Editorial: Progress ! (1907)

Editorial from the March 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 1905 criminal statistics recently issued from the Home Office show that while there is a decline in convictions for drunkenness, manslaughter, bigamy and malicious wounding, there is nevertheless a significant increase in burglaries and crimes against property with violence. Sir John Macdonell says in his summary : “The enormous preponderance of crimes against property is remarkable : nearly nine-tenths of the whole fall every year within that category.”

Indictable offences have increased from a yearly average of 51,612 during 1896-1900 to 61,463 in 1905. While, instead of drink being the cause of crime, drunkenness has declined while crime has increased. The statistics are eloquent of the dependence of crime on economic conditions, the increase in crime coinciding with greater distress and unemployment among the people. The accumulation of property into few hands and the corresponding lack of the means of existence among the many lead irresistibly to what are called crimes against property, and the Socialist is not surprised to find that the year of acutest distress and unemployment among the workers was at the same time “a record year of National Prosperity.”

Truly there is progress and prosperity, but it is not for the workers—yet; and instead of the class cleavage becoming less marked it daily grows wider.

To abolish the contradictions and antagonisms of interest that exist, the working class must gain control of Society and dispossess the owners of capital so that unity of interest may be secured by the participation of all in production. Those, however, who think of securing the support of those whose superior position depends upon the slavery of the workers, must, if honest, be ignorant of the lessons of history and of everyday experience.

Thus Mr. Keir Hardie tried to assure the Cambridge undergraduates recently that “Socialism was not a class movement.” “Down with it!” they cried. “Many of the Socialists’ most enthusiastic advocates are university men,” shouted Keir Hardie. “Shame!” howled the undergraduates. “These men and women from the middle and upper classes realise that there is something more sacred than property,” continued Hardie. “Rot!” yelled the gownsmen ; and there is no doubt that the undergraduates differ in no essential from the generality of their class.

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