For Christ's Sake (1907)

From the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is a bare statement of the experiences of a man who, out of work and with a wife and four children to support, applied, with a letter from a local clergyman, to one of the Church Army Depots, for work. The man lives at South Tottenham. He delivered his letter at No. 8a. Hornsey-st., Holloway-rd., at 8 a.m. on December 4th. With five others he was told to apply at 9 a.m. and was then given a cross cut saw and started by a Church Army Officer at cutting a heap of old, damp wood full of nails. The men worked in pairs; the wood was of all shapes and sizes but had to be cut into pieces 5½ inches in length. After working from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. without food (although a dinner time was allowed between 1 and 2) our correspondent and his mate had cut 274 lbs. between them. For this he received 10½d. less than 1½d. per hour! It is not suggested that his mate worked harder or better or had more to shew for his efforts, but his mate received 2/6. Another pair who cut between them in the same time 180 lbs received 2/6 and 6d. respectively. The third pair, who had cut about 175 lbs received 6d. and 5½d.

Thinking himself rather hardly used in the circumstances our correspondent addressed the chief secretary of the Church Army and received a reply from W. W. Jemmett, who said : "We regret to hear that you are dissatisfied, but it should not be necessary for us to explain to every man why some other applicant should be placed on special work under special conditions.” He concludes: “The half-crown a day rate of pay is not the usual scale.”

On the face of it there is here shewn a discrimination which resembles the peace of the God the Church Army are alleged to serve, in that it passeth all understanding. In very special circumstances a man may get 2/6 a day for one day, which is remuneration at the rate of 3½d. per hour. This, to put it mildly, is not munificent. Even in the rare contingency of the recipient receiving it as a regular rate of pay for six days a week, there is not a great chance of exercising thrift, of putting by for a rainy day, after the wants of a wife and four children are attended to—not to mention the unimportant wants of the rent collector. Divide the total by four, however, and it becomes at once apparent that the Church Army holds to the belief that the day when the hunger-cravings of thousands could be satisfied with two small loaves and five small fishes is by no means past. Ten pence, ten whole pence, a day [is] a clear rise of nine pence upon the wage of the biblical labourers who engaged themselves to work in the vineyards. What possibilities of saving are here. Why not accept the letter of holy writ in this connection and reduce the scale of remuneration to the vineyard labourers’ figure? It would then be possible to employ ten men where to-day only one can be employed. The “right to work” would have been conceded. The unemployed problem would be solved!

But what if we dispense with the hypothesis of miraculous properties in Church Army pennies? What if the purchasing power of Church Army money is no more than the filthy lucre of common usage? In that case we can only say that if there is an organisation existing anywhere which has succeeded in “grinding the faces of the poor " to better purpose we have yet to hear of it, and we say this fairly cognisant of the workings of that other religious Army which has so successfully combined the business of the salvation of souls with the damnation of bodies.

We may return to the matter again, but meantime, perhaps the Church Army would like a word.

Those Aliens! (1907)

A Short Story from the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

WILL: (to George, who is discovered reading the Daily Distress): Hello! looking for a loser?

GEORGE: No. I'm reading about those confounded aliens. Those foreign bakers are allowed to come over here and they immediately start agitations and strikes as though the country belonged to them. Taking the bread out of our mouths, I call it.

WILL: Why, you're a funny chap. You grumble if they work cheaply, and you grumble of they try to better their lot. I suppose the fact is you hate them, and they could do nothing to please you.

GEORGE: Who can help hating the beggars when they take our jobs away from us. Why don't they go back to their own country?

WILL: Look here, George, the foreign workman has no more a country of his own than you have: his native land, like yours, is the property of a master class and the worker has not even burial space of his own.

GEORGE: That's an old tale.

WILL: But can you deny its truth?

(George does not answer)

WILL: Do you know that the number of English who are abroad is much greater than the number of foreigners in England; so would you not be much worse off if all the English came back to compete with you in place of the foreigner? Your policy for every man to be compelled to remain in his native land is suicidal on that score alone.

(George scratches his head).

WILL: And are you aware that in history the unmixed races, those people who are cut off from the world as you would have us to be, remain primitive or become degenerate; while the mixed races, those roaming wide areas, are vigorous and progressive?

GEORGE: But why is it, then, that there are so many unemployed and pauperised in England of the alien is not the cause?

WILL: My dear fellow, they've got unemployed and paupers in every capitalist country: and they exist, not because of aliens, but because of capitalism.

GEORGE: I don't see that.

WILL: But you ought to. Let me make it plain. In the first place each western nation is divided broadly into two great groups or classes. One group owns the land, railways, mines, factories, machinery and buildings - in fact this class own all the means for producing wealth. The other group or class, on the contrary, do not own property, all they possess is their power to work which they must sell to the owners of the means of production, or else starve. The propertied, ruling section we call the capitalist class: the propertyless, enslaved section we call the working class. Is that clear?

GEORGE: Oh, yes. I know which is my lot!

WILL: Good! Now this capitalist class want to get as much labour as they can out of the workers with as little expenditure of wages as possible. Hence a conflict of interests. Hence the the capitalist class will employ Chinamen or even gorillas if they are cheaper and can work as well as their own countrymen. Hence the propertied class are ever seeking and introducing new inventions, machines and methods by means of which more can be produced with less spent in wages. You can now see, George, that the master class, being able to supply the markets and get their profits with the aid of proportionally fewer employees, cut down their wages bill and create the unemployed. Hardly a day passes without some new invention or process displacing some of the wage-earners. It is not the alien that causes the unemployed, but it is the ownership of the means of production by a class who use every improvement in them against the workers. The more wealth can be produced today, the fewer workers do the ruling class need to employ. The wealthier the country under capitalism the poorer and more miserable are the workers in proportion. Capitalism, by making the workers disinherited and outcast in Society, is the cause of unemployment and pauperism, whilst the despised alien is in reality simply a fellow sufferer and a brother.

GEORGE: But how would your Socialism alter that?

WILL: Socialism would alter it by making the working class the whole nation; by using the working class capture of the political power to turn all the means of production into the collective, democratically controlled, property of the people. Improvements in production, new inventions, or an increase in the number of workers would then, instead of, as now, throwing numbers of the working class out of work to starve, increase the wealth and decrease the toil of all. The workers will have come into their own and be no longer outcasts in the world their labour has created.

GEORGE: I see. A co-operative commonwealth. That certainly is worth working for.

WILL: It is, indeed, the only thing worth striving for. and I hope you'll join us: always remembering, though, that the foreign worker is really our brother, for our interests are the same, and our enemy is the same. We have not to fight one another, but to aid each other in conquering the common enemy, the capitalist class of all countries. With the ruling class, patriotism is the mask of self-interest: with the working class it is the brand of utter ignorance. Let us be international.

F. C. Watts