Editorial: Marx and Hardie. (1908)

Editorial from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Labour Leader, October 23rd, 1908, under the title “Is there to be discord?” Mr. J. Keir Hardie makes a lengthy endeavour to justify the position of the Labour Party in its relation to Socialism. His criticism of the S.D.P. attitude as representing an altogether needless sect is plainly correct, as that body, while holding aloof from the Labour Party nationally, allows its members to work with the Labour Party locally. If the Labour Party is to be considered as an opponent nationally, surely it is equally so locally. To us there appears no reason whatever for thus attempting to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, except either an altogether mistaken notion of Socialist tactics, or an endeavour to play the political game.

But Mr. Hardie, in building his case for the Labour Party, invokes the blessing of Marx, Engels and Liebknecht, and for that purpose quotes two or three sentences from a letter Marx is said to have written in 1871. The rest of the letter is excluded on the plea that it would occupy too much space. Yet one column on the leader page is occupied in announcing and repeating Hardie’s statements, and could easily have been dispensed with to make room for the whole letter ; and if one column was not sufficient, a whole page could have been made available by omitting tlie advertisements of soothing syrup, ointment, pills, boot polish, etc. with which pages are filled. As it is the quotation is by no means satisfactory, and cannot be made to bear the construction Hardie labours to put upon it. As he himself says, “Marx’s great point was the organisation of the working class as a separate political party, apart and distinct from all other political parties.” Despite his assertion, Marx’s great point is emphatically not met by the Labour Party, which is, as we have demonstrated time and time again, a wing of the capitalist Liberal Party, and has its present footing in the “House” only with the consent of that party. Although political prophecy is a dangerous pastime, it is safe to say that the Labour Party will go out on the ebb of the Liberal tide that carried it in.

That portion of the quotation referring to sects which Hardie throws at us is equally inapplicable. “When the working class becomes ripe (for an independent historical movement) all sects are essentially retrograde.” The whole point is, therefore, whether the working class is yet ripe, or in other words, whether the working class is yet Socialist. There; can be no two opinions about it ; indeed, it is not a matter of opinion, but one of fact. The working class has to be converted to Socialism, and when that has been accomplished, the movement necessarily set up precludes the possibility ot sectional differences so far as the course of action is concerned. The present trouble, the exacerbation of which has called forth the pronouncement which forms the subject of this note, arises from the fact that the workers are not Socialist and cannot be driven or led or otherwise persuaded to take a line of action in accordance with the wishes of Hardie & Co. The fact that Hardie & Co’s, line of action is not the Socialist one is not the point for the present. It is not good enough for Hardie to put the thermometer in the furnace and then persuade himself that it registers the temperature outside.

The independent movement of the working class for its emancipation, admittedly necessarily Socialist, must be the work of a Socialist party, and the Labour Party is not the Socialist Party. Hardie has already explained that the I.L.P., as a political factor, has completely sunk its identity in the Labour Party, so that it is wih the latter alone that we have to deal.

The Socialist party has first of all, therefore, to convert the working class—has, in a word, to be a propagandist body. During its work as a proselytising force it is bound to take political action. The question which constitutes the rock of offence is whether that political action shall be merely an item in the general work of propaganda, or whether it will play down to the unconverted to win. The I.L.P., the S.D.P., and every other political party outside the S.P.G.B,, has chosen the latter course, and thereby ceased to be Socialist propagandists—fallen out of the Socialist movement. That they stole the Socialist thunder, used the enthusiasm of the rank and file, and prostituted the name and the cause of Socialism does not matter—they won. But the cost of their election is the hindering of the development of class consciousness and the hampering of the work of the Socialist movement. The greatest set-back, the most powerful opponent Socialism can possibly have, is, as Liebknecht has said, the man who comes into our ranks as a friend and a comrade and betrays us.

Editorial: The Personal Service Committee. (1908)

Editorial from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again the axiom is illustrated that the master class will do anything for the workers—except get off their backs. The newest illustration is the attempt at promotion, by personal visitation, of “friendship” between rich and poor in an endeavour to soften the increasingly apparent antagonism between those who live by robbery and the victims. This “Personal Service” committee includes representatives of the families of Asquith, Balfour, Gladstone, Cadbury and Lyttleton, while Lords Norfolk, Salisbury, and Wolverhampton are of the number, together with Mr. Arthur Henderson, leader of the Labour Party, who once again may be known by the company he keeps.

In their letter of appeal the committee say that if a sufficient number come forward “many families in poor circumstances might be tided over the coming winter, who, if left to themselves would inevitably fall below the poverty line.” But they also say in the course of the same appeal that the cases for visitation will be selected through the Charity Organisation Society and the Unemployed Distress Committees, and this practically guarantees that all those dealt with shall be already far below the poverty line ; so that the committee’s statement in this respect is simple a piece of unctious humbug.

In the Daily Mail H. Hamilton Fyfe warmly praises the idea, and attempts, with little success, to make a distinction between the new scheme and the old insulting district visitors’ coal-ticket distribution. He further accuses the “working classes” of inelasticity, unadaptability, and “ignorance or mistrust of the little things that make all the difference to life,” and suggests that “most of those who come off badly in the struggle for existence are lacking either in bodily strength or in mental equipment.” The workers, forsooth, are poor because they are inferior in bodily strength or in mental equipment to the parasites that social conditions compel them to keep in luxury ! And the worker, able and willing to supply his needs by his labour, but denied the opportunity by the profit system, is to be advised and lectured on his unadaptability and ignorance by useless, jewelled parasites who owe their wealth and position to the fortune of birth and class rule, and who know nothing of working conditions, being totally incapable of supplying their own needs, or even of dressing themselves in many cases ! One can imagine the sullen rage that must rise within the intelligent but impoverished worker under the torture of such stupid advice and degrading charity from the class that lives by his robbery.

Indeed, if the truly terrible distress from which the working class are now suffering were the result of what is usually called a natural calamity, such as an earthquake, there might be some excuse for such a movement. But the distress of unemployment is not a natural calamity in that sense ; it is a preventable disease. Moreover, the names of the Personal Service Committee are emphatically representative of those who have, in the interests of the master class, set themselves determinedly against the only possible remedy, and have championed the system of robbery that manufactures the unemployed and their distress. They stand, indeed, for those who decline to do even that which is within their power toward ending the possibility of this preventable and unmerited misery. Such an appeal as that of the committee, therefore, can in plain English, only be characterised as damnable hypocrisy.

Not being prepared to be just, some of the master class profess a willingness to be charitable. Feeling that there is danger to their profits and their security in the growing feeling of hostility between rich and poor, they make a pretence of friendship, endeavouring to tranquillise their victims and prevent them taking steps that may endanger the position of the capitalist class. It is not love, but fear, that makes the ruling class loosen its purse strings, as experience has repeatedly shown. And the dainty, jewelled dames who may soon find a hobby in insulting visits, stupid advice and priggish charity, would readily, as has happened in the past, applaud police and soldiery in their brutal batonning and slaughter of the workers the moment the latter, driven to desperation, took their fate into their own hands. The name of Asquith would once again find congenial association ; and charity and humbug, having failed in their purpose, would be cast aside by the master class in favour of a frank reliance on coercion by means of the armed forces of the nation. There can, indeed, be no conciliation in the great class antagonism. All pretence at friendship between the two armies in the modern struggle is sheer hypocrisy. This we know, and all history is its confirmation, that the working class, in the ending of their misery, must rely, first and last, upon themselves.

Editorial: Out-Heroding Herod. (1908)

Editorial from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the little scene in the “House” on Nov. 12, it can hardly be argued that the workers have gained even a more sympathetic administration of capitalism by the advent of the workman Cabinet Minister. After Mr. Asquith, who has no reputation for kindliness toward the workers, had promised the removal of certain restrictions in the dispensation of relief, the L.G.B. order, instead of instructing such removal, made it a voluntary action by the authority. Taxed with this in the “House,” Mr. Burns replied that he had adopted the best way of carrying out the Prime Minister’s promise. Mr. Asquith, however, disagreed, and the order is to be replaced by one incorporating the removal of the disability of having received Poor Law Relief within a specified time. Mr. Burns had better be careful. Already dissatisfaction is being expressed in high Liberal circles owing to his not playing the game carefully enough, and if he assumes a callous, unsympathetic attitude toward an unemployed problem which compels even the Premier to affect commiseration, he will have to give place to one who will smile and frown with his master, and shed tears to order. A few more examples like that under notice will blow the gaff on Liberal hypocrisy completely. Burns’ special function in the Cabinet was to conciliate working-class demands for independent representation and to show that the Liberal Party was so concerned to have the voice of Labour in its counsels as to obviate the necessity for separate representation.

To realise that the “short, square built man in the straw hat” who talked himself hoarse on behalf of the dockers in 1889 and the man who is out-Heroding Herod in the cruel, callous administration of relief to the unfortunates of capitalism are the same John Burns is difficult, and shows how complete a control over their representatives must the workers exercise before their convictions can be made to prevail.

The Forum: From Capitalism to Handicraft. (1908)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some Open Discussions.

Statements of difficulties, criticisms of our position, contributions upon any question of working-class interest, are invited. Members and non-members of the Party are alike welcome. Correspondents must, however, be as brief as possible, as bright as possible, and as direct as possible to the point.

Dear Sir,

The first of the Kautsky pamphlets published by your Party under the title of “From Handicraft to Capitalism,” treats in a masterly manner with the earlier stages of capitalist development, with the transformation of the sturdy handicraftsman, owning and controlling his own implements of industry, and producing for his own use and enjoyment, into the stunted, anaemic, flat-chested, narrow-gutted wage-slave, tending machinery which, although produced by labour, belongs to the master class, and turning out commodities for the world’s market, being permitted to consume a small fraction of the value of what he produces. Most of us are aware of recent developments in machinery, and can see quite easily the extent to which it is not only rendering it possible for the necessary labour to be performed by women and children instead of by men, but also making it easy to displace human labour, a displacement which is largely responsible for the acuteness of the unemployed question at this moment. Probably the time is not very far distant when such improvements will have been introduced as will make it quite easy for trained monkeys to do very much of the tending, and then—what is to happen to the bulk of the human race may perhaps form the subject of a discussion at a later date.

My object in writing now is to draw attention to a matter upon which I think some of your members as well as others claiming to be Socialists are taking a wrong turning—like the girl in the play. I know that, as a rule, they are wise enough not to be drawn into giving forth schemes or plans as to how this or that will be managed under Socialism, but content themselves with advocating the principle and pointing out that a people intelligent enough to declare the Socialist Republic will also be intelligent enough to settle in their own way any little questions which may seem difficult problems to some folk to-day. But I have sometimes heard it said that under Socialism we shall utilise the most scientific machinery for producing wealth, thus reducing the necessary human labour to the minimum and giving ample leisure to all. Now it occurs to me that there is here just a danger that under Socialism the people may be even greater victims of machine domination than they are to-day, and that all the joy in labour which William Morris so beautifully describes in your pamphlet “Art, Labour, and Socialism” will be conspicuous by its absence. Obviously, if under Socialism the test of the value of an improvement in machinery is to be its utility as a saver of human labour, many machines not now in use, because they are not savers of wages, will be taken advantage of. As no machinery can be run without organisation and strict discipline on the part of those concerned in its manipulation, it would seem that under Socialism there will not only be perpetuated that fetish of punctuality by which the profit mongers very naturally set such store, but that it will be seated upon even a higher throne than now. (The metaphor may be mixed but I think my meaning will be clear.) Now, is this desirable ? Are we to be “the touch the button” automatons which Edward Bellamy’s ”Looking Backward” depicts, or are we to be free men and free women, securing our livelihood in our own way ? Are we to be called to do our turn of machine minding by the shriek of the Government’s hooter, or are we to be allowed to have a “lay in” if we want it, pleasing ourselves as to how, when and where, if at all, we shall delve and spin?

I know, of course, some will say that in view of the leisure for all, possible only under Socialism, the slight restrictions upon individual liberty involved in punctually responding to the Government’s factory bell will be quite bearable and few will be found to grumble. Well, I think I shall be one of the few. After all, what is leisure and what should be employment ? They should both be synonymous terms for enjoyment. I take pleasure in pushing a plane and handling other implements associated with carpentry and cabinet-making. I may take three or four days to make a door which, with the aid of the most up-to-date and scientific machinery which is to be employed under Socialism could be produced, no doubt, in less than an hour. Am I to be compelled to forego the pleasure of producing my door by handicraft so that I may have “leisure” to do something I may be less inclined to ?

In my own particular case I know that when in health I require an outlet for my physical and mental powers. If I feel unfit for say, chopping wood (a favourite pastime of mine, but, of course, a waste of time when wood could be much more easily and expeditiously prepared for tho domestic hearth by machinery), if I don’t feel up to arguing with a Tariff Reformer or a Total Abstainer I know I’m not well, and I am certain I should feel damnably unwell if, under Socialism, I should be compelled to enter the Government factory at a particular time and to assist in producing articles by machinery which, if produced by handicraft would probably be superior in every respect, and which would certainly mean real leisure, that is, enjoyment to the producers.

Under Socialism there will be no parasites. There will, of course, be dependents. But as all the able bodied will be producers and as all useless labour will be avoided, the effort required to satisfy human needs will be so small that very little machinery will be needed. The tendency will be toward the “simple life” in production, in other words, as Society passed from Handicraft to Capitalism, so, in my opinion, it will revert to Handicraft after the transition stage from Capitalism to State Socialism. But I should like to hear the views of some member of the S.P.G.B.

Yours, etc.,

Kendrick Johns

_____________

Reply:

As the great Artemus has very forcefully pointed out, it is unwise to prophecy unless you knew. We do not know the precise form of organisation that will control industry in the Socialist Republic, nor the exact details of the working. We do not know whether the worker then, will be summoned to a factory by a State “hooter” or aroused from his slumbers by a direct electrical current established between the workshop and his bedpost. Not knowing, we do not prophecy. We only hold it highly improbable that the elimination of the conditions governing present day production for profit will leave the worker the slave of the machine. The manipulation of machinery in an atmosphere of comparative industrial liberty may well provide the manipulator with as great a joy as our correspondent can derive from the sight of a door growing slowly to recognisability under his hand—in four days. The machine is often a marvel of ingenuity, a veritable fairy story told in mechanics. Its control may easily be a dear delight. At the same time it is probable that the people of the Commonwealth may prefer a form of production, in special cases, that will allow the character of the worker to express itself more or less adequately in the work of his hand. Generally, however, we do not suppose that the worker then, will be prepared to relinquish the advantages of greater leisure that the machine offers—although he may occupy that leisure in some form of handicraftsmanship. Doubtless the present revolt against machine work is due to the crushing sense of the domination of the machine over the man—an inevitable result of the capitalist mode of production. Given the subserviency of the machine to the requirements of the man, and the whole aspect changes.

However this may be the subject is one we may well leave to the society of the future. A broader, saner view of productive processes and their relation to the life of the community will inevitably result from the removal of the restrictions that at present cramp the soul of the worker, and will reflect itself in the character of the product. It is a pleasing subject for speculation, anyhow, although the question of far greater and more immediate importance to us has to do with the education and organisation of the workers for the control of the means of their own livelihood. As to what they will do after then we do not pretend to have any particular knowledge. Nor is it a matter to worry about. They will doubtless make mistakes, but if they do they will have to bear the result of the error. Out of their experience they may be relied upon to, sooner or later, devise a means of satisfying their own desires within the means of their development. Then, at any rate, they will have the opportunity of profiting to the full from the lessons of their mistakes.

And that is all there is to it.—Ed. S.S.

Some publications. (1908)

Book Review from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

“A Book for the deaf. Surdus in Search of His Hearing.” By Evans Yellon. (The Celtic Press. 2s. 6d. Nett.)

While THE SOCIALIST STANDARD is an instrument designed to open the eyes of the intellectually blind, having no message that will unstop the ears of the physically deaf, it can still afford to offer a welcome to a book that fearlessly and trenchantly exposes the fraudulent methods of the aural quacks and perepatetic purveyors of “patent” potions or absurd appliances, who foist themselves upon the credulity of the deaf, to the deaf’s financial undoing—when it goes no further than that. There is not much left of “the gentleman who cured himself after 14 years,” or “Professor” Keith Harvey, or the Drouet Institute, or “Dr.” Moore, by the time Mr. Yellon is through with them.

The author, himself completely deaf, clearly understands his subject, and the limitations of the remedial measures that may be adopted. He writes with strength and sanity and much humour, and may be commended as a thoroughly reliable guide to any of our readers who seek information upon the matter.

Jottings. (1908)

The Jottings Column from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

D. J. Shackleton, M.P., speaking at Leeds on Oct. 24th, ’08, on unemployment, said of the Labour Party, “It should always be remembered that they were the smaller party, and what they could get out of the ‘House’ would be by persuasion and force of argument.” And yet later in the same speech he stated “I take it that Mr. Asquith means help apart from the Poor Law. If he does not we are not going to have it” (“it” being Asquith’s remedy for unemployment). Fancy the party of persuasion having or not having as it chooses ! “If we can only get Parliament to see the reasonableness of our demand, I, for one, will be quite pleased to see the Government get on doing the good work with regard to temperance reform and other matters that they are doing.” Mr. Shackleton doesn’t seem to realise that what appears reasonable to profit-mongers in Parliament will not be to the workers’ interest. Further, were it in the workers’ interest and there was no force behind the demand they can ignore it. Mr. Guy Wilson, at West Hull, quoted Mr. Shackleton as showing that the Liberal Party were favourable to Labour, and now he has given one of the parties whose interests he is to strictly abstain from promoting, another testimonial. He is reported as saying “We are not anxious to do anything to hamper the Government, but they are not doing all we could expect of them.” There’s where he makes a mistake. If he viewed these matters from a class conscious stand-point he would see that they do all one can expect of them from the workers’ point of view, and that is “nothing.”

_____________

Messrs. Brunner, Mond, & Co., Northwich, have not, according to Mr. F. W. Brock, a director, considered the financial effect of putting their employees on short time (and short wages) in order that work may be found for some of the unemployed in and around Northwich.

The scheme is on similar lines to one mentioned by J. T. McPherson, M.P., in the Eight Hours Bill debate, 18.3.08. The members of the union this gentleman is connected with alleged to be getting so much in wages for a twelve hour day on the North-East Coast and West of Scotland that a proposal had been made to the employers to allow three shifts of eight hours each instead of two shifts of twelve hours each per day. By this method it was hoped to employ 1,200 additional men, and, even though the steel smelters were willing to sacrifice one third of the wages they received the employers declined to entertain the proposal. It would be interesting to know what the wages were at the time the suggestion was made. I should have thought that so many unemployed in an industry would tend to lower wages. In the Northwich arrangement it is calculated that work will be found for 250 additional men, while the same wages bill as at present will be paid. This means speeding up. And as work is to go on day and night, it is obvious that the financial side has not been considered at all. It never is ! The dividend is 5 per cent. below the corresponding period last year. Possibly this has something to do with the new move.

_____________

If open confession be good for the soul, Councillor J. E. Sutton, a Manchester “labour” leader, must now sleep easy o’nights. Speaking in support of “Labour” Councillor Billam at Bradford, Manchester, during the municipal contests, he stated, “The Labour Party are willing to compromise if the other parties would allow them one representative in every ward. That would give them thirty representatives instead of the eleven which it had taken them fourteen years of hard work to secure.”

There are about, 124 representatives on the Manchester City Council, therefore, Councillor J. E. Sutton thinks Labour’s share is about one-fourth the total. Any attempt to break through such an arrangement by endeavouring to secure more seats on the council would mean the loss of some of the original thirty. The workers of Bradford, Manchester would do well to read tho following.

“An honest man may take a knave’s advice,

But idiots only may be cozened twice :

Once warned is well bewared.”

                                Dryden. “The Cock and the Fox.”

_____________

At the Hull Conference of the Labour Party Mr. Grayson stated that he believed in palliatives with all his heart; now he tells us that “war has been declared. The decks are cleared. The people know their friends and I am hopeful. I am out for Socialism, and will be content with nothing less.” (Daily Dispatch, 17.10.08.) At a meeting held at the Huddersfield Town Hall on 31.10.08, Mr. Grayson said, “Robert Blatchford and I have been considering, and we have come to the conclusion that while the squabble goes on the people must be fed. There is nobody else will feed them, and we in the Socialist movement must. We are going to say to the classes who say it cannot be done, ‘put down as much as you can and we will feed them.’ If they refuse to put it down we shall be able to turn round on them and say, ‘You contemptible cads, we applied constitutional and peaceful means—we shall now resort to other means.’ You must be ready for the other means.” —Manchester Guardian, 2.11.08.

Socialism, to Mr. Grayson, would appear to mean charity ; failing charity being forthcoming he would resort to other means, presumably Anarchy, not Socialism, surely, because that might well be brought about by constitutional methods, via the ballot box, that is given voters educated to a sense of their class mission. Belfort Bax in “Socialism: What it is and what it is not,” tells us “No! emphatically, alms giving, whether good or bad, right or wrong, under existing conditions, not only is not Socialism, but has nothing to do with Socialism.

But, of course, Bax is an “esoteric rambler” vide Grayson, in his debate with Hicks.

_____________

The Liberal politicians are as much at sea as the Labour misleaders. This possibly arises from their actions in Parliament being similar. C. F. G. Masterman (whom J. Hunter Watts supported), speaking at Tottenham on October 29th said that “If the Right to Work Bill had been passed, however, in the crude form in which it was presented to Parliament, it would have been as difficult for them to provide work as at the present time.” And yet he “voted some time ago for the Right to Work Bill.”

_____________

W. Thorne, in backing the Unemployed Bill of the Labour Party whilst knowing it was of no use as a solution of the problem, was in the same position as Masterman in voting for a measure he knew was of no use.

JAYBEE.

Blogger's Note:

My educated guess is that 'JAYBEE.' was the pen-name for Manchester Branch's Jim Brough, who had written other Jottings columns under his own name.

At Random. (1908)

From the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Keel is an organ devoted to the exposition of “Tyneside Socialism.”

* * *

As thus : “Social Reform is inoperative. We want to change the basis of society.” (Oct. ’08.)

* * *

As a means to the end which the Keel vainly imagines it is working for, it warmly supported the candidature of Hartley at Newcastle.

* * *

Hartley, in his election address, declares himself “first, last, and all the time, a Socialist.” As evidence in support of this assertion he trots out six “questions,” every one singly, or all in their entirety, of which are exploited by Liberal or Radical politicians. These he considers to be of primary importance.

* * *

Every one of the six “questions” is concerned with a policy of more or less—chiefly less—effective patching of the vile garment which is doing duty to hide the obscenity of the Body Politic.

* * *

Clearly the Keel has lost its compass “Social Reform is inoperative.” Hartley’s “programme” is Reform, Reform, and yet again, Reform. Therefore we support Hartley. Shades of Q. E. D. !

* * *

A member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain recently expressed the opinion that a few millstones, the deep blue sea, and labour “leaders”—the ingredients duly and well approximated—were among the first essentials of the Social Revolution.

* * *

Recent utterances of the labour “leader” surely justify the opinion. Place for Philip Snowden ! Room for Gentle Jesusism and the Brotherhood of Capital and Labour !! Make way for Cant; strew the dead hopes of the deluded worker in the path of oily Sham and baleful Ignorance.

* * *

“He did not propose to rob the millowners of their property. No ; they would compensate them for their mills as they would compensate the landowners and railway companies. That was sound political doctrine.”

* * *

Instead of which a Manchester comrade writes “Seeing that the workers only receive one-third of their product (and have to spend this third in buying the necessaries of life) how can they buy out the capitalist class ? If the workers acquired political power—thereby robbing that power of the sting it has hitherto possessed, the power, namely, of the oppression of a class, they would not need to “compensate.”

* * *

While that power is not possessed the capitalist class would refuse to be “bought out,” even it the miracle of producing the purchase money were to be performed, since, if every avenue of investment were closed to them the said purchase money would be useless.

* * *

Compensate ? Listen !

* * *

“I once heard a manufacturer ask an overlooker ‘Is so-and-so not back yet’ ‘No.’ How long since she was confined ?’ ‘A week.’ ‘She might easily have been back long ago. That one over there only stays three days.’ ”

(Official Report on Mills, 1844.)

* * *

Again: “I have seen a girl of eleven years who was not only a fully developed woman, but pregnant, and it is by no means rare in Manchester for women (!) to be confined at fifteen years of age.”—(Dr. Robertson, 1844.)

* * *

Once more—this is YOUR SHOW, brothers of the working class, ye whose sisters were at the mercy of every millowner, ye who NOW provide the prostitute for the class to be “compensated”—”In stench, in heated rooms, amid the constant whirling of a thousand wheels, little fingers and little feet were kept in ceaseless action. They slept by turns and in relays, in filthy beds that were never cool. Many died and were buried secretly at night in some desolate spot, and many committed suicide.”

(“Industrial History of England,” p. 180.)

* * *

Compensate ? In the name of the oppressed of all time, in the name of the maimed and the scrapped, the outraged woman and the joyless child, by the suffering and agony and the bloody sweat of OUR CLASS, who prates of compensation ?

* * *

THEY SLEPT BY TURNS IN BEDS THAT WERE NEVER COOL.

* * *

Compensate !

SNOGGY.

Goethe Quote. (1908)

From the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Men become perplexed at themselves and at others, because they treat the means as the end, and so, from sheer doing, do nothing, or, perhaps, just the opposite of what they want to do."

Goethe

Battersea Branch. (1908)

Party News from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For December. (1908)

Party News from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard