i^^^st
 
 SIT/ OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MAY TREAT MORRISON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ALEXANDER F MORRISON
 
 THE MARTYRDOM OF LABOUR
 
 THE MARTYRDOM OF 
 LABOUR 
 
 ALFRED THOMAS STORY 
 
 u 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 ' THE BUILDING OK THE EMPIRE," " THE LIFE OF JOHN LINNELL, 
 
 ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE REDWAY 
 
 1899
 
 He hath put down the mighty from their seat, 
 and hath exalted the humble and meek.
 
 ^3 "JO 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Mv book will doubtless call forth opposition. 
 That I expect and am prepared for. It would 
 not be what it is and what it is intended to be 
 if it did not. In the clash and coruscation of 
 thought there is life, and in life, where it con- 
 cerns the human, there is growth. That is what 
 tt I desire — growth in that moral and spiritual 
 direction which is the glory of man. 
 
 More than that in these prefatory words I do 
 not wish to say, except that I have written my 
 book honestly, strongly it may be, but without 
 bitterness or hatred ; not with any desire to sow 
 discord or contention, but in the hope that it 
 may do something to weld together in a closer 
 amity and brotherhood that humanity for which, 
 sharing its destiny, I have an abounding love 
 and pity. 
 
 Wanborough, Surrey. 
 
 K 
 
 
 4S
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I PAGE 
 
 " The old order change th " . . . i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 " There shall be a new heaven and a new earth ' . .10 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 " MuliUitdes, Multitudes " . . . . .22 
 
 CHAPTER I\' 
 " Behold I will set a pluuibline in the midst of my people '' 35 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 " The land which the Lord thy God giveth thee " . . 51 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 " Woe to him that buildeth a house with blood, that stablish 
 
 a city by iniquity " . • • • -73 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 '■'■Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the 
 
 poor innocents " ..... 86 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 " / will make a man more precious than fine gold''' . .104 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 " Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven " . . .123
 
 viii Contents 
 
 CHAPTER X PAGE 
 
 " Woe unto those who lay house to house mid field to field'''' . 138 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ''^ He that ruleth over men must be just'''' . . .161 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 " My covenant shall be in your flesh for an e7>erlasting 
 
 covenant" . . . . . .173 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 '''■ My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge''^ . .188 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 " Blessed is the man luho hath his quiver full I " . . 207 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 ''^ The earf/i is the Lord^s and thefulness thereof ^'' . . 222 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 "He that ploivcth ought to plow in hope, and he that 
 
 thresheth, to thresh in hope of partaking" . . 236 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 ^^Woreover, the profit of the earth is for all" . .254 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 " Be renewed in tJie spirit of your mind, and put on the new 
 
 tnan " . . . . . . . 267 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 " Be of good cheer and let us play the nmn '' . . . 280
 
 THE MARTYRDOM OF LABOUR 
 
 PROEM ''The old order changeth." 
 
 One may well say at the present time that the 
 old order changeth giving" place to new. For 
 seldom, perhaps never in the history of the world, 
 was it so true as it is to-day that the old order of 
 things is passing away and a new order arising. 
 Every hour we see, as it were, the hosts of re- 
 volution marshalling in our midst, cohort throng- 
 ing upon cohort, phalanx hurrying after phalanx, 
 drums and trumpets sounding, banners flying. 
 On every hand we hear the reveille sounding ; 
 everywhere we see the assembling and marching 
 of men ; everywhere we behold the units falling 
 into line, coalescing under the inspiration of one 
 commanding thought ; everywhere we hear the 
 measured tramp of men — everywhere deep calling 
 unto deep — the deep heart to the deep heart of 
 man. 
 
 Do you not hear the sound ? Do you not 
 mark the sign ? 
 
 Now from this quarter and now from that 
 comes a rumble as of distant thunder, as of the
 
 2 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 gathering of the winds, as the roll and recoil of 
 petit-jLi|^' • i^latcf.s-. - There- is hardly a moment's 
 lull. And the welkin is darkening with clouds, 
 the upgathering of the storm, which may mean 
 the refreshing and the rejuvenating of nature, or 
 which may mean simply wide-spread devastation 
 and destruction. 
 
 Here and there, too, are gleams and flashes of 
 lightning, and the harsh roar of the approaching 
 tornado. Do you not hear it ? Do you not gather 
 its significance ? Amid the reverberations of the 
 thunder, distinct even amidst the throbbing of 
 the waters, the roaring of the winds, and the 
 clamour of awakened nature, may be heard the 
 spirits of the tempest — the voices that are raising 
 and directing the storm. It is the cry of the 
 awakened multitudes. 
 Listen ! 
 
 From the North and from the .South, from the 
 East and from the West, comes the self-same 
 cry. It comes too with no uncertain sound ; 
 there may be here and there a jarring tone, a 
 discordant note ; but the burden of the cry is the 
 same — everywhere the same. Nor is its mean- 
 ing doubtful or obscure, leaving room for different 
 interpretations. It is perfectly articulate and 
 clear. The message it brings is one that all 
 men may hear and understand. It signifies the 
 awakening of the millions, the uprising of the
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 3 
 
 down-trodden, the resurgent clamour of the 
 exploited. 
 
 Yes, it is in the main a clamour ; but it is 
 also more than a clamour ; for, as I have said, 
 the burden of it is everywhere the same — every- 
 where firm and explicit : it is the demand for 
 justice — for equity. Nay, it is even more than 
 that in the ultimate : it is a demand for the 
 realisation of the Gospel of Christ — for brother- 
 hood, the brotherhood of man. 
 
 You know what that means. It is a story 
 that has been talked about and preached about 
 for hundreds of years. Nay, it has even been 
 warred about — to carry brotherhood at the point 
 of the sword. To you it has been prattled about 
 since your childhood. You have drunk it in as 
 you drank in the fairy tales of your infancy and 
 youth. It has sounded to you very beautiful ; 
 it has sometimes moved you to tears ; but it 
 has left only the faintest of impressions upon 
 the generality of mankind. If it had been 
 otherwise it would have produced more effect 
 in these well-nigh nineteen hundred years : for 
 remember we are on the threshold of the 
 twentieth century — the twentieth century of 
 that lullaby of Bethlehem, and as yet it only 
 mocks us with its sweetness. 
 
 Is it a falsehood, this cradle-song of a new 
 birth, that has been echoed down the ages ?
 
 4 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 Is it a falsehood, or is it a truth? It is for 
 you to say — you, whoever you be, who hear 
 the mutterings of the storm, who watch the stir 
 and movement of the elements that form the 
 basis of Society, and stand aloof, cold and defiant. 
 On you depends the result — the refreshing and 
 rejuvenating storm, or the destructive hurricane. 
 The spirits in revolt are willing to test the ques- 
 tion on either issue — justice, brotherhood, or the 
 old might for right doctrine. It is for you to say 
 which it shall be. 
 
 Do you doubt the seriousness of the con- 
 testants ? Doubt if you will, but be on your 
 guard. Prepare ! The old order changeth : the 
 constituents of society as it has heretofore existed 
 have become molten — are daily becoming more 
 and more fiuid — ready to flow into and take any 
 shape. Who shall say into what mould they 
 may flow — what form they may not ultimately 
 take ? The eye of statesman or philosopher 
 cannot see it, the plummet of poet or prophet 
 cannot fathom it. Of this, however, we may be 
 sure — that the forces and constituents of society, 
 as it at present exists, will never again crystallise 
 into their old form, but into some newer shape 
 that is destined to take its place. 
 
 What that shape may be depends on the 
 wisdom of those who now form part of the fluid 
 and upheaving mass.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 5 
 
 A hundred years ago occurred the French 
 Revolution. It was ushered in with manifest 
 sign and portent. But those to whom it signified 
 the most — those who were destined, as it proved, 
 to go down before the storm — were utterly ob- 
 livious of the warnings given to them, or, if not 
 oblivious, scornful ; laughed at them, scoffed at 
 them, kept up the mad whirl of pleasure in the 
 midst of the portents of storm, danced their 
 insane Dance Macabre — yea, even in the midst 
 of the starving multitude, danced it. They 
 thought their reign was assured to them for ever. 
 
 To-day we see the same thing ; the millions 
 toil and starve that the few may dance and 
 rejoice, quaffing the goblet of pleasure, saying 
 to themselves, " This is our world ; the Almighty 
 has chosen us to enjoy the riches and the good 
 things of the earth, and has ordained that the 
 others, the millions, shall toil and spin, and make 
 things pleasant for us." But has he } Ask your- 
 selves that question seriously, you of the Gilded 
 Legions. Where is your authority for so saying, 
 for so thinking ? 
 
 The millions are awakening to the doubt that 
 your position is a false one. Nay, they have 
 awakened. They say you have inherited as 
 often as not by a forged will, or in spite of will, 
 by force and fraud. They say that the Eternal 
 Father must will that all his children shall enjoy
 
 6 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 alike — shall inherit alike — or else he is no just 
 Father. 
 
 They may be wrong. Who shall say? For 
 are we not all, like Festus of old, uncertain what 
 truth is ? But we can all see the signs and por- 
 tents of the time, and he were a bold or a blind 
 man who would say they were for " set fair." 
 The " masses " have been reading in the books, 
 and they have learned some things — learned 
 them imperfectly it may be ; still their reading 
 has put ideas into their heads. They have 
 learned that the forces that have worked for 
 social upheaval have in all ages been held wrong, 
 criminal even, and denounced and punished as 
 such until they have succeeded. When they 
 have succeeded, and the new order has been 
 established on a firm basis, that order has 
 become God's order, and has been hailed as 
 the condition of things in which a wise Pro- 
 vidence has placed the children of men. 
 
 The masses, as just remarked, have learned 
 these things, and much more to boot, with the 
 result that it is not now as it has been heretofore. 
 You cannot, for instance, legislate as you did 
 formerly, making a law to suit yourselves, the 
 few, and calling that the right. The millions 
 are now the lawgivers, and what they decide 
 upon to-day as the right, that to-morrow must 
 be the accepted and legalised right.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 7 
 
 One might tarry awhile here to remark on 
 the futility of the highest seats of learning, the 
 universities. In them are congregated hosts of 
 men with means and leisure to study the laws 
 and constitution of this universe in which we 
 live, and to discover the best means of framing 
 and governing society. But how very little they 
 do in this regard. For the most part they seem 
 to spend their time over worn-out superstitions 
 and philosophies, that would have been buried 
 and forgotten long ago, were it not for these 
 seats of learning keeping them alive. 
 
 Hence we see how the new truths and fresh 
 ideas, coming up as they ever seem to do from 
 the lowermost ranks of society — where they are 
 begotten and gestated in travail and pain — 
 always take them by surprise. It was so with 
 the doctrines that led to the French Revolution. 
 They were the offspring of no one person's 
 brain. They were generated amid the suffering 
 and starving masses of the people, and it was 
 only gradually, albeit with ever-increasing vigour, 
 that the inarticulate cries with which their birth 
 was heralded to the world, became translated 
 into articulate human speech. Speech was ever 
 at first but a cry, and the highest philosophy an 
 unformulated feeling or notion. Thus it arose, 
 no doubt, that the doctrines which farthered the 
 French Revolution, were not known in the
 
 8 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 universities over there. Had there been wise 
 men looking ahead, and studying the masses, as 
 they ought, instead of poring over the old rag- 
 bags of antiquity, they might have guided that 
 whirlwind somewhat. Then the outcome might 
 have been very different. For, had the French 
 aristocracy not withstood so unwisely the forces 
 of the Revolution — had they not tried by every 
 means in their power still to deceive and beguile 
 the people — once more to regain the upper hand, 
 and, by force or fraud, to keep the masses down 
 in their old servitude, in their ghastly misery 
 and degradation, the checked flood would not 
 have risen so high, the devastating sweep of the 
 waters would not have carried away so much, 
 its cleansing and healing would have been more 
 effectual, its destruction less. 
 
 Shall we repeat the folly of that time now? 
 or shall we not rather with wise forbearance and 
 calmest reason, take counsel of the elements of 
 upheaval and revolt, and by patient study try to 
 evolve out of the tumult a humaner order and 
 a surer-founded peace ? 
 
 The human mind has shown itself capable 
 of much. It has shown itself at times, in noble 
 individual cases, as occasionally in mass — it has 
 shown itself capable of touching almost the 
 divine ; but, alas ! it has also shown itself capable 
 of sinking lower than the ravening brute. We
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 9 
 
 see the two forces still working side by side, now 
 the one threatening to get the upper hand, now 
 the other rising like an angelic spirit, and with 
 the breath of its wings, and the affluence and 
 glory of its voice, checking the tigerish brood, 
 and making the human heart leap onward and 
 upward as to possess its promised beatitude. 
 
 But the outlook is dim and troubled, and we 
 know not which, in the coming struggle, will 
 show itself the stronger — angel or demon — 
 tigerish claw or claspen hand.
 
 pTj/ipp-pp TT " There shall be a fiew heaven 
 
 L.n/\riJiK 11 ^j^^i ^ „^„^ earth}' 
 
 Let us look at the condition of society and the 
 attitude of man towards it a Httle closer. Never 
 possibly in the history of mankind was there 
 a time of such clashing and ferment of ideas 
 as is to be witnessed now in every field of human 
 inquiry ; and as at bottom thought is the for- 
 mative principle of society, it follows that there 
 never was a time when society was undergoing, 
 or was threatened with so much change. It is, 
 in fact, no exaggeration to say that the old props 
 and stays of society are being undermined by the 
 flood of new thought which is taking hold of the 
 minds of men, and that if utter wreck and ruin 
 is not to follow, fresh ones must be framed and 
 built in upon the foundations of the old. 
 
 Upon the qualities that may be possessed by 
 the next two or three generations, therefore, it 
 depends very largely what shape society will 
 ultimately take. Old principles of cohesion are 
 being tested and found wanting ; old formulas 
 are being rent into shreds and patches ; old faiths 
 pulverised into the nothingness whence they 
 came.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 1 1 
 
 In all this no one capable of thinking will 
 venture to assert that only the evil is threatened : 
 some good will doubtless perish with the bad. 
 In the process of winnowing a portion of the 
 grain is sure to go with the chaff. It would be 
 strange indeed if, when nearly every human in- 
 stitution is upon its trial, some that on the whole 
 have worked for good should not meet with the 
 same condemnation as the evil. For when there 
 is disease in the body politic, the innocent and 
 the guilty are apt to suffer alike. This is the 
 fatal blot in our human life, in our earthly destiny 
 — the fatal blot, and yet the knot of unity, the 
 binding link in the chain that makes us one, 
 since, for good and for evil, we are one, and 
 cannot get apart. 
 
 To thoughtful observers it appears to be the 
 forgetfulness of this fact which has been chiefly 
 instrumental in bringing about the present 
 turmoil. Whether truly or not, they assert that 
 there has long been a tendency on the part of 
 the rich and well-to-do to overlook their common 
 humanity with the humble worker, and to thank 
 God, as a speaker recently put it, that He has 
 blessed them above his step-children the poor. 
 Hence, to a large extent, our present difficulties. 
 One part of society is up in arms against the 
 other — is determined that the present form of 
 society shall not continue to exist, that it shall be
 
 12 The Martyrdom of Labour, 
 
 either ended or mended. What the outcome will 
 be no man can tell. But that it will be wildly 
 disastrous or the reverse, according as we are 
 wise or not, no one with the elements of just 
 thought within him will deny. The important, 
 the essential thing, then, is to inquire what are 
 the causes of the present widespread upheaval of 
 thought, whither is it tending, what is going to 
 take the place of that which goes — in short, what 
 is to be the vitalising, formative principle of the 
 future ? 
 
 These are momentous questions, and on the 
 answering of them in wisdom or in folly de- 
 pends the world's weal or woe for generations 
 to come. 
 
 There are those who see nothing but evil in 
 change. They see nothing but disaster, although, 
 on the whole, the ages have advanced from dark- 
 ness to comparative light, from savageism and 
 barbarism to approximate civilisation. The 
 people of such contracted vision see in the ex- 
 isting agitation of thought, and in the present 
 demand for reform, nothing but a headlong rush 
 towards chaos, a downward plunge to anarchy. 
 The wise, however, will have no such fear. 
 Human nature is still human nature, and it is 
 as natural for men to fall into ordered and 
 governed ways of living as for elements in 
 certain conditions to crystallise. Society, in
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 1 3 
 
 short, is a sort of crystallisation. But it has, 
 or appears to have, fallen into unhealthy forms 
 of crystallisation. Hence the efforts we see on 
 every hand, in every country, to remedy what 
 is wrong, and to bring back a condition of health 
 out of a state of disease. 
 
 What will be the result, whether more health 
 or more disease, even the wisest and most dis- 
 cerning cannot forecast. All that can be pre- 
 dicted with certainty is, that the outcome of all 
 this agitation of thought will be in strictest ac- 
 cordance with the sum of the nation's — of the 
 world's wisdom. What that practical wisdom 
 may be worth, and whether it will eventuate 
 in giving the fluid mass of humanity a more 
 stable and salutary shape than our present 
 society exhibits, are questions of the gravest 
 moment, questions too which it behoves every 
 man anxiously to ponder. This is no time for 
 hasty conclusions — for the impatient dismissal of 
 awkward problems. When the rumbling of the 
 volcano is heard we had best bestir ourselves. 
 To idle by the way with jest and limpid laughter 
 when the mother of the earthquake is in labour 
 were the height of folly. Folly it would be too 
 to make light of the ferment of which revolutions 
 are born. And will any one venture to deny 
 that such leaven is now astir in the very bosom 
 and entrails of society ? If such there be let him
 
 14 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 look abroad. Should he, after casting his g-lance 
 over the world, be able to console himself with 
 the view that fifty years hence society will be as 
 it is to-day, with strife still "father and king," 
 then he must indeed be a sanguine man. To 
 those less optimistic the question is not whether 
 we are on the eve of momentous changes, but 
 to what extent those changes will go ; not whether 
 revolutionary forces are at work, but what will be 
 the complexion society will eventually assume 
 under the influence of those forces. 
 
 If we inquire of history we shall find that the 
 forces which have been chiefly instrumental in the 
 making of revolutions, whether silent and slow, or 
 swift and violent, have arisen from beneath, not 
 from above ; they have come from the " masses " 
 rather than from the " classes " — to use the terms 
 which, of chance coinage though they be, seem 
 to mark the ruling evil of the time. Looking, 
 then, for the forces chiefly active in the lower 
 strata of society, what do we find.-* We see a 
 democracy increasing in education, a democracy 
 becoming more and more independent and self- 
 reliant, a democracy growing daily more inquiring 
 and thoughtful ; and lastly, a democracy that is 
 becoming ever more dissatisfied with things as 
 they are, ever more distrustful of those who have 
 been their teachers, their guides, their rulers, ever 
 more convinced that no man's interests are safe
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 15 
 
 in the keeping of another — no, even though that 
 other were an archangel. 
 
 It is a terrible conviction that has forced itself 
 upon them. So long as they trusted their in- 
 terests to the " classes " they were betrayed : so, 
 at least, they believe and affirm. The masses 
 are beginning to see now with the keenness of 
 newly awakened intelligence ; and it is in no 
 dubious tones that they are summing up what 
 they deem to be the effect of those generations 
 of work. "Deceived, cheated, betrayed" are 
 the terms in which they characterise that work 
 as it affects themselves. Anyone may convince 
 himself of the fact, if he will put his ear to the 
 throbbing heart of the people. The indictment, 
 true or false, is a terrible one, and ought to make 
 the so-called ruling classes — the classes which 
 have ruled for generations — redden with shame 
 or quiver with indignation. And who of them 
 will venture to say it is not in part, if not wholly, 
 true ? Who will venture to affirm that there is 
 not, at least, substantial ground for the indict- 
 ment? If in nothing else, it is true in that the 
 classes have withheld from their brothers of the 
 masses that which is also a right — sympathy. 
 
 The democracy — not yet fully instructed, and, 
 therefore, liable to error — believe their indict- 
 ment to be true, and, believing it, they demand 
 to have a share in the controlling and governing
 
 1 6 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 of the world, in order that their interests may 
 be no longer overlooked. They demand, not 
 a shadowy, delegated share, but a substantial 
 and personal one. For they have come to see 
 — this long-suffering, brute people — that some- 
 how (though quite justly, of course), a share in 
 the governing of the world means a share in 
 the good things of the world also. They have 
 come to see that those "good things" have 
 always managed to gravitate from the governed 
 to the governing. 
 
 The fact is very curious : it looks like a law 
 of nature, and doubtless it is a law of depraved 
 or undeveloped human nature. Perceiving this, 
 then, Demos is saying to himself: " If we had 
 a hand in the governing, some of the good things 
 might come to us also." These slowly awaken- 
 ing masses may be grievously mistaken, but that 
 is their thought. 
 
 The question is, how are we going to meet 
 that thought? For thought does not long 
 remain thought, but, like "the word," it is apt 
 to be made flesh, to become life, and to translate 
 itself into acts. An abstract idea gestating in 
 the brains of one generation is very likely to 
 take a concrete form in the next. Put into 
 concrete form, then, this dream of the demo- 
 cracy means — what? Neither more nor less than 
 that it is their intention to divide the world
 
 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 1 7 
 
 more equally with the rich ; in other words, 
 that they intend to reconquer a fair share of 
 the world's goods. Their newly-acquired im- 
 pulse for reading has taught them that such 
 reconquests and divisions have taken place 
 again and again ; and, in spite of decalogues, 
 the heavens have not fallen. They think that 
 with justice another division might be insisted 
 upon, and God's statute of limitation not be 
 violated. Nay, they even dream that a new 
 heaven and a new earth might thereby be 
 brought into being — a renewed earth that would 
 be to them as a heaven. 
 
 Can they carry out their wish ? Those who 
 know the masses will say, "Yes, if they will only 
 be wise." Those who do not know them — the 
 "classes," that is — will smile, perhaps, a cynical 
 smile at the question, and point to the too easily 
 assumed fact that the stability of society is based 
 upon bayonets and machine guns. In this they 
 reason from what has eone before. Because 
 revolts and insurrections have been put down in 
 that way in times past, they think the method a 
 panacea. They overlook the changed conditions. 
 They forget that not only are the upper classes, 
 they whom Arnold called the Barbarians, greatly 
 changed, but the lower also. " A great part of 
 the artizans have ceased to belongf to the ' lower 
 classes' in the sense in which the term was
 
 1 8 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 originally used," says a thoughtful writer ;i "and 
 some of them already lead a more refined and 
 noble life than did the majority of the upper 
 classes even a century ago." Many of them, 
 moreover, could give points to members of the 
 aristocracy in all that concerns the attributes of 
 higher manhood, being better read and more 
 truly educated than they, and what is more, 
 capable of a profounder devotion to altruistic 
 principle. 
 
 And these workers, it will be found, are almost 
 to a man on the side of change — in favour of 
 opposing to that "law of the beasts" which, we 
 are told on authority, " is supreme in all ques- 
 tions of national existence and activity," the 
 higher law of human being ; that is, they would 
 turn the edge of the savage cosmic process of 
 selection by an appeal to the ethical principle 
 interwoven in the subtlest manner with the very 
 substance and essential being of man. 
 
 It is upon these men that the hopes of the 
 working classes rest. They are forming, the 
 world over, a body of opinion that must, sooner 
 or later, have its effect upon the constitution of 
 society. Nor are these leaders lacking the sup- 
 port and sanction of some of the highest thinkers. 
 " Any one who is acquainted with the state of 
 the population of all great industrial centres," 
 
 ^ Professor Marshall in his " Principles of Economics."
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 19 
 
 wrote the late Professor Huxley, "whether in 
 this or other countries, is aware that, amidst a 
 large and increasing body of that population, la 
 misere reigns supreme. . . . There is not a 
 single large manufacturing city which is free 
 from a vast mass of people whose condition is 
 exactly that described, and from a still greater 
 mass who, living just on the edge of the social 
 swamp, are liable to be precipitated into it by 
 any lack of demand for their produce." ^ 
 
 Whoever approaches, with a view to diagnose, 
 this disease of the body politic is struck at the 
 very outset with the too prevailing and ever- 
 present conditions. " At the one pole," says 
 Kidd, '* we have the continued appropriation and 
 accumulation of surplus value, with the ever- 
 increasing wealth and power of those in whose 
 hands it is concentrated. At the other end we 
 have the progressive enslavement and degrada- 
 tion of the exploited classes." - Man seems to 
 see in the resulting conflict something of the 
 inevitableness of a natural law. " Along," says 
 he, " with the constantly diminishing number of 
 the magnates of capital, who usurp and mono- 
 polise all advantages of this process of transfor- 
 mation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, 
 slavery, degradation, exploitation ; but with this 
 grows also the revolt of the working class, a class 
 
 " Social Diseases and worse Remedies." ^ " Social Evolution."
 
 20 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 always increasing in number, and disciplined, 
 united, organised by the very mechanism of the 
 process of capitalist production itself."^ 
 
 The worst feature of this " mass of misery," 
 with its widespread food-lack and general depri- 
 vation, is the effect it has upon the higher part 
 of man's nature. Insufficiency of sustenance, 
 whether in animals or plants, tells first upon the 
 more delicate parts of the organism. We know 
 that in plants, by careful nourishment, that which 
 is the end and acme of its existence, the flower 
 or fruit may be greatly improved. Many of our 
 finest flowers and nearly all our fruits have been 
 thus produced in their highest perfection. There 
 are few gardeners who have not had it forced 
 upon their experience how both fruit and 
 flowers will gradually deteriorate if deprived 
 of proper and sufficient nourishment or other- 
 wise stinted of the conditions natural to their 
 well-being. 
 
 The same law holds good of human life. Want 
 and deprivation gradually sap it of all its highest 
 and noblest characteristics, and so leave it weak- 
 ened and brutalised. But if misery does this on 
 the one hand, luxury and the turning of the human 
 soul, in Ruskin's phrase, into a "covetous machine" 
 produce an almost equally deplorable effect on 
 the other. Consequently we have, as the result, 
 
 1 Das Capital, by Karl Marx.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 2 1 
 
 degradation at both extremes of society, and thus 
 our poor human nature, wing-clipped and en- 
 feebled, struggles vainly to live in accordance 
 with the ideal fashioned and indelibly imprinted 
 within it.
 
 C H A PT E R 1 1 1 " Multitudes, Multitudes:' 
 
 Here then are the two forces — the two factions, 
 if you will — the one facing the other in growing 
 hostility. They have not yet separated them- 
 selves into two clearly-cut armies — God forbid 
 that they ever should! — but the fight, desultory 
 in the main, is going on nevertheless. Detach- 
 ments are engaging here and there, larger bodies 
 marshalling and manoeuvring from time to time. 
 We hear the din and clamour of the strife, and 
 we watch the result with growing anxiety. The 
 numbers of the contending parties appear to 
 increase daily, the interests involved to become 
 larger, the area of the struggle wider. Formerly 
 the judgment, the skill in deploying forces, the 
 wise tactics were all on the side of the classes, 
 that is, of capital. It is not so now. Though 
 the masses are the masses still, they are not a 
 mob. The workers have begun to grow heads. 
 Their opponents — those who fight for vested 
 interests — see this, and are apt to show heat and 
 temper as the result. That is a mistake, because 
 it is unwise. 
 
 The time is one for the calmest wisdom. Any
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 23 
 
 levity, any precipitancy, might lead to a repetition 
 of the error of 1789, and once more turn what 
 might be a peaceful renovation and reformation 
 into a world-tragedy. There is, unfortunately, 
 no sign of any forthcoming saviour of society — 
 no voice that is strong enough and pure enough 
 to sound forth an awakening. Much might be 
 done by such a one to inform and enlighten the 
 vast mass of selfishness, ignorance, and apathy 
 among those who will be the first to suffer when 
 the upheaval comes, should it come in anger and 
 fury — those who float gaily on the surface of 
 society, the thoughtless, self-indulgent, with hearts 
 so far as concerns the world's bondslaves to toil 
 — as hard as the nether mill-stone. 
 
 What have they done, or what do they care to 
 do — the majority of them — so long as they can 
 eat, drink, and be merry, wear fine clothes, with- 
 out toiling or spinning, and put in an appearance 
 at church on Sunday to let " God " know that 
 they are quite acquiescent touching the beautiful 
 and beneficent order of his universe, through 
 which he allows them to glide so easily, while 
 others delve and drudge, and spend their days 
 in darkness and misery ? 
 
 Is this strong language ? The world's disease 
 needs energetic measures to cure, and if strong 
 talk can serve any useful end, so long as the evil 
 has not reached a fatal stage, it is better to
 
 24 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 have that than wait until the scalpel has to be 
 applied. 
 
 The remedy lies with the classes. If they 
 think that the picture is too strong, let them with 
 a little patience consider a few things. Let them 
 for a little while put themselves in the place of 
 those who are at the opposite end of the social 
 scale to themselves, who, though they may not 
 be so ornamental as their "betters," are vastly 
 more useful, and while not usually called "noble," 
 are in real truth the " salt of the earth." 
 
 Suppose, therefore, O idle ones, so far as any 
 "sweat of the face" is concerned — suppose you 
 deign for a little while to look upon the ways 
 you know not, to see how the multitudes of your 
 brothers and sisters (it is your own phrase, taken 
 from your outwardly accepted religion, although 
 inwardly your worship is of a dust-eaten ances- 
 try) exist, slaving that you may be idle, spinning 
 that you may dance in fine raiment, dying before 
 their time that you and your children may live 
 long. 
 
 We need not go far to get a sight of the vast 
 human swarm that lies strong and multitudinous 
 as the deep at the foundations of society. It 
 seethes, literally seethes, all about us. Growing, 
 too, in numbers out of all proportion to those 
 whom it lives to keep in idleness and luxury, 
 as well as changmg yearly, almost daily, in
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 25 
 
 character, it may be worth while to give it a 
 little consideration, to inquire as to its essential 
 features, to calculate what latent power, for good 
 or evil, lies within it, to reflect on its position 
 and destiny. 
 
 It is customary to attribute to the " common 
 people " many vices, and but few, very few, 
 virtues. They are coarse, they are brutal, they 
 are drunken, they are licentious, they are impro- 
 vident, they are . But what need to enumer- 
 ate the catalogue of their vices ? Who is there 
 that has not heard them recited, almost ad 
 nauseam f They are to be heard on every hand, 
 well-nigh from every tongue, among the classes. 
 But where is there to be found, amongst these 
 people, one who has a word to say on the other 
 side.'* To them the masses truly form in the 
 abstract a social pariah whom everybody finds 
 a pleasure to kick, and very few to say one 
 word in praise of. 
 
 And yet the fact remains, that this long- 
 suffering multitude, this amorphous, neglected 
 mass of human beings which rests at the base 
 of society, and moils, and spins, and produces, 
 and is coarse, and rough, and brutal, and potent 
 for all sorts of mischief, abides for the most part 
 still and innocuous. Yea, though it so often 
 wants — wants bread even — it remains quiescent, 
 orderly. Who of you, rich, that has not heard
 
 26 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 of the Lancashire cotton famine? Who but too 
 well remembers the miners' lock-out of 1893, 
 and their struggle for a living wage ? Who can 
 recall that episode without a thrill of wonder 
 and admiration ? And then the dockers' strike 
 for his poor miserable sixpence. Think of it ! 
 
 The majority of these people are hard and 
 steady workers, satisfied to live for a week, for a 
 month even, on what would barely furnish forth 
 a rich man's dinner-table. They manage to keep 
 their families too on it, and to bring them up, 
 on the whole, in decency and respectability. 
 The majority teach them also to be God-fearing 
 and contented with their lot — contented, mind 
 you, with a wage that barely allows them to live, 
 that does not allow the major part of them to 
 live in decent comfort ! 
 
 Considering their immense power, say for 
 helping themselves at a pinch, is there anything 
 more wonderful in this wide world than the 
 spectacle of this contented multitude diligently 
 and devotedly working to produce that which 
 they do not enjoy, doggedly slaving for a crust 
 that others may have a whole loaf, spread too, 
 and plenteously garnished to boot ? 
 
 If you will only consider it aright, it is the 
 most wonderful thing in this wonderful creation 
 of ours, indeed, it is nothing less than a daily 
 miracle.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 27 
 
 Do you know anything that affords a glimpse 
 into a greater mystery than any with which we 
 are confronted — the mystery of the potency and 
 permanency of ideas ? But ideas, for all that, 
 are not eternal. Gradually a new thought may 
 take the place of a world-old one. Sometimes 
 the new thought — the new idea — may come 
 suddenly, as by a miracle. It may even assume 
 the form of a gospel, as we know certain ideas 
 did a century ago. And what has happened 
 once may happen again. 
 
 Suppose the stolid, and for the most part 
 silent masses, were one day to agree together 
 as one man and say, " Let us have no more 
 of this, but let us enjoy with the rest — it is 
 our right," where would your present society 
 be ? Consider what the masses have done 
 beforetime by getting an idea into their heads, 
 and willing, as it were, with one mind. Against 
 the united volition of these seemingly inert, 
 stolid multitudes even bayonets and machine 
 guns would be of little avail, for are not your 
 wielders of the machine guns and the bayonets 
 likewise of the people ? 
 
 There can be no doubt it is in the power of 
 the democracy to reconquer the world, or a 
 rightful portion of it, if they will, that is, if 
 they will be wise and united. The crux, of 
 course, lies in the exercise of will and wisdom
 
 28 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 combined. Can they so train themselves as to 
 work with united will for the attainment of their 
 ends, as the aristocracy have done time out of 
 mind ? Moreover, can they train themselves to 
 the exercise of that patient, suffering, and far- 
 seeing wisdom without which united action is 
 vain ? 
 
 That is the point the multitudes have to, and 
 probably will, remember : that the upper classes 
 have held their own because they have always 
 had the wisdom to know no division where their 
 interests were in question. Whig and Tory, 
 Liberal and Conservative, they have always 
 fought shoulder to shoulder, or rather head to 
 head, for their own hand ; they have ever formed 
 a firm and united phalanx when the rights, the 
 privileges, or the safety of their order have 
 been at stake. They have always known how 
 to make their point invulnerable, because, in 
 the first place, they have understood themselves, 
 and because, in the second place, they have 
 known how to divide the common enemy ; for 
 as such they have always regarded the people, 
 the masses, whenever they have manifested a 
 desire to act or think for themselves. 
 
 Let the democracy, then, follow their example, 
 as they seem determined to do, and the proba- 
 bility is that nothing can prevent them from 
 getting all they want. Nothing can prevent
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 29 
 
 them, that is, from reconstituting society on a 
 more human, and at the same time on a more 
 humane basis. 
 
 Perhaps the classes may say, in answer to 
 all this — and they may honestly believe, as many 
 undoubtedly do — that, whatever its defects, what- 
 ever its minor shortcomings, the existing organ- 
 isation of society is the work of the Almighty. 
 But is it ? It is no good believing — it will 
 not help us in the hour of need to believe — -a 
 thing that is not true. And what evidence 
 have we to prove that society as it at present 
 exists is any more of divine ordination than 
 we have that such would be the case, say in 
 the year 19 10, if in the meantime there had 
 been a turning of the social organism upside 
 down, leaving the upper classes where their 
 social inferiors now are, and placing the lower 
 orders in the present seats of the mighty '^. 
 
 Does anybody to-day think that was a divine 
 order of society which obtained in France before 
 the Revolution, when men and women were 
 literally ground to the earth by heavy tailles 
 and other taxes to support a cruel and licentious 
 aristocracy, and often had perforce to eat grass 
 and garbage of all sorts to keep themselves 
 alive because their betters had left them nothing-. 
 Hardly, one would think. And yet the people 
 of that time were as assured of it as any of us
 
 30 The Martyrdom, of Labour. 
 
 can be to-day that the present order of society 
 is divinely ordered. 
 
 We have had many conditions of society in 
 England. A condition of things in William the 
 Conqueror's time, when it was instant death to 
 touch Duke William's lordly red deer. That 
 state and condition of society continued to exist 
 with very little change until the Barons com- 
 pelled John Lackland to grant them a charter 
 of rights — forced him, be it remembered, at the 
 point of the sword. 
 
 At that time and for long afterwards the 
 poor had no rights, and no one thought of lifting 
 a hand for them. They were for the most part 
 attached to the glebe, and when the harvests 
 were good and peace reigned in the land, they 
 enjoyed the rude plenty of their masters. But 
 there were bad times then as now, times of 
 depression and scarcity, when it was hard for 
 men to live and slow torture to die. Langland 
 has given us a picture of what the lives of the 
 poor then were. It is a picture that, in his 
 own words, " reuthe is to rede." No one then 
 had shown so much pity, manifested such keen 
 human sympathy for the sorrows of the poor ; 
 few have shown such deep compassion for them 
 since — no one has set it forth in such an epic 
 of lamentation as he. It is impossible to turn 
 the pages of his book without feeling something
 
 The Martyrdo7n of Labour. 3 1 
 
 of his poignant commiseration, of his almost 
 hopeless outlook. The astounding thing is that 
 his words apply to-day as truthfully as they 
 did in his own — separated from us though he 
 be by a stretch of over five hundred years. 
 
 We do not find, however, that " Piers Plowman " 
 produced any marked effect. It was a hard 
 and pitiless age, one in which the most callous 
 and brutal survived. We read of John Ball 
 and Wat Tyler risings and of their ruthless 
 suppression, the latter it will be remembered, 
 by the foulest of treachery and lies ; for even 
 truth and fair dealing were considered too good 
 for those down-trodden sons of toil. Nor have 
 we got much beyond that method yet when the 
 workers are concerned and the thing can be 
 done in the dark. Witness the loaded dice with 
 which the engineers were played. 
 
 The poor misguided, or at least miscalculating 
 serfs had heard, probably from the priests, of the 
 charter which the Barons had obtained some 
 generations before, and thought they too might 
 secure a similar charter of rights if they made 
 their demand. They needed it badly enough, 
 God knows ! So, in this dumb way they gave 
 expression to their aspirations for freedom, for 
 a more manly life, for something approaching 
 equality as sons of a reputed common Father. 
 For the plain word of his promise was then
 
 32 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 beginning to find its way among them. But 
 — the accepted Christ notwithstanding — they 
 were no more than vermin under the feet of 
 their "betters," the nobles, who would hear of 
 no such aspirations. Their cry was " no com- 
 promise, the serfs were their goods and their 
 goods could not be taken from them except 
 with their own consent, and that, said they, we 
 will never give were we all to die in one day." 
 
 The attitude which the nobles then took, they 
 have always assumed towards the lower orders 
 when any question of rights or enfranchisement 
 has arisen — with this difference, that, as the 
 ages have rolled on, they have weakened down 
 through luxury and sloth, and are in consequence 
 a less robust race than they were aforetime. 
 
 As the generations roll on, however, we emerge 
 into a broader light and see the order of society 
 changing. We see modern history taking its 
 rise in the person of King Harry with his wives 
 of precarious tenure, and his ad captanduni 
 method of dealing with the monks and the 
 monasteries. Thousands to this day believe 
 that in doing as he did Henry VIII. iniquitously 
 overturned a God-ordained condition of society. 
 But those who had their share of the spoils lifted 
 no voice against the act. Many to this day are 
 still enjoying the position which their ancestors 
 received as a sop for their acquiescence in this
 
 The Marty 7'dom of Labour. 33 
 
 wholesale robbery of church and poor ; but it 
 is doubtful whether their enjoyment of the 
 wealth and consideration accruing therefrom is 
 any the less keen because of the unjust way it 
 was come by. Possibly they never gave the 
 subject as much as a thought. 
 
 In the century next following we behold another 
 picture, and a stirring one it is. With an assur- 
 ance that had been truly splendid if it had been 
 backed by more grandeur of character, we see 
 our kings claiming a " divine right " to govern 
 a "live" people as they liked; and we see, on 
 the other hand, that same people — at first in their 
 dumb, awkward way — denying that right, array- 
 ing themselves in embattled ranks to contest it, 
 and finally winning the game. It was a tough 
 fight, and took nearly a hundred years to win. 
 But the result was one which should be burned 
 into the brain and heart of every English child — 
 it was the assertion and the establishment of the 
 divine right of the people of these realms and 
 of all realms, to be governed, not by one man, 
 or a hundred, or a thousand men, but according 
 to their own will and choice, and by some ap- 
 proximate rule or method of justice and equity. 
 
 So we might go through the acts of kings and 
 parliaments down to our own day, and show that 
 after all the acts of the people are the acts of God, 
 that the broad aim of justice and right in the end 
 
 c
 
 34 The Mariyrdoni of Labour. 
 
 sanctifies all changes, eruptions, reformations, 
 though they tear up roots that have been en- 
 deared and sanctioned by long endurance and 
 widely-ramified associations. The only thing 
 that is not justifiable in this universe is the 
 suflfrance of a wrong after it has been proved 
 to be a wrong. Moreover, in the long-run the 
 setting right of a wrong can do no man and no 
 nation any permanent injury, but only good, 
 howsoever long it may have been hardened into 
 custom and wont, and however deep its roots 
 may have struck down into the spine and marrow 
 of the national life. 
 
 That is a truth that should be set down in 
 red in the Bibles of every people under the sun.
 
 r^TJAp'T'rr'D TAT' " Bekold I will set a plwnbline 
 
 in the midst of my peopled 
 
 There is one thing which has ever stood in the 
 way of the free development of the people of 
 these islands. They have always been too prone 
 to the worship of rank and title. At the root 
 the feeling is not a bad one. It is a glorious 
 thing to have good leaders, to be proud of 
 them, and to be willing to follow their lead at 
 all risks and through all peril for the national 
 good. Such leaders we have had : to that fact 
 we owe much of our greatness as a people — to 
 the fact of the good leadership in combination 
 with brave fighters, who were ever ready to 
 stand like a living wall against any danger and 
 against any odds. 
 
 To the long ages in which lords and commons 
 stood in this intimate relationship to each other 
 we owe the admiration and awe of the latter, 
 lingering after the qualities which bred the feeling 
 have long since departed. For the old noble 
 has gone, the old leader is no more. The man 
 who shared the land with his retainers ; the man 
 who grew up surrounded by the yeomen and 
 peasants who fought by his side in the hour of
 
 36 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 trial, whose lives, notwithstanding difference of 
 rank and wealth, were much the same as his, 
 and who were near enough and known enough to 
 call out his sympathies and his goodwill in times 
 of sorrow and distress, as well as in periods of 
 rejoicing — that man departed long ago, his place 
 being taken by one who first of all robbed his 
 co-partners in the land, and then, having deprived 
 them of their independence, scorned them, and 
 put an almost impassible barrier betwixt them 
 and himself. 
 
 This self-degradation of a class has had results 
 that are very perilous to the Commonwealth. 
 
 It was long the boast of Britons that as a 
 nation we were the freest people in the world. 
 There was a time when that proud claim was 
 undoubtedly true ; but those days have passed 
 away. Other peoples now enjoy freedom as 
 great as ours, and greater equality. We showed 
 them the way to liberty ; they have set us the 
 example of that greater liberty, equality. 
 
 To-day it would be difficult to find amongst 
 civilised communities a country in which, side 
 by side with so much general freedom, there 
 exists a system of such flagrant inequality before 
 the law as in this country of ours. For a so- 
 called free country we are the most privilege- 
 ridden people in Europe. We cannot do any- 
 thing without asking the permission and almost
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 37 
 
 craving the indulgence of a class which has the 
 power to put a check on all progress, which has 
 rarely given its consent to any improvement in 
 the condition of the people but it has had to 
 be wrung from it by force or fear. 
 
 Through all the social and political changes 
 that have taken place in the course of the 
 centuries, the power-holding class have not only 
 shown themselves strong enough to maintain 
 their position of privilege, but in some respects 
 to widen and deepen it. In hardly a country 
 in Europe can such a condition of things be 
 matched. All over the Continent aristocracies 
 have come and gone, swept away or modified 
 by social and political changes; but here, through 
 all revolutions and all dynasties, the privileged 
 class has remained practically the same, its 
 " rights " and license checked and curtailed to 
 some extent, but its privileges as wide as ever, 
 and in some respects more deeply riveted than 
 ever. 
 
 In some respects it has become a greater 
 danger to the other sections of the community 
 than it was at any previous time, through its 
 alliance with the capitalists. "In the transition 
 from the military to the industrial type of society 
 in England," says Kidd,^ " it has become largely 
 transformed into the capitalist class. It is still 
 
 1 " Social Evolution." 
 
 O 'J '1^- /
 
 38 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 
 
 the party of wealth, prestige, leisure, and social 
 influence and position. On the other side we 
 have a party — including the greater part of those 
 who lead toilsome, strenuous lives for the least 
 reward. In England, where the course of social 
 development has been less interrupted by dis- 
 turbing influences than in many other countries, 
 these opponents correspond more or less closely 
 to the two great historic parties in the State. In 
 France, in the United States, in Germany, and in 
 other countries we have, in reality, the same two 
 parties no less distinctly in opposition, although 
 local and particular causes to some extent pre- 
 vent them from thus clearly confronting each 
 other continuously and all along the line as 
 organised political forces." 
 
 Looked at broadly this spectacle of the per- 
 sistence of a class is not without its touch of 
 grandeur. It must needs be a tough and sturdy 
 race that can hold on like that, and through 
 centuries of upheaval and revolution, keep its 
 head clear above the welter of passion and strife, 
 and, after all, still come in at the top. Yes, 
 looked at from that point of view, there is a touch 
 of grandeur about it ; but regarded from another 
 point — what then ? We have the spectacle of a 
 class that has ever been cold-blooded and selfish, 
 that has sought no ends but its own, that has 
 betrayed every trust, that has preferred might to
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 39 
 
 right, that has long forgotten its once proud 
 motto, noblesse oblige. 
 
 No reasonable man will deny that in the 
 classes as they once existed in England, that is, 
 an aristocracy of culture and refinement, a middle 
 class composed of yeomen and traders, and a 
 lower class made up of the peasant and artizan, 
 each dependent upon and eventually helpful to 
 the other, we had an almost ideal state of 
 society ; the happiness and well-being of one 
 sustaining and buttressing the safety and well- 
 being of another. But when the noble forgot his 
 old glory, and, allying himself with the plutocrat, 
 became a mere money-grabbing "boss," then 
 commenced the . inevitable downgrade of national 
 greatness and national happiness. For the 
 colossal fortunes of the plutocracy, their idle- 
 ness, their luxury, and, above all, their peculiar 
 and implacable hardness of heart — egged on by 
 the gospel of political economy — have brought 
 about a war of interests which bid fair to pro- 
 duce a revolution, the like of which the world 
 has not yet seen. 
 
 The astonishing thing is that while the English 
 have had the firmness and resolution to cut the 
 claws of their kings, and to give them to under- 
 stand that they can only reign by and in accord- 
 ance with the will of the people, they have 
 neglected to place the nobles under equal re-
 
 40 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 straint, with the result that we now see them 
 sit upon the nation hke so many robber-barons, 
 setting the example of a social and industrial 
 tyranny which is the ideal condition of all who 
 acquire money, and hampering at every turn all 
 true progress. 
 
 There is not a similar spectacle to be seen 
 anywhere in a free country. From the time 
 when they lorded it over their serfs, and claimed 
 the privilege of levying private war one upon 
 another, the aristocracy have acted as if the 
 whole country were made for them, and no one 
 else was to be considered as against their pleasure 
 and their profit, and only kept in check by the 
 wholesome discipline of the Crown. It is rare 
 to find one who has acted a truly generous part ; 
 but if there has ever been a project to spoil the 
 poor or to take advantage of the industrious, 
 members of this class have not been far to 
 seek. 
 
 Not only do they sit astride of the country 
 on their broad acres, which, in a country of 
 boasted free trade, are kept exempt from the 
 ordinary processes of trade ; but in a society, the 
 very blood and breath of whose existence is, so 
 to speak, a fierce and pitiless competition, they 
 are protected from its effects by a double vallum 
 of protection and privilege. The effect has been 
 to make the weight of competition fall with
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 41 
 
 double force upon the exploited classes, and this 
 continues with almost unabated pressure, not- 
 withstanding the political enfranchisement of the 
 workers. " Political liberty," says the author of 
 'Social Evolution/ "has not enabled the poorer 
 classes to make headway against the enormous 
 influence which these classes wield to the extent 
 to which many of the old reformers expected. 
 By the combination of the capitalist classes into 
 rings, trusts, syndicates, and the like associations 
 for the universal control of production and the 
 artificial keeping up of prices, the community 
 finds the general welfare threatened by a general 
 complication which the reformers of the past 
 can scarcely be said to have counted upon." ^ 
 
 This pernicious influence is intensified by the 
 most exceptional and unreasonable privilege of 
 all, a House particular and special to a class, which 
 is regarded by its members, not as a chamber to 
 consider measures for the welfare of the common- 
 wealth as a whole, but for the safeguarding and 
 enhancement of their own vested interests. 
 
 In this and other unfair and inequitable class 
 privileges we have a condition of things that to- 
 day militates more than almost anything else 
 against social progress, and that tends to per- 
 petuate what Professor Marshall designates " the 
 cruelty and waste of irresponsible competition 
 
 ^ Page 216.
 
 42 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 and the licentious use of wealth." ^ It is in the 
 curtailment, if not in the complete abolition, of 
 these privileges that lies the only hope of further 
 advance towards a more rational and equitable 
 state of society. 
 
 It is impossible for those who desiderate and 
 work for the progressive humanisation of the 
 conditions of life to blink the fact that the first 
 stronghold to attack and demolish is this grossest 
 and most belated of the many remnants of 
 feudalism which yet afflict a long - suffering 
 people. This is the Bastile of the new revolu- 
 tion which must be brought down before any- 
 thing else effective can be done. Its towering 
 insolence is a threat to the true liberty of the 
 industrial classes, an insult to their manhood. If 
 England were a conquered country, and these 
 were the dominant race, the conquerors, their 
 position of privilege could not be greater, their 
 abuse of the power in their hands more in- 
 tolerable. Whoever else suffers, they must be 
 buttressed against loss. Although when trade 
 has been bad here, and thousands have been 
 suffering from want of work, it has hardly been 
 possible to get the Government to sanction 
 measures for assisting emigration, or any scheme 
 in aid of the distressed; yet let the "noble" 
 classes utter an ignoble complaint about their 
 
 * "Journal of the Royal Statistical Society," Dec. 1890.
 
 The Martyi'doiu of Labour . 43 
 
 impoverishment, and straightway — albeit usually 
 by some indirect method — the legislature has 
 come to their assistance. 
 
 It is their wont to pretend that the aid is not 
 for themselves — they protest that it is not, that it 
 is for some national purpose ; but it goes into 
 their pockets nevertheless. We have recently 
 had one or two samples of this sort of thing. 
 One was the abolition of the porterage fee on 
 telegrams up to a limit of three miles — a measure 
 which spared the pockets of the wealthy at the 
 expense of the ratepayers. A still more un- 
 justifiable example was the Agricultural Rating 
 Act. And yet we hear plethoric dukes wailing 
 Jeremiads against the bugbear of Socialism when 
 it is proposed to give decent conditions of life to 
 workers, not from imperial revenues, but at a 
 small initial cost to the ratepayers, whom these 
 same dukes and company bleed to the very bone 
 and marrow, and give nothing in return. 
 
 These are the superior classes, the " nobles," 
 those whose nobility obliges them to distinguish 
 themselves by higher qualities, by a loftier 
 courtesy, by an ideal above that of the ordinary 
 man ; and yet, should a whiff of the common 
 depression which touches most men, and grips 
 the bellies of thousands, blow upon their fortunes, 
 though never so slightly, lo ! they will be seen to 
 crave aid from the funds drawn from the blood
 
 44 'The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 and sinews of the people. These aids they 
 demand by reason of their position, and by 
 reason of their privileges they are able to com- 
 mand them. 
 
 A large number of persons are blinded enough 
 to sanction such things because they imagine these 
 people are in some way a safeguard to the State, 
 because they form a bulwark of some sort. But 
 in truth, for long years, they have been little of a 
 bulwark against anything except against the spread 
 of popular rights, against the removal of social 
 injustice, and against the granting of everything 
 like an approach to equalisation of opportunity to 
 all ; whereby " the dead hand of feudalism " (as 
 Marx puts it), that still presses with such cruel 
 weight upon the people might in some measure 
 be lio^htened. 
 
 It is not merely that this condition of privilege 
 is an evil in itself, setting up a false standard of 
 superiority ; but it splits society into two broad 
 divisions, in which the line of cleavage is one 
 of money. There is no question of character ; 
 there is no question of greater talents, or wisdom, 
 or benefit done to the country : these qualities 
 are all more abundant on the lower side of the 
 dividing line. It is entirely a question of sordid 
 material wealth, and the man who has accumu- 
 lated that — it may be by the most dishonourable 
 practices — can almost invariably buy his way
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 45 
 
 into the sacred precinct, where worth and genius 
 have but httle chance in comparison. 
 
 Thus the anomaly is recruited, thus bolstered 
 up ; and so the tyranny of wealth is made to 
 grow heavier year by year, until in the end the 
 social fabric must inevitably give way and come 
 down under the strain. 
 
 Moreover, not only is this the case, but such is 
 the glamour of wealth, that there is always a 
 tendency — and we see it on every side — to make 
 our theories of government, and even of theology, 
 square with and support this state of things. 
 Some are biassed unwittingly, as the compass 
 may be on a coast where ironstone abounds, 
 though unseen ; they think they are steering 
 straight for the haven of truth, of right ; but 
 they are not. Others are conscious of the bias. 
 The glitter is in their eyes, and they know it. 
 They put on blinkers, and do all they can to 
 provide them for others as well. And how 
 willingly and innocently they are assumed by 
 many, perhaps by the majority ! 
 
 If we were wise should we permit ourselves to 
 be hoodwinked like this ? Should we not rather 
 — as every age ought to do — re-examine every 
 accepted theory, whether of government or re- 
 ligion, for ourselves, co-ordinating each point of 
 doctrine and every fact, so to speak, to date ? 
 Thus far the world's practice has been very much
 
 46 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 the reverse, requiring each new truth to focus 
 with the old and too often worn-out and thread- 
 bare dogmas of the past, or be rejected. 
 
 This is very largely the case with our political 
 economics. Because such a condition of things 
 exists, the theorist finds that it is the best that 
 could be, all things considered, and that it is 
 based on immutable laws. As to looking be- 
 neath the surface, that is rarely done. 
 
 Take one of the most insidious conditions of 
 society to-day — one of the things that perhaps 
 acts more than any other towards the moral and 
 social degradation of one half of the human race 
 — the power of money to go on increasing and 
 breeding itself Those who live upon their invest- 
 ments, is it they who produce the margin of profit 
 arising from the use of their invested capital, or 
 is it the money of itself? It is neither the one 
 nor the other. For if they and their money were 
 left to themselves, nothing would result. You 
 may save your eggs, and you may put them by 
 to hatch ; but unless the mother hens are there, 
 and in the mood to sit, the chicks will be far 
 to seek.^ 
 
 Is it not much the same with your money ? 
 Save as much as you will, put it out to breed, 
 
 * Of course it may be replied that one can employ an incubator. 
 But this does not invalidate the argument, because the incubator 
 cannot do its work without the care and supervision of the worker.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 47 
 
 to multiply ; but if the producer, the worker, 
 be not there, how much will it become ? If you 
 decide to embark it in trade or manufactures in 
 distracted Turkey, in effete Persia, or even in 
 poverty-stricken Italy, what will it return you ? 
 As much, and with the same safety, as in a 
 thrifty, law-abiding country like England? And 
 does your money multiply as freely in Great 
 Britain when the masses are disturbed and in 
 distress as when they are quiet and prosperous ? 
 
 In short, the reproductlveness of your money 
 depends upon the character of the community. 
 Without an organised society there could be no 
 money to invest, there could be but little accumu- 
 lation of wealth, gold would be of no value ; 
 nothing would be worth much except food, cloth- 
 ing and shelter, and the instruments that helped 
 to produce them — all perishable. Hence, by the 
 growth of society, commodities are given a value 
 which they could not otherwise possess, and 
 according to the stability and security of that 
 society, such value is given the character of 
 equableness and stability. Every individual 
 forming part of the community contributes to- 
 wards the general result, that is, towards the 
 commonweal, but most of all those who, by their 
 industry, their expertness, their genius for inven- 
 tion, and so forth, help to shorten or augment 
 processes of production or in any way to increase
 
 ^.8 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 the conveniences of society. And, as regards 
 these considerations, none have contributed so 
 much as the workers. 
 
 The worker therefore is worth considering — if 
 only as the goose that lays the golden ^^^. He 
 helps, and helps enormously, to make your in- 
 vestments good and sound ; he is the other half 
 of the bargain : nay, he is more than half. You 
 may have the money, but without his industry, 
 without his aid as a consumer also, it would 
 be valueless. Of yourselves, you, as capitalists, 
 could not make it produce one per cent. You 
 are dependent for all you have, first upon his 
 labour, and secondly upon him as a consumer. 
 He is as two parts to your one. 
 
 Thus everyone who accumulates wealth does 
 so not of himself alone, but by means of those 
 about him. Even supposing that he has a cer- 
 tain amount of money to begin with, his capital 
 can do nothing of itself, any more than a bushel 
 of the finest seed can produce a crop of wheat 
 without soil, labour, sunshine and rain. His 
 ability may count for something ; but even with 
 that and his capital he can do nothing without 
 the society in which he lives and of which he 
 forms a part. That society, in short, is the 
 soil in which his fortune grows, and without 
 which his capital is absolutely valueless. 
 
 Now, the agriculturist who rents a farm is
 
 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 49 
 
 required to treat his land with consideration. 
 He must not take everything from it and give 
 nothing in return. He may not sell the straw 
 as well as the corn. In many cases he may sell 
 nothing but the corn. 
 
 Why should not the same principle apply to 
 the man who derives wealth from the com- 
 munity? He obtains his riches therefrom partly 
 by employing some of its members as workers, and 
 partly by supplying them and others with what 
 he produces. Were it not for the large popu- 
 lation he could not accumulate great wealth. In 
 sparsely populated communities great fortunes 
 are not made. Moreover, every manufacturer, 
 trader, merchant, etc., owes something to the 
 gradually and laboriously acquired experience 
 of the community, without which he could not 
 carry on his operations. 
 
 Like the farmer, therefore, is he not bound in 
 fairness to return something to the source of 
 his wealth ? He must not impoverish it by 
 taking so much from it and returning nothing 
 in its place. 
 
 Political economy has during the past twenty 
 years been developing greatly broadened views ; 
 it is boldly advancing from the " wealth " to the 
 " well-being " of nations, and it is destined sooner 
 or later to recognise as the foundation of all 
 true social economics the principle that there 
 
 D
 
 50 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 can be no real justice as between individuals, 
 as well as between the different sections of 
 society, until all are enabled to enjoy some- 
 thing of equality in respect to the country's 
 resources which were not made by man, and 
 until they shall be able to enjoy them with 
 some approach to equality of opportunity. And 
 in what way can such equality be effected so 
 easily and so beneficently as by the recognition 
 of an inherent right in all to some share in the 
 unearned increment of capital ?
 
 pTTApT^P'p \T " ^^^^ land which the Lord thy 
 
 God nveth thee." 
 
 If there has been one infamy of the erewhile 
 power-holding class greater than another it has 
 been their action in regard to the land. The 
 chequer-board character of most parts of the 
 country, cut up as it is into fields, still stands 
 as evidence of the fact that in early times in 
 England, as in other Teutonic countries, the land 
 was held in common, the arable being divided 
 into something like equal allotments, which were 
 drawn lots for, or taken in rotation, annually, 
 while the pasture was open to all for the feed- 
 ing of their flocks and herds. 
 
 By the successive waves of conquest, and 
 especially by the uprisal of the feudal system, 
 all this was changed, though the germ of it 
 has continued to our own days in the exist- 
 ence of common rights. But even so late as 
 two centuries ago the rights of lords of the 
 manor were exceedingly limited in comparison 
 with the rights assumed to-day. Every care- 
 ful student of history must be aware of this. 
 The rights of the landlord in the old days were
 
 52 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 barred and checked on every side ; they were 
 intended to be a restraining- power for the good 
 of the community, and not for personal aggran- 
 disement. The court baron and court leet were 
 just as ready to fine the lord as any of his 
 tenants for any encroachment, or for the in- 
 fringement of the various common rights. The 
 idea of a quarry, a coal mine, or a sand pit 
 being in those days monopolised by the lord of 
 the manor, or closed at his autocratic will, would 
 have been considered the rankest treason to the 
 community. We have come to put up with 
 thino^s that would have stirred our forefathers' 
 blood like a call to battle. 
 
 The result is that Great Britain stands alto- 
 gether alone in the absolute, unchecked grasp 
 which she has allowed her landowners to assume 
 and tyrannously to assert. 
 
 The total area of England and Wales is, after 
 deducting the quantity within the metropolitan 
 area, 37,243,859 acres. How is this vast extent 
 divided among the inhabitants ? 
 
 66 persons own 1,917,076 acres. 
 
 100 persons own 3,917,641. 
 
 Less than 280 persons own 5,425,764 acres, or 
 nearly one-sixth of the enclosed land of England 
 and Wales. 
 
 523 persons own one-fifth of England and 
 Wales.
 
 TJie Martyrdom of Labottr. 53 
 
 710 persons own more than one - fourth of 
 England and Wales. 
 
 874 persons own 9,267,031 acres. 
 
 In none of these calculations are the extents of 
 woods, commons, and waste lands Included. 
 
 In the County of Northumberland, which con- 
 tains 1,220,000 acres, 26 persons own one-half 
 the county. 
 
 One Englishman owns more than 186,397 
 acres, another more than 132,996 acres, and a 
 third more than 102,785 acres. 
 
 A body of men, which probably does not 
 exceed 4500, own more than 17,498,200 acres, 
 or more than one-half of all England and Wales. 
 
 In Scotland the returns are still more startling 
 and shameful. The total average of Scotland is 
 18,946,694 acres. One owner alone has 1,326,000 
 acres in Scotland and also 32,095 acres in Eng- 
 land, or a total of 1,358,548 acres. 
 
 A second owner has 431,000 acres, a third 
 owner has 424,000 acres, a fourth owner has 
 373,000 acres, and a fifth 306,000 acres. Twelve 
 owners have 4,339,722 acres, or nearly one 
 quarter of the whole of Scotland ; or, in other 
 words, a tract of country larger than the whole 
 of Wales, and equal in size to eight English 
 counties, namely, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buck- 
 inghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Corn- 
 wall, Cumberland, and Derbyshire.
 
 54 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 Twenty owners have each more than 120,000 
 acres. 
 
 24 owners have more than 4,931,884, or more 
 than a quarter of Scotland. 
 
 70 owners have about 9,400,000 acres, or about 
 one-half of Scotland. 
 
 171 owners have 11,029,228 acres. 
 
 While nine-tenths of the whole of Scotland, 
 that is, of the whole of 18,946,694 acres, belong 
 to fewer than 1700 persons. 
 
 It is an old story how the existence of these 
 vast properties in Scotland has led to the de- 
 populating of immense tracts of country in order 
 to create large deer forests. There is no return 
 of their acreage, but the Hon. Lyluph Stanley 
 calculates that much more than 2,000,000 acres 
 have been cleared of hundreds of thousands of 
 sheep, and depopulated, in order to make room 
 for deer ; or, in other words, the homes and farms 
 and food of thousands of families have been de- 
 stroyed in order to feed the deer and encourage 
 sport, and this in a country which is alleged to 
 be so crowded as to make it absurd to suppose 
 that any alteration in the land laws would enable 
 the middle or labouring classes to acquire land. 
 
 Why is it that this state of things exist ? The 
 only answer is, because of the greed of the rich, 
 because of the unholy greed of a privileged class, 
 which, striving and working generation after
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 55 
 
 generation, has succeeded in disinheriting the 
 sons of the soil. Five hundred years ago, his- 
 tory tells us, the great majority of the agricultural 
 population were yeomen or peasant proprietors, 
 and there was no vagabondage, or unemployed, 
 or pauperism in "merry England." Even so late 
 as the beginning of last century there were mil- 
 lions upon millions of acres of land which were 
 the birthright of the people, a possession which 
 made them semi-independent. These were the 
 common lands. But during the reigns of Queen 
 Anne and the first three Georges, or between 
 1702 and 1800, upwards of three and a half 
 millions of acres were enclosed and appropriated 
 by the landlords. Nor did the spoliation cease 
 with the eighteenth century ; for during the first 
 forty-two years of the present century 2,773,812 
 more acres were filched from the sons of toil ; 
 while between that date and 1876 an additional 
 699,702 acres were similarly " conveyed " from 
 the poor to the rich. 
 
 It is this one cause more than any other that 
 has tended to place the poorer classes in this 
 country in so distressing a condition economi- 
 cally. They have nothing at the back of them ; 
 they possess no sort of natural stay or prop. Of 
 course all cannot have their bit of land : it is not 
 contended that they can ; but under a just and 
 equitable system of land tenure the whole labour-
 
 56 The Martyrdotn of Labour. 
 
 ing population would not be thrown on the 
 market, so to speak, helpless in the hands of the 
 capitalist, because they have nothing to fall back 
 upon. In short, it is the land monopoly which 
 begot capitalism. 
 
 How much worse off we are in this respect 
 now than we were about the middle of last 
 century is seen from the fact that the total 
 number of males and females engaged in agri- 
 cultural work and food production at the present 
 day is one and a half millions ; whereas in 1 769 
 Arthur Young estimated that out of a total popu- 
 lation of 8,500,000 the agricultural class numbered 
 2,8000,00: a proportion of one in every three. 
 With our present population of 29,000,000, the 
 proportion is one in every nineteen.^ 
 
 It is hardly likely that so large a proportion of 
 the population as one in three could return to the 
 land, with profit, even under the best of condi- 
 tions ; but a very large augmentation of the pre- 
 sent proportions could be advantageously effected. 
 Nor will some of the evils from which the country 
 is so severely suffering be cured until restitution 
 is made, and the land be again divided, with some 
 approximation to equity, amongst the people. 
 Then, and not till then, shall we see a happ)' and 
 contented labouring class, every man in every 
 village, tilling his half acre or acre, and rejoicing 
 
 1 "The Destitute Alien in Great Britain," p. 47-8.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 57 
 
 in something of the Creator's bounty. When this 
 question is referred to among those who are in 
 favour of the existing state of things, we are con- 
 stantly told that small culture cannot be made 
 to pay in England ; and, moreover, it is often 
 added, the character of the English labourer is 
 such that, if it could be made to pay, he is not 
 the one to do it. 
 
 Such are the constantly reiterated statements ; 
 and yet whenever there is a bit of land to be had, 
 either to rent or to buy, there are found plenty of 
 men willing to take it. Indeed, during the last 
 few years — during the worst years of depression 
 — it has been proved beyond doubt that there is 
 a veritable land hunger in the country, and that 
 it takes every possible means of being appeased. 
 Richard Cobden once wrote about Dorset : — 
 
 " Dorset is a county of large estates and large 
 farms. One landlord is said to be able to ride 
 thirty miles from east to west on his own lands. 
 Several have their residences in walled parks 
 literally miles in circumference. Ask the eight 
 millions of landed proprietors in France to 
 exchange lots with the English people, where the 
 labourer who cultivates the farm has no more 
 proprietary interest in the soil than the horses 
 he drives, and he will be struck with horror ! " 
 
 Sir Robert Edgcumbe was struck by this 
 fact, too, and one day, some few years ago, as
 
 58 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 he was riding past a farm of 343 acres in Dorset, 
 then in the market, the thought occurred to him : 
 " Why not take this farm for small holdings ? 
 The tenant had to give up his occupation, and 
 the farm was mortgaged at ^5000, although a 
 few years before it had been valued at ^12,000. 
 The rent then paid was ^240 a year, and as 
 the mortgagees did not see their way to take 
 over the farm, they offered it for sale, fixing the 
 amount of the mortgage as the upset price. 
 Edgcumbe was the only bidder at ^5050, at 
 which price the property became his. 
 
 The farm consisted of a long narrow strip 
 of land along the Dorsetshire hills. The new 
 owner proceeded to have a careful survey made 
 of it, and then, besides making a road right 
 through the middle of it, had two wells sunk. 
 The expenses entailed by these works were : — 
 
 Purchase price ..... ^5050 
 
 Tillages and tenant right . . . 490 
 
 Survey, and 200 lithographed maps, and 
 
 plotting out the land . . .129 
 
 Law costs — Investigating title, drafting 
 model form of agreement for sale, 
 and model conveyance . . . 13 
 
 Sinking wells . . . . . .120 
 
 Cost of making a road .... 340 
 
 ;^6l42
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 59 
 
 The land was now laid out in plots of various 
 sizes, great care being taken to apportion the 
 value of each holding. In all, twenty-five of 
 such holdings were created, varying in size from 
 two to thirty-three acres, and they were offered 
 at the apportioned prices to purchasers who were 
 prepared to pay one-tenth of the money down, 
 and the remainder in nine equal yearly instal- 
 ments, interest being paid on the balance of 
 unpaid instalments. To the surprise of every- 
 body, there was a flood of applications, and not 
 the slightest difficulty occurred in at once dis- 
 posing of every bit of the land. 
 
 This was at the beginning of 1889, and by 
 the spring of 1895, that is, within six years, the 
 whole of the instalments were cleared off, with 
 the exception of about ^500. Considering the 
 character of the applicants, this was a remark- 
 able result. Amongst the number were a black- 
 smith, a watchmaker, eight agricultural labourers, 
 a cooper, a railway porter, a rural postman, a 
 carpenter, a gardener, two coachmen, a currier, 
 two small shopkeepers, and a stonemason. 
 
 When in the occupation of the late tenant, 
 there were employed upon the land the farmer 
 and three agricultural labourers. Under the new 
 conditions there were on the same land twenty- 
 five families, counting seventy-five persons in all. 
 The prices paid per acre varied from ^7 to £2^,
 
 6o The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 according to the value of the land. Besides the 
 farm-house, there were three cottages on the 
 estate, each of which was sold to separate pur- 
 chasers. The other buyers had to put up houses 
 to suit their condition and needs. Some built 
 handsome cottages ; others had to be content 
 with houses of wood and corrugated iron until 
 the balance of their purchase money was cleared 
 off. 
 
 "There was," says the writer of the account 
 from which I chiefly take these facts, " over the 
 whole of the Kew estate an air of something 
 which I cannot describe, but which is best illus- 
 trated by Arthur Young's phrase, ' the magic of 
 ownership.' Here were people who were work- 
 ing for themselves. Every bit of labour they put 
 into the holding, every fence they made, every 
 brick they put into position, was improving the 
 value of their own property." People round 
 about did not seem to realise this, and were not 
 a little surprised at the results that were reached 
 and the transformation achieved. 
 
 Sir Robert Edgcumbe estimated the letting 
 value of the land at the close of the late tenant's 
 occupation at ^170 a year. After six years of 
 petite culture the land was valued for rateable 
 purposes at ^313, and the actual total assess- 
 ment was ;^283, 6s. 8d. This was what the 
 neighbouring farmers and landowners could not
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 6i 
 
 understand. But it is perfectly obvious to every- 
 body who is not blinded by prejudice in favour 
 of the system of large estates. The writer of 
 the article above referred to ^ cites the case of 
 a gardener who had bought seventeen acres. 
 "When we visited him," he says, "he was just 
 finishing another long range of glass-houses, in 
 which he was growing early vegetables for the 
 markets at Bournemouth and Weymouth. He 
 showed how he had got the lime to whitewash 
 his range of buildings by burning the chalk in 
 the furnace of his conservatories. It is by 
 attention to these little matters of detail that 
 these men succeed. And then the pigs, the 
 poultry, and the bees all go to make up the 
 necessary returns." 
 
 This is but one example out of many which 
 might be adduced, including that of Earl Gray's 
 farm at East Learmouth, by many regarded as 
 quite a new departure, and the well-known 
 instance of the successful establishment of a 
 number of poor people on the land at Winter- 
 slow by Major Poore. In this case, acting upon 
 Arthur Young's aphorism that " the magic of 
 property turns sand into gold," Major Poore 
 gave his people a lease for two thousand years, 
 instead of making them freeholders, because the 
 leofal costs for a lease were less than to sell 
 
 ' It appeared in the Daily Chronicle.
 
 62 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 outright. The alacrity with which the purchase 
 money was found by the leaseholders caused 
 general surprise, although it need not have done, 
 considering the amount of thrift there is among 
 the labouring classes. 
 
 These are a few examples of what might be 
 done, and is being done, in a small way all 
 over the country, thus reversing the process 
 whereby the people were dispossessed of their 
 holdings. But this is what the rich — the "upper 
 classes," as they like to be called — do not wish 
 to see. " They know in their secret hearts," as 
 Tolstoi puts it, " that the land question contains 
 all social questions ; that with its solution all 
 special privileges would disappear, and that this 
 question is the leading subject of the day. Yet 
 while they pretend to care for the well-being of 
 the masses, and while they raise for them benefit 
 societies, factory inspection, income taxes, ay, 
 and eight hours' working days, they carefully 
 ignore the land question." 
 
 We have another object-lesson of the same 
 kind in the story of the Highland crofters during 
 the last two decades. The landlords were gradu- 
 ally "dinging" them out of existence by their 
 tyranny and extortion. In the early part of the 
 eighties they revolted, and bid fair to set the whole 
 heather on fire. Finally a Royal Commission 
 was appointed to inquire into their grievances,
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 6^^ 
 
 with the result that not only were the rents of 
 their crofts lowered, their arrears reduced, if not 
 entirely cleared off, and the tenants given security 
 for their holdings, but in some cases their hold- 
 ings were increased in size. The result has been 
 a moral and material improvement in the con- 
 dition of the crofters that forms one of the most 
 significant object-lessons of the political history 
 of the latter quarter of the century. 
 
 But the most significant thing of all connected 
 with the crofter question is the fact that the 
 inquiry proves beyond doubt that an idle class 
 living upon the labours of others is absolutely 
 incapable of dealing justly with those by whom 
 so much of their wealth is produced. And by 
 knowing what, in the course of a few years, would 
 have become of the crofter people, if the law had 
 not stepped in to protect them, we are able to 
 understand how, and with what ignoble tyranny 
 and injustice, the commoners of England, the 
 yeomen and peasants, have been "choused" of 
 their birthright in the land. 
 
 When the yeoman fell upon evil times, and he 
 did not know how to make both ends meet, was 
 Parliament asked to come to his assistance, as 
 it has so often done for the " nobles," and so 
 enable him to tide over the evil day, and save his 
 freehold ? No, he was left alone to his troubles, 
 the insatiate land-grabber patiently watching his
 
 64 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 chance, and gobbling him up the moment he 
 was at the end of his resources. The noble did 
 exactly the same with the peasant-holder, and 
 when he had swallowed the peasant's portion he 
 " went for " the common-land. The way in which 
 the power-holding class laid their hands upon the 
 common-lands in England, as for the crofter's 
 land and rights in the Highlands of Scotland, 
 constitutes one of the most precious hall-marks 
 of aristocracy in our later social history. Even 
 at the present hour the thing goes on ; the rich 
 man still sets his snare for the poor man's tiny 
 ewe lamb, while the poor man, with the needs 
 of his children in his heart, and possibly their 
 famishing cries in his ears, and unable to buy 
 the law that goes for justice, must perforce 
 submit to the mercy of the wolf Is not the 
 memory of Humphrey's orchard still green .-* 
 
 They might have foreseen, these nobles, if they 
 had but given heed to the voice of conscience, 
 that though their wrong-doing was successful for 
 the time being, it must in the end be followed by 
 the inevitable retribution. They effected their 
 ill-deeds with such apparent impunity that they 
 seemed as secure as the hills. But look how the 
 avenging form of Nemesis is now stalking through 
 the land. Is his hand not upon the unjust holders 
 of the soil ? Do we not hear every day and all 
 day long of how the land is going out of cultiva-
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 65 
 
 tion, and of how the "splendid paupers" are grow- 
 ing poorer and poorer every day? It is a bad look- 
 out for them; but it means future health, happiness 
 and prosperity for the country when they shall be 
 obliged to let the soil go to those who can till it. 
 It may be objected that this harking back to 
 the things of the past is merely a stirring up of 
 ancient history. The answer is that the life of a 
 nation is a unity, and that the earlier acts of the 
 drama are not ancient history at all. The first is 
 connected in a sequence with the last. Have we 
 it not on divine authority that on God's clocks a 
 thousand years are but as a day? Nothing is 
 truer than that. 
 
 This story of the great treachery of the nobles 
 in regard to the land has never yet been fully and 
 properly told — how by every form of "getting" 
 the small holders were dispossessed, till there is 
 hardly a village or township in which the story of 
 Naboth's vineyard has not been repeated from 
 year to year, and from generation to generation, 
 until the land of England is held by from 200,000 
 to 300,000 owners, or about one in every 146 of 
 the population, while in France there are 7,000,000 
 landowners, or one in every five of the population. 
 
 The process of casting out the peasants had 
 already become so marked in Queen Elizabeth's 
 time, that a law was passed making it illegal for
 
 66 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 any peasant's cottage to be left without four acres 
 of land for him to live upon.^ Then, as now, 
 "the small holdings had been devoured by the 
 large. The labouring peasants had been bundled 
 into villages, where, with no other tenement be- 
 yond the rooms which they occupied, they were 
 supported, as now, only by daily or weekly 
 wages ; while, through neglect in enforcing the 
 Statute of Labourers, they had been driven to 
 accept such wages as the employers would give, 
 rather than the fair and just equivalent for their 
 work, which it was still the theory of English 
 legislators that they ought to receive."^ 
 
 This condition of things, with a sense of justice 
 which did them honour as men, the statesmen of 
 that day did their best to put an end to by the 
 enactment referred to. Well had it been if those 
 who followed them had had such a feeling of right 
 amongst their possessions. But they had not, or 
 if they had they hid it in a napkin with the pro- 
 verbial talents, and so the old infamy commenced 
 again. And as the result, we see the descendants 
 of the men who were the making of England, not 
 merely dispossessed of all hold on the land, but 
 gradually rotting away for lack of food and the 
 natural sustainment of men. 
 
 One might ask what would become of this 
 
 1 The law was abrogated by 15 Geo. 3, c. 28. 
 
 2 Froude, " History of England."
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 67 
 
 country if some day it should find itself in a 
 similar predicament to that in which France 
 was cast barely thirty years ago ? Then, in 
 the hour of her trial, the peasants to whom the 
 Revolution had done the justice of restoring the 
 land, came to her rescue, and did much towards 
 saving the honour of the country when almost 
 everything else had failed. It was the misfortune 
 of that noble people that for twenty-five years 
 they had been subjected to the will of a poltroon 
 and an assassin. His was the dishonour — his and 
 his marshals' and his advisers' — of the defeat into 
 which it had fallen. When they had done their 
 worst, and the country was at the mercy of the 
 foe, the despised peasant came to the rescue and 
 proved the salvation of the country. What would 
 or could our 200,000 or 300,000 landowners do in 
 such a crisis? Very little, one doubts. It is the 
 poor who make sacrifices, and do deeds of noble 
 trust, not the rich — at least so it would seem. 
 
 Nor is the outlook any the more reassuring in 
 case we should be called upon to fight for very 
 life, as we, as a nation, have had to do ere now. 
 Never before was so large a proportion of the 
 people dissociated from the land ; never before, 
 perhaps, were those who have to till the soil so 
 impoverished, so little fitted by physical condition 
 to make good fighting material ; never before had 
 the people of the country so little hold on the
 
 68 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 
 
 land. Why, therefore, in case of a European 
 coahtion against Great Britain, should the ex- 
 propriated masses shed their blood for a land 
 in which they are landless ? The sentiment of 
 home and country is something. But suppos- 
 ingf the half-starved labourers and the brutalised 
 workers were to say as a man, " I am not going 
 to fight for a country in which I have no stake. 
 At worst I can only starve in America as I am 
 doing here ! " 
 
 Is it not worth the while of the monopolisers of 
 the land to take thought of this ? Most assuredly 
 it is an imminent danger. Since the last great 
 war conditions have changed enormously. There 
 was not then a cheap ferry across the Atlantic 
 as now, and other facilitations of democracy. 
 Labour can to-day take advantage of the mar- 
 kets in a way that it could not at the beginning 
 of the century ; and as the worker becomes more 
 and more enlightened the more surely will he 
 have the world at command. Whether his 
 capital consists in his physical strength and en- 
 durance, or in the acquired craft of his brain 
 and right hand, he will be able to say, " These 
 can win for me bread and a place in any of the 
 four quarters of the globe : why, therefore, should 
 I sentimentalise over a country — and fight for it 
 — in which there is not a single square yard of 
 earth I can grip and say, ' This is my foothold ? ' "
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 69 
 
 Would not the labourer especially be justified 
 in saying to his sons and daughters : " Storm- 
 clouds are gathering up, there is going to be 
 trouble, when every man will have to fight for 
 his hearth and his home. But this home, in 
 which I have had to bring you up in poverty and 
 misery, half fed, ill clothed, with hardly enough 
 room for decency, not enough for health — God 
 forgive me, but it is not worth shedding your 
 blood for ! Get away, therefore, to America, 
 anywhere, and leave me here. I have only a 
 few years to live, and perhaps it is best that 
 my old bones should rot here — here where they 
 would not give me the decent status of a man ! " 
 
 Is this picture overdrawn ? Let those who 
 have hearts and have seen the labourers in the 
 villages, and how they live, say whether it is 
 or not. In most of their homes it is a case of 
 deficiency of food the year round — a case of 
 deficiency of the very food they are slaving all 
 the time to produce. 
 
 Those who have given the subject the most 
 thought are agreed that the smallest amount of 
 food on which a day's work can be healthily 
 done is, for a man, 25 oz., for a woman, 16 oz., 
 for a growing child, 10 oz. In a family of four 
 young children that comes to 81 oz. a day. Let 
 anyone skilled in these matters reckon up what 
 that quantity of food will cost — food of the
 
 70 The Martyi'dom of Labour. 
 
 simplest kind, such as bread, potatoes, meal, 
 bacon, margarine (for though the labourer may 
 help to produce butter, he is an eater of mar- 
 garine), etc., and he will find that it varies from 
 IIS. 6d. to 13s. a week. Now, putting the agri- 
 cultural labourer's wages at the highest rate, 
 namely, 15s. a week, after laying in the food for 
 his family he has some 2s. left for rent, clothes, 
 firing, lights, washing, and all the other etceteras 
 of a household, to say nothing of medical aid for 
 wife and children when needed. 
 
 Even if harvest money raises his income to an 
 average of 17s. or i8s. a week the year round, he 
 is still left with barely sufficient to keep body and 
 soul tog^ether. 
 
 In some counties, like Cambridge, the average 
 does not, according to Major Craigie's "Table 
 of Labourers' Wages," reach so much as 15s. 
 The result is that food is a large want, and the 
 mother, instead of being able to stay at home 
 and do her best for the children, has to go into 
 the field and work for a miserable pittance. In 
 villages within thirty miles of London it is 6s. a 
 week. The result of this degrading toil is seen 
 in ragged and unwashed children, and what is 
 still worse, in children whose hunger is never 
 fully satisfied. Happily for them, poor mites, 
 there are at times wild eggs and unfledged birds 
 for the seeking ; and for those who have not
 
 The Martyrdom of Laboztr. 71 
 
 been brought up daintily these make nourishing 
 food. This is no imaginative picture, but sober 
 fact : labourers' children have been knov^n, within 
 an hour's railway run of St Paul's, to fill their 
 famished bellies with unfledged birds, quick from 
 the hedgerow, and other the like live things. 
 
 Can one wonder, when life to a large section 
 at the base of society — Christian society, more- 
 over, be it said — is such a martyrdom, that men 
 run to the public-house, to dull their craving 
 and their despair with lunatic broth, thinking it 
 "picks them up," whereas all it does is still 
 further to waste their lowered energies. 
 
 This is no dream of a heated fancy, but the 
 actual, disgraceful truth, which these men in their 
 dumb way, and their friends more articulately, 
 are endeavouring to drive into the heads of 
 those who pretend to be Christians — that eighty 
 thousand labourers who extract from English soil 
 the wealth that English landowners spend upon 
 themselves, receive so small a share out of the 
 profits of their toil that they are far worse fed, 
 and therefore far less fitted for their work, than 
 the horses in the ploughs and waggons they 
 drive, that they are, in short, worse cared for 
 than the beasts, and that when society has thus 
 conspired to degrade them, it can, in answer to 
 all remonstrance, only point the finger at them 
 and say, " They deserve no better, they are so
 
 72 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 degraded ; " forgetting what their wise book says, 
 that " the destruction of the poor is their poverty," 
 which is caused by the iniquitous economical 
 laws that their "betters" have made and still 
 foster and support.
 
 " Woe to hivi that buildeth 
 CliAPTKRVI a house with bloody that 
 
 stablish a city by iniquity P 
 
 Nor is it in the agricultural districts alone where 
 this baneful deterioration of man is taking place. 
 The forced depopulation of the villages has 
 tended to overcrowd the towns. Those who 
 live by the labour of others, who thrive materi- 
 ally by the keeping up of a servile and always 
 half-starved, and hence degraded class, are by 
 no means loth to see this condition of things 
 continue. It is to their profit to have labour 
 cheap ; and so long as they can help it nothing 
 will be done to bring about a better state of 
 society. 
 
 This condition, of course, is not peculiar to 
 England. It exists the world over, wherever 
 civilisation obtains. Look anywhere, in every 
 country of Europe — one might almost say of 
 the world, but one prefers to say Europe, because 
 it is so pre-eminently " Christian " — look any- 
 where, and you will behold want, privation, and 
 numberless other forms of suffering that arise 
 from no temporary or exceptional visitations, but 
 are for ever in our midst — want, privation, and 
 
 73
 
 74 1^^^ Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 suffering, with their concomitant physical and 
 moral deg^radation, so intense and inexcusable, 
 that one of the largest-minded men of our gener- 
 ation expressed the opinion that if there was 
 " no hope of a large improvement of the con- 
 dition of the greater part of the human family, 
 he should hail the advent of some kindly comet 
 which would sweep the whole affair away as a 
 desirable consummation." 
 
 The causes of this state of things are of a 
 permanent character for which we ourselves 
 are solely and entirely responsible. They are to 
 be traced to the anti-christian and unbrotherly 
 relations existing between the two classes into 
 which society is broadly divided — between those 
 on the one hand who, though they do no work, 
 live in luxury and ease, and, on the other hand, 
 those who, without much culture, and too often 
 brutalised by the hard conditions of their exist- 
 ence, habitually suffer from insufiicient food and 
 deprivations of every description, but whose 
 deplorable case rarely attracts attention, except 
 it be from some accidental and exceptional poig- 
 nancy. 
 
 If at times we hear little or nothing of the 
 misery of these lives it arises rather from the 
 stolidity with which they endure their lot, from 
 the patient and uncomplaining heroism with 
 which they bear up under their hard fate, than
 
 The Martyrdom of Laborer. 75 
 
 from any amelioration of their condition. It is 
 not because hunger, cold, and other starving 
 needs have ceased to crush and carry off thou- 
 sands whose lives are one long story of excessive 
 and unnatural toil ; it is because we do not wish 
 to hear of them more than we can help, or 
 because they have become so common to our 
 ears that we cease to think much about them. 
 We read from time to time of the groaning and 
 travailling world at the base of society, but we 
 hasten to forget what we read — we make haste 
 to let the uneasy picture fade from our minds. 
 
 " It is no affair of mine," reflects the one who 
 is putting by more and more wealth every year, 
 the produce of the blood and sinews of these 
 martyrs of labour. "It does not concern me," 
 says the cultured non-worker, who, with no 
 physical want unsatisfied, draws for all he has, 
 and depends for his every comfort, upon the 
 labour of the helot of our modern Christian life ; 
 to whom, nevertheless, he seldom gives a thought, 
 save when he hears that the slave on whom he 
 lives is being educated too much, or that he is 
 learning to like books — the books that will 
 redeem him yet ! 
 
 But, poor pampered idle ones, might it not be 
 well now and again to have a thought for your 
 manhood — a thought for your womanhood! It 
 is for you that these martyred ones are sacrificed.
 
 76 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 It is for you they work and starve and are 
 brutalised — for you ! And, moreover, remember 
 that the richer, the idler, and the more pampered 
 you are, the greater is the burden and the shame 
 of this martyrdom that rests upon you. 
 
 Although in all the lower ranks of labour 
 wages are, as a rule, barely enough to keep body 
 and soul together, in certain trades the conditions 
 are such that, not only are wages at starvation 
 rate, but they are fraught also with disease, 
 degradation, and premature death. One need 
 not refer at length to occupations in which poor 
 women try to make a living, but too often find 
 it impossible without eking out their scanty 
 earnings by the dishonourable traffic of their 
 bodies. The condition of the match manu- 
 facture, in which so many girls are paid wages 
 that will barely pay for food alone, has often been 
 described in the London papers, and the con- 
 ditions that obtain in that industry are by no 
 means the worst. 
 
 There is hardly a single article of clothing 
 worn by man, woman, or child, but some poor 
 soul at the bottom of the scale has been half 
 sweated to death in the production of it. 
 
 The following instance in point was taken 
 from a London paper about a year ago. The 
 article describes a fur-trimmed jacket which has 
 to be made for eightpence. " Each seam has to
 
 The Martyrdom of Labotir. yy 
 
 be sewn three times ; the collar has to be put on ; 
 the elaborate braiding has to be formed and 
 attached, and the worker provides her own 
 thread. Each jacket takes some hours to finish, 
 and the magnificent pay is eightpence." The 
 manufacturer acknowledged that this was the 
 fact. Others, he said, with no more work in 
 them, were paid for at the rate of fourteen and 
 sixteenpence, but for this they could not afford 
 more. It was only this line, said the manu- 
 facturer, that was so badly paid. He went on 
 to say : — " Actually I do not get more than 8d. 
 on each jacket for myself, after supplying the 
 capital, taking all the risk of bad stock, bad 
 debts, and goodness knows what other risks 
 besides. The profit goes to the middlemen 
 and the shopkeepers. The nearer you get to 
 the source of production the less the profit." 
 
 The tale of the middleman was the same. 
 Bad trade, bad debts, remainders going for an 
 old song ; shopkeepers wanting unlimited credit, 
 and then heavy discounts. The poor middle- 
 man seemed to be in as woeful a plight as any 
 of them. It was the same story with the shop- 
 keeper. High rents, crushing rates, assistants 
 refusing to work more than twelve or thirteen 
 hours a day, and clamouring for a half-holiday 
 every week ; lack of customers, wear and tear 
 of stock, and so on, to the dismal tune that
 
 78 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 the shopkeeper cannot make a profit whatever 
 he does. Nevertheless, the jacket sells for 
 15s. or 1 6s. in the shops, and the stuff costs 
 perhaps 5s., and the worker gets 8d. ! Who gets 
 the ten or eleven shillings' profit it is difficult 
 to make out, but one has a suspicion that the 
 middleman takes most of it. 
 
 If we turn to the tailoring trade, to the cap 
 making industry, to shoemaking, slipper making, 
 shirt making, we find similar conditions obtaining. 
 Gruesome pictures of the economic slavery appear 
 from time to time in the columns of the news- 
 paper press ; but for those who would become 
 fully acquainted with the details of the disgrace- 
 ful story, there are the cold, passionless pages 
 of the tons of blue-books, the records of innumer- 
 able royal commissions and select committees 
 that have been issued during the last thirty years 
 to an expectant world. But they are like Old 
 Testaments, full of words of exposition, monition, 
 of promise, of hope even; but they leave us 
 sorrowful, almost despairing, yearning for the 
 New Testament of emancipation yet to come. 
 
 From one book of this stolid British Bible let 
 us take a few extracts. It is known briefly as 
 " The Lord's Committee on Sweating." Our 
 first excerpt shall be one referring to "sweatery" 
 in the tailoring trade in Glasgow. We read 
 that there, ten years ago — and for anything we
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 79 
 
 know the conditions are the same to-day — a 
 woman got 2s. for making a boy's kilt suit which 
 would take her sixteen or seventeen hours to 
 make. Shooting coats were made at from 2s. 
 to 2s. 3d. ; overcoats at from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 3d ; 
 trousers from lis. to 14s. a dozen. 
 
 Of .some sweaters' places it is written : "The 
 sweater makes a practice of what we call ' taking 
 on learners ' ; that is to say, employs young girls for 
 a certain time to learn the machine part of the 
 work, and they get no wages for six weeks or 
 two months, and after that time, if competent, 
 they get 2s. or 3s. a week, and after the busy 
 season is over, as a rule they discharge them all 
 and take on a new batch. The new learners 
 are again got for nothing, and the same thing 
 takes place as before." Nor is it in the Glasgow 
 tailoring trade alone that this method of sweating 
 " learners " prevails. 
 
 In the London tailoring trade the same sort 
 of thing takes place. One workman says : 
 " Sometimes we have nothing to do for weeks 
 and weeks, but have to go idle, and the wages 
 (when there is work) are not paid regularly. 
 One sweater pays on Friday, one pays on 
 Saturday, one pays on Sunday, and one pays 
 nothing : you have to summon him for it." Mr 
 Burnett, labour correspondent of the Board of 
 Trade, gives evidence to the effect that some
 
 8o The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 women are paid as low as 6d. a day. " For a 
 slop coat, from 2s. to 3s. gd. was formerly paid ; 
 the rate is now is. 6d. to 2s. 3d, A good coat, 
 for which a man got los. 2d. a few years ago, 
 now brings to the maker only 6s. 6d." He cites 
 establishments "where cloaks are now made for 
 4s. 6d., which six or seven years ago were 
 paid for at the rate of 8s. Witney coats, which 
 were then made for los. 3d., are now made 
 for 5s. 6d." 
 
 Nor is this the worst, " A woman makes a vest 
 outright for 5d., and she is able to make four a 
 day" — a total of is. 8d. Mr Arnold White 
 produced a coat which was made for 7|d., and 
 by working fifteen hours a woman could make 
 four such in a day. earning 2s. 6d, ; but out of 
 that she had to pay 7d. for trimming and other 
 etceteras. 
 
 It is fifty years since Hood sang his " Song 
 of the Shirt," which has brought the pitiful tears 
 to thousands of eyes ; and yet the needful gar- 
 ment is made now as then — 
 
 " In poverty, hunger and dirt." 
 
 The only difference is that, whereas then it was 
 all "stitch, stitch, stitch," plying the needle and 
 thread, now the work is done by machine. But 
 though the machine does the work quicker, the 
 toiler's martyrdom is still the same. Sevenpence
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 8i 
 
 and eightpence a dozen is (or was in 1888) the 
 price paid for shirtmaking. One woman could 
 earn is. 2d. a day at the work ; but her materials 
 cost her is. 3d. a week besides the cost of the 
 sewing machine, for which she had to pay £"] , 3s. 
 in instalments of 2s. 6d. a week. She began 
 work between seven and eight o'clock in the 
 mornine and did not leave off sometimes till 
 eleven at night. 
 
 Another woman had to "sit up until twelve 
 and one o'clock at night to do a dozen and a half." 
 A third witness confessed that though " toiling 
 like this, she did not average 6d. a day to buy 
 food for herself and children after her rent was 
 paid." 
 
 The Rev. W. Adamson, rector of Old Ford, 
 gives evidence to the effect that some of the 
 best silk mantles sold in the West End shops 
 were made in his parish for 7|d. each, this 
 being the price paid " for making the whole 
 mantle right throughout ; and they have to find 
 their own cotton and silk, and oil for the 
 machine." The sweater, however, only pays 
 5d. to the worker, and the latter can make is. 3d. 
 to IS. 6d. a day. 
 
 The same witness avers that " fifteen hours' 
 work in the day at boot-making is not excep- 
 tional ; " and Dr Adler, the Delegate Chief 
 Rabbi, says that eighteen hours is regarded as
 
 82 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 an ordinary day in the cheap-boot trade, A 
 Mr Hoffman testifies to having found children 
 at work at boot-finishing up to twelve and one 
 o'clock at night. He had also seen beds in 
 cellars and underground places where boot work 
 was carried on, and knew of a double room 
 knocked into one where ten men and also a 
 man and his wife and six children worked and 
 slept. There were "greeners" — persons who 
 had not learned the trade properly — "many of 
 whom will live on a cup of coffee and a red 
 herring for a whole day." 
 
 These statements refer to London, exceptional 
 in many respects, in its size for one thing, and 
 in the ease with which things may exist and 
 be hidden ; but the same or similar conditions 
 exist in all large towns. We have seen some- 
 thing of what is done in Glasgow in the tailoring 
 trade ; in Leeds, in the slipper-making industry, 
 mostly now in the hands of Jews, the story is 
 much the same. Mr Sherard, in his " White 
 Slaves of England," gives a gruesome, though 
 by no means too dark a picture of what its toilers 
 have to endure, working as they do, fourteen 
 or more hours a day for a remuneration of four- 
 pence an hour. But it is needless to follow the 
 writer through his exposure of these abomina- 
 tions, or of the miseries of the tailors and tailor- 
 esses in the notorious Leyland, struggling with
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 83 
 
 filthily-woven and manure-sized cloth, or sewing 
 for dear life amidst awful stenches and general 
 uncleanliness, the girls earning in their " punish- 
 ing-houses " at most no more than half-a-sovereign 
 a week, and having to pay out of that a sixth 
 in "sewings," besides being obliged to submit 
 to bullying foremen, iniquitous fines, constant 
 slackness of work, and frequent reductions of 
 wages. 
 
 For much of this Mr Sherard quotes Miss 
 Ford of Adel Grange, an unimpeachable autho- 
 rity ; while for his harrowing description of the 
 misery of the wool-combers of Bradford he has the 
 corroborative testimony of Mr Samuel Shaftoe, 
 J. P., Secretary of the Local Wool-Combers' As- 
 sociation. The pictures he draws of this industry 
 are like a nightmare. He compares the men 
 working in the night shifts in the combing-sheds 
 to skeletons, and declares that the work so preys 
 on their physique as to make their weight two 
 or three stones less than that of the average 
 adult. Their wages he estimates at perhaps a 
 sovereign weekly, but as they might be idle 
 nearly half the year, the total on which a whole 
 family has to be supported has to be halved. 
 The conditions of work are frightful also, a 
 foul yellow dust pervading the atmosphere, 
 a filthy smell coming often from the fleeces, 
 and the heat proving so infernal as to neces-
 
 84 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 sitate the removal of most of the workers' 
 clothes. 
 
 As a finishing touch to this grim picture, it 
 need only be added that often enough man and 
 wife are wholly separated, the one working on 
 the night turn, the other in the day, and just 
 seeing each other perhaps for an instant as one 
 passes into and the other out of the Gehenna of 
 toil. 
 
 One might go on adding to the list of these 
 malebolgi of labour almost ad injinitunt, refer- 
 ring to the long hours and unwholesome con- 
 ditions of labour in the fish-curing trade ; to the 
 insalubrity of some of the departments of the 
 Belfast linen industry ; to the terrible nature of 
 work in our coal mines, wherein men barter their 
 lives for a bare existence wage to provide those 
 with a luxurious income, cruelly won, who have 
 no more natural right to the produce of the earth's 
 entrails than they have to the stars. But in almost 
 every department of labour we witness the same 
 sort of thing. 
 
 One sickens of the inhumanity at the root of 
 all this slavery. It fills the soul with a feeling 
 akin to despair to think that in this England of 
 ours, blessed in some things above most countries, 
 there can be found men and women who are content 
 to live on the flesh and blood, yea, upon the very 
 soul's health, of the workers. For, be it remem-
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 85 
 
 bered, in the end, the holding of men and women 
 and children in slavery by the grip of their hunger, 
 means nothing less than the crushing out of the 
 very souls of many of them — killing that central 
 spark, which is the man, the woman.
 
 '■'^ Also in thy skirts is found 
 CHAPTER VII the blood of the souls of the 
 
 poor imwcents." 
 
 But even yet we have not come to the blackest 
 of the picture. It is not until we reach the alkali 
 and white-lead workers, to the nail-makers of 
 Broomsgrove, or the chain-makers of Cradley 
 Heath, that we touch the lowest depths of labour 
 degradation and torture — unless, indeed, there be 
 a still deeper depth to be found in the stoke-holds 
 of ships. 
 
 It would be a work of supererogation to go 
 over the whole cataloQfue of infamies connected 
 with the alkali and white-lead industries, or to 
 tell again the dismal story of the nail and chain 
 makers. Have they not been set forth — for per- 
 haps the hundredth time — in the book of the 
 " White Slaves } " And yet one cannot pass them 
 over entirely, so deeply are they responsible for a 
 large share in the martyrology of toil in this nine- 
 teenth century of grace. 
 
 A few brief indications, however, must suffice. 
 And — to take the case of the alkali workers first — 
 let anyone who doubts go to Widnes or St Helen's 
 and see for himself what this terrible industry does
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 87 
 
 for human life, as for vegetation. To look at 
 town and country, one would imagine that a 
 curse had fallen upon both. And such indeed 
 is the case! Hardly a green tree, a bush, or a 
 blade of grass is to be seen for miles round. All 
 have been killed by the sulphuretted hydrogen 
 and other gases which, "belched forth night and 
 day from the many factories, rot the clothes, the 
 teeth, and in the end the bodies of the workers," 
 so that "it is rare to find old people amongst the 
 alkali workers." ^ 
 
 A leading doctor of St Helen's told Mr 
 Sherard that this alkali business is a miserably 
 unhealthy one, adding, " if the published statistics 
 show but a small death-rate it is because the 
 chemical trade only kills a man three parts out of 
 four, leaving the workhouse to do the rest. The 
 men are dismissed before they are actually dying. 
 As a general rule the men go from forty-five to 
 fifty-five years of age. The tubes become blocked 
 up and asthmatical, the gases destroy all elasticity 
 of the tubes. The lime men get soft stone. All 
 get more or less anaemic. Asthma, kidney disease, 
 chronic cystitis are the perquisites of many." 
 
 In all such cases where men are obliged to 
 play chuck-farthing with death, degradation is 
 only too often the result. As in so many other 
 departments of labour-slavery, drink is resorted 
 
 1 The " White Slaves of England," by Robert Sherard.
 
 88 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 to ; it acts as a spur for the time being;-, and in 
 the end becomes the besetting- sin. " The men 
 cannot do their work unless they are half-drunk," 
 says the above-mentioned medical authority : 
 "They drink because they cannot eat. A man 
 cannot be healthy under these conditions." 
 
 Lumbago, gastralgia, bronchitis, and lung 
 diseases generally are among some of the 
 scourges that carry off the alkali workers before 
 their time. But bad as is the hydrochloric acid 
 and the heat of the furnaces to which the men 
 are exposed — heat on one side and draught on 
 the other — " Roger" is worse. 
 
 Roger is the chlorine gas which, pumped on 
 to slaked lime, transforms this into bleaching 
 powder. " Roger ... is so poisonous that the 
 men . . . who pack the bleaching powder after 
 the process into the barrels in which it is exported 
 work with goggles on their eyes and twenty 
 thicknesses of flannel over their mouths, these 
 muzzles being tightly secured by long cords. 
 They can pack but a few minutes at a time. A 
 ' feed ' of this gas kills its man in an hour." ^ 
 Yet lethal as are its effects, the men are full of 
 grim jokes about ' Roger.' " 
 
 One would think that at least these men would 
 be well paid. But no ; though they put soul as 
 well as body into the scale they must perforce 
 1 "White Slaves," p. 55.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 89 
 
 kick the beam for a starvation wage. First 
 degrade your man and then underpay him is the 
 high poHtico-economical maxim of the exploiters 
 of labour today. Twenty-four shillings a week 
 seems to be considered a good wage for these 
 men, who go with death in their hands every 
 day of their lives, and even that they can only 
 earn by sacrificing their Sunday. Some average 
 only 3s. 9d. a day ; while the used-up man, at 
 the last stagfe before the workhouse — " tooth- 
 less, asthmatic, half-blind," who are employed 
 breaking the stones from which sulphur is ex- 
 tracted, may, if he be extra smart, "earn 13s. 
 a week, but few earn more than 8s. a week," ^ 
 Nor can they depend on this munificent hire 
 with anything like regularity. "Of ' Roger,' " 
 says Mr Sherard, " and salt-cake gas, and 
 the hundred other risks that attend them, 
 they speak light-heartedly:" their only grief 
 is the irregularity of their death-dealing occupa- 
 tion. 
 
 For grim ghastliness there is nothing to choose 
 between the alkali industry in South Lancashire 
 and the white-lead industry of Newcastle-on- 
 Tyne. Everyone who knows anything is aware 
 of the poisonous nature of white-lead, and of the 
 heavy demands it makes upon the worker for 
 victims. It is needless to go into details of the 
 
 1 " White Slaves."
 
 90 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 manufacture, suffice it to say that it is one of 
 the deadliest, and that it can only be carried 
 on at the cost of untold suffering, insanity, and 
 death. One of the first effects of the white-lead 
 poison is to cause colic, cramp, and inflammation 
 of the bowels, on which quickly follow paralysis 
 and death. One of its peculiar effects is what 
 is known as "wrist-drop." The lead gets under 
 the nails, and so affects the joints that the arms 
 become twisted. Mr Sherard gives an instance 
 of a man suffering from wrist-drop. "He could 
 only lift his arms with the hands hanging down, 
 and to raise a glass to his mouth had to press 
 it between the backs of his wrists. He has to 
 eat like an animal, with his mouth to his plate. 
 He is completely helpless at the age of thirty- 
 nine." 
 
 This poor fellow had worked at his lethal 
 calling for a little over seven years, earning 
 about 23s. a week. 
 
 But, bad as is the case of the men, that of the 
 women is, or was, still worse ; for, happily, the 
 Home Secretary a few months ago issued an 
 order prohibiting the employment of women in 
 the white-lead works, as well as making more 
 stringent regulations for the protection of the 
 men. Women and girls, however, are still 
 allowed to work in potteries and other manu- 
 factories in which white-lead is employed, and in
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 91 
 
 which we hear from time to time of their losing 
 sight or being otherwise maimed through its 
 poisonous effects. 
 
 The Staffordshii'e Sentinel recently gave par- 
 ticulars of five cases of young people of 16, 17, 
 and 18, blinded by the conditions under which 
 raw lead is used in the potteries. Here is an 
 example, characteristic of the rest : — 
 
 " Gertrude Cartledge was employed for eigh- 
 teen months in the dusting shop — where colour 
 and glaze are ' dusted ' on the ware, very dan- 
 gerous work. At the end of 1896 she had a fit 
 when on the way home. She became very ill, 
 suffering terribly from pains in the head, and 
 there were symptoms of paralysis. One Sunday 
 morning, on coming downstairs, she said to her 
 father, ' Dada, it's dark ; is it going to rain ? ' 
 ' No,' replied her father, ' Us a nice mornhig, and 
 the SU71 is shining.' The poor girl had lost her 
 sight, and she has never seen since." 
 
 Professor Thomas Oliver, an expert in regard 
 to the effects of white-lead, and who holds that 
 women are physically more liable to lead poison- 
 ing than men, says that every now and then 
 a girl of eighteen to twenty-three years of age 
 works only a few weeks or months in a lead 
 factory, when symptoms of lead-poisoning are 
 noticed, namely — colic, constipation, vomiting, 
 headache, pains in the limbs, and incomplete
 
 92 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 blindness. In a few days, with or without treat- 
 ment, she becomes convulsed, and dies in a state 
 of coma, the death being so sudden that we 
 cannot but regard it as due to acute toxaemia. 
 " Death in these cases is analogous to strychnine 
 poisoning." 
 
 The consequences of lead-poisoning are much 
 more serious in the case of women than in the 
 case of men. According to Professor Oliver 
 the women employed in the lead factories almost 
 invariably miscarry. " I have known cases," 
 he says, "of women who have had children 
 naturally before going to the lead-works, but, 
 whilst employed in the works, either had nothing 
 but miscarriages or gave birth to still-born 
 children." Nor does it appear that, when born 
 alive, they are as healthy as they should be. 
 And yet, for all this misery and suffering, if 
 we may believe Mr Sherard, these women do 
 not average the year round more than 7s. a 
 week. 
 
 God help the poor labouring mother! In her 
 purest joy she must find little else but suffering. 
 If she is a true-hearted woman she must be sorry 
 even when a man-child is born to her, knowing 
 the slavery he will have to go through for a 
 livelihood, but should it be a girl — pity on her, 
 she must be ready to cry out with Job that it 
 had been better if her travail had resulted in an
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 93 
 
 untimely birth. And yet when it is a question 
 of indemnifying these people for the maiming 
 and suffering caused by improper conditions or 
 negligence, we find a Christian legislature, and 
 especially Christian "lords," setting their unfeeling 
 heels upon it. 
 
 We do not in these days believe in the "curse" 
 of labour, but rather in the curse of idleness. But 
 wherever lies the blame, there is assuredly some- 
 thing accursed in those industries the workers in 
 which are martyred daily between the upper and 
 nether millstones of slavish and degrading toil. 
 In a "Tale of Eternity" which the writer once 
 read, the wanderer asks to be allowed a sight 
 of Hell. Instantly he is wafted back from the 
 extra-terrestrial regions into which he had been 
 transported, and is landed — where think you ? 
 In any subterranean or subaqueous Hades .-* No, 
 but at chain-making, Cradley Heath. And why 
 Cradley Heath? Because all the veritable hells 
 are created by man, not by the libelled and 
 defamed Almighty. 
 
 Look at the way men — and women — work and 
 live in this Malebolge of Cradley Heath, and say 
 what worse Inferno could you wish to send your 
 worst enemy to. 
 
 The work of chain-making consists in heating 
 iron rods (a process which involves a number of 
 pulls on the bellows for each link), bending the
 
 94 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 red-hot piece, cutting it on the anvil, or " hardy," 
 twisting the Hnlc, inserting it into the last link of 
 the chain, and welding or closing it with repeated 
 blows of the hand-hammer and the " oliver," 
 worked by a treadle. Of this industry and the 
 allied one of nail-making, carried on at Broms- 
 grove, the Report of the Lords' Sweating Com- 
 mittee says that, " Although these industries do 
 not give employment to a great number of per- 
 sons, in scarcely any that have come under our 
 notice is so much poverty to be found, combined 
 with such severe work and so many hardships." 
 
 "The larger description of chains," continues 
 the Report, " known as cable-chains, are made in 
 factories ; block chains, cart-horse back bands, 
 dog chains, and other smaller kinds, are made in 
 the district in small shops attached to the homes 
 of the workers. In most cases there is a work- 
 shop at the back of the house, fitted up with an 
 anvil, a stone block, and other appliances." A 
 shop of the kind described, with a dwelling-house 
 attached, lets at from 3s. to 3s. 6d. a week. 
 
 The sweater in these trades is known as the 
 " fogger." He goes to the master, takes out 
 the work, and distributes it among the men and 
 women workers. When it is done he takes it 
 back to the master. Not only are the workers 
 sweated to the bone by these middlemen, but 
 often enough — according to the evidence given —
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 95 
 
 they are shamefully defrauded by the fogger's 
 use of fraudulent scales. 
 
 It was shown that a hard week's work on com- 
 mon chain, averaging twelve hours a day for five 
 days out of the week, provides no more than a 
 bare subsistence for the men or women engaged 
 in it. The Rev. R. H. Rylett, a minister of 
 Dudley, acquainted wath the district, stated that 
 the women working on the smaller chains get 
 from 4s, 6d. to 6s. 6d. a week. A man can 
 make about three cwt. of chain a week, for 
 which he receives 5s. per cwt. ; so that he would 
 earn about 15s. 
 
 Some skilled workmen can earn as much as 
 I OS. a day; but the work is so exhausting that, 
 having worked enough hours to earn that amount, 
 a man would be so done up that he would have 
 to "play" for the next day or two. Men sel- 
 dom, in fact, earn more than a pound a week, 
 when charges for "gleeds" or firing have been 
 deducted. 
 
 One workwoman told their lordships that she 
 could usually earn 5s. a week, or something like 
 that, out of which she had to pay is. for firing. 
 Another stated that, working from seven in the 
 morning till seven at night, she could make about 
 a hundredweight of chain in a week, for which 
 she w^as paid from 4s. to 6s. 6d., the price vary- 
 ing. "We do not live very well," said this
 
 g6 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 woman ; " our most living is bacon. We get a 
 bit of butter sometimes." 
 
 A girl, aged fifteen, said she did not get as 
 much to eat as she would like, even of bread and 
 potatoes, and Mr Ker, certifying surgeon for the 
 Halesowen district, affirmed that " children do 
 not get enough to eat, even of the poorest food," 
 while the factory inspector said that two years 
 ago the people were near starving. 
 
 Another girl, aged fourteen years and nine 
 months, who helped to cut nails, began to work 
 when she was thirteen, worked from seven in the 
 morning till seven at night, and was not strong 
 enough for the work. One witness said that 
 children used to begin work at eight ; now they 
 begin at twelve or thirteen. Mr W. Price, who 
 himself commenced work at nine, said that chil- 
 dren now begin to work at eleven and twelve, 
 and that the Education Act, forbidding children 
 under thirteen to work for more than half-time, 
 is evaded. A girl of eighteen stated that she 
 worked twelve hours a day, and that her net 
 earnings would be about 7s. id. for the week. 
 Sometimes she had bacon for her dinner, never 
 fresh meat. 
 
 " Chronic hunger is the experience of most of 
 the women workers of Cradley Heath," says Mr 
 Sherard. " 'We have to do with two quartern 
 loaves a day,' said one of the^women blacksmiths
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 97 
 
 to me, ' though three such wouldn't be too much 
 for us.' This woman had six children to keep, 
 and her husband into the bargain, for he had 
 been out of work since Christmas, She was 
 good enough to detail to me her manner of 
 living. A pennyworth of bits of bacon, two 
 pennyworth of meat from the ' chep-butcher,' and 
 a pennyworth of potatoes, all cooked together, 
 made a dinner for the family of eight." ^ 
 
 Such a dinner, however, was not always to be 
 had. Often enough she and the rest of them 
 had to be content with dripping " as a relish to 
 insufficient bread ; " sop — hot water and bread — 
 was a dainty for the children ; in good weeks she 
 could get a bit of margarine — that last triumph 
 of civilisation ! 
 
 By working incessantly some twelve hours a 
 day this woman could earn about 8s. a week ; 
 that is, she could make about one hundred- 
 weight and a half of heavy chain a week, at 
 5s. 4d. the cwt. But this is wealth in com- 
 parison with the earnings of another female Vul- 
 can who makes chain-harrows, and at the end of 
 the week, after working twelve hours a day, 
 carries home 5s. In three days a sister slave 
 forged 728 heavy links, and for this work re- 
 ceived 2s. 2d., out of which sum she paid 7-|d. for 
 the necessary firing for her work and is. to a 
 1 "V/hite Slaves." 
 
 G
 
 98 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 
 
 nurse for taking care of her baby ; so that her net 
 earnings for the thirty-six hours was 6|d.^ 
 
 What wonder if some of these women have to 
 make a half-pennyworth of oatmeal serve for a 
 whole family. One woman, who does this often, 
 works " from three in the morning till eleven at 
 night, and begins again at three in the morning," 
 in order to feed her five children, their father 
 being in an asylum for the insane, " Heat, 
 worry, and drink knocked my old un','' explains 
 the wife. Drink plays its usual role amongst 
 these people, whose low vitality is always craving 
 a stimulus. 
 
 The indefeasible brutality at the bottom of all 
 this slavery is the more apparent when, as the 
 Report of the Sweating Committee says, it is 
 mentioned that the price of a dog chain, which is 
 made by these women for three farthings, is, in 
 London, from is, to is. 3d, The value of the 
 materials would be about 2d, A still more extra- 
 ordinary case is that mentioned by Mr Juggings, 
 who stated that cart chains, costing, as far as 
 value of labour and material were concerned, 
 i|d. and 7d, respectively, had sold in Southport 
 for from 4s. 6d, to 5s., in Liverpool for 5s,, and 
 in London for 7s. 
 
 Not a whit less miserable are the lives of the 
 Bromsgrove nail-makers than those of their 
 
 » " White Slaves."
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 99 
 
 brethren of Cradley Heath, Bromsgrove, a 
 pretty Httle town in the Midlands, is full of 
 homes that are always overshadowed by the 
 phantom of starvation. God-fearing and re- 
 signed heroes and heroines are many of these 
 makers of nails, who, because they cannot get 
 out of the clutches of the "fogger," must per- 
 force drag out a weary existence upon a few 
 shillings a week. 
 
 "There are scores of men in this parish," said 
 a former secretary of the one-time Nailmakers' 
 Union, "who are not earning 9s. a week for 
 seventy, eighty, and ninety hours' work, and 
 out of these earnings have to pay from is. to 
 IS. 6d. a week for firing, and about 6d. for 
 keeping their tools in order." ^ 
 
 A nailmaker told the Sweating Committee 
 that out of his week's work only about 8s. 6d. 
 remained for himself, after deducting firing and 
 other charges ; " and I have worked for that 
 amount of money," he added, " till I did not 
 know where to put myself." 
 
 In another case a husband and wife work 
 together. The man does the "heading," the 
 woman the " pointing " of the nails. Their 
 united labour brings in from i8s. to 21s. a week, 
 but of that about 2s. 3d. goes for " breeze " {i.e. 
 fuel), about 5s. for carriage, 2s. 6d. for rent of 
 
 i '• White Slaves."
 
 lOO The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 house and shop, 6d. to gd. for deductions on 
 account of under-weight, and the man has to 
 devote from half a day to a day to repairing 
 his tools. Nor does i8s. or 20s. represent their 
 average weekly earnings over a year, as some 
 weeks they do not get any work at all. Their 
 general hours of work were from seven in the 
 morning till nine at night, with half an hour 
 for breakfast, an hour for dinner, and half an 
 hour for tea for the man. The woman had no 
 regular time for meals, "on account of there 
 being no one in the house to do the work 
 besides myself." 
 
 According to Mr Rylett, already quoted, it is 
 not unusual for these people to work thirteen or 
 fourteen hours a day. " It is common," he said, 
 " to find these people working up to eight and 
 nine o'clock at night." One witness "could 
 mention scores of instances of working sixty and 
 sixty-five hours a week." 
 
 According to Mr Sherard, a nailmaker has to 
 fashion 220 tacks for id., or 24,000 for 9s. id. 
 A nailer, his wife and five children, could only 
 earn 15s. amongst them, and 4s. of that amount 
 had to go for rent and fire. A man making 
 clout nails could earn 7s. (for 30 lb.) ; his wife, 
 working nine hours a day making tacks, at 6d, 
 the 1000, could earn about is, a day. " My 
 old man," said the woman, "has told you the
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. loi 
 
 outside farthing that he earns. His average is 
 6s. 3d. a week, and when Saturday comes it is 
 hard to lay out. I have to turn it oyer very 
 often. And my man is' the 'liardest' v/oiTsing 
 man in Bromsgrove, and has never been on the 
 beer in his Hfe." ^ 
 
 Out of their joint income 2s. 6d. went for rent, 
 IS. for repair of tools, and is. id. for fuel. " Tea, 
 bread, and margarine were their staple food," 
 sixpence worth of meat being thrown in by 
 way of Sunday treat. New clothes were a 
 thing not to be thought of. "I has been 
 married twenty-three years," said the woman, 
 "and I has never had a new dress since I 
 was married." 
 
 According to some witnesses examined before 
 the Sweating Committee, work is at times carried 
 on in these trades in conditions that lead to 
 indecency and immorality. As regards the 
 charge of indecency in regard to dress, one of 
 the inspectors demurred, saying, " You may 
 certainly see far more indecency in the stalls of 
 a London theatre than you may see in a chain 
 and nail shop in the way of clothing." Nor is 
 the charge of immorality borne out by the 
 statistics of illegitimacy. It is a common thing, 
 however, " for girls and boys to marry at fifteen 
 and sixteen, and bring on themselves the charge 
 1 " White Slaves."
 
 102 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 of a family when in a state not far removed from 
 starvation." ^ ■ , . 
 
 Need it surprise anyone, after reading these 
 things, to h^ar that, "the race had deteriorated 
 in the last ten years," ^ When all is said and 
 done, the most valuable asset of a nation is a 
 physically strong and morally efficient people ; 
 and yet we calmly, and with apparent in- 
 difference, stand by and see that asset being 
 gradually destroyed by the canker of gold-lust 
 and greed, because at the root of the matter 
 that is the real cause of all slavish labour and 
 starvation. 
 
 Can one wonder that amid such grinding 
 poverty and deprivation as are to be seen on 
 every hand, such excessive and unnatural toil, 
 the " chronic condition of tens of thousands of 
 the poor" is one "of a ceaseless and almost un- 
 varying depression " ; and that the result of this 
 " heritage of o-enerations of overwork and under- 
 pay " is a gradual debasing of the limit of human 
 life until, though the image and superscription 
 remain legible, its noblest and most enduring 
 qualities have disappeared ? These conditions 
 are such that they tend to perpetuate themselves. 
 There is no recuperative power left ; the vampire 
 " Have " has sucked so fiercely at the veins of 
 
 1 Report of the Sweating Committee. 
 Report of the Lords' Sweating Committee.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 103 
 
 the "Have-nots" that all vital resiliency has 
 gone. 
 
 There is a poverty that is honourable, that 
 begets strength and greatness ; but it is a very 
 different thing from the poverty that is ever on 
 the under-side of want, that never knows what 
 sufficiency is, that is worse, indeed, than death. 
 For death is "but a sleep and a forgetting;" 
 whereas this "poverty of work, of wages, of 
 comfort, of resource, of opportunity, of character, 
 of life," ^ means annihilation — a gradual dying 
 away of all force, of all energy, of all thought, of 
 all hope, of very soul. 
 
 It is a condition that is ever preying upon 
 itself, and being preyed upon. Like a soil that 
 has been worked for generations, without any- 
 thing being given back to it for what it yields, 
 these " cities of the poorest of the poor " have 
 become thoroughly exhausted, almost beyond all 
 hope of self- recovery. It is in this condition — in 
 the inefficiency of the workers, early marriages, 
 and the tendency of the residuum of the popula- 
 tion in large towns to form a helpless community, 
 together with a low standard of life, that the 
 Report of the Sweating Committee finds the chief 
 " factors in producing sweating." True : but 
 what about the other factors ? 
 
 1 The Rev. G. S. Reaney in "The Destitute Alien."
 
 pTTApT^Tirp \7TTT ""^ ^^^^ make a man tnore 
 
 LHAriilK Vlil precious than fate gold." 
 
 I HAVE said that a workman must die before his 
 time in order that the rich may Hve in idleness 
 and luxury. That may appear a hard saying, 
 but it is literally true. The average of the life of 
 a worker, apart from agriculture, is about thirty- 
 three years, more than twenty years less than 
 the general average for Great Britain. At the 
 bottom of the scale stands the toiler, at the top 
 the clergyman; on the one hand, the man who 
 works the hardest and lives the poorest, whose 
 life is too often one of want and care from the 
 cradle to the grave ; on the other, the gentleman, 
 who takes upon himself the mantle of the Man of 
 Sorrows, and undertakes to carry his message to 
 the sorrowful. His life is easy, he is well fed, 
 well-housed, well clad ; he sees as little of the dark 
 and seamy side of things as possible ; he swims 
 down the stream of life with the least trouble and 
 care of any, save perhaps the self-indulgent rich, and 
 dies — he dies with the largest average accumula- 
 tion of years upon his head of any class or calling. 
 
 He is the slowest to take his departure to that 
 104
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 105 
 
 heaven of bliss, which it has been his Hfe's duty 
 to recommend to others. 
 
 The only class of toilers who compare favour- 
 ably with the clergy are the agricultural labourers. 
 Thanks to their life in the open air and the 
 exercise that tends to keep the bodily functions 
 in order, labourers in agricultural districts enjoy 
 the highest average of life of any workers. Dr 
 Tatham (in the Supplement to the Fifty-fifth 
 Annual Report of the Registrar - General of 
 Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England, Part 
 II,) shows that, whereas agricultural labourers 
 die at a rate which he takes as 100, the pro- 
 portion for the London general labourer is 212, 
 and for the labourer in industrial districts, 227. 
 The proportion of dock labourers' deaths is 
 nearly three times that of agriculturalists. The 
 file-maker, the potter, and the lead-worker vie 
 with the dock labourer in the speed with which 
 they make acquaintance with death. In the 
 "dusty" trades, for every 100 deaths of agricul- 
 turalists from phthisis and respiratory complaints, 
 there die from the same causes 244 cotton 
 operatives, 261 quarrymen, 292 iron and steel 
 workers, 335 glass workers, 2)7 Z file-makers, 407 
 cutlers, 453 potters. 
 
 These mortality figures of 1891 are in a large 
 number of cases worse than those given by Dr 
 Ogle ten years before. The death-rate of potters
 
 io6 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 is shown to be practically the same as in 1871 ; 
 deaths from lead-poisoning had increased to twice 
 the rate of 1881. 
 
 The other principal trades which show a 
 heavier mortality than twenty years ago are the 
 dyers and printers, and the glass-makers. The 
 following extract from the comparative mortality 
 fio^ures will show the ravages caused in these 
 
 o o 
 
 industries by phthisis and respiratory diseases 
 alone. The figures for the clergy are given as a 
 standard of comparison : — 
 
 Clergy . 
 
 Dyers and printers 
 
 Glass-makers . 
 
 File-makers 
 
 Potters . 
 
 Clergy (from all causes) 
 
 136 
 624 
 740 
 
 825 
 1 00 1 
 
 533 
 
 It is, unfortunately, but too true that not only 
 are the normal conditions of the workers' toil 
 such as, in a large proportion of cases, to promote 
 disease and shorten life, but amongst employers 
 there is too often a callous indifference to such 
 general precautions as would put an end to a 
 large proportion of preventable accidents and 
 disease. And not only this, but up to the 
 present the classes who live upon the labour 
 of the workers have stood stolidly in the way 
 of such proposed parliamentary enactments as
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 107 
 
 would tend to the protection of life and health. 
 Such measures, if carried out, would result — so 
 they think — in a reduction of their profits ; and 
 so they are content to take an extra percentage 
 made possible by negligence and indifference to 
 the lives of those they employ, and to the 
 happiness and well-being of others dependent 
 upon them for their bread. This has been 
 abundantly shown by what has gone before. 
 
 But this is not all, nor even the worst. There 
 are actually men who, for their profit, plan 
 murder. Mr Plimsol was the first to awaken 
 England to the enormity of the system which 
 sent ships to sea designed and registered for 
 destruction. Companies were formed whose sole 
 object was thus to consign boats and cargoes 
 to the depths of ocean, so that they might 
 benefit financially by the over-insurance. It was 
 nothing to these men — human devils as they 
 were — that a dozen or two men might go to the 
 bottom with them. That was a part of the game ; 
 for dead men could tell no tales. What was it 
 to them if whole families were thus cast into the 
 most heartrending distress and misery '^ What if 
 wives were left destitute and children without 
 bread, so long as they secured their ungodly 
 gains ? 
 
 There are, doubtless, good people who will say 
 that such things could not be ; men might insure
 
 io8 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 their ships and cargoes against loss, but that 
 they could not be so diabolically wicked as 
 calmly and deliberately to plan disaster and 
 death for gain. Possibly some of those who 
 held shares in such companies were innocent 
 of any guilty knowledge, but that cannot be said 
 of all. Two men were known to the writer, 
 both of whom were shareholders in companies 
 of the kind. Both of them, too, acknowledged 
 that money had flowed into their coffers from 
 this criminal source. One became a rich man 
 by such means, and for years sat in Parliament 
 for a Radical constituency. Where he is now 
 one does not care to inquire. The other 
 murderer has gone whither he will more clearly 
 see by how base a bargain he sought to enhance 
 his enjoyment of this shuttle's-length of a life. 
 It is not unlikely that before he left he began 
 to have painful intimations of that fact from the 
 profound- abysses of consciousness below and 
 beyond life on every side. 
 
 Owing to the fierce light that was a few years 
 ago turned upon these practices, not nearly so 
 much of this sort of thing takes place to-day 
 as formerly, though there is still far too much. 
 But so rampant and inconsistent is the com- 
 mercialism of the age, and so eager the race for 
 wealth, that the unfeeling brutality of the human 
 animal, unchecked by altruistic sentiments, if
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 109 
 
 foiled of its purpose in one direction, soon finds 
 an outlet in another. Hence such conditions of 
 labour as are shown in the following picture, 
 which for its unrelieved grimness and gloom 
 would have suited well for a canto in Dante's 
 " Inferno." Dante's poem, however, was an 
 imagination ; this is a bit of nineteenth-century 
 realism. It is culled from the newspaper — that 
 brimming record of our seamy and parti-coloured 
 civilisation — and is no overdrawn description of 
 the conditions in which stokers and firemen live 
 on board ocean-steamships — conditions which 
 drive an abnormal number of the poor fellows 
 to suicide. 
 
 The writer begins by saying that his interest 
 in the subject dates from a previous voyage, 
 when the chief engineer took him down to see 
 the working of the vessel. " We stood," he 
 proceeds, " as near as we could to the door 
 of the furnace-room, beaten back by the intoler- 
 able heat if we ventured from under the air 
 funnel. Here, in front of the row of huge fur- 
 naces, stood the firemen, stripped almost naked, 
 perspiration streaming down their blackened 
 bodies, never ceasing in their work of opening 
 and re-opening the furnace doors to shovel in 
 fresh supplies of coal and keep the fire raked 
 up to a white heat. Under those conditions the 
 men worked four hours on and four off at
 
 I lo The Marlyrdom of Labour. 
 
 stoking, but, in addition to that, they had to 
 remove their own ashes, which took another 
 hour. This chief engineer himself thought their 
 hours too long, and the food provided for them 
 very poor, and he did not think it any wonder 
 that once ashore their instinct was to lie still 
 and drink whisky. As a man of heart he pitied 
 them, and said so, but what could he do ? 
 
 " Aboard the far larger liner I have just left, 
 I had considerable talk with a fireman, who w^as 
 in a state of weakness and exhaustion brought 
 about by the heat and strain. Of the eighty men 
 who stoked this vessel, he believed every one 
 drank save himself, not only ashore but afloat, 
 for, though against the rules, each smuggled 
 whisky bottles in his satchel. The stench of the 
 whisky, combined with the intense heat, turned 
 him sick every time he descended the ladder. 
 They worked four hours on, then eight off ; then 
 four on and four off, and oatmeal water was 
 provided for drink during their work. The food 
 prepared for them he could not eat ; he said it 
 was not fit for men, and he had lost 20 lb. 
 in a month. . . . Then pointing to the coarse 
 rope-netting drawn tightly down in front of the 
 narrow steerage deck, he said, ' Do you know 
 what that's for? That's to keep firemen from 
 jumping overboard ; we get light-headed with 
 heat and weakness."
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 1 1 1 
 
 That this is no fancy picture anyone who has 
 been much on board ocean-steamships and has 
 conversed with engineers can avouch, even if the 
 investigations of the Board of Trade were not 
 sufficient to place the facts beyond question. 
 According to the inquiries of that department, 
 the mortahty that obtains amongst the slaves 
 of the stoke-hold is something enormous, being 
 not less than 65 per cent. 
 
 No doubt many of the men who hire them- 
 selves out as firemen and stokers are of a low 
 type, and undoubtedly a large number of them 
 drink. It would be surprising if they did not. 
 Is not the whole of our literature, as well as 
 our social customs, saturated with the praise of 
 drink, and is it not given conditions of sale and 
 dissemination eclipsing anything else, whether 
 we regard food for the body or food for the 
 mind '^. And nothing that is taken into the body, 
 or that is put upon the body, is subject to so much 
 insidious and deleterious adulteration as this 
 liquid damnation. If it were the peculiar and 
 invincible vehicle of salvation itself it could not 
 be given such scope and license. And when 
 such is the case, what are these men that they 
 should be able to judge it for what it is, and pass 
 it by as a fraudulent thing .'^ 
 
 True, they are free agents, and to a large 
 extent responsible for their actions. But society
 
 1 1 2 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 is also responsible. That is the fact that it is still 
 necessary to bring home to the consciences of 
 English men and English women, that in all 
 these conditions of degrading, unwholesome, and 
 demoralising labour, in all the preventable death, 
 sickness, and hurt that takes place in our works 
 and in our mills and factories (to say nothing of 
 what is caused by the insanitary condition of 
 manufacturing towns), they have a responsible 
 part and share. 
 
 But few are they, unfortunately, who take the 
 trouble so much as to know the nature and extent 
 of labour's martyrology — even amongst those 
 who are chiefly contributing thereto. If they 
 were compelled — as one sometimes thinks they 
 should be — to live amid the conditions which 
 their wealth-production has created, they would be 
 soon greatly ameliorated, if not entirely removed. 
 
 Nevertheless, let us look at the facts. During 
 the last fifty years industry and labour have sent 
 more persons to their graves, to hospitals, to beds 
 of suffering, than any war that has taken place 
 during the same period. 
 
 According to a return issued on the motion of 
 Sir William Plowden in 1890, there were 2070 
 deaths and 22,467 injuries in connection with 
 labour. If we add 2000 for shipping, we have a 
 total of 26,537 deaths and injuries. From evi- 
 dence given before the Labour Commission, we
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 1 1 3 
 
 learn that, in spite of what factory inspectors say, 
 the death-rate in many trades has risen ; and from 
 the Hearts of Oak Society we know that in one 
 year they had 10,094 cases of accident, involving 
 72 deaths. If that average is maintained through 
 the whole 8,000,000 of workers, it means that in 
 one year there were 500,000 which ought to have 
 been reported. The London Hospital deals in 
 one year with some 36,000 accidents, and at the 
 Poplar Hospital, situated so near as it is to the 
 slaughter-houses, accidents are admitted at the 
 rate of three per hour per day. In the docks the 
 amount of suffering and death through accident 
 is immense, and if the new Act were properly 
 enforced, 60 per cent, of the accidents now received 
 at the London Hospital might be prevented in 
 twelve months. In the mill-sawyers' trade, 397 
 men out of 2900, or 10 per cent., were away from 
 work for twenty-six weeks in one year through 
 accidents. In the brickmakers' 8 per cent., and 
 in the steel-workers' 7 per cent., were away for 
 the same period from similar causes. 
 
 In a lecture he delivered in the Music Hall, 
 Battersea, in the month of November, 1893, Mr 
 John Burns, M.P., stated, that in thirty years 
 31,466 miners had been killed outright, which 
 gave an average of 1000 per annum ; whilst over 
 1 20,000 were injured every year. Was it to be 
 wondered at, he asked, that they demanded
 
 114 '^^^ Mar'tyrdom of Labour. 
 
 legislative interference ? In South Wales 280 
 out of every 1000 miners met with accidents 
 every year, and in Cleveland i out of 8 was 
 away from work three and a half weeks in the 
 year through accident. As an argument in 
 favour of legislation, Mr Burns said it had been 
 shown in the case of sailors, that whereas in 1882 
 I out of 59 was lost through accident or from 
 other causes, the proportion had decreased in 1889 
 to I in 126. 
 
 Take another laborious class of men, those 
 engaged on the railways. In the eighteen years 
 from 1874 to 1893, 12,000 were killed, and 
 160,000 injured on the railway lines of the 
 country. In seven years 1220 out of the 14,000 
 shunters and brakesmen employed on the rail- 
 ways of the United Kingdom were killed, and 
 11,690 injured, which means that something like 
 80 per cent, of the workers thus employed may 
 calculate upon being either killed or maimed in 
 seven years. In 1892 i in 164 shunters was 
 killed, and i in 16 injured. 
 
 In the year 1894 the number of deaths attri- 
 butable to " accident " was reported as 4699, while 
 in 1895 the total was 4493. But, on the other 
 hand, 26,846 were reported as injured, against 
 23,863 in 1894. Of the 1895 ^ist, 10,011 were 
 injured in factories and workshops, 5470 in and 
 about mines, and 7480 among railway servants.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 1 1 5 
 
 These are but a few facts and figures selected 
 from a number relating to trades and occupa- 
 tions that are not dangerous to life in the same 
 sense as the alkali and white-lead industries, and 
 in which the great loss of life and frequent maim- 
 ing are largely preventable. Yet it will be re- 
 membered that when it was proposed to make 
 employers liable for injuries done to their em- 
 ployes, how those who live by the men, who get 
 rich on their labour, united together to prevent 
 a just and righteous act from being passed. 
 
 It is a strange satire on our religious preten- 
 sions. And the satire becomes the sharper the 
 deeper one investigates the facts, and sees that 
 the men who should be the closest friends of the 
 workers are the very ones who can be the least 
 depended upon. In any struggle engaged in by 
 the workers for the bettering of their condition, 
 the clergy, for the most part, stand aside, even if 
 they do not openly join the militant ranks against 
 them. They hold apparently that they were 
 sent to comfort the rich and rebuke the poor — 
 to preach contentment to the miserly-paid worker, 
 though contentment with such a lot as theirs 
 would be almost worse than crime. 
 
 As a class these men have ever been opposed 
 to the workers in their struggles to ameliorate 
 their condition. If there have been a few with 
 them — and, thank Heaven, there has always
 
 ii6 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 been a noble sprinkling ! — they have been of 
 the poorer clergy, men whose needs have allied 
 them with the down-trodden in other walks of 
 life. The higher in the scale, the surer is their 
 divinity to be on the side of the gilded legions. 
 Who that have watched the fight of labour 
 against capital, of capital against labour, but 
 have been compelled to blush for these sons 
 of the church, and especially for the highest 
 among them. Is there a man or woman who, 
 with a spark of sympathy for the toiler, has 
 taken record of the doings of the House of 
 Lords but has felt the thrill of indignation at 
 the action of these " my lords " of the church. 
 Always, almost to a man, against conditions that 
 would make for wholesomeness of life and purity 
 of morals amongst the poor. Always on the 
 side of him who carries the bag with the thirty 
 pieces of silver, the price of betrayal. But why 
 use the flail on the trodden straw ? Has not the 
 treachery of the " lords spiritual" became a bye- 
 word ? " Blind mouths," 
 
 As the greater fish, so the smaller fry. Who 
 does not remember the Jerusalem Chamber con- 
 ference — what time the miners of Lancashire, 
 Derbyshire, and adjacent counties were fighting 
 for a "living wage"? It was called in the heat 
 of the contest, when men and women were starv- 
 ing — chose to starve rather than yield the point
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 117 
 
 they were fighting for — the right of the workers 
 to a waee that would enable them to live with 
 average wholesomeness and decency. It was 
 thought that an emphatic pronouncement of 
 clergymen and ministers of the gospel would 
 help to settle the contest and stamp the prin- 
 ciple of the living wage for all time upon the 
 economics of British labour. 
 
 But aeain, and for the thousandth time, the 
 gospel as it is in the Church proved an utter 
 failure. No wonder a newspaper, noted for its 
 able and just advocacy of the workers' rights, 
 should exclaim, " The Church has again had its 
 chance, and it has missed it." 
 
 The proposals placed before the conference 
 were eminently moderate and reasonable. They 
 did not call upon their supporters to decide what 
 is a living wage, in this or that trade, under these 
 or those conditions. They emphasised the prin- 
 ciple of a decent living wage as a first consideration 
 in the arrangements between Capital and Labour, 
 leaving the decision upon each case to competent 
 boards of mutually-chosen representatives. 
 
 If such a proposal is not an elementary prin- 
 ciple of Christian ethics, then one must be 
 excused if he fails to understand what these 
 leaders of religious opinion take to be the teach- 
 ing of him to whom they look as their inspirer 
 and guide.
 
 1 1 8 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 Happily for our future prospects, not all present 
 were equally to blame for the miserable fiasco 
 that befel. There were some noble exceptions, 
 both among churchmen and nonconformists ; 
 but they formed the minority. One man, who 
 shall be nameless, had in another place a short 
 time before, declared : — 
 
 " Even with the laissez faire economists, as 
 Mr John Rae had pointed out, the necessary 
 subsistence wage was not a bare living. It was 
 the standard of living which the labourer had 
 himself consented to abide by. The real pro- 
 gress of civilisation was determined by that. 
 The workman must draw a line somewhere, and 
 he must draw it at the living wage, and by that 
 he meant the wage at which a workman, his wife, 
 and children might live in health, decency, and 
 comfort. Could they do that on 13s. pd. a 
 week ? St Paul declared that the first charge 
 on the production of industry must be for the 
 benefit of the actual worker — the miner that 
 laboureth in the bowels of the earth must be the 
 first to partake of the fruits." 
 
 These are noble sentiments, eloquently put ; 
 but what can we say when the man who uttered 
 them, called upon to give his support to a resolu- 
 tion in favour of the principles he here advocates, 
 executes a complete volte face, throwing over his 
 formerly expressed views in a " trimming, diplo-
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 119 
 
 matic, and conscienceless speech." In one place 
 a living wage could be defined ; in the Jerusalem 
 Chamber, " it was absolutely impossible for any- 
 one in that room to define a living wage, or the 
 standard of decent living." 
 
 In all these discussions it comes out more and 
 more clearly how hopeless it is to expect anything 
 from the religion of the day — an amorphous and 
 undigested mass of dogmas and precepts that will 
 not coalesce and amalgamate themselves with the 
 life and work of to-day. Saith the Bishop of 
 Ripon : " We are here to express our adherence 
 to great Christian principles, but not to declare 
 how they are to be applied — that is the work of 
 the expert." One had always supposed that these 
 men were experts — experts in regard to the appli- 
 cation of divine laws to which all others must be 
 subservient, from which there can be no appeal. 
 If there are " economic laws " that are at variance 
 with these, then these cannot be divine : they 
 must therefore be something else. 
 
 Count Leo Tolstoi, almost the only one of his 
 class in this age who has recognised the truth and 
 dared to speak it, has more than once called at- 
 tention to these things in his vigorous criticisms of 
 our current religion and civilisation, and no apology 
 is necessary in quoting his words on this subject. 
 
 "The sun has risen," writes the prophet, "and 
 we can no longer hide what its light makes patent
 
 1 20 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 and visible. We can no longer throw our re- 
 sponsibilities on the Government ; excuse our- 
 selves by the plea that the people must be kept 
 under ; appeal to the authority of science ; invoke 
 the sacred rights of property ; allege the necessity 
 of maintaining tradition and law. The sun has 
 risen, the flimsy veil has been torn asunder, and 
 no longer serves to hide the truth. All know, 
 and all see plainly enough, that what we are 
 anxious to preserve and protect is, not the 
 government of the people, but our salaries ; 
 not the enlightenment of the ignorant, but our 
 precious honoraria and pensions ; not the sacred 
 rights of law and justice, but the income our 
 estates bring in. The reign of concealment 
 and falsehood has come to an end. 
 
 "There are but two ways of escape open to the 
 wealthy, non-working, governing classes. One is 
 to announce frankly their apostasy — not merely 
 from Christianity in its true and higher mean- 
 ing, but from anything like it, from the law of 
 humanity and justice, and boldly to declare : 
 ' We are in possession of certain advantages 
 and privileges, and we mean at any risk to keep 
 them. They who wish to take them away from 
 us will have to measure their strength with us. 
 And we have got power on our side, for we can 
 call to our aid the soldiery, the galleys, the prison, 
 the knout, and the hangman.'
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 1 2 1 
 
 " The only other way of escape is to acknow- 
 ledge the injustice of the present order of things, 
 to cease to He, to repent not merely in words, to 
 come to the help of the needy. But not, as dur- 
 ing these past two years, with pecuniary contribu- 
 tions made up of money originally extorted from 
 the people themselves. Let them rather break 
 down the wall of separation now dividing the 
 wealthy and working classes ; prove, not in 
 words, but in deeds, that they acknowledge a 
 common brotherhood, and because of that are 
 ready to change their lives, renounce the ad- 
 vantages and privileges they enjoy, and, having 
 renounced them, stand on an equal level with the 
 people, and, working with them and for them, 
 strive to attain those blessings of good govern- 
 ment, science, and civilisation which are now 
 something apart from the people, but which we 
 always pretend to wish to extend to them." 
 
 The great lack of the age is the imagination to 
 realise how utterly and shamefully base is our 
 ideal of life — how unutterably false we are to the 
 great Gospel we — or the greater number of us — 
 profess. The result of nearly nineteen hundred 
 years of Christianity has been to set up and for- 
 mulate the grossest betrayal that the world has 
 seen. It is as though, with pretended acceptance 
 of the golden rule of conduct, we deliberately wrote 
 it the "rule of gold." Judas was a poor, sordid
 
 122 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 soul who could not rise to the realisation of a 
 great cause ; but what shall we say of the men 
 who, imagining themselves to be the bearers of 
 his consecration to a divine work, and with no 
 excuse of sudden temptation, like Judas, yet daily 
 sell their Master and his gospel for money. 
 
 Max Muller describes the amazement of an 
 Indian convert to Christianity, who, after ab- 
 sorbing the essence of Christian doctrine, came 
 to Europe and saw the actual life of Christians. 
 He could not recover from his astonishment at 
 the complete contrast between the reality and 
 what he had expected to find amongst Christian 
 nations. Everyone who looks at the teachings 
 of the Prophet of Nazareth in their plain, un- 
 varnished sincerity must find himself in the 
 same state of utter amazement. As a fulfilment 
 or realisation of his gospel, " lie " is written on 
 the whole face and front of our civilisation. 
 
 We need only look at the life around us — alike 
 in our large towns and our villages — from the 
 point of view of that Indian, who understood the 
 teachings of Jesus in their plain simplicity — we 
 need only look at the crass selfishness, the 
 savage brutalities whereof our life is full, to be 
 appalled at the contradictions in the midst of 
 which we live without scruple, and, with the 
 exception of here and there one, without protest.
 
 pTTApnrpr'P TV " Of such is the Kingdom of 
 
 Heaven}'' 
 
 Bad as is the martyrdom that labour suffers 
 to-day, especially in some of its phases, the 
 lowest depth to which the capitalist is capable 
 of sinking in his eagerness to make wealth is 
 happily a thing of the past. At least, we may 
 fervently hope that such is the case, albeit not 
 without some misgiving, seeing the enormous 
 vitality that still pervades the frame of the 
 aboriginal devil of selfishness. Nevertheless, as 
 the story is still within the memory of the living, 
 it may be worth while to go back for a little 
 to read a lesson of what Christian men were 
 debased enough to do for the sake of money 
 in this nineteenth century of Grace. 
 
 We are beginning to show a little more 
 humanity to children than formerly, although it 
 will be acknowledged that there is still a very 
 large leeway to be made up in this respect when 
 it is seen to how large an extent the young are 
 even to-day sacrificed to the demon of commer- 
 cialism. According to the Supplement to the 
 Fifty-fifth Annual Report of the Registrar- 
 General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages,
 
 1 24 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 already referred to, the mortality among the 
 young employed in the textile industry is alarm- 
 ingly high. Taking the standard for all oc- 
 cupied males between the ages of fifteen and 
 twenty as 100, Dr Tatham finds that there is an 
 excess of exactly a third in the case of the 
 textile workers, whilst in the Lancashire cotton 
 trade we get an excess of 46 per cent., and 
 in the case of dyers and printers the death- 
 rate is no less than 86 per cent, above the 
 average. Speaking of this abnormal waste of 
 young life in these textile factories, a daily 
 paper remarked : " How many of these lads 
 begun work at eleven there is no means of 
 saying ; but it is sad to think that at a time when 
 many boys are beginning their school-life, these 
 Lancashire children should be already marked 
 out for premature death at their trade." Sad 
 indeed ! But we are improving in regard to 
 the employment of the young. So late as the 
 seventh decade of the century our statute book 
 betrayed many shameful lacunae in respect to 
 the treatment of children by a people who every 
 Sunday ostentatiously read from the sayings of 
 him who commanded: "Suffer little children to 
 come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such 
 is the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 Within fifty years of this year of grace we 
 were employing children of five, six, and seven
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 125 
 
 years of age in factories. They were turned 
 out of their beds on cold winter mornings at four 
 and five o'clock to go to work, and they did not 
 finish work until six in the evening, often later. 
 It is on record that they were not infrequently 
 found dead on the steps of the factories, where 
 they sat shivering until the doors were opened. 
 They were frozen to death. Many, too, were the 
 deaths amongst these little ones, caused by fall- 
 ing into the machinery, in consequence of being 
 overcome by weariness or sleep. 
 
 This is no imaginative picture, no exaggera- 
 tion, but the plain unvarnised truth. The ghastly 
 unchristian facts are to be read in the bald dry 
 prose of the blue-books of the day, the records 
 of royal commission inquiries. 
 
 It will be said, perhaps, that the parents of the 
 little ones were to blame. So they were : but 
 what can you expect if you make dull, cloddish 
 helots of your workers, starve and degrade them 
 till there is hardly a spark of manliness or 
 womanliness left in them, till there is hardly 
 enough humanity to house a soul. But it was 
 different with the capitalist employer. He was 
 educated ; he knew that he was treating those 
 slave children differently to what he would have 
 had his own treated ; he knew that he was saving 
 the wages of older persons by employing these 
 little ones; in short, he must sometimes have had
 
 126 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 the consciousness that he was committing the 
 abysmal meanness of making wealth out of the 
 toil of babes. 
 
 I say he must sometimes have had such 
 consciousness, if only when he heard talk of that 
 rule of his religion, " Do to others," etc. And 
 yet, strange to say, the conscience of the nation 
 was but little moved until a noble woman, feeling 
 the whole sin and shame of it in the mother's 
 soul of her, raised her voice and stirred the 
 universal heart with her " Cry of the Children." 
 
 " Do ye hear the children weeping and disproving, 
 O my brothers, what ye preach ? " 
 
 Nor were these the worst of the infamies 
 perpetrated in the name of political economy, for, 
 be it remembered that when Parliament was 
 called upon to interfere for the protection of the 
 young, the most strenuous opposition was made 
 in the interests of the selfish science whose glory 
 it has been to decree the economical subjugation 
 of labour. While children of five and six were 
 being thus done to death by factory labour, others 
 of seven, six, and even four years of age were 
 condemned to work in mines and collieries, while 
 females, " sometimes even pregnant women," were 
 employed in great numbers in labours utterly 
 unfitted for their sex. 
 
 In cases where the seam of coal was so narrow
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 127 
 
 that it was impossible to stand up, " both women 
 and children were obliged to crawl backwards and 
 forwards, like beasts of burden, on all fours, in 
 the passages of pits, dragging trucks loaded with 
 coals by a chain passing from the waist between 
 the legs; and all this often in winter, breathing air 
 strongly charged with carbonic-acid gas, amidst 
 damp, cold, and in an atmosphere of filth and 
 profligacy which could hardly have a thought or 
 feelino- of untainted vice." The regular hours 
 of labour for these unfortunate creatures were 
 fourteen or sixteen a day, and they were often 
 exceeded. The poor children were whipped and 
 beaten, overworked and oppressed in every way. 
 Women went up from the pit to be confined, and 
 were down again at their dreadful work in less 
 than a week.^ 
 
 This excessive and unnatural toil produced 
 in the bodies of those who were subjected to 
 it the effects which might be expected : stunted 
 growths, crooked spines, crippled gait, heart 
 diseases, ruptures, asthma, primitive old age, and 
 lastly, death. But if the health of those who 
 laboured in these dark and noisome excavations 
 was undermined, their morals were still more 
 speedily corrupted. The children who were 
 employed were often maimed and even killed 
 with impunity. The language used was shock- 
 
 1 Molesworth : " History of the Reform Bill."
 
 128 The Martyrdo77i of Labour. 
 
 ing, the drunkenness almost universal ; the 
 natural modesty of the female sex was altogether 
 cast away, and a frightful recklessness prevailed, 
 which often caused accidents by which these un- 
 fortunate beings were instantaneously destroyed. 
 
 As there was no regard for human life or 
 human honour in this degrading slavery, so 
 any natural rights of these poor creatures were 
 utterly ignored. The children of paupers were 
 often bound as apprentices to the owners of coal 
 mines, and compelled to work without any re- 
 muneration until the age of twenty-one, when 
 their labour was worth from 20s. to 25s. a week. 
 Such was the justice of the mine-owner. 
 
 Many of these evils were remedied by Acts 
 of Parliament, after fierce and protracted fighting 
 in the first half of the century. But even so 
 late as 1865-66 a commission of inquiry into the 
 employment of women and children disclosed 
 an amount of suffering amongst a million and 
 a half of young persons and children, occupied 
 in various manufactures and employments not 
 coming under the regulations of the Factory 
 Acts that was appalling. The details of the 
 evidence elicited on the subject were so pain- 
 ful that bills were brought into Parliament to 
 place all manufactures previously carried on 
 without Government inspection under regula- 
 tions analogous to industries already under those
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 129 
 
 acts. The sixth and final report of the com- 
 mission, however, related to women, children, 
 and young persons engaged in agriculture, and 
 its revelations respecting the system of em- 
 ploying agricultural gangs, or companies of 
 young persons and children of both sexes, in 
 Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, 
 Norfolk, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire, and to some 
 extent in Bedford and other counties were 
 appalling in the extreme.^ 
 
 Nor was the chapter of the economical martyr- 
 dom of children closed with the wiping away of 
 the latter scandals. The battle for the emanci- 
 pation of the children of the brickfields, waged 
 singlehanded for years by one man against the 
 men whose corpus of invested rights and un- 
 scrupulous money-getting was at stake, is a story 
 well within the memory of middle-aged people. 
 It was a splendid battle and a splendid victory, 
 winning for education and decent living thousands 
 of children who were being brutalised by cruel 
 and demoralising toil. 
 
 One could almost fancy, as one reads the 
 account George Smith ogives of the scenes that 
 stirred his heart on behalf of the children of the 
 brickfield, that it was a record of another century. 
 Child labour, for girls as well as for boys, he 
 tells us, began at from seven to eight years of 
 
 ^ See " Gladstone and his Contemporaries," page 278, div. 7.
 
 1 30 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 age. Sometimes children were set to work at 
 the age of six, and they worked fourteen and 
 even fifteen hours a day. One day he found a 
 poor httle stunted fellow doing a man's work. 
 He put him on the scales and found he weighed 
 just 52^ lb., and yet the poor lad was obliged 
 to carry 43 lb. of clay on his head fifteen miles a 
 day for an average of seventy-three hours weekly. 
 George Smith himself went through the martyr- 
 dom, and this is the account he gives of it : — 
 
 " At nine years of age my employment consisted 
 in continually carrying about 40 lb. of clay upon 
 my head from the clay heap to the table on 
 which the bricks were made. When there was 
 no clay I had to carry the same weight of bricks. 
 The labour had to be performed almost without 
 intermission for fifteen hours daily. Sometimes 
 my labours were increased by my having to 
 work all night at the kilns. 
 
 " The result of the prolonged and severe 
 labour to which I was subjected, combined with 
 the cruel treatment experienced by me at the 
 hands of the adult labourers, are shown in marks 
 that are borne by me to this day." On one 
 occasion, he says, after the usual day's work, 
 "I had to carry 1200 nine-inch bricks from the 
 maker to the floors on which they were placed 
 to harden. The total distance thus walked by 
 me that night was not less than fourteen miles,
 
 The Martyrdom of Laboitr. 131 
 
 seven miles of which I traversed with eleven 
 pounds weight of clay in my arms, besides 
 lifting the unmade clay and carrying it some 
 distance to the maker. The total quantity of 
 clay thus carried by me was five and a half 
 tons. For all this labour I received sixpence ! " 
 
 The fatigue thus occasioned brought on a 
 severe illness which prevented him from resum- 
 ing work for several weeks. 
 
 Take another picture. 
 
 " Children of very early years are sent to the 
 clay-yards and are brought up amidst scenes 
 and conversations which are most demoralising. 
 One can, in fact, scarcely recognise, either in 
 the person or the mind and manner of the 
 female clay-worker, a feature of the sex to 
 which she belongs. I have seen a boy of five 
 years old working among two or three and 
 twenty females, being broken in as they call 
 it, to the labour. In one case a boy of eleven 
 years of age was carrying fourteen pounds weight 
 of clay upon his head and as much more within 
 his arms, backward and forward, from the 
 temperer to the brickmaker, walking eight miles 
 a day upon the average of six days ; and another 
 a boy of sixteen carrying green bricks to the floor 
 in the mould, weighing fourteen pounds then, and 
 three pounds, the empty mould, back, and walking 
 eighteen miles a day upon the average.
 
 132 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 " I have also seen females of all ages, nineteen 
 or twenty together (some of them mothers of 
 families) undistinguishable from men, excepting 
 by the occasional peeping out of an earring ; 
 sparsely clad, up to the bare knees in clay- 
 splashes, and evidently without a vestige of 
 womanly delicacy, thus employed, until it makes 
 one feel for the honour of the country that there 
 should be such a condition of human labour 
 ui It. 
 
 But, as scenes such as these are now a thing of 
 the past — although I believe girl-labour is still 
 occasionally winked at in some of the Kentish 
 brick-fields — it may be asked, " Why hark back 
 to them at this time of day ? " Because, as we 
 have seen, child slavery is not yet a thing of the 
 past. If any one imagines that it is, and in a 
 form dishonourable to the country and a shame 
 on our Christianity, let him turn to Mr Sherard's 
 "White Slaves" (p. 230), and read what he has 
 to say about girl apprentices to chain-making at 
 a wage of 2s. 6d. a week. 
 
 " The vision is of such a girl at work in this 
 factory. She was fourteen by the Factory Act, 
 by paternity she was ten. I never saw such 
 little arms, and her hands were made to cradle 
 dolls. She was making links for harrow-chains, 
 and as she worked the heavy Oliver she sang a 
 song. And I also saw her owner approach with
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 133 
 
 a clenched fist, and heard him say, " I'll give you 
 some golden hair was hanging down her back ! 
 Why don't you get on with your work ? " 
 
 That, for one thing, is why I hark back to 
 these things ; and, furthermore, because the 
 labour of children in brickfields, which George 
 Smith exposed, went on in a Christian country, 
 under reputed Christian employers, and to make 
 money for, often to build up the fortunes of, 
 Christian people — and that no more than thirty 
 years ago. In other words, for the sake of 
 selfish gain, men, and women too, were content 
 to see not merely women degraded to a condition 
 almost lower than the beasts, but to be parties to 
 the subjection of children to something worse 
 than slavery. They were content to live — ■ 
 satisfied to augment their gains by the labour of 
 little children almost young enough to be still 
 cradled at their mother's breasts. And does not 
 the same unmanliness — the same unwomanliness 
 — exist still ? Do not the idle rich live on the 
 sweat of other men's brows — on the sweat and 
 toil of men to whom they have not the manliness, 
 the womanliness, to pay a just price for their 
 labour ; and not only that, but on the toil and 
 drudgery of poor women and little children too. 
 For, be it remembered, in our Christian England, 
 this child-labour still goes on to an enormous 
 extent. In Lancashire alone upwards of ico,ooo
 
 134 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 children are working as half-timers ; that is, 
 before they are out of their childhood they are 
 deprived of one half of their opportunities for 
 education, and sent to work to make wealth for 
 the capitalist and the idler. 
 
 And what does this labour mean ? In a paper 
 on " Factory Children," published in Hygiene in 
 May 1 89 1, Dr James S. Torrop, certifying 
 surgeon, Hey wood, Lancashire, after giving 
 some statistics showing the unwholesome effect 
 of factory work upon the constitution of chil- 
 dren, says : " Factory work is not so excessively 
 laborious ; it is the heat, impurity, and dust- 
 laden state of the atmosphere that injures health. 
 The promising child often degenerates into the 
 lean and sallow person of thirteen, and this 
 process is continued until a whole population 
 becomes stunted, and thus the conditions of life 
 in factory towns becomes a real source of danger 
 to England's future. In addition to the loss of 
 physique, it is instructive to note the deteriora- 
 tion in personal appearance. Out of the 2000 
 children under notice, only 16 could be described 
 as handsome, and of these the larger portion were 
 girls from Ireland." 
 
 Arlidge, in the " Diseases of Occupation," 
 referring to the employment of children in 
 factories, says they are more susceptible to 
 poisonous materials, to the depressing influences
 
 The Martyrdom of Laboitr. 1 3 5 
 
 of sedentary and monotonous labour, and of 
 confinement in workrooms. They also show- 
 greater proclivity to pulmonary mischief from 
 dust and external causes of disease generally. 
 The same writer bears witness to the backward- 
 ness of England, as compared with France and 
 Germany, in regard to the control exercised by 
 the State over the construction of factories, the 
 processes of manufacture, and their sanitary 
 circumstances ; and in all cases where evidence 
 is forthcoming that disease attends upon a 
 manufacturing process, the State in those coun- 
 tries is much quicker to call in the aid of ex- 
 perienced physicians to investigate the circum- 
 stances, and to indicate remedial measures. To 
 this proceeding science is greatly indebted for 
 the knowledge of the causes and results of 
 numerous industrial diseases, and for valuable 
 suggestions for obviating them. 
 
 Nor is it in this department alone that we are 
 behind our Continental neighbours, as, in some 
 respects, we have already seen, and as we shall 
 see still more, as we go on. But as regards the 
 sanitary conditions of labour and the thorough- 
 ness and universality of labour, we have fallen 
 far into the rear, and it behoves us to set to work 
 in earnest to make up the leeway. 
 
 For this backwardness there is the one class 
 that is chiefly to blame — the class that lives upon
 
 1 36 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 the unjust exploitation of others — a class which 
 knows that it so lives because of the ignorance of 
 the masses it deceives and robs, and for that 
 reason hates the name of popular education, 
 knowing with the prescience of guilt that when 
 their inferiors are fully educated their reign will 
 be at an end. This fact alone accounts for their 
 hostility to education — a hostility which is especi- 
 ally noticeable in the rural districts, where in 
 some respects the chances of the boy are smaller 
 as regards education than in the manufacturing 
 districts. For even before he has passed the 
 examination for his agricultural certificate, he is 
 frequently tempted away from school by a small 
 bribe to act as beater to the man with a gun. 
 The attendance officer has an eye on him, of 
 course, and the parents are often fined for these 
 absences ; but one rarely, if ever, hears of the 
 shooting gentry being fined for their part in these 
 infractions of the law, although nominally they 
 are liable to a heavy penalty for such offences. 
 
 One can hardly believe that men of high moral 
 character — real men — can read these records 
 without a tingling of shame — without some stir- 
 ring of the ethic of true manhood. O for a little 
 more of that altruist imagination that would en- 
 able us to place ourselves in the position occupied 
 by others, and so to judge of things from their 
 point of view! Imagine what a difference it
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 137 
 
 would make if men would try to do that, instead 
 of wilfully blinding themselves to the truth — in- 
 stead of so cogging the dice of their logic that it 
 always tells in favour of themselves. We should 
 soon have another race of men if, in place of the 
 worship of greed, of luxury, and of show, they 
 would follow the rule taught by the founder of 
 Christianity, but really almost as old as any 
 written record we possess, and show the same 
 measure of justice and good-will which they 
 would have others manifest towards them.
 
 pTLJAPT^TirP V " ^'^'^'^^ ^'^^'^ iJiose who lay house 
 
 UHAril^KA ^^ /^^^^^^ ajid field to field." 
 
 Let us turn to another aspect of this great cause 
 of Poor versus Rich, Labour versus Capital, 
 which is now being tried at the bar of humanity. 
 Who of us that has not had his heart moved by 
 the touching drama of human passion set forth 
 in the play of "The Merchant of Venice"? 
 Who of us that has not had his nerves thrill with 
 alternate indignation and pity as the trial of the 
 action between Shylock and Antonio goes for- 
 ward ? The Hebrew, with the unfeeling demand 
 for his pound of flesh, seems so heartless that we 
 regard him as the very incarnation of cruelty and 
 revenge, spurred on by the greed of gold. For 
 generations this drama has served to point the 
 moral of iniquitous usury, of unrighteous gain, 
 and we have done a great and long-suffering 
 people the injustice of making it appear that 
 they alone were guilty of such enormities. O 
 self-righteous ! Where is there a people more 
 addicted to the crime of poor Shylock than we 
 English ? Where is there a people that lives 
 more on its five per cents., that for its ten per 
 cents, and fifty per cents, will wink at blood-
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 139 
 
 guiltiness ? That when it gets the gleam of gold 
 in its eyes will forget its seventh-day ideal — yes, 
 even its manhood and its womanhood ? 
 
 Was there any more guilt in the poor despised 
 and ill-used old Hebrew's demand for his pound 
 of flesh than, say, in the callous and selfish 
 insistence upon their seven and a half per cent, 
 by the shareholders of the East London Water 
 Company during the so-called water famine ? 
 When disease and death were being caused by 
 the scarcity of water, like Shylock they would 
 hear of no abatement of their interest ; they 
 would have their bond. Nay, they went con- 
 siderably further than the Jew in baseness. He 
 did his part according to the contract. They did 
 not. Getting the money for the supply of water 
 beforehand, they wilfully failed to deliver accord- 
 ing to " the bond," electing to sell again to another 
 purchaser [i.e. the vestries for watering the streets) 
 what was already, by contract, due to others. Did 
 the poor Jew show more hardness of heart, more 
 inhumanity, than the Water Company ^ 
 
 And do we not see the same spirit rampant 
 on every side ? Are not the conditions of life 
 among the poor made almost intolerable by it? 
 Wherever the rich man can get his finger he 
 will squeeze flesh and bone for his percentage. 
 Things have come to such a pass that the 
 worker is little better than a bond-slave to the
 
 140 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 o^reed of the orold-sodden. He has been almost 
 expatriated from the land ; he has hardly a foot 
 of earth that he can call his own, and for the 
 miserable sty in which he is so often obliged 
 indecently to herd he must pay Shylock even 
 to a fourth of his small earnings. And not only 
 that, but he must pay in blood and bone, aye, 
 and in morals, to boot ! For that for which he 
 will oftentimes be compelled to pay to the extent 
 of a quarter of his income is not only in too 
 many cases unsanitary to the last degree, but 
 it does not even afford adequate accommodation 
 for decency of living. 
 
 We used to hear a great deal a few years ago 
 about the advance which was being made in 
 regard to the housing of the labouring classes 
 in large towns and cities, especially in London ; 
 and we were directed, in evidence thereof, to the 
 huge blocks of buildings on the flat system which 
 were everywhere springing up, financed so often 
 — as was pointed out — by kind-hearted and 
 philanthropic men. 
 
 But if anyone, in the light of a larger 
 humanity, would like to judge how far from 
 satisfactory is the way in which the housing 
 question is treated, let him study the little work 
 of Mr Robert Williams, of the Institute of 
 British Architects,^ a book written, as the author 
 
 ^ " London Rookeries and Colliers' Slums."
 
 ■ The Martyrdom of Labour. 141 
 
 tells us, "first, to protest against huge dwellings ; 
 secondly, to advocate the adoption of the scheme 
 proposed by the London County Council for the 
 prevention of slum dwellings ; and, thirdly, to 
 plead generally for more room and better houses 
 for working men." It is an excellent little essay, 
 and calls attention with a touch of real feeling, 
 and not a little of that imag:inative insio"ht so 
 often lacking in the treatment of practical ques- 
 tions of the kind, to the vital problem of how 
 the poor are housed. 
 
 Speaking of the great blocks of industrial 
 dwellings, which seem to get taller and more 
 hideous year by year, Mr. Williams remarks : 
 " Notwithstanding the good intentions of these 
 builders of huge dwellings, these houses are not 
 heavenly mansions ; they are human packing- 
 cases, befouled with carbonic acid constantly 
 given off by the lungs and skins of the people 
 crowded into them. If any doubt, let him, if he 
 possess a healthy sense of smell, go into some of 
 the newest of the fully inhabited dwellings, and 
 he shall find that the carbonic acid far exceeds 
 the amount — namely, 6*6 per 1000 — which 
 Willoughby considers the permissible impurity." 
 This is a very mild way of putting the matter. 
 There are amongst these London model dwel- 
 lings human warrens which are so dark in the 
 winter that gas has to be kept lighted in the
 
 142 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 rooms all day ; so badly drained that typhoid 
 and diphtheria are constant concomitants ; so 
 wretchedly provided with space that if all the 
 children in the great brick barracks were 
 assembled in the yard there would be found 
 to be but scant room for them. 
 
 They must be people easily satisfied if they 
 think many of these barracks any improvement 
 upon the old rookeries. Many persons, indeed, 
 would prefer the latter to some of the dark and 
 dismal abominations that are now to be found 
 in most districts of the metropolis. A gentle- 
 man who has given much attention to this 
 subject, as is manifest from his work on " The 
 Dwellings of the Poor," ^ tells us that there are 
 in and around London upwards of six hundred 
 block dwellings for the working classes on the 
 flat system. About half of these, he opines, are 
 fairly well constructed, but many of the other 
 half are worse than the tenement property they 
 replace, having " close enclosed courts, dark stair- 
 cases, and gloomy involved passages." Even 
 the best of them are deficient in ventilation, and 
 indeed in almost everything that is requisite for 
 the development of aught but the mere human 
 machine that is so necessary to the proper working 
 of the present politico-economical model of society. 
 
 i"The Dwellings of the Poor and Weekly Wage Earners in 
 and Around Towns." By T. L. Worthington.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 143 
 
 No one who has any feeHng for the best 
 interests of human beings can help being pro- 
 foundly dissatisfied with the existing conditions 
 of all great towns, wherein the working classes 
 are packed together in the narrowest possible 
 compass and compelled to spend from a quarter 
 to a fifth of their income in rent, for which in 
 return they get nothing that is deserving the 
 name of home. The model dwellings which 
 were to solve the problem of the housing of the 
 poor, turn out when constructed so as to provide 
 the " irreducible minimum " of civilisation, to be 
 too expensive for the labourer. His numbers 
 and his labour help vastly to make the ground 
 upon which he stands valuable, with the result to 
 himself that he is not allowed room enouQfh in 
 which to thrive in health and comfort. If he 
 choose the block dwellings, which offer indeed 
 wholesale though costly abiding-places, he must 
 live superimposed layer above layer, with in- 
 sufficient air, space, and light for the needs of 
 himself and family. 
 
 It is not all, however, who can aspire to the 
 accommodation, deficient though it be, of the 
 slummy "model" dwellings; for they are none 
 the less slums because you must go upstairs — 
 groping your way in the dark as often as not — 
 to find your den. Some must perforce put up 
 with a still lower level of shelter and housing
 
 144 1^^^^ Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 space than is afforded by the third-rate dwelHngs 
 on the flat system. What those lower levels 
 are, and how tenanted, is shown almost every 
 day in the metropolis by some ghastly side-light 
 or lurid show. Let us take an instance at random. 
 A fire had broken out in a house let room by 
 room, or rather corner by corner, and before 
 rescue was at hand a victim or two had been 
 claimed by the flame fiend. The police found 
 the place a "perfect rabbit warren," says the 
 daily paper. An inquest had of course to be 
 held, and when the facts were laid before the 
 coroner, he seemed to doubt his hearing. "There 
 had been ghettos," he exclaimed ; " but there was 
 no need of that sort of thing in England." 
 
 So he appeared to think, as do doubtless tens 
 of thousands of others ; but whatever the need — 
 "in England" — the fact exists nevertheless, as a 
 juror promptly showed him. " You will find that 
 sort of thing all round this neighbourhood " 
 (Spitalfields), he quietly observed. " What ! 
 fourteen people in one room ? " exclaimed the 
 coroner. The juror declined to pledge himself 
 to that particular number ; but he said that he 
 certainly knew of seven or eight in one room of a 
 house tenanted by thirty or forty persons. And 
 this is no exaggeration. Any one who cares to 
 take the trouble may see houses of three storeys 
 in which every room is occupied by a diflerent
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 145 
 
 family, the family in some cases numbering from 
 six to eight persons. 
 
 Nor is it in Spitalfields alone, nor in the East End 
 generally, but everywhere throughout the metro- 
 politan area, that this overcrowding and the con- 
 sequent man-rot takes place. We have recently 
 heard how even in Soho, and the very heart of 
 London wealth and luxury, the same thing exists — 
 an evil and a misery made in the first instance by 
 the unnatural affluenceof one class, and then preyed 
 upon by the vicious idleness and unchecked licence 
 of that class, from the highest to the most obscure. 
 
 Moreover, not the least astounding circum- 
 stance of the whole damnable concatenation is 
 that, if you take the trouble to inquire, you will 
 find some " Christian " landlord at the back who 
 profits by this overcrowding and consequent 
 demoralisation. One old hunks, of delectable 
 memory, took to this sort of thing as affording 
 a special field for speedy gains. He was ever 
 on the look-out for dilapidated property ; the 
 worse the neighbourhood the better for him ; 
 and however "slummy," he never hesitated to 
 buy. Then, if it was ruinous when he purchased, 
 it soon became worse under his hands. He 
 never repaired : that was not his game ; he knew 
 that if it were condemned by the authorities he 
 would get compensation. So he plied his trade, 
 let his rookeries room by room, collected the
 
 146 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 rents himself, and woe the man or woman who 
 was unable to pay the rent when due. " Out 
 they go," said he, describing;- his methods, " I 
 stand no nonsense, and their stuff must pay." 
 "Do you never have any pity on them?" 
 " Pity's no part of business ; pity won't pay my 
 bills," was the ferocious answer. It may be 
 added that this rook was a sincere — if a mis- 
 guided — Christian. He took the sacrament regu- 
 larly once a month, and boasted that he had missed 
 but twice or thrice in forty years. When once ex- 
 postulated with for the harshness and cruelty to his 
 tenants, and asked if it was the sort of conduct 
 to win him heaven, he replied that the Lord had 
 promised that whosoever partook of his flesh and 
 drank of his blood should inherit eternal life, 
 adding with some vehemence : " It's a contract — 
 it's a contract — and God dare not break it!" 
 
 This is no doubt an extreme type ; but we 
 have only to look round us to see how closely it is 
 paralleled in the conduct of professedly Christian 
 men and women in every town and village of the 
 country — men and women who would probably 
 look at you in blank amazement if you hinted that 
 their treatment of others, upon whom they live 
 like the mother of the horse-leech, was other 
 than what it should be — so little are they in the 
 habit of nicely judging what is due from them to 
 others of their kind.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 147 
 
 As an instance in point, let us take a few lines 
 from the Report of the Sweating Committee, 
 already drawn from more than once. Referring 
 to the dwellings of the chain and nail-makers of 
 Cradley Heath and Bromsgrove, it says: "The 
 houses in which these people live are generally of 
 the most squalid and deplorable kind." And this 
 judgment is fully justified by the evidence of men 
 like the Rev. H. Rylett. " I was in a home only 
 the other day," said this gentleman ; " the fire- 
 place was a wreck, and there had not been a bit 
 of whitewash or anything of that kind done in 
 that house for seven years ; and a woman who 
 stood near said, ' I have lived seventeen years in 
 my house, and the landlord has done nothing to 
 it' " Often enough there are no drains, and if 
 there be any, they are defective. Mr Ker, the 
 certifying surgeon of the district, testified that 
 heaps of manure were often to be found opposite 
 the workshops and dwellings ; and that typhoid 
 was " much more common than it ought to be." 
 
 One witness said he had known cases where 
 there were holes in the roof, where buckets had 
 to be kept in the bedrooms to catch the water 
 pouring through the roof. He found other 
 houses so extremely damp that there was actually 
 a fungoid growth on the wall — breast high. The 
 district was "all left to hazard." 
 
 Nor is it only in large cities and manufacturing
 
 148 The Martyrdoin of Labour. 
 
 towns that these disorraceful rookeries — in which 
 the worker must perforce be content to Hve and 
 die — are permitted to exist. 
 
 In the rural districts the evil is quite as bad, if, 
 indeed, not worse. It has been the subject of 
 consideration of many royal commissions, and 
 like most things, touched by such " royal " 
 bodies, it not only remains a blot upon our 
 intelligence and humanity, but a sore that mocks 
 our boasted civilisation. All these commissions 
 have given expression to the same sentiments 
 in regard to the scandalous way in which the 
 labourers, especially the agricultural labourers, 
 are housed in all parts of the country. In the 
 words of the report of one of these commissions, 
 " the agricultural labourer lives under conditions 
 that are physically and morally unwholesome and 
 offensive " ; while the Welsh Land Commission 
 describes the housing of the poor people in the 
 Principality as absolutely disgraceful. 
 
 Moreover, this condition of things exists not- 
 withstanding the Houses of the Poor Act, which 
 was placed in the Statute book to remedy the 
 evil. A careful inquiry recently made by a 
 Committee of the Land Law Reform Association, 
 showed that the Act is a dead letter in villages 
 and country districts. In a conference on rural 
 housing held in May 1897, Sir Walter Foster 
 stated that the results of that inquiry went to
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 149 
 
 show that in sixty-seven parishes, comprising 
 between 3000 and 4000 houses, one-fifth of the 
 cottages were reported to be bad, or very bad — 
 not simply poor and insufficient — while sixty-one 
 per cent, of the bedrooms in these cottages were 
 without fireplaces, and therefore could have no 
 proper or healthy ventilation ; and one-sixth of 
 the cottages had an extremely bad and dangerous 
 water supply. In a second inquiry, involving 
 240 villages and about 10,000 houses, one-half 
 of the villages complained of the cottages being 
 bad, one-fifth complained of insufficient cottage 
 accommodation, while there were thirty cases of 
 gross overcrowding, and in one-sixth ot the total 
 number of cottages there was an inadequate and 
 dangerous water supply. As an instance of the 
 overcrowding, he mentioned cases of cottages 
 with one bedroom, occupied in one case by a 
 man, his wife, and six children, the eldest a girl 
 1 5 years of age ; in another case by a man, his 
 wife, four children, and two young men lodgers. 
 These are typical cases. 
 
 At the same conference Mr F. A. Channing, 
 M.P., stated that the result of the above-named 
 inquiry showed that, not merely here and there, 
 but almost everywhere in England and Wales, a 
 large proportion of the cottages of the agricul- 
 tural labourers were insanitary, and quite unfit 
 for human habitation.
 
 150 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 Mr Williams, to whose book, " London Rook- 
 eries and Colliers' Slums," reference has been 
 made above, gives some vivid descriptions of the 
 disgraceful housing accommodation that is pro- 
 vided for coal-miners in different parts of the 
 country. The following is a dainty sketch of 
 what the miners' dwellings are like in South 
 Wales : — 
 
 " Here are several rows built against the moun- 
 tain side, each row overtopping the last as they 
 ascend. The spaces between the rows are very 
 narrow — a sort of compromise between a foot- 
 path and a road. There are neither gardens nor 
 back-yards, nor is there a forecourt. The front 
 door abuts the footpath and opens at once into 
 the living room. A door stands open ; we enter 
 the living room measuring 13 ft. by 11 ft. . . . 
 The ceilings are very low and the back of the 
 house is perpetually damp, owing to the level of 
 the ground at the back being much higher than 
 the ground-floor, and the absence, as usual, of 
 a damp-course. It is a hovel and nothing more ; 
 and the scores of cottages adjoining are like it — 
 indeed some that were looked into were in a 
 more deplorable state, what with bad repair and 
 uncleanly habits of the tenants. Yet the rent 
 of such hovels ranged from 4s. 5d. to 4s. iid. 
 per week." 
 
 The same sort of thing is to be found all over
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 151 
 
 our God-blessed England. Wherever you find 
 a toiler, be he artizan or agricultural labourer, 
 unskilled worker, or one who risks his life daily 
 in mine, on the railway, or wherever there is 
 risky work to do, there you will discover tene- 
 ments for his habitation to which it is a degrading 
 misnomer to give the name of house. They are 
 small, they are insufficient for the decent accom- 
 modation of a family ; and yet there are " gentle- 
 men " and " ladies," too — God save the mark ! — 
 who are debased enough to take rent for them. 
 
 Moreover, there cannot be an independent 
 movement, no matter how humble, to improve 
 the conditions of living amongst the labouring 
 poor, but this upper fringe of idle selfishness 
 and luxury grasps at, and generally manages to 
 gobble, their portion out of the betterment. The 
 Chtu^ch Reformer recently instanced a parish 
 (Christ Church, Southwark) where doles of 
 bread to the value of ^350 had the effect of 
 raisine rents in the tenement houses therein over 
 those paid in adjoining districts. Mr Benjamin 
 Jones, of the Co-operative Union, in his evidence 
 before the Town Holdings Committee, 1887 
 (Q. 10,780/2), showed how a co-operative society 
 at Woolwich caused an increase in the letting 
 value of neighbouring cottages. 
 
 To the same effect is a statement made by the 
 Clarion of November 4th, 1896, according to
 
 152 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 which the result of an agitation by the Deptford 
 Labour Protection League was not only to raise 
 wages in H.M. Naval Victualling Yard from 15s. 
 to 19 and 20 shillings a week, but also to raise 
 rents, " so that the landlords are practically getting 
 nearly all the benefit of the increase of wages." 
 
 Thus, in the words of the late Professor 
 Rogers, " Every permanent improvement of the 
 soil, every railway and road, every bettering of 
 the general condition of society, every facility 
 given for production, every stimulus supplied to 
 consumption, raises rent. The landowner sleeps, 
 but thrives." Every path of improvement has a 
 switch into the capitalist's belly. 
 
 And even with all this, for the miserable hovels 
 which the labourer is so often compelled to 
 inhabit there is no fixity of tenure. He may be 
 turned out at a week's notice, and hence has no 
 inducement to improve the place and make it 
 comfortable and home-like. If not evicted, the 
 effect of his industry would probably be to cause 
 an addition to be clapt on to his rent. 
 
 It is astoundino- to think that this sort of thinof 
 is going on all over these islands, and that multi- 
 tudes of sufferers tamely submit. For, terribly as 
 the evil weighs upon the labouring poor, it is not 
 they alone who are the victims. In every part 
 of England, in every town and village, from 
 London outwards, it will be found that the man
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 153 
 
 who holds the land will not sell it, but merely let 
 it on lease to those who want to build. In other 
 words, the landless can only provide himself with 
 a home if some rich man chooses to permit him ; 
 and even then often only on the condition that 
 the house he builds, and all the money he spends 
 upon it, shall be confiscated at the termination of 
 the lease for the landlord's personal benefit. 
 
 How the thing works out may be seen not 
 only in every town of the realm, but almost in 
 every village ; albeit, one must acknowledge 
 some few noble exceptions to the almost uni- 
 versal rule of landlord greed. Only in November 
 last the Rev. W. Mantle took the occasion of 
 the municipal elections to tell the Mayor and 
 Corporation of Devonport how the town suffered 
 from the way in which men of capital neglected 
 the public interests in their grasping after money. 
 *' Devonport was," he said, " the very worst of all 
 the towns in England for overcrowding. At that 
 very moment, not three hundred yards from the 
 church, there was a room where a bed-ridden 
 girl had been lying for five years. The mother's 
 corpse had occupied for four days a corner of the 
 same room, and at least two adults tried to sleep 
 in the room every night. In darkest Africa, said 
 the reverend gentleman, they would not find so 
 much disrespect and disregard for the feelings of 
 humanity as was to be found in Devonport."
 
 154 ^-^^ Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 A London paper a short time ago supplied a 
 still more ghastly picture. It is cited to enable 
 the reader "to realise how disease is spread" — 
 by "tailoring operations conducted under the 
 
 conditions . . . witnessed in T e Court." 
 
 " From one of these rooms," the report goes 
 on, "proceed the sounds of what dwellers in the 
 East-end recognise as the keeping of a wake. 
 In one corner, surrounded by candles which have 
 been burning all night . . . there lays the dead 
 body of the woman of the family. It has been 
 there for five days already, and unless a 
 magistrate's order is obtained for its removal, it 
 will be there another five days at least ; for the 
 resources of the family do not admit of the pre- 
 payment of the undertaker, and that functionary 
 refuses to discharge his duties unless prepaid. 
 In another corner upon some filthy bedding, 
 grown-up young men and women are herded 
 indiscriminately together, having not yet risen. 
 An attempt is being made to prepare some 
 breakfast over a few embers in the grate, and 
 two or three adult relatives of the deceased are 
 paying their respects to the dead in snuff-taking, 
 and other congenial occupations, while awaiting 
 the frugal meal." 
 
 A characteristic specimen of English savagery 
 this, worthy to go down to posterity from this 
 latter end of the nineteenth century. There are,
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 155 
 
 of course, many elements that go to the brewing 
 of such a kettle of broth ; but first and foremost 
 stands the condition of land-monopoly which makes 
 it next to impossible for the poor to get proper 
 house-room, and so conduces more than almost 
 anything else to such overcrowding that many 
 of the lower districts of London are, as the direct 
 result, simple hells of vice. It is difficult to con- 
 template such scenes without one's thoughts 
 being carried to that Gilded Chamber where any 
 and every effort to bring the question of the land 
 and the decent housing of the poor to a reason- 
 able solution is incontinently strangled by the 
 "lords, temporal and spiritual," and seeing a 
 parallel between that hall of incarnate selfishness 
 and the one so magnificently described by Milton 
 in his Paradise Lost, that famed — 
 
 Pandemonium ; the high capital 
 Of Satan and his peers ; . . . 
 . . . they but now who seemed 
 In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, 
 Now less than smallest dwarfs . . . 
 . . . like that Pygmean race 
 Beyond the Indian mount. 
 
 The more one contemplates this question of 
 the housing of the poor, the more clearly one 
 perceives that it will never be settled in a satis- 
 factory manner so long as it is allowed to remain 
 in the hands of the landholders or the five-per- 
 center, benevolent and godly though he be.
 
 156 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 Fifty years ago Charles Kingsley drew attention 
 to the same blot in scathing words, describing 
 the agricultural labourer as worse housed than 
 the landlord's hacks and pointers. He was 
 followed by others, notably by Cardinal Manning, 
 who, when he was with us, used to speak of 
 this housing question as one of crying urgency, 
 and transcending in importance all other social 
 questions of the day. He held that people could 
 not lead decent or human lives in the narrow and 
 crowded quarters of our great towns, and that 
 the existence of masses of the population on the 
 brink of barbarism imperilled the very existence 
 of society. 
 
 No one since the days of Robert Owen has 
 laid greater stress on the vital connection be- 
 tween circumstances and character, environment 
 and progress, than this friend of the London 
 poor. But, notwithstanding his persistent warn- 
 ing, and that of many others, including that of 
 Lord Shaftesbury, another of the social reformers 
 of our time, not only has little or nothing effective 
 been done to remedy the evil, but it is confessedly 
 more deplorable and disgraceful now than it ever 
 was before. Moreover, recent developments show 
 that it is becoming even worse. The scarcity of 
 houses is so greatly felt in some districts of Eng- 
 land and Wales that we hear of men being forced, 
 with their families, to take refuge in the work-
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 157 
 
 house, even while in full work, because they could 
 find no other place wherein to lodge their wives 
 and children. 
 
 Since 1851, Dr Bowmaker reminds us, the 
 Legislature and the municipalities have toyed with 
 the housing question. There have been com- 
 missions and committees, permissive measures 
 which no self-respecting municipality could adopt 
 because of their ruinous compensation clauses, 
 and Public Health Acts, which, with all their 
 powers for spreading sweetness and light, could 
 not make bad houses good, or bring sun and air 
 through brick walls. Let the man who grumbles 
 at the amount of legislation for life and labour 
 nowadays read this chapter in our history, take 
 note of the taint of property that runs through 
 the Housing Acts — property of ground landlords 
 in death areas and fever areas, property of jerry- 
 builders in houses unfit for habitation — and 
 remember that we are called on now to deal with 
 the arrears of a century of neglect. Let the man 
 of science who objects to making things easy for 
 the weakly remember that in the opinion of the 
 Registrar-General, who is no sentimentalist, but 
 a student of the statistics of life and death, the 
 present course of town life is one of steady 
 degeneration and deterioration, " a system which 
 leads to the survival of the unfittest." 
 
 It seems pretty plain that nothing effective will
 
 158 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 be done to remedy the evil until the workers 
 take the matter into their own hands, and force a 
 solution. 
 
 We often hear it suggested as a means of 
 putting an end to overcrowding in towns that the 
 toiler should be got away into the country after 
 his day's work is done. But the fear — nay, 
 the certainty — is that such remedy would be 
 worse than the evil, considering the monopolist's 
 deadly grip on the land, and the capitalist's 
 notion of what is suitable as housing for the 
 worker, when we see a wealthy railway company 
 accommodate its labourers at the rate of two bed- 
 rooms for eleven persons, or, say two bedrooms 
 for a family, as is the case within gunshot of the 
 place in which these lines are written. Where 
 the benefit of such stying would be to the 
 worker at the end of a long 'bus or train journey 
 from his work one fails to see. 
 
 It is satisfactory, so far as it goes, to learn that 
 this question is not dealt with in the same 
 miserly and inhuman way all over. Manchester 
 it appears is ahead of London in some important 
 particulars, such as the stipulation of a minimum 
 height of nine feet for all rooms, not attics, in 
 new houses. Admirable regulations in regard to 
 window space also exists, and — still more admir- 
 able ! — no house is now allowed to be put up 
 without proper provision for personal cleanliness.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 1 59 
 
 Happy Manchester ! So different to the water- 
 less desert of East London, where, up to within 
 a few months ago, a bath for the poor in certain 
 districts was an impossibihty, unless it was taken 
 in a mud puddle or a cesspool. 
 
 To all right-thinking persons the spectacle of 
 men and women who never do a hands-turn of 
 productive or profitable work holding such a 
 deadly grip on the land as to make decent 
 housing for the poor an impossibility is nothing 
 less than shameful, and the century we are so 
 soon to enter upon — the century of drastic evolu- 
 tion or revolution — will hold and stamp as 
 shameful beyond all measure of shame the atti- 
 tude of men who, living upon a tribute extorted 
 from the blood and sinews of the workers, and 
 doing nothing for what they receive, are still 
 found capable of abusing their privilege and their 
 position to the extent of being parties to the 
 degradation and demoralisation of those from 
 whom they derive their wealth, while claiming to 
 be the mirrors of righteousness and honour. 
 
 So long as this crying evil and injustice exist, 
 and they stand mutely by, their righteousness and 
 honour are but as blemished beauties tricked out 
 in paint. If they would justify their Christianity 
 and the common boasts of our civilisation, let 
 them stand forth and act in accordance with their 
 pretended beliefs, and not be satisfied with
 
 i6o The Martyj^dom of Labour. 
 
 mumbling and genuflecting in their places of 
 worship. And let their lordships the bishops 
 begin. Let them rise to a man in their places 
 in the House of Lords and register their honest 
 protest against the abominations of money-sweat- 
 ing demoralisations, and luxurious living at the 
 expense of others' deprivation, and they will set 
 a wind blowing that shall sweep away these foul 
 Christian ghettos, the breeding-places of sin and 
 crime, in a generation.
 
 puApn^PP yy " He that rideth over men 
 
 fiiust be jtest." 
 
 Can one wonder that men, at leno-th emancipated 
 from the condition of utter ignorance that for- 
 merly weighed them down, and in which their 
 masters were so long successful in keeping them, 
 are now bent upon bringing about a new era, 
 are combining everywhere for that purpose ? 
 And, if wisdom and moderation continue to 
 guide their counsels, are sure to attain the de- 
 sired end ? Can one wonder that, getting ideas 
 of science into their minds, getting also a know- 
 ledge of the constitution of the universe, and of 
 their own frames and organisation, they are 
 beginning to read new rights into old wrongs ? 
 In conversation with a gentleman not long 
 ago, one of these men related how lately he had 
 been drawn to listen to a course of lectures on 
 astronomy, and how" they had given him quite 
 a new idea of human life and human destiny. 
 Said he — " If there is all that wondrous balance 
 and harmony in the universe — all its various 
 parts adapted so perfectly one to another, and 
 acting one with another to a common end — 
 
 L ^6*
 
 1 62 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 giving one the idea of an ordered dance of joy, 
 it seems to me that the same mind which created 
 that harmony must have intended that human 
 beings should Hve together in a similar state of 
 unison, but that we have somehow got jangled 
 and out of tune, so that we neither dance for 
 joy, as we should, nor send up a pure song of 
 gladness and praise, such as one would imagine 
 the rhythmic movements of the stars and planets 
 in their courses give forth." 
 
 It was a striking idea this man had got hold 
 of. He was indeed turning science to its noblest 
 end, bringing down its highest teachings to the 
 bettering and uplifting of our human life. Well 
 might he draw a hope for our future on earth 
 from the ordered movements of the stars and 
 suns and even the erratic comets in space. 
 
 And can any man who has studied the divine 
 mould in which the universe is cast deny that 
 there was a great presumption of truth in this 
 man's conception } Will any one who has sent 
 the plummet line of his thought into the depths 
 of this mighty and unfathomable universe dare to 
 say that the divine intellect that measured out 
 the heavens with such justness and equity, and 
 fitted the orbs in space with such niceness and 
 balance, failed when he came to build and 
 fashion the human clay } 
 
 No ; however much, to our sorrow, we mortals
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 163 
 
 may ignore it, there is an ever-during principle 
 of justice — a principle of divine justice — that 
 reigns throughout all space, that permeates all 
 things, and that in the end will bring all things 
 to a perfect balance. It is coeval and coex- 
 tensive with the Omniscient himself. It must 
 be so. When he was justice was. It is the 
 principle of his being and rules in all his 
 works. 
 
 His divine order, too, regulates the just treat- 
 ment of man by man, as surely as his divine 
 order regulates the movements of the orbs in 
 space. The difference is that, in the case of the 
 heavenly bodies, they are moved and regulated 
 in harmony with the celestial music of the divine 
 mind, or the principle divine, which called the 
 whole into being ; whereas in human beings the 
 divinity has planted some will, some power to 
 select and choose. For his greater glory, we 
 may imagine, he did not wish men to be mere 
 machines, automatic instruments, but beings of 
 varied powers, and with a knowledge of right 
 and wrong. He therefore placed in them the 
 power to know and to act in full accord with 
 justice — that divine flower from whose every 
 part flows harmony and beauty. 
 
 It was a beautiful saying of Emmanuel Kant's 
 that there are two things in the universe whose 
 sublime grandeur strikes the mind with awe, " the
 
 164 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 starry heavens and the moral nature in man." 
 He saw in the two things the same expression 
 of the divine mind, the one being but a counter- 
 part of the other. To the great Original nothing 
 is stupendous, nothing is small. Just as the same 
 law which governs the largest sun governs also 
 the smallest moon or satellite, the one being but 
 as an atom in comparison with the other ; so in 
 human affairs there is one law alike for all — one 
 immutable law, which may be shirked, but cannot 
 in the end be evaded. 
 
 It is as though the one acted upon the other, 
 the greater upon the less, the less upon the greater, 
 and that in the course of the ages something of 
 the divine order that rules the larger universe had 
 instilled itself into the mind of man. But for that 
 human society could not have continued to exist. 
 It would have destroyed and annihilated itself. 
 Century after century, however, we behold the 
 work going forward, and the human mind be- 
 coming more and more subdued to the grander 
 harmony, or, to put it more truly perhaps, being 
 attuned to the harmony of the spheres. And this 
 progress must still go on in an ever-increasing 
 ratio. Nothing, one must believe, can stop it — 
 nothing short of a universal cataclysm. 
 
 Without a firm belief in such an advance men 
 would lose all hope — all stimulus to effort for a 
 larger life. Were we compelled to the belief
 
 The Martyrdoin of Labour. 165 
 
 that there is no such thing as eternal harmony — 
 what in one aspect of human affairs we call justice 
 — one would not wish to live. Life would be a 
 mockery. It is our moral, our spiritual magna 
 charta that somewhere and somewhen there must 
 be a divine rectification, a full and complete com- 
 pensation. 
 
 Everything must reach its counterpoise some- 
 time. It could not in the nature of things be 
 otherwise. As that law obtains in the cosmos, 
 so must it be in our little world. In the stupen- 
 dous motions of the orbs in space there is no 
 constant and unvarying uniformity, but a moving 
 as it were from apogee to perigee, a flux and 
 reflux, a pulling this way and a rebound that — 
 no undeviating line, but a perfect balance. Do 
 we not see it in summer and winter, in day and 
 night, in storm and calm, in what we call life and 
 death ? These are necessary conditions. Life 
 cannot be an unchanging thing, else it would not 
 be life. There must be birth, growth, and decay, 
 and these cannot be without chano^e. And chanofe 
 means a rise and a fall, a time of flood and a time 
 of ebb, a time to fly out and a time to return on 
 its arc. Thus everything — in human life as in 
 the planetary spheres — must complete its round, 
 fill out its full circle. 
 
 Were it not for this principle of balance, of 
 compensation, of rectification, the life of the
 
 1 66 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 universe, so to speak, could not go on. So it 
 is in human affairs. We can see how law asserts 
 itself; how evil brings about its own inevitable 
 punishment, how in the end all wrong-doing 
 entails disaster. Our present state is one of 
 misery and unhappiness, because we have not 
 fully appreciated the immutability of the moral 
 as well as of the physical laws — because we do 
 not see that a "right" pushed to the length of a 
 "wrong" must in time bring its own retribution. 
 We have seen, for instance, how a class drove 
 into far-off lands men who could no longer find a 
 foothold in their own country because that class 
 had seized and appropriated to themselves nearly 
 all the soil of the realm. We have seen how for 
 a time they profited by their greed, and fancied 
 that by making laws to further their own ends 
 they would profit for ever. But how short-sighted 
 and futile it all proved. The sons and grandsons 
 of the very men they drove from their steadings 
 in the old home are now gradually making it 
 impossible for the wrong-doers to live on the 
 acres they so unrighteously took from the people. 
 Thus nature, stronger than governments, is recti- 
 fying the old injustice, and knelling the downfall 
 of a class which, riveting its fakir-like gaze upon 
 its own navel, failed to see, in the phrase of the 
 Stoic emperor, that what is good for the swarm 
 is good also for the bee.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 167 
 
 That lesson they have yet to be taught, and if 
 they are wise they will learn it quickly. 
 
 Of course in the bringing about of the present 
 crisis in which the world finds itself, the govern- 
 ing classes are not wholly to blame ; the workers 
 have not been impeccable. How could it be 
 otherwise, ignorant and brutal as they were for so 
 long kept. But one must hold that the wealthy 
 classes have done more towards forcing it to the 
 front than the wage-earners, because they have 
 been systematically unjust. The great fault of 
 the worker has been, and is yet, his ignorance, 
 which puts him too often at the mercy of the wily 
 agitator, as well as making him the tool of the 
 designing intriguers at the opposite end of the 
 social scale, who are never tired of repeating 
 Jacob's abysmal meanness in taking advantage 
 of their brothers' hunger to delude them out of 
 their birthright. It makes no difference that the 
 mess of pottage is a basin of cheap soup, or a 
 charity blanket, and that idle Rachels are in the 
 deception. 
 
 It is the same with the capitalist employer, 
 who for the sake of a small percentage more, or 
 for a little more wealth, is ever ready to forget 
 his patriotism, the commonweal, even the char- 
 acter of just and humane man. The wage-earner 
 fights for a shilling or two more to spend upon 
 the needs of his family ; the capitalist for more
 
 1 68 The Martyrdo7n of Labour. 
 
 luxury. The worker s is a struggle towards a 
 larger humanity, the capitalist's — though he may 
 not perceive it — towards a degraded manhood. 
 For that is the end brought about by the curse 
 of gold, and that is what the moneyed classes 
 have long been under — the curse which, if any- 
 thing, will bring England down, nay, which will 
 most assuredly bring her down, unless something 
 be done to cure the disease. 
 
 It was injustice brought about by the greed for 
 gold that toppled Tyre in the dust, that brought 
 down Babylon, Rome, the shameless iniquity 
 and blood-guiltiness of Spain — the curse of the 
 accumulation of gold in the hands of the few, 
 making them arrogant and tyrannical over the 
 many. And never before — not even in Rome, 
 not even in Spain — was the tyranny of gold, and 
 the injustice caused by it, so great as it is in 
 England to-day. Never did the millionaire so 
 lord it before and over the world as now ; never, 
 notwithstanding our Christianity, was there such 
 worship of wealth, never such wide-spread sanc- 
 tion and ready support of schemes for the plunder 
 of the many in behalf of the few. 
 
 In the United States they have awakened to 
 the fact : perhaps they — the people with the most 
 democratic institutions in the world — are feeling 
 the weight more poignantly than we in Great 
 Britain. The all-powerful "boss," with his trusts
 
 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 169 
 
 and his monopolies, strides the country like a 
 colossus, and strangles every effort of the wage- 
 earners and the poorer traders to defend or pro- 
 tect their interests. For the sake of his ungodly 
 pocket millions must toil for a pittance and find 
 the necessaries of life made almost beyond their 
 reach. His fingers itch to "corner" everything. 
 But they are still alive, those people, and before 
 long we shall see them turn and corner the boss, 
 or the signs are deceptive. 
 
 We have seen the attempt made to introduce 
 the same thing in England ; nay, we see it 
 being made all about us to-day. But let the 
 conspirators take heed of what they do. The 
 British is on the whole a patient and slow- 
 moving animal ; but there comes a time when, 
 as a noble lord once put it, he "gets tired of 
 playing Job." It will not pay to try to force 
 the worker back into the position of degrada- 
 tion he formerly held. Under the heel of the 
 monster accumulation of gold of the nineteenth 
 century his position is precarious enough. Quite 
 enough is he exploited and forced to produce 
 for the benefit of this ungodly Mammon — for 
 those who have the means to command and 
 the meanness to thrive upon his labour. 
 
 To put a man, and still more a woman, in 
 the position that they must accept your offer 
 of work at your own price or starve is to take
 
 1 70 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 an advantage for which there is no other name 
 but devihsh. It is no better than compelling 
 a man to sign a contract with a halter round 
 his neck. Nay, it is worse. For, if the worker 
 had simply to put his own life on the stake, 
 he might be willing to risk it ; but it is the 
 thought of the helpless ones dependent upon 
 him that compels submission. 
 
 Your contract is never a righteous one unless 
 both parties thereto can accept or reject it 
 without causing personal suffering. When men 
 are men, and love righteousness — right-wiseness 
 — they will see that it is so. 
 
 The time will surely come when mankind will 
 waken to the wrong — to the infamy — of this 
 sort of thing. The ages creep on, even though 
 it be but slowly, and gradually with the passing 
 of the centuries we see some improvement, some 
 advance in humanity. There was a time when 
 men ate each other. But by degrees the con- 
 sciousness of kinship and unity in mankind grew 
 to such an extent that this man-eating became 
 impossible, and it ceased. Then there was a 
 time when men procured the labour of others 
 by violence and made slaves of their fellows. 
 They thought nothing of murdering the adult 
 population of a whole district, and bringing 
 up their children to servitude. But in course 
 of the ages the conscience of mankind came to
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 171 
 
 see that it was a degradation both to the slave 
 and to the master to stand in this relation to 
 each other, and so with the higher races it fell 
 into disuse. Slavery still exists, though for 
 the most part in concealment, and against the 
 law of the more civilised peoples. But even 
 among the most enlightened, where slavery in 
 the ancient form is held in abomination and 
 horror, this other method of enslavement is still 
 tolerated and even defended by Christian men. 
 It is defended by them on the ground that it 
 is in accordance with sound political economy. 
 But the time will come, and that we must 
 believe soon, when men will hold it just as 
 shameful to take advantage of men's necessities, 
 and of their children's hunger, to enslave and 
 degrade them, as to hold them in physical 
 bondage, and to buy and sell them as was 
 formerly done. 
 
 Most men now see that the system of slavery 
 was as degrading to the holder as to the slave. 
 The blot was one that touched all, so that 
 none under its withering blight could rise to 
 the true dignity of manhood. So will it be 
 with the system at present in vogue. We shall 
 come to perceive that it is degrading, incom- 
 patible with the character of true humanity, to 
 subject another to thraldom by the force of 
 hunger and cold, and intellectual and spiritual
 
 172 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 deprivation. It will begin, as indeed it has, 
 with the best men and the best women who 
 will see that it is nobler to work more them- 
 selves and spare more for others, than that 
 others should suffer in order that they may do 
 less and enjoy more. And so the sense of 
 human justice and human brotherhood will grow 
 from more to more. 
 
 It cannot be otherwise if we work out the 
 hieroglyphics of the divine code, which are 
 written everywhere about us, not only within, 
 but round and athwart the vast azure-tinted and 
 sun-lighted chamber in which we live. And 
 perhaps, to the right intellects, they may not 
 be so cryptic as at first sight they appear. It 
 is the province of human reason and human faith 
 and endeavour to find out and investigate that 
 code and apply its laws, not only in personal con- 
 duct, but in political measures, social organisa- 
 tion, and the multifarious relations of daily life. 
 Until we have done this, or in some large 
 measure done it, we have failed to justify the 
 high claim we make for ourselves of being 
 creatures guided by moral, reasonable, and 
 religious considerations.
 
 " My covenant shall be in 
 CHAPTER XII your flesh for a?t everlast- 
 
 ing covenant." 
 
 There goes a most subtle alchemy to the making 
 of a man — an alchemy that demands tribute of 
 elements and influences from suns and stars, from 
 the winds of heaven and the waters of ocean, from 
 the mountains above and the plains beneath, from 
 field and forest and moorland, from toil and play, 
 from laughter and tears, from the time that was 
 and the time that is to come, from bird and beast 
 and fish, from all things and all places, even the 
 profoundest depths of the deep heart of man. 
 
 All this is provided for in the Creator's labora- 
 tory — in this swinging, revolving meat-jack of a 
 world, with its great central fire and its number- 
 less little gleams, all raining influences. From 
 the cherishing love and kindling thought fashion- 
 ing the embryo in the mother's womb to the light 
 and air and warmth, the pregnant water, and the 
 ever-plenteous building material of food, and over 
 and above all the abounding beauty and entranc- 
 ing wonder to rejoice and inspire — all these are 
 there, ready to hand and eye and heart, as the 
 growing and developing mortal needs.
 
 1 74 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 The great He who planned the man made 
 provision for all that was requisite for his 
 building-up and adornment according to his 
 design. All things are provided in plenty — 
 and the child's birthright is to enjoy them in 
 abundance and in season. It must be so ; else 
 has the Maker and Master of the whole bidden 
 his men-children make bricks without the needful 
 straw — which is impossible. 
 
 And yet — and yet — if we look about us, O 
 penurious souls of men ! what do we see ? The 
 poor mother when she should be at rest, dream- 
 ing and thinking of beautiful and sacred things, 
 gestating the immortal soul of the man or woman 
 that is to be — we see her even now, in the suprem- 
 est hours of her being, compelled to toil in un- 
 wholesome factories and workshops, in field and 
 furrow, for her miserable dole of food. And 
 when the little ones in their growing years are 
 in need of all the light and warmth, food and 
 fresh air, and all the stimulating and ennobling 
 influences of God's great fields and open spaces, 
 they are confined to narrow, foetid alleys, with 
 their cold, damp stones and hideous surround- 
 ings ; yes, and then, after being starved and 
 stinted through the long years of childhood and 
 youth, we hold up hands of pious horror, or spit 
 out unseemly words of scorn, because the result- 
 ant man, the completed woman, is something
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 175 
 
 short of perfect — something less than the divine 
 ideal which the Planner had in view. We have 
 debarred them the full run and tuition of his 
 glorious laboratory, and put them in the factories 
 which man has devised for the growing of abor- 
 tions — and then, forsooth, we talk of it as the 
 result of his providence, insolents that we are ! 
 
 Did it never occur to the sapient weavers of 
 political economics, to statesmen of the abase- 
 ment, to consider the Almighty's plan and inten- 
 tion apart from the thought of their own sub- 
 diaphragm space and pantry ? Did it never occur 
 to them in some spare, brief moment of detach- 
 ment to ponder the covenant which he, the 
 designer and maker, has made with man ? Did 
 they never by any chance get an inkling of the 
 great text that is written all about them ? Was 
 no passing glimpse ever revealed to them, by 
 faintest flash of inspiration or rush of insight, 
 of that veracious contract and covenant, graven 
 on every vessel and organ, in every bone and 
 ligament of man's body? It is imprinted in 
 every line, in every dint of the sculptor's fashion- 
 ing thumb — lettered in big on every column and 
 entablature of his magnificent temple — yea, 
 flashed and musicked forth from every rill and 
 bird-throat, from every cloud and whirling rain- 
 pillar, from each up-springing wheat-blade and 
 down-shooting star and star-gleam.
 
 1 76 The Ma7'tyrdom of Labour. 
 
 But degenerate-souled man, saying to himself, 
 " This is for labour and toil only, for sordid cares, 
 for misery, for premature death — what need they 
 of grace and refinement, of over-much soul, or 
 even of body more than is sufficient to do our 
 work ? — and so saying, stints the ennobling draught 
 of beauty and of thought, and mars by greed the 
 perfect model as it left the Maker's hand. 
 
 Here is an authentic document, taken down 
 many years ago from the lips of one who had 
 for long years read and pondered over this 
 subject of man and his position and his relation 
 to the universe — one whose university was the 
 world, and whose tutor and inspirer the deep 
 unfathomed heart of humanity. It is entitled 
 "God's Covenant with Man." 
 
 " In the beginning," says this scripture, the 
 Creator of man, as of the universe, made a con- 
 tract with the outcome of his handiwork. It is 
 a covenant as true, and therefore as sacred as any 
 word in the Holy Scriptures, on which the world 
 justly places so high a value. It is written in the 
 most legible characters upon man's organisation. 
 Therein it is clearly laid down and stipulated how 
 a man shall live, and what he shall do ; what shall 
 be his reward for the proper fulfilment of his part 
 of the covenant ; and what will be the punishment 
 for neglect and disobedience. 
 
 " By this 'everlasting covenant,' the document
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 1 7 7 
 
 continues, ' it is ordained that man shall use the 
 hands with which he has been provided for the 
 earning of his daily bread.' For that purpose 
 they were fashioned so wondrously, for that 
 purpose given him ; to that end also the earth 
 was made fruitful, and bestowed on him to till 
 and to garner in its increase. 
 
 " The contract further ordains that when he 
 arrives at the age of maturity and reason man 
 shall take to himself a wife, not only that life 
 may thereby be made the more beautiful and 
 the more agreeable to him, but that the crea- 
 tive purposes of the Almighty may be carried 
 out. The helpmate he thus espouses he is 
 bound to love and support in all honour, and 
 to give equal love and honour and reverence 
 to the children that are the fruit of their union, 
 working for them with patience and diligent 
 foresight, allowing no man to take that right 
 from him, and permitting none to oppress or de- 
 grade them. To this end he is given strength 
 and courage to do and dare all things. 
 
 " God has further covenanted with man that 
 in requital of his labour he shall have food and 
 raiment proper and sufficient ; for without these 
 he cannot do his allotted work, nor fulfil his other 
 divinely-imposed duties as he should ; and to 
 this end He hath placed him on a bounteous land 
 which requires but his intelligent care and labour
 
 178 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 to produce all he needs both for himself and wife, 
 and for the children that have been given to them 
 as a charge, to nourish and support and to bring 
 up to right manhood and womanhood. 
 
 " There is nothing that man needs during his 
 sojourn on this earth that is not provided in 
 plenty, and provided, be it remembered, not by- 
 man, not by kings, not by aristocracies, but by 
 the Almighty Father himself His sun, his 
 rain, his co-working elements do it all, man only 
 giving a little diligent labour, a little foresightful 
 thought, to help forward the harvest, and to 
 gather and garner it in season. 
 
 "In such plenty is this provision made by the 
 Great Giver that there is sufficient for man 
 not only during his days of strength and active 
 labour, but also for the time when the fires of 
 life are burning low, and he can only go feebly 
 about, waiting for the cloak of darkness that 
 shrouds his way to the great light. 
 
 " This is all set forth not only in the secret 
 chambers of man's heart, but in the pictured 
 house in which he has been placed to dwell for 
 a season, wherein, wedded to every picture is 
 a tongue, and in every tongue a voice, and in 
 every voice a light, fashioned to sing, and 
 thunder, and flash forth his meaning. And woe 
 unto him who shall misread and mishear. Woe 
 to the man who, daring to misconstrue His
 
 The Martyrdoin of Labour. 1 79 
 
 thought, lays hands on more than his share, 
 assumes a personal right over any of the things 
 of the Great He, to the wrong and scanting of 
 another. By so doing he commits a sacrilege 
 against the Almighty law and ordinance, and 
 offends against his everlasting covenant with 
 man. And sorrowfully must he answer for it ; 
 for the grave is not the end, but only the step- 
 ping-stone to God's reckoning place. 
 
 " Every breach of this contract has its appro- 
 priate penalty. For the assumption of a right 
 over things that do not belong to him a man's 
 punishment is degradation. The man who fails 
 to work for that which he eats and wears soon 
 becomes less than a man, for it is the crown of 
 true manhood that a man shall work. Some who 
 do not work, or who are not allowed to work, 
 die of starvation. Such physical death is better 
 than the death of the soul, the gradual decay of 
 manhood, which is the penalty of him who goes 
 idly to the grave. Every infraction of God's con- 
 tract is fraught with disease. But the worst disease 
 of all is that which insensibly but surely seizes the 
 man who lives upon the labour of others, especially 
 if those others be women and children. 
 
 " One cannot conceive that the Almighty could 
 hold anything in greater contempt than such 
 a one, who with hands, and arms, and strength 
 to work, and with brain to think, yet lives on
 
 i8o The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 the toil of his kind, who, because they have 
 to slave for him, must themselves suffer want. 
 He puts himself in the place of one who has 
 been born perhaps a cripple or idiotic. Such a 
 person must go into the life to come maimed of 
 his manhood. For is it not by work — by effective 
 doing — that we attain true manhood, that we 
 acquire the character that is well-nigh everything 
 here, and that must be more hereafter ? 
 
 " This divine contract of rights and duties 
 is inscribed so plainly and unmistakably on man's 
 organisation, that it would be a mockery to pre- 
 dicate the existence of a God on any other 
 supposition. If he is, he is just, and therefore 
 would not write a lie. 
 
 " There is also another contingency for which 
 the Creator has mercifully provided. In his 
 wisdom, foreseeing that, in the latitude of free- 
 dom he has given to his creatures, some of 
 them would descend to a lesser rank of being 
 than he designed, and make life here unen- 
 durable to others by their injustice and tyranny. 
 Therefore, while he allows to man no voice 
 or choice as regards his coming* into the world, 
 he has left the way out open and unrestrained. 
 Hence if any son or daughter of Adam feel 
 that life is impossible without ignominy or de- 
 gradation, it is only necessary to will it, and the 
 way is free for them to go back to the bosom of
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. i8i 
 
 the Almighty, whence they came. It is best to 
 wait until he calls. It is best patiently to tarry 
 until the soft hand of the gentlest of his ministers 
 kindly leads to the hidden stair lapped by the 
 eternal and still lipless wave. But if men, by 
 their greed and their cowardice, make it impos- 
 sible for man or woman to live, except at the 
 price of the utter desecration and degradation of 
 man or womanhood, then, O deathless mortal! 
 fear not, but courageously shake the earthly dust 
 from your feet and seek the 'open door.' It is 
 the noblest, the only honourable way. But woe 
 to the man or woman that shall compel you ! " 
 
 Can one doubt the essential truth of these 
 arguments ? Who will question that, broadly 
 and in the main, the thinker of these thoughts 
 was right ? Possibly at the root the idea is not 
 entirely original. That we have had adumbra- 
 tions of it before is certain. Not to go any 
 wider afield, Wordsworth tells us that " the 
 external world is fitted to the mind," that is, to 
 the various powers of the brain, and the brain is, 
 as Goethe puts it, but the root of the man, his 
 body and limbs being the stem and branches 
 growing therefrom. Conversely we may say 
 that the mind is fitted to the external world, 
 not only the world in its physical aspects, but 
 the world on the far elusive and yet ever present 
 side which we designate spiritual.
 
 1 82 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 Up to within a tolerably recent period man 
 was so largely occupied with the task of sub- 
 duing the earth, and bringing it to a condition 
 of approximately peaceful habitation, that the 
 part of his mind which relates to and fits him 
 for the more physical side of things became 
 too preponderant, indeed almost overwhelming 
 in its force. During this time so fully was he 
 occupied with his physical position and his 
 material needs that he was able to give but 
 little thought to the moral or spiritual side 
 of things. Hence that side of his mind got 
 but little chance. 
 
 As the followers of Darwin tell us, the law of 
 the merely physical side of nature is one of 
 " ruthless self-assertion," of the " thrusting aside 
 or treading down all competitors," so that "her 
 darling the strongest" may survive. How, and 
 to what extent, that law prevailed, and still 
 prevails, we have evidence in all history and 
 on every side. Nevertheless, in course of time, 
 and at an early period of his development, 
 another law began to make itself felt ; it was 
 the law of his higher nature, of that part of his 
 mental organisation which relates him to the less 
 physical aspect of things, to that which appeals 
 to him in the form of thought and emotion 
 merely, which we designate ethic and esthetic, 
 and which connect him by slender filaments of
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 183 
 
 sensation with the remotest depths of space, 
 star-haunted and order-motioned. 
 
 At first these cerebral gangHons responded but 
 dimly to the higher impulse. They were but 
 small of growth, choked by the sturdier profu- 
 sion and clamant activity of the baser elements 
 of mind. Howbeit, dimly throbbing within him, 
 occasionally breaking out in wild and vehement 
 protest, these same faculties gradually began to 
 tell as a power. Still it was long before they 
 became anything like an ordered power. They 
 remained subsidiary to and largely overwhelmed 
 by the more physical members of the mental 
 council. While these were trained, educated, 
 disciplined almost to their fullest capacity, the 
 complementary powers — those that fill out the 
 complete man — were either wholly starved or fed 
 on the crudest superstitions. 
 
 This was unavoidable when the natural state 
 of man was one of war — when war grew out of 
 and fed the faculty that loved it. Indeed, it 
 may be said that only when broad swathes of 
 peace were possible did man begin to cultivate 
 the higher side of his nature ; or, we might say, 
 when it became the business of a section of the 
 community only to do the fighting, leaving to 
 others those avocations of peace which favour 
 the speedier and more generous growth of the 
 ethic and esthetic feelings. And in proportion
 
 184 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 as peace has become the more general condition 
 of society has that higher and better nature 
 grown, and with it, of course, the law that checks 
 the principle of selection in its more purely 
 physical aspect. 
 
 The truth is therefore that in man there are 
 two opposing principles at work, just as in the 
 cosmos we meet with the centripetal and centri- 
 fugal forces. One is the law of physical selec- 
 tion, the other the law of moral perfection. The 
 latter is a principle which grows out of the 
 former, and is related to it, inasmuch as it is 
 based on a physical condition. But united 
 though it thus be in its physical base, its purpose 
 is to counteract the rigour of the physical law, 
 and so to perfect the lower animal man by the 
 superaddition of a moral and spiritual beauty. 
 Or, as we have it put by Professor Huxley : 
 " Social progress means a checking of the cosmic 
 process at every step and the substitution for it 
 of another, which may be called the ethical 
 process ; the end of which is not the survival 
 of those who happen to be the fittest, in respect 
 of all the conditions which obtain, but of those 
 who are ethically the best." ^ 
 
 " The practice of that which is ethically best 
 (the same writer goes on to say) — what we call 
 goodness or virtue — involves a course of conduct 
 
 1" Evolution and Ethics," p. 81.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labo^ir. 185 
 
 which, in all respects, is opposed to that which 
 leads to success in the cosmic struggle for exist- 
 ence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it de- 
 mands restraint ; in place of thrusting aside, or 
 treading down all competitors, it requires that 
 the individual shall not merely respect, but shall 
 help, his fellows ; its influence is directed, not so 
 much to the survival of the fittest as to the 
 fitting of as many as possible to survive. It 
 demands that each man that enters the enjoy- 
 ment of the advantages of a polity shall be 
 mindful of his debt to those who have labori- 
 ously constructed it ; and shall take heed that 
 no act of his weakens the fabric in which he has 
 been permitted to live."^ 
 
 This is a noble use of science, and one which 
 the capitalist may well take into consideration. 
 
 As in the past the narrow theories of political 
 economy were seized hold of the more completely 
 to subjugate the worker, so now the doctrine of 
 the survival of the fittest has become a favourite 
 weapon in the hands of the Mammonites. If the 
 reformer points to the wide-spread misery exist- 
 ing at the base of society ; if he points to the 
 unequal distribution of wealth, to the laws which 
 favour capital as against labour, to the "cut-throat" 
 competition which sinks to the verge of starva- 
 tion more than a third of the population of our 
 
 ^ " Evolution and Ethics," p. 82.
 
 1 86 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 large cities, what is the answer we get from the 
 capitaHst ? When some humane person, driven 
 almost to despair of his kind by the suffering 
 and deprivation he sees everywhere amongst the 
 workers, what says the dry-as-dust scribbler on 
 political economy ? He points to Darwin and 
 the survival of the fittest. 
 
 Those who gravitate to the base of society, he 
 argues, are the weakest, the unfittest to survive, 
 and must therefore go to the wall. According to 
 his way of looking at the doctrine, universal com- 
 petition is the primal order of nature, and cannot 
 be done away with ; and hence any commisera- 
 tion for those who suffer from it is a waste of 
 energy. But this same individual, capitalist or 
 capitalist supporter, will be the first to advocate 
 laws that bar the operation of the law of com- 
 petition, that protect classes and interests from 
 its full effects, and so cause it to tell with greater 
 force and vehemence ao^ainst those not so de- 
 fended. 
 
 If the land and those who hold it, and assume 
 a special and peculiar status because they so 
 hold it — if these were not protected by a double 
 vallum of privilege from the effects of free com- 
 petition, how many generations would it take to 
 sweep them completely from the field ? Hardly 
 three, one opines. And do we not see the same 
 barriers in force against the full influence of the
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 187 
 
 law of survival in the continued existence of 
 institutions that are no longer in keeping with 
 the spirit of the age, and that, cumbering the 
 soil, prevent the upgrowth and spread of better 
 things ? Yet the class of people who are thus 
 protected from the law of competition — and who, 
 it will be found, are the slowest to come under 
 the influence of the law of ethical perfection — 
 these are the first to point at the social detritus 
 of the towns and villages as a residuum unfit for 
 anything except to serve them and minister to 
 their baser wants. 
 
 However, we are coming slowly and by 
 degrees to a broader and deeper biology, to a 
 truer psychology, to a nobler science of social 
 economics ; and the more surely we advance in 
 these departments of knowledge, the more cer- 
 tainly shall we, ere long, find the only secure 
 basis of a true humanity in the recognition 
 of that "covenant" which, as above shown, 
 is implanted in the " fiesh for an everlasting 
 covenant."
 
 PT-TAPT'TrP VTTI " ^^ people are destroyed 
 
 L. H A ri li K Alii p^. i^^j, gj knowledge:' 
 
 The world is afraid of this new idea, this new 
 demand, which has taken hold of the peoples. 
 Those who have grown up under the old regime — 
 the regime of class prejudice and class distinctions 
 — are afraid of it because they see in it the death- 
 blow to their pretensions and to their obsolescent 
 social tyranny. They are afraid of it, and they 
 meet it with the frightened man's weapons, with 
 the weak man's arguments. They cannot be just 
 to it. But they might as well. The new thing has 
 come to abide with us, and has in consequence to 
 be reckoned with. For better or for worse the 
 new movement is revolutionising the world. 
 Everywhere you turn your eyes it is to be seen 
 at work. It seems to creep slowly, to have many 
 repulses, to suffer many sets back ; but it still 
 flows on with sure and inevitable sweep. Nothing 
 can stop it. Count the strongholds it has taken 
 since it began to be clamorous after the first har- 
 rowing shock of the French Revolution was over. 
 Look at those it is now assailing. They 
 appear formidable enough ; they seem indeed 
 
 i8S
 
 The Ma7'tyrdoin of Labour. 189 
 
 impregnable. But the ever-lapping and ever- 
 licking water will in the end undermine any 
 structure, however strongly it may be built. 
 And the workers — "the people," as we com- 
 monly describe them — are like the waves of the 
 sea for multitude, and for the persistency of their 
 thought, and thought breeds effort. Before their 
 steady and unceasing onslaught, these appar- 
 ently impregnable fortresses of belated custom 
 and age-crusted wrong will crumble to pieces, 
 as others have done bit by bit, until nothing is 
 left but a memory. Yes, this will be, let the 
 people of privilege and class distinction gird and 
 rail as they will, and call upon all the gods, but 
 especially that of their first and chiefest worship, 
 Mammon. 
 
 For, naturally, to them this new thing appears 
 ungodly. Yet — notwithstanding many ugly fea- 
 tures — it is working in God's way. It is putting 
 down the mighty and exalting the humble and 
 the weak ; and we may with assurance predict 
 that it will continue to do so, provided the workers 
 be wise and diligent in the use of the weapon 
 that is now in their good right hands. 
 
 That weapon is not the martial one. The 
 victory they seek is not to be won by the 
 physical arm. No, good people, your salvation 
 does not lie in the way of murder. There has 
 been enough of that in the world — enough and to
 
 190 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 spare. Moreover, there is no remedy in it. The 
 conquest won by the iron hand is held by the 
 iron hoof, and is of the brute, brutal. That is its 
 law : and it remains such so long as continuance 
 roots it in the mind. But the conquest you seek 
 is one based on a created frame of mind, on a 
 seed sown and developed in the hearts and brains 
 of men — the sentiment of justice, the feeling of 
 brotherhood. 
 
 Man's mental constitution is as wide and as 
 carefully fitted to his position and surroundings 
 as his physical organisation ; but so long has 
 he been turned from his true course, from his 
 natural life, by a partial and one-sided organisa- 
 tion of society, that the balance of the mental 
 council has become warped and dwarfed. With 
 one section of society the care for daily bread 
 has become so excessive that it tyrannises over 
 and in the end wellnigh kills other needs. How 
 can such a one take thought of the draughts 
 of beauty that are as necessary for his complete 
 well-being as bread ? How can such a one look 
 freely and gladly up to heaven when his gaze is 
 kept riveted so fast to the earth, whence his 
 miserable sustenance comes } 
 
 And are the other sections of society any more 
 truly furnished as regards their minds ? With 
 how many is the whole time, from youth to age, 
 spent in devising means or carrying out plans for
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 191 
 
 the continued subjection of the toiling masses ? 
 Their aim is not justice ; it is not the happiness 
 of others ; it is not to find and follow any divine 
 intent in the world ; it is to make life as pleasant 
 as they can for themselves, no matter what the 
 cost may be to others. Can the mental council 
 in these men grow to what it should be ? They 
 are in truth as much starved in soul, though in 
 another way, as their more unfortunate brethren. 
 
 The great thing for the workers to bear in 
 mind is that they will make headway in their con- 
 quest in proportion as they fill up and strengthen 
 this mental council — in proportion as they make 
 themselves the fuller and the truer men. 
 
 Let your laurels, therefore, O workers, be 
 sullied by no sword work ! Leave dynamite to 
 the blind and ferocious, and all such chemical 
 weapons and bloodshed to those who would 
 degrade themselves to the level of murder. 
 Your empire must be founded on a plane above 
 all that ; and there is an alchemy to your hands 
 more potent and far surer than all those lethal 
 instrumentalities and abominations. Call it the 
 philosopher's stone if you will ; for though it will 
 not transmute dross into gold, it will do what is 
 better and nobler. It will convert chaos into 
 order, poverty into riches, misery into beauty and 
 content, evil into good. 
 
 That alchemy lies in education. Yes. O
 
 192 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 millions ! million-handed to work, million-headed 
 to think ! the task for you is to educate your- 
 selves. You do not need the education of book- 
 worms, nor the education that will make you 
 clever instruments merely. That obtain and use 
 if need be. But what you chiefly require is the 
 larger education that differentiates a mob from a 
 body-politic, a mass of particles from a concrete 
 organism. That for one thing : but over and 
 above all, you need to bear constantly in view 
 the difference between a system of cramming 
 that sterilises and stereotypes the mind, and a 
 system whereby the mind is fed and so encour- 
 aged to fuller growth and development. Do not 
 educate yourself, or allow your children to be 
 educated, In a rut, like the parson ; but remember 
 that you are the "heirs of all the ages," entitled 
 to your share of their wealth of knowledge, and 
 the power that comes of it — a wealth that is at 
 the command of most through the public libraries 
 — and in the cheap editions of books, many of 
 them, be it remembered, to be had at the price of 
 a day's beer or a week's supply of tobacco. 
 
 Do not be satisfied with the novels with which 
 the public libraries are so deluged. You will get 
 more intellectual litter than true literature in 
 them. A few there be that are good, but for 
 the most part they are such as will prove 
 emotional Delilahs to rob you of mental grit and
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 193 
 
 vigour. They may be good for the idle, but not 
 for you. Touch them, therefore, but rarely, and 
 then only the best. What you need are the real 
 things in books — the things that reveal to you 
 what the world is, what man is and has been. 
 These are the Scriptures that really open men's 
 eyes and introduce them to the magnificent in- 
 heritance which is theirs, ready for the taking, 
 ready for the enjoying, a feast that has been 
 preparing for them, under the hand of the 
 Master, by the masters, from old time. 
 
 In short, what you need to acquire, O workers! 
 is the education that gives you the power to 
 think, to originate, the talent to discriminate the 
 true from the false, and, in addition thereto, the 
 ability to organise yourselves, so as to be, or to 
 produce, your own leaders and spokesmen, with 
 the gifts of statesmen and diplomatists. You 
 need too to educate and train your own teachers. 
 Did it never occur to you that, by the present 
 system of education, the men who are trained to 
 be your teachers and guides — especially your 
 guides spiritual — invariably end by being against 
 you ? Send a working man's son to one of the 
 leading universities, and, though he may go with 
 large-minded sympathies for his class, he will in 
 nine cases out of ten be weakened down, narrowed 
 in heart and brain, by the glamour of wealth and 
 fashion, by the prevailing cynicism., which dis-
 
 194 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 counts enthusiasm, and by the traditions of 
 erudition as against practical life and experience. 
 You, as workers, need teachers and professors of 
 your own, that is, on the subjects that specially 
 affect your position and welfare, trained in your 
 own university — that of the world is the best. 
 It would, indeed, pay you to have specialists 
 in different departments travelling and collecting 
 information on subjects connected with labour, 
 and giving the results in lectures and in the 
 public press. 
 
 Only in some such way will you make your 
 cause good. You have fought in the past for 
 freedom and the rights of labour ; but you have 
 too often been deceived by others. You trusted 
 them because of their superior knowledge, and 
 they deceived you for their own ends. They led 
 you to believe that your cause was their cause ; 
 but in truth your cause was only their cause so 
 long as it gave them strength to gain what they 
 wanted themselves. That secured, what did they 
 care for you } 
 
 You thought that a man with a glib tongue, a 
 good coat, and money in his pocket could not fail 
 to be as good as his word, and that your interests 
 were safe in his hands. And though you have 
 been hoodwinked and deceived again and again, 
 you are hardly yet convinced of the truth that 
 if you want your work done well you must do
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 195 
 
 it yourselves. It is not enough to say you want 
 this and that done, and then leave it for some 
 one else to do in his own way, at his own time, 
 and with just as much watering down as will 
 best serve his own ends. You must not only 
 know precisely what you would have, but you 
 must study in how far and by what means it is 
 procurable. Nor is that all, for you must also 
 inquire whether it can be had without injustice 
 to others. 
 
 In order to do all this, and to do it properly, 
 the worker needs to be well abreast of all the 
 science and even of the higher criticism of the 
 time. What more needful, therefore, than that 
 he should be sure of his guides } For if they are 
 not with him, they are against him. There is a 
 vast deal of so-called history and science, not to 
 mention theology, that is no better than so much 
 cobwebbery, spun by fat spiders in the pay of 
 Mammon, with intent to deceive. They would 
 put you off on a wrong scent, delude you with 
 empty theories and false ideals. When their 
 facts are weak or non est, they will try to dazzle 
 and cajole you with a splendid jugglery of words. 
 
 Especially should the worker have his eye on 
 political economy. In the past it has done him 
 great disservice : the early part of the century 
 saw it help to rivet upon him the bonds of an 
 industrial serfdom. No wonder, then, if in his
 
 196 The Martyrdoin of Labour. 
 
 eyes it has become suspect. But not for that 
 reason should he ignore it. In the hands of men 
 like Adam Smith, its first great exponent, it was 
 the means of doing much good, opening the eyes 
 of the nations to many follies. Unfortunately 
 others, following in his wake, spoke and wrote as 
 though this science, " still almost in its infancy," ^ 
 were an assured gospel, beyond all doubt or ques- 
 tion ; and by treating " labour as a commodity 
 without staying to throw themselves into the 
 point of view of the workman ; and without 
 dwelling upon the allowances for his human 
 passions, his instincts and habits, his sympathies 
 and antipathies, his class jealousies and class 
 adhesiveness," ^ did a vast deal of harm. 
 
 The day of this sort of thing, however, has 
 long gone by, never to return. To John Stuart 
 Mill is given the credit of having humanised 
 political economy. His noble lead has been 
 followed by others, with the result, as Professor 
 Marshall remarks,^ that "the human as distin- 
 guished from the mechanical element is taking a 
 more and more prominent place in economics." 
 Wealth is still the main object about which the 
 science turns, but the general well-being is not 
 overlooked. It is no longer possible to barter 
 and bargain away the human soul, with all its 
 
 1 Professor Marshall in " Principles of Economics." 
 
 2 Ibid. 3 /^/^.^ p. 66.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 197 
 
 infinite yearnings, like so much coal or so many 
 sacks of wheat — so much as it requires to stoke 
 and stable the worker and his family for a week, 
 to so much is he entitled for the work that can 
 be got out of him, and no more. 
 
 It will be seen how far the science of economics 
 has travelled since that was the accepted doctrine 
 if we turn to one of our leading- economist's esti- 
 mate of what are the necessaries for the efficiency 
 of an ordinary agricultural or of an unskilled 
 labourer and his family, in England, in this 
 generation. " They may be said to consist," 
 says Professor Marshall, "of a well-drained dwell- 
 ing with several rooms, warm clothing, with some 
 changes of underclothing, pure water, a plentiful 
 supply of cereal food, with a moderate allowance 
 of meat and milk, and a little tea, etc., some edu- 
 cation and some recreation, and lastly, sufficient 
 freedom for his wife from other work to enable 
 her to perform her maternal and her household 
 duties," The writer adds that, " If in any district 
 unskilled labour is deprived of any of these things, 
 its efficiency will suffer in the same way as that of 
 a horse that is not properly tended, or a steam- 
 engine that has an inadequate supply of coals." 
 
 It will be said that this is but the expression 
 of a pious opinion, very far from the disgraceful 
 conditions obtaining ; but the fact remains that it 
 is the recorded opinion of a recognised authority,
 
 198 The Martyrdo7n of Labour. 
 
 whose views are accepted and taught in our 
 highest institutions of learning, and must gradu- 
 ally come to be the received doctrine in regard 
 to the matter in question. 
 
 The workers will do well, therefore, not to 
 neglect the study of political economy, or social 
 economics, as it is coming more properly to be 
 called. But do not, you whom it so largely con- 
 cerns — do not be deluded by it into false courses. 
 Appraise the facts for yourselves, and never go a 
 jot beyond the point whereto they lead. Directly 
 you are launched from the facts on to a theory, 
 rein up. A wise man never travels far on the 
 back of a theory. Remember the treatises on 
 political economy are mostly written by men who, 
 though not exactly in the pay of the classes, are 
 very largely in sympathy with them and their 
 ideals. Hence they are suspect. For how can 
 the man who is hand and Move with the rich 
 avoid letting his little ass of theory trot by the 
 side of the patron's carriage. He may be never 
 so honest, never so disinterested, but the load- 
 stone of class — small though it may appear — will 
 tell. We all know how large a deviation from a 
 straight course an infinitesimally slight cant in a 
 wheel will occasion. 
 
 How inevitably the bias makes itself felt is 
 shown in the fact remarked by Kidd,^ that "in 
 
 1 " Social Evolution," p. 251.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 199 
 
 England during the nineteenth century the 
 educated classes, in almost all the great politi- 
 cal changes that have been effected, have taken 
 the side of the party afterwards admitted to have 
 been in the wrong, — they have almost invariably 
 opposed at the time the measures they have 
 subsequently come to defend and justify." 
 
 This circumstance is the more striking when 
 it is considered how much political economy was 
 invoked on their side, and how, up even to our 
 own time, the worker was regarded as nothing 
 but a wealth-producer, a commodity — a little 
 more than your ass, a little less than your horse. 
 At its dictates he was ousted from the soil — to 
 make way for large farms, north of the Tweed 
 to give place to sheep, to make room for deer. 
 It was not political economy that first raised its 
 voice against the degradation of women in mines, 
 against the enslavement of children in factories, 
 against their demoralisation in brick-fields, in 
 canal boats, in agricultural gangs ; and to-day it 
 is in favour of the continued employment of the 
 young as half-timers ; that is, it advocates the 
 putting of the young to work before they are 
 fully instructed as they should be — and this for 
 fear lest some other country should be able to 
 sell something cheaper than we can. 
 
 A true science of social economy will regard 
 the healthy, happy, and contented worker as a
 
 200 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 country's chief wealth, and an idle, luxurious 
 class as its greatest evil, because it makes for 
 disunity and therefore for weakness. The ideal 
 of the true worker will ever be to make and keep 
 himself independent, that is, able to command a 
 sufficient livelihood without submitting to any 
 degrading conditions, and by that means to lay 
 by enough for a comfortable old age. 
 
 The ideal of the non-worker is the very oppo- 
 site of this. It is to draw the overplus of the 
 worker's earnings, or the result of his labour, 
 less the scanty deduction necessary for his keep, 
 into his own pocket, and so to hold the wealth- 
 producer in subjection. 
 
 The man, however, who has learned his true 
 place in nature, and to know his real value and 
 the exact measure of his power, cannot be so 
 degraded and enslaved, except with his know- 
 ledge and acquiescence. What we know as evil 
 all men have to suffer in one way or another : it 
 is part of the birthright which they must accept 
 along with the good ; but it is very largely a 
 man's own fault if he suffers more than a fair 
 share of that evil. 
 
 For what we know as evil is a necessary con- 
 comitant of the state in which man finds himself. 
 His life is bound up with that of a planet every 
 law of whose existence makes for change, makes 
 for possible decay, at the same time that it makes
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 201 
 
 also for possible advance. The very circum- 
 stance that there is no iron stability, no invari- 
 ableness of condition, is a factor working for 
 progress towards a higher perfection ; but it is 
 also a factor that makes the reverse equally 
 possible, namely, a descent towards a less perfect 
 condition, or, in other words, towards greater 
 evil. 
 
 The earth — to confine illustration to our fixed 
 abiding-place — is in a transition state. Science 
 shows it to have gradually developed from an 
 intricate mass of warring elements into a con- 
 dition in which life in its lower and more 
 rudimentary stages became possible. Then, 
 step by step, perfecter and more complicated 
 forms were evolved, working up through snake 
 and lizard to bird, through monkey and ape to 
 man, the latter in turn rising from lower to 
 higher, shaping and carving his upward way by 
 an age-long struggle against fang and tooth and 
 claw, sharpening his wits in the process, but 
 developing also an amount of energy and cunning 
 that made him in course of time the capsheaf of 
 created things. He cleared the earth of its 
 monsters, or did his share towards it, succeeding 
 more, of course, by his invincible courage and 
 his far-reaching intelligence than by strength 
 alone. Indeed, in the long war with the various 
 forms of beast — tooth and claw, insidious poison
 
 202 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 and cunning lair — there was nothing that he did 
 not make his own and, if need were, better the 
 instruction. 
 
 Thus, in his contest with the evil by which he 
 was surrounded — with savage material nature on 
 the one hand and the ravening beast on the other 
 — man developed so enormous an overplus of the 
 self-protecting faculties and domineering powers 
 that they in turn became an added evil. They 
 became even masterful over himself, obscuring 
 often, and warring against, his better nature, 
 causing him even to be devilish towards his 
 kind, his excess of uncontrollable desire a devil 
 even to himself — the worst devil we know. 
 
 Thus was it that the evil without made neces- 
 sary an evil within ; and so it came about that 
 man was surrounded and encompassed with evil 
 — encompassed within and without. Neverthe- 
 less, deprived of this condition of evil — evil in 
 cold and hunger and in lurking death, evil in his 
 own enormous propensity to build up and protect 
 himself, even at the expense of others — man 
 could not have grown to what he is. He would 
 have remained stagnant in some lower form of 
 being, even if he had not long since been entirely 
 gulped up and obliterated by some larger mouth. 
 
 Thus out of the evil conditions of nature come 
 good, come growth to higher forms, to better 
 things. For though the evil is ever present,
 
 The Martyrdo7n of Labour. 203 
 
 ever powerful, ever dragging down, as it were, 
 from angel to beast, yet stronger than that 
 downward path, more vital than the ever-present 
 inertia of the brute, is the deep underlying and 
 unconquerable love of conquest, which is perhaps 
 the most distinguishing characteristic of mortal 
 man. It is deeper than love, more undying 
 than hate. 
 
 Hence, though this overplus of evil, this ten- 
 dency to revert to the lower types through which 
 man has passed in his upward way, this constant 
 temptation to evade the law of remuneration — 
 of the lesser for the greater good — this ever- 
 present alluring of the lower insidious forms 
 of propensity and passion, is for ever at work 
 checking the advance ; yet along with it for ever 
 goes the consciousness that the descent is a 
 failure, and the passion that will not be content 
 with defeat. 
 
 And so the battle goes on — the warfare 
 betwixt the good that incites and the evil that 
 tempts — between devil on the one side and angel 
 on the other, both throned in one being, and 
 warring ever the one against the other. 
 
 The trend — notwithstanding the weight and 
 vigour of the evil — is, nevertheless, for ever 
 upward. When that stops and life, as it were, 
 stands still, then the end will not be far distant. 
 Sometimes the march seems backward, or at
 
 204 '^^^ Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 least not forward. Perhaps It is but a halt for 
 bearings, to dress, as it were, for a fresh start. 
 Anyhow, ere long, another advance is seen. 
 Another stronghold of evil — or of the devil, as 
 we prefer to put it in the concrete — is won, 
 and the basis of humane life broadened and 
 cleansed. 
 
 What is it that decides the balance, that gives 
 the upward lift, the leaning on the whole towards 
 steady onward progression ? For that has been 
 the slow but sure tendency through the ages. 
 When evil was enormously preponderant, when all 
 the conditions were of the brute brutal, there was 
 still in the midst of the tangle a something that 
 wrought for the upward march, as though there 
 were an invisible spiral that must be followed ; 
 and along this way, despite many a stay in the 
 course and many a backward roll, the march of 
 humanity ceaselessly jogged. 
 
 Has that marvellous impulse all been from 
 within } Or does it owe something to influences 
 from beyond the earthly sphere ^ Is it unreason- 
 able to suspect a something beating upon human 
 consciousness from the illimitable regions of 
 ether-filled space, some larger air, some purer 
 breath, that, borne like sunlight, like heat, like 
 electrical disturbance, upon the ever-throbbing 
 waves of that immeasurable sea, is able to act 
 upon the supersensuous margin of consciousness
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 205 
 
 which we call soul, and spur it to still higher and 
 purer efforts of living ? 
 
 The scientist is apt to say no. But science 
 should be humble, and wait for evidence where 
 none has been vouchsafed it. We know that 
 light, heat, electricity come to us from extra- 
 terrestrial sources : may there not be similar 
 founts of intellectual or spiritual stimulus ? The 
 entire limitless universe is bound together by 
 chains of interdependence, the one part feeding 
 and sustaining the other by all manner of subtle 
 and undefinable influences ; and wherefore not by 
 such as we name spiritual ? One thing is certain : 
 the man who assiduously prepares himself for the 
 reception finds himself reinforced, according to 
 his need, by spiritual strength ; and it is educa- 
 tion in that strength which the masses require 
 to-day more than almost anything else. That, 
 and to cure themselves of "that strange abnor- 
 mality," as a thoughtful writer puts it,^ " that 
 extraordinary and vital defect in their — i.e. the 
 English — character, the absence of the emotional, 
 of the imaginative, and of the love of the beauti- 
 ful, and which amounts, in fact, to nothing less 
 than the divorce of soul from our national life." 
 
 These things they would do well to bear con- 
 stantly in mind in educating themselves for the 
 contest that is before them ; remembering what 
 
 1 J. G. Speed in "The Education of Man."
 
 2o6 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 Wordsworth once wrote to a people fighting a 
 lonely fight for emancipation : — 
 
 "Thou hast at thy side 
 Powers that will work for thee : earth, air, and skies ; 
 There's not a breathing of the common wind 
 That will forget thee : Thou hast great allies. 
 Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 
 And love, and man's unconquerable mind." 
 
 Ay, and he might have added death, and 
 moon and stars, and the broad illimitable ether, 
 that, as it conveys light to the eye, and warmth 
 and vigour to the blood, brings also, with that 
 larger knowledge of the divinely-ordered whole, 
 which acts as an impulse and an inspiration to- 
 wards its higher perfections, fructifying measures 
 of strength and endurance to the soul that cannot 
 and will not be satisfied with mere earthly food 
 and mortal and temporal gratifications.
 
 CHAPTER XIV ''Blessed is themanwho 
 
 hath his qmver full ! " 
 
 There is still another respect in which the 
 workers need to educate themselves, and to 
 educate their children. They need to train 
 themselves to the exercise of wisdom in reeard 
 to their sexual instincts. The toiler is in this 
 respect too much like the brute beasts, following 
 a blind impulse only. He is too apt to think of 
 nothing but the gratification of his lust, giving 
 little or no thought to the offspring that must 
 come, that will have to be fed, clothed, and 
 otherwise cared for. When they do come there 
 is nothing to show that the worker is less affec- 
 tionate to them than his superiors in the golden 
 scale. But since they depend so much for their 
 maintenance and right training upon his earnings, 
 he ought to practice more restraint. 
 
 The census of 1891 presents us with some 
 appalling object-lessons touching this question. 
 We gather therefrom the astonishing fact that in 
 our midst there then existed some 28,000 wives 
 and 169 widows, all aged fifteen, and all of the 
 poorest class. Can we doubt, with such facts 
 
 staring us in the face, that the present evil state 
 
 207
 
 2o8 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 of things does not come altogether from Dives, 
 but is largely the fault of Lazarus himself. The 
 former personage has quite enough sins of his 
 own to answer for ; it would be hard indeed if 
 he were in addition to be made responsible for 
 the miseries that are purely self-inflicted by 
 Lazarus himself. Lazarus errs through ignor- 
 ance, perhaps ; but none the less true is it that 
 he overstocks the labour market, and himself 
 largely discounts his chance of better ways and 
 a worthier outlook by his inability or his un- 
 willingness to be guided by what he sees around 
 him, and to take his thoughts a few years ahead. 
 If, too, it be cruel to flood the world with a 
 pauper, or well-nigh pauper progeny, it is doubly 
 cruel when that progeny comes of immature 
 parents, because such progeny cannot be en- 
 dowed with the requisite physical and moral 
 stamina wherewith to fight the battle of life. 
 The evil comes very largely from the imperfect 
 education which, with all the money spent upon 
 it, is still given to the young, and from the haste 
 wherewith they are forced, at an immature age, 
 into factories and workshops. Something of the 
 evil is due also to the belated teaching of the 
 church that " children and the fruit of the womb 
 are of the Lord." That may have been the 
 case in patriarchal times, when the earth was 
 still "the Lord's and the fulness thereof"; but
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 209 
 
 in these days, when the " Lord " has been ousted 
 by the " landlord," the dictum wants re-editing. 
 
 It is a jibe often thrown into the teeth of the 
 giant Demos that he knows no restraint, that he 
 begets families far beyond his power to maintain 
 and keep in decent housing and apparel. That 
 he does so is as much the fault of his betters, who 
 were ever eager for sword-food, as his own. Yet, 
 though the accusation is but too true, the fact 
 attests his virtue as well as his improvidence. 
 He unfortunately too often marries early because 
 he is taught to confine his lusts within the mar- 
 riage vow. He is not always chaste, but, man 
 for man, there will be found more honesty and 
 fidelity in this respect among the workers than 
 amongst their so-called betters. For one thing 
 it happens to be so because a young fellow of 
 the humbler classes remains as a rule under the 
 paternal roof, and so under paternal influence, 
 until he weds. It is very different with the 
 young male of the wealthy classes, amongst whom 
 there is a social convention by which it is tacitly 
 understood and agreed that it is better for young 
 men to have a little latitude allowed them to sow 
 their "wild oats," than that they should marry 
 too early, or too poor. The thing is universally 
 understood, and very generally winked at by the 
 easy-going classes. 
 
 There is another very potent reason for the 
 
 o
 
 2 10 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 large families of the toiling poor. It is a grim 
 but none the less a very saddening one. A Nor- 
 folk woman, the wife of an agricultural labourer, 
 and the mother of nine children, made confession 
 of the fact. She had been complaining of the 
 number of mouths there were to fill and backs to 
 clothe, and the little wherewithal to do either. 
 "Yes," said her lady visitor, "but you know 
 where they come from ? Why do you have so 
 many ? " " Well, you see, ma'am, there is so 
 little pleasure or comfort in life, and on winter 
 nights we's often neither light nor fire, and so 
 must needs go to bed to keep us warm — an' I 
 s'ppose that's how 'tis." What a philosophy is 
 there! "So little pleasure or comfort in life, 
 ma'am — an' that's how 'tis ! " 
 
 As regards avoiding too early marriages, the 
 democracy would do well to take a lesson from 
 those above them, not, however, in the way of 
 "wild oats." Here is where they will have to 
 apply the first-fruits of their newly-acquired 
 wisdom. The overwhelming abundance of chil- 
 dren is inimical to their best interests. They will 
 have to make the mouths fewer ; and in order to 
 do so they have only to apply the principle to the 
 family which they have already learned to bring 
 to bear with such success in trade. They must 
 "reduce the output." The wisdom of that prin- 
 ciple of restraint is as apparent in the social as in
 
 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 2 1 1 
 
 the material world. Overstock the market and 
 you reduce prices. Extract too much coal, and 
 the wages of the miners must go down. Produce 
 children at the rate of eight or ten to the family, 
 and you overstock the market with hands. And 
 when there are three to do the work of one, the 
 capitalist can have labour practically at his own 
 price. If that price be a starvation one, it makes 
 no matter to him. A man qtcd man may have 
 bowels of compassion, but a man qzid capitalist 
 indulges in no such luxury. 
 
 The democracy, therefore, must put away the 
 notion that children are unqualified blessings. 
 They may be blessings — in moderation. But 
 the man who at this time of day asserts, or acts 
 on the belief, that a numerous progeny is a bless- 
 ing, especially to a poor man, deserves to be set 
 to picking oakum, or put into a strait waistcoat. 
 There is hardly a feebler doctrine afloat than that. 
 Moreover, it is not only feeble, it is little less than 
 criminal. It may be very pleasant to have little 
 ones about the house, to be cheered by their 
 charming ways, and to be cheated out of our 
 cares by their smiles, to be elevated by their 
 innocence ; but the man who cannot carry his 
 mind forward into the years when those innocent 
 prattlers will be pale-faced, hollow-eyed youths 
 and maidens, standing in the market-places of 
 the world, and bartering their lives for the price
 
 2 1 2 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 of semi-starvation at the hands of bowelless 
 capitaHsts, who heartlessly make capital out of 
 soul and sinew, is not worthy the name of father, 
 and does little honour to that of husband. 
 
 Moreover, do we not know that the children of 
 the worker are the most likely to be left orphans, 
 and destitute ? The blessing that was is then 
 apt to become a curse — to the children. For we 
 know also, despite our beautiful philosophies and 
 Christian theories, that the world does not look 
 upon destitute children as blessings. At least 
 one would not think so to see the life in our 
 streets and workhouses. 
 
 Look at what the administration of the poor- 
 law was for generations — and is to a large extent 
 yet — a disgrace to a civilised community ; and 
 in this system the young and innocent are in- 
 volved with the rest. The tests and terrors that 
 were formerly set up for the idle and vicious were 
 applied also to the young and to the victims of 
 social conditions that were too hard for them. 
 They were lumped without discrimination with 
 the residuum, the riff-raff, the half-imbecile, the 
 morally and physically disordered. Social con- 
 ditions and conditions of labour are such that a 
 large proportion of the working-classes must in- 
 evitably succumb — must be killed off before their 
 time or else become a burden on the rates. In 
 the former case the outcome is the happier for
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 2 1 3 
 
 the worker, but the outlook for his children is, or 
 was, a thing to make angels weep. Something 
 has been done of late years to amend this state 
 of things, but much still remains to be done. 
 
 Perhaps one day we may come to see that 
 those who have amassed large fortunes through 
 the exploitation of labour are specially indebted 
 to the community for the social failures they 
 have helped to make. When a community by 
 its industry, and by the wants thus created, gives 
 a value to land which would otherwise have 
 remained wilderness, that enhanced value does 
 not rightfully belong to the man who, though 
 nominally owning it, did nothing of himself to 
 raise it from Its wild state. Though he may 
 be entitled to some part of the increment, the 
 greater share thereof undoubtedly belongs to 
 those whose united industry and common needs 
 so greatly enhanced its value. Of late years 
 thinkers, and to some extent legislators, have 
 come more and more to recognise the justice 
 of this principle as applied to land. Why not, 
 therefore, as applied to the community ? 
 
 A man, whether as the nominal owner of the 
 land upon which a town is built, or as the pur- 
 veyor for the needs of the community, either 
 in the manufacturing or commercial capacity, 
 accumulates a large fortune, owes something of 
 that increase to the community, and especially
 
 2 14 ^^^ Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 to those individuals of it by whose industry its 
 acquisition has been made possible. In other 
 words, there is an unearned increment in fortunes 
 which does not of right belong wholly to the 
 holders, but, as one may say, to the community 
 by which its accumulation was made possible ; 
 for when capital reaches the stage of investment 
 its multiplication and reduplication depend on the 
 orderliness, activity, and productiveness of that 
 community. In the case of agricultural land the 
 owner is held bound to make allowance for the 
 unearned increment : why not in the case of the 
 community likewise ? 
 
 The health and strength of the united units 
 forming the community constitute its productive 
 force ; if, therefore, as in the case of bad agri- 
 culture, everything possible is taken out of it, and 
 nothing returned, the community suffers. Hence 
 the justness of the claim that the larger fortunes 
 should pay back something of their unearned 
 increase, and that the amount should be appro- 
 priated as a provision for the aged, the prema- 
 turely incapacitated, and the orphans of workers. 
 
 By such means the workers would receive 
 something of the residue of wage owing to 
 them which it was not possible to pay while 
 capital was working capital merely, but which 
 certainly can be afforded when it becomes in- 
 vestment, and is earning a further profit, from
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 2 1 5 
 
 no inherent virtue in itself, but simply because 
 of the needs and activity of the combined 
 members of the community. 
 
 A tacit acknowledo^ment of some such in- 
 debtedness of wealth as this has ever been in 
 evidence in most civilised countries in the 
 benefactions that have been made, and the 
 legacies left by prosperous men for purposes 
 useful to the community, such as the endow- 
 ment of schools for poor children, the erection 
 of alms-houses for the worn-out and aged, the 
 building of hospitals, libraries, and the like, 
 and the establishment of all sorts of institutions 
 for the good generally of the more needy and 
 deserving sections of society. In this way a 
 great deal of the wealth that has been taken 
 from the community, or accumulated through its 
 instrumentality, finds its way back to it, though 
 not by any means so much as ought, nor, 
 probably so much as formerly did in proportion 
 to wealth and population. 
 
 Perhaps the idea here set forth is not very 
 well expressed. Howbeit, it is one that may be 
 worth considering. Something more than his 
 weekly wage is undoubtedly due to the diligent 
 and orderly worker, who gives his labours to 
 the community as the civil servant gives his to 
 the State ; and some sort of pension, or provision 
 for old age, is as much due to the one when
 
 2i6 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 too old to work, as to the other when ready for 
 the enjoyment of a ripe old age. 
 
 This notion, however, is, by the way, and as 
 a hint to you, soldier of toil, how you may make 
 the study of political economy profitable. But 
 the main thing is, and ever must be, to learn 
 how to make the most of the powers and the 
 strength you have. You possess brains enough. 
 From your ranks have been produced men who 
 have done some of the best work for the coun- 
 try in whatever branch we may like to name. 
 You possess plenty of " go " when fairly well 
 fed, and can "remove mountains" if you will: 
 mountains of superincumbent and down-crushing 
 oppression. But be wise, be satisfied with two 
 or three children ; feed them well ; give them 
 all the science they can hold, girls and boys 
 alike ; set them the example of being pure and 
 righteous, and they shall go out and possess 
 the world ; not to live idly in it, and to trick 
 themselves out in glittering metals and shining 
 stones, but to be adorned with intelligence and 
 moral strength. 
 
 Your demand must be the right to live a 
 cleanly, honourable, and decent life. Let your 
 motto be, "less labour and more thought." If 
 you be resolute and keep a firm check on the 
 animal within, you will be able to get all you 
 want. But your resolutions will have to be of
 
 The Martyrdom of Laborer . 2 1 7 
 
 the most unflinching kind — of the kind that 
 will be ready to accept death rather than 
 slavery. 
 
 Accept no man's blankets, no man's soup. 
 Have naught to do with ladies who seek you out 
 and pat your babes on the cheek when there is 
 an election to the fore. Show them the door : 
 they are not honest. Your honest friends are 
 those who come every day. All these people 
 aim at doing is to play the Jacob with you, as 
 they have done in the past. Abhor the parson 
 who comes to inquire after your soul while your 
 body is ill-clad and your belly empty. Re- 
 member that the message of the nineteenth 
 century is, in the words of M. de Lavelaye : 
 "Thou shalt cease to be the slave of nobles and 
 despots who oppress thee." 
 
 Another thing, take warning of Cassius, and 
 do not put into your mouth that which steals 
 away your brains, and with them your manhood 
 and your independence. You surely learned in 
 your unfledged youth how hard it is to catch even 
 a little sparrow by putting salt on its tail, and yet 
 you — you who are of more value than a hundred 
 sparrows — allow yourselves to be taken by a 
 little salt on your tongues and in your wames — 
 by an extra pinch of salt in your glass of ale, 
 which makes you as bondslaves, and sends to 
 the House that for ever holds you from your
 
 2i8 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 
 
 rights the beer-lords who pocket the milh'ons 
 that would pay for your battles and render you 
 independent if stocking'd or put into labour and 
 industrial banks. 
 
 This is no teetotal lecture ; but the man who 
 cannot take and leave when he has had enough, 
 who, moreover, tamely allows a man to drug his 
 drink ^ in order that he may get the deeper into 
 his pocket, is not only an ill-educated, but a 
 spiritless lump of humanity. 
 
 Go after the substantial : you are in a material 
 world. Make what investments you like in a 
 possible future state ; but make sure first of a 
 solid foundation here. You cannot build securely 
 without that. The moral, the spiritual thrives 
 only upon a solid base. The strongest and most 
 towering natures, like the oak and the poplar, 
 grip the earth the firmest. Everything is built 
 on character — possibly even your place in what- 
 ever immortal state there may be ; and out of 
 material slavery, out of the semi-starvation that 
 keeps the physical fires low, there can be no 
 effectual growth of character. 
 
 Remember even the bishops do not place all 
 their investments in heaven. They favour the 
 three per cents, and the best railways. These, 
 they know, mean a substantial heaven here. It 
 
 ^ By the recent committee of inquiry into the adulteration of 
 foods it was reported that beer was scandalously over-salted.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 219 
 
 is a good lead to follow, that of the bishops — 
 in respect of earthly things, at any rate. 
 
 Have nothing to do with an organised religious 
 system which accepts as its leading principles 
 love to one another like that of brothers and 
 sisters, parent and child, the doing to others as 
 you would be done by, and that yet allows its 
 professors and teachers to see you and your 
 children sink into vice or starve, while they feed 
 on the best, dress in the warmest, and lay up 
 their treasures in this sordid realm of moths 
 and thieves. 
 
 Have a religion of your own — and let the 
 corner-stones of that spiritual temple be justice, 
 justice, justice, and still justice. Let the steps 
 to it, and the floor of it, consist of love one to 
 another ; and let the vault and towering dome 
 of it be love to God. Give heavenward windows 
 to faith and hope ; but leave charity outside. 
 There is something bastard and mean about that 
 reputed virtue. With justice and brotherly love 
 you do not need it. It has tended to degrade 
 men and has become suspect. Once it may have 
 been noble and fire-touched ; but in course of 
 time it has become whittled down and emascu- 
 late, till there is nothing more heroic about it 
 than the dropping of a penny in your hat — or it 
 may be a threepenny bit. 
 
 In short, it is in a true religious awakening
 
 220 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 that lies the answer to all these perturbing 
 questions that at present envelop the world 
 in a cloud of doubt and dismay. The signs of 
 it are already with us. They are seen in the 
 growing seriousness of the workers, in their 
 deepening earnestness. But this resurgent re- 
 ligion will be a different thing from what we 
 have seen in the past. It will not be a religion 
 divorced from all the practical wants and aims of 
 life — a thing that can only dole out smooth words 
 when miners' wives calmly resign themselves to 
 starve in their bare cottages rather than have 
 their husbands abandon a principle of right — 
 rather than they should accept defeat in a ques- 
 tion vital to their physical and moral well-being 
 and that of their children. 
 
 It is in such heroism as this, becoming more 
 and more manifest amongst the workers, that 
 the hope and even the promise for the future 
 lies. It is in such moral heroism, in such 
 examples of obedience to ideas of right, in the 
 intense desire that whatever comes the right will 
 prevail, and the firm conviction that in the end 
 the right — fought for aright — must and shall pre- 
 vail, that we find the master-key for the solution 
 of the problems that now weigh with the weight 
 of fate on the minds of all just and far-seeing 
 men. 
 
 Such a reawakening of practical religion — of
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 221 
 
 pity and humanity — working through the masses 
 as it is doing, and will do more and more, is 
 bound to conquer the world as surely as Chris- 
 tianity did. It is indeed the revitalising of 
 Christianity, and the application of it to the 
 needs of our everyday life, whether in the home 
 or in the workshop, in the court or in the mart. 
 It was destined to come sooner or later. With 
 the struggle for a loftier ideal of life it was sure to 
 leap into existence and mingle in the strife. The 
 flame will mount higher and higher, the light 
 burn brighter and keener. Nothing can stop it, 
 unless, indeed, by some means a wave of utter 
 degradation should overwhelm the world — which 
 seems humanly almost impossible. And so once 
 more the Church will become what it was in its 
 best days, not merely a place in which people are 
 preached at on Sundays, and where the poor are 
 shamed by the finery of the rich, but at once 
 school, inn, hospital, the common home.^ 
 
 1 I am indebted for this idea to Renan.
 
 CHAPTER XV ^^'^\\Tf!''^'^t'"i'> 
 
 and t/ie fulness thereof. 
 
 When the multitudes have fully reflected upon 
 their position, and have determined upon their 
 course, they will enrol themselves in companies 
 and regiments, and become soldiers, not soldiers 
 of the old murderous type, but soldiers for the 
 right and the truth, fighters for justice and 
 humanity. They will need much drill and a 
 great deal of careful discipline to fit them for the 
 campaigning they will have to do. But first and 
 chiefiy they will be required to submit to a re- 
 duction of their baggage and camp-following to 
 soldier-like proportions. As before said, the 
 fewer the children to harass them on the march 
 and to weaken their knees the better. For the 
 women must be soldiers too in this warfare — 
 true Amazons for the nonce, cutting off both 
 breasts, if need be. 
 
 When the multitudes have thus resolved to 
 enrol themselves and take up arms — the arms 
 of wisdom and might — then, and not till then, 
 will they begin to repossess the earth, and to 
 re-enter into their forfeited birthright. It is a 
 beautiful inheritance, and one well worth a little
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 223 
 
 discipline and restraint to enjoy. They are be- 
 ginning to see that, these masses ; but when they 
 are thoroughly awake they will see it more 
 clearly. They will then inquire how it happened 
 that they were so completely dispossessed of 
 their real inheritance, the land. They are only 
 partially conscious of the fact as yet ; but when 
 they are once thoroughly aroused they will see 
 that the country is very beautiful, and that it is 
 also very fruitful. It is the Almighty's garden, 
 upon which he exerts all his love and all his 
 might. In other realms of his nature he mani- 
 fests his power in other ways — in magnificent 
 displays of his handiwork, in destruction, or 
 apparent destruction, and renovation. But here, 
 in what we call the country, it is all production, 
 growth and multiplication, so careful is he for 
 the nourishment and delight of his creatures. 
 
 Put seed into the ground, and it will grow — 
 grow while you, O workers, are asleep — grow 
 even while you are sick and ill, while you are 
 tired and aweary, while you are sturdily fighting 
 the dragon of capital. It breeds like the rich 
 man's money. God breathes on the land and 
 it produces ; you, the masses, breathe on the rich 
 man's gold, and it doubles and trebles itself. 
 Between you and the Almighty, the classes — 
 doing nothing but think and contrive how best 
 still to keep you masses, burden-bearers — take
 
 2 24 ^^^'" M^artyrdom of Labour. 
 
 the whole of the world's produce, leaving you 
 just sufficient to keep )'0u as you are. burden- 
 bearers. 
 
 If you had your portion of the country where 
 God's good things grow, you could do without 
 the wealth that nian nia'kes — the wealth unjustly 
 gained from tlie sweat of your faces. Yes, in 
 the country all the most precious things grow ; 
 while the town is at best but a place of toil and 
 dissipation — a place where men gradually decay. 
 
 When the masses come to appreciate fully their 
 position in regard to the land, and the manner in 
 which they were dispossessed, the)" will be stag- 
 gered at the folly of their fathers in the past — at 
 their folly and the selfishness of others. The\' 
 will see how. by continued blindness on one 
 point, the people gradually became disinherited, 
 how. step by step, they were juggled out of their 
 joint-heirship in the land and its natural produce. 
 Froude tells us in his " History of Eni::land," 
 that " Land never was private property. . . . 
 Duty to the State was at all times supposed 
 to override private interest or inclination (vol. i. 
 p. ii). The restrictions, both on masters and 
 servants, were so severe as to prevent either 
 from taking advantage of the necessities of the 
 other, or from terminating through caprice or 
 levity, or for any insufficient reason, a connection 
 presumed to be permanent" (vol. i. p. 13).
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 225 
 
 Yet, because the State gradually came to be 
 represented by one class, and that class stood up 
 only for its own interests, and there being no 
 sovereign after Elizabeth capable of holding the 
 balance between the lower and the upper classes, 
 this wise principle of action was allowed to be 
 shelved, to the century-long disinheriting of the 
 commons of England, and to the unrighteous 
 enrichment of the power-holding class. Having 
 first, as we have shown, swallowed up the yeoman 
 class, they then set to work to despatch the poor 
 cottager. The process was very much the same 
 in the one case as the other. Knowing how 
 much the poor depended upon the commons, 
 and upon their bits of crofts and gardens, they 
 first got an Act of Parliament to enclose the 
 commons. They gave compensation at times. 
 Yes, they gave compensation ; but upon what 
 a scale ! Could, indeed, any compensation be 
 sufficient for the practical expropriation they 
 effected ? 
 
 This method of what are known as the " land- 
 owners " has always been the same. Whenever 
 they have seen a poor man in the enjoyment of 
 a bit of freehold, if it were only a cottage and as 
 much land as would contain its shadow, they 
 have played the Naboth over it ; and if it were 
 gettable by hook or by crook, it was presently 
 added to their possessions. In this respect their
 
 2 26 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 hunger made them merciless. Whenever it was 
 a question of taking from the poor, the aristocracy 
 have ever shown themselves destitute of compas- 
 sion — nay, destitute of the most elementary ideas 
 of justice ! They have never thought of the 
 poor man's comfort, of the poor man's pleasure, 
 of the poor man's right to manhood ; they have 
 thought only to gratify their own immense and 
 insatiable greed. Is not the story of it written 
 on every hillside, in every vale, in every stream .-^ 
 Jt is written also in the hearts of the people. 
 
 Take an instance. It was the writer's lot, as 
 a youth, to live in the house of a poor widow 
 tvith sons and daughters. Her husband had 
 been a working printer, and, being in regular 
 employment, and having besides the right of 
 pasturage on the town-commons land, was well 
 off. 
 
 "We sometimes had a cow on the common; 
 sometimes we had a couple of pigs — always half- 
 a-dozen geese and some poultry," said his widow. 
 " At the worst of times we had a goose to kill at 
 Martinmas, and one or two at Christmas. Then, 
 it was very rarely that we had not a flitch of 
 bacon or a ham hanging to the beam. But when 
 the lord of the manor enclosed the commons that 
 was all at an end. It seemed to make all the 
 difference to us between poverty and riches when 
 they were gone. After that we always seemed
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 227 
 
 to be in want and difficulties, and my husband 
 had to work so much harder that in the end it 
 killed him." 
 
 " But you got compensation," observed the 
 writer, remembering the beautiful homilies that 
 were in the school-books of the time about the 
 Rich and the Poor, Capital and Labour, the 
 beneficent providential arrangement of society 
 into toilers and idlers, and the like. Beautiful 
 homilies — beautiful lies ! 
 
 But the writer did not know they were such 
 then, and so thought he had answered the poor 
 widow. 
 
 "Yes," said she, "we had compensation, it is 
 true. But what was that '^ We should have 
 been better without it." 
 
 " How much did you get ? " 
 
 " Our share was twenty-five shillings ! " 
 
 The writer does not know who that particular 
 lord of the manor may have been, but there can 
 be no doubt as to what he was. He was a robber 
 of the poor ! The democracy, however, ought 
 to be thankful for one thing at least: he, with 
 many others, his brethren, showed them the way. 
 They got an Act of Parliament. The democracy 
 has a long memory, and will remember and profit 
 by that fact. 
 
 When the great landowners had reduced the 
 poor to absolute poverty by taking away the
 
 2 28 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 commons and every vestige of natural rights in 
 the land upon which they were born, and upon 
 which their fathers and forefathers had lived ere 
 they were — they then said : " Now, we shall 
 have to support these people by doles and poor- 
 rates if we allow them to stay here. Let us 
 drive them into the towns ; the townsfolk can 
 provide for them ; they are of their set, and so it 
 is their affair more than ours. We do not need 
 them ; we can turn our land into large farms, 
 which can be tilled by machinery, and so employ 
 as few people as possible. Then we and our 
 game can enjoy the country, and the tradesfolk 
 and the poor can have the towns." What they 
 thus decided upon they did, and they were 
 enabled to do it because they were of one mind. 
 
 But selfish people never see far beyond their 
 own pockets. Hence, in taking the course they 
 did towards the poor, the classes did not see 
 that from the starving people of the towns there 
 would arise a thought that would one day lead 
 to their own overthrow. You may root out — 
 kill — mutilate everything but a thought. While 
 all lived as it were together, part of one whole, 
 and sympathising one with another as mutually 
 fitting members of one body, then the poor, 
 seeing the aristocrat daily, even as they saw the 
 sun and moon and the stars, conceived that, like 
 them, he was a part of the order of nature. But
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 229 
 
 when, forcibly ejected from the country, they 
 came to herd in towns, and saw less and less of 
 these lords, they no longer regarded them as 
 part and parcel of that order, but the reverse. 
 They learned that, though they never saw these 
 so-called noblemen, and received nothing from 
 them, they yet had to pay a tax to them, and 
 that, because of that tax, they could not have 
 house-room enough for the healthy growth of 
 either body or soul. They found, in short, that 
 men were living under the anomaly that, whereas 
 a piece of land that would be worthless except 
 as a breeding-place for frogs, and had no value 
 beyond what was put into it by man's industry, 
 was yet taxed by a man who had done nothing 
 to enhance its value, and could not add one iota 
 thereto if he tried. In other words, this man 
 was allowed to tax other men's industry — to live 
 and thrive, and get enormously rich out of other 
 men's blood, and bone, and wit, — that, in short, 
 like the old-fashioned slave, every man must pay 
 to him first-fruits of all his labour. 
 
 Thus, with the only source of natural produc- 
 tion at his back, with money and other wealth at 
 his beck and call, the landholder became the 
 capitalist, while the worker, with no resource but 
 his strength and cunning, fell more and more 
 under the power of the monopolist, until he 
 began to organise and to act as the bundle of
 
 230 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 sticks in the fable by forming those trade-unions 
 which, in their " brilHant though chequered 
 career," have "been more full of interest and 
 instruction than almost anything else in English 
 history."^ 
 
 The capitalist tried hard to prevent this coa- 
 lescence and co-operation : he wanted still to be 
 able to deal with the worker stick by stick, and 
 so to be in the position at any time to break him 
 on his knee. And when he could not do that he 
 endeavoured to gain his end by appealing to the 
 worker's patriotism, or rather to rouse public pre- 
 judice by appealing to the patriotic instinct. 
 
 We see the same thing going on to-day. If a 
 section of workers strike for higher pay, shorter 
 hours, or any other advantage, we at once hear 
 the outcry — " Driving trade from the country." 
 Yet no single act or movement that can be named 
 has done more in the direction of diverting trade 
 from these shores than the action of the power- 
 holders in monopolising the land, unless it be the 
 short-sighted policy of the railway monopolists 
 in favouring the foreigner as against the home- 
 producer. 
 
 Not only have they been the means of putting 
 millions a year into the pockets of the foreigner 
 for produce that could as well have been grown 
 here, thereby giving work to tens of thousands of 
 
 " Principles of Economics," by Alfred Marshall.
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 231 
 
 labouring men and women, and at the same time 
 enriching the holders of the land, who are now so 
 shamelessly squealing — there is no fitter word for 
 it — about their depreciated rents and asking that 
 the people they formerly robbed should be taxed 
 for their support. Not only have they done this, 
 but they have deprived the State of a large 
 revenue which it would otherwise have enjoyed, 
 and to which it was justly entitled. What that 
 might have been may be gathered in part from 
 the fact, given by Mr Gladstone, that the annual 
 assessment of the land in France during the pre- 
 sent century has increased from ^40,000,000 to 
 ^140,000,000, solely as the result of the division 
 of the land into small holdings. 
 
 We see here and there the faint beginnings of 
 wisdom in regard to this expropriation of the 
 toilers from the land. Here and there we see 
 a larger-minded landowner inviting the worker to 
 return to the soil, and so to help increase the 
 wealth and happiness of the country. Earl Car- 
 rington's scheme in South Lincolnshire is an 
 instance in point. Under the direction of a small 
 syndicate 250 acres of land have been let in a hun- 
 dred holdings, and after three years' experience 
 the syndicate express themselves perfectly satis- 
 fied with the success of their venture, and their 
 readiness to extend operations. A new feature 
 was introduced during the past year by dividing
 
 232 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 up the grass land, the result being nine holdings 
 on the farm of pasture land. 
 
 By this reasonable arrangement labouring men 
 are enabled to secure enough land to make it 
 worth their while to devote themselves to culti- 
 vation, and at the same time to keep a cow. 
 
 This is only one of the numberless efforts that 
 have of late years been made to give the labourer 
 some sort of grip upon the land. Parliament has 
 repeatedly taken the subject up, but for the most 
 part in a half-hearted, ineffectual way. Since the 
 earliest Allotment Act in 18 15 until the latest 
 in 1890, there has been a steady growth in the 
 number of these patchment holdings, the increase 
 between 1873 and 1890 being upwards of 200,000 
 allotments. The clause in the Parish Councils' 
 Act relating to allotments has greatly aided the 
 movement ; and the Small Holdings' Bill of Mr 
 Jesse Collings is a further step in the same direc- 
 tion, doing on a small scale for England what the 
 Ashbourne Act had already done for Ireland. 
 
 But when all is said and done, the result is a 
 miserable one, and says little for British states- 
 manship. To look at the treatment this subject 
 has received at the hands of legislators during the 
 last thirty years, one would think them all small 
 farmers with parish minds and hearts no bigger 
 than the small change in their pockets. There 
 is everywhere visible the fear lest the labourer
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 233 
 
 should, by being able to do anything for him- 
 self, develop a spark of independence ; and so 
 the amount of allotment allowed him is of the 
 meagrest description, and it is burdened with 
 every possible drawback. 
 
 Anyone who has gone much about the country 
 will have been struck with the patchwork-like 
 enclosures here and there on the outskirts of 
 villages, and generally not much larger than an 
 old-fashioned quilt. Not unfrequently they will 
 be found to be fully a mile from the labourers' 
 homes, and instances occur where they are con- 
 siderably more than that. In many cases that 
 have come under the writer's own notice, the 
 worst land in the parish has been chosen for 
 such allotments, and the labourer has been 
 charged treble the price per acre paid by the 
 farmers of the district.^ But, of course, it is 
 long since the labourer ceased to be anybody's 
 neighbour. 
 
 However, signs of improvement in this respect 
 are not wanting. Larger views are beginning to 
 prevail. Economic science is already recognising 
 that "the poverty of the poor is the chief cause 
 of that weakness and efficiency which are the 
 causes of their poverty " ; ^ and this fact lends a 
 special interest to the work of later investigators 
 
 1 This was notably the case in one district of Northamptonshire. 
 ^ " Principles of Economics."
 
 2 34 '^^^ Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 in this line of research. We shall not get far 
 into the coming century before legislators will 
 perceive the wise course to be a frank avowal 
 of error in the past, and such a dealing with 
 the land question as to make it possible for a 
 considerable proportion of workers to become 
 freeholders. 
 
 In any case, the democracy have it in their 
 power to help themselves in this respect. More 
 and more land is coming, and will still come, 
 into the market, even without the adoption of 
 any such scheme as that of the Land Nationalisa- 
 tion Society, or the Land Restoration League ; 
 and if the workers hold solidly together and 
 use their means and their credit to the best 
 advantage, they will be able to secure small 
 freeholds for themselves out of the wreck of the 
 great estates. These — thanks to the " common 
 men " whose wit and perseverance contrived the 
 means and appliances to bring produce from far 
 continents to undersell the fruits of the landlord's 
 land — these are crumbling to bits, and will dis- 
 integrate the faster when the workers, using the 
 power that is in their hands, resolve to have 
 equitable laws touching the soil, and especially 
 to do away with primogeniture and entail. 
 
 It will be a pity, some will opine, to see the 
 old families go. But they will not go. What 
 is in them of good and fitting will, as we know,
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 235 
 
 survive. What is not good and fitting — do we 
 not know, on the authority of science, that nature 
 has no use for it ? In so far as the " old famiHes " 
 have created a false ideal, and lived according to 
 that ideal, they have done evil, and the sooner 
 they cease to do it, and get into the right way, 
 the sooner will other evils be done away with. 
 Every low-natured sweater, every discreditable 
 mine-salter, every Hebraic usurer, who draws 
 misbegotten wealth from the souls of his victims, 
 takes the " upper ten " as his model. Like them 
 he begins by having no shame to live upon the 
 labour of others, but with his baser nature and 
 more viciously sharpened wits, he betters their 
 instruction. 
 
 It would be unjust, of course, to blame the 
 aristocracy for all the evils of the prevailing 
 economic system ; but inasmuch as they were 
 the first to set the example of taking from the 
 labourer his independence and subjecting him 
 to an economic vassalage, they must bear their 
 quota of the disgrace of the existing anarchic 
 condition of the industrial world ; and if they 
 are of the higher mintage to which they lay 
 claim, they will be among the first to join the 
 Order of Rectification.
 
 "i% that ploweth ought to plow 
 CHAPTER XVI in hope, and he that thresheth, to 
 
 thresh in hope of partakingP 
 
 Reference has already been made to Professor 
 Marshall's statement to the effect that it is a mis- 
 nomer to apply the term "lower classes" to a large 
 portion of the artisan population, many of whom, 
 so far as thought and conduct are concerned, lead 
 as noble and refined lives as do the best of the 
 upper classes. This is a great thing to be able 
 to say, but it is even still more striking to reflect 
 that some of the most characteristic social move- 
 ments of the century have had their origin 
 amongst the workers. It will suffice to instance 
 trade-unionism, building and friendly societies, 
 working men's savings banks, and brotherhood 
 associations, all of which may be classed under 
 the heading of co-operation. 
 
 It would be difficult to overestimate the in- 
 fluence of trade-unionism. In it are exhibited 
 some of the best instincts of the race — not only 
 physical but moral. For while the trade-unions 
 are avowedly organisations for fight, they have 
 on the whole ever been martialled by men under 
 
 the strong restraint and guidance of moral prin- 
 
 235
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 237 
 
 ciple. How deep has been their effect upon the 
 social and political life of these islands, and indeed 
 of the English-speaking world, it is perhaps too 
 early to judge. But it is hardly an exaggeration 
 to say that the trade unions have worked a 
 revolution in industrial affairs by what we under- 
 stand as " constitutional " and on the whole essen- 
 tially peaceful means. 
 
 The principle has been as happily educative 
 to the classes concerned, as it has been success- 
 ful in ameliorating the conditions of labour. For 
 while the trade organisations put them in the 
 position to augment wages and to reduce hours 
 of labour ; by their building societies they have 
 been enabled to purchase houses for themselves 
 that otherwise they would not have been able to 
 compass, and by their benefit societies to provide 
 by mutual self-help against the proverbial rainy 
 day. But over and above all this, it fell to them 
 — by a natural sequence, as would seem — to dis- 
 cover and practically work out the principle of 
 co-operation as applied to trade, thereby reducing 
 the price and improving the quality of the neces- 
 saries of life, whereof they are such large con- 
 sumers, and for which, in the ordinary way of 
 trade, they pay so dearly. 
 
 Nevertheless, though co-operation in these 
 respects has made such admirable progress in 
 England, it is doubtful whether many of even
 
 238 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 the most intelligent among the co-operators have 
 yet fully grasped the enormous power they have 
 to their hands in the thorough comprehensive 
 and effective carrying out of that principle. In 
 its quiet extension and patient development lies 
 an entire social revolution. A more thorough re- 
 casting and re-forming of society is to be effected 
 by its means than by the violent overthrow of a 
 revolution. For the general result of such catas- 
 trophes is that the constitution of society remains 
 very much the same, almost the only difference 
 being that the places are shuffled, some who were 
 above going below, while others who happened to 
 be beneath are shaken up to the top. The net 
 result is that simply another batch of officious 
 persons, eager for salaries, and not unfrequently 
 greedy for spoil to boot, attain the helm of 
 power. 
 
 There is too much of this even at the best 
 of times. Men who apprehend untold ills to 
 politics should members of Parliament be allowed 
 a small stipend to cover the cost of their attend- 
 ance in London are blind to the still greater 
 evils incident to a system that makes the highest 
 offices of State prizes to be won for their mone- 
 tary value. 
 
 The time will probably come, though not just 
 yet, when people will as soon think of a stipen- 
 diary statesman as of a stipendiary god. And
 
 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 239 
 
 the true statesman will as readily dream of taking 
 a bribe as of stipulating for a salary. The men 
 who direct the supreme policy of the State should 
 be above all pay and emolument. Let us furnish 
 their table for them, and let them travel freely at 
 the State's expense ; but salary — let us leave that 
 for the smaller men, for the fillers of offices. Thus 
 the lesser men will be avoided — the men who 
 contend for the stipend, not for the honour of 
 working for the nation's good. If, after the 
 statesman has done his work — when he has 
 retired from the direction of affairs — he fall into 
 poverty, then pension him and make his declining 
 days days of comfort. But do not dishonour him 
 with the idea that he is being paid for his work. 
 The truly great work cannot be paid for. Thanks 
 be to the Powers, William Shakespeare died still 
 William Shakespeare — a poor man in a small 
 house. 
 
 We know what benefits have been derived 
 from co-operative action in those towns and 
 villages where the principle has taken a thorough 
 hold on the community. Let it be extended in 
 every direction — to production, to manufacture, 
 to distribution wholesale — and the effect in course 
 of time must be to render the working classes 
 wholly independent of the mere exploiters of 
 labour. 
 
 What is wanted now is that co-operators should
 
 240 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 turn their attention to the land, and by a well- 
 arranged system purchase freeholds all over the 
 country as opportunity affords, especially in the 
 vicinity of large towns, and re-sell or let them on 
 easy terms to suitable men. The holdings might 
 vary from one to ten or twenty acres. They 
 should not be too large ; the object being to 
 settle as many industrious men in the country 
 as possible. Moreover, where feasible, prefer- 
 ence should be given to men who have a trade 
 in their fingers besides that of agriculture or 
 gardening, so that they may have something 
 to turn their hands to, and thus to keep the mill 
 going, when there is little or nothing doing on 
 the land, so especially the case during the winter 
 months. 
 
 Indeed, it would be well if working men, as a 
 rule, had more than one trade or craft at their 
 fingers' ends. There is no reason whatever why 
 an intelligent lad should not learn shoe-making 
 or tailoring, as well as brick-laying, or book- 
 binding or wood-carving, as well as gardening. 
 Then, if work were scarce in the one trade, or 
 not possible on account of the weather, as is so 
 often the case in agriculture and the building 
 trades, the workman could turn his hand to his 
 other craft. If he were able to do nothing else, 
 he could, being a shoemaker or tailor, usefully 
 employ his time in his own or his neighbour's
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 241 
 
 families. There is a world of wealth for workers 
 in these unfilled and other co-operative ways. 
 
 But to return to the question of co-operation in 
 the cultivation of small holdings — there would be 
 no difficulty in arranging for the absorption of 
 all the produce of such culture, whether butter, 
 cheese, eggs, milk, fruit, vegetables, or poultry, 
 for which we are now paying the foreigner some- 
 thing like ^40,000,000 sterling annually. In this 
 respect, as in many others, they seem to have 
 gone ahead of us in France, where, at the present 
 time there are some five hundred farmers' co- 
 operative associations. These, which owe their 
 institution mainly to the patronage of the French 
 Government, which keeps a jealous eye on the 
 progress of the great national industry, were 
 intended to enable farmers to buy what they 
 need in their business at wholesale prices and 
 of guaranteed quality. But within the last few 
 years, many of these agricultural syndicates, as 
 they are termed, have extended their operations 
 to the exchange of farm products amongst them- 
 selves, and to the sale of these products to 
 outsiders. 
 
 How different our insular British method ! 
 Although co-operation has, on the whole, been 
 the means of effecting great and unquestionable 
 good among the workers, yet we see everywhere, 
 amongst a certain class, nothing but hatred and 
 
 Q
 
 242 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 prejudice expressed against the principle. One 
 can understand the shopkeeper class disliking 
 co-operation, whose profits it may reduce in 
 towns where it is much in vogue ; but why 
 capitalists should be opposed thereto it is more 
 difficult to understand, except on the ground that 
 anything that tends to increase the independence 
 of the worker militates, as they think, against 
 them, inasmuch as it prevents their having labour 
 at their own price whenever and wherever they 
 may like to employ it. 
 
 And yet how narrow and short-sighted is such 
 a policy. For co-operation, as Molesworth so 
 ably puts it, by giving every man a property of 
 his own, makes it the interest of all to uphold 
 the sacredness of property. By making every 
 man to a certain extent a capitalist, it compels 
 him to respect capital, and to perceive that if 
 there are some enterprises that can be well and 
 safely conducted by small capitalists combining 
 their resources to make a large capital, there are 
 many others in which it is essential that the 
 capital should be concentrated in the hands of a 
 single individual, able to act on his own respon- 
 sibility. By making the same man at once 
 capitalist and workman, employer and employed, 
 co-operation enables him to comprehend and make 
 allowances for the difficulties of the employer's 
 position, and in this way tends to palliate, if not
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 243 
 
 altogether to remove, those unfortunate trade 
 disputes which have at times been attended with 
 such mischievous consequences both to employers 
 and their workmen in the manufacturing districts. 
 Much the same may be said in regard to making 
 labouring men owners of land or tillers of small 
 holdings on their own account. 
 
 It is not necessary to go at any length into 
 the question of co-operation. Its general prin- 
 ciples are fairly well understood, although the 
 immense possibilities that lie within it are far 
 from being grasped, even by its stoutest advo- 
 cates. At the root of it co-operation is nothing 
 more nor less than a protest against unfair 
 trading, against the besetting vice of our com- 
 mercial system, the aim of which is to extort as 
 large a profit as possible for goods sold ; and to 
 such perfection has this system been brought 
 that men will go to the length of committing 
 almost any crime in the calendar in order to 
 force up the selling price of their commodities, 
 or to secure the command of the market. 
 
 The Standard Oil Trust is an instance in point. 
 This is one of the most extensive monopolies in 
 the United States, and its life-history is, if we 
 may trust the account given of it in Mr Henry 
 D. Lloyd's " Wealth against Commonwealth," 
 one of the blackest records in the annals of 
 latter-day commercialism. There is a school of
 
 244 ^'^^ Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 political economists who are for ever preaching 
 the doctrine of laissez faire in respect to all 
 industrial and commercial enterprise. They 
 would "let alone" the adulterator, the false 
 trade-mark user, the regrator, leaving those 
 "economic harmonies," concerning which Bastiat 
 was so eloquent, to work out their own beatific 
 results. Well, in the United States this doctrine 
 has been allowed full swing, and the Standard 
 Oil Trust is a living exemplification of what it 
 may lead to. According to Mr Lloyd's book, 
 the methods employed by the responsible heads 
 of the corporation to attain their ends did not 
 stop at arson, perjury, conspiracy, bribery, or 
 even murder. The record is an astounding one, 
 and one would be inclined to doubt the facts had 
 not strenuous attempts been made in America to 
 impeach their accuracy, but without avail. 
 
 Indeed, the voluminous array of facts and 
 figures, gathered together with the greatest care, 
 and often confirmed by sworn evidence, carry 
 irresistible conviction. From its first humble 
 beginnings to its present vast magnitude and 
 sinister power Mr Lloyd traces its course with 
 ruthless and unerring hand. " We see," says the 
 Daily Chronicle, from which this account is 
 chiefly taken, " the monopoly gathering enter- 
 prise after enterprise within its octopus embrace. 
 We see it deliberately ruining all competitors
 
 The Martyrdom of Labotir. 245 
 
 by the most unscrupulous means. We see it 
 corruptly using juries and State legislators. We 
 see it conspiring to defraud a large city. We 
 see it employing secret agencies for illegal pur- 
 poses in various parts of America. We see it 
 entering into intimate relations with other similar 
 monopolies for the purpose of levying a tribute on 
 the public rather than for legitimately supplying 
 genuine public needs. And all through its his- 
 tory we see how true wealth-production has been 
 sacrificed to the idea of merely gaining power." 
 
 The result is enough to stagger one's faith, 
 not in a "reign of righteousness," but in common 
 honesty and humanity. And yet there is really 
 no great cause for surprise. It is only the 
 spectacle of unchecked human nature aiming 
 at and achieving- its selfish ends at all costs. 
 The same thing has been done again and again, 
 in different forms, in our own country, and by 
 men of honourable repute. The reason why this 
 particular example shocks one so much is that 
 its operations have been carried on so openly 
 and on so large a scale. Where so many 
 persons were concerned one would expect that 
 some consciences would have been stirred to re- 
 volt. Perhaps they were. Anyway, Mr Lloyd's 
 book is a healthy sign, and will do good ; for the 
 people whom he addresses are not dead, but 
 living, and at the bottom profoundly religious.
 
 246 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 His aim, as he tells us, is to awaken the civic 
 consciousness of the United States, and to re- 
 kindle the public spirit which made a nation out 
 of a congeries of human atoms, and which alone 
 can make a State and keep it sound. A further 
 aim he has before him is that of enforcing the 
 idea that while the individual should receive 
 what he is honestly enabled to earn by his 
 industry, the community should also receive for 
 public purposes a share of the total mass of 
 wealth which it helps to create — a doctrine which 
 is bound to have a large future ; for therein lies 
 the whole philosophy of co-operation : each in- 
 dividual working at one and the same time 
 both for himself and the community, each end 
 being alike for his own good and that of his 
 neighbour. 
 
 Looked at merely as a method of trading, 
 co-operation is easily misunderstood, or at least 
 not grasped in its full significance ; but it becomes 
 quite a different thing when regarded as a system 
 whereby men, working together for a common 
 purpose, are the better enabled to arrive at some 
 proximate equality of condition and resource. 
 
 It is doubtless true, as Professor Marshall 
 says, that " the world is only just beginning to 
 be ready for the higher work of the co-operative 
 movement, and that its many different forms 
 may therefore be reasonably expected to attain a
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 247 
 
 larger success in the future than in the past." 
 No one who has closely studied the working 
 classes, and has seen what they have done, 
 can doubt that such will be the case. 
 
 In all the above-mentioned movements, which 
 have so signally characterised the social evolution 
 of the century, they commenced in a small way, 
 working to an end which they saw plainly before 
 them ; and, as men striving in that practical 
 way generally do, achieved success. Had they 
 began with large schemes, and for far-away results, 
 they would have failed, as so many admirable 
 though Utopian schemes have done in times 
 past, and their efforts would have remained as a 
 warning and a discouragement to others. 
 
 But the method of the pioneers of the co- 
 operative, as of the trade-union movement, was 
 the wise one of small means to small and present 
 ends. They went just so far as they could see 
 and no further ; but having taken that step, they 
 were prepared, from the fresh standpoint reached, 
 to see a little beyond and make another advance. 
 
 Such, up to the present, has been the history 
 of co-operative progress. It has been a true 
 evolutionary movement, and if it has suffered 
 checks and sets back, these have been no more 
 than was to be expected, seeing the complicated 
 conditions and unknown forces wherewith the 
 co-operators had to deal.
 
 248 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 Not the least of their difficulties was the 
 uneducated or only partially educated material 
 with and on which they had to work. The 
 labouring classes, as a rule, are suspicious, and 
 do not readily trust their fellows until they 
 have been well tried, hence it speaks eloquently 
 for the moral earnestness with which these move- 
 ments have been entered into, and thus far 
 carried on, that they have resulted in so large 
 a measure of mutual trust, as well as of cheerful 
 self-sacrifice. For many of the leaders of co- 
 operation have shown such exceptional business 
 capabilities, and so fine a genius for organisation 
 and management, that they might have aspired 
 to far greater pecuniary rewards outside the 
 movement had they been disposed to consider 
 self alone. 
 
 But in this lies one of the chief glories of these 
 peculiarly working-class developments — that they 
 owe their primary success to an amount of de- 
 votion and even to some extent of self-effacement, 
 that it would be difficult to find so generally 
 exemplified in any other class of society. Well 
 might Gerald Massey declare, as he did in a 
 lecture in St George's Hall many years ago, 
 that these steadfast workers for a common end 
 and a common elevation afford the finest ex- 
 emplification of practical altruism that he had 
 ever met with,
 
 The Ma7'tyrdo7n of Labour. 249 
 
 Not the least remarkable feature connected 
 with CO - operation, and the one which offers 
 perhaps the most promise for the future, is the 
 fact that where the principle has taken the 
 deepest root, it has not been confined to the 
 supply or production of merely physical needs, 
 but has been extended so as to embrace moral 
 objects. But this is the necessary correlate of 
 all work the end whereof is mutual benefit in 
 place of mutual "besting." It begins with the 
 desire on the part of those who form the little 
 society to make the most of their united means 
 for the supply of their material necessities. But 
 this end having been attained, it is seen that 
 they can still further help and benefit each other 
 by promoting the ends of education and social 
 enjoyment through the establishment of libraries 
 and the provision of concerts and other enter- 
 tainments, the members of the society itself 
 supplying the talent. 
 
 Nor does effort stop here. For it is found 
 that when all are working for a common object, 
 instead of trying to get as much as possible out 
 of each other, so bright and hopeful a spirit is 
 developed, and so confident a feeling of mutual 
 help being the best of self-help, that education, 
 library, and entertainment funds, to say nothing 
 of other means and aids to the common well- 
 being, are the natural outcome.
 
 250 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 In other words, it is found by these people, 
 that by fair and honest trading one with another, 
 they can not only supply themselves with the 
 necessaries and many of the luxuries of life, 
 but that, when other things have been provided 
 for, they have still a margin of profit left which 
 they consider well and justly set aside for the 
 purpose of broadening and beautifying life and 
 making provision for a securer future. 
 
 Have we not here a principle which, if applied 
 generally throughout society, would tend to pro- 
 duce something like order out of our present 
 chaotic conditions ? Suppose we were to re- 
 cognise that all large incomes, whether derived 
 from trade, manufacture, commerce, or any other 
 source, should return something to the community 
 for the benefit of those whose health and strength 
 are their capital, and who, when they have 
 honourably expended both in the service of the 
 community, and are no longer able to work, 
 are entitled to a comfortable and respectable 
 maintenance to the end of their days — should 
 we not by so doing go far towards establishing 
 a lasting peace between Labour and Capital ? 
 
 The capitalist may reply that he cannot in 
 justice be called upon to make such a sacrifice : 
 his responsibility ends with the payment of his 
 workman's wages. But that does not meet the 
 justice of the case ; for when the worker is
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 251 
 
 incapacitated for further labour, either by old 
 age or disease, he has to be maintained by 
 someone, and on whom should the burden fall 
 if not on those who have taken most out of 
 him ? 
 
 The capitalist gives a dead inert substance 
 (with his intelligence, of course) ; the worker 
 brings to bear vitality, energy, intelligence, in- 
 dustry, numbers, order, to say nothing of his 
 gradually acquired knowledge and dexterity. 
 These make the dead substance not only valu- 
 able, but of cumulative value. Yet the capitalist 
 claims not only the first money invested, but all 
 that, under the workman's industry, vitality, and 
 productive skill and energy it becomes, saying 
 virtually to him, "You are entitled to so much 
 as will keep up your strength and no more." 
 
 Is this reasonable? Is it right? The worker's 
 capital, that is, his health, strength, and his 
 natural and acquired gifts are as valuable to 
 him as the employer's capital, and of equal value 
 to the community. The worker, therefore, should 
 live with as full assurance that while he is em- 
 ploying his capital diligently and wisely for the 
 benefit of the community, he is providing a sure 
 dividend for his old age or time of need, as the 
 capitalist that his investments will be protected 
 from fraud. 
 
 And whence should the workers' old age divi-
 
 252 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 dend come, if not from the unearned increment 
 which forms so large a proportion of all large 
 fortunes ? For after fortunes have reached a 
 certain point they increase, as one may say, of 
 their own momentum, and simply and almost 
 solely because the community is a rich and 
 fruitful soil. 
 
 It will be for future legislators, considering 
 these facts, to decide what this unearned margin 
 of capital should contribute as its due to the 
 superannuation dividend of the workers. No- 
 thing, in any case, should be done to hamper 
 trade or to check enterprise. But the community 
 has a sacred right and duty to protect itself from 
 the impoverishment and other evils brought 
 about by the excessive accumulation of wealth 
 in a few hands. 
 
 Since the above was written the question of 
 old age pensions has arisen and has been shelved 
 because legislators do not know where to find 
 the ;!^ 20,000,000 that would be required annually 
 to do an act of justice to the workers. Well, 
 if they were to require those who have always 
 been the oppressors of the producer to do the 
 right thing the difficulty would be at once met. 
 Everyone who knows anything about the ques- 
 tion knows that, by a bargain made with William 
 of Orange, the landholders of the country, in 
 place of military services rendered to the Crown,
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 253 
 
 undertook to pay a land tax of 4s. in the pound. 
 But ever since its imposition that tax has 
 been unjustly evaded by those who agreed to 
 pay it. 
 
 Now, if half the sum which the very moderate 
 Act of 1692 said should be paid by the land- 
 holders for the privilege of retaining their lands 
 after they ceased to render the services for which 
 they were granted, found its way into the 
 Treasury it would furnish the people with old 
 age pensions. In short, it would produce just 
 the ^20,000,000 which are estimated to be 
 necessary for that purpose. Nothing is more 
 certain in economics than the fact that the 
 ^200,000,000 of net ground values in this king- 
 dom are due, not chiefly to the exertions of the 
 landowners, but to the number and character 
 of the whole population. We have, therefore, 
 in these two hundred millions, a national fund, 
 created by the nation. Why, then, should not 
 a part of this national fund, say 10 per cent, be 
 reserved as a superannuation dividend, payable 
 to the workers for the share they have taken in 
 creating those values 'i When we get a legisla- 
 ture that is just all round something of the sort 
 will be recognised as fair and just.
 
 CHAPTER XVII '' Moreover the profit 
 
 of the earth is for all. 
 
 Let no one go away with the idea that this book 
 is written by one who is a blind apologist of the 
 working class, and that in his eyes they have no 
 faults. They undoubtedly have their weaknesses, 
 many and various ; and few know them better 
 than he does, having observed them closely, 
 listened to their complaints, and noted their errors 
 and shortcomings ever since, as a youth, he lived 
 in their midst through the Cotton Famine of the 
 early sixties. But while he recognises this, he 
 recognises also that the social superiors of the 
 workers — their " betters," as they call themselves 
 — have likewise their faults, and that they are 
 not fewer in number, nor yet less varied in 
 character ; albeit, a good coat and a clean shirt 
 cover a multitude of sins. 
 
 The "betters" seem to forget that fact, al- 
 though for ever finding fault with the workers. 
 But the chief fault of the masses — after those of 
 not always speaking grammatically, and failing at 
 times to wear fashionable and spotlessly clean 
 attire — appears to be their " discontent." They 
 are, say the classes, never satisfied with the
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 255 
 
 wages they get, though perhaps ever so much 
 more than their fathers received. This, together 
 with their ingratitude in not being everlastingly 
 thankful for an occasional sup or dole thrown to 
 their misery, is set against them as a crime. 
 
 But, Messieurs et Mesdames les Riches, what- 
 ever their other faults, let this at least be set 
 down to them for virtue, that they will not now 
 be satisfied with less than some shadow of justice, 
 that if their wretchedness compels them to accept 
 the wage of slaves, they have yet the manhood, 
 the sense of outraged honour, not to fawn upon 
 and lick the hand of the giver. For if you ask 
 yourselves seriously, your own hearts will answer 
 that there is hope for one who feels his dis- 
 honour, or who feels the dishonourable position 
 into which he has been forced. So long as he is 
 conscious of the degradation of his position, so 
 long will he struggle, so long will he give reason 
 for hope. But let a man once cease to recognise 
 his degradation, once become blind and indifferent 
 to what is the inalienable right of all men, the 
 right to live honourably and decently, and in 
 reasonable comfort, before his fellow-men, in 
 other words, let him become oblivious or neglect- 
 ful of his natural claims to just and righteous 
 treatment on the part of society, and there is 
 very little hope for him. 
 
 It is, in short, one of the most hopeful signs of
 
 256 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 the time, and of the existing conflict, that the 
 working classes have a keen and healthy sense 
 of justice, and if not driven to extremity, they 
 will be found to be open to reason and to counsels 
 of moderation. But if such counsels be ignored, 
 and the one-fourth of society try to keep the 
 three-fourths in continual subjection by force, 
 then let the smaller fraction take the conse- 
 quences. It will have no one to blame but 
 itself. It has had warning enough. The signs 
 of the times are patent enough to all who will 
 open their eyes and see. Moreover, is not the 
 outcry of the thing everywhere ? 
 
 The literature on this question of questions in 
 our time is enormous. It deals with the subject 
 from every point of view ; and while there is 
 necessarily much contradiction, and not improb- 
 ably some exaggeration, yet on the whole the 
 exposition is marked by a vigour of thought, a 
 calmness of temper, and a largeness of grasp, 
 that compares favourably with contemporary 
 utterances in other branches of inquiry. There 
 never has been a time when so much serious 
 thought was given to the question of labour. It 
 is the most significant thing in our day and 
 generation. For while we have a positive chaos 
 of hypothesis and theory, we see the most serious 
 consensus of opinion as to the impossibility of 
 the continuance of the present condition of the
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 257 
 
 masses, which, says Kidd, " is utterly without 
 the sanction of the moral code."^ 
 
 While we have no end of more or less virulent 
 doctrine, there wells up in the midst of it all the 
 one clear and persistent thought, that it is the 
 right of the workers to a larger share of the 
 results of their industry ; that hitherto, partly by 
 economic robbery, partly by the juggling of 
 finance, very largely by the injustice of privilege, 
 they have been kept out of their rightful heritage; 
 that now it is time for the worker to claim and 
 enter upon his birthright. 
 
 There are doctrinaires who see no other way 
 of remedying the evil except by the forcible 
 expropriation of those who hold possession of 
 the wealth and the wealth-producing apparatus 
 of the world. But that means war, and in war- 
 fare the capitalist can always outdo and defeat 
 the worker, at least until he is better organised. 
 For it has to be borne in mind that at present 
 the capitalist is the State, and will be until the 
 democracy learn wisdom, and allow themselves 
 to be represented by none but those of their own 
 class. 
 
 Besides, the principle of war is the principle of 
 destruction, and to destroy merely is to leave the 
 heart of the matter as it was before. To effect 
 the thorough change which you contemplate, and 
 
 ^ " Social Evolution."
 
 258 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 which alone can permanently better your con- 
 dition, O bread-winning multitudes ! you need to 
 alter the inner moulding and shaping principle, 
 not externals merely. If the formative idea 
 remain untouched the externals will grow again 
 exactly as before. That is why, as a rule, revolu- 
 tions have effected so little. They did not go 
 deep enough ; they did not change men's hearts ; 
 to use an old phrase, or, in other words, they did 
 not give to men fresh ideals. 
 
 What is wanted, therefore, for the new reforma- 
 tion or revolution is that you reform your own 
 lives first ; instil into your own hearts and those 
 of your children the living vital principle of a new 
 life, a new society, and the revolution you wish 
 for will accomplish itself as if by magic. There 
 is nothing in the history of the world like the 
 revolution that was brought about silently and 
 almost imperceptibly by the gradual infiltration of 
 an idea accepted and taught by poor and lowly 
 men like yourselves. Gradually it overthrew the 
 mighty empire of Rome, and, indeed, almost 
 conquered the world. The weapons of a similar 
 victory are in your hands. 
 
 The thought which thus conquered was an 
 ideal, and had that ideal been kept pure and un- 
 corrupt, the conquest which it effected would have 
 been permanent and possibly eternal. But it be- 
 came polluted, and was turned from its course by
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 259 
 
 the mingling with it of base and barbarous systems, 
 but especially by the pomp and glitter of wealth 
 and power. Thus it became surcharged with 
 mockeries, which all the efforts of men clearly 
 seeing, and truly esteeming, the superior ideal, 
 have not been able to put right. 
 
 That ideal was one by which, with profound 
 insight, the Master saw that only by losing him- 
 self can a man find himself — only by throwing 
 himself on the other than self — only by seeking 
 to do right to and for others — can he be sure of 
 getting right done to himself. The whole secret 
 lies in doing the exact right thing as far as pos- 
 sible ; and no man who is for ever thinking of him- 
 self can do that. But let him forget himself in 
 his desire to see right and justice done to others, 
 and he straightway begins to build himself up — 
 to attain the attitude and the altitude of the true 
 man. 
 
 Therein lies the aim for all men. Yet how little 
 we seem to realise that truth. We may senti- 
 mentalise about Christianity and its promises, 
 we may pretend to believe it all ; but, in truth, 
 we see hardly any of that high resolve to live in 
 this world in the light of the great ideal we 
 ostensibly idolise and worship — we see little of 
 that heroic devotion that is so much needed to 
 counteract the low aims, the shameless intrigues 
 and sordid ambitions, the hard gross sensuality
 
 26o The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 of thought and feeling that so generally character- 
 ise our life to-day. 
 
 Can one help at times being tempted to look 
 upon the whole concatenation of churches, chapels, 
 bishops, apostolic successions, prayer mumblings, 
 man-millinery, and spiritual gallimaufry generally, 
 as a huge and painful satire ? It was the thought 
 of obedience unto death to a great idea, of un- 
 swerving devotion to an accepted truth, of abso- 
 lute renunciation of mere personal worldly advan- 
 tages, which so moved the Christian church in its 
 early heroic days. But where is all this Christian 
 heroism now ? Have we got beyond the need 
 of it ? Was it ever indeed more needed than now 
 amid the welter of conflicting egotisms and un- 
 blushing selfishness in this hard, mechanical age ? 
 
 Can we wonder that men are tempted to revile 
 the whole thing as we see it masquerade before 
 us to-day ? Can we wonder that the splendid, 
 yea, the dazzling, ideal, presented to us by the 
 life and thought of the Man of Nazareth, lost 
 sight of in the depraved and emasculated imita- 
 tion of modern Christendom — that the story of 
 that life and that promise is looked upon as a 
 sweet but delusive song made to lull and assuage, 
 not to redeem, our human misery and despair } 
 
 As to any reality in it — shame on us, we are 
 not worthy of it ! Such a future as is held up 
 before us ! Such an eternity ! And we, pre-
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 261 
 
 tending the while to beHeve it, barter the lot 
 for a life of tick-tack duration and the petty 
 pleasures it affords — enjoyed for the most part 
 at the expense of others. Ah ! poor mortal 
 creatures ! One fears, regarding these things 
 seriously, that it is after all but a miserable 
 threepenny - bit sort of world, and that there 
 goes little more than a farthing's worth of spirit 
 to the furnishing forth of a whole generation. 
 It is rare indeed to meet with a man worth as 
 much as that : else should we not find human 
 beings setting such store upon clothes, meat 
 and drink, gold and the like trifles, to the 
 neglect of justice, good feeling, and something 
 of compassion for the misery of others, our 
 fellow-wayfarers. One wonders even that the 
 Lord Christ deemed it worth his while to try 
 to save such a people, who see their heroes in 
 modern-day bishops, swaggering sworders, and 
 princes that change their clothes a dozen times 
 a day ; and women, the idols of their adoration, 
 for the most part callow-brained creatures who 
 tighten their bodies till they are like to wasps, 
 and while they encumber one end of their persons 
 with a superfluity of clothing, leave the other 
 extremity needlessly and often shamelessly ex- 
 posed ; and this though those to whose labour 
 they are chiefly indebted for all they have must 
 frequently go without sufficient to eat or to wear.
 
 262 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 They are not to be envied, these pauvres 
 riches. Weakh is not a synonym for happiness, 
 and it more frequently corrupts than ennobles. 
 It is only necessary to watch that faithful mirror 
 of the time, the press, to see what a canker of 
 looseness, frivolity, and worse, is eating away 
 the heart of grace of our idle classes. Women 
 sending photographs of themselves in night attire 
 to their male friends, frolics at country houses 
 that are fitter for the brothel, wantonness, ram- 
 pant and unashamed. Such is the Nemesis that 
 pays for the enforced sin and shame at the 
 other end of the social scale. " Neither riches 
 nor poverty," saith the psalmist, and he might 
 have added, " Neither idleness nor crushing 
 toil, but enough labour to give joy, enough 
 leisure to fit for the daily task." That is the 
 condition to promote happiness. 
 
 The day has come for saying these things 
 — for saying that those who think society can 
 continue to exist as it has done heretofore, are 
 living in a fool's paradise. One would lose all 
 hope for the world and for man if one thought 
 things could still go on indefinitely as they 
 have done heretofore. No, the world cannot 
 be ruled for ever by the doctrine of devils ; 
 and the justice of the market price — a price 
 that may mean semi-starvation to the worker, 
 or worse — is nothing less. If it meant instant
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 263 
 
 and unlingering starvation it would be merciful 
 and blessed. But when it is a starvation that 
 gradually saps away all vital resistance and 
 resolution, and death only comes after utter 
 degradation — then it is a market price that 
 is wholly damnable and accursed, and if there 
 is nothing else for it, it is best to clear out 
 through "the open door" and appeal to the 
 Life-giver, 
 
 How wisely we are taught to talk about the 
 sacredness of contract, about supply and demand, 
 and about the laws of a political economy that 
 dares not go to first principles : to the principle 
 that, if there is any natural right at all, every 
 man and woman coming into the world has a 
 just claim upon the earth's productiveness, in 
 so far as it is natural productiveness. Fer, if 
 we do not grant that, but hold that it is just 
 and right for a comparative few to own the 
 land of the globe and to arrogate to themselves 
 the whole of its produce, then we land ourselves 
 in a very serious dilemma, as Herbert Spencer 
 has pointed out. For if, as he shows, one 
 portion of the earth's surface may justly become 
 the possession of an individual, and may be 
 held by him for his sole use and benefit, as 
 a thing to which he has an exclusive right, 
 then other portions of the earth's surface may 
 be so held ; and eventually the whole of the
 
 264 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 earth's surface may be so held, and our planet 
 may thus lapse altogether into private hands. 
 Observe now the dilemma to which this leads. 
 Supposing the entire habitable globe to be so 
 enclosed, it follows that if the landowners have 
 a valid right to its surface, all who are not 
 landowners have no right at all to its surface. 
 Hence such can exist on the earth by sufferance 
 only. They are all trespassers. Save by per- 
 mission of the lords of the soil, they can have 
 no room for the soles of their feet. Nay, 
 should the others think fit to deny them a 
 resting-place, these landless men might equitably 
 be expelled from the earth altogether. Which 
 is absurd. 
 
 But while one may hold that the land is for all, 
 and that justice and equity demand that, in a 
 society confessedly no longer ruled by robbers 
 and assassins, every man and woman coming 
 into the world should have a fair chance and 
 some sort of an equal welcome, especially at the 
 hands of those who claim to be heirs to a great 
 gospel — it does not follow that one is of the class 
 of those vain dreamers who imagine that society 
 can be shaped to a pattern of dead flat uni- 
 formity and mediocrity, where no one will be 
 poor, none rich, but all living stolidly hum- 
 drum lives, all equally comfortable and equally 
 and unutterably dismal.
 
 The Martyrdo7n of Labour. 265 
 
 Unfortunately, there will always be poverty 
 enough and misery enough in the world. Equality 
 of condition is an idle dream. But it is no idle 
 dream that, so far as human will and human law 
 can help, society shall be so framed as not to be 
 wilfully unjust to any. It is no idle dream to 
 think that what men have done, men may still 
 do. And men have seen, and have acted on the 
 principle, that it is nobler and manlier to live a 
 life of simplicity and labour than it is to exist 
 in idleness upon the only half-requited toil of 
 others. 
 
 It is not an idle dream to believe that this 
 nobler type will grow more and more, and that 
 in the end it will prevail over that other which 
 has held the field so long — though it must be 
 said, modifying to some extent, and gradually — 
 in which the highest aim is to get the advantage 
 of another, to take that which he has, to rob, to 
 plunder. The history of most of the world's wars 
 is this ; and though it is not so easy to go forth 
 with the sword as it was, many of the financial 
 and other schemes for acquiring money, nominally 
 lawful, are as predacious as the wars, although 
 more cowardly and contemptible. We have of 
 late years seen not a few of such schemes come 
 to grief, and their sponsors to the convict cell ; 
 but others as barefaced and nefarious, both here 
 and amongst our transatlantic kinsfolk, still man-
 
 266 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 age to live upon the public trust, and escape the 
 scythe. This could not be if Mammon were not 
 enthroned so high, and had not his minions 
 in the seats where godliness and justice alone 
 should sit.
 
 " Be renewed in the spirit 
 CHAPTER XVIII of your mind, and put on 
 
 the new man." 
 
 It may occur to some who read these pages to 
 ask : But supposing- it were well that all this 
 restoration and reformation should be brought 
 about, how is it to be effected ? The question 
 is as pertinent as — to many — it will be perplex- 
 ing and perturbing. But to those who have 
 carefully noted the trend of thought in the for- 
 going pages the answer will probably be not 
 very far to seek. The betterment of the world lies 
 in a very simple thing — in the cultivation, namely, 
 of a larger humanity ; or, in other words, in the 
 development of real men. 
 
 The evils from which society suffers — the in- 
 justice, the coarseness, the brutality — have arisen 
 from the survival of savage ideals, which the 
 struggling culture of centuries, the enlightening 
 march of science, and the example of supernal 
 heroism set by the Man of Judea, have been 
 powerless to eradicate. Substitute a new ideal, 
 the ideal of the true, the intrinsic man, with its 
 correlate, the true woman, and the change that 
 
 would take place in society within a measurable 
 
 267
 
 268 The Mm'tyrdom of Labour. 
 
 period would be nothing less than miraculous. 
 It would be like the descent of a new avatar. 
 
 Nothing, in short, is needed but the advent of 
 the real man to transform in a very few years the 
 entire form and constitution of society. The bar- 
 barous treatment of man by man, the harshness, 
 the cruelty which we behold on every side, would 
 gradually disappear, and we should have an ap- 
 proach to what we understand when we speak 
 of a common or universal brotherhood, the pro- 
 clamation of which, at the outset, was, according 
 to Mr Lecky, the mission of Christianity. 
 
 It is entirely a question of ideals. At one 
 time the ideal man was a butcher — a man with 
 a huge club who beat out the brains of all who 
 did not do his will. This ideal prevailed with 
 but little variation or mutation for ages. When 
 this beast-man was not armed with a spiked 
 bludgeon, it was with a sword or other murder- 
 ous cutlery ; and he was accounted a brave man 
 and a warrior in proportion as he dare go out 
 to meet and cut down men more poorly armed 
 than himself, if not altogether defenceless. These 
 specially armed and armoured men — for in course 
 of time they began to clothe themselves in mail — 
 became a caste, and they made it unlawful for 
 others to be as well armed, or as well educated 
 in arms, as themselves, lest they should not be 
 able at all times to slay — if they wished —
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 269 
 
 those whom they had made subject to their 
 will. 
 
 For it became a part of this ideal of manhood 
 to hold vast territories and to have them culti- 
 vated by serfs and bondsmen, who were entirely 
 at their mercy. Even hundreds of years after 
 the advent of Christ, from whom these men were 
 supposed to accept a new ideal, the old cowardly 
 ideal continued to prevail, and the semi-man was 
 as ready as ever to go about with the instru- 
 ments of murder and rapine suspended from his 
 shoulder and bristling about his waist, to take 
 that which was not his, slay those who opposed 
 his will, and to make himself rich at the expense 
 of the poor and weak. Oh, but he was a brave 
 creature, this knife-carrier ! 
 
 The strangest thing of all was that this brute 
 man, after one of his orgies of blood and plunder 
 — after one of these bouts of blood-o-uiltiness and 
 lust, the infernal infamy of which no modern 
 historian dare sully his pages withal — would 
 enter the temples raised in the name of the gentle 
 Galilean, and through him return thanks to the 
 one who calls the stars by their names for the 
 success of his butchery and his greed. 
 
 Nor have we quite got rid of this sort of thing 
 yet. We still hang banners steeped in human 
 gore in our State churches ; we still regard the 
 killing profession as the most heroic — though,
 
 270 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 God wot, it were a dismal world and a poor out- 
 look for humanity did not our daily life present 
 us with heroisms a hundred times more heroic 
 than this ! But in the course of time the ideal 
 has changed a little. Now the ideal man — the 
 one popularly worshipped — is not he who is the 
 best killer, the one who has slain and subjugated 
 most, though the State still loves to honour and 
 enrich him the most, but the man who has ac- 
 cumulated the most money. It does not matter 
 much how he came by it — possession is enough. 
 Let it but be known that he is a millionaire, and 
 all the world is at his feet. Honours, titles, 
 " greatness," everything is at his beck and call — 
 everything except true manhood. 
 
 Guid faith he canna fa that ! 
 
 Wealth, in short, is the ideal — Mammon the 
 idol. It is a terrible thing to have to say ; but 
 it is literally true. After well-nigh nineteen 
 hundred years of Christianity we have not yet 
 got out of that semi-human, or rather semi- 
 simian, state. We are, in short, but half-men, 
 and when one approaching the full stature of 
 manhood appears we are just as likely as not to 
 persecute him, or to leave him severely alone as 
 a madman or a fool — until he be dead. Then 
 we give him the adoration of words, and perhaps 
 statues. 
 
 So long as we remain in this condition of half-
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. i^ji 
 
 man it is needless to say that society will con- 
 tinue much in the same state as heretofore. We 
 may reform politically as much as we like without 
 touching- the rampant evil at the bottom of the 
 social scale. New forms of baseness will but 
 take the place of the old ; the sweater will stand 
 in lieu of the slave-driver, the usurer will take 
 the place of the more valiant robber, the trickster 
 with cards and dice will be exchanged for the 
 stock exchange gambler and company promoter, 
 the charterer of the coffin-ship for the pirate and 
 slave-catcher. 
 
 Men who live by such methods, it is needless 
 to say, are not by any means men of an ideal 
 type ; indeed, as touching such a type, it is 
 doubtful even if they can be so much as half- 
 men. At best they can but be admitted to be 
 men arrested in a low stage of development, 
 whom it will still take long ages to bring up to the 
 true altitude and dignity of man — long ages of 
 toil along the upward road ; for not all the sacri- 
 fices of all the centuries can vicariously take 
 away their degradation. 
 
 What the real man will be it is not easy to say 
 off-hand. It is, however, far from difficult to 
 predict what he will not be. No one can doubt 
 that he will not be unjust, a swearer of false 
 things, a gluttonous liver, a plotter after other 
 men's money, a pretender to spiritual gifts, a
 
 272 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 political trickster, a brewer of lunatic broth, a 
 worshipper of dead men's dust, a wearer of 
 clothes merely. Nor, as regards the real woman, 
 will she be a mere hat-carrier. For it is the 
 bane of the weaker vessel, that, having a dim 
 sort of idea that the glory of the human has 
 something to do with the head, she will so often, 
 in lieu of anything substantial within, cover, 
 what worthy old Fuller designates the cock-loft, 
 with the most marvellous structures of feathers, 
 futilities, and show that it is possible to imagine ; 
 and be content to wobble along presenting that 
 as the best she can offer before high heaven. 
 
 One may even go so far as to affirm that the 
 man of the new ideal — and his worthy coadjutor 
 woman, also — will be simple in his habits, affect- 
 ing plain clothes and an unaffected speech ; that 
 he will be courteous to those beneath him or in 
 any way dependent upon him ; that he will not 
 pride himself on his charity, but be nicely just ; 
 that he will regard idleness and high living as 
 the twin vices that take all moral grit out of a 
 man ; that in all his ways and dealings, especially 
 with those whose birthright is toil, he will be 
 truly gentle, gentle in the very inwardness of the 
 word ; and that he would deem it a disgrace to 
 live on the toil of others without giving a full and 
 adequate return by some honest and devoted 
 labour of his own.
 
 The Martyrdom of Laborer. 273 
 
 He is probably the happiest man in the face 
 of the hereafter, where the inequaHties of this Hfe 
 will be rectified, who shall be able to say, " I have 
 lived on the sweat of no man's face but my own. 
 No man can shame me before the ultimate tribunal 
 by saying that I lived on his or her labour. No 
 child will be able to arise and accuse me of having 
 put it on the mill of toil that I might be rich and 
 idle, or that my sons might be thriftless and sin. 
 No one can say I shirked my quantum of the 
 world's work, or that I did it carelessly or with 
 indifferent hand." 
 
 There are those who will not be able to say 
 that. There are men — human creatures, that 
 is — who live and grow fat on the slavery of 
 others ; and if they cannot to-day become rich 
 on the labour of children, as before-time they 
 did, they can and do still make their unholy 
 percentages out of the under-paid labour of girls 
 and the starvation of women. 
 
 The one who can do that is very far from being 
 a real man. The one who in any way lives upon 
 the labour of another without giving him a just 
 return, not only does that man a wrong, but he 
 commits an even graver crime against himself 
 also. For only by worthy work can a man — or 
 woman — rise to that moral elevation which is 
 the sole and inevitable stamp of true manhood — 
 of true womanhood.
 
 2 74 Th^ Martyrdo^n of Labour. 
 
 We are apt to lose sight of that fact — a fact as 
 eternal as the stars, as immutable as the moral 
 law. A man does a mean or an unjust thing 
 against his neighbour ; he profits by it, and 
 plumes himself upon its successful accomplish- 
 ment and issue. He does' not know, or forgets, 
 poor man, that the very instant he committed 
 that act he set at work the machinery which in 
 the end must avenge his sin or his crime. The 
 mean act hurts the victim, but it hurts the doer 
 more. Though the unjust deed causes pain 
 to the sufferer, he will nevertheless recover 
 from its effects quicker and more surely than 
 the perpetrator. 
 
 For the time being, when an unjust thing is 
 done, it seems simple enough. But in truth it 
 is very terrible. For, with every degrading act 
 committed, something of the divine in a man is 
 taken away, and he sinks lower in the scale of 
 manhood ; and if he is to rise and recover lost 
 ground again, it must be through suffering and 
 pain — sometimes through incredible suffering and 
 pain. For there is no washing such stains away 
 except by painful upward growth. 
 
 Sometimes men do wrong against others with- 
 out knowing it, simply through the observance of 
 a convention of society. But even they, in obedi- 
 ence to the divine law, must suffer — not to the 
 same extent, perhaps, as those who willingly and
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 275 
 
 knowingly do wrong, but still the penalt}^ must 
 be paid. The penalty is terrible to them — the 
 more terrible because they live highly and nobly 
 according to their lights. But there is no growth 
 except through work and struggle ; and for those 
 lulled in the lap of luxury and sloth, where is the 
 struggle, where is the goal achieved ? It is a 
 drift through life with little effort and no stretch. 
 Satisfied with false ideas, content to appear and 
 not to be, what are they — what can they be — but 
 half-men at best 1 
 
 After all, it may be for the toiling multitude to 
 set the example of living up to a nobler ideal — of 
 realising in truth the true religion. They are not 
 hampered like the others ; they have less to throw 
 off, to unlearn. The Christian exemplar perceived 
 the difficulty, the almost impossibility of a rich 
 man or woman being truly religious. The weight 
 of the gold bears down the spirit in them, hardens 
 the heart, and chokes up well-nigh all the well- 
 springs of pity and humanity. True sympathy 
 with the world's sorrows, the feeling of brother- 
 hood, the compassion that stimulates justice — 
 these things are not in them. 
 
 Yes, it may be for you, O toiling multitudes ! 
 to do this pioneer work. You can suffer from 
 no such canker of the heart as that which too 
 often deadens and degrades the rich. Your lives 
 are spent in poverty, often enough on the verge
 
 276 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 of want, amid scenes of sorrow and wretchedness 
 from year end to year end. Daily you are called 
 upon to have your hearts moved by pity and com- 
 passion, and only those who have lived amongst 
 you know how ready you are to give sympathy, 
 and to render substantial help too, according 
 to your means. A noble man who fought 
 for you and amongst you all his life, once ex- 
 claimed : " Were it not for the poor the poorer 
 would die ! " And true it is. Out of your little 
 you give far more in proportion than the rich ; 
 nor does your right hand effusively shake your 
 left over the fact. 
 
 It is for you, I say, to realise the nobler ideal — 
 yes, even to show the gold-sodden the way to a 
 truer religion. Their ideal is to possess a fine 
 house, and to have many servants to whom they 
 are able to say, " Do this, do that " ; to run after 
 the fox on fleet horses, or to go en masse after a 
 tame deer, and to see it die, torn by dogs, or 
 reserved for future torture ; to shoot and kill — 
 time, if nothing else ; to affect a grand style by 
 outward show ; to pretend to a superiority that 
 in reality they do not possess — or rarely. But to 
 live greatly and simply, to be truly gentle — ah, 
 that is too often beyond them ! 
 
 The real man — the man of the new ideal — will 
 be very different to that. He will be neither 
 afraid nor ashamed of work. He will rather have
 
 The Martyr do77i of Labour. 277 
 
 pride in being able to handle spade, or scythe, or 
 the shafts of the plough, and to do his day's work 
 with the lowliest. It will be his delight to take 
 his place by the side of the common man, and 
 impart to him something of the knowledge and 
 craft he has, while he in turn learns what he can 
 from the other, nature's intimate. If his years of 
 study, if his contact with the world, have taught 
 him anything that can make life nobler and better, 
 will not he, the real man, be earnest to communi- 
 cate it, and to do his share towards lifting and 
 improving the world ^ 
 
 The turning-point may not be just yet, but it 
 will come. The truly lofty souls will begin by 
 asking themselves : " Is there nothing in all these 
 lives worthy of our cultivation — no desire like 
 ours, no possibility — that we should stand aloof, 
 regarding them simply as dull, cloddish instru- 
 ments for our use, to make life useful and plea- 
 sant to us, and to be cast aside and forgotten 
 when that end is served .-^ Are they not the same 
 as we, compact of the like blood and spirit, with 
 the like yearnings, the like hopes, the like fears '^ 
 Is not their incoming the same, and their out- 
 going too — by * the house appointed for all 
 living ' } And yet, forsooth, every political 
 effort, every concession granted, is shackled with 
 the open or implied intention to keep them down 
 as mere instruments."
 
 278 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 We are, in truth, almost as much slave drivers 
 in intention as ever. Some of us cannot fashion 
 a system of education but there runs through it 
 — or we would have run through it — the implica- 
 tion that some are born to serve, and we must be 
 careful not to give emancipation. Such is the 
 ruling of Providence, we say. And how eager 
 we are to help the hand of Providence when our 
 own selfish ends are in the balance ! 
 
 Half-men ! Half-men ! Can you not see your 
 degradation ? Are you not able to rise a step 
 higher } Is it not in you to climb to a loftier 
 altitude, and so look at things in a light free from 
 the huge and distracting personal equation ? Did 
 it never occur to you — you especially of the 
 religion — did it never occur to you that it was 
 not enough to keep these people simple and 
 ignorant, living very much as the brute beasts, 
 cultivating in them a faith which is in truth but a 
 blind credulity, with nothing in it of the lifting 
 aim, the upward struggle, the victory won, partial 
 perhaps, but still victory ? If there be something 
 noble in the career of those who, in an imperfect 
 world, and amid errors and tumults innumerable, 
 range themselves with this or that battalion of 
 intellectual or moral contestants, or with this or 
 that band of spiritual pioneers, and suffer the 
 hardships and trials incident to the fight, for the 
 joy of the contest, and what strength and glory
 
 The Marty rdo7n of Labour. 279 
 
 may come of it, why should those whom you 
 leave in ignorance be debarred the life and ex- 
 pansion of the conflict ? Is it for fear lest there 
 should be none to plough your tilth and groom 
 your beasts, none to black your boots and scour 
 your floors ? Shame on you ! A thousand indel- 
 ible shames on your selfishness and your sloth ! 
 Enter the field and join the battle with them. 
 The renunciation of your selfishness is the 
 struggle for you. It would do you good, if you 
 are men, to go into your barns and gardens, if 
 you be true women, to descend into your kitchens 
 and laundries, and do some work — in the sweat 
 of your face. 
 
 Would you not thereby be obeying the com- 
 mand of "the Lord your God"? Why should 
 you leave to your poorer brethren the blessing 
 that comes of an ordinance fulfilled ? Most 
 assuredly you are doing so ; and in this, and so 
 far, your " inferiors " come nearer the true alti- 
 tude than you. But perchance you are only pre- 
 tenders, but "half-believers of our casual creed," 
 and give to it lip-service only.
 
 P T-T A PT FT? V T V " "^^ of good cheer and let us 
 
 flay the man." 
 
 The great hope of the fresh renaissance, of the 
 renewed youth of the world, lies in the young — 
 in the young of both sexes, but especially in 
 woman. We want a new man, but almost still 
 more we want a new womb-man, because upon 
 her depends so much in the new birth of man- 
 kind that is needed. And the new woman must 
 be one who will not aim at being a man, but will 
 aspire to give to the world real men. Is it too 
 much to hope that we may one day see such a 
 woman — one who will think, not one, as now, 
 that accepts all the ideas she has from some petty 
 homunculus, accepts her ideas from the fashion 
 plates, and believes with the decadent novel that 
 the whole of her duty consists in learning to 
 simper and to look as beautiful as she can in 
 a new dress. Her real duty is far other than 
 that. If she cannot look beautiful in the glow 
 of her moral and spiritual being, then the men 
 had best pass her by and leave her to the com- 
 panionship of her textile adorations. She is not 
 the one to bear real men and real women. 
 
 The mother of real men is of a very different 
 
 s8o
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 281 
 
 complexion to that. Here and there may be 
 found a few even now, but they will have to 
 grow from more to more ere the great time come. 
 Ay, mother of the man that is to be, mother 
 of him who will bring the great awakening, the 
 revindication and assertion, yours it is to whisper 
 to him ere he be born — to whisper to your girl- 
 child, too, the while she still nestles there close 
 to your heart — heart of your heart, soul of your 
 soul — to whisper to them your yearning, your 
 aspiration. In the long and dreamful day, in the 
 silent, prayerful night, when He with whom you 
 are co-creator seems so near, whisper the budding 
 soul how poor men suffer, how poor labouring 
 women suffer and repine, that others may be idle 
 and rich and thoughtless — how helpless little 
 ones go cold and hungry that others may have 
 too much, how their scant bread is sopped with 
 tears and their pillows with the thought of the 
 hopeless dawn. Tell them of the slavery, of the 
 misery, of the degradation, of the religion that is 
 a mockery. Tell them these things, little mother, 
 and put it to them, burn it into the very pith and 
 marrow of their souls, that when they grow up 
 to be men and women, and the world is before 
 them, that they shall be fiery and strong, and 
 refuse to submit to such slavish toil, such misery 
 and degradation, but choose rather to hunger and 
 thirst to the end than so to live — yea, by prefer-
 
 282 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 ence, accept the great and unyielding renuncia- 
 tion, the renunciation of Hfe itself. 
 
 Tell the budding souls, O mothers ! tell them 
 the noble yet pitiful story of the Caribs, the 
 people whom the despicable Spaniards found in 
 the beautiful islands which we now call the West 
 Indies, whom they found innocent and free, and 
 whom, because they were unused to war and to 
 injustice, and could not contend against the fire- 
 guns and great knives of the murderers of Spain, 
 they thought to make slaves of, and to put to 
 ignominious toil in the mines. These poor 
 Caribs, however, preferring death to such de- 
 gradation and slavery, took their own lives and 
 the lives of their children, and went out fearless 
 into the great beyond where God still lives and 
 is for ever pitiful, and for ever at the scales 
 weighing the souls of men, what they are and 
 what they do. 
 
 The story is a very terrible one, but a very 
 glorious one — one of the most glorious in all 
 history. 
 
 Whisper this great example, little mothers, to 
 the men and women that are to be, and put it on 
 them as a sacred duty to be so true to the ideal 
 of the true man and the true woman that they 
 will prefer starvation to degradation — death to a 
 life less than one of full, free, and enlightened 
 manhood and womanhood.
 
 , The Martyrdom of Labour. 283 
 
 Do this, O mothers, when the fashioning and 
 creating God is so near to you, so immanent and 
 pervading within and about you, and you will do 
 more towards settling this question of unpaid and 
 underpaid labour, of degraded and despised man- 
 hood, and of real as against half men, than all 
 the statutes of all the Parliaments. Tell them it 
 is better to go out resolutely into the great God- 
 litten space of the beyond than to accept slave 
 labour, a serf-like condition. Tell them it is 
 better to be heroes than helots, and you, O 
 mothers of the nations ! can make heroes and 
 heroines of your sons and daughters if you only 
 will, and it is the heroes and the heroines who 
 make laws and shape destinies more than the 
 Acts of Congresses and Parliaments and the 
 decrees of Courts and Synods. 
 
 To your sacred task, then, mothers, reformers, 
 law-givers ! Set such a seal on the heart of every 
 man-child and every woman-child that comes into 
 the world that they shall work for its freeing, for 
 its ennoblement ; and that they shall strive to 
 that end not by political means only, but with 
 religious earnestness, with religious zeal, and 
 with that renunciation which is still a weapon 
 when all others have been taken away ; " for 
 there is no man that has power over the spirit 
 to retain the spirit." 
 
 In truth, the only hope for England, as for the
 
 284 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 world, lies in the attainment of a true religion, one 
 adapted to the character and needs of the people 
 and the age, a heart-shaping and a man-forming 
 religion, not one of the lip and the knee alone. 
 In this respect religion is the first and last word. 
 The essence of it undoubtedly lies in Christianity, 
 but in a Christianity ransomed from the fetters 
 with which it is now bound — pagan superstitions, 
 the fancies of Rabbinical Judaism, Greek sophis- 
 tries, and the pomps and ceremonies of imperial 
 Rome. 
 
 With such a resurrection of religion as would 
 take hold of and spiritualise national energy and 
 renew national life, we might also look forward to 
 a genuine uprising, a veritable palingenesia, which 
 should make earth young again, and fill the heart 
 of every man and woman amongst us with the 
 quickening sense of an ever-widening and up- 
 lifting emancipation and brotherhood. 
 
 This cannot be brought about by mere changes 
 of governmental machinery — by the mere decant- 
 ing of the old effete spirit into newly-shaped 
 bottles, prettily labelled perchance, but with ever 
 the same damned and damning contents. A new 
 character, a renovated soul, is what is needed, and 
 that new character and reinvigorated spirit must 
 be founded upon a new belief in the real nature 
 of man — on that true nature of man and of the 
 human soul which the political economists, and
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 285 
 
 the spiritual economists likewise, have too often 
 left out of their reckoning. 
 
 In short, for a great and successful reawaken- 
 ing, for a true and hopeful re-shaping, we need to 
 proceed on a thorough revision of our conception 
 of what a man potentially is, and what his position 
 here. This revisional work has already begun, 
 and is going on apace. The pioneers and inves- 
 tigators are at work in every land ; the prophets 
 and seers are lifting up their voices wherever 
 men are congregated together, in workshops and 
 factories, in lowly bothies on far hill-sides, deep 
 down in darksome mines, in camps and clearings, 
 in vessels that plough the deep—everywhere. 
 On every side efforts are being made to quicken 
 the dull latent powers of the average man, to fit 
 and fashion him for the coming democracy, in 
 which, while none will be neglected and none 
 despised, no class of people will be relieved "of 
 the responsibility of planning and struggling for 
 its own existence and well-being." 
 
 Herein lies alike the mission and the discipline 
 of the workers. For it is only those whose brains 
 have been drilled and inured to work that are 
 capable of conceiving and putting forth vigorous 
 effort for a renovated and purified social state. 
 To them belong the inspiration — to them the 
 unyielding strenuousness of the fight. In this 
 task they need little if any help from the upper
 
 286 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 circles as a class. They, barbarians still, have 
 been too long worshippers of the fetish of birth 
 and title to be converted to any true religion, 
 or real unbiassed contemplation of life, so long 
 as they remain a class apart. 
 
 Yes, O workers ! it is for you to " stir up the 
 billows of war," to fight for the new ideals, to carry 
 the quivering torch on and on, ever upward along 
 the toilsome slope, till the new city of rest be won. 
 But let no dreams of a possible paradise of idle- 
 ness deceive you ! Look forward to no lotus- 
 eating on ever peaceful shores, for that were 
 death, but simply to a heaven of nobler work 
 with juster requital. And there is no question 
 but that goal is obtainable if you will, and will 
 resolutely, all as one. 
 
 Nor will you be alone in the great enter- 
 prise if you go to work with justice in your 
 hearts and enlightenment in your minds. Every 
 day there is a growing companionship of noble 
 minds — of men who accept the life that is given, 
 the career that is opened to them, and without 
 whimper or affright, nor yet over-bold, willingly 
 fight it out with courage to the end ; taking 
 unjust dues from no man, tormenting no man to 
 his hurt, scorning with all that is deepest in the 
 scorn of lofty minds to take tribute of the labour 
 of women and children, and whether it be pov- 
 erty or riches, gladness or sorrow, that rewards
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 287 
 
 their toil, thanking- the immortal Umpire of the 
 race for the strength it brought out and the joys 
 it gave — thanking him even that they were 
 deemed men enough to need no unequal bolster- 
 ing, no prop of wealth, no crutch of title, but 
 bare as their mothers gave them to the world, 
 started fair from the base, asking only to be 
 directed where was the goal, what the highest 
 aim, chanting, perhaps, in the spirit, if not in the 
 words of the Spartan poet of to-day : — 
 
 "Out of the night that covers me. 
 
 Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
 I thank whatever gods there be 
 For my unconquerable soul." 
 
 Ay, thanks to the Inspirer, to the darkling 
 Supporter and Sustainer, many such there be ! 
 And the little companionship will grow. For 
 many a great-soul'd man, many a great-hearted 
 woman, too, who did not know what ailed them 
 with their wealth and their idleness, will debarrass 
 themselves of this plethora, and join the im- 
 mortal band. In all lands and amongst all 
 peoples, these, but most of all, I believe, amongst 
 the race that went through its century-long fusion 
 and amalgfam in these isles. There is a triorious 
 future for that race, through its various septs and 
 ramifications. But to England, and to her sister 
 beyond the deep, belongs as yet the lead. 
 
 To the one people has been given but few
 
 288 The Martyrdom of Labour. 
 
 ideas, to the other many, though crude ; but 
 both possess the demon of work, and they possess 
 also, as I think, the deepest sense of duty of any 
 people. In spite of a commercialism the most 
 banal and deadening, the altruism of both peoples 
 is of the nature of a passion. This may be seen 
 by noting how much they are devoted to philan- 
 thropy. What agencies and associations there 
 are throughout both lands for helping others and 
 ministering to the afflicted, for saving souls, 
 though not for making them start safe. The 
 lamentable thing is that so much of this pious 
 energy is wasted by being frittered away in mere 
 idle and often useless charity. 
 
 Philanthropy is good, but it is best when it 
 is helping along the cause of justice, the cause of 
 human solidarity and brotherhood. The public 
 conscience has become steeped to the core in 
 what we must consider the bastard virtue of 
 charity, to an almost utter obliviousness of 
 justice. Men and women, but especially women 
 who, forgetting for a space that little godless 
 cult of ancestry, devote their time and much of 
 their means to relieving distress and seeking out 
 fresh fields of benevolence — let one but hint to 
 them that the constitution of society is bad, based 
 on indefensible selfishness and greed, on a system 
 that breeds and foredooms souls for hell, if any- 
 thing does, and they will hold up their hands in
 
 The Martyrdom of Labour. 289 
 
 pious horror. And yet what instruments for good 
 might not these same noble sisters be if, instead 
 of setting up charity as their ideal, they were to 
 give their devotion to the cultivation and accom- 
 plishment of justice — Justice, that fairest and 
 noblest passion of them all — the calm, prevailing 
 passion of the divine intent ! 
 
 It is a thing to be remarked in every history 
 and wherever the deeds of men are under con- 
 sideration, how smoothly things go when the 
 man who has the destinies of others in his 
 keeping acts with a tolerable regard to justice 
 and right. What an oasis is the chapter which 
 records such an episode amid the arid deserts of 
 human tyranny and wrong ! And how rarely 
 they occur ! Under such treatment men leap 
 to gladness, and ere long they begin to lose half 
 the savageism which is ever lying dormant in 
 humanity, and ready on the least provocation 
 to assert itself 
 
 Had St Paul's trinity of virtues been faith, 
 hope, and justice, affirming the greatest of these 
 to be justice, he would have come nearer the 
 truth than he did with his faith, hope, and 
 "charity." That beggarly virtue has misled 
 the world, has warped Christianity from its 
 true course. Men have been led by it to 
 think that in giving their acquiescence and 
 sanction to a society founded on an unjust
 
 290 The MartyrdoTfi of Labour. 
 
 basis they were on solid ground and their Chris- 
 tianity saved. But, poor shortsighted men, they 
 were miserably mistaken. Christianity has failed 
 of its right ideal so long as through or by its 
 effort some approach to equal justice has not 
 been accomplished. 
 
 A feeling and aspiration for this divine quality 
 we find here and there in individuals ; but in 
 the bulk of the people, especially in those who 
 assume themselves to be cultured and aspire 
 to govern, it is only just creeping into their 
 united counsels, ineffectually for the most part, 
 and with a sort of half-hearted conviction. Hence 
 we English are still very far from being a truly 
 great people. We may be called a big, burly, 
 and to some extent at least, a very brutal nation, 
 loving the clatter and parade of war, with not 
 a few fine streaks of lordly character and potential 
 greatness ; but as to real greatness — there is yet 
 to be infused into the inchoate mass of warring 
 attributes that lofty detachment of spirit and 
 ethereal refinement of nature which alone mark 
 the truly great. 
 
 We have been called by our continental neigh- 
 bours perfidious, and perfidious we certainly have 
 been. The classes which did the governing in 
 times past were perfidious to the back bone. 
 They were capable of throwing about them, 
 when the need arose, a Roman toga of virtuous
 
 The Martyrdout of Labour. 291 
 
 similitude ; but beneath its deceitful folds was 
 hidden a multitude of sins and shames. One 
 would not like to say that they were worse than 
 their accusing neighbours ; but they were no 
 better. Possibly it might not be just to affirm 
 that they are the same now ; to some extent at 
 least the mantle has gone from them to the 
 financial bosses — those contemptible creatures 
 who have swum in the pactolean stream of a 
 base commercialism until everything, honour, 
 honesty, humanity, patriotism, religion itself, have 
 been transmuted into a mere yellow sediment 
 of gilded corruption and pollution. And in 
 this respect it is not we alone who suffer the 
 abasement. 
 
 If one had not intense faith in the destiny of 
 the imperial race that has carried the one tongue 
 round the globe and graven it with a deeper 
 than Roman indelibleness upon every continent 
 and the islands of all the seas, one would lose 
 hope in the future of the world. But it cannot 
 be that the people that has established liberty 
 as a birthright and founded nations the very 
 breath and pulse of whose being are derived 
 from the inherent indomitableness of its spirit — 
 it cannot be that that people shall ultimately 
 fail of the yet higher and nobler achievement 
 that lies before it. The universal thought looks 
 to it for an advance beyond anything that has
 
 292 The Maidy7'doni of Labour. 
 
 been won by its conquering sword or the still 
 more potent arm of its industrial energy — an 
 advance to be gained by a simple faith in that 
 higher manhood which, whenever reached, takes 
 humanity captive and hales it forward and up- 
 ward, as though by the irresistible strains of an 
 ethereal music. 
 
 One must indeed at times fear for the lao^aard 
 step of the old home, with its enthralling tra- 
 ditions and the seductive make - believe of a 
 partial culture ; but the South and the West 
 are calling, and the East steadily appealing ; and 
 what with the invitation on the one hand and 
 the incitement and rivalry on the other, she 
 must break ground at last and, throwing her 
 base egotisms to the wind, frankly accept the 
 ideals she has but peddled with and paltered 
 with in the past, and follow, high of soul, 
 whithersoever her genius may lead. 
 
 It is a high and glorious destiny — one more 
 glorious, more inspiring, never loomed in ecstatic 
 vision before the eyes of mortal men ; and, 
 knit together as they are by oneness of speech 
 and a common aim, ten thousand shames will 
 cling to and blacken the memory of the people 
 derived from Anglo-Saxon stock if they allow 
 that proud heritage to elude their grasp. Only 
 the gleam of gold and the frenzy of money- 
 sweating can debar them from that crown and
 
 The Marty j^dom of Labour. 293 
 
 goal of eventual achievement ; and whoso is 
 sound of faith must still believe and work with 
 unswerving- conviction in the belief that there 
 is still moral health and hardihood enough at 
 the core of that people to cleanse the disease 
 that is eating away its heart, and so set it 
 once more marching to the pulse-beat of the 
 realms, far away yet near, whose unheard and 
 invisible harmonies thrill along the highways 
 of space, appeaHng for admission into the souls 
 of men, eager to awaken in them those chords 
 of feeling and of thought that are as the force- 
 engendering drum - taps of the Eternal and 
 Omniscient Mind.
 
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