A Look Round. (1907)

From the April 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Weekly Times and Echo is a Liberal newspaper. Between elections it plays to the Labour Gallery, prints articles from prominent Social-Democrats and Labour men. But at elections it supports the Liberal (which, of course, includes the Progressive) candidates, and should therefore be regarded as an enemy by those who claim to be Socialists.

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“He that is not with us is against us,” used to be recognised as a truism by the S.D.F. But recently things have been altered. On the front page of the Weekly Times and Echo for March 17, 1907, appears an advertisement by the Edmonton Branch of the S.D.F., addressed to the Electors of Edmonton, and announcing a mass meeting in support of S.D.F. candidates for the District Council. In the advertisement the electors are advised not to blindly vote for “the man your landlord thinks the best, and who is selected by the landlords themselves.”

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This denouncing of the landlord, while ignoring his companion, the capitalist, is an old Liberal dodge, but I hardly expected to find it in an S.D.F. Advt.

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The advertisement concludes : “Take in this paper weekly. It is the best for all workers.”

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So the S.D.F. are now reduced to urging the workers to be taken in by taking in a paper which appears several times during the week for the greater glorification of the Liberal section of the capitalist class !

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What Judge Emden described as an extraordinary state of affairs was revealed at the Lambeth County Court on March 13, when a member of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners named Murphy sued the Society for £50 which he claimed as accident benefit. Counsel for the Union submitted to the Judge that as the Society was an illegal society for the purposes of restraining trade, the Court had no jurisdiction to try it, which was proved by section 4, subsection 3, of the Trade Union Act of 1871. This provided that members of the Society, or vice-versa, shall have no power to resort to a court of law for the purpose of enforcing any agreement between them.

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After a lengthy legal argument the Judge decided favourably to the Union, dismissed the action, and at the request of the Union’s advocate, gave costs against the Union member.

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The plaintiff’s advocate described the Union as a “swindle” and was promptly reproved by the Judge. But the irony of it ! The workers are urged to join their Trade Unions, in order to make provision, amongst other things, for sickness, old age, accident, etc. And then the Union into which they have paid, week after week, a large proportion of their earnings, resists claims by its members and defeats them by the tactics detailed above.

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The Liberal Government at home are mouthing threats against the House of Lords, mainly because they claim that “it thwarts the people’s will.” At the same moment they have established a second chamber in the Transvaal with the definite object of thwarting the wishes of the elected Assembly.

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The scandal of the Upper House nominations, writes the Daily Chronicle’s Johannesburg correspondent, must be remembered in estimating the political outlook. The people elected a majority pledged to the repatriation of the Chinese, and Lord Selborne has nominated a Progressive Chinese majority in the Upper House. Consequently it is premature as a result of the elections to predict the peaceful elimination of the Chinese, since the power to precipitate a crisis and thwart the policy of the Assembly and the home Government by voting such legislation as is essential to repatriation is placed in the hands of the puppets of Lord Selborne and the mining houses, as, in case of a deadlock, the Governor can dissolve the Assembly without calling a joint sitting of both Houses.

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“Improvements in administration, chiefly in the interest of the middle-class ratepayer, improvement even in the status of organised labour, does not take us far on the road to genuine Socialism. It is reform certainly, and it has, in some respects, a good effect in so far as it shows the way to better things. But, on the other hand, palliatives are likely to obscure the main issue and the idea itself of the maintenance of municipalities, and the raising the status of wage-earners, stunts the revolutionary intelligence and restricts the area of economic foresight.”

H. M. Hyndman, November, 1895.

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“To get a little they must ask for the lot, if they ask for a little they will get nothing. As he was growing older he was beginning to feel the futility of crying for reforms when you find yourself face to face with a system which makes all reform impossible.”

H. M. Hyndman, March, 1904.

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Those who will carefully read the above Hyndmanisms, and then read through the addresses issued by S.D.F. candidates at recent elections will not need to subscribe to the Daily News edition of Punch.

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“Who aims a star, shoots higher far

Than he that aims a tree.”

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On Saturday, London had spoken for the forces of reaction, and had played into the hands of the Harmsworth family once again, said our Lady of Warwick at the East Ham Town Hall on March 4. As London had to choose between a majority of “Progressives” and one of “Moderates,” both of whom serve the interests of the capitalist class, it is evident that her Ladyship would have hailed the victory of the former as a defeat of the forces of reaction.

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According to the Burton Evening Gazette, something of a sensation has been caused by certain staff changes at Messrs. Allsopp & Sons’ Offices. A number of clerks, some of whom had given life service to the firm, were dismissed peremptorily, but with their salaries in advance, and the incident, although it is merely an elaboration of a policy which has unhappily long been in progress, caused much comment by reason of the position of the parties concerned and the length of their association with the brewery.

The lady clerk is to make her appearance at the desk, and she and her class will very largely take the place of those gentlemen who have been sent adrift. It is contended that the somewhat drastic changes which are now in progress in Messrs. Allsopp’s internal affairs are dictated by the demands for a strictly economical working plan. Whatever may be the verdict of the general public on the matter, it cannot be denied that much resentment is expressed locally at the continued dismissal of clerks, and this has especially made itself felt within the past few days.

A representative of the Gazette had an interview with Mr. C. J. Stewart, the chairman of the Board of Directors, who stated that the policy of economy had been going on generally since he commenced his tenure of office. “A considerable saving has,” he said, “been effected in the administrative staff in accordance with that policy.” He had had experience of lady clerks in other capacities, and he thought that they would be very suitable for the work it was proposed to give them. It would be merely a matter of figures, and what might be monotonous for men would not be so in the case of girls. In fact, it was really women’s work to do that sort of thing.

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Of course, “it is really women’s work to do that sort of thing,” and any other sort of thing whereby the wages bill can be reduced.

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As we have so often pointed out, the displacement of men by women and even by children is incidental to the capitalist system and must and does take place in offices as well as in mills and factories. The writers of some of the letters that have appeared in the Press concerning this particular case have made some extraordinary suggestions and have mostly shown a lamentable ignorance of things as they are. They have appealed to the “feelings” of the Directors, etc. In days gone by, when businesses were small, when they were personally superintended by the proprietors, there no doubt did exist some feeling of friendship between the employer and his employees, but since the advent of the large concerns, the joint stock corporations, where often the employees never see the actual proprietors, where the departmental managers are expected to make their respective departments “pay,” sentiment is entirely out of the question. Business is not carried on for philanthropy but for dividends.

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It has also been suggested that the lesson, to be learnt by the clerk is that there is still room for him if he will make himself an all round competent man. But there are plenty of these today working for a mere pittance, and plenty even dossing nightly at Booth’s hotels. Moreover, the only practical school for acquiring efficiency in office routine is the office itself, and the conditions of modern offices render it impossible for the necessary experience to be obtained. The “From Powder Monkey to Admiral,” “Office Boy to Proprietor” fiction is long since exploded. In the small office, say with manager, cashier, clerk, junior and office boy, the “yob” certainly did have an opportunity, provided he were smart, of acquiring a general and particular knowledge of the office routine and of the business transacted, but as the small offices gave place to the mammoth concerns now so common in commercial centres, the work became departmentalised and all-round knowledge rendered unnecessary for the majority of the staff. The newcomer, however proficient he may have made himself at commercial schools and similar institutions for extracting fees out of would-be Pierpoint Morgans, finds himself set to work which, as Mr. Stewart says, is “merely a matter of figures.” Usually, his only hope of promotion is to become the head of the department, or one of that worthy’s ”coppers,” but between him and the coveted post intervenes an array of a score or more all anxious for advancement and all as little likely to secure it. His knowledge is useless because his only prospect is to remain at one particular job, at work which could be done by any other fairly correct person, male or female.

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What the clerk has to do is to drop his cant of respectability and to recognise that economic development, which has reduced the skilled mechanic to a casual labourer, has also affected him. The growth of large concerns, the aggregation of capital, the increased use of mechanical appliances, in offices as elsewhere, the subdivision and departmentalisation now generally in vogue, have effected vast changes in the status of the wage and salary earner, of those who have to sell their abilities, physical or mental, to the master class. Under capitalism, production per head of the population tends to increase continually, but production per head of the actually employed workers also increases. Thus the army of the unemployed will be an evergrowing one and we ask our opponents to show how the problem can be dealt with, apart from a re-organisation of industry—apart from the substitution of Socialism for the present system.

J. Kay