Leaves from the diary of a philanthropist. (1911)

A Short Story from the July 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oct. 16, 1908.—This day is the thirtieth anniversary of my marriage and the fortieth of my business career. I remember well even now, how I calculated that my ten-year-old business warranted the step. I always opined that £1,000 per year was the minimum sum upon which a cultivated man could take the step of holy matrimony. My wife’s dowry, of course, helped. As I look calmly back over the forty years I can estimate the relative values of various incidents and personal qualities which have contributed to my successful career. Minor factors in that success have been the building of a railroad near my native town, the growth of population in the district creating a market for my products ; a plentiful supply of cheap labour ; my good fortune in obtaining capable foremen at reasonable wages ; and, last of all, the use of my recognised mental qualities, famed business foresight, and a determination to find regular employment for my beloved workpeople. My native town has indeed prospered : its population must have quadrupled during the last fifty years.

Jan. 9, 1909.—The granting of a commission on sales (usually called profit-sharing) to my shop managers has been a remarkable success, resulting in a large increase in trade. At a dinner which I gave to my staff a few days ago, several of the men spoke in eulogy of the commission scheme. They said, speaking with much feeling, that it had been a continual stimulus to increased exertion, and that without it their efforts to increase trade could not have been so determined. Some of the managers of my retail shops who proved incapable of response to this reasonable stimulus I have been compelled to dismiss.

I received to-day an acknowledgment of the cheque sent to the Guild of Help. It is with deep humility that I thank the Giver of All Blessings for such opportunities to succour the fallen. I notice that the receipt was signed by the chairman of the I.L.P., who is, I hear, chairman of the Guild.

July 9, 1909.—Following the example of my competitors, I twelve months ago placed a suggestion box in each department of my works. This was my scheme. If an idea occurred to any employee which he or she thought would conduce to the more economical working of the department, it was to be written down and placed in this box. For any adopted suggestion I promised a reward of 10s. The scheme has been fruitful—it is one more example of the value of that Mutual Aid which philanthropists see existing throughout all time.

Dec. 3. 1909.—I have been invited to woo the constituency in which I reside, in the Liberal interest. The city is an industrial one and important enough to warrant any expenditure. Have given my political agent £10,000 for charitable purposes, but I am on the horns of a dilemma as regards its distribution. If I give to both Liberal and Tory I shall be accused of trying to change Tory votes to Liberal ; if I give to Liberal alone I shall also be suspected of corruption. It is not my aim to debauch a constituency, but merely to help poor people with whom I hope to stand in intimate relationship.

The Trades Union Congress is being held here this year. I have invited the delegates to a dinner at my place, and also to visit my model factory and see how well-ventilated rooms make the girls work merrily and briskly. The local Liberal paper is sending a reporter to write up the delegates’ speeches. Have arranged for a series of whole page adverts in this paper—the proprietor is an earnest and useful man.

Feb. 6, 1910.—I learnt the value of sobriety and thrift at a Wesleyan Methodist Band of Hope. These cardinal virtues, having stood with me all possible tests, deserve wider recognition and acceptance, so, with this object in view, I purpose building a Wesleyan chapel. A suitable site, about half a mile from my factory, has been secured. It is in the centre of the city, between the Corporation Gas Works and Messrs. Tanquick’s large tanyard.

Hearing that about a dozen capable youths in this town, connected with the various religious bodies, were becoming infected with Socialism, and that in the ordinary way they may, perchance, become eloquent expositors of the Word, I have made arrangements to subsidise them and so allow them to attend a theological seminary. I often wonder why those Enemies of the Red Flag and similar organisations insist upon brazenly purchasing working-class talent : the bargain is too apparent. Clever working lads can be diverted from red ruin in far less ostentatious ways.

May 28, 1911.—I have to-day been pondering over the position I am placed in by recent legislation—I mean of the type of Workmen’s Compensation and State Insurance. Certainly I cannot oppose such legislation, although the new insurance scheme will cost me £500 per year. I readily allow that an employer of labour ought to stand in a moral relationship to his “hands.” He ought not to think always of buying cheap and selling dear, and overlook human duties.

Well-meaning persons say that an increase in the price of my commodities must be the result of this legislation, but they speak rashly. The price I receive for my goods is not just what I desire, not any price I please to ask, but it is defined by well-known economic laws. If I am to save the £500 I must act on different lines. For instance, I buy labour-power, and as a check upon it I intend to purchase an Automatic Time Register. I check other commodities which I purchase, and there is no legitimate reason why I should not rigidly check labour-power. I also intend to economise in the office, first by purchasing an Addressing Machine and a Calculating Machine. I can now obtain an addressing Machine which will address 3,000 customers an hour. This is the track I must follow—economise so that I may ultimately be a helpful citizen. I have given instructions to the head of each department to keep a watchful eye on the machinery market, and to be in touch with all new mechanical improvements. If Lloyd George does not lessen my income he has certainly succeeded in quickening my faculties. But let us not forget the apostolic instruction : “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” If we strive to carry out this great teaching we shall help forward that greater and nobler day when it shall be said of us:

Then in no were for the Party ;

   Then all were for the State ;

Then the great man helped the poor,

    And the poor man loved the great.

John A. Dawson

Capitalism and the Shopkeeper. (1911)

From the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist teaching of the truth that capital is becoming concentrated in the hands of a diminishing number of capitalists has been recently attacked, from two points of view, by the “illuminati” of the I.L.P. and by the Anarchists.

In both cases is the wish father to the thought. Both parties have a case to bolster up, and both have diligently sought for “facts” to support their tenets.

The Joint-Stock Company and the small shopkeeper are stock illustrations supposed to prove the theory of the division of capital among an increasing number of happy and deserving recipients. The “theory of increasing misery” has its converge in the theory of a slow but sure evolution into terrestrial paradise. No one will be able to say of any particular period: here ends capitalism and Socialism has its birth ; but the change will be gradual, peaceful, ethical—through the Joint Stock company and the small shopkeeper, and small reforms, vide Bernstein & Co. Let us look into the position of this small shopkeeper.

The English race have been reputed a nation of shopkeepers; the growth of multiple retail stores has suggested the remark that we are now a nation of managers. It is beyond dispute that the existence of thousands of company stores has limited the scope for individual success in the retail trade, and has driven the small retailer to accept the most casual and unremunerative portion of that trade. A huge business is carried on in multiple and chain shops, by mail-order businesses, departmental stores, and other massive concerns. They cause tradesmen great anxiety ; all along the line the small shopkeeper is exploited ; manufacturers are making attempts to deal direct with the consumer ; department stores are trying to filch suburban trade ; they are spoiling the retailer by well-organised mail-trading systems.

If the man with little capital can exist to day at all it is as a retailer; but even this small sphere of activity seems narrowing. Half a century ago little capital was required to become a retailer. In no branch of commerce is the personal factor, the knowledge of a customer’s wants and whims, of such value. The old tradesman was in personal contact with hundreds of his customers, and it was once thought that. here was a barrier to Joint Stock Company success in the retail trade. However, slower than in manufacture, but as surely, the big capitalist is gaining ground.

In the North of England the shopkeeper has two competitors—the multiple stores and the co-operative societies. These obtain the cream of the cash trade, and leave to the shopkeeper a hazardous credit trade, plus what he can catch when the stores are closed—for he works fifteen hours a day. Certainly, as one walks along and sees hundreds of small shops, it would seem as if the small trader throve in spite of powerful competitors. But even if we grant an increase in the number of small shops, it does not imply greater prosperity for their owners, nor that a certain number of proletarians have risen out of their class and become independent shopkeepers. In large towns hundreds of these “emporiums” are run by workingmen with the aim of adding a trifle to their petty wages, just as, as Kautsky has shown, in Belgium many of the belauded peasant proprietors work in contiguous mines and milk to help eke out a livelihood.

It is certainly the ideal of thousands of workingmen to “get out of the factory,” as the phrase goes, and live a life free from the factory buzzers, managers, and foremen ; alas, many are called but few chosen ! The majority of them have not even a sporting chance of obtaining a livelihood from their shop alone. Years ago such, small speculators had better opportunities of becoming successful retail merchants, but to-day they are snowed under by powerful enemies. The big fish, are swallowing the little fish even in a branch of commerce where so much is in favour of the small fry. The Marxian law surely stands unassailable everywhere if it is applicable to retail trading. The following figures relative to the number of shops in Prussia are taken from Bernstein’s “Evolutionary Socialism.”

Bernstein remarks : “It is not the large businesses that offer the most deadly opposition to the small ones; the latter provide it among themselves.” If he can obtain comfort from such statistics his position is surely in dire straits.

The better placed shopkeepers who manage to obtain a “living” are, too, getting more in the clutches of the big capitalists. Most retail tobacconists are merely agents for the Imperial Tobacco Company ; in the grocery line such firms as Lever Bros, are obtaining great power ; and in every department of retail trade we meet with combination and association. Competition is as dead as piety. Arrangements are made amongst manufacturers to keep up prices, and amongst retailers to do likewise. Small dealers attempt, through their associations, to buy collectively. A few weeks ago a Manchester ironmongers’ association actually discussed a proposal that they, as an association, commence a large store in the centre of the city, to enable them to fight the great firms with better prospect of success. These stores, it was stated, were stealing the most profitable portion of the trade ; and individually they could not compete with the splendid displays and powerful organisation of the stores.

The transition from a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of managers is the transition from “small to big industry,” analogous to the transition from handicraftsman to factory hand in the sphere of production. The journals which circulate amongst the various retailers are not blind to this change, however much the I.L.P. official gang may deny it. The “Boot and Shoe Trade Journal” is a better judge of the havoc wrought by company shops amongst small retailers than is Ramsay MacDonald or the editor of the “Labour Leader.” And when the present chairman of the I.L.P., Mr. W. C. Anderson, was peripatetic organiser for the Shop Assistants Union, his stock speech was a lament at the small opportunities possessed by modern shop assistants, of budding into independent shopkeepers.

The Socialist must wish for a quick awakening, both in the ranks of the shop assistants and those of the shopkeeper. The former in permanently proletarian, the latter liable to drop into the proletarian ranks at any moment. The assistant, working in a shop, amongst thirty more of his class, that shop being but one of six hundred owned by his employers, is better able to appreciate the vast changes in the retail trade than are I.L.P. critics and Anarchist theorisers with creeds to defend at any cost.

John A. Dawson

The Problem of High Prices. (1912)

From the August 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present is a period of high prices. Workers and merchants alike are grumbling and wondering at this troublesome phenomenon. The workers are in a state of half-conscious rebellion; strikes are frequent; attempts are made to bring wages up to the standard of the new prices of commodities. Merchants are receiving stereotyped letters all telling a like story: “Owing to the high cost of raw materials and fuel, and the increase of wages and salaries, the National Insurance Act, etc., etc., we are reluctantly compelled to raise our prices ten per cent."

Though a wholesale or retail merchant is well aware of the difficulty of getting enhanced prices, yet they jump to the conclusion that the manufacturer is raising prices simply because of his wicked individual craving to do so, in order to meet new expenses, etc. This we know to be absurd ; but what of capitalist combines? what of associations and selling agreements betwixt rings of ambitious exploiters ? Have these associations the power to do what economists say a number of competitors are powerless to do ? Are the admitted effects of supply and demand upon prices cancelled when capitalists form combines and “artificially" attempt to raise prices?

A trust may raise prices so extravagantly that another article is substituted. For instance, in normal times there can be no fancy price for coal: oil and electricity are ever feared by our coal barons.

Mr. Chiozza Money thinks that an important cause of present high prices is the increasing scarcity of tin, copper, and other metals. But even if a metal such as tin is scarce; even if it is scarce and a monopoly, there are obvious limits to prices—even to prices based upon a monopolist’s desires. If tin were to reach a much higher price it is probable that it would be rendered obsolete for domestic and other uses by aluminium ware, for the exploiters of a new article are ever on the watch ready to seize a new market.

But it is probable that laws operating under a regime of competition are cancelled under monopoly. If a coterie of capitalists can control the output in any trade, it would seem as if, within certain limits, they can raise prices. Now especially, when “trade is good," can prices be easily raised in well-organised trades; arrangements to raise prices have even been successful over periods of very slack trade. To the writer’s knowledge, amongst other things, wire fencing and cast iron holloware, articles subject to open competition and which anyone could manufacture, nave been price-maintained for years by a compact between capitalists which covered the whole trade. Better known instances are oil, screws, wallpaper, cotton thread, linoleum, tobacco, etc. The predominance of proprietary articles, price maintenance schemes, capitalist pools, and other such factors, are causing people to ask the question whether the influence on prices of supply and demand is not being modified by that “capitalist will’’ which economists once thought had so little influence. This issue is then raised : That if the profits in any trade rise above the average profit in all trades, then new capital is attracted to the super-profitable trade. Competition thus becomes more keen and profits tend down again to the normal. Is it not possible, however, for a newcomer in a trade that is protected by arranged prices, to be met with overtures and blandishments if he joins in the price scheme, and threatened with “price cutting" if he remains obdurate? Such a line of action would certainly not be novel.

The laws operating under competition are likely to be altered under monopoly, and even if the desires of capitalists have not unfettered scope, yet by plotting and using discretion it would seem as if they can obtain good financial results by arrangements amongst themselves, and can influence prices to a greater extent than was thought possible by economists.

Karl Marx and capitalist economists agreed in seeing a connection between cheap gold and high prices. Mr. McCulloch said: “It has been contended, by Mr. Locke and others, that the value of the precious metals is imaginary, or that it depends on the consent of the nations who have adopted them, to serve as a circulating medium. . . . Gold is not more valuable than iron, or lead, or tin, because of its greater brilliancy, durability, or ductility ; but simply because an infinitely greater outlay of capital and labour is required to produce a given quantity of gold than is required to produce the same quantity of either of these metals. ... It is sufficiently well known that those who employ their capitals in the working of gold or silver mines do not, upon the average, obtain any greater returns than those who are engaged in raising of coals or the manufacture of bricks. The production of the precious metals is not subjected to any species of monopoly or restraint. All individuals at their pleasure may employ capital in the extraction of bullion from the mines; and there is no conceivable limit to the extent to which its supply may be increased." To all this (save the babble of “capital and labour ") a Socialist can subscribe.

Marx, in his monograph on “Wage Labour and Capital," says: “ In the sixteenth century the gold and silver in circulation in Europe was augmented in consequence of the discovery of America. The value of gold and silver fell, therefore, in proportion to other commodities. The labourers received for their labour the same amount of silver coin as before. The money price of their labour remained the same, and yet their wages had fallen, for in exchange for the same sum of silver they obtained a smaller quantity of other commodities.”

According to “Whitaker's Almanack" the production of gold for the whole world since 1901 has taken the following course: In 1901 £54,000,000; in 1904, £69,000,000; in 1907, £85,000,000; in 1910, £95,000,000. And with the increasing quantities there have been discovered improved methods of treating the ore which lower the cost of production and renders the gold cheaper.

The two factors dealt with—cheaper gold and capitalist co-operation —would appear to account for the upward tendency of prices. Anyone hoping to benefit the workers by an attack on these two things is a reformer. They are effects of the capitalist system and only the destruction of capitalism will check such anti-social growths. There are the trade unions, struggling despairingly to keep wages on the track of advancing prices; there are currency cranks with financial fads for social salvation. Well, the progress of the Socialist movement may seem slow to those in the thick of the fight, but our progress is lightning-like compared with the injuries inflicted upon capitalism by such puny fighters. The effects of capitalism upon prices, the commodity quality of price will only cease when capitalism bites the dust.

John A. Dawson.

Kropotkin on the French Revolution. (1910)

Book Review from the March 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kropotkin’s work on the French Revolution, just issued in its English edition, professes to be written from the point of view of the “common people”. The author says: “The Parliamentary history of the Revolution, its wars, its policy and its diplomacy, has been studied and set forth in all its details. But the popular history of the Revolution remains still to be told. The part played by the people of the country places and towns in the Revolution has never been . . . narrated in its entirety.” (Page 4.) Kropotkin claims that his work, to a certain extent, fills the gap which previously existed. “the people,” he says, “long before the Assembly, were making the Revolution on the spot; they gave themselves, by revolutionary means, a new municipal administration.” (Page 108). Further: “The Assembly only sanctioned in principle and extended to France altogether what the people had accomplished themselves in certain localities. It went no further.” (Page 125.) Again, the middle-class Brissot said: “It is the galleries of the Convention, the people of Paris, and the Commune, who dominate the position and force the hand of the Convention every time some revolutionary measure is taken.” (Page 357.)

We know to-day that the French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, that from the assembling of the States General to the days of the Directory there was a succession of bourgeois assemblies, and that, above all, fear drove the Royalist party to cede first one point and then another, and further, that the bourgeoisie, once in unstable control of the State, was compelled, in order to keep the allegiance of its own lower ranks and the help of the incipient proletariat, to grant measures of relief, of political and legal reform. And, of course, a plentiful crop of promises. As Meredith puts it: “The rich will not move without a goad – I have and hold – you shall hunger and covet – until you are strong enough to force by hand.”

The French revolution was, then, a bourgeois revolution, made by a wealthy class, a class which, having gradually attained a position of economic advantage, determined on the grasping of political power as the proper safeguard of its interests. There can be little doubt that the English Revolution of 1640 and the great French Revolution were enacted by such.

But Kropotkin does not adopt the Marxian view that the root of historic change is to be found chiefly in economic development. He says that “It is always ideas that govern the world”, and he contends that two currents made the French Revolution. “One of them, the current of ideas, concerning the political reorganisation of States, came from the middle classes; the other, the current of action, came from the people,  . . . who wanted to obtain immediate and definite improvements in their economic condition.” (Page 1.)

There have been many attempts to explain the French Revolution in other than economic terms. Kropotkin thus largely attributes it to the work of the philosophers and teachers who preceded the Revolution, but after all his concept differs but little from that of Louis the Sixteenth, who, when he encountered the works of Voltaire and Rousseau in the library of the Order of Malta, referred to them as the source of all his misfortunes. Other historians have spoken of the whimsical and unbalanced character of the French people as the cause of the great Revolution, and this is surely as plausible as an explanation as the “idea” hypothesis of Kropotkin. Frederic Harrison, in his essays on the Meaning of History, gives a long and remarkable list of economic changes which the Revolution made, and Kropotkin himself recognises this when he says: “Before all this (i.e., the Revolution) could be realised they (the bourgeoisie) knew the ties that bound the peasant to his village must be broken. It was necessary that he should be free to leave his hut, and even that he should be forced to leave it, so that he might be impelled towards the towns in search of work.” (Page 8.) “As to the real authority, that was to be vested in a Parliament, in which an educated middle class, which would represent the active and thinking part of the nation, should predominate.” (Page 7.)

I remember once seeing an advertisement in an American magazine puffing up a well-known brand of revolvers. It was illustrated with a picture full of meaning. A paymaster stood behind a wire screen doling out wages. A few dozen piles of coins were laid in a row, and behind the screen were a few dozen rough looking men waiting for their wages. Within easy reach of the paymasters’ hand lay a revolver; one, as the advertisement grimly said, reputed for quick, accurate work at short notice. The revolver was emblematic of force, but here is the rub – what was there to prevent the men themselves likewise possessing these weapons celebrated for quick and accurate work? I think we can safely say that in the majority of cases it was the “idea” deeply imprinted on the minds of the men that the paymaster had a right to his piles of gold. Not that the illustration stops here, or we should be idealists; but this servile idea that property is sacred, a test of virtue and ability, had been sedulously instilled into the minds of those men by the paid orators and quibblers of the capitalist class. It is our work, we who are conscious of the working of class society, to combat that idea, and in this work we are aided by economic conditions; whilst the economic environment existing at the time of the great French Revolution was not adapted to the social ownership of the means of production and distribution. We Socialists, just as much as the hired hacks of the capitalist class, are products of our time. We move along the line of the law of things; to-day insecurity of existence for the many, production concentrating into monopoly, our vigorous propaganda, these are the elements which make for Socialism.

Kropotkin, however, gives us some acute criticism. He deals with the Communistic conception of Babeuf in a manner which is capable of application to our would-be sociologists of the I.L.P. Altogether Babeuf’s conception was so narrow, so unreal, that he thought it possible to reach Communism by the action of a few individuals who were to get the Government into their hands by means of a conspiracy of a secret society. He went so far as to put his faith in one single person, provided this person had a will strong enough to introduce Communism and thus save the world! (Page 491.) And so to the “Socialists” previously named it seems possible to reach Socialism by anticipating the workers’ class-consciousness, by “giving” the proletariat something; promising them amelioration with their enemies in power, and being so near sighted as to imagine that the crux of the problem lies in getting the suffix M.P. at the end of their leaders’ names, whilst the Socialist democracy is still in the making.

Kropotkin, on page 391 says: “Either there will be in the revolution (of the future) a day when the proletarians will separate themselves from the middle-class  . . . or this separation will not take place, and then there will be no revolution.” Now Kropotkin gives a detailed account of the position of Maximilien Robespierre. Robespierre was the tool of the third estate, the instrument of the newly wealthy, who were satisfied with the position they had obtained. He was not their hypocritical, conscious tool, for he was noted fir his rectitude and sincerity. But he was doing their work, nevertheless, when he was annihilating the Herbertists and Montagnards; for during the Terror, Louis Blanc tells us, out of 2,759 executions only 650 were wealthy people. Robespierre guillotined his “more advanced” co-workers. Then the “more conservative” of the bourgeoisie soon despatched Robespierre.

Liebknecht, in his short treatise No Compromise, says that the German Social Democrats have used opponents against opponents, but have never allowed their opponents to use them. Whether that be true or not, Kropotkin shows how during the French Revolution the proletariat were used by the bourgeoisie. At critical moments the poor were brought into the streets to fight and terrify the royalists. But when the terrifying was done they were sent back to their hovels to be patient and starve, and when the royalists had been beaten, the bourgeoisie did all that was possible to destroy the proletarian organisation in the sections. When the armies returned from the frontiers the men of the Faubourgs were surrounded and disarmed.

Kropotkin also brings out beautifully the work of the unknown toilers in the Revolution, the unknown organisers in the sections, of the type of the Communard of eighty years later, who died fighting at the barricades shouting, “For the solidarity of Humanity”. The Positivists set aside a day for the worship of “All the Dead”, of all those heroes by whose efforts and sacrifices, hopes and ideals, a better world has been made possible. Is it too sentimental to suggest that we also, amidst times of hoper and gloom, should give more than a stray thought to all those unknown comrades whose individual minute but collectively massive efforts have made Socialism something more than a Utopian dream?

John A. Dawson

Aggressive Lancashire Capitalists. (1912)

From the February 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rarely has our “free” Press had such an innings as during the recent cotton lock-out in Lancashire (and during the Parliamentary recess, too). Thousands of columns of servile paid trash have been written “about it and about.” Let us sift out the wheat from the chaff, and see what really is the position of the workers in Lancashire. Children leave school to work half-time in the weaving mills at the age of twelve, and full time at about thirteen. After “tenting,” or helping a four or six loom weaver, they get first two looms to look after, then in the course of time, three and four looms. Four is the usual number — when six are minded a “tenter,” or help, is necessary.

The average earnings per loom (given by Wood in his “History of Wages in the Cotton Trade”) are 6s. 6d. per loom per week for a two loom weaver ; 5s. 11d. per loom per week for a three loom weaver ; 6s. per loom per week for a four loom weaver; but many have help to pay for. Weavers having happy family connections or other exceptional help may become overlookers and earn 45s. or 50s. weekly, conditioned by the earnings of the weavers. The overlooker, paid on the weavers’ earnings, is thus tempted to keep production up to the maximum.

A large number of weavers are women, and when married many continue their employment. The sight of women taking out infants to their nurse at half past five on a winter’s morning is an incident of family life which only an anti-Socialist can appreciate. In Burnley, out of the total number of married women and widows, 33.8 percent. are occupied in various industries. The average earnings per loom before mentioned only applies to times of regular employment, “bad” times come, when many looms are stopped and fewer hours worked. Taking all in all, the outlook for a lad or lass when school is left behind, is, in Lancashire, much the drab, dull outlook of the worker the capitalist world over.

Beaming Radical politicians gloat over the extravagant prosperity of the weavers compared with the poverty of their forebears. Let us briefly examine the course of events.

In Lancashire, says Toynbee, “we can trace step by step the growth of the capitalist employer. At first we see, as in Yorkshire, the weaver furnishing himself with warp and weft, which he worked up in his own house and I brought himself to market.” By degrees he became dependent on the merchants at Manchester, who gave him out warp and raw cotton. Finally the merchant would get thirty or forty looms in a town — then came the great mechanical inventions.

The times when the weaver fully or partially controlled his product were decidedly his golden age. Down to the year 1810 the hand-loom weaver waxed fat; then the power loom caused a catastrophe. Even in 1833 the hand loom weavers out-numbered the power loom weavers by three to one. Says Mr. Wood: all the records agree that an extraordinary fall in prices paid and amounts earned by hand loom weavers took place between the early years of the century and 1830-40. In Lancashire in 1806, according to the same authority, there existed :

80,000 to 100,000 factory operatives earning 9s 6d. to 10s 6d. per week.
165,000 hand-loom weavers earning 18s. to 24s. per week.

From the year 1806 down a rapid change took place in the earnings of the hand-loom weavers, a reduction in wages of 50 per cent. taking place in 25 years. The competition was drastic, and it was not until 1840 that the turn was taken, and not until the year 1890 that the wage level (nominal wage) of 1800 was again reached truly a century of progress for the workers.

Besides changes in piece wages (for over 30 years stationary) there are two factors affecting the wages of weavers: the speeding-up of the looms and the increase in the number tended. These factors become more important if we remember that in the year 1901 over 350,000 fewer persons were employed in the textile trades than in 1851; a diminution contemporary with a constant increase in the quantity of textiles produced. If we take the cotton trade alone we find a slight increase in the number employed, an increase, however, negligible compared with the vast difference in the amount of stuff produced This is the truth: after a century of mechanical change we have not equalled the conditions existing prior to that change — now power loom production is established the worker is in many ways in an inferior position to that of the weaver in the palmy days of the hand-loom. If it is not so I should be pleased to see some textile union leader haul forth some facts.

To come to the lock-out, during the past year an attempt has been made to bring non-unionists into the ranks of the textile unions. Oral persuasion failed in some cases, and the weavers at an Accrington mill refused to work with non-unionists. The reply of the masters was to lock out the bulk of the weavers in Lancashire. Now what were the masters' motives for their action ? Were they anxious that a few non-unionists should have freedom or license or liberty or some other abstract concept? Reverse the position and imagine that but ten percent. of the weavers were in the union, and that the ninety per cent. non-unionists threatened to cease work unless the unionists abandoned the union — would then the bosses have prated about freedom and liberty? It is not at all likely. The unionists would have to surrender, for at such a time, in the midst of a trade boom, the mills would never have closed, and it would have been left to the philosophers to prate about liberty. So in the case of the lock out it cannot be possible that the bosses were much bothered about the few non unionists.

In searching for reasons for the lock out it is necessary to ask: Were the masters opposed to the trade unions on principle? Would they not rather negotiate with the unions than with unorganised workers? The following quotation from the “Manchester Guardian” of Jan. 20th, the day following the settlement, is apt here : 

“Comparatively few employers could be found to deny, or even question, the advantage winch they as employers have gained from the regulation of wages and the general systemisation of conditions of employment which their own associations and the uuions have jointly brought about. We believe that a great majority of employers wish the unions to be strong, if for no other reason than that they shall be able to prevent the minority of what may be described as non-union employers from competing unfairly with them by paying wages less than the standard rates.”

The following gem is from the “Blackburn Daily Telegraph'' of Jan. 19th. The manufacturers “have a direct interest in the effective working of the employees’ unions, which they have no desire to see smashed, as they operate effectively in keeping prices at a uniform rate. The absence of these organisations would result in certain firms underpaying, to the detriment of all fair competition.”

Such citations could be reproduced in abundance from the capitalist Press at the time of the lock out.

It is the writer's opinion that the cotton capitalists do not desire to smash the unions so long as they retain their present servile position. Then why the lock out? Why this apparently disproportionate, huge lock out in reply to a strike at a single mill? Does it not look as if it were a case of using a steam hammer to smash a nut, even if there was danger of an extension of the strike? The truth is probably this—that within the Lancashire unions exists a militant section, and it is this minority which has taken the initiative on the non-unionist question and forced action upon the supine majority in the unions. The capitalists are not afraid of trade union leaders of the old school, but, rightly or wrongly, they look with suspicion on the activities of a section of the workers.

The lock-out was settled on terms that left the weavers in a worse position than before the non-unionist agitation. When the terms were known meetings of protest were held in many weaving centres; in Nelson. Accrington, Blackburn and other towns vigorous language was used anent the terms obtained, a majority of those who take an interest in the working of the unions condemned their “delegates” Unfortunately, many are insensitive to humiliation by employers, and it is such the “delegates” lean upon for a mechanical support.

This minority I speak of are not Socialists; they are no doubt reformers and would disavow the class war. But the silly habit of looking upon capitalism as a thing that was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, is fading away. A more rebellious, if uninformed, spirit animates many of the workers. It is this which the masters fear.

Many factors are at work which will in the near future bring these operatives to see that Socialism is the only way out of the mire. Their stationary wages, the increase in the cost of living, the failure of the Labour Party, the “flitting” of their leader, Shackleton, the obvious permanency of their proletarian condition under the present system—all such factors must tend to compel the workers in Lancashire to make the war against the bosses political besides industrial; and permanent, not haphazard and fitful.

John A. Dawson.

The "Great Man" Fallacy. (1909)

From the June 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

In certain circles one becomes so accustomed to hearing Carlyle cited as an infallible authority, especially on matters social and economic, that it requires some temerity to attack his teachings. In those discussion classes and mutual improvement societies connected with the Sunday schools in our towns and cities, the very name of Thomas Carlyle seems to effectually smother one's opponent in controversy. And it is amazing that in many “Socialist” clubrooms photographs of Carlyle and Ruskin adorn the walls as if these “literary gents’’ were not merely democrats, but even revolutionary Socialists.

What, then, is the gospel according to Carlyle? It is that history with its dynastic and class struggles, progress—mental and moral, great nations, important discoveries; all is the work of a few individual clever men. I quote from “Hero Worship.” “Universal History, the history of what has been accomplished in this world, is at the bottom the history of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.”

But there is nothing scientific in attributing history to the work of a few great men. History, according to Carlyle, is but the biography of the great men who have lived in the world. The real problem is: why have certain races qualities, virtues, vices, talents and institutions which other races lack? And history is of utility only when it ceases to be graphically descriptive or effusively personal, and attempts to explain the working of those deeper seated economic and physical forces which mould human society. Great men and even mighty empires are of little import when compared with the working of these powerful economic and physical forces.

Buckle, in his “History of Civilisation” has dealt with physical factors. He lucidly proves the great influence of climate, soil, and the general aspect of nature, showing how the huge empires of India, Assyria, Egypt and Peru were created in luxuriantly fertile regions on the banks of large, navigable rivers. The difference between the Laplander and the Hindoo, the Spaniard and the Anglo-Saxon, can to a certain extent be explained by their physical environments. The industrial habits, the religious conceptions, and the mental life of different races of humans can only be accounted for by admitting the potency of varying environments.

Lewis Morgan, in his work on Ancient Society, has shown the importance of the economic factor. Man is the only creature that can manufacture tools and thus create new environments entirely undreamt of by the tool discoverers. We sometimes say that economic amelioration is the direct cause of moral improvement. Take these four factors: the discovery of cereals (wheat, maize, etc.), the domestication of animals, the use of stone and brick in architecture, the discovery of the manifold uses to which iron can be put —take these few discoveries, and it is not too much to say, that once existing, the battle for civilisation, for power over nature, was won. Says Morgan “The discovery of the process of smelting iron ore was the discovery of discoveries in human experience, without a parallel, besides which all other inventions and discoveries are insignificant." And if one ponders over the place which iron occupies in our every day life we can see that Morgan hardly over-stated the case.

It is probable that humans ceased to eat captives taken in battle not from any moral betterment, but from the fact that it was more lucrative to make them labour for their captors. Slavery thus succeeded cannibalism. This new institution, slavery, radically altered ancient society; it created an aristocratic class living off the labour of the slave, a class with leisure, and by means of that leisure art, science, and literature were cultivated. But I cannot labour this point. Suffice it here to say that as new methods of production were born, as slavery became feudalism and feudalism became capitalism, important social and moral changes also took place.

A favourite subject in debating societies is: what would be the present condition of England if Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo, or Europe if William the Norman had lost the battle of Hastings, or of European civilisation if the Greeks had been beaten at Salames? These questions carry us into the heart of the question of genius and its effect upon social and economic conditions. Carlyle, of course, would answer: without the existence of these mighty men the history of the world must have taken different channels, their influence was incalculable. The Socialist, however, will say: it mattered little to the mass of the people, the working class, whether Napoleon won or was soundly thrashed at Waterloo. National boundaries to-day might be slightly or greatly different, but it is probable that the application of steam power to manufacture would have been the same, and this application caused a revolution more radical and permanent than any ever made by a mighty warrior. Napoleon was beaten at Waterloo, and we are surrounded by social and economic inequality and injustice. Had he won we should still be living in a capitalist state—and one need not say more than this. For the working class that great battle did not mean a higher or a lower standard of living, but, as was usual with all such conflicts, it implied: which nation shall be the paramount buccaneer? For is not capitalism making uniform the lives of the working class in all countries? As Hervé has so well put it, “There is at present no country so superior to any other that its working class should get themselves killed in its defence.”

Let us take, for instance, those great improvements in machine production which were the gift of the nineteenth century to progress, and we shall see the fallacies involved in Carlyle’s heroic theory. Modern spinning machinery is said by Hobson to be a combination of about eight hundred inventions. And necessity is the mother of invention. The inventor must live in a suitable age, he must be adapted, in harmony with his environment. Lord Lytton in his historical novel “The Last of the Barons” gives us a living picture of an inventor who was born, as we say, before bis time. This work is based on events which occurred in the fifteenth century. It shows the inevitable failure of the inventor of a machine in such an age, before a population of workers divorced from the land, and before the spirit of “economic rationalism,” the desire to invest money to make money, had been born. As Lytton puts it; “The grim age devours ever those before, as behind, its march; and confounds in one common doom the too guileless and the too wise.”

The position of the great man as inventor in the middle ages is thus obvious. He was accused of being a wizard, a sorcerer, or a necromancer. The fate that befel Roger Bacon was probable, perhaps inevitable. We cannot explain the great discoveries of any epoch as due solely to a large number of those “accidental” variations whom we term men of genius. We must account for the development of machine production by the presence of factors favourable to, and the absence of factors unfavourable to, the application of thought to machine invention. And the middle ages, with their intricate guild restrictions, their fantastic chivalry, the extremely local markets and the position of the peasants on the land, all contributed to form an environment unsuitable to the use of power machinery on a large scale. The age thus shapes the work of the “great” men.

If we divide history m the orthodox manner into the Old Stone, the New Stone, and the Bronze Ages, and give to each period its appropriate discoveries, we shall see that not only do we owe a debt of gratitude to “Humanity,” but also that progress is universally due to the combined efforts of millions of unknown individuals, just as the chalk cliffs of England are formed of the residue of countless myriads of minute organisms. Says Clodd, “Not many noble nor mighty are called to the euduriug tasks of nature. It is the minute agents, unresting and wide-spread, that have been the efficient causes of much that is grandest in earth structure.” So in social history. Mallock has recently said that the working class is not underpaid but wantonly overpaid, because, forsooth, the manual labourer as such is no more efficient than he was in Roman times. The growth of productive power, of course, is due to the élite, the mental and moral few, the real aristocracy! But why return to Roman times ? Why not to our quassi-simian forerunners? Surely they, houseless, without tools or the knowledge of fire, were in the position the workers deserve to be in to-day—would be in but for the spontaneous initiative and all-round mentality of our monopolisers of “directive ability.” But Marx’s wonderful chapter on Co-operation dissolves the sophistries of Mallock. “It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist” Truly the capitalist is not a great man, he is not a monopolist of ability; he simply has that peculiar mental and moral twist which adapts him to modern economic conditions.

The teaching of Carlyle, that we hold certain ideas of economics and morality because of the influence of individual clever men, is now predominant and taught in our schools. We know how history is written. It is the deification of the Empire builder, the mighty king, the great statesman. It is worship without limit. The old historians could not condescend to discuss social conditions and ordinary events. Minute descriptions of the personal habits of the great king, his likes and dislikes, the contour of his features, the colour of his hair—this makes up our school history. The stage is occupied with gorgeous display, while the mainspring, the common human machinery in the background, the fret and toil of ordinary humans which makes the servile show possible.is ignored as too obscure and petty to chronicle. When I read the history of Greece I am not impressed by the oratory of Demosthenes or the statesmanship of Pericles. But I note that Corinth alone contained slaves by the thousand dozen, and I ask: what was the economic condition of this class? what did they know of science or art or literature? Dickens has spoken of men and women who all go in and out at the same hours, to do the same work; people to whom every day is the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. These are the people history should speak to us about, and not of depraved parvenus and braggart buffoons of royal descent. Then I say to every working man and woman: before you read the life of Cicero or Aristotle or Julius Caesar, before you become immersed in trivial biography, study well the conditions of life and labour of your social ancestors in Greece, in Rome, in the middle ages. The proper study of a working man is working-class conditions.

To Alexander the “Great” the position he obtained meant a development of his faculties and the possibility of exercising his talents which otherwise might have lain dormant. The position of a powerful king or a privileged class might allow the cultivation of intellectual charm or physical beauty by a chosen few. But Lincoln well said that no man is good enough to be another’s master without the other’s consent. There is no such thing as a good despotism. What are dubbed good despots are viler than bad ones, for without making for stable or genuine progress, they create a flabby, servile people, devoid of initiative or activity. No permanent progress can be made except by improving the common human material. Democracy is the only possible method of preventing a single “great” man from becoming, by a union of talent and opportunity and ambition, a good or bad despot, a terrible source of oppression. But even despots can only reign long when they correctly represent the interests of a dominant class. Socialism is the only possible method of preventing a class from monopolising the great machinery of wealth production, and perverting science and the arts to their own ends. And Socialism would not eliminate genius. It would merely prevent humans of genius and those super-privileged men of talent whom we have often mistaken for such, using any class as a milch cow from which to extract “economic rent."

John A. Dawson

Reflections on the Cotton Lock-out. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The cotton lock-out has been ‘‘settled," accompanied by the tedious Te Deums of our sycophantic clergy, the benedictions of our prosperous trade union organisers, and the “we are glad both sides are reasonable” sermons of our Liberal newspapers. To-day every strike and lock-out gives clear proof of the bankruptcy of trade unionism, of its utter inability to permanently raise the standard of the workers’ existence. In Lancashire the big unions are monsters of indifference, organisations bossed by mediocre bureaucrats, with a rank and file taking little interest in the working of the union, save when the mill “breaks down,” and they become entitled to a few week’s "break-down pay.”

Some of these unions resemble the mediaeval guilds; jobs are handed down from father to son ; it is sure that one must possess family influence, either lineal or collateral, to be able to enter the union and learn the trade. At their best these unions are looked upon as attempts to preserve the status quo to try to preserve, if possible, even the present "heavy and varied condition of the operatives' breakfast table.”

The boisterous crowds whom we read of as patrolling the streets of Oldham during the first day of the lock-out were not enthused and noisily happy because of a coming fight on some vital question with their bosses, but simply because they were confident of the "give and take” policy of their leaders bringing the lock-out to a speedy end.

Their leaders! What an array of altruistic capacity passes before our vision when we think of the men who “led” the workers during the lock-out! Working-men J.P.s ! Is there anywhere such another anomaly ? In Lancashire they flourish abundantly. These leaders conceive it to be their duty to punish the small, petty, found-out thieves who are the natural product of capitalism. "Justice of the Peace” is almost a synonym for "labour leader" in Lancashire. If the workers put their trust in such mental small fry, what wonder that their condition shows no sign of alleviation!

In the Manchester Guardian of Oct. 5 1908, referring to meeting of "Oddfellows” at Nelson, Mr. Shackleton's constituency, that gentleman in the course of speech is thus reported:

  “Alluding to the presence on the platform of Mr. Wilkinson Hartley, chairman of the Nelson Cotton Manufacturers Association, Mr. Shackleton said that he and Mr. Hartley had often met before, and had had some tough battles. That night they could shake hands and welcome each other as brothers desirous of furthering a great movement. As long as they could get on with men like Mr. Hartley, there was security for the peace and well-being of Lancashire, and its principle trade might be carried on to the best advantage of the community.”

In the same paper of Dec. 28, 1908 a photograph was published of Mr. Shackleton occupying the position of chairman at a meeting of the Labour Co-partnership Association, with Mr. A. J. Balfour and Sir. C. Furness on his right and Mr. Henry Vivian and similar "men of thought who waged contention with their times decay” on his left. One understands Mr. P. Snowden’s remark, in a speech to his constituents during the lock-out, that "He had followed this dispute, and he could not call to mind any form of industrial dispute in which one side had showed a disposition to be reasonable, to compromise and to make sacrifices in order to avoid a stoppage of work to the extent that the operative leaders had.” (Manchester Guardian, 10.4.10.)

The results obtainable from the capers of these leaders of the Lancashire operatives are manifested in that speech of Mr. Snowden’s. Continued penury exists in spite of Labour M.P.’s teetotal sermonising; an inability to improve their economic position to even the least extent is inevitable when the workers’ leaders fraternise with their enemies the bosses on so-called neutral platforms, and truckle and accept defeat when any dispute is in "progress.” Strange that a Socialist platform never becomes a "neutral ” one !

Let the labour leaders learn from a bourgeois historian. "The warfare of capital and labour in England has been more prolonged than any other historical struggle. Dynastic wars, wars of religion, wars on behalf of balance of power, wars for supremacy in commerce have been waged in Europe for lengthened periods. But none has been so lasting as that between employer and labourer. The history of the contest is to be extracted from the Statute Book in laws long since repealed or modified, or become obsolete.” (Prof. T. Rogers, “ Economic Interpretation of History". Vol. 1.. p 23)

After such an admission by a Liberal of the type of Thorold Rogers we reach the limits of inanity when it is seriously contended that our labour leaders are on the road to Socialism! There is no class struggle! say those gentlemen. Well then, we may ask. what has your class fraternity led to but the tighter grip of the capitalist on the means of life?

Other lines of thought are stimulated by this lock-out. Our "Industrial Unionist" friends seem to expert miraculous results from a “unified” working class bound together in a few large trade unions. I ask, what if these unions continue to be collared by leaders whose only qualification is their safe mediocrity and the extraordinary vitality of their tongues? What if the working class is still non-Socialist ? Given a non-Socialist proletariat we can bind them, or they can bind themselves, into either a dozen large unions or a thousand miniature ones, but the leaders would still be Shackletons, Snowdens and Gills, and the promised land would still be afar off, for not even Industrial Unionism can make bricks without straw, or create the Socialist Commonwealth without Socialists.

John A. Dawson

My Friend Jones. (1909)

A Short Story from the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like the printer in Ibsen’s “Enemy of Society," I am a man of discreet moderation and of moderate discretion. I disclaim and abhor violence. I am one who is prepared to compromise with the enemy to obtain part of what I desire. When agitating for a specific loaf l am ready to accept either half the loaf or the promise of a quarter at some early future. Society is not composed of blacks and whites, or clear-cut classes of workers and shirkers, like my friend Jones imagines. I once thought that as he grew out of youth he would cast aside his perverse, impossible spirit. Society is an organism, a growth, a whole of which we humans are interdependent cells; and my politics and economics are not rigid, cut and dried doctrines, but flexible and fluid habits of mind. Let me give you a few examples of his ridiculous rigidity.

Our town boasts a successful debating society. Many of my Labour comrades entered this society with the avowed aim of cunningly permeating the debaters with a moderate, calm Socialism. Whatever the subject matter of the debate was we astutely endeavoured to show its relation to Socialism. Especially when the orthodox subject of State Socialism was dealt with by the enemy in the orthodox manner did we try our level best to show the society that the essayist was attacking a noxious and antiquated chimera. We were slowly compelling by superior logic, even our opponents to see that the old, rigid, unemotional, cataclysmic, class-struggle Socialism was un-English—Continental, in fact—and is now entirely discredited. I personally played a prominent part in showing how we attain Socialism step by step, now by the abolition of barmaids, now by Sunday closing of drinking dens, now by finite but ever increasing taxes on the value of land. The old view of the coming of Socialism, the expropriation of the expropriators, the stubborn opposition of the plutocracy, the determined democracy, the blood-red dawn of the Socialist Monday morning—all this I ruthlessly exposed by explaining how all successful modern exponents of Socialism believed in such a peaceful, pellucid transition to Socialism that no one would be able to say that here at a definite stage capitalism capitulated, and here the Socialist Commonwealth was born.

Then up rose my friend Jones and to the very evident glee of the enemy attacked my moderate, permeating Socialism after the manner of his kind, brazenly, vigourously, and with the self- confidence peculiar to him. He poked fun at my “organic social movements” and substituted his hair-raising class war; he declared that the fantastic analogies of all the “philosophers" from Spencer to Macdonald were no adequate equivalent for the clear-drawn illustrations of the Marxian class struggle. He had no faith in the crux of our creed, that the social instincts of the plutocracy will prove more powerful than their class interests. He attacked bluntly every institution of any note whether political, charitable, or charitable-theological, from the Fabian Society to the Emigration Army. The Liberal leaders who would meet us half way were humbugs, the Labour leaders had been humbugged. Palliatives postponed Socialism. Socialism spelt revolution, the deliberate, conscious overthrow of capitalism; the working class organised politically, with their representatives in Parliament, economically, in enlightened Socialist Trade Unions. In short, the work of months was undone. The society no longer accepts our assertion that revolutionary Socialism is cremated. We have, through the impulsive Jones, the onerous task of defending not simply a minimum wage, a minimum of education, a minimum of leisure and the conduct of the Labour Party, but even now Socialism itself. I am afraid that we shall be compelled to cancel Jones’ speaking engagements with our local Labour Representation Committee.

But the climax of my friend’s political career came when he was our candidate at a municipal election. His election address was unpractical and doctrinaire; it lacked constructional spirit; it was brusque in dealing with some of the chief planks on our programme, viz., that we should have better railway facilities in one of our wards, and that the recreation ground was in want of repairs. And when but three days from the poll he rashly alienated the Nonconformist and Salvation Army votes. “General” Booth had just previously passed through the town on a tour, and Jones took advantage of the occasion to make a badly timed attack on what he termed “Salvation Syrup.’’ But the Nonconformist incident was typical of the impossibilist spirit. My friend’s election committee had invited a very popular and influential dissenting minister to address a meeting for the people’s cause. At the great risk of offending his congregation the minister accepted. He was a new convert to Socialism. I just forget the particular organisation of which he was a member—a “League of Progressive Thought’’ or something of that kind. But certainly it was a Socialistic organisation. Jones.was glum and saturnine when informed about his new comrade, but nothing he said prepared us for his unwise and precipitate action at the meeting.

It was certainly a great meeting. The council school was full and cheers greeted the plucky young minister when he arose to give hie address—or sermon, as Jones said. I thought his speech splendid. He declared himself in favour of an eight hours day for railway workers, endowment of motherhood, and a Minister of Labour. He also spoke well in an appeal for the cultivation of the best sort of Socialism, the improvement of individual character, the care of the Soul: for was not the regeneration of the individual the aim alike of the Church and of Socialism ? He showed how Martin Luther and John Wesley each had dim but unmistakable premonitions of the Socialist idea; and with his fine tenor voice moved his audience to tears by an earnest condemnation of contemporary society as a mingling of blank and blatant Atheism and the most unrighteous materialism.

Then Jones spoke. He almost sneered at the minister's vivid denunciation of the slum. Flat and plain he said that had he been aware of the minister's ideas he would never have occupied a platform by his side, and that if the reverend gentleman wanted regeneration and abolition of blatant Atheism he would discover suitable allies amongst the Primitive Methodists.

The election was not won. Jones is not yet councillor or member of Parliament. His latest freak is to join a small and noisy gang of impossibilists. These men are such a body of troublesome revolutionaries, that the cultured and elegant editor of the Socialist Review tells us that they are driving our sensitive Labour leaders into the arms of the Liberal party. They heckle our lecturers, demand debating engagements, and frighten the life out of our young speakers. They forget that the English working man is not built after the fashion of bis French and German compeers: he is definitely conservative, with a defendable love for venerable traditions and ancient institutions. So we must humour him and organise a Labour party without a programme, for as our comrade Wardle, who is a member of Parliament — a body which is the Will of All, the general active Will of the nation — as our comrade has shown, a pregramme was the means of wrecking the historic Liberal party, and will be the destruction of the Labour Party if it is so forgetful of its constructive spirit as to adopt one.

John A. Dawson

An S.D.P. Curio. (1909)

From the October 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

A surprising discovery has been recently made in an old, old Roman camp at Elslack, near Skipton. It was a volume shaped like an exercise book, made of that inferior kind of paper which stamped it at once as reminiscent of the twentieth century. In some strange way it had become mingled with the potteries and coins of the old camp, perhaps left there by some twentieth century explorer. A thorough examination proved it to be an old minute book belonging to the Burnleigh Branch of the Social Democratic Party, and as luckily a specialist in things historical is now investigating the wobbling and bewildering policy of this one time well-known party it will perchance be of valuable historical interest. I write a few extracts culled at random from this mysterious volume.

The Secretary, Mr. I. Dirving, read the minutes of previous meeting. Twenty-five members present. Queetons were invited on the minutes. Tertullian inquired about the antics of Mominsen, who had recently joined the Tariff Reformers (these being one of the side-tracking sects of that time). Was it true that this Mominsen had been cheekily saying that ha had as much right to advocate Tariff Reform as a palliative as other Socialists had Free Imports? Another member remarked that Mominsen was gulling the workers by a deliberate distortion of the word “palliative,” for was not Socialism itself a palliative?

Arising out of the minutes Euselrius enquired as to the truth in the report of a member mentioned having tried to form a suicide club, consisting of those members of the branch who were Conscious Pessimists,and uttered in unison an amount of commonplace pseudo-philosophic pessimism anent the impossibility of cultivating the working class—not including in the phrase “working class,” of coarse, the members named. He was informed that the allegation was an S.P.G.B. calumny, and that one S.P.G.B. firebrand in particular was persistently commenting on the alleged indifference of certain S.D.Peers because they had, after a few years’ experience of reform agitation been “fed up” with it. Many other members of the branch had also been charged by the same clique with holding a foolish fatalism and with being like those Eastern philosophers mentioned by Gibbon who “sat motionless year after year absorbed in the contemplation of their own navels.”

Celsus questioned about members of the branch sitting on the directive board of the Co operative Society, whether the Society was a revolutionary body, and could members improve working-class conditions by being on the picnic or library committees of the society. He was told that fine work had been done by our members, that margarine was being bought shillings a cwt cheaper owing to the exertions of one of our members, and that Mr. H. G. Wells' great work, “New Worlds for Old," had been placed on the library shelves.

Origen asked the secretary if they could not obtain more uniformity in their speakers, that one week the speaker would condemn palliatives and the four following weeks perhaps the lecturers would speak of reforms with laudation. It was pointed out that the action of a certain organisation made it imperative that occasionally we have speakers who would put the straight position, but it would be seen to at election times that the more extreme men were silenced in some way.

Arising from the correspondence a member said it was sad to think the Sunday morning discussion class was to be abandoned, and what was the reason? Answered that the previous year had seen a successful choir and cycling club, but that for some incomprehensible reason the discussion class had been a complete fiasco. Besides, a discussion class attracted a certain sententious type of individual not possessed of the sweet reasonableness of the choir members. They saw the dilemma. The wreckers or blackleg Socialists would attend and argue indefinitely, while their own members were apathetic toward politics. It had, however, been definitely decided to form a class for the study of botany; a dart club was also to be originated. He believed, said the secretary, their comrades at Sarle Hyke boasted the finest dart team in the Kingdom.

Augustine questioned on the matter of Socialist councillor Harry Lee Henry being on the committee of the Guild of Help, an organisation formed for the economic distribution of alms. The secretary said that the Guild of Help was a non-party organisation, witness the fact that both Liberal and Tory were connected with it. The larger a material platform, remarked the chairman, the more it would accommodate, but the larger a mental platform the smaller the number it would hold. As an organisation they must be tolerant so as to attract all and sundry to the fold.

Epictetus said: arising from this point, had their candidates come to any agreement on the reform question? It was answered that one was opposed to secular education, another to compulsory evening schools, another to proportional representation, but they had united on the common ground of a complete abolition of the smoke nuisance, and incidentally on the question of Socialism.

Lucian asked could they not amalgamate with the I.L P. in the town and thus prevent confusion in the minds of the workers. They had a common aim, Socialism, and agreed on the desirability of working with the trade union forces. Why not present a united front to the enemy? Answer: the S.D.P. as an organisation refused to join the National Labour Party, but locally individual branches had a free hand. Just as a general on the field of battle must adapt his tactics in different parts of the field to varying requirements, must sometimes practice contradictory tactics at one and the same time, may both be traitor and patriot, cautious tactician and daring fighter; just as in logic a thing can both be and not be—

Here the manuscript ends.

John A. Dawson

Waste Paper and Old Tin. (1909)

From the November 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Capitalism, with all its attendant evils of poverty and distress, is doomed. The dawn of the Cooperative Commonwealth is even now at hand: be it yours to vote and work to hasten the noontide of the happier day it promises for us all. .  .  . I have, as you know; always stood as a Socialist, in favour of a definite programme and policy on Socialist lines, because I am convinced that by the realisation of Socialism alone can the many injustices and inequalities of social and industrial life be redressed."

The above is culled from the election address of Mr. Dan Irving, issued this November to the electors of Burnley. It is the theoretical, the word-stuff specifically coined to catch flats. Now for the real—and the anti-climax.

The "Burnley Express” of October 9th contained a report of a Council meeting, the star turns “Socialist” councillors Irving and Lees being present. A question of vital importance to the worker was under discussion, not one of your puny palliatives, but a knotty administrative, collective ownership, municipal enterprise problem. “To institute a system of collecting waste paper and cardboard, apart from other refuse, from tradesmen; and also to recommend the purchase of a tin-crushing machine” (to smash with lightning celerity dilapidated salmon tins). Harry Lees mentioned paper collecting systems at Bury and said that this method kept the streets tidy and the tips sightly; and the tin-crushing machine took up very little room and would cost but £100. and the saleable value of the tins would be increased four or fivefold. Liberal councillor Race suggested that the tins might after all be crushed by the steam roller, but ridiculous! responded Lees, who pointed out that Nelson (which boasts a Labour council and mayor) made a profit of £25 a year by tin crushing. Dan Irving submitted that if they collected waste paper from shops less would get into the streets. But by a vote of 18 to 8 it was decided that a tin-crushing machine was not required, and another example of municipal "Socialism” was ruthlessly crushed in the bud. £25 profit in a year! Could it not have been used to lower the rates, or to cover the expenses of a deputation to Guernsey to investigate the market building scheme?

And this is what the Social Democratic movement in Burnley has culminated in. Men and women who have been in the thick of the fight, who have been victimised by ruthless employers and compelled to seek fresh fields and pastures new, or have given gratuitously time and energy to street corner agitation and converse with their mates in the workshop, those who have canvassed and paid and worked and borne obloquy—all receive their reward in such laughable and petty administration. Those who have worked and remain S.D.Pers, those who have worked and ratted, those who have worked and tired.—we ask one and all, is this what you have worked for? If not, come outside and join the only Socialist organisation in Great Britain.

John A. Dawson

The Influence of Machinery upon the Working Class. (1912)

From the January 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

J. S. Mill, to the surprise of the Radicals. said that it was “questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes.” We of the Socialist Party have always held that labour saving devices have not lessened the sum total of work that is done by the workers, or increased the remuneration they receive for that work.

This position we defend against “cheery” social reformers who contend that machinery has had a beneficial effect upon working class conditions; that it has brought us nearer to a heaven upon earth.

They assert that machinery has (1) shortened the working day, (2) abolished heavy and wearying work, (3) educated the worker by giving him intricate machinery to mind, (4) lowered the price of commodities, (5) whilst negatively it is contended that it has not made employment more irregular, nor caused any considerable amount of suffering by disturbing working conditions when applied to new industries. All misery attendant on machine production is due to Free Trade, or Protection, or Land Monopoly, or some other Will-o’ the Wisp.

Machinery, says the Liberal, has deepened the working man’s chest and increased his stature by shortening the hours of work. When he says “shortened hours” we promptly ask “compared with when?” And as promptly comes the answer : “In comparison with the hours worked in the ‘hungry forties,’” or “when my grandfather was a lad.”

To compare present hours of work with the length of the working day in that transitional period when capitalism was in its birth throes (with the aim of extolling the difference) is an inane procedure.

Thorold Rogers has shown the comparative leisure of the worker under the system of “small production”—with that we need not deal. If we take our case at its worst and compare hours of work to-day with the hours toiled in the early years of capitalism, we find justification for our case. We find that side by side with the shorter working day has come a quicker pace, a more rapid rate of production, a faster consumption of working-class brain, nerve, and muscle. Whether it be in the sphere of production—at lathe or loom, or in distribution on train, tram, or taxi, the working pace is fierce.

Even if we examine types of work where steam-power cannot be applied—office routine and the like—we find mechanical appliances such as calculating machines, typewriters, dictating appliances, etc., adding to the intensity of the workers’ grind.

The spheres of production and distribution are worked at such a pace that even porters and packers and carmen and shopworkers and the like are affected by the pace which permeates from the departments where machinery reigns as God. The change from the leisurely life of the 17th. century to the horrid bustle of to-day is a change so scenic, so grim, so fraught with great possibilities and fearsome forebodings, that one’s brain whirls at the revolution — and one smiles at fussy politicians and dozy economists. Machine production under private ownership has rendered futile the behest to “love thy neighbour” and ushered in the modern cry: "Get on or get out!"

Economists tell us that machinery is abolishing heavy and “very laborious” work. But whilst machinery has a tendency to make work less “ muscular,” we must not forget that (as J. A. Hobson puts it): “As regards those workers who pass from ordinary manual work to the tending of machinery, there is a good deal of evidence to show that, in the typical machine industries, their new work taxes their physical vigour quite as severely as the old work.” And: “A lighter form of labour spread over an increased period of time, or an increased number of minor muscular exertions substituted for a smaller number of heavier exertions within the same period of time, may, of course, amount to an increased tax upon the vital energy.” (“Evolution of Capitalism,” pp. .'337 et seq.)

We must not overlook, either, the striking number of horrible accidents arising from the tending of machines. Even if those gullible optimists who find in machinery a “ palliative,” an economiser of working class energy—if these people had a defensible case at all it is destroyed by this one factor, the mutilation, mortal and otherwise, traceable to machinery.

If we examine the tables of death rates in various occupations we find evidence of the risk run by the workers. Taking figures for 1900-1-2 (and an index number of 1,000), we find that in the list of occupations “ men of God ” stand well at 524, and farmers at 590. Tramway workers are represented in the holocaust by the number 1,013; copper, tin, etc. workers by 1,043; tool, saw, and file workers 1,315; cotton workers 1,114; brush makers 1216: whilst publicans (terrible example of the pious) are overtopped in the figures by general labourers at 2,235.

General labourers! The phrase calls up reflections of physical and mental misery deeper than of Grecian helot or “the rude forefathers of the hamlet.” 2,235! Pythagoras saw things strange and mystical in numbers; in the death rates and the accident rates of the class of labourers and miners Christian capitalists see things tangible— say a safe twenty per cent.; Socialists see the machine and the man, and curse the capitalism which serenely massacres the real pillars of society.

The machine (so we are told) “educates” the worker by giving him a complex machine to make and tend. If we grant the intricacy and skill involved in machine manufacture (an exercise of skill on the workers' part as great, as the much puffed “labour of superintendence”), it is more than counterbalanced by the tedious times of the machine-tenders, by the “sameness” of the proletarian's work. His home. Ins necessities, and his “luxuries,” all bear evidence of the mechanical, low-priced, and mean. Production in iron, brass, copper, wood, cotton, etc., is simply a story of the exercise of similar actions, the making of prosy repetition articles. To quote J. A. Hobson : “The constant employment on one sixty-fourth part of a shoe offers no encouragement to mental activity, but dulls by its monotony the brains of the employee to such an extent that the power to think and reason is almost lost.”

The workers, as Dickens said, are “those people who all go in and out at the same hours to do the same work; people to whom every day is the same as yesterday and to morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next." The “rude forefathers of the hamlet" were oblivious of the motor car. the Linotype, and the music hall; hut in every village the craftsman in metals, wood, stone, or leather had by his daily work qualities of initiative and forethought cultivated, contrasting with the heavy band laid by machines on their bored minders.

The individual who has heard of the “miseries of grandfather’s days,” challenges us with the assertion that machinery has lowered the price of the necessaries of life. A quotation from Marx’s “Poverty of Philosophy” is apt here: “ The price of food [in civilisation] has almost continually risen, while the price of manufactured articles and luxuries has almost continually fallen. Take the agricultural industry itself: the most indispensable objects, such as wheat, meat etc. increase in price, while cotton, sugar, coffee, etc., fall continually in a surprising fashion. Even among food stuffs, properly so-called, luxuries, such as artichokes, asparagus, etc., are relatively cheaper to-day than the objects of prime necessity. In our epoch the superfluity is more easily produced than the necessaries of life. Finally, at different historical epochs, the reciprocal relations of price are not only different but opposed. All through the Middle Ages agricultural products were relatively cheaper than manufactured products : in modern times the relations are reversed.”

So Liberal-Nonconformists expect the worker to be ridiculously thankful at the cheapness of questionable boots, frail sovereign suits, and dollar watches, while the rent of his “ home,” the price of his beer, his food stuffs, his fuel, etc., was never so prohibitive as in the “palmy” present. On every point the machine defender is worsted. 'The worker is, indeed, badly housed, badly clothed, and badly fed.

The defenders of capitalism deny our assertion that machinery has made unemployment more acute. 'They admit that a new machine might cause a temporary displacement of labour, but contend that the decrease in price resulting from the use of machinery causes a new demand which absorbs the displaced labour. Things “adjust” themselves and all is for the best. But whilst the “adjusting” process is fructifying, the worker is being pushed further into the mire. The adjusting period may be only temporary, but human lives are likewise temporary. A knotting machine dispenses with five or six “twisters”; the later try to adjust themselves. Twisting is one of the numerous processes in cotton manufacture, and obviously the number of twisters is determined by the whole industry.

The production of cotton goods must increase six times if all the twisters are to find employment at their own occupation. Machinery thus makes the workers’ jobs more hazardous and temporary. It throws out six twisters and finds employment for one mechanic making the new machine. The mechanic in turn is displaced by a lad working a new machine which “economises labour” in the engineering shops. Commonplace statistics have shown the existence of unemployed in every “skilled’’ trade.

In conclusion. Socialists do not see a “devil” in machinery. They appreciate its value to a society wherein are neither peers nor paupers, moochers nor millionaires. Socialists object to the capitalism which uses machinery as a means of more rapid and efficient exploitation of the workers; object to the degradation resulting from the existence of a factor which, under Socialism, will add leisure and pleasure to life.

John A. Dawson