A Middle-Class Utopia. (1907)

Book Review from the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern Thraldom.—A New Social Gospel, by Dr. W. Hampson, M.A. London: Wells Gardner, Barton & Co. Paper covers, 162 pp., 1s. 6d. Net.

The early portion of this book describes the servitude into which “borrowed” tools, houses, and land are supposed to have thrown the “labouring classes,” the “clean clothes classes,” and also the tradesmen, small manufacturers, and farmers. The evidence in the book, however, really shows that the poverty of the workers and the crushing of the small capitalists are due to the concentration of wealth and industry into fewer hands turning increasing numbers into propertyless hirelings of the possessing few. But to put it thus involves Socialism as the solution, so our author prefers to attribute the situation not to the inevitable march of industrial development, but simply to credit in some form or other. 

The most interesting part of the book is that dealing with agriculture, where many reasons are given for the decrease in number and increase in size of farms, but where the most important reasons such as the development of agricultural machinery which cannot profitably be employed on small farms, the general economies of operations on a large scale, and the development of the machinery of transport which brings other climes into more acute competition, are missed. This, however, is of a piece with the fact that Dr. Hampson nowhere realises the force of the economic trend.

From his point of view of the small property-holder, the author is much troubled by the question of the rates, but his own evidence shows it to be a question that does not concern the workers or even the tenant farmer. He says, p. 46: —

“At the time of the great depression in land values and profits from land, it became impossible for farmers to continue paying their former rents, and a percentage was remitted in most cases, so as to bring the amount payable each half-yearly rent day just within the limits of the possible. If a season were exceptionally bad, so as to involve the farmers in inevitable loss, a larger percentage of rent would be remitted. If times improved in some way, the remission would be less. Thus when the Agricultural Rating Act was passed, to relieve the farmers of a portion of their rates, a smaller percentage of rent was remitted the next half year.”

The middle class of course has its schisms and the author tilts against modern radicalism and against that municipal enterprise which is such a blessing to many middle-class investors, and also against the officialism that provides easy positions for their sons ; but Dr. Hampson’s attitude is nevertheless essentially that of the class between the devil and the deep blue sea. He protests against rings and combines, but is specially vehement against working-class trade organisations, and states that trade union action, by restricting free competition in labour “means a reduction of wages and in the standard of living,” while on p. 28 it is further urged that:—

“All combining, negotiating, organised advising and warning, striking, picketing, and other proceedings intended to restrict the freedom of the labour market, ought to be regarded and treated as criminal, so as to restore complete freedom to the man who wants to sell labour and to the man who wants to buy it.”

There is also on p. 12 a curious defence of the exploitation of labourers—exploitation by the middle class of course. It is stated that the shareholders having the necessary plant and materials or equivalent wealth—

“Lent them to the officials and working men and women of the factory, on condition that the latter, having borrowed them and worked with them, should pay to the lenders a part of the profits earned by their labour, namely, all that was over after they had been paid a subsistence wage depending, among other conditions, on the recognised minimum standard of living in the district at the time. Now this was a perfectly open bargain, well understood by all the parties to it, and the shareholders, who in fact lent the factory and appliances, have a right to claim that they shall not have hard words thrown at them, as capitalists, because they are taking a part of the profit earned by other men’s labour.”

In the description of the Utopia that is expected to follow the adoption of the author’s suggestions there is nothing but glorified middle-class conditions, with the middle class predominant in wealth and power. It is prohibited to live in hired rooms and houses, and all credit is forbidden except the capital of limited liability companies, of which all shareholders are required to be also occupied in connection with their company, while no shareholder may own more than five times the smallest allotment of shares. A kind of Single Tax is instituted (in spite of the author’s ideal of free internal trade) in the nature of a poundage on every cash transaction. This tax (which the author says is not a tax, and which is to be levied without officials) is to enable the one man government to supply such of the citizens as have deposited £250 in the State Bank, with a further £250 on their marriage for the purpose of buying house, furniture and allotment. There are to be no boards, committees, councils or parliament. National government is to be run by an elected president and local administration by a manager ; while no one can vote unless he owns, among other things, a bicycle !

There is still to be wage-slavery in the new Utopia, but the workmen are supposed to be able to get higher wages through the absence of trade organisations, and through being forbidden to hire rooms, so having to buy a room or rooms outright. The labourer is to give six hours industrial labour per day and put in the rest of his time on the land. The thrashing, winnowing and grinding of corn is to be done at home in small hand machines because :

“However little it may cost to grind in a steam driven mill, it costs less to do it at home in the time that used to be spent in the evening at a public house. It costs nothing at all, but actually saves the money that was once spent in drinking to while away the time.”

How typically middle class ! 

Even the great domestic servant question is almost solved in this Utopia. The author says :

“And are mistresses no longer the slaves of their servants ?

In this respect also there is great improvement. We have now no large class of excessively rich, keeping large houses full of ‘pampered menials,’ and so setting before other servants a false standard of lavishness, luxury, ease, pilfering, and ‘perks.’ On the other hand the middle-class ladies, having given up imitating the luxury of the rich, have themselves become as good practical housekeepers as their husbands are practical business men and cultivators. They can, if need he, manage their houses in many cases without outside help, and so, when they have that help they know how to keep, without petty domineering, the position of mistress in their own homes.”

The Doctor’s Utopia illustrates both how completely class interests as they are recognised mould a man’s views, and how narrow is the mental vision of the middle class.

For the realisation of this Utopia an association called the Land and Labour League is to be formed and to be endowed by a few charitably disposed millionaires for the purchase of property, the tenure of which is to be sold to League members who in turn are not allowed to give any of their property as security for a loan. Leaguers will pay “no rates or taxes,” these will be paid by the League out of proceeds of a receipt stamp tax to be levied on all members.

The League, says the author, is to be a co-worker with the garden city schemes at Bourneville, Port Sunlight, York, Letchworth and other places, so it is very small beer after all.

The League will, when funds allow, put £250 to the selected member’s on his marriage for the purchase of house and grounds that are to remain technically the property of the League—a sort of glorified building society in fact that is supposed to grow snowball like, until it absorbs the whole of Society.

But what of the, working man ? How is he to save the necessary £250 in order to participate in this paradise ? The author has told us that to-day “The lowest salary which will supply the bare living must be accepted by each applicant lest another cut in and take the place,” also that “conditions make it practically impossible for an average man to rise out of the labouring ranks in which he was born.”

The odds therefore appear to be rather long against the workers being able to save the requisite £250 each, indeed, they do not stand even an outside chance. But the author of the “New Social Gospel” has a most simple plan. It is to tax immigrants heavily and put an almost prohibitive tax on imports. Then, says the doctor:

“When all the production for the English market is secured for the English producer, there will be for a time an era of prosperity seldom equalled before. Demand will overtake supply for a time. The price of labour will rise higher than ever before; the unemployed and, under such tempting conditions, many even of those who are now unemployable, will be earning money ; and the workers being rich, the prices of common articles will rise also, though not in the same proportion as wages.”

Truly a simple plan—for simpletons. The workman knows that labour-power is the last to participate in a rise in prices, so that the problematic rise in wages will not be proportionate to the rise in general prices. The worker will also see that if prices rise, then the price of house and land rises also, thus the amount to be saved rises proportionately, leaving the possibility to the workman of saving at least as remote as before.

Further, restricted immigration is no new thing, and where instituted has made no appreciable difference to the workers. It is not the alien, but capitalist development that creates the unemployed, and the same process is going on in every country ; new inventions and processes, greater concentration and more efficient organisation decrease daily the proportion of wage workers required by the masters to produce for the market. Large numbers of workers are thus thrown on the streets while the owners of the instruments and materials of labour reap the whole of the benefit.

And with regard to a prohibitive import tax, owing to the very nature of international exchange, the import trade of the country cannot be destroyed without causing havoc in the export trade and the consequent ruin (under capitalist conditions) of those producing for export. We have also object lessons the whole world over of the futility of fiscal juggling as far as the workers are concerned. Capitalist conditions breed working-class poverty everywhere, and must do so long as the workers are the hirelings of the possessing few. But even supposing that by some miracle all wage slaves managed to save £250 and so live rent free ; is it not a fact that capitalism (whether under small or large manufacturers) turns the very thrift and temperance of the workers into weapons of offence against them ? and does not Dr. Hampson himself prove this ? Speaking of allotments he says :

“Suppose the profits from a plot of land to be equal to two shillings a week. Then a man and his family can live in the same moderate degree of comfort as before on a wage of fourteen shillings instead of sixteen if need be.

It is the professed object of the promoters of improvement on these lines that the improvement shall become general. Suppose them to succeed to the full extent of their hopes. Suppose that practically all the labourers increase their wages by such means to the equivalent of eighteen shillings, so that they could, in case of necessity, continue their present style of living on an actual money wage of fourteen shillings. The farmers would not be long in making the discovery that their labourers were able to live on two shillings a week less. And the next week they would require their men to prove their ability.”

Such, indeed, is the mainspring of the welcome that has greeted the present Liberal Small Holdings Bill. And its undeniable truth destroys at one blow Dr. Hampson’s Utopia as far as the workers are concerned. Whatever cheapens the cost of living of the workman, as soon as it becomes general, reduces his wage, competition compelling him to sell himself for a mere subsistence. Yet Dr. Hampson dares to say that if the worker did not have to pay rent he would be enabled to exact a higher wage ! The small capitalist is essentially reactionary, and his only possible ideal is one that runs counter to every economic tendency. And our author, voicing the interests and ideals of this class, has reckoned without his host, the financial magnate, who now rules the capitalist roost, and without, also, the army of the workers, who can only go forward, to industrial democracy,—not backward, to the infancy of capitalist society. Unlike the middle class intellectuals, the scientific Socialist, has outgrown the Utopian stage. Our author, however, evidently imagines that men figure the society they want and then make it to order ; so he thinks that if the public find his Utopia good they will set themselves to make one like it. The scientific Socialist does not erect a fanciful Utopia, but analyses actual Society, its economics and its history, and tracing its laws of development sees whither the basic factor, the development of wealth production, tends, and derives therefrom, not a detailed picture of the future, but the broad direction of economic evolution and the essential principles of the society foreshadowed by the present. And by the study of men’s actions, motives and history, he is enabled to discover the essential principles of the action that must be taken to render the transition speedy and beneficial.

Dr. Hampson has not done this, therefore his reforms are upon all counts a snare and delusion to the middle class in their struggle against the inevitable, while to the working class they offer at best nothing but a shuffling of masters by no means to the better.

F. C. Watts

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

On Buying Out the Capitalist. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

[From “The Concentration of Wealth” by Henry Laurence Call, a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Columbia College, New York, Dec. 1906.]

The purchase of public utilities from the corporations is, indeed, now generally advocated ; and we presume the same alternative will be proposed with regard to the trusts, when the people shall have become thoroughly aroused as to what they mean, as also to the futility, as well as the inadequacy, of all attempts to curb or smash them. But this acknowledges the right in these corporations to insist upon such terms as they please, or even absolutely to refuse to sell until their franchises and privileges shall have expired ; thus postponing indefinitely, and rendering practically null, any attempt at a real remedy. The proposition is, moreover, in any just estimate, deliciously ludicrous. The simplicity of the countryman who “locked the stable door after the horse was stolen,” was sage wisdom by comparison. It is as though that countryman, with the thief parading his stolen horse in his plain sight, should have hypnotised himself into the belief that the possession of that thief was evidence of property, and sacred ; and while still in that hypnotic state, should have proposed to mortgage his farm and future labour in order to purchase back his stolen property.

If, through the misconduct of their public servants, the people have been defrauded of the possession of their public highways, as also of industry itself, then their right to repossess themselves of these properties and franchises is the same as that of the individual to repossess himself of his property, whether lost or stolen. The deprivations and wrongs of the past can never be remedied ; and all the wealth that has thus far gone to supply the lavish and sinful waste of these arch plunderers of the industrial world may not be restored to the people ; but all the plundered wealth that yet remains, including the franchises and properties, is theirs to recover and possess.

To attempt such purchase would, indeed, entail upon industrial society an impossible burden.

It is stated that the income of John D. Rockefeller is 72,000,000 dollars per year. If this is true, then the wealth of that individual alone, judged by its earning power, is to-day not far from 2,500,000,000 dollars; and before any reform can be effected will undoubtedly be 3,000,000,000 dollars. Now, inasmuch as the net earnings of the whole (American) people are only 3,000,000,000 dollars per annum, it would require all the earnings of all the people of the nation for a whole year, to satisfy the demands of this one individual alone, in the event of such purchase. But he is only one of thousands of the enormously rich ; and the class, of which he is representative, possess practically ninety per cent. of the 106,000,000,000 dollars given as our national wealth. Not all the labour of all the people would, then, suffice ; . . . as well might a slave, all whose toil belongs to an absolute master, hope to purchase its freedom, as industrial society to undertake such purchase, and then hope even to lighten its debt burden.

Aside from the contradiction it implies, and the hardship it must entail, the purchase by society of these possessions would perpetuate an aristocracy of wealth, having no occupation but the search for pleasure and power, and quite as formidable then as now. It would take all the profits from production and industry, leaving the whole of industrial society in the future, as at present, but “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for these lords of the industrial world. It would convert this into an immense corruption fund, in the hands of an idle class trained to ambition and power. Many might be content with this perpetual mortgage upon the labour of the whole nation, and spend their incomes upon pleasure ; but who can doubt that the great lords of finance who now dominate the industrial world, would still thirst for power, and, conversant with all the corrupt methods of our politics, would use the same criminal methods to build up a newer power, as those employed to build up their present possessions and power ?

Besides, such half-way action, or compromise, would be as wrong and unjust as it would be impolitic. All these possessions have been created alone by the labour of industrial society ; and to it, and it alone, they justly belong.

If, therefore, these possessions have found their way into the hands of the present possessors through unjust laws, through bribery, corruption, fraud, and other criminal misconduct, which the people could not see or prevent, then the people cannot do less than demand a full return both of the properties and all the accumulated wealth therefrom. Their right to this wealth is exactly commensurate with their right to take possession of the properties themselves. The return of the goods of which they have been despoiled is quite as important and altogether as just, as the prevention of further spoliation. It is enough that they have been so long defrauded of their just possessions, and compelled to toil in the service, and at the dictation, of the wrongful appropriators ; without assuming this voluntary and dangerous additional burden of perpetual toil, in order to come into possession of their own again, or rather into what would be but a hollow mockery of that possession. This wealth, thus plundered from a nation’s toil, either belongs to these plunderers or to the society from which they have plundered it; and to one or the other it must go in the end. Industrial society must make its choice between the two horns of the dilemma ; it must be the judge of its own rights, as also the enforcer of its own decrees ; and from its decision there is no appeal, as no recourse from its action.

The corporation, then, in all its ramifications, industrial, financial, and public service, should be taken from under the control of private interests, and made co-operative in the workers, by them to be administered for the common good; it should be, in fact, a social, not a selfish institution.

Industrial Democracy. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The logic of events has altered somewhat the character of the opposition that is made to the Socialist. He is now seldom told that the personal management of the capitalist is essential to the working of industry, for it is precisely those concerns in which the personal supervision of the capitalist is lacking that are driving the personally managed businesses to the wall.

It is acknowledged that the small master man has every year an increasing difficulty in making his way in the world. Each year sees an enormous number of bankruptcies, largely among the personally managed businesses, and each year sees private businesses turned into companies, and companies combined into rings, cartels, and trusts. The reason for this is not far to seek.

It is only the small businesses that can in any real sense of the word be said to be personally directed, and the small concern is in a parlous way beside the great public company. The large firm is able to considerably reduce the proportion of management expenses by distributing them over a larger volume of work. It is also able to extend the division of labour and to introduce and suitably employ the most efficient machinery. It is able to buy in large quantities and therefore more cheaply ; to make consignment of goods in bulk and therefore at lower rates ; and in many ways both in buying and in selling to overreach its smaller rival.

Though the working capitalist resort to sweating methods of the worst kind and work his men long hours and use all the petty tricks of trade, yet he can rarely successfully compete with the great company that makes profit for owners who know nothing of the processes and who take no part in the labour involved.

The sweating underground master-baker is out-competed by the eight hours day machine bakery. The struggling tobacconist, tea dealer, and the like are being crushed by the branches of the great distributing trusts. The small cycle maker is losing ground before the great Coventry companies, and on all sides a similar process is going on. The number of trusts in this country is already very great, and their number grows apace. And this fact, though it sounds the knell of the middle class, rings nevertheless with the promise of deliverance for those who toil.

It means that associated production is vastly more efficient and economical than individual or small scale wealth production. It demonstrates that the personal supervision of the capitalist is unnecessary to the carrying on of industry. It means that the workers run the main industries of the country, though it is true that they now do so for others’ gain.

In the company and trust, some of the black-coated proletariat are hired and placed in positions of authority ; the manager is given a larger salary and perhaps a percentage on the profits in order that his interests may be more closely identified with those of his masters, the capitalist class, rather than with those of his dusty coated brethren ; but nevertheless the fact remains that the most efficient concerns are run by proletarian hirelings and the profits are handed over by them to the idle and useless owners of the plant.

The growth of company and trust each year demonstrates more plainly the uselessness of the capitalist. The working class now runs industry to its own misery for the profit of its oppressors, but the day is near when it should take those industries that have been built up with its blood and sweat and transform them from means of profit for a handful of parasites into the means of its deliverance from slavery and degradation. The economic foundation is being laid, and as industry after industry ripens to the trust stage, so approaches the time when those who labour, having driven their exploiters from the political entrenchments, must seize the industrial machinery their labour has created and use it for the well-being of all.

W.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For July. (1907)

Party News from the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Blight of Snobbery. (1907)

From the May 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Organisation of “Respectable” Workers.

Notwithstanding our past efforts to point the more excellent way to the Railway Clerks’ Association, that organisation of the more “respectable” railway employees, like the ploughman of the famous Elegy, still continues to pursue its dull and melancholy way. Its latest lucubration makes it clear that although as their watch-word in large capitals informs us “Association is the law of Progress,” it does not follow that progress must accompany association. Intellectual progress (the analogy is intended to be void of offence) would not, for example, result from wooden heads be they never so closely associated. A silk purse is not the outcome of the association of sows’ ears. Two years ago we gently argued with the R.C.A. in an endeavour to show that its position was unhappy and untenable, yet to-day it comes along with pretty much the same sort of fallacious pronouncement. It has had two years of association but that has not connoted progress—of intellect anyhow.

This is its statement of some reasons why railway clerks should combine–preferably in the R.C.A. :—

“On nearly every railway there are evidences of reactionary tendencies which will become very detrimental to the welfare of the clerical Staff unless steps are taken to counteract them. Salaries are being kept down, staff reduced, holidays made more difficult to obtain, returns are multiplied, and office work made heavier and more complicated every year. Sunday business increases without any extra remuneration being allowed to clerks who are called upon to sacrifice their Sabbath. Girl clerks are introduced to keep down the standard of the men, and the word “Economy” is abused wherever opportunity allows. 

Instead of Railway Clerks participating in the general improvement of trade and the increase of National wealth, their condition is either stationary or declining while Railway revenues are steadily advancing. Prospects of promotion diminish every year through the introduction of young men from universities who have undue preference over experienced capable men amongst the general staff.”

Excepting that it seems to be assumed that if railway clerks would but join the R.C.A. they would participate in the increase of National wealth—an absurd assumption of course—this statement, doubtless, fairly represents some of the conditions of railway clerical labour. It is what we should expect to find seeing that railway clerks are in the same position as any other section of the working class—the position of an exploited or robbed class. In common with the rest of the workers they have to sell their labour-power for wages, and any hardening of their conditions simply means that the capitalist class, who buy their labour-power, are endeavouring to squeeze a little extra surplus value out of the deal—whether the exigencies of industrial conflict necessitate such squeezing in order that dividends may be maintained, doesn’t matter for present purposes.

The Roots of Capitalist Philanthropy.

The operation may be ill-advised from a capitalist point of view. It might be better business for them to make, for example, the surroundings of their employees more congenial; but they, naturally, would only consider that matter favourably if they could see that it was possible to get greater profits out of the improvement. It is their concern for profits which is the actuating motive, not the increased comfort and happiness of their wage-slaves, and they may be relied upon to make any such alterations in their own interests without any assistance from an organisation of employees.

The R.C.A. or any other such body presumably does not exist for the purpose of informing the master class of the best means of getting larger profits. Seeing that all profit is obtained from the exploitation of the workers, they (the workers) are not concerned with being party to the increase of that robbery—not unless they are very stupid. It is no advantage to them if they are translated into conditions which enable them to speed up their energies to permit of three days’ work being done in two, when, as is inevitable, the speeding-up process results in the production of an earlier state of decrepitude. They are concerned, or should be, in securing, if possible, some real advantage—a benefit which has no counterbalancing loss.

If we are agreed so far, it will at once be seen that such benefit cannot be obtained except at the expense of capitalists’ profits. And the capitalist is not going to relinguish any portion of the profits, upon which his existence depends, without a struggle. Into this struggle the worker, out for increased benefits, must fling himself willy-nilly. There is no other way for him. He cannot achieve his purpose by “blarney,” by pleading the misery of his lot, by appealing to the “higher nature” of his employer. Capitalism knows no higher nature. It only knows higher profits. The worker has got to go into the struggle. And his measure of success will be the measure of his appreciation of the conditions of the conflict.

The Class Struggle.

The conditions of the conflict are simple. He is fighting as a worker against the capitalist whose interests are absolutely and entirely opposed to his own. It is not a fight of individuals either. It is not him versus his employer. If it were he would go under at once because his employer has always the unemployed reserve to fall back upon and all he has to do is to sack his “hand” and get a new one from the hungry crowd clamourously appealing for work outside. It is not even a section of workers against a section of capitalists. Threaten a section of the institution of profit-mongering seriously, and immediately the capitalist section becomes a capitalist class with all the forces that Capital can command hurrying up to the defence of one of its citadels. The sectional struggles of the workers since the rise of capitalism are in evidence as proof of this. A Tory mine-owner (Masham) calls upon a capitalist Liberal Government for help against his striking workers, and in a twinkling we have the soldiery shooting down the workers in revolt. Scores of cases could be cited if space allowed.

The struggle then is between class and class. When the workers recognise that, they will have appreciated the conditions of their battle and will organise their forces on a class basis accordingly. As it is they organise sectionally, enter the fight sectionally, and are beaten in detail by the opposing forces acting in concert, with their economic power buttressed by political power controlling the armaments of the country. The working class in such circumstances are in a condition of pitiable impotence. Under the direction of leaders either fraudulent or ignorant they waste their substance and their strength with a recklessness at once prodigal and imbecile. And if as a result of repeated efforts repeatedly smashed, they fall back hopeless, dispirited, apathetic, what wonder is it ?

But even if any ground existed for the supposition that sectional fights might be productive of good, it would be at once conceded that the larger the section, the better the chances of success. If the railway workers could take sectional action for sectional benefit to themselves as railway workers, it would surely be allowed at once that such action ought to be taken by the whole of the railway workers. The larger the association, the more effective the action— that is always argued by the trade union leaders. And yet we have the Railway Clerks’ Association coming along to railway workers, mouthing “union is strength” and the rest of the inconsequentialities of trade union stock-in-trade, to urge that a section of a section should organise themselves separately—without connection with any other firm in the same street !

How Not to Organise.

Here is the acme even of trade union absurdity. Railway clerks must combine separately. In the name of the ten-a-penny gods, why? Because their interests are separate and distinct from the interests of the rest of railway workers ! Really, I hardly know whether this is rant or cant or fustian. The interests of clerks are as distinct from those of engine drivers as the interests of platelayers are distinct from those of porters—neither more nor less. Therefore—a platelayers’ union, and a carriage washers’ union, and a porters’ union, and two or three score other unions in the same industrial section ! Why not ?

The fact is, of course, that the R.C.A. is endeavouring to play up or down to the “respectability” of the clerk. He doesn’t wear corduroys—therefore his interests are different. He wears a black coat —which, perhaps, poor devil, he hasn’t paid for—and therefore his ways are not the ways of the carman who, probably, wouldn’t have a coat at all if the Company in its large-hearted charity didn’t supply him with one. He is a superior person our railway clerk, and must be treated “as sich.”

Of course, this cult of the bob-tailed coat is a live thing with railway clerks or the R.C.A. would be unable to exploit it. But it is none the less a manifestation of clerkly ignorance, not less but more pitiably ludicrous because it is crowned with the stove-pipe hat of caste. Clerks, railway or other, will have to recognise the essential unity of their interests with those of the more horny-handed sons of labour if they are to effect any material change in their condition. As members of the working class themselves there is no progress for them apart from the general advance of their class. Any organisation they may be associated with not based upon this conception of class solidarity coupled with the recognition of the conditions of the conflict they are consciously or unconsciously participating in to-day—conditions briefly set out in the foregoing—is not an organisation at all for their purposes. It is simply a delusion and a snare from which, when wisdom comes, they will flee—after giving it a parting kick as a mark of their esteem.

R.C.A. Fatuity.

Does the Railway Clerks’ Association give even a fleeting intimation, of its recognition of the essentials of working-class organisation? To that question we have to answer to-day as we have answered before—not one. On the contrary it seems to lay itself out to shew that more appalling stupidity, more abysmal ignorance can find lodgement in the clerical breast—or that part of their anatomy clerks usually think with—than in the mental fit-up of any other species of proletarian. The public pronouncement previously referred to after detailing some of the reasons for organisation on the part of railway clerks, goes on with sublime fatuity (or stupendous cheek) to say—

“The Association advocates nothing of a character likely to be detrimental to proper discipline or the best interests of the Railway Companies, and one of its aims is to promote a better understanding between Directors, Officers and Staff.”

Is there any “Labour” organisation maintaining itself leech-like upon working-ignorance anywhere, that can beat that for folly ? Here are workmen acquiescing in the announcement made by their leaders with an air of authoritative wisdom to the effect that on the one hand out of their own pence the men are voluntarily creating an organisation for the purpose of looking after the best interests of their employers, while on the other they assert they have entered into association to protect themselves against their employers ! Apparently the R.C.A. is of opinion that the best way to fight the employer is to kill him with kindness—a method for which, perhaps, something might be said if the employer under such treatment did not take so unconscionable a time in dying.

And this is the organisation which railway clerks are strongly pressed to join ; an organisation without a glimmer of understanding of the working class position ; an organisation whose idea of association is to sub-divide the working class into as many sections and sub-sections as the numerical strength will allow ; an organisation that conducts its campaign against capitalism by studying the best interests of capitalism and modifying its own action to conform to the requirements of those best interests ! How the board-rooms must ring with the laughter of the great-hearted Directors when the news comes in of the steps their clerical workers are taking to secure some amelioration in their hard condition. Small wonder that Directors of Companies sat at one time—whether they do or not, now, does not appear in the document under notice—in the presidential and vice-presidential chairs of the R.C.A.—it was most excellent good business for them.

And small wonder also that such an organisation should have as its most prominent fugleman, the nominee of a person of so malodorous a reputation as the President of the Local Government Board. Alderman W. J. West, J.P., the nominee referred to, is the President of the R.C.A. and under the aegis of Burns stood as L.C.C. candidate for Battersea, vice Burns himself, (who had been called to higher things by his too satisfied capitalist paymasters). We had the satisfaction of doing something toward the defeat of Mr. West’s pseudo-Progressive and confusionist candidature, just as we hope to have the satisfaction of doing something toward defeating the work of Mr. West’s pseudo-labour confusionist organisation.

The Duty o£ the S.P.G.B.

That is our business in life as a Socialist Party. We are out to combat working-class error, and invincible though the error seems when manifested in such appalling pronouncements as the one quoted from above, we are by no means dismayed. To some number we who form the S.P.G.B. are clerks ourselves and have some intimate knowledge of the forces which operate to produce in the clerk that sense of snobbish superiority which is so pitiable because based upon such slender ground—as the clerks themselves make patent every time they “spread” themselves to achieve dialectical effects in political or economic discussion. As the Emerald Islander would put it, “they can never open their mouth without putting their foot in it.” Break down the fancy line of caste, however, let in upon him the light of the Socialist philosophy that raises (or reduces) the man with the hoe to the level of the man with the pen, and the clerk takes his place with the rest of the working class and may be relied upon to do his share in the work of breaking down the society forms behind which the forces of capitalism lie entrenched, and setting to utter rout those forms thus unmasked.

The Only Hope.

We despair neither of the clerk nor the navvy. Pressure of economic forces will compel him to cast about for the, means of economic salvation, as in fact it is doing to-day, and although his untutored efforts may be temporarily arrested by charlatan or fool and his energies switched off and wasted in absurd organisations of the type of the R.C.A., it must occur that, in the result, for the very simple reason that the Socialist Party alone holds the solution of the industrial problem, he must turn to the Socialist Party for the way of escape. The Socialist Party alone can explain the phenomena of economic cataclysm. The Socialist Party alone can unravel the tangled skein of working-class hardship and poverty and insecurity. And in the Socialism they advocate can adequate and final remedy be found. “There is no other name given under Heaven whereby we may he saved” except Socialism.

Our appeal to the clerks of the R.C.A. and to every other memher of the exploited working class is that they should concentrate their mental energies upon a fair and full consideration of the Socialist position. The result will be sure. It will he death to the Railway Clerks’ Association and all other such causes of working-class confusion, but it will mean life to the railway clerk and to the rest of the proletariat.

A. James

Random Notes. (1907)

From the May 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bernard Shaw has a three column article in the Clarion upon “the moral of the L.C.C. elections,” one column and a half of which is devoted to his showing, mainly on the evidence of the return of Sidney Webb and Frank Smith, that the results of those elections do not spell defeat for Socialism. The other column and a half is mainly devoted to supporting the contention of Robert Blatchford, that the results of the elections do spell defeat for Socialism ! And yet we are urged by the quidnunc and the cognoscente to believe that Shaw is not merely the farceur he has been represented, but, on the contrary, is a desperately earnest person.

o o o

The Tribune (April 1st) quotes this from the report of the Executive of the S.D.F. to their annual conference :—

“It is necessary here to call attention to the conduct of Mr. John Burns, who, as President of the Local Government Board, has now gone back entirely upon his former opinions, and the most hypocritical employer of sweated labour, with a predilection for conventional Sunday-school morality, might well envy the power of glib pharisaical cant which the “man with the red flag” can now always bring to bear upon the unemployed question.”

o o o

and this is the S.D.F. conception of correct tactics on the unemployed question :—

“This conference further calls upon the Government at once to amend the existing Unemployed Workmen Act to such an extent as to provide useful and remunerative work for unemployed men, and to make sufficient grants from the Imperial Exchequer to local authorities to enable them to give employment to all citizens in need of it.”

o o o

And then reflect that Burns is at the head of the Governmental department which must deal with the call “to provide useful and remunerative work,” etc. And that the Government is, according to the S.D.F., representative of capitalist interests. And that, also according to the S.D.F., capitalist interests absolutely rely upon continued labour redundancy. So, we will call upon the capitalist Government to put into operation the pharisaical cant of their obedient servant, the ex-“man with the red flag,” in order that the unemployed upon whom capitalist interests depend, may obtain the work that the capitalist Government cannot provide !

o o o

Sweet, isn’t it ? Likely to have an exceedingly enlightening effect upon the working class the S.D.F. allege they are educating—what? Don’t tell the unemployed that the capitalist Government can do nothing for them. That would be the truth, of course, but it wouldn’t be good “tactics.” Therefore we will lead them to suppose that the Government can do something for them, and we will call upon the Government to do that something which they cannot ! So will our reputation as practical politicians grow.

o o o

May the beneficent fates turn the hungry eyes of the uneducated working-class unemployed away from such tactic-struck educators. And may the same beneficent fates turn the brains of those well-intentioned S.D.F. rank-and-filers in order that they may see their own stupidity in following with such pathetic fidelity the fatuous leading of their purblind—or is it pharisaical—captains. We offer the beneficent fates aforementioned, the columns of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD as a medium for the expression of their powers. Indeed, the S.D.F. man may rightly regard these columns as the instrument which the fates are using to divert his path from that abyss of political impotence toward which his unthinking steps are being urged by the tactical grotesques he hails as leaders. If he will not so regard these columns, he must needs gang his ain gait (I hope that’s good Scots) and suffer the penalty which “baffle-headedness” always invokes. And he may count himself a fortunate fellow if he awakes from his somnambulistic perambulations before he finds himself up to his neck in a slough of despond, being pelted by the objurgatory brickbats of a long-suffering working class.

o o o

At the annual dinner of the athletic club of Messrs. J. Lyons & Go’s employees, the chairman (Mr. Isidore Gluckstein) in responding to the vote of thanks to the directors of the Company for the support they had given the club, remarked that they were pleased to encourage athletics among their staff because “outdoor sports not only bettered a man physically but enabled him to do his indoor work all the better.” So. Scratch the benevolent director and you find the hungry capitalist. It is good for the men that they should be physically robust. It is also good business for the employer. And the greatest of these (to the employer) is the good business.

o o o

The Paris Herald reports the death, in Pittsburg, of John Brislin, the inventor of modern rolling mill machinery. John was a boyhood friend of Andrew Carnegie, and John thought, when, in conjunction with Anton Vinnac, he perfected his patent, that his old pal, Andrew, who was in the steel business, would see him through all right. Instead of which, John and Anton had to take action against the Carnegie Steel Company for stealing and working their patent. They estimated their invention to be worth 40,000,000 dollars. Andrew’s company offered them 100,000 dollars. They refused and the States District Court gave a verdict in their favour. Then old pal Andrew’s company took the case to the Federal Court of Appeal which, being a court of commercial justice and Andrew’s company easily having the most money, naturally reversed the order of the lower court. Having no more money to fight, Anton died of grief and John lost his eyesight and Andrew by the grace of God and the poverty of his old pal, waxed fat upon the invention that didn’t belong to him and began to make a name as a philanthropist and library purveyor. Recently John received a letter from Andrew in which Andrew seems to have held out some hope that Jobn might expect some justice soon and John was so shocked that he died of heart failure.

o o o

Under Socialism of course, it will be impossible for genius to reap the reward due to it. It is only under capitalism that genius can hope to secure adequate recognition. All the same I don’t marvel that John died.

o o o

“There is no other movement in the world, unless perhaps the Christian Church, which numbers among its professed followers so many who fail to understand or appreciate, the meaning and application of its fundamental teachings, as does Socialism in England. This is the more remarkable as the points in dispute are scientific facts, capable of the fullest and most complete demonstration.”

E. J. Lamel in “Justice,” 6.4.07.

Many a true word spoken even in Justice. We entirely agree with Mr. Lamel, but cannot allow the exception which he makes in favour of the S.D.F., to which he belongs.

o o o

Our objection to the S.D.F. is quite as strong as Mr. Lamel’s objection to the pseudo-Socialists who will have none of the S.D.F. because that organisation refuses “to accept an anaemic, milk-and-water ‘Socialism’ as the genuine, full-blooded article.” And our objection to the S.D.F. is for very much the same reason. S.D.F. “Socialism” is anaemic and milk-and-water as Mr. Lamel will find if he will peruse fairly the statement of the position set out in the Manifesto of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (price Id.)

o o o

It is curious, too, to find a writer like Mr. Lamel, who seems to pose as an exponent of the scientific view, making reference to the private ownership of land and capital, as though the common ownership of capital, like the common ownership of land, was conceivable. He speaks of the predictions of Marx with the air of one who has Marx at his finger-tips. But if he really knew his Marx he would not confuse (as he appears to do) capital with wealth.

o o o

Nor would he fall into the error common among those unscientific persons whom he so vigorously trounces, that the working class which “suffered the most” in prosecuting the South African War, “now has, directly or indirectly, to pay the piper.” As a matter of fact the working class temporarily benefited by the industrial incentive which the war gave. And if it is true, as Mr. Lamel states (a statement in which the “scientific Socialist” will concur), that the working class “has to rely for its livelihood upon the proceeds of its labour” (read labour-power) “sold as a ware,” it will be interesting to know how the working class can ”pay the piper,” having regard to the fact, accepted by all “scientific Socialists,” that competition for work reduces the average working-class return to a bare subsistence level.

o o o

These points are urged, not with a view of scoring off Mr. Lamel’s ignorance, but rather with the idea of suggesting to Mr. Lamel and those who stand with him, that just as the S.P.G.B. has been at pains to establish itself on what Mr. Lamel may regard as the minutiae of Marxian economics, so it has been at pains to discover the error of the pseudo-Socialist Parties in order that it might, by dissociating itself from such error, and the confusion which it must inevitably work, present a clear issue to the working class.

o o o

This clear issue is absolutely necessary to enable the working class to begin to build up that organisation upon which it must rely in the struggle of the future. That is essential to class-conscious action—the only action that can effect working-class emancipation. Wherefore, to Mr. Lamel and all those whose desire it is to do all that men may to forward the revolution, we throw out the challenge to show us wherein our position is unsound. Failing that—and in the three years of our existence it has not been done once—we insist that the S.P.G.B. is the only Party of the workers, and that in it all Socialists (the term connotes a scientific appreciation of all the facts of the economic situation and needs no qualification) should be organised for the purpose of giving effective assistance in the working-class struggle for freedom.

o o o

At the meeting of the London Central Unemployed Committee (April 5th)—

“Mr. Lansbury said he thought it was time the Body seriously considered their position. THEY HAD FOOLED THE UNEMPLOYED LAST WINTER. They had the amusing spectacle of Parliament voting £200,000 and setting up in London elaborate and costly machinery, and yet they had not been able to spend that money in providing work.

They had registered the unemployed, investigated their birth, and “inquested” them up and down London, and the result had been that a petty few thousand had received a few weeks’ employment. He protested against the way in which things were being managed and against the man at the head of affairs and the whole of his wretched department.

He protested against the return of £90,000 to the Treasury and against the man who was doing it. The Liberal Government was fooling the unemployed.”

o o o

And this is the organisation brought into existence by the Government measure for which the S.D.F. claimed credit ! This is the abortion which was hailed by “Labour” members, (and those who want to be “Labour” members,) as something very like a revolution. For the first time, we were told, Parliament had recognised its duty towards the out-of-work. For the first time the legislature had admitted its moral obligation—and so on. We pointed out at the time that the thing was a fraud—must be a fraud and could not by any chance be any other. And now Lansbury comes along to say that the unemployed has been “inquested” and “fooled” and that practically nothing had been done or could be done,

o o o

What now ? Well, if the unemployed are not sick to death of the dreary business ; if they are content to believe that their self-styled representatives in the House are doing everything needful or possible ; if they can still manage to find spiritual sustenance from the faith that is in them—faith in others doing what they require—if these things still are, then the next step will be the step that was taken last. And it will be productive of the same result. But if the unemployed recognise the futility of starving and insist for themselves upon the right to the things which are life, then, although the unemployed problem will not be solved, they will not be hungry.

o o o

There is no solution for the unemployed problem short of Socialism. The working class sooner or later must recognise that and organise accordingly for the overthrow of capitalist domination. But in the meantime? Well, in the meantime they will get the equivalent of nothing unless they evince a determination to refuse to starve quietly—unless, in short, they constitute themselves a menace to the peace of mind of the master class. We are no advocates of rioting because an unarmed mob versus a well disciplined, well armed force means immediate defeat for the rioters. The most powerful menace to official complacency is the growth of a class-conscious working-class organisation. Given that and a refusal to be satisfied with promises or with anything short of the extirpation of capitalism, and doles will come tumbling down as manna from heaven. Take the doles in your stride but do not allow them to divert you from your purpose a hair’s breadth. Concentrate upon THE WORLD for the working class and, as the scriptures have it, all other things shall be added unto you.

Alegra.

A Look Round. (1907)

From the May 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Louis A. Hill, to whose utterances I have previously referred in these columns, continues his advocacy of an Eight Hours Act for bakers and continues to make unprovable statements in connection therewith.

***

In communications to the Dally News and the Daily Express recently, he stated that the passing of the bill would “find work for practically every unemployed baker in London” and “would find employment in London alone for some 4,000 or 5,000 extra hands.” Now in my humble opinion Mr. Hill knows he cannot justify these statements, hence his refusal to debate the matter with a member of the S.P.G.B., when asked to do so at the meeting of bakers held at Canning Town on February 9th.

***

In the February issue of the Journeymen Bakers’ Magazine, Mr. Jenkins, General Secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Operative Bakers, reported that during the Labour Conference at Belfast he visited one of the largest and most up-to-date bakeries in the city, and “had special facilities offered me to examine the newest machinery that had been introduced from a labour-saving point of view, and found, as I had expected, that every development of machinery was throwing men out of work, the result being that 102 men were on the out-of-work list, so that with a 700 membership, one out of every seven were out of work, which represents a very serious state of things ; up to now they have been able to deal with this small army of unemployed, but from all appearances they may be eventually hard pushed to provide for them unless by a serious increase of contributions, notwithstanding they are working under a 48 hour week.”

***

According to the British Baker for April 19 last, Mr. Jenkins attended the Annual Dinner of the Portsmouth Branch of the A.U.O.B. & C. on April 10 and in replying to the toast of “The Amalgamated Union,” laid special stress on the Eight Hours Day Bill for the Baking Trade now before Parliament, which had, he said, been rendered necessary by the excessive labour forced on those who could find employment, the result, in connection with modern improvement, being an ever-increasing army of unemployed bakers, which the proposed Bill would practically eliminate. Where ten or fifteen years since ten or eleven sacks was considered a fair output per man, now double that amount was the output in many of the factories, and it was evident that something to alter the conditions of the workers was an absolute necessity.

***

Once again I ask Mr. Hill, and also Mr. Jenkins, to reconcile their extravagant statements with the actual facts as admitted by, at any rate, the last-named.

***

That “Radical of Radicals,” Mr. Horatio Bottomley, has made Mr. Featherstone Asquith a present of a suggestion, but does not for a moment suppose that Mr. Asquith will adopt it. He says : “An Old Age Pension of 5s. per week for every law-abiding citizen—whether otherwise “deserving” or not—of the age of seventy years and upwards, who cares to claim it. That will exactly fit the case—and Mr. Asquith’s name will go down to posterity as that of the great Chancellor who, out of the country’s wealth, fed and clothed the aged when their powers of contributing to it were exhausted. No man could seek a higher reputation than this.”

***

Oh! that will be joyful. Most members of the working class are “too old at forty.” The great friendly societies, who take care only to enrol “good lives,” show in their statistics the number of middle-aged members who, mainly because of unemployment, lapse. And if they can only manage to “hang on” until they are 70, and never break the law, Horatio would give them five shillings per week !

***

This, in Mr. Bottomley’s opinion, will enable them to feed and clothe themselves. I should like to see Bottomley, Asquith & Co. doing it at the price. And what about rent ?

***

In the following year Mr. Bottomley would extend the pensions to those of 65 years of age, thus bringing himself into line with those other advocates of “justice” for the squeezed-out workers, the Labour Party, who through Mr. G. N. Barnes, urged this proposal in the House of Commons in February, 1906.

***

In sending stamps for twelve months’ subscription to THE SOCIALIST STANDARD, “Wrong Fount” expresses his appreciation of our efforts to produce an interesting and instructive journal, the reading of which has greatly strengthened him. He is a member of the S.D.F., and has been recently a municipal candidate for that body. He does not wish his name and town to be mentioned, as “the time has not yet arrived,” whatever that may mean. He adds:—”You have a good work ahead ; it is good if only for what the ‘S.S.’ has taught me, although I am still ashamed of my ignorance. Go on, Lads!”

***

Well, we cannot expect to dispel ignorance all at once. It took many years for some of us who were in the S.D.F. to arrive at the stage of entirely breaking away from the reform and palliative mongering of that body. But at last “the time arrived,” and we formed the S.P.G.B.

***

One paragraph in “Wrong Fount’s” letter is undoubtedly based upon an insufficient knowledge of the facts, and may also be due to some prejudice on his part against us. He says: “might I suggest that there is a vast difference between criticism and vilification—although I must confess that the latter weapon is not used so much now as it was formerly by you. That is good, too.”

***

Now, I do not think it can be charged against us that we have ever vilified anyone in the columns of this journal. To vilify means to degrade by slander and a slander is a false or malicious report. So far as we know, no “slanders” have ever appeared and every effort will be made to keep them out. Upon reconsideration “Wrong Fount” will no doubt withdraw his remark.

***

On Wednesday, September 6th, 1905 (one year and eight months ago), whilst the Trade Union Congress was sitting at Hanley, over a hundred people were evicted during a heavy downpour of rain from their homes at New Hemsworth, near Barnsley, at the instance of the Colliery Company, with whom they were in dispute. Other evictions followed later. The dispute is not yet settled, and the evicted ones have not yet returned to “their” homes. They are endeavouring to subsist on the few shillings that can be raised by making charitable appeals to their fellow members of the working class, who have not sufficient for themselves.

***

For fourteen months out of the twenty there has been a “Labour” Party in the House of Commons, specially claiming to represent the Trade Unionists, of whom the Hemsworth colliers form a part. While the colliers and their wives and children have been suffering and starving, the “Labour” Party have been earning the encomiums of the capitalist party, and boasting of their “sensibility, adaptability, and respectability.” One of them (Ramsay MacDonald) moved the adjournment of the House to discuss the shooting of natives in Natal, but none (not even W. Thorne, S.D.F.) has risked his reputation for “sensibility, adaptability, and respectability” by denouncing the damnable system which produces such outrages as the Hemsworth evictions.

***

“Wrong Fount” may accuse me of vilification, but can he deny that what I have written is true and justifiable ?

***

Of course one can quite understand the reluctance of Keir Hardie and his friends to take action concerning such a glaring illustration of that class war which they declare is only a “shibboleth” and “a reactionary and whiggish precept, certain to lead the movement away from the real aims of Socialism.”

***

A formal report has been issued by the Departmental Committee appointed to inquire into the “probable economic effect of a limit of eight hours to the working day of coal mines.” Some interesting evidence has been given, particularly as to the effect of a reduction in other industries. Mr. H. F. Donaldson, M.I.C.E., chief superintendent of the Ordnance Factories, Woolwich, detailed how the hours in the factories had been reduced from 54 to 48. Their method of work was really piecework, and the production had been approximately the same as under the old regime. The attendance of the men had been more regular since the shortening of the hours. He did not think that the reduction had meant an increased intensity of labour, but it did mean “hustle,”

***

Mr. J. Lowrie, manager of the Royal Army Clothing Factory, Grosvenor Road, also gave evidence. He said that at his establishment there were employed 1,532 women and girls, of whom 1,385 were on piece work. Until 1894 they were working 55 hours per week, after which year they were reduced to 48. He did not think this reduction of seven hours had made any difference in the output: there was the same efficiency in the shorter hours. He considered it had been an economic success.

***

And there are some folks who talk of dealing with the unemployed problem by enacting an Eight Hours Day !

J. Kay

Pirates (2024)

Book Review from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pirate Enlightenment, Or The Real Libertalia. By David Graeber, Penguin, 2024

The Age of Enlightenment is usually said to be the intellectual movement that occurred mainly in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, based on knowledge learned by reason and evidence. Graeber argues that the Enlightenment did not begin in Europe and that its true origins are to be found on the island of Madagascar, in the late seventeenth century, when it was home to several thousand pirates. This was in the Golden Age of Piracy which lasted no more than fifty years, but it was also an experiment in radical democracy as the pirate settlers attempted to apply the egalitarian principles of their ships to a new society on land. Those also involved were Malagasy women, merchants, traders and escaped slaves. They were exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice in Europe a century later.

This short book was first written to be a chapter of a book on ‘divine kingship’ Graeber co-authored with fellow anthropologist Marshall Sahlins. Graeber obtained a doctorate under Sahlins doing ethnographic research in Madagascar. Graeber died in 2020. This book answers the question: since they were wanted men who couldn’t go home, what happened to the pirates who wanted to escape or retire? The answer seems to be: they often settled in north-east Madagascar, a large island (one thousand miles long) to the east of Africa. Libertalia is the name given to the utopian pirate experiment, even if there was never any actual settlement that bore that name. Piracy is still practised in that part of the world.

Graeber’s treatment of piracy and Madagascar is convincing. He argues that what unifies the pirate Enlightenment of Libertalia and the later Age of Enlightenment was an intellectual movement which was conversational. In Libertalia there was an expectation of rational conversation, on an egalitarian basis, of such subjects as liberty, authority, sovereignty and much more. There is however no persuasive evidence of the pirate Enlightenment feeding into the later Enlightenment, as Graeber claims. He admits that he is being ‘intentionally provocative’ as if he knows the evidence he presents is flimsy and speculative. In this respect he is following in the buccaneering tradition of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

Lew Higgins

Halo Halo (2024)

The Halo Halo! column from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard 

As Horace Walpole said, ‘This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.’ Rationalists find plenty within religion as a whole to occasion mirth, with some individual ones especially capable of producing belly laughs. But there are times when it’s very hard to echo Eric Idle’s exhortation at the end of Life of Brian to always look on the bright side of life.

Michael Palin said this about the 1979 television debate about the controversial film:

‘He (Bishop of Southwark) began, with notes carefully hidden in his crotch, tucked down well out of camera range, to give a short sermon, addressed not to John or myself but to the audience… He accused us of making a mockery of the work of Mother Teresa, of being undergraduate and mentally unstable. He made these remarks with all the smug and patronising paraphernalia of the gallery-player, who believes that the audience will see he is right, because he is a bishop and we’re not’.

American bible-bashers continue to press for their fantasies to be imposed upon children within public schools:

‘At a curriculum committee meeting school board Director Jordan Blomgren requested that “both sides” should be presented to students about evolution and climate change, stunning onlookers. ‘My question always comes down to the content,’ said Blomgren, who is also a teacher. ‘Like, you know [the] Earth’s been around for billions of years. Are you talking about both creation and evolution, like just having both… making sure that we’re showing both sides.’ A mother said “My kids are heavy into STEM, I don’t want them to be ill-prepared because Jordan wants to take up space complaining about fossils. I really don’t want my kids to be taught creationism. That’s for a Christian school, not a public school”’ (Buckscountybeacon.com 5 June).

They don’t give up, do they? Oklahoma’s top education official has ordered all public schools in the state to teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments to their students, a move that critics claim violates the US Constitution:

‘He called the Bible ‘one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution and the birth” of the United States. It is a necessary “historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system”. Every classroom in Oklahoma from grades five to 12 must have a Bible, and all teachers must teach from the Bible in the classroom.’

‘Requiring a Bible in every classroom does not improve Oklahoma’s ranking of 49th in education,’ State Representative Mickey Dollens said in a statement. ‘The state superintendent should focus on educating students, not evangelizing them.’

‘The Oklahoma directive comes a week after the governor of Louisiana signed a law ordering all public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.’

It’s August. Time to start buying those Chrisfest baubles now appearing in a store near you.

DC

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The richest 1% of Norwegians held 22% of net wealth in 2022, according to Statistics Norway. That compares with 34% in the US, 30% in Germany and 21% in the UK. 

(MSN)

Senior Chinese leaders… are engaged in corruption and hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth by using relatives to disguise their activities, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. By 2012, Mr. Xi had amassed at least $376 million in company investments, an indirect 18% stake in a rare-earth mineral company worth more than $311 million, and $20.2 million holdings in a technology company, according to a CRS report based on published information from news outlets about the hidden wealth. 

(The Washington Times)

Among the 2,300 sewer cleaners under the employment of the KWSC, to do manual scavenging to unclog the drains, he claims to have taught Adil the dos and don’ts of diving into the slush. ‘You have to be smart to outdo death, which is our companion as we go down,’ he says. It is not the army of cockroaches and the stink that greets you when you open the manhole lid to get in, or the rats swimming in filthy water, but the blades and used syringes floating that are a cause for concern for many as they go down to bring up the rocks and the buckets of filthy silt.

(Inter Press Service)

Umm Shadi, 50, called for Hamas to ‘end the war immediately without seeking to control and rule Gaza’. ‘What have we gained from this war except killing, destruction, extermination and starvation?’ she asked. ‘Every day the war on Gaza increases, our pain and the pain of the people increases. What is Hamas waiting for?’. 

(France24)

The military leader of Hamas has said he believes he has gained the upper hand over Israel and that the spiralling civilian death toll in Gaza would work in the militant group’s favor, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, citing leaked messages the newspaper said it had seen. ‘We have the Israelis right where we want them,’ Yahya Sinwar told other Hamas leaders recently, according to one of the messages… In another, Sinwar is said to have described civilian deaths as ‘necessary sacrifices’ while citing past independence-related conflicts in countries like Algeria. 

(CNN)

Graham stressed that helping Ukraine in its fight against Russia could also have strategic economic benefits for the U.S. and Western countries. ‘They’re sitting on $10-12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine. They could be the richest country in all of Europe. We don’t want to give that money and assets to Putin to share with China,’ he told Brennan on Sunday. ‘If we help Ukraine now, they could become the best business partner we ever dreamed of. They’re sitting on a goal mine. To give Putin $10-12 trillion that he will share with China is ridiculous’. 

(MSN)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)