Editorial: A Deadly Parallel. (1913)

Editorial from the May 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "To-day you have greater poverty in the aggregate in the land than you have ever had.”
                             Lloyd George at Cardiff, December 1911. 

"Since 1905 the income of the Income Tax paying class has increased by £188,000,000."—Mr. Chiozza Money in the “Daily Chronicle,” 18.4.13.

It is May Day again—a day symbolic of, and sacred to, all that the children of toil have lost. It is May Day—the day when the ghost of the departed joy of life stalks abroad for all working- class eyes to see, lest working-class minds, sepulchred in their grey stone prisons, forget. It is May Day, the day when, in old-time fancy. Nature balances her books and commences another busy round—therefore it is a peculiarly fitting day for our annual stock taking.

The two quotations at the head of this column might have been left to tell their own tale but for the circumstance that they serve a very useful purpose in our survey. They put the total at the foot of the balance sheet in figures that cannot be challenged. They cry aloud that all the ceaseless toil of those who do the work of the world results in nothing but dead loss to them, while the idlers become more opulent than ever!

“It is not that we are not making progress,” mumbles Lord Haldane to bis fellow parasites at the Eighty Club. It looks like it, indeed. Lloyd George confirms the statement when he assures the money-grabbers of the Kingdom in his Budget speech that despite the all-round increase in the cost of maintaining their thieves’ kitchen, no new taxes will be required to be levied — the growth of their plunder far outstrips the stupendous cost of their armaments, and the pimpling increase in their expenditure upon "social reform.”

Yes, our masters are making fine progress — there can be no doubt about that. But how is it with the working class ? What progress are we making ? Sixteen months ago the man who, from his official position, should know as much about it as anyone in the Kingdom, told us that we had “greater poverty in the aggregate” than we have ever had before. That “greater poverty’’ is the gift of our boasted civilisation, not to the idle and lazy, not to those who don't work for their livelihood, but to the industrious, to those who toil in very weariness and pain. It is the fruit of all our wonderful invention, the offering of our conquest of the elements. We harnessed the wind to our wheels and made water turn our grindstones for us. We conquered steam for our purpose, and have entrammelled electricity. But every fresh conquest has made us work harder; every new outburst of the torrent of wealth has made us poorer; every addition to the good things which our hard hands produce has sent us hungrier to bed.

Those who think that against all this must be set what they are pleased to refer to as the “inestimable blessings of civilisation” may have those inflated blessings reduced to their true value in very short time.

Mr. Seebohm Rowntree made a calculation of the cost of the primary necessaries for a family of five persons. The dietary was too stringent to allow for beer, tobacco or butcher’s meat, and the limit of luxury was touched in tea—once a week. Here is the table :—

	S.	d.
Expenditure on Food	12	9
Rents and Rates	4	0
Clothing, including boots	2	3
Fuel	1	10
Lighting, washing material, furniture, crockery, etc.		10
	21	8

Low as this estimate is, Mr. Rowntree found just upon a third of the total population of York, a typical provincial city, existing either below, upon, or very little above it. Mr. C. Booth found a like condition of things existing in London, while other investigators have shown that such poverty is general all over the country.

Now you who are looking for the “amenities of civilisation” have before you the condition of things as they affect nearly one third of the people of the richest country in the world, or rather, as they did affect them ten years ago, before prices had risen to their present height, and before “poverty in the aggregate” had the altitude at which Lloyd George finds it to-day.

But where are you to find the “blessings of civilisation” ? Are they in the first line: “Food 12s. 9d.” ? A farmer could not keep five pigs on the money. Are they in the second or third lines? A savage would scorn the stinking prison dens in which so many of our children are born and die, and would decline the responsibility of clothing five bodies on 2s. 3d. a week.

All the amenities for which these workers have exchanged the fresh air, the pure food, the leisure and natural freedom of their forefathers must be sought in the line: “Lighting, washing materials, furniture, crockery, etc. 10d.” Medicines and medical attendance, insurance, newspapers and books, postage stamps, bus, tram and railway fares, the cinema, the theatre, the bicycle, the country excursion, and the thousand and one other “blessings of civilisation” have to be paid for, in the case of nearly one-third of the people of wealthy, merry England, with what is left, after paying for soap, soda and candles, pots, pans and dishes, bedding, carpets and the piano, out of 10d. a week! Seven days of the amenities of modern civilisation for the surplus of 2d. per head!

Oh, if the workers would only understand that all this “progress,” which under the social system at present obtaining, runs to their masters, and leaves those who do the work every day in more abject poverty, could so easily be made to give every unit of society a full and a happy existence, free from the cankering anxiety of insecurity, free from the withering blight of never ending toil!

Ah, well! since the only way is through Socialism, it follows that it is also through the Socialist propaganda, and so long as this goes forward we can say with Lord Haldane—we are making progress.

A Paddington Placard. (1913)

Party News from the May 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

We desire to announce to the workers of Kilburn and North Kensington that Paddington Branch is holding meetings at Victoria Rd., High Rd., Kilburn, on Wednesdays at 8.30 p.m., and at Lancaster Rd., Portobello Rd., North Kensington on Fridays at 8.30 p.m.

This announcement will also constitute an effective salute to “our nearest friends,” the sympathetic scribes of the local sheets, who want Socialism in rag-time, please.

They are somewhat perturbed at the approach of summer, and with it the Socialist Party’s street-corner propagandists. This should allay their fears.

And then there is that Paddington pest, who revels in mouthing that miserable lie about the Socialists of Great Britain who hibernate during the winter to blossom forth with the flowers in May. There will be no plausible excuse after this— he will know where to find us in future, when he can present a case against us without resorting to dirty innuendoes and lying misrepresentation.

We are enjoying large audiences at Kilburn, and the prospects of forming a branch are promising. The wiseacres of Anti Socialists are in attendance twice a week when sober, and they regale their dupes with the ancient wheezes about us, which occasionally make them grin, but never prompt an intelligent question.

To get the workers to think and act is our business, not theirs, and in making this raid upon the preserves of these agents of reaction and confusion we shall ruthlessly expose and condemn them.

The local B.S.P. members boom the “Daily Herald,” advocate Syndicalism, and consciously do everything to frustrate the workers in realising what Socialism is and what it implies. For the workers to support such frauds as those is tantamount to committing suicide. We counsel them to ignore with contempt such a treacherous party. Have nothing to do with them! Attend our meetings, give an attentive hearing to our speakers and question them if need be.

We don't ask you to take for granted what we say just because we say it. We implore you to stop and think — stop and consider what your position in modern society represents. Reflect upon the value life has for you under the present hellish conditions! Listen to the Socialist Party’s propaganda and ponder over it. Procure our literature, the finest obtainable, and read it up, because men and women must be educated in order that they may be free.

Then, having achieved education, organise on class lines for the conquest of political power, making for the overthrow of slavery and bringing about the birth of the Society of the future.

Ben Carthurs.

Profits before life. (1913)

From the May 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The profits will not allow it.”

Rarely has the plain, tragic truth been so bluntly stated by a capitalist as on April 28th in the Westminster Coroner’s Court.

The Coroner was holding an inquiry into the “accident” that took place upon a building in course of erection in High Holborn.

Two and a half tons of iron was being hoisted by a crane “made to take three tons.” “ Everything was brand new ”

Henry James Matthews, a lad of 18, acting as a crane signalman, was killed as the result of the chain of the crane breaking.

After the poor lad’s brother had given evidence, the Coroner called a member of the firm that made the chain.

After great difficulty the Coroner got the makers to give evidence. The secretary of the company that supplied it offered the Coroner some certificates, but said that he knew nothing about the chain itself.

The Coroner was forced to remark that "it seems a very casual way of doing things when a man’s life is at stake.”

Finally a member of the manufacturing firm told the Coroner that he had been asked to attend ‘‘to listen to the evidence." He was asked by the Coroner : "After testing do you go over the chain to see if there are any cracks?"

The answer was a remarkable indictment of this cursed system of society, for he said:

"NO. THE PROFITS WILL NOT ALLOW OF IT”!

"I am not talking about profits,” retorted the Coroner. "I am talking about the safety of human life."

After some further questions the Coroner was led to say: "You are perfectly well aware of what you are talking about. It in no use trying to befool me. You are trying to ride round the subject."

A link of the chain was handed to the witness and he was asked why, although the link had snapped, it showed no signs of fracture. All he could say to the point was. ” It shows no signs of fracture."

The Coroner said that “looking at the surface of the link you can see it is not a fracture, and that the metal had never been properly welded."

Frederick John Parkes, Factory Inspector, said that the quality of the workmanship of the link was very bad indeed and that the metal was defective. It had not been properly welded.

Even the representative of the building company had to confess that he "found the rest of the chain not perfect."

This is the plain, unvarnished evidence, as reported in the “Evening News" (28.4.13). And it bears out to the fullest extent the charge of the Socialist that men are sacrificed to the hunt for profits. You have here the capitalist confession as given in a capitalist paper.

A lad of 18 is done to death! At an age when the sons of the parasite master class are enjoying themselves in the playing fields of Eton or Harrow, or Oxford or Cambridge, a worker’s child is manipulating two and a half tons of iron with a “brand new" but rotten chain—because the employers want “profits."

In the interest of profit women and girls are sweated in the chain-making sheds of Cradley Heath, and after years of struggle against the employers they are allowed 2½d. an hour!

The story of profit mongering is the record of the sacrifice of human lives to the parasites' interests.

Col. H. A. Yorke, of the Board of Trade, said in his report of the 19th September last, that during the year 2,934 accidents occurred due to failure of couplings—made of iron —on the railways.

"A weldless steel coupling has been tried and has given very satisfactory results, but" —(Ah, that all-meaning "but"!)— "unfortunately it costs rather more than the iron coupling. The accidents," the Colonel said, "frequently result in injuries to the men." But what matters that when it is a case of workmen's lives against PROFITS.

“ Even if a little more money were spent upon it it would still be the cheapest coupling in the world," declares Col. Yorke, but his Department, the infamous Board of Trade (of Titanic memory), being anxious only for the capitalists' welfare, lets the matter rest, whilst the murdered are carried in a ghastly procession to their eternal home.

Toilers may be slaughtered so that the “White" Star Line may pay 60 per cent, dividend. Shunters may be shunted into an early grave to enable the railway companies to make 50 millions profit in a twelvemonth. Dynamite makers may be blown to atoms (as at Pitsea last month) so that the dynamitards may give “Peace prizes." All this may be done to make a merry England for our masters.

It will only cease when the workers awake to the fact that this system stands for murder and robbery—stands in the way of the safety, the well-being, the happiness of humanity—of the wealth producers.

Adolph Kohn