The Bread that Perishes and Those who Make it. (1908)

From the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like Pouring Water in a Sieve.

Far back in the last century the Baker’s Union was formed, and although it has never enjoyed the confidence of a majority of the men engaged in bread-making, or, with the single exception of the ’89 agitation, has it contained more than a remnant within its ranks, yet probably 95 per cent. of the London bakers have been members at one time or another. They have entered its ranks, paid one or two quarters’ subscription, then, generally through disgust with the internal management, have gone to swell the lapsed, and been lost. The remnant who remain in the union recognise it for what it really is—a provident society—though they do not all understand that, in the final analysis, it operates in the interests of the master class.

The capitalist, in permitting trades unions to have a legal status, demands that they shall serve him further than the mere friendly society. This is done by all trade unions guaranteeing that their members shall not strike spontaneously, thus giving the capitalist time to prepare himself for any eventuality. The bakers do even better. In every district they have a house of call, where the unemployed foregather and await the masters’ convenience. As journeymen bakers invariably go in to work on Sunday evenings with curses on their lips, and as that is the time usually chosen to give the rack another twist, it sometimes happens that a spontaneous strike takes place. When this occurs the master rushes off to the nearest club house, where he can obtain all the men he wants. Thus trade unionists are always available to break the strike of non-union or union men. The most stoney-eyed can see how useful this is to the masters.

Putting Their Faith in the Enemy.

It is necessary for the officials of trade unions, in order to maintain their positions, to advertise themselves, and to prevent the dry rot of apathy among their followers putting a period to their existence as leaders, to invent at intervals a new slogan, such as the “All Grades Movement,” “Abolition of Night Work,” etc. The latter has been the rallying cry of the Bakers for several years past, and the pence diverted from the semi-starved wives and children of the operatives, have been spent in organising public meetings to force the bill for the abolition of night work and the limitation of the hours of labour through the Imperial Parliament, and also to pay the expenses of delegates to the House of Commons. These genuflected before Liberal, Lib-Lab and Lab-Lib M.P.s, humbly beseeching their help in pushing the “Charter of Emancipation” through. At the public meetings the men were assured by hired speakers that no compromise would be considered. The damnable system of night work was to cease. The abominable slavery of 80 to 100 hours a week was to be kicked into the limbo of the past. Many arguments were advanced to show the sweet reasonableness of their “demands,” the most nauseating being the cant of the “Christian Socialists.” Everything was working up for the final onslaught, when, as invariably happens in trade union agitations, as the hour of deliverance was about to strike, there came the anti-climax.

Dilly, Dilly Come and be Killed.

A cold douche quenched any hopes that might be still, flicking in the breasts of the oft-deluded operatives in the form of a circular letter to the branches of the union. This letter ran as follows :

“I am directed by my Committee to ask your members to approve of the proposed alteration in the Eight Hours Bill.

We consider that the Bill stands an infinitely better chance of passing with the clause deleted and personally I believe that even if the Bill in its present form was to pass its second reading that particular clause would come out in committee. By deleting it we at once disarm three-fourths of the opposition to the measure which has hitherto been based largely upon the alleged impossibility (if the Bill were passed) of supplying the early morning roll and restaurant trade.

Factory bakery proprietors say, not without reason, that it would handicap them in competing with the small shops, and some of the larger shops object on the score of the very large amount of capital they would have to spend in building additional bake houses.

Some of the Liberal M.P.s whom we recently interviewed expressed the opinion that as a matter of policy there is no doubt that it would be far and away the best to make the issue a clear and straight one of Long Hours v. Short Hours, and not to give the employers the opportunity of going off on a side issue.

Of course, the districts which have day work would still be able to retain it by trade union action, and others might regain it by the same method.

Yours very truly,

Louis A. Hill,

29 May, 1908.”

Absurdity can go No Further.

Can anyone conceive of a document drafted with a more tender solicitude for the welfare of the enemy, the capitalist wolves? It abandons the main position under cover of presenting a straight issue. The one clause that did stand a dog’s chance of getting on to the statute book, and being enforced when there, was the night work clause, for the very cogent reason that an overwhelming case could be made out to prove that it is necessary in order to ensure that foodstuffs should be produced under wholesome conditions. Many bakers have collected ample materials to prove that bakeries, not only the catacomb bakeries, but some of the more modern factories, are centres for the propagation and dissemination of loathsome infections and contagious diseases, and that this state of affairs is the lowering of the vitality, and consequent disease among the operatives caused by night work and the long hours which are possible only under that system.

Let Criticism Begin At Home.

That, and the question of wholesome ingredients, must be dealt with from a Socialist workman’s point of view. When I have leisure, and as I am fast approaching the “scrapping age,” it shall be done. Once get the howling pack of Christian profit-hunters, who shriek anathemas at Leopold the Amorous from our garden city suburbs for the atrocities perpetrated in the collection of “red rubber” on the Congo, and who view with callous indifference the cruel slaughter of their compatriots in the production of white bread, to realise that this system re-acts against their material interests, the only chord to which they respond, that these flagrant outrages against the laws of Nature spell for them, too, impaired health, disease, and its consequent loss of treasure, and your precious reform is accomplished, nay, is forced on you, willy-nilly, and you would not be consulted on the matter.*

As regards the straight issue, Long v. Short Hours, the veriest political tyro knows the powerful interests which oppose the principle of limiting men’s labour by legal enactment, knows that the bell-wethers of the miners, those “gaseous vertibrates,” called labour leaders, cannot lead their followers to victory. Miners number many more thousands than bakers do tens, are splendidly organised from a trade union point of view, and have been “demanding” the eight hours’ day for twenty-five years, If the miners are in such a parlous state what chance do the poor bakers stand, except by frightening the capitalist parties through their stomachs ?

Twenty Four Hour Day Not Sufficient.

The peremptory stoppage of night work would automatically curtail the hours of labour, as is well known to the masters’ spokesmen. If a man started work at 6 a.m. and wrought till midnight he would only then have completed an eighteen hours’ day, whereas it is not uncommon for a baker to see the clock round twice at the week-end. Every baker knows that it breaks a master’s heart to see his men go home at ten o’clock in the morning, after having done twelve hours slogging. The day is at its busiest, and under a score of pretexts first one hour then another is added to the night’s work until one night is driven into the next, and the baker is robbed of all that makes life endurable. He comes out late in the day completely exhausted, his eyes are dazzled by the daylight; and if he takes one “half ale” he is fuddled, two and he is “blindo.” The nasty, drunken beast !

The last sentence in Mr. Hill’s letter is comic in view of the position of the cotton operatives, the awful plight of the railway men, and the utter rout of “the most powerful and the most perfect type of trade union in the world,” the engineers. The fact is the bakers can obtain nothing by trade union organisation, nor could they if 95 per cent. were organised. Their position has gradually become worse, their skill is fast becoming needless, they are being reduced to the status of the unskilled labourers, who can, and are, taking their places as machine tenders. They are a diminishing number, owing to the introduction of machinery doubling and redoubling the output per man in what is a limited trade, and while their nominal wages have risen slightly, their real wages have gone down considerably, for they have lost their allowance of bread and flour, sack money (which at one time amounted to several shillings weekly), yeast money, millers’ Xmas boxes, and other extras, and by mid-week many of them are “broke to the world,” as they phrase it—yet they never spend any money. Their jobs are more precarious, and they are “scrapped” at an earlier age as regular hands and become jobbers—especially now they are so inconsiderate as to lie down and die in the bake-house, or drop down in the street as they wend homeward.

No reform or series of reforms can touch that position. No trade union can act even as a brake to steady the downward rush. As the years roll by capital gets more aggressive, more relentless and its engines of death act with more deadly precision. The trade union is a spent force: capital can no longer be fought with the velvet glove. The only effective means is an economic revolution. The issue has too long been obscured by the thousands of tricky liars who prostitute their talents for grub. None have done it so effectively, or so cheaply to the capitalist, as those who have posed as labour leaders and dissipated the energies of the working class by focussing their attention on this or that trumpery reform that does not matter, while pumping an income from the stomachs of the starving women and children of the proletariat. Signs are manifold that their baneful influence is at last waning. We are now face to face with the fact that the class ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth, in the final analysis, spells, not “race suicide,” but race murder. There is no other name for it. There is no social problem to the Socialist. He has the key to the situation. He alone recognises with joy that society is in the melting-pot of the Social Revolution, and that the issue will be—must be—Socialism or annihilation.

J. Smith.

* Since this was written Mr. Haldane has said (Ladybank, Sept 26) that the Government “had to deal with the prevention of diseases among the poor, in the interest not merely of the individual, but of the State.”

Why the Unemployed are Necessary under Capitalism. (1908)

From the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond doubt the problem of unemployment is beginning to assume a new aspect. Hitherto a regrettable, but quite incidental, visitation of Providence, a working-class concern (as bad trade has been to do with the master class), a temporary inconvenience, our rulers have said, not entirely beyond the ameliorative touch of Private Charity, the problem is now developing a new visage.

The Incubus of the Out-o’-Work.

There is an ugly gleam in its eye, an all-devouring menace in its bestial mouth. No longer can the capitalists pretend that Private Charity is able to deal with the situation—it has been like a bee lending its honey sac to the support of a hungry elephant. It is so short a while since the dread shape was rampant over the land, and now it rises again, with added stature, with renewed rage and redoubled vigour. But the disquieting thing is that during the interim the shape has never for a moment been banished. Our lords and gentlemen and honorable boards, our masters and pastors and those set in authority over us, our organisers of production and captains of industry, all took it for a ghost, and tried to “lay” the ghost each in his own way. And alike for those who took it to the Lord in prayer, and those who passed measures in the legislature, and those who offered propitiation out of the lean purse of Private Charity, and those who accepted the Miltonian dictum that “they also serve who only stand and wait,” the shape unobligingly refused to be “laid.” The thing has not righted itself, even temporarily.

A strengthening suspicion is spreading over the minds of the master class that when the thing does right itself, it will do so in a way distinctly unpleasant to them. It dawns upon them that this thing which, they with complaisance regarded as a cross the workers had to bear, threatens more and worse against the rulers than the ruled. The idea takes shape that this nightmare is the product of their own operations, the inevitable and ominous companion of capitalist production, and they go in mortal fear that, sooner or later, it must overwhelm them.

The Policy of Sop Throwing.

Hence there are signs that every cheap expedient is to be used in the endeavour to stave off the flood of destruction which threatens to burst from this heaped up and increasing mass of humanity so completely cut off from the means of life. And are these efforts to succeed ? Let us enquire into the nature of the problem.

It is not the mere fact that so many men are idle that constitutes the serious feature of the problem. It may be no unmixed blessing to have this army of workless workers kicking their heels together, especially when the devil begins to apply his solution by finding work for their idle hands to do, but it is nowhere suggested that any other consideration can compare with the fact that the unemployed lack the necessaries of life—they starve in their great numbers, and those greater numbers dependent upon them starve in company. The real problem is, therefore, not to provide work for the unemployed, but to furnish them with the means of subsistence. It is a misnomer to call it an unemployed problem it is a starvation problem.

The solution of the starvation problem has been left to Private Charity: she has failed. They say the goddess has a slender purse, and we know that is true. Let us then suppose Private Charity’s purse as broad and deep and illimitable as her heart is said to be, that out of her bottomless resources and melting pity she could and did give to repletion to all directly or indirectly suffering from the effects of unemployment, what then would happen ?

The Awful Indolence of Man.

Alas for her peace of mind, our masters never tire of telling us what would happen. “Human nature,” they say, “would assert itself. It is not human nature to engage in uncongenial toil save under pressure. Remove the pressure of want from the unemployed and at once you have an army of ‘won’t works.'” Private Charity consents to the judgment, as must you and I.

There is no doubt about it, man does not sell his labour-power, and with it necessarily his liberty, for fun. To be unemployed is no terrible hardship in the absence of the poverty which accompanies working-class unemployment. Relieve us of the coercive force of the empty stomach, the shameless importunity of the landlord, and so on, and, frankly, we would not worry about work—our human nature is not so different from that of our betters that we need blush to confess that. And then what would happen ?

What would happen, my friends, in this impossible case, is just this. Those in employment,, finding themselves relieved of the competition of the workless (we will leave out of consideration the fact that their “human nature” would impel them to become workless, too, upon such terms), would begin to cast about them for some means of improving their condition. As it is true, as our masters tell us, that the workers would not sell themselves to toil unless they were forced to, it follows that they would oppose a more effective resistance to the weakened coercion. They would demand a higher price for their labour-power, either through increased wages or a shorter working day, or both.

Nothing Left for the Boss – What O !

We are taking here the extreme case, in which the labour market is entirely and effectually relieved of the pressure of the unemployed—whether by provision of work or of direct sustenance does not matter one iota. Theoretically, the worker, being without a competitor, would have things all his own way. Wages, being a price, must rise by leaps and bounds, as all prices do in the absence of competitors. And as, mind you, wages are that portion of the total value created which is enjoyed by those who create it, it follows that a rise in wages results (other things remaining constant) in a decrease of the portion of value left to those who do not create it.

Now mark the effect. Capitalist demand for labour-power is excited only by the desire for that portion of the value created which remains after that labour-power is paid for, and will therefore be in proportion to the relative amount of that surplus-value. Just as the removal of the unemployed from the labour market has torn from the employing class the power of resisting the demands of the working class, so now the diminished profits react against the worker by lessening the demand for labour-power which the desire for profit alone creates. Those concerns which have been run at the lowest profit, immediately cease to show any at all, and are shut down, and Private Charity has other hordes to comfort at her eleemosynary bosom. Solomon gurgled of “breasts like towers,” but she needs breasts like oceans for the job she has taken on, must wear thin and thinner with the calls upon her system, and after all her sacrifice will prove unavailing, for wages, rising to the point of extinguishing all profit, has extinguished with it the capitalists’ desire to engage their factories

and machinery in the process of wealth production.

No Profit, No Production.

Here is a deadlock. The solution of the unemployed problem by sustaining the workless has resulted in the raising of wages, the absorption of profit, and, as a necessary corollary, the cessation of production. From which it appears that idleness has its dignity, no less than labour, since the unemployed are necessary to capitalist production, and that it is true indeed that “they also serve who only stand and wait.”

But capitalist sophism tells us that other things do not remain constant—which, of course, is true enough. We are told that a rise in wages is followed by a rise in prices, but this is presuming too much upon our ignorance. The workers create all value, whether it take the shape of golden sovereigns, loaves of bread, stained glass angels, or what not. If then the price of loaves went up alone the sovereign would buy fewer than before; but if the price of gold rose proportionately, the relative positions of the two remain the same. Just all prices are to go up, since all commodities are the result of wage labour and all wages are to rise. The result is that none of their relative positions have changed. The sovereign still buys as many loaves before, as many Manifestoes or SOCIALIST STANDARDS. There has then been no rise in prices, though, since our ingenuous masters always except one commodity (labour-power) from the added price-stature, they manage to indicate a fall in wages—which is all they want to do. But, with no unemployed “standing and waiting,” the working class would hold the whip hand. And all this is apart from the fact that prices of commodities do not bear relation to the cost of the labour-power consumed in their production, but to the amount of necessary labour embodied in them.

Machinery creates its own Unemployed.

Again other things do not remain constant. We have been considering an extreme case, where production has ceased because profit has ceased, and all because there were no unemployed to keep down wages. It is clear then, that if production is to continue, is must either do so under conditions in which its operation is not dependent upon profits, or the unemployed must be again brought into being to force down wages and allow profit to reappear.

The system makes beautiful provision for this by the law of the development of machinery. In practically every trade there exists machinery and methods in partial use far in advance of that generally employed—indeed, all through the industrial world there are degrees of perfection or imperfection in the means of production, tailing away into antiquity so distant as can just be run at sufficient profit to save them from extinction. In each degree of development there is a fringe where it is a question if better machinery could not be more profitably adopted. Any raising of wages at once decides the question. At all times machinery is the competitor of labour-power. To increase the price of the latter is merely to hasten its displacement by the former. In the printing world the Linotype composing machine is an accomplished fact. It is not that the machine would have to be invented—it is there, doing the work of several men under the hands of one. The only question is the diameter of the circle of its profitable application, and this, of course, is a matter of competition with the hand compositor.

An Automatic Adjustment (not patented).

If the wages of the latter go up, there is a corresponding advantage on the side of the machine, an enlargement in the circle of its employment, and an addition to the unemployed army to beat down wages again. It may be said that the machine operator’s wages rise also, but that is only one man’s wages against several displaced by the machine. It may also be objected that the cost of the machine is raised since higher wages must be paid for its construction, but that lands us again in the impossible position of witnessing an all-round rise in prices, and runs counter to the economic verity that prices (averaged by rises and falls cancelling one another) express, not the amount of wages consumed in producing the commodities, but the necessary labour embodied in them.

The fact is that every advance in wages reacts upon machinery and methods, pronouncing the doom of those requiring most labour-power to operate them, throwing men out of work, and so creating that army of unemployed which is necessary to the continuance of production so long as production is carried on for profit.

The position may be summed up as follows. As under present conditions all commodities are produced for profit, production must cease with the cessation of profit. As profit and wages between them constitute, and have their only source in, the value created by the worker, profit can only appear while wages are prevented from consuming the whole product of labour. As wages, the price of labour-power, are regulated by the relation of supply and demand, a surplus of labour-power (the unemployed) is necessary to prevent wages swallowing up all profit.

The Logic of the Revolutionary Proposal.

Therefore the unemployed army is a vital necessity to capitalist production, and there can be no solution under capitalism.

As wages are regulated by the relation of supply to demand of that labour-power which it is the price of, any diminution of the surplus (unemployed) labour-power is attended by a rise in wages. As machinery is the competitor of labour-power, any rise in the price of labour-power induces its displacement by machinery, which thus creates in perpetuity the out-of-work army. Therefore there can be no partial solution to the unemployed problem under capitalism.

As profit is the only incentive to capitalist production, and an unemployed army is an inevitable necessity to the production of profit, it is clear that the solution of the unemployed problem must be sought in a new productive objective—production must be independent of profit.

As the consumer demands the production of commodities because they are use-values, and demands them as long as they have use-value, it is clear that utility would be a more constant incentive to produce than profit, since things have always utility while people need them, and it is just when people need them most, because they are starving, but have no money to pay for them because they are unemployed, that there is no profit in their production.

As production for profit implies the power to wrest from the workers part of their product by keeping some of them (the unemployed) from production, it presupposes also private ownership by the few of the machinery of production.

And as production for use means production while any one has need, it implies free access to the means of production—in other words, common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community.

The establishment of this changed property condition is the revolutionary proposition, the object of all Socialists. It is revolutionary because it changes the whole structure of society from top to bottom. In particular it abolishes the unemployed by giving free access to the means of production.

Socialism is the only cure for unemployment, therefore study Socialism.

A. E. Jacomb

Dynamite. (1908)

From the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

WAS GOING TO SMASH SOCIALISM

At a sitting, before Mr. Registrar Brougham, for the public examination of E. W. Mockler, of Hungerford Road, Holloway, works manager, it appeared that he had interested himself in politics, and that about June, 1907, he became treasurer of the Constitutional Speakers’ League, which was to send vans round the country and supply speakers at meetings to be held on the subject of tariff reform. In respect of that league the debtor stated that he had personally incurred sundry liabilities, and he estimated that, including money advanced to the chairman (about £300 now appearing as a bad debt) and other expenses, he had lost about £750 in connection therewith. The horses and vans were eventually seized and sold for the payment of keep and storage. To his losses and liabilities on behalf of the league the debtor attributed his failure,—”Morning Advertiser,” 7.11.08.

__________

LETTING THE CAT OUT

Sir,—I beg to assure you that there is nothing of revolt against the Government in my letter stating I would not again contest Walworth. I wish to give the Prime Minister, Mr. Burns, and Mr. Haldane every support. What I do revolt against is any pandering to Socialism by less experienced and less wise Ministers, and entirely because their doing so helps reaction and blocks the way of the urgent reforms to which I am pledged. REFORM AND SOCIALISM ARE LIKE WATER AND FIRE—MUTUALLY DESTRUCTIVE.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

C. J. O’Donnell,

House of Commons, Oct. 26.

—” Standard.”

__________

HOW ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN?

When you go back to the early years of the nineteenth century, and read the accounts of children’s sufferings due to the cruelty of slave-drivers, your hearts are apt to cry out in anguish. Just think of today. Think of today in these great United States, children five and six years old, working from six in the morning until six in the evening, and at the hardest and most trying kind of labour. These children are being ruined by thousands by the manufacturers. It is killing the whole white race of the South.

It may be surprising, but it is the absolute truth, that things just as bad are going on right here in New York City. Child slavery thrives here in greater proportion than in the South.

There are parts of this city where little children are driven to work early in the morning for two hours and then sent to our American schools, and after school are forced into sweatshops, where they are obliged to work from three in the afternoon until eleven o’clock at night.—William H. Maxwell, Superintendent of Schools of New York City.

—”St. Louis Labour,” Oct. 17, 1908.

Who said ” Tariff Reform” ?

__________

CANDOR

Asked at a mass meeting last January, “What do you advise a conscientious working man to do who is out of a job and whose family is starving because he can’t get work ?” Mr. Taft, who weighs over twenty stone, flung his hands above his head in a gesture of despair as he answered, “God knows, I don’t.”

That pregnant ejaculation has travelled from New York to San Francisco and its echo has been heard from New Orleans to Minnesota. It is characteristic of its author—as honest an American as the United States ever produced.

“Star,” 8.11.08.

For the first time a mountain in travail has brought forth something that may pass for the truth. Taft may know God knows what a starving man should do, but certainly Taft, the capitalist doesn’t.

__________

WHAT DO THEY KNOW?

Much amusement was caused in the Lobby of the House of Commons last night by the circulation of a portrait in a New York newspaper. The words underneath were “England’s Bulwark Against Socialism—Mr. John Burns,” but the portrait, by some mischance, was that of Mr. Keir Hardie.

—” Daily Mail,” Guy Fawkes Day.

__________

No one, surely, can be so unkind to John Burns as his friends.

“Mr. Burns has seen one relevant fact of great importance. He has realised that if municipalities distribute their work with more regularity over the year and give out as much of it as possible during the winter months a good deal of unemployment can be prevented, and for some of it a resource will always be available.” “Daily News,” 26.10.08.

How can unemployment be affected by starving men in summer to feed them in winter ?

__________

We do get the truth, sometimes.

“The pretence that the existing distress is merely a transient phase due to financial disturbance in the United States and so forth is absurd.”—”Standard,” 26.10.08.

__________

This is interesting.

“One remedy for unemployment would be to double the wages of every working man. If that could be done to-morrow the spending power of the people would be doubled, and work would be provided, for every man and woman in Great Britain in providing for their needs.”-(Keir Hardie at Merthyr, 24,10.08.)

It is as difficult to mitigate unemployment by doubling wages as it would be to remove unemployment by abolishing wages.

__________

What d’ye say, Henderson ? What’s the good of it if it don’t find work for every child as well ?

__________

Oh ! these “Socialists.” Here is another specimen. Author, Philip Snowden.

“He wanted to assure all temperance workers of his sympathy and of the sympathy of his colleagues, who were working in other fields of reform—reforms which were no less temperance reforms … As one who deeply appreciates the very great injury and the very great obstacle which the drinking habits of the people present to the progress of every movement of a social reform character, I want to assure you that we are heart and soul with you, and we wish you God-speed. … In connection with the Trade Unions Congress there was always held a temperance fellowship meeting. Mr. Steadman, M.P., the secretary, had told him that he could remember the time when a temperance resolution was struck out of the agenda on the ground that temperance had nothing to do with labour. 

“There was at the present moment another question besides that of temperance touching the hearts of the people—the wide-spread suffering and privation from want of employment.”—(“Manchester Guardian,” 10.10.08.)

The quotations are quite in their proper order. Observe the great question of “temperance reform” comes first, then the secondary matter of “unemployment,” while as for Socialism, that seems to have been “struck out of the agenda on the ground that it has nothing to do with labour.”

What We Are After. (1908)

From the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has for its OBJECT:

The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.

Obviously the present social system is not so based. Its characteristics, class division and antagonism, riches and poverty, overwork and idleness, its law, public institutions and mentality, arise from and have their basis in the ownership and control of these means and instruments by a small part of society—the members of the capitalist class. Our wealthy mentors and their Press and platform hirelings admit as much when they tell us that if we abolish the “sacred rights of property” the whole social fabric will totter to the ground, even though, they conclude with the gratuitous assumption that “anarchy and chaos” will follow.

So that there may be no mistake, let us at once state which are the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution that Socialism demands shall be owned in common and controlled democratically. They are those winch are essential to the community’s well-being—those which it is worth the people’s while to acquire, hold and administer ; which, as private property, enable their owners to get rent, profit or interest—those things, in short, which enable their possessors to exploit the workers. Thus the carpenter’s favourite plane, the wife’s knitting needles and a host of other odds and ends that deluded opponents of Socialism love to quibble over are excluded. The means of production and distribution that count, that are indispensible and worth going after, are, broadly speaking, the land, factories, warehouses, machinery, ships and railways.

Given, then, such a fundamental change in the basis of society as will be the social control of industry, in place of the existing private control, and tremendous changes must inevitably follow in the whole social superstructure. The capitalist-landlord class, deprived of its unearned incomes, will either have to come and do its quota of necessary labour like the rest of us, or accept the alternative it offers us workers—starvation. The census of 1901 shows that there were then 663,656 adult men who did not even profess to have any occupation. These “gentlemen” together with their numerous female dependents, and the myriads of domestic servants who pander to their luxury, constitute a potential supply of labour power which, when applied, will help to vastly increase the supply of goods and services available to the community. The thousands of clerks to-day employed in booking profits will, with the abolition of the profits system, be set free for work of social utility. The same applies to the innumarable agents, commercial travellers, advertisers, printers, redundant shopkeepers and assistants.

There being no longer an enslaved class to keep in subjection and no longer any need to forcibly hold markets or protect capitalist investments abroad, the stupendous amount of energy now wasted in the maintenance of arnies and navies will become available for the satisfaction of society’s needs.

Thus at a stroke tho establishment of the Socialist Republic involves an immense increase in the productive powers of the community, and consequently of the possibilities of enjoyment and of leisure ; and further, the abolition of war and vice-breeding, parasitic idleness. The security of well-rewarded, brief labour would spread over the land a happy and bony people.

The condition that necessarily follows from the attainment of the OBJECT of the S.P.G.B. is then, seen to be infinitely preferable to the conditions at present obtaining, at least from the workers’ standpoint.

The product of industry now divided into a small part wages and a large part profits will then remain entirely with and at the disposal of the industrious. Then invention and more economical methods will not, as now, spell unemployment and misery, but greater comfort and leisure, giving opportunities for such, physical and mental development as but few of the working class even hope for to-day.

Many poor, half-fed workers, carefully gulled by the political and journalistic organs of the beneficiaries of the present system, will bring forward this and that (as they think) awkward question and objection ; but if they will reason out logically the consequences that flow from the S.P.G.B. Object applied to each case they have in mind, and compare the results as they affect themselves and those they love, with the results of the present capitalist system, they will realise, indeed, that the workers have nothing to lose but their chains, and a world to win.

By reasoning out for themselves and finding out the correct answer to the often trilling difficulties and objections brought against Socialism, instead of asking someone to think them out for them, our fellow working men and women will the sooner enjoy the novel satisfaction of being less often tricked and misled. Then, indeed, we shall be making headway toward our goal, realising that in Socialism, understood and fought for by a wide-awake and ever vigilant democracy, lies our only hope.

J. H. Halls

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

Party Pars. (1908)

Party News from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two new branches have been formed during November. At Nottingham and at Stoke Newington. Socialists in either place are invited to communicate with the respective secretaries, for whose addresses see Branch Directory on the last page.

#    #    #    #

The Burnley Branch are still on the war path. They journeyed one Sunday to Accrington, where the S.D.P. were demonstrating. The latter wanted questions — when they got them from the S.P.G.B. they wanted to apply the closure. The audience preferred to hear questions answered, but were nevertheless disappointed. Is there any answer to the S.P.G.B?

#    #    #    #

During the period since the issue of the November number, the Delegate Meeting has been held, and for the first time since the formation of the Party, extended into a second day.

#    #    #    #

A correspondent writes from Durham enquiring for Socialists in the district. He has searched the I.L.P. and other organisations and not found one yet. We are not surprised the I.L.P. is among the least likely places to find them.

#    #    #    #

After the disappointment of the Watford Branch in E. E. Hunter, S.D.P., slipping off the hook just when they had nearly landed him in a debate, they have succeeded in fixing up Councillor Gorle, S.D.P., to debate with our representative. He chose the subject of debate, which is peculiar: “That the S.P.G.B.  is not the only Socialist party in this country, and that it is delaying the Social Revolution ’’ By the time this appears in print the debate will be a matter of history, but it gives one pause how a Socialist party can delay that, the achievement of which constitutes itself. Perhaps it is another sample of the notorious S.D.P. "mixed thinking."

#    #    #    #

Battersea have had a side slip. Carmichael, as blatant at ever, challenged our representative from the S.D.P. platform to debate the proposition “that the S.P.G.B. is not worthy the support of the working-class.’’ This was accepted from Carmichael as representing the S.D.P., but when negotiations were getting interesting he discovered that the matter was not one of public interest, and should be discussed only “before members of Socialist organisations.” And this objection being over ridden, agreed to debate if the S.D.P. were not mentioned! A remarkable instance of the length that can be reached by ingenious casuistry.

#    #    #    #

Someone at Tottenham—a local aspirant to municipal honours—accepted a challenge to debate, and took care to impose conditions which could not possibly be tolerated, viz, that he should choose who should or should not be our representative. This proved another disappointment.

#    #    #    #

Awhile ago the S.D.P. were holding a meeting at Stoke Newington, and in the course of the discussion the speaker informed a member of our Party not to interrupt their meeting but to go to some other corner and hold a meeting of our own, or to go to Tottenham and expose the S.D.P.! We did both. Taking advantage of his admission that the S.D.P. could be exposed, and, going to Amhurst Road, Stoke Newington at the first opportunity, held a meeting. The result is announced in the first of these Party Pars.

Dick Kent

Keir Hardie in Canada. (1908)

From the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Western Clarion (of British Columbia) and many of its readers seem to be under no delusions either as to the sort of job Keir Hardie was attempting to manage during his recent visit in that part of the Empire which we call “ours,” or of the possibilities of the job, assuming it could be accomplished. We reproduce the three extracts which follow with thanks.

  “Keir Hardie, we are told, is to attend the Trades Congress at Halifax, for the special purpose of bringing together the forces of Socialism and Trades Unionism as they have been brought together in the Old Country.
   "We are very much afraid that neither the Socialists nor the Trades Unions will bite. The proposition is just a little too raw. Stripped of all wordy ornament it just amounts to this: That the Socialists shall put their hands in the Trade Union’s pocket and their principles in their own.”—LEADING ARTICLE.

#    #    #    # 

  “So Keir Hardie is coming to Canada on a special mission of inducing the Socialist Party and the Independent labourites to get together for united political action. Well, he has undertaken a contract that all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t accomplish. He is attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. That he should think of such a thing shows how little he knows of the uncompromising revolutionary spirit of the Socialists of British Columbia and Ontario. He is harking up the wrong tree, and displays the fatal spirit, of compromise which is the weak spot in the Anglo-Saxon character, and has done more than anything else to retard the growth of genuine Socialism in England and in fact among English-speaking people generally.
   “There is and can be no common ground between the Socialist whose end and aim is the abolition of wage slavery and the ownership by the workers of the machinery of production and distribution, and the man who simply wants to effect a few ameliorations of the lot of the wage slave. The Socialist recognises that at this stage of the game the all essential thing to be done is to educate the workers to want and insist upon Socialism as the only permanent and effective remedy and uses elections simply as a means of propaganda, He wants first and foremost to make Socialists. The Independent Labour man merely wants to make votes. The Socialist knows that votes are no good unless there are clear-cut convictions behind them. The Independent Labour man expects to carry everything with a hurrah! and when his candidate comes in among the “also rans” is apt to get cold feet. The Socialist knows that all that can be done at present is to lay foundations, and wants to lay them good and strong on the bed-rock of scientific truth. The other fellow wants to win the election any old way and get something right here and now. The Socialist knows that a desperate, long-seated disease can't be cured suddenly by any quack remedy, and will only yield to a long course of treatment. The Independent Labour man ignores the root of the disease and wants to doctor the symptoms. Phillips Thomson."

#    #    #    # 

  “Keir Hardie. M.P., with his wife and daughter, has been visiting Toronto this week and the capitalist Press has been full of his doings. I’ll content myself with reporting a meeting I had with him a year ago. After the usual preliminaries I enquired’ ‘Comrade Hardie, I’d like to know your position on the class struggle."
  ‘ “There is no class struggle,’ he replied, following this up with a denunciation of the 'foolish’ tactics followed by the Socialist Party of Canada.
  “Having had some experience in publishing Labour and Socialist papers, I know it’s difficult at that game to get enough to buy a decent meal ticket, let alone tour the world with a family. Knowing, too, that a man won't grow rich on the salary paid a British M P. or out of the contributions to M.P.s by the union men, it puzzles me to figure out how Ramsay MacDonald, Keir Hardie, Victor Grayson and such men manage to finance these globe-trotting expeditions. If any comrade can enlighten me I'll promise to send the suggestion on to the Dominion executive so that if the game is straight the path of the next organiser sent out to our Canada for our Party will be made a little more easy than this summer's trip by the 'Old Man.' G. W. Wrigley."