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 ESSAYS ON SOCIALISM 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE BESANT 
 
 Stici- Swo §)fvMvn^3 and Sixfincc. 
 
 LONDON 
 ROBEET FORDER, 28 STONEGUTrER ST.. E.G. 
 
 1893
 
 Contents. 
 
 The Kedistribution of Political Power. 
 
 The Evolution of Society. 
 
 Modern Socialism. 
 
 Why I AM A Socialist. 
 
 Eadicalism and Socialism. 
 
 The Socialist Movement.
 
 THE 
 
 PiEDISTPtlBUTION 
 
 OF 
 
 POLITICAL POWER 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE EESANT. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 FEEETHGUGIIT PUBLISHING COMPANT, 
 
 C3, FLEET STREET, E.C; 
 
 18 85. 
 
 PRICE FOURPENCE
 
 LONDON : 
 PEINTKD BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BEADLAUGH, 
 
 G3, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
 [Reprinted from Onr Corner^ 
 
 I
 
 
 THE EEDISTEIBUTION OF POLITICAL 
 
 POWEE. 
 
 /? 
 
 Eesults of the Eeform Bill of 1832. 
 
 Standing as we do face to face with the enfranchisement 
 of two million men and the redistribution of electoral 
 power in the community, it seems well to look back on 
 earlier Eeform Bills and to endeavor to judge of the 
 probable results of the present measures from the 
 results that have followed their predecessors. My 
 object in the folio wing pages is to trace out the 
 most important tendencies which have shown themselves 
 after each Eeform Bill ; to mark the chief activities 
 manifested after each "infusion of new blood"; to pre- 
 sent a picture of certain steadily developing modifications 
 of the national organism, modifications which are likely to 
 become very pronounced in the near future. I am not 
 aware that any attempt has been made to distinguish the 
 transitory from the permanent tendencies, the reforms done 
 once for all amid great excitement fi'om the apparently less 
 important measures which none the less initiate new eras 
 and serve as the starting-point for new developments. Yet 
 in sociology as in geology, the most far-reaching changes 
 are not made by the volcanoes and the earthquakes, but 
 by the slow action of countless silent ever-working forces. 
 Each Eeform Bill has been followed by a great outburst 
 of reforming energy, and amid the many measures carried 
 in the reformed Parliaments those are, I think, of the most 
 
 759523
 
 4 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 permanently important character which have dealt with the 
 conditions of Labor, with the extension of Religious Liberty 
 and Equality, with the Tenm-e of Land, with the Educa- 
 tion of the People. 
 
 One marked change has come over the nation apart from 
 any legislative enactment — the decrease of the power of 
 the hereditary peers after each Eeform Bill. That of '32 
 swept away from them their control of the House of Com- 
 mons ; after '67, their legislative chamber became less and 
 less able to hold its own against the increased power of the 
 popular rejiresentatives ; on the Bill of '84 they nearly 
 shijjwrecked their House, and when the new constituencies 
 have had their say we may hope that the abolition of their 
 hereditary right of obstruction will be within measurable 
 distance. 
 
 We shall not be able to estimate the changes brought 
 about after 1832 without glancing at the England of the 
 pre-reforming period. The power of the great houses then 
 controlled the elections of so many boroughs that the peers 
 practically made the government ; in the Kst given b}' Lord 
 John Eussell in 1831, we find boroughs returning members 
 in which the constituencies consisted of 13, 18, 5, 10, 12, 
 persons, and in one case of no persons at all. In these 
 dukes, marquises, earls, and great untitled commoners, 
 appointed whom they would as the members to serve in 
 Parliament. Molesworth saj'S : "Li most of these boroughs 
 the seats were sold hj the proprietors. Sometimes they 
 themselves or some of their relatives or dependents were 
 nominated to represent them. Bribery was also practised 
 with little or no reserve or concealment where it was neces- 
 sary, but in many instances the constituency was so depen- 
 dent on the proprietor that no expenditure of this kind was 
 requisite " (History of the Eeform Bill, page 116). Lord 
 John Eussell urged that a stranger visiting the country 
 "would be very much astonished if he were taken to a 
 ruined mound, and told that the mound sent two representa- 
 tives to Parliament — if he were taken to a stone wall, and 
 told that three niches in it sent two representatives to Par- 
 liament- — if he were taken to a park, where no houses were 
 to be seen, and told that that park sent two representatives 
 to Parliament" (Ibid., p. 104). 
 
 Complaints of a similar nature were put even more for- 
 cibly in a petition presented to the House of Commons as
 
 THE EEDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 5 
 
 early as 1793, in wliich the petitioners stated that "seventy 
 of your honorable members are returned by thirty-five 
 places, where the right of voting is vested in burgage and 
 other tenures of a similar description, and in which it would 
 be to trifle with the patience of your honorable house to 
 mention any number of voters whatever, the elections at 
 the places alluded to being notoriously a mere matter of 
 form " ; further that two hundred and twenty more were 
 elected by places in which the electors varied from less than 
 fifty to less than two hundred ; that one hundred and fifty- 
 seven members were sent to Parliament by the direct au- 
 thority of eighty-four individuals, and one hundred and 
 fifty more ' ' not by the collective voice of those they 
 appear to represent, but by the recommendation of seventy 
 powerful individuals", one hundi-ed and fifty persons thus 
 returning a majority of the House (Ibid., pp. 342, 343, 
 
 347). 
 
 The agitation outside against this intolerable political 
 condition was sharpened by poverty and distress among the 
 people. Then, as now, social suffering was widespread and 
 alarming. The Non-intercourse Act, passed by the United 
 States, shut the American market against England, while 
 the introduction of machinery into various manufactures 
 threw numbers of persons out of employment, and the 
 year 1811 was marked by the " Luddite riots ", in which 
 the new and hated machines were destroyed by the in- 
 furiated workers. But these, isolated by ignorance, could 
 enter into no effective and organised action for their own 
 good ; they could make riots, they could burn a castle ; 
 they could not formulate their demands and enforce them. 
 In 1819, at Peterloo, the savage yeomanry rode at the help- 
 less crowd, cutting with their swords in every direction, till 
 six hundred and eighteen people were wounded and four- 
 teen were killed. (See Hunt's speech, reported in " Moles- 
 worth ", p. 126.) But the answer to this was not Eeform, 
 but the infamous " Six Acts " of Lord Sidmouth, generally 
 called " Castlereagh's Six Acts", which gave more speedy 
 execution of justice in certain cases, prevented unauthor- 
 ised military training, punished so-called "libels", gave 
 authority to seize arms, forbad "seditious" meetings, and 
 imposed a stamp duty. 
 
 Even when at last a Eeform Bill was introduced, it met 
 with bitter opposition. Sir Charles Wetherell railed against
 
 6 THE REDISTRIBUTION^ OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 it in tlie true Tory style, prophesying all sorts of mischiefs 
 as the consequences of Reform. " I say that the principle 
 of the Bill is EepubHcan at the basis ; I say that it is de- 
 structive of all property, of all right, of all privilege ; and 
 that the same arbitrary violence which expelled a majority 
 of members from that House at the time of the Common- 
 wealth, is now, after the lapse of a century from the Eevo- 
 lution, during which the population has enjoyed greater 
 happiness than has been enjoyed by any population under 
 heaven, proceeding to expose the House of Commons again 
 to the nauseous experiment of a repetition of Pride's purge " 
 (Ibid., p. 132). Spite of all these terrible forebodings the 
 Bill passed into law, receiving the Eoyal Assent on Jime 
 7th, 1832. 
 
 The general result of the Act was to throw political 
 power into the hands of manufacturers and capitalists, in 
 a phrase to " enfranchise the middle classes ". The direct 
 influence of the working classes was, if anything, slightly 
 diminished by the Act, since it disfranchised a few places 
 in which they had previously possessed the suffrage. It 
 struck a fatal blow at the privileges of the possessors of 
 hereditary authority, and gave representation to the com- 
 mercial interests of the nation. One striking proof was 
 given that the class which then won political power was 
 not unworthy of the freedom it had gained. One of its 
 first reforms was the introduction of a Factory Act to pro- 
 tect the more helpless of the operative class, and it ought 
 never to be forgotten that effective legislative interference 
 with employers was due to a Parliament elected principally 
 by that very same hourgeois class which it is now the fashion 
 to so unsparingly denounce. 
 
 In 1801 the first Act limiting the hours of labor was 
 passed, and by this it was forbidden that apprentices 
 should work for more than twelve hours a daj^ ; in 1819 
 Sir Robert Peel was defeated in a Bill which proposed to 
 limit the working day for young persons under sixteen 
 years of age to eleven hours and a half, and the Act of 
 1801 appears to have been systematically evaded. When 
 the Reformed Parliament met in 1833, a Bill was intro- 
 duced in the preamble of which it was stated that "it has 
 become a practice to employ a great number of children 
 and young persons of both sexes an unreasonable length 
 of time, and late at night, and in many cases aU night " ;
 
 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 7 
 
 this Bill enacted that no child should be employed in any 
 factory or mill (except a silk manufactory) under ten years 
 of age, and limited the working day to nine hours for 
 children under fourteen. In silk mills children under the 
 age of thirteen were still allowed to work for ten hours a 
 day. The hours of labor for young persons over fourteen 
 and under eighteen were fixed at sixty-nine a week or 
 eleven- and-a-half a day. Inspectors were also appointed 
 to see to the proper carrying out of the law, but it was 
 nevertheless evaded, and in 1838 Lord Ashley proposed 
 another measure for the protection of children, but his Bill 
 was thrown out by 121 votes against 106. In 1842, the 
 same gentleman successfully carried through a Bill pro- 
 hibiting the employment of women and children in coal 
 mines, and thus put a stop to the torture of young children, 
 and to the wholesale demoralisation which accompanied 
 the working together of men and women stripped to the 
 waist in the mines. X Lord Londonderry, as a large coal- 
 owner, bitterly opposed the Bill, affording one m ore ex- 
 ample of the fact tha't "humanity" vanishes before the 
 greed for wealth, and that the life and happiness of the 
 employed weigh little when put in the balances against 
 increased profit for the employer, v In 1844 an unsuccessful 
 attempt to limit the. working of women and children in 
 factories to a Ten Hours' Day, brought in by Lord Ashley, 
 was opposed by the Government and was defeated, and a 
 similar fate befell the same measure when re-introduced in 
 1846 by Mr. Fielden. In 1847, however, Mr. Fielden 
 carried a bill reducing the working day to ten hours for 
 young persons up to the age of eighteen. 
 
 This group of measures, passed by the Reformed Parlia- 
 ments, may be taken as laying down the principle of legis- 
 lative interference between employers and employed, of 
 protecting the latter by law against the former. That this 
 principle will, in time to come, be carried considerably 
 further is, to my mind, not a matter of doubt, and those 
 who object to further legislation in the interests of labor 
 ought in consistency to advocate the repeal of all the laws 
 on that matter already jmssed. They should send back 
 women to work half naked in the coal-mines. They should 
 bid the young children leave the schoolroom and the play- 
 ground, and go back to the factory to toil all day "and 
 late at night and in many cases all night", till they fall
 
 THE REDISTRIBTJTIOIf OF POLITICAL POWEB. 
 
 asleep over their work, and till, lying at home on their 
 2:)allets, their little hands in sleep still toss the shuttle to 
 and fro.^ They should call on the law to stand aside and 
 to let the wild struggle for life go on unchecked. They 
 should allow the workers to trample each other down in 
 the fearful competition for bread, and the employers to 
 wring from their necessities the greatest amount of labor 
 at the lowest wage. So shall the sacred " freedom of con- 
 tract " remain untouched, and the beautiful spectacle of 
 anarchical competition unrestrained by law shall be offered 
 as the outcome of civilization. Wild beasts rend each 
 other in their strife over the carcase of their prey ; why not 
 men in their strife for bread and wealth ? 
 
 With regard to Religious Liberty the Reformed Parlia- 
 ments made vast changes between 1833 and 1867. In 
 1833 a Bill for abolishing the civil disabihties of the Jews 
 was passed by the House of Commons but rejected by the 
 Lords, and thus began the long struggle which ended only 
 in 1860 by the Act which abolished the Christian oath for 
 members of Parliament. In 1834 the Commons passed 
 Bills for the abolition of University Tests, for the abolition 
 
 ^ From Evidence from the Report of the Committee of the Souse of Lords, 
 1819. — T. Willciiiso)!. — ''"WTiat are the hours of working in the fac- 
 tories you are acquainted with r — From six to seven in the summer, 
 and from seven to eight in the winter. "What time is allowed for 
 dinner 'r — An hoiu-. Is any other time allowed for meals ':* — No. Are 
 the children ever obliged to be at the factory before or after the com- 
 moii hours of work f — Yes. Are they ever beaten to make them 
 work 'r — I have seen hundreds beat, to keep them awake and drive 
 them on." Jolin Farchrothcr. — "How old were you when you first 
 went in ? — Between five and six. When the children have to eat their 
 meals in the factor}', do they generally finish it 'r — No. Do they leave 
 much of it ? — Yes ; I have seen it all left many times. Is that owing 
 to its being covered with dust ? — Yes. How do they get their break- 
 fast and afternoon meal ? — As they can catch it ; when the machinery 
 Ls mo^ang they eat it as they are piecing. How soon do you begin to 
 see a difference in a child's health r* — I have seen a difference in one 
 week." Fvidriice before the House of Commons Committee in 1816. — ./. 
 3foss. " He had on one occasion knoTVTi children to work in the mill 
 from eight o'clock on Saturday night to six on Sunday morning. The 
 same children resumed work on Sunday night at twelve o'clock, and 
 worked until five in the morning. . . . He had known children to 
 work for three weeks together from five in the morning till nine or ten 
 at night, with the exception of one hour for meals ; he had frequently 
 found the children asleep on the mill floors, after the time they should 
 kave been in bed."
 
 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 1> 
 
 of Church Rates, for allowing marriages in Dissenters' 
 chapels, but all these were rejected, by the Lords, the 
 struggle over University Tests lasting until 1871, after a 
 second Reform Act. In 1836, the right of registering 
 births, marriages, and deaths was taken from the clergy of 
 the Established Church, and in the same year a BiU was 
 passed permitting Dissenters to be married in their own 
 chapels. In 18.37 an attempt was made to relieve Dissen- 
 ters from the payment of Church Rates, but the Bill was 
 withdrawn in consequence of the opposition raised to it, 
 and the measure was not carried until 1868, after the im- 
 pulse of a new Reform. In 1840 a small instalment of 
 justice to Ireland in religious matters was made by the- 
 Irish Tithe Bill, which had been originally introduced in 
 1834, and rejected in 1835, 1836, and 1837; in 1857 an- 
 other small instalment was paid by the abolition of a tax 
 called "Ministers' Money " which had been levied for the 
 support of the Establishment. The great agitation for the 
 disestablishment of the Irish Chui'ch was commenced in. 
 Parliament by Mr. DiUwyn in 1865; it was endorsed by 
 the Liberal Party in Mr. Gladstone's famous resolutions- 
 for disestablishing and disendowing it, carried in the un- 
 reformed Parliament in March 1868, and the way was thus 
 opened for a Bill on the subject after the general election. 
 The claim of Dissenters to be allowed to bury their dead 
 ■without the intrusion of the State-paid priests went too far 
 on the path of religious equality for the Parliaments be- 
 tween 1833 and 1867; the establishment of cemeteries 
 whereof a part remained unconsecrated for their use was 
 permitted, but complete freedom of burial was only ob- 
 tained by them in 1880, and this is not even yet extended 
 to thorough-going heretics. 
 
 With respect to the Tenure of Land, nothing of any im- 
 portance to the nation was done between 1832 and 1867. 
 A number of bills affecting land were passed, but they 
 were all on points touching only the landowners, and no- 
 thing was even suggested which coidd imply that the nation 
 had the smallest interest in its own soil. The great Cora 
 Law struggle, which ended with the passing of the Anti- 
 Corn Law Bill in 1846, was, however, really a struggle be- 
 tween the masses of the people wanting cheap bread and 
 the landlords wanting to keep out foreign corn ; only by 
 protection could farmers, they thought, continue to pay
 
 10 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 high rents for the land they cultivated, and the "protec- 
 tion of agriculture " then, as now, was nothing more than 
 an attempt on the part of the landlords to tax the com- 
 munity for their own benefit. Here, as everj'-where else, 
 the interests of the small land-monopolising class were in 
 direct conflict with the interests of the masses of the people. 
 The people need cheap food ; the landlords want food to be 
 dear, so that the farmers who supply it may be able to pay 
 high rent ; every attempt to keep out foreign corn, foreign 
 •cattle, foreign food of any kind, is an attempt to maintain 
 unfair rents by forcing up the prices of farmers' produce, 
 and to levy a tax on the consumers for the maintenance of 
 an evil system. 
 
 The roots of our present system of National Education 
 are struck in the first Parliament after the Reform Act of 
 1832. In 1833 a grant of £20,000 a year was made for 
 the purposes of National Education, but it was placed for 
 administration in the hands of the National Society and of 
 the British and Foreign School Society ; so that although 
 the grant implied a recognition of the duty of the com- 
 munity towards its children, the recognition took the un- 
 healthy form of placing State funds in the hands of un- 
 official societies. Practically most of the money was 
 disposed of by the clergy, and was used for denominational 
 purposes. In 1839 the grant was raised to £30,000 a-year, 
 and an Educational Committee of the Pri\y Council was 
 appointed to receive and administer the money : this was 
 the foundation of State Education, for not only was the 
 money kept under State control, but inspectors were ap- 
 pointed over the schools assisted by the State, and so began 
 the system which received such vast development after the 
 Reform Eill of 1867, and which is likely to develop yet 
 further in the near future. Those who oppose its develop- 
 naent are bound in reason to object to the recognition of 
 the whole principle of State Education, and to agitate for 
 the abolition of the huge system which has grown out of 
 the seeds planted in 1833 and 1839. Those who would 
 leave education to " voluntary effort " should see what was 
 its condition before the State stepped in on behalf of its 
 helpless children, and should gravely ask themselves 
 whether they really desire that the ignorance of the early 
 part of the nineteenth centurj^ should return to shroud its 
 close, and that the children of the twentieth century should
 
 THE REDISTRIBUTIO>r OF POLITICAL POWER. 11 
 
 be robbed of the knowledge which is raising the children 
 of to-day. 
 
 While Parliament was thus laying the basis of a system 
 of National Education for children, the yearning of the 
 workers outside for wider knowledge forced on it other 
 legislation, which was also essentially educational. This 
 yearning took the form of a resolute agitation for an un- 
 stamped press, for the fourpenny stamp imposed on all 
 newspapers placed them entirely out of the reach of the 
 poorer workers. Never was a struggle for a noble object 
 carried on with more resolute heroism, with more strenuous 
 patience. It was waged almost entirely by the poor, men 
 and women selling unstamped papers, going to gaol, and 
 continuing the sale on their release. Glancing over the 
 list of those prosecuted in the year ending September, 
 1834, I see a few well-known names, and many to me 
 unknown. There are Henry Hetherington, John Cleave, 
 James Watson, all j)rominent men ; but few know Edmund 
 Wastneys of Newcastle, Isabella Rose of Southampton, 
 Richard Lee and Edmund StaUwood of Holborn, John 
 Smith of the Strand, Greorge Baker of Worcester, Edmund 
 Somerside of Winlaton, W. Nicholls of Tottenham Court 
 Road, Patrick Bready and Edward Gleave of Sheffield, 
 John Chappell of Clifton, James Guest, Richard Jenkin- 
 son, Julius Faulkner, William Plastans, William Guest, 
 Thomas Watts, all of Birmingham, Alexander Yates of 
 Coventry ; yet all these suffered imprisonment for the 
 crime of selling unstamped newspapers. And so I might 
 go on with list after list of these, the privates in Liberty's 
 army, who were struck down in the battle, who by their 
 sufferings won for us our freedom, and on whose unknown 
 graves we cannot even lay a leaf of memoi'y and of thanks. 
 
 In 1836 the stamp was reduced from 4d. to Id., despite 
 the argument that the reduction would "introduce a cheap 
 and profligate press, one of the greatest curses that can be 
 inflicted on humanity". This penny duty was levied on 
 papers containing " news ", or remarks on news, jiublished 
 periodically at intervals of less than twenty- six days, and 
 "published for sale for a less price than sixpence, exclu- 
 sive of the duty" (6th and 7th William IV., cap. 76, 
 quoted in the Report of the Select Committee on News- 
 paper Stamps, 1851, p. iv.). The agitation continued 
 against the Id. stamp, and the Committee of 1851 reported
 
 12 THE REDISTKIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 against it because of " tlie impediments -whicli it throws in 
 the way of the diffusion of useful knowledge regarding 
 current and recent events among the poorer classes " 
 (Report, p. xii.). The stamp was abolished in 1855. 
 
 In 1860, Mr. Gladstone proposed and carried in the 
 House of Commons a clause in his Budget Bill repealing 
 the paper duties, so as to still further cheapen literature, 
 but the Lords struck out the clause by a majority of 89. 
 In 1861, however, Mr. Gladstone made the repeal a part 
 of his financial measure in such fashion that the Lords 
 would have been obliged to reject the Budget if they 
 rejected the repeal clause, and as they did not venture on 
 so dangerous an aggression the "taxes on knowledge" 
 were taken off. 
 
 Of all the work done by the Reformed Parliaments that 
 connected with education was perhaps the most vitally 
 important and the most far-reaching. Without a cheap 
 press, political education is impossible for the masses, and 
 without political education reforms are either unattainable 
 or inoperative. Education is the lever whereby political 
 and social inequahty shall be overturned, and with this 
 lever in one hand and the trowel of political power in the 
 other. Democracy will be armed to overturn the Wrong 
 and to build up the Right. 
 
 II. — Results of tiie Reform Bill of 1867.. 
 
 The question of Parliamentary Reform again took defi- 
 nite shape in 1858, after the convulsions caused by the 
 Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. In that year, the 
 Tories being in power, IVIi-. John Bright formulated a new 
 scheme of Reform, which proposed to give the franchise to 
 all who paid the poor-rate in boroughs, to all who paid a 
 £10 rental in counties, and to lodgers paying a similar 
 rental. Voting by ballot was also adopted by the Re- 
 formers, for the protection of the poorer voters who were 
 subjected to intimidation by their employers. In 1859 Mr. 
 Disraeli introduced a Reform Bill containing a most extra- 
 ordinary collection of fancy property franchises, and on 
 this the Government was defeated, and Lord Derby went 
 to the country. After the general election Lord Palmer- 
 ston came into power, and in the following year, 1860, 
 Lord John Russell introduced a measure which gave a £6 
 franchise in boroughs, and a £10 in counties ; in this Bill
 
 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 13 
 
 appeared for the first time the proposal to make "three- 
 cornered constituencies", in which a minority might secure 
 representation by electing one member out of three. The 
 Bill made but slow progress in the House, and excited no 
 enthusiasm out-of-doors, and it was finally withdrawn by 
 the Government on June 11th. The question of Eeform 
 then slept until 1865, when Mr. Baines brought up some 
 resolutions in its favor, and the Government declined to 
 take any action in the matter ; the feeling outside had, 
 however, been growing steadily, and after the general 
 election of 1865 — in which Mr. Gladstone was defeated at 
 Oxford and returned for South Lancashire — the Liberal 
 party found itself stronger than ever. On the assembling 
 of Parliament, Earl Eussell being Premier, Parliamentary 
 Eeform found a place in the Queen's speech, and Mr. Glad- 
 stone introduced the Government Bill on March 1 3th ; the 
 proposed was by no means a Eadical one, the county fran- 
 chise being fixed at £14, and the borough at £10, but the 
 famous " Cave of Adullam " was formed against it, and 
 the Whigs and Tories together defeated the Government. 
 Lord Derby took office at the end of June, and the agita- 
 tion in favor of Eeform now rose to fever heat; the Govern- 
 ment tried at first to coerce the people, but succeeded only 
 in irritating them, as when it closed the gates of Hyde 
 Park against a meeting of the Eeform Ijeague, and a new 
 way was made into the Park over the pulled-down railings. 
 On this the Government decided to yield to the popular 
 demand, and in March, 1867, Mr. Disraeli, after bring- 
 ing forward some abortive resolutions, startled Whigs, 
 Tories, Liberals, and Eadicals by introducing his famous 
 Eeform Bill which gave household suffrage to ratepayers 
 in the boroughs, and reduced the count}' franchise to a 
 £15 qualification. The latter was further reduced to £10, 
 and householders who paid their rates in their rents re- 
 ceived also the franchise. The Bill, characterised by Lord 
 Derby as "a leap in the dark", passed the House of Lords 
 in August, and thus the second great Eeform Bill of the 
 century became law, the working classes in the towns win- 
 ning their enfrancliisement and becoming, so far as the 
 boroughs were concerned, the real depositories of political 
 power. 
 
 It was manifestly impossible for the Tories long to delay 
 the appeal to the new electorate, working, as they were,
 
 14 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL TOWER. 
 
 ■with, a minority iu the House of Commons. Lord Derby 
 resigned office, and was succeeded by Mr. Disraeli, at the 
 beginning of the Session of 1868, and the opening of a 
 new period of reforming energ}'- was announced in the 
 famous resolutions of Mr. Gladstone, carried by a majority 
 of 66, proposing to disestablish and disendow the Irish. 
 Church. Parliament was dissolved and a general election 
 took place in November, resulting in the return of a large 
 Liberal majority to the House of Commons. Mr. Grlad- 
 stone, who in 1865 had proved too Liberal for Oxford, was 
 in 1868 proved to be too Liberal for the county constitu- 
 ency of kSouth Lancashire, but was returned by the work- 
 ing men of Greenwich, and became Premier of the new 
 Liberal ISIinistry. 
 
 The Labor legislation of the period between the Reform 
 Bills of 1867 and 1884 continued steadily on the lines laid 
 down in the preceding period, and though fewer in num- 
 ber the Bills introduced were of the most valuable kind. 
 In 1871 the Trade Union Act was passed, by which were 
 repealed the iniquitous laws against combinations of 
 Avorkers. The law of 39 and 40 George III., cap. 106, 
 to take an example of past legislation, punished combina- 
 tion by imprisonment, and rendered illegal all agreements 
 between workmen for obtaining any advance of wages. 
 Various Acts had been j)assed from time to time, partly 
 repealing, partially re-enacting, this and similar oppressive 
 measiu'es, and the common law of conspiracy was constantly 
 used against the Trades' Unions, the most outrageous 
 sentences of penal servitude being passed on men under 
 this law for combination and picketing. The natural result 
 of oppression, secret outrages, appeared in many large 
 towns ; a strong agitation was carried on, and various 
 Select Committees were appointed to consider the laws 
 affecting the relations between employers and employed. 
 The result was the passing of the Trade Union Act, which 
 rendered the associations legal. This emancipating legis- 
 lation was completed by the Employers and Workmen Bill, 
 passed by Mr. r)israeli's Government in 1875, an Act which 
 repealed all the oppressive penal laws under which labor 
 had been so long suffering. 
 
 This same year 1875 was noticeable for the passing of 
 the Artisans' Dwellings Bill, a well-meant measure, but 
 which has proved inoperative, in consequence of its being
 
 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 15 
 
 permissive. A Shipping Bill, due to Mr. Plimsoll, was 
 also passed during this year, and did something, though 
 but little, to protect sailors' lives. 
 
 In 1874 a Bill introduced by Mr. Mundella, for extend- 
 ing the operation of the Factory Acts, had been taken up 
 by the Government and passed; and in 1878 Mr. Cross 
 succeeded in carrying another Bill, which had also been 
 previously proposed by Mr. Mundella, for the consolidation 
 and amendment of the Factory and AVorkshops Acts. This 
 Act insisted on a sanitary condition for factories and work- 
 shops, and on the safeguarding of machinery ; it limited 
 the hours of labor for children, young persons, and women, 
 prohibited the employment of children under ten years of 
 age, provided for the education of child employees, set 
 apart certain holidays and half-holidays, and required 
 certificates of fitness for employment for children under 
 sixteen years of age. On the whole the measure was a 
 good one, though permitting too long hours of labor. 
 
 The Employers' Liability Bill of 1880, earnestly pleaded 
 for by the representatives of labor in the House, made 
 another important step forwards, by declaring that the 
 employer might be made responsible for injuries received 
 by his employees where such injury resulted from neglect 
 by himself or by his agents. 
 
 Looking at the whole of this legislation, we find recog- 
 nised as a definite principle the right of the community to 
 interfere, by means of law, for the protection of the workers 
 from the greed of those who employ them, whether it be 
 to save sailors from " coffin-ships ", or miners aud other 
 operatives from preventible injury, or factory and shop- 
 workers from excessive hours of labor. We also find that 
 the community recognises its interest in the wholesome 
 housing of its laboring class, in the health of those pro- 
 ducers on whom the wealth of the nation depends. 
 
 Some of the greatest blows struck for Eeligious Liberty 
 and Equality during the century were dealt between 1867 
 and 1884. It is mentioned above that in 1868 Mr. Glad- 
 stone's resolutions against the Irish Establishment were 
 carried in the unreformed Parliament by a majority of 
 66, and when Mr. Gladstone came into power as a result 
 of the general election, the Liberal party was thereby 
 pledged to attack the Irish Church without delay. On 
 March 1st, 1869, Mr. Gladstone introduced a Bill for the
 
 16 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Irish Church. 
 As the Church of the landlords and of a very small minority 
 of the population, and as a badge of conquest, the Irish 
 Church was quite peculiarly indefensible, yet it is needless 
 to say that the Tory party loudly denounced the Bill as 
 sacrilegious and confiscatory. It passed the Commons in 
 May, but was returned to them so altered that they declined 
 to accept it ; after much wrangling the usual compromise 
 was effected, and the Bill received the Eoyal Assent on 
 July 26th. The great blunder of the Act lay in its clauses 
 for comjieusating the officials of the defunct Establishment. 
 Every ofiicial — including schoolmasters, clerks, and sextons 
 — who was in office on January 1st, 1871, was declared to 
 be entitled to payment of the net income which he was 
 previously receiving so long as he discharged his office, 
 such income to be further commutable for a capital sum, 
 calculable on the value of the income as a life-annuity. 
 The consequence of giving a seventeen months' period 
 during which fresh interests could be created was, of 
 course, to add largely to the class which had to be com- 
 pensated, and so to diminish the funds aj)plicable to 
 national purposes. But the Act is of utmost value, in that 
 it declared that the "ultimate surplus" was available for 
 " the relief of unavoidable calamity and suffering", and 
 that " the said proceeds shall be so applied accordingly, 
 in the manner Parliament shall hereafter direct ". That 
 is, it laid down the precedent of treating the Church merely 
 as a department of the State, the funds administered by 
 which were national funds, to be used as the nation may 
 direct. 
 
 The same year 1869 saw the passing of the Evidence 
 Amendment Act, allowing witnesses without religious 
 opinions to affirm in courts of law. As first introduced by 
 the Hon. George Denman, it onl}^ permitted affirmation to 
 those who should "object to take an oath". Charles 
 Bradlaugh, now junior member for Northamjiton, pointed 
 out that this would not enable Atheists to affirm, since 
 they had been held " incompetent " to swear, whether they 
 objected or not, and after some insistance a modification 
 was made which authorised the taking of an affirmation 
 by anyone who should "object to take an oath", or who 
 should be objected to as "incompetent to take the oath". 
 Unhappily the insulting words were added that the pre-
 
 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWEIU 1 ' 
 
 siding judge must Le " satisfied that the taking of an oath 
 would have no binding effect on his conscience". This 
 phrase has been constantly used as though Atheists stated 
 that the oath was not binding on them, whereas the words 
 were merely words of insult used by a Parliament in which 
 Christians were in a large majority. The Evidence Further 
 Amendment Act, passed in the following year, only ex- 
 tended the meaning of the word " judge " to "include any 
 person or persons having by law authority to administer 
 an oath for the taking of evidence ". This Act was passed 
 in consequence of the rejection of Mr. Bradlaugh's evi- 
 dence by an arbitrator, the Court of Common Pleas holding 
 that the evidence was rightly rejected, the Act of 1869 only 
 admitting evidence given in a court of justice before a 
 judge. 
 
 Since 1880, in consequence of Mr. Charles Bradlaugh's 
 claim to affirm as a member of the House of Commons, 
 various attempts have been made to legalise affirmation in 
 Parliament. In June 1882 Lord Sundridge introduced a 
 Bill permitting any member of either House to affirm if he 
 intimated in writing that he had " a conscientious objection 
 to the form of the oath required by the law, or that the 
 taking of an oath would have no binding effect on his con- 
 science ". Objection was raised that the Grovernment ought 
 to deal with the matter rather than a private member, and 
 the Bill failed to pass. In February, 1883, the Grovern- 
 ment introduced a similar Bill, but instead of making the 
 conditions above stated, proposed that every member 
 "may, if he thinks fit," affirm instead of swearing. The 
 Government foolishly did not make their Bill a cabinet 
 question, and it was lost by a majority of only three votes, 
 proving that the least energy on their part woidd have 
 ensured its success. In February, 1885, Mr. Hopwood, 
 Q.C, introduced a far better measure, legalising affirma- 
 tion " in all places and for all purposes where an oath is or 
 shall be required b}' law ". The fate of this new attempt 
 to widen religious liberty is still doubtful when I write. 
 
 In 1871, the University Tests Bill, abolishing religious 
 tests in the Universities, was at last passed, bitterly op- 
 posed as it was by the Tories, who denounced it in un- 
 measured terms ; and by this funds usurped by the Church 
 were rendered available for the education of Churchmen 
 and of Dissenters alike. An attempt to do a similar ser-
 
 18 XHE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 vice for Ireland, by the creation of a University from which 
 theology should be excluded, was made by Mr. Gladstone 
 in 1873, but this Bill was rejected by a majority of three. 
 A Bill was, however, passed in this year abolishing tests 
 in Trinity College, Dublin, and so a small step towards 
 equality was made. In 1877, a Burial Acts Consolidation 
 Bill was introduced in the House of Lords, which permitted 
 "silent burial" in churchyards by Dissenters; but it was 
 ultimately withdrawn, and quarrels over the coffins of dead 
 Dissenters continued until 1880, in which year a Burials 
 Bill was passed which permitted dissenting ministers to 
 bury members of their sects in parish churchyards with 
 any "religious and orderly service" they preferred. A 
 strong effort was made to include all orderly forms of 
 burial, Mr. Ashton Dilke pointing out that as he had no 
 "religious" opinions the permission would not include 
 himself, but the Christian majority was too intolerant to 
 extend to extreme heretics the liberty it claimed for its own 
 members, and an amending Burials Act is still required. 
 It may be noted in passing that in 1879 Mr. Martin suc- 
 ceeded in passing through Parliament a Bill which made 
 it incumbent on local authorities to provide cemeteries for 
 the burial of Dissenters. 
 
 The prosecutions in 1883 of Messrs. Bradlaugh, Foote, 
 Ramsey, and Kemp, for blasphemy, the conviction of the 
 three latter, and the brutal sentences passed on them by 
 Mr. Justice North, roused public feeling strongly against 
 the Blasjiheray Laws, and a Bill for their repeal was drafted 
 by Mr. Justice Stephens. No member of the House of 
 Commons, however, could be found bold enough to intro- 
 duce it, and the abolition of these cruel laws is left to a 
 more enlightened Parliament, chosen by a wider electorate. 
 
 Enormous progress was made in questions affecting the 
 Tenure of Land between 1867 and 1884. Pirst in order 
 and in far-reaching imjoortance comes Mr. Gladstone's 
 gi^eat measure, the Irish Land Act. It was introduced in 
 the Commons on February 15th, 1870, and became law on 
 August 1st. By this Act the right of a tenant to his own 
 improvements was recognised, and an attempt was made 
 to prevent the confiscation by the landlord of the tenant's 
 property by imposing on the landlord the obligation to 
 compensate an outgoing tenant for his improvements. The 
 right of the tenant to security of tenure was admitted by
 
 THE KEDISTEIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 19 
 
 compelling the landlord to "compensate for disturbance " 
 if he ejected his tenant, and by authorising the tenant to 
 keep possession of his holding until the money was paid. 
 In cases of dispute, the amount of compensation was to be 
 decided by the Civil Bill Court (County Court) ; a scale, 
 however, limiting to far too low a sum the maxiuiuiu 
 amount that could be fixed as compensation for disturbance, 
 was inserted in the Act. Unfortunately the object of the 
 Legislature in passing the Bill was foiled, for it made no 
 provision for preventing the landlord raising the rent when 
 improvements were made by the tenant, and so confiscation 
 went on unchecked ; if the tenant tried to avoid the penalty 
 by giving notice to quit on the raising of the rent he re- 
 ceived no compensation for disturbance, the compensation 
 being only paid when he was " disturbed in his holding by 
 the act of his landlord ". The attempt tcT create a peasant 
 proprietary also proved a failure, for though the Grovern- 
 ment was authorised to advance two-thirds of the purchase- 
 money to a cultivator desiring to buy land, the legal ex- 
 penses were so heavy as to prove practically prohibitory. 
 A fairly extensive sale of Church lands, however, took 
 place, the legal cost being far less, and between five and 
 six thousand peasant proprietors were thus made. 
 
 The failure of this effort to settle the Irish land question, 
 and the sufferings inflicted on the people by famine, led to 
 continued agitation, and one of the first measures intro- 
 duced by Mr. Gladstone's Grovernment in the short session 
 of 1880 was the Compensation for Disturbance Bill (Ire- 
 land). It was rejected by the House of Lords by a 
 majority of 232, and the agitation in Ireland passed, as 
 Mr. Gladstone had predicted, into a state which was practi- 
 cally one of civil war. In 1881 the second great Irish 
 Land Act was passed, which laid down the important 
 principle of a "judicial rent". It also established Land 
 Courts, which were empowered to fix these judicial rents, 
 and these Courts have largely reduced the rack-rents before 
 exiicted. 
 
 "While these two great Irish measures are of vital impor- 
 tance as laying down the principle of State interference 
 between landlord and tenant, other measures affecting the 
 Tenure of Land were passed during this same fruitful 
 period. The Agricultural Holdings Act of 1875 was, like 
 the Artisans' Dwellings Act, permissive, and those whom
 
 20 THE REDISTKIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 it is most necessary to coerce thus escape from its provi- 
 sions. In 1879 an attempt to abolish distraint for rent of 
 agricultural holdings was made by Mr. Blennerhassett, but 
 he was defeated by a majority of 110, and nothing was 
 done for tenants until a Liberal Grovernment was again in 
 power. In 1880 the Ground Game Bill was passed, au- 
 thorising farmers to kill ground game on their own farms, 
 so relieving them from the obligation of feeding their land- 
 lords' animals, so far as quadrupeds were concerned. The 
 landlords are still allowed to keej) winged game at their 
 tenants' expense, and avail themselves largely of this lega- 
 lised form of theft. 
 
 The system of National Education, commenced in 1839, 
 assumed definite shape and wide extent in 1870. In that 
 year Mr. Forster brought in his famous BiU of Elementary 
 Education and carried it to a successful issue. By this Act 
 it was declared that "there shall be provided for every 
 school district a sufficient amount of accommodation in public 
 elementary schools (as hereinafter defined) available for all 
 the children resident in such district for whose elementary 
 education efficient and suitable provision is not otherwise 
 made ". Eeligious liberty was guarded by enacting that 
 " it shall not be required, as a condition of any child being 
 admitted into or continuing in the school, that he shall 
 attend or abstain from attending any Sunday school, or any 
 place of religious worship, or that he shall attend any 
 religious observance or any instruction in religious subjects 
 in the school or elsewhere " : any religious instruction given 
 at the school was to be given at the beginning or end of 
 the schoolhours, and any parent might withdraw his child; 
 the inspector was not to have the duty of examining in 
 religious knowledge. Each child was to pay a weekly fee, 
 iinless excused on the ground of the parent's poverty, and 
 if " a school board satisfy the Education Department that, 
 on the ground of the poverty of the inhabitants of any 
 place in this district, it is expedient for the interests of 
 education to provide a school at which no fees shall be re- 
 quired from the scholars, the board may, subject to such 
 rules and conditions as the Education Department may 
 prescribe, provide such school, and may admit scholars to 
 such school without requiring any fee". Expenses were 
 to be met out of the " school fund ", which consisted of 
 moneys received as fees, provided by Parliament, raised
 
 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 21 
 
 by loan or by rate : further, one district might be directed 
 to "contribute towards the jDrovision or maintenance of 
 public elementary schools in another school district or dis- 
 tricts". School Boards, to carry out the duties imposed 
 by the Act, were to be elected by the ratepayers by the 
 cumulative vote, and these Boards might pass a bye-law 
 rendering education compidsory for children between the 
 ages of iive and thirteen, any child over ten years of age 
 being exempted from the bye-law if he was certified as 
 having reached the standard of education fixed by the 
 Board. Such is an outline of the famous Education Act, 
 the first effective attempt to educate the childi^en of the 
 poor. The amending Act of 1873 contains nothing but 
 matters of detail, with the exception of the proviso that if 
 any parent was receiving out-door relief, it was to "be a 
 condition for the continuance of such relief that elementary 
 education in reading, writing, and arithmetic" should be 
 given to any child between the ages of five and thirteen. 
 In 1876 another Education Act was passed. By this it was 
 declared that " it shall be the duty of the parent of every 
 child to cause such child to receive efficient elementary in- 
 struction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and if such 
 parent fail to perform such duty, he shall be liable to such 
 oi-ders and penalties as are provided by this Act ". The 
 Act forbade the employment of children under ten years of 
 age, and of children above that age if they had not reached 
 a certain standard of education, imless such children were 
 attending school during part of the day. Local authori- 
 ties were empowered to authorise the employment of child- 
 ren over eight years of age, for not more than six weeks in 
 the year, in husbandry or ingathering of crops. Provision 
 was made for comjjelling the parent to send his child to 
 school, and in case of non-compliance with the order a 
 court of summary jurisdiction was authorised to send the 
 child to a certified day industrial school. In such schools 
 meals were to be provided, and were to be paid for ' ' out 
 of moneys provided by Parliament" and by fees paid by 
 the parents, the latter to be excused if the parent were too 
 poor to pay them, and to be charged on the rates. It is 
 noteworthy that in all cases of payment of fees for parents, 
 provided for in this and in the Act of 1870, the payment is 
 not to be taken as ruaking the parent a pauper ; thus, in 
 this Act of 1876 it is laid down : " The parent shall not by
 
 22 THE EEDISTRIBITTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 reason of any payment made under this section be deprived 
 of any franchise, right, or privilege, or be subject to any 
 disability or disqualification". 
 
 As in the former period, from 1832 to 1867, the struggle 
 for a free press accompanied Parliamentary action in favor 
 of education, so in the period we are now considering, 
 another great step was taken towards freeing the press 
 from its shackles. The combatant in this struggle was 
 Charles Bradlaugh, and the battle was over the Act im- 
 posing sureties against blasphemy and sedition, 60 George 
 in., cap. 9. This Act was intended to stop "pamphlets 
 and printed papers, containing observations upon public 
 events and occurrences, tending to excite hatred and con- 
 tempt of the Government and constitution of these realms, 
 as to law established, and also vilifying our holy religion ". 
 It applied only to publications sold at less than sixpence 
 per copy. Mr. Bradlaugh, as editor of the National Re- 
 fornier, a Eepublican and Freethought twopenny journal, 
 declined to give sureties, on the ground that so doing 
 would make the conduct of the paper too costly for his 
 means. For some years the paper went on its way, all 
 applications for the security being met with a bland 
 refusal. At last, in 1868, the Tory Government resolved 
 to prosecute, and the paper appeared with a line under its 
 heading: "Published in defiance of Her Majesty's Gov- 
 ernment, and of the 60th George III., cap. 9 " (National 
 Reformer^ May 3rd, 1868, p. 281). Mr. Bradlaugh's answer 
 to the notice of prosecution was characteristic : 
 
 " TO HER Majesty's Commissioners for the Department 
 OF Inland Eevenue. 
 
 " Gentlemen, — You have taken the pains to officially remind 
 me of an Act of Parliament, passed in 1819, avowedly for the 
 suppression of cheap Democratic and Freethought literature, 
 and you require me to comply with its provisions, such provi- 
 sions being absolutely prohibitory to the further appearance of 
 this journal. With all humility, I am obliged to bid you defi- 
 ance ; you may kill the National Reformer, but it will not 
 commit suicide. Before you destroy my paper we shall have to 
 fight the question, so far as my means will permit me. 
 
 " I know the battle is not on equal terms. You have the 
 national purse, I an empty pocket; you have the trained talent 
 of the law officers of the Crown, I my own poor wits. But it 
 would be cowardly indeed in me to shrink in 1868 from a con-
 
 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAl, POWEE. 23 
 
 test in wMch my gallant predecessor, Eichard Carlile, fought 
 so persistently more than a quarter of a century since." 
 
 This is not the place to record the varying events of the 
 long struggle ; it must suffice to say that Sir John Kars- 
 lake failed, in consequence of the adroit legal fencing of 
 his lay opponent, and that the Gladstone Government, 
 coming into office, disgraced itself by taking up the prose- 
 cution in 1869. The Crown gained a verdict, whicli ]\Ir. 
 Bradlaugh upset ; a stet processus was then entered, the 
 Government introducing a Bill to repeal the Acts. Mr. 
 Ayrton had previously endeavored to get rid of tht>se op- 
 jiressive laws, having described them as "laws which 
 could never have been placed upon the jstatute-book except 
 in the most evil times, when the old Tory party was en- 
 gaged in desperate struggles to repress the expression of 
 public opinion, and to maintain its hold of political power". 
 Now his bill passed rapidly through its stages, and the 
 freedom of the press was won as far as political discussion 
 was concerned. From that time forward cheap newspapers 
 could circulate, criticising all flaws, advocating all reforms, 
 without fear of having to pay for their boldness by the 
 forfeiture of their recognisances, and that freedom they 
 owe to that small but gallant party which since the time 
 of Thomas Paine has fought and suffered for the liberty 
 of aU. 
 
 III. — Eesults of THE Eeform Bill of 1884. 
 
 In the previous pages I have tried to trace the results 
 of Eeform as seen exemplified in our past. In the 
 following ones I propose to outline results which 
 are yet in the future, but which lie in the direct line 
 of evolution, and are but an expansion and a development 
 of principles already accepted by the Legislature. What 
 legislative action is likely to be taken by the Eeformed 
 Parliament with respect to the conditions of Labor, Eeli- 
 gious Liberty and Equality, the Tenure of Land, the Edu- 
 cation of the People ? As in the past, so in the future, the 
 new Parliament will be full of reforming energy ; again 
 we stand on the threshold of great changes, changes to 
 which some look with fear and some with hope. 
 
 We have already seen that the principle of legislative 
 interference between employers and employed has been
 
 24 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 largely acted on by Parliament since 1832. There is no 
 reason to suppose that the new Parliament will be more 
 careless of the interests of the workers than its predeces- 
 sors have been ; indeed, elected as it will be, by a larger 
 number of handworkers than have ever before taken part 
 in the choice of representatives of the Commons, it will 
 probably be more inclined to legislate in the interests of 
 Laljor than any Parliament we have yet seen. 
 
 The hours of labor have been shortened at successive 
 intervals since 1801, and it is not unreasonable to suppose 
 that a further shortening of these hours will soon be made. 
 The ordinary London operative now works for a ten hours' 
 day, from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. with an hour's interval for 
 dinner. Mr. Howell says on this: "If we take the 
 metropolis we shall find that a building operative has to 
 be at his work at six o'clock in the morning, and he now 
 leaves at five o'clock at night. But he has often to walk 
 four or five miles to his work, so that he has to leave home 
 at five and cannot reach home again until six, making a 
 total of thirteen hours. . . . An hour's walk is often very 
 exhilarating to a business man, shvit up in an office all 
 day, but to a mason, carpenter, bricklayer, or plasterer, 
 who has frequently to plod through the rain or drifting 
 snow, it is painfully exhausting, especially when it has to 
 be dune before six o'clock in the morning."^ 
 
 There can be no doubt in the minds of reasonable people 
 that a ten hours' day is too long. But if that be so, what 
 shall we say to the hours of labor of shopmen and shop- 
 women, who in most large shops in London begin at 8 
 a.m. or 9 a.m. and continue at work until 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. ? 
 In the smaller shops things are still worse, and, going 
 through a poor neighborhood, we see provision shops open 
 until 10 p.m. or even 11 p.m. served by exhausted men 
 and women, whose pale cheeks and languid movements 
 tell of the strain which is destroying their vitality. The 
 new Parliament should pass an Eight Hours Bill, making 
 the legal day a day of eight hours only, and giving one 
 haK-holiday in the week, so that the weekly hours of labor 
 shall not exceed forty-four. In time to come I trust that 
 the hours of labor will be yet further shortened, but the 
 
 1 "The Conflicts of Capital and Labor." By G. Howell. Pp. 
 295, 296.
 
 THE KEDISXRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 25 
 
 passage of an Eight Hours Bill would mark a good step 
 forward. Looking at the question from a rational point 
 of view, it is surely clear that a human being should not 
 be required to give more than eight hours out of the 
 twenty-four — one third of his time — for absolute bread- 
 winning. Another seven or eight hours must be given to 
 sleep, leaving eight for meals, exercise, recreation, and 
 study. The last eight are short enough for their varied 
 uses, and I look forward to a time when the first section 
 shall be shortened and the third lengthened ; but if every 
 worker had even eight hours of freedom in the day, his 
 life would be a far more human and far more beautiful 
 thing than it is at the present time. 
 
 The establishment of an eight houi's' day would alsa 
 help to distribute toil a little more evenly than it is distri- 
 buted now ; the same amount of work will have to be 
 performed, and if each pair of hands only does * of the 
 work it now does, additional pairs of hands must execute 
 the remainder. At present some are being worn out with 
 excessive labor, while others are clamoring for employ- 
 ment ; shorter hours for the present workers mean work 
 for the now idle hands. 
 
 Legislation on the sanitary — or rather insanitary — con- 
 ditions of various trades is urgently required. I need only 
 mention the whitelead makers, the Sheffield grinders, the 
 miners in dangerous workings, to remind my readers of 
 well-known scandals. Some would leave all remedial 
 measures to voluntary effort and to the influence of 
 "humanity". But humanity looks on them indifferently 
 to-day : it shops at all hours, careless of the suffering in- 
 flicted : it says "How sad!" when it reads of special 
 distress, and goes on with its dinner : it contemplates the 
 conditions under which they live who feed and clothe and 
 serve it, and murmurs platitudes about "differences of 
 ranks", and happiness being " pretty evenly distributed, 
 after all" : and so it will remain until the strong arm of 
 the law shall compel it to do justice, and shall force it to 
 yield as obedience what it will never yield to prayer. 
 
 "We may reasonably hope that Religious Liberty and 
 Equality will be rendered complete by the new Parliament. 
 The liberty to make an affirmation in all cases in which 
 an oath is now required will, I trust, be granted by the 
 present Legislature ; if not, the passage of an Affirmatioa
 
 26 THE REDISTRIBU'TION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 Bill will be one of the first duties of the Reformed Parlia- 
 ment. An amending Burials Bill, giving to unbelievers 
 the right to an "orderly service" at the graveside (see p. 
 18), will probably pass without much difficulty. Nor is 
 there much likelihood of serious opposition to a Bill for 
 repealing "all the statutes inflicting penalties for opinion, 
 or placing hindrances in the way of lectures and discus- 
 sions ", and for annulling " the present penal and disabling 
 effect of the common law ".^ The general confession by 
 hostile Christians that the latest prosecutions for blasphemy 
 have only injured their religion and strengthened Free- 
 thought, shows that the rusty sword of persecution is not 
 likely to be often used by them in the future, and it is 
 noticeable that Radical candidates for the next Parliament 
 are very generally pledging themselves to a repeal of the 
 obnoxious statutes. 
 
 There remains the greatest of all the religious changes 
 — the disestablishment and disendowment of the English, 
 Welsh, and Scotch Churches : the public national confession 
 that henceforward the State will concern itself only with 
 the conduct and no longer with the speculations of its 
 citizens. The disestablishment of the Churches will be 
 oasily enough effected ; the English and Welsh bishops 
 will disappear from the House of Lords as quietly as did 
 their Irish brethren, to the advantage of that House, by 
 the removal of a special obstructiveness, and, let us hope, 
 to the advantage of those dioceses to which their attention 
 will thenceforth be more completely confined. The disen- 
 dowment clauses of the Bill will present far more diffi- 
 culty, not only from the vast wealth with which they will 
 deal, but also from the complexity of the interests con- 
 cerned. The cry of "Sacrilege" and of "Robbery "is 
 sure to be raised when Parliament lays its hands on ' ' Church 
 property ". Those who use such epithets wiU have to be 
 reminded that an enormous part of the Church's wealth is 
 drawn from lands given to the Roman Catholic Church by 
 pious Papists, and that if it be theft for the State to divert 
 to new ends property given to a corporation within its 
 limits, then the first theft was made when Henry VIII. 
 by Act of Parliament severed the Church in England from 
 
 1 "The Laws relating to Blasphemy and Heresy." By Charles 
 Bradlaugh. P. 31.
 
 THE REDISTKIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 27 
 
 the Papal obedience, and it does not lie with the receiver 
 of stolen goods to complain of robbery when the goods 
 are again removed. Every one knows that many fellow- 
 ships of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were 
 charged with the payment of masses for the sonls of the 
 defunct donors ; Protestants who regard masses for the 
 dead as "dangerous deceits" have gaily pocketed the 
 Papists' money, and have left their souls imprayed and 
 unpaid for. The Church as by law established has been 
 quite content to fatten on the spoils of its Eoman prede- 
 cessor, and it is with but a bad grace that it commences to 
 pose as the injured innocent, when a second transfer of the 
 cash is proposed. The ground which we should take in 
 dealing with Church funds is a simple one ; the State cannot 
 allow the hands of long-mouldered corpses to determine 
 the disposition of wealth now in its midst, and is itself the 
 supreme arbiter in dispensing huge accumulations made 
 by the generations of its dead. Funds which are annually 
 voted to the Church can be stopped by omission of the 
 votes; the rest must be dealt with by the Bill. It is 
 earnestly to be hoped that the State will retain in its own 
 hands all the glebe lands. Their rental will then form a 
 source of national income and will go to lighten the general 
 burden of taxation. The rental of the ecclesiastical build- 
 ings to bodies desiring to use them for religious worship, 
 lectures, etc., will form another large item on the credit 
 side of the national balance-sheet. Some provision out 
 of these funds will have to be made for the aged beneficed 
 clergy, as it would be cruel to turn them out helpless into 
 the world. The clergy of the future will have to be sup- 
 ported by their own congregations, as Dissenting ministers 
 are supported now, and "Church people" will no longer 
 be religious paupers, with their souls fed and clothed at 
 the expense of their neighbors. 
 
 Changes in the Tenure of Land, vaster than any hitherto 
 attempted, will probably be made by the Eefortned Par- 
 liament. The huge masses of agricultural laborers now 
 dowered with the vote have been wearing the agricultural 
 shoe long enough to know where it pinches, and they are 
 likely to prove energetic shoemakers. The changes to be 
 made will be radical changes, involving the substitution of 
 a rational system of land-holding for the quasi-feudal one 
 now existing. The new system will be based on the
 
 28 THE BEDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 
 
 recognition of the principle that land, being the sole 
 fundamental means of existence for all, cannot expediently 
 be regarded as the private property of individuals. Since 
 men can only live by virtue of what they obtain from land, 
 so long as land belongs to a set of individuals in a nation 
 the remainder of the nation must work for these at what- 
 ever wages they will give, and fi-eedom of contract be- 
 tween those who hold the means of existence and those 
 who need them becomes a meaningless phrase. Hence, 
 unearned accumulations of wealth for the privileged class, 
 and continual struggle for existence for the unprivileged, 
 with an ever- widening gulf between the unjustly rich and 
 unjustly poor. The substitution of the new system for the 
 old implies too vast a change to be wrought at once ; bift 
 it is essential that every alteration made in the present 
 tenure of land shall be an alteration tending towards the 
 goal of nationalisation, and not a mere tinkering of abuses 
 on the present basis. The more di-astic of the proposals 
 put forward by the Land Law Eeform League should be 
 transformed into law by the new Parliament. (I omit the 
 suggested reforms on which all Liberals are agreed, such 
 as cheap transfer, security for improvements, etc.) Thus : 
 cultivable land kept uncultivated and not used for public 
 purposes should be forfeit to the State, " with payment to 
 the dispossessed landowner of say twenty years' purchase 
 at the average annual value of the land for the seven years 
 prior to the" dispossession. " Annual value " is to be 
 understood as meaning any amount really obtained from 
 actual produce : in many shameful cases this is only a few 
 head of game. " Payment to be made by bonds of the 
 State, bearing the same interest as the consolidated debt." 
 ^'■The land to be ^tate property^ and to be let to actual tenant 
 cultivators. . . . The amount paid as rent to the State to 
 be applied to the payment of the interest [on the bonds], 
 and to form a sinking fund for the liquidation of the 
 principal." The words I have italicised are of vital im- 
 portance ; this forfeited land is not to be sold ; it is to be 
 let by the State. Thus the State will become a landholder 
 on a large scale, and a huge step towards nationalisation 
 will be made. The glebe lands above spoken of will add 
 another great slice to the national estate, and no acre of 
 land acquired by the State must ever again be sold to an 
 individual. The breaking up of large estates and the
 
 THE KEDISTRIBTJTION OF POLITICAL POSTER. 29 
 
 further acquisition of land by the State will be brought 
 about by the imposition of a graduated land tax, "say, 
 the normal tax on the first 5,000 acres, a double tax on the 
 second 5,000 acres, again doubled on the next 10,000 acres," 
 and so on. As the amount thus imposed as tax would 
 soon exceed the value of the land, unduly large estates 
 would be made untenable, and the owners would be 
 forced to sell. " Re-valuation of lands for the more equit- 
 able imposition of the land tax " is another matter of 
 pressing importance, the nominal tax of 4s. in the £ being 
 in many cases now a real tax of f^d., Id., or 1-M. If the 
 land-tax were levied on the present value of land, instead 
 of on the value it had nearly 200 years ago, it would 
 amount to about £50,000,000 a year, and this fourth part of 
 the income from land would go into the Exchequer of the 
 State, instead of into the ever-gaping pockets of the privi- 
 leged class. 
 
 Before very long, also, Parliament must take into con- 
 sideration cases like those of the Dukes of Portland, Bed- 
 ford, and Westminster, whose predecessors let out land on 
 building leases, and who come into possession, as the leases 
 fall in, of houses to the building of which they have not 
 contributed a penny. This shameful confiscation of other 
 peoi)le's property should be stopped and that speedily, or 
 else we may hereafter be called on to compensate these 
 all-swallowers for depriving them of property to which 
 they have not the smallest title, and which they should 
 not be allowed to acquire. 
 
 The Education of the young will, I hope, receive at the 
 hands of the Reformed Parliaments wide extension and 
 development. The State schools will probably become 
 entirely secular, religious education being left to the 
 various religious sects and to teachers selected by the 
 parents. Compulsion will be enacted by the law of the 
 land, instead of by bye-laws as at present. School 
 fees paid by the parent, already avoidable by the very 
 poor, will be entirely abolished, and the whole cost of 
 education will be charged on the rates, instead of the 
 greater part only, as at present. The abolition of these 
 will relieve the teachers from much heavy clerical work, 
 now imposed on them ; will do away with all the 
 machinery for enquiry which now exists to deal with cases 
 in which the remission of fees is asked ; and will reduce to
 
 30 THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWEK. 
 
 a minimiini tlie prosecutions for non-attendance, and the 
 cost of tlie army of officials now needed to enforce it. Thus 
 will the work of 1870 and 1876 be completed, and we shall 
 have a system of National Education, secular, compulsory, 
 and rate-supported. 
 
 What shall be included in this education is a question 
 too wide for discussion at the close of this paper. I look 
 forward to a time when every child shall receive in the 
 national schools the elements of a literarj^, scientific, artistic, 
 and technical education ; when neither boy nor girl shall 
 leave the school ignorant of the glories of our literature, 
 of the wonders of science, of the delight in beauty, of some 
 definite means of bread-winning. Be it tailoring, or dress- 
 making, or cooker}', or carpentering, or any one of the 
 man}' trades needed in a civilised society, every pair of 
 hands should be able to do at least some one thing well, 
 by which a Kving may be honestly earned. The maturity 
 that follows a youth spent in such training will be useful 
 to the State, and enjoyable to the individual ; and such a 
 maturity it should be the object of educational laws to 
 make possible for every citizen. 
 
 The lines here sketched are not likely to be followed out 
 in any one Parliament, however great the impulse for im- 
 provement, but it is along these lines that the reforming 
 energy will travel, if the study of the past shed any light 
 upon the future of Eeform.
 
 THE 
 
 EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 3 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE BESANT 
 
 [Reprinted from Our Corner.'] 
 
 LONDON: 
 FEEETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 63, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 1886. 
 
 PEICE THKEETENCE.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 TEINTKI) BY AXXIE P.KSANT AND CIIAKLKS BEADLAUGir, 
 
 03, PLy.KT STKEET, K.C.
 
 THE EVOLUTIOX OF SOCIETY. 
 
 -^~ 
 
 The recognition of Evolution in the physical world, of 
 gradual progress from the simple to the complex, of reiter- 
 ated integration as the steps of that progress, has led to the 
 application of the same imifying principle to the psychical 
 world, and to the suggestion of its application to the socio- 
 logical. As the lowest forms of life consist of simple 
 independent cells, as these cells become grouped, differen- 
 tiated, integrated into tissues, as these tissues become more 
 complex in arrangement, more co-ordinated, in the highest 
 organisms, so, it is argued, do the individual human units 
 become grouped into families and tribes, integrated into a 
 social organism, of which the multiplicity of the composing 
 elements is the measure of its adaptability, the unity and 
 the correlation thereof the measure of its strength. If 
 Society be thus regarded as an organism instead of as a 
 bag of marbles, if it be conceded that the health of the 
 whole depends upon the healthy functioning of every part, 
 in correlation not in independence, then all that tends to- 
 wards integration will be recognised as of life, all that 
 tends towards disintegration as of death. Judging the 
 future by the past we shall be prepared to look forward to 
 the realisation of a fuller social unity than has yet been 
 reached, and to recognise that by an inexorable necessity 
 Society must either integrate yet further, or must begin a 
 movement which will result in its resolution into its ele- 
 ments. The further integration may be regarded as an 
 ideal to be embraced, or as a doom to be striven against, as a 
 brotherhood to be rejoiced in or as a slavery to be abhorred ;
 
 4 THE EVOLUTION' OY SOCIETY. 
 
 "but the believer in Evolution must acknowledge that if 
 Society is to endure, this further integration is inevitable. 
 
 The object of this and of the following papers is to 
 roughly outline this Evolution of Society, and to consider 
 the type towards which it is working ; and they will deal 
 with : I. The Barbaric Period and its Survivals ; II. The 
 Industrial Period and its products ; III. The Conflict be- 
 tween Social and An ti- Social Tendencies ; lY. The Eecon- 
 cilement of Diverging Interests. 
 
 I. — The Barb.uiic Period axd its STTRVivAiiS. 
 
 Association for the common weal is, as is well known, by- 
 no means confined toman. Many herbivorous animals live 
 in herds, and in the pastures the females and the young 
 graze in the centre, while the males form a protective ring, 
 and sentinels, carefully posted, give warning cries of alarm 
 if danger approaches. "Wolves hunt in packs, and together 
 pull down prey Avith which singly they could not cope. 
 Bees and ants live in thickly populated communities, with 
 their builders, food-gatherers, nurses, and in many cases 
 soldiers, all working for the Society as a whole. Man's 
 nearest congeners, the apes, are social animals and differ 
 little in their qualities and morality from the lowest savages. 
 And in all these one phfonomenon is noteworthy : the sub- 
 mission of the individual to restraints for the general good. 
 When a tribe of monkeys goes out on a predatory expedi- 
 tion — as to rob an orchard — the young ones are slapped if 
 the}' are not silent and obedient. When a goat is dis- 
 charging a sentinel's duty, he may not feed at ease on the 
 tempting grass on which his comrades are luxuriating, con- 
 fident in his vigilant loyalty. The working-bee must not 
 keep the honey it gathers, but must carry it home for stor- 
 ming. Each member of the community yields up something 
 of individual freedom, receiving in exchange the benefits 
 V of association, and it is among those who — like the bees 
 and ants — have carried very far the subordination of the 
 unit to the social organism that the most successful com- 
 munities are found. 
 
 In the Barbaric Period of human society the virtues 
 evolved are much the same as those which characterise the 
 brute communities — courage, discipline of a rudimentary 
 kind, loyalty to the head of the tribe. These are evolved
 
 THE EVOLUTION Or SOCIETY. 5 
 
 l)ecause they are necessary to the success of the tribe, ami 
 those who are weak in them perish in the struggle for 
 existence. They are evolved by the pressure of necessity, 
 by the exigencies of the common life. As disputes can only 
 be settled by war, the military chief is indis2:)ensable, and 
 the strong and cunning man is made the head of the com- 
 munity. As social conditions become a little more settled, 
 and the conventions which grew up from necessity become 
 gradually crystallised into law, the hereditary principle 
 creeps in, and the most capable adult member of a family 
 — now recognised as royal — is selected to fill the throne ; 
 as law increases yet more in authority, the personal capacity 
 of the sovereign becames a matter of less vital necessity, 
 and the eldest son succeeds to his father's crown, whether 
 he is major or minor ; at last the time is reached, as with 
 ourselves, in which a monarch is simply a survival, in- 
 teresting — as are all rudimentary organs, because marks 
 of an ancestral condition — but perfectly useless : a mere 
 excrescence like the dew-claw of a St. Bernard dog. Es- 
 sentially barbaric, it is an anachronism in a civilised 
 society, and only endures by virtue of its inofPensiveness 
 and of the public inertia. 
 
 Still keeping within the Barbaric Period, but passing 
 out of the stage in which every man was a warrior, we 
 come to the time in which Society was constituted of two 
 classes : the fighting class, which consisted of king and 
 nobles ; the working class, which consisted of those who 
 toiled on the land and of all engaged in commerce of any 
 kind, whether by producing goods for sale or by selling 
 them when produced. The fighting class had then its real 
 utility ; if the king and the nobles claimed the privilege of 
 governing, they discharged the duty of protecting, and 
 while they tyrannised and robbed at home to a consider- 
 able extent, they defended against foreign oppression the 
 realm to which they belonged. Fighting animals they 
 were, like the big-jawed soldiers of the Termites, but they/ 
 were necessary while the nations had not emerged from 
 barbarism. But these were not in the line of evolution ; 
 the evolving life of the nation was apart from them ; they 
 were the wall that protected, that encircled the life that 
 was developing, and their descendants are but the 
 crumbling ruins which mark where once the bastions and 
 the ramparts frowned.
 
 1' 
 
 ( 
 
 6 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 The life of the nation was in its workers, among whom 
 the agriculturists claim our first attention. The villeins 
 who tilled the soil under the feudal system were, in a very 
 real sense, the chattels of their lord. They were bound 
 to the soil, might be recovered by a legal suit if they left 
 their lord's estate, were liable to seizure of all their pro- 
 perty by their lord at his mere will, might be imprisoned or 
 assaulted by him, and in many cases the lord held over them 
 a power of life and death. These feudal privileges of the 
 lord gradually disappeared in England during the Middle 
 :' Ages; many villeins fled their native soil, hired themselves 
 out in other parts of the country, and were never recovered 
 by their lords ; residence for a year and a daj^ in a walled \ 
 town made a villein free : relaxations of servitude made ' 
 b}" an indulgent lord became customary : villeins became 
 transformed into copyholders in many cases, and in one 
 way or another the peasantry emerged from nominal slavery. 
 
 In trying to realise the lot of the villein and to compare 
 it with that of his modern descendant, the agricultural 
 laborer, it is not sufficient to study only the conditions of 
 his servitude, the extreme roughness and poorness of his 
 house, his ignorance, the frequent scarcity and general 
 coarseness of his food. It must be remembered that if his 
 lord was his owner he was also his protector, and that the 
 landowner's feeling of duty to his tenants and the tenants' 
 feeling of dependence and claim for assistance on the land- 
 owner which still exist in some old-world parts of Eng- 
 land, are survivals of the old feudal tie which implied 
 subjection without consciousness of degradation. Eurther, 
 while the hut of the villein was of the poorest kind, the 
 castle of the lord by no means realised our modern idea of 
 a comfortable house : the villein had straw on his floor, 
 but the lord had only rushes ; and the general roughness 
 of the time effected all alike. If the villein was ignorant, 
 so was the lord, and if the lord tilted gaily with the lance, 
 the villein broke heads as gaily with his stafE. If the 
 villein was sometimes sorely put to it to find bread, at 
 other times he revelled in rough abundance, and the doles 
 at the monastery gates often eked out his scanty supply 
 when Nature was unkind. Speaking broadly, there was 
 far less difference then in fashion of living between lord 
 and villein than now between lord and laborer : less 
 difference of taste, of amusements, of education, and
 
 THE EVOLUTIOX OF SOCIETY. 
 
 therefore more comradeship : the baron's retainers then 
 dined at the table of the lord without shocking any 
 fastidious taste, while my lord marquis now would find his 
 dinner much interfered with if his servants sat at it as of 
 old. And since happiness is very much a matter of com- 
 parison, it may be doubted whether the villein was not 
 happier than the agricultural laborer is now, and whether 
 the lop-sided progress of Society, which has given so little 
 to the toiler in comparison with what it has given to the 
 idler, has been much of a blessing to the laboring agri- 
 cultural class. 
 
 The growth of industries other than agricultural marked 
 with unmistakable distinctness the evolution of society 
 from barbarism. Handworkers in these tended to produce 
 in groups, and soon associated themselves in towns, partly 
 for convenience in production and distribution, partly for 
 self-defence ; divorced from the land, they were naturally 
 less directly dependent on the landowners than were the 
 agriculturists, and as the king's wish to plunder them was 
 checked by the nobles, and the nobles' wish to plunder 
 by the king, they gradually secured charters which pro- 
 tected them from both, and waxed free and prosperous. 
 Each craft had its guild, and the apprentice entering to 
 learn his trade worked his way step by step up to the 
 position of a master craftsman. There were then no large 
 aggregations of workers, as in our modern factories, but 
 the lad placed in a workshop was one of a small group, 
 and was trained as a member of a family rather than as a 
 " hand ". Entrance into the workshop of a famous master 
 was eagerly sought for, and in consequence of the slight 
 division of labor there was a pride in capable workman- 
 ship which is now almost impossible. Individual ability, 
 under this system, was at once apparent and had scope for 
 development, so that art and industry were more closely 
 imited than they have ever been since. The artist was 
 largely a handicraftsman in the industrial sense, and the 
 handicraftsman was largely an artist; and side by side with 
 this mental development existed physical vigor, in conse- 
 quence of the small size of the towns and the accessibility 
 of the open country. In industrial pursuits, as in those of 
 the countryside, the great division between classes which 
 is now so grievous did not exist; the "master" worked 
 with his men, eat with them, lived with them, and the
 
 ■8 THE EVOLVTIOX OF SOCIETY. 
 
 "industrious apprentice" who "married Ms master's 
 daughter" was not a poetic fiction, but an inspiring and 
 realisable ideal. Certainly the amount of j^roducts turned 
 out could not rival the vast quantities now produced, but 
 the lives of the producers were healthier and more human 
 than those of too many of the handicraftsmen of to-day. 
 
 Among the survivals from the Barbaric Period present 
 in modern society, the monarch has already been men- 
 tioned. Perhaps no form of monarchy exposes its anachro- 
 nistic character more completely than the "limited 
 monarchy " of modern England. There is an exquisite 
 absurdity in the man who can being changed into the man 
 who can not} The hereditary aristocracy is another sur- 
 vival from barbarism, and is a curious travesty of the 
 scientific truth as to race. The analogy of a high-bred 
 horse and a high-bred man is misleading, for the human 
 breeding is a matter of name, not of qualities. There can 
 be no doubt that a human aristocracy might be bred, by 
 matching men and women who showed in marked degree 
 the qualities which might be selected as admirable, but 
 the aristocracy which proceeds from male idlers, profligate 
 in their undisciplined youth and luxurious in their pam- 
 pered maturit}', matched with female idlers, whose useless- 
 ness, vanity, and extravagance are their chief recom- 
 mendations, is not one which should bear rule in a strong 
 and intellectual nation. To the barbaric Past it belongs, 
 not to the semi-civilised Present, and the lease of its 
 power will be determined when the workers realise the 
 power which has now passed into their hands. -^ 
 
 II. — The IxDUSTRiAii Period A^'D its Products. 
 
 The Industrial Period may fairly be taken as beginning 
 for all practical purposes with the invention of the Spinning 
 Jenny by Hargreaves, a weaver, in 1 764 ; of the Spinning 
 Machine by Arkwright, a barber, in 1768; of the Mule, 
 by Crompton, a weaver, 1776. If to these we add the 
 virtual invention of the Steam Engine by "Watt in 1765, we 
 have within these twelve j-ears, from 1764 to 1776, the 
 vastest revolution in industry the world has known, the 
 birth of a new Period in the Evolution of Society. As 
 
 ^ King, GciTnan Kijjiig, has the same root as Kiinnen, to be able.
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. W 
 
 Green points out in his " History of the English People", 
 the " haudloom used in the Manchester cotton trade had 
 until that time retained the primitive shape which is still 
 found in the handlooms of India " (p. 7G8), and the con- 
 ditions of labor were feudal, patriarchic, domestic, not 
 industrial, in the modern sense of the word. The intro- 
 duction of machinery (other than the simple kinds used in 
 earlier times) revolutionised social life as well as industry, 
 and the vast increase of man's power over nature not only 
 affected the production of manufactured goods, but affected 
 also the condition of the worker, the climate and aspect of 
 the country, as also, with the most far-reaching results, the 
 framework and tendencies of society. These all are the 
 products of the Industrial Period, and these all must be 
 taken into consideration if we would estimate fairly and 
 fully the net result of good or of evil which remains. 
 
 It is obvious that the great value of machinery lies in 
 the fact that it produces much with little labor ; in the 
 words of a Eeport : " One man in a cotton-mill superin- 
 tends as much work as could have been done by two 
 hundred, seventy years ago." The result of this should 
 have been widespread comfort, general sufficiency of the 
 necessaries of life, a great diminution of the hours of labor : 
 the result of it has been the accumulation of vast fortunes 
 by a comparatively few, the deadening and the brutalising 
 of crowds of the handworkers. Whether we regai^d the 
 immediate or the general results, we shall find them very 
 different from the rosy hopes of those who gave to the 
 world the outcome of their inventive genius. 
 
 The immediate result of the introduction of machinery 
 was, as everyone knows, terrible suffering among handi- 
 craftsmen. Let us hear Green, an impartial witness. 
 "Manufactures profited by the great discoveries of Watt 
 and Arkwright ; and the consumption of raw cotton in 
 the mills of Lancashire rose during the same period 
 from fifty to a hundred millions of pounds. The J 
 vast accumulation of capitaT^i^as well as the constant ] 
 recurrence of bad seasons at this time, told upon the / 
 land, and forced agriculture into a feverish and un-^ 
 healthy prosperity. Wheat rose to famine prices, and the 
 value of land rose in proportion with the price of wheat. 
 Inclosures went on with prodigious rapidity ; the income 
 of every landowner was doubled, while the farmers were
 
 10 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 able to introduce improvements into the processes of agri- 
 culture which changed the whole face of the country. But 
 if the increase of wealth was enormous, its distribution 
 was partial. During the fifteen years which preceded 
 Waterloo, the number of the population rose from ten to 
 thirteen millions, and this rapid increase kept down the 
 rate of wages, which would naturally have advanced in 
 
 fa corresponding degree with the increase of the national 
 wealthTy^ven manufadures, though destined in the long 
 run to benefit the laboring classes, seemed at firbt 
 rather to depress them. One of the earliest results of 
 the introduction of machinery was the ruin of a number 
 of small trades which were carried on at hpme, and the 
 paviperisation of families who relied on them for support. 
 In the M'inter of 1811 the terrible pressure of this transi- 
 tion from handicraft to machinery was seen in the Luddite, 
 or machine- breaking, riots which broke out over the 
 northern and midland counties, and which were only sup- 
 pressed by military force. While labor was thus thrown 
 out of its older grooves, and the rate of wages kept down 
 at an artificially low figure by the rapid increase of popu- 
 lation, the rise in the price of wheat, which brought 
 wealth to the landowner and the farmer, brought famine 
 and death to the poor, for England was cut off by the 
 war from the vast cornfields of the Continent or of America, 
 which nowadays redress from their abundance the results of 
 a bad harvest. Scarcity was followed by a terrible pauperi- 
 sation of the laboring classes. The amount of the poor- 
 rate rose fifty per cent., and with the increase of poverty 
 followed its inevitable result, the increase of crime " 
 ("Hist, of the English People", pp. 805, 806). 
 
 It is noteworthy that where handworkers are concerned, 
 no claim for compensation is ever put forward when they 
 are deprived of their means of livelihood. If it is pro- 
 posed to nationalise the land, it is at once alleged that the 
 present owners must be bought out, on the ground that 
 it would be unjust to deprive them of their incomes from 
 land and to reduce them to poverty for the benefit of the 
 community. But no one is so scrupulous, or so tender- 
 hearted, when only laborers are ruined ; no one ever pro- 
 posed to compensate the handicraftsmen who were robbed 
 of their means of existence by the introduction of machinery. 
 Great stress is laid on the general benefit of the community,
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 11 
 
 for which it appears it is right to sacrifice the worker, but 
 wrong to sacrifice the idler. And further, if a starving 
 . laborer fall back on the poor-rate he is at once 
 "pauperised", and everyone knows it is a disgi-ace to be 
 a pauper — on the parish : but if a Duke of Marlborough, 
 -with huge estates, pockets a sum of £107,000 out of the 
 taxes he is not "pauperised", and everyone knows it is 
 no disgrace to be a pauper — on the nation. 
 
 The general result of the introduction of machinery ha8\ 
 clearly been a great increase of comfortmnd wealth to the I 
 upper and middle classes, and to the upper stratum of the / 
 artisans; but great masses of the people are worse off/ 
 absolutely, as well as relatively, in consequence of its in- 7. 
 troduction. They are more crowded together, the air they • 
 breathe is fouler, the food they eat is more unwholesome, 
 the trades they live by are more ruinous to health, than 
 they were in the time when towns were smaller, the open 
 country more accessible, the air unpoisoned by factory 
 chimneys and chemical works; the times when "master 
 and man " slept in the same house, dined at the same 
 table, worked in the same room. 
 
 Machinery ha^ enormously increased the amount of 
 goods produced/but it has not lightened the toil of the 
 workers; it has sent down prices, but the laborer must 
 work as long to gain his bare subsistence. The introduc- 
 tion of sewing-machines may serve as a typical instance. 
 It was said that they would lighten the toil of the needle- 
 woman, and enable her to earn a livelihood more easily. 
 Nothing of the sort has happened ; the needlewoman 
 works for quite as many hours, and earns quite as meagre 
 a subsistence ; she makes three or four coats where before 
 she made one, but her wages are not trebled or quadrupled; 
 the pi-ofits of her employer are increased, and coats are 
 sold at a lower price. The real value of machinery, again, 
 may be seen when a sewing machine is introduced into a 
 house where the needlework is done at home ; there the 
 toil is lightened ; the necessary work is done in a fifth 
 part of the time, and the workers have leisure instead of 
 long hours of labor. The inference is irresistible ; machinery 
 is of enormous value in lessening human toil when it is 
 owned by those who produce, and who produce for us^, 
 not for profit ; it is not of value to those who work it for 
 wages, for the wages depend, not on the worth of the goods
 
 12 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 produced, but on tlie competition in the labor-market and 
 the cost of subsistence. 
 
 In dealing- with the products of the Industrial Period, 
 the human products are of the most extreme importance. 
 How have the conditions of labor, the environment, and 
 therefore the life of the laborer, been affected by the intro- 
 duction of machinery ? I say, without fear of contradic- 
 tion, that the environment of the manufacturing laborer.* 
 has altered for the worse, and that the result of that 
 worsening may be seen in the physical deterioration of 
 the great masses of the workers in factory towns. Com- 
 pare the tall, upright, brown laborer of Lincolnshire with 
 the short, bowed, pallid knife-grinder of Sheffield; 
 compare the robust, stalwart Northumberland miner 
 with the slender, pasty-cheeked lads who come troop- 
 ing out of a Manchester cotton-mill ; and you will 
 soon see the physical difference caused by difference of 
 labor-conditions. Sheffield workers die young, their lungs 
 choked with the metal dust they inhale ; cotton-factory 
 " hands " die of the fibre-laden air they breathe. I grant 
 that Sheffield goods are cheap, if by cheapness is meant 
 that fewer coins are paid for them than would have been 
 required ere they were made by machinery ; but to me 
 those things are not cheap which are rendered less in 
 money-cost by destruction of human life. Hood once 
 wrote of cheap shirts : 
 
 " O men >\'ith sisters dear, 
 O men with mothers and wives, 
 It is not linen you're wearing out, 
 But human creatures' lives I " 
 
 And to me there is many a " cheap " article which is dear 
 by the price that has been paid for its cheapness, price of 
 human health, price of human happiness, price of human 
 life, making it costly beyond all reckoning, for it incarnates 
 the misery of the poor. 
 
 I grant readily that things were worse before the Factory 
 Acts were passed; but this truth only makes me desire 
 their extension, and also a far greater insistence on sanita- 
 tion than at present prevails. It is necessary that a large 
 number of workers should co-operate in production by 
 machiner^^ ; it is not necessary that they should be poisoned 
 or wearied out with toil. The working- day should be
 
 THE EVOLUTIOX OF SOCIETY. 13 
 
 short, because meclianieal toil tends to stupefy ; and 
 every factory should have a recreation-ground, prettily 
 laid out, with facilities for games, to which the workers 
 might resort for the intervals between the hours of labor. 
 Thorough ventilation should ensure the wholesomeness of 
 the air within the factory, a task which would be greatly 
 facilitated by each factory standing alone and being tree- 
 surrounded. 
 
 The law should also promptly concern itself with the 
 scandalous pollution of the atmosphere and of rivers bj^ 
 the smoke and refuse of factories. There is no reason 
 why every factory should not consume its own smoke, and 
 the law already existing on this matter should be sternly 
 enforced, by imprisonment, not by fine. A man who 
 poisons one person is punished ; a man who poisons a 
 whole neighborhood goes free. The thick cloud of black 
 smoke hanging over a town like Sheffield or Manchester 
 is a sickening sight ; it blights the trees, destroys the 
 flowers, soils every house, dirties every article of clothing. 
 Who that has lived in Manchester can forget "Manchester 
 blacks " ? It is pitiable to go through the country and 
 see exquisite landscapes destroyed by smoke and refuse ; 
 huge chimneys belching out black torrents ; streams that 
 should be dancing in the sunlight gleaming with phos- 
 phorescent scum, and rolling along thick and black with 
 tilth. What sort of England is the Industrial Period 
 going to leave to its successors? 
 
 If there be any truth in the scientific doctrine that the 
 environment modifies the organism, what can be the 
 tendency of the modifications wrought by such an environ- 
 ment as the Black Countr}'-? What is there of refining, 
 of elevating, of humanising influence in those endless 
 piles of cinders, that ruined vegetation, that pall of smoke, 
 lighted at night by the lurid glare of the furnaces ? What 
 kind of race will that be whose mothers work in the chain- 
 fields till the children come to the birth, and who return 
 thither sometimes on the very day on which they have 
 given new lives to the world ? 
 
 Many people, true products of the Industrial Period, are 
 indifferent to natural beauty, and only see in a waterfall 
 a source of power, in a woody glen a waste of productive 
 soil. But if, again, the environment modifies the organism, 
 beauty is useful in the highest degree. A high humau
 
 14 THE EVOLfTIOlV OF SOCIETY. 
 
 type cannot be bred in a back slum, trained amid filtli and 
 ugliness and clangor, sent to labor ere maturity ; it must 
 be bred in pure air, trained amidst sighta and sounds that 
 are harmonious and beautiful, educated until mature ; then 
 let it turn to labor, and give back to the community the 
 wealth of love and comfort which shielded its earlier 
 years. On the faces of the lads and lasses who come 
 tumbling out of factories and great warehouses at the 
 close of every day, filling the streets with tuniult and 
 rough horseplay, is set the seal of the sordid conditions 
 under which they live. The lack of beauty around them 
 has made them unbeautiful, and their strident voices are 
 htted to pierce the din amid which they live. 
 
 In truth, in its effect on Society, the wealthy manufac- 
 turing class is far worse than the feudal nobility it is 
 gradually pushing aside. The feudal lords lived among 
 their tenantry, and there were ties of human sympathy 
 between them whi<h do not esist between the manufac- 
 turer and those whom he significantly calls his " hands". 
 The manufacturers live away from the place in which their 
 wealth is made, dwelling lusuriously in beautiful suburbs, 
 and leaving the "hands " to stew in closely- packed dwel- 
 lings under the shadow of the huge and unsightly factories. 
 The division of classes becomes more and more marked ; 
 between the rich and the poor yawns an ever-widening gulf. 
 
 The tendency of Industrialism to produce castes should 
 not be overlooked. Practical men have noted that when 
 people have for generations lived by weaving, their chil- 
 dren learn weaving far more easily than children who come 
 from a mining district. If a trade becomes hereditary, the 
 aptitude for the trade becomes marked in members of the 
 family. And this is not well. It is a tendency to produce 
 hxed castes of workers, instead of fully-developed various 
 human beings. It means, if present forces go on working 
 unrestrained, the dividing of society into castes, the forma- 
 tion of rigid lines of demarcation, the petrifaction which 
 has befallen some older civilisations. 
 
 Over against those who laud the present state of Society 
 with its imjustl}^ rich and unjustly poor, with its palaces 
 and its slums, its millionaires and its paupers, be it ours 
 to proclaim that there is a higher ideal in life than that of 
 being first in the race for wealth, most successful in the 
 scramble for gold. Be it ours to declare steadfastly that
 
 THE EVOLUTION OV SOCIETY. lo 
 
 health, comfort, leisure, culture, plenty for every individual, 
 are far more desirable than breathless struggle for exist- 
 ence, furious trampling down of the weak by the strong, 
 huge fortunes accumulated out of the toil of others, to be 
 handed down to those who have done nothing to earn 
 them. Be it oui's to maintain that the greatness of a 
 nation depends not on the number of its great proprietors, 
 on the wealth of its great capitalists, on the splendor of 
 its great nobles; but on the absence of poverty among its 
 people, on the education of its masses, on the uni- 
 versality of enjoyment in life. 
 
 III. — The Conflict between Social and Anti-Social 
 
 Tendencies. 
 The conflict between social and anti-social tendencies has 
 existed as long as Society itself. It is the contest between 
 the integrating and disintegrating forces, between the 
 brute survival and the human evolution. The individual 
 struggle for existence which had gone on through countless (^ 
 centuries over the whole world had become to some extent 
 modified among the social animals, and savage man, as 
 the highest of these, had also modified it within the limits 
 of each community. As Society progressed slowly in civi- 
 lisation, the contest went on between the surviving brutal, 
 or savage, desire for personal accumulation and personal 
 aggrandisement without regard for others, and the social 
 desire for general prosperity and happiness with the readi- "^ 
 ness to subordinate the individual to the general good. It 
 is the still-enduring conflict between these tendencies 
 which now claims our attention. The openings for per- 
 sonal accumulation offered during the Industrial Period 
 gave a great impetus to the anti-social tendencies ; the 
 codification of the laws of wealth-getting in Political 
 Economy was seized upon for defence, as though Political y 
 Economy offered any law for the general guidance of 
 human conduct, or held up any object as the aim of human 
 life. In their eagerness to represent as right and useful 
 their own greed of gain, members of the laissez-faire school 
 sheltered themselves under philosophic names, and used 
 Political Economy as though instead of laying down the 
 conditions of wealth-getting, it had declared it to be the 
 one duty of human beings to get wealth. 
 
 The anti-social tendencies seized on three sources of
 
 16 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 wealth as especially promising : mines, factories, landed 
 estates. So ruinous in each department proved their unre- 
 stricted play, that in each case law had to be called in to 
 check their operation. 
 
 Mines. — In these the anti-social tendency of unrestricted 
 accumulation, by competition with others, led to the em- 
 plojrment of women and children in labor for which they 
 were unfitted, at wages lower than those obtained by men. 
 Women worked half-naked, with band round forehead 
 dragging laden trucks up steep inclines. Children were 
 born in the darkness, and grew up underground, never 
 seeing the brightness of the sun. The most frightful 
 demoralisation existed, and infants, sleeping at their trap- 
 doors, were crushed beneath the hurrying truck. Manly 
 decency, womanly modesty, childly weakness, all weut 
 down before the Juggernaut car of unrestricted competi- 
 tion, until the social tendency, in the guise of law, stepped 
 in to curb the brutality of anti-social greed. 
 
 Factories. — Here, again, the labor of women and 
 children has been utilised in antagonism to the better-paid 
 labor of men. And both women and children were 
 scandalously overworked until law intervened to protect 
 them. In Our Corner for March, 1885 (vol. v., pp. 158, 
 159), I gave some details of the labor imposed on children 
 before the legislature interposed, and when we find such 
 Acts as the Factory and Workshops Acts attacked by those 
 who pretend to defend Liberty (see report of the 3rd annual 
 ]neeting of the Liberty and Property Defence League, p. 
 10), we know that the liberty they defend is the liberty to 
 plunder others unchecked, the liberty which the burglar 
 might claim in annexing his neighbors' goods. At the 
 present time the chain- works in Warwickshire and Worces- 
 tershire show us examples of overmuch liberty in dealing 
 with other people's lives. Women there work semi-nude, 
 dragging heavy chains. A young girl will be absent from 
 her work one day, and reappearing on the morrow will 
 excuse her languid work to the inspector on the ground : 
 "I had a baby yesterday". Child-bearing girls, to the 
 anti-social school, are only "hands" worth so much less 
 in the labor market. These facts have to be faced. No 
 vague talk of "general improvement" will avail us here. 
 These people are suffering while we are discussing, and 
 dilettante sympathy is of small use.
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 17 
 
 Landed Estates. Here, again, the anti-social tendencies 
 iiave had full swing. Taxation, levied on land as the 
 rent to the State for the privilege of holding it, has been 
 shifted oif the land on to the people, and the land has 
 been claimed as private property instead of as public 
 trust. Improvements made by the tenant have been con- 
 fiscated, and then the improved condition of the land has 
 been utilised as a reason for raising the rent of the tenant 
 who improved it. Eents have been raised to an extent 
 the tenant could not meet, until he has become hopelessly 
 indebted to his landlord, and so bound to him, hand and 
 foot. Game has been preserved until the crops of farmers 
 have been ruined by it, and until wild animals luxuriated 
 while human beings starved. When the anti-social 
 tendency has had full play and when it has spread abroad 
 sufficient misery for purblind eyes to recognise, then the 
 social tendency has asserted itself, and has established 
 Land Courts in L-eland to fix fair rents ; has secured to 
 the tenant the results of his own labor ; has permitted the 
 farmer to kill the ground game preying on his crops. 
 
 In towns the landlord has been even a greater curse 
 than he has been in the country. Un drained, filthy, rotten 
 hovels have been rented by him to the poor. The slums 
 of all great cities testify to the results of the anti-social 
 tendency, and warn us that the deepest and widest degra- 
 dation will never touch men's hearts sufficiently to over- 
 bear the desire for personal gain. 
 
 Law, and law alone, can curb these anti-social tendencies. 
 Granted that a time will come when men shall be too 
 noble to profit by the misery of their fellows, that time is 
 mot yet. The anti-social tendencies ruin and degrade, 
 and the few who recognise the evil while not personally 
 experiencing it, aided by the many who suffer from it 
 without fully understanding it, must carry legislation 
 which shall fetter the savage inclination to prey on human 
 beings. 
 
 So far we have considered the play of anti-social tenden- 
 cies in modern society. Let us turn now to the social 
 tendencies, to those which make for integration. 
 
 The first of these which we will note is the tendency to 
 -co-operation. Handicapped as it is by being compelled to 
 make its way in a society based on competition, co-opera- 
 1;ion has yet done much to better the lot of the poor. How
 
 18 THE EYOLUTIOX OF SOCIETY. 
 
 mucli it raiglit do if everywhere it replaced competition, 
 may he guessed at from what it has done despite the evil 
 atmosphere which has surrounded it. Anyone who goes 
 over the stores of the Eochdale Pioneers, who sees the 
 great library it has gathered there, who knows the educa- 
 tional agencies centred there, must recognise the enormous 
 good done by even partial co-operation under uncongenial 
 circumstances. That productive co-operation has not suc- 
 ceeded as well as distributive is due partly to the fact that 
 the co-operative workers have sought too eagerly and paid 
 too highly for "influential names" to "float" their com- 
 panies ; and partly to the fact that production, under the 
 present system, needs a larger capital to withstand trade 
 crises than workers are able to command. Many promi- 
 sing enterprises have been ruined by straining after large 
 profits, while working with an undue proportion of borrowed 
 money, money which, in times of jmnic, has been suddenly 
 withdrawn. 
 
 The social tendency is shown in the assignment of public 
 money for educational j)urposes, the passing of the Educa- 
 tion Acts, the pressure of public feeling in favor of rate- 
 supported schools, of higher education for all at the public 
 expense. It is shown in the demand for shorter hours of 
 labor : the insistence that all should work ; the attempts 
 — at present only by agitation — to enact limits to the 
 accumulation by individuals of land and capital. 
 
 And above all the social tendency is shown in the incli- 
 nation to resort to law for the effecting of the desired 
 changes; in the recognition that social, not individual 
 effort is necessary for the reform of the social system ; in 
 the feeling that the continuance of vice and misery side by 
 side with civilisation is intolerable, and that some means 
 must be found to put an end to them. 
 
 The jjroblem now set before us is how to eradicate the 
 anti-social, and to cultivate the social, instincts in men and 
 women. Much would be gained if once it were generally 
 recognised that the desu'e for huge personal accumulation 
 is essentially anti-social, is a survival from the brute. At 
 the present time this desire is veiled under less offensive 
 names, such as "business ability", "sharpness", "energj^", 
 etc., etc., but when the veil is stripped away it stands 
 forth in its repulsive nudity. To desire sufficiency, suffi- 
 ciency for health and pleasure now, and for the time when
 
 THE EYOLUTIOi; Ol' SOCIETY. 19* 
 
 work-power has failed, that is natural and reasonable ; to 
 desire superfluity, superfluity for ostentation and waste, 
 that is barbaric. 
 
 Enough for each of work, of leisure, of joy; too little- 
 for none ; too much for none ; such is the Social Ideal. 
 Better to strive after it worthily, and fail, than to die with- 
 out striving for it at all. 
 
 IV. The EECONCILEilENT OF Dl^'^ERGING I>"TEEESTS. 
 
 WiiEREVEii a school of thought has succeeded in gaining 
 many adherents, and in holding its ground for a consider- 
 able period, it is probable that it possesses some truth, or 
 part of some truth, valuable to humanity. Very often it 
 may see only one side of the truth, and so may present a 
 half as though it were the whole ; and the bitterest combat& 
 are generally waged between those who hold separately 
 the two halves which, united, would form the perfect whole. 
 Truths which are complementary to each other are held as 
 though they were mutually destructive, and those who 
 should be brothers in a common strife turn their weapons 
 against each other's breasts. Such has been the conflict 
 between the "Individualistic" and the "Socialistic" 
 schools ; each holds a truth and does well to cling to it, for 
 neither truth could be lost without injury to Society ; the 
 whole truth is to be found by joining the twain, for there 
 is needed for the highest humanity the perfecting of the 
 Individual within a highly organised Society. 
 
 Looking back for a moment at our Industrial Period, 
 which may be taken as incarnated in the "Manchester 
 School ", we shall find that it has given to the world some 
 important information touching production. It has proved 
 that the productiveness of labor can be enormously increased S' 
 by co-operation and the division of labor ; that individual 
 production of the ordinary necessaries of life is a mistake ;_ ' 
 that it is cheaper to weave cotton goods by machinery than 
 to leave each housekeeper to do her own spinning and 
 weaving. The Manchester School has for ever rendered 
 it impossible that we shall return to general production by /f 
 "cottage industries": it has proved that large numbers 
 should co-operate in production ; that labor should be 
 economised by much division ; that machine-made goods 
 should supersede hand-made in large departments of in~ 
 
 /o
 
 20 THE EYOLUTIOX OF SOCIETY. 
 
 ^dustry ; these are the contributions of the Manchester 
 / School to progress. With these truths which it taught 
 \ were bound up errors which raised against it a widespread 
 \ revolt. Its system appeared as though it were based on 
 ythe assumption that, while labor was to be co-operative, 
 f the profits arising from the associated labor were to go to 
 \ the enrichment of an individual. It deified competition, 
 and consecrated as its patterns those who could best outwit 
 iheir rivals and outstrip them in the race for wealth. Its 
 maxim, "buy in the cheapest market and sell in the 
 •dearest ", while admirable as counsel for money-making, 
 did not alwaj^s conduce in practice to perfect honesty, and 
 is scarcely sufficient as the end of life. " Get money; by 
 fair means if thou canst, but by all means get money", 
 was a somewhat brutally frank way of putting "business " 
 morality. It tended to regard men too much as mechanical 
 instruments of production, significantly calling men, women, 
 and children "hands", instead of human beings. This 
 school it was of which I spoke on p. 15 as having misused 
 Political Economy, and as having taught as though the 
 laws of Political Economy said "Get rich", instead of 
 stating the conditions of getting rich ; they have used it 
 as the science of Mechanics might be used, if instead of 
 teaching by it how a weight may be lifted with least exer- 
 tion of muscular strength, it were appealed to as declaring 
 that everyone should lift weights. 
 ^-^ Turning to the Socialistic School, we find that it enshrines 
 • 2 the truth that man is a social animal, and that his progress 
 must lie in the direction of closer social union. Within 
 ( this school again we find three camps, the CoUectivist, the 
 \ -Communistic, and the Anarchist, the latter of which is 
 really tenanted by extreme Individualists, who are separated 
 from the ordinary Individualistic School by their desire to 
 ■overturn the present social system, and to destroy the 
 " rights of property ". 
 
 The Socialists have learned from the Manchester School 
 the conditions of wealth-production on a large scale, and 
 seeing that industrj^ as now conducted leads to the en- 
 riching of a few and the hopeless poverty of the many, it 
 lays hands on the raw material and the means of production 
 and claims these as collective property. There is, perhaps, 
 .among many of us who belong to this school too gi'eat an in- 
 clination to think that the environment is everything, and to
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 2t 
 
 ignore the reaction of the organism on the environment. 
 There is too much forgetfulness of the worse types of men 
 and women, results of the Industrial Period, who would 
 not be suddenly changed even if their environment could 
 be suddenly transformed ; there is too reckless a desire to 
 overturn, without asking what curb would be kept, in the 
 general overturning, on the degraded and criminal products 
 of our present civilisation. 
 
 The Individualistic School, whether it is carried to the /^ 
 extreme Anarchist position, or maintains the sufficiency of 
 reform along the broad lines of the present social state, . 
 brings into prominence the right of individual libert}^, and I 
 the value of individual initiativeTV One outside, and one 
 inside, nominal Socialism, each is the result of a dread of, 
 a recoil against, over-much State regulation and State 
 interference. Each lays down the vital truth that free 
 play for human faculties, encouragement not discourage- 
 ment of variations, are necessary to human progress. 
 Each points out that a perfect State is only possible by the-v 
 perfecting of individual citizens, and each is apt to lay so 
 much stress on the organism as to overlook the immense 
 importance of the environment. There is, of course, as I 
 have said above, the fundamental difference between the 
 Anarchists and those generally recognised as Individualists, 
 that the former appear to negate, while the latter maintain, 
 the right of private property. I have only put them to- 
 gether as alike in one thing, that they assert the right of 
 the Individual against the State, while the Collectivist 
 Socialist asserts the right of the State as against the In- 
 dividual. I 
 
 Pressed on the matter, however, both Individualist and\ 
 Socialist are found to hold a common object; the Indi- j 
 vidualist admits that the claims of the unit must yield if 
 they come into conflict with those of Society : the Socialist . a 
 admits that he is working for a higher social state in order 
 that each individual may have room and opportunity to 
 develop to the highest point of which he is capable. Is 
 there not here a possible reconcilement ? Is not the ideal 
 of all good and earnest reformers practically the same,' 
 although seen by them from different sides ? True, the 
 Individualist is not generally in favor of nationalising the 
 means of production, and herein differs in his method from 
 the Socialist ; but is this difference any reason for their
 
 22 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIKTY. 
 
 posing as antagonists ? The difference is not greater than 
 Ihat between the Socialist who secures to the worker the \ 
 '^ private property he has himself earned, and the Communist , 
 , who would have all property commoi^iror between the/ 
 i » Collectivist and the Anarchist schools. Yet these can work 
 together for common objects, while differing in much ; and 
 so should work the Socialist and the Radical Individualist 
 against the common foe, the idle class that lives as parasite 
 on Society. 
 
 The first matter on which all agree is that the environ- 
 ment must be largely modified by law. The Socialist will 
 carry this modifying process further than will the Indi- 
 vidualist, but here again it is a (question between them of 
 •degree. Speaking as a Socialist, I desire to see laws passed 
 which will render education tax- supported, compulsory, 
 and secular, so that all the children of the community may 
 Teceive a common education ; which will fix a normal 
 \ 1 \ working day ; which will render factory inspection more 
 -efficient, and extend inspection to shops and rooms of every 
 kind in which employees work ; which will enforce sanitary 
 inspection and prevent it from being the farce it now is ; 
 which will enable the building of healthy houses, and 
 I provide plentj^ of recreation ground in every town. All 
 these measures are imperatively necessary now, and imme- 
 diately necessary, in order that the environment may be 
 changed sufficiently for the development of healthier or- 
 ganisms. After a while most of them will not be needed ; 
 when all have felt the benefit of education, compulsion to 
 educate will become a dead letter ; when labor is better 
 organised, when the words employer and employee shall 
 , f./ y^o longer have any facts answering to them, when all 
 ~ t ^[ production is for use, not for profit^xhere will be no need 
 ^ of a law limiting the working day, for none will be driven 
 to over-long labor by the awful pressure of starvation and 
 of fear of future distress. Factory inspection will be a 
 very easy task when there are no longer over-greedy owners 
 trying to wring every possible penny out of their "hands " ; 
 iind the need for sanitary inspection will j)ass when there 
 are no slums, and when every householder understands the 
 •conditions of health. 
 
 The organism, born into and growing up in a healthier 
 environment, will be more vigorous and therefore more 
 capable of evolving a higher individuality, a more marked
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 23 
 
 personality. The evolution of individTiality is now clieckcd, 
 in some by poverty and over-hard and prolonged t(nl, in 
 some by the strict conventions of fashion, in some by the 
 iinsuitability of their work to their capacities, in some 
 by a narrow and superstitious education, in all by the 
 unhealthy social atmosphere they are compelled to breathe. 
 The loss to the community by waste of power, due to the 
 •crushing out of all individuality among hundreds upon 
 hundreds of thousands, is a loss simply incalculable. 
 When all are fully educated through childhood and youth, 
 the faculties of each developed and trained, then each indi- 
 vidual will be able to evolve along his own line, and the 
 full value of each pei"sonality will enrich Society. It is 
 often argued that a wide and thorough education will unfit 
 people for the drudgery necessary for supporting the exis- 
 tence of iSociety, and that " some one " — never the speaker, 
 of course! — must do the "dirty work". There are two 
 lines of answer to the objection. First, education does not 
 unfit people for doing any necessary work ; it is the 
 ignorant, superficial, " genteel" person who fears that the 
 veneer of polish may rub off in use. The educated brain, 
 brought to bear on manual work, economises labor and 
 minimises drudgery. General education will certainly 
 bring about the substitution of machinery for men and 
 women wherever possible, for doing really unpleasant 
 labor ; and ingenuity will be exerted in the invention of 
 labor-saving machinery when educated people find them- 
 selves face to face with repulsive kinds of toil. At pre- 
 sent they shove oft' all the unpleasant work on to others : 
 then, all being educated and there being no helot class, 
 means will be found to avoid most of the really disagree- 
 able work. If any such remains, which cannot be done by 
 machinery, those who by doing it serve Society will be 
 honored, not looked down on as they are now ; or possibly 
 some minute fraction of it will fall to the lot of each. 
 Secondly, if it were as true as it is false that education 
 unfitted people for "menial" work, no class has the right 
 to keep another class in ignorance and degradation, in 
 order that its own fingers may not be soiled. The answer 
 to the querulous argument : ' ' AVho is to light our fires 
 and cook our dinners, when the servants are as good as 
 their masters ? " is the very plain one: " You yourself , if 
 jou want the things done, and cannot find anyone willing
 
 24 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 to do those services for you, in exchange for services you 
 are able to do for them." In the coming times everyone- 
 will have to do something, and to do some one thing well. 
 AVe shall not all have to light fires, for the principle of 
 division of labor will come in, but the one who lights the- 
 fire will be a free and independent human being, not a 
 drudge. There is no doubt that domestic labor will be 
 very much lessened, when those who enjoy the results caa 
 no longer put off all the toil which produces them on some 
 one else. Even now, the work of a house can be wonder- 
 fully diminished if a little intelligence be brought to bear 
 upon it, although domestic labor-saving machines are still 
 in their infancy. The great "servant problem" will be 
 solved by the disappearance of servants, the wide intro- 
 duction of machinery, and the division among the mem- 
 bers of each domestic commonwealth of the various 
 necessary duties. The prospect is really not so very terri- 
 ble when quietly surveyed. 
 
 AVhither is Society evolving ? It is evolving towards a 
 more highly developed individuality of its units, and 
 towards their closer co-ordination. It is evolving towards 
 a more generous brotherhood, a more real equality, a 
 fuller liberty. It is evolving towards that Golden Age 
 which poets have chanted, which dreamers have visioned, 
 which martyrs have died for : towards that new Eepublic 
 of Man, which exists now in our hope and our faith, and 
 shall exist in reality on earth.
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 r 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE BESANT 
 
 [SEC0^^) EDITION.] 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 FEEETHOUGHT PUBLISHING- COMPANY, 
 
 63 FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
 18 9
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRTNTKD BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHAEIES BEADLAUGH, 
 
 63 FLEET STEEET, E.G.
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 Great changes are long in the preparing, and every 
 thought that meets ultimately with wide acceptance is 
 lying inarticulate in many minds ere it is syllabled out by 
 some articulate one, and stands forth a spoken Word. The 
 Zeitgeist has its mouth in those of its children who have 
 brain to understand, voice to proclaim, courage to stand 
 alone. Some new Truth then peals out sonorous and far- 
 sounding as the roll of the thunder, melodious to the ears 
 attuned to the deep grand harmonies of Nature, but terrible 
 to those accustomed only to the subdued lispings of arti- 
 ficial triflers, and the murmurs which float amid the hang- 
 ings of courtly halls. 
 
 When such an event occurs a few hearken, study, and 
 then rejoicingly accept the new Truth ; these are its 
 pioneers, its apostles, who go out to proclaim it to the as 
 yet unbelieving world. They meet with ridicule, then with 
 persecution ; for ever the new Truth undermines some 
 hoary Lie, which has its band of devoted adherents living 
 on the spoils of its reign. Slowly, against custom and 
 tradition, against selfishness and violence, even against 
 indifference, deadliest foe of all, this band of devoted 
 teachers makes its onward way. And the band grows and 
 grows, and each convert becomes in his turn a pioneer ; 
 until at last the victory is won, and the minority has 
 become the majority ; and then the time comes for some 
 new Truth once more, and the old struggle is gone over 
 afresh, and so again and again ; and thus the race makes 
 progress, and humanity climbs ever upward towards the 
 perfect life. 
 
 During the last century and a quarter the social problem 
 has been pressing for solution on all who have brains to
 
 4 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 think, and hearts to feel. The coexistence of wealth and 
 penury, of idle prodigality and laborious stint ; the terrible 
 fact that " progress and poverty " seem to inarch hand-in- 
 hand ; the growing slums in large towns ; the huge for- 
 tunes and the starving poor ; these things make content 
 impossible, and force into prominence the question : ' ' Must 
 this state of things continue ? Is there no possible change 
 which will cure, not only palliate, the present evils ? " 
 
 Great hopes have sprung into being from time to time, 
 each in turn to be blighted. Machinery was to double 
 production and diminish toil, to spread comfort and suffi- 
 ciency everywhere. It made cotton-lords and merchant- 
 princes with one hand, and with the other created a prole- 
 tariat unlike aught the world had seen, poor in the midst 
 of the wealth it created, miserable in the midst of luxury, 
 ignorant in the midst of knowledge, savage in the midst 
 of civilisation. When the repeal of the Corn Laws was 
 striven for and accomplished, once more hope rose high. 
 Cheap food was to put an end to starvation. Alas I in the 
 streets of the wealthiest city in Christendom, men and 
 women perish for lack of a loaf of bread. 
 
 Nor is this persistence of miseiy and of squalor the onl}' 
 sign which troubles the brain and the heart of the student 
 of the social problem. He notes the recua-ring crises in 
 industrj', the inflations and depressions of trade. At one 
 time all is prosperous ; demand is brisk, and supply can 
 scarce keep pace with it ; wages rise, full time is worked, 
 production is enormously increased. Then a change creeps 
 over aU ; supply has overtaken, has surpassed demand ; 
 the market is glutted ; the warehouses are filled with 
 unsaleable goods ; short time begins ; wages fall ; mills are 
 closed ; fui'naces are damped out ; many workers are dis- 
 charged. • Then the unemployed in the large towns increase 
 in number ; the poor-rate rises ; distress spreads upwards. 
 After a while the depression passes ; trade improves ; and 
 the whole weary circle is trodden once more. Nor is this 
 all; although there has been '' over-production " there is 
 want of the necessaries of life ; there are unsaleable clothing 
 goods in the warehouses, and half-naked people shivering 
 outside ; too many blankets, and children crying them- 
 selves to sleep for cold. This monstrous absurdity, of com- 
 modities a drug in the market, and human beings perishing 
 for want of those very commodities, stares us ever in the
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 5 
 
 face. Cannot human brain discover some means to put an 
 end to this state of things, a state which woukl be hidicrous 
 were it not for the horrible suffering involved in it ? Some 
 say, this must always be so; that the poor shall be for 
 ever with us ; that commercial crises are inevitable ; that 
 these evils are not susceptible of complete cure. If this 
 indeed be true, then I know not that any better advice can 
 be given to humanity than that given to Job by his wife, 
 to " curse God and die ". But I think not so meanly of 
 human intelligence ; I believe not that our present indus- 
 trial sj'stem, little more than a century old, must needs be 
 eternal ; I believe that the present system, devised by man 
 and founded in greed of gain, may by man be changed; 
 and that man's growing power over external nature may 
 be used to bring comfort and wealth to each, and not, as 
 now, to enrich the few at the cost of the enslavement of 
 the many. 
 
 Various attempts to bring about a better social ^tate 
 have been made by earnest and noble-hearted mel^^iring 
 the last hundred years. I leave aside such systems as 
 those of the Moravians, because they cannot be regarded 
 as in any sense schemes for the reconstruction of society. 
 They, like the monastic communities, were merely attempts 
 to create oases, fenced in from the world's evils, where 
 men might prepare for a future life. These efforts were 
 but crude attempts at Communism, and were foredoomed 
 to failure, economic evolution/not having reached the point 
 at which a scientific Communism will become possible. 
 With these the name of Robert Owen will be for ever 
 associated. 
 
 Owen's first experiment was made at New Lanark, in 
 connexion with the cotton-mills established there by Mr. 
 Dale, his father-in-law. He became the manager of these 
 in 1797, and set himself to work to improve the condition 
 of the operatives and their families. The success which 
 attended his efforts, the changes wrought by education 
 and by fair dealings, encouraged him to plan out a wider 
 scheme of social amelioration. In 1817 he was asked to 
 report on the causes of poverty to the Committee on the 
 Poor Laws, and in this report he dwelt on the serious in- 
 crease of pauperism which had followed the introduction 
 of machinery, and urged that employment ought to be 
 found for those who were in need of it. He "recommended
 
 6 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 that every union or county should provide a farm for the 
 employment of their poor ; when circumstances admitted 
 of it, there should be a manufactory in connexion with it" 
 ("Eobert Owen," by A. J. Booth, p. 70). On the farm, 
 buildings were to be built for housing the laborers, con- 
 sisting of "a square, divided into two parallelograms by 
 the erection of public buildings in the centre" ; these would 
 consist of "a kitchen, mess-room, school-rooms, library 
 and lecture hall. The poor would enjoy every advantage 
 that economy could suggest : the same roof would cover 
 many dwellings : the same stove might warm every room : 
 the food would be cooked at the same time, and on the 
 same fire : the meals would be eaten from the same table, 
 in the society of friends and fellow-workers. Sympathies 
 now restricted to the family would be thus extended to 
 a commimity : the union would be still fxu'ther cemented 
 by an equal participation in the profits, an equal share in 
 
 the toil Competition is the cause of many vices ; 
 
 association will be their corrective " {Ibid, pp. 70 — 72). 
 Soon after this report, Mr. Owen published a letter, urging 
 the recoDstitution of "the whole of society on a similar 
 basis" ; the lowest class was to consist of paupers, to be 
 drafted into the proposed establishments ; the second of 
 the " working class " ; the third of laborers, artisans, and 
 tradesmen, with proj^erty of from £100 to £2,000; the 
 fourth of persons unable or unwilling to work, owning 
 from £1,000 to £20,000 ; these were to employ the second 
 class. The workman was to be supported by this class in 
 comfort for seven years in exchange for his labor, and then 
 was to be presented by it with £100, so that he might 
 enter class three ; if he remained as a worker for five years 
 more he was to have £200. 
 
 A community of workers, as recommended by Owen, was 
 started in 1825, under the management of Abraham 
 Combe, at Orbiston, nine miles east of Glasgow, and it 
 began well; but Combe died in 1827, and with his death 
 the whole thing went to pieces. A few months before the 
 settlement at Orbiston, Eobert Owen sailed for America, 
 and he purchased a property named Harmony, consisting 
 of 30,000 acres in Indiana, from the Eappites, a religious 
 communistic body. He advertised for inhabitants, and 
 gathered together a mixed crowd ; " there were some 
 enthusiasts who had come, at great personal sacrifice, to
 
 MODEEN SOCIALISM. 7 
 
 face a rude life and to mix among rude men, who had no 
 object but to work out the great problem of a New Society; 
 there were others who fancied they could secure abundance 
 with little labor, prepared to shirk their share in the toil, 
 but not to forego their share in the reward" {Ibid, p. 106). 
 In the following year, 1826, "New Harmony " inaugurated 
 a system of complete Communism, much against Osven's 
 judgment; a number of small independent communities 
 were soon formed, eight of these having already broken 
 off from New Harmony early in 1827, the difficulties 
 attendant on widely extended common life being found 
 insuperable. In 1828, Eobert Owen was forced to confess 
 that his efforts had failed, and that "families trained in 
 the individual system " could not suddenly be plunged into 
 pure Communism with success. It boots not to dwell here 
 on his further efforts in England. Eobert Owen's experi- 
 ments failed, but out of his teaching arose the co-operative 
 movement, and the impulse to seek some rational system 
 of society has, since his time, never quite died out in 
 England. 
 
 In America a large number of communities have been 
 established, mostly religious in character. From the 
 careful account given of them by Charles Nordhoff, the 
 following brief details are taken (all numbers relate to 
 1874). The Amana community consists of 1,450 members; 
 they have a property of 25,000 acres, and live in seven 
 small towns ; they are Germans, very pious and very 
 prosperous ; their head is a woman, who is directly inspired 
 by God. The Harmony Society, Economy, near ]?ittsburg, 
 consists of followers of Rapp, who founded the society in 
 1805. They are all Gfermans and number 110, in addition 
 to about 100 hired laborers and some sixty children. They 
 live in comfort, and have clearly done well unto them- 
 selves, owning now a very large amount of property. 
 The Separatists of Zoar, Ohio, are, once more, Germans : 
 they started in 1817, have now about 300 members, own 
 7,000 acres of land, and are prosperous exceedingly. The 
 Shakers, established in 1792, are scattered over several 
 States, number about 2,415, own about 100,000 acres of 
 land, are divided into fifty-eight communities, and are 
 wealthy and prosperous ; the members are American and 
 English. The Perfectionists of Oneida and Wallingford 
 are American, and the first attempt by them at communal
 
 OV> MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 living took place in 1846. They number 521, and own 
 894 acres of land. They also are prosperous. The Aurora 
 and Bethel Communes, iii Oregon, are German, or "Penn- 
 sylvania Dutch" ; they started in 1844, and now number 
 some 600 persons: their property extends to 23,000 acres, 
 and they live in much comfort. The Icarians, founded by 
 Etienne Cabet in 1848, are nearly all French ; they have 
 hitherto been less fortunate than the preceding societies, 
 in consequence of mismanagement at the start ; a heavy 
 debt was incurred early in the movement, and members 
 fell off ; but a few resolute men and women settled down 
 steadily in Iowa, with 4,000 acres of land, and 20,000 
 dollars of debt ; they had to give up the land to their 
 creditors, but managed to redeem nearly half of it, and 
 they are now 65 in number, own 1,936 acres, have no 
 debts, and have acquired a large live stock. They still live , 
 very plainly, but are on their way to prosperity, having 
 conquered all the difficulties amid which they started; 
 their constitution is perfectly democratic and they are 
 without religion. A Swedish community at Bishop Hill, 
 Illinois, was formed bj- a pietist sect which emigrated to 
 America to escape persecution in 1846-1848. They were 
 terribly poor at first and lived in holes in the ground, 
 with a tent for a church, but gradually acquired property ; 
 until in 1859 they owned 10,000 acres of land, worth 
 300,000 dollars, and some magnificent live stock. Un- 
 fortunatel}' their piety led to such extreme dullness that 
 the younger members of the society revolted : debt was 
 incurred, individuality was advocated, the property was 
 divided, and the community ceased to exist. Lastly, there 
 are two small communities, founded in 1871 and 1874; the 
 former, the Progressive Community, at Cedar Yale, con- 
 sists partly of Russians ; it possesses 320 acres of good 
 land, and has onlj^ eight members, of whom one is a child. 
 The second, the Social Freedom Community, consists of 
 three adults and thi-ee lads, Americans, and has a farm of 
 333 acres. 
 
 The whole of these societies can only be regarded as in 
 the nature of experiments, and as such the}' are extremelj' 
 interesting ; each communit}' has succeeded in gaining 
 comfort and independence, but these small bodies, living 
 chiefly by agriculture in a thinly-populated country on 
 virgin soil, while they show the advantages of associated
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 labor, really offer no data for the solution of the problems 
 which beset a complex society. They are a return to more 
 primitive forms of living, not an onward social evolution, 
 and they are only possible in a "new country ". Further, 
 while they are communistic so far as their own members 
 are concerned, they are individualistic and competitive in 
 their aspect to the outer world ; each small group holds its 
 own propert}', and transacts all its business on the old lines 
 in its dealings with the rest of the nation. This is, of 
 course, inevitable, since each is encircled by comjjetition : 
 but it must not be overlooked that all these organisations, 
 like co-operative societies at home, are nothing more than 
 enlarged families, and are essentially individualistic — win- 
 ning sufficiency for their own narrow, isolated circles, but 
 leaving untouched the question of national poverty. They 
 are arks, rescuing their inmates from the deluge, but they 
 do nothing to drain away the seething ocean of misery. 
 
 Modern Socialism has wider aims than the saving of a 
 few, or the piecemeal reformation of society ; it is an 
 attempt to get at the root of the poverty which now pre- 
 vails ; to find out how fortunes are made ; why commercial 
 crises occur : what are the real relations of capital and 
 labor at the present time. 
 
 In speaking of "fortunes ", I do not here include for- 
 tunes made by gambling, as on the Stock Exchange. They 
 fall under another category, for in gambling, whether on 
 the Stock Exchange or on the card table, wealth is not 
 really made : it only passes from one pocket to another. 
 The gambler, or the burglar, may " make a fortune " so 
 far as he is himself concerned ; but it is not done by the 
 creation of wealth, but only by transferring wealth already 
 existing from the pocket of its temporory possessor into 
 his own ; in both businesses the profits are large because 
 the risks are great, and the penalty for failure heavy for 
 the moment. 
 
 Socialism, as an industrial system, is chiefly concerned 
 with fortunes in the making, with the way in which the 
 wealth created by associated labor passes into the hands 
 of individuals who do little or nothing in exchange for it. 
 These fortunes arise from the ownership of the instruments 
 of production, or of the raw material out of which wealth 
 is to be manufactured ; from the ownership, that is, of 
 capital or of land.
 
 10 modern socialism. 
 
 Pboduction. 
 
 Let us tate the case of the possessor of capital ifemplo jed 
 in manufacture. This man desires to obtain more wealth 
 than he can produce alone, more than he can individually 
 produce even with the help of machinery. He must con- 
 sequently hire others, who, in exchange for a certain fixed 
 sum to be paid to them by him, shall allow him to take 
 over the whole results of their labor, and to pocket the 
 difference between those results and the fixed sum paid 
 by him. This fixed sum is known as wage, and is "the 
 market price of labor ". We have therefore here two 
 classes face to face with each other : one is a class which 
 is the owner of capital, that is which possesses the instru- 
 ments of production ; the other is a class which possesses 
 the labor force, without which the instruments of produc- 
 tion are useless, but which must perish if it cannot get 
 hold of some of those instruments. (Behind the capitalists 
 is a third-class, the land-owning, with which the capitalist 
 has to come to terms : that will be dealt with afterwards.) 
 This second class stands therefore at this disadvantage ; that 
 while the capitalist can, if he pleases, utilise his own labor- 
 force for his own subsistence, it cannot subsist at all except 
 with his consent and aid, being shut out from the raw 
 material b}' the landowner, and from the instruments of 
 production by himself. Put a naked man on fertile soil in 
 a decent climate and he will subsist ; he will live on fruits 
 and berries while with his hands he fashions some rouglu 
 tool, and with the help thereof makes him a better onej^ 
 out of the raw material he will form an instrument of pro- 
 duction with those original instruments of production given 
 him b}- nature, his fingers and the muscles of his body ; 
 then with his instrument and the raw material at his feet 
 he will labor and win his livelihood. But in our complex 
 society this opening is not before him ; the raw material is 
 enclosed and trespassers are prosecuted ; if he picks fruit 
 for food, he is a thief ; if he breaks off a bough to make 
 a rough tool, he is arrested ; he cannot get an instrument 
 of production, and if he could he would have nothing to use 
 it on ; he has nothing but his labor-force, and he m ust 
 either sell that to someone who wants it, or he must diey* 
 And the sale must be complete. His labor force is bought 
 for so much down per week or per month ; it no longer
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 13 
 
 "- a 
 
 belongs to himself, it is owned by his master, and he ht 
 not any right over that which it produces ; ho has sold it, 
 and if he wants to resume possession he must give notice 
 of his wish to the owner thereof ; having resumed possession 
 it is of no use to him ; he can only live by selling it to some- 
 body else. He is " free ", in so far that he is able to change 
 his master : he is a slave in that he must sell the labor force 
 in his body for food. The man whose labor-force has been 
 sold to another for life is regarded by all as a slave ; the 
 man whose labor-force is sold for stated terms is regarded 
 by most as free ; yet in comparing the conditions of the 
 two, it is well to bear in mind that the slave, in becoming 
 a chattel, becomes of value to his master, and it is the 
 interest of the latter to feed him well and to keep up his 
 physical strength as long as is possible ; also in old age he 
 is fed and housed, and can die in peace amid his fellows. 
 Whereas the wage earner has no such value, but it is his 
 master's interest to get as much work out of him as is 
 possible, without regard for his health, there being plenty 
 to take his place when he is worn out ; and when he is 
 old, he is separated from wife and child and is left to die 
 in the prison we call a workhouse. The slave is valuable, 
 as the horse and the ox are valuable, to his owner : the 
 wage- earner is valuable only as a garment, which is cast 
 into the dusthole when it is worn out. 
 
 It may be answered that the wage- earner by good for- 
 tune, industry, and thrift, may be able so to save of his 
 earnings that he may escape the workhouse, and may even 
 himself become independent and an " employer of labor". 
 True. So might a lucky slave become free. But the 
 truth that some may rise out of their class does not render 
 satisfactory the state of tlie class, and the very fact that 
 such rising is held out as a reward and a stimulus is an 
 admission that an escape from the proletariat must be the 
 natural longing of every proletarian. The rising of a few 
 does not benefit the proletariat as a whole, and it is the 
 existence of this unpropertied proletariat which is the evil 
 thing. 
 
 To this proletariat, waiting to sell its labor-force, the 
 capitalist goes, for it is here that he will be able to obtain 
 the wealth-making strength which he requires. The next 
 question is : What determines the wage which he is to 
 pay? That is : what fixes the market price of labor-force?
 
 1^ ^ , MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 ctmg on one side temporaiy and comparatively trivial 
 jauses which may slightly affect it one way or the other, 
 there are two constant determinants : population, and 
 standard of living. The market-price of labor-force will 
 largely depend on the quantity of labor-force in the 
 market ; if the supply exceed the demand, the price will 
 be low ; if the demand exceed the supply, the price will 
 go up. If an employer requires fifty laborers, and two 
 hundred laborers compete with each other for the employ- 
 ment he offers, and if the employment stands between 
 them and starvation, he will be able to beat down their 
 price until it touches the lowest point at which they can 
 subsist. The more rapid the multiplication of the prole- 
 tariat, the better for the capitalist class. 
 
 The other determinant is the "standard of living" or 
 "standard of comfort". Wage can never sink bej'oud 
 ►/.the point at whicli a man and his family can temporarily 
 exist thereon ; this is the extreme limit of its fall, inas- 
 much as a man will not work unless he can exist on the 
 results of his work. As a matter of fact, it does not often 
 sink so low ; the wage of an ordinary operative is more 
 than barely suffices to keep him and his family alive, but 
 large numbers of the laboring poor are habitually under- 
 fed, and are liable to the diseases brought on by low 
 living, as well as to premature aging and death arising 
 from the same cause. It is a significant fact that the 
 deathrate of the poor is much higher than the deathrate 
 of the rich. Wage is lower in countries in which the 
 standard of living is low, than in those in which it is, 
 by comparison, higher. Thus in parts of Scotland, where 
 oatmeal is much used for food, and children run much 
 barefoot, wage is normally lower than in England, where 
 wheaten flour and shoes and stockings are expected. Any 
 general lowering of the standard of living is therefore to 
 be deprecated — as the wide substitution of cheap vegetable 
 food-stuffs for more expensive articles of diet. The 
 standard of living also (and chiefly, in any given country) 
 affects wages through its effect on population. Mill points 
 out (" Principles of Political Economy," Book 11, chap, xi, 
 sec. 2) that "wages do adapt themselves to the price of 
 food ", either (a) from children dying prematurely when 
 food rises, and wages were before barel}' sufficient to main- 
 tain them, or {b) from voluntary restriction of the growth
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 13 
 
 of population when the laborers refuse to sink below a 
 certain standard of living. In each case the diminution 
 of labor supjDly causes a rise of wage. "Mr. Eicardo", 
 sa^'s Mill, " considers these two cases to comprehend all 
 cases. He assumes that there is everywhere a minimum 
 rate of wages: either the lowest with which it is phj'sically 
 possible to keei) up the population, or the lowest with 
 which the people will choose to do so. To this minimum 
 he assumes that the general rate of wages always tends ; 
 that they can never be lower, bej'ond the length of time 
 required for a diminished rate of increase to make itself 
 felt, and can never long continue higher." This is the 
 "iron law of wages ", and it is the recognition of its truth 
 which, among other reasons, sets Socialists against the 
 wage-system of industry. [It must not be forgotten that 
 the phrase " ordinary operative " does not include all the 
 workers. There is a large class which obtains barely 
 subsistence wage, and those who are not regularl}' em- 
 ployed are on the very verge of starvation. The hard lot 
 of these must not be left out of sight in impeaching the 
 present social state.] 
 
 The capitalist, then, buys as much labor-force as he 
 desires, or as his means allow, at the market price, deter- 
 mined in the way we have seen. This labor-force he pro- 
 poses to utilise for his own advantage ; with some of his 
 capital he buys it ; some of his capital consists in machinery, 
 and the labor-force set at work on this machinery is to 
 jjroduce wealth. The labor-force and the instruments of 
 production are now brought together ; they will now pro- 
 duce wealth, and both they and the wealth they produce 
 are the property of the capitalist. 
 
 Our next inquiry is : Wliere does the capitalist look for 
 his profit ? He has bought machinery ; he has bought 
 labor-force ; whence comes the gain he is seeking ? The 
 profit of the capitalist must arise from the difference be- 
 tween the price he pays for labor-force and the wealth pro- 
 duced by it ; out of this difference must be paid his rent, 
 the loss incurred by wear-and-tear, and the price of the 
 raw material on which his machinery works ; these provided 
 for, the remainder of the difference is his "profit". The 
 analj'sis of the way in which this profit arises is, then, the 
 task that comes next. 
 
 In Karl Marx's "Das Capital " may be found a carefully
 
 14 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 elaborated exposition of " surplus-value ". The student 
 "will do well to read his seventh chapter, on the "produc- 
 tion of use-value and surplus-value " ; in reading, he must 
 remember Marx's definitions of value and use-value, which 
 of course govern the whole. Value is human labor incor- 
 porated in a commodity ; use-value is that which in a 
 commodity satisfies some human want. The "use-value " 
 of Marx is identical with the " intrinsic natural worth " of 
 Locke. Locke says: "The intrinsic natural worth of any 
 thing consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or 
 serve the conveniences of human life ". (" Considerations 
 of the Lowering of Interest," etc, Locke's Works, vol. ii., 
 p. 28, ed. 1777). As an instance of the production of 
 surplus-value — that is of the difference between the capital 
 which the capitalist expends in production and that which 
 he possesses when the production is complete — Marx takes 
 the case of the manufacture of ten pounds of thread. The 
 capitalist buys ten pounds of cotton at 10s. ; wear-and- 
 tear of machinery in the spinning of the cotton into thread 
 raises his expenditure to 12s. ; further, six hours of work 
 are necessary to tui"n the ten pounds of cotton into ten 
 pounds of thread. 
 
 Now suppose that a man in six hours is able to produce 
 sufficient to maintain himself for a day ; — that is that he 
 produces as much as might be exchanged for a day's con- 
 sumption of the necessaries of life. Let us value this at 
 3s. in money. That 3s. which is the monetary equivalent 
 of his six hoiu's' labor must be added to the cost of j)roduc- 
 tion of the thread ; its value has therefore risen finally to 
 15s. If the capitalist now sells his ten pounds of thread 
 for 15s., he will only receive back as much as he has 
 expended ; he will have made no profit. But suppose the 
 working day be of twelve hours instead of six, the wages 
 paid will none the less be fixed at 3s. by the standard of 
 living ; but in that second six hours the operative can 
 transform another ten pounds of cotton into another ten 
 pounds of thread ; as before, cotton and wear-and-tear will 
 amount to 12s. ; but these ten pounds of thread have a 
 value of 15s. as had the previous ten pounds although they 
 have only cost the capitalist 12s. Hence the final product 
 of the day's labor has a value of 30s., but has cost the 
 capitalist only 27s. The value added by the operative in 
 the second six hours has brought Mm no equivalent ; it is
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 15 
 
 " surplus- value ", value added by him over tlie value 
 whose equivalent he receives in wage ; this creation of 
 surplus-value is the aim of the capitalist. 
 
 Now, without tying ourselves down to the exact figures 
 and the phraseology of Marx, we may yet see by a little 
 thought that his main position is essentially correct. If a 
 capitalist buys £l worth of raw material ; if his machinery 
 is depreciated say by the value of one shilling in working 
 up the raw material ; if he pays in wage 5s. for the labor- 
 force expended on it ; he will most certainly not be content 
 with selling the finished product for 26s. He demands a 
 " profit " on the transaction, and this profit can only be the 
 difference between that which is paid to labor, and the 
 value, in the ordinary sense of the word, which labor 
 creates. 
 
 It is sometimes objected that nothing is gained by 
 Marx's divisions of " value ", " surplus value ", and " ex- 
 change value ", but that, on the contrary, they transport 
 economics into a metaphysical region away from the solid 
 ground of facts. It is urged that it is better to represent the 
 conditions thus : that the worker produces a mass of com- 
 modities ; that the capitalist sells these commodities for 
 what they will fetch in the market, the price being fixed, 
 not by the duration of the labor embodied in them, but by 
 the relative utilities of money and commodity to buyer and 
 seller ; that the capitalist gives over to the producer suffi- 
 cient of the results of the sale to enable the producer to 
 exist, and pockets the remainder. This presentment is a 
 statement of the facts as they are; Marx's "value" is a 
 metaphysical abstraction corresponding to nothing exist- 
 ing at ibhc present time, however true it would be under 
 ideal conditions. The main point to grasp, however, is 
 obvious, whichever of these presentments is thought pre- 
 ferable. Capital, under our present industrial system, is 
 the result of unpaid labor — a matter to be further con- 
 sidered later in this essay. But it must be remembered 
 that, as a matter of fact, the profit made by the capitalist 
 is not a fixed quantity, as is the " surplus value " of Marx ; 
 but that the capitalist not only preys on the worker, but 
 also on the necessities of the consumer, his profit rising 
 and falling with the changes of demand and supply. The 
 phrase "surplus value", if it is to be retained at all, 
 might well be extended to cover the whole difference
 
 16 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 between the price paid to labor for the commodities it 
 produces, and the price obtained for those commodities by 
 the capitalist employer of labor. It is in this wide sense 
 that the phrase is used in the following pages, not in the 
 metaphj-sical sense of Marx. 
 
 "We are now in a position to understand how large 
 fortunes are made, and why Capital and Labor are ever 
 at war. 
 
 Before the commencement of the Industrial Period — 
 which may be fairly dated from the invention of the 
 Spinning Jenny in 1764 — it was not possible to accumu- 
 late great wealth by the employment of hired labor. By 
 hand-work, or by the use of the very simple machines 
 available prior to that date, a single operative was not 
 able to produce sufficient to at once supjoort himself and to 
 largely enrich others. " Masters and men " consequently 
 formed a community of workers, without the sharp 
 divisions that now exist between capitalist and "hands "; 
 and the emploj'er would have been as much ashamed of 
 not working deftly at his trade, as the son of a Lancashire 
 cotton-lord would be ashamed if he were suspected of 
 throwing a shuttle in one of his father's looms. Under 
 these conditions there was very little surj^lus-value to be 
 absorbed, and there were consequently no great aggrega- 
 tions of the purely industrial classes. The introduction of 
 machinery multiplied enormously the productive power of 
 the operative, while it did not increase the wage he 
 received. A man receiving 3s. for a day of twelve houi's, 
 l^roduced, we will say for the sake of illustration, surplus- 
 value to the amount of Is.; after the introduction of 
 machinery he received the same wage and produced an 
 enormously increased surplus-value. Thus the fortunes 
 of the lucky possessors of the new machinery rose by 
 "leaps and bounds"; lads who began at the loom were 
 owners of palaces by middle age ; even later on, after the 
 first rush had spent itself, I have myself met Lancashire 
 cotton-lords who were mill-hands in their youth ; but 
 most certainly their wealth had only been made by the 
 results of the toil of many becoming concentrated in the 
 hands of one. 
 
 Another step was taken to increase surplus -value. 
 Depending, as it does, on the difference between the 
 value produced by the worker and the amount paid to
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 17 
 
 him as wage, it is obvious that if it be possible to obtain 
 the same amount of produce from purchased labor-force 
 while reducing the purchase - money, the surplus-value 
 will become larger. This step was soon taken, for it was 
 found that many machines could be superintended by a 
 woman quite as effectively as by a man, while female 
 labor-force was purchasable in the market at a lower rate. 
 Hence the large introduction of female "hands" into 
 cotton mills, and as married women were found more 
 " docile " than unmarried — docility increasing with the 
 number of mouths crying for bread at home — there came 
 the double curse on the producers, of male labor being 
 pushed aside by female labor at lower wage, and of untidy 
 home and neglected children, bereft of mother's care. Yet 
 another step. Child-labor was cheaper even than woman- 
 labor, and by utilising children with their pitiful wage, sur- 
 plus-value might be swollen to yet larger proportions ; and 
 as wives had fought with husbands for wage, so children 
 now fought with fathers and mothers, until verily a man's 
 foes in the labor-market were they of his own household. 
 
 There was, however, a way of increasing surplus-value 
 apart from the amount of daily wage. The lengthening 
 of the hours of labor has obviously the same result in this 
 respect as the lowering of wage. The very zenith of the 
 production of surplus-value, the most complete exploitation 
 of the producers, the perfect triumph of the capitalist ideal 
 of free contract and of laissez-faire, were reached when 
 little children, at nominal wage, were worked from fifteen 
 to sixteen hours a day, and princely fortunes were built 
 up by human sacrifice to the devil of greed, in fashion that 
 shall never, so help us tongue, and pen, and arm, be again 
 possible in this fair English land. 
 
 We have at the present time no exact figures available 
 which can enable us to judge of the precise amount of 
 surplus value produced in the various departments of 
 industry. In America, the Bureaus of Labor Statistics 
 help us, and from these we learn some suggestive facts. 
 
 Extra net Extra net 
 
 Average wage value produced Average wage value produced 
 
 paid to worker, by worker. paid to worker. by worker. 
 
 1870 £62 £69 
 1880 69 4 64 14 
 
 1850 £49 12 £41 16 
 1860 58 8 65 10 
 
 (Ta!" ''n from Laurence Gronlund's quotation of these 
 
 B
 
 18 . MODERN SOOIAXISM. 
 
 returns in Ms " Co-operative Commonwealth ", rliap. i. 
 Tlie same figures, as regards total net produce and wages 
 paid, have appeared in a capitalist work.) We have now 
 in England a Labor Bureau somewhat similar to those 
 now existing in the United States, but it is still too young 
 to give us the figures we need. For this Bureau we have 
 to thank Charles Bradlaugh, M.P., who succeeded in 
 passing a resolution in favor of the official publication of 
 similar statistics through the House of Commons. Among 
 the many priceless services he has done to the workers, 
 the obtaining of these is by no means the least. Exact 
 knowledge of the present state of things is a necessary 
 precedent of organic change, and the figures supplied by 
 the Labor Bureau will give us the very weapons that we 
 need. 
 
 The absolutely antithetical interests of Capital and 
 Labor have necessitated — and must continue to necessitate 
 while the present system lasts — a constant and embittered 
 war. As Capital can only grow by surplus value, it 
 strives to lengthen the working day and to decrease the 
 daily wage. Labor struggles to shorten the hours of toil, 
 and to wring from Capital a larger share of its own pro- 
 duct in the form of higher wage. While Capital is the 
 possession of one class, and Labor is the only property of 
 the other, this strife must go on. There can never be 
 industrial peace until this root of war be pulled up, and 
 until Capital, under the control of the community, shall 
 be used for the fertilisation, instead of for the oppression 
 of Labor. 
 
 Since large fortunes are made by manufacturers, and 
 there is no source of wealth save labor applied to natural 
 objects, it is clear that these fortunes are due to the fact 
 that the manufacturers are able to become the owners of 
 the means of production and of labor-force ; even these 
 very means of production, with which the present labor- 
 force works, are but past labor-force crystallised. The 
 wage-earners must produce sufficient to maintain them- 
 selves from day to day and to increase the capital of the 
 wage-payers, else they will not be employed. Hence 
 arises another evil, the waste of productive force. Men 
 are not employed because their labor-force, embodied in 
 the necessaries of life, will spread sufficiency and comfort 
 throughout the community. They are only employed
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 19 
 
 wlien the articles produced can be sold at a profit by a 
 third party ; their products, fairly exchanged for the pro- 
 ducts of their fellow-laborers — woven cloth, say, for shoes 
 — would clothe warmly the shivering population ; but 
 above the cloth produced by the one, and the shoes pro- 
 duced by the other, stand the capitalists, who demand 
 profit for themselves ere the cloth shall bo allowed to 
 shield the naked back, or the shoes keep off the pavement 
 the toes blued by the frost. If the employment fails, the 
 •wage-earner is out of food ; but the erstwhile wage- payer 
 has the capital made by the former to live upon, while its 
 maker starves. The capitalist, truly, cannot increase his 
 capital, unless he can buy labor-force ; but he can live on 
 his capital. On the other hand the labor- force must perish 
 unless it can find a purchaser. Let us put the position 
 plainly, for as the great majority of people think the 
 arrangement a perfectly fair one, there is no need to cover it 
 over with a veil of fine phrases and roundabout expressions. 
 The owner of raw material and of the means of production 
 faces the unpropertied proletarian, and says to him: •'! 
 hold in my hands the means of existence ; unless you can 
 obtain the means of existence you will die ; but I will only 
 let you have them on one condition. And that is that you 
 shall labor for me as well as for yourself. For each hour 
 that you spend in winning bread, you shall spend another 
 in enriching me. I will give you the right to win a hard 
 existence by your labor, if you will give me the right to 
 take whatever you produce beyond that bare existence. 
 You are perfectly free to choose ; you can either accept 
 my terms, and let me live on your work, or you can refuse 
 my terms, and starve." Put so baldly, the proposition 
 has a certain brutality in it. Yet when we Socialists argue 
 that a system is bad which concentrates the means of 
 existence in the hands of a propertied class, and leaves an 
 unpropertied class under the hard condition of winning 
 only the right to exist on such terms as may be granted by 
 the propertied ; when we urge this, we are told that we 
 are incendiaries, thieves, idiots, or, at the mildest, that our 
 hopes of fi'eeing these enslaved ones are dreams, mere 
 castles in the air. 
 
 We have now reached the foundation of modern 
 Socialism. We say : As long as the industrial classes are 
 divided into capitalists and proletarians, so long must con- 
 
 s2
 
 20 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 tinue the present strife, and the present extremes of wealth 
 and of poverty. It is not a mere modification, but a com- 
 plete revolution of the industrial system which is required. 
 Capital must be controlled by labor, instead of controlling 
 it. The producers must obtain possession of their own 
 product, and must regulate their own labor. The present 
 system has been weighed in the balances and foimd want- 
 ing, and on the wall of the capitalist banqueting-room is 
 written by the finger of modern thought, dipped in the 
 tears and in the blood}^ sweat of the over-tasked proletariat : 
 " Man hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. It is 
 divided among the mjTiads thou hast wronged." 
 
 Competition. 
 
 Strife is the normal condition of the whole industrial 
 2 world ; Capital strives against Labor, and Labor against 
 ji Capital, lock-outs and strikes being the pitched battles of 
 h the struggle ; capitalists strive against capitalists for profits, 
 and the list of the vanquished may be read in the bank- 
 J' ruptcy court ; workers strive against workers for wage, and 
 injure their own order in the fratricidal combat. Every- 
 where the same struggle, causing distress, waste, hatred, 
 / in every direction ; brothers wronging brothers for a 
 trifling gain ; the strong trampling down the weak in the 
 1 frantic race for wealth. It is the struggle of the wild 
 S beasts of the forest transferred to the city ; the horrible 
 ^ struggle for existence, only in its " civilised" form hearts 
 are wrenched and torn instead of limbs. 
 / It is constantly urged that competition is advantageous 
 j because it develops capacity, and by the struggle it causes 
 it brings about the survival of the fittest. The allegation 
 may be traversed on two grounds : granting that capacity 
 is developed by struggle, it is yet developed at great cost 
 '0 of suffering, and it would be more worthy of reasoning 
 beings to seek to bring about the capacity and to avoid the 
 suffering; to borrow an illustration which suggests itself 
 by the very word " struggle", we know that actual fighting 
 develops muscle, endurance, readiness of resource, quick- 
 j j ness of the senses ; none the less do we regard war as a 
 ' disgrace to a civilised people, and we find that the useful 
 capacities developed hj it may be equally well developed 
 in the gymnasium and the playing-field, without the evils
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 21 
 
 accompanying war. So may education take the place of 
 competition in developing useful qualities. Further we 
 deny that "the fittest" for social progress survive in the 
 competitive struggle. The hardest, the keenest, the most ^ 
 unscrupulous survive, because such are the fittest for the^ 
 brutal strife ; but the generous, the magnanimous, the 
 just, the tender, the thoughtful, the sympathetic, the very 
 types in whose survival lies the hope of the race, are '" 
 crushed out. In fact, competition is war, and the very 
 reasons which move us to endeavor to substitute arbitra- 
 tion for war, should move us to endeavor to substitute 
 co-operation for competition. 
 
 But it is urged, competition among capitalists is advan- . 
 tageous to the public, and it is shown that where two or \ 
 three railway lines compete for custom, the public is better //9 
 served than where there is only one. Granted. There is 
 an old adage which says that " when thieves fall out, 
 honest men come by their own "; none the less is it better 
 to stop thieving, than to encourage it under the hope that 
 the thieves may fall out, and some of the stolen goods be 
 recovered. So long as capitalists are permitted to exploit 
 labor, so long is it well that they should compete with each 
 other and so have their profits lessened ; but it would be 
 still better to stop the exploitation. Accepting the railway 
 instance, it may be rejoined that the German State railways 
 have comfortable carriages that can hold their own against 
 all comers, and that whereas a railway company, eager for 
 dividends, can only be forced into providing decent carri-, 
 ages by fear of losing customers to a rival, a State railway 
 is managed for the benefit of the public, and improvements 
 are readily introduced. Our post-ofiice system shows how 
 improvements are made without any pressure of competi- 
 tion ; it has given us cheaper postage, cheaper telegraph- 
 ing, and is giving us cheaper parcel-delivery ; so that we 
 can send from London a letter to Wick for a penny, a 
 telegram thither for sixpence, and a parcel for threepence. 
 It is a matter of pride to the Postmaster-General of the day, 
 as a public servant, to improve his department, although 
 he is protected by law (save in case of parcels only just 
 undertaken) from competition. 
 
 Even some economists who approve of competition see 
 the need of limiting its excesses. Mr. R. S. Moifat, for 
 instance, approves of it and thinks that " competition is
 
 /4 
 
 22 MODEEN SOCIALISM. 
 
 not only the best, but the only practical means of meet- 
 ing " " the conflicting natural conditions, between the 
 exigencies of an unknown demand and the fluctuations of 
 an uncertain supply", "that ever has been, or is ever 
 likely to be discovered" ("The Economy of Consump- 
 tion ", p. 114, ed. 1878.) Yet Mr. Moffat points out that 
 " the material cost of competition includes two items : 
 first, superfluous production, or wasted labor ; and secondly 
 ill-balanced distribution, or misdirected labor" (p. 115); 
 and he declares : " not content with promoting a healthful 
 industry, it enforces tyrannous laws upon labor, and exacts 
 from the free laborer an amount of toil which the hardest 
 taskmaster never succeeded in wringing from the slave. 
 It disturbs by its excesses the balance of industry which 
 its moderation had established. In times of prosperous 
 production it accumulates stocks till they become a nuis- 
 ance and a source of the most serious embarrassment to 
 producers, who do not know where to turn for employment 
 to their productive resources ; and in adverse times it 
 gambles with them, and deprives consumption of their 
 support at the very time for which they were provided " 
 (pp. 116, 117). "It is upon laborers", he says, "not 
 only as individuals, but as a class, that the great bui'den. 
 of over-production falls " (p. 190.) 
 
 I propose to consider I., the evils of competition ; II., 
 the remedy proposed by Socialism. 
 
 I. — The Evils. — Many of these lie on the surface ; others 
 become palpable on very slight investigation. They affect 
 the capitalist manufacturer ; the distributor ; the consumer ; 
 and the producing classes. 
 
 An ingenious capitalist sees a want and devises an 
 article to meet it ; or he devises an article and sets to 
 work to create the want. He places his article before the 
 public, and a demand for it arises. The article either 
 supplies a real want, or it becomes "the fashion", and 
 the demand increases and outstrips the supply. Other 
 capitalists rush in to compete for the profit which is to be 
 made ; capital flows rapidly into the particular industry 
 concerned ; high wages are offered ; operatives flock to it ; 
 the supply swells until it overtops the demand. But when 
 this point is touched, the supply is not at once lessened ; 
 so long as there is any hope of profit, the capitalists 
 manufacture ; wage is lessened to keep up the profit, b ut
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 23 
 
 this expedient fails ; short hours are worked ; at last the 
 market becomes thoroughly overstocked. Then distress 
 follows, and while capital seeks new outlets, the operatives 
 fall into the great army of unemployed ; and very often 
 the small capitalists, who went into the rush just when 
 profit was at its highest, and who have not sufficient 
 capital to hold out against the fall, and to await a rise, 
 meet the fate of earthenware pots, carried down a torrent 
 among iron ones. When this happens, the result of their 
 speculative folly is held up as an example of the " risks 
 run by capitalists ". Nor is this the only way along which 
 a small capitalist sometimes travels to the bankruptcy court. 
 He often borrows money "to extend his business ", and if ,~ 
 the business shrinks instead of expanding, he becomes ' < 
 bankrupt. In the universal war, the big capitalist fish 
 devour the small fry. 
 
 And, after all, even the "successful man " of our com- 
 petitive society is not one whose lot is to be envied by the 
 healthy human being. Not for him the pure joy in 
 natural beauty, in simple amusements, in intellectual 
 triumph, which is the dower of those unstained by the 
 fight for gold. For the successful competitor in commer- 
 cial war Nature has no laurel-crown. He has bartered 
 himself for a mess of pottage, and his birthright of healthy 
 humanity is gone from him for evermore. Well does 
 Moffat write his fate : "The man who strives to make a ^o 
 fortune contemplates his own ease and enjoyment, not the 
 good of society. He flatters himself that through his 
 superior skill, tact, wisdom, energy, or whatever quality it 
 is he thinks himself twice as strong in as his neighbors,^,' 
 he will be able to do in half a lifetime what it takes them 
 their whole lives to do. For this he toils and sacrifices his '-X 
 health ; for this he rushes upon reckless speculations, and 
 hazards his character and reputation ; for this he makes 
 himself indifferent to the rights and callous to the feehngs^'^ 
 of others ; for this he is sordid, mean, and parsimonious. 
 All these are the means by which, according to different 
 temperaments, the same end is pursued. And what is the 
 end ? An illusion, nay, worse, a dishonest3^ The man ^ ^ 
 who pursues a fortune is not qualifying himself for any 
 other course of life besides that which he at present lives. 
 He is merely striving to escape from duty into enjoyment. 
 And the fever of the strife frequently becomes his whole
 
 24 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 existence ; so that when he has obtained his object, he 
 finds himself unable to do without the excitement of the 
 struggle " (p. 220). Surely in judging the merits of a 
 system it is fair to take into account the injuries it works 
 to its most successful products. Its masterpieces are the 
 withered and dehumanised ; its victims are the paupers 
 and the suicides. 
 
 Nor can we leave out of account in studying competitive 
 production the waste of material, and of the time spent in 
 working it up, which result from over-production. The 
 , ^ accumulation of stock while the demand is lessening means 
 ^ - the making and storing of unneeded wares. Some of these 
 are forced into the market, some lie idly in the great 
 warehouses.' The retail dealers find themselves over- 
 stocked, their shelves laden with unsaleable goods. These 
 fade, and spoil, and rust away — so much good material 
 wasted, so much human labor spent for nought, monu- 
 2,4 ments of a senseless system, of the barbarous, uncalcu- 
 lating blindness of our productive force. 
 
 More heavily yet than on the capitalist does competition 
 2 1 press on the distribiitox- A dozen traders compete for the 
 custom which one could satisfactorily supply. The com- 
 petition for shops in a thickly populated neighborhood 
 drives up the rent, and so adds to the retailer's burden. 
 2, ^ He is compelled to spend large sums in advertising, striving 
 by brilliancy of color or eccentricity of design to impress 
 himself on the public mind. An army of commercial 
 travellers sweeps over the country, each man with his 
 hand against his neighbor in the same trade, pushing, 
 haggling, puffing his own, depreciating his rival's wares. 
 These agents push their goods on the retailer, often when 
 no real demand for them is coming from the public, and 
 then the retailer puffs them, to create a demand for his 
 supply. Nor must we omit from notice the enormous 
 waste of productive energy in this army of canvassers, 
 advertisers, bill-posters, multiplied middlemen of every 
 kind. The distributive work done by these is absurdly out 
 of proportion to their number. We see several carriers' 
 carts half-filled, instead of half the number filled ; each 
 carrier has to deliver goods over the whole of a wide area, 
 so that a man may have to drive five miles to deliver a 
 single parcel at a house a stone's throw from a rival ofiice. 
 Yet each man must receive his full day's wage, and must
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM, 25 
 
 be paid for the hours he is compelled to waste, as well 
 as for those he spends in useful work. It is the same 
 thing in every business. Three or four carts of each y^ 
 trade go daily down each road, covering the same ground, ' 
 supplying each one house here and one there, losing time, 
 wearing out horses and traps, a foolish shameful waste. 
 And all these unnecessary distributors are consumers when ^ 
 they might be producers, and are actually making unneces- ~ 'J 
 sary work for others as well as for themselves. 
 
 Short-sighted people ask : "Would you add all these to 
 the crowds of half-starving unemployed now competing 
 for work ? No, we answer. We would not add them to 
 the unem'plojed ; it is only in a system of complete com- 
 petitive anarchy that there could be unemployed labor on -^ / 
 the one hand, and people clamoring for the necessaries'^ 
 of life on the other. We have already seen that under 
 the present system men are only employed where some 
 profit can be made out of them by the person who hires 
 them. Under a saner system there would be none unem- 
 ployed while the food and clothing supply was insufficient, 
 and the turning of non-productive consumers into produc- 
 tive ones would only mean shorter hours of labor, since 
 the labor necessary to supply the consumption of the 
 population would be divided among a larger number than 
 before. If wealth be the result of labor applied to raw 
 material, poverty may come from the pressure of popula- 
 tion on the raw material which limits the means of sub- 
 sistence, but never from the greater part of the population 
 working to produce wealth on raw material sufiicient for 
 their support. 
 
 On the consumer falls much of the needless additional 
 expense of advertisements, canvassers, and the rest. The 
 flaming advertisements we see on the walls we pay for in 
 the price of the puffed articles we buy. The trader feels 
 their burden, and tries to recoup himself by adding a 
 fraction of it to the price of the goods he sells. If he is 
 forced to lower his nominal prices in consequence of the Xv 
 pressure of competition with his rivals, yet by adulteration 
 he can really raise, while he seems to lower, them. The l 
 nominal width of fabrics does not correspond with the J 
 real ; woollen goods are sold of which the warp is cotton ; 
 tobacco is sold damped unfairly to increase its weight ; 
 sand is mixed with sugar; lard or dripping with butter ;
 
 26 MODEKN SOCIALISM. 
 
 chicory with coffee; sloe-leaves with tea; turnip with 
 orange in marmalade ; foreign meat is offered as home- 
 grown ; damaged flesh is chopped up for sausages ; until, 
 at last, as Moffat caustically remarks : " It is not rogues 
 and vagabonds alone who have recourse in trade to ex- 
 pedients which could not be justified by a strict theoretical 
 morality. When this incline is entered upon, there is no 
 resting upon it. Morality itself becomes subject to com- 
 petition ; and the conventional standard of trade morality 
 gets lower and lower, until the things done by respectable 
 people can hardly be distinguished from those done by 
 people who are not respectable, except by the respectability 
 of the people who do them" (p. 154). And in all this 
 adulteration the consumer suffers in health, comfort, and 
 temper. Not only does he pay more than he should for 
 what he buys, but he buys a good deal more than he 
 pays for. 
 
 Heaviest of all is the burden on the operative classes, 
 > ^ and they suffer in a double character, both as consumers 
 and producers. As consumers, they share the general in- 
 jury ; as producers, their case is yet more serious. If they 
 are in work, their wages are driven down by the competi- 
 tion for employment ; they are the first to feel a lessening 
 demand in lengthened hours, in lower wage ; as the de- 
 pression goes on, they are thrown out of work ; illness not 
 only incapacitates them for the time, but their place is filled 
 up, while they lie helpless, by the eager waiters for hire ; 
 when they combine to strike for fairer treatment, the fringe 
 of unemployed labor around is used against them by the 
 employers ; the lowest depth is reached by the crowd who 
 at the dockyard gates at the East of London literally fight 
 for a place in which the foreman's eye may fall on them, 
 and out of the struggling hundreds units are taken on for 
 the day at miserable wage for heavy exhausting work, to 
 be turned out at night to undergo a similar struggle next 
 morning. 
 ni The only classes who gain by competition are the big 
 i'T capitalists and the landlords. The big capitalists engaged 
 in manufacture gain by the crushing out of their smaller 
 rivals, and by their ability to hold over stocks produced 
 when wages are low until prices are high. Capitalists 
 who onl}' lend out money on usury, and live on the interest 
 thereby obtained, flourish when the demand for money is
 
 MODEEN SOCIALISM. 27 
 
 brisk. Most of all do landlords, who live on rent, profit 
 by the struggle. In a growing neighborhood rents of 
 commercial premises rise rapidly, and the shopkeeper finds 
 himself heavily taxed by the landlord, who imposes on him 
 practically a graduated income-tax for his own advantage. 
 Thus the chief gainers by competition are the idlers who 
 are permitted to hold the nation's soil, and who live in 
 luxury on the toilers, laughing to see how the fratricidal 
 struggles of those who labor turn to the advantage of 
 those who lounge. And so the strain of living constantly 
 increases for the one class, while the luxury and ostenta- 
 tion of those who levy tax on toil become ever greater, 
 and more aggressive by the contrast. 
 
 II. The Eemedy. — These evils can be radically cured ' 
 only in one way ; it is by the substitution of co-operation | 
 for competition, of organisation for anarchy in industry, ' 
 The relation of employer and employed must disappear, z 
 and a brotherhood of workers, associated for facilitation 
 of production for use, must replace the band of servants J 
 toiling for the enrichment of a master by profit. The full 
 details of socialised industry cannot be drawn at length ; 
 but it is not difiicult to see that the already existent co- 
 operative societies offer a suggestive model, and the trades 
 unions a sufficiently competent means for change. „Prp- -> / 
 bably each industry in each district will organise itself, "t. 
 _and own, for use, all its means of production ; thus the 
 miners of Durham, for instance, organised in their lodges, 
 with their central executive, would form the mining trade 
 society of that district ; all the mines of that district 
 would be under their control, and they would elect their 
 o£Q.cers of all grades. So with all mining districts through- 
 out the land. These separate trade societies would be 
 federated, and a General Board elected by all. The 
 elements of such a self-organised industry exist at the . 
 present time, and the more closely the miners can band ' 
 themselves into district unions, and the unions into a 
 national federation, the more prepared will they be to play 
 their part in the great industrial revolution. It is probable 
 that something of the nature of the royalties now paid to 
 the individual mine-owners will be paid into the National 
 Exchequer, in exchange for the right to work the national 
 soil. A similar organisation would be needed for each 
 productive industry, and probably representatives of each
 
 J- 
 
 28 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 separate industry would form a central Industrial Board. 
 But, I repeat, these details cannot now be laid down 
 authoritatively, any more than the details of the present 
 industrial competitive system could have been laid down 
 before the Industrial Period. On these details Socialists 
 would inevitably differ considerably at the present time, 
 and no special scheme can be fairly stamped as " Socialist," 
 ,to the exclusion of the rest. But on this main principle all 
 Socialists are agreed : that the only rightful holders of 
 capital are industrial groups, or one great industrial group 
 — the State, i.e., the organised community ; that while 
 individuals may hold private property for use, none should 
 hold capital — that is ivealth employed in 'production — for 
 individual profit ; that while each may have property to 
 \ consume and to enjoy, none should be allowed to use 
 
 '/ ; property to enslave his neighbor, to force another to work 
 for his advantage. 
 
 The revolution of distribution will be as great as that in 
 production, and here again co-operation must take the 
 place of competition. We already see the beginnings of a 
 distributive change in the establishment of huge stores for 
 the supply of all the necessaries of life, and the way in 
 which these are crushing out the smaller retail shops. 
 Housewives find it more convenient to go to the single 
 building, than to trudge wearily from shop to shop. Groods 
 bought in very large quantities can be sold more cheaply 
 than if bought in small, and econom}^, as well as conveni- 
 ence, attract the purchaser to the store. At present these 
 stores are founded by capitalists and compete for custom, 
 but they are forerunners of a rational distributive system. 
 The very enmity they create in the minds of the small 
 traders they ruin is paving the way for the community 
 to take them over for the general advantage. Under 
 
 o Socialism all goods manufactured by the producers would 
 be distributed to the central store of each district ; from 
 this central store they would be distributed to the retail 
 stores. Anyone who thinks such distribution impossible 
 had better study the postal system now existing ; we do 
 not have post-offices jostling each other as do baker's 
 and butcher's shops : there are sufficient of them for the 
 requirements of the district, and no more. The letters 
 for a town are delivered at the Greneral Post Ofiice ; they 
 are sorted out and delivered at the subordinate offices;
 
 MODEEN SOCIALISM. 29 
 
 the distribution of the correspondence of millions is carried 
 on by a Government Department, quietly, effectively, 
 without waste of labor, with celerity and economy. But 
 then in the Post Office co-operation has replaced competi- 
 tion, organisation has replaced anarchy. Such a system, 
 one hundred years ago, would have been pronounced im- 
 possible as the Conservative minds of to-day pronounce im- 
 possible its extension to anything except letters and tele- 
 grams and parcels. I look for the time when the success 
 of the Post Office will be repeated — and improved — in 
 every department of distribution. 
 
 Capital. 
 
 We have already seen that Capital is accumulated by '~) 
 withholding from the producer a large part of the value he 
 produces, and we have now to look more closely into the .' 
 growth of Capital and the uses to which it is put. A 
 glance over the historical Past, as well as the study of the 
 Present, inform us that Capital has always been — as in- 
 deed it always must be — obtained from unpaid labor, or, 
 if the phrase be preferred, by the partial confiscation of 
 the results of laboi-. , In communities the economic basis of 
 which was slave-labor, this fact was obvious ; the owner 
 confiscated the ^whole ]i)roducts of his slaves' toil, and he 
 became a capitalist by this process of continued confiscation ; 
 while the slave, fed, clothed, and housed out of the fruit 
 of his own labor by his master, never owned anything as of 
 right, nor had any property in that which he created. As 
 civilisation advanced, serf -labor replaced slave-labor ; here 
 also the confiscation of the results of labor was obvious. 
 The serf was bound to give so many days of work to his 
 lord without payment ; this service rendered, the remainder 
 of his time was his own, to produce for his own subsist- 
 ence ; but the lord's capital increased by the confiscation 
 of the results of the serf's labor during the days whereon 
 he worked for his lord. In modern times " free labor " 
 has replaced serf -labor, but in the present industrial system 
 as truly as in slave and in serf communities, Capital results 
 from unpaid labor, though now from the unpaid labor of 
 the wage- earner. We may search the whole world over, 
 and we shall find no source of wealth save labor applied 
 to natural agents. Wealth is never rained down from
 
 30 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 heaven, nor is it ever a spontaneous growth. ; unless 
 indeed wild fruits taken for food be counted wealth, and 
 even to these must human labor be applied in the form 
 of picking ere they can be used. It is the result of 
 human labor ; and if one man has more than he has pro- 
 duced, it necessarily follows that another man has less 
 than he has produced. The gain of one must be the loss 
 of another. There are but sixteen court cards in the fifty- 
 two, and if by ingenious shuffiing, packing, and deaUng, 
 all the court cards fall to one player, only the lower cards 
 can remain for the others. 
 
 Separating " Capital " from " "Wealth " we may con- 
 veniently define it as "wealth devoted to purposes of 
 profit ", and as " wealth is the result of labor applied to 
 raw material ", Capital becomes the result of labor 
 devoted to purposes of profit. John Stuart Mill says the 
 *' accumulated stock of the produce of labor is termed 
 Capital ". Maeleod : " Capital is any Economic Quantity 
 used for the purpose of Profit". Senior: "Economists 
 are agreed that tokatever gives a profit is properly called 
 Capital ". Something more, however, than the activity 
 of labor is implied in the existence of Capital. There must 
 have been saving, as well as production. Hence Marshall 
 speaks of Capital as " the result of labor and abstinence " ; 
 Mill of Capital as " the result of saving " ; and so on. It 
 is obvious that if the products of labor were consumed as 
 fast as they were made, Capital could not exist. We have, 
 therefore, reached this certainty when we contemplate 
 Capital; someone has worked, and has not consumed all 
 that he has produced. 
 
 Under these circumstances, we should expect to find 
 Capital in the hands of industrious and abstinent pro- 
 ducers. But as Mill very justly points out : " In a rude 
 and violent state of society it continually happens that the 
 person who has Capital is not the very person who has 
 saved it, but some one who, being stronger, or belonging 
 to a more powerful community, has possessed himself of 
 it by plunder. And even in a state of things in which 
 property was protected, the increase of Capital has usually 
 been, for a long time, mainly derived from privations 
 which, though essentially the same with saving, are not 
 generally called by that name, because not voluntary. The 
 actual producers have been slaves, compelled to produce
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 31 
 
 as mucli as force could extort from them, and to consume 
 as little as the self-interest or the usually very slender 
 humanity of their task-masters would permit." How 
 many of our. great capitalists have produced and saved 
 until they accumulated the fortunes they possess.? These 
 fortunes are greater than any human being could save 
 out of his makings, even if he lived most abstemiously, 
 instead of with the luxury and ostentation of a Rothschild 
 or a Vanderbilt. But if they have not made and saved, 
 how came they to possess ? Mill gives the answer, though 
 he did not mean it to be applied to modern industrialism. 
 " In a rude and violent state of society " Capital is not in 
 the hands of the producer and saver, but in the hands of 
 those who possess themselves "of it by plimder " — legal- 
 ised plunder, in our modern days. The "saving" is not 
 voluntary; it is "derived from privations"; the "actual 
 producers" are wage-earners, who are " compelled to pro- 
 duce as much as" pressure can extort from them, and to 
 " consume as little " in the form of wage as they can be 
 beaten down to by the competition of the labor-market. 
 These men "have labored, and" others "have entered 
 into their labors ". 
 
 A very brief comparison of those who produce and save, 
 and those who possess themselves of the results of labor 
 and abstinence, will suiB.ce to show the inequality which 
 characterises the present system. The worker lives hardly 
 and dies poor, bequeathing to his children the same neces- 
 sity of toil : I do not forget that the more fortunate workers 
 have shares in Building Societies, a few pounds in the 
 Savings Bank, and even an interest in a Burial Club, so 
 that the parish may not have the expense of burying them ; 
 but I say that these poor successes — vast indeed in the 
 aggregate, but paltry when the share of the individual is 
 looked at — bear no kind of reasonable proportion to the 
 wealth created by the worker during his life-time. On 
 the other hand the capitalist either starts with inherited 
 wealth, grows richer, and bequeaths the increased wealth 
 to his children ; or he begins poor, saves a little, then 
 makes others work for him, grows rich, and bequeaths his 
 wealth. In the second generation, the capitalist can simply 
 invest his wealth and live on the interest ; ; and since all in- 
 terest must be paid out of the results of labor, the workers 
 not only lose a large proportion of their produce, but this
 
 32 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 very confiscated produce is made into a future burden for 
 them, and while the fathers build up the capitalist, the 
 children must toil to maintain his children in idleness. 
 
 Capital may also be accumulated by the ownership of raw 
 material, .since no wealth can be produced until labor can 
 get at this. The question of rent will be considered under 
 the head of Land ; here we are only concerned with the 
 fact that wealth appropriated in this way is investible, and 
 on this also interest can be obtained. 
 
 Now the enormous burden placed on labor by the invest- 
 ment of money at interest, is not appreciated as it ought 
 to be. The interest on the National Debt, including termi- 
 nable annuities, amounted in 1884-5 to £28,883,672 12s.; 
 how much is paid in dividends on railway, tram-car, and 
 companies' shares, it would be difiicult to discover. Mr. 
 Giffen, in his "Progress of the Working Classes", esti- 
 mates that the capitalist classes receive from capital — ex- 
 cluding "wages of superintendence" and salaries — some 
 £400,000,000 a year. In 1881, the income-tax returns 
 quoted by Mr. Griffen show that the income from capital 
 was no less than £407,000,000, and in estimating those in 
 Schedules B and D (Part I.) Mr. Giffen certainly takes care 
 to make the gains on "idle capital" as small as he can. 
 Mr. Giffen takes the aggregate income of the whole nation 
 at about £1,200,000,000, so that according to his own 
 figures Capital takes more than a third part of the national 
 income. I should be prepared to contend that the burden 
 on the producers is heavier than he makes out, but even 
 taking his own calculations the result is bad enough. For 
 all this money which goes to capitalists is money not earned 
 by the receivers — mark that all which is in any sense 
 earned, as wages of superintendence, etc., is excluded — and 
 by all this is lessened the share of the produce of labor 
 which goes to labor. 
 
 We have already dealt with the way in which the worker 
 suffers injustice when capital Js invested in machinery 
 / owned by private individuals ; we have now to consider 
 \ the portion of it used as loans, cases in which the capitalist 
 takes no part in the management of any industrial con- 
 cern, but merely lends his money at usury, living on the 
 interest he receives. There is so much confusion of thought 
 on this subject, so much idea that a man has " a right " 
 to invest money at interest, that it necessary to try to
 
 jrODERN SOCIALISM. 33 
 
 get at the " bed-rock " of the question. Take the case of 
 a man who earns 30s. in a week ; suppose he spends 20s. 
 and saves 10s. For the 20s. he spends he receives their 
 equivalent in commodities, and these he consumes ; he has 
 had his "money's worth", and he is content, and if he 
 requires more commodities he knows he must labor again 
 to earn their equivalent in money. The 10s. he has saved, 
 however, are to have a different fate ; they represent, also, 
 so much possibility of possession of their equivalent in 
 commodities which he could consume ; but he desires to 
 defer this consumption to a future day, to defer ir, perhaps, 
 until he is too old to give labor in exchange for his needs. 
 One might suppose that the equivalent of commodities for 
 the 10s. would be as satisfactory as the equivalent of com- 
 modities for the 20s. But it is not so. He desires to in- 
 vest his 10s. at interest; let us suppose he invests it at 5 
 per cent. ; at the end of twenty years he will have received 
 back his 10s. by instalments of 6d. a year, and will have 
 exchanged it for 10s. worth of commodities ; yet at the end 
 of the twenty years he expects to receive back in addition 
 his full 10s. ; to have spent it all, and yet to find it un- 
 diminished ; so that for his 10s. saved he expects to receive 
 20s. worth of commodities in twenty years, to have his 
 labor paid for twice over. In the case of money only is it 
 possible to eat your cake and have it, and after you have 
 eaten it to pass it on as large as ever to your descendants, 
 so that thej' may eat it and yet find it, like the widow's 
 cruse, ever miraculously renewed. 
 
 Those who defend usuxy do so generally on its supposed 
 collateral advantages, rather than on its central theory. It 
 is argued that " «/ a man gets no ^interest on his savings, he \ 
 has no incitement to work^\ To this it may be answered : (a) 
 That there is clearly no incitement to work on the part of 
 those who live on interest, since their money comes tumbling 
 in whether they work or idle; it is the labor of others ou 
 which the interest-receiver lives. (5) That the incitement 
 to work would be greater if the reward of work were not 
 diminished by the imposition on it of a tax for the benefit 
 of the idle ; surely the abstraction of £400,000,000 annually 
 for interest can hardly act as an incitement to those whose 
 labor returns are diminished to that extent, (c) That the 
 real incitement to work is the desire to possess the result 
 of labor, and that the more completely that desire is satis- 
 
 c
 
 J4 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 fied, the greater will the incitement become. Would the 
 incitement totramcar employees be lessened, if the necessity 
 of paying 10 per cent on shareholder's capital no longer 
 kept down their wages ? But, in truth, this argument as 
 to incitement to workers is either ignorant, or disingenuous. 
 The mainspring of the worker's toil is, as a matter of fact, 
 compulsion, not the incitement of hope of reward. Had 
 he control over the product of his own labor, then the 
 desire to obtain more might incite him to work harder, as 
 indeed, has been found to be the case with piece-work, and 
 in co-operative undertakings : with his fixed wage it is to 
 him a matter of indifference how much or how little he 
 produces. The desire for interest is an incitement to the 
 capitalist to press his wage-toilers to work harder, so that 
 after he has satisfied his own power of consumption he 
 may lay by all the surplus value he can squeeze out of 
 them, and increase the capital he has out at interest. The 
 higher the interest obtainable, the greater the compulsion 
 to work put upon the producers. But this compulsion is 
 clearly an evil, not a good, and in the case of the tramcar 
 employees just cited, it is compulsion which forces them to 
 accept the long hours of labor, and the compulsion is exer- 
 cised in order to obtain interest for the shareholders. 
 
 " The incitement to thrift icill disappear.'''' But («) the 
 interest obtainable by "thrift " is too small to serve as an 
 incitement , for the savings of the industrious poor are not 
 sufficient to give interest enough to subsist on. The Savings 
 Banks are resorted to as a convenient place wherein to put 
 money saved for future use ; it is the safe keeping of the 
 money " for a rainy day ", not the trifling interest, which is 
 the attraction to the anxious poor. The small amount per- 
 mitted to an individual and the low interest are sufficient 
 proofs of this assertion ! no one must put in more than £30 
 in a year, the interest is only 2^ per cent., and this is not 
 paid yearly, but is added to the principal. And this future 
 necessity is the real incitement to thrift. A man earns, say, 
 sufficient this week to support himself for a fortnight ; 
 having satisfied his needs, he does not want to satisfy them 
 twice over ; he knows that some years hence his power of 
 work will have disappeared, while his necessity of consump- 
 tion will remain, and he defers his consumption of half the 
 results of his labor till that time. Why should he look 
 for added power of consumption as a reward for deferring
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM, 35 
 
 his consumption for his own convenience? Witliotit in- 
 terest, thoughtful people would save, for the sake of com- 
 fort in their old age. It may, however, be conceded that 
 the incitement to annex the results of the thrift of others 
 — the only way in which big fortunes can be made — will 
 disappear with the disappearance of interest, and the pos- 
 sibility of living idly by taxing the labor of others. 
 
 "/i( will not he possible to [jet money for railroads, traiucars, 
 etc., if interest on share capital disappears^ But the indes- 
 tructible reason for making railroads, tramways, etc., is the 
 need for the conveniences they afford. And Socialism 
 would place the making and carrying on of all means of 
 transit in the hands of local bodies, municipalities, and so • 
 forth, who would raise the requisite funds from the com- 
 munity which is to enjoy the increased facilities. These 
 funds would be used in remuneration of the labor expended 
 on them, and none would have a right to levy a perpetual 
 tax on the public on the pretence of having lent the 
 money originally employed in the construction. Now a 
 man claims the right to tax all future labors and all future 
 consumers for the benefit of his posterity, as a reward for 
 having transferred into his own pockets the results of his 
 neighbor's toil. It is time that the immorality of this claim 
 should be pointed out, and that people should be told that 
 while they may rightly save and live on their savings, 
 they ought not to use their savings for the enslavement 
 and the taxing of other people. An effective step towards 
 the abolition of interest might be taken by the closing of 
 the sources of idle investment, the taking over by local 
 bodies of the local means of transit, the gas and water 
 supply, etc., while the central authority takes over the 
 railways. 
 
 There is, however, one argument in favor of interest 
 which brings conviction to many minds : an individual ' 
 wants to perform a piece of productive work, but has no 
 capital and is unable to do it ; he borrows the capital and 
 performs the work ; since the man who lent the capital has 
 facilitated the doing of the work, ought he not to share 
 in the product, which would have had no existence but for 
 his capital ? Now it might be answered to this that if his 
 capital is returned to him in full he has lost nothing by 
 the transaction, but has, on the contrary, gained the ad- 
 vantage of having his money taken care of without trouble 
 
 c2
 
 36 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 to himself, and returned to him uninjured at the time that 
 he requires it. But the real answer is that interest is in- 
 evitable so long as Caj)ital remains in private hands, so 
 long as individuals are permitted to annex the results of 
 the unpaid labor of others, and so manufacture a lien on 
 all future industry. Interest will only be abolished when 
 the results of the past unpaid labor of manj' are held by 
 the many to facilitate the future labor of many. Now, 
 industry can only be carried on with the permission and 
 the assistance of those whose stores of wealth have been 
 piled up for them by thousands of patient toilers ; and that 
 permission and assistance can only be gained by taxing 
 labor for the enrichment of the lender. In future those 
 vast stores will be used to carry on production, and while 
 labor will constantly replace the caj)ital it uses in produc- 
 tion, it will not also be taxed for the benefit of individuals. 
 Interest and private property' in the means of production 
 must stand and fall together. At the present time no law 
 against usury could be passed, and even were the passing 
 of such a law possible it would be a dead letter, so 
 thoroughlj' is the present system built on the paying of 
 interest. All Socialists can do for the moment is to expose 
 the fundamental dishonesty and injustice of usury, and so 
 pave the way for a better state of things. 
 
 Apart from the abuse of Capital here indicated Capital 
 has a function which, of course, no Socialist ignores. Capital 
 is necessary for all forms of industry, and its function is : 
 to save labor, as by machinery ; to facilitate it, by the in- 
 troduction of improvements therein ; to support it while it 
 is employed in production, and until its products are ex- 
 changed. The true use of the savings of past labor is to 
 lighten futui'e labor, to fertilise production. But in order 
 that it may be thus used, it must be in the hands of the 
 / community instead of in the hands of individuals. Being 
 ' as it is, and must be, the result of unpaid labor, it should 
 p&ss to the community to be used for the common good, 
 instead of to individuals to enrich them to the common, 
 loss. 
 
 Land. 
 
 Most Badicals are ready to admit that Land, i.e., natural 
 agents, ought not to be the private property of individuals. 
 No absolute property in land is indeed recognised by the 
 
 (
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. o7 
 
 laws of this realm, but tlie proposition that laud ought 
 not to be private property goes, of course, much further 
 than this legal doctrine. It declares that the soil on which 
 a nation lives ought to belong to the nation ; that those 
 who cultivate it, or who mine in it, and who for practical 
 purposes must have for the time the exclusive usufruct of 
 portions of it, should pay into the national exchequer a 
 duly-assessed sum, thus rendering an equivalent for the 
 privilege they enjoy, and making the whole community 
 sharers in the benefits derived from natural agents. 
 
 The present system of permitting private ownership of 
 land has led to three great and increasing evils ; the esta- 
 blishment of an idle class, which grows richer by increas- 
 ingly taxing the industrious ; the divorce of the really 
 agricultural class from the soil ; the exodus from the country 
 districts into the towns. 
 
 Private ownership of natural agents must inevitably re- 
 sult in the first of these three evils. These natural agents 
 are the basis of wealth ; the very subsistence of the nation 
 depends on their utilisation ; yet a comparatively small class 
 is permitted to claim them as private property, and to appro- 
 priate the rent to its private use. Hence, one of the first 
 charges on the results of labor is rent, and rent, be it 
 noted, not to the community, but to an individual who has 
 acquired the legal right to stand between labor and land. 
 Now just as wage is determined practically by the standard 
 of living, so is rent determined by the same thing. The 
 landlord exacts as rent the value of the produce minus the 
 subsistence of the tenant, and in many cases, if the farmer's 
 receipts sink and there is no corresponding lowering of 
 Tent, the farmer cannot even subsist, and becomes bank- 
 rupt. Hence, if a farmer improves the land and so obtains 
 from it larger returns, the landlord steps in and raises his 
 rent, claiming ever as his, produce minus subsistence, and 
 -confiscating for his own advantage the results of the labor 
 and invested capital of the farmer. Thus also with the 
 spread of commei'cial prosperity comes a rise in the tax 
 levied by the landlords ; as towns grow larger the land 
 around them becomes more valuable, and thus the Stanleys 
 grow wealthy by the growth of Liverpool, and the Grros- 
 venors and Kussells by that of London : competition drives 
 np rents, and landlords may live in Italy or Turkey, and 
 •become ever wealthier by the growth of English trade, and
 
 38 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 the toil of English laborers. Moffat points out (" Economy 
 of Consumpton," p. 142) that part of the retailer's profit, 
 and possibly the larger part of it "is purely local, and 
 which he could not carry away with him. It distinguishes 
 the site of his business, and resolves itself into rent. If 
 the retailer owns his own premises, he may be content with 
 this part of his profits, and handing the business to another 
 become a landlord. If they are owned by another, the owner, 
 unless the retailer is able to find other suitable premises 
 within a moderate distance, will be able to levy all the 
 extra profit from him in the shape of rent. Hence the 
 rapid rise of rents in the central localities of large towns." 
 Socialists are accused of desiring to confiscate property, but 
 the regular and uncensured confiscation of the property of 
 busy people by idlers, the bloodsucking of the landlord 
 leeches, passes unnoticed year by year, and Society honors 
 the confiscators. The expropriation of small cultivators 
 has been going on for the last 400 years, partly by big 
 landlords bujdng up small ones, and partly by their thefts 
 of common land. The story of Naboth's vineyard has been 
 repeated in hundreds of country districts. The exorbitant 
 rents demanded by landlords, with the pressure of Ameri- 
 can competition aided by capitalists on this side, have 
 ruined the farming class, while the absorption of small 
 holdings has turned into day-laborers at miserable wage 
 the class that formerly were independent tillers of the soil. 
 Attracted by the higher wage ruling in manufacturing 
 towns this dislanded class has flocked into them, has 
 crowded into unsuitable houses, increased the slums of our 
 great cities, and, under most unwholesome condition has 
 multiplied with terrible rapidity. The exodus has been 
 further quickened by the letting of formerly arable land 
 for sheep-pasture, and the consequent forced migration of 
 the no longer needed tillers. And thus have come about 
 the under-population of the agricultural districts, and the 
 over-crowding of cities : too few engaged in agricultural, 
 and too many competing for industrial, employment ; until 
 we find our own land undercultivated, and even in some 
 districts going out of cultivation, while food is being im- 
 ported to an alarming extent, and the unemployed are 
 becoming a menace to public tranquillity. The effect on 
 England of revolution abroad is apt to be overlooked in 
 studying our own labor difiiculties. A considerable portion
 
 MODERN SOCIALTSM. 39 
 
 of our imports represents rent and interest from estates 
 abroad and foreign investments. This portion would sud- 
 denly stop as regards any country in which a revolution 
 occurred, and foreign workmen were, in consequence, no 
 longer subjected to exploitation for the benefit of English 
 capitalists. Now this likelihood of foreign revolution is 
 yearly increasing, and Europe is becoming more and more 
 like a boiler with armed forces sitting on the safety valve. 
 
 The first attempt to move in the right direction was the 
 Land Cultivation Bill introduced into the House of Com- 
 mons in 1886 by Charles Bradlaugh. This proposes to 
 expropriate landlords who hold cultivable land waste ; to 
 give them, as compensation, payment for twenty-five years 
 equal in amount to the annual value of the produce 
 obtained from the confiscated land — so that if there is no 
 produce there will be no payment ; to vest the land in the 
 State, and to let it, not sell it, to cultivators. Thus, if the 
 Bill passed, a large area of land would be nationalised 
 early in the following year. Such an Act, followed up by 
 others taking over all land let on building leases as they 
 run out — probably paying to the present landlords, for 
 life, the original ground-rents ; making the Land Tax an 
 adequate rent paid to the State; taking back without 
 compensation all common lands that have been stolen ; 
 breaking up the big estates by crushing taxation ; steps 
 like these, if taken with sufficient rapidity, may effect a 
 complete Land Revolution without violence, and establish 
 Socialism so far as the ownership of natural agents is 
 concerned. 
 
 It is of vital importance to progress in a Socialist direc- 
 tion that an uncomprising resistance should be offered to 
 all schemes for the creation of new X)roprietors of the soil. 
 Peasant cultivators, paying rent to the State, are good. 
 Peasant proprietors are a mere bulwark, raised by land- 
 lords to guard their own big estates, and will delay the 
 realisation of the true theory that the State should be the 
 only landowner. It is also important that Socialists shoidd 
 popularise the idea of communal, or co-operative, farming. 
 There can be no doubt that cereal crops can be raised most 
 economically on large holdings, and such holdings should 
 be rented from the body or bodies, representing the com- 
 munity, by groups of cultivators, so that both large and 
 small farms should be found in agricultural districts. But
 
 40 MODERIN" SOCIAIilSM. 
 
 it must be distinctly stated that the Socialisation of Land 
 "without the Socialisation of Capital will not solve the social 
 problem. No replanting of the people in the soil, no im- 
 proved balance of agricultural and industrial production, 
 will by themselves free the wage-slaves of our towns. 
 Means of production, as well as natural agents, must come 
 under the control of the community, before the triumph of 
 Socialism can be complete. The tendency of Radicals to 
 aira only at the nationalisation of land has an effect, how- 
 ever, which will ultimately prove of service. It irritates 
 the landlord class, and the landlords devote themselves to 
 proving that there is no essential difference between pro- 
 perty in Land and property in Capital. Just as they 
 helped to pass the Factory Acts to restrain capitalists as a 
 retort for the capitalist agitation against the Corn Laws, 
 so they will be likely to help in nationalising Capital in 
 revenge for the nationalisation of Land. 
 
 Education. 
 
 For the successful maintenance of a Socialist State a wide 
 and thorough system of national education is an absolute 
 necessity. A governed people may afford to be ignorant ; 
 a self-ruling communitj^ must be instructed, or it must 
 perish. And the education contemplated by Socialism is 
 a very different thing from the paltry modicum of know- 
 ledge deemed sufficient for the " masses" to-day. Under 
 our present system education is a matter of class, and it is 
 a misnomer to call it "national"; it is partly supported 
 by the parents of the children who attend the Board 
 Schools, and partly by the rates and taxes ; it is limited 
 to the mere elements of learning ; the one object of the 
 teachers is to cram the children so that they may pass 
 stated examinations, and thus obtain a Government grant 
 per head. Under Socialism the whole system will be 
 revolutionised, as the one aim then will be to educate in 
 such a way as will ensure the greatest possible healthy 
 development of the young, with a view to their future 
 position as members of a free community. 
 
 The foundations of complete social equality will be laid 
 in the school. All the children will be educated in the 
 communal schools, the only distinction being that of age. 
 Boys and girls will not be separated as they are now,
 
 MODEBX SOCIALISM. 41 
 
 l)ut a common education will prepare for common work. 
 Every child will be led through a course, which, will em- 
 brace a thorough training in the elements ojt the various 
 sciences, so that in after life he may feel an intelligent 
 interest in each, and if his taste so lead him, acquire later 
 a fuller knowledge of any special branches. He — and 
 " he " here includes " she " — will be instructed also in the 
 elements of art, so that the sense of beauty may be 
 developed and educated, and the refining influence of 
 instructed taste may enrich both mind and manners. _A 
 knowledge of history, of literature, and of languages will 
 widen sympathy and destroy narrowness and national 
 prejudices. Nor will physical training be forgotten ; 
 gymnastics, dancing, riding, athletic games, will educate 
 the senses and the limbs, and give vigor, quickness, 
 dexterity, and robustness to the frame. To this will be 
 superadded technical training, for these educated, cultured, 
 graceful lads and lasses, are to be workers, every one of 
 them. The foundations of this technical training will be 
 the same for all ; all will learn to cook and scrub, to dig 
 and sew, and to render quick assistance in accidents ; it 
 is probable also that the light portions of household duties 
 will form part of the training of ever}^ child. But as the 
 child grows into the youth, natural capacities will suggest 
 the special training which should be given, so as to seciu'e 
 I'or the community the full advantages which might accrue 
 from the varied abilities of its members. No genius theu 
 will be dwarfed by early neglect, no rare ability then 
 perish for lack of culture. Individuality will then at last 
 find full expression, and none will need to trample on his 
 brother in order to secure full scope for his own develop- 
 ment. It is probable that each will learn more than a 
 single trade — an easy task when brain acuteness and 
 manual dexterity have been cultiu'ed — so as to promote 
 the adaptability in the future industrial life. 
 
 Now to many, I fear to most, of. my readers, this sketch 
 of what education will be in a Socialist community will 
 appear a mere Utopian dream, ^et is it not worth while 
 for such to ask themselves : Why should not such an 
 education be the natural lot of every child in a well- 
 ordered community ? Is there anything in it superfluous 
 for the thorough development of the faculties of a human 
 being ? And if it be admitted that boys and girls thus
 
 42 ■ MODERN SOCIAI.ISM. 
 
 educated -vrould form nobler, completer, more many-sided 
 human heings than are the men and women of to-day, 
 is it not a rational thing to set up as an object to be 
 worked for the realisation of an idea which would prove 
 of incalculable benefit to the community ? 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that education in a Socialist 
 State, would be " free" — i.e., supported at the public cost, 
 and compulsory. Free, because the education of the young 
 is of vital importance to the community; because clas^ 
 distinctions can only be effaced by the training of children 
 in common schools ; because education is too important a 
 matter to be left to the whims of individuals, and if it be 
 removed from the parent's direction and supervision it is 
 not just to compel him to pay for it. Compulsory, because 
 the State cannot afford to leave its future citizens ignorant 
 and helpless, and it is bound to protect its weak members 
 against injustice and neglect. 
 
 Two objections are likely to be raised : the question of 
 cost, and the question of unfitting persons for "the dirty 
 work of the world, which someone must do ". 
 
 As to cost. It must not be forgotten that this education 
 is proposed for a Socialist community. In such a State 
 there would be no idle adult class to be supported, but 
 all would be workers, so that the wealth produced would 
 be much greater than at the present time. Now according 
 to the figures of anti-Socialist Mr. Giffen, the aggregate 
 income of the people is at present about £1,200,000,000 ; 
 of this the workers are assigned by him £620,000,000 ; 
 deduct another £100,000,000 for return from investments 
 abroad ; this leaves £480,000,000 absorbed by the non- 
 producing class. (It must be remembered, further, that a 
 large number of the "workers" are unnecessary distribu- 
 tors, whose powers could be utilised to much better purpose 
 than is done to-day.) The wealth producers have to bear 
 the Church on their shoulders, and provide it with an 
 income variously stated at from £6,000,000 to £10,000,000 
 a year. They have to bear the "landed interest", with 
 its appropriation in rents, royalties, etc., of something like 
 £260,000,000. They have to bear the ultimate weight of im- 
 perial and local taxation, estimated at about £120,000,000 
 for the present year. All these charges, by whomsoever 
 nominally paid, have to come out of the wealth produced 
 by the workers. Is it then to be pretended that when the
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 43 
 
 idle class has disappeared there will not he wealth enough 
 produced for the education of the children, or that their 
 education will be as heavy a burden as the drones are to- 
 day ? Nor must it be forgotten that there are millions of 
 acres of land that would produce wealth if labor were sent 
 to them, and that plenty of our idlers will there find produc- 
 tive work which will enormously increase the national 
 :wealth. Nor also that the waste which results from 
 luxurious idle living will be of the past, and that a simpler, 
 manlier, rate of expenditure will have replaced the gluttony 
 and intemperance now prevalent in the " higher circles of 
 society ". 
 
 But it will indeed be of vital importance that the propor- 
 tion of workers to non-workers shall be considered, and 
 that there shall not be in a Socialist community the over- 
 large families which are a characteristic of the present 
 system. Families of ten or a dozen children belong to 
 the capitalist system, which requires for its success a 
 numerous and struggling proletariat, propagating with 
 extreme rapidity, so as to keep up a plentiful supply of 
 men, women and children, for the labor market, as well 
 as a sujjply of men for the army to be food for cannon, 
 and women for the streets to be food for lust. Under a 
 Socialist regime, the community will have something to 
 say as to the numbers of the new members that are to 
 be introduced into it, and for many years supported b}^ it ; 
 and it will prefer a reasonable number of healthy, well- 
 educated children, to a yearly huge increase which would 
 overburden its industry. The limitation of the number in 
 a family is a condition of Socialist success. 
 
 As to unfitting persona for work. So long as manual work 
 is regarded as degrading, education, by increasing sensi- 
 tiveness to public opinion, tends to make people shrink 
 from it, at least if their sensitiveness is greater than their 
 intelligence. But even now an educated person of strong 
 will and clear judgment, who knows that all useful work 
 is worthy of respect, finds that his education fits him to 
 perform work more quickly and more intelligently than is 
 possible to an ignorant person ; and respecting himself in 
 its thorough accomplishment he is conscious of no degra- 
 dation. Weak persons, compelled to labor for their bread, 
 and aware that manual work is considered to place the 
 worker in a subordinate social class, feel ashamed of the
 
 44 MODERN SOCLAXISM. 
 
 inferior position assigned to them, by public opinion ; and 
 knowing by experience that tbey will be snubbed if they 
 treat their "superiors" as equals, they live down to their 
 social rank, and long to raise their children into a class 
 above their own. One consequence of the absurd artificial 
 disadvantage attached to manual work, is that the children 
 of the more successful workers crowd the inferior profes- 
 sional occupations, and a man prefers to be a clerk or a 
 curate on £90 a year to being an artisan on £150. But in 
 the Socialist State only idleness will be despised, and all 
 useful work will be honored. There is nothing more 
 intrinsically degrading in driving a plough than in driving 
 a pen, although the ploughman is now relegated to the 
 kitchen while the clerk is received in the drawing-room. 
 The distinction is primarily a purely artificial one, but it is 
 made real by educating the one type while the other is left 
 ignorant, and by teaching the one to look on his work as 
 work " fit for a gentleman ", while the other is taught that 
 his work is held in low social esteem. Each reflects the 
 surrounding public opinion, and accepts the position 
 assigned by it. In Socialism, both wiU be educated 
 together as children ; both will be taught to look on all 
 work as equally honorable, if useful to the community ; 
 both will be cultured "gentlemen", following each his 
 natural bent ; the ploughman will be as used to his pen 
 as the clerk ; the clerk as ready to do heavj^ work as the 
 ploughman ; and as public opinion will regard them as 
 equals and will hold them in equal honor, neither w ill feel 
 any sense of superiority or inferiority, but they will meet 
 on common ground as men, as members of a social unity. 
 As to the physically unpleasant work — such as dealing 
 with sewers, dung-heaps, etc. — much of that will probably ^ 
 be done by machinery, when there is no helpless class on 
 whose shoulders it may be bound. Such as cannot be 
 done by machinery, will probably be divided among a 
 large number, each taking a small share thereof, and the 
 amount done by each will thus become so insignificant, 
 that it will be but slightly felt. In any case the profoujid , 
 selfishness, which would put all burden on a helot class, I 
 and rather see it brutalised by the crushing weight than ' 
 bear a portion of the load on one of its fingers, must be 
 taught that Socialism means equality, and that the divine 
 right of idlers to live at ease on the labor of others and
 
 MODERX SOCLVLISM. '43 
 
 to be shielded by tbe bodies of the poor from all the un- 
 pleasantnesses of the world, is one of the notions against 
 which Socialism wars, and which must follow the corre- 
 lative superstition of the divine right of kings. 
 
 Justice. 
 
 The pretence that under the present system there is one 
 law for rich and poor is so barefaced a piece of impudence, 
 that it is hardl}' worth while to refute it. Everyone knows 
 that a rich man is fined for an offence for which a poor 
 man is sent to gaol ; that no wise man goes to law unless 
 he has plenty of money ; that in a litigation between a rich 
 and a poor man, the poor man practicall}^ stands no chance, 
 for even if he at first succeeds the rich man can appeal, 
 and, secure in the power of his money-bags, wear out his 
 poor antagonist by costly delays and by going from court 
 to court. The poor man cannot fee first-class counsel, seek 
 out and bring up his witnesses from various parts of the 
 country, and keep a stream of money continually running 
 through his solicitor's hands. There might be the same 
 law for him as for the rich man, if he could get it ; 
 but it is far away behind a golden gate, and he lacks the 
 key which alone will fit the wards of the lock. Yet surely 
 one of the primary duties of a State is to do justice among 
 its members, and to prevent the oppression of the weak 
 by the strong. In a civilised State justice should be dealt 
 out "without fee or reward ; if a man gives up his inherent 
 right to defend himself and to judge in his own quarrel, 
 he ought not to be placed in a worse position than he would 
 be in if society did not exist. Lawyers, like judges, 
 should be ofiicials paid by the State, and should have no 
 pecuniary interest in winning the case in which they are 
 engaged. 
 
 The administration of justice in a Socialist State wiU be 
 a very much simpler matter than it is now. Most crimes 
 arise from the desire to become rich, from poverty, and 
 from ignorance. Under Socialism poverty and ignorance 
 will have disappeared, and the desire to grow rich will 
 have no raison di'etre when everyone has sufficient for com- 
 fort, is free from anxiety as to his future, and sees above 
 him no wealthy idlers whose luxury he desires to ape, and 
 whose idleness is held up to him as a matter of envy, as 
 the ideal state for man.
 
 46 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 Amusement. 
 
 There is a cnrious inconsistency in the way in which 
 people deal with the question of amusement at the present 
 time. We should have an outcry about " pauperisation" 
 and "interference with private enterprise", if anyone pro- 
 posed that the theatres should be open to the public without 
 charge. Yet Hyde Park is kept gorgeous with flowers, 
 Eotten Eow is carefully attended to, a whole staff of 
 workers is employed, in order that the wealthy raa^y have 
 a fashionable and pleasant lounge ; and all this is done at 
 the national expense, without any expression of fear lest 
 the wealthy should be pauperised by this expenditure on 
 their behalf. Nor is complaint made of the public money 
 spent on the other parks in London ; the most that is 
 suggested is that the money wanted ought to be taken 
 from the London rates and not from the national taxes. 
 No one proposes that the parks should be sold to the 
 highest bidder, and that private enterprise should be 
 encouraged by permitting some capitalist to buy them, and 
 to make a charge at the gate for admission. It is signi- 
 ficant that once anything gets under State control, the 
 advantages are found to be so great that no one would 
 dream of bringing it back under private exploitation. In 
 some parks a band plays, and people are actually de- 
 moralised by listening to music for which they do not pay 
 directly. Nay more ; the British Museum, the National 
 Gallery, the South Kensington Museum, are all open free, 
 and no one's dignity is injm'ed. But if the National 
 Gallery be open fi-ee, why not the Eoyal Academy? If 
 a band may be listened to in the open air without pay- 
 ment, why not in a concert room ? And if a concert may 
 be free, why not a theatre ? Under the present system, 
 the Eoyal Academy, the concert, the theatre, are all private 
 speculations, and the public is exploited for the profit of 
 the speculators. The National Gallery and the Museums 
 are national property, and the nation enjoys the use of its 
 own possessions. In a nation which has gone so far in 
 the direction of providing intellectual amusement, it cannot 
 be pretended that any principle is involved in the question 
 whether or not it shall go further along the same road. 
 A nation which collects the works of dead painters can
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 47 
 
 hardly, on principle, refuse to sliow the works of living 
 ones ; and we Socialists may fairly urge the success of 
 what has aheady been done in the way of catering for the 
 public amusement as a reason for doing more. 
 
 As it is, with the exception of a few places, the poor, 
 whose lives most need the light of amusement and of 
 beauty, are relegated to the very lowest and coarsest 
 forms of recreation. Unreal and intensely vulgar pictures 
 of life are offered them at the theatres which specially 
 cater for them ; they never have the delight of seeing 
 really graceful dancing, or noble acting, or of hearing 
 exquisite music. Verily, the amusement of the wealthier 
 leave much to be desired, and theatre and music-hall alike 
 pander to a low and vulgar taste instead of educating and 
 refining it ; but still these are better than their analogues 
 at the East End. Under Socialism, the theatre will be- 
 come a great teacher instead of a catch-penny spectacle ; 
 and dramatists and actors alike will work for the honor 
 of a noble art, instead of degrading their talents to catch 
 the applause of the most numerous class of an uneducated 
 people. Then an educated public will demand a higher 
 art, and artists will find it worth while to study, when 
 patient endeavor meets with public recognition, and crude 
 impertinence suffers its due reproof. Theatres, concerts, 
 parks, all places of public resort, will be communal pro- 
 perty, open alike to all, and controlled by elected officers. 
 
 CONCLUSIOX. 
 
 It remains, in conclusion, to note the chief objections 
 raised to Socialism by its opponents. Of these the most 
 generally urged are three : that it will check individual 
 initiative and energy ; that it will destroy individuahty ; 
 that it will unduly restrict personal liberty. 
 
 Tliat it will chech individual initiative and energy. This 
 objection is founded on the idea that the impulse to initia- 
 tive must always be desire for personal money gain. But 
 this idea flies directly in the face of facts. Even under 
 the individuahstic system, no great discovery has ever 
 "been made and proclaimed merely from desire for personal 
 money profit. The genius that invents is moved by an 
 imperial necessity of its own nature, and wealth usually 
 falls to the lot of the commonplace man who exploits the
 
 48 MODERN S0CI.U.IS1I. 
 
 genius, and not to the genius itself. Even talent is moved 
 more by joy in its own exercise, and intlie public approval 
 it wins, than by mere hope of money gain. Who would 
 not rather be an Isaac Newton, a Shelley, or a Shakspere, 
 than a mere Vanderbilt ? And most of all are those of 
 strong individual initiative moved by desire to serve their 
 "larger self", which is Man. The majority of such 
 choose the unpopular path, and by sheer strength and 
 service gradually win over the majority. We see men and 
 women who might have won wealth, position, power, by 
 using their talents for personal gain in pursuits deemed 
 honorable, cheerfully throw all aside to proclaim an un- 
 popular truth, and to serve a cause they believe to be 
 good and useful. And these motives will become far more 
 powerful under Socialism than . they are now. For the 
 possession of money looms unduly large to-day in conse- 
 quence of the horrible results of the want of it. The 
 di'ead of hunger and of charity is the microscope which 
 magnifies the value of wealth. But once let all men be 
 secure of the necessaries and comforts of life, and all the 
 finer motives of action will take their proper place. 
 Energy will have its full scope under Socialism, and in- 
 deed when the value of a man's woi'k is secured to him 
 instead of the half being appropriated by someone else, 
 it will receive a new impulse. How great will be the in- 
 centive to exertion when the discovery of some new force, 
 or new application of a known force, means greater com- 
 fort for the discoverer and for all; none thrown out of 
 work by it, none injured by it, but so much solid gain 
 for each. It is interesting to notice, as bearing on this 
 question, that even a partial sharing in profits by the 
 workers stimulates invention and increases productive 
 energy. Mr. Wordsworth Donisthorpe ("Labor Capitali- 
 sation ", p. 97) quotes M. Grodin as saying that the men 
 in his " Familistere " are constantly making new inven- 
 tions and improvements ; and similar testimony has been 
 borne by others who have given an interest in the business 
 to the men they employ. In all such cases the man 
 who invents or improves, enjoys the thanks and the praise 
 of the community, as well as the material gain which he 
 shares with his comrades. And let not the power of 
 public opinion be undervalued as a stimulus to exertion. 
 What Greek athlete would have sold his wreath of bay
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM. 49 
 
 for its weight in gold ? Only one kind of energy will be 
 annihilated by Socialism — the euerg}' that enslaves others 
 for its own gain, and exploits its weaker brethren for its 
 own profit. For this kind of energy there will be no 
 room. The coarse purse-proud mediocrity who by sheer 
 force of pushing brutality has trampled his way to the 
 front, will have vanished. The man who grows rich by 
 underpaying his emploj^ees, by being a " hard business^ 
 man" will have passed away. Energy will have to find 
 for itself paths of service instead of paths of oppression, 
 and will be honored or reprobated according to the way 
 in which it is used. 
 
 Tliat it will destroy individuality . If this were true, the 
 loss to progress would indeed be incalculable. But Social- 
 ism, instead of destroying individuality will cultivate aud 
 accentuate it, and indeed will make it possible for the first 
 time in civilisation for the vast majority. For it needs, in 
 order that individuality shall be developed, that the indi- 
 vidual shall have his characteristics drawn out, and trained 
 by education ; it needs that he shall work, in maturity, at 
 the work for which his natural abilities fit him ; it needs 
 that he shall not be exhausted by excessive toil, but shall 
 go fresh and vigorous to his labor ; it needs that he shall 
 have leisure to continuously improve himself, to train his 
 intellect and his taste. But such education, such choice 
 of work, such short hours of labor, such leisure for self- 
 culture, where are all these to-day for our laboring popu- 
 lation ? A tremendous individuality, joined to robust 
 health, may make its way upward out of the ranks of 
 the handworkers to-day ; but all normal individuality is 
 crushed out between the grinding-stones of the industrial 
 mill. See the faces of the lads and lasses as they troop 
 out of the factory, out of the great mercantile establish- 
 ments ; how alike they all are ! They might almost have 
 been turned out by the dozen. We Socialists demand 
 that individuality shall be possible for all, and not only 
 for the few who are too strong to crush. 
 
 That it will unduly restrict 'personal liberty. Socialism, 
 as conceived by the non-student of it, is an iron system, 
 in which the " State " — which is apparently separate from 
 the citizens — shall rigidly assign to each his task, aud 
 deal out to each his subsistence. Even if this caricature 
 were accurate, Socialism would give the great majority
 
 50 MODERN SOCIALISM. 
 
 far more freedom than tliey enjoy to-day; for tliey would 
 only be under the yoke for their hrief hours of toil, and 
 would have unfettered freedom, for the greater portion of 
 their time. Contrast this compulsion with the compulsion 
 exercised on the workers to-day by the sweater, the 
 manager of the works or business, and above all the 
 compulsion of hunger, that makes them bend to the yoke 
 <for the long hours of the working day, and often far into 
 the night : and then say whether the " freedom " of Indus- 
 trialism is not a heavier chain than the "tyranny" of the 
 most bureaucratic Socialism imagined by our opponents. 
 But the " tyranny of Socialism ", however, would consist 
 only in ordering — and enforcing the order if necessary — 
 that ever}' healthy adult should labor foi his own subsist- 
 ence. That is, it would protect the liberty of each b}^ not 
 allowing anyone to compel another person to work for him 
 and by opening to all equal opportunities of working for 
 themselves. The worker would choose his own work cer- 
 tainly as freely as he does now : at the present time, if 
 one class of work has enough operatives employed at it, a 
 man must take some other, and I do not see that Socialism 
 could prevent this limitation of choice. At any rate, the 
 limitation is not an argument against Socialism, since it 
 exists at the present time. 
 
 Imagine the glorious freedom which would be the lot of 
 each when, the task of social work complete, and done 
 under healthy and pleasant conditions, the worker turned 
 to science, literature, art, gymnastics, to what he would, 
 for the joyous hours of leisure. For him all the treasures 
 of knowledge and of beauty ; for him aU the delights of 
 scenery and of art ; for him all that only the wealthy 
 enjoy to-day ; all that comes from work flowing back to 
 enrich the worker's life. 
 
 I know that our hope is said to be the dream of the 
 enthusiast ; I know that our message is derided, and that 
 the gospel of man's redemption which we preach is scorned. 
 Be it so. Our work shall answer the gibes of our oppo- 
 nents, and our faith in the fviture shall outlast their 
 mockery. We know that however much man's ignorance 
 may hinder our advance ; however much his selfishness 
 may block our path ; that we shall yet win our way to the 
 land we have seen but in our visions, and rear the temple 
 of human happiness on the solid foundation stones of
 
 MODERN .SOCIALISM. 51 
 
 science and of truth. Above all sneer and taunt, above all 
 laughter and bitter cries of hatred, rings out steadily our 
 prophecy of the coming time : 
 
 "O nations undivided, 
 O singk- People, and free, 
 "We dreamers, we derided, 
 We mad blind men that see. 
 We bear you witness ere ye come that ye shall be."
 
 TE>'TII THOUSAND.] 
 
 WHY I All A SOCIALIST. 
 
 By ANNIE BESANT. 
 
 " A Socialist ! you don't mean to say you are a Socialist ! " 
 Such is the exclamation with which anyone who adopts the 
 much-hated name of Socialist is sure to be greeted in "polite 
 society". A Socialist is supposed to go about with his pocket 
 full of bombs and his mind full of assassinations ; he is a kind 
 of wild beast, to be hunted down with soldiers if he lives 
 under Bismarck, with sneers, abuse, and petty persecutions if 
 he lives under Victoria. The very wildness of the epithets'"^ 
 launched at him, however, shows how much there is of fear in / 
 the hatred with which he is regarded ; and his opponents, by I 
 confining themselves to mere abuse, confess that they find I 
 themselves unable to cope with him intellectually. Prejudiced 
 and passion, not reasoned arguments, are the weapons relied 
 on for his destruction. Once let the working classes understand "~^ 
 what Socialism really is, and the present system is doomed;—^ 
 it is therefore of vital necessity that they shall be prevented 
 from calmly studying its proposals, and shall be so deafened 
 with the clamor against it that they shall be unable to hear 
 the "still small voice" of reason. I do not challenge the 
 effectiveness of the policy — for a time. It has been the policy 
 of the governing classes against every movement that has been 
 aimed against their privileges ; Radicalism has been served in 
 exactly similar fashion, and now that Radicalism has grown 
 so strong that it can no longer be silenced by clamor, it is the 
 turn of Socialism to pass through a like probation. There is \ 
 always an ugly duckling in Society's brood; how else should he J 
 maintained the succession of swans ? 
 
 With a not inconsiderable number of persons the prejudice 
 against the name of Socialist is held to be a valid reason for 
 not adopting it, and it is thought wiser to advocate the tiling
 
 2i WHY I AM A SOCIALIST. 
 
 without affronting the antagonism aroused against the name. 
 With such a policy I have ever had no sympathy. It seems 
 to me the wiser, as well as the franker course, to boldly wear 
 any name which expresses an opinion held, and live down the 
 prejudice it may awaken. The name Socialist is in itself a 
 fine name, connoting as it does the social union ; it is the re- 
 cognised label of the school which holds as its central doctrine 
 that land and the means of production should be the property 
 of the social union, and not of privileged individuals in it ; 
 it is the one name which is recognised all the world over as the 
 name of those who are opposed to political, religious, and 
 social tyranny in every land ; of those who look with brotherly 
 sympathy on the efforts of every nation which is struggling for 
 its freedom ; of those who are on the side of the poor and 
 the toiling everywhere ; of those who recognise no barriers of 
 nationality, of class, or of creed, but who see a brother in every 
 worker, a friend in every lover of the people. Every political 
 name is of the country in which it is born ; but the name 
 Socialist, like the name Atheist, is of no one land ; it is valid in 
 every country ; it is whispered on Eussian steppe, in German 
 field, in French city, in Italian vinej-ard ; and wherever it is 
 heard the chains of the captive for a moment seem lighter, for 
 Hope has lifted them, and the careworn faces of the toilers 
 brighten, as a gleam from a sunnier day gilds the tools over 
 which they bow. 
 
 Pass we from the name to the thing, from " the outer and 
 visible sign to the inward and spiritual grace ". Within the 
 compass of a brief paper it is not possible for me to give all the 
 reasons which have made me a Socialist, but there are three 
 main lines of thought along which I travelled towards Socialism, 
 and along which I would fain persuade my readers to travel 
 also, in the hope that they too may find that they lead to the 
 same goal. 
 
 I. / am a Socialist because I am a leliever in Evolution. The 
 great truths that organisms are not isolated creations, but that 
 they are all linked together as parts of one great tree of life ; 
 that the simple precedes the complex ; that progress is a process 
 of continued integrations, and ever-increasing differentiations ; 
 these truths applied to the phj'sical animated world by Darwin, 
 Huxley, Haeckel, Biichner, and their followers, have unravelled 
 the tangles of existence, have illuminated the hidden recesses of 
 Nature. But the service to be done to science by Evolution was 
 not completed when natural history was made a coherent whole 
 instead of a heterogeneous heap of irrelevant facts; its light
 
 WHY I Air A SOCIALIST. 3 
 
 next fell on the universe of mind, and traced the growth of 
 mentality from the lowest organism that responds to a stimulus 
 up to the creative brain of man. And still it had work to do, 
 and next it reduced to order the jarring elements of the sphere 
 of morals, and analysed duty and conscience, right and wrong, 
 obligation and responsibity, until it rendered intelligible and 
 consequent all that seemed supernatural and incoherent. And 
 both in mind and in morals Spencer was the great servant of 
 Evolution, illuminating the previous darkness by lucid exposition 
 and by pregnant suggestion. But having done so much in the 
 ordering of thought in every realm of study save one, it was 
 not possible that Evolution should leave Sociology untouched, a 
 mere chaos of unrelated facts, of warring oj)inions. Hither also 
 came the light, and out of the chaos slowly grew a cosmos. Society 
 was seen evolving from lowliest savagery, from the embryonic 
 state of barbarism, through nomad life to settled order, through 
 tribes to nation, through feudalism to industrialism, through in- 
 dustrialism to Nowhither ? Evolution complete ? Further 
 
 progress barred ? Not so. For science, which cannot prophesy 
 details of the future, can grasp tendencies of the present, and 
 recognising the conditions of the social growth of the past, can 
 see how the present has been moulded, and along which lines its 
 further development must inevitably pass. Now the progress of 
 society has been from individualistic anarchy to associated order ; 
 from universal unrestricted competition to competition regulated 
 and restrained by law, and even to partial co-operation in lieu 
 thereof. Production from being individualistic has become co- 
 operative ; large bodies of workmen toiling together have re- 
 placed the small groups of masters and apprentices ; factory 
 production has pushed aside cottage production, and industrial 
 armies are seen instead of industrial units. Laws for the 
 regulation of industry — which failed when they were made by 
 a few for their own advantage, and were used in the vain eif ort 
 to keep down the majority — liave been carried and applied suc- 
 cessfully to some extent in defence of the liberty of the majority 
 against the oppression of a privileged few. Since the partial 
 admission of the workers to the exercise of political power, 
 these laws for the regulation of industry have rapidly multiplied, 
 and at the same time laws which hindered the free association 
 of the workers have been repealed. The State has interfered 
 with factories and workshops, to fix the hours of labor, to insist 
 on sanitary arrangements, to control the employment of the 
 young. Land Acts and Grround Game Acts, Education Acts and 
 Shipping Acts, Employers' Liability Acts and Artisans' Dwellings 
 Acts, crowd our Statute book. Everywhere the old ideas of free 
 contract, of non-interference, are being outraged by modern
 
 4 'WHY I AM A SOCIALIST. 
 
 legislation. And it is not only Socialists who point to these 
 reiterated interferences as signs of the tendencies of society. 
 John Morley, in his "Life of Cobden ", notes that England, 
 where Socialism is supposed to have but small influence, has a 
 body of Socialistic legislation greater than can found in any 
 other country in the world. 
 — II. I am a Socialist because of the failure of our presetit civilisa- 
 tion. In an article which appeared in the July number of the 
 Westminster Review, after alluding to Professor Huxley's decla- 
 ration that he would rather have been born a savage in one of 
 the Fiji islands than have been born in a London slum, I put 
 the following question, which I will venture to quote here. "Is 
 it rational that the progress of society should be as lopsided as 
 it is ? Is it necessary that, while civilisation brings to some art, 
 beauty, refinement — all that makes life fair and gracious — it 
 should bring to others drudgery, misery, degradation, such as no 
 uncivilised people know ? and these emphasised and rendered the 
 bitterer by the contrast of what life is to many, the dream of 
 what it might be to all. For Professor Huxley is right. The 
 savage has the forest and the open sea, the joy of physical 
 strength, food easily won, leisure sweet after the excitement of 
 the chase ; the civilised toiler has the monotonous drudgery of 
 the stuffy workshop, the hell of the gin-palace for his pleasure- 
 ground, the pandemonium of reeking court and stifling alley for 
 his lullaby ; civilisation has robbed him of all natural beauty 
 and physical joy, and has given him in exchange — the slum. 
 It is little wonder that, under these circumstances, there are 
 many who have but scant respect for our social fabric, and who 
 are ajit to think that any change cannot land them in a condition 
 worse than that in which they already find themselves." 
 
 Now if this view should spread widely among the inhabitants 
 of the slums, it is obvious that the present civilisation would 
 stand in very considerable peril, and it would be likely to sink, 
 as feudalism sank iu France, beneath the waves of a popular 
 revolution. But such a revolution, sweeping from the slums 
 over the happier parts of the towns, would not be a revolution 
 set going by men of genius, directed by men of experience and 
 of knowledge, as was the French Revolution of 1789. It would 
 be a mad outburst of misery, of starvation, of recklessness, 
 which would for a brief s])ace sweep everything before it, and 
 behind it would leave a desolate wilderness. Walk at midnight 
 through the streets near the Tower, along Shadwell High Street, 
 or about " Tiger Bay ", and imagine what would happen if 
 those drunken men and women, singing, shouting, fighting, in 
 the streets, were to burst the barriers that hem them in, and 
 were to surge westwards over London, wrecking the civilisation
 
 WHY I AM A SOCIALIST. ;i//UW>\ , p'*--^ 5/'^'' 
 
 which, had left them to putrefy in their misery, and had remained / 
 callous to their degradation. Is it not the part of a good citizen ) 
 to try to change a social system which hears such products as j 
 these in every great city ? "- — ^ 
 
 The slum population, however, is not wholly composed of such 
 persons as I have spoken of. Large numbers of honest, tempe- 
 rate, industrious people are forced by poverty, and by the neces- 
 sity of being near their work, into the dismal fate of living in 
 the slums. And among them is spreading a discontent which is "7 
 pregnant with change. Education is awakening in them desires ' 
 and hopes which find no satisfaction in the slums. It is opening 
 to them wider views of human life, and the penny newspaper 
 tells them of enjoyments and luxuries of which they would have 
 known nothing, pent in the dreary mill-round of their toiling 
 lives, had ignorance kept them blind. Slowly is being formed 
 that ** educated proletariat " which shall work out its own salva- 
 tion, and which shall refuse any longer to act as the basis on ") 
 which is reared the pyramid of civilisation. The present civili- -^ 
 sation rests on the degradation of the workers ; in order that 
 they may accept their lot they must be kept poor, ignorant, 
 submissive ; the culture of their superiors is paid for with their 
 ignorance ; the graceful leisure of the aristocrat is purchased 
 by the rough toil of the plebeian ; his dainty fingers are kept 
 soft and white by the hardening and reddening of the poor 
 man's hands ; the workers are daily sacrificed that the idlers 
 may enjoy. Such is modern civilisation. Brilliant and beautiful 
 where it rises into the sunlight, its foundation is of human lives 
 made rotten with suffering. Whited sepulchre in very truth, 
 with its outer coating of princes and lords, of bankers and 
 squires, and within filled with dead men's bones, the bones of 
 the poor who builded it. 
 
 Most hopeful sign, perhaps, for the future is the fact that dis- 
 content with the present system is not confined to those who are 
 in a special sense its victims. In every class of society are found -^ 
 men and women who look and work for a complete revolution J 
 in the method of the production and distribution of wealth. ^ 
 Among those who profit most by the present system are found 
 the most eager workers against it, and many whose lot is cast 
 among the "comfortable classes " are striving to undermine the 
 very constitution which gives them the privileges they enjoy. 
 In thena sympathy has triumphed over selfishness, and their own — | 
 rich wine of life tastes sour when they see the bitter water of 
 poverty pressed to their brothers' lips. They are indignant that 
 their own hands should be so full while others' hands are 
 empty ; and would fain lessen their own heap in order that the 
 share of their neighbors may be made equal with their own.
 
 6 WHY I AM A SOCIALIST. 
 
 At present the Socialist movement in England is far more a 
 middle-class than a working-class one ; the creed of Socialism 
 is held as an intellectual conviction by the thoughtful and the 
 studious, and is preached by them to the workers, who have 
 everything to gain by accepting it, and some of whom have 
 already embraced and are teaching it. Instead of being a class 
 movement, it is a movement of men and women of all classes 
 for a common end, and the Socialist army is composed of persons 
 of various social ranks, who have renounced for themselves the 
 class distinctions they are banded together to destroy. 
 
 III. I am a Socialist because the poverty of the ivorhers is, and must 
 continue to he, ati integral part of the present method of wealth-pro- 
 duction and ivealth-distrilution. Under that method land, capital, 
 and labor, the three factors in wealth-production, are divorced 
 from each other, and landless, capitaUess labor — which must sell 
 itself to live — lies at the mercy of the privileged classes. The 
 owner of the land demands a share of the produce raised on or 
 from it, and this share is claimed by him not because he helps 
 in gaining the produce, but because he owns the raw material of 
 the soil, and can prevent anyone from utilising it, if he so pleases. 
 The land is his ; for him the rain softens and the sunshine warms 
 the soil ; for him sweet Mother Nature bares her fragrant bosom, 
 and pours out the treasures with which her arms are laden ; for 
 him she has been working through the silent centuries, growing 
 her forests, carbonising her buried vegetable treasures, storing 
 her vast unseen realms with gem and ore of metal, building 
 through myriads of ages by life and death, by creation and des- 
 truction, by swift birth and slow decay. And all this toil of 
 ages, wrought out by the mighty unseen forces, finds its end in 
 my Lord Emptyhead, who stretches out his useless hands over 
 the noble product, and cries to his countless brothers, " This is 
 mine ! ". Then he bargains with them, and claims the right to 
 tax their labor in exchange for permitting them to use what 
 ought to be the common property, and to tax it, moreover, in 
 proportion to its success. Thus Dukes of Westminster, of Bed- 
 ford, and of Portland ; Marquises of Londonderry, of Anglesey, 
 and of Bute ; Earls of Derby and of Dudley ; with many another 
 beside ; all these grow ever and ever wealthier, not because they 
 work, but because their ancestors by force or fraud got grip of 
 the soil, and in days when the people were unrepresented made 
 laws which secured to them and their descendants the monstrous 
 monopoly of natural agents. As the people multiply and press 
 ever more ajid more on the means of subsistence, they have to 
 pay more and more to the owners thereof ; and while private 
 property in land is permitted to exist, so long will the landless 
 lie at the landlord's mercy, and wealthy idler and poverty-
 
 WHY I AM A SOCIALIST. 
 
 stricken worker will form integral parts of our social, or rather 
 anti-social, system. 
 
 Similarly is a share of the worker's product claimed by the 
 class which holds as individual property the accumulated wealth 
 made by generations of toilers, the present means of production; 
 this wealth is obtained by forcing labor to accept as "wage" 
 less than the value it creates ; unless it will accept these terms it 
 is not permitted to create any value at all, so that it has the 
 choice between starvation and exploitation. The share of its own 
 produce which it receives as wage varies from time to time ; 
 sometimes it is less, sometimes more ; but it is always less than 
 the value made by it. Only when there is a " profit " to be 
 iQade — that is when the capitalist can get out of his "hands" 
 more value than he returns to them as wage — will he employ 
 them. The machines which have been invented by human 
 genius, and which ought to lessen human labor, are used to 
 make fortunes for a few. A skilful workman sees a possible 
 improvement; his master reaps the profit of the improved 
 machine, patenting it for his own enrichment. Huge fortunes 
 rapidly made date from the invention of machinery, because 
 only by the possession of machinery can a man utilise the labor 
 of many for such swift gain. Possessing this, he is in a position 
 of advantage which enables him to say to his fellow-men : " You 
 shall use my machinery on condition that you are content with 
 bare subsistence, and leave to me the wealth which flows from 
 you and the machine ". Thus machinery, which is one of the 
 advantages of civilisation, gives wealth to its individual owner, 
 and bare subsistence to the toilers who work with it. And so 
 long as the possession of all the mechanical advantages is in the 
 hands of individuals, so long will they be able to enslave and 
 exploit those who have only their natural tools, and the machine- 
 owner may lie at his ease and watch the growing piles of his 
 wealth, as his bondmen heap it together, and gratefully accept 
 the fraction of it which his higher servants fling to them as wage. 
 Poverty will last so long as one class depends on another for 
 " employment " ; so long as one man must sell another man his 
 labor at whatever rate the condition of the market may fix. 
 Pree men may associate their labor for a common end, and 
 divide the common product ; slaves are obliged to let their labor 
 be at the direction of their master, and to accept subsistence in 
 exchange. 
 
 Class distinctions will endure while men stand in the position 
 of employer and employed; the one who holds the means of 
 subsistence feels himself superior to the one who craves them. 
 And this is not all. The life-surroundings of the rich fashion 
 an organism easily distinguishable from the organism produced
 
 b \rHY I AM A SOCIALIST. 
 
 by the life-surroundings of the poor. Take two healthy week- 
 old babies, one the child of a ploughman and the other the child 
 of a duke ; place them side by side, and the keenest eye will not 
 be able to separate the aristocrat and the plebeian. But give 
 to one the best education and to the other none, and place them 
 side by side when each is grown to manhood, and the easy 
 polished manner and soft speech of the one will be contrasted 
 with the clumsy roughness and stumbling articulation of the 
 other. Education, training, culture, these make class distinc- 
 tinctions, and nothing can efface them save common education 
 and equally refined life-surroundings. Such education and life- 
 surroundings cannot be shared so long as some enjoy wealth 
 they do not earn, and others are deprived of the wealth they 
 do earn. Land and capital must be made common property, 
 and then no man will be in a position to enslave his brother by 
 placing before him the alternative of starvation or servitude. 
 And because no system save that of Socialism claims that there 
 shall be no individual monopoly of that on which the whole 
 nation must depend, of the soil on which it is born and must 
 subsist, of the capital accumulated by the labor of its in- 
 numerable children, living and dead ; because no system save 
 that of Socialism claims for the whole community control of its 
 land and its capital ; because no system save that of Socialism 
 declares that wealth created by associated workers should be 
 shared among those workers, and that no idlers should have a 
 lien iipon it ; because no system save that of Socialism makes 
 industry really free and the worker really independent, by 
 substituting co-operation among workers for employed and 
 employing classes ; because of all this I am a Socialist. My 
 Socialism is based on the recognition of economic facts, on the 
 study of the results which flow inevitably from the present 
 economic system. The pauper and the millionaire are alike its 
 legitimate children ; the evil tree brings forth its evil fruits. 
 
 PRICE ONE PE^^fY. 
 
 Printed by Ajsnie Besant and Chaeles BEADLAuaH, at 63, Fleet Street* 
 
 London, E.G.— 1886.
 
 E 
 
 RADICALISM AND SOCIALISM. 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE B E S A N T 
 
 [Reprinted feom "Our Corner".] 
 
 LONDON : 
 FEEETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 63, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 1887. 
 
 rniCE THREEPENCE.
 
 LONDON 
 PEINTED BY CHAr.LES EEADLArGH AND ANNIE BESAUT, 
 63, FLEET STREET, E.C.
 
 EADICALISII AND SOCIALISJI. 
 
 A:moxg the various features of public life in England at the 
 present time there is none which appears to me to be more 
 regrettable, or more fruitful of evil consequences in the 
 near future, than the antagonism between Radicalism and 
 Socialism — or rather between Radicals and Socialists — 
 which is so strongly marked on the platform and in the 
 press. ■ As a Socialist, it is with much regret that I am 
 forced to acknowledge that the first provocation came from 
 the Socialist side, and that it was the uncalled-for and un- 
 scrupulous abuse poured out on Radical leaders and 
 workers which stirred up the anger of the Radicals, and 
 caused reprisals as bitter as the attacks. The taunts and 
 sneers levelled at working men's Radical organisations ; 
 the description of some of their most active and trusted 
 officials as "fifth-rate political hacks"; the insolent con- 
 tempt expressed by bran-new " leaders " for men who had 
 been toiling for the popular cause for more years of service 
 than they could themselves count months ; all these things 
 alienated the more self-reliant and thoughtful of the 
 workers, and made them look with coldness, deeply tinged 
 with dislike, on any idea which was presented to them 
 under the guise of Socialism. The whole mischief has 
 been done by a very small and ver}^ narrow-minded clique, 
 the members of which have nothing but abuse for every- 
 one who does not meekly follow in their wake, and who 
 appear to be moved by a furious jealousy against everyone, 
 Socialist or non-Socialist, who is able to serve the cause of 
 the workers, and is regarded by them with trust and with 
 love. It is time that it should be clearly seen that these 
 few Socialists who are constantly attacking Radicals speak
 
 4 RADICVLISil AND SOCIALISM. 
 
 only for themselves, and not for English Socialists in 
 general, but that, on the contrary, most of the latter desire- 
 earnestly to work with their Eadical brethren for all objects 
 which both parties regard as desirable ; and that while 
 they hold up steadily as their object the complete Social- 
 isation of the State, they will gladly welcome the com- 
 panionship of the Eadicals over that portion of the road 
 which the Eadicals are ready to travel. No worse mischief 
 can be done to the cause of labor, no more serious harm 
 can be done to progress, than by setting Eadicals and 
 Socialists in antagonism, instead of binding them together ; 
 than by putting in opiDosite camps those who ought to be 
 banded against the common foe ; than by using wild and 
 bitter words to drive apart those whose earnest desire is for 
 the common good, and so, by dividing the armj" of progress, 
 to render it easier for the privileged classes to defend their 
 citadel of idleness and monopoly. The position that 1 
 desire to advance is that Socialism is the outcome, the 
 legitimate and necessary outcome, of Eadicalism ; that the 
 main current of Eadical legislation, despite little eddies- 
 and backwaters, sets towards Socialism ; and that just as 
 Evolution, taking up the chaos of biological facts, set them 
 forth as an intelligible and correlated order, so Socialism, 
 dealing with the chaos of sociological facts, brings a unif}'- 
 ing principle, which turns Eadicalism from a mere empirical 
 system into a reasoned, coherent, and scientific whole. 
 Socialism is a far vaster thing than a changed system for 
 the prodiiction and distribution of wealth, great as that 
 economical change would be ; it means the substitution, as 
 method, of co-operation for competition in every depart- 
 ment of human life ; it means the substitution, as aim, of 
 the common good for the personal profit of the individual ; 
 it means the placing of the production and distribution of 
 wealth, as well as of all public affairs in which men and 
 women are associated, under the control of bodies elected 
 by and responsible to those who are concerned in thein, 
 whether as workers or as citizens, instead of leaving them, 
 as so many of them now are, under individual authority. 
 
 Now it is impossible to realise what Socialism means, and 
 to study the history of our own times with intelligence and 
 insight, without recognising the vast revolution which has 
 been going on during the present oenturj', and without 
 seeing that the changes which are being wrought are on
 
 radicalism: and socialism. 5 
 
 the road of which Socialism is the natural and inevitable 
 end. Radical legislation in removing privilege, in placing 
 public affairs in the hands of the populace, in assailing 
 landlord . monopoly, in regulating the relations between 
 •employer and employed, is penetrated by the Socialist 
 spirit, and has already leavened the community with 
 Socialist ideas. At the beginning of the century there 
 was little Socialism in our legislation ; there was no inter- 
 ference on the part of tlie State between employers and 
 -employed, save in the way of tying down the em2)loyed 
 and of preventing them from associating together for their 
 ■common good. Of restrictions on the workers for the 
 benefit of the exploiting classes there had been enough and 
 to spare ; but of legislation to equalise conditions, to check 
 the strong in his oppression of the weak, to utilise the 
 powers arising from the social union for the common benefit, 
 of this there had been nothing. All that the commercial 
 classes asked for was to be left alone by the State ; they 
 were willing to destroy laws which favored the land- 
 lord interest — as the Corn Laws — but they demanded 
 for themselves merely a free hand ; strong in their 
 position of advantage, holding in their hands the means 
 ■of subsistence of the population which seethed below them, 
 they only required to be left "free " in order to gain their 
 ends ; free, that was, to use starvation as a whip with 
 which to coerce the workers if they turned restive under 
 their burdens, to buy them in the labor-market as "hands " 
 to drive their machines, to pile up the riches made by the 
 toiling myriads, flinging back to them as "wage" a 
 fraction of the wealth they created. There were then no 
 laws to regulate the conditions of labor ; any man, who 
 had the power to do so, might build up a fortune by the 
 overwork of men, women, and children. At that time the 
 <iemocracy had no share in the Government ; the workers 
 were voiceless in the great Council of England, and were 
 therefore wholly at the mercy of their employers. It was 
 not until the degradation of the working population, the 
 absolute physical ruin of hundreds and of thousands of 
 the people, had become so patent that it could no longer 
 be denied, that the State stepped in between the employer 
 and the children he was murdering by over-work, and 
 limited the hours during which, and the conditions under 
 -which, the children should be permitted to labor. Since
 
 6 KADICALISJI AXD SOCIALISjr. 
 
 that first interference with so-called "freedom of contract "" 
 there have been many others, some of which touched the 
 "Eights of Property" ; such as the Factory Acts which 
 limited the hours of labor, and insisted on proper sanitary 
 conditions, the Shipping, Irish Land, Agricultural Hold- 
 ings, Employer's Liability, and Education Acts — all cases 
 in which the State interfered with individual "rights" for 
 the sake of effecting the common good. Thick-and-thin 
 opponents of Socialism have been quick to notice this 
 Socialist tendency of legislation, since the working classes 
 have been able to influence Parliament. The Liberty and 
 Property Defence League remarks that ' ' every fresh cur- 
 tailment of individual liberty, or substitution of collective 
 for individual action in the assumed interest of the com- 
 munity, is a step in the direction of State Socialism ", and 
 it issues from time to time a list of the proposed measures 
 which tend in this direction. Lord Pembroke complains 
 that "Land Acts, Shipping Acts, Education Acts, Factory 
 and Workshops Acts, Water Company AcFs, and all the rest 
 of them", are regarded "as exceptions that are justified 
 by the circumstances of the particular case" by j)eople 
 who are not Socialists, whereas "each one that is added 
 to the list weakens popular belief in the principles of 
 freedom, and inclines it towards those of Socialism ". 
 Lord Wemyss, in a speech delivered in the House of 
 Lords on July 31st, 1885, enumerated seven Acts and 
 eight Bills between 1870 and 1885 that assumed "the 
 right of the State to regulate the management of or to 
 confiscate real property — stej^s in the direction of substi- 
 tuting 'land nationalisation' for individual ownership " : 
 there were four Bills affecting corporate bodies in 1885, 
 two of which dealt with Water Companies^'^nd were 
 " attempts to subject the chartered rights of private enter- 
 prise in water supply to mimicipal monopolies, by first 
 reducing the value of the companies' property by harassing 
 legislation " ; then nine Acts affecting ships, and six af- 
 fecting mines, which regulated "private enterprise and^ 
 individual management " ; nine Acts and three Bills regu- 
 lating manufactures and trades, and six Eailway Acts, 
 " encroachments by the Boardof Trade upon the self-govern- 
 ment of private enterprise in railways ". Passing over 
 twenty Acts and six 13ills about the Liquor Trafiic, we 
 come to sixteen Acts and three Bills which " embody the
 
 HADICALISil AKD SOCIALISM. / 
 
 priucii)le that it is the duty of the State to provide dwellings, 
 private gardens, and other conveniences for the working 
 classes, and assume its right to appropriate land for these 
 purposes". Then thirteen Acts and four Bills on Educa- 
 tion and Eecreation, many of which " provide those things 
 that ought to be left to the instincts and aifections of the 
 parents ". " While on the Continent ", said Lord Wemyss, 
 "people are thinking and vaporing about Socialism, we 
 in this country are adopting it in our legislation. Louise 
 Michel, the French Communist, epitomised the matter 
 very effectively when she said ' that whereas in France 
 Socialists stand in the dock, in England they sit in the 
 House of Commons'." Herbert Spencer in his "Man 
 versus the State " summarises the legislation of the last 
 twenty-five years, in order to show the increase of State 
 interference which has taken place "during periods of 
 Liberal ascendancy ". Despite its length, I quote it here, 
 so important is the testimony borne in it to the soundness 
 of my position : 
 
 "To bring the illustrations within compass, let us commence 
 with 1S60, under the second administration of Lord Palmerston. 
 In that year the restrictions of the Factories Act were extended 
 to bleaching and dyeing works ; authority was given to provide 
 analysts of food and drink, to be paid out of local rates ; there 
 was an Act providing for inspection of gasworks, as well as for 
 fixing quality of gas and limiting price; there was the Act 
 which, m addition to further mine inspection, made it penal to 
 employ boys under twelve not attending school, and unable to 
 read and write. In 1861 occurred an extension of the compul- 
 sory provisions of the Factories Act to lace-works ; power was 
 given to poor-law guardians, etc., to enforce vaccination; local 
 boards were authorised to fix rates of hire— horses, ponies, mules, 
 asses, and boats— and certain locally-formed bodies had given 
 to them pov/ers of taxing the locality for rural drainage and 
 irrigation works, and for supplying water to cattle. In 1862 
 an Act was passed for restricting the employment of women 
 and children in open-air bleaching; and an Act for making 
 illegal a coal-mine with a single shaft, or with shafts separated 
 by less than a specified space, as well as an Act giving the 
 Council of Medical Education the exclusive right to publish a 
 Pharmacopceia, the price of which is to be fixed by the Treasury. 
 In 1863 came the extension of compulsory vaccination to Scot- 
 land, and also to Ireland ; there came the empowering of certain 
 boards to borrow money repayable from the local rates, to em- 
 ploy and pay those out of work ; there came the authorismg of
 
 8 RADICALISM AND SOCIALISM. 
 
 town authorities to take possession of neglected ornamental 
 spaces, and rate the inhabitants for their support ; there came 
 the Bakehouses Regulation Act, which, besides specifying mini- 
 mum age of employees occupied between certain hours, pre- 
 scribed periodical lime- washing, three coats of paint when 
 painted, and cleaning with hot water and soap at least once in 
 six months; and there came also an Act giving a magistrate 
 authority to decide on the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness 
 of food brought before him by an inspector. Of compulsory- 
 legislation dating from 1864, may be named an extension of the 
 Factories Act to various additional trades, including regulations 
 for cleansing and ventilation, and specifying of certain em- 
 ployees in match-works, that they might not take meals on the 
 premises, except in the wood-cutting places. Also, there were 
 passed a Chimney-Sweepers Act ; an Act for further regulating 
 the sale of beer in Ireland ; an Act for compulsory testing of 
 cables and anchors ; an Act extending the Public Works Act of 
 1863, and the Contagious Diseases Act, which last gave the 
 police, in specified places, powers which, in respect of certain 
 classes of women, abolished sundry of those safeguards to indi- 
 vidual freedom established in past times. The year 1865 wit- 
 nessed further provision for the reception and temporary relief 
 of wanderers at the cost of ratepayers ; another pubUc-house 
 closing Act; and an Act making compulsory regulations for 
 extinguishing fires in London. Then, under the ministry of 
 Lord John Russell in 1866, have to be named an Act to regulate 
 cattle-sheds, etc., in Scotland, giving local authorities powers 
 to inspect sanitary conditions, and fix the numbers of cattle ; 
 an Act forcing hop-growers to label their bags with the year 
 and place of growth, and the true weight, and giving police 
 powers of search ; an Act to facilitate the building of lodging- 
 houses in Ireland, and providing for regulation of the inmates ; 
 a Public Health Act, under which there is registration of 
 lodging-houses and limitation of occupants, with inspection 
 and directions for lime- washing, etc., and a Public Libraries 
 Act, giving local powers by which a majority can tax a minority 
 for their books. 
 
 " Passing now to the legislation under the first ministry of 
 Mr. Gladstone, we have, in 1869, the establishment of State 
 telegraphy mth the accompanying interdict on telegraphing 
 through any other agency ; we have the empowering a Secre- 
 tary of State to regulate hired conveyances in London ; we have 
 further and more stringent regiilations to prevent cattle diseases 
 from spreading, another Beer-house Regulation Act, and a 
 Sea Birds Preservation Act (ensuring greater mortality of fish). 
 In 1870 we had a law authorising the Board of Public Works 
 to make advances for landlords' improvements and for purchase 
 by tenants ; we have the Act, which enables the Education
 
 RADICALISM AND SOCIALISM. 9 
 
 Department to form school boards which shall purchase sites 
 for schools, and may provide free schools supported by local 
 rates, and enabling school-boards to pay a child's fees ; to 
 compel parents to send their children, etc., etc. ; we have a 
 further Factories and Workshops Act, making, among other 
 restrictions, some on the employment of women and children 
 in fruit-preserving and fish-curing works. In 1871 we meet 
 with an amended Merchant Shipping Act, directing officers of 
 the Board of Trade to record the draught of sea-going vessels 
 leaving port; there is another Factory and Workshops Act, 
 making further restrictions ; there is a Pedlar's Act, inflicting 
 penalties for hawking without a certificate, and limiting the 
 district within which the certificate holds, as well as giving the 
 poKce jDOwer to search pedlars' packs; and there are further 
 measures for enforcing vaccination. The year 1872 had, among 
 other Acts, one which makes it illegal to take for hire more 
 than one child to nurse, unless in a house registered by the 
 authorities, who prescribe the number of infants to be received ; 
 it had a Licensing Act, interdicting sale of spirits to those 
 apparently under sixteen ; and it had another Merchant Ship- 
 ping Act, establishing an annual survey of passenger steamers. 
 Then, in 1873, was passed by the Agricultural Children's Act, 
 which makes it penal for a farmer to employ a child who has 
 neither certificate of elementary education nor of certain pre- 
 scribed school-attendances, and there was passed a Merchant 
 Shipping Act, requiring on each vessel a scale showing draught, 
 and giving the Board of Trade power to fix the numbers of 
 boats and life-saving appliances to be carried out. 
 
 "Turn now to Liberal law-making under the present 
 Ministry. We have, in 1880, a law which forbids conditional 
 advance-notes in payment of sailors' wages ; also a law which 
 dictates certain arrangements for the safe carriage of grain 
 cargoes ; also a law increasing local coercion over parents to 
 send their children to school. In 1881 comes legislation to 
 prevent trawling over clam-beds and bait-beds, and an interdict 
 making it impossible to buy a glass of beer on Sunday in Wales. 
 In 1882 the Board of Trade was authorised to grant licenses to 
 generate and sell electricity ; and municipal bodies were enabled 
 to levy rates for electric-lighting ; further, exactions from rate- 
 payers were authorised for facilitating more accessible baths 
 and washhouses, and local authorities were empowered to make 
 bye-laws for securing the decent lodging of persons engaged 
 in picking fruit and vegetables. Of such legislation during 
 1883 may be named the Cheap Trains Act, which, partly by 
 taxing the nation to the extent of £100,000 a year (in the shape 
 of relinquished passenger duty), and partly at the cost of 
 railway proprietors, still further cheapens travelling for work- 
 men ; the Board of Trade, through the Railway Commissioners,
 
 10 RADICALISM AND SOCIALISM:. 
 
 being empowered to ensure sufficiently good and frequent 
 accommodation. Again, there is the Act which, under penalty 
 of £10 for disobedience, forbids the payment of wages to work- 
 men at or within public-houses ; there is another Factory and 
 Workshop Act, commanding inspection of white-lead works 
 (to see that they are provided with overalls, respirators, baths, 
 acidiilated drinks, etc.) and of bakehouses, regulating times of 
 employment of both, and prescribing in detail some construc- 
 tions for the last, which are to be kept in a condition satis- 
 factory to the inspectors " (pp. 9-12). 
 
 After carefully following out the results of this policy, 
 Herbert Spencer asks whither these changes "with the 
 accompanying current of ideas" are carrying us, and he 
 finally answers : "Thus influences of various kinds con- 
 spire to increase corporate action and decrease individual 
 action. And the change is being on all sides aided by 
 schemers, each of whom thinks only of his pet project, and 
 not at all of the general reorganisation which his, joined 
 with others such, are working out. It is said that the 
 French Revolution devoured its own children. Here an 
 analogous catastrophe seems not unlikely. The numerous 
 Socialistic changes made by Act of Parliament, joined with 
 the nunierous others presently to be made, will by-and-bye 
 be merged in State Socialism — swallowed in the vast ware 
 which they have little by little raised" (pp. 26, 33, 34). 
 
 Now ill all these separate steps towards Socialism, 
 Radicals have advocated the particular measure on the 
 ground of its individual usefulness, but they have not 
 grasped the underlying tendency of the whole body of 
 allied changes. The main difference between Radicals 
 and Socialists in dealing with these practical questions is 
 that Radicals take the steps towards Socialism without 
 recognising whither they are going ; while the Socialists 
 see the goal as well as the steps, and recognise the 
 general tendency of legislation as well as the separate 
 Acts of Parliament. They have risen from empiricism to 
 science. But in this difference lies no reason for quarrel, 
 no cause for antagonism. There is, however, a cause of 
 disagreement that might well arise between Radicals and 
 Socialists as politicians, due to the. fact that Socialists 
 scrutinise the tendency of legislation as well as its imme 
 diate results. For instance peasant proprietorship, as 
 distinguished from peasant tenancy, of land has many
 
 RADICALISM AND SOCIALISM. 11 
 
 advocates among Eadicals ; to any legislation in this 
 direction Socialists would offer an uncompromising re- 
 sistance, as being retrograde in tendency, and as increasing 
 the difficulty of bringing all land under the control of the 
 community. But such disagreement on an isolated measure 
 would not prevent full and cordial co-operation in matters on 
 which both parties were agreed. And in order to dispose 
 Eadicals to such co-operation I point them to the legisla- 
 tion of our own generation, and I challenge them to dis- 
 prove the assertion that this body of legislation tends to 
 substitute collective control for individual independence, 
 to limit private rights of property, to interfere in the name 
 of the community between employer and employed, between 
 parent and child, and to take over important branches of 
 national enterprise into the hands of the State. 
 
 It is not only in legislation that the spirit of Socialism 
 is making itself felt, but we see it again in the growing 
 inclination of municipalities to extend the sphere of their 
 activity, and to undertake the supply of important neces- 
 saries of life over the district they are elected to administer. 
 The substitution of Socialism for individualism in matters 
 affecting the citizens of any locality, is the substitution of 
 the action of an elected body for private enterprise in sup- 
 plying the wants of the community, and the consequent 
 regarding of all excess of receipts over expenditure as 
 being funds belonging to the communitj'-, and not to the 
 individuals who have superintended the business out of 
 which they may have arisen. I may take as a convenient 
 illustration of the change from individualism to Socialism 
 in the supply of one necessary of life, the methods in 
 which a community may obtain its water. Each might 
 buy as much water as he wanted from a private trader 
 at a charge fixed by competition ; or he might sink a well 
 in his own back garden, and if he were very enei'getic 
 and enterprising he might sink it deeper than the wells 
 of his neighbors, and so obtain more water than he 
 wanted for his own use, while their wells ran dry ; in 
 either of these cases, the water-supply of the town would 
 be left to individual enterprise. Another individualistic 
 method would consist in a body of men voluntarily asso- 
 ciating themselves into a company for the supply of water ; 
 such a company would obtain an Act of Parliament giving 
 it certain rights and privileges, and would levy a water-
 
 12 RADICALISM AND SOCIALISM. 
 
 rate on the inhabitants of the district it supplied ; the 
 profits made would be pocketed by the company, and divided 
 among the shareholders. But the water supply might be 
 undertaken by the municipality elected by the community ; 
 the rate would then be fixed at a figure estimated to cover 
 the cost, and if any profit should arise the profit would go 
 into the town exchequer, and would be used for the benefit 
 of the community. This would be Socialism, applied to 
 the supply of water. Some few towns have already taken 
 this step, and have found as result that the water-supply 
 is better and cheaper when controlled by the municipality 
 than when managed for the individuals. The supply of 
 gas, again, is being undertaken by municipalities with 
 very satisfactory results. In some cases gas is supplied at 
 a cheaper rate than when it was in the hands of a private 
 company, and at the same time there has been an 
 excess of receipts over expenditure which has gone to the 
 lessening of the rates. So bhnd are many to the real 
 character of the changes taking place before their eyes, 
 that while they would denounce the supply of milk or 
 bread by the municipality as sheer Socialism, they regard 
 with approval the supply by it of gas and water. Really 
 each such step, placing the distribution of a necessary of 
 life in the hands of an elected body, which trades in it for 
 the advantage of a community electing it, is a step towards 
 Socialism, and this growth of municipal Socialism, fostered 
 and encouraged by the Radicals, shows how far unconscious 
 Socialism has spread. It has already been proposed that the 
 liquor trade shall be undertaken by the municipality, and 
 Mr. Chamberlain has been a warm advocate of this (the 
 Gothenburg) scheme. It is not so very far from this to 
 the establishment of municipal stores, stores that would 
 soon become popular from the purity of their goods and 
 the lowness of their prices. 
 
 Now this growth of municipal Socialism, visible on aE 
 hands, cannot continue without a corresponding growth 
 over a wider area, the area of the State. Already in the 
 Post Office there is the beginning of the Socialism of the 
 State ; here the State has taken upon itself the functions 
 of collecting and distributing the letters of the whole com- 
 munity ; similarly it has taken in hand the business of 
 telegraphing, and is taking that of conveying parcels ; the 
 superior certainty and celerity of the State carriage of
 
 RADICALISM AND SOCIALISM. 13 
 
 parcels are being widely recognised, and the business is 
 rapidly growing. Who now hesitates, if he wants to send 
 a small parcel from London to Dundee, between the means 
 of conveyance directed by the State, and those controlled 
 by *' private enterprise"? Nor is it, as has been suggested, 
 any argument against the Socialist character of the Post 
 Office that the charge made varies with the weight carried ; 
 Socialism estimates the value of a thing by the amount of 
 human labor required to produce it, and those who require 
 the expenditure of more human labor for their service must 
 in exchange give more of their own labor, that is, of the 
 results thereof. Socialism implies the equal exchange of 
 equal amounts of labor, and only forbids that a third party 
 who adds nothing should make a profit out of the ex- 
 change. It does not mean the distribution of everything 
 in equal proportions, without any regard to what each one 
 does. Nor is it necessary' to Socialism that all the details 
 of a business concern with many branches should be 
 arranged from a single State centre. The Post Office, 
 which is a State institution, is not governed in its minute 
 details from St. Martin's-le-Grrand. From the centre come 
 certain laws and regulations which all must obsei've ; but 
 it is not the State which chooses the country postmen ; it is 
 not the State which controls the minutite of the work of the 
 individual letter-carrier. He takes his order from the post- 
 master of his district, and not from the Postmaster-Greneral. 
 And so, in all kinds of business, under Socialism, there 
 will be group after group, co-ordinate with each other, each 
 being related to the wider group next above it ; and the 
 individual laborer would come into contact with his own 
 group, not with the central executive. But we can see in 
 the Post Office organisation the enormous gain of a central 
 unifying power. When a great political speech is to be 
 delivered, to telegi'aph which over the country would 
 utterly overtax a local staff, then the central body steps in 
 to supply the sudden demand, and affords the help neces- 
 sary for the due discharge of the public service. While 
 industry is under individual control, we have industrial 
 anarchy ; in one place there are too many workers, in 
 another too few, and equilibrium is only attained after 
 much friction and much suffering, to be again overthrown 
 by the next fluctuation. But with a central regulative 
 body, supply may be made to meet demand, and what is
 
 14 KADICALISil AXD SOCIALISil. 
 
 now dene hj the Post Office in a single branch would be 
 done in all departments of industry. Then labor would 
 be organised without waste and without excess, and while 
 laborers would be as free as Post Office clerks are now, all 
 profits made woidd come back to the nation as a whole ; so 
 that instead of individualistic gain there would be cor- 
 porate good and corporate advantage everywhere. Radicals 
 recognise the utility of the State collection and distribution 
 of one kind of articles-letters. Is there any difference m 
 2)rinciple between the State collecting the letters of a dis- 
 trict and collecting the goods manufactured in it ? between 
 distributing the letters and distributing the goods ? In 
 the latter case it would not need to do as much as it does 
 with the letters ; it delivers them at individual houses ; it 
 would onl}' need to deliver the goods at district stores. 
 Under such conditions, there would be no more fruit 
 rotting in Yorkshire because its sale would not pay the 
 cost of carriage, while high prices were being paid for 
 similar fruit in London ; no more exorbitant railway 
 charges and middleman's profits eating up the whole 
 price paid by the consumer. 
 
 Eadicals, again, are to a great extent in favor of plac- 
 ing all the means of communication under State control. 
 '' Many Eadicals demand that all tramcars, omnibuses, and 
 hackney carriages plying in a town shall be transferred to 
 the municipality of the town, and that the railways shall 
 be acquired by the State. Here once more Eadicals desire 
 that representative bodies shall acquire property and ad- 
 minister it for the general advantage ; that any gains 
 accruing shall go into the general exchequer ; that public 
 good, not private gain, shall be sought. But every step 
 which substitutes agents of the community for men work- 
 ing for individual gain is a step towards Socialism ; and 
 when Eadicals have taken all the steps the Socialist State 
 will exist. 
 
 If we pass from these general questions of administra- 
 tion to the economic question of the production and distri- 
 bution of wealth, we shall find that many Eadicals go 
 half-way to Socialism. And here let me point out that my 
 • friend Mr. Bradlaugh is attacking a very crude present- 
 ment of Socialism when he defines it as " the theory and 
 the scheme which denies all individual property, which 
 denounces individual effort for individual gain, and affirms
 
 RADICALISM AXD SOCIALISM. 15 
 
 that society organised as the State should own all wealth, 
 protect all labor, and compel the equal distribution of all ) 
 produce. A >Socialistic State would be a State in whichV "i 
 everything would' TDe'Tielct in common, iu which the labor- ^ \ 
 of each individual would be protected and controlled by the- \ , 
 State, to which would belong all resvilts of such labor.'' ,' ^ 
 Socialism does not deny "ail individual property"; it| 
 would leave a man in full possession of his share of the- • . 
 value he and his fellow-laborers had produced. It de- 
 nounces " individual effort for individual gain " when the 
 individual utilises other people's efforts for his individual 
 gain ; and it points out that when many co-operate to pro- li 
 duce no one man should claim the common product as his. 
 It does not affirm that the State should " own all wealth ", 
 but that it should own the raw material and the means of 
 production. It does affirm that the State should protect all 
 labor, and it affirms further that the present State performs 
 that primary function extremely badly. It does not affirm 
 that the State should compel the equal distribution of all 
 produce, nor of any produce, but seeks to secure to the 
 worker the value he creates, leaves him free to exchange 
 the results of his labor as he will. Nor does the Socialist 
 ask that " everything should be held in common", but that 
 those things only shall be held in common the possession 
 of which by individuals enables them to enslave their 
 fellows, and to force others to work for their advantage. 
 To say that Socialists desire to destroy all property because- 
 they would vest the ownership of land and capital in the 
 community, is as misleading as it would be to say that 
 Eadicals desire to destroy all order because they say that 
 legislative power should be vested in the representatives' 
 of the people and not in an autocratic sovereign. Take 
 the numerous suggestions put forward by representative 
 Socialists, such as Bebel, that men should be paid for their 
 work by labor-notes, or by some symbol of exchange, 
 representing the labor given by the individual. Those 
 labor-notes would represent so much time given to labor. 
 The recipient would own these notes ; he might save them, 
 spend them, w^aste them ; one thing only he would not be 
 able to do with them — force men to sell themselves to him 
 and annex their labor for his own profit. 
 
 I have already pointed out that we do not propose that 
 the labor of every individual citizen should be directed by 
 
 ry
 
 1^ BADICALISM AND SOCIALISil. 
 
 a central body ; but even were it true that such were our 
 / proposal, I fail to see that the liberty of the worker would 
 Vybe narrower then than it is now. Why would it be worse 
 , / to have one's labor controlled by the State than to have it 
 \ controlled by the individual employer ? A workman does 
 not control his labor now ; he must sell it for what he can 
 get for it. His labor is controlled by the individual manu- 
 facturer, who controls it for his own advantage ; whereas 
 the State wovild control it for the corporate advantage in 
 '' which the worker would share. But it is, of course, not 
 practicable that the State, as a whole, should direct and 
 •control the labor of each individual. For what is the 
 State ? It is the people, organised as a community. As 
 a whole, the State could not control the labor of each 
 ■citizen ; but when the people are organised in groups of 
 workers, each group can very well control its own labor, 
 and elect its own superintendents, as well as elect such 
 representatives as might be necessary to constitute boards 
 of management to keep group in touch with group. The 
 Trades Unions have in them the germs of the necessary 
 organisation. If every miner were in the Miners' Union, 
 then that union, with its branches in every coal district, 
 would be the body which would immediately control the 
 ' production of coal in a Socialist State. Can Radicals, 
 who have fostered Trades Unions and urged the workers 
 to combine, oppose a development of them? Can they, 
 who have so preached self-reliance and self-government, 
 maintain that men must always work for masters, and that 
 they are not competent to control their own labor and to 
 regulate their own production ? 
 / Again, the Socialist declaration that priYate property in 
 land should be abolished is endorsed by the majority of 
 '\ Radicals in principle, however much some may falter in 
 I carrying it into practice. The evils that result to the com- 
 munity from the soil on which it lives being owned by a 
 class are patent even to careless observation. We see the 
 increase of a town population drive up rents, and the 
 owners of the soil growing wealthier and wealthier without 
 any exertion of theirs contributing to their swelling reve- 
 nues. They are able to levy a cumulative tax on industry, 
 and to grow fat in idleness while others grow lean in toil. 
 And if we seek the reason why some should be placed in a 
 i^osition of such huge advantage, we often find that it is
 
 RADICALISM AXlJ SOCIALISil. 17' 
 
 because they are at the end of a long line, at the beginning 
 of which stands a man who got the land by force or fraud. 
 And seeking further, we find that the laws protecting the- 
 monopoly are laws which were made by the people who 
 profited by it, so that the laws by which landlords hold the 
 land are laws made by landlords. It is as though a 
 minority of thieves, getting the upper hand, made laws 
 legalising robbery ; and it is time that the people, now 
 that legislative power is theirs, should re2:)eal the laws . 
 which legalise wrong, and should assume the collective 
 ownership of the soil. The State should be the only land- 
 owner. 
 
 It does not, however, follow from State ownership that 
 the whole land of a country should be controlled from its 
 metropolis. It would be better that municipalities should 
 hold the land in towns, and local boards in agricultural 
 districts, than that the State for landholding purposes- 
 should be concentrated too much, centralised too severely. 
 If a municipality held the land on which a town was built, 
 all rents would go into the municipal exchequer, and they 
 would be used for the benefit of the town instead of for 
 the enrichment of an idle landlord. Now, a good many 
 Eadicals are at one with Socialists on this point, and in 
 what position is the Radical who is in favor of the State- 
 being the only landlord ? He is a long way on the road to 
 Socialism, half-way towards it at least, since Socialism 
 demands the abolition of private property in land and capi- 
 tal. If the liadical already goes so far as to desire the 
 abolition of private property in land, it is not wonderful 
 that Socialists should look forward to his taking the other 
 step, the abolition of private property in capital. 
 
 Por the reasons which lead the Socialists to desire the 
 abolition of px'ivate property in capital are cogent, and are- 
 such as must appeal to the unpropertied classes of the 
 communit3^ A man who does not inherit land or capital 
 can only live by the sale of his labor, and he must sell his 
 labor for what it will fetch. The price he can get for it 
 depends on population — the number competing for work — 
 and on the cost of living. If a man can earn a bare sub- 
 sistence by the sale of his labor, he will sell it. Competi- 
 tion among employers may drive up the rate of wages for 
 a while, for the profit made out of men's labor may be so 
 great that it becomes worth while to "throw away a
 
 ( 
 
 ( 
 
 ( 
 
 18 RADIC^VLISil AND SOCIALISif. 
 
 herring to catch a whale ". But wage ever tends to fall 
 to the cost of living, and will continue to do so as long as 
 there are employers and employed. The amount of a 
 man's wage is not fixed by the value he produces by his 
 labor; the same value may be produced by each of two 
 workers, and the wage paid may differ considerabl}'. The 
 boot and shoe trade in Northamptonshire offers an apt 
 illustration of this bearing of the cost of living on wage. 
 It is complained in the town of Northampton that much of 
 the boot-and-shoe-making for which the district is famous 
 is now being carried on in the villages round, because the 
 goods can be produced there more cheaply than in the 
 town. Now it is clear that the goods produced in the 
 villages are as valuable as those produced in the town : 
 the same amount of labor is put into them, and the same 
 price obtained for them. If the value of men's work in- 
 fluenced their wage, the country workers would receive a 
 wage equal to that paid in the town. But the wage varies 
 with the cost of living. Eent is lower in the country, and 
 living is cheaper, so a man will take less money for his 
 labor, the wage duly sinking to subsistence level. And 
 much above that level it can never permanently rise. 
 
 Going a step further, we can see that the production by 
 the laborer of a much greater value than he receives as 
 wage is the condition of his employment. The employer 
 does not hire a man for his amusement ; he hires him that 
 iie may make something out of him. The employers are 
 often spoken of as the benefactors of labor, but this view 
 is a decidedly topsy-turvey one. Is it not the laborer who 
 benefits the employer, rather than the employer the 
 laborer ? The laborer works hard all his life for wage, 
 and deems himself lucky if he saves enough to keep him- 
 self out of the workhouse in his old age and to bury him 
 decently. The employer builds his grand house, and his 
 stables, and his hothouses, and leaves a fortune made in 
 trade to his heirs. On which side is the benefit ? Which 
 is the benefactor ? Is it not labor which benefits the 
 employer ? labor which makes bare subsistence for itself 
 and heaps up wealth for another. If one man is to make 
 a profit, another man must make a loss. Wealth is only 
 made by hard human labor, and the profit made by the 
 emj)loyer is the measure of the loss suffered by the work- 
 men. Granted that wages may be forced up a little by
 
 KADICALISJI AXD SOCIALISJr. 19 
 
 combination, yet so long as a profit is made out of the 
 workex' so long will he have less than he ought to have. 
 It is said that employers work, and in so far as the 
 employer contributes to the value of the product just so 
 far has he also a right to share in the total value produced. 
 Working employers have a right to remuneration, but the 
 remuneration should be based on the value they add to 
 the product, and should not consist of profit made by 
 annexing part of the value made by others. As a matter 
 of fact, a large number of the owners of capital do not work 
 at all : they invest their capital, or have it invested for 
 them, and they live on the interest they draw from it — 
 uaere idlers existing on the work of others. As long as 
 one class can prey upon another, so long will it prey ; and 
 the propertied classes will live on the unpropertied for just 
 -so long as the latter will submit to the burden. Capital is 
 made by labor, by associated labor, and can only exist 
 where men co-operate for a common end ; surely it is not 
 unreasonable to demand that that which is produced by 
 common labor shall be under common control. No indi- 
 vidual should have the right to monopolise the result of/ 
 associated labor for his own personal advantage, for his 
 own personal gain. Under the system proposed by \ 
 . Social ism, in which the means of production would be j 
 under common control — that is, in which each trade would J 
 own for use the machinery needed in the trade — under / 
 that system only can be stopped the constant war between 
 capital and labor, for under it co-operating, self-ruling 
 workers would be substituted for masters and men. 
 
 I have already suggested that under Socialism each trade \ 
 would form a Trade Union, each such Union controlling / 
 its own industry. These Unions will need to be kept in 
 touch with each other by a central Industrial Board, to 
 which each will elect a representative. A step has been 
 taken towards making such a Board possible by the 
 establishment, on Charles Bradlaugh's initiative, of a 
 Labor Bureau, which will collate the statistics relating to 
 the various trades, and will so render possible a regulation 
 of industry where at present we have blind and aimless 
 competition. 
 
 It is said that any regulation of industry means slavery ; | 
 that the State will say to a man, go and do so and so. Not ) 
 so. There is no reason why, under Socialism, a man should /
 
 
 20 RADICALISM AKD SOCIALISil. 
 
 not be as free to choose liis work as he is now. If there 
 were too many in one particular trade then, as now, some 
 would have to choose another. There might be a rush to 
 one industry, and some would have to take other work ; 
 but the advantage would lie in the central Board, able to 
 say where labor was wanted, so doing awaj' with the 
 heart-breaking tramp after work which is the lot of so 
 many to-day. 
 
 Socialism is no wild scheme, no Utopia impossible of 
 realisation. It is a carefully-reasoned scheme of produc- 
 tion, distribution, and administration, which it is contended 
 is better than the monopoly sj'stem of to-day. It would 
 put an end to the war of classes, for it would substitute a 
 community of workers for the present gradations of social 
 rank. It would bid all healthy adults work, but it would 
 also give to each leisure to enjoy. And since of all the 
 political parties it is the Eadicals only who claim liberty 
 and equality for all, who admit no hereditary rights, who 
 demand from all discharge of social duty, who base society 
 on justice, not on privilege, who look to reason as guide, 
 and not to authority, therefore it is to them that the 
 Socialists must naturally turn for alliance, seeking to 
 march with them against the common foe.
 
 THE 
 
 / 
 
 SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE BESANT. 
 
 [Repeinted from the " Westminstee Review".] 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 FEEETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 63, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
 18 8 7. 
 
 PKICE THREEPENCE.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PEINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BEADLATJaH, 
 
 63, FLEET STKEET, E.C.
 
 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 Some good-hearted people must have felt an uncomfortable 
 thrill when they heard Professor Huxley declare that he 
 would rather have been born a savage in one of the Fiji 
 Islands than have been born in a London slum. The 
 advantages of civilisation, from the slum point of view, 
 must appear somewhat doubtful; and as a considerable 
 part of the population of every large city live in the slums, 
 the slum view has an importance of its own as a factor in 
 the future social evolution. For it must be remembered 
 that the slum population is not wholly composed of 
 criminals and ne'er-do-weels — the " o^ood-for-nothing's " 
 of Herbert Spencer. The honest workman and struggling 
 seamstress live there cheek by jowl with the thief and 
 and the harlot ; and with the spread of education has 
 arisen an inclination to question whether, after all, ever}'- 
 thing has been arranged quite as well as it might be in 
 this best of all possible worlds. The question. Whether 
 on the whole civilisation has been an advantage ? has 
 been a theme of academical discussion since Rousseau 
 won the prize for an essay on " Has the restoration of the 
 Sciences contributed to purify or to corrupt Manners ? " 
 and laid down the audacious thesis that riches gave birth 
 to luxury and idleness, and from luxury sprang the arts, 
 from idleness the sciences. But it has now changed its 
 form, and has entered the arena of practical life : men 
 are asking now. Is it rational that the progress of society 
 should be as lopsided as it is ? Is it necessary that, 
 while civilisation brings to some art, beauty, refinement — 
 all that makes life fair and gracious — it should bring to 
 others drudgery, misery, degradation, such as no un-
 
 4 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 civilised people kuow ; and these emphasised and rendered 
 the bitterer by the contrast of what life is to many, the- 
 dream of what it might be to all ? For Professor Huxlej-- 
 is right. The savage has the forest and the open sea, the 
 joy of physical strength, food easily won, leisure sweet 
 after the excitement of the chase ; the civilised toiler has 
 the monotonous drudgery of the stuffy workshop, the heU 
 of the gin-palace for his pleasure-ground, the pande- 
 monium of reeking court and stifling alley for his lullaby : 
 ci\dlisation has robbed him of all natui'al beauty and 
 physical joy, and has given him in exchange — the slum. 
 It is little wonder that, under these circumstances, there 
 are many who have but scant respect for our social fabric, 
 and who are apt to think that any change cannot land 
 them in a condition worse than that in which they ah'eadj' 
 find themselves. 
 
 The tendency to think of complete social change as a 
 possible occurrence has come down to the present genera- 
 tion as an inheritance of the past. Old men still dwell 
 fondly on the hopes of the " social missionaries " who were 
 preaching when the men now of middle-age were born. 
 Some even remember the experiments of Robert Owen and 
 of his personal disciples, the hopes raised by New Lanark 
 and Arbiston, the chill disappointment of New Harmony. 
 The di-eam that glorified their youth has remained a sacred 
 memory, and they have told how all might have been 
 different had society been prepared in Owen's time for the 
 fundamental change. And the great and far-reaching 
 co-operative movement, bom of Owen's Socialism, has kept 
 "his memory green", and has prepared men to think of 
 a possible futiu'e in which co-operation should wholly re- 
 place competition, and Owen's dream of universal brother- 
 hood become a living reahty. Such part of the energy of 
 the Owenite Socialists as was not merged in co-operative 
 activity was swamped in the sudden rush of prosperity 
 that followed the repeal of the Corn Laws and the English 
 triumph of Free Trade. Now that that rush is long over, 
 and the old misery is on the workers once more, their 
 minds turn back to the old schemes, and they listen readily 
 to suggestions of a new social oi'der. 
 
 The abnormal!}- rapid multiplication characteristic of the 
 very poor is at once constantly rendering the problem to 
 be solved more difficult and more imperatively pressing.
 
 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. O 
 
 Unliealtliy conditions force tlie young into premature 
 nubility; marriage takes place between mere lads and 
 lasses ; parenthood comes wbile father and mother are 
 themselves legally infants ; and the dwarfed, peaky little 
 mortals, with baby frames and wizened faces, that tumble 
 over each other in the gutters of the slums, are the un- 
 wholesome and unlovely products of the forcing-house of 
 extreme poverty. 
 
 The spread of education and of religious scepticism has 
 added the last touch necessary to make the poor ripe for 
 .social change. Ignorance is a necessary condition for 
 prolonged submission to remediable misery. The School 
 Boards are teaching the childi'en the beauty of order, 
 cleanliness, and decency, and are waking up in them desire 
 for knowledge, hopes, and aspirations — plants unsuited for 
 cultivation in the slums. They are sowing the seeds of a 
 noble discontent with unworthy conditions, while at the 
 same time they are developing and training the intelli- 
 gence, and are converting aimless, sullen grumbling into 
 a rational determination to understand the Why of the 
 present, and to discover the How of change. Lastly, reli- 
 gious scepticism has enormously increased the value put 
 upon the life which is. So long as men believed that the 
 present life was the mere vestibule of an endless future, it 
 "was possible to bribe them into quiescence in misery by 
 representing poverty as a blessing which should hereafter 
 bring in its train the "kingdom of heaven". But now 
 that many look on the idea of a life beyond the grave with 
 doubt, and even with disbelief, this life has taken giant 
 proiDortions in their eyes, and the human longing for 
 happiness, which erstwhile fed on hopes of heaven, has 
 fastened itself with passionate intensity on the things of 
 ' earth. 
 
 Such is the soil, ploughed by misery, fertilised by edu- 
 cation and scepticism, ready to receive and nourish the 
 seed of social change. 
 
 While the soil has been thus preparing, the sowers who 
 are to scatter the seed have been fashioning. Thoughtful 
 persons have noted the regular cycle of alternate depres- 
 sion and inflation trodden by industrialism during the last 
 century. At one time industry progresses "by leaps and 
 boimds ", employment is plentiful, w-ages high (as wages 
 ;go), prices of coal and iron high, profits increase, and
 
 6 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 fortunes are rapidly Ibuilt up. This inflation after a wliile- 
 passes awaj', and is succeeded by depression ; "short time " 
 is worked, wages are reduced, profits diminish, the " market 
 is overstocked". This in its tiu-n passes awaj', and tem- 
 porary prosperity returns, to he after a while succeeded 
 hy another dejiression, and that by another inflation. But 
 it is noticeable that the depressions become more acute and 
 more i:)rolonged as they return time after time, and that 
 there is less elasticity of revival after each. The position 
 of England in the world's markets becomes yearly one of 
 diminished advantage ; other nations raise their own coal 
 and their own iron instead of buying from us, and as the 
 competition of nations becomes keener, English trade can 
 no longer monopolise the custom of the world. The radical 
 weakness of our industrial system is thus beconiing patent 
 — no longer A'eiled, as it was during the fii-st half of the 
 century, by a monojDoly which brought such enormous 
 gains that the drain of wealth into a few hands was com- 
 paratively httle felt. Now that there is so much less to- 
 divide, the unfairness of the method of division is becoming 
 obvious. 
 
 Nor can we overlook, in tracing the fashioning of those 
 who are to sow the seeds of change, the eft'ect on English 
 thought of the greatly increased communication with 
 foreign countries, and especiall}^ with Germany. English 
 religious thought has been largely influenced by the works 
 of tStrauss and Feuerbach ; philosophic thought by those 
 of Hegel, Kant, and Schopenhauer ; scientific by the specu- 
 lations of Goethe, the jjractical labors of Vogt, Biichner, 
 and Haeckel. English insularity has been broken down 
 in every domain of theoretical and speculative thought ; it 
 was inevitable that it should also be broken down in the 
 domain of practical sociology, and that German proposals 
 for social change should win the attention of English 
 students of social problems. The works of Marx, Bebel,. 
 Liebknecht, and Engels have not reached any large num- 
 ber of English people ; neither have those of Strauss, 
 Hegel, and Kant. None the less in each case have they 
 exorcised a profoundly modifying influence on religious, 
 philosophical, and sociological thought respectively ; for, 
 reaching a small band only, that band has in its turn in- 
 fluenced thought in the direction taken by itself, and has- 
 modified the vieyrs of very many who are unconscious of the
 
 THE SOCIALIST MO^^:iIEI^T. 7 
 
 cliange thus •wroxiglit in tlieir own attitude toTvards pro- 
 gress. At the same time the German graft has been itseK 
 modified by the English stock, and EugHsh Sociahsm is 
 beginning to take its own distinctive color ; it is influenced 
 by English traditions, race, habit, and methods of public 
 procedure. It shows, at its best, the influence of the open- 
 air of English political life, the tolerance of diversity of 
 thought which is bred of free speech ; it is less arrogant, 
 less intolerant, than it is with Germans, or with those 
 English who are most directly under German influence. 
 In Germany the intolerance of oppression has caused in- 
 tolerance of revolt ; here the very power of the democracy 
 has a tendency to sober its speech, and to make it take its 
 own way in the quiet consciousness of its resistless strength. 
 This peculiarity of English life must modify Socialism, 
 and incline it to resort to methods of legislation rather 
 than to methods of dynamite. 
 
 Nor has the effect of foreign thought been confined to 
 the influence exerted by thinkers over thinkers, thi'ough 
 the medium of the press. A potent worker for the inter- 
 nationaHsation of thought has been silently busy for many 
 years past. At fu'st insular prejudices were broken down 
 only for the wealthy and the nobles, when the " grand 
 tour" was a necessary part of the education of the fine 
 gentleman. Then the capitalist broke down national fences 
 for his own gain, feehng himself nearer in blood to his 
 foreign colleagvies than to the workers in his own land ; 
 for, after all, common interests he at the root of all fellow- 
 feeling. And the capitalist abolished nationalism for 
 himself : he hired Germans and Frenchmen for his count- 
 ing-house work, finding them cheaper and better educated 
 than English clerks ; when his Enghsh wage-workers 
 struck for better wages he brought over foreigners to take 
 their place, so that he might live on cheap foreign labor 
 while he starved the English into submission. The effect 
 of foreign immigration and of foreign importation has not 
 in the long run turned whoUy to the advantage of the 
 capitalist ; for his foreign clerks and his foreign workers 
 have fraternised with the English they were brought over 
 to displace. They have taken part in club discussions ; 
 they have spread their own views ; they have popularised 
 in England the ideas current among workers on the Con- 
 tinent ; they have made numbers of Englishmen acquainted
 
 8 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 ■with, the solutions suggested abroad for social problems. 
 Thus, the internationalism of the luxurious idle and of the 
 wealthy capitalist has paved the way for the interna- 
 tionalism of the future — the internationalism of the prole- 
 tariat, the internationalism of Socialism. 
 
 From this preliminary sketch of the conditions which 
 make for a Socialist movement in England at the present 
 time we must turn to an examination of the doctrines held 
 and taught by the modern school, which claims to teach 
 "what is known as Scientific Socialism. The allegation, or 
 even the proof, that modern civilisation is to a large ex- 
 tent a failure, is obviously not sufficient ground for a com- 
 plete social revolution. Appeals to the emotions by means 
 of word-pictui-es of the sufferings and degradation of the 
 industrious poor, may rouse sj-mpathy, and may even 
 excite to riot, but can never bring about fundamental 
 changes in society. The intellect must be convinced ere 
 we can look for any wise movement in the direction of 
 organic improvement ; and while the passion of the igno- 
 rant has its revolutionary value, it is on the wisdom and 
 foresight of the instructed that we must rely for the work 
 of social reconstitution. 
 
 The first thing to realise is that the Socialist move- 
 ment is an economic one. Despite all whirling words, 
 and revolution fire, and poetic glamor, and passionate 
 appeal, this one dry fact is the central one — Socialism 
 2 / rejects the present industrial system and proposes an ex- 
 ceedingly different one. No mere abuse can shake the 
 Socialist ; no mere calling of names can move him. 
 He holds a definite economic theory — a theory which 
 should neither be rejected without examination, nor ac- 
 cepted without study. 
 
 The preliminary stock objection which is often held to 
 be sufficient to wave Sociahsm out of court is the statement 
 that it is "against the laws of political economy". No 
 statement could be more erroneous ; though it may be 
 pleaded in extenuation that the abuse levelled by ignorant 
 Socialists at political economy has given excuse for sup- 
 posing that it is in antagonism to Socialism. AVith political 
 economy, as the science which deals with the nature, the 
 production, and the distribution of wealth, Socialism can 
 have no quarrel. Its quarrel is with the present industrial
 
 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. y 
 
 system, not with tlie science which, points out the ascer- 
 tained sequence of events under that system. Suppose 
 a regime of avowed shivery : political economy, dealing 
 with the production of wealth in such a state, would lay 
 down how slaves might be worked to the best advantage — 
 how most might be got out of them with least expenditure. 
 But it would be irrational to attack political economy as 
 brutal under such conditions ; it would be the slave sj^stem 
 which would be brutal, and blame of the science which 
 merely dealt with the existent facts would be idle. The 
 work of political economy is to discern and expound for 
 any type of social system the best methods of pi'oducing 
 and distributing wealth under that system ; and it can as 
 easily study and develop those methods under a regime of 
 universal co-operation such as Socialism, as under a regime 
 of universal competition such as the present. Socialism is 
 in antagonism to the present system, and seeks to over- 
 throw it; but only the ignorant and the thoughtless con- 
 found in their hatred the system itself, and the science that 
 deals with its phtenomena. 
 
 In truth. Socialism founds part of its disapproval of 
 the present industrial system on the very facts pointed 
 out by orthodox, economists. It accepts Ricardo's "iron 
 law of wages "-j^'^and, recognising that wages tend to fall 
 to the minimum on which the laborer can exist, it de- 
 clares against the system of the hiring of workers for a 
 fixed wage, and the appropriation of their produce by the 
 hirer. It accepts Ricardo's theory of rent, with such 
 modifications as are adopted by all modern economists. 
 It assents to, and indeed insists on, the facts that all 
 wealth is the result of labor applied to natural agents, 
 that capital is the result of labor and abstinence, that in 
 all save the most primitive forms of industry' capital and 
 labor — that is, the unconsumed result of past labor and 
 present labor — are both necessary factors in the produc- 
 tion of wealth. 
 
 Nor does Socialism challenge the accuracy of the deduc- 
 tions from the "laws of political economy" in a com- 
 petitive system drawn by the trading community. That 
 a man who desires wealth should buy in the cheapest 
 market and sell in the dearest ; that he should drive the 
 hardest possible bargains ; that in selling he should be 
 guided by the maxim, caveat emptor ; that in buying he
 
 10 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 should take advantage of the ignorance or the necessities 
 of the seller ; that the weakest should go the wall ; that 
 feeling should not interfere with business ; that labor 
 should be bought at the lowest possible price, and as 
 much got out of it as may be ; that trade morality difPers 
 from the morality of private life — all these maxims the 
 Socialist regards as the evil fruits of the perpetuation 
 among men of the struggle for existence ; a struggle which, 
 however inevitable among brutes, is from his point of view 
 unworthj- of human civihsation. 
 
 Eecognising thus the unsatisfactory results which flow 
 naturally and inevitably from the present system, Sociahsm 
 proceeds to analyse the way in which wealth is produced 
 and accumulated under it, to seek for the causes of the 
 extreme wealth and extreme poverty which are its most 
 salient characteristics. 
 
 _ Applying ourselves, then, to the study of the produc- 
 tion of wealth, we find taking part therein three things — 
 natural agents, capital, and labor. These, under the pre- 
 sent system, are represented in England by three types — 
 the landlord, the capitalist, and the proletarian. The 
 transitional organisms need not detain us : the landlord 
 who tills his land with his own hands, the capitalist who 
 works in his own mill — these are exceptions ; and we are 
 concerned with the normal types. Abroad, the landlord 
 pm-e and simple is comparatively rare. Of these three, the 
 landlord owns the natural agents ; no wealth can be pro- 
 duced without his consent. John Stuart Mill ("Principles 
 of Political Economy", bk. ii., ch. xxi., sec. 1) remarks 
 that "the only person, besides the laborer and the 
 capitalist, whose consent is necessary to production, and 
 who can claim a share of the jjroduce as the price of that 
 consent, is the person who, by the arrangements of society, 
 possesses exclusive power over some natural agent ". 
 Given a person who, by possession of the natural agents 
 fi'om which wealth can be produced, can prevent the pro- 
 duction of wealth by withholding the raw material, and 
 you have a person who can successful!}- claim part of the 
 wealth to be produced as a condition of allowing produc- 
 tion to take place. He gains, by virtue of his position, 
 wealth which one less fortunately placed can only acc^uire 
 by prolonged labor. Nay, more ; since many capitalists 
 will compete for the raw material when it is advantageously
 
 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 11 
 
 situated, he will be able to obtain an ever higher price 
 from the most eager bidder ; as towns increase and trade 
 develops, competition will di-ive the price up still higher ; 
 and this ever-mouuting " rent", paid to the owner of the 
 natural agents, will enrich the lucky possessor, however 
 idle, ignorant, or useless he may be. Thus is produced 
 a class which has a vested right to tax industry, and 
 which taxes it in proportion to its success. Not an 
 improvement can be effected, nor a railway constructed, 
 nor a road made, without toll being fii-st paid to the 
 owner of the soil. The whole nation is at the mercy 
 of a comparatively small class, so long as it consents to 
 admit that this class has a right to own the ground on 
 which the nation lives. Here is a point at which Socialism 
 finds itself in direct antagonism, to the present system of 
 society. Socialism declares that natural agents ought not 
 to be private property, and that no idle class should be 
 permitted to stand between land and labor, and demand 
 payment of a tax before it will permit the production of 
 wealth. Socialism holds that the soil on which a nation 
 is born and lives ought to belong to the nation as a whole, 
 and not to a class within the nation ; that the soil should 
 be cultivated by individuals, or by co-operative groups, 
 holding directly under the State — the "State" here 
 meaning central organising body or district organising 
 body, according as the organisation is communal or cen- 
 tralised. And here, among different Socialist schools, 
 difference in detail manifests itself. All agree that the 
 soil must in some fashion be controlled by the community, 
 and the benefits derivable from it spread over the com- 
 munity. But some Socialists would have each commune 
 practically independent, with the soil on which it lives 
 vested in each ; the agriculturists of the commune would 
 form an organised body for cultivating the soil, and the 
 agricultural products would be collected in the communal 
 store, and thence distributed as each member of the 
 commune had need of them. Nothing would here be 
 recognised as "rent", since the total produce would pass 
 under communal control. Other Socialists favor a system 
 of more centralised management. But all agree that in- 
 dividual property in land must disappear, and that in the 
 future land must not be used as an investment which is to 
 bring in a profit in the shape of rent to some speculator or
 
 12 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 idler, hut must he used for purposes of production for the 
 general good, yielding food and raw materials for clothing 
 and other necessaries of life, but profit in the shape of 
 rent to no individual. 
 
 The extreme ^Radical school of politicians accepts the 
 Socialist theory of land, and denounces private property in 
 the soil as vigorously as d(jes the Socialist. In fact, the 
 Radical is a half-fledged Secialist — indignant as many 
 ^would he at the description : he is in favor of the State 
 j being the landowner, but he boggles at the idea of 
 \^ the State being the capitalist. His attitude to the land 
 is, however, an important factor in the Socialist move- 
 / ment, for it familiarises the national mind with the idea 
 \ of the State absorbing the functions hitherto belonging 
 to a class. The establishment of Land Courts, the fixing 
 of judicial rents, the legal restrictions put on the "rights" 
 of landlords — all these make for Socialism. M. Agathon 
 de Potter, a well-known Continental writer, rejoices over 
 the introduction of Mr. Charles Bradlaugh's Bill for expro- 
 priating landlords who keep cultivable land uncultivated, 
 and for vesting the forfeited lands in the State, as a direct 
 step towards Socialism. The shrinking of English poli- 
 ticians from the name does not prevent their advance 
 towards the thing, and the Libert}- and Property Defence 
 League is justified in its view that politics are drif ting- 
 steadily in a Socialist direction. 
 
 Pass we from the landlord who holds the natural agents 
 to the capitalist who holds the means of production. What 
 is capital, and how has it come into existence? CapitaHs 
 any wealth which is emploj^ed for profit. On this there is 
 / no dispute. As Senior says: "Economists are agreed 
 1 that whatever gives a profit is property called capital ". 
 Now, as all wealth is the result of labor a2:)plied to natural 
 agents, capital, being wealth, must have been so produced. 
 But another factor has been at work ; as Marshall says : 
 it is " the residt of labor and abstinence ". lATierever there 
 is capital there has been labor, and there has also 
 been abstinence from consumption. But in studying 
 the origin and the accumulation of capital, this remark- 
 able historical fact stares us in the face — that capital is 
 not found in the hands of the laborious and the 
 abstemious, but is obtained by a process of confiscation 
 of the results of labor and the imposition of privation on
 
 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 13 
 
 the laborious. On this John Stuart Mill has the following 
 pregnant passage : 
 
 " In a rude and violent state of society it continually happens 
 that the person who has capital is not the very person who has 
 saved it, but someone who, being stronger, or belonging to a 
 more powerful community, has possessed himself of it by 
 plunder. And even in a state of things in which property was 
 protected, the increase of capital has usually been, for a long 
 time, mainly derived from privations which, though essentially 
 the same with saving, are not generally called by that name, 
 because not voluntary. The actual producers have been slaves, 
 compelled to produce as much as force could extort from them, 
 and to consume as little as the self-interest or the usually very 
 slender humanity of their taskmasters would permit. (" Prin- 
 ciples of Political Economy", bk. i., ch. v., sec. 5). 
 
 Capital always has been, and it always must be, 
 obtained by the partial confiscation of the results of 
 labor ; that is, it must be accumulated by labor which , 
 is not paid for, or by labor of which the pajTuent is 
 deferred. In slave communities the slave-owner becomes 
 a great capitalist by appropriating the total results of 
 his slaves' toil, and returning to them only such small 
 portion of it as suffices to keep the wealth-producers in 
 capable working order. That is, the wealth produced 
 7mnus the amount consumed by tlie producers, goes to 
 the owner, and that part of it which he does not consume 
 is laid by to be employed as capital. And it is worth 
 noting that no considerable accumulation of capital was 
 made, and no rapid progress in civilisation was possible, 
 until slavery was introduced. In a low stage of evolution 
 men will not deny themselves present for the sake of future 
 enjoyment, nor incur present toil for the sake of future 
 ease. But when, as was neatly said to me, the barbarian 
 discovered that he could utihse his conquered enemy to 
 mvich greater advantage by making him work than b}- 
 merely eating him, civilisation had a chance. Slavery 
 was, in truth, a necessary stage in social evolution ; only 
 by forced toil and forced privation was it possible to accu- 
 mulate capital, and without capital no forms of complex 
 industry are realisable. At the present time that which 
 was done frankly and unblushingly in the slave regime is 
 done under a veil of fine phrases, among which free eon- 
 tract, free laborer, and the like, play a striking part. But
 
 14 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 in reality the "free laborer" only obtains as wage such 
 portion of the results of his labor as enables him to exist 
 at the standard of living current for his class at the time, 
 and the remainder of his produce goes to his employer. 
 And too often this portion of his is not sufficient to keep 
 him in capable working order, as is shown by the sombre 
 fact that the average age of the hand- workers at death is 
 far less than that of the idlers. For in truth the slave of 
 the past had this advantage over the wage-worker of the 
 present — that it was to his master's interest to keep the 
 slave in high phj'sical condition, and to prolong his working 
 life ; whereas it is to the modern employer's interest to 
 get as much work out of the " free laborer" as is possible 
 in a short time, and then to fling him aside as he begins 
 to flag, and hire in his place a younger and more vigorous 
 competitor, to be in his turn wrung dry and thrown away. 
 Before considering what Sociahsm would do with the 
 capitalist, we must turn to the proletarian, his necessary 
 correlative. A proletarian is a person who is possessed or 
 labor-force, and of nothing else. He is the incarnation of 
 the " labor " necessary for the production of wealth, the 
 third factor in our trio. This type, in oxu' modern society, 
 is numerous, and is rapidly increasing. He is the very 
 antithesis of the really free laI)orer, who works on his own 
 raw material with his own instruments of production, and 
 produces for his own subsistence. In the country the 
 proletarian is born on somebody else's land, and as he 
 grows up he finds himself owner of nothing except his 
 own body. The raw raaterial around him is owned by the 
 landlord ; the instruments of production are owned by the 
 capitahst farmers. As he cannot live on his own labor 
 force, which can only become productive in conjunction 
 with raw material and means of production (capital), he 
 must either sell it or starve. Nominally he may be free ; 
 in reality he is no more free than is the slave. The slave 
 is free to refuse to work, and to take in exchange the lash, 
 the prison, the grave ; and such freedom only has the 
 present proletarian. If he refuses to work, he must take 
 the lash of himger, the prison of the workhouse, and, on 
 continued refusal, the actual gaol. Nor can he put his 
 own price on this solitary property of his, his body — he 
 must sell it at the market rate ; and in some agricultural 
 covuities of England at the present time the market rate
 
 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 15 
 
 is from 7s. to 9s. a week. It is most significant of the 
 bearing of the propertyless condition of the proletarian 
 that many farmers object to the very slight improvement 
 made in the laborer's position by his being permitted to 
 rent at a high price a small allotment which he cultivates 
 for himself. The ground of the farmer's objection is that 
 even such small portion of freedom makes the laborer 
 " too independent ", and thereby drives up wages. To 
 get the full advantage out of him, the proletarian must be 
 wholly dependent for subsistence on the wages he earns. 
 The town proletarian is in a similar position — neither land 
 nor instrument of production is his ; but he also has his 
 labor force, and this he must sell, or he must starve. 
 
 We have arrived at the citadel of the Socialist position. 
 Here is this unpropertied class, this naked proletariat, face 
 to face with landlord and capitalist, who hold in their grip 
 the means of subsistence. It must reach those means of 
 subsistence or starve. The terms laid down for its accep- 
 tance are clear and decisive : " We wiU place within joux 
 hands the means of existence if you will produce sufficient 
 to support us as well as yourselves, and if you will consent 
 that the whole of your produce, over that which is sufficient 
 to support you in a hardy, frugal life, shall be the property 
 of us and of our children. If you are very thrifty, very 
 self-denying, and very lucky, you may be able to save 
 enough out of your small share of your produce to feed 
 yourself in your old age, and so avoid falling back on us. 
 Your children will tread the same mill-round, and we hope 
 you will remain contented with the position in which 
 Providence has placed you, and not envy those born to a 
 higher lot." Needless to say, the terms are accepted bj- 
 a proletariat ignorant of its own strength, and the Avay to 
 profit is open to landlord and capitalist. The landlord, 
 as we have seen, obtains his share of the gains by taxing 
 the capitalist through raising his rent. The capitalist 
 finds his profit in the difference between the wage he pays 
 and the value of the produce of his hired workers. The 
 wage is fixed by the competition for employment in the 
 labor market, and limited in its downward tendency by 
 the standard of living. The minimum wage is that on 
 which the worker can exist, however hardly. For less 
 than this he will not work. Every shilling above this is 
 fought over, and wage rises aii,d falls by competition. At
 
 16 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 every stage of their relationship there is contest between 
 employer and employed. If the wage is paid for a fixed 
 day's work — as in nearly every trade — the employer tries 
 to lengthen the daj', the employed to shorten it ; the 
 longer the day, the greater the production of "surplus 
 value " — i.e., of the difference between the wage paid and 
 the value produced. The employer tries to increase surplus 
 value by pressing the workers to exertion ; they lessen 
 exertion in order not to hasten the time of their discharge. 
 The employer tries still to increase surplus value by sup- 
 planting male labor with female and child labor at lower 
 wages. The men resist such introduction, knowing that 
 the ultimate result is to increase the amount taken by 
 capital and to lessen tliat obtained by labor. 
 
 Now the Socialist alleges that these antithetical interests 
 can never be reconciled while capital and labor are the 
 possessions of two distinct classes. He points to the results 
 brought about by the capitalist class while it was left un- 
 shackled by the State. The triumph of capitalism, and of 
 laisser-faire between empl(jyers and employed, was from 
 1764 to 1833. During that time not only adults but young 
 children were worked from fifteen to sixteen hours a day, 
 and the production of surplus value was enormous. The 
 huge fortunes of the Lancashire "cotton-princes" were 
 built up by these overtasked, quickly worn-out workers. 
 The invention of machinery ceaitupled man's productive 
 power, and its benefits were monopohsed b}^ a compara- 
 tively small class ; while those who made the wealth 
 festered in closel}- crowded courts, those who appropriated 
 the wealth luxuriated in country seats ; one side of industri- 
 alism is seen in the Lancashire mansions, pleasure-grounds, 
 and hothouses ; the other in the reeking slums within the 
 sound of the factory bells. Under a saner system of pro- 
 duction, the introduction of macliinery would have lightened 
 toil, shortened the hours of necessar}^ labor, and spread 
 abundance where there was want. Under capitalistic in- 
 dustrialism it has built up huge fortunes for a few, and 
 has reduced thousands to conditions of insanitary living 
 and dreary degradation, worse than anything the world 
 has hitherto known. It has poisoned our rivers, polluted 
 our atmosphere, marred the beauty of our country's face, 
 bestialised large numbers of our people. Improvements in 
 machinery, which should be hailed with joy, are regarded
 
 THE SOCIALIST HOVEMEXT. 17 
 
 witli dread by large classes of workers, because they will 
 tbrow numbers out of work, and reduce men, who were 
 skilled laborers with the old machinery, into the ranks of 
 the unskilled. True, the result of the introduction of 
 machinery has been to cheapen — in consequence of com- 
 petition among capitalists — many commodities, especially 
 articles of clothing. But this effect is little felt among the 
 laboring classes. They can buy perhaps three coats where 
 they used to buy one, but the easily worn-out shoddy, 
 thought good enough for clothes sold in poor quarters, is 
 but a poor exchange for the solid hand-made stulfs worn 
 by their ancestors. 
 
 What, then, is the remedj^ proposed by Socialism ? It 
 is to deal with capital as it deals with land ; to abolish the 
 capitalist as well as the landlord, and to bring the means 
 of production, as well as the natural agents on which they 
 are used, under the control of the community. 
 
 Capital is, as we have seen, the result of vmpaid labor ; 
 in a complex system like our own it is the result of co- 
 operative — that is, of socialised — labor. It has been found 
 by experience that division of labor increases productive 
 abiHty, and in all forms of industry nimibers now co- 
 operate to turn out the finished product. In each com- 
 modity is embodied the labor of many workers, and the 
 socialisation of labor has reached a very advanced stage. 
 But while industi-ialism has been socialised in its aspect of 
 labor, it has remained individualistic in its aspect of capi- 
 tal ; and the results of the combined efforts of many are 
 appropriated to the advantage of one, and when the one 
 has exhausted his power of consumption he retains the 
 remaining results, and employs them for the further 
 enslavement and exploitation of labor. Thus labor con- 
 stantly adds new links to the chain which fetters it, and 
 is ever increasing the capital which, let out at interest by 
 its owners, becomes ever a heavier tax upon itself. Social-^ 
 ism contends that these unconsumed results of socialisec 
 labor ought not to pass into the hands of individuals to be 
 used by them for their own profit ; but should pass either , 
 into the industrial funds of the several trades that produce/ 
 them, or into a central industrial exchequer. In either* 
 case, these funds created by past labor would be used for 
 the facilitation of present and future labor. They woidd 
 be available for the introduction of improved machinery,
 
 18 THE SOCIAXIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 for the opening up of new industries, for the improvement 
 of means of communication, and for similar undertakings. 
 Thus, in a very real sense, capital would become only the 
 deferred payment of labor, and the whole results of toil 
 would be constantly flowing back upon the toilers. Under 
 such conditions, fixed capital or plant would, Hke land, be 
 held for purposes of use by the workers who used it. Its 
 replacement would be a constant charge on the commodi- 
 ties it helped to produce/lOV machine represents so much 
 human labor ; that embodied labor takes part in producing 
 the finished commodity as much as does the palpable labor 
 of the human worker who superintends the machine ; that 
 worker does not produce the whole value added in the 
 factory to the material brought into it, and has no claim 
 to that whole value. The wear and tear of the machine is- 
 an offset, and must be charged on the products, so that 
 when the machine is worn out there may be no difiiculty 
 in its replacement. Under such conditions also the dis- 
 tinction between emploj^ers and employed would disappear. 
 All wovild be members of industrial communities, and the 
 necessary foremen, superintendents, organisers, and officers 
 of every kind, would be elected as the officers of trades 
 unions are elected at the present time. 
 
 X Poverty will never cease so long as any class or any indi- 
 viduals have an interest in the exploitation of others. 
 While individiials hold capital, and other individuals caji- 
 not exist unless that capital is used f or their emplo yment, 
 the first class will prey upon the sec ond. Th e ca pitalis ts^ 
 will not employ Tinlcss they can " make a profit " out of 
 those tlicy liirc to work for them ; that is, unless they pay 
 lUeiu less tliaiL the Aaluo of the work produced. But if 
 one man is to have value for which he has not wrjikcd, 
 another must have less than the value of his work ; and 
 while one class grows wealthy on unpaid labor, another 
 must remain poor, giving labor without retui-n. Socialism 
 would give to each return for labor done, but it recognises 
 no claim in the idle to grow fat on th e pro duce of the in- 
 dustrious. X" ~ ' 
 
 Interest on cajiital, paid to individuals, has — as is obvious 
 from the foregoing — no place in Socialism. Strongly aa 
 Socialism protests against the whole sj^stem of which land- 
 lords and capitalists form an integral part, it reserves its 
 uttermost reprobation for the theory which justifies a class
 
 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 1^ 
 
 of the latter in living solely on money drawn as interest on 
 investments. If a man possesses three or four thousand 
 pounds he can invest them, and live all his life long- on 
 the interest without ever doing a stroke of honest work, 
 and can then bequeath to some one else the right to live in 
 idleness ; and so on in perpetuity. Money in the capitalist 
 system is like the miraculous oil in the widow's cruse — it 
 can always be spent and never exhausted. A man in sixty 
 years will have received in interest at five per cent, three 
 times his original fortune, and although he may have spent 
 the interest, and thus have spent every penny of his for- 
 tune three times over, he will yet possess his fortune as 
 large as it was when he began. He has consumed in com- 
 modities three times the sum originally owned, and yet is 
 not one penny the worse. Other people have labored for 
 him, fed him, clothed him, housed him, and he has done 
 nothing in exchange. The Socialist argument against this 
 form of interest lies in a nutshell : a man earns £5 ; he 
 gives labor for which he receives in exchange a power of 
 possession over £o worth of commodities; he desires only 
 to consume £1 worth now, and to defer the consumption 
 of the remaining £4. He buys his £1 worth of commodi- 
 ties, and considers himself repaid for the fifth portion of 
 his work by possessing and consuming these. But he ex- 
 pects to put out his saved £4 at interest, and would con- 
 sider himself hardly used if, fourteen years hence, when he 
 desired to exercise his power of consumption, deferred for 
 his own convenience, that power had not increased although 
 he had done nothing to increase it. Yet it can only be in- 
 creased by other people's labor being left unpaid for, while 
 he is paid twice over for his ; and this arrangement the 
 Socialist stamps as unjust. So long as capital remains in 
 the hands of individuals, interest will be demanded by 
 them for its use, and will be perforce paid ; and so long 
 also will exist an idle class, which will consume without 
 producing, and will remain a burden on the industrious, 
 who must labor to support these as well as themselves, and 
 m.ust jDroduce suiRcient for all. 
 
 Now, Sociahsm aims at rendering impossil)le the exist- 
 ence of an idle class. No healthy adidt but will have to 
 work in exchange for the things he requires. For the 
 young, freedom from labor ; they have to prepare for life's 
 work. For the aged, freedom from labor : they have
 
 •20 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 worked, and at eventide should come rest. For the sick 
 also, freedom from labor ; and open hospitals for all, with- 
 out distinction of class, where tendance and all that skill 
 can do shall be at the service of each. But for the strong 
 and the mature, no bread of idleness, no sponging upon 
 •other people. With division of labor will come also divi- 
 sion of leisure ; the disappearance of the languid lady, full 
 of en7iui from sheer idleness, wiU entail the disappearance of 
 the overworked slavey, exhausted from unending toil ; and 
 there will be two healthy women performing necessary 
 work, and enjoying full leisure for study, for art, for 
 •recreation, where now are the over-lazy and the over- 
 driven. 
 
 In thus condemning the existence of an idle class. Social- 
 ism does not assail all the indi^dduals who now compose it. 
 These are not to blame for the social conditions into which 
 they have been born ; and it is one of the most hopeful 
 ■signs of the present Socialist movement, that many who 
 are working in it belong to the very classes which will be 
 abolished by the triumph of Socialist principles. The man 
 who has inherited a fortune, and has embraced Socialism, 
 would do no good by throwing it away and plunging into 
 the present competitive struggle ; all he can do is to live 
 simply, to utilise his position of advantage as a pedestal 
 on which to place his advocacy of Socialism, and to employ 
 his money in Socialist propaganda. 
 
 It is feared by some that the success of the Socialist 
 movement would bring about the cnishing of individualism 
 and an undue restriction of libert}'. But the Socialist 
 -contends that the present terrible struggle for existence is 
 the worst enemy of individualism, and that for the vast 
 majority individuality is a mere phrase. Exhausting toil 
 and ever-growing anxiety, these crush out individuality, 
 and turn the eager promising lad into the harassed drudge 
 of middle age. How many capable brains are wasted, 
 how many original geniuses lost to the nations they might 
 illuminate, \)j the strife for mere livelihood ? The artist 
 fritters away his genius in "pot-boilers"; the dramatist 
 writes down to the piece that will "paj^", and harnesses 
 -his delicate fancy into coarse burlesque full of wretched 
 witticisms ; in the stress of the struggle to live, patient 
 •study and straining after a great ideal become impossible. 
 Individualism will only develop fuU}' when Socialism has
 
 THE SOCIALIST MOVEJIEXT. 21 
 
 lifted off all shoulders the heavy hurden of care, and has- 
 given to all leisure to think and to endeavor. 
 
 Nor is the fear of undue restriction of liberty better 
 founded than that of the crushing out of individualism. 
 One kind of liberty, indeed, will be restricted — the liberty 
 to oppress and to enslave other people. But with this- 
 excej)tion liberty will be increased. Only the very wealthy 
 are now free. The great majority of people must work, 
 and their choice of work is very limited. The poor must 
 take what Avork they can get, and their complaint is not 
 that they are compelled to work, but that they often cannot 
 get work to do. In satisfying the comiDlex wants of the 
 civilised human being there is room for all the most diverse 
 capacities of work ; and if it be said that there are un- 
 pleasant kinds of work that must be done, which none 
 would willingly undertake, it may be answered that those 
 kinds of work have to be done now, and that the com- 
 pulsion of the community would not be a greater restriction. 
 of j)ersonal liberty than the present compulsion of hunger; 
 and further, that it would be easy to make a short period 
 of unpleasant toil balance a long period of pleasant ; and 
 that it would be far better to have such tasks divided 
 among a number, so that they would press very lightly upon 
 each, than have them, as now, pushed on to a compara- 
 tively few, whose whole lives are brutalised by the pressiu'e. 
 The very strictest organisation of labor by the community 
 that can be imagined, would be to the great majority far 
 less oppressive than the present system, for at the Avorst, 
 it would but control an extremely small portion of each 
 working day, and would leave the whole of the rest of the 
 existence free, to be used at the pleasure of the individual, 
 untrammelled by anxiety and harassing care for the mere 
 necessaries of life. The pride in skill, the stimulus of 
 honorable ambition, the pleasure of success, all these would 
 be present, as they are to-day ; but instead of being the 
 privilege of the few, they would brighten the life of all. 
 
 A profound moral impulse really vmderlies the whole 
 of the Socialist movement. It is a revolt against the 
 callous indifference of the majority in the "comfortable 
 classes" to the woful condition of large nimibers of the 
 ■workers. It is an outburst of unselfish brotherhood, 
 which cannot bear to sit at ease while others suffer, 
 which claims to share the common human lot, and to bear
 
 22 THE SOCIALIST IMOVEJIENT. 
 
 part of the burden now pressing with, crusliing weight on 
 the shoulders of the poor. It detests the theory that there 
 must alwa3^s be hewers of wood and drawers of water for 
 a luxurious class, and proclaims that human degradation 
 lies in idle living, not in earnest work. It would have 
 all work, that all may have leisure, and would so distribute 
 the necessary work of the world that none may be crushed 
 by it, but that all may be discipHned. And this very put- 
 bturst of human brotherhood is in itself a proof that society 
 is evolving Socialismwards, and that the evolution of 
 humanity is reaching a stage in which sympathy is tri- 
 umphing over selfishness, and the desire for equahty of 
 happiness is becoming a potent factor in human conduct. 
 The Socialist ideal is one which could not meet with wide 
 acceptance if humanity were not marching towards its 
 realisation. 
 
 On one matter the Socialist movement, both abroad and 
 at home, has set itself in opposition to science and to right 
 reason — e.g., on the law of population. It is easy to see 
 how this opposition has arisen, and it may be hoped that 
 when Socialists in general disentangle the scientific state- 
 ment of facts from Malthus' unwise applications of them, 
 Socialism and prudential restraint will be seen to be 
 indissolubly united. Malthus accurately pointed out that 
 population has a tendency to increase beyond the means 
 of subsistence ; that as it presses on the available means, 
 suffering is caused ; and that it is kept within them by 
 what he termed " positive checks " — i.e., a high death-rate, 
 especially among the children of the poor, premature death 
 from disease, underfeeding, etc. The accuracy of his state- 
 ment has been proved up to the hilt by Charles Darwin, 
 who describes with abundant illustrations the struggle for 
 existence — a struggle which is the direct result of the fact 
 stated in the law of population, of the tendency of all 
 animated things to increase beyond their food suj)ply ; this 
 has led, and stiU leads, to the survival of those who are 
 fittest for the conditions of the struggle. Unhaj^pily, Malthus 
 added to his scientific exposition some most unfortunate 
 practical advice ; he advised the poor not to marry until, 
 j)ractically, they had reached middle life. The poor felt, 
 with natural indignation, that in addition to all their other 
 deprivations they were summoned by Malthus to give up 
 the chief of the few pleasures left to them, to surrender
 
 THE SOCIALIST ilOYEMENT. 23 
 
 marriage, to live in joyless celibacy through the passion- 
 season of life, to crush out all the impulses of ■ love until 
 by long repression these would be practically destroyed. 
 Under such circumstances it is little wonder that ' ' Mal- 
 thusianism " became a word hated by the poor and 
 denounced by those who sympathised with them. It is 
 true that the advice of Malthus as to the putting off of 
 marriage has been and is very widely followed by the 
 middle classes ; but it is perfectly well known that the 
 putting oif of marriage does not with them mean the 
 observance of celibacy, and the shocking prostitution 
 which is the curse of every Christian city is the result of 
 the following of the advice of Malthus so far as marriage 
 is concerned. It is ob-vaous that Malthus ignored the 
 strength of the sexual instinct, and that the only possible 
 result of the wide accej)tance of his teaching would be 
 the increase of prostitution, an evil more terrible than 
 that of poverty. But the objection rightly raised to the 
 practical teaching of Malthus ought not to take the form of 
 assailing the perfectly impregnable law of population, nor 
 is it vahd against the teachings of Neo-Malthusians, who 
 advise early marriage and limitation of the famil}- within 
 the means of existence. 
 
 The acceptance of this doctrine is absolutely essential to 
 the success of Sociahsm. Under a system in which children 
 are forced to labor, they maj' begin to "keep them- 
 selves" at a very early age; but under a Socialist system, 
 where education will occupy chiklhood and youth, and 
 where old age is to be free from toil, it will soon be found 
 that the adult working members will not permit an un- 
 limited increase of the mouths which they have to fill. 
 Facilitate production as we may, it will always take more 
 hours to produce the necessaries of life for families of ten 
 or twelve than for families of three or four. The practi- 
 cal enforcement of the question will probably come from 
 the women ; highly educated women, full of interest in 
 public work and taking their share in public duty, wiU 
 not consent to spend year after year of their prime in 
 nothing but expecting babies, bearing babies, and suckling 
 babies. They wiU rebel against the constant infliction of 
 physical discomfort and pain, and will insist on the limita- 
 tion of the family as a condition of marriage. The sooner 
 this is recognised by Socialists the better, for at present
 
 24 THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. 
 
 they waste mucli strength, by attacking a doctrine which 
 they nmst sooner or later accept. 
 
 A glance backward over the history of our own countrj^ 
 since the Eeform Bill of 1832 oj)ened the gate of jDolitical 
 power to those outside the sacred circle of the aristocracy, 
 will tell how an unconscious movement towards Socialism 
 has been steadily gi-owing in strength. Our Factory. Acts, 
 our Mines Regulation Acts, our Education Acts, our Em- 
 ployers' Liability Acts, our Land Acts — all show the set 
 of the current. The idea of the State as an outside power 
 is fading, and the idea of the State as an organised com- 
 munity is coming into prominence. In the womb of time 
 the new organism is growing : shall the new birth come in 
 j)eace or in revolution, heralded by jiatient endeavor or by 
 roar of cannon ? Who can tell ? But this one thing I 
 know, that come it will, whether men work for it or 
 hinder ; for all the mighty, silent forces of evolution make 
 for Socialism, for the establishment of the Brotherhood of 
 Man.
 
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 The Fallacy of Saving 
 
 
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