“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

Fifty Years of “Progress”. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Socialist Examination of a Capitalist Statement.

Flights of Fancy.

The Daily Chronicle could scarcely find words to give expression to its admiration of the Blue Book recently published by the Local Government Board, wherein, we are told, the great prosperity of the worker since the introduction of Free Trade, is clearly shown. Wages have risen, prices have fallen, and that great social sore, pauperism, has decreased. In fact, after a perusal of the figures we are almost led to believe that within the next few years all the social evils that now afflict us will have been entirely eliminated, almost, that is, unless we happen to be in possession of further facts and figures.

We are informed by the Daily Chronicle that since 1849 the percentage of paupers to the population has decreased.

Now the total number of persons in receipt of poor relief during the year 1906-7 was 2,076,316. Every day during the year, taking the average, 25.1 per thousand of the population were in receipt of relief. While there has been a decrease since 1850 in the number of outdoor paupers, the number of indoor paupers has almost doubled. When referring to this question the Press were very careful to avoid giving an explanation of the decrease of outdoor pauperism. The cause was fully explained by “F. C. W.” in the issue of March ’06 Socialist Standard, wherein he says

“The Poor Law was further strengthened by the Amendment Act of 1844, but it was not (says the “Encyclopedia Britannica”) until 1867 that the local administration bodies took the matter up with much enthusiasm. The Pauper Inmate Act of 1871, and the Casual Poor Act of 1882, made conditions of relief more onerous by increasing the compulsory stay of vagrants and by other means. Ashcroft and Preston Thomas say in their work ‘The English Poor Law System’ p. 285, ‘The marked increase of indoor paupers (accompanied of course by a still more marked decrease of outdoor paupers until recently) is due to the movement beginning about 1865 in favour of the workhouse principle. It is clear that in the case of this class of paupers (able-bodied adults) it was mainly by the rigid enforcement of the workhouse test that this improvement was secured.’ ”

The Return to Naked Fact.

There are now many other ways by which the workhouses are being relieved, such as, for instance, the Church Army and Salvation Army Homes, and Dr. Barnado’s Homes (which boast of having 8,000 children always under its care) and the rest of the 1,800 charitable institutions dispensing funds to the amount of ten million pounds per annum.

When the Pauper Inmate Act and the Casual Poor Act had been in operation some time, there was another large increase in pauperism. The “Twelfth Abstract of Labour Statistics” issued by the Board of Trade states that

“on every day throughout the year 1892 the average number of persons in receipt of poor relief was 953,719, this number rising steadily each year with but very slight fluctuation to 1,103,724 in 1906, being an increase not only in the number but also relatively to the increase of population.”

If the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission is adopted and the suggested alterations in the Poor Law are enacted, then we shall again be told that pauperism is decreasing, while as a matter of fact the relief of the poor will have been transferred from public institutions to private charity, which we are told can be so developed and organised that out-door relief will become unnecessary.

Turning from the question of pauperism our attention is diverted to “the record of rising wages under Free Trade,” as the Daily Chronicle has it.

Two sides to the story.

Now it is true that there has been an increase in the rate of money wages, but that is no criterion of an actual rise in wages or of an increase in the purchasing power of the wages received. Turning again to the “Twelfth Abstract of Labour Statistics” we find that since 1895 (the first year for which comparative tables are given) the increase in the retail prices of the necessaries of life, apart from the increase of house rent, which is by far the most important factor in the expenditure of the workers, has kept pace with the increase in the rate of wages, which is in many cases based upon the price paid per hour. But the same publication informs us that the number of hours worked per week have been greatly reduced, to say nothing of the increase of unemployment. So when we take all the facts into consideration we find instead of an increase in wages we have an absolute decrease.

The Daily News makes a very poor attempt to minimise the extent of the unemployed problem by attributing the great increase during 1908 to the engineering and ship-building disputes, and this in spite of the fact that the Board of Trade and Labour Gazette tells us in every issue, that persons on strike or locked out, sick or superannuated, are excluded from the figures.

The health of the workers is the next subject that confronts us. We are reminded that the number of cases arising from such diseases as enteric fever, diptheria, small-pox, etc., have been greatly reduced, in fact some of them have actually been stamped out. If, then, there has been such a large decrease in this class of disease, we must ask the reason for the alarm of the friendly societies at the “enormous increase in the number of applicants for sick pay.”

Unemployment brings Sickness–

The Evening News of June 3rd asks “Are modern conditions of life undermining the general health of the working people of this country ? Mere warnings of medical men,” it continues, “unsupported by statistics, do not count as evidence, but the testimony of the great friendly societies which are in close and constant touch with the workers is a more weighty matter.”

On this question Mr. J. Luther Green, president of the Hearts of Oak Benefit Society, says,

“The matter is most serious and is causing the greatest concern to all friendly societies. . . . The causes of the alarming increase in sickness liabilities are probably to be found in the changed industrial conditions, the constancy of the evil of unemployment, the operation of the Compensation Act, and the increased pace and pressure of life. . . Distress arising from unemployment has been especially noticeable during the past year. Cases have come under the notice of the committee where the sickness has been solely the result of unemployment. Distress is followed by privation and health must of necessity be impaired.”

It appears that while the membership of the above society has increased, since 1903, 12½ per cent., the number of claims for sick pay has increased 24 per cent., and the amount paid in sick benefit by over 33 per cent., in spite of the adoption of more stringent methods to eliminate the fraudulent “invalids.”

But the Hearts of Oak is only one of the many benefit societies, so we must take a broader view of the subject. Reviewing the returns of the 14 leading benefit societies we find an almost corresponding increase in sickness, and we agree with the president of the H.O.O. that the great increase is due to insufficient nourishment and the increased pace and pressure on the life of the worker. Every worker knows that the pace and pressure in the factories, workshops and offices is far greater to-day than it was even a few years ago, while the age at which he is thrown upon the industrial scrap-heap, when his vitality and energy have degenerated, is earlier; and so witnesses the record, in the Blue Book, of the great decrease in the number of persons employed over the age of 65.

Employment Wounds and Death.

With the speeding up of machinery and increasing pressure upon the worker grows the the increase of sickness, insanity and the “accidents” upon the industrial field, the number of the latter in 1907 reaching the enormous total of 160,731, being almost double the figure for 1898. The number of fatal “accidents” rose from 3,810 in 1898 to 4,453 in 1907, and the number of non-fatal accidents increased from 79,633 in the former year to 156,278 in the latter ! a total far in excess of the combined British and Boer casualties in the late South African war.

The increasing development of capitalism renders it far more difficult for the worker to raise himself from the ranks of the wage-slaves until now it has become almost an impossibility even in individual cases.

The increase in unemployment and the longer period the worker is in the labour market, makes life ever more insecure. While in employment he is compelled, where possible, to deprive himself and family of many of the necessaries of life in order to accumulate a little to tide over the ever-expected period of “out-o’-work,” an attempt that more often than not ends in failure. 

In conclusion, then, and taking into consideration all the facts attending the position of the workers, we can safely say that instead of enjoying greater prosperity, their position in society continues on the downward grade, Liberal and Tory reformers notwithstanding. And so their only hope is in the complete change, the Revolution, i.e., Socialism.

H. A. Young

Points from the Factory Inspector’s Report. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The report for 1908 of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops contains some interesting facts illustrating and sufficiently condemning capitalist industry and pretended reform.

Here are a few (we quote from Lloyds News, 30.5.09).

“The passing is noted of the White Phosphorus Matches Prohibition Act of 1908, the provisions of which will come into force next January, after which date no white phosphorus matches may be made or imported. All the match factories in the United Kingdom, with one notable exception, remained free from any case of necrosis as in the three previous years; ‘but in that one factory a further case occurred in 1908 and two other attacks have been reported in the first quarter of 1909.'”

The above mentioned Act is rather typical of capitalist “palliative” legislation and is characterised by the usual hypocrisy. ‘Tis clear that the evil complained of has, in this country at least, been reduced to a minimum by the progress of the match industry itself. For have not the superiority and cheapness of the non-white-phosphorus matches almost driven the more noxious kind out of the market ? The Liberal party and its Labour supporters are thus able to point to a further important advance in social reform at mighty little cost to themselves—cost in votes and contributions to the party funds. For practically no capitalist interests are touched, since the evil against which the Act is directed (according to the Report) scarcely exists.

* * *

“Lead poisoning shows, on the other hand, a lamentable increase, the number of cases of all kinds being 646 against 578, the greatest increase being in connection with the smelting of metals—from twenty-eight to seventy. The new inspector for the Potteries district expresses his dissatisfaction with the manner in which the special rules are being observed.”

There is, however, no mention of a law against the use of lead in the pottery industry, although its use, according to the Report, is attended by much greater injury. Why ? Because its use is still profitable, and to propose a law against its use would be to attack real, live, capitalist interests.

It is worth while noting, too, that there are great numbers of workers, for example plumbers and painters, whose cases are never reported.

* * *

Lady Inspector Miss Vines describes amongst others, the following pitiful case: it shows “what capitalism has done for the worker” (pace ‘”Anti-Socialist”) and is doing for the mother and the mistress of the “Englishman’s castle.”

“Mrs. B., a celeste paintress, aged thirty-eight, was a colour duster eight years ago, when she had a severe attack of lead poisoning, never properly well since, but has been employed as celeste paintress at the same factory for several years. Was very ill with colic, sickness, wrist and finger drop of both hands. Could not dress herself, could not grip. Had been married fifteen years, had nine dead and one living child, which was ill all its life and never walked dying under three years of age. Her husband was injured in the South African war, and had been an invalid ever since. Both lived with the husband’s old widowed mother, and latterly the wife had partially kept both mother and husband with her earnings. Mrs. B.’s employers refused compensation, and it was not till the case was taken into court that compensation was obtained.”

Incidentally the reward of “Tommy,” one of “Our Empire’s brave defenders,” should not be overlooked.

* * *

But the Report contains other pretty items.

“In certain parts of the Swansea and Cardiff districts houses suitable for the working classes are so scarce that men sleep in three relays of eight hours each in the same bed, and kitchens are being used as sleeping apartments.”

We wonder if there are some Territorial “home” defenders among the said men.

* * *

While this one tersely delineates the condition of the olten anaemic, forewoman cursed, bun and tea starved stitchers who clothe in rich raiment the female parasites of the capitalist class :

“‘Gentility’ and high rents are the curse of the West End dressmaking establishments. The workers must be hidden away in basement workrooms, or at the back and top of high houses, in order that they may not disturb or worry the sensibilities of the client, who cares not under what conditions clothes are made.”

And yet withal, these, the other potential happy home-makers, when they (not all by any means) reach the desired haven or “home,” find in how many cases, that they have but exchanged the frying-pan for the fire. Such is the age.

* * *

Our next and last shows how hopelessly ineffectual the inspection often is and how employers are able to brow-beat and intimidate those whom the capitalist Press pretend are free citizens. The case cited is a test of truth as between the “free citizen” delusion and the enlightening Socialist axiom that capitalist employment is wage-slavery.

“Another lady inspector, Miss Martindale, gives some startling details as to how the Truck Act is evaded. In one case in Ireland declarations were obtained by her from men who swore that their wages were kept back in payment for their father’s long-standing debts. Proceedings were taken, but the lady inspector’s witnesses went back on their declarations, and swore that they received their wages in coin. The case, of course, was dismissed. Yet Miss Martindale was told immediately afterwards that the employer had paid wages in goods from ‘time immemorial,’ and that everyone in court knew it.”

Did the employee witnesses go “back on their declarations” because they enjoyed bearing false witness, or was it not rather that they feared the “sack” and inability to give their children bread ? Answer, ye anti-Socialist working men and women. Are ye truly “free citizens” or are ye not verily wage-slaves ? If the latter, come where ye belong, in the ranks of the wage-slaves’ party—the S.P.G.B., and battle with us for your emancipation.

John H. Halls

Jottings. (1909)

The Jottings Column from the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. A. D. Steel-Maitland and Miss Rose Squire were appointed to investigate the relationship of industrial and sanitary conditions to pauperism. Their report to the Poor Law Commission is issued as a Blue Book. Their summing up gives the following conditions as being contributory to pauperism in the order given.

1. Casual and Irregular Employment.

2. Bad Housing Conditions.

3. Seasonal Fluctuations in Trade.

4. Unhealthy Trades and Insanitary Conditions of Work Places.

5. Earnings Habitually Below what are required for Healthy Subsistence.

6. Dangerous Trades.

7. Excessive Hours of Work.

Regarding cause 2 the investigators say ”These contribute to pauperism through disease and demoralisation. They are important causes of Pauperism, but less so than the first.”

The Socialist is well aware that the bad housing conditions are consequent upon (or effects of) the irregular employment under existing conditions. Shortness of wages compels the wage worker to accept a slum dwelling.

Some of the slums are the result of “improvements,” it is pointed out.

“Improvements in towns, accompanying the increase of wealth, by the demolition of badly built quarters, the erection of palaces for banks, warehouses, etc., the widening of streets for business traffic, for the carriages of luxury, and for the introduction of tramways, etc., drive the poor into worse and more crowded hiding places.”—” Capital,” Vol. I, p. 674.

This shows clearly that the palliative of better housing does not palliate the real evil of the present system at all, but this by the way.

* * *

With reference to No. 7, “Excessive Hours of Work,” the comment of the investigators is “We have been unable to trace any connection between long hours of work and pauperism.”

Whilst, however, they cannot trace “any connection between long hours of work and pauperism,” they tell us that drink is one of the principal causes of pauperism, but for the most part it is the effect of causes such as dangerous and unhealthy conditions of work, excessive hours, low wages and bad housing. So showing drink to be a cause of pauperism and excessive hours to be a cause of drinking habits, these blind tools of capitalist hypocrits cannot (?) trace any connection between long hours and pauperism.

* * *

The June issue of the Pioneer, the organ of the “Labour and Socialist” movement in Burnley and edited from the S.D.P. club in that town, contains an article on the Budget by Robinson Graham.

The sixpenny super-tax is hailed gladly by the writer of the article. He goes on to say “we Socialists (!) are determined that the working class shall be reminded that this Liberal tax is a tax which has been advocated by Socialists on the platform and in the Press since the inception of the Socialist movement.” Again, “the Government has merely embodied the public wish formed by the Socialist agitator.” Quite unconsciously Mr. Graham belittles the “Socialist” effort alluded to above and points out that “ten Budgets like this one would make little or no difference to the lives of the working classes.”

As the item advocated since the inception of the “Socialist” movement is contained in the Budget, those “Socialists” who advocated it stand condemned, on their own admission, for side-tracking the workers, in so far as time has been wasted on a useless measure.

There is some sound advice in the concluding paragraph of Mr. Graham’s article, which the workers of Burnley and elsewhere (and Mr. Graham himself) should take to heart. They are urged to “direct their attention to ways and means of overthrowing the capitalist system which makes poverty the common experience of the great majority of our people,” and since it is admitted that the Liberal Government have brought in this Budget with a view “to restoring the confidence of the British workmen” in themselves, it should be a lesson to the workers to fight shy of even S.D.P. agitation for super-taxes and the like, which can be used for the restoration of confidence in a capitalist Government.r

Socialism is the only remedy, and that alone, for our social evils. Super-taxes will not make any alteration whatever in the basis of society, in fact, they presuppose exploitation in order that the taxes may be levied and realised.

Those who, claiming to be working-class leaders, direct working-class political activity against anything except the capitalist system must be swept away.

* * *

We are informed by the Baker’s Record, that the S.D.P. have convened a meeting to consider the food supply of the nation, at which they propose to put forward a resolution urging the Government to purchase large reserve stores of corn with money invested in the Post Office Savings Bank. This all very fine as an example of revolutionary daring, but it isn’t to be supposed that the capitalist class are going to put up for ever with the revolutionary (!) plots that are hatched at Mooney’s bar. One of these fine days the S.D.P. will find itself suppressed, unless some particularly funny turn so excites the hilarity of the police as to prevent them executing their duty. Moreover, they are in for a “rough-and-tumble” with the I.L.P., for I hear that the latter have long ago ear-marked “the money in the Post Office Savings Bank” for the capitalists to buy themselves out with.

JAYBEE.

Slings and Arrows: The Wages of Philanthropy (1953)

The Slings and Arrows column from the June 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Wages of Philanthropy

A poet of the eighteenth century commented that “Virtue is its own reward.” That thought is often quoted and applied, especially when workers want a rise in pay. It is nice to know, however; that occasionally virtue brings other and more tangible rewards than the mere satisfaction of knowing one has been virtuous.

When, in 1892, Lord Rowton built the first of his enormous lodging-houses, he did so because he believed (Daily Express, 30/4/53) “every man should have a room to himself—with a door—for 6d. a night.” Five such lodging houses were established and although every man was entitled to pay his sixpence and get his room—with a door—only the poor turned up. The rich, either ignorant of these facilities, or not wishing to stop the poor using them, continued to reside at the Ritz or Claridges. But time has a habit of evening things out and in due course the rich were duly rewarded for their consideration, as we shall see.

It is a far cry from the nineties of the last century to the present time but Rowton Houses still go on and although the price has increased to 2s. 3d. per night nevertheless there is a constant demand for accommodation. So much so that the dividends on the capital of Rowton Houses Ltd. has recently been increased. Its properties are reputed to be worth £2,000,000, and the shares, if the firm were sold, would have a break-up value of £10 each. The City Editor of the Daily Express tells us that although the share and property dealers are envious and would like to do a deal in Rowton House shares their chances are slender, for the shares are held by people “who put service to the not-so-wealthy before profit.” It is perhaps a coincidence that the shares of Rowton Houses are regarded as gilt-edged and that that institution of putting “service before profit,” the Britannic Assurance Co. hold 11,000 shares. When “service to the not-so-wealthy” is accompanied by an increased dividend then virtue gets more than its “own reward,” and when Ecclesiastes wrote “Cast thy bread upon the waters and it shall return after many days ” he little dreamed that it would return buttered.

The Rest is Silence

Dr. Dalton, bright star in the Labour firmament, has published the first instalment of his three volume autobiography. Apart from a few admissions and statements, the book has no merit either as a work of literature or a study of political events. In the normal course of events this book would not be mentioned in these columns as it would be a waste of space to do so. But some of the disclosures are worthy of comment because they throw a significant light on the present Labour leaders who pretend to be more prescient, and more faithful to the cause than the idols of yesteryear.

Dr. Dalton tells us in 1953, that he knew in 1924 or 1925 that Ramsay MacDonald was vain, conceited, snobbish and untrustworthy. But between those years and 1931 Dalton was his supporter and indeed served under him in the second Labour Government. Never, until after the debacle of 1931, did Dalton and the rest of the gang who pretend to have known all along, say one word which would lead either the electorate or rank and file Labourites to believe that all was not well with the Party leadership. On the contrary their mouths dripped honeyed words of admiration.

Dalton quotes Tom Johnston as saying “If the party meeting only got to know of a few things like this, they’d all be climbing up the walls, not just the I.L.P. but the soberest trade unionists in the Party.” But if Dalton knew and Johnston knew how was it that the Party meeting did not know? The truth was concealed.

We are left then with two conclusions. If MacDonald betrayed the Labour Party and was suspect all the time then those who suspected him were culpable. If on the other hand, they did not know, but pretend to do so in order to appear wise, then what reliance can be placed on them? Here they were, working day by day with men whom they now call traitors and they remained blithely innocent of the fact. Are these the leaders who ask for support because of their qualifications?

We are also indebted to Dalton for telling us something of the quality of the Labour leadership. He tells us that when the Labour Government was being formed in 1929, would-be Ministers besieged MacDonald and some of them wept and fainted in their anxiety. What a disgusting spectacle.

That is the sort of thing that goes on when Leaders take refuge in secrecy and when they rely for support as they must do (or they wouldn’t be leaders), on the political ignorance of their followers.

Who knows but that in another twenty-five years we may be reading some future Dalton on some present day traitor or betrayer of the Labour Party. For judging on past experience we don’t know.what goes on in the hierarchical section of the Labour Party; the Party meeting does not know and the rank and file do not know. We can only guess. And we are on reasonably safe ground if we venture to predict that the present day Labour Leaders are as anxious as those of the past to remain leaders, and to take power in order to run capitalism.

Whose Mother isn’t using Persil?

Among the American prisoners released by the Koreans are a small group, who according to the Authorities have been infected with Communist propaganda. And, since the United States is a land of freedom, and the right to think as one pleases is upheld by the American Constitution, this small group has been sent to a hospital for treatment. The treatment will consist of reading books and seeing newsreels approved by the authorities, so that they may be cured of their infection. The State Department announces: “The privations, and dangers suffered by prisoners of the Communists, may have made them susceptible to the Communist brain-washing techniques.”

Here is some peculiar reasoning. Are we to understand that the way to make people agree with and become permeated by one’s ideas is to make them suffer privations and dangers? If it is true, as we have been told by sundry journalists, that American prisoners of war were badly treated by the Chinese and Koreans then how could a “small group” become infected with their oppressors ideas? No one has heard of any Jew who suffered in concentration camps at the hands of Hitler, having to be "brainwashed” because he had become convinced that the Germans were a "Master race.” How then could prisoners subjected to "privations and dangers ” by their captors become convinced of the benefits to be derived from their ideas?

If it is because of the ill-treatment, are these returned prisoners to be even worse-treated so that they may become imbued with the benefits and joys of the "American way of life ”?

As if these unfortunate prisoners have not had enough, psychiatrists have been turned loose on them in order to "brainwash” them back to a belief in free enterprise, democracy, and Americanism. It has not yet occurred to these psychiatrists and “brainwash” experts that men who have been held prisoners for many years and whose subsequent release is dependent upon their change of attitude, will "brainwash” themselves so fast as to outdo any claim made by the makers of Persil soap.

If it were not so tragic this whole episode would make a good subject for an Aldwych farce!

S.A.

Blogger's Note:

The February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard carries an interesting article by 'Ivan' on Rowton Houses.

Socialist Sonnet No.187: Change (2025)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Change 

The deserving and undeserving poor

Will be forever with us so it seems,

At least as long as capitalism’s

Allowed to remain. Poverty and war

Are its indelible marks, that might be

Obscured for a while by some cosmetic

Concealer, liberally applied by a sleek

Politician, who’s not actually free

To do much else, as it’s accountancy

That must have the final decisive say

While capital continues to hold sway,

The determinant of philosophy.

It’ll not change the world unless and until

Real change has become the popular will.

 

D. A.

Editorial: “Our Wonderful Prosperity” (1907)

Editorial from the October 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Board of Trade return issued in support of Free Trade and giving figures showing the phenomenal amount of wealth that is created by those who do not enjoy it, was recently seized upon by the Dally Chronicle in an endeavour to convince the working man that he is prosperous. The figures, however, to the seeing eye show how fundamental is the great class antagonism ; and although the “national wealth” is spoken of and the amount per head calculated, it is seen that there are not one but two nations—those who live by labour and those who live upon those who labour—and that the hirelings who live by labour stand without the pale of this wonderful prosperity.

In reviewing the figures the Daily Chronicle did not refer to the significant increase in pauperism, lunacy, degeneration and unemployment that has been apparent during the past decade. It referred, it is true, to the fact that the cost of pauperism had nearly doubled since 1861, but tried to minimise this by stating that the proportion of paupers had decreased from 364 per 1,000 in 1861 to 249 per 1,000 in 1906. These figures, however, by no means show that the conditions of the working class have improved even compared with such an unfavourable period as 1861, for it is evident to all who have any knowledge of the history of the Poor Laws that the decline in pauperism has been due (as Ashcroft and Preston Thomas point out in “The English Poor Law System”), to the progressive imposition of more onerous conditions of relief and more rigorous tests, to the compulsory stay of vagrants and to the rigorous restriction of outdoor relief.

These facts however, are carefully hidden by the capitalist statistician, and he will complacently point to the decline in pauperism until recently as proof of a decline in poverty, while in reality it shows no such thing, for it is the result of the golden rule of capitalist poor “relief,” to make conditions of “relief” so onerous that the workers will—as indeed they do—rather starve than accept of it. It is most eloquent, of the workers’ condition, that in spite of this the past few years have seen an actual increase in pauperism.

Work and Wages

All who have studied working-class conditions know that the poverty and unemployment of that class is terrible indeed, and that figures drawn from returns made from a few “aristocrats of labour” are utterly inadequate to convey the depth of the poverty or the extent of unemployment among the toilers as a whole, many of whom sink yearly into the hopeless and increasing mass of slumdom through the pressure of economic circumstances. Rates of wages are also used by many to give a totally inaccurate impression, for no allowance is usually made for unemployment, “short time” or sickness, it being so arranged that if a workman gets for six months a wage of 30/- weekly and is compelled to be idle for the rest of the year, his wages are nevertheless represented not as 15/- but as 30/- per week.

One or two items of working-class consumption are given that show a decline in price, but no allowance whatever is made for the adulteration and reduction in quality which are daily more apparent in all things consumed by the workers ; while the fact that house room and many household necessities and provisions have increased in price is rarely mentioned.

The figures given by the Liberal M.P. for Paddington are, indeed, significant enough in themselves, for they show that one million people possess nearly one half of the income of the country. Yet Liberal organs parade the growing “wealth of the country” before the impoverished and worn-out toiler as proof to him that he is prosperous.

The “prosperity of the country” means the prosperity of those who own the country, not of the working class, and those who deny the class antagonism should endeavour to explain how it is that while the so-called national wealth increases by leaps and bounds the condition of those who produce this wealth shows no improvement, but that their employment grows less secure and their toil more intense.

Remarkable evidence of working-class prosperity. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wage-Slaves are able for the first time to cover their nakedness with old rags!

The “Daily Chronicle” of September 24th. last, published the following startling piece of information regarding the overwhelming opulence of those who are getting unprecedented wages for drinking and shirking.

———-

Boom in "Old Clo'es."

One result of workers prosperity.

Not the least curious of the many unexpected consequences of the war (writes a “Daily Chronicle” correspondent) is an unprecedented boom in old and second-hand clothing.

Day by day one sees in the weekly and suburban Press an increasing number of wardrobe dealers’ advertisements offering good prices for all kinds of worn but still servicable clothing.

The reason is that the demand for cheap attire has grown, as a result of the industrial prosperity caused by the war, out of all proportion to the supply.

This is in spite of the fact that some three million men have temporarily discarded the ordinary dress of civil life for the more popular khaki. As may be observed any day in the East End and other industrial districts, there are hundreds of thousands and even millions of people who, formerly but casually employed, and, therefore, ill able to afford even complete second-hand suits of clothes, now find themselves earning regular and often good wages.

Such an advent of good fortune as has been experienced in many working-class homes during the war is generally celebrated by a rehabilitation en masse at the hands of the nearest wardrobe dealer.

———-

Well ! what do you think of it ?

F. C. Watts

Again we tell you. (1914)

From the October 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The average working man does not like the Socialist to tell him that he is a slave. But nevertheless he is a slave. The only freedom the worker has to day is the freedom to starve, or to change one employer for another. Even that, he finds from bitter experience, he cannot always do.

If the worker cannot find work to do he has no means to live on. It then soon dawns upon him that if he cannot find an employer to give him work, he will be forced into the workhouse, or, worse still, be compelled to steal and to become an outcast dodging the upkeepers of the capitalist laws.

We are Wage Slaves. It does not matter what class of labour we do, whether we work as navvies, clerks, or mechanics, we all come under the category of working men. The master class call us by one name: his employees.

Now we of the working class do not own the mines, factories, land, etc. We have no alternative, therefore, but to go to those that do own them, and ask them to give us permission to work. One thing is obvious: we have to work in order to live. If someone else owns the means by which we live then we are subservient to them. Are we not, therefore, slaves, when we have to ask others to let us work for them in order that we may live ?

It is only when we can make a profit for them (the masters) that we are allowed to work, so the thoughtful man can easily see that we are not considered for a moment. When the markets are glutted and our employers cannot sell the commodities we have produced, we are given the sack.

The poverty of the worker when he is working, and the nerve-wrecking fear of unemployment, makes his position as a wage slave worse than any previous form of slavery that was perpetrated upon his ancestors. The chattel slave had comparative security. We have not. The serf had security, less work, and more leisure, than we have.

The working man has no property. He can live in a house—or rooms—just so long as he can pay rent for it. He can go on paying rent for 50 years and the house is not his. His furniture ! Ah, yes ! That is his so long as he can pay the rent. If he cannot fulfil his obligations to the landlord then his furniture is taken.

To put the case in a few words, we own nothing but the power to work. As we own no property, I repeat, we are the slaves to those that do. “He owns my life who owns the means by which I live” is as true now as when Shakespeare wrote it. It will be, too, as long as we, the working class, like to keep a parasitic class upon our backs.

It is no longer necessary to do this. The capitalist class has served its purpose. It is now suffering from disorganisation and decrepit old age. The working class is the last class to achieve its freedom. We have now to carry out OUR mission. That is to take over the means of producing and distributing wealth ourselves, and use in the interests, not of a few, but of the whole community.

It should be obvious to the worker, surely, that if we control our owns means of living we will put a a end to slum dwellings and unhealthy places to work in. The majority of diseases and complaints which the worker suffers from are the result of the conditions under which he works or the unsanitary, over-crowded dwellings wherein he lives. That would be obliterated, never to show its ugly form in the future.

That is the goal before us. The ending of poverty which is the result of the private ownership of the means of life.

With the common ownership of the world’s means of production the social evils that we are faced with to-day would never occur again. That briefly is what Socialism offers. It is your place to take a firm stand one way or the other. If you do not believe that what we say is right, then fight us vigorously. But if you believe in the principles and policy which we expound, join us and help us to end such a system as can only hold out to the workers in their youth, starvation and misery as the fruits of unending and arduous toil, and in their old age, a five shilling pension or the workhouse. The means of producing wealth are now so fertile that only fools can accept poverty as a necessary condition of society to-day.

J. G. W. Stone

Breaking Apart (2024)

Book Review from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of a Failing State. By Danny Dorling. Verso £14.99.

It was recently reported (BBC online 21 March) that the UK now has twelve million people living in absolute poverty, after the biggest rise in thirty years. And in December the Centre for Social Justice (centreforsocialjustice.org.uk) published Two Nations, a report which concluded that for those who are not getting by, ‘their lives are marked by generations of family breakdown, their communities are torn apart by addictions and crime, they live in poor quality, expensive, and insecure housing, and they are sick.’ Here Danny Dorling, who has written on similar issues in the past, surveys many of the ways in which the lives of British workers are indeed being shattered.

One theme is that in most of the world, human lives are improving, but not so much in the UK. For instance, infant mortality is falling faster elsewhere than in the UK, and economic inequality is falling. The UK is probably the most unequal country in Europe in terms of income inequality. In the late 1960s and early 70s, Britain was more equal than it is now, and where you grew up was less important than it is today.

The second part of the book echoes the Five Giants identified in the 1942 Beveridge Report. They are presented as hunger, precarity (insecurity related to housing as well as employment), waste (with far more people now working in finance and accounting), exploitation (such as high university fees), and fear (physical and mental health having declined since the 70s). Research in 2022 showed that one UK household in six was in serious financial difficulty. Austerity has led to a slowdown in growth in life expectancy in Britain, and people in the poorest fifth of households saw their earnings fall between February and May 2020. Death rates from Covid were higher in the poorest areas, and long Covid is most commonly found there too. Many facts and statistics such as these make much of the book an informative but rather depressing read. There is one refreshing observation, though: ‘We should measure the value of a job by the amount of happiness it brings to others, not by the profit that can be made by the person employing the worker.’

And what is the author’s proposed solution? This is not a book where the last chapter offers a raft of reformist measures intended to do away with the problems discussed earlier. Rather, the proposals are spread throughout its pages, including minimising VAT, raising wages faster than food price increases, making school lunches universally available, making tenancy agreements more secure, and restricting second-home ownership. It is ironic that the Labour Party is criticised for proposing ‘only more tinkering’, when the ideas set out here are little more than that.

What we said in the April 2015 Socialist Standard is just as valid as it was then: Danny Dorling should be a socialist and not simply fight for reforms.

Paul Bennett

The Purpose and Method of Colonisation. [1] (1914)

From the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some time ago the Bishop of Hull, speaking on the relation of Christianity to Social problems, referred to the decision of the Japanese people, not to make Christianity their national religion, and said:

“This was because the shrewd Japanese had known too much about the lives of professing Christians. During the time when the present Archbishop of York was labouring in Stepney, a Japanese traveller called upon him and asked to be put in the way of seeing the real inner life of the people of the East-end. The clergyman did not refuse, bat he said he could only pray that the Japanese visitor might forget as soon as possible many of the things he saw . . . The Japanese could not fail to perceive that as a people we were hopelessly divided, class against class . . . squalid poverty at the one end of the scale and stupid luxury at the other.”

It would appear that even the Bishop felt that Christianity was not playing a very creditable part in the sordid tragedy of this much belauded civilisation, although we have no doubt that he would not publicly endorse the charge of the Socialist that religion is always to be found on the side, and, indeed, is the active ally of the forces of oppression.

In the face of the hideousness and injustice of the social conditions obtaining in Christian countries—”the terrible social difficulties,” as one eminent prelate said—the purpose of missionary societies, who go to great efforts and spend enormous sums in bringing this 20th Century civilisation to the “heathen,” might well puzzle those who, although not Socialists, will readily agree that the conditions of existence in modern society not only leave much to be desired, but are in fact paradoxical in the extreme.

The all too apparent and ever increasing poverty of the great mass of the people, which means their shortage not only of those means, opportunities and healthful environment which afford culture and minister to a high development of one’s physique and intellect—the only guarantee for the real enjoyment of life and therefore the road to happiness—but their shortage even of the barest and crudest necessities of existence, side by side with undisputed abundance of all those things, or “unparalleled prosperity.” The paradox of increasing insecurity and harder toil, owing, not as one might suspect, to the failure or misunderstanding of nature, or the difficulty of producing the means of subsistence, but in spite of or contrary to the continuous advance in understanding, mastering and utilising the forces of nature, and more insecurity and harder toil as the result of ever greater facilities to produce.

Neither of the above mentioned instances of glaring inconsistencies and cruel ironies, which could, of course, easily be multiplied, will be denied. Nor is there, so far as the non Socialist is concerned, any remedy for, or any escape from, that condition of things. It is easy to get their admission that unemployment with all its attendant evils is inevitable, and that it exists side by side with excessive toil oa the part of those “in work.” It is common knowledge, “but cannot be altered,” that overcrowding, slums, homeless and shelterless exist side by side with spacious, comfortable and healthy empty and half empty houses; it is equally common knowledge, “but cannot be altered,” that there is preposterous waste of all sorts of commodities side by side with the most pressing and bitter want. Foodstuffs, especially of easily deteriorating nature, such as vegetables, meat, fish, etc. are rotting and perishing in markets and stores in enormous quantities, while uncounted workers with their families are suffering the pangs of hunger. Fuel, such as coal for instance, is being uselessly destroyed to an incredible extent alone in keeping battle ships continually “prepared,” while in cold days the lack of the same precious fuel accentuates the gloom and squalor of innumerable dreary habitations and causes sickness and death due to insufficient warmth.

Anyone reading, for example, the records of such institutions as the Salvation Army, or the Church Army, Dr. Barnardo’s “homes,” etc., etc., the signposts of “civilisation,” or their soul stirring appeals on behalf of the thousands of destitute men, women and children reduced to implore the humiliating, degrading and demoralising help of such charities ; or anyone having perused the facts in Seebohm Rowntree’s “Poverty: A Study of Town Life,” or “How the Labourer Lives,” or Sir Charles Booth’s “The Life and Labour of the People of London,” or Dr. Wallace’s “Social Environment,” or the eloquent comparisons in Chiozza Money’s “Riches and Poverty,” or any other of the numerous similar enquiries, again might fail to detect the reason for the enthusiasm of missionary organisations in transplanting a system such as produces the crying evils and glaring inconsistencies surrounding us.

“In London”—so ran a whole page appeal in the “Daily Telegraph” in the cold month of February—”at this moment there are thousands to whom each degree’s fall in the thermometer is so much additional agony. Men and women feel it keenly, acutely, and to the hapless children it means suffering untold. Think for a moment of some of its phases. There is no money to buy coal, the grate is fireless, . . . and there is nothing but a bit of hard, dry bread. Even the solace of a cup of tea becomes impossible then . . . the pangs of hunger are felt with tenfold force, and the emaciated mother and the shivering children huddle together in the gloom of their bare room. . . . The poor, thin rags that serve as an apology for clothes; the broken boots, through which toes and heels protrude, no warm blankets at night. . . . You cannot—you dare not say you do not see these sufferings. No one can go a walk or drive of half-a-mile in London without passing them:

Women, children, young and old,

Groan from pain and weep from cold;

From the haunts of daily life,

Where is waged the daily strife,

With common wants and common cares

Which sow the human heart with tares.

For we know the long drawn-out misery is there—on our right hand and on our left in this great, proud, wealthy Capital of the Empire.”

“No food, no fire, no home.” “Work for starving women,” etc., etc. Such are other head lines to advertisements in the Daily Press of civilised Christian countries !

Besides this, eloquent figures can be quoted from capitalist economists and statesmen, and a long row of Bluebooks produced, which go a long way to explain a good many of the social anomalies surrounding us.

1,400,000 persons in the United Kingdom, for instance, appropriate between them some £634,000,000 whilst 39,000,000 other people share between them £935,000,000. 30,000,000 people of the United Kingdom own no land, whilst 7 landlords draw £14,640,000 per annum in ground rent!

Is it a wonder that there are 13,000,000 continually on the verge of hunger and that the great majority of the people are at the mercy of a small minority ? And is it a wonder that this stupid disproportion of wealth-distribution should produce anarchy ?

And the same tale of chronic poverty and consequent degradation can be told of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of Germany, Austria, France, America, and the rest of those countries where His Majesty King Capital reigns supreme, and where, consequently, Their Worships Profit and Prostitution, male and female, are the pillars of civilisation. Any native from an “uncivilised” land who had been shown through the factory hells of Continental or American industrial centres and brought into contact with the “life” of the workers there and their “homes,” might well be excused if not rewarded, for bringing to an abrupt end the career of the missionary babbling to him about the blessings of civilisation.

Chronic strikes, bread riots, sordid tragedies of strife, misery and want, police and military brutalities, are evidence that there, as here, millions do not receive a “living wage,” and that there, as here, they are, as the Bishop said, hopelessly divided—class against class.

If then, as can be done, overwhelming evidence can be brought that the system of human co-existence in the so-called civilised Christian countries is “rotten from top to bottom”—as one great apologist for the system has put it—if besides, the worst that can be said by the Socialist is being repeatedly admitted and substantiated by capitalist economists and statesmen, and if, in spite of the struggle with nature having been won by “civilised” men, the great majority of them have still to live from hand to mouth and, not having any property, have to eke out this existence of perpetual penury and insecurity with the spectre of starvation haunting them, it would certainly seem strange that the contamination of the pure atmosphere of the “uncivilised” with our system and institutions should tend to produce there something different from what it produces here—that is, anarchy and social idiocies.

Rudolf Frank

(To be Continued.)

Minimum wages for us – and maximum profits for them (2002)

From the January 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the minimum wage of £3.60 (adult) became law in 1998 many of capitalism’s apologists predicted widespread unemployment and bankruptcies galore. No such disasters occurred. On 10 October the rate was increased to £4.10 and the prophets of doom were once more out in force.

Like all reforms of capitalism the minimum wage legislation leaves intact the basic mechanism wherein a small handful live of the surplus value produced by the working class. However even by comparison with previous capitalist reforms this piece of legislation has proved woefully unsuccessful.

In the two years since it was first introduced the Inland Revenue has had to talk to 16,000 companies about non-compliance with the Act. Peter Grattidge, head of national minimum wage operation at the Revenue, reckons that staff have been paid under the minimum wage level in about 40 per cent of cases. The catering trade is notorious for sharp practices, such as counting tips in calculating minimum wage levels.

A recent example of how this reform works in practice is the swank London hotel The Sanderson. The rates for staying at this hotel vary from £210 per night for a double room to £2,000 a night to stay in the penthouse suite, a sharp contrast to the conditions of the cleaners and porters in the hotel. “From next month the hotel is proposing to switch from a shift system to a rate that will be fixed at £2.15 an hour. And rather than giving a guarantee of 38 hours a week the staff will see the minimum cut to 32 hours. A cut in hours might benefit some staff, but their contract commits them to work 48 hours a week if they are needed.” (Guardian, 24 November)

Richard Donnelly

The Appeal to Dives. (1906)

From the June 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the glory of the Daily News and the increase of its circulation, a “Sweating Exhibition” was opened in the early days of last month, under the distinguished patronage of certain serene or royal highnesses who were graciously pleased to express their heartfelt sympathy with the condition of the victims of the system which their royal highnesses are also pleased to uphold, and of which they are the more or less picturesque figure-heads. We read that when she saw these brave workers Princess Henry was moved several times to say, “Oh, terrible ! terrible ! terrible !” and again “Shocking ! shocking ! shocking !” And these ejaculations seem to have so greatly affected the Daily News gentlemen that they forgot to reject the advertisement which has appeared at intervals in their journal check by jowl with the lavishly worded reports of the proceedings of their Sweating Exhibition—a large displayed advertisement which sets out the advantages of somebody’s suits at 21s.

All through the month of May the exhibition has, with the assistance of a weirdly polyglot committee of high church dignitaries, low church ecclesiastics, broad church clerics, non-conformist church pillars and a host of laymen of every church and no church—a committee ranging from my lord bishop to plain Harry Quelch—kept its doors open. The well-to-do folk in goodly numbers have followed the lead of the royal personages and passed through the tastefully arranged hall and after closely inspecting; the horrors of sweating with all the horrors carefully eliminated, have passed out again having remarked “oh, terrible ! terrible” and also “dreadful! dreadful !” which it seems is the proper thing to say in the circumstances. And the soul of the Daily News has been much gratified thereat; and the sweated workers on exhibition have (vide the Daily News) been equally gratified ; and the columns of the Daily News have been filled with much good “copy;” and a firm has written expressing their great indignation that the boxes used by them should have been discovered in process of manufacture under sweating conditions and has donated a sum to the exhibition ; and the Daily News has secured a wide and valuable advertisement out of the undertaking; and what with one thing and another it has been most excellent good business.

It was a great idea to fix upon the West End for the show. It was done purposely to attract the well-to-do. All that the well-to-do wanted was to have their consciences shaken up a little. Once effect that, and something was bound to happen. It was useless going to a poor neighbourhood as had been proven by the lack of success of the previous exhibition which had been holden in the East End. The conscience of England, rich England, that is not poor England which does not matter, could not be reached from the East End. Certainly much interest was aroused by the East End Exhibition. Representatives of large firms unable to understand how their trade rivals could undersell them, came and were astounded at what they saw. It cleared the air for them and they went away no longer seeing as through a glass darkly. Yet the sweating did not stop. On the contrary, it seemed to increase. Perhaps it was that the City firms, knowing their rivals’ secret, had been forced to adopt their methods. Its a poor Exhibition out of which nobody gets a wrinkle.

Therefore, the Daily News show came to the West End in order to lash the moral consciences of the rich and if a West End conscience expresses itself under the lash in “shockings” and “terribles” the show has done it. The Daily News people at any rate have no doubt about it. Their Exhibition “has rendered a great service to humanity;” it has successfully appealed to the moral conscience of England and has raised such a storm of indignation that, if the land is not filled with fugitive sweaters hastening without the revengeful reach of relentless wrath, it clearly ought to be.

Nevertheless, the truth compels the admission that sweating still continues and must continue so long as the worker is compelled to sell his or her labour-power on the market as a commodity and has no control over the disposal of the wealth which the labour of the worker alone produces. Just because it is inevitable that the exigences of profit manufacture,—the necessary accompaniment of capitalism,—should demand that a large proportion of labour should be redundant on the market; just because, that is, capitalist production would be impossible without an army of unemployed to keep wages down, it is inevitable that the pressure of want should force numbers of these workers to sell their labour-power at starvation prices. Not all the waves of indignation and “moral feeling” that can be conjured out of a community, can affect that result even though the community were ten thousand times more susceptible to “moral” appeals than English people are. Given capitalism, there is no escape from the mind-blunting, heart-racking misery which the annals of toil shew as their dominant and most persistent feature.

Exhibitions such as the Daily News has organised are useless—worse than useless, because the only effect they have or can have is to temporarily stimulate the flow of ludicrously impotent driblets of charity to the end that the evil plight of those unhappy persons whose condition has been brought under notice, may be in some measure palliated, and the time when drastic and adequate action may be taken, delayed. To delay that time may or may not be the deliberate intention of charity dispensers and their following, but it is indisputable that their action contributes to the dissemination of the idea that there exists a “moral conscience” which when occasion demands, can take on tangible soup-and-blanket expression sufficient to satisfy the immediate demands of the acutely impoverished. In other words, the response of the charitable is the excuse for Governmental indifference to the poverty problem, is the force that blunts the agitation of those concerned to press that problem upon a reluctant public attention and, what is of far greater importance from our point of view, helps to obscure that class issue which it is our business as a Socialist Party to keep boldly defined, and so fosters confusion in the minds of the working class. As against the Daily News and its circulation raising sensationalism, we urge that nothing short of the overthrow of capitalism itself and the establishment of Socialism can effect the eradication of poverty and all its attendant horrors. Only when the working class understand that they are poor because they have no control over the machinery of wealth production and, therefore, have no control over the wealth which they alone produce ; only when they have recognised that fact and appreciated the unalterable antagonism existing between themselves and the capitalist class in control of the machinery of wealth production, which that fact necessarily connotes, only then will they understand that by organisation on class lines and by waging unceasing war upon the dominant class until they have achieved complete victory and secured possession of political power and through that the possession also of the means of life can they ensure for themselves freedom from the possibility always present with them to-day, of reduction to the ranks of the sweated and even below. Until then, the fear of abject poverty will haunt them perpetually. Until then, sweating, as even a Daily News writer has been obliged to confess, will continue. The leopard cannot change its spots nor the Ethiopian his skin. An appeal to either to do so would not be more preposterous than the appeal to capitalism to abolish sweating is,

Agra.

Blogger's Note:

There's an interesting post which gives more background on the “Sweating Exhibition” at the following link.

Pauperism versus Poverty. (1906)

From the March 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Rt. Hon. John Burns, in the picturesque language characteristic of him, once said ”Figures never lie, but liars sometimes figure.” During the late election, however, in contradicting the figures of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Mr. Burns did a little figuring of his own.

He said

“In 1849, when the country had just emerged from Protection, there were 1,088,000 paupers, or 62 per thousand of the population, in 1900 there were 25 per thousand. In 1849 the able-bodied poor numbered 13 per thousand of the population, but to-day only 2 per thousand of the paupers were able-bodied.

“As to the cost of the Poor Law Administration, the increase was due to the fact that as under Protection the standard of comfort of the whole community was low, so under Free Trade it was correspondingly better. They had better workhouses, many of them almost palatial whereas formerly they were almost a cross between a penitentiary and a prison.” (The italics are ours.)

That the standard of comfort of a section of the community has improved is, of course, true ; but this cannot be said of the mass of the workers. They toil harder and can buy no more with their wages. Their employment is less secure and their out-of-work spells are longer. The average worker’s wage is barely sufficient to enable him to continue in working condition and reproduce his kind; whilst there are 12 to 13 millions of the working class who cannot obtain even that bare sufficiency. This too, in face of the fact that the labour of the people has increased the wealth of the “country” by leaps and bounds.

We have, it is true, if we have the misfortune to outlive our usefulness to our masters, permission to end our days in those palatial residences which Mr. Burns said are due to Free Trade.

But what of Mr. Burns’ figures ?

They only show an increase in well-being if the Poor Law administration has not been made more severe. Let us see whether the Poor Law regulations have been made stricter, for if they have, the veriest tyro would know that the value of the figures is thereby destroyed.

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 abolished the grant of relief in aid of wages, and considerably modified the Act of Settlement, it also laid down the principle of the Workhouse Test. Parliament, however, left the gradual introduction of the principle in the hands of the Central Department. Nevertheless the refusal of relief in aid of wages and the partial imposition of the workhouse test in order to discourage applicants for relief caused a continuous decline in pauperism from 1834—twelve years before the inauguration of Free Trade.

The Poor Law was further strengthened by the Amendment Act of 1844 ; but it was not (says the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”) until 1867 that the local administrative bodies took the matter up with much enthusiasm. The Pauper Inmate Act of 1871, and the Casual Poor Act of 1882 made conditions of relief more onerous by increasing the compulsory stay of vagrants and by other means.

Regarding this, Ashcrott and Preston Thomas say in their work, ”The English Poor Law System,” p. 285,

“The marked increase of indoor paupers (accompanied, of course, by a still more marked decrease of out-door paupers until recently is due to the movement beginning about 1865 in favour of the workhouse principle.”

Again, p. 288,

“It is clear that in the case of this class of paupers (able-bodied adults) it was mainly by the rigid enforcement of the workhouse test that this improvement was secured.”

The facts clearly show that the statistics of pauperism for the past 70 years are in themselves no guide to the condition of the working class, but they illustrate that poverty is inseparable from capitalism, be it Free Trade or Protectionist. Indeed, in defiance of tests and restrictions there has been a marked increase in pauperism during the past decade.

In spite of Mr. Burns, decreasing pauperism has not been due to diminishing poverty, but to the application of the golden rule of capitalist poor “relief,” to give the poor exactly what they don’t want, so that they would rather starve than come again.

It is, indeed, in consistent application of this golden rule that Mr. Burns himself is being used. The fact that he provides an excellent means of decoying some with vague labour aspirations into the toils of Liberalism, is not the only merit he posesses in capitalist eyes. Few have made it more peculiarly their business to dilate upon those virtues which the capitalist desires in his wage-slaves that they may work cheaper and harder, and none have so vehemently championed the capitalist view of the poor as the new “Labour” minister.

No course moreover, leads so easily to popularity and patronage as the flagellation of working class vices, provided always the fact is blinked that these are the product of a vicious system. Nothing wins the applause of the interested and the superficial more easily than the loud-mouthed opprobrium of the loafer, the outcast and the unfortunate, so long as attention is diverted from the condition of things that created them. Mr. Burns has repeatedly disclaimed any sympathy for these victims of the capitalist juggernaut. He has “none to spare” for these. Even the “Pall Mall Gazette” was led to exclaim that he might be trusted to deal with the “whining wastrelism” known as the unemployed.

In the “Charity Organization Review” he said in 1894 and repeats it in varying phrases,

“Every man who has been out of work cheers the man who is in favour of out-door relief. Every loafer at the street corner who lives on it says: ‘Three cheers for a pound a week out-relief.’ I have always been against it except when administered with the greatest rigidity.”

No wonder, therefore, that the capitalist press proclaim him as the “Right man in the right place,” for as President of the Local Government Board he has found his vocation in the administration of the Poor Law in the interests of the master class.

We who know the utter futility of charity, know also that the only hope of the working class lies in Socialism, and, therefore, concentrate our efforts on that, necessarily in hostility to the capitalist class and all who become its willing tools. The interests of the master class demand that the Poor Law shall be administered with the “greatest rigidity,” so that the poor may be compelled to submit to the most inhuman conditions rather than accept its “shelter,” and the ruling class have found a man after their own heart, one also who does not shrink, when juggling with their statistics, from concealing awkward facts.

F. C. Watts

Letters: My Cupboard is Bare (2008)

Letters to the Editors from the November 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Cupboard is Bare

 Dear Editors,

Gordon Brown was said to be a great economist. Whatever model he used to predict an end to boom-and-bust capitalism was wrong, however. His thinking was worse than one who thinks-not. Recently he stated that Labour were committed to reducing poverty at the same time as he doubled the income-tax burden on the poorest earners in society. In Manchester he said this was a “mistake”. Are we to take it that the man is simply an idiot? No, he is not an idiot, but a man is revealed by his work. Like most in his position his primary interest is in the retention of power and privilege. The working-poor, whose income-tax he doubled, do not bother voting, (as he knows) for we, the low-paid, realise that there is no-one worth voting-for.

There is no important difference for us, the drivers of buses, the cleaners of houses, the makers of windows, the maintainers of property, the workers in offices, all the low-paid working-men and women of this country, between the Labour and Conservative Parties. What politicians call spin we call bullshit and we want no part of it. Middle-England, on middle incomes, voted Labour into power, and for that voting-base income-tax was reduced in an attempt to retain support for Labour. The books were balanced at the expense of the worst-off, without risk of making the Labour Party worse-off. It was no “mistake”, but rather a ploy so transparent that at the next election even fewer of the ordinary hard-working women and men of this country will bother to vote. The real “mistake” made was that of a government without ideology which assumes those of us who vote-not, think-not.

The front page of the Guardian (30 September) reported that “opposition from ordinary Americans killed the bill” to bail-out their failing banks. Over here, we are repeatedly told by the chancellor that the economic cupboard is bare. This is certainly true of my cupboard. Yet the cupboards in the homes, second homes and yachts of those who have caused and profited-from the banking crisis overflow. If the British government makes yet another “mistake” of having ordinary hard-working British citizens bail-out British banks and the greedy millionaires who helped cause the problem it will be one mistake too far and I for one may be looking to my pitchfork rather than the ballot-box. Somehow I do not think I will be alone.

Stephen Haigh, 

Barnsley.

 

Reply:

We trust that your threat to use your pitchfork rather than your vote is just poetic licence. – Editors.

Language

Dear Editors

I read with interest your article on Belgium (September Socialist Standard). It is also of interest to socialists to note how the ruling classes in Belgium used and in some instances continue to us language to divide and rule. By forcing the majority of Flemish (Dutch) speakers to speak French in education matters and totally ignoring the small minority of German speakers in the East around Eupen they managed to get workers at each others throats just by virtue of the fact that they spoke a different language.

Whether socialist society decides to use English, Spanish, Chinese, Esperanto or any other language as a means of communicating with places which speak a different language will be entirely a matter for the people concerned to decide and will not be imposed by the ruling classes. What is for sure is that in socialism all people will be free to speak and learn whichever language(s) they chose. And I dare venture to say that the enjoyment and pleasure gained by learning a new language because you choose to will be immense compared e.g. to the occupants of a country being forced to learn and/or use the language of someone else choice e.g. British colonies being forced to speak English, state capitalist occupied Czechoslovakia being forced to learn Russian or Hungarian speakers in current Romania being forced to speak Romanian in the Ceaucescu state capitalist dictatorship.

Of course some people in socialism may choose to speak only their own native language(s) and rely on a phrase book if they decide to travel, what is for sure is that that will be a personal choice rather than one forced by economic necessity as in capitalism e.g. Polish speakers being forced to speak and learn English if they want to work in the UK (economic migrants). Of course in socialism people will be free to choose where they want to live and work but that choice will be a matter of personal preference rather than economics driven.

Language of course also plays a part in that scourge of the working classes, religion. Much of the church’s hang up about sex probably derives from young lady being erroneously translated as virgin at some point in history. Also they were as thorough as any East German Stasi thug in preventing information getting to where it could harm them. People were burned at stake for the “crime” of publishing or possessing bibles in the English language at a time when literacy was not widespread. So afraid were they that the bible should be stripped of its mystique if common people who didn’t speak Latin could read it in their own patois.

Colin Brown, 

Grantham