is selfishness a bad thing ? It is more than selfishness when it steps out of its way to inflict suffering upon others. That is not mere selfishness, but crime. It is aggressive egoism, which the law of every civilised society represses and punishes. But that is not a bad selfishness which enables a man to work hard, to fore­ see consequences, to make provision for the morrow, toforego a present gratification for a more important future one, and to strive to make provision for the wife and children in his own home, whom he must love more than the wives and the children of society in general. That selfishness is not a crime. If you could eliminate it from society you would kill society. But the passion is indestructible and society is safe. (Cheers.) I did not say in any part of this debate that everything was for the best. I said that man was a gradually im­ proving creature. I did not say there was no room for improvement. Mrs. Besant cannot deplore more than I do the evils that afflict mankind. (Hear, hear.) And I have in my own way done my little share towards making the world a trifle better. (Cheers.) The question between us is not whether the world requires reform, but what is the kind of reform it requires. (Hear, hear.) If a patient is sick, Mrs. Besant and I may both deplore his condition, but the question of what is the best remedy for his dis­ order is entirely independent of our appreciation of the fact that he is ill. You may as well say there is no use in discussing the merits of allopathy and homoeopathy while patients are sick. I say our patient must be treated care­ fully in cold blood, by persons who subordinate their feelings to their skill. You may work as much mischief by good feeling wrongly directed as by bad feeling itself. �IS SOCIALISM SOUND? 135 If you could measure all the evil done in society by mis­ directed benevolence it would appal you. (Hear, hear.) Pauperism itself is intensified by this evil. I admit that society requires change; but how is the change to be brought about ? Mrs. Besant says let us turn over a brandnew leaf. I say there is plenty of good message on the leaf we have not yet exhausted. It is not a fact that in our present system we have merely exchanged the old slavery for a new one. (Cries of “ Oh, oh”.) It is not a fact. Words often cheat people. They fancy that two different things, because they can be called by the same word, are really identical. Do you mean to tell me there is any identity between the black slave, put up in the mar­ ket for sale, and knocked down to the highest bidder, separated from his wife and family probably never to see them more, driven to work in the fields with a whip, and not having a single thing to call his own, even his life being almost absolutely at the mercy of his master—and the skilled mechanic—(Cries of “ Oh, oh ”.) One moment. If there are persons who are unskilled, whose fault is it ? Cannot the unskilled laborer become a skilled laborer ? (Cries of “ No, no ”.) Is there any penal statute in the wide universe to prevent any man with the capacity getting as much skill as any other man with the same capacity. (Cheers.) I repeat, then, What analogy is there between that black slave and the skilled or half-skilled mechanic, who goes to work five and a half days in the week, and has his evenings to himself ; who, if he does not live altogether on the fat of the land, at least has his own inviolable domi­ cile, where he can shut his door, and enjoy unmolested the society of those he loves ? It may not be quite so large as he might like ; but it is his. (Hear, hear.) Why, if you were to call half the working men in this country in their own workshops slaves, they would feel insulted. (Hear, hear.) Although I daresay some will go to a public hall and cheer the utterance when it serves their side of the dispute. These workers are not slaves. (Cries of “We are ”.) Well, if any gentleman feels he is a slave, I will not dispute the fact any further. (Laughter.) Now is it a fact that the working classes have no means of redress ? I said before that they had. I say their proper road to salvation is not through enforced co-opera­ tion, but through voluntary co-operation. (Cheers.) No �136 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? State co-operation, can. succeed until the necessary qualities are there ; and if they were there, they would make volun­ tary co-operation possible to-morrow. (Hear, hear.) Volun­ tary associations have succeeded; succeeded with picked men it is true, but no new enterprise, no progressive movement, can ever succeed except with picked men. (Hear, hear.) The mass of mankind go on doing pretty much the same thing from the cradle to the grave. It is only the exceptional persons who strike out in fresh direc­ tions, and they are followed by-and-bye when the experi­ ment they began has proved a success. Many co-operative societies have succeeded. Mill mentions some of them in his chapter on the Probable Future of the Working Classes. Others are mentioned by Thornton. You will also find others in the Government' “Report on Co-operation in Foreign Countries ” issued last summer. Mrs. Besant says the workers cannot obtain capital, but she is entirely wrong. These experiments prove the very opposite. Nay more, while nearly all—I believe absolutely all—the State subventioned enterprises failed in France in 1849, the successful ones were those animated wholly by the spirit of self-help. Let me cite a few instances from the Govern­ ment Report: “In 1849, fifty-nine tailors started with some assistance from outsiders, a co-operative tailors’ shop. They soon raised a business capital of 200,000 francs in fifty franc shares, which were to be paid for in weekly one franc instal­ ments. In 1851 this association was doing work on a large scale, and had at the same time a benefit fund formed by re­ taining five per cent, on salaries, and ten per cent, on profits.” “ Fourteen piano makers in 1848, without any means of their own, or Government aid, after great hardships and difficulties in starting, founded and carried on successfully, a business which two years afterwards owned 40,000 francs’ worth of property.” “A small association of armchair makers, which started in 1849 with 135 francs, made 37,000 francs of net profits, and could afford to pay 5,500 francs per annum for their work­ shop.” “A co-operation of file-makers, starting with fourteen members and 500 francs, acquired a capital of 150,000 francs, and two houses of business, one in Paris, the other in the provinces.” �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 137 “A successful co-operation of boot-form makers began with two francs. One of spectacle makers, with 650 francs, had in 1883 a capital of over 1,270,000 francs.” (Cheers.) You see, then, that the statement that labor, if it be energetic, earnest, possessed with the necessary intellectual and moral qualities, cannot get capital, is belied by these facts, which are of infinitely more value than all the de­ clamations and theories in the world. (Cheers.) Now just a word in concluding this speech. Mrs. Besant says she is not here to solve conundrums. I never asked her to. She says she is not going to trouble herself about details, as it is not necessary to work them out. But everything in the long run consists of details. (Hear, hear.) Great masses are made up of small quantities. Details mean everything in the end. Mind you, the ques­ tion between us is, not whether society requires improve­ ment, but whether Mrs. Besant’s particular scheme for improvement is likely to turn out a good one. You may as well say that a Prime Minister should bring in a Bill for Home Rule, without telling the House or the country any of the details of the scheme by which he proposes to carry his principles out, as shirk the practical details of a question like Socialism. Mr. Gladstone was opposed by many who approved his object but disapproved his method. They agreed on the principle, but split on the ways and means. So I approve Mrs. Besant’s principle of agitating for the improvement of society, but I object to her method. I know that reform is wanted, but I also know that to shirk the details of new proposals is to over­ look the fact that life is made up of details, and that men must be guided by experience. H you will shirk the prac­ tical difficulties of your scheme, you have no right to ask us to accept it. (Applause.) Annie Besant : Let me say at once that I thoroughly and gladly admit that Mr. Foote is as earnest for social reform as I am myself. (Hear, hear.) I should be sorry in the strictures I level against the system of society he supports, to be supposed in any way to make any kind of imputation against his sincerity or against his earnest desire to see improvement. It is the system he advocates I am attacking, without throwing any kind of slur on his own desire of making any improvement. And on the question of detail there is �138 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? one more word I should like to say. Suppose a naturalist desires to breed to any particular type, he will select his type, and then basing his actions on scientific prin­ ciples, he will try to breed towards that type, knowing generally what he desires to attain. But he will not be able to tell you the exact length of the animal’s ears, the number of curls there will be in his tail, or the particular direction in which his eyes may slope. (Laughter.) Those are the kind of details about which the scientific naturalistwould not try to prophesy. (Hear, hear.) He would take his general type as I have done in this subject, but he would not commit himself to prophecies for which the foundation is not in any way attainable. Mr. Foote gives me an illustration of the present Socialist policy by refer­ ring to a Prime Minister. He says that a Prime Minister must not bring in a mere abstract of a Bill without details; but I ask Mr. Foote whether anything is more common than that a statesman should bring in an abstract resolution embodying some particular principle, and try to carry that resolution, and thus to gather the general sense of the House before he passes into the details of the Bill, details which are, I grant, necessary, when it becomes a project for immediate legislation. (Cheers.) That is exactly our Socialist position at the present time. (Hear, hear.) We are trying to carry a resolution before the public in favor of the Socialist principle; and, mark you, we are giving our definite reason for doing it. We have said over and over again, and I say it now for the last time in this debate, that we allege that private property in the material of wealth-production is at the root of poverty. (Hear, hear.) That as long as that lasts you must have your propertied and your slave classes. We allege that this is the source from which the evils flow, and we must fight out that question of principle before it is even worth while to go into minute details, which must be considered, I thoroughly accept that, before you can make a Socialist community; but it is idle to discuss the details so long as the main principle of difference between the Individualists and the Socialists remains undecided by the public voice. (Hear, hear.) I go back to the speech of Mr. Foote, which, he very fairly said, I did not completely answer. There was a slight error in quotation Mr. Foote made in connexion with the question—How wages should �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 13^ be settled, when he quoted me as saying the worker should have control over the value of his labor. The whole context of the passage shows that what I was arguing wasthat when the workmen had received a return for the labor he had done, that amount which he received would beentirely under his own control. Just as now, a man re­ ceiving wage from an employer can spend that wage as hepleases; so the workman employed, as he may be, by a group of workers, or by whatever other phrase you may use, when he receives the recompense of his labor, would be able to use that recompense as he chose, as he thought best. (Hear, hear.) That is the point I put in my essay, and it appears that Mr. Foote has entirely misconceived it, and has turned it into the man fixing his own wage instead of controlling the equivalent for his own labor. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr. Foote asks us to take a case which we find in our present society—take the case of men like Burns or Watt—what shall they do, and who shall decidein what way they shall be employed ? One of the reasons why we want to press the Socialist solution is because, under your present Individualistic system, you crush out such an enormous amount of talent that might make its way if it only had the opportunity. (Cheers.) If, as the Socialists propose, the people were educated thoroughly and completely in the years of their childhood and of their youth, do you mean to say that it would be possible that the talent of a Burns would escape notice, as it did when he was sent to the plough-tail in his childhood, and had no­ possibility of education which would enable him to show his literary power ? (Hear, hear.) Under your present system it is but a mere chance whether the child of great ability succeeds or not. It depends largely on the rank of society in which he is born. (Hear, hear.) I do not say that you may not here and there havea child born under unfavorable conditions, who has talent which amounts to absolute genius, and a strength of will as of iron, so that even circumstances cannot break it. I do not say that such a one amongst a myriad may not fight his way to the front despite all that is against him. But I do say that under your present system you practically lose to society thousands upon thousands of personsdowered with real ability, whose ability would have been discovered had they had a reasonable and rational educa­ �140 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? tion, but whose ability is crushed out of them in their •childhood and their youth by the hard circumstances of their life. (Cheers.) And that is why we say that your Individualistic system crushes Individualism. That is why we say that only under Socialism can you hope to get all the benefit through individual development which ■comes from removing persons from the constant strain and struggle for existence, and, by securing the means of liveli­ hood to all, give time and opportunity for the development of the particular capacity. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr. Foote asks, are you going to have all your amusements arranged by public committees, because if so their low tastes will swamp the higher tastes for the fine arts. Now that is exactly what happens at the present time, because the managers are now ruled by the receipts, and the receipts come from the majority. Mr. Foote says that low tastes are the tastes of the majority, and that it is only the small minority that have the higher tastes. And what is the result ? Your wretched melodrama and the • comic opera are what the manager readily accepts, because they appeal to the majority. (Hear, hear.) And even Irving, great as he is, has his genius stunted, and, like a fine jewel in tawdry setting, he has to fall back on fine upholstery and limelight because he dares not trust to the attraction of his own genius, for he knows it would not pay. (Hear, hear.) It is the testimony of everyone who has looked into the subject—(cries of “No, no”)—I am going to give you a fact—(cries of “ Question! ”)—the question is that of amusements under Socialism, and I am dealing with that. (Hear, hear.) It is a fact which everyone knows who has looked into the subject that the only countries in which new genius—either dramatic or artistic of any kind—can really make its way and be heard by the public are those countries where theatres and places of amusement are endowed by the State. (Hear, hear.) The French stage is the very model of the other European theatres. And why ? Because there a man of genius can really bring forward a play that has to wait before it is . appreciated. But your stage here falls back upon the off­ scourings of the French theatres, and plays adapted from the lower stage of France are played at your best theatres here. (Hear, hear.) And so in Germany. Take the case of Wagner. He was on the verge of starvation, was nearly �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 141 killed by your Individualistic system, until an endowed theatre made it possible for him to get his music heard. And these are facts for Mr. Foote to deal with instead of theorising and floating about in the clouds. (Hear, hear.) But Mr. Foote argues that the scavenger can hear Patti if he is prepared to pay his two shillings, and to wait two hours at the doors. But the scavenger cannot easily pay that money and wait two hours or more. I have paid that and waited—(A Voice : “It’s half-a-crown”)—the gentle­ man is quite right, it is half-a-crown and not two shillings, (Laughter.) But I do not think that a scavenger with a small family of hungry children at home, can afford to spend 2s. 6d. and to wait two hours, and then spend three or four more in listening to Patti. (Cheers.) And what is worse, he does not want to do so. He has not had the education which would make it possible for him to enjoy such music ; and he won’t have the desire until the educa­ tion given by the community includes art and literary culture as well as the mere elements it now gives. (Cheers.) I pass on to yield my perfect agreement to Mr. Foote’s statement of what we are seeking—viz., the best remedy. And that is why I complain that he has not tried to deal with the fundamental remedy of Socialism, and has ap­ pealed to feeling and prejudice instead of dealing with my proposals. (Hear, hear.) I pointed out to Mr. Foote that, if he speaks of words leading to mistakes, that is the very complaint which the Socialists make. We say that the word “freedom”, applied to any laborer who has only a choice of accepting the contract offered him and starvation, is but a word, and is not a thing. (Hear, hear.) When freedom of contract is spoken of, I say that that can only take place between persons tolerably equal; and when Mr. Foote speaks of the tension of muscles caused by compe­ tition, I answer that such benefit can only result when each competitor has a chance of reaching the winning-post. There is no stimulating competition, but only a crushing feeling of disqualification, if you set to race one man who is only allowed to go on one leg and is carrying a heavy chain, and another man who is allowed to use a bicycle to get round the course. (Hear, hear.) The man with the disadvantage finds it practically impossible for him to race at all. And I allege that in your modern society the man of the bicycle is the landlord and the capitalist who has �142 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? everything made easy for him in the life-race ; and the man with one leg and the chain, who is asked to compete with him, and to feel the benefit of freedom of competition and free contract, is the laborer who has nothing whatever but his labor to sell, and who must starve unless he can sell it. (Cheers.) Mr. Foote : Mrs. Besant says that if a naturalist wishes to produce a particular variety of dog, he does not before­ hand say what length its tail is going to be, or how many hairs it is going to have on its body. But if he proposes to breed a long-tailed dog, surely the length of the tail would have something to do with his prevision. If that naturalist proposed to produce a special variety of dog, and made it a condition of his experiment that he should have every dog in the country under his control, the rest of us would want to know what he was going to do before ■consenting to allow him to make such a vast experiment. (Hear, hear.) Mrs. Besant'reiterates that private property in capital is at the root of all the poverty there is. Now we have had three nights of this debate already. This point has been •debated over and over again, and why Mrs. Besant wants that particular point debated afresh to-night I do not understand. I contravene it. I say there is no one root, but many roots of evil, and the cause of all the roots of evil lies in the fact that man is as yet only partially evolved. He has advanced a long way from his brutish progenitors, but he has yet higher ranges of capacity, of thought, and of feeling, to reach in his development. (Hear, hear.) You cannot do with your present human nature what you could do with a better human nature. The better human nature will come in time, for the Dar­ winian theory which gives us a certitude of progress in the past gives us a reasonable guarantee of progress in the future. I gave as one of the causes of poverty the pressure of population on the means of subsistence. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant herself has given it. She has to-night told you that the death-rate is lower among the upper classes than among the lower classes. (Hear, hear.) If I had known that Mrs. Besant was going to use those particular statistics to-night, instead of following my lead, I should have come prepared with some counter statistics. But I �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 143 now make the broad statement that the birth-rate among the lower classes is as high as their death-rate relatively to the upper classes. (Hear, hear.) They marry earlier, breed faster, and therefore their numbers are kept down by a heavy death-rate. I never said that the poor man was in as good a condition as the man who is better off. (Laughter.) But that is not our argument. How are the great mass of people to be improved ? is the question at issue. And after all, it is not my remedy, but Mrs. Besant’s remedy, that is under discussion. When she says I have not dealt with the difficulties she raised, I beg to say that she has to deal with the difficulties which I have raised against the system she wants us to embrace. (Hear, hear.) . She says that, under the Individualist system, talent is crushed down for want of education. We all know that to some extent, but we did not wait for Socialism to provide education in the Board Schools for every boy and girl. We did not wait for Socialism to found our system of secondary education, and we shall not wait for Socialism to realise the dream of Radicals that the endowments of the universities shall be put to their right purposes, and applied to the education of those higher capacities that are selected from the lower schools to which all the mass of the children go. (Cheers.) It is perfectly true that to some extent the lower taste at present swamps the higher taste. But if the lower taste gets the reins of power in its hands it will be an overwhelming deluge. Now you can paddle your own boat, but then you will have no boat to paddle. (Hear, hear.) It is perfectly true that what pays best is put on the stage ; but I said that there was a select circle of finer tastes, and that they can get what they want. It may be true that Mr. Irving has too much recourse to upholstery and lime­ light, but that may be due to his melodramatic instincts. He has played in many Shaksperian characters, however, and in other legitimate dramas, and I do not see how his pos­ turing in “Faust ” proves that he is a panderer to the lowest tastes of the day. (Hear, hear.) If you can go and see low comedy, you can also go and see high comedy. Tf you want your tastes gratified with the best music, or drama, or literature, you can have it. Shakspere is brought into our homes, decently printed, for a shilling; and in all sorts of ways the highest taste in such things can be �144 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? gratified without a very great expenditure. The poorest,, even, can sometimes have the pleasure of hearing a great singer like Patti ; and even under Socialism she could not sing every night to everybody, unless the opera house were large enough to hold the nation. Wagner was a poor illustration. He was outlawed for fighting on behalf of liberty against what turned out to be the majority of his countrymen. Mrs. Besant says his musical genius stood no chance till he was endowed. But the person who assisted him with money was the mad King of Bavaria. That fact does not favor Mrs. Besant’s position. It rather tells, if at all, on behalf of the monarchy which she and I are both opposed to. (Hear, hear.) I will now take a few more difficulties. I do not know much about carpentering, and I think Mrs. Besant knows as little. (Laughter.) I have no practical knowledge of a variety of trades. But I do know something about writing and publishing, and so does Mrs. Besant. Under Socialism, Mrs. Besant would like to write and publish articles and pamphlets maintaining her Freethought, Mal­ thusian, and other views. Yet if all the means of produc­ tion were in the hands of State officials, or under the control of industrial groups, how does she know that she would be able to do what she wanted ? Gronlund says that society would not allow anything and everything to be printed. It would draw the line somewhere. Yes, and I think the line would be very hard upon the minority and all unpopular ideas. It would seriously hamper the advanced few who are the cream of every generation, and whose thought to-day decides the action of to-morrow. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant knows very well that she is not in the majority at present. Her Malthusianism is unpopular with general society, and she regrets to say that among her Socialist friends it is more unpopular still. She and ! would continne to hold unpopular opinions, and if we did not, other persons would. Now those opinions would have to be ventilated, and in a highly organised society like ours they cannot be ventilated, except through the press and the pl at,form. But all the halls, all kinds of meeting­ places, are to be controlled by public committees, and all printing plant is to be under similar management. Would , Mrs. Besant get what she wanted printed, if it were generally distasteful? Would not the managers of the �145 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? printing group be very reluctant to offend their constituents and imperil their prospect of re-election to office ? She would also probably find that if the hall she wanted was not absolutely refused, it would be required for something else on that date. The free play of mind would thus be checked. But upon that very thing all progress hinges. What is progress ? The only valuable, or indeed intelli­ gible definition I know of is Sir Henry Maine’s “progress is the constant production of fresh ideas”. Fresh ideas might be produced, but they would be absolutely abortive, unless there were the means of disseminating them and carrying them out. Could those means be counted on when all the agencies were in the hands of the majority who would naturally be content with the state of things in which they exercised supreme power ? How can you praise liberty, when under your system liberty would be arrested at its source ? Mrs. Besant may smile at this. She may say, as she has said, that if you cannot get a hearing in a hall you must go to some open space. But if the officials would not let you speak in public halls, they would put obstacles in the way of your speaking in public places of other kinds. (Hear, hear.) You would then have to hold forth on Dartmoor or the Yorkshire wolds, where the chances of finding an audience are exceedingly limited (Laughter.) I really wish Mrs. Besant would tell us how these difficulties are to be surmounted. Individualism will produce all the benefits Socialism could possibly bestow, and it gives us other benefits which Socialism would destroy. It was finely said by Channing that you may spring a bird into the air by mechanism, but its flight is only admirable when it soars with its own vital power. So the mechanism which would elevate people despite themselves does not really elevate them. They are only lifted up when their life is improved by their own energy, foresight, and capacity. (Cheers.) If you gave a man with the lowest tastes ten times his present income, do you mean to tell me that he would be ten times better ? He would probably spend it all very much as he spends his money now. But if he got more by voluntary co-operation with his fellows, his character would be elevated in the very process of bettering his material con­ dition. (Cheers.) Mrs. Besant complains that competition is impossible L �146 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? with those who have personal advantages. Yes, and I know that without riding on bicycles there are some stronger and fleeter than others. Those with the most powerful and subtle brains must win the first prizes in the race of life. But there are many competitions and millions of minor prizes of all degrees. We cannot all run in the race for the Premiership. Only a few can compete for that, and let us hope the best man gets it. But if a man cannot compete for the Premiership, he may be first in the making of good honest boots. (Hear, hear.) There are thousands of races, and if a man cannot succeed in one he may enter another. Competition is not the frightful thing Mrs. Besant supposes. It does not imply that only one wins and all the rest absolutely lose. In our com­ petition there is a first prize, a second, a third, a fourth, and'so on down to the point at which there really is com­ plete failure, and a man is thrown out of employment. But the great mass of workers are in employment, and there is something even for those who are farthest behind. The vast majority get what is worth having, though all cannot be first. (Hear, hear.) Now, in conclusion, let me say a word as to what Indi­ vidualism has done. There was a time when man fought for the possession of caves with his brute contemporaries. There was a time when man was so low in the scale of life that he could scarcely be discriminated from his ape-like progenitor. Through countless ages he has advanced to his present position. And that position gives only a fore­ taste of what he will realise in the days to come. The science which affords us so many benefits is still in its childhood, and what it has done is but “ an earnest of the things that it shall do ”. Individualist competition, man wrest­ ling with nature and the brutes, man matched against man, thrift against improvidence, sagacity against dulness, energy against indolence, courage against cowardice, sense against stupidity—this has brought civilisation to its pre­ sent pitch. Individualism has constructed railways, made the steam-engine, bridged rivers, covered the ocean with ships, invented the printing press, and given us all our science and art. Individualism has given to “the poor” what they consider necessaries of life, but what once were luxuries to princes and kings. And what has your State done? It has always been trying to “ regulate ” things, �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 147 making mistake after mistake with the best intentions, and failing again and again because it could not possibly succeed. It has tried to take men’s religion under its control; it has tried to take all their thoughts and all their actions under its control. It decreed the status in which men should remain from the cradle to the grave. It hemmed them in on every side. And while individual Europeans have gone all over the world, colonising and founding new empires, what have the Europeans States done ? They have hurled people against people. They have contracted four thou­ sand five hundred millions of debt in senseless quarrels. The 1 ‘ State ’ ’ has done more harm than good. Individualism has made progress. Without it none is possible. Col­ lectivism, State control, crushes liberty, hinders Indi­ vidualism, and prevents that noble progress which we all see brightening and heightening in the great future before us. (Prolonged applause.) Annie Besant : I did not state in my last speech that the present system of private property in the material of wealth production is at the root of all the poverty. Mr. Eoote has put in the word all. I quite admit that there are other influences at work as well; and you know that in dealing with the question of population I have pointed to that cause. But Mr. Eoote rightly said in an earlier speech that under the present system that difficulty was not dealt with, because it is to the interest of the capitalist that the workers should rapidly increase, that he may play off the one against the other. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr, Eoote stated—and I agree with him—that society will improve by evolution. And it is because I am an evolu­ tionist that I am a Socialist; it is because I see that society is evolving in the direction of Socialism, and that the tendency of the most Radical legislation is to promote the growth of Socialism. (Hear, hear.) And then Mr. Eoote says that the birth-rate and the death-rate balance each other. But surely Mr. Eoote must have noticed that I gave percentages, and not absolute numbers, of deaths, and that brief answer of his does not deal with my diffi­ culty, which really was the price that society pays for the maintenance of the present system. (Hear, hear.) Then Mr. Foote says we don’t wait for Socialism to get educa­ tion. But your education is founded on the Socialist principle ; you tax the community for a special benefit of �148 IS SOCIALISM SOUND? which, some only take advantage; the State compels parents to do their duty towards their children, forcing upon them that which otherwise they would not do, and intruding even within the circle of the home; in fact, you treat the children as belonging in the highest sense to the community rather than to the parents, and you forbid the parent to inflict an injury upon the community by keeping the child in ignorance, and therefore in degradation. (Cheers.) I admit in that good work has been done; but it is work done by society—by the State that Mr. Foote attacks—and not by Individualistic effort. (Hear, hear.) The voluntary school system was the growth of Indi­ vidualism ; the national system is the growth of the tendency towards Socialism in the State. Mr. Foote goes on to say a word about publishing papers and pamphlets : Here are Mrs. Besant and Mr. Foote. Their opinions are in a minority. How are they to publish their views under Socialism? But we are in a minority now, and we have paid for it under your Individualistic system. (Hear, hear.) We have found not only that it is very difficult to get a hearing for the views of the minority, but that a man may be sent to gaol for putting his views in print. What worse tyranny than this can Socialism inflict ? (Hear, hear.) Individualistic society shuts up a man in prison because he dared to print something against the views of the majority. (Cheers.) What more could Socialism do ? But let us be frank in this matter. Socialism will not at once quite alter human nature. These difficulties which Mr. Foote speaks of are the difficulties of minorities everywhere, and there is no way of getting over them save by courage on the part of the minority, and the gradual growth of education and of a feeling of respect in the majority for the opinions of others. (Hear, hear,) But I can tell you why we think that under Socialism the minority would have a better chance of making itself heard than it has now. It is because even under the present condition of things those institutions which are most nearly on the road to Socialism are those where the greatest liberty is already permitted. (Hear, hear.) Co-operation, for instance, which is the grouping of many together to work side by side and there­ fore is only in a small way—when it is real, and not mere dividend hunting—what the Socialist State will be in a �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 149 large form—co-operation may serve as an instance. Mr. Foote knows that it is the halls scattered over the country which have been built by the co-operative societies, and which are controlled by committees and not by individual owners, which are most readily granted for the propaga­ tion of the opinions of the minority. (Hear, hear.) Often when an individual owner refuses to let me his hall, I find the co-operative society readily grant it, although many members of their committee are in opposition to my views. (Hear, hear.) The truth is that where an individual refuses to let any views be heard but his own, the clash of opinions on a committee makes each member disposed to give others a hearing in order that his own views may obtain a hearing in turn. Take another case. You speak of the tyranny of the State. I take as an illustration of the difference between being under a State and being under the indi­ vidual, an incident that happened at the British Museum. There was a gardener there who committed the horrible crime of calling by his first name the son of one of the officials—he called him George instead of Master George. (Laughter.) Such a piece of gross insolence on the part of a gardener could not be overlooked, and the result was that he was dismissed. So far he shared the fate which would have befallen him had he been hired by an individual owner. But as he was a servant of the State and not the mere hired servant of an individual owner, his complaint was listened to, an inquiry ordered, and the result was that a fresh post was found for the gardener to compensate him for the loss he had undergone. H he had called an indi­ vidual’s son George he would have been thrown out into the world to seek a fresh livelihood for himself; but as he called the State functionary’s son George, the State inter­ fered in order to protect him, and gave him another place instead of the one he lost. (Cheers.) But Mr. F oote points to what Individualism has done— it has covered the sea with ships. Aye, with coffin ships, which went to the bottom until the State interfered to save life. (Hear, hear.) Individualism has done much. On my very first night I said that being an evolutionist I recognised the fashion in which society had grown ; from my point of view it is idle to find fault with what has been done in the past; it is for us to try with the experience of the race, by the study of history, by the growing knowledge �150 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? of man, and by our increased scientific ability, to find a better road for the future, than our ancestors have struggled along in the past. (Hear, hear.) And the difference between Mr. Foote and myself is this—that I recognise that evolution has brought us to the point where this Individualistic struggle must give way to organised action. And I notice that we have grown from the Individualism of the savage up to the co-operative Socialism of civilisa­ tion : because as Mr. Foote truly says—civilisation is co­ operation ; that is, it is the raising of the group and the group interests above the interests of the units who compose the group. I put to you now in closing this debate one or two points which I venture to think are not unworthy your careful ■consideration. Mr. Foote says that we have been making progress, we have been improving in the past. I have urged on him, on the other side, that the improvement has been far slower than it need be, and that the root of the question of poverty must be dealt with if improvement is to go on. I have pointed out to him that while there is improvement in one part of society there is retrogression in another. I have pointed out to him the ever-widening of the gulf between the rich and the poor—the evergrowing division between the cultured and the masses of the people—the ever-increasing danger of that which Sidgwick pointed out, viz., that the tendency of our present industrial system is to make the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. (Cheers.) That I hold to be the position in which we stand to-day; and I, a Socialist, come forward, and pointing to these evils in modem society say they are evils which are inherent in the system. Under a Socialist system—and only under that system— is the change and the remedy for us possible. Mr. Foote, I recognise, desires that improvement should go on. He says to us: Your Socialism will fail when it is tried. I answer him: Your Individualism has been tried and has failed—(cries of “No, no!”)—and our wars, our poverty, our misery, our ignorance, our wretchedness, are the proofs of the failure of an Individualistic system of society. (Cheers.) You say it has not failed. How then is it that in every civilised country the millionaire and the pauper stand side by side ? How is it, if it be a success, that in this great metropolis of ours �IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? 151 where thousands of pounds are given for a china dish hundreds of men and women are dying of slow starvation ? (Hear, hear, and cries of “ Shame ”.) Go down to Shadwell High Street when the crowds are turning out of the music rooms and gin palaces, and next morning go to the Ladies’ Mile; see how the West End differs from the East End, and then ask yourself, can a civilisation last where the contrasts are so glaring, where the divisions are so extreme? (Hear, hear.) Eor remember that you have no longer the safety of the past—the safety of the ignorance of the masses of your people. (Hear, hear.) While there was no penny press, while there was no public education, much of the luxury of the rich man remained hidden from the eyes of the poor, starving in their cellars and in their garrets. But to day your halfpenny paper takes the news everywhere. The sempstress reads of the great ladies decked in diamonds at a Court ball, and the costermonger •reads of the millionaire giving thousands for a race horse, spending thousands in luxury and in vice. These are beginning to think—beginning to ask questions ; beginning to ask, must these things always be ? is there not something fundamentally wrong in a condition of society where such things exist ? And that is not all. Your idle classes are the very cancer of society. (Hear, hear.) The luxury in which they live makes them rotten by its very idleness. They consume without producing; they enjoy without discharging a duty; they live easily, smoothly, without difficulty, and society takes nothing from them in ex­ change for what they take from it. And what is the result ? Your higher classes with their profligacy are the scandal of the whole civilised world at the present time. A press, greedy for profit, tears down every curtain in the desecrated home, and exhibits it to the eyes of the whole of Europe, until the very noblest of human passions becomes as filth, fit only to roll through the sewer which runs beneath your streets. (Cheers.) And this is the outcome of the Individualistic system. This is the result of luxury and idleness, the result of the neglecting of duty, and of the making possible of luxury without service done in exchange for those who give it. And one plea I make to you—to you, the majority of whom in this Hall are against me—the large majority of whom judge us harshly and blame us sternly, because looking at the misery, and �152 IS SOCIALISM SOUND ? the luxury of society we strive to bring about a remedy which may make things other than they are to-day. (Hear, hear.) Many of us are ignorant; most of us are poor. Tongues of education and of culture are but here and there amongst us, and rough men speak for us out of the miseries that they feel. What wonder that sometimes the tongues should be reckless; what wonder that some­ times the speech should be bitter; what wonder that men, feeling what they might have been, and knowing what they are, speak words that may not be measured as carefully as the perfectly cultured and the unsuffering may measure theirs; what wonder if their indignation grows hot against the wrongs they know. But this I ask of you. If sometimes we speak too hotly; if sometimes our passion gets the better of our judgment; if sometimes the misery of the poor voices itself too sharply in our words and rings out in a fashion that the easy and idle class may not like ; at least do us this justice: that in a society where the stronger trample upon the weak ; in a society where most men seek for power, for luxury, or for money; at least admit this to the despised Socialists amongst you—that in that society we have withdrawn from the strife for gold, we have turned aside from the struggle for power, and we have eyes that see and hearts that love some nobler ideal of society than you have yet found possible in your Individualistic life. (Great cheering.) Mr. Foote : I rise to propose with great pleasure a very hearty vote of thanks to the chairman. ‘ Annie Besant : I second that. The motion was carried, and the meeting dispersed. � 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 &amp; 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 Is socialism sound? : verbatim report of a four nights' debate between Annie Besant and G. W. Foote : at the Hall of Science, Old St., London, E.C. : on February 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd, 1887 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Besant, Annie Wood Foote, G. W. (George William) Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 152 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Stamp on title page: 'South Place Chapel Finsbury, Lending Library'. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Freethought Publishing Company Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1887 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T404 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Is socialism sound? : verbatim report of a four nights' debate between Annie Besant and G. W. Foote : at the Hall of Science, Old St., London, E.C. : on February 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd, 1887), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><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 Debates and Debating Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/afe45c5d1617d7ac73c386392663ed4f.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=k0jmuGMsjwkmJwVqheR0Z-Wn1WGG-NVB96w8%7EsUcSKz5bzJJZiJVHd6hmJTKYpWxoOSZ7q6I9tUuo18I%7E3nFxV7BgIzQ40BKZeBoJYIPqfdYz4bkd5MNprHaQ3mGEIETMRAYiKPgDIcqYZUBgk3QjQXTx9F7PGUQpJrdjhlkpAZXGupqkXfiQ9iKctmAssBD9lVAX9xnm1WLm1YHggDd8YVgVmvIfB-Eoy2vdG7eXIEt6q7eLBi9hEq65FhmKUqppqInO8CVUEasFGeS0FT59BqmHc0pEkDIT4eGPTZIl9fzlvY-G6maW6P4-g%7EjNzDksOfhEEM701TDyLUmkPdT%7Ew__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d99e0d6ab02cf7eeb5fd1439f487e609 PDF Text Text NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. BY ANNIE [Reprinted from the BESANT. “Westminster Review”.] LONDON : FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 63, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1 8 8 7. PRICE THREEPENCE. �I LONDON : TRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAVGH, 63, FLEET STREET, E.C, �n)(T7# THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. Some good-hearted people must have felt an uncomfortable thrill when they heard Professor Huxley declare that he would rather have been born a savage in one of the Fiji Islands than have been born in a London slum. The advantages of civilisation, from the slum point of view, must appear somewhat doubtful; and as a considerable part of the population of every large city live in the slums, the slum view has an importance of its own as a factor in the future social evolution. For it must be remembered that the slum population is not wholly composed of criminals and ne’er-do-weels—the “ good-for-nothings ” •of Herbert Spencer. The honest workman and struggling seamstress live there cheek by jowl with the thief and and the harlot; and with the spread of education has arisen an inclination to question whether, after all, every­ thing has been arranged quite as well as it might be in this best of all possible worlds. The question, Whether • on the whole civilisation has been an advantage? has been a theme of academical discussion since Rousseau won the prize for an essay on 11 Has the restoration of the • Sciences contributed to purify or to corrupt Manners ? ” ■ and laid down the audacious thesis that riches gave birth to luxury and idleness, and from luxury sprang the arts, from idleness the sciences. But it has now changed its form, and has entered the arena of practical life: men . are asking now, Is it rational that the progress of society should be as lopsided as it is ? Is it necessary that, while civilisation brings to some art, beauty, refinement— all that makes life fair and gracious—it should bring to •others drudgery, misery, degradation, such as no un­ �4 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. civilised people know; and these emphasised and rendered the bitterer by the contrast of what life is to many, thedream of what it might be to all ? For Professor Huxley is right. The savage has the forest and the open sea, the joy of physical strength, food easily won, leisure sweet after the excitement of the chase; the civilised toiler hasthe monotonous drudgery of the stuffy workshop, the hell of the gin-palace for his pleasure-ground, the pande­ monium of reeking court and stifling alley for his lullaby : civilisation has robbed him of all natural beauty and physical joy, and has given him in exchange—the slum. It is little wonder that, under these circumstances, there are many who have but scant respect for our social fabric, and who are apt to think that any change cannot land them in a condition worse than that in which they already find themselves. The tendency to think of complete social change as a possible occurrence has come down to the present genera­ tion as an inheritance of the past. Old men still dwell fondly on the hopes of the “ social missionaries ” who were preaching when the men now of middle-age were born. Some even fem ember the experiments of Fobert Owen and of his personal disciples, the hopes raised by New Lanark and Arbiston, the chill disappointment of New Harmony. The dream that glorified their youth has remained a sacred memory, and they have told how all might have been different had society been prepared in Owen’s time for the fundamental change. And the great and far-reaching co-operative movement, born of Owen’s Socialism, has kept “his memory green”, and has prepared men to think of a possible future in which co-operation should wholly re­ place competition, and Owen’s dream of universal brother­ hood become a living reality. Such part of the energy of the Owenite Socialists as was not merged in co-operative activity was swamped in the sudden rush of prosperity that followed the repeal of the Corn Laws and the English triumph of Free Trade. Now that that rush is long over, and the old misery is on the workers once .more, their minds turn back to the old schemes, and they listen readily to suggestions of a new social order. . The abnormally rapid multiplication characteristic of the very poor is at once constantly rendering the problem to be solved more difficult and more imperatively pressing. �THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 5 Unhealthy conditions force the young into premature nubility; marriage takes place between mere lads and lasses; parenthood comes while father and mother are themselves legally infants; and the dwarfed, peaky little •mortals, with baby frames and wizened faces, that tumble -over each other in the gutters of the slums, are the un­ wholesome and unlovely products of the forcing-house of extreme poverty. The spread of education and of religious scepticism has added the last touch necessary to make the poor ripe for social change. Ignorance is a necessary condition for prolonged submission to remediable misery. The School Boards are teaching the children the beauty of order, •cleanliness, and decency, and are waking up in them desire for knowledge, hopes, and aspirations—plants unsuited for ■cultivation in the slums. They are sowing the seeds of a noble discontent with unworthy conditions, while at the same time they are developing and training the intelli­ gence, and are converting aimless, sullen grumbling into a rational determination to understand the Why of the present, and to discover the How of change. Lastly, reli­ gious scepticism has enormously increased the value put upon the life which is. So long as men believed that the present life was the mere vestibule of an endless future, it was possible to bribe them into quiescence in misery by .representing poverty as a blessing which should hereafter bring in its train the “kingdom of heaven”. But now that many look on the idea of a life beyond the grave with •doubt, and even with disbelief, this life has taken giant proportions in their eyes, and the human longing for happiness, which erstwhile fed on hopes of heaven, has fastened itself with passionate intensity on the things of •earth. Such is the soil, ploughed by misery, fertilised by edu­ cation and scepticism, ready to receive and nourish the seed of social change. While the soil has been thus preparing, the sowers who •are to scatter the seed have been fashioning. Thoughtful persons have noted the regular cycle of alternate depres­ sion and inflation trodden by industrialism during the last century. At one time industry progresses ‘ ‘ by leaps and bounds ”, employment is plentiful, wages high (as wages .go), prices of coal and iron high, profits increase, and �6 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. fortunes are rapidly built up. This inflation after a whilepasses away, and is succeeded by depression ; 11 short time is worked, wages are reduced, profits diminish, the “ market is overstocked”. This in its turn passes away, and tem­ porary prosperity returns, to be after a while succeeded by another depression, and that by another inflation. But it is noticeable that the depressions become more acute and more prolonged as they return time after time, and that there is less elasticity of revival after each. The position of England in the world’s markets becomes yearly one of diminished advantage ; other nations raise their own coaland their own iron instead of buying from us, and as thecompetition of nations becomes keener, English trade can no longer monopolise the custom of the world. The radical­ weakness of our industrial system is thus becoming patent •—no longer veiled, as it was during the first half of the century, by a monopoly which brought such enormousgains that the drain of wealth into a few hands was com­ paratively little felt. Now that there is so much less to.divide, the unfairness of the method of division is becoming obvious. Nor can we overlook, in tracing the fashioning of thosewho are to sow the seeds of change, the effect on English thought of the greatly increased communication with foreign countries, and especially with Germany. English religious thought has been largely influenced by the worksof Strauss and Eeuerbach ; philosophic thought by those of Hegel, Kant, and Schopenhauer ; scientific by the specu­ lations of Goethe, the practical labors of Vogt, Buchner, and Haeckel. English insularity has been broken down in every domain of theoretical and speculative thought ; it was inevitable that it should also be broken down in the ■ domain of practical sociology, and that German proposals-'for social change should win the attention of English students of social problems. The works of Marx, Bebel,. Liebknecht, and Engels have not reached any large num­ ber of English people ; neither have those of Strauss, Hegel, and Kant. None the less in each case have they exercised a profoundly modifying influence on religious, philosophical, and sociological thought respectively ; for, reaching a small band only, that band has in its turn in­ fluenced thought in the direction taken by itself, and has modified the views of very many who are unconscious of the.- �THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 7 change thus wrought in their own attitude towards. pro­ gress. At the same time the German graft has been itself modified by the English stock, and English Socialism is beginning to take its own distinctive color ; it is influenced by English traditions, race, habit, and methods of public procedure. It shows, at its best, the influence of .the openair of English political life, the tolerance, of diversity of thought which is bred of free speech ; it is less arrogant, less intolerant, than it is with Germans, or witn those English who are most directly under German influence. In Germany the intolerance of oppression has caused in­ tolerance of revolt ; here the very power of the democracy has a tendency to sober its speech, and to make it take its Own way in the quiet consciousness of its resistless strength. This peculiarity of English life must modify Socialism, and incline it to resort to methods of legislation rather than to methods of dynamite. Nor has the effect of foreign thought been confined to the influence exerted by thinkers over thinkers, through the medium of the press. A potent worker for the inter­ nationalisation of thought has been silently busy for many years past. At first insular prejudices were broken down only for the wealthy and the nobles, when the ‘ grand tour ” was a necessary part of the education of the fine gentleman. Then the capitalist broke down.national fences for his own gain, feeling himself nearer in blood to his foreign colleagues than to the workers in his own land ; for, after all, common interests lie at the root of all. fellowfeeling. And the capitalist abolished nationalism for himself : he hired Germans and Erenchmen for his count­ ing-house work, finding them cheaper and better educated than English clerks ; when his English wage-workers struck for better wages he brought over foreigners to take their place, so that he might live on cheap foreign labor while he starved the English into submission. . The effect of foreign immigration and of foreign importation has not in the long run turned wholly to the advantage of the capitalist ; for his foreign clerks and his foreign workers have fraternised with the English they were brought, over to displace. They have taken part in club discussions ; they have spread their own views ; they have popularised in England the ideas current among workers on the tinent ; they have made numbers of Englishmen acquainted �8 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. with the solutions suggested abroad for social problems. Thus, the internationalism of the luxurious idle and of the wealthy capitalist has paved the way for the interna­ tionalism of the future—the internationalism of the prole­ tariat, the internationalism of Socialism. From this preliminary sketch of the conditions which make for a Socialist movement in England at the present time we must turn to an examination of the doctrines held and taught by the modern school, which claims to teach what is known as Scientific Socialism. The allegation, or even the proof, that modern civilisation is to a large ex­ tent a failure, is obviously not sufficient ground for a com­ plete social revolution. Appeals to the emotions by means of word-pictures of the sufferings and degradation of the industrious, poor, may rouse sympathy, and may even excite to. riot, but can never bring about fundamental changes in society. The intellect must be convinced ere we can look for any wise movement in the direction of organic improvement; and while the passion of the igno­ rant has its revolutionary value, it is on the wisdom and foresight of the instructed that we must rely for the work of social reconstitution. The. first thing to realise is that the Socialist move­ ment is an economic one. Despite all whirling words, and revolution fire, and poetic glamor, and passionate appeal, this one dry fact is the central one — Socialism rej ects the present industrial system and proposes an ex­ ceedingly different one. No mere abuse can shake the Socialist; no mere calling of names can move him. He holds a definite economic theory—a theory wbieb should neither be rejected without examination, nor ac­ cepted without study. The preliminary stock objection which is often held to be sufficient to wave Socialism out of court is the statement that it is “against the laws of political economy”. No statement could be more erroneous; though it may be pleaded in extenuation that the abuse levelled by ignorant Socialists at political economy has given excuse for sup­ posing that it is in antagonism to Socialism. With political economy, as the science which deals with the nature, the production, and the distribution of wealth, Socialism can have no quarrel. Its quarrel is with the present industrial �THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 9 system, not with the science which points out the ascer­ tained sequence of events under that system. Suppose a régime of avowed slavery : political economy, dealing with the production of wealth in such a state, would lay down how slaves might be worked to the best advantage— how most might be got out of them with least expenditure. But it would be irrational to attack political economy as brutal under such conditions ; it would be the slave system which would be brutal, and blame of the science which merely dealt with the existent facts would be idle. The work of political economy is to discern and expound for any type of social system the best methods of producing and distributing wealth under that system ; and it can as easily study and develop those methods under a régime of universal co-operation such as Socialism, as under a régime of universal competition such as the present. Socialism is in antagonism to the present system, and seeks to over­ throw it ; but only the ignorant and the thoughtless con­ found in their hatred the system itself, and the science that deals with its phænomena. In truth, Socialism founds part of its disapproval of the present industrial system on the very facts pointed out by orthodox economists. It accepts Ricardo’s “iron law of wages ”, and, recognising that wages tend to fall to the minimum on which the laborer can exist, it de­ clares against the system of the hiring of workers for a fixed wage, and the appropriation of their produce by the hirer. It accepts Ricardo’s theory of rent, with such modifications as are adopted by all modern economists. It assents to, and indeed insists on, the facts that all wealth is the result of labor applied to natural agents, that capital is the result of labor and abstinence, that in all save the most primitive forms of industry capital and labor—that is, the unconsumed result of past labor and present labor—are both necessary factors in the produc­ tion of wealth. Nor does Socialism challenge the aecuracy of the deduc­ tions from the “laws of political economy” in a com­ petitive system drawn by the trading community. That a man who desires wealth should buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest ; that he should drive the hardest possible bargains ; that in selling he should be guided by the maxim, caveat emptor ; that in buying he �10 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. should take advantage of the ignorance or the necessities of the seller; that the weakest should go the wall; that feeling should not interfere with business; that labor should be bought at the lowest possible price, and as much got out of it as may be; that trade morality differs from the morality of private life—all these maxims the Socialist regards as the evil fruits of the perpetuation among men of the struggle for existence; a struggle which, however inevitable among brutes, is from his point of view unworthy of human civilisation. Recognising thus the unsatisfactory results which flow naturally and inevitably from the present system, Socialism proceeds to analyse the way in which wealth is produced and accumulated under it, to seek for the causes of the extreme wealth and. extreme poverty which are its most salient characteristics. Applying ourselves, then, to the study of the produc­ tion of wealth, we find taking part therein three things— natural agents, capital, and labor. These, under the pre­ sent system, are represented in England by three types— the landlord, the capitalist, and the proletarian. The transitional organisms need not detain us: the landlord who tills his land with his own hands, the capitalist who works in his own mill—these are exceptions ; andwe are concerned with the normal types. Abroad, the landlord pure and simple is comparatively rare. Of these three, the landlord owns the natural agents ; no wealth can be pro­ duced without his consent. John Stuart Mill (“Principles of Political Economy”, bk. ii., ch. xvi., sec. 1) remarks that “ the only person, besides the laborer and th© capitalist, whose consent is necessary to production, and who can claim a share of the produce as the price of that consent, is the person who, by the arrangements of society, possesses exclusive power over some natural agent ”. Given a person who, by possession of the natural agents from which wealth can be produced, can prevent the pro­ duction of wealth by withholding the raw material, and you have a person who can successfully claim part of the wealth to be produced as a condition of allowing produc­ tion to take place. He gains, by virtue of his position, wealth which one less fortunately placed can only acquire by prolonged labor. Nay, more ; since many capitalists will compete for the raw material when it is advantageously �THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 11 situated, he will be able to obtain an ever higher price from the most eager bidder ; as towns increase . and. trade develops, competition will drive the price up still higher ; and this ever-mounting “ rent”, paid, to the owner of the natural agents, will enrich the lucky possessor, however idle, ignorant, or useless he may be. Thus is produced a class which has a vested right to tax industry, and which taxes it in proportion to its success. Not an improvement can be effected, nor a railway constructed, nor a road made, without toll being first paid to the owner of the soil. The whole nation is at the mercy of a comparatively small class, so long as it consents to admit that this class has a right to own the ground on which the nation lives. Here is a point at which Socialism finds itself in direct antagonism to the present system of society. Socialism declares that natural agents ought not to be private property, and that no idle class should be permitted to stand between land and labor, and demand payment of a tax before it will permit the production, of wealth. Socialism holds that the soil on which a nation is born and lives ought to belong to the nation as a whole, and not to a class within the nation ; that the soil should be cultivated by individuals, or by co-operative groups, holding directly under the State—the ‘.‘State” here meaning central organising body or district oiganising body, according as the organisation is communal or cen­ tralised. And here, among different Socialist schools, difference in detail manifests itself. All agree that the soil must in some fashion be controlled by the community, and the benefits derivable from it spread over the com­ munity. But some Socialists would have each commune practically independent, with the soil on which it lives vested in each; the agriculturists of the commune would form an organised body for cultivating the soil, and the agricultural products would be collected in the communal store, and thence distributed as each member of the commune had need of them. Nothing would here be recognised as “ rent ”, since the total produce would pass under communal control. Other Socialists favor a system of more centralised management. But all agree that in­ dividual property in land must disappear, and that in. the future land must not be used as an investment which is to bring in a profit in the shape of rent to some speculator or �12 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. idler, but must be used for purposes of production for the general good, yielding food and raw materials for clothing and other necessaries of life, but profit in the shape of rent to no individual. The extreme Radical school of politicians accepts the Socialist theory of land, and denounces private property in the soil as vigorously as does the Socialist. In fact, the Radical is a half-fledged Socialist—indignant as many would be at the description: he is in favor of the State being the landowner, but he boggles at the idea of the State being the capitalist. His attitude to the land is, however, an important factor in the Socialist move­ ment, for it familiarises the national mind with the idea of the State absorbing the functions hitherto belonging to a class. The establishment of Land Courts, the fixing of judicial rents, the legal restrictions put on the “rights” of landlords—all these make for Socialism. M. Agathon de Potter, a well-known Continental writer, rejoices over the introduction of Mr. Charles Bradlaugh’s Bill for expro­ priating landlords who keep cultivable land uncultivated, and for vesting the forfeited lands in the State, as a direct step towards Socialism. The shrinking of English poli­ ticians from the name does not prevent their advance towards the thing, and the Liberty and Property Defence League is justified in its view that politics are drifting steadily in a Socialist direction. Pass we from the landlord who holds the natural agents to the capitalist who holds the means of production. What is capital, and how has it come into existence ? Capital is any wealth which is employed for profit. On this there is no dispute. As Senior says: “Economists are agreed that whatever gives a profit is properly called capital ”. Now, as all wealth is the result of labor applied to natural agents, capital, being wealth, must have been so produced. But another factor has been at work; as Marshall says: it is “ the result of labor and abstinence ”. Wherever there is capital there has been labor, and there has also been abstinence from consumption. But in studying the origin and the accumulation of capital, this remark­ able historical fact stares us in the face—that capital is not found in the hands of the laborious and the abstemious, but is obtained by a process of confiscation of the results of labor and the imposition of privation on �THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 13 the laborious. On this John Stuart Mill has the following pregnant passage : “ In a rude and violent state of society it continually happens that the person who has capital is not the very person who has Saved it. but someone who, being stronger, or belonging to a more powerful community, has possessed himself of it by plunder. And even in a state of things in which property was protected, the increase of capital has usually been, for a long time, mainly derived from privations which, though essentially the same with saving, are not generally called by that name, because not.voluntary. The actual producers have been slaves, compelled to produce as much as force could extort from them, and to consume as little as the self-interest or the usually very slender humanity of their taskmasters would permit. (“ Prin­ ciples of Political Economy”, bk. i., ch. v., sec. 5). Capital always has been, and it always must be, obtained by the partial confiscation of the results of labor ; that is, it must be accumulated by labor which is not paid for, or by labor of which the payment is deferred. In slave communities the slave-owner becomes a great capitalist by appropriating the total results of his slaves’ toil, and returning to them only such small portion of it as suffices to keep the wealth-producers in capable working order. That is, the wealth produced minus the amount consumed by the producers, goes to the owner, and that part of it which he does not consume is laid by to be employed as capital. And it is worth noting that no considerable accumulation of capital was made, and no rapid progress in civilisation was possible, until slavery was introduced. In a low stage of evolution men will not deny themselves present for the sake of future enjoyment, nor incur present toil for the sake of future ease. But when, as was neatly said to me, the barbarian discovered that he could utilise his conquered enemy to much greater advantage by making him work than by merely eating him, civilisation had a chance. Slavery was, in truth, a necessary stage in social evolution ; only by forced toil and forced privation was it possible to accu­ mulate capital, and without capital no forms of complex industry are realisable. At the present time that which was done frankly and unblushingly in the slave régime is done under a veil of fine phrases, among which free con­ tract, free laborer, and the like, play a striking part. But �14 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. in reality the “free laborer” only obtains as wage such portion of the results of his labor as enables him to exist at the standard of living current for his class at the time, and the remainder of his produce goes to his employer. And too often this portion of his is not sufficient to keep him in capable working order, as is shown by the sombre fact that the average age of the hand-workers at death is far less than that of the idlers. For in truth the slave of the past had this advantage over the wage-worker of the present—-that it was to his master’s interest to keep the slave in high physical condition, and to prolong his working life ; whereas it is to the modern employer’s interest to get as much work out of the “ free laborer ” as is possible in a short time, and then to fling him aside as he begins to flag, and hire in his place a younger and more vigorous competitor, to be in his turn wrung dry and thrown away. Before considering what Socialism would do with the capitalist, we must turn to the proletarian, his necessary correlative. A proletarian is a person who is possessed of labor-force, and of nothing else. He is the incarnation of the “labor” necessary for the production of wealth, the third factor in our trio. This type, in our modern society, is numerous, and is rapidly increasing. He is the very antithesis of the really free laborer, who works on his own raw material with his own instruments of production, and produces for his own subsistence. In the country the proletarian is born on somebody else’s land, and as he grows up he finds himself owner of nothing except his own body. The raw material around him is owned by the landlord ; the instruments of production are owned by the capitalist farmers. As he cannot live on his own labor force, which can only become productive in conjunction with raw material and means of production (capital), he must either sell it or starve. Nominally he may be free ; in reality he is no more free than is the slave. The slave is free to refuse to work, and to take in exchange the lash, the prison, the grave ; and such freedom only has the present proletarian. If he refuses to work, he must take the lash of hunger, the prison of the workhouse, and, on continued refusal, the actual gaol. Nor can he put his own price on this solitary property of his, his body—he must sell it at the market rate ; and in some agricultural counties of England at the present time the market rate �THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 15 is from 7s. to 9s. a week. It is most significant of the bearing of the propertyless condition of the proletarian that many farmers obj ect to the very slight improvement made in the laborer’s position by his being permitted to rent at a high price a small allotment which he cultivates for himself. The ground of the farmer’s objection is that even such small portion of freedom makes the laborer “too independent”, and thereby drives up wages. To get the full advantage out of him, the proletarian must be wholly dependent for subsistence on the wages he earns. The town proletarian is in a similar position—neither land nor instrument of production is his; but he also has his labor force, and this he must sell, or he must starve. We have arrived at the citadel of the Socialist position. Here is this unpropertied class, this naked proletariat, face to face with landlord and capitalist, who hold in their grip the means of subsistence. It must reach those means of subsistence or starve. The terms laid down for its accep­ tance are clear and decisive : “We will place within your hands the means of existence if you will produce sufficient to support us as well as yourselves, and if you will consent that the whole of your produce, over that which is sufficient to support you in a hardy, frugal life, shall be the property of us and of our children. If you are very thrifty, very self-denying, and very lucky, you may be able to save enough out of your small share of your produce to feed yourself in your old age, and so avoid falling back on us. Your children will tread the same mill-round, and we hope you will remain contented with the position in which Providence has placed you, and not envy those born to a higher lot.” Needless to say, the terms are accepted by a proletariat ignorant of its own strength, and the way to profit is open to landlord and capitalist. The landlord, as we have seen, obtains his share of the gains by taxing the capitalist through raising his rent. The capitalist finds his profit in the difference between the. wage he pays and the value of the produce of his hired workers. The wage is fixed by the competition for employment in the labor market, and limited in its downward tendency by the standard of living. The minimum wage is that on which the worker can exist, however hardly. For less than this he will not work. Every shilling above this is fought over, and wage rises and falls by competition. At �16 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. everstage of their relationship there is contest betweèn employer and employed. If the wage is paid for a fixed day’s work—as in nearly every trade—the employer tries to lengthen the day, the employed to shorten it ; the longer the day, the greater the production of “surplus value ”—¿<?., of the difference between the wage paid and the value produced. The employer tries to increase surplus value by pressing the workers to exertion ; they lessen exertion in order not to hasten the time of their discharge. The employer tries still to increase surplus value by sup­ planting male labor with female and child labor at lower wages. The men resist such introduction, knowing that the ultimate result is to increase the amount taken by capital and to lessen that obtained by labor. Now the Socialist alleges that these antithetical interests can never be reconciled while capital and labor are the possessions of two distinct classes. He points to the results brought about by the capitalist class while it was left un­ shackled by the State. The triumph of capitalism, and of laisser-faire between employers and employed, was from 1764 to 1833. During that time not only adults but young children were worked from fifteen to sixteen hours a day, and the production of surplus value was enormous. The huge fortunes of the Lancashire “cotton-princes” were built up by these overtasked, quickly worn-out workers. The invention of machinery centupled man’s productive power, and its benefits were monopolised by a compara­ tively small class ; while those who made the wealth festered in closely crowded courts, those who appropriated the wealth luxuriated in country seats ; one side of industri­ alism is seen in the Lancashire mansions, pleasure-grounds, and hothouses ; the Other in the reeking slums within the sound of the factory bells. Under a saner system of pro­ duction, the introduction of machinery would have lightened toil, shortened the hours of necessary labor, and spread abundance where there was want. Under capitalistic in­ dustrialism it has built up huge fortunes for a few, and has reduced thousands to conditions of insanitary living and dreary degradation, worse than anything the world has hitherto known. It has poisoned our rivers, polluted our atmosphere, marred the beauty of our country’s face, bestialised large numbers of our people. Improvements in machinery, which should be hailed with joy, are regarded �THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 17 with dread by large classes of workers, because they will throw numbers out of work, and reduce men, who were skilled laborers with the old machinery, into the ranks of the unskilled. True, the result of the introduction of machinery has been to cheapen—in consequence of com­ petition among capitalists—many commodities, especially articles of clothing. But this effect is little felt among the laboring classes. They can buy perhaps three coats where they used to buy one, but the easily worn-out shoddy, thought good enough for clothes sold in poor quarters, is but a poor exchange for the solid hand-made stuffs worn by their ancestors. What, then, is the remedy proposed by Socialism ? It is to deal with capital as it deals with land; to abolish the capitalist as well as the landlord, and to bring the means of production, as well as the natural agents on which they are used, under the control of the community. Capital is, as we have seen, the result of unpaid labor; in a complex system like our own it is the result of co­ operative—that is, of socialised—labor. It has been found Iby experience that division of labor increases productive ability, and in all forms of industry numbers now co­ operate to turn out the finished product. In each com­ modity is embodied the labor of many workers, and the Socialisation of labor has reached a very advanced stage. But while industrialism has been socialised in its aspect of labor, it has remained individualistic in its aspect of capi­ tal ; and the results of the combined efforts of many are appropriated to the advantage of one, and when the one has exhausted his power of consumption he retains the remaining results, and employs them for the further enslavement and exploitation of labor. Thus labor con­ stantly adds new links to the chain which fetters it, and is ever increasing the capital which, let out at interest by its owners, becomes ever a heavier tax upon itself. Social­ ism contends that these unconsumed results of socialised labor ought not to pass into the hands of individuals to be used by them for their own profit; but should pass either into the industrial funds of the several trades that produce them, or into a central industrial exchequer. In either case, these funds created by past labor would be used for the facilitation of present and future labor. They would be available for the introduction of improved machinery, �18 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. for the opening up of new industries, for the improvement of means of communication, and for similar undertakings. Thus, in a very real sense, capital would become only the deferred payment of labor, and the whole results of toil would be constantly flowing back upon the toilers. Under such conditions, fixed capital or plant would, like land, be held for purposes of use by the workers who used it. Its replacement would be a constant charge on the commodities it helped to produce. A machine represents so much human labor; that embodied labor takes part in producing the finished commodity as much as does the palpable labor of the human worker who superintends the machine; that worker does not produce the whole value added in the factory to the material brought into it, and has no claim to that whole value. The wear and tear of the machine is an offset, and must be charged on the products, so that when the machine is worn out there may be no difficulty in its replacement. Under such conditions also the dis­ tinction between employers and employed would disappear. All would be members of industrial communities, and the necessary foremen, superintendents, organisers, and officers of every kind, would be elected as the officers of trades unions are elected at the present time. Poverty will never cease so long as any class or any indi­ viduals have an interest in the exploitation of others. While individuals hold capital, and other individuals can­ not exist unless that capital is used for their employment, the first class will prey upon the second. The capitalists will not employ unless they can “make a profit ” out of those they hire to work for them; that is, unless they pay them less than the value of the work produced. But if one man is to have value for which he has not worked, another must have less than the value of his work; and while one class grows wealthy on unpaid labor, another must remain poor, giving labor without return. Socialism would give to each return for labor done, but it recognises no claim in the idle to grow fat on the produce of the in­ dustrious. Interest on capital, paid to individuals, has—as is obvious from the foregoing—no place in Socialism. Strongly as Socialism protests against the whole system of which land­ lords and capitalists form an integral part, it reserves its uttermost reprobation for the theory which justifies a class �THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 19 of the latter in living solely on money drawn as interest on investments. If a man possesses three or four thousand pounds he can invest them, and live all his life long on the interest without ever doing a stroke of honest work, and can then bequeath to some one else the right to live in idleness ; and so on in perpetuity. Money in the capitalist system is like the miraculous oil in the widow’s cruse—it can always be spent and never exhausted. A man in sixty years will have received in interest at five per cent, three times his original fortune, and although he may have spent the interest, and thus have spent every penny of his for­ tune three times over, he will yet possess his fortune as large as it was when he began. He has consumed in com­ modities three times the sum originally owned, and yet is not one penny the worse. Other people have labored for him, fed him, clothed him, housed him, and he has done nothing in exchange. The Socialist argument against this' form of interest lies in a nutshell: a man earns £5 ; he gives labor for which he receives in exchange a power of possession over £5 worth of commodities; he desires only to consume £1 worth now, and to defer the consumption of the remaining £4. He buys his £1 worth of commodi­ ties, and considers himself repaid for the fifth portion of his work by possessing and consuming these. But he ex­ pects to put out his saved £4 at interest, and would con­ sider himself hardly used if, fourteen years hence, when he desired to exercise his power of consumption, deferred for his own convenience, that power had not increased although he had done nothing to increase it. Yet it can only be in­ creased by other people’s labor being left unpaid for, while he is paid twice over for his; and this arrangement the Socialist stamps as unjust. So long as capital remains in the hands of individuals, interest will be demanded by them for its use, and will be perforce paid; and so long also will exist an idle class, which will consume without producing, and will remain a burden on the industrious^ who must labor to support these as well as themselves, and must produce sufficient for all. Now, Socialism aims at rendering impossible the exist­ ence of an idle class. No healthy adult but will have to work in exchange for the things he requires. For the young, freedom from labor ; they have to prepare for life’swork. For the aged, freedom from labor: they have. �:20 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. worked, and at eventide should come rest. For the sick also, freedom from labor ; and open hospitals for all, with­ out distinction of class, where tendance and all that skill •can do shall be at the service of each. But for the strong and the mature, no bread of idleness, no sponging upon other people. With division of labor will come also divi­ sion of leisure ; the disappearance of the languid lady, full of ennui from sheer idleness, will entail the disappearance of the overworked slavey, exhausted from unending toil; and there will be two healthy women performing necessary work, and enjoying full leisure for study, for art, for recreation, where now are the over-lazy and the over­ driven. In thus condemning the existence of an idle class, Social­ ism does not assail all the individuals who now compose it. These are not to blame for the social conditions into which they have been born; and it is one of the most hopeful ■signs of the present Socialist movement, that many who are working in it belong to the very classes which will be .abolished by the triumph of Socialist principles. The man who has inherited a fortune, and has embraced Socialism, would do no good by throwing it away and plunging into the present competitive struggle; all he can do is to live simply, to utilise his position of advantage as a pedestal •on which to place his advocacy of Socialism, and to employ his money in Socialist propaganda. It is feared by some that the success of the Socialist movement would bring about the crushing of individualism and an undue restriction of liberty. But the Socialist contends that the present terrible struggle for existence is the worst enemy of individualism, and that for the vast majority individuality is a mere phrase. Exhausting toil ■and ever-growing anxiety, these crush out individuality, -and turn the eager promising lad into the harassed drudge ■of middle age. How many capable brains are wasted, how many original geniuses lost to the nations they might illuminate, by the strife for mere livelihood ? The artist .fritters away his genius in u pot-boilers ” ; the dramatist writes down to the piece that will “pay”, and harnesses h.is delicate fancy into coarse burlesque full of wretched witticisms ; in the stress of the struggle to live, patient study and straining after a great ideal become impossible. Individualism will only develop fully when Socialism has �TIIE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 21 lifted off all shoulders the heavy burden of care, and hasgiven to all leisure to think and to endeavor. Nor is the fear of undue restriction of liberty better founded than that of the crushing out of individualism. One kind of liberty, indeed, will be restricted—the liberty to oppress and to enslave other people. But with this exception liberty will be increased. Only the very wealthy are now free. The great majority of people must work, and their choice of work is very limited. The poor. must take what work they can get, and their complaint is not that they are compelled to work, but that they often cannot get work to do. In satisfying the complex wants of the civilised human being there is room for all the most diverse capacities of work; and if it be said that there, are un­ pleasant. kinds of work that must be done, which none would willingly undertake, it may be answered that those kinds of work have to be done now, and that the com­ pulsion of the community would not be a greater restriction of personal liberty than the present compulsion of hunger; and further, that it would be easy to make a short period of unpleasant toil balance a long period of pleasant; and that it would be far better to have such tasks divided among a number, so that they would press very lightly upon each, than have them, as now, pushed on to a compara­ tively few, whose whole lives are brutalised by the pressure. The very strictest organisation of labor by the community that can be imagined, would be to the great majority far less oppressive than the present system, for at the worst, it would but control an extremely small portion of each working day, and would leave the whole of the rest of the existence free, to be used at the pleasure of the individual, untrammelled by anxiety and harassing care for the mere necessaries of life. The pride in skill, the stimulus of honorable ambition, the pleasure of success, all these would be present, as they are to-day; but instead of being the privilege of the few, they would brighten the life of all. A profound moral impulse really underlies the whole of the Socialist movement. It is a revolt against the callous indifference of the majority in the “ comfortable classes ” to the woful condition of large numbers of the workers. It is an outburst of unselfish brotherhood, which cannot bear to sit at ease while others suffer, which claims to share the common human lot, and to bear �22 TIIE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. part of the burden now pressing with crushing weight on the shoulders of the poor. It detests the theory that there must always be hewers of wood and drawers of water for a luxurious class, and proclaims that human degradation lies in idle living, not in earnest work. It would have all work, that all may have leisure, and would so distribute the necessary work of the world that none may be crushed by it, but that all may be disciplined. And this very out­ burst of human brotherhood is in itself a proof that society is evolving Socialismwards, and that the evolution of humanity is reaching a stage in which sympathy is tri­ umphing over selfishness, and the desire for equality of happiness is becoming a potent factor in human conduct. The Socialist ideal is one which could not meet with wide acceptance if humanity were not marching towards its realisation. On one matter the Socialist movement, both abroad and at home, has set itself in opposition to science and to right reason—<?.y., on the law of population. It is easy to see how this opposition has arisen, and it may be hoped that when Socialists in general disentangle the scientific state­ ment of facts from Malthus’ unwise applications of them, Socialism and prudential restraint will be seen to be indissolubly united. Malthus accurately pointed out that population has a tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence ; that as it presses on the available means, suffering is caused ; and that it is kept within them by what he termed “positive checks ”—¿.0, a high death-rate, especially among the children of the poor, premature death from disease, underfeeding, etc. The accuracy of his state­ ment has been proved up to the hilt by Charles Darwin, who describes with abundant illustrations the struggle for existence—a struggle which is the direct result of the fact stated in the law of population, of the tendency of all animated things to increase beyond their food supply ; this has led, and still leads, to the survival of those who are fittest for the conditions of the struggle. Unhappily, Malthus added to his scientific exposition some most unfortunate practical advice ; he advised the poor not to marry until, practically, they had reached middle life. The poor felt, with natural indignation, that in addition to all their other deprivations they were summoned by Malthus to give up tfie chief of the few pleasures left to them, to surrender �TIIE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 23 marriage, to live in joyless celibacy through, the passion­ season of life, to crush out all the impulses of love until by long repression these would be practically destroyed. Under such circumstances it is little wonder that “ Mal­ thusianism ” became a word hated by the poor and denounced by those who sympathised with them. It is true that the advice of Malthus as to the putting off of marriage has been and is very widely followed by the .middle classes; but it is perfectly well known that the putting off of marriage does not with them mean the ■observance of celibacy, and the shocking prostitution which is the curse of every Christian city is the result of the following of the advice of Malthus so far as marriage is concerned. It is obvious that Malthus ignored the strength of the sexual instinct, and that the only possible result of the wide acceptance of his teaching would be the increase of prostitution, an evil more terrible than that of poverty. But the obj ection rightly raised to the practical teaching of Malthus ought not to take the form of assailing the perfectly impregnable law of population, nor is it valid against the teachings of Neo-Malthusians, who advise early marriage and limitation of the family within the means of existence. The acceptance of this doctrine is absolutely essential to the success of Socialism. Under a system in which children are forced to labor, they may begin to “keep them­ selves ” at a very early age; but under a Socialist system, where education will occupy childhood and youth, and where old age is to be free from toil, it will soon be found that the adult working members will not permit an un­ limited increase of the mouths which they have to fill. Facilitate production as we may, it will always take more hours to produce the necessaries of life for families of ten or twelve than for families of three or four. The practi­ cal enforcement of the question will probably come from the women; highly educated women, full of interest in public work and taking their share in public duty, will not consent to spend year after year of their prime in nothing but expecting babies, bearing babies, and suckling babies. They will rebel against the constant infliction of physical discomfort and pain, and will insist on the limita­ tion of the family as a condition of marriage. The sooner this is recognised by Socialists the better, for at present �24 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. they waste much strength by attacking a doctrine which they must sooner or later accept. A glance backward over the history of our own country, since the Reform Bill of 1832 opened the gate of political power to those outside the sacred circle of the aristocracy, will tell how an unconscious movement towards Socialism has been steadily growing in strength. Our Factory Acts, our Mines Regulation Acts, our Education Acts, our Em­ ployers’ Liability Acts, our Land Acts—-all show the set of the current. The idea of the State as an outside power is fading, and the idea of the State as an organised com­ munity is coming into prominence. In the womb of time the new organism is growing: shall the new birth come in peace or in revolution, heralded by patient endeavor or by roar of cannon ? Who can tell ? But this one thing I know, that come it will, whether men work for it or hinder; for all the mighty, silent forces of evolution make for Socialism, for the establishment of the Brotherhood of Man. � 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 &amp; 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 The socialist movement Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Besant, Annie Wood [1847-1933] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 24 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Reprinted from the "Westminster Review". Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Freethought Publishing Company Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1887 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N070 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism 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 (The socialist movement), 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 NSS Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/4f2eb7b556c44294af9dc333742d62b0.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=t7gXRgblxOI0xu7FoyfnwpX7jgWP7zkuk6qGRyheo91ndAl8agrJh2pC7Bsj03eCqWsCLITxIpn6ekvgg89bRmuyP7IllF%7E4mEQakF9xqacdFZrHfTOgB2In06G3xgyke0nD0iGjySncf7woVdJyRaE0UnB04kh7G6TdL69jTTJPNLOlTq9CtHEc%7EZPswRw%7EVk%7Eahj4slpFV4WMxQq9Vtt4l%7EyXPqHFvB9S0sjoBPfGycFjRPlAV3qb4NeVG2wAJHfxUxWwpwgi5OXbiOGtXgu5vfy1gHEOOUu2prJPQlms14EOBmfPQAu0%7E-CUoft3oCU0Cv1PlI4-KlHfHvRt9jw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 93f0bf88c798a7dc1489f7ba8016e1c3 PDF Text Text ¥ NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY BY ANNIE BESANT. [Reprinted from Our Corner.] LONDON: EREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING 63, FLEET STREET, E.C. COMPANY, �LONDON: TRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH, 63, ELEET STREET, E.C. �THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. ---------- ---------- — The recognition of Evolution in the physical world, of gradual progress from the simple to the complex, of reiter­ ated integration as the steps of that progress, has led to the application of the same unifying principle to the psychical world, and to the suggestion of its application to the socio­ logical. As the lowest forms of life consist of simple independent cells, as these cells become grouped, differen­ tiated, integrated into tissues, as these tissues become more complex in arrangement, more co-ordinated, in the highest organisms, so, it is argued, do the individual human units become grouped into families and tribes, integrated into a social organism, of which the multiplicity of the composing elements is the measure of its adaptability, the unity and the correlation thereof the measure of its strength. If Society be thus regarded as an organism instead of as a bag of marbles, if it be conceded that the health of the whole depends upon the healthy functioning of every part, in correlation not in independence, then all that tends to­ wards integration will be recognised as of life, all that tends towards disintegration as of death. Judging the future by the past we shall be prepared to look forward to the realisation of a fuller social unity than has yet been reached, and to recognise that by an inexorable necessity Society must either integrate yet further, or must begin a movement which will result in its resolution into its ele­ ments. The further integration may be regarded as an ideal to be embraced, or as a doom to be striven against, as a brotherhood to be rejoiced in or as a slavery to be abhorred; �4 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. but the believer in Evolution must acknowledge that if Society is to endure, this further integration is inevitable. The object of this and of the following papers is to roughly outline this Evolution of Society, and to consider the type towards which it is working ; and they will deal with: I. The Barbaric Period and its Survivals; II. The Industrial Period and its products; III. The Conflict be­ tween Social and Anti-Social Tendencies; IV. The Becoacilement of Diverging Interests. I.—The Barbaric Period and its Survivals. Association for the common weal is, as is well knows* by no means confined to man. Many herbivorous animals live in herds, and in the pastures the females and the young’ graze in the centre, while the males form a protective ring, and sentinels, carefully posted, give warning cries of alarm if danger approaches. Wolves hunt in packs, and together pull down prey with which singly they could not cope. Bees and ants live in thickly populated communities, with their builders, food-gatherers, nurses, and in many cases, soldiers, all working for the Society as a whole. Man’s nearest congeners, the apes, are social animals and differ little in their qualities and morality from the lowest savages. And in all these one phsenomenon is noteworthy: the sub­ mission of the individual to restraints for the general good^ When a tribe of monkeys goes out on a predatory expedi­ tion—as to rob an orchard—the young ones are slapped if they are not silent and obedient. When a goat is dis­ charging a sentinel’s duty, he may not feed at ease on th# tempting grass on which his comrades are luxuriating, con­ fident in his vigilant loyalty. The working-bee must not keep the honey it gathers, but must carry it home for stor­ ing. Each member of the community yields up something of individual freedom, receiving in exchange the benefits of association, and it is among those who—like the bees and ants—have carried very far the subordination of the unit to the social organism that the most successful com­ munities are found. In the Barbaric Period of human society the virtues evolved are much the same as those which characterise the brute communities—courage, discipline of a rudimentary kind, loyalty to the head of the tribe. These are evolved �THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. 5 because they are necessary to the success of the tribe, and those who are weak in them perish in the struggle for existence. They are evolved by the pressure of necessity, by the exigencies of the common life. As disputes can only be settled by war, the military chief is indispensable, and the strong and cunning man is made the head of the com­ munity. As social conditions become a little more settled, and the conventions which grew up from necessity become gradually crystallised into law, the hereditary principle ereeps in, and the most capable adult member of a family —now recognised as royal—is selected to fill the throne ; as law increases yet more in authority, the personal capacity of the sovereign becames a matter of less vital necessity, and the eldest son succeeds to his father’s crown, whether he is major or minor; at last the time is reached, as with ourselves, in which a monarch is simply a survival, in­ teresting—as are all rudimentary organs, because marks of an ancestral condition—but perfectly useless: a mere excrescence like the dew-claw of a St. Bernard dog. Es-sentially barbaric, it is an anachronism in a civilised society, and only endures by virtue of its inoffensiveness and of the public inertia. Still keeping within the Barbaric Period, but passing out of the stage in which every man was a warrior, we come to the time in which Society was constituted of two olasses: the fighting class, which consisted of king and nobles; the working class, which consisted of those who toiled on the land and of all engaged in commerce of any kind, whether by producing goods for sale or by selling them when produced. The fighting class had then its real utility; if the king and the nobles claimed the privilege of governing, they discharged the duty of protecting, and while they tyrannised and robbed at home to a consider­ able extent, they defended against foreign oppression the realm to which they belonged. Fighting animals they were, like the big-jawed soldiers of the Termites, but they were necessary while the nations had not emerged from barbarism. But these were not in the line of evolution; the evolving life of the nation was apart from them ; they were the wall that protected, that encircled the life that was developing, and their descendants are but the crumbling ruins which mark where once the bastions and the ramparts frowned. �£ THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. The life of the nation was in its workers, among whom the agriculturists claim our first attention. The villeins who tilled the soil under the feudal system were, in a very real sense, the chattels of their lord. They were bound to the soil, might be recovered by a legal suit if they left their lord’s estate, were liable to seizure of all their pro­ perty by their lord at his mere will, might be imprisoned er assaulted by him, and in many cases the lord held over them a power of life and death. These feudal privileges of the lord gradually disappeared in England during the Middle Ages; many villeins fled their native soil, hired themselvesout in other parts of the country, and were never recovered by their lords ; residence for a year and a day in a walled town made a villein free: relaxations of servitude madeby an indulgent lord became customary: villeins became transformed into copyholders in many cases, and in one way or another the peasantry emerged from nominal slavery. In trying to realise the lot of the villein and to compare it with that of his modern descendant, the agricultural laborer, it is not sufficient to study only the conditions of his servitude, the extreme roughness and poorness of his house, his ignorance, the frequent scarcity and general coarseness of his food. It must be remembered that if his lord was his owner he was also his protector, and that the landowner’s feeling of duty to his tenants and the tenants’ feeling of dependence and claim for assistance on the land­ owner which still exist in some old-world parts of Eng­ land, are survivals of the old feudal tie which implied subjection without consciousness of degradation. Further, while the hut of the villein was of the poorest kind, the castle of the lord by no means realised our modern idea of a comfortable house: the villein had straw on his floor, but the lord had only rushes; and the general roughness of the time effected all alike. If the villein was ignorant, so was the lord, and if the lord tilted gaily with the lance, the villein broke heads as gaily with his staff. If the villein was sometimes sorely put to it to find bread, at other times he revelled in rough abundance, and the dolesat the monastery gates often eked out his scanty supply when Nature was unkind. Speaking broadly, there was far less difference then in fashion of living between lord and villein than now between lord and laborer: less difference of taste, of amusements, of education, and �THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. 7 therefore more comradeship: the baron’s retainers then dined at the table of the lord without shocking any fastidious taste, while my lord marquis now would find his dinner much interfered with if his servants sat at it as of old. And since happiness is very much a matter of com­ parison, it may be doubted whether the villein was not happier than the agricultural laborer is now, and whether the lop-sided progress of Society, which has given so little to the toiler in comparison with what it has given to the idler, has been much of a blessing to the laboring agri­ cultural class. The growth of industries other than agricultural marked with unmistakable distinctness the evolution of society from barbarism. Handworkers in these tended to produce in groups, and soon associated themselves in towns, partly for convenience in production and distribution, partly for self-defence; divorced from the land, they were naturally less directly dependent on the landowners than were the agriculturists, and as the king’s wish to plunder them was checked by the nobles, and the nobles’ wish to plunder by the king, they gradually secured charters which pro­ tected them from both, and waxed free and prosperous. Each craft had its guild, and the apprentice entering to learn his trade worked his way step by step up to the position of a master craftsman. There were then no large aggregations of workers, as in our modern factories, but the lad placed in a workshop was one of a small group, and was trained as a member of a family rather than as a “ hand ”. Entrance into the workshop of a famous master was eagerly sought for, and in consequence of the slight division of labor there was a pride in capable workman­ ship which is now almost impossible. Individual ability, under this system, was at once apparent and had scope for development, so that art and industry were more closely united than they have ever been since. The artist was largely a handicraftsman in the industrial sense, and the handicraftsman was largely an artist; and side by side with this mental development existed physical vigor, in conse­ quence of the small size of the towns and the accessibility of the open country. In industrial pursuits, as in those of the countryside, the great division between classes which is now so grievous did not exist; the “master” worked with his men, eat with them, lived with them, and the �THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. 4‘industrious apprentice” who “married his master’s daughter’’ was not a poetic fiction, but an inspiring and realisable ideal. Certainly the amount of products turned out could not rival the vast quantities now produced, but the lives of the producers were healthier and more human than those of too many of the handicraftsmen of to-day. Among the survivals from the Barbaric Period present in modern society, the monarch has already been men­ tioned. Perhaps no form of monarchy exposes its anachro­ nistic character more completely than the “ limited monarchy ” of modern England. There is an exquisite absurdity in the man who can being changed into the man who can not.1 The hereditary aristocracy is another sur­ vival from barbarism, and is a curious travesty of the scientific truth as to race. The analogy of a high-bred horse and a high-bred man is misleading, for the bum an breeding is a matter of name, not of qualities. There can be no doubt that a human aristocracy might be bred, by matching men and women who showed in marked degree the qualities which might be selected as admirable, but the aristocracy which proceeds from male idlers, profligate in their undisciplined youth and luxurious in their pam­ pered maturity, matched with female idlers, whose useless­ ness, vanity, and extravagance are their chief recom­ mendations, is not one which should bear rule in a strong and intellectual nation. To the barbaric Past it belongs, not to the semi-civilised Present, and the lease of its power will be determined when the workers realise the power which has now passed into their hands. II-—The Industrial Period and its Products. The Industrial Period may fairly be taken as beginning for all practical purposes with the invention of the Spinning Jenny by Hargreaves, a weaver, in 1764 ; of the Spinning Machine by Arkwright, a barber, in 1768 ; of the Mule, by Crompton, a weaver, 1776. If to these we add the virtual invention of the Steam Engine by Watt in 1765, we have within these twelve years, from 1764 to 1776, the vastest revolution in industry the world has known, the birth of a new Period in the Evolution of Society. As 1 King-, German Ivo/iiy, has the same root as Konnen, to be able. �TOE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 9 Green points out in his “ History of the English People ”, the “handloom used in the Manchester cotton trade had until that time retained the primitive shape which is still found in the handlooms of India” (p. 768), and the con­ ditions of labor were feudal, patriarchic, domestic, not industrial, in the modern sense of the word. The intro­ duction of machinery (other than the simple kinds used in earlier times) revolutionised social life as well as industry, and the vast increase of man’s power over nature not only affected the production of manufactured goods, but affected also the condition of the worker, the climate and aspect of the country, as also, with the most far-reaching results, the framework and tendencies of society. These all are the products of the Industrial Period, and these all must be taken into consideration if we would estimate fairly and fully the net result of good or of evil which remains. It is obvious that the great value of machinery lies in the fact that it produces much with little labor; in the words of a Report: “One man in a cotton-mill superin­ tends as much work as could have been done by two hundred, seventy years ago.” The result of this should have been widespread comfort, general sufficiency of the necessaries of life, a great diminution of the hours of labor : the result of it has been the accumulation of vast fortunes by a comparatively few, the deadening and the brutalising of crowds of the handwoi’kers. Wliether we regard the immediate or the general results, we shall find them very different from the rosy hopes of those who gave to the world the outcome of their inventive genius. lhe immediate result of the introduction of machinery was, as everyone knows, terrible suffering among handi­ craftsmen. Let us hear Green, an impartial witness. “Manufactures profited by the great discoveries of Watt and Arkwright; and the consumption of raw cotton in the mills of Lancashire rose during the same period from fifty to a hundred millions of pounds. The vast accumulation of capital, as well as the constant recurrence of bad seasons at this time, told upon the land, and forced agriculture into a feverish and un­ healthy prosperity. Wheat rose to famine prices, and the value of land rose in proportion with the price of wheat. Inclosures went on with prodigious rapidity; the income of every landowner was doubled, while the farmers were �10 THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. able to introduce improvements into the processes of agri­ culture which changed the whole face of the country. But if the increase of wealth was enormous, its distribution was partial. During the fifteen years which preceded Waterloo, the number of the population rose from ten to thirteen millions, and this rapid increase kept down the rate of wages, which would naturally have advanced in a corresponding degree with the increase of the national wealth. Even manufactures, though destined in the long run to benefit the laboring classes, seemed at first rather to depress them. One of the earliest results of the introduction of machinery was the ruin of a number of small trades which were carried on at home, and the pauperisation of families who relied on them for support. In the winter of 1811 the terrible pressure of this transi­ tion from handicraft to machinery was seen in the Luddite, or machine-breaking, riots which broke out over the northern and midland counties, and which were only sup­ pressed by military force. While labor was thus thrown out of its older grooves, and the rate of wages kept down at an artificially low figure by the rapid increase of popu­ lation, the rise in the price of wheat, which brought wealth to the landowner and the farmer, brought famine and death to the poor, for England was cut off by the war from the vast cornfields of the Continent or of America, which nowadays redress from their abundance the results of a bad harvest. Scarcity was followed by a terrible pauperi­ sation of the laboring classes. The amount of the poorrate rose fifty per cent., and with the increase of poverty followed its inevitable result, the increase of crime ” (“Hist, of the English People”, pp. 805, 806). It is noteworthy that where handworkers are concerned, no claim for compensation is ever put forward when they are deprived of their means of livelihood. If it is pro­ posed to nationalise the land, it is at once alleged that the present owners must be bought out, on the ground that it would be unjust to deprive them of their incomes from land and to reduce them to poverty for the benefit of the community. But no one is so scrupulous, or so tender­ hearted, when only laborers are ruined; no one ever pro­ posed to compensate the handicraftsmen who were robbed of their means of existence by the introduction of machinery. Great stress is laid on the general benefit of the community, �THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 11 for which, it appears it is right to sacrifice the worker, but wrong to sacrifice the idler. And further, if a starving laborer fall back on the poor-rate he is at once “pauperised”, and everyone knows it is a disgrace to be a pauper—on the parish : but if a Dake of Marlborough, with huge estates, pockets a sum of £107,000 out of the taxes he is not “pauperised”, and everyone knows it is no disgrace to be a pauper—on the nation. The general result of the introduction of machinery has clearly been a great increase of comfort and wealth to the upper and middle classes, and to the upper stratum of the artisans; but great masses of the people are worse off absolutely, as well as relatively, in consequence of its in­ troduction. They are more crowded together, the air they breathe is fouler, the food they eat is more unwholesome, the trades they live by are more ruinous to health, than they were in the time when towns were smaller, the open country more accessible, the air unpoisoned by factory chimneys and chemical works; the times when “master and man ” slept in the same house, dined at the same table, worked in the same room. Machinery has enormously increased the amount of goods produced, but it has not lightened the toil of the workers; it has sent down prices, but the laborer must work as long to gain his bare subsistence. The introduc­ tion of sewing-machines may serve as a typical instance. It was said that they would lighten the toil of the needle­ woman, and enable her to earn a livelihood more easily. Nothing of the sort has happened; the needlewoman works for quite as many hours, and earns quite as meagre a subsistence ; she makes three or four coats where before she made one, but her wages are not trebled or quadrupled; the profits of her employer are increased, and coats are sold at a lower price. The real value of machinery, again, may be seen when a sewing machine is introduced into a house where the needlework is done at home; there the toil is lightened; the necessary work is done in a fifth part of the time, and the workers have leisure instead of long hours of labor. The inference is irresistible ; machinery is of enormous value in lessening human toil when it is owned by those who produce, and who produce for use, not for profit; it is not of value to those who work it for wages, for the wages depend, not on the worth of the goods �12 THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. produced, but on the competition in the labor-market and the cost of subsistence. In dealing with the products of the Industrial Period, the human products are of the most extreme importance. How have the conditions of labor, the environment, and therefore the life of the laborer, been affected by the intro­ duction of machinery ? I say, without fear of contradic­ tion, that the environment of the manufacturing laborers has altered for the worse, and that the result of that worsening may be seen in the physical deterioration of the great masses of the workers in factory towns. Com­ pare the tall, upright, brown laborer of Lincolnshire with the short, bowed, pallid knife-grinder of Sheffield; compare the robust, stalwart Northumberland miner with the slender, pasty-cheeked lads who come troop­ ing out of a Manchester cotton-mill; and you will soon see the physical difference caused by difference of labor-conditions. Sheffield workers die young, their lungs choked with the metal dust they inhale; cotton-factory “ hands ” die of the fibre-laden air they breathe. I grant that Sheffield goods are cheap, if by cheapness is meant that fewer coins are paid for them than would have been required ere they were made by machinery; but to me those things are not cheap which are rendered less in money-cost by destruction of human life. Hood once wrote of cheap shirts : “ O men with sisters dear, O men with mothers and wives, It is not linen you’re wearing out, But human creatures’ lives I ” And to me there is many a “ cheap ” article which is dear by the price that has been paid for its cheapness, price of human health, price of human happiness, price of human life, making it costly beyond all reckoning, for it incarnates the misery of the poor. I grant readily that things were worse before the Factory Acts were passed; but this truth only makes me desire their extension, and also a far greater insistence on sanita­ tion than at present prevails. It is necessary that a large number of workers should co-operate in production by machinery; it is not necessary that they should be poisoned or wearied out with toil. The working-day should be �THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 13 short, because mechanical toil tends to stupefy; and every factory should have a recreation-ground, prettily laid out, with facilities for games, to which the workers might resort for the intervals between the hours of labor. Thorough ventilation should ensure the wholesomeness of the air within the factory, a task which would be greatly facilitated by each factory standing alone and being treesurrounded. « The law should also promptly concern itself with the scandalous pollution of the atmosphere and of rivers by the smoke and refuse of factories. There is no reason why every factory should not consume its own smoke, and the law already existing on this matter should be sternly enforced, by imprisonment, not by fine. A man who poisons ope person is punished; a man who poisons a whole neighborhood goes free. The thick cloud of black smoke. hanging over a town like Sheffield or Manchester is a sickening sight; it blights the trees, destroys the flowers, soils every house, dirties every article of clothing. Who that has lived in Manchester can forget “Manchester blacks ” ? It is pitiable to go through the country and see exquisite landscapes destroyed by smoke and refuse ; huge chimneys belching out black torrents; streams that should be dancing in the sunlight gleaming with phos­ phorescent scum, and rolling along thick and black with tilth. What sort of England is the Industrial Period going to leave to its successors ? If there be any truth in the scientific doctrine that the environment modifies the organism, what can be the tendency of the modifications wrought by such an environ­ ment as the Black Country ? AVhat is there of refining, of elevating, of humanising influence in those endless piles of cinders, that ruined vegetation, that pall of smoke, lighted at night by the lurid glare of the furnaces ? What kind of race will that be whose mothers work in the chain­ fields till the children come to the birth, and who return thither sometimes on the very day on which they have given new lives to the world ? Many people, true products of the Industrial Period, are indifferent to natural beauty, and only see in a waterfall a source of power, in a woody glen a waste of productive soil. But if, again, the environment modifies the organism, beauty is useful in the highest degree. A high human �14 THE EVOLTTIO^ OF SOCIETY. type cannot be bred in a back slum, trained amid filth and ugliness and clangor, sent to labor ere maturity ; it must be bred in pure air, trained amidst sights and sounds that are harmonious and beautiful, educated until mature ; then let it turn to labor, and give back to the community the wealth of love and comfort which shielded its eaTlier years. On the faces of the lads and lasses who come tumbling out of factories and great warehouses at the dose of every day, filling the streets with tumult and rough horseplay, is set the seal of the sordid conditions under which they live. The lack of beauty around them has made them unbeautiful, and their strident voices are fitted to pierce the din amid which they live. In truth, in its effect on Society, the wealthy manufac­ turing class is far worse than the feudal nobility it is gradually pushing aside. The feudal lords lived among their tenantry, and there were ties of human sympathy between them which do not exist between the manufac­ turer and those whom he significantly calls his “ hands The manufacturers live away from the place in which their wealth is made, dwelling luxuriously in beautiful suburbs, and leaving the “hands ” to stew in closely-packed dwel­ lings under the shadow of the huge and unsightly factories. The division of classes becomes more and more marked; between the rich and the poor yawns an ever-widening gulf. The tendency of Industrialism to produce castes should not be overlooked. Practical men have noted that when people have for generations lived by weaving, their chil­ dren learn weaving far more easily than children who come from a mining district. If a trade becomes hereditary, the aptitude for the trade becomes marked in members of the family. And this is not well. It is a tendency to produce fixed castes of workers, instead of fully-developed various human beings. It means, if present forces go on working unrestrained, the dividing of society into castes, the forma­ tion of rigid lines of demarcation, the petrifaction which has befallen some older civilisations. Over against those who laud the present state of Society with its unjustly rich and unjustly poor, with its palaces and its slums, its millionaires and its paupers, be it ours to proclaim that there is a higher ideal in life than that of being first in the race for wealth, most successful in the scramble for gold. Be it ours to declare steadfastly that �THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 15 health, comfort, leisure, culture, plenty for every individual, are far more desirable than breathless struggle for exist­ ence, furious trampling down of the weak by the strong, huge fortunes accumulated out of the toil of others, to be handed down to those who have done nothing to earn them. Be it ours to maintain that the greatness of a nation depends not on the number of its great proprietors, on the wealth of its great capitalists, on the splendor of its great nobles; but on the absence of poverty among its people, on the education of its masses, on the uni­ versality of enjoyment in lifeill.—The Conflict between Social and Anti-Social Tendencies. The conflict between social and anti-social tendencies has existed as long as Society itself. It is the contest between the integrating and disintegrating forces, between the brute survival and the human evolution. The individual struggle for existence which had gone on through countless centuries over the whole world had become to some extent modified among the social animals, and savage man, as the highest of these, had also modified it within the limits of each community. As Society progressed slowly in civi­ lisation, the contest went on between the surviving brutal, or savage, desire for personal accumulation and personal aggrandisement without regard for others, and the social desire for general prosperity and happiness with the readi­ ness to subordinate the individual to the general good. It is the still-enduring conflict between these tendencies which now claims our attention. The openings for per­ sonal accumulation offered during the Industrial Period gave a great impetus to the anti-social tendencies; the codification of the laws of wealth-getting in Political Economy was seized upon for defence, as though Political Economy offered any law for the general guidance of human conduct, or held up any object as the aim of human life. In their eagerness to represent as right and useful their own greed of gain, members of the laissez-faire school sheltered themselves under philosophic names, and used Political Economy as though instead of laying down the conditions of wealth-getting, it had declared it to be the one duty of human beings to get wealth. The anti-social tendencies seized on three sources of �16 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. wealth as especially promising: mines, factories, landed estates. So ruinous in each department proved their unre­ stricted play, that in each case law had to be called in to check their operation. Mines.—In these the anti-social tendency of unrestricted accumulation, by competition with others, led to the em­ ployment of women and children in labor for which they were unfitted, at wages lower than those obtained by men. Women worked half-naked, with band round forehead dragging laden trucks up steep inclines. Children were born in the darkness, and grew up underground, never seeing the brightness of the sun. The most frightful demoralisation existed, and infants, sleeping at their trap­ doors, were crushed beneath the hurrying truck. Manly decency, womanly modesty, childly weakness, all went down before the Juggernaut car of unrestricted competi­ tion, until the social tendency, in the guise of law, stepped in to curb the brutality of anti-social greed. Factories. — Here, again, the labor of women and children has been utilised in antagonism to the better-paid labor of men. And both women and children were scandalously overworked until law intervened to protect them. In Our Corner for March, 1885 (vol. v., pp. 158, 159), I gave some details of the labor imposed on children before the legislature interposed, and when we find such Acts as the Factory and Workshops Acts attacked by those who pretend to defend Liberty (see report of the 3rd annual meeting of the Liberty and Property Defence League, p. 10), we know that the liberty they defend is the liberty to plunder others unchecked, the liberty which the burglar might claim in annexing his neighbors’ goods. At the present time the chain-works in Warwickshire and Worces­ tershire show us examples of overmuch liberty in dealing with other people’s lives. Women there work semi-nude, dragging heavy chains. A young girl will be absent from her work one day, and reappearing on the morrow will excuse her languid work to the inspector on the ground: “I had a baby yesterday”. Child-bearing girls, to the anti-social school, are only “hands” worth so much less in the labor market. These facts have to be faced. No vague talk of “general improvement” will avail us here. These people are suffering while we are discussing, and dilettante sympathy is of small use. �THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 17 Landed Estates. Here, again, the anti-social tendencies have had full swing. Taxation, levied on land as the rent to the State for the privilege of holding it, has been shifted off the land on to the people, and the land has been claimed as private property instead of as public trust. Improvements made by the tenant have been con­ fiscated, and then the improved condition of the land has been utilised as a reason- for raising the rent of the tenant who improved it. Bents have been raised to an extent the tenant could not meet, until he has become hopelessly indebted to his landlord, and so bound to him, hand and foot. Game has been preserved until the crops of farmers have been ruined by it, and until wild animals luxuriated while human beings starved. When the anti-social tendency has had full play and when it has spread abroad sufficient misery for purblind eyes to recognise, then the social tendency has asserted itself, and has established Land Courts in Ireland to fix fair rents; has secured to the tenant the results of his own labor; has permitted the farmer to kill the ground game preying on his crops. In towns the landlord has been even a greater curse than he has been in the country. Undrained, filthy, rotten hovels have been rented by him to the poor. The slums of all great cities testify to the results of the anti-social tendency, and warn us that the deepest and widest degra­ dation will never touch men’s hearts sufficiently to over­ bear the desire for personal gain. Law, and law alone, can curb these anti-social tendencies. Granted that a time will come when men shall be too noble to profit by the misery of their fellows, that time is not yet. The anti-social tendencies ruin and degrade, and the few who recognise the evil while not personally experiencing it, aided by the many who suffer from it without fully understanding it, must carry legislation which shall fetter the savage inclination to prey on human beings. So far we have considered the play of anti-social tenden­ cies in modern society. Let us turn now to the social tendencies, to those which make for integration. The first of these which we will note is the tendency to ■co-operation. Handicapped as it is by being compelled to make its way in a society based on competition, co-opera­ tion has yet done much to better the lot of the poor. How �18 THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. much, it might do if everywhere it replaced competition, may be guessed at from what it has done despite the evil atmosphere which has surrounded it. Anyone who goes over the stores of the Rochdale Pioneers, who sees the great library it has gathered there, who knows the educa­ tional agencies centred there, must recognise the enormous good done by even partial co-operation under uncongenial circumstances. That productive co-operation has not suc­ ceeded as well as distributive is due partly to the fact that the co-operative workers have sought too eagerly and paid too highly for “influential names” to “float” their com­ panies ; and partly to the fact that production, under the present system, needs a larger capital to withstand trade crises than workers are able to command. Many promi­ sing enterprises have been ruined by straining after large profits, while working with an undue proportion of borrowed money, money which, in times of panic, has been suddenly withdrawn. The social tendency is shown in the assignment of public money for educational purposes, the passing of the Educa­ tion Acts, the pressure of public feeling in favor of ratesupported schools, of higher education for all at the public expense. It is shown in the demand for shorter hours of labor; the insistence that all should work; the attempts —at present only by agitation—to enact limits to the accumulation by individuals of land and capital. And above all the social tendency is shown in the incli­ nation to resort to law for the effecting of the desired changes; ih the recognition that social, not individual effort is necessary for the reform of the social system; in the feeling that the continuance of vice and misery side by side with civilisation is intolerable, and that some means must be found to put an end to them. The problem now set before us is how to eradicate the anti-social, and to cultivate the social, instincts in men and women. Much would be gained if once it were generally recognised that the desire for huge personal accumulation is essentially anti-social, is a survival from the brute. At the present time this desire is veiled under less offensive names, such as “ business ability ”, “sharpness”, “energy”, etc., etc., but when the veil is stripped away it standsforth in its repulsive nudity. To desire sufficiency, suffi­ ciency for health and pleasure now, and for the time when �THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. 19’ work-power has failed, that is natural and reasonable; todesire superfluity, superfluity for ostentation and waste, that is barbaric. Enough for each of work, of leisure, of joy; too littlefor none; too much for none; such is the Social Ideal. Better to strive after it worthily, and fail, than to die with­ out striving for it at all. IV.—The Reconcilement oe Diverging Interests. Wherever a school of thought has succeeded in gaining many adherents, and in holding its ground for a consider­ able period, it is probable that it possesses some truth, or part of some truth, valuable to humanity. Very often it may see only one side of the truth, and so may present a half as though it were the whole ; and the bitterest combats are generally waged between those who hold separately the two halves which, united, would form the perfect whole. Truths which are complementary to each other are held as though they were mutually destructive, and those whoshould be brothers in a common strife turn their weapons against each other’s breasts. Such has been the conflict between the “Individualistic” and the “Socialistic” schools; each holds a truth and does well to cling to it, for neither truth could be lost without injury to Society; the whole truth is to be found by joining the twain, for there is needed for the highest humanity the perfecting of the Individual within a highly organised Society. Looking back for a moment at our Industrial Period,, which may be taken as incarnated in the “Manchester School ”, we shall find that it has given to the world some important information touching production. It has proved that the productiveness of labor can be enormously increased by co-operation and the division of labor ; that individual production of the ordinary necessaries of life is a mistake ; that it is cheaper to weave cotton goods by machinery than to loavo each housekeeper to do her own spinning and weaving. The Manchester School has for ever rendered it impossible that we shall return to genoral production by “cottage industries”: it has proved that largo numbers should co-operate in production; that labor should be economised by much division; that machine-made goods should supersede hand-made in large departments of in­ �20 THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. dustry; these are the contributions of the Manchester School to progress. With these truths which it taught were bound up errors which raised against it a widespread revolt. Its system appeared as though it were based on the assumption that, while labor was to be co-operative, the profits arising from the associated labor were to go to the enrichment of an individual. It deified competition, and consecrated as its patterns those who could best outwit their rivals and outstrip them in the race for wealth. Its maxim, “buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest”, while admirable as counsel for money-making, did not always conduce in practice to perfect honesty, and is scarcely sufficient as the end of life. “Get money; by fair means if thou canst, but by all means get money ”, was a somewhat brutally frank way of putting “ business ” morality. It tended to regard men too much as mechanical instruments of production, significantly calling men, women, and children “hands”, instead of human beings. This school it was of which I spoke on p. 15 as having misused Political Economy, and as having taught as though the laws of Political Economy said “Get rich”, instead of stating the conditions of getting rich; they have used it as the science of Mechanics might be used, if instead of teaching by it how a weight may be lifted with least exer­ tion of muscular strength, it were appealed to as declaring that everyone should lift weights. Turning to the Socialistic School, we find that it enshrines the truth that man is a social animal, and that his progress must lie in the direction of closer social union. Within this school again we find three camps, the Collectivist, the ’Communistic, and the Anarchist, the latter of which is really tenanted by extreme Individualists, who are separated from the ordinary Individualistic School by their desire to •overturn the present social system, and to destroy the “rights of property ”. The Socialists have learned from the Manchester School the conditions of wealth-production on a large scale, and seeing that industry as now conducted leads to the en­ riching of a few and the hopeless poverty of the many, it lays hands on the raw material and the means of production and claims these as collective property. There is, perhaps, among many of us who belong to this school too great an in­ clination to think that the environment is everything, and to �THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. 21 ignore the reaction of the organism on the environment. There is too much forgetfulness of the worse types of men and women, results of the Industrial Period, who would not be suddenly changed even if their environment could be suddenly transformed; there is too reckless a desire to overturn, without asking what curb would be kept, in the general overturning, on the degraded and criminal products of our present civilisation. The Individualistic School, whether it is carried to the extreme Anarchist position, or maintains the sufficiency of reform along the broad lines of the present social state, brings into prominence the right of individual liberty, and the value of individual initiative. One outside, and one inside, nominal Socialism, each is the result of a dread of, a recoil against, over-much State regulation and State interference. Each lays down the vital truth that free play for human faculties, encouragement not discourage­ ment of variations, are necessary to human progress. Each points out that a perfect State is only possible by the perfecting of individual citizens, and each is apt to lay so much stress on the organism as to overlook the immense importance of the environment. There is, of course, as I have said above, the fundamental difference between the Anarchists and those generally recognised as Individualists, that the former appear to negate, while the latter maintain, the right of private property. I have only put them to­ gether as alike in one thing, that they assert the right of the Individual against the State, while the Collectivist Socialist asserts the right of the State as against the In­ dividual. Pressed on the matter, however, both Individualist and Socialist are found to hold a common object; the Indi­ vidualist admits that the claims of the unit must yield if they come into conflict with those of Society : the Socialist admits that he is working for a higher social state in order that each individual may have room and opportunity to develop to the highest point of which he is capable. Is there not here a possible reconcilement ? Is not the ideal of all good and earnest reformers practically the same, although seen by them from different sides ? True, the Individualist is not generally in favor of nationalising the means of production, and herein differs in his method from the Socialist; but is this difference any reason for their �-22 THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. posing as antagonists ? The difference is not greater than that between the Socialist who secures to the worker the private property he has himself earned, and the Communist who would have all property common; or between the Collectivist and the Anarchist schools. Yet these can work together for common objects, while differing in much ; and so should work the Socialist and the Iladical Individualist against the common foe, the idle class that lives as parasite •on Society. The first matter on which all agree is that the environ­ ment must be largely modified by law. The Socialist will •carry this modifying process further than will the Indi­ vidualist, but here again it is a question between them of degree. Speaking as a Socialist, I desire to see laws passed which will render education tax-supported, compulsory, and secular, so that all the children of the community may receive a common education; which will fix a normal working day; which will render factory inspection more •efficient, and extend inspection to shops and rooms of every kind in which employees work; which will enforce sanitary inspection and prevent it from being the farce it now is ; which will enable the building of healthy houses, and provide plenty of recreation ground in every town. All these measures are imperatively necessary now, and imme­ diately necessary, in order that the environment may be •changed sufficiently for the development of healthier or­ ganisms. After a while most of them will not be needed; when all have felt the benefit of education, compulsion to educate will become a dead letter; when labor is better •organised, when the words employer and employee shall no longer have any facts answering to them, when all production is for use, not for profit, there will be no need •of a law limiting the working day, for none will be driven to over-long labor by the awful pressure of starvation and of fear of future distress. Factory inspection will be a very easy task when there are no longer over-greedy owners trying to wring every possible penny out of their “hands ” ; and the need for sanitary inspection will pass when there are no slums, and when every householder understands the •conditions of health. The organism, bom into and growing up in a healthier environment, will be more vigorous and therefore more capable of evolving a higher individuality, a more marked �TIIE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 23 personality. The evolution of individuality is now checked, in some by poverty and over-hard and prolonged toil, in some by the strict conventions .of fashion, in some by the unsuitability of their work to their capacities, in some by a narrow and superstitious education, in all by the unhealthy social atmosphere they are compelled to breathe. The loss to the community by waste of power, due to the "Crushing out of all individuality among hundreds upon hundreds of thousands, is a loss simply incalculable. When all are fully educated through childhood and youth, ■the faculties of each developed and trained, then each indi­ vidual will be able to evolve along his own line, and the full value of each personality will enrich Society. It is often argued that a wide and thorough education will unfit people for the drudgery necessary for supporting the exis­ tence of Society, and that 11 some one ”-—-never the speaker, of course!—must do the 11 dirty work”. There are two lines of answer to the objection. First, education does not unfit people for doing any necessary work; it is the ignorant, superficial, “genteel” person who fears that the veneer of polish may rub off in use. The educated brain, brought to bear on manual work, economises labor and minimises drudgery. General education will certainly bring about the substitution of machinery for men and women wherever possible, for doing really unpleasant labor; and ingenuity will be exerted in the invention of labor-saving machinery when educated people find them­ selves face to face with repulsive kinds of toil. At pre­ sent they shove off all the unpleasant work on to others: then, all being educated and there being no helot class, means will be found to avoid most of the really disagree­ able work. If any such remains, which cannot be done by machinery, those who by doing it serve Society will be honored, not looked down on as they are now; or possibly some minute fraction of it will fall to the lot of each. Secondly, if it were as true as it is false that education unfitted people for “menial” work, no class has the right to keep another class in ignorance and degradation, in order that its own fingers may not be soiled. The answer to the querulous argument: “Who is to light our fires and cook our dinners, when the servants are as good as their masters? ” is the very plain one : “You yourself, if you want the things done, and cannot find anyone willing �24 THE EVOLUTION OE SOCIETY. to do those services for you, in exchange for services you are able to do for them.” In the coming times everyonewill have to do something, and to do some one thing well. We shall not all have to light fires, for the principle of division of labor will come in, but the one who lights the fire will be a free and independent human being, not a drudge. There is no doubt that domestic labor will be very much lessened, when those who enjoy the results can no longer put off all the toil which produces them on some one else. Even now, the work of a house can be wonder­ fully diminished if a little intelligence be brought to bear upon it, although domestic labor-saving machines are still in their infancy. The great “servant problem” will besolved by the disappearance of servants, the wide intro­ duction of machinery, and the division among the mem­ bers of each domestic commonwealth of the variousnecessary duties. The prospect is really not so very terri­ ble when quietly surveyed. Whither is Society evolving ? It is evolving towards a more highly developed individuality of its units, and towards their closer co-ordination. It is evolving towards a more generous brotherhood, a more real equality, a fuller liberty. It is evolving towards that Grolden Age which poets have chanted, which dreamers have visioned, which martyrs have died for : towards that new Republic of Man, which exists now in our hope and our faith, and shall exist in reality on earth. � 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 &amp; 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 The evolution of society Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Besant, Annie Wood [1847-1933] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 24 p. ; 19 cm. Series title: Socialism Notes: Reprinted from Our Corner. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Freethought Publishing Company Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1886 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T398 N064 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism 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 (The evolution of society), 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 NSS Social change Social history Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/b301a68be1f55e804215950bbe9f119e.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=umwTECp%7EJS-z1vR58ILViPxozSoj4zxIYO8UErDM9aH8nM1tpCGzvipo5yfnGix5RTrtc5jNLm7A6Z%7EySFNolbnkxynHZe6Fd8h6ABRiLmD7sicszro9ENGsdT%7En4PDiKlTZrXv5PLP6mxfoo-sV6rF4ZNeJSTzyyjmEQjawfEMyznMNZhlg%7EfNLwk0kVRhFX69hhhFajUrH0ZqBDtoKi8N9qUygff8svjMjsmfVJk0O3gCKNhzWBD8ZtkABd8bqnVDRlSjSf04UBCOeaCF-rmuCRJjUREevK6VyMpECo7vuWxKEVKQiqzEfy%7EmCijiw1%7EFkBYOVroNP4z-NumqNHA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3ac5e4aba3cf4cadcbe3461f71e8d658 PDF Text Text 403 MODERN SOCIALISM. BY ANNIE BESANT. LONDON FKEETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 63, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1 8 8 6. �LONDON PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH, G3, ELEET STREET, E.C. �* MODERN SOCIALISM. Great changes are long in the preparing, and every thought that meets ultimately with wide acceptance is lying inarticulate in many minds ere it is syllabled out by some articulate one, and stands forth a spoken Word. The Zeitgeist has its mouth in those of its children who have brain to understand, voice to proclaim, courage to stand alone. Some new Truth then peals out, sonorous and farsounding as the roll of the thunder, melodious to the ears attuned to the deep grand harmonies of Nature, but terrible to those accustomed only to the subdued lispings of artificial triflers, and the murmurs which float amid the hangings of courtly halls. When such an event occurs a few hearken, study, and then rejoicingly accept the new Truth; these are its pioneers, its apostles, who go out to proclaim it to the as yet unbelieving world. They meet with ridicule, then with persecution; for ever the new Truth undermines some hoary Lie, which has its band of devoted adherents living on the spoils of its reign. Slowly,- against custom and tradition, against selfishness and violence, even against indifference, deadliest foe of all, this band of devoted teachers makes its onward way. And the band grows and grows, and each convert becomes in his turn a pioneer; until at last the victory is won, and the minority has become the majority; and then the time comes for some new Truth once more, and the old struggle is gone over afresh, and so again and again ; and thus the race makes progress, and humanity climbs ever upward towards the perfect life. During the last century and a quarter the social problem has been pressing for solution on all who have brains to �4 MODERN SOCIALISM. think and hearts to feel. The coexistence of wealth and penury, of idle prodigality and laborious stint; the terrible fact that “ progress and poverty ” seem to march hand-inhand ; the growing slums in large towns; the huge for­ tunes and the starving poor; these things make content impossible, and force into prominence the question: “Must this state of things continue ? Is there no possible change which will cure, not only palliate, the present evils ? Great hopes have sprung into being from time to time, each in turn to be blighted. Machinery was to double production and diminish toil, to spread comfort and suffi­ ciency everywhere. It made cotton-lords and merchant­ princes with one hand, and with the other created a prole­ tariat unlike aught the world had seen, poor in the midst of the wealth it created, miserable in the midst of luxury, ignorant in the midst of knowledge, savage in the midst of civilisation. When the repeal of the Corn Laws was striven for and accomplished, once more hope rose high. Cheap food was to put an end to starvation. Alas! in the streets of the wealthiest city in Christendom, men and women perish for lack of a loaf of bread. Nor is this persistence of misery and of squalor the only sign which troubles the brain and the heart of the student of the social problem. He notes the recurring crises in industry, the inflations and depressions of trade. At one time all is prosperous; demand is brisk, and supply can scarce keep pace with it; wages rise, full time is worked, production is enormously increased. Then a change creeps over all; supply has overtaken, has surpassed demand; the market is glutted; the warehouses are filled with unsaleable goods; short time begins; wages fall; mills are closed; furnaces are damped out; many workers are dis­ charged. Then the unemployed in the large towns increase in number ; the poor-rate rises ; distress spreads upwards. After a while the depression passes ; trade improves ; and the whole weary circle is trodden once more. Nor is this all; although there has been “ over-production ” there is want of the necessaries of life; there are unsaleable clothing goods in the warehouses, and half-naked people shivering outside; too many blankets, and children crying them­ selves to sleep for cold. This monstrous absurdity, of com­ modities a drug in the market, and human beings perishing for want of those very commodities, stares us ever in the �MODERN SOCIALISM. 5 face. Cannot human brain discover some means to put an end to this state of things, a state which would be ludicrous were it not for the horrible suffering involved in it ? Some say, this must always be so; that the poor shall be for ever with us; that commercial crises are inevitable; that these evils' are not susceptible of complete cure. If tffis indeed be true, then I know not that any better advice can be given to humanity than that given to Job by his wife, to “ curse God and die ”. But I think not so meanly of human intelligence ; I believe not that our present indus­ trial system, little more than a century old, must needs be eternal; I believe that the present system, devised by man and founded in greed of gain, may by man be changed; and that man’s growing power over external nature may be used to bring comfort and wealth to each, and not, as now, to enrich the few at the cost of the enslavement of the many. Various attempts to bring about a better social state have been made by earnest and noble-hearted men during the last hundred years. I leave aside such systems as those of the Moravians, because they cannot be regarded as in any sense schemes for the reconstruction of society. They, like the monastic communities, were merely attempts to create oases, fenced in from the world’s evils, where men might prepare for a future life. The efforts I allude to are those classed as “Socialistic”; they were really ■crude forms of Communism. With these the name of Robert Owen will be for ever associated. Owen’s first experiment was made at New Lanark, in connexion with the cotton-mills established there by Mr. Dale, his father-in-law. He became the manager of these in 1797, and set himself to work to improve the condition •of the operatives and their families. The success which attended his efforts, the changes wrought by education and by fair dealings, encouraged him to plan out a wider scheme of social amelioration. In 1817 he was asked to report on the causes of poverty to the Committee on the Poor Laws, and in this report he dwelt on the serious in•crease of pauperism which had followed the introduction of machinery, and urged that employment ought to be found for those who were in need of it. He “ recommended that every union or county should provide a farm for the employment of their poor; when circumstances admitted �6 MODERN SOCIALISM. of it, there should be a manufactory in connexion with it” (“Robert Owen,” by A. J. Booth, p. 70). On the farm, buildings were to be built for housing the laborers, con­ sisting of “a square, divided into two parallelograms by tl^e erection of public buildings in the centre ” ; these would consist of “a kitchen, mess-room, school-rooms, library and lecture-hall. The poor would enjoy every advantage that economy could suggest: the same roof would cover many dwellings : the same stove might warm every room : the food would be cooked at the same time, and on the same fire : the meals would be eaten from the same table, in the society of friends and fellow-workers. Sympathies now restricted to the family would be thus extended to a community: the union would be still further cemented by an equal participation in the profits, an equal share in the toil............ Competition is the cause of many vices; association will be their corrective” {Ibid, pp. 70-72). Soon after this report, Mr. Owen published a letter, urging the reconstitution of “the whole of society on a similar basis”; the lowest class was to consist of paupers, to be drafted into the proposed establishments; the second of the “working-class”; the third of laborers, artisans, and tradesmen, with property-of from £100 to £2,000; the fourth of persons unable or unwilling to work, owning from £1,000 to £20,000; these were to employ the second class. The workman was to be supported by this class in comfort for seven years in exchange for his labor, and then was to be presented by it with £100, so that he might enter class three; if he remained as a worker for five years more he was to have £200. A community of workers, as recommended by Owen, was started in 1825, under the management of Abraham Combe, at Orbiston, nine miles east of Glasgow, and it began well; but Combe died in 1827, and with his death the whole thing went to pieces. A few months before the settlement at Orbiston, Robert Owen sailed for America, and he purchased a property named Harmony, consisting of 30,000 acres in Indiana, from the Rappites, a religious communistic body. He advertised for inhabitants, and gathered together a mixed crowd; “there were some enthusiasts who had come, at great personal sacrifice, to face a rude life and to mix among rude men, who had no object but to work out the great problem of a New Society; �MODERN SOCIALISM. 7 there were others who fancied they could secure abundance with little labor, prepared to shirk their share in the toil, but not to forego their share in the reward ” {Ibid, p. 106). In the following year, 1826, “New Harmony ” inaugurated a system of complete Communism, much against OwSn’s^ judgment; a number of small independent communities'^ were soon formed, eight of these having already broken off from New Harmony early in 1827, the difficulties attendant on widely extended common life being found insuperable. In 1828, Robert Owen was forced to confess that his effortshad failed, and that “families trained in the individual system ” could not suddenly be plunged into pure Communism with success. It boots not to dwell here on his further efforts in England. Robert Owen’s experi­ ments failed, but out of his teaching arose the co-operative movement, and the impulse to seek some rational system of society has, since his time, never quite died out in England. In America, a large number of communities have been established, mostly religious in character. Erom the careful account given of them by Charles Nordhoff, the following brief details are taken (all numbers relate to 1874). The Amana community consists of 1,450 members ; they have a property of 25,000 acres, and live in seven small towns; they are Germans, very pious and very prosperous ; their head is a woman, who is directly inspired by God. The Harmony Society, Economy, near Pittsburg, consists of followers of Rapp, who founded the society in 1805. They are all Germans and number 110, in addition to about 100 hired laborers and some sixty children. They live in comfort, and have clearly done well unto themunto themselves, owning now a very large amount of pro­ perty. The Separatists of Zoar, Ohio, are, once more, Germans: they started in 1817, have now about 300 members, own 7,000 acres of land, and are prosperous exceedingly. The Shakers, established in 1792, are scat­ tered over several States,-number about 2,415, own about 100.000 acres of land, are divided into fifty-eight commu­ nities, and are wealthy and prosperous ; the members are American and English. The Perfectionists of Oneida and Wallingford are American, and the first attempt by them at communal living took place in 1846. They number 521, and own 894 acres of land. They also are prosperous. �8 MODERN SOCIALISM. The Aurora and Bethel Communes, in Oregon, are German, or 11 Pennsylvania Dutch ”; they started in 1844, and now number some 600 persons: their property extends to 23,000 acres, and they live in much comfort. The Icarians, founded by Etienne Cabet in 1848, are nearly all French; ch^have hitherto been less fortunate than the preceding societies, in consequence of mismanagement at the start; a heavy debt was incurred early in the movement, and members fell off; but a few resolute men and women settled down steadily in Iowa, with 4,000 acres of land, and 20,000 dollars of debt; they had to give up the land to their creditors, but managed to redeem nearly half of it, and they are now 65 in number, own 1,936 acres, have no debts, and have acquired a large live stock. They still live very plainly, but are on their way to prosperity, having conquered all the difficulties amid which they started; their constitution is perfectly democratic and they are without religion. A Swedish community at Bishop Hill, Illinois, was formed by a pietist sect which emi­ grated to America to escape persecution in 1846-1848. They were terribly poor at first and lived in holes in the ground, with a tent for a church, but gradually acquired property; until in 1859 they owned 10,000 acres of land, worth 300,000 dollars, and some magnificent live stock. Unfortunately their piety led to such extreme dullness that the younger members of the society revolted: debt was incurred, individuality was advocated, the property was divided, and the community ceased to exist. Lastly, there are two small communities, founded in 1871 and 1874 ; the former, the Progressive Community, at Cedar Vale, consists partly of Russians; it possesses 320 acres of good land, and has only eight members, of whom one is a child. The second, the Social Freedom Community, consists of three adults and three lads, Americans, and has a farm of 333 acres. The whole of these societies can only be regarded as in the nature of experiments, and as such they are extremely interesting; each community has succeeded in gaining comfort and independence, but these small bodies, living chiefly by agriculture in a thinly-populated country on virgin soil, while they show the advantages of associated labor, really offer no data for the solution of the problems which beset a complex society. They are a return to more �MODERN SOCIALISM. 9 primitive forms of living, not an onward social evolution, and they are only possible in a “ new country ”. Further, while they are communistic so far as their own members are concerned, they are individualistic and competitive in their aspect to the outer world; each small group holds.Wrs own property, and transacts all its business on the old lines in its dealings with the rest of the nation. This is, of course, inevitable, since each is encircled by competition; but it must not be overlooked that all these organisations, like co-operative societies at home, are nothing more than enlarged families, and are essentially individualistic ; win­ ning sufficiency for their own narrow, isolated circles, but leaving untouched the question of national poverty. They are arks, rescuing their inmates from the deluge, but they do nothing to drain away the seething ocean of misery. We turn next to Socialism, as distinct from Communism. The distinction between these, though recognised by so orthodox an economist as John Stuart Mill, is generally ignored by those who oppose any radical reconstruction of Society. Mr. Mill divides into two classes the assailants of the present system of purely individualistic property : “ those whose scheme implies absolute equality in the distribution of the physical means of life and enjoyment, and those who admit inequality, but grounded on some principle or supposed principle, of justice or general expediency, and not, like so many of the existing social inequalities, dependent on accident alone. At the head of the first class, as the earliest of those belonging to the present generation, must be placed Mr. Owen and his fol­ lowers. M. Louis Blanc and M. Cabet have more recently become conspicuous as apostles of similar doctrines (though the former advocates equality of distribution only as a transition to a still higher standard of justice, that all should work according to their capacity, and receive according to their wants). The characteristic name for this economical system is Communism, a word of conti­ nental origin, only of late introduced into this country. The word Socialism, which originated among the English Communists, and was assumed by them as a name to designate their own doctrine, is now, on the Continent, employed in a larger sense; not necessarily implying Communism, or the entire abolition of private property, but applied to any system which requires that the land and �10 MODERN SOCIALISM. the instruments of production should be the property, not of individuals, but of communities or associations, or of the government” (“Principles of Political Economy”, Book II., chap, i., sec. 2). Communism implies the complete abolition of private property, and the supply of the wants of each individual from a common store, without regard to the contributions to that common store which may, or may not, have been made by the individual. Socialism merely implies that the raw material of the soil and the means of production shall not be the private pro­ perty of individuals, but shall be under the control of the community; it leaves intact a man’s control over himself and over the value of his work—subj ect to such general laws as are necessary in any community—but by socialising land and capital it deprives each of the power of enslaving his fellows, and of living in idleness on the results of their labor instead of on the results of his own. It may be that at some future time humanity shall have evolved to a point which shall render Communism the only rational system; when every man is eager to do his share of work ; anxious not to make too much for his own enjoyment: holding the scales of justice with a perfectly even hand; his one aim the general good, and his one effort the service of his brethren; when each individual is thus developed, law will have become unnecessary, and Communism will be thenatural expression of social life; perfect freedom will be the lot of each, because each will have become a law unto himself. But to that stage of development man has not yet attained, and for man as he is Communism would mean the living of the idle on the toil of the laborious, the rebirth, under a new name, of our present system. Modern Socialism is an attempt to get at the root of the poverty which now prevails ; to find out how fortunes are made; why commercial crises occur; what are the real relations of capital and labor at the present time. In speaking of “fortunes”, I do not here include for­ tunes made by gambling, as on the Stock Exchange. They fall under another category, for in gambling, whether on the Stock Exchange or on the card table, wealth is not really made; it only passes from one pocket to another. The gambler, or the burglar, may “ make a fortune ” sofar as he is himself concerned; but it is not done by the creation of wealth, but only by transferring wealth already �MODERN SOCIALISM. II existing from, the pocket of its temporary possessor into his own ; in both businesses the profits are large because the risks are great, and the penalty for failure heavy for the moment. Socialism, as an industrial system, is chiefly concerned with fortunes in the making, with the way in which the wealth created by associated labor passes into the handsof individuals who do little or nothing in exchange for it. These fortunes arise from the ownership of the instrumentsof production, or of the raw material out of which wealth isto be manufactured; from the ownership, that is, of capital, or of land. Production. Let us take the case of the possessor of capital employed in manufacture. This man desires to obtain more wealth than he can produce alone, more than he can individually produce even with the help of machinery. He must con­ sequently hire others, who, in exchange for a certain fixed sum to be paid to them by him, shall allow him to take­ over the whole results of their labor, and to pocket the difference between those results and the fixed sum paid by him. This fixed sum is known as wage, and is “the market price of labor”. We have therefore here twoclasses face to face with each other: one is a class which is the owner of capital, that is, which possesses the instru­ ments of production; the other is a class which possessesthe labor-force, without which the instruments of produc­ tion are useless, but which must perish if it cannot get hold of some of those instruments. (Behind the capitalists is a third class, the land-owning, with which the capitalist has to come to terms ; that will be dealt with afterwards.) This second class stands therefore at this disadvantage; that while the capitalist can, if he pleases, utilise his own labor­ force for his own subsistence, it cannot subsist at all except with his consent and aid, being shut out from the raw material by the landowner, and from the instruments of production by himself. Put a naked man on fertile soil in a decent climate and he will subsist; he will live on fruit and berries while with his hands he fashions some rough tool, and with the help thereof makes him a better one out of the. raw material he will form an instrument of pro­ duction with those original instruments of production given. �12 MODERN SOCIALISM. him bv nature, his fingers and the muscles of his body; then with his instrument and the raw material at his feet he will labor and win his livelihood. But in our complex society this opening is not before him; the raw material is enclosed and trespassers are prosecuted; if he picks fruit for food, he is a thief; if he breaks off a bough to make a rough tool, he is arrested ; he cannot get an instrument of production, and if he could he would have nothing to use it on; he has nothing but his labor-force, and he must either sell that to someone who wants it, or he must die. And the sale must be complete. His labor-force is bought for so much down per week or per month ; it no longer belongs to himself, it is owned by his master, and he has not any right over that which it produces; he has sold it, and if he wants to resume possession he must give notice of his wish to the owner thereof; having resumed possession it is of no use to him; he can only live by selling it to somebody else. He is “free”, in so far that he is able to change his master; he is a slave in that he must sell the labor force in his body for food. The man whose labor-force has been sold to another for life is regarded by all as a slave; the man whose labor-force is sold for stated terms is regarded by most as free; yet in comparing the conditions of the two, it is well to bear in mind that the slave, in becoming a chattel, becomes of value to his master, and it is the interest of the latter to feed him well and to keep up his physical strength as long as is possible; also in old age he is fed and housed, and can die in peace amid his fellows. Whereas the wage-earner has no such value, but it is his master’s interest to get as much work out of him as is possible, without regard for his health, there being plenty to take his place when he is worn out; and when he is old, he is separated from wife and child and is left to die in the prison we call a workhouse. The slave is valuable, as the horse and the ox are valuable, to his owner; the wage-earner is valuable only as a garment, which is cast into the dusthole when it is worn out. It may be answered that the wage-earner by good for­ tune, industry, and thrift, may be able so to save of his -earnings that he may escape the workhouse, and may even himself become independent and an “ employer of labor ”. True. So might a lucky slave become free. But the truth that some may rise out of their class does not render �MODERN SOCIALISM. 13 satisfactory the state of the class, and the very fact that such rising is held out as a reward and a stimulus is an admission that an escape from the proletariat must be the natural longing of every proletarian. The rising of a few does not benefit the proletariat as a whole, and it is the existence of this unpropertied proletariat which is the evil thing. To this proletariat, waiting to sell its labor-force, the capitalist goes, for it is here that he will be able to obtain the wealth-making strength which he requires. The next question is: What determines the wage which he is to pay ? That is: what fixes the market price of labor­ force ? Putting on one side temporary and comparatively trivial causes, which may slightly affect it one way or the other, there are two constant determinants : population, and standard of living. The market-price of labor-force will largely depend on the quantity of labor-force in the market; if the supply exceed the demand, the price will be low; if the demand exceed the supply, the price will go up. If an employer requires fifty laborers, and two hundred laborers compete with each other for the employ­ ment he offers, and if the employment stands between them and starvation, he will be able to beat down their price until it touches the lowest point at which they can subsist. The more rapid the multiplication of the prole­ tariat, the better for the capitalist class. The other determinant is the “standard of living” or “standard of comfort”. Wage can never sink beyond the point at which a man and his family can exist thereon; this is the extreme limit of its fall, inasmuch as a man will not work unless he can exist on the results of his work. As a matter of fact, it does not often sink so low; the wage of an ordinary operative is more than barely suffices to keep him and his family alive, but large num­ bers of the laboring poor are habitually underfed, and are liable to the diseases brought on by low living, as well as to premature aging and death arising from the same cause. It is a significant fact that the deathrate of the poor is much higher than the deathrate of the rich. Wage is lower in countries in which the standard of living is low, than in those in which it is, by comparison, higher. Thus in parts of Scotland, where oatmeal is much used for food, and children run much barefoot, wage is normally lower �14 MODERN SOCIALISM. ih.an in. England, where wheaten flour and shoes and -stockings are expected. Any general lowering of the standard of living is therefore to be deprecated—as the wide substitution of cheap vegetable food-stuffs for more ■expensive articles of diet. The standard of living also (and chiefly, in any given country) affects wages through its effect on population. Mill points out (“ Principles of Political Economy,” Book II., chap, xi., sec. 2) that “wages do adapt themselves to the price of food ”, either («) from children dying prematurely when food rises, and wages were before barely sufficient to maintain them, or (J) from voluntary restriction of the growth of population when the laborers refuse to sink below a certain standard of living. In each case the diminution of labor supply ■causes a rise of wage. “Mr. Ricardo”, says Mill, “con­ siders these two cases to comprehend all cases. He as­ sumes, that there is everywhere a minimum rate of wages: -either the lowest with which it is physically possible to keep up the population, or the lowest with which the people will choose to do so. To this minimum he assumes that the general rate of wages always tends; that they ■can never be lower, beyond the length of time required for a diminished rate of increase to make itself felt, and can never long continue higher.” This is the “iron law of wages ”, and it is the recognition of its truth which, among other reasons, sets Socialists against the wage-system of industry. [It must not be forgotten that the phrase “ordinary operative” does not include all the workers. There is a large class which obtains barely subsistence wage, and those who are not regularly employed are on the very verge of starvation. The hard lot of these must not be left out of sight in impeaching the present social state.] The capitalist, then, buys as much labor-force as he desires, or as his means allow, at the market price, deter­ mined in the way we have seen. This labor-force he pro­ poses to utilise for his own advantage; with some of his capital he buys it; some of his capital consists in machinery, and the labor-force set at work on this machinery is to produce wealth. The labor-force and the instruments of production are now brought together ; they will now pro­ duce wealth, and both they and the wealth they produce are the property of the capitalist. �MODERN SOCIALISM. 15 Our next inquiry is : Where does the capitalist look for his profit ? He has bought machinery; he has bought labor-force ; whence comes the gain he is seeking ? The profit of the capitalist must arise from the difference be­ tween the price he pays for labor-force and the wealth produced by it; out of this difference must be paid his rent, the loss incurred by wear-and-tear, and the price of the raw material on which his machinery works; these provided for, the remainder of the difference is his “profit”. The analysis of the way in which this profit arises is, then, the task that comes next. In Karl Marx’s “Das Capital” may be found a carefully •elaborated exposition of “ surplus-value ”. The term is a con­ venient one, and the student will do well to read his 7th chap­ ter, on the “production of use-value and surplus-value”; in reading, he must remember Marx’s definitions of value and use-value, which of course govern the whole. Value is human labor incorporated in a commodity; use-value is that which in a commodity satisfies some human want. The “ use-value ” of Marx is identical with the “ intrinsic natural worth” of Locke. Locke says: “The intrinsic, natural worth of any thing, consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or serve the conveniences of human life ” (“Considerations of the Lowering of Interest,” etc., Locke’s Works, vol. ii., p. 28, ed. 1777). As an instance of the production of surplus-value—that is of the difference be­ tween the capital which the capitalist expends in produc­ tion and that which he possesses when the production is complete—Marx takes the case of the manufacture of ten pounds of thread. The capitalist buys ten pounds of cotton at 10s.; wear-and-tear of machinery in the spinning of the cotton into thread raises his expenditure to 12s.; further, six hours of work are necessary to turn the ten pounds of cotton into ten pounds of thread. Now suppose that a man in six hours is able to produce sufficient to maintain himself for a day;—that is that he produces as much as might be exchanged for a day’s con­ sumption of the necessaries of life. Let us value this at 3s. in money. That 3s. which is the monetary equivalent of his six hours’ labor must be added to the cost of pro­ duction of the thread ; its value has therefore risen finally to 15 s. If the capitalist now sells his ten pounds of thread for 15s., he will only receive back as much as he has �16 MODERN SOCIALISM. expended ; he will have made no profit. But suppose the working day be of twelve hours instead of six, the wages paid will none the less be fixed at 3s. by the standard of living; but in that second six hours the operative can transform another ten pounds of cotton into another ten pounds of thread; as before, cotton and wear-and-tear will -amount to 12s.; but these ten pounds of thread have a value of 15s. as had the previous ten pounds, although they have only cost the capitalist 12s. Hence the final product of the day’s labor has a value of 30s., but has cost the capitalist only 27s. The value added by the operative in the second six hours has brought him no equivalent; it is “ surplus-value”, value added by him over the value whose equivalent he receives in wage; this creation of surplus­ value is the aim of the capitalist. Now without tying ourselves down to the exact figures, given by Marx, we may yet see by a little thought that his position as to “ surplus-value ” is essentially correct. If a capitalist buys £1 worth of raw material; if his machinery is depreciated say by the value of one shilling in workingup the raw material; if he pays in wage 5s. for the labor­ force expended on it; he will most certainly not be content with selling the finished product for 26s. He demands a “profit” on the transaction, and this profit can only be the difference between that which is paid to labor, and the value, in the ordinary sense of the word, which labor creates. It is sometimes objected that nothing is gained by Marx’s divisions of “value”, “ surplus value ”, and “ex­ change value”, but that, on the contrary, they transport economics into a metaphysical region away from the solid ground of facts. It is urged that it is better to represent the conditions thus: that the worker produces a mass of com­ modities ; that the capitalist sells these commodities for what they will fetch in the market, the price being fixed, not by the duration of the labor embodied in them, but by the relative utilities of money and commodity to buyer and seller; that the capitalist gives over to the producer suffi­ cient of the results of the sale to enable the producer to exist, and pockets the remainder. This presentment is a statement of the facts as they are; Marx’s “value” is a metaphysical abstraction, corresponding to nothing exist­ ing at the present time, however true it would be under �MODERN SOCIALISM. 17 ideal conditions. The main point to grasp, however, is obvious, whichever of these presentments is thought pre­ ferable. Capital, under our present industrial system, is the result of unpaid labor—a matter to be further con­ sidered later in this essay. But it must be remembered that, as a matter of fact, the profit made by the capitalist is not a fixed quantity, as is the “ surplus value ” of Marx; z but that the capitalist not only preys on the worker, but also on the necessities of the consumer, his profit rising and falling with the changes of demand and supply. The phrase “ surplus value ” is, as I have said, a convenient one, but it might well be extended to cover the whole difference between the price paid to labor for the com­ modities it produces, and the price obtained for those com­ modities by the capitalist employer of labor. It is in this wide sense that the phrase is used in the following pages, not in the metaphysical sense of Marx. We are now in a position to understand how large for­ tunes are made, and why Capital and Labor are ever at war. Before the commencement of the Industrial Period— which may be fairly dated from the invention of the Spin­ ning Jenny in 1764—it was not possible to accumulate great wealth by the employment of hired labor. By hand­ work, or by the use of the very simple machines available prior to that date, a single operative was not able to pro­ duce sufficient to at once support himself and to largely enrich others. “Masters and men” consequently formed a community of workers, without the sharp divisions that now exist between capitalist and “hands”; and the em­ ployer would have been as much ashamed of not working deftly at his trade, as the son of a Lancashire cotton-lord would be if he were suspected of throwing a shuttle in one of his father’s looms. Under these conditions there was very little surplus-value to be absorbed, and there were consequently no great aggregations of purely indus­ trial classes. The introduction of machinery multiplied enormously the productive power of the operative, while it did not increase the wage he received. A man receiving 3s. for a day of twelve hours, produced, we will say for the sake of illustration, surplus-value to the amount of Is.; after the introduction of machinery he received the same wage and produced an enormously increased surplus-value. c �18 MODERN SOCIALISM. Thus the fortunes of the lucky possessors of the new machinery rose by “ leaps and bounds ”; lads who began at the loom were owners of palaces by middle age; even later on, after the first rush had spent itself, I have myself met Lancashire cotton-lords who were mill-hands in their youth; but most certainly their wealth had only been made by the results of the toil of many becoming concentrated in the hands of one. Another step was taken to increase surplus-value. De­ pending, as it does, on the difference between the value produced by the worker and the amount paid to him as wage, it is obvious that if it be possible to obtain the same amount of produce from purchased labor-force while re­ ducing the purchase-money, the surplus-value will become larger. This step was soon taken, for it was found that many machines could be superintended by a woman quite as effectively as by a man, while female labor-force was purchasable in the market at a lower rate. Hence the large introduction of female “hands” into cotton mills, and as married women were found more “docile” than un­ married—docility increasing with the number of mouths crying for bread at home—there came the double curse on the producers, of male labor being pushed aside by female labor at lower wage, and of untidy home and neglected children, bereft of mother’s care. Yet another step. Child­ labor was cheaper even than woman-labor, and by utilising children, with their pitiful wage, surplus-value might be swollen to yet larger proportions; and as wives had fought with husbands for wage, so children now fought with fathers and mothers, until verily a man’s foes in the labormarket were they of his own household. There was, however, a way of increasing surplus-value apart from the amount of daily wage. The lengthening of the hours of labor has obviously the same result in this respect as the lowering of wage. The very zenith of the production of surplus-value, the most complete exploitation of the producers, the perfect triumph of the capitalist ideal of free contract and of laissez-faire, were reached when little children, at nominal wage, were worked from fifteen to sixteen hours a day, and princely fortunes were built up by human sacrifice to the devil of greed, in fashion that shall never, so help us tongue, and pen, and arm, be again possible in this fair English land. �19 MODERN SOCIALISM. We have at the present time no exact figures available which can enable us to judge of the precise amount of sur­ plus value produced in the various departments of industry. In America, the Bureaus of Labor Statistics help us, and from these we learn some suggestive facts. Average wage paid to worker. 1850 1860 1870 1880 .. £49 12 58 8 62 0 69 4 Extra net value pro■ duced by worker. .. £41 16 65 10 69 0 64 14 (Taken from Laurence Gronlund’s quotation of these re­ turns in his 11 Co-operative Commonwealth”, chap. i. The same figures, as regards total net produce and wages paid, have appeared in a capitalist work.) I trust that we shall soon have in England Labor Bureaus similar to those now existing in the United States and in Canada. Charles Bradlaugh, M.P., has succeeded in passing a resolution in favor of the official publication of similar statistics through the House of Commons, and among the many priceless ser­ vices he has done to the workers, the obtaining of these is by no means the least. Exact knowledge of the present state of things is a necessary precedent of organic change, and the figures supplied by the Labor Bureaus will give us the very weapons that we need. The absolutely antithetical interests of Capital and Labor have necessitated—and must continue to necessitate while the present system lasts—a constant and embittered war. As Capital can only grow by surplus value, it strives to lengthen the working day and to decrease the daily wage. Labor struggles to shorten the hours of toil, and to wring from Capital a larger share of its own product in the form of higher wage. While Capital is the possession of one class, and Labor is the only property of the other, this strife must go on. There can never be industrial peace until this root of war be pulled up, and until Capital, under the control of the community, shall be used for the fertilisation, instead of for the oppression of Labor. Since large fortunes are made by manufacturers, and there is no source of wealth save labor applied to natural objects, it is clear that these fortunes are due to the fact that the manufacturers are able to become the owners of c2 �20 MODERN SOCIALISM. the means of production and of labor-force; even these very means of production, with which the present labor-force works, are but past labor-force crystallised. The wage­ earners must produce sufficient to maintain themselves from day to day and to increase the capital of the wage­ payers, else they will not be employed. Hence arises another evil, the waste of productive force. Men are not employed because their labor-force, embodied in the neces­ saries of life, will spread sufficiency and comfort throughout the community. They are only employed when the articles produced can be sold at a profit by a third party; their products, fairly exchanged for the products of their fellow­ laborers—woven cloth, say, for shoes—would clothe warmly the shivering population ; but above the cloth produced by the one, and the shoes produced by the other, stand the capitalists, who demand profit for themselves ere the cloth shall be allowed to shield the naked back, or the shoes keep off the pavement the toes blued by the frost. If the employment fails, the wage-earner is out of food; but the erstwhile wage-payer has the capital made by the former to live upon, while its maker starves. The capitalist, truly, cannot increase his capital, unless he can buy labor-force ; but he can live on his capital. On the other hand the labor-force must perish unless it can find a purchaser. Lotus put the position plainly, for as the great majority •of people think the arrangement a perfectly fair one, there is no need to cover it over with a veil of fine phrases and roundabout expressions. The owner of raw material and of the means of production faces the unpropertied pro­ letarian, and says to him : “I hold in my hands the means of existence; unless you can obtain the means of existence you will die; but I will only let you have them on one condition. And that is that you shall labor for me as well as for yourself. For each hour that you spend in winning bread, you shall spend another in enriching me. I will give you the right to win a hard existence by your labor, if you will give me the right to take whatever you produce beyond that bare existence. You are perfectly free to choose ; you can either accept my terms, and let me live on your work, or you can refuse my terms, and starve.” Put so baldly, the proposition has a certain brutality in it. Yet when we Socialists argue that a system is bad which concentrates the means of existence in the �MODERN SOCIALISM. 21 hands of a propertied class, and leaves an unpropertied class under the hard condition of winning only the right to exist on such terms as may be granted by the propertied ; when we urge this, we are told that we are incendiaries, thieves, idiots, or, at the mildest, that our hopes of freeing these enslaved ones are dreams, mere castles in the air. We have now reached the foundation of modern So­ cialism. We say: As long as the industrial classes are divided into capitalists and proletarians, so long must con­ tinue the present strife, and the present extremes of wealth and of poverty. It is not a mere modification, but a com­ plete revolution of the industrial system which is required. Capital must be controlled by labor, instead of controlling it. The producers must obtain possession of their own product, and must regulate their own labor. The present system has been weighed in the balances and found wanting, and on the wall of the capitalist banqueting-room is written by the finger of modern thought, dipped in the tears and in the bloody sweat of the over-tasked proletariat: “Man hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. It is divided among the myriads thou hast wronged.” Competition. Strife is the normal condition of the whole industrial world; Capital strives against Labor, and Labor against Capital, lock-outs and strikes being the pitched battles of the struggle; capitalists strive against capitalists for profits, and the list of the vanquished may be read in the bank­ ruptcy court; workers strive against workers for wage, and injure their own order in the fratricidal combat. Every­ where the same struggle, causing distress, waste, hatred, in every direction ; brothers wronging brothers for a trifling gain ; the strong trampling down the weak in the frantic race for wealth. It is the struggle of the wild beasts of the forest transferred to the city; the horrible struggle for existence, only in its “civilised” form hearts are wrenched and torn instead of limbs. It is constantly urged that competition is advantageous because it develops capacity, and by the struggle it causes it brings about the survival of the fittest. The allegation may be traversed on two grounds : granting that capacity is developed by struggle, it is yet developed at great cost of suffering, and it would be more worthy of reasoning �22 MODERN SOCIALISM. beings to seek to bring about the capacity and to avoid the suffering; to borrow an illustration which suggests itself by the very word “ struggle ”, we know that actual fighting develops muscle, endurance, readiness of resource, quick­ ness of the senses ; none the less do we regard war as a disgrace to a civilised people, and we find that the useful capacities developed by it may be equally well developed in the gymnasium and the playing-field, without the evils accompanying war. So may education take the place of competition in developing useful qualities. Further we deny that “the fittest ” for social progress survive in the competitive struggle. The hardest, the keenest, the most unscrupulous, survive, because such are the fittest for the brutal strife; but the generous, the magnanimous, the just, the tender, the thoughtful, the sympathetic, the very types in whose survival lies the hope of the race, are crushed out. In fact, competition is war, and the very reasons which move us to endeavor to substitute arbitra­ tion for war, should move us to endeavor to substitute co-operation for competition. But it is urged, competition among capitalists is advan­ tageous to the public, and it is shown that where two or three railway lines compete for custom, the public is better served than where there is only one. Granted. There is an old adage which says that “when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own ” ; none the less is it better to stop thieving, than to encourage it under the hope that the thieves may fall out, and some of the stolen goods be recovered. So long as capitalists are permitted to exploit labor, so long is it well that they should compete with each other and so have their profits lessened; but it would be still better to stop the exploitation. Accepting the railway instance, it may be rejoined that the German State railways have comfortable carriages that can hold their own against all comers, and that whereas a railway company, eager for dividends, can only be forced into providing decent carri­ ages by fear of losing customers to a rival, a State railway is managed for the benefit of the public, and improvements are readily introduced. Our post-office system shows how improvements are made without any pressure of competi­ tion ; it has given us cheaper postage, cheaper telegraphing, and is giving us cheaper parcel-delivery ; so that we can send from London a letter to Wick for a penny, a telegram �MODERN SOCIALISM. 23 thither for sixpence, and a parcel for threepence; it is a matter of pride to the Postmaster-General of the day, as a public servant, to improve his department, although he is protected by law (save in the case of parcels, only just undertaken) from competition. Even some economists who approve of competition see the need of limiting its excesses. Mr. R. S. Moffat, for instance, approves of it and thinks that “competition is not only the best, but the only practical means of meet­ ing” “the conflicting natural conditions, between the exigencies of an unknown demand and the fluctuations of an uncertain supply”, “that ever has been, or is ever likely to be, discovered” (“The Economy of Consump­ tion,” p. 114, ed. 1878). Yet Mr. Moffat points out that “ the material cost of competition includes two items: first, superfluous production, or wasted labor; and secondly, illbalanced distribution, or misdirected labor ” (p. 115); and he declares: “Not content with promoting a healthful industry, it enforces tyrannous laws upon labor, and exacts from the free laborer an amount of toil which the hardest taskmaster never succeeded in wringing from the slave. It disturbs by its excesses the balance of industry which its moderation had established. In times of prosperous production it accumulates stocks till they become a nuisance and a source of the most serious embarrassment to pro­ ducers, who do not know where to turn for employment to their productive resources ; and in adverse times it gambles with them, and deprives consumption of their support at the very time for which they were provided” (pp. 116, 117). “ It is upon laborers”, he says, “ not only as individuals, but as a class, that the great burden of over-production falls” (p. 119). I propose to consider, I., the evils of competition; II., the remedy proposed by Socialism. I.—The Evils.—Many of these lie on the surface; others become palpable on very slight investigation. They affect the capitalist manufacturer; the distributor; the con­ sumer ; and the producing classes. An ingenious capitalist sees a want and devises an article to meet it; or he devises an article and sets to work to create the want. He places his article before the public, and a demand for it arises. The article either supplies a real want, or it becomes “the fashion”, and the demand �24 MODERN SOCIALISM. increases and outstrips the supply. Other capitalists rush in to compete for the profit which is to be made; capital flows rapidly into the particular industry concerned ; high wages are offered; operatives flock to it; the supply swellsuntil it overtops the demand. But when this point is touched, the supply is not at once lessened; so long as there is any hope of profit, the capitalists manufacture; wage is lessened to keep up the profit, but this expedient fails; short hours are worked ; at last the market becomes thoroughly overstocked. Then distress follows, and while capital seeks new outlets, the operatives fall into the great army of unemployed; and very often the small capitalists, who went into the rush just when profit was at its highest,, and who have not sufficient capital to hold out against the fall, and to await a rise, meet the fate of earthenware pots, carried down a torrent among iron ones. When this happens, the result of their speculative folly is held up as an example of the “risks run by capitalists ”. Nor is this the only way along which a small capitalist sometimestravels to the bankruptcy court. He often borrows money “to extend his business”, and if the business shrinks instead of expanding, he becomes bankrupt. In the uni­ versal war, the big capitalist fish devour the small fry. And, after all, even the “successful man” of our com­ petitive society is not one whose lot is to be envied by the healthy human being. Not for him the pure joy in natural beauty, in simple amusements, in intellectual triumph, which is the dower of those unstained by thefight for gold. For the successful competitor in com­ mercial war Nature has no laurel-crown. He has bartered himself for a mess of pottage, and his birthright of healthy ' humanity is gone from him for evermore. Well doesMoffat write his fate : “The man who strives to make a fortune contemplates his own ease and enjoyment, not the good of society. He flatters himself that through his superior skill, tact, wisdom, energy, or whatever quality it is he thinks himself twice as strong in as his neighbors, he will be able to do in half a lifetime what it takes them * their whole lives to do. For this he toils and sacrifices hishealth ; for this he rushes upon reckless speculations, and hazards his character and reputation; for this he makes himself indifferent to the rights and callous to the feelings of others; for this he is sordid, mean, and parsimonious. �MODERN SOCIALISM. 25' All these are the means by which, according to different temperaments, the same end is pursued. And what is the end? An illusion, nay, worse, a dishonesty. The man who pursues a fortune is not qualifying himself for any other course of life besides that which he at present lives. He is merely striving to escape from duty into enjoyment. And the fever of the strife frequently becomes his whole existence; so that when he has obtained his object, he finds himself unable to do without the excitement of the struggle ” (p. 220). Surely in judging the merits of a system it is fair to take into account the injuries it works to its most successful products. Its masterpieces are the withered and dehumanised; its victims are the paupers and the suicides. Nor can we leave out of account in studying competitive production the waste of material, and of the time spent in working it up, which result from over-production. The accumulation of stock while the demand is lessening means the making and storing of unneeded wares. Some of these are forced into the market, some lie idly in the great warehouses. The retail dealers find themselves over­ stocked, their shelves laden with unsaleable goods. These fade, and spoil, and rust away—so much good material wasted, so much human labor spent for nought, monu­ ments of a senseless system, of the barbarous, uncalcu­ lating blindness of our productive force. More heavily yet than on the capitalist does competition press on the distributor. A dozen traders compete for the custom which one could satisfactorily supply. The com­ petition for shops in a thickly populated neighborhood drives up the rent, and so adds to the retailer’s burden. He is compelled to spend large sums in advertising, striving by brilliancy of color or eccentricity of design to impress himself on the public mind. An army of commercial travellers sweeps over the country, each man with his hand against his neighbor in the same trade, pushing, haggling, puffing his own, depreciating his rival’s wares. These agents push their goods on the retailer, often when no real demand for them is coming from the public, and then the retailer puffs them, to create a demand on his supply. Nor must we omit from notice the enormous waste of productive energy in this army of canvassers, advertisers, bill-posters, multiplied middlemen of every kind. The distributive work done by these is absurdly out �:26 MODERN SOCIALISM. of proportion to their number. We see several carriers’ carts half-filled, instead of half the number filled; each carrier has to deliver goods over the whole of a wide area, so that a man may have to drive five miles to deliver a single parcel at a house a stone’s throw from a rival office. Yet each man must receive his full day’s wage, and must be paid for the hours he is compelled to waste, as well as for those he spends in useful work. It is the ■ same thing in every business. Three or four carts of each trade daily down each road, covering the same ground, supplying each one house here and one there, losing time, wearing out horses and traps, a foolish shameful waste. And all these unnecessary distributors are consumers when they might be producers, and are actually making unneces­ sary work for others as well as for themselves. Short-sighted people ask: Would you add all these to the crowds of half-starving unemployed now competing for work? No, we answer. We would not add them to the ^employed; it is only in a system of complete com­ petitive anarchy that there could be unemployed labor on the one hand, and people clamoring for the necessaries of life on the other. We have already seen that under the present system men are only employed where some profit can be made out of them by the person who hires them. Under a saner system there would be none unem­ ployed while the food and clothing supply was insufficient, and the turning of non-productive consumers into produc­ tive ones would only mean shorter hours of labor, since the labor necessary to supply the consumption of the population would be divided among a larger number than before. If wealth be the result of labor applied to raw material, poverty may come from the pressure of popula­ tion on the raw material which limits the means of sub­ sistence, but never from the greater part of the population working to produce wealth on raw material sufficient for their support. On the consumer falls much of the needless additional expense of advertisements, canvassers, and the rest. The flaming advertisements we see on the walls we pay for in the price of the puffed articles we buy. The trader feels their burden, and tries to recoup himself by adding u fraction of it to the price of the goods he sells. If he is forced to lower his nominal prices in consequence of the �MODERN SOCIADISM. 27 pressure of competition with his rivals, yet by adulteration he can really raise, while he seems to lower, them. The nominal width of fabrics does not correspond with the real; woollen goods are sold of which the warp is cotton ; tobacco is sold damped unfairly to increase its weight; sand is mixed with sugar; lard or dripping with butter ; chicory with coffee; sloe-leaves with tea; turnip with orange in marmalade ; foreign meat is offered as home­ grown ; damaged flesh is chopped up for sausages; until, at last, as Moffat caustically remarks: “It is not rogues and vagabonds alone who have recourse in trade to ex­ pedients which could not be justified by a strict theoretical morality. When this incline is entered upon, there is no resting upon it. Morality itself becomes subject to com­ petition ; and the conventional standard of trade morality gets lower and lower, until the things done by respectable people can hardly be distinguished from those done by people who are not respectable, except by the respectability of the people who do them” (p. 154). And in all this adulteration the consumer suffers in health, comfort, and temper. Not only does he pay more than he should for what he buys, but he buys a good deal more than he pays for. Heaviest of all is the burden on the operative classes, and they suffer in a double character, both as consumers and producers. As consumers, they share the general in­ jury ; as producers, their case is yet more serious. If they are in work, their wages are driven down by the competi­ tion for employment; they are the first to feel a lessening demand in lengthened hours, in lower wage; as the de­ pression goes on, they are thrown out of work; illness not ■only incapacitates them for the time, but their place is filled up, while they lie helpless, by the eager waiters for hire ; when they combine to strike for fairer treatment, the fringe of unemployed labor around is used against them by the employers ; the lowest depth is reached by the crowd who at the dockyard gates at the East of London literally fight for a place in which the foreman’s eye may fall on them, and out of the struggling hundreds units are taken on for the day at miserable wage for heavy exhausting work, to be turned out at night to undergo a similar struggle next morning. The only classes who gain by competition are the big �28 MODERN SOCIALISM. capitalists and the landlords. The big capitalists engaged in manufacture gain by the crushing out of their smaller rivals, and by their ability to hold over stocks produced when wages are low until prices are high. Capitalists who only lend out money on usury, and live on the interest thereby obtained, flourish when the demand for money is brisk. Most of all do landlords, who live on rent, profit by the struggle. In a growing neighborhood rents of commercial premises rise rapidly, and the shopkeeper finds himself heavily taxed by the landlord, who imposes on him practically a graduated income-tax for his own advantage. Thus the chief gainers by competition are the idlers who are permitted to hold the nation’s soil, and who live in luxury on the toilers, laughing to see how the fratricidal struggles of those who labor turn to the advantage of those who lounge. And so the strain of living constantly increases for the one class, while the luxury and ostenta­ tion of those who levy tax on toil become ever greater, and more aggressive by the contrast. II. The Remedy.—These evils can be radically cured only in one way; it is by the substitution of co-operation for competition, of organisation for anarchy in industry. The relation of employer and employed must disappear, and a brotherhood of workers, associated for facilitation of production for use, must replace the band of servants toiling for the enrichment of a master by profit. The full details of socialised industry cannot be drawn at length ; but it is not difficult to see that the already existent co­ operative societies offer a suggestive model, and the trades unions a sufficiently competent means for change. Pro­ bably each industry in each district will organise itself, and own, for use, all its means of production; thus the miners of Durham, for instance, organised in their lodges, with their central executive, would form the mining trade society of that district; all the mines of that district would be under their control, and they would elect their officers of all grades. So with all mining districts through­ out the land. These separate trade societies would be federated, and a General Board elected by all. The elements of such a self-organised industry exist at the present time, and the more closely the miners can band themselves into district unions, and the unions into a national federation, the more prepared will they be to play �.MODERN SOCIALISM. 29 their part in the great industrial revolution. It is probable that something of the nature of the royalties now paid to the individual mine-owners will be paid into the National Exchequer, in exchange for the right to work the national soil. A similar organisation would be needed for each productive industry, and probably representatives of each separate industry would form a central Industrial Board. But, I repeat, these details cannot now be laid down autho­ ritatively, any more than the details of the present in­ dustrial competitive system could have been laid down before the Industrial Period. On these details Socialists would inevitably differ considerably at the present time, and no special scheme can be fairly stamped as “ Socialist ” to the exclusion of the rest. But on this main principle all Socialists are agreed; that the only rightful holders of capital are industrial groups, or one great industrial group —the State, i.e., the organised community; that while individuals may hold private property for use, none should hold capital—that is wealth employed in production—for individual profit; that while each may have property to consume and to enjoy, none should be allowed to use property to enslave his neighbor, to force another to work for his advantage. The revolution in distribution will be as great as that in production, and here again co-operation must take the place of competition. We already see the beginnings of a distributive change in the establishment of huge stores for the supply of all the necessaries of life, and the way in which these are crushing out the smaller retail shops. Housewives find it more convenient to go to the single building, than to trudge wearily from shop to shop. Goods bought in very large quantities can be sold more cheaply than if bought in small, and economy, as well as con­ venience, attract the purchaser to the store. At present these stores are founded by capitalists and compete for custom, but they are forerunners of a rational distributive system. The very enmity they create in the minds of the small traders they ruin is paving the way for the com­ munity to take them over for the general advantage. Under Socialism all goods manufactured by the producers would be distributed to the central store of each district; from this central store they would be distributed to the retail stores. Anyone who thinks such distribution im- �30 MODERN SOCIALISM. possible had better study the postal system now existing ; we do not have post-offices jostling each other as dobaker’s and butcher’s shops: there are sufficient of them for the requirements of the district, and no more. The letters for a town are delivered at the General Post Office; they are sorted out and delivered at the subordinate offices ; the distribution of the correspondence of millions is carried on by a Government Department, quietly, effectively, without waste of labor, with celerity and economy. But then in -the Post Office co-operation has replaced com­ petition, organisation has replaced anarchy. Such a system, one hundred years ago, would have been pronounced impossible, as the Conservative minds of to-day pronounce impossible its extension to anything except letters and telegrams and parcels. I look for the time when the success of the Post Office will be repeated—and improved —in every department of distribution. Capital. We have already seen that Capital is accumulated by withholding from the producer a large part of the value he produces, and we have now to look more closely into the growth of Capital and the uses to which it is put. A glance over the historical Past, as well as the study of the Present, inform us that Capital has always been—as indeed it always must be—obtained from unpaid labor, or, if the phrase be preferred, by the partial confiscation of the results of labor. In communities the economic basis of which was slave-labor, this fact was obvious; the owner confiscated the whole products of his slaves’ toil, and he became a capitalist by this process of continued confiscation ; while the slave, fed, clothed, and housed out of the fruit of his own labor by his master, never owned anything as of right, nor had any property in that which he created. As civilisation advanced, serf-labor replaced slave-labor; here also the confiscation of the results of labor was obvious. The serf was bound to give so many days of work to his lord without payment; this service rendered, the remainder of his time was his own, to produce for his own subsist­ ence ; but the lord’s capital increased by the confiscation of the results of the serf’s labor during the days whereon he worked for his lord. In modern times “free labor” has replaced serf-labor, but in the present industrial system, �MODERN SOCIALISM. 31 as truly as in slave and in serf communities, Capital resultsfrom unpaid labor, though now from the unpaid labor of the wage-earner. We may search the whole world over, and we shall find no source of wealth save labor applied to natural agents. Wealth is never rained down from heaven, nor is it ever a spontaneous growth; unless indeed wild fruits taken for food be counted wealth, and even to these must human labor be applied in the form of picking ere they can be used. It is the result of huipan labor; and if one man has more than he has produced, it neces­ sarily follows that another man has less than he has pro­ duced. The gain of one must be the loss of another. There are but sixteen court cards in the fifty-two, and if by in­ genious shuffling, packing, and dealing, all the court cards fall to one player, only the lower cards can remain for the others. Separating “Capital” from “Wealth” we may conve­ niently define it as “wealth devoted to purposes of profit”, and as “wealth is the result of labor applied to raw ma­ terial”, Capital becomes the result of labor devoted to purposes of profit. John Stuart Mill says the “ accumu­ lated stock of the produce of labor is termed Capital ”. Macleod: “ Capital is any Economic Quantity used for the purpose of Profit ”. Senior: “Economists are agreed that whatever gives a profit is properly called Capital ”. Some­ thing more, however, than the activity of labor is implied in the existence of Capital. There must have been saving, as well as production. Hence Marshall speaks of Capital as “the result of labor and abstinence”; Mill of Capital as “ the result of saving ” ; and so on. It is obvious that if the products of labor were consumed as fast as they were made, Capital could not exist. We have, therefore, reached this certainty when we contemplate Capital; some­ one has worked, and has not consumed all that he has produced. Under these circumstances, we should expect to find Capital in the hands of industrious and abstinent pro­ ducers. But as Mill very justly points out: “In a rude and violent state of society it continually happens that the person who has Capital is not the very person who has saved it, but some one who, being stronger, or belonging to a more powerful community, has possessed himself of it by plunder. And even in a state of things in which �32 MODERN SOCIALISM. property was protected, the increase of Capital has usually been, for a long time, mainly derived from privations which, though essentially the same with saving, are not generally called by that name, because not voluntary. The actual producers have been slaves, compelled to produce as much as force could extort from them, and to consume as little as the self-interest or the usually very slender humanity of their task-masters would permit.” How many of our great capitalists have produced and saved until they accumulated the fortunes they possess ? These fortunes are greater than any human being could save out of his makings, even if he lived most abstemiously, instead of with the luxury and ostentation of a Rothschild or a Vanderbilt. But if they have not made and saved, how come they to possess ? Mill gives the answer, though he did not mean it to be applied to modern industrialism. “Ina rude and violent state of society ” Capital is not in the hands of the producer and saver, but in the hands of those who possess themselves “of it by plunder”—legal­ ised plunder, in our modern days. The “saving” is not voluntary; it is “derived from privations ” ; the “actual producers ” are wage-earners, who are “ compelled to pro­ duce as much as” pressure can extort from them, and to “consume as little” in the form of wage as they can be beaten down to by the competition of the labor-market. These men “ have labored, and” others “have entered into their labors ”. A very brief comparison of those who produce and save, and those who possess themselves of the results of labor and abstinence, will suffice to show the inequality which characterises the present system. The worker lives hardly and dies poor, bequeathing to his children the same neces­ sity of toil: I do not forget that the more fortunate workers have shares in Building Societies, a few pounds in the Savings Bank, and even an interest in a Burial Club, so that the parish may not have the expense of burying them ; but I say that these poor successes—vast indeed in the aggregate, but paltry when the share of the individual is looked at—bear no kind of reasonable proportion to the wealth created by the worker during his life-time. On the other hand the capitalist either starts with inherited wealth, grows richer, and bequeaths the increased wealth to his children; or he begins poor, saves a little, then �33 MODERN SOCIALISM. makes others work for him, grows rich, and bequeaths his wealth. In the second generation, the capitalist can simply invest his wealth and live on the interest; and since all in­ terest must be paid out of the results of labor, the workers not only lose a large proportion of their produce, but this very confiscated produce is made into a future burden for them, and while the fathers build up the capitalist, the children must toil to maintain his children in idleness. Capital may also be accumulated by the ownership of raw material, since no wealth can be produced until labor can get at this. The question of rent will be considered under the head of Land; here we are only concerned with the fact that wealth appropriated in this way is investible, and on this also interest can be obtained. Now the enormous burden placed on labor by the invest­ ment of money at interest, is not appreciated as it ought to be. The interest on the National Debt, including terminable annuities, amounted in 1884-5 to £28,883,672 12s.; how much is paid in dividends on railway, tram-car, and companies’ shares, it would be difficult to discover. Mr. Giffen, in his “ Progress of the Working Classes ”, esti­ mates that the capitalist classes receive from capital—ex­ cluding “wages of superintendence” and salaries—some £400,000,000 a year. In 1881, the income-tax returns quoted by Mr. Giffen show that the income from capital was no less than £407,000,000, and in estimating those in. Schedules B and D (Part I.) Mr. Giffen certainly takes care to make the gains on “idle capital” as small as he can. Mr. Giffen takes the aggregate income of the whole nation at about £1,200,000,000, so that according to his own figures Capital takes more than a third part of the national income. I should be prepared to contend that the burden on the producers is heavier than he makes out, but even taking his own calculations the result is bad enough. For all this money which goes to capitalists is money not earned by the receivers—mark that all which is in any sense earned, as wages of superintendence, etc., is excluded—and by . all this is lessened the share of the produce of labor which goes to labor. We have already dealt with the way in which the worker suffers injustice when capital is invested in machinery owned by private individuals; we have now to consider the portion of it used as loans, cases in which the capitalist D �34 MODERN SOCIALISM. takes no part in the management of any industrial con­ cern, but merely lends his money at usury, living on the interest he receives. There is so much confusion of thought on this subject, so much idea that a man has “a right” to invest money at interest, that it is necessary to try to get at the “bed-rock” of the question. Take the case of a man who earns 30s. in a week; suppose he spends 20s. and saves 10s. For the 20s. he spends he receives their equivalent in commodities, and these he consumes; he has had his “money’s worth”, and he is content, and if he requires more commodities he knows he must labor again to earn their equivalent in money. The 10s. he has saved, however, are to have a different fate; they represent, also, so much possibility of possession of their equivalent in commodities which he could consume; but he desires to defer this consumption to a future day, to defer it, perhaps, until he is too old to give labor in exchange for his needs. One might suppose that the equivalent of commodities for the 10s. would be as satisfactory as the equivalent of com­ modities for the 20s. But it is not so. He desires to in­ vest his 10s. at interest; let us suppose he invests it at 5 per cent.; at the end of twenty years he will have received back his 10s. by instalments of 6d. a year, and will have exchanged it for 10s. worth of commodities; yet at the end of the twenty years he expects to receive back in addition his full 10s.; to have spent it all, and yet to find it un­ diminished ; so that for his 10s. saved he expects to receive 20s. worth of commodities in twenty years, to have his labor paid for twice over. In the case of money only is it possible to eat your cake and have it, and after you have eaten it to pass it on as large as ever to your descendants, so that they may eat it and yet find it, like the widow’s cruse, ever miraculously renewed. Those who defend usury do so generally on its supposed collateral advantages, rather than on its central theory. It is argued that “ if a man gets no interest on his savings, he has no incitement to work ”. To this it may be answered: (a) That there is clearly no incitement to work on the part of those who live on interest, since their money comes tumbling in whether they work or idle ; it is the labor of others on which the interest-receiver lives. (J) That the incitement to work would be greater if the reward of work were not diminished by the imposition on it of a tax for the benefit �MODERN SOCIALISM. 35 of the idle ; surely the abstraction of £400,000,000 annually for interest can hardly act as an incitement to those whose Habor returns are diminished to that extent. (<?) That the real incitement to work is the desire to possess the result of labor, and that the more completely that desire is satis­ fied the greater will the incitement become. Would the incitement to tramcar employees be lessened, if the necessity of paying 10 per cent, on shareholders’ capital no longer kept down their wages ? But, in truth, this argument as to incitement to workers is either ignorant, or disingenuous. 'The mainspring of the worker’s toil is, as a matter of fact, •compulsion, not the incitement of hope of reward. Had he control over the product of his own labor, then thp desire to obtain more might incite him to work harder, as, indeed, has been found to be the case with piece-work, and in co-operative undertakings: with his fixed wage it is to him a matter of indifference how much or how little he produces. The desire for interest is an incitement to the capitalist to press his wage-toilers to work harder, so that ■after he has satisfied his own power of consumption he may lay by all the surplus value he can squeeze out of them, and increase the capital he has out at interest. The higher the interest obtainable, the greater the compulsion to work put upon the producers. But this compulsion is ■clearly an evil, not a good, and in the case of the tramcar employees just cited, it is compulsion which forces them to accept the long hours of labor, and the compulsion is exer­ cised in order to obtain interest for the shareholders. 11 The incitement to thrift will disappear.” But (a) the interest obtainable by “thrift” is too small to serve as an incitement, for the savings of the industrious poor are not sufficient to give interest enough to subsiston. The Savings Banks are resorted to as a convenient place wherein to put money saved for future use; it is the safe keeping of the money “for a rainy day ”, not the trifling interest, which is the attraction to the anxious poor. The small amount per­ mitted to an individual and the low interest are sufficient proofs of this assertion; no one must put in more than £30 in a year, the interest is only 2-| per cent., and this is not paid yearly, but is added to the principal. And this future necessity is the real incitement to thrift. A man earns, say, sufficient this week to support himself for a fortnight; having satisfied his needs, he does not want to satisfy them d 2 �36 MODERN SOCIALISM. twice over ; he knows that some years hence his power of work will have disappeared, while his necessity of consump­ tion will remain, and he defers his consumption of half theresults of his labor till that time. Why should he look for added power of consumption as a reward for deferring his consumption for his own convenience? Without in­ terest, thoughtful people would save, for the sake of com­ fort in their old age. It may however be conceded that the incitement to annex the results of the thrift of others—the only way in which big fortunes can be made—will disappear with the disappearance of interest, and the pos­ sibility of living idly by taxing the labor of others. • “ It will not be possible to get money for railroads, tramcars, etc., if interest on share capital disappearsi But the indes­ tructible reason for making railroads, tramways, etc., is theneed for the conveniences they afford. And Socialism would place the making and carrying on of all means of transit in the hands of local bodies, municipalities, and soforth, who would raise the requisite funds from the com­ munity which is to enjoy the increased facilities. Thesefunds would be used in remuneration of the labor expended on them, and none would have a right to levy a perpetual tax on the public on the pretence of having lent the money originally employed in the construction. Now a man claims the right to tax all future labors and all future consumers for the benefit of his posterity, as a reward for having worked and saved, or mostly as a reward for having transferred into his own pockets the results of his neighbor’s toil. It is time that the immorality of this claim should be pointed out, and that people should be told that while they may rightly save and live on their savings, they ought not to use their savings for the enslavement and the taxing of other people. An effective step towards the abolition of interest might be taken by the closing of the sources of idle investment, the taking over by local bodies of the local means of transit, the gas and water supply, etc., while the central authority takes over the railways. The question of compensation would be solved with the least amount of injustice to exploiters and ex­ ploited by paying over a yearly dividend to shareholders until the dividends amounted to a sum equal to the nominal value of the shares held; thus a £100 share would be extinguished by the payment of a sum of £ 10 annually for �MODERN SOCIALISM. 37 ten years, leaving the shareholder richer than he was originally by all the interest received during the past, but terminating his right to tax within a brief period. There is, however, one argument in favor of interest which brings conviction to many minds; an individual wants to perform a piece of productive work, but has no •capital and is unable to do it; he borrows the capital and performs the work; since the man who lent the capital has facilitated the doing of the work, ought he not to share in the product, which would have had no existence but for his capital ? Now it might be answered to this that if his capital is returned to him in full he has lost nothing by the transaction, but has, on the contrary, gained the ad­ vantage of having his money taken care of without trouble to himself, and returned to him uninjured at the time that he requires it. But the real answer is that interest is in­ evitable so long as Capital remains in private hands, so long as individuals are permitted to annex the results of the unpaid labor of others, and so manufacture a lien on all future industry. Interest will only be abolished when the results of the past unpaid labor of many are held by the many to facilitate the future labor of many. Now, industry can only be carried on with the permission and the assistance of those whose stores of wealth have been piled up for them by thousands of patient toilers; and that permission and assistance can only be gained by taxing labor for the enrichment of the lender. In the future those vast stores will be used to carry on production, and while labor will constantly replace the capital it uses in produc­ tion, it will not also be taxed for the benefit of individuals. Interest and private property in the means of production must stand and fall together. At the present time no law against usury could be passed, and even were the passing of such a law possible it would be a dead letter, so thoroughly is the present system built on the paying of interest. All Socialists can do for the moment is to expose the fundamental dishonesty and injustice of usury, and so pave the way for a better state of things. Apart from the abuse of Capital here indicated Capital has a function which, of course, no Socialist ignores. Capital is necessary for all forms of industry, and its function is: to save labor, as by machinery; to facilitate it, by the in­ troduction of improvements therein ; to support it while it �38 MODERN SOCIALISM. is employed in production, and until its products are ex­ changed. The true use of the savings of past labor is ta lighten future labor, to fertilise production. But in order that it may be thus used, it must be in the hands of the community instead of in the hands of individuals. Beingas it is, and must be, the result of unpaid labor, it should pass to the community to be used for the common good, instead of to individuals to enrich them to the common loss. Land. It is hardly necessary to argue, at this time of day, that Land, i.e., natural agents, ought not to be the private pro­ perty of individuals. No absolute property in land is in­ deed recognised by the laws of this realm, but the proposi­ tion that land ought not to be private property goes, of course, much further than this legal doctrine. It declares that the soil on whieh a nation lives ought to belong tothe nation; that those who cultivate it, or who mine in it, and who for practical purposes must have for the time the exclusive usufruct of portions of it, should pay into the national exchequer a duly-assessed sum, thus rendering an equivalent for the privilege they enjoy, and making the whole community sharers in the benefits derived from natural agents. The present system of permitting private ownership of land has led to three great and increasing evils ; the esta­ blishment of an idle class, which grows richer by increas­ ingly taxing the industrious; the divorce of the really agricultural class from the soil; the exodus from the country districts into the towns. Private ownership of natural agents must inevitably re­ sult in the first of these three evils. These natural agents are the basis of wealth; the very subsistence of the nation depends on their utilisation; yet a comparatively small class is permitted to claim them as private property, and to appro­ priate the rent to its private use. Hence, one of the first charges on the results of labor is rent, and rent, be it noted, not to the community, but to an individual who has acquired the legal right to stand between labor and land. Now just as wage is determined practically by the standard of living, so is rent determined by the same thing. The landlord exacts as rent the value of the produce minus the �MODERN SOCIALISM. 39 subsistence of the tenant, and in many cases, if the farmer’s receipts sink and there is no corresponding lowering of rent, the farmer cannot even subsist, and becomes bank­ rupt. Hence, if a farmer improves the land and so obtains from it larger returns, the landlord steps in and raises his rent, claiming ever as his, produce minus subsistence, and confiscating for his own advantage the results of the labor and invested capital of the farmer. Thus also with the spread of commercial prosperity comes a rise in the tax levied by the landlords; as towns grow larger the land around them becomes more valuable, and thus the Stanleys grow wealthy by the growth of Liverpool, and the Gros­ venors and Russells by that of London : competition drives up rents, and landlords may live in Italy or Turkey, and become ever wealthier by the growth of English trade, and the toil of English laborers. Moffat points out (“ Economy of Consumption,” p. 142) that part of the retailer’s profit, and possibly the larger part of it “ is purely local, and which he could not carry away with him. It distinguishes the site of his business, and resolves itself into rent. If the retailer owns his own premises, he may be content with this part of his profits, and handing the business to another become a landlord. If they are owned by another, the owner, unless the retailer is able to find other suitable premises within a moderate distance, will be able to levy all the extra profit from him in the shape of rent. Hence the rapid rise of rents in the central localities of large towns.” Socialists are accused of desiring to confiscate property but the regular and uncensured confiscation of the property of busy people by idlers, the bloodsucking of the landlord leeches, pass unnoticed year by year, and Society honors the confiscators. The expropriation of small cultivators has been going on for the last 400 years, partly by big landlords buying up small ones, and partly by their thefts of common land. The story of Naboth’s vineyard has been repeated in hundreds of country districts. The exorbitant rents demanded by landlords, with the pressure of Ameri­ can competition aided by capitalists on this side, have ruined the farming class, while the absorption of small holdings has turned into day-laborers at miserable wage the class that formerly were independent tillers of the soil. Attracted by the higher wage ruling in manufacturing towns this dislanded class has flocked into them, has �40 MODERN SOCIALISM. crowded into unsuitable houses, increased the slums of our great cities, and, under most unwholesome conditions has multiplied with terrible rapidity. This exodus has been further quickened by the letting of formerly arable land for sheep-pasture, and the consequent forced migration of the no longer needed tillers. And thus have come about the under-population of the agricultural districts, and the over-crowding of cities : too few engaged in agricultural, and too many competing for industrial, employment; until we find our own land undercultivated, and even in some districts going out of cultivation, while food is being im­ ported to an alarming extent, and the unemployed are becoming a menace to public tranquillity. The effect on England of revolution abroad is apt to be overlooked in studying our own labor difficulties. A considerable portion of our imports represents rent and interest from estates abroad and foreign investments. This portion would sud­ denly stop as regards any country in which a revolution occurred, and foreign workmen were, in consequence, no longer subjected to exploitation for the benefit of English capitalists. Now this likelihood of foreign revolution is yearly increasing, and Europe is becoming more and more like a boiler with armed forces sitting on the safety valve. The first attempt to move in the right direction is the Land Cultivation Bill introduced into the House of Com­ mons by Charles Bradlaugh. This proposes to expropriate landlords who hold cultivable land waste; to give them, as compensation, payment for twenty-five years equal in amount to the annual value of the produce obtained from the confiscated land—so that if there is no produce there will be no payment; to vest the land in the State, and to let it, not sell it, to cultivators. Thus, if the Bill passed, a large area of land would be nationalised early in next year. Such an Act, followed up by others taking over all land let on building leases as they run out—probably pay­ ing to the present landlords, for life, the original ground­ rents ; making the Land Tax an adequate rent paid to the State; taking back without compensation all common lands that have been stolen; breaking up the big estates by crush­ ing taxation; steps like these, if taken with sufficient rapidity, may effect a complete Land Revolution without violence, and establish Socialism so far as the ownership of natural agents is concerned. �MODERN SOCIALISM. 41 It is of vital importance to progress in a Socialist direc­ tion that an uncompromising resistance should be offered to all schemes for the creation of new proprietors of the soil. Peasant cultivators, paying rent to the State, are good. Peasant proprietors are a mere bulwark, raised by landlords to guard their own big estates, and will delay the realisation of the true theory that the State should be the only landowner. It is also important that Socialists should popularise the idea of communal, or co-operative, farming. There can be no doubt that cereal crops can be raised most economically on large holdings, and such holdings should be rented from the body or bodies representing the com­ munity by groups of cultivators, so that both large and small farms should be found in agricultural districts. But it must be distinctly stated that the Socialisation of Land without the Socialisation of Capital will not solve the social problem. No replanting of the people in the soil, no im­ proved balance of agricultural and industrial production, will by themselves free the wage-slaves of our towns. Means of production, as well as natural agents, must come under the control of the community, before the triumph of Socialism can be complete. The tendency of Radicals to aim only at the nationalisation of land has an effect, how­ ever, which will ultimately prove of service. It irritates the landlord class, and the landlords devote themselves to proving that there is no essential difference between pro­ perty in Land and property in Capital. Just as they helped to pass the Factory Acts to restrain capitalists as a retort for the capitalist agitation against the Corn Laws, so they will be likely to help in nationalising Capital in revenge for the nationalisation of Land. Education. For the successful maintenance of a Socialist State a wide and thorough system of national education is an absolute necessity. A governed people may afford to be ignorant; a self-ruling community must be instructed, or it must perish. And the education contemplated by Socialism is a very different thing from the paltry modicum of know­ ledge deemed sufficient for the “masses” to-day. Under our present system education is a matter of class, and it is a misnomer to call it “national” ; it is partly supported by the parents of the children who attend the Board �42 MODERN SOCIALISM. Schools, and partly by the rates and taxes; it is limited to the mere elements of learning; the one object of the teachers is to cram the children so that they may pass stated examinations, and thus obtain a Government grant per head. Under Socialism the whole system will be revolutionised, as the one aim then will be to educate in such a way as will ensure the greatest possible healthy development of the young, with a view to their future position as members of a free community. The foundations of complete social equality will be laid in the school. All the children will be educated in the communal schools, the only distinction being that of age. Boys and girls will not be separated as they are now, but a common education will prepare for common work. Every child will be led through a course, which will em­ brace a thorough training in the elements of the various sciences, so that in after life he may feel an intelligent interest in each, and if his taste so lead him acquire later a fuller knowledge of any special branches. He—and “ he ” here includes “ she ”—will be instructed also in the elements of art, so that the sense of beauty may be developed and educated, and the refining influence of instructed taste may enrich both mind and. manners. .A knowledge of history, of literature, and of languages will widen sympathy and destroy narrowness and national prejudices. Nor will physical training be forgotten; gymnastics, dancing, riding, athletic games, will educate the senses and the limbs, and give vigor, quickness, dexterity, and robustness to the frame. To this will be superadded technical training, for these educated, cultured, graceful lads and lasses are to be workers, every one of them. The foundations of this technical training will be the same for all; all will learn to cook and scrub, to dig and sew, and to render quick assistance in accidents; it is probable also that the light portions of household duties will form part of the training of every child. But as the child grows into the youth, natural capacities will suggest the special training which should be given, so. as to secure for the community the full advantages which might accrue from the varied abilities of its members. No genius then will be dwarfed by early neglect, no rare ability then perish for lack of culture. Individuality will then at last find full expression, and none will need to �MODERN SOCIALISM. 43- trample on his brother in order to secure full scope for his own development. It is probable that each will learn more than a single trade—an easy task when brain acute­ ness and manual dexterity have been cultured—so as topromote adaptability in the future industrial life. Now to many, I fear to most, of my readers, this sketch of what education will be in a Socialist community will appear a mere Utopian dream. Yet is it not worth while for such to ask themselves: Why should not such an education be the natural lot of every child in a wellordered community ? Is there anything in it superfluous for the thorough development of the faculties of a human being? And if it be admitted that boys and girls thuseducated would form nobler, completer, more many-sided human beings than are the men and women of to-day, is it not a rational thing to set up as an object to beworked for the realisation of an idea which would proveof incalculable benefit to the community ? It is hardly necessary to add that education, in a Socialist State, would be “free ”—i.e., supported at the public cost, and compulsory. Free, because the education of the young is of vital importance to the community; because classdistinctions can only be effaced by the training of children in common schools; because education is too important a matter to be left to the whims of individuals, and if it be removed from the parent’s direction and supervision it is not just to compel him to pay for it. Compulsory, because the State cannot afford to leave its future citizens ignorant and helpless, and it is bound to protect its weak members against injustice and neglect. Two objections are likely to be raised: the question of cost, and the question of unfitting persons for “the dirty work of the world, which someone must do ”. As to cost. It must not be forgotten that this education is proposed for a Socialist community. In such a Statethere would be no idle adult class to be supported, but all would be workers, so that the wealth, produced would be much greater than at the present time. Now according to the figures of anti-Socialist Mr. Giffen, the aggregate income of the people is at present about £1,200,000,000 ; of this the workers are assigned by him £620,000,000; deduct another £100,000,000 for return from investments abroad; this leaves £480,000,000 absorbed by the non­ �44 MODERN SOCIALISM. producing class. (It must be remembered, further, that a large number of the “workers” are unnecessary distribu­ tors, whose powers could be utilised to much better purpose than is done to-day.) The wealth producers have to bear the Church on their shoulders, and provide it with an income variously stated at from £6,000,000 to £10,000,000 a year. They have to bear the “landed interest”, with its appropriation in rents, royalties, etc., of something like £200,000,000. They have to bear the ultimate weight of im­ perial and local taxation, estimated at about £120,000,000 for the present year. All these charges, by whomsoever nominally paid, have to come out of the wealth produced by the workers. Is it then to be pretended that when the idle class has disappeared there will not be wealth enough produced for the education of the children, or that their ■education will be as heavy a burden as the drones are to­ day ? Nor must it be forgotten that there are millions of acres of land that would produce wealth if labor were sent to them, and that plenty of our idlers will there find produc­ tive work which will enormously increase the national wealth. Nor also that the waste which results from luxurious idle living will be of the past, and that a simpler, manlier rate of expenditure will have replaced the gluttony and intem­ perance now prevalent in the “ higher circles of society ”. But it will indeed be of vital importance that the propor­ tion of workers to non-workers shall be considered, and that there shall not be in a Socialist community the over­ large families which are a characteristic of the present system. Families of ten or a dozen children belong to the capitalist system, which requires for its success a numerous and struggling proletariat, propagating with extreme rapidity, so as to keep up a plentiful supply of men, women, and children for the labor-market, as well as a supply of men for the army to be food for cannon, and women for the streets to be food for lust. Under a Socialist regime, the community will have something to ■say as to the numbers of the new members that are to be introduced into it, and for many years supported by it; and it will prefer a reasonable number of healthy, welleducated children, to a yearly huge increase which would overburden its industry. As to unfitting persons for work. So long as manual work is regarded as degrading, education, by increasing sensi­ �MODERN SOCIALISM. 45 tiveness to public opinion, tends to make people shrink from it, at least if their sensitiveness is greater than their intelligence. But even now an educated person of strong will and clear judgment, who knows that all useful work is worthy of respect, finds that his education fits him to­ perform work more quickly and more intelligently than is possible to an ignorant person ; and respecting himself in its thorough accomplishment he is conscious of no degra­ dation. Weak persons, compelled to labor for their bread, and aware that manual work is considered to place the worker in a subordinate social class, feel ashamed of the inferior position assigned to them by public opinion; and knowing by experience that they will be snubbed if they treat their “ superiors” as equals, they live down to their social rank, and long to raise their children into a class above their own. One consequence of the absurd artificial disadvantage attached to manual work, is that the children of the more successful workers crowd the inferior profes­ sional occupations, and a man prefers to be a clerk or a curate on £90 a year to being an artisan on £150. But in the Socialist State only idleness will be despised, and all useful work will be honored. There is nothing more intrinsically degrading in driving a plough than in driving a pen, although the ploughman is now relegated to the kitchen while the clerk is received in the drawing-room. The distinction is primarily a purely artificial one, but it is made real by educating the one tvpe while the other is left ignorant, and by teaching the one to look on his work as work “fit for a gentleman”, while the other is taught that his work is held in low social esteem. Each reflects the surrounding public opinion, and accepts the position assigned by it. In Socialism, both will be educated together as children; both will be taught to look on. all work as equally honorable, if useful to the community; both will be cultured “ gentlemen ”, following each his natural bent; the ploughman will be as used to his pen as the clerk; the clerk as ready to do heavy work as the ploughman; and as public opinion will regard them as equals and will hold them in equal honor, neither will feel any sense of superiority or inferiority, but they will meet on common ground as men, as members of a social unity. As to the physically unpleasant work—such as dealing with sewers, dung-heaps, etc.—much of that will probably �46 MODERN SOCIALISM. be done by machinery, when there is no helpless class on whose shoulders it may be bound. Such as cannot be ■done by machinery, will probably be divided among a large number, each taking a small share thereof, and the amount done by each will thus become so insignificant, that it will be but slightly felt. In any case the profound ■selfishness, which would put all burden on a helot class, and rather see it brutalised by the crushing weight than bear a portion of the load on one of its fingers, must be taught that Socialism means equality, and that the divine right of idlers, to live at ease on the labor of others and to be shielded by the bodies of the poor from all the un­ pleasantnesses of the world, is one of the notions against which Socialism wars, and which must follow the corre­ lative superstition of the divine right of kings. Justice. The pretence that under the present system there is one law for rich and poor is so barefaced a piece of impudence, that it is hardly worth while to refute it. Everyone knows that a rich man is fined for an offence for which a poor man is sent to gaol; that no wise man goes to law unless he has plenty of money ; that in a litigation between a rich and a poor man, the poor man practically stands no chance, for even if he at first succeeds the rich man can appeal, and secure in the power of his money-bags wear out his poor antagonist by costly delays and by going from court to court. The poor man cannot fee first-class counsel, seek out and bring up his witnesses from various parts of the •country, and keep a stream of money continually running through his solicitor’s hands. There might be the same law for him as for the rich man, if he could get it; but it is far away behind a golden gate, and he lacks the key which alone will fit the wards of the lock. Yet surely one of the primary duties of a State is to do justice among its members, and to prevent the oppression of the weak by the strong. In a civilised State justice should be dealt out without fee or reward; if a man gives up his inherent right to defend himself and to judge in his own quarrel, he ought not to be placed in a worse position than he would be in if society did not exist. Lawyers, like judges, should be officials paid by the State, and should have no �MODERN SOCIALISM. 47 pecuniary interest in winning the case in which they are engaged. The administration of justice in a Socialist State will be a very much simpler matter than it is now. Most crimes arise from the desire to become rich, from poverty, and from ignorance. Under Socialism poverty and ignorance will have disappeared, and the desire to grow rich will have no raison d'etre when everyone has sufficient for com­ fort, is free from anxiety as to his future, and sees above him no wealthy idlers whose luxury he desires to ape, and whose idleness is held up to him as a matter of envy, as the ideal state for man. Amusement. There is a curious inconsistency in the way in which people deal with the question of amusement at the present time. We should have an outcry about “pauperisation” and “ interference with private enterprise ”, if anyone pro­ posed that the theatres should be open to the public without •charge. Yet Hyde Park is kept gorgeous with flowers, Eotten Eow is carefully attended to, a whole staff of workers is employed, in order that the wealthy may have a fashionable and pleasant lounge ; and all this is done at the national expense, without any expression of fear Jest the wealthy should be pauperised by this expenditure on their behalf. Nor is complaint made of the public money spent on the other parks in London; the most that is suggested is that the money wanted ought to be taken from the London rates and not from the national taxes. No one proposes that the parks should be sold to the highest bidder, and that private enterprise should be encouraged by permitting some capitalist to buy them, and to make a charge at the gate for admission. It is signi­ ficant that once anything gets under State control, the advantages are found to be so great that no one would ■dream of bringing it back under private exploitation. In some parks a band plays, and people are actually de­ moralised by listening to music for which they do not pay directly. Nay more ; the British Museum, the National Gallery, the South Kensington Museum, are all open free, and no one’s dignity is injured. But if the National Gallery be open free, why not the Eoyal Academy ? If a band may be listened to in the open air without pay­ �48 MODERN SOCIALISM. ment, why not in a concert room ? And if a concert may be free, why not a theatre ? Under the present system, the Royal Academy, the concert, the theatre, are all private speculations, and the public is exploited for the profit of the speculators. The National Gallery and the Museums are national property, and the nation enjoys the use of its own possessions. In a nation which has gone so far in the direction of providing intellectual amusement, it cannot be pretended that any principle is involved in the question whether or not it shall go further along the same road. A nation which collects the works of dead painters can hardly, on principle, refuse to show the works of living ones; and we Socialists may fairly urge the success of what has already been done in the way of catering for the public amusement as a reason for doing more. As it is, with the exception of a few places, the poor, whose lives most need the light of amusement and of beauty, are relegated to the very lowest and coarsest forms of recreation. Unreal and intensely vulgar pictures of life are offered them at the theatres which specially cater for them; they never have the delight of seeing really graceful dancing, or noble acting, or of hearing exquisite music. Verily, the amusements of the wealthier leave much to be desired, and theatre and music-hall alike pander to a low and vulgar taste instead of educating and refining it; but still these are better than their analogues at the East End. Under Socialism, the theatre will be­ come a great teacher instead of a catch-penny spectacle ; and dramatists and actors alike will work for the honor of a noble art, instead of degrading their talents to catch the applause of the most numerous class of an uneducated people. Then an educated public will demand a higher art, and artists will find it worth while to study when patient endeavor meets with public recognition, and crude impertinence suffers its due reproof. Theatres, concerts, parks, all places of public resort, will be communal pro­ perty, open alike to all, and controlled by elected officers. Conclusion. It remains, in conclusion, to note the chief objections raised to Socialism by its opponents. Of these the .most generally urged are three: that it will check individual �MODERN SOCIALISM. 49 initiative and energy; that it will destroy individuality; that it will unduly restrict personal liberty. That it will check individual initiative and energy. This objection is founded on the idea that the impulse to initia­ tive must always be desire for personal money gain. But this idea flies directly in the face of facts. Even under the individualistic system, no great discovery has ever been made and proclaimed merely from desire for personal money profit. The genius that invents is moved by an imperial necessity of its own nature, and wealth usually falls to the lot of the commonplace man who exploits the genius, and not to the genius itself. Even talent is moved more by joy in its own exercise, and in the public approval it wins, than by mere hope of money gain. Who would not rather be an Isaac Newton, a Shelley, or a Shakspere, than a mere Vanderbilt ? And most of all are those of strong individual initiative moved by desire to serve their “larger self”, which is Man. The majority of such choose the unpopular path, and by sheer strength and service gradually win over the majority. We see men and women who might have won wealth, position, power, by using their talents for personal gain in pursuits deemed honorable, cheerfully throw all aside to proclaim an un­ popular truth, and to serve a cause they believe to be good and useful. And these motives will become far more powerful under Socialism than they are now. For the possession of money looms unduly large to-day in conse­ quence of the horrible results of the want of it. The dread of hunger and of charity is the microscope which magnifies the value of wealth. But once let all men be secure of the necessaries and comforts of life, and all the finer motives of action will take their proper place. Energy will have its full scope under Socialism, and in­ deed when the value of a man’s work is secured to him instead of the half being appropriated by someone else, it will receive a new impulse. How great will be the in­ centive to exertion when the discovery of some new force, or new"application of a known force, means greater com­ fort for the discoverer and for all; none thrown out of work by it, none injured by it, but so much solid gain for each. And for the discoverer, as well as the material gain common to him and his comrades, the thanks and praise of the community in which he lives. And let not �50 MODERN SOCIALISM. the power of public opinion be undervalued as a stimulus to exertion. What Greek athlete would have sold his wreath of bay for its weight in gold ? Only one kind of energy will be annihilated by Socialism—the energy that enslaves others for its own gain, and exploits its weaker brethren for its own profit. For this kind of energy there will be no room. The coarse purse-proud mediocrity, who by sheer force of pushing brutality has trampled his way to the front, will have vanished. The man who grows rich by underpaying his employees, by being a “hard business man”, will have passed away. Energy will have to find for itself paths of service instead of paths of oppression, and will be honored or reprobated according to the way in which it is used. That it will destroy individuality. If this were true, the loss to progress would indeed be incalculable. But So­ cialism, instead of destroying individuality will cultivate and accentuate it, and indeed will make it possible for the first time in civilisation for the vast majority. For it needs, in order that individuality shall be developed, that the individual shall have his characteristics drawn out and trained by education; it needs that he shall work, in maturity, at the work for which his natural abilities fit him ; it needs that he shall not be exhausted by excessive toil, but shall go fresh and vigorous to his labor; it needs that he shall have leisure to continuously improve himself, to train his intellect and his taste. But such education, such choice of work, such short hours of labor, such leisure for self-culture, where are all these to-day for our laboring population ? A tremendous individuality, joined to robust health, may make its way upward out of the ranks of the handworkers to- day; but all normal individuality is crushed out between the grinding-stones of the industrial mill. See the faces of the lads and lasses as they troop out of the factory, out of the great mercantile establishments; how alike they all are ! They might almost have been turned out by the dozen. We Socialists demand that individuality shall be possible for all, and not only for the few who are too strong to crush. That it will unduly restrict personal liberty. Socialism, as conceived by the non-student of it, is an iron system, in which the “ State ”—which is apparently separate from the citizens—shall rigidly assign to each his task, and �MODERN SOCIALISM. 51 deal out to each his subsistence. Even if this caricature were accurate, Socialism would give the great majority far more freedom than they enjoy to-day ; for they would only be under the yoke for their brief hours of toil, and would have unfettered freedom for the greater portion of their time. Contrast this compulsion with the compulsion exercised on the workers to-day by the sweater, the manager of the works or business, and above all the compulsion of hunger, that makes them bend to the yoke for the long hours of the working day, and often far into the night: and then say whether the “freedom ” of Indus­ trialism is not a heavier chain than the “tyranny ” of the most bureaucratic Socialism imagined by our opponents. But the “tyranny of Socialism”, however, would consist only in ordering-—and enforcing the order if necessary— that every healthy adult should labor for his own subsist­ ence. That is, it would protect the liberty of each by not allowing anyone to compel another person to work for him, and by opening to all equal opportunities of working for themselves. The worker would choose his own work certainly as freely as he does now : at the present time, if one class of work has enough operatives employed at it, a man must take some other, and I do not see that Socialism could prevent this limitation of choice. At any rate, the limitation is not an argument against Socialism, since it exists at the present time. Imagine the glorious freedom which would be the lot of each when, the task of social work complete, and done under healthy and pleasant conditions, the worker turned to science, literature, art, gymnastics, to what he would, for the joyous hours of leisure. For him all the treasures of knowledge and of beauty; for him all the delights of scenery and of art; for him all that only the wealthy enjoy to-day; all that comes from work flowing back to enrich the worker’s life. I know that our hope is said to be the dream of the enthusiast; I know that our message is derided, and that the gospel of man’s redemption which we preach is scorned. Be it so. Our work shall answer the gibes of our oppo­ nents, and our faith in the future shall outlast their mockery. We know that however much man’s ignorance may hinder our advance ; however much his selfishness may block our path; that we shall yet win our way to the �52 MODERN SOCIALISM. land we have seen but in our visions, and rear the temple of human happiness on the solid foundation stones of science and of truth. Above all sneer and taunt, above all laughter and bitter cries of hatred, rings out steadily our prophecy of the coming time : ‘ ‘ O nations undivided, O single People, and free, We dreamers, we derided, We mad blind men that see, We bear you witness ere ye come that ye shall be.” � 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 &amp; 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 Modern socialism Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Besant, Annie Wood [1847-1933] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 52 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Freethought Publishing Company Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1886 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T403 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Modern socialism), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><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 Social change Social conditions Socialism