Loving fathers of industry. (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

An interesting advertisement booklet recently published by Messrs. Joseph Crosfield & Sons, the Warrington soapworkers’ exploiters, shows how “model employers” dominate even the “private life” of their wage slaves, dictating as to how they should spend their scanty leisure.

After giving the names of the directors and other parasites who “run” the business, the pamphlet shows us how increased efficiency in the worker only benefits the capitalist class. For it states: “It is compulsory upon all boys and girls (employees) between the age of 14 and 17 to attend an evening school at least three nights a week. The course of instruction for boys is naturally concerned with questions relating to their line of work.” (Italics mine.)

Not a bad wheeze, teaching the poor kiddies their trade at night schools in their all too meagre spare time, after they have put in 8½ hours hard graft at the works for their lords and masters ! It is obvious, of course, that no time will be lost at work in teaching these youngsters soap making ! For the workers’ time is money to the capitalist.

We are then told that in the day-work departments, the 9½ hour day has been reduced to an 8½ hour day, “and events have proved that as much work as previously is done in the shorter hours.” Will the “B.S.P.” please note, that if the 8 hour day for all workers came into vogue, the capitalists would see to it, as they have done in this case, that the workers’ output was not lessened, but that they would be “speeded up,” so that the same or even an in­creased output was maintained in the shorter working day, with less expense to the masters in running machinery, lighting and heating the factories, etc.

With an eye to business the firm tells us: “The physical aspect of education is not over­ looked, for all work-girls up to the age of 17 undergo a course of gymnastics during the winter months.” Because strong, healthy, well-developed workers can obviously turn out more and better work than weak, unhealthy, and ill-nourished workers. So that from a purely busi­ness point of view—the point of view the master class always take—this little incidental expense well repays the employers.

Under the ironical heading “Social Recreation during Leisure Hours,” we are informed that the firm provide a company of the 4th Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment (Territorials), also a company of boy-scouts.

Note the masters’ determination to inocculate their workers with that brain-disease, patriotism. One can imagine how useful would these same workers be in defending their masters’ property against foreign invaders, or more probably, strike rioters.

Verily, the capitalist moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform !

This, we are told, is how the firm take a keen interest in the social life of the work-people ! Not much time for these workers to study their slave position in society. The firm see to it that their workers’ minds are diverted into less revolutionary and dangerous channels.

“Garden Village” employers go one better even, by providing their workers with libraries filled with capitalist works, libraries from which working class books and papers are vi­gorously excluded. Gardening, too, is taught, and thus the workers keep the “garden village” well cultivated in their spare time, without expense to the employers. Free fire brigade staff, ambulance staff, and gardening staff ! And so on, ad nauseam.

After giving a description of the soapmaking the pamphlet concludes with photos, several showing the work-people cheering and flag-wagging, on the occasion of a recent visit to the works of our royal parasites.

The enormous profits made out of the unpaid labour of the workers by soap kings was demonstrated by the “Daily Chronicle,” (24.4.14). According to that rag, Messrs. Joseph Watson & Sons, the Leeds soapmakers, made a profit of £103,999 last year, as compared with £84,215 in the year previous.

How much more of this devilish game will you workers submit to ? Aren’t you tired of being referred to in contemptuous terms as the working asses? or are you going to quietly wait for that last phase of this rapidly decaying system, State Capitalism, with its universal “model employers,” “garden villages,” “ideal conditions of labour,” “co-partnership,” “profit-sharing,” etc.; which is really more intensified slavery still—to a hide-bound State, instead of private employers—than that which exists at present ?

Capitalism has long since outstayed its wel­come ; why not organise with us and overthrow it at once ? “Now is the accepted time ”

A. C. Kelly

Gems from Malta. (1916)

From the February 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

That wars are, after all, land and territory-grabbing expeditions, is admitted by a Mr. H. S. Gullett, writing in the “Daily Malta Chronicle" of November 18th last. In an article entitled "Strengthening the Empire" Mr. Gullett says:

  The disturbing factor is that we live in an exceedingly land-hungry age, in which solemn treaties are lightly honoured. Everywhere the clamour is for more territory. Within the past few years war after war has been waged, and despite the attempts of the aggressors to cover their design, the aim in nearly : every case has been material gain.

Of course! But many capitalist writers have admitted that wars have economic causes. He then goes on to say:

  Perhaps the Empire is too large; perhaps we are attempting too much. But the tendency is to acquire more and more territory, and to add to our monster task of colonising.

To acquire more and more territory "by waging war and covering their design," etc., to use his previous words. Exactly! For it is obviously “material gain" that prompts capitalist nations to make war upon one another to “acquire more territory.” Mr. Gullett then observes :

  Already in this war we have, in the acquisition by the Australians of the big rich islands in the South Pacific, and in the gallant conquest of German South West Africa, added enormously to our work of Empire-building.

But the thoughtful reader of this frank admission will reflect that then- were more profitable reasons than “preserving the neutrality of small nations'' that induced “us” to declare war. The writer, however, fears that “we" have bitten off more than "we" can chew, for he continues:

  We who live overseas are already spread very thin; after the war our grip, unless we are strongly reinforced, will be very precarious indeed. . . There is grave danger that . . our insatiated appetite for more territory will prove our undoing. At the dictation of the Home Government, and yielding to our own strong desire, we have snatched a great additional domain from the Germans.

Thus is shown the land-snatching proclivities of capitalist governments, and the capitalist nature of wars generally.

Only by the inauguration of international Socialism will wars be abolished. For only then will there be no capitalist class to make war (using our class for the butcher's job) in order to seize territory which will become markets for their surplus products. For only then will the workers own and control all that which they alone produce, and only then will there be no vast surplus of wealth, stolen from the workers, for which a market must he found, and to provide a market for which working-class blood must be poured out like water. No man worthy of the name will hold back now.

A. C. Kelly.