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■nit S
PRICE ONE PENNY.
SEVENTY-FIRST THOUSAND I
SOCIALISM
MADE PLAIN
AND
“THE UNEMPLOYED”
BEING TWO
MANIFESTOES
OF THE
SOG/A L-DEMOGRA TIG
FEDERA TION.
Address Secretary, Social-Democratic Federation,
Bridge House, Blackfriars. E.C.
EDUCATE.
AGITATE.
ORGANISE.
THE MODERN PRESS, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C.
1886.
Agent for U.S.A., W. L. ROSENBERG, 56, EAST
STREET, NEW YORK CITY.
FOURTH
�Summary of the Principles of Socialism.
By H. M. Hyndman and William Morris.
Second
edition, 64-pp. crown 8-vo., in wrapper designed by Wm.
Morris, price 4d.
This gives an account of the growth of capitalist production, and con
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The Emigration Fraud Exposed.
By
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Reprinted by permission from the Nineteenth Century for
February, 1885. Crown 8-vo., price id.
The Socialist Catechism. By J. L. Joynes.
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Reprinted with additions from Justice.
price id. Fifteenth thousand.
Socialist Rhymes.
J.
By
Reprinted chiefly from Justice.
L.
Joynes.
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Wage-Labour and Capital.
By Karl Marx.
Translated by J. L. Joynes and reprinted from Justice.
Price 2d.
This is the only work of the great Socialist thinker which has been
translated into English.
Socialism and the Worker.
Sorge.
By F. A.
Price id.
An explanation in the simplest language of the main idea of Socialism.
John Williams and the History of the
Social-Democratic Federation.
8-vo., price id.
Socialism
and
With portrait.
Slavery.
By
H.
Royal
M.
Hyndman. (In reply Mr. Herbert Spencer’s article on
the “ Coming Slavery ”). New Edition. Price id.
The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row, E.G.
And W. L. ROSENBERG, 56, East Fourth Street, New
York City.
�SOCIALISM
MADE
PLAIN,
BEING THE
Social and Political Manifesto of the Democratic Federation
EDUCATE.
AGITATE
ORGANISE.
Fellow Citizens,
qpHE time has come when it is absolutely necessary
that the mass of the people should seriously take
in hand their own business unless they are content to
find themselves in the near future worse off than they
have ever yet been. At present, social and political
power is monopolised by xhose who live upon the
labour of their fellows; and Tories or Conservatives,
Whigs, Liberals or Radicals strive only to keep the
workers ignorant of the truths which most nearly con
cern them. After the Reform Bill of 1832 the capi
talists entered into alliance with the landlords except
on one question, and from the repeal of the Corn
Laws in 1846 to this day the lords of the money-bag
and the lords of the soil have together been absolute
masterc of the millions who labour throughout the
United Kingdom. So complete has been their control
that since the year 1848 no vigorous attempt has even
been made to overthrow it. But what has been the re
sult to the workers of this supremacy of the luxurious
classes ? During fifty years our labourers have com
peted against one another for wages which barely
suffice to keep them
aUve.
Whilst the realised
�weaith and the annual income of the country have
more than trebled, those who create these riches re
main a wage-slave class, overworked and underfed,
at the mercy of every crisis and the victims of each suc
ceeding depression. The improved machinery, the
extension of railways, the great steam and electric
communications—that vast increase of the power of
man over nature which has been the main feature of
our epoch, has brought luxury for the few, misery and
degradation for the many. Even in the past ten years
what have we seen ? The interests of Great Britain
utterly neglected, Ireland shamefully misgoverned,
India ruined and South Africa estranged. In 1874
the Liberals were dismissed for incapacity and Conser
vatives ruled in their stead for six years. Not a single
measure did they introduce during that long tenure of
office which could in any way lighten the lot of the
millions who toil. The Conservatives having been
turned out in disgust the Liberals again try their
h|and, and once more not a single measure is before
Parliament, not a single measure is proposed for future
legislation, which can benefit the working men and
women who are really the source of all our wealth.
Fellow-Citizens the further success of this pitiful
trickery depends upon your ignorance and will last as
long as your apathy. Landlords and capitalists, who
o ahi the House of Lords and fill the House of Commons,
wish nothing better than to protect their interests
under the pretence of looking after yours. Take up
then your own heritage, push aside these wealthy huck
sters of both factions who trade upon your labour,
and trust for the future in your own strength alone.
�Consider the figures below.
Total Production of the United
Kingdom................................. £1,300,000,000
Taken by Landlords, Capitalists
and Profitmongers
..........
1,000,000,000
Left for the Producers..................
300,000,000
Study these figures all who toil and suffer that others
may be lazy and rich ; look upon the poverty, the star
vation, the prostitution around you ye who labour and
return the value of your entire day’s wages to the employ
ing classes in the first two or three hours of your day’s
work. Ponder on these facts, reflect upon these figures,
men and women of England, and then ask yourselves,
whether it is worth while for such a result as this to
bow down in slavish subjection before your “ governing
classes,” whether you will not rather demand and
obtain the full fruits of your labour and become your
own governing class yourselves. Submit then no longer
to a system of Parliamentary Government which is
maintained in the interests of those who rob and oppress
you—which has proved itself for generations to be alike
a failure and a fraud.
EDUCATE !
AGITATE !
ORGANISE !
Fellow Citizens, we of the Democratic Federation
demand complete adult suffrage for every man and
woman in these islands, because in this way alone dan
the whole people give free expression to their will; we
are in favor of paid delegates and annual Conventions
because by this means alone can the people control
their representatives; we stand up for the direct r&
ference of all grave issues to the country at larg<&,
and for the punishment as felony of every species ol
�corruption, because thus only can tyranny be checked
and bribery uprooted ; we call for the abolition of all
hereditary authority, because such authority is neces
sarily independent of the mass of the people. But all
these reforms when secured mean only that the men and
women of these islands will at length be masters in
their own house. Mere political machinery is worth
less unless used, to produce good social conditions.
All wealth is due to labour ; therefore to the labourers
all wealth is due.
But we are strangers in our own country. Thirty
thousand persons own the land of Great Britain against
the 30,000,000 who are suffered to exist therein. A
long series of robberies and confiscations has deprived
us of the soil which should be ours. The organised
brute force of the few has for generations robbed and
tyrannised over the unorganised brute force of the many.
We now call for Nationalisation of the Land. We
claim that land in country and land in towns, mines,
parks, mountains, moors should be owned by the people
for the people, to be held, used, built over and culti
vated upon such terms as the people themselves see fit
to ordain. The handful ot marauders who now hold
possession have and can have no right save brute force
against the tens of millions whom they wrong.
But private ownership of land in our present society
is only one and not the worst form of monopoly which
enables the wealthy classes to use the means of pro
duction against the labourers whom they enslave. Of
the £1,000,000,000 taken by the classes who live without
labour out of a total yearly production of ^1,300,000,000,
the landlords who have seized Our soil, and shut us out
�from its enjoyment, absorb little more than £60,000,000
as their direct share. The few thousand persons who
own the National Debt, saddled upon the community
by a landlord Parliament, exact ^28,000,000 yearly from
the labour of their countrymen for nothing ; the share
holders who have been allowed to lay hands upon
our great railway communications take a still larger
sum.
Above all, the active capitalist class, the
loan-mongers, the farmers, the mine-exploiters, the
contractors, the middle-men, the factory-lords—these,
the modern slave-drivers, these are they who, through
their money, machinery, capital, and credit turn every
advance in human knowledge, every further improve
ment in human dexterity, into an engine for accumu
lating wealth out of other men’s labour, and for
exacting more and yet more surplus value out of the
wage-slaves whom they employ.
So long as the
means of production, either of raw materials or of
manufactured goods are the monopoly of a class, so
long must the labourers on the farm, in the mine or in
the factory sell themselves for a bare subsistence wage.
As land must in future be a national possession, so
must the other means of producing and distributing
wealth. The creation of wealth is already a social
business, where each is forced to co-operate with his
neighbour; it is high time that exchange of the produce
should be social too, and removed from the control of
individual greed and individual profit.
As stepping-stones to a happier period, we urge for
immediate adoption :—
The COMPULSORY CONSTRUCTION of healthy
artisans’ and agricultural labburers’ dwellings in pro
�8
portion to the population, such dwellings to be let at
rents to cover the cost of construction and maintenance
alone.
FREE COMPULSORY EDUCATION for all
classes, together with the provision of at least one
wholesome meal a day in each school.
EIGHT HOURS or less to be the normal WORK
ING DAY in all trades.
CUMULATIVE TAXATION upon all incomes
above a fixed minimum not exceeding ^300 a year.
STATE APPROPRIATION
with or without compensation.
OF
RAILWAYS,
The establishment of NATIONAL BANKS, which
shall absorb all private institutions that derive a profit
from operations in money or credit.
RAPID
DEBT.
EXTINCTION
of
the
NATIONAL
NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND, and
organisation of agricultural and industrial armies under
State control on co-operative principles.
By these measures a healthy, independent, and
thoroughly educated people will steadily grow up
around us, ready to abandon that baneful competition
for starvation wages which ruins our present workers,
ready to organise the labour of each for the benefiit
of all, determined, too, to take control finally of the
entire social and political machinery of a State in
which class distinctions and class privileges shall cease
to be.
Do any say we attack private property ? We deny
'Vp attack only that private property for a few
�thousand loiterers and siave-drivers, which renders all
property in the fruits of their own labour impossible
for millions. We challenge that private property
which renders poverty at once a necessity and a crime.
Fellow-Citizens, we appeal to every man and woman
among you who is weary of this miserable huckster’s
society, where poverty and prostitution, fraud and
adulteration, swindling and jobbery, luxury and debau
chery reign supreme, we appeal to you to work with
us in a never-ceasing effort to secure a happier lot for
our people and their children, and to hold up a high
ideal of national greatness for those who come after.
Such an ideal of true greatness and glory, needs but
intelligence, enthusiasm, and combination, to make it
a reality even in our own day. We, at least, will never
falter. We stretch out our hands for help, co-operation,
and encouragement, to all creeds and all nationalities,
ready ourselves to render assistance in every struggle
against class injustice and individual greed. The land
of England is no mean heritage; there is enough and
to spare for all; with the powers mankind now possess
wealth may easily be made as plentiful as water at the
expense of trifling toil. But to-day the worn-out wage
slaves of our boasted civilisation look hopelessly at the
wealth which they have created to be devoured only by
the rich and their hangers-on. To the abject poor
patriotism is but a mockery, all talk of happiness, of
beauty, of morality, is a sneer. We call, then, upon
every lover of freedom to support us in our endeavour
to form a real party of the people, which shall secure a
noble future for our own and other lands.
The aims and objects of the Democratic Federation
�are before you.
organised effort.
Success can only be achieved by
Educate !
We shall need all our intelligence.
Agitate !
We shall need all our enthusiasm.
Organise !
We shall need all our force.
EDUCATE !
(Signed)
June, 1883.
A GITA TE !
ORGA NISE !
The Executive Committee,
Democratic Federation.
The Federation consists of branches in various towns,
membership of which is open to all who hold the prin
ciples set forth in the manifesto of the body, and who
subscribe to its programme. Subscription id. per week.
Further information can be obtained by reading
EVERY
SATURDAY.
“JUSTICE”
w
1
ONE
PENNY.
A paper managed by working men, and edited by a
working man. It can be obtained from any newsagent,
or will be forwarded for 13 weeks to any address if is.
8d. is sent to The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row,
London, E.C.
Full particulars can be obtained by writing to the
Secretary, Social-Democratic Federation,
Bridge House, Blackfriars, E.C.
�MANIFESTO
OF THE
Social-Democratic Federation.
Issued after the West End Riots, Feb. 8, 1886.
15^ February.
Fellow Citizens,
We invite you to attend a mass meeting of employed
and unemployed workers in Hyde Park, at 3.30 p.m.
punctually, on Sunday next, February 21st, to demand
that the Government should organise the labour of
those who are now starving, owing to no fault of their
own, and should, as at other periods of distress, com
mence useful public works, paying to those engaged rates
of wages sufficient to ensure a healthy subsistence.
In calling this meeting we earnestly appeal to all who
attend it, whether in or out of work, to help us to keep
order. Those who understand the vital importance of
the Social-Democratic movement to workers of every
grade will be the first to put down any attempts of their
enemies to discredit the cause of the people, or to
endanger that right of public meeting which can alone
enable the producing class to gain any real advantage
without bitter civil strife.
The objects of the Social-Democrats when attained
will benefit not the workers only but even those who
to-day live in luxury, at the expense of the misery and
�12
degradation of the labourers. The present hopeless
breakdown shows clearly enough that the upper and
middle classes are unable to handle the industrial
machinery even to their own profit. Hundreds of
thousands of our fellows eager to do' useful work, in
order to maintain themselves and their families in
reasonable comfort, find that they cannot earn sufficient
wages to give them the bare necessaries of life. At the
same time the very goods which they themselves most
want are unsaleable because the producers are thus
denied the possibility of purchasing them. Even the
employed must know that the lot of their workless
fellows to-day may be theirs to-morrow. The uncer
tainty of employment is yearly increasing in every trade,
while in many branches men over forty years of age are
systematically refused work.
Hard times now come much oftener than formerly and
each crisis lasts longer than the one before. The
reason of this is that the workers themselves, having no
property, are forced to compete with one another for
subsistence wages, and have nothing to do with the dis
posal of the wealth which they produce for the profit of
others. When capitalists cannot mike that profit, they
cut their men adrift.
What is to be done? The landlords and capitalists
practically confess that they, at least do not know.
When forced to recognize that people will no longer
starve in silence, they condemn skilled artizans as well
as famine-stricken labourers to prove that poverty is
their only crime by breaking stones or picking oakum
at tenpence a day; or they endeavour to salve their
consciences, shocked by the misery which clamours at
�*3
their doors, by the pitiful expedient of an unasked-for
charity.
Social-Democrats alone dare deal directly with the
difficulty. More than two years ago as palliatives for
the serious distress which even then prevailed, we
issued the following proposals :—
“ i.—That no Government servant be employed at his
or her present wages for a longer period than eight
hours in each day. This alone would give room for
many now out of work, seeing that the ordinary hours
of work in the Post Office and other State establish
ments are from ten to twelve hours, or more, in the day.
2. —That all uncultivated Crown, or other lands, or
lands now in pasture, which in the opinion of skilled
agriculturists, would best pay to cultivate, be at once
worked with improved machinery by such of the unem
ployed as are accustomed to or would prefer agricultural
occupation. These labourers to be paid the rate of
wages which, in the judgment of a board of assessors,
shall be sufficient to keep them and their families in
health and comfort, or that such necessary food be sup
plied at cost at a general meal, lodging being provided
on the spot. An equitable portion of the profits, if
any, derived 'from such farming operations to be divided
from time to time among the people employed.
3. —That any public works oi importance in or near
any industrial centre—such as artisans’ dwellings, em
bankment of rivers, construction of canals or aqueducts
—should be begun at once instead of their commence
ment being deferred ; and that the same rate of wages
be paid, in proportion to cost of living, to the workers
employed that is paid to the agricultural labourers, or
�*4
that their feeding be conducted on wholesale principles
as above. That if, on valuation of works completed
any profit should be shown above what such works
would have cost, at rates of wages for similar work
averaged for the last five years, an equitable proportion
of such profit be divided among the labourers.
4. —That, where possible, light relief works on similar
principles should be commenced for those women or
men, who are incapable of heavy labour; or that they
be engaged on clothing or other work which they could
exchange through the State with the products of those
who are at work upon the land.
5. —That the cost of the initial proceedings and the
payment of wages be met by the ratepayers and the
State in equal portions, or in such proportions as may
be determined. The advantage to the ratepavers is that
able-bodied persons would be engaged upon beneficial
remunerative labour, instead of upon useless workhouse
tasks ; the advantage to the State would be that no
permanent pauperism would result from the prevailing
depression. Therefore the Municipalities and the State
should at once organise the unemployed labour and
thereby save expense later.”
To these we would now add free dinners for the
children in all Board Schools, as nothing is more
terrible for the workers at times like these than to see the
health of their offspring ruined for life by sheer lack of
nourishment.
Is this incendiarism ? Are these proposals anarch
ical ? That they can be but temporary expedients
we readily admit. But every man must acknowledge
that a society in which the statement of such elemen
�tary truths as that men should be allowed to work and
children to eat is accounted revolutionary cannot long
be propped up even by the adoption of the continental
methods of police repression or the arbitrary despotism
of a military governor.
All the facts around us confirm us in the conviction
that the class supremacy due to historical development is
even now being sapped by the growth of new economical
foims. The scientific truths on which this belief isfounded,
can be studied in the authorised publications of the
Social-Democratic Federation.
We call then upon the workers of London and of
these islands to stand side by side with us in orderly
union, to the end that they may organise for themselves
and for their children a sound system of national and
international co-operation which shall happily replace
the anarchy and misery of to-day. The work that we
have taken up is no light one, but the object is noble
and the reward is sure.
Let the governing classes face the inevitable downfall
of a decaying civilisation without hypocrisy and without
panic.
On them rests the responsibility of a
peaceful or a forcible issue to the last great class
struggle of our times. Here in the centre of capitalist
domination and commercial greed we at least are
resolved to continue our efforts, confident that they
must lead to the final emancipation of labour and to
the conquest of the future by the workers of the world.
(Signed)
The General Council of the
Social-Democratic Federation.
�The Working Man’s Programme (Arbeiter
Programm). By Ferdinand Lassalle. Translated from
the German by Edward Peters. Crown 8-vo., paper
cover, price 6d.
Social Progress and Individual Effort.
Desirable Mansions
Co-operative Production.
By Edward Carpenter.
Price id. each.
The Appeal to the Young.
By Prince
Peter Kropotkin.
Translated from the French by
H. M. Hyndman and reprinted from Justice. Royal 8-vo.,
16-pp. Price one penny. Tenth thousand.
The most eloquent and noble appeal to the generous emotions ever pen
ned by a scientific man. Its author is now suffering five years imprison
ment at the hands of the French Republic for advocating the cause of the
workers.
Herbert Spencer on Socialism. By Frank
Fairman.
16-pp. crown 8-vo., price id.
The Robbery of the Poor. By w. H. P.
Campbell.
New Edition.
Paper wrapper, price 6d.
The Man with the Red Flag: Being John
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Conspiracy, on April gth, 1886. (From the Verbatim
Notes of the official shorthand reporter). With Portrait.
Price 3d.
What an Eight Hour Bill Means. By T.
Mann, (Amalgamated Engineers).
Price id.
Socialism and Slavery. By H. M. Hyndman.
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Coming Slavery ”). New Edition. 16-pp., Royal'8-vo.
Price id.
The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C.
And W. L. ROSENBERG, 56, East Fourth Street, New
York City.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Socialism made plain and "The Unemployed" : being two manifestoes of the Social-Democratic Federation
Creator
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Social-Democratic Federation
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15, [1] p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: First manifesto (p. 1 to 10) titled, 'Socialism Made Plain, being the Social and Political Manifesto of the Democratic Federation'. Second manifesto (p. 11 to 15) titled, 'Manifesto of the Social-Democratic Federation. Issued after the West End Riots, Feb. 8 1886'. End of text of first manifesto dated June, 1883. Second manifesto dated, 15th February [1886]. Publisher's advertisements on page [2] and on unnumbered page at end.
Publisher
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The Modern Press
Date
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1886
Identifier
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T465
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Socialism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Socialism made plain and "The Unemployed" : being two manifestoes of the Social-Democratic Federation), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Political Manifesto
Socialism
Unemployment