The Health Services (1966)

From the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The school medical service was the first national health scheme to be established in Britain. In the earliest days of compulsory education a constant source of anxiety for the capitalist state was the suspicion that it was wasting money on many of the underfed and underclad children in its elementary schools, simply because their physical condition prevented them from really applying themselves to their books. But what finally shook the reformers into action were the press reports of widespread physical defects found in the young workers recruited into the army at the time of the Boer War. It was feared that the bulk of Britain’s. “C3 population” was not even fit enough to die defending the imperialist interests of the ruling class. Hence in 1904 the Inter-departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration emphasised the need for a system of medical inspection of school children. This led to the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907. It is, of course, no coincidence that the other principal improvements to the school medical service are linked with the First and Second World Wars. The drafting of hundreds of thousands of working men and women on both these occasions again showed to what extent social conditions had undermined health. It is against this background that the Education Acts of 1921 and 1944 can be understood. These made it a duty for all education authorities to provide routine health inspections to be conducted on school premises.

However, the Education Act of 1944 was largely overshadowed by the discussion which raged around the Beveridge Plan and eventually materialised as the National Health Service Act, 1946. If ever there was a case of a government feeling it could simply plan away the problems of ill-health arising from the capitalist system, this was it. What was envisaged was a unified scheme available for the whole population, except for those who had the money and inclination to pay for private treatment. As can be seen from the diagram following, in theory every form of illness was adequately covered.

Under the Act the vast majority of hospitals were transferred to the Minister of Health (i.e. formal ownership of the State) on July 5, 1948. The Minister was charged with the responsibility for providing adequate hospital accommodation together with the required medical, nursing and other facilities—including the services of specialists. Eighteen years later accommodation, in terms of the number of hospitals and the number of beds, still remains inadequate. As one government publication put it: “Scarcity of capital resources seriously limited hospital building in the early years of the service.” But, it proudly goes on, “. . . the annual expenditure on hospital building rose from £12.5 million in 1956-57 . . . to an estimated £54.6 million in 1963-64 . . .” To put such figures in perspective they must be measured against the “defence” expenditure for comparable years (£1,483 million in 1957-58 and £1,837 million in 1965-66—see the Socialist Standard, August, 1966).

But the problem is not just one of too few beds, even though the Guardian mentioned on June 9, 1966, that there are now about 10,000 patients waiting to enter a hospital. Low wages have resulted in a chronic shortage of nurses and doctors. Earlier this year the general secretary of the Confederation of Health Service Employees reported to his union that 13 per cent of the beds in the hospital service could not be used anyway at present—because of the lack of staff. Most doctors are continually overworked and reports of individuals putting in well over 100 hours a week are commonplace. However, despite all the statistics that could be quoted, perhaps the best appraisal of the hospital service can be made by referring to the comment of a Manchester consultant, reported in the Daily Mail, August 22, 1966:

“When I was doing my house training I’d do a stitching job in casualty after being up all night, and I’d know it wasn’t my best work.

"Today I should hate to be knocked down and become a patient. The odds are I’d get a young doctor who had been on duty for 48 hours. How could 1 expect his best work?”

Unless you can afford the fees of a private surgeon or those of the London Clinic, this is what the hospital service means for you.

The general medical and dental services are under the supervision of the local executive councils. There is one of these to each county and county borough and it is their function to organise the doctors, dentists, pharmacists and opticians in their areas so that a comprehensive medical service exists. Supplementing these are the local health authorities who are responsible for the ambulance and midwife services as well as employing health visitors, home nurses and so on. The fact is that everywhere in this supposedly “comprehensive medical service” there are gaps and inadequacies resulting from lack of staff and facilities. A few details should make this clear.

Ten years ago the report of a working party on health visitors (Min. of Health—1956) suggested that a total force of 11,500 would be required “for the Health Visitor to effectively discharge all the duties required of her.” Years later, when this estimate is outdated anyway, there are still only the equivalent of 8,000 whole-time health visitors employed in Great Britain. Similarly, there is still throughout the country an unsatisfied demand for home helps—especially among old people. At present the average for England and Wales is that for every 10,000 people only 68 are receiving some form of assistance in this way. Section 25 of the National Health Service Act places on local health authorities the duty of providing home nursing for invalids who require such attention. As one writer euphemistically put it: "The limiting factor for some time to come will probably be the number of nurses available.” (The New Public Health —F. Grundy, London, 1965). Again, under Section 21 of the same Act, the local health authorities were ordered to equip and maintain health centres in their areas. “(This) duty on local health authorities has not been enforced, largely because of the restrictions until recent years on capital investment in health and welfare projects . . . By the end of 1963 only 18 health centres had been opened . . .” (Health Services in Britain, HMSO, 1964).

One service not mentioned so far is that of health inspection. Every council, other than county councils, is required to appoint one or more public health inspectors who supervise slum clearance, inspect houses and factories, check food supplies and so on. In the same year that the National Health Service Act was passed, a report of the Central Housing Advisory Committee outlined a 16-point standard for a “satisfactory” dwelling. It should be stressed that these were minimum requirements and merely included such stipulations as that the house should be dry, equipped with a proper drainage system and have adequate heating facilities for each room. It was pointed out back in 1946 that it was not then practicable to put this standard on a statutory basis and immediately have the public health inspectors enforce it. Twenty years later this is still the case. Millions of workers continue to live in damp, insanitary, squalid buildings which the authorities label with the bureaucratic understatement of “unsatisfactory”.

The health services, just as much as the mines and factories, are organised and run by members of the working class. There can be no doubt that many of the overworked doctors and underpaid nurses stick at their jobs simply because of their conviction that they are doing worthwhile work. But, like all workers under capitalism, they find that their efforts are hemmed in and frustrated by a social system where health comes very low down on the list of priorities.

John Crump

The Pillory. (1908)

From the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. John Burns at Tynemouth, 14.10.08 (Daily News report) said in reference to the Tariff Reformer’s allegation that under Free Trade England was a country of vanishing trades, “If that was true (which he denied) it was unpatriotic to allege it.” Burns’s conception of patriotism is, then, a readiness to lie with all the heart, and soul, and strength, when circumstances require it. Burns is a patriot—for £2,000 a year!

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David Cummings, of the Boilermakers, has gone the way of Isaac Mitchell, of the General Federation. They both have jobs under the Board of Trade, and the capitalist class will doubtless find them eager to justify their salaries. It is better so. In the ranks of the workers they were worse than useless. The workers know now where they are—and why. George Barnes is said to be in the running for a similar job. He also will be better there—if he goes. At present he denies it. But these denials are generally to be taken cum grano salis. If George doesn’t go it will probably be due to the fact that he hasn’t a biblical name. Men with biblical names seem in much greater request, witness John, Isaac, and David. Now if George had been named Barrabas——

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A. S. Headingly, of the S.D.P., is advertised in the St. Louis Labor (3.10.08) as open to speak in the large cities of America at 15 dollars a time. It is not stated whether his address will consist of exhortations to the workers to keep their finger-nails clean and see that the crease in their pants is always in perfect alignment, or whether he will take as his subject “the application of soap below the collar line and its relation to the Revolution.” These grave questions will doubtless be duly considered as usual, notwithstanding that the lecturer’s fee is so low.

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We have been requested to announce that “on Oct. 12th the Rev. Ernest J. B. Kirtlan, B.A., B.D., late chaplain of H.M. Prison, Wormwood Scrubs, member of Fabian Society, and lecturer for the S.D.P., will speak in connection with the anniversary of the South London Wesleyan Mission. Subject: ‘Fag-Ends.'” The combination of qualifications and the occasion, not less than the importance of the subject, have impelled us to comply. We are sorry that the address will have been delivered some weeks before we can publish the news to the world, but we have done what we could.

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Act 1. Mr. W. Thorne, M.P., introduces a Bill to provide for a citizen army.

Act 2. The S.D.P. issue a pamphlet explaining what Mr. Thorne means. (This was laudable and eminently necessary.)

Act 3. Has not yet been constructed. It might properly take the form of an explanatory pamphlet on the S.D.P. explanation of Mr. Thorne’s Bill.

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Mr. A. E. Wachter is, I understand, a well-known Clarion Scout in his own neighbourhood. He writes to the Sunday Chronicle to enlighten a “middle-class father of eight,” who seems to have alleged that the working “classes” do not pay rates. Mr. Wachter says the working “classes” do pay rates. Mr. Wachter should read THE SOCIALIST STANDARD regularly. It would save him making exhibitions of ignorance. The working class does not pay rates; and there is only one working class. To refer to working classes is absurd.

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“He did not care tuppence ior the abstract opinion of any man who did not come into his trade union and plant down his little bit of money and do his little bit of work.” (G. N. Barnes, M.P., Salford, 4.9.08.) The value of a man’s views is in proportion to the regularity with which he planks down his little bit of money in the union. Mr. Barnes is refreshingly frank.

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At the Sanitary Inspectors’ Conference at Liverpool on the 9th, Sir J. Crichton-Browne said that if Mrs. Hemans were alive she would have to add another verse to her well-known poem in eulogy of tenement buildings. It would probably run, he said, thus—

The tenements of England, piled tier on tier on high.

Stand not by brooks, in verdant nooks, that rest and glad the eye,

But they rest fair, in sun and air, are clean and free from croup,

And safely there the weary sleep, and the sickly cease to droop.

If this is humour it is of the type that requires labelling. If it is not perhaps the least unkind remark one could make would be that Sir J. C. Browne’s poetry is at least as good as his facts; to which might be added that while the poet may properly claim licence for his fanciful figments, the scientist must make his appeal on more solid ground.

Socialists & Capitalist Hospitals. (1905)

From the April 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why “capitalist” hospitals? the non-Socialist will ask. Because the diseases and injuries there treated are caused, almost entirely by the unhealthy conditions of life of the workers, imposed upon them by the capitalist system, or negligence of the employers to provide accident preventing appliances. Because, also, as consistent Socialists have always pointed out, the patients, mostly of the working-class, are used to experiment on for the benefit of the propertied class.

“The hospitals, it should be remembered, are the training schools of the medical profession,” wrote London’s Lord Mayor in 1899, “and for that reason deserve grateful recognition and adequate support.” The treatment meted out to the “subjects” is detailed by a medical practitioner in the Grand Magazine in the course of which he declares that although medical students must learn their business, patients also have rights—but the poorer class of these, especially women, are treated as if they were destitute of human feeling. He asserts that in every hospital recognised by the Medical Council as a place of instruction for students the treatment of the patients is entirely subordinated to the instruction of those students and that it may be said with perfect truth that the girls and young women who attend the public hospitals gain the possible healing of their bodies at the expense of mortal injury to their souls. What, he asks, must be the moral effect on a modest girl who goes to a hospital complaining of some trivial ailment, and is stripped naked to the waist, and subjected to the salacious scrutiny of some dozens of youths who lay hands on her and maul her about to their hearts’ content? It is immaterial whether she complains of or has anything the matter with her chest or not. She, in common with her sisters in misfortune, is utilised as “material” for the instruction of students. At one time he saw 14 young women of ages from 12 to 25, all standing stripped in this manner. One girl, aged 18, told him she had been attending the hospital nearly every fortnight for over three years. Imagine how much modesty would he left in her after exhibiting herself in this fashion for years to many hundreds of students. There was not the slightest hope of cure or improvement, so that this girl was regularly exposed in this manner merely because she was an “interesting case.” Eighteen months ago he was the unwilling witness of an even greater atrocity. A woman was dying of malignant disease of the stomach, and the physician under whose “care” she was was delivering a clinical lecture, taking the unhappy woman as his text. In the course of his remarks he mentioned various ways of ascertaining the extent of the stomach, amongst them the method of inflating it with gas, and then by percussion mapping out its boundaries. A student inquired precisely how it was done, and the physician said he would show him. The patient was thereupon given a solution of bicarbonate of soda, and this dose was immediately followed by one of tartaric acid. The effect on the poor woman was pitiful, as one can readily understand, for the stomach was instantly distended enormously, which would have been extremely painful had it been healthy; how much more so when eaten out with cancer? She was hours recovering from the effect of this unnecessary experiment, and she died the next day. Is it fair, or just, or even reasonable that, in addition to the pain and worry of her disease, a young woman should be compelled to sacrifice her modesty by stripping herself to the gaze and handling of dozens of men? No medical man would dream of treating a private patient in such an unseemly manner. Why, then, should advantage be taken of the poverty of less fortunate women ?

Of course, there is nothing new in all this. Such practices have assisted Socialists in their opposition to attempts to persuade the workers to contribute to hospital funds, or to take part in friendly society, trades union and other like parades, and street collections. Moreover, the voting of subsidies by public bodies has, until recently been strenuously resisted. We know that this attitude is unpopular, because the workers have been bamboozled into believing that the hospitals exist for their benefit, but it is none the less the correct one for the Socialist, who sees in the failure of the capitalist-class to support them, an opportunity for the people to provide, own and control such places in the interest of and for the benefit of all.

In view of recent developments, it would be too much to expect S.D.F. members and other “labour” representatives to support such a vote-spoiling, “inopportune” attitude. On the contrary, they must “use every means” to get and keep seats. We seldom hear of the anti-hospital Sunday demonstrations we knew in the old days. We do occasionally hear of so-called Socialist councillors and other elected persons appearing at dinners organised for the purpose of raising funds for hospitals and learning to use the tooth-pick with the best of them. But it is left to an S.D.F. councillor of West Ham to propose an express speed down-hill policy in this connection by placing the following resolution upon the agenda for a recent meeting of Council. “Councillor Mayday will move: 'That the Council do approach the trustees of the West Ham hospital for the purpose of entering into an arrangement by which upon payment by the Council to the trustees of the annual sum of £1,000 the latter will, from time to time, receive into the hospital such number of sick inhabitants as may be nominated by the Council.'” As we have seen no report of its being discussed or voted upon we presume it has not been reached and stands postponed. Meanwhile the West Ham branch of The Socialist Party of Great Britain have sent a letter of protest to the Council, setting forth their reasons, and we trust their action will prevent public funds being voted to private institutions where the bodies of the working-class are utilized as experimental objects for the benefit of the rich.

W.

The Economic Foundations of Ill-Health (1944)

From the August 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much emphasis has been laid of late years, particularly since the war, on the importance of health education. It is a tragic fact that under the present system it takes a war to reveal the condition of the nation’s health. The Boer War revealed the harm done to the manhood of England by their employment as young children in the factories and mines. Those surviving, whilst fit enough to be alive, were not, curiously enough, sufficiently fit to die for their country. The last great war revealed a high percentage of C3s. Robert Sinclair, in “Metropolitan Man,” states (page 28) : “The position has not substantially changed since the closing year of the war, when the Ministry of National Service compiled a health census of the 2,500,000 young men who then attained their eighteenth birthday. Of this fine flower of the English race, two specimens in every three were unfit.”

Complacency during this war has not been so much disturbed by the prospective fighting men as by the condition of their children. Evacuation of the town populations to the country brought to light some startling facts. Dr. Kenneth Mellanby, quoted in “Our Towns” (page 5), suggests that 50 per cent. of the evacuated children were verminous. Their hostesses were horrified by their condition, but had they become aware of the state of the “homes” from which many had come, their horror would have been better founded.

“The New Survey of London Life and Labour,” quoted in “Our Towns” (page 40), states : “It is the exception rather than rule to have water ready at hand in unlimited quantities. In half the houses investigated water has to be fetched from outside the tenement, often from a tap on the landing, sometimes from across a yard, at others up or down three flights of stairs; nor is the place for emptying dirty water always where the tap is—it may be yet further away.”

Public health workers, such as health visitors, midwives, school nurses, are expected to be the educators of the working class living in the conditions mentioned above. Under the more passable conditions of some of the working class their advice is welcomed and followed; to those dulled by years of the most brutalising poverty, it fails to register. To the more intelligent among the poorest, however, nothing could be more exasperating. Under hopeless conditions, health talks serve to deepen frustration.

The writer recently attended a lecture on Parentcraft. As he stated his case, the lecturer cited a family of his acquaintance as an example of what parentcraft can do. They appeared to be in the direst poverty, but due to the untiring efforts of the mother, the children had survived. The writer made a reference to “Birth, Poverty and Wealth,” by R. Titmuss, a work showing how descent in the social scale, and the type of work performed by the father, condemned the children to a greater expectation of disease and early death than those of the highest professional groups, and was the greatest factor in the health of the family. The lecturer stated that, whilst he appreciated the effects, he felt that much could be done to ameliorate them by knowledge of parentcraft. What empty hopes! Reminiscent of the boy who, by holding his hand over the hole in the dyke, hoped to stem the flood. Thus do reformers waste their time and energies in trying to alleviate the direct effects of capitalism, instead of striving to abolish the cause.

Health education comprises also a knowledge of food facts. In December, 1937, the Ministry of Health and the British Medical Association worked out budgets in which the amount necessary for food lay between 5s. and 6s. a week per head at the then prevailing prices. Aleck Bourne, commenting on it in “The Health of the Future” (page 81), says : “It may be true that if such a sum were spent by a housewife with a sound practical knowledge of the vitamin and mineral content of the food exposed for sale, she might be able to feed her family without physiologial privation. But this would still not be possible, even though she could buy the food, unless she had been taught how to prepare and cook it, both to preserve the living elements and also to make it palatable and attractive.”

Let us try to imagine the mother of a large family, living, if very fortunate, in a council house; if less fortunate, in a tenement, or even in one room or less, in the worst part of an industrial town. Her vitality is diminished by repeated births and the unending struggles to wash, cook, clean and care for her little ones in surroundings not conducive to the continuance of such activities. Yes, it is very hard to imagine her sitting down and planning the day’s menus in a balanced manner; much easier to imagine her buying fish and chips, bread, marg. and jam, and washing down the mixture with over-sweetened tea as a stimulant. Under such conditions, knowledge, if imparted, could scarcely be made of use. A telling incident is recorded in “Our Towns,” showing how bad housing induces bad eating: “The motives of conduct of poverty are sometimes very far to seek for the well-to-do. An old woman who was bringing up a 10 year old grandson used, when short of money, to give him 2d. to buy two cubes of a proprietary extract. Asked why she did not buy herrings instead, she replied, ‘You see, we’ve only got one room, and the smell of fish frying turns me stomach; and it brings out the mice, and I’m afraid of mice'” (page 41).

Many of these incidents must have occurred within the experience of the average worker, but for a last damning example we will turn to America, that land of the free, and further to South Carolina, that erstwhile home of slavery, where negroes now live under conditions never equalled in the heyday of the “Southern Gentlemen.”

“Look,” an American magazine, in its June 1942 issue, published an article entitled “Parenthood U.S.A., The Story of South Carolina.” It deals with the appalling conditions in Berkeley and Lee counties, which are mainly populated with negroes. “Tucked away in the hot amiable heart of South Carolina are the counties called Berkeley and Lee. Here in two areas, each of 1,200 parched square miles, rural, agricultural, economically impotent, 70 per cent. Negro, exists a public health programme with teeth in it, obstetrical care, infant care and baby spacing are its three main functions. Nowhere in the U.S.A. was there a greater need for such a programme. In 1936, 360 South Carolina mothers died in childbirth; 5,600 infants died in their first year, a higher proportion than in any other state. In 1939, when South Carolina made baby-spacing one of its official public health services, Berkeley County instantly began functioning as an experimental centre. … If the programme works in these impoverished regions, it will work anywhere.”

Graphic descriptions follow. The main diseases rampant include V.D., malaria, rickets, pellegra. Malnutrition is common enough to be almost the rule. The article states in uncompromising terms, “Low incomes mean high infant death rates.” What, then, is the solution to the problem in South Carolina ? The obvious one of raising incomes, or of abolishing the wages system and providing plenty for all? No! what is called baby spacing is alleged to be the panacea for all ills.

Whatever so-called success attends this health drive, it can only constitute a palliative. The malaria may be treated by free quinine, but in such a district, with sanitation almost nil, re-infection will quickly occur. The treatment of syphilis is lengthy, and much of the damage done is irradicable. And the deficiency diseases, what of them ? With smaller families, the wage, such as it is, is divided among fewer mouths. But as the chief occupation is tenant farming in a dry, crop-poor land, reward for hard work is meagre. Many receive what we should term public assistance, and this, we know, maintains life, but not necessarily health. An excellent example this of capitalist reforms; surface scratching, leaving the hard core, the root cause untouched. After all the teaching of parentcraft, birth control and what you will, Berkeley and Lee will remain to their unfortunate inhabitants 2,400 parched square miles where they are compelled to sell their labour power at a bare existence price, or seek some other place. But wherever they go, they will be, whilst working, exploited; if idle, forming part of the industrial reserve army, and, finally, join the scrap heap.

When the worst anomalies are removed, others more subtle become apparent. An excellent exposition of the effects of poverty on the mentality of the school child is given in a work entitled, “A Pen’orth of Chips” by C. S. Regal. This school teacher, working in the Royal Borough of Kensington, found children living in over-crowded surroundings, getting little sleep, and that disturbed, having the well-known diet of bread and marg., getting little fresh air, with a greater preponderance of dullness than those living in less poverty-stricken districts. Dullness is a physical condition that may be inherited, but it may also be acquired. The difference in the stature of the elementary schoolboy and the public schoolboy is well known, but is the difference in the mental stature and its cause so readily appreciated?

It will take more than parentcraft, baby spacing, school meals, etc., to remove the effects of poverty in a world of plenty; it will take a complete change in the social system to bring about production solely for people’s needs, and not in order to make a profit such as obtains to-day. Poverty for the many is inherent in the capitalist system, and we must work for Socialism in order to remove it. By Socialism we do not mean public utility corporations, State control and National Health services, which pass for it with some of our less well informed fellow-workers. By Socialism we mean a system in which all who are able participate in production, and everyone receives what he needs. Only under Socialism can the heart-breaking effects of poverty be removed and all have an opportunity of living the good life as well as enjoying good health.

W. P.

A Look Round. (1904)

From the October 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chamberlain has evidently undermined the economic basis of the Shoreditch Branch of the S.D.F. The members have resolved :

  "That being cognisant of the great distress our fellow-workers in London, owing to the inevitable depression in trade, call upon the L.C.C. to have the building of the steamboats for the Thames traffic carried out as far as possible on the Thames, thereby alleviating to some extent the suffering of the workers of this great metropolis.”

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This contribution towards the solution of the unemployed problem will, doubtless, receive due consideration from the L.C.C. and the Tariff Reform League. For an alleged Socialist organisation to advocate Preferential Treatment or Protection in this manner, and to suggest dealing with the “inevitable” unemployed problem in one locality by creating or intensifying it in another, qualifies it for membership of the Capitalists’ Kidders’ Conglomeration. We shall watch to see whether they join the Chamberlain or General Booth faction.

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The Clarion and Labour Leader are concerned at the position of W. C. Steadman, an adopted candidate of the L.R.C., whom the Daily News announces as the Liberal candidate for Finsbury, which he certainly is, and who is reported to have urged the workers of Stepney to strike a blow at the Government by returning the Liberal candidate. But when has Steadman been anything but a decoy duck for the Liberal faction of the master class? Twelve months ago Tribune (West Ham) contained a letter which had been sent to W. Thorne’s Election Committee, part of which read as follows :—

  "If members of the S.D.F. accept the aid of W. C. Steadman, who runs as a Liberal Labour candidate, then I consider they are morally bound to support Steadman’s candidature if asked to do so. No class conscious Socialist could do so, as only so recently as last September he was the chief speaker at a Liberal demonstration at Grays, at which he is reported to have urged the audience to return a Liberal member at the next election. Socialists cannot logically support candidates who ally themselves with any section of the Capitalist Party, and, therefore, cannot honestly accept aid from them for Socialist candidates.”

What do the Labour Leader and the Clarion expect? “Can the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin ?”

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According to the Daily Express, it is an unpleasant and appalling fact that lunacy is steadily increasing in England and Wales, and it is startling to find that whereas one person in every 327 was certified as insane in 1894, the figures for 1904 are one in 288. But to the Socialist there is nothing startling in the fact. As the struggle for existence becomes more intense, as we speed up, as the raging, tearing, hurrying and scurrying possess us, and as the position of the worker becomes more precarious, we must expect that the mental equilibrium will be disturbed. The returns show that the numbers of insane known to the Commissioners have for some time past been increasing at a greater rate than the growth of population. While the rate of increase in the population during the last decade was 12.2 per cent., the rate of increase of the insane was 24.4 per cent.

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Those so fanatical teetotallers who declare that it is only necessary to close public-houses in order to empty our lunatic asylums, should ponder over the fact that the Commissioners certify that alcoholic intemperance is responsible for not more than 22.8 per cent. of insane males and 9.5 per cent. of insane females. We have no desire to minimise the effect of these figures, but it must not be forgotten that in many cases where intemperance is certified as a cause, it is itself an effect of the overcrowding, insanitary, ill-ventilated, and generally unhealthy conditions under which the workers work and exist. Dr. David Walsh, in his paper on “Unwholesome Workshops and Drink,” declared that anything which weakened the health of the individual predisposed him to the use of alcohol, and no sensible person will dispute this. There is only one way by which the health of the people can be secured and maintained, and that is by the reorganisation of Society upon the basis laid down by the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

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As Mr. Featherstone Asquith is now denying that he was responsible for the shooting of the miners, it will be useful for our propagandists to note the following reference to the matter which he made in his speech at Glasgow on the 17th October, 1893:

  “The year that had gone by had been distinguished by a large number of deplorable industrial disputes. Those disputes had culminated in what had been a most serious and regrettable conflict—he alluded to the dispute between the coalmasters and colliers in the Midland parts of England. In his character as Secretary of State for the Home Department, it had been his duty to take executive action in more than one of those cases for the maintenance of the law and for the prevention of disorder, and he accepted the full responsibility for everything that had been done.”

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Asquith is a Liberal. So also are Bell, Crooks, Henderson, Shackleton, Steadman, and others receiving the support of the L.R.C. The I.L.P. openly supports the L.R.C., but the S.D.F. does not affiliate to it nationally, although it permits its prominent members to attend the Conferences and be adopted as L.R.C. candidates. W. Thorne has not yet been called upon to resign his membership of the S.D.F. for having decided to run as a “Labour” candidate, although for the same backing-down A. E. Holmes was requested to send in his resignation. Moreover, since Thorne has fallen into line with the L.R.C., conditions, he has been publicly supported by Quelch, Jones, Hayday, and other well-known members of the S.D.F., at a demonstration at which he declared that:

   "he believed the eight hours day was the most important of all questions.”

For of such is the S.D.F.! Quelch and his friends support Thorne; he supports Alden, Crooks, Steadman, and Co.; Alden, Steadman, and Co. support Asquith and Co.; and E. Belfort Bax writes letters, which are published in the Press, from the National Liberal Club! No wonder we are asked by a correspondent whether the S.D.F. still assert that there is no difference between Liberals and Tories, and whether we can explain what they mean by their continual references to “keeping free from entangling alliances ?” We cannot: we give it up.

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At the annual conference of the Sanitary Inspectors’ Association held last month at Bournemouth, the President in his opening address, said that the Public Health Acts could not be administered in many places owing to the fact that the officers held their appointments from year to year, and were in consequence dependent upon the goodwill of individual members of the authority appointing them. What member of the association of some years’ experience had not been covertly or openly threatened by some member or members of his authority, or by those aspiring to the office, for either attacking his insanitary property, seizing his unsound —or sampling his adulterated—food? Quite so, and so long as the governing institutions are controlled by the capitalist class, the legislation and administration will be in the interest of that class. And mere Labourism will not alter it. Many a “Labour” member makes the best possible supporter and defender of Capitalism and its works.

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The capitalist press is filled with articles concerning the out-of-works, the homeless, free meals, and other pastimes to which the capitalist class devotes its attention when other things pall. There is no question about things being terribly bad, and that they have not yet touched bottom. In the business world there is a general complaint of slackness of trade and tightness of money—the latter being perennial with the wage-worker. Speaking for the Church Army last month, Mr. Colin F. Campbell told a Daily Telegraph representative that he shared the general opinion that the approaching winter was likely to be one of very great severity for the poorest of the poor. During the summer months their Labour Homes had been without exception full, and he had never known that to be the case during the 12 years he had been there. There were more of the better class of people asking help than there had ever been. Canon Scott Holland, preaching in St. Paul’s Cathedral on September 11th, gave the following word-picture of London to-day :

  “Look at London to-day! Sum up its story! It’s poverty! It’s nakedness! It’s suffering ! There it all welters! Can we not go closer down into it ? Can we not fling into it our reason, our imagination, our conscience—so that we actually see what the unhappy see, and feel what the wronged feel, and burn with their indignation, and pray with their prayers ? This is not done —not done even so much as it was done. There is a slackening of social interest—a deadening of social reform. People do not care as they did. There is no movement. Everything that we hoped for is caught in some dismal backwater. Yet the poor babies still die in their hundreds, simply through the murderous infamy of the conditions into which they are born. And the sweated women still toil from morning to night for a starvation wage, as literally, as intolerably, as ever! And the aged poor are more than ever left behind out of the marching hosts. And the weak invalids are still squeezed down to the level of the criminals and the loafers. We should never let such things be if we really identified ourselves with those who suffer under them—if we took their sorrows as our sorrow—if we were made one with their need.”

Such is the picture, not overdrawn in the slightest detail. Cynics will note that it has been drawn in the chief institution of the Christian Church, that class organisation which has so ably assisted the capitalists in their efforts to keep the people down. And what is said here of London can be said of every large and wealthy city throughout the world. It is Hell! After two thousand years of Christianity, after centuries of middle-class domination, after years of Tory and Liberal Government, London is Hell! And no matter where we turn, one problem forces itself upon us and demands solution. In Monarchic Britain, in Kaiser-inflicted Germany, in Republican France, in Free America, in Despotic Russia, it is Hell for the proletariat. The problem of world-wide poverty in the midst of plenty will never be solved by sermons, prayers, Labour Homes, or Labour Leaders. It will only be solved when the people assume the ownership and control of the means of life, and produce for their own use instead of for idlers. To prepare the proletariat for this complete revolution is the mission of The Socialist Party of Great Britain.—K.