By The Way. (1919)

The By The Way column from the March 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our old friend (!) Lord Soapsuds has been busy of late advocating his pet scheme of a six hour day as the solution for industrial unrest. Writing recently in a journal called "system" he said that "what is called industrial unrest is, in my opinion. a healthy sign; it means that the worker is reaching out, is using the betterment of yesterday as a stepping-stone for something higher." I hope this "healthy sign" will develop, but not exactly along the lines laid down by the Soap King. He wants to run his machines and their attendants practically the whole 24 hours by a system of several shifts. No, we do not want to turn night into day in the factory hells of England. If Leverhulme and the class be represents will do night work we may later consider the other portions of the day.

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However, this propagandist of the new order really surpassed himself later on. He is great on the subject of "kidding." Mark what follows :

  "There is no finer material than the British workman, and if he is treated properly there is no finer producer in the world. We must reduce his hours of labour and increase his rate of pay. He must have a good home—a piano if he desires it, houses with gardens, and, if he wants it, a motor car." —"Daily News," January 15th, 1919.

Now there you are, my fellow wage slave, doesn't that sound nice? No more will you be told that you are "too old at forty," for our soap magnate says that capital and labour are the Siamese Twins of productive enterprise. Of course it really would be interesting to learn what part of the productive process he is engaged in. For instance, whether he contributes the socially necessary labour in the soap-making or the margarine department. As most people know, he has just bought the island of Lewis, but the chronicler omitted to state what portion of the earth's surface fell to the lot of the twin brother. Doubtless his allowance is in France.

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An example of our rulers' business ability was recently brought to light. Small wonder that there was an outcry about the shortage of ships. Let me quote:

"SAND SENT TO EGYPT.

Two stories of official ignorance or stupidity were related by Mr. W. H. Garrison on the occasion of the Royal Colonial Institute Christmas address to a juvenile audience at the Central Hall. By order of the War Office a ship wholly laden with sand was sent out during the war to Egypt ! The sand was there put into bags in order to bank up trenches. One could hardly imagine the disgust of the men told off to unload it." —"Daily News' January 4th, 1919.

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On Tuesday, February 11th, the new Parliament was opened. A great portion of King Capital's speech was devoted to the C 3 homes of the C 3 population, and my Lords and Gentlemen were informed that "We must stop at no sacrifice of interest or prejudice to stamp out unmerited poverty, to diminish unemployment and mitigate its sufferings, to provide decent homes, to improve the nation's health, and to raise the standard of well-being throughout the community." After a passing reference "that the gifts of leisure and prosperity may be more generally shared throughout the community," I observe the following, which seems to be troubling our capitalist masters : "It is your duty, while firmly maintaining security for property and person, to spare no effort in healing the cause of the existing unrest." 

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We have often been told that slavery cannot exist under the Union Jack, and the type of free and enlightened Britishers who wear anti-German badges and penny flags in their coats really believe it. But let us look at this picture taken from the sister isle :

SWEATED BELFAST WOMEN. 

Mr. Devlin regards the demand for a 44-hour week in the shipyards as a most hopeful sign, and he believes the movement will succeed, but it is to the shocking case of the sweated women workers in Belfast, the women out of whose misery and ruined health the great linen industry has been built up, that he intends to devote much of his energy during the coming year. These women, about 20,000 in number, work on an average 56 hours a week under the most trying conditions of moist heat. Many start work at 6.30 in the morning and do not finish till 6.30 at night. A large proportion, little better than children, are half-timers, doing three days at school and three in the mills for a wage that is insufficient to keep body and soul together. "The patience of these poor creatures and their dumb acceptance of a life that has little to offer but bitter drudgery are wonderful, and inspire one at the same time with anger and profound admiration," Mr. Devlin testified. —"Daily News," January 24th, 1919.

Doubtless the man who won the war made the world safe for democracy, and commenced to "cleanse the land of poverty and want" some ten years ago by speech-making, has been prevented from studying the conditions of the Belfast workers owing to his activities as strike-breaker.

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The following advertisement appeared a little while ago in a Liverpool evening paper :

  "Discharged young soldier (one with foot off may suit), to assist in light trade; must be able to stand without crutches for an hour or two ; hours 9 to 7; wages 15s," — "Daily News," January 25th, 1919.

Needless to say, the appearance of the above led to a demonstration by some disabled soldiers, who went to interview the advertiser. After informing him that they had a suitable man they enquired as to whether he considered the money offered a living wage. The advertiser explained that it was a future partnership he had in mind, The crippled soldier was called in and was offered 30s. a week if he would take an interest and give all his time to the business, but the terms were refused.

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The quotation given below appeared in the International Notes of the "Labour Leader,'' and emanates from Italy.

"When will Socialists learn that capitalism is by instinct predatory, that no true League of Peoples is therefore possible, except under Socialism, that Socialism will only be established by Socialists, and that Socialists must place the whole of their faith and reliance in themselves, and not in any capitalist or despot, however benevolent."

The above would have read better and been more precise had it appeared thus: "When will the pseudo Socialist," etc. However, I commend it to the Thornes, Lansburys, and others of that ilk who delight in labelling themselves Socialist, but spend their time bolstering up capitalism.

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That inveterate gas-bag, Windy Churchill, is finding some of his chickens coming home to roost. There was a time when he blustered about digging the German Fleet "out like rats." But the British Fleet, for the maintenance of the efficiency of which Windy had been responsible previous to the war— at a good many thousands a year—had its chance, and Admiral Jellico has been compelled to issue a "defence" showing why he did not seize his opportunity. The Admiral compares the instrument which had been provided him by the windy braggart with that of the despised German, and the result must make many worshipper of the hero of Sidney Street wonder what he, as First Lord of the Admiralty, took his thousands for. The Admiral says that the British ships were out-classed in search-light power, inferior in range-finders, insufficiently provided with destroyers, not so well protected against dropping fire, and so on. In short, the egregrious failure of the war had proved such a failure preparing for war that the British Admiral dared not close with his enemy.

Yet this guy, who went on from blunder to blunder, from Antwerp to Gallipoli, till even his thick hide could not save him from the public's jeers, and who, in order to rehabilitate himself, had finally to resort to that magnificent piece of bluff—the melodramatic reminder to the military authority that "my regiment is in France"—this fellow who had to fly to the funk-hole for shelter from the derision brought down upon his head by his own clumsy incapacity, is one of the chosen few who alone can "carry the country through the difficult times ahead." "There is something rotten in the State of"—capitalism when such empty-headed noodles are the best the country can find to run the show. The "directive ability" superstition which our masters are so fond of talking about gets a nasty one on the snout here.

The Scout.

Editorial: Who Pays? (1919)

Editorial from the March 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “beautiful new world” so often, promised the workers by their masters’ oily-tongued hacks when it was thought that possibly the under dogs might develop some sort of doubt as to whether the ugly old hell that capitalism had made of the world was really worth any wage slave’s while sacrificing his life for, is now emerging. The old world, in the torture of her child-birth, makes such horribly wry faces that one cannot help laughing. The railwaymen think that the New World should provide them with time to eat, and the Old World is sure that if the child is to have such an unheard of excrescence it can never survive the parturition. The miners think that the New World should be able to afford those who keep it warm and snug a couple of hours a day more sunlight, a modest two hours respite from the gas, dust, and danger of the pits, the accoucheur says he really doesn't think the beautiful New World he is ushering into existence can stand it.

Mr. Lloyd George, like the true capitalist lackey that he is, answers the miners' demands for more money and shorter hours, with a rigmarole of capitalist economics. He plays the old dodge of declaring that anything which is conceded to the producer must be paid for by the consumer. He affects to believe that between the wage of the producer and the price of the consumer there stands only a negligible quantity, a mere nothing. In the case of coal, he tells us, this mere nothing —profit—averages a shilling a ton, and of course, if he can induce his hearers to believe that it will prevent the suggestion that any increase of the pitmen’s wages or shortening of their hours might come out of the masters profits.

And as was to be expected, among all the so-called representatives of labour who heard him speak, there was not one sufficiently the master of Marxian economics to get up and tell the Premier that he lied when he said that more money for the coal-getters meant an additional burden on every industry. They accepted it. One of them even confirmed it by whining, when Lld. George claimed that the miners’ demands meant 10 per cent, on steel, "ten per cent, would not be very much." They accepted it with all its implications, which do not stop short of the conclusion that a general advance of wages would be no good to the workers because it would be counterbalanced by a general advance of prices.

We have shown repeatedly that the masters, in ordinary competitive circumstances, cannot put up prices merely because they have to pay higher wages, if they have the power to do that they would have the power to put up prices independent of. wages movements, and they would never cease doing so.

No, it is not a struggle between producer and consumer, much as Lld. George desires to make it appear to be so. It is purely a struggle between the takers of wages and the takers of profits. The masters’ only way of recovering what they have to shell out in higher wages is to speed up either by improved organisation or adopting advanced machinery. They have got to get more coal per unit of labour or they have got to put up with a smaller rate of profit. It is just there where the shoe pinches.

The workers should study Marxian economics for themselves, they would then be proof against the yarn with which masters’ champions combat every demand for higher wages or shorter hours—that the consumer, and therefore the worker, will have to pay.

Some Receipts. (1919)

Party News from the March 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

Circumstances (which you may call bad business arrangements without being far out) have prevented the regular publication of our lists. This does not mean that the need for funds is any  less urgent. Every effort should now be made to provide funds for the final struggle, which is revealing itself all over the world as never before.

Editorial: The Phelps Dodge Mining Corporation. (1919)

Editorial from the March 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

On our front page we print an invaluable report of an outrage perpetrated by the Phelps Dodge Mining Corporation, with the assistance of the local authorities, upon striking workers. Read it.

This is not the first case of a similar kind that we have given the publicity of our pages. Older readers will remember the Lawrence affair, and the ghastly firing of a camp over the heads of the trapped workers in another case, and the shooting of the poor wretches who tried to escape. We draw especial attention to these items of capitalist villiany in America at the present moment for the reason that they show with perfect clearness the hollow fraud and sham of all the drivel about the Americans entering the war to “make the world safe for democracy.”

From Peterloo to Tonypandy and Belfast in the British Isles, from Homestead to Bisbee in the United States, the same tale is to tell. All the forces which political supremacy everywhere places in the hands of the master class are and will be used to keep the capitalist world safe from democracy. There’s a difference.

An Odious Comparison. (1919)

From the March 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

A CAPITALIST ORGY OF MURDER.

At a time when a flood of slobber is being poured out through the capitalist Press concerning the “red-terror” in Russia it might not be inopportune to reproduce a report of a characteristic incident of the suppression of the Paris Commune of 1871. It illustrates the capitalist method of securing order when their supremacy is threatened by the working class. It is to be remembered that these butcheries, of which the following was but a small example, took place, not in the course of fighting, but after the struggle had ceased—not, therefore, under the influence of the fear and anxiety as to the course of the battle, but in cold-blooded lust of revenge.

  "The column of prisoners halted in the Avenue Uhrich and was drawn up four or five deep on the footway facing to the road. General the Marquis de Gallifet and his staff, who had preceded us there, dismounted, and commenced an inspection from the left of the line and near where I was. Walking down slowly, and eyeing the ranks as if at an inspection, the General stopped here and there, tapping a man on the shoulder or beckoning him out of the rear ranks. In most cases, without further parley, the individual thus selected was marched out into the centre of the road, where a small supplementary column was thus soon formed. . . . They evidently knew too well that their last hour had come, and it was fearfully interesting to see their different demeanours. One, already wounded, his shirt soaked with blood, sat down in the road and howled with anguish ; . . . others wept in silence. . , . It was an awful thing to see one man thus picking out a batch of his fellow-creatures to be put to a violent death in a few minutes without further trial. . . .  A few paces from where I stood a mounted officer pointed out to General Gallifet a man and a woman for some particular offence. The woman, rushing out of the ranks, threw herself on her knees and with outstretched arms implored mercy, and protested her innocence in passionate terms. The General waited for a pause, and then, with most impassive face and unmoved demeanour, said: 'Madame, I have visited every theatre in Paris; your acting will have no effect on me.' . . . I followed the General closely down the line, still a prisoner, but honoured with a special escort of two chasseurs-a cheval, and endeavoured to arrive at what guided him in his selections. The result of my observations was that it was not a good thing on that day to be noticeably taller, dirtier, cleaner, older, or uglier than one’s neighbour. One individual in particular struck me as probably owing his speedy release from the ills of this world to his having a broken nose on what might have been otherwise an ordinary face, and being unable from his height to conceal it. Over a hundred being thus chosen, a firing party was chosen, and the column resumed its marching, leaving them behind. In a few minutes afterwards a dropping fire in our rear commenced and continued for over a quarter of an hour. It was the execution of these summarily convicted wretches.”—“The Daily News,” June 8,1871.

Here is another report, referring to another case, showing how capitalist butchers dealt with those working men and women of Paris who dared to challenge their supremacy.

  “On the 26th of last May we formed part of the column of prisoners who had left the Boulevard Malesherbes at eight o’clock in the morning in the direction of Versailles. We stopped at the Chateau of La Muette, where General Gallifet, after having dismounted from his horse, passed into our ranks, and then making a choice, he pointed out eighty-three men and three women. They were taken away along the talus of the fortifications and shot before us. After this exploit the General said to us: 'My name is Gallifet. Your journals in Paris have sullied me enough. I take my revenge.’ ”
—The Liberte, Brussels, 26th May, 1871.

Here is a report of a third instance:

  “Yesterday (Sunday, 28th), about one o’clock, General Gallifet appeared at the head of about 9,000 prisoners. . . . They were evidently prepared for the worst fate, and dragged listlessly along, as though it were not worth while to walk to Versailles to be shot. M. de Gallifet seemed to be of the same opinion, and a little beyond the Arc-de-Triompne he halted the column, selected eighty-two, and had them shot there and then.
—“The Times,’’ May 31st, 1871.

Did the capitalist Press rise up in horror and indignation at these ruthless butcheries of daily occurrence? Did the journalists and parsons and public men of the capitalist world heap invective and insult upon the heads of these capitalist murderers who were executing capitalist vengeance on the workers of Paris? Here is what one English newspaper (The “Naval-and Military Gazette” of May 27th, 1871) said, referring, of course, to the Communards, not to their butchers : “We are deliberately of the opinion that hanging is too good a death for such villains to die, and if medical science could be advanced by operating on the living body of the malefactors who have crucified their country, we at least should find no fault with the experiment.”

As to how far the slaughtered were guilty even of the crimes which served to excuse their massacre is shown by the remark of a French capitalist paper (Opinion Nationale, June 1st, 1871), under the fear that the unburied corpses would give rise to pestilence : .“A serious examination of the accused is imperative. One would like to see only the really guilty die.”

This wholesale and absolutely indiscriminate massacre went on for weeks, after which farcical trials provided victims for bourgeois bullets for eighteen months, and for imprisonment and transportation for six years.

And if the workers wish to know how the capitalists really viewed this butchery of over thirty- thousand workers, AFTER THEY HAD LAID DOWN THEIR ARMS, it can be judged from the fact that to the day of his death that English monarch Edward VII, always so careful of bourgeois “public” opinion, maintained the relations of intimate friendship with one of the chief assassins of the piece, the man who used to wait daily for the processions of prisoners, and levy his toll at the city gates because the Paris journals had sullied him—General Gallifet. Well might such a class of vampires palpitate with horror because the Bolsheviks are (they allege) treating their bourgeois opponents to a mild dose of their own physic. Their own hideous example is looming ominously before their affrighted eyes.

A. E. Jacomb

Labour Unrest. (1919)

From the March 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most striking feature of the wave of unrest sweeping the working class to-day is the chaotic, and even contradictory, character of the claims put forward. The Clyde engineers struck—"unofficially," it is true—for a 40-hour week; the Belfast workers for 44 hours. The Engineering and Shipbuilding trades in general having accepted a 47 hour week with the following as a condition:

The unions will take all possible steps to ensure that in the critical state through which the country has to pass the greatest possible output will be secured and maintained.

were surprised to find the employers at once endeavouring to obtain as large, or even larger, an output in the 47 hours as under the 54, by speeding up, and cutting time for refreshment and so on.

Meanwhile the railway men had obtained recognition of the "principle" of the 8 hour day. Then the motor men on the London Tubes suddenly found that the half hour for meals allowed under the previous system was knocked off. Failing to get satisfaction through their officials they struck. Then ensued one of those situations that on the theatre stage would have caused roars of laughter, but which in real life is almost tragic. The main body of railway workers (apart from the clerks, etc.) are grouped in two unions—the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, and the National Union of Railwaymen. As usual where two unions recruit from one body of workers, considerable jealousy exists between the officials. At first both unions refused to recognise the motormen's strike. Then, seeing a chance to score off the N.U.R., the A.S.L.E.F. declared the strike "legal." Following this they signed an agreement with the Railway Executive that left the situation practically as it was before the strike. Now the officials of the N.U.R. saw their chance. They repudiated this agreement and declared their men as "officially" on strike. In the course of a few days this farcical situation was ended by the N.U.R. officials signing an agreement similar in all respects to that signed by their rivals, except that this empty phrase was added:

The companies are to offer reasonable facilities to meet the ordinary physical needs of the men.

The Shipbuilders and Repairers of the Thames are on strike for a 15s increase, while the Miners are balloting as to whether they shall strike to enforce their claims of a 6 hour day, 30 per cent. on wages, and nationalisation of the mines.

It is a favourite dodge of the capitalist hacks to lay the cause of these actions of the workers on "Bolshevik agitators." But one simple fact put this nonsense out of court. If the unrest were due to any organised agitation, clearly it would have one object or set of objects and follow a co-ordinated policy to obtain them. It is true that a few Anarchist agitators, some of whom call themselves Bolsheviks, are taking advantage of the struggles to shout themselves into a brief notoriety, but they are no more the cause of the trouble than a cork bobbing in a stream is the cause of the water's flow. A couple of incidents proved completely how small was the influence of these people.

The Government decided to break the strike on the Clyde. Well informed as to internal matters of the men's organisation, they determined to deprive the strikers of their leaders, believing that this would collapse the strike.

A deputation had been appointed to interview the Mayor of Glasgow to try to persuade him to use his influence to obtain the intervention of the Government. A mass meeting of the strikers was to be held outside the Town Hall to hear the result. Instead of following the procedure usual when peaceful demonstrations are taking place of ordering vehicular traffic to suit its movements to the demonstration, the police first allowed a motor to drive into the crowd, injuring two persons, and then tried to force some trams through the meeting. Upon protest being made against this the police charged the crowd with batons. The men's leaders rushed out and two of them were struck down by the police. After being taken inside the Town Hall and having their wounds dressed, they were allowed to speak to the meeting, and told the men to peaceably disperse and avoid all rioting. These leaders were then locked up and charged with inciting to riot!

Such a farcical charge exposes the police plot in its entirety. But this was not enough. Pretending that they feared an extension of the "riots," the Government cynically sent Scots soldiers, provided with machine guns, bombs and wire netting, and later some Tanks, to protect the property of the master class. The plot succeeded and the strike collapsed.

Meanwhile a meeting of Electrical Workers in London decided to cease work and cut off all electrical power there to force the Government to introduce a 40 hour week throughout the country. The Government replied by issuing a new regulation under D.O.R.A. making it an offence to leave work on any electrical power plant supplying electricity to public and other services. The Electricians took the hint and nothing occurred.

These collapses show how small was the influence of these "agitators." Still more clearly they show the overwhelming importance of the control of political power.

A calm examination of the situation will reveal that the main factors behind the great unrest are, the high cosy of living and, of greater importance, the dread of increase in the large amount of unemployment already existing with the further demobilisation of soldiers and closing down of various Government department. These are the great common causes manifesting themselves in the different and unco-ordinated efforts of the workers in various parts of the country. They are trying to fight, more or less blindly, some of the effects of a system, while solidly supporting that system as a whole. Even in its immediate details they fail to see the absurdity of the terms they accept. Thus a child could understand that if production is maintained at the old level when hours are reduced, not a single extra worker will be employed. Yet the Engineering trades accept the condition that "the greatest possible output  will be secured and maintained," and thus do their best to prevent the absorption of of such of the unemployed as might have found work under the reduction of hours.

To the other factors causing unemployment may be added the shortage of materials.

The problem thus becomes intensified, and the expedient of shortening hours, good as far as it goes, cannot do more than act as a temporary check, while private ownership of the means of life continues. Not until the working class own and control the means of production and distribution will they be able to adjust the hours of labour to the requirements of society and the number able to work. To do this they must first understand and accept the principles of Socialism, then set to work to establish it by organising to take control of political power for the purpose of wresting the means of life from the hands of the master class. Only then will the "unrest" disappear—through its cause being abolished.

Jack Fitzgerald

Some Pars From America: Not read at the Peace Conference (1919)

From the March 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

As news of the American labour movement is so scare in these days of censorship and Press laws, perhaps the following notes from the December issue of the New York "Class Struggle," an unofficial organ of the so called left wing of the also so-called Socialist Party of America may be of interest to the reader.

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In a candid article on the recent elections it is admitted that the large vote received by the S.P. of A. at the 1917 election was more of an anti-war vote than one for Socialist principles and that this vote has now gone back to the "old parties." By this means the recent "slump" is accounted for.

Nothing seems to left of the sprinkling of Socialist legislators that were elected in the previous year in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and California. Kansas, Idaho, Illinois, and Minnesota are again without Socialist representatives in the legislatures, and Minneopolis lost its Mayor Van Lear, which is hardly to be regretted. This precious "Socialist" who, at the beginning of the war had opposed the "infamous Public Safety Commission" as the new election approached "compromised himself and the party that elected him, by joining hands with the American Alliance of Labour and Democracy, and by speaking from its platform at a so-called Victory Meeting . . . That Van Lear took this stand not so much from a change of conviction as from openly opportunist motives, above all to get re-elected, by no means detracts from this sorry spectacle.

The article declares that the defeat of Meyer London, the late "Socialist" Congressman for New York, is "one thing to be thankful for." After telling the tale of his reactionary, pro-capitalist activity in Congress during the war the writer concludes: "His re-nomination is not to the credit of the membership of New York, even though it was prompted by the consideration that the district would be lost if another candidate were nominated in his place."

Such are the methods of the anti-revolutionary, anti-socialist ideas which permeate the membership of the S.P. of A. Is this the party which is going to overthrow the best entrenched and most unscrupulous capitalist oligarchy in the world? I think not.

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Very little news has reached this country about one of the most dastardly outrages among the many which American capital has perpetrated upon its wage-slaves. The sequel, too, is interesting. In Bisbee in Arizona, in 1917,

"four thousand miners went on strike against the Phelps Dodge Mining Corporation for a ten per cent. wage increase and a reduction of the ten-hour workday to nine hours . . .  At that particular time there was an enormous demand for metal ore, and the highest prices were being paid. The Company saw fat profits slipping away between their fingers; the strike was costing them millions of dollars. They were, therefore, prepared to come to terms on the question of wages, and would perhaps have granted a reduction of working hours. But they refused point blank to consider the recognition of the union demanded by the striking miners.

Then on the 17th June the bosses took action:

A great crowd of striking miners that had gathered about the entrance to one of the mines was surrounded by an army of police, deputy sheriffs, and gun-men, were driven, unarmed as they were, before the loaded guns of their captors, to the railroad station. There, all of them, men, women and children, were forced with unbelievable brutality into a waiting freight train, in which they were shipped across the border into New Mexico about seven hundred miles from Bisbee, where they were thrown out of the cars in the midst of an uninhabited desert. In this deserted region of New Mexico, completely cut off from all communication with their families and the world, these unfortunate men, women and children were exposed to the most intense suffering. And only the foodstuffs that were brought them by organised labour at the earliest possible moment saved these thousands of workers from a miserable death.

 It took some time before the energetic protests of labour in the West were finally able to force an investigation. It was disclosed that this dastardly crime had been committed not only with the knowledge, but with the assistance of the management of the mines and the local authorities of Bisbee. The corporation officials had paid the gun-men, while the local authorities had engaged the scoundrels who did this dirty work. Indictments followed, indictments that incriminated the highest officials among the millionaire knaves at the head of the company. Proudly the capitalist press showed that there was no class justice in the United States of America, that rich and poor were measured by the same standards, that not even the richest of the men were responsible for the Bisbee outrage would be able to escape the hand of justice.

That was six months ago. Since then things have been strangely quiet. And now comes the news that the entire matter has been dropped because of a technical error in the indictment.  (Italics mine.)

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A very interesting account of the recent food riots in Japan is given by the well-known Sen Katayama. The immediate cause of the riots was the high price of rice, the staple food of the Japanese workers. Dr. Yokoi, "the agricultural authority of Japan, says in 'Industrial Japan': 'The past five years have produced super-abundant rice crops in Japan. Statistics show that there is no shortage of rice this year.'" The article following the Japanese "Oriental Economist," declares that the high prices were directly due to the policy of the Government in aiding and encouraging export trade. The political machinery of the country functions exclusively in the interests of a few big capitalists, while the interests of the vast majority of the people and the workers are completely disregarded."

The various phases of the riots are described in some detail. They "usually began in a peaceful demonstration that went to the homes of the rice dealers or to the granaries to demand cheaper food. Invariably it was the police who met the demonstrants with drawn sabres that turned these for the most part peaceful demonstrations in furious attacks." The riots were very wide-spread, extending "over three prefectures, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, over thirty provinces, and in Hokkaido, the northern part of Japan. Altogether this rising affected over two-thirds of the Japanese Empire. The 'Oriental Economist' reports that there were destructive riots in 142 different localities; that in 38 places they could be put down only by armed troops. In Osaka (the Manchester of Japan) the rioting continued for three full days and nights, and it is roughly estimated that at its height a force of over thirty thousand soldiers, including cavalry, was necessary to control the infuriated masses."

"In Kure, where the chief Navy Yard of the Empire is located, the marines were called out in full strength to quell the desperate mobs, while all thoroughfares and important crossings were armed with machine guns. But in spite of the rigid military discipline that obtains in the Japanese army, it was found that a number of the marines had made common cause with the rioting masses  . . . In Kobe the populace burnt down stores, offices, and even the residences of the wealthy rice speculators. The rioters were joined in a sympathetic movement of the 8,000 workers in the Mitsubitu shipbuilding yards." It must be remembered that working-class organisations, which might have rendered the movements more effective and less chaotic and violent, are illegal in Japan.

After August 13th the Government, fearing the spread of the disturbances, suppressed all news relating to the riots. "In Osaka the Governor published an edict forbidding more than five persons walking together on the streets. In Yokohama street assemblies were limited to nine persons."

"When the Government saw the magnitude of the movement, it appropriated $5,000 000 with which rice was bought up to be given away to the poor, or to be sold at greatly reduced rates to stem the tide of popular dissatisfaction." This, however, failed to have the desired result, for the movement had developed new characteristics. "Since food riots have ceased there have been labour troubles all  over the country. The 'Oriental Economist' gives a detailed account of seven large strikes that occurred between the 1st and the 19th of August, while the daily newspapers enumerate at least 40 others." The legal machinery, of course, reaped a rich harvest. "According to the latest reports (Sept. 12) over 5,000 persons were arrested and are awaiting trial. It is estimated by the Government that the number of arrests will reach more than 7,000 before the whole matter us settled. Among them are numerous Socialists. Chief among these is Yei Osugi, arrested at Osaka. The Government is particularly desirous of incriminating our comrades as mob leaders."

The article further hints that a contributory cause of the riots was the discontent of the workers with the Government's policy of intervention in Siberia, Whether this is so or not the political sequel to the disturbances was significant, for the Terauchi Government was superseded and the new ministry under Premier Hara reversed the policy of the old ministry in Russian affairs, and openly declares that Japan desires only  a responsible government in Russia, whether it be Bolshevik or not." Of course, this eyewash may satisfy for a time the workers of Japan, but we know that a working-class government can in no circumstances be considered "responsible" by the bourgeoisie.

R. W. Housely