“The Force of Passing Events.” Reform in the Baking Trade. (1908)

From the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Fear of the Awakening.

From time to time there have appeared in the Socialist Standard articles descriptive of the horribly inhuman conditions imposed upon bread bakers by our rascally commercial system, and showing how the victims, after floundering about in the Slough of Reform for years, are now turning to the remedy—Socialism. One of these articles has been quoted in full by the official organ of the London master bakers, which now is voicing the fear that unless something is done by way of reform the result will be cataclysmal for the exploiters. In an article headed “White slavery” an appeal is made to the sweater to be a little more merciful than heretofore, and he is reminded of the “laws of reason,” “our common humanity,” “the principle of live and let live,” and such like meaningless twaddle so dear to the heart of the mealy-mouthed and fire-eating reformer alike. Instances known to the Editor are given of men who work 110 hours a week for the “quite inadequate wage of 26s. a week.” That is less than threepence an hour for working in the hot, fetid, smoke, sulphur and steam-laden atmosphere of a bakehouse. The Bakers’ Record, however, recognises that there are two sides to every question, especially now the labourer begins to show his teeth, and it sapiently observes, “Every toiler in a bakehouse, however subordinate his position for the time being may be, always has the prospect before him of being able one day, through the exercise of industry, intelligence, and enterprise, of opening out into life on his own account ; these counteracting considerations notwithstanding, there can be no blinking the transparent fact that much cruelty is exercised here and there, which to a degree throws opprobrium on the whole trade.” It is, no doubt, a regrettable fact that the Socialist at the street corner has for ever made the further blinking of these disagreeable things impossible. It is also a pity that opprobrium should fall on a whole trade. Disgusting and sickening to see the operative turning his face to the rising sun of Socialism as a way out, instead of indulging in the beatific vision of one day becoming a bloodsucker himself as compensation for the loss of his own red corpuscles, and industriously applying himself, with a wet towel around his pate, to the study of the intricacies of high finance that he may be able to successfully float his future Bonanza bakery (the days of the little drum up a side street being over); but the melancholy fact must be recognised, nevertheless, and the operative side-tracked at all costs.

Murder will out.

But how ? Not with jeremiads and the gospel according to Samuel Smiles, but with reforms. This much the capitalist has learned. But what reform? Here the difficulty is met. In the baking trade we have had a surfeit of arbitration and conciliation boards, and see them for the frauds they are, although boomed by shaky-knee’d labour leaders in other industries. That we are not taking any more is obvious to the hack writer referred to. He says : “The past history of the Protection Society (masters) reveals the fact that all such efforts have been in vain, that Arbitration Boards on which masters and men have been represented in equal strength have proved utterly futile, and that the intervention and good services of that useful public body, the London Chamber of Commerce, were utterly useless.” O tempora, O mores ! Alas and alack ! the times are indeed out of joint. The working baker scornfully rejecting a proved fraud— Arbitration. He will no longer beg the robber class to rob him a little less, but is audaciously talking of preventing the robbery altogether. The scribe goes on “the masters selfishly look after what they consider their own individual rights and interests.” Of course they do. That is what they are in business for—nothing else. And they buy all their commodities—flour, salt, coal, yeast, and labour-power—at rock bottom prices, and will continue to do so despite the reformers’ pathetic appeals to them to consider the broader interests of capitalism as against individual selfishness as a means of putting off the evil day of the workers’ emancipation; and despite the fact that that narrow selfishness coupled with the economic development is forcing the pace, as the writer points out in the following terms :

“Therein we can clearly see lies the danger of legislative interference, at no distant date, and we are not sure that it would be to the interests of either party when it became necessary by the force of passing events. We do not hesitate to say that it would be distinctly to the disadvantage of the masters.”

The Capitalist “in the Cart.”

“The force of passing events” is good, very excellent good. It comprises the driving factors which no individual master or joint-stock company can stay or control. The reformer, then, might just as well throw up the sponge and “cease his damnable faces.” The diabolical system cannot be permanently patched up. The “force of passing events” renders the methods of production in vogue to-day antiquated to-morrow, and the rules of the game obsolete and inoperative. The capitalist cannot observe them if he would. He that would save his trade alive must adapt himself to the new conditions, must toe the commercial line drawn by the most unscrupulous, by the man who has the predatory instinct and a species of low cunning abnormally developed. The inexorable decree of Capital is :—

” ‘Mid the clash of gentler souls and rougher,

Wrong must thou do or wrong must suffer.”

and the survivor is he who has elected to do wrong.

The Futility of “Fakes.”

Faced with this position the reformer, who, generally speaking, can skilfully and accurately diagnose the disease, is hard put to it find another quack remedy. “The force of passing events” has rended all the old, fly-blown fakes into things of shreds and patches which cannot be refurbished any more. The position is desperate. The worker must be side-tracked by some means—but alas ! the reformer must either speak truly or fall back on age-worn appeals. He therefore calls for “harmonious action,” “a frank and manly understanding between employer and employed,” and such like “tosh.” But it leads nowhither. “He circling goes who navigates a pond.” It’s no go. The only understanding that will serve is the understanding of our position in the social organism—that we are mere commodities on the labour market; that the sole function of the capitalist is to make profit, which he can only do by robbing the worker; that there can be no “harmonious action” between the exploiter and the exploited, however ignorant capitalist institutions have succeeded in keeping the workers, and that all “understandings” promoted with that end in view can be summed up in the rhyme of our younger days:—

There was a young lady of Niger,

Who went for a ride on a tiger;

They came back from their ride

With the lady inside,

And a smile on the face of the tiger.

That’s the position.

Emancipation via Revolution.

There is no getting to the windward of the capitalist while production for profit lasts. Fully aware of this, we are going for no more rides. We are out for the emancipation of the workers by the workers—for emancipation via the social revolution.

W. Watts

The slimy trail. (1908)

From the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The flight of the wealthy exploiter into the Tariff Reform camp is causing consternation in Liberal circles. Not because the Liberals are thereby losing brilliant advocates for the forlorn hope, but because they are losing and will lose the funds wherewith to purchase professional agitators from the ranks of the intellectual proletariat which capitalism produces in such large numbers and who are compelled, in order to fill their bellies, to prostitute their talents in aid of any cause the votaries of which are able and willing to pay for their services.

The politically bankrupt Liberal Party, then, finding itself in this position, sets out through its Press, in a series of lachrymose articles, to arrest the stampede and to justify the departure from “Cobdenism” in the “economic sphere” and its unfaltering adherence to the free imports fetish. Says the official organ of the “great party” in a panic screed,

”Mr. Chamberlain used to taunt Liberal Free Traders with inconsistency for accepting Cobden’s fiscal policy but rejecting his policy of laissez faire in matters of factory legislation. Mr. Asquith long ago disposed of this point by showing that the two things are essentially consistent. The object of government in the economic sphere is, he said, to secure the best application and distribution of the productive powers of the country. Fiscal ‘protection’ is opposed by free traders because it interferes with that object. Factory legislation is supported by liberals because it conduces to it, since sweated labour is, in the long run, labour uneconomically employed.” (Italics mine.)

Here the reformer himself points to his cloven hoofs, for, shorn of its euphemisms, the foregoing excerpt exposes the sordid motive that first, last, and always actuates the Liberal wing of the capitalist House of Commons. Laissez faire, in the economic sphere does not pay, so overboard it goes. Cheap bread means cheap wage slaves, so the capitalist will spend the last drop of his apoplectic blood to keep the people’s food untaxed. Sweated labour is labour uneconomically employed, so the Liberals will assist their Tory collaborators in preventing titled owners of chemical factories from importing big, raw-boned sons of Anak, standing six feet three inches in their socks, from Erin, and murdering them inside of twelve months. They must take three years to “do them in.” Hence the agonised tears of the humanitarian over phossy jaw, potter’s rot, wrist drop, baker’s foot, and other loathsome diseases which make up the “majesty of labour.” The less astute capitalist is aghast at seeing his liberty to slay for profit restricted in this manner. He is slow to learn the lesson mastered by successful soap-boilers and cocoa fakers that there is money in applied humanitarianism and cheap and telling advertisement in model villages and garden cities, and so the capitalist hack must perforce point out the real motive for all great reforms and “workmen’s charters.” In effect, he says to his paymaster, “Play the game, old man, play the game. Let the cry of the oppressed go up. Let your Carlyles write their flapdoodle on the ‘condition of England question,’ your Ruskins their ‘Fors Clavigera’ and such-like ‘tripe.’ Weep over the ‘cry of the children’ and the ‘submerged tenth.’ Subsidise all and sundry. But keep the people away from the Socialist. He alone endangers the citadel of King Capital. Keep the minds of the working class diverted from Socialism and all is well for Capitalism.”

It is said that in the Chicago stockyards nothing is wasted except the squeal of the dying hog. The British capitalist politician beats even that. Indeed, he finds a trump card in the groan of the famished, half-naked, shivering child ; in the wail of the widow ; in the suppressed complaint of the scrapped wage slave who is a driveiling old dotard at forty-five, babbling, not of green fields a la Falstaff, but of his exploits when stripped to the waist before retort or furnace. All can be turned to account for the further advancement and consolidation of Capitalism ; all can be used to side-track the working class from the main line to emancipation.

It is suddenly realised that it is unprofitable to wear out the workers so quickly. Immediately the capitalists’ henchman of press, platform and pulpit bellow forth the dawn of a brighter era for the factory slave by adding still another “Workmen’s Charter” to the Statute Book in the shape of elastic Factory Acts. It is found, owing to the starving of the infant proletarian, that a sufficiency of cannon fodder cannot be obtained—the wage slave is degenerate and inefficient, and so the children must be fed. Did not the great white Christ command “Feed my lambs” ? The young idea is so trained that it can draw up false balance sheets and lying prospectuses, tot up accounts and label merchandise with more or less false descriptions. It is taught that the despicable vices of thrift, prudence, and resignation are cardinal virtues, that the more servile he is the better citizen he is, and that the religion of cowardly slaves—Christianity—is the very acme of morality, and if he will only subscribe to it he will one day have a halo round his feet. This is called education. And to achieve its purpose Capitalism astutely enlists in its service all the sentimentalists, freaks, and cranks with which mankind is cursed. All the churches, friendly societies, philanthropists, co-operative societies, trade unions, and pseudo Socialist organisations. The slimy trail of the capitalist serpent is over them all. Tariff Reformer and Free Trader, Home Ruler and Labour Leader, Sacerdotalist and Passive Resister, Malthusian and Mormon, Suffragette and Social-Democrat, Temperance man and Anti-gambler, Secularist-ethicist and morality mongers generally—all are playing the capitalist game, consciously or unconsciously. All are attempting to mould the plastic working-class mind on the potter’s wheel. The one party that stands out in bold relief against them all is The Socialist Party. That alone points the road to emancipation and exposes all reforms for the tinkering ineptitudes they are. Hail the Social Revolution !

W. Watts

SPGB Meetings. (1908)

Party News from the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

The Fraud of Municipal Bakeries. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reply to R. B. Suthers.

“Bread and Bunkum” is the title of an article in which Mr. R. B. Suthers draws, in the Clarion, a harrowing, soul-rending picture of the last gasp of the petty shop-keeper, particularly the master baker (perhaps the most pious, unctuous, psalm-grinding, callous sweater civilisation has produced) who is now being crushed by the newest thing in trusts—the Bread Trust.

Mr. Suthers, out of the fulness of his heart, is moved to prescribe a remedy. What is this precious remedy ? None other than municipalisation, which he imagines is Socialism. He says :

“The only question for the small baker is, ‘Am I to be abolished by the Trust or by Socialism ?’ Allow me to put the problem from a Socialist point of view. Here is a community in which bread is a necessity to life. So much bread is required every day. The question is how to make bread in the cheapest and most expeditious manner. It is plain that in a large town it would be cheaper and more efficient to have one or more large bakeries from which bread could be delivered in motor cars direct to the customers, rather than have a number of small shops with a little hand cart or slow horsed cart each overlapping the district of half-a-dozen others. Local depots might be necessary, but they need not be so numerous nor so large as under the wasteful system of to-day.”

If I thought Socialism was anything so monstrous as this glorified capitalism I would fight it for all I was worth.

I have been a victim of this Manchester god of “cheapness” and “expedition” for over twenty years, and during that time have seen many journeymen bakers broken on the wheel of “cheapness,” “expedition,” and “efficiency.” I would ask Mr. Suthers to quit for a while his beloved rate-saving, middle-class view point, and look at the matter from the position as it affects the working class, the only class that matters, or is worth consideration in any way.

Assume that the rate-savers decide to municipalise the bread supply (it won’t be decided by master bakers, Mr. Suthers) what happens ? To ensure expedition and efficiency, cheapness, and other Manchesterisms, it will be necessary to have the newest and most down-to-date machinery operated in the most scientific manner and the latest manner is this: A large bakery is erected on scientific principles, that is, the interior of the structure is divided into two bakeries, exact duplicates, each with its gear of flour sifters, sack shakers, dough mixers, dividers, moulders, provers, ovens and storing racks, with one clock for the use of both. No partition divides them, so that the gangs of nearly naked, emaciated slaves work in full view of each other, each driven by an enslaved slave-driver

.

At the stroke of the clock the two gangs begin their mad race against time and efficient, untiring machinery. An industrial policeman, called the General Foreman, who is not necessarily a baker, clad in snow white cap and overalls, Stalks majestically from gang to gang, book in hand, recording by the common clock the time each gang takes to finish its “rounds,” not that the most “expeditious” may be decorated with a “Crown of Wild Olive,” but that the laggards may be called upon to render an account of their stewardship in that capitalist hell of “cheapness, expedition, and efficiency,” and the misfits weeded out and “scrapped.” This mode of procedure brings out the tigrish instincts of the ganger, who is especially selected for his ability to drive and bully, and who is always on his trial, and can only retain his job by keeping time with his “opposite” or by running past him, consequently the “hand ” who slows down or does not hear a shouted order is “woke up” with a torrent of foul abuse and indecent oaths. The hawk-eyed “Pinkerton” looks on and makes a note. Such is a modern bakery !

In one of these efficient infernos I wot of, the most happy human machine is a big and powerful deaf mute, who works by watching the others. He never complains, nor does he hear the ganger’s live and modern English, nor “the roaring loom of time,” as typified by bread-making machinery. Yet he is sometimes pitied as being afflicted !

In a factory of this description the output per man engaged averages about twenty-two sacks of flour per week: in handicraft bakery it averages about twelve sacks. It is obvious, therefore, that as the industry becomes either trustified or municipalised, a large number of bakers will be thrown on the streets, and the market is already overcrowded with this class of merchandise, as a visit to the factory gates at 11 p.m. will testify. After that hour the poor devils who have failed to secure a night’s job may be seen tramping, Christ knows where, while their brilliantly lighted municipal trams, only half filled, glide past them. Perhaps by tramping through the slush and rain in broken boots they can meditate the better on the advantages of municipalising the trams, which Mr. Suthers with ghastly irony, told us a time ago now belongs to all the people. Mr. Suthers does not say what municipalisation will do for these, or for the “outed” master bakers, the redundant carmen, the superfluous shop-girls, millers’ travellers, shop fitters, and a host of others who will go into the ranks of the unemployed, and in the fulness of time become unemployables, wastrels with drooping lips and slouching gait, fit material for the casual ward and the lunatic asylum, if no worse fate awaits them.

Mr. Suthers, in his tender solicitude for the small master (the ever-starving journeymen seem to be an entirely negligible quantity) asks : “Will the trust buy him out ?” and answers : “No ! the trust will freeze him out.” “Will the trust,” he goes on, “find the starving shopkeepers work ? Will it ?” No, Mr. Suthers, it will not, neither will the municipality buy him out, though, certainly, he may secure a job by the influence of his co-religionists on the council. If he be a Freemason he may even become a “Pinkerton.”

Mr. Suthers concludes by asking “Why then should we not organise this business of making bread, and put an end for ever to the degrading condition and struggle for existence between rival bakeries ?” And my answer is because it would be better to eliminate all the “business” out of industry absolutely, and make bread to be eaten, not to lower rates. Municipalities go into business to make profit only, like any other capitalist concern. It does not signify whether the owners absorb the profits in the shape of “reduced prices” or lower rates. If the working class is enabled to buy cheap bread the operation of the “Iron Law of Wages” will secure all the advantage for the capitalists, as it did in the days of the saintly Bright, when the corn laws were repealed. Capital is always the same in its effect on the working class, whether manipulated by an individual capitalist, joint-stock enterprise, municipality or government, and with each step in concentration the working class gets relatively less and the master class gets richer, more corrupt and more bestial, as recent events in Berlin and elsewhere show.

Why should all the bread be made in factories, anyhow ? In a Socialist community the housewife would have the facilities, if she so wished, to make bread and pastries for herself, her mate and her children, and to suit their individual palates. The essence of Socialism is freedom, and if a woman prefers to develope her individuality by making pure and wholesome food she will be at liberty to do so. All healthy humans must expend their energies in some manner, and why not in cooking—who shall say them nay ?

The damnable idea of being marshalled and drilled, or numbered and docketted, like any other merchandise, in a state of glorified capitalism is not the Socialist’s ideal, but its antithesis, no matter what the capitalists and their protagonists, the pseudo-Socialists, choose to name it. We don’t want to be driven to the gate of the municipal or other factory to hustle and elbow our fellows out of the way so that we may catch the official’s eye in the mad and sordid scramble for mere belly food, for a mere animal subsistence, to be thrown on the social scrap-heap the moment we cease to be “expeditious,” there to rot out a living death, the mental agony prolonged by being kept on the brink of Kingdom Come by a “George Barnes” pension, previously deducted from our competition wage. With the advent of Socialism the whole of the capitalist State and its superstructure will collapse, with its cant of living wages, its Brotherhoods of Man, and the rest of its nauseous humbug.

Socialism will enable us to co-operate with our fellows for the production and distribution of all the necessaries and comforts of life, and to further bring under control the forces of nature for the common weal. Then and then only will the humanities have a chance. Then we shall live, stand erect and be men and women. Away with all forms of capitalism ! Speed the Social Revolution !

W. Watts

Blogger's Note:

A number of R. B. Suthers' books are available over at Archive.org.

The Bakers’ Agitation. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why the Manchester strike must fail.

There is probably no “skilled” section of the working class in a more hopeless plight than the Operative Bakers. All the forces of bestialization seem to be focussed upon that unhappy craft. Withdrawn from all social intercourse with his fellows, and from home life, by the continuous nightwork system, beginning his week’s work early on Sunday evening (I have heard men sworn at for not being in soon enough to allow the boss and his family to be in time for Chapel), sweating far into the next day, he comes home exhausted, takes a fitful and feverish sleep, and repeats the process daily until Friday, when he must start several hours earlier and work several hours later in order to make bread in one night for two days. The work is not only physically exhausting, but the nervous strain is great. He sees the dough in warm weather “moving” faster than he can cope with it to keep it sweet. If the temperature suddenly falls during the night, or (as is often the case in these days of faked ingredients) the yeast deteriorates, it is “on the green side,” and he goes in fear of a “slamming” if the vans have to wait, or if the loaf has to weigh two pounds to be big enough for sale.

In the factories the hours are usually shorter, but the nervous strain is even greater. The speed is much faster and the work oftimes more laborious. The operative’s job is much less secure, at he can be discharged without notice. The wages in both cases work out at less per hour than that of the general labourer, the trade union rate, which few receive, being only 28s. per week of 60 hours for table hands. He therefore does not receive the means of subsistence for himself, a wife and family. Under such inhuman conditions it is certain that the spirit of revolt would be engendered in all those not sunk in the torpor of despair, but alas ! the operative baker’s spirit of revolt does not take definite shape. He has no money to buy books, no opportunity to confer with his.fellows ; the mental atrophy resulting from many hours of night labour in the hot, fetid atmosphere of the bakery (I have worked in an atmosphere of over 100 degrees Fah.) make him the sport of those execrable creatures, the palate-tickling, self-seeking Labour leaders.

The baker’s spirit of revolt is manifesting itself at the present time in Manchester, and there are threats of a strike unless certain demands preferred by the operatives are conceded. Let us see what a strike in the baking industry means, and why it must entail, not only the suffering incidental to every strike, but also starvation for the women and children and bitter disappointment for the operatives.

In the first place I will briefly recall the London ’89 strike as it is called, the last great strike in our industry, and which our “leaders” claimed as the most successful strike since the amalgamation of the small unions. After a long agitation the London men finally decided to come out, a manifesto was sent to the masters and copies posted on the hoardings ; and on a given date all the men handed in a copy of the union’s terms for the signature of their respective employers. If these terms were not accepted the men gave a week’s notice. Many employers gave in, and the result was that these engaged a few extra men and supplied those masters who stood out with bread for their customers in cases where a sufficiency of blacklegs could not immediately be obtained. We thus had the edifying spectacle of union men blacklegging their striking brethren. London did not lose a single day’s bread supply. The displaced operatives received strike pay for some weeks, and paraded the streets carrying “peels” draped with crepe, headed by a brass baud which played the Dead March and other sloppy sentimental drivel outside the non-union shops until the funds were exhausted, mainly through the refusal of those in work to pay strike levies, and dropping out of the union.

Meanwhile the masters were active. They immediately substituted quick-working distillers’ yeast for the old fashioned bread-sweetening but, slow-working “thick” and “compo” yeasts; the “straight” dough system was adopted in lieu of the ferment and sponge system. More machinery was introduced, factories sprang up, or were enlarged, the unemployed grew larger, with the inevitable result of longer hours and less pay for those employed. And in less than a year conditions were even worse than before, excepting in a few instances, mostly factories.

I myself, rather than submit to the conditions my pious employer tried to enforce, threw up my job and walked about for weeks looking for work, spent the accumulations of my thrift in advertising, and was finally glad to accept a job at 22s. and bed per week of upwards of 90 hours. My bed was a fifth share of a room over the flour loft, in which we cooked and smoked. One corner of the room was the office of a city gent rejoicing in the name Pierpoint & Co., and there were other occupants of the room whom we did not individualize, but referred to by the generic name of “mahogany backs.” This was six months after our “successful” strike in that year of successful strikes, 1889.

Shortly after this there occurred an incident which revealed two facts to the alert capitalist. In North London a master baker and publican was a member of the local vestry, and in his capacity as guardian of the public health, led the opposition to a builders’ sundriesman constructing lavatories in the basements of some buildings he was erecting. The sundriesman tried various ways to bring our baker “to his senses,” without avail. He then played his trump card and threatened to ruin the baker, and this is how he proceeded. He took a shut-up shop in close proximity to the baker’s, went to a local factory owner and arranged to have an unlimited supply of bread, engaged a cashier and countermen, fitted up the shop and opened it for the sale of bread at a penny per quartern lower than the lowest cutter in that “bread-eating neighbourhood.” People came from all the surrounding districts with flour bags, baskets, etc., to fetch bread for themselves and friends, policemen were stationed at the shop door to regulate the crowd, who filed in, made their purchases, and went out through the back entrance. The bakers in the factory were working at breakneck speed, at piece wages, their wrists swollen and bandaged with excessive moulding. The baker vestryman was “brought to his senses,” and many others were driven out of theirs and compelled to call a meeting of their creditors, while the factory-owner and the builder made a profit. Less than a year ago the victor, who now lives in affluence, told me he did well over the “deal.” This incident revealed to the factory-owner the number of sacks of flour that could be turned into bread per man in a week. The speed was maintained, but wages reverted to the normal night wages. The more alert capitalist was quick to see the possibilities of machinery, and that a practically unlimited supply of bread could be turned out with its aid and that of a few skilled bakers, and by drawing on the ever increasing army of “unskilled” labourers. He saw the economic advantage he thus obtained, and that the possibility of a successful strike of London bakers was gone for ever. Indeed, the improvement and development of machinery in the baking industry has proceeded at such a pace that it is well known by live bakers that a very large proportion of the work now done in bakeries could be done by unskilled labour, which would be immediately introduced should the operatives force up their wages by any means.

And in the event of a strike the general foremen with one or two blacklegs to supervise the weighing of yeast and salt, the temperating tank, the pitching of flour, etc., and with the assistance of engineers, supplied by the engineering firms, to superintend and work the dough mixers, dividing and moulding machines, regulate the heat of the ovens and draw the plate, could turn out all the bread that was required. Unskilled labour could easily do the rest. The result would not perhaps be the highly finished commercial loaf of to-day, but bread equal in quality to that at present sold. In no trade has technical knowledge been rendered valueless so quickly as in that of bread making, and the factories are fast scooping the trade. Everything is working in their favour, and a rise in wages, shortening of the hours of labour, the abolition of night work, or any other possible reform would give the factory a further economic advantage over the handicraft bakery and the operative.

In 1889 the masters were not organised as they are now. Every district has its local association, while 90 per cent. of the bakers in urban districts are in the National Association. It will be an easy matter then to get the output of the 700 striking operatives in Manchester made in the various factories and conveyed to Manchester in a little over four hours, even from London. Sectional strikes are hopeless in all trades, but in the case of the bakers are madness. There is no hope for us under the capitalist system of production. We must trust to ourselves alone, cease to look up to leaders or appeal to politicians, organise ourselves politically and industrially, not in vain attempts to palliate or relieve our conditions, but to end them.

That trade union leaders do not understand the working-class position and are not to be trusted is evidenced by their public utterances, their miserable failure in the House of Commons, the insipid twaddle with which they decorate the title pages of rule books (“Defence, not Defiance,” “For the Good of All,” etc.), their dining and wining with, and cringing sycophancy in the presence of, the enemy’s lenders. That they do not understand the position is the most charitable construction that can be put upon their conduct. If they understand, acting as they do, they must be frauds. On the other hand the capitalist does understand the economic position, does recognise the incessant class war being waged, does fight scientifically, with all the logic of brutal warfare. He gives no quarter and allows no scruples, no appeals to his humanity to thwart him in his one object and ethic, the complete domination of the working class, the securing to himself an ever increasing share of the wealth produced by our labour. I therefore appeal to the Manchester men before engaging in a suicidal sectional strike, to reconsider their position and what a defeat must mean to them, what a long fight must mean to their wives and children. Even supposing a long fight were possible, is the objective worth the struggle ? While capitalism lasts the capitalist must come out on top. Our emancipation can only come by the complete overthrow of the system of production for profit, and the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth.

W. Watts

The Doom of the Small Baker. (1908)

From the April 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Effect of an Eight Hours Day on Small Masters.

The officials of the Bakers’ Union continue to make pathetic appeals for working-class support for their poor little bantling, the Eight Hours Bill for Bakers, on the grounds that it would, if carried into law, solve the unemployed problem so far as bakers are concerned.

Now as the large number of small bakers still carrying on business in London and the large towns are themselves working much longer and harder than their overwrought employees, and spend their Sabbath, when not in Chapel seeking business, posting up their books and doing other necessary clerical work, and are yet unable to keep in a state of solvency, the forcing up of their wages bill by the enactment of a legal eight hour day, would be, in many instances, the last straw, and their shops would be closed forthwith. Even now the journeymen, after working a “night’’ of eighteen or twenty hours on Friday-Saturday, often cannot get their wages when they finish, but have to call round late on Saturday night, after the barrowman has brought money in from the rounds.

Immediately, therefore, the new conditions began to operate, the factory owner would scoop in the trade of the struggling masters, with the inevitable result that in a very short time the already large army of unemployed bakers would be augmented to an enormous extent.

The baking industry a few months ago was all agog because of the wonderful machinery on view at Islington. Since that time that “labor saver” has been installed in various factories in London and the provinces, and now several balance sheets are going the rounds of the Baking Trade showing the capacity of such machinery in actual every night practice. In one particular factory five hundred sacks of flour are being turned into one hundred thousand loaves by eleven men, and in another four- hundred and eighty to five hundred sacks are done by fifteen men, the extra four men being required in this instance because the bread made is “fancy.” To-day the small master has a difficulty in squeezing thirteen sacks out of each man he employs. Obviously, therefore, it is only a question of time and the small man must finally disappear altogether, even under the present conditions of unlimited hours for a limited wage, and any change whatsoever can only result in speeding the departing guest into the ranks of the proletariat. In the factory bakers are not wanted: any “unskilled” man of average intelligence can do what is required, and for laborers’ wages.

The eight hour day will come, whether it be legalised or not, in fact, it is here in many instances because the capitalist has found that after that period labour is dear at nothing an hour. He can suck all the labour force out of a man in that time, and just as he has no use for superseded machinery made of steel, he has no use for the human machine until it has recuperated. It does not pay him to run expensive machinery with men from whom all the energy has been pumped. He therefore selects a new gang from the large crowd who are always waiting at the gate, in all weathers, night and day. If by any chance he retains a gang for a short period over the normal day, so alive is he to the quality of their labour that he actually pays them at a lower rate for overtime—in some instances as low as 2d. per hour, and even then by a pretty “wangle” is able to comply with the Trade Union clause in bis contracts with Boards of Guardians and other public bodies.

The “big pot” in the trade is in favour of a legal eight hour day, and the reason is not because he is bubbling over with the milk of human kindness and sympathy for the journeymen bakers, but because he has everything to gain from it, and the poor devil who is hanging on by his eyebrows stands to lose what little he has.

What are we to think of those posing as leaders who are holding up such a palpable sham as a remedy for the miseries of the working baker? Happily an ever increasing number are embracing the only remedy,—Socialism.

W. Watts.

Another Debate. (1910)

From the June 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although Mr. Wimborne was the challenger, he declined to open the debate when he met our representative at Manor Park on April 4th, so Comrade Dawkins took the platform and outlined the propaganda carried on by the S.P.G.B., stating that the audience well knew what Socialism was as expounded by his comrades and himself. And he defied Mr. Wimborne to deal with Socialism and not to saddle the S.P.G.B. with the vagaries of Messers. Quelch, Blatchford, Ramsay Macdonald, or the kidnapped Victor Grayson. Nor was he to set up any Aunt Sally and then proceed to knock the poor old lady down and scalp her, for the satisfaction of exhibiting a reeking trophy to the public gaze.

Mr. Wimborne opened by admitting that the capitalist system was not perfect. He claimed however, that the horrible tyranny which would be set up if the Socialists had their way would be far worse. He quoted from a book he called "Allinson's History of Europe" showing the massacres which were perpetrated in France during the Revolution, and he described the S.P.G.B. as the Jacobins of the Socialist movement, who would ruthlessly slaughter all who disagreed with them. Brotherhood was a dream which could never be realised. Christianity had tried for 2,000 years to bring it about and failed. All the great teachers had failed, then how could a few men calling themselves the Socialist Party of Great Britain hope to do what every great genius had failed to do? Now under present conditions the best man came to the top. There was plenty of scope for talent to display itself. But under Socialism the commune would decree what work every man and woman should do. What would happen if the commune decreed that Comrade Dawkins should sweep the roads? Dawkins would decline and then the awful machinery would be set to work. The President would put down his foot and say: the roads want sweeping—Dawkins is a handy man with a broom and Dawkins shall sweep the roads. Mr. Wimbourne then came to his remedy for the existing evils. First we must trust to scientific development. And we must all admit that things are getting better, said he, whereat the audience set up a roar of derisive laughter. You may laugh and jeer, retorted the speaker, but you forget Old Age Pensions and the Workmen's Compensation Act, which bring solace to the old and to the widows of the killed. This statement moved the crowd to redoubled laughter, and even to actual rudeness, whereupon the disheartened protagonist of Liberalism vacated the platform.

Comrade Dawkins dealt with his opponent's points seriatim and in Dawkinesque style. He pointed out that Mr. Wimborne need not have gone to the early struggles of capitalists for supremacy to show how they will murder without scruple all who jeopardise their material interests, and instanced Cecil Rhodes and Co., who butchered thousands of the Matabele in the quest for gold and diamonds.

Our comrade then showed the fraud of Old Age Pensions and the Workmen's Compensation Act, and demonstrated that scientific development, instead of helping the working class, was kicking them in the bread basket every time. Each new application of science to industry was militating against the working class and must continue to do so under private or class ownership in any form.

With regard to the harrowing spectacle of Dawkins sweeping the roads, Dawkins pointed out that degrading as Mr. Wimborne and his superior friends thought such a job was, hundreds of thousands of men were eager for that work now, at a few shillings per week recompense, that many men now do far dirtier and more unpleasant jobs and don't care who sees them where no social inferiority is implied. Under Socialism no useful, necessary work would be held degrading. Our whole outlook would be altered and such things as the rewarding of men like Kitchener and Cromer with hundreds and thousands and people like Madame Curie with a mere pittance would be regarded as sheer lunacy.

Briefly it was thus.

W. Watts.