CIALISM 
 
 AND 
 
 STRIKES 
 
 Reprint with New Introduction) 
 
 BY 
 
 J. BRUCE GLASIER 
 
 WITH NEW PORTRAIT 
 
 PRICE FOURPENGE 
 
 THE NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS, LIMITED, 
 30, BLACKFRIARS STREET, MANCHESTER 
 
 AND AT LONDON.
 
 DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OP MY COMRADE 
 AND FRIEND, 
 
 J. KEIR HARDIE, 
 
 WHOSE INSPIRED WISDOM AND FAITH, UN- 
 WEARYING TOIL, AND NOBLE COURAGE AND 
 PATIENCE, DID SO MUCH TO LEAD THE 
 WORKING CLASS FORTH OK THE RDAD TO- 
 SOCIALISM.
 
 & 
 
 ^
 
 J. BRUCE GLASIER
 
 1383688
 
 5 
 
 PEEFACE AND APOLOGIA. 
 
 THIS pamphlet was first published some twenty-five years ago, 
 under the title of " On Strikes "; it had a large circulation , but 
 has been for many years out of print, and I have been urged to 
 have it reprinted. 
 
 This I was at first reluctant to do, as I thought I should 
 have to revise and perhaps re-write a large portion of it in order 
 to bring the statement up to date with the changed circum- 
 stances of the industrial and political world. But on reading 
 over the pamphlet after twenty or more years, I am almost 
 startled to find how appropriate for the most part the paragraphs 
 remain to the present situation in the Trade Union and Socialist 
 Movements. Except for an occasional mode of expression and 
 a few topical references, I observe little in its pages that I 
 should change were I to write it afresh to-day. I am therefore 
 allowing the pamphlet to go forth almost exactly as it was 
 originally written, except that in one or two places I have 
 altered a phrase or substituted fresh references to wage figures 
 and passing events. 
 
 The stupendous events of the revolutionary upheavals in 
 Eussia and Central Europe, and the enormously augmented 
 power of mass-action now possessed by Trade Unions in our 
 own country, have not rendered obsolete the main pleas in the 
 pamphlet with respect to the present situation. Eather have 
 they served to demonstrate the wisdom and urgency more than 
 ever of the great political mission which the Socialist movement 
 -set forth to accomplish. That mission was avowedly to organise 
 the workers for political action, in order to bring not only the 
 claims of Labour, but all questions affecting the common well- 
 being, before the judgment of the whole people. 
 
 The extraordinary spectacle which, were it not so appall- 
 ingly serious and tragic, would be so grotesquely ludicrous, of 
 the workers penalising themselves and the poor everywhere by 
 directing virtually the six million-fold power of Labour to the 
 antediluvian device of seeking to overcome the power of 
 capitalism by an incessant effort to force up wages to meet 
 an incessant rise in prices, justifies the hope that a reaffirmation 
 of the arguments contained in the pamphlet may be of real 
 advantage at the present hour. 
 
 No one will, I hope, so misread the pamphlet as to sup- 
 pose that it countenances for a moment the notion that the
 
 6 
 
 workers should relinquish the strike as an industrial or even as 
 a political weapon. I cannot conceive of the workers ever sur- 
 rendering the right to collectively withhold their labour in 
 industrial bargaining or in certain political eventualities under 
 a Capitalist, and even under a Socialist regime. 
 
 What the sort of eventualities are that make justifiable the 
 recourse to strike action will always depend on the nature of the 
 principle at stake and the state of intelligence, discipline and 
 political capacity of the workers concerned. But in a country 
 possessing complete political freedom and especially where 
 the workers are in such numbers as to be able to make or 
 unmake Governments and laws the mass strike should be 
 used only as a last resource, when the will of the people is 
 being overborne by unconstitutional action on the part of the 
 Government by military or police intimidation, or by sectional 
 usurpation of public power. For the mass strike puts the whole 
 community, and chiefly the poor, under penalty, and only in 
 such extreme instances as I have suggested can the workers 
 fairly and in accord with the mutual obligations of human 
 society resort to what is virtually a form of civil war. 
 
 Let us not forget that revolutionism and mass-action, 
 strikes and dictatorships are old : many a thousand years older 
 than parliaments and the universal franchise. It was but 
 yesterday that women and the whole adult working class 
 obtained the vote : and as yet the half of them hardly have any 
 notion of the purpose and power of their new-found citizenship. 
 
 My argument, then, is frankly an appeal from the strike 
 to the ballot-box, from hunger and fear and terrorism of all 
 kind, to reason, to the true self-interest and the inherent good- 
 Avill of the community of the nation. For if there be not enough 
 reason and sense of common well-being and inherent goodwill 
 in the community to bring about Socialism, how can we hope 
 that there will be enough to keep Socialism going after it has 
 been established by terror and force? Terror and force do not 
 breed reason and goodwill. Nay, a Socialism established by 
 terror and intimidation would be no Socialism at all. 
 
 Political democracy has not failed : it has never yet been 
 really tried. War, rebellion, and all forms of terrorism, com- 
 pulsion, repression and punishment, these have been tried from 
 the beginning, and behold, the world we see ! 
 
 J. BRUCE GLASIER. 
 May, 1920.
 
 SOCIALISM AND STEIKES. 
 
 (A EEPRINT.) 
 
 I. 
 
 AMONG the many curious and, at first sight, inexplicable customs 
 of modern civilisation, that of industrial strikes seems one of 
 the most extraordinary. Even writing, as I do, in the heart 
 of a district where 75,000 men are in the seventh week of a 
 contest of this kind, I find difficulty in convincing myself that 
 such a thing as a strike, especially on a large scale, is a probable 
 or even possible occurrence. 
 
 It seems almost beyond belief tihat a method so irrational 
 and futile of determining questions of right dealing between 
 man and man should be resorted to by an intelligent, practical, 
 and, shall I say, religious community. 
 
 An actual fight with fists, swords, or guns, in which men 
 deal ponderable blows of some sort, one can understand it may 
 at least determine a question of might, if nqt of right; but a 
 contest between two parties as to which shall do nothing and, 
 maybe, eat nothing, longest, with a view to deciding a question 
 of either might or right, seems ridiculous beyond the reach of 
 words. 
 
 Nevertheless, strikes are not only a fact of our time, but 
 they 'are regarded by many people, especially amongst ,the 
 working class, as being quite as natural and inevitable 
 occurrences as thunderstorms, blizzards, earthquakes and other 
 physical disturbances that usually play havoc with human life 
 and property. And the more terrible their effects the more 
 the sufferings of women and children can be cited and the 
 patience of the men commended the more justifiable they are 
 esteemed. 
 
 Srtrikes are especially frequent in Christian countries, 
 although upon what particular passage of Scripture their 
 authorisation rests I am unable to say. They occur most 
 regularly in those districts where large and handsome churches 
 have been erected through the beneficence of rich employers of 
 labour and their devout daughters. Whenever you see a church 
 being built you may rest assured that there will be a strike in 

 
 8, 
 
 the neighbourhood before the copper weathercock is perched 
 upon the spire. New churches are decidedly unlucky in this 
 respect, and should always* be regarded with grave suspicion by 
 the working classes. It is significant that, whereas clergymen 
 in their prayers confidently communicate to the Almighty their 
 desire for the success of British troops in battles abroad, they 
 seldom venture a word of supplication on behalf of British 
 armies of Labour on strike at home. 
 
 Although no actual fighting usually takes place in the course 
 of a strike, the struggle is frequently as brutal in its intent and 
 as devastating in its effect as a military engagement. Most of 
 the vices and but few of the virtues that are supposed to be 
 attached to war on the field are exemplified. All the magnificent 
 exertion and adventure, and the heroic comradeship which 
 of ten time characterise campaigning on the field, are usually 
 absent; and weary, blunting idleness, and mean suspicion, 
 hatred, and deception are encouraged instead. Women and 
 children rather than the men themselves have to bear the 
 heaviest load of suffering ; and the harm to their bodies inflicted 
 by, it may be, months of continuous privation, and in the winter 
 time of torturing cold, is often such that almost as much wreck 
 and ruin is done to human life as would occur were a similar 
 number of men employed in a war of rival nations. 
 
 And, indeed, so far as strikes can be dignified by the name 
 of war, they are wars between rival nations not nations in the 
 sense of people belonging to different countries, but of people 
 having different interests, habits, and obligations the nation of 
 the rich and idle and the nation of the poor and industrious. 
 And, if you look at it closely, you will find that the cause of 
 strikes is precisely the same as the cause of wars. Usually 
 when one country seeks to invade another it does so with the 
 object of appropriating the land and riches of the other nation 
 and subjecting its people to some form of servitude. It is 
 precisely with this object that employers seek to reduce their 
 workmen's wages or oppose trade unions, thereby provoking the 
 workmen to strike. The employers by which term I wish to 
 include the land and capital-owning classes desire to obtain 
 more riches and idleness for themselves by appropriating a still 
 further portion of their workmen's wages or leisure. The work- 
 men endeavour to resist this, just as one nation resists invasion 
 by another; but, as I think we shall see later on, their method 
 of resistance is of very little effect, and even when they seem 
 to have gained a victory it is only for the moment, and at best
 
 9 
 
 they have only compelled the employers to be content with a 
 little less plunder than they otherwise would have secured. 
 
 In strikes as in wars, therefore, justice has no say in the 
 issue of the conflict might is right; victory is vindication. The 
 factory becomes a fortress in a state of siege. The workmen 
 wish to get into it to be employed under the terms of their union ; 
 the employer refuses to allow them save on his own terms, and 
 bribes other workmen blacklegs to occupy their vacated 
 posts, hoping that destitution will ere long compel the- 
 rebellious trade unionists to offer submission to his rule and 
 crave back employment on his conditions. The strikers- 
 endeavour to intercept the blacklegs from garrisoning the 
 employer's place, and also hope to compel him to surrender by 
 jeopardising his custom and destroying his profits. Whichever 
 side can hold out the longest wins. But, as I have said before, 
 although it has the semblance of a fight, it is little better than 
 a starvation contest, and chiefly interesting as an experiment in 
 physiological and economic endurance. By the rules of the 
 engagement neither side is supposed to touch the person or 
 property of the other. The workmen merely set themselves to 
 scare the employer into yielding through fear of incurring greater 
 loss by holding out than by giving in, while the employer 
 deliberately, and with the approval of his own and the public 
 conscience, prays Famine to do service for him, well knowing 
 that the men will stick out only so long as their ribs stick in. 
 It is all very droll and very ghastly. 
 
 Great, moreover, as are the number of workmen effected in 
 many instances, and momentous as may be the issues involved, 
 strikes are nevertheless usually deadly dull affairs. Nobody is 
 ever really enthusiastic about them, and although the news- 
 papers occasionally contain long accounts of the very great ones, 
 everybody forgets all about them as soon as they are settled 
 and never wish to be reminded of them again. You never see 
 boys poring over the pages of a Trades Union newspaper, and 
 no enterprising publisher has ever thought of issuing a popular 
 companion volume to "British Battles on Land and Sea," 
 entitled, " Strikes and Lock-outs from the Thames to the Tay." 
 
 People will rush in thousands to see a football match or a 
 couple of drunken men fight, but during even the greatest strikes 
 hardly a soul will think of wandering down to the scene of the 
 dispute unless a riot between the strikers and blacklegs is 
 expected. And here I may opportunely remark how much more
 
 10 
 
 valiantly workmen comport themselves towards poor starving 
 blacklegs than towards the fat and comfortable employers who 
 hire these unfortunate wretches. Scores of blacklegs have been 
 mauled in the course of strikes, but scarcely so much as one 
 , employer has had even his whiskers singed. 
 
 The reason of the indifference of the public towards strikes 
 is not far to seek. People know that a strike is an irrational and 
 foolish affair, and that there is no real go in it. They don't like 
 to see men knocking about hungry, with their women and 
 children starving at home, and they cannot be persuaded that 
 there is any right reason for such a proceeding. If the workmen, 
 not knowing better what to do, even said : " Our masters refuse 
 to pay us what we are entitled to, and unless we consent to be 
 robbed by them we must ^top work and begin to starve; let us 
 therefore seize our masters as we would any other sneak- 
 thieves and duck them in the river, and then let us go r to our 
 municipal councils, and if .they refuse to give us work, let us 
 <duck them too " then you would see the situation brightening 
 People would believe there was some earnestness in the matter, 
 and crowds of interested and, I venture to say, approving 
 spectators would flock to the scene. But for men to allege that 
 they are being swindled, and endeavour to show how deeply 
 they feel the injustice of it by going in for a few weeks' starva- 
 tion is in no wise an exhilarating event. And thus it is that 
 strikes, notwithstanding the tragedy and magnificence of resolu- 
 tion which is often attached to them, are reckoned about as 
 uninteresting as funerals. 
 
 We cannot dissociate the unreality of carrying on strikes 
 from the motive that urges men to declare them. Most com- 
 monly the professed object is to obtain ,a rise or resist a reduction 
 of wages. In other words, as I have already observed, the men 
 insinuate that their master is intent upon, or has already suc- 
 ceeded in, cheating them out of their due. But although the 
 fact of the case is usually as clear as day, it is perfectly evident 
 that in most instances the workmen are not quite sure about it, 
 and are not without a lurking suspicion that, after all, it may be 
 they themselves and not their master who are endeavouring 
 to do the cheating. For, did you ever know of a workman who 
 really believed he was being defrauded of money behaving as 
 workmen do when on strike? 
 
 I remember once observing the behaviour of a work- 
 man who really thought his master designed to cheat him.
 
 11 
 
 He was a moulder, and the dispute was all over the paltry 
 sum of twopence, which he held had been knavishly 
 deducted from his pay. In three minutes the pay-box was the 
 scene of what appeared to be an incipient riot. All the dynamic 
 expletives usually excluded from publication were exploding on 
 the premises. The cashier was brought down, then the manager, 
 and finally two policemen had to be summoned to give eclat to 
 the proceedings. It was a splendid scene. There stood the 
 little black moulder, the great streaks of sweat dripping down 
 upon his indigo shirt, and his clenched fist in ugly proximity 
 with the cashier's nose, threatening to bring it down as a pre- 
 liminary to calling in the entire forces of the Crown and Con- 
 stitution to vindicate his right should the twopence not be 
 restored to him on the spot ! 
 
 That, I say, is an example of real trenchant indignation 
 displayed by a single workman against what he firmly believed 
 Wias an attempt to defraud him of twopence. Fancy, then, what 
 ten thousand or a hundred thousand men, imbued with the 
 same private pluck and public spirit, would do if they all 
 conceived themselves to be robbed, not of a couple of coppers 
 once perhaps in a lifetime, but of so many shillings every week? 
 Multiply even that one man's unit of protestation against being 
 fleeced of twopence by the square of a hundred thousand men 
 why, it would shake the foundations of the empire and bring the 
 whole fabric of the State rattling down about our ears 1 
 
 And yet, when over 300,000 English miners were on strike 
 in 1893 for nearly five months, and although they were resist- 
 ing an attempt on the part of their employers to defraud each of 
 them of five shillings a week, not once did their demeanour give 
 occasion for political alarm, never once did they threaten the 
 stability of the social edifice. Indeed, the only incendiary or 
 insurrectionary incident that disturbed the Sabbath-peace of the 
 combatants was occasioned as usual by those who are paid and 
 appointed to preserve it. At Featherstone some soldiers, 
 mistaking, no doubt, a peaceful assembly of black-faced miners 
 for a tribe of Arabs or Hottentots, poured a volley of Lee-Metford 
 bullets into their midst. For months the newspapers recorded 
 with gruesome minuteness the heart-rending scenes of destitu- 
 tion among the miners' families. Subscriptions were raised for 
 them, philanthropists flecked to the front, and politicians as 
 is their wont on such occasions beat unobtrusively in the back- 
 ground. Towards the latter days of the dispute, when the
 
 12 
 
 weather became bitterly cold, hundreds of thousands of poor 
 people who were in no wise responsible for the strike endured 
 appalling misery from the coal famine. And this was, up to that 
 time, the greatest strike ever known in England ! In what 
 respect, save in increased magnitude of the numbers of the 
 strikers and in the wider infliction of suffering upon the com- 
 munity generally, with perhaps a compensating shortening of 
 the duration of the struggle, have our more recent strikes differed 
 from it? 
 
 Three hundred thousand English workmen twice the 
 number of the military forces of the empire, and four times as 
 many as won the battle of Waterloo believing themselves to be 
 mercilessly fleeced by a few hundred employers, volunteered to 
 starve themselves and their families and involve thousands of 
 their fellow-men in their misfortunes, accept charity, and peace- 
 fully comport themselves, until such time as their immortal 
 souls gave out or their masters discovered that it was no longer 
 profitable to insist upon the additional rate of plunder. 
 
 It was not war. It was culpable, incomprehensible fatuity. 
 Why, our solitary moulder, of whom I have just spoken, made 
 more forcible protest over his trumpery twopence than did these 
 well nigh half a million men over what presumably was to be a 
 permanent purloining of five shillings a week off every man of 
 
 (them. No wonder we are termed a law-abiding people ! But, 
 please observe that the law is robbers' law, and we, the people 
 who abide by it, have been described by Carlyle as mostly fools. 
 
 Extraordinary as is the conduct of workmen during a strike, 
 it is eclipsed by their conduct afterwards. I have already 
 rioted the peculiar circumstance that whenever you see a hand- 
 some church in the course of erection you can foretell that 
 there will be a strike in the neighbourhood before many months 
 are gone. Similarly, wherever a strike has taken place, you 
 may be morally certain that the employer of labour who has 
 proposed the hardest terms and has in all ways made himself 
 most obnoxious to his workmen, will be elected Member of 
 Parliament for the locality on the very first vacancy. I have 
 i gone elaborately into the statistics bearing on this point, and so 
 remarkable are the coincidences of the two events that I have 
 been forced to the conclusion that politicians deliberately reckon 
 upon the fact, and arrange that whenever an employer wishes 
 to get into Parliament he shall first win the esteem of the
 
 13 
 
 electorate by a vigorous course of wage reductions and lock- 
 outs. No matter how infuriated against their master workmen 
 may be during a strike, a few months after it is over the 
 majority of them appear to acquire quite an affection for him ; 
 and the more soundly they have been beaten, the more ardent 
 becomes their attachment ! 
 
 Turning meanwhile from the absurdity of the modes of 
 strikes, and the manners of those who engage in them, let us 
 look sharply for a moment into the ostensible purpose which 
 they are designed to accomplish. 
 
 That strikes in nowise determine the right or wrong of the 
 claims of the workers is evident not only from the circumstance 
 that usually the lowest paid and most severely wrought trades 
 have generally been the least successful, but from the far more 
 important consideration that there exists, and can exist no 
 means of deciding, under the present competitive commercial 
 conditions, what is and what is not a fair wage. Even when 
 the matter in dispute is brought to the test of the market value 
 of the products, and when the profits of the capitalists have 
 been reduced to the lowest percentage, we havs not reached 
 any standard of value which will bear scrutiny. The market 
 value of an article which has perhaps cost a great deal of 
 labour may be very low, whereas that which has cost little or 
 no labour may be very high. Goods are sometimes sold under 
 the actual cost paid in wages for them, while at any other time 
 they may be sold for ten, twenty, or thirty times their wage 
 cost. A fisherman, for example, after bringing in a boatload 
 of fish which has cost him a couple of days' labour in netting 
 and hauling, may find that there is no demand whatever for 
 his cargo, and may have to throw it away on the beach. A 
 week later he brings in another load, and so great is the demand 
 for his catch that he may sell it at double the price he had 
 thought of asking for it. Of course, the irregularity in the 
 quantity of fish produced is the chief cause of this great 
 fluctuation in the price ; but even were a fixed quantity of fish 
 obtained every day from the sea, the competition of the buyers 
 in the market would vary in intensity, and the wages of the 
 fisherman would rise and fall in consequence. 
 
 The quantity of coal produced in this country does not, 
 and certainly need not fluctuate much, yet the selling price 
 and the wages paid to the miners fluctuate a great deal. For
 
 14 
 
 example,* in the year 1890 the coal produced in Great Britain 
 amounted to almost the same figure as in 1892 181,614,288 
 tons as against 181,786,871 tons yet the selling price at the 
 pit heads fell from 74,953,997 in 1890 to 66,050,451 in 1892, 
 a difference of nearly 9 per cent. Again, during the period 
 1870-1874 there was an annual average export of 911,000 tons 
 of railroad iron, and during the period 1885-1889 very nearly 
 the same amount, viz., 915,000 tons. Yet from the former 
 period to the latter, the price of the total had fallen from 
 9,420,000 to only 4,440,000. I am not here entering into 
 the causes of the variation in the prices of products. I am 
 merely noting the fact that they do vary even when the supply 
 is approximately the same in quantity, and that consequently 
 the selling price of commodities affords no equitable standard 
 to which to appeal the question of wages. Even were masters 
 content always to exact a uniform percentage of interest and 
 profit, however low, workmen would find that the instability 
 under competition of the market value of products would 
 upon appeal justify frequent and considerable alterations in 
 their wages. Nevertheless it is actually by this unstable and 
 totally blind tribunal that masters in most instances profess 
 to regulate the rates of wages ; and it is by that, in the majority 
 of instances, the success or failure of a strike is determined. 
 
 Of course, if the workers are sufficiently organised and 
 determined they may, by prolonging a strike, occasionally 
 succeed in compelling a rise of prices in the market, and thus 
 make good for the moment their claim for an increase, or 
 against a reduction, of pay. But this can only happen when 
 the demand for the product is persistent, and when the market 
 cannot be supplied from other districts or countries. Such 
 favourable conditions are, however, of infrequent occurrence. 
 There are few articles of urgent and imperative need to the 
 community, or any section of it, which are produced only in 
 one locality, or in any one manufacturing area likely to be 
 affected by a strike. Most of the primary and indispensable 
 articles of consumption or use can be obtained in an emergency 
 from widely separate districts or countries; and it rarely or 
 never happens that in all these places there is any sharply 
 simultaneous, defensive, or offensive action by the workers. 
 
 * Compare in this connection the dispute going on in Parliament even at this 
 moment, between the miners and the Government, as to the necessity of a 14s. 
 increase in the selling price of a ton of coal.
 
 15 
 
 II. 
 
 BUT if, on the one hand, the action of workmen in resorting to 
 strikes is neither an accurate means of ascertaining what are 
 fair wages, nor yet an effective means of securing them, neither 
 on the other hand do the pleas usually put forward by 
 employers, when resisting any increase, or insisting upon a 
 reduction of wages, afford a truthful or sufficient justification 
 of their conduct. These pleas may be summarised in the 
 phrases, "Bad Trade," "Foreign Competition," "Low 
 Prices," and " Diminished Profits." 
 
 Now, it is evident on the. least thought about it that, 
 even were the assertions true, as they often are not, workmen 
 cannot be responsible for any of the circumstances implied in 
 them. 
 
 It is not the working class, but the capitalist class that 
 undertakes the organisation of industry and the control of the 
 market for profitmaking. This is no accusative statement. 
 It is the claim boastfully and triumphantly made on behalf 
 of employers and capitalists generally, by themselves and their 
 political apologists. And surely no more discreditable 
 admission of their personal incompetence, or the unservice- 
 ableness of their functions could be desired, than this of their 
 cwn, that they are unable to conduct the production and 
 exchange of the country, with even such bare efficiency as 
 will allow of their paying the paltry wages demanded by their 
 workers, or of their obtaining for themselves the no more than 
 petty profits which they allege their businesses afford. What 
 object can there be in producing commodities at all, if neither 
 those who make them, nor those who Organise those who make 
 them, nor those even who sell them, can get a " living wage " 
 out of the undertaking? 
 
 And if neither the workers can get wages, nor the 
 employers profit, to whom does the enormous sum of our 
 industrial profits go a sum admittedly sufficient, even with 
 our present recklessly wasteful methods of production, to richly 
 . supply all our material needs as a nation, and of which at 
 present the workers, some four-fifths of the nation, only obtain 
 one-third? Who are the clever knaves, and how do they get 
 their greedy fingers in. who contrive so successfully to deplete 
 the workers of the reward of their labour, and the astute
 
 16 
 
 employers of their tender percentages? And why don't the 
 employers, the " captains of industry," the " statesmen of 
 commerce," as they have, with prodigious flattery, been desig- 
 nated, seize hold of these wicked thieves and have them 
 publicly arraigned for their crimes? Truly, if matters stand 
 as said "captains" and "statesmen" protest upon all 
 occasions of dispute with their workmen, they must either be 
 imbeciles, and fit only to be confined in lunatic asylums, or 
 themselves be the knaves, or the abettors of the knaves, in 
 which case they should be stripped of their "captains' ' 
 uniforms, and deprived of their " statesmen's" seals, and 
 sent to the places which they have prepared for their less 
 dangerous, but more unfortunate professional brethren. 
 
 And if we inquire we shall find that our worst suspicions 
 of the capitalists are confirmed at every turn. Their every- 
 day actions, their mode of life, their places of abode, the 
 company which they keep, and even their antecedents, all 
 track them down as men of evil principles and unrighteous 
 deeds. 
 
 Never a week passes but we find a list of wills in the news- 
 papers in which fortunes of from 30,000 to 300,000, and 
 occasionally 3,000,000, have been left by well-known or obscure 
 capitalists, who have gone down into the pit, protesting with 
 almost their last breath that their businesses did not pay, and 
 that the workers must submit to a reduction of wages. Never 
 a week passes but we read that some coalowner, ironmaster, 
 manufacturer, shipowner, or railway shareholder, who has 
 made himself notorious by resisting the demands of his work- 
 people, is about to build a new yacht, or a larger palace, pur- 
 chase an additional shooting, or go away upon another 
 prolonged tour in some interesting part of the world. 
 
 Again, too, in the reports of their financial successes 
 published in the commercial columns of our newspapers, we 
 discover that however the profits of capitalists may shrink 
 when held up to the gaze of the workers, they assume 
 astounding proportions when laid for inspection before financial 
 investors. When the Messrs. Coates, of Paisley, first con- 
 verted their Thread Mills into a Limited Liability concern in 
 1898, they affirmed that they had been making an average 
 annual profit of 480,000, and that they employed about 6,000 
 workpeople. That is to say, according to their own audited 
 declaration, the firm was making a profit of not less than 78
 
 17 
 
 a year, or 30s. a week off every one of the men, women and girls 
 in its employment. 
 
 Hardly less astounding were the figures given by a firm 
 cf Tube manufacturers in the neighbourhood of Glasgow about 
 the same time, in a prospectus issued for a similar purpose. 
 By its own confession the firm was making a profit of more 
 than 1 for itself, against every 1 paid out in wages to its 
 workmen. Many colliery companies also admit making profits 
 as high as from 15 to 35 per cent, on their nominal capital.* 
 
 It may be demurred that instances of this kind are excep- 
 tional, and that the great majority of employers obtain but 
 meagre dividends upon their investments, not a few indeed 
 failing to obtain any return at all. 
 
 But the objection only serves to exhibit more clearly the 
 purely predatory character of our commercial system. 
 Capitalists are not only purchasers of their workmen's labour, 
 but sellers afterwards of what they have purchased. As buyers 
 of labour they endeavour to get as much of it as possible, at 
 the lowest cost in wages. As sellers to other capitalists, 
 middlemen, agents, or consumers, they endeavour to give as 
 little, and get as much in return as they possibly can. In 
 this process of exchange between employers, middlemen, and 
 consumers, it inevitably happens that one or other of them 
 drives the most successful bargain. If the employer happens 
 to be an incapable merchant of the goods which he has pos- 
 sessed himself of by his workmen's labour, he may have to 
 sell at a price that allows him little or no profit on the 
 transaction, in which case the purchaser, usually a middleman 
 or broker of some description, pockets as extra gain what the 
 employer has unwittingly let slip through his fingers. Thus, 
 if I may present the matter in a familiar and perfectly accurate 
 manner, the employer who has stolen so much value from his 
 workmen fails, when disposing of it to the reseller, to get even 
 a fair thieves' price for it. He is, however, none the less a 
 knave, though he may be the greater fool that he has allowed 
 another rascal to niggle him of his booty. 
 
 After-war figures make these statistics of profiteering read quite tamely. 
 Since these paragraphs were written Messrs. Coates have declared a profit of 
 over 19,000,000 for the five years of the war and topped this with a bonus of 
 7.300.000 capital to the shareholders from the reserve fund, in connection with 
 a scheme which increased the company's capital from 10,000,000 to 20.000,000. 
 The coal mines in the same period showed over 188,000.000 final net profits and 
 interest accruing to coal owners, after deducting the Coal Controller's Levy and the 
 Excess Profits Duty! The total capital sunk in the mines is about 135,000,000.
 
 18 
 
 Perhaps, however, there may be workers who still cling 
 to the peculiar notion that the capitalists and landlords, wno 
 between them make up our employing classes to-day, do some 
 really useful work, and that without them it would be impos- 
 sible for industry to be carried on. Do they not, it may be 
 asked, supply the capital, pay us our wages, and direct our 
 labour wisely ? 
 
 No! Employers do not supply workmen with either the 
 capital they use, nor their wages, nor do they direct their 
 labour wisely. 
 
 The landlords and capitalists simply hold possession of the 
 land, which no one can claim to have produced, and the capital, 
 which the labour and skill of the workmen have produced, and 
 only allow the latter the further use of the land and capital 
 on condition that tbey hand up to their employers all that they 
 make, and are content to go on working for the small share 
 they receive back in the form of wages. All the capital, viz., 
 all the workshops, factories, machinery, railways, etc., which 
 the capitalist class own, and .all the houses, food, clothing, and 
 everything else which workmen purchase with their wages, 
 have been produced by the labour and skill of the workers of 
 this and past generations. The capitalist class have obtained 
 all the capital, which they now use to compel the workers to 
 serve them, by the very same means as they now increase 
 their store of it, that is, by unjust exchange, by paying the 
 workers less in wages than the workers produce by their labour 
 
 Moreover, they do not direct the workers' labour wisely. 
 It must surely be admitted that there are only two questions 
 with which a wise director of labour would trouble himself. 
 He would first find out what the people needed, and secondly 
 see to it that the workers who under him laboured to produce 
 what W'as needed, had themselves their full life needs supplied 
 with all that that implies in comfort at their work, and the 
 opportunity of leisure and pleasure outside of it and that none 
 of their labour force was wasted. Instead of this, to-day, the 
 employers are exercising all their skill, their cunning, and, if 
 you will, their anxiety and labour, in endeavouring to sell at a 
 profit. That is, they will, firstly,, only allow their land and 
 capital to be used for the production of goods which other people 
 have money to buy, and as the workers have little and the 
 rich much, they prate of gluts in the market, and no work
 
 19 
 
 needing to be done, when the poor all around them are half -fed, 
 half -clothed and half-sheltered. And secondly, whatever of 
 time or diligence they do give to business is spent in fighting 
 the other employers who desire to supply this cash demand, 
 in obtaining orders for themselves which other employers would 
 fain have secured. 
 
 Employers, therefore, do not assist in the production of 
 wealth, they only manage or mismanage it with a view to getting 
 as much for themselves, and as little for anybody else, as 
 possible. Let me ask you, how, if the services of the capitalist 
 class in any way add to the value of the products of labour, 
 as all useful service must do, how is it that the reward of their 
 service should be determined almost entirely by their cunning 
 and craft in deceiving and over-reaching their neighbours? 
 Why should they sometimes, almost without pretence of exer- 
 tion at all, make large fortunes, and at other times, even with 
 the utmost care and striving, fall out penniless? There are 
 only two tenable suppositions. The one is that their services 
 are dispensable and are, therefore, entitled to no due, constant, 
 or ad valorem reward, in which case, whatever recompense 
 capitalists obtain, is mere booty or spoliation gained by their 
 preying upon the necessity or ignorance of those with whom 
 they deal. The other is, that their services are indispensable 
 and add to the value of the products of labour; in which case 
 if they fail to obtain a due, constant, and ad valorem reward, 
 as many, especially of the most active and just dealing, do 
 fail, their failure must be the result of their being deprived 
 of the value of their services unjustly by others of their own 
 class. I say of their own class because the wages of workmen 
 usually run at the same rate under employers who are unsuccess- 
 ful, as under employers who are successful, and similarly, the 
 prices paid by consumers are usually the same, irrespective of 
 whether the goods have come from a firm that has made a profit 
 or a loss in selling them. Whichever, therefore, of the two 
 assumptions we proceed upon, we are forced to the conclusion 
 that the existing capitalist-competitive system of production 
 and exchange is fraught with grave injustice, and that as the 
 employing classes cannot claim either to have furnished the 
 workers with their capital or their wages., or to be directing 
 their labour wisely, the whole system of then* profit-making is 
 based upon systematic theft.
 
 20 
 
 III, 
 
 BUT while admitting the general effectiveness of strikes, and the 
 dispensableness of the Capitalist classes, it may nevertheless 
 be still urged that there is no prospect of the workers being 
 released from the necessity of their position in the present or, 
 maybe, for many generations to come, and that there is nothing 
 for them but to make the best of it. They have to depend upon 
 wages for their livelihood, and it is only by trade union organisa- 
 tion, and by resorting to strikes in extremities that they have 
 improved their conditions in the past, and can hope to retain 
 that improvement or to secure any further advance in the 
 immediate future. Besides, it may be further urged, may not 
 Trade Unions become stronger and accomplish more for the 
 workers than they have yet done? 
 
 To take the last question first : What hope, think you, is 
 there of Trade Unions becoming more powerful or more 
 efficacious in the future ? Already many of the trades have been 
 as highly organised and equipped as they are ever likely to be, 
 and they have had seasons of opportunity that will never recur 
 again. Take the Lancashire Cotton Spinners, the Boilermakers' 
 Society, the Amalgamated Engineers, and the Durham and 
 Northumberland Miners' Association. These are large, rich, 
 and imposing unions. They are, or have been, splendidly 
 organised, and have had all the power to yea or nay the terms of 
 their employers that mere Trade Unions ever will have. Yet 
 the members of those unions are still wage slaves, can still be 
 thrust out of their jobs the moment their employers choose; 
 their wages are still but little above the starvation rate paid to 
 unorganised workmen, and their toil is as hard as it ever has 
 been, even if their hours of labour be somewhat less than 
 formerly. They cannot make bad trade good, they cannot, and 
 would not dare if they could, prevent the introduction of wage- 
 saving machinery ; and even if it came to it they could not pre- 
 vent their employers shutting their doors in their face never to 
 open them again. 
 
 It may, however, be urged that although separate Trade 
 Unions have failed, it is possible to form a national, and perhaps 
 international, federation of Trade Unions, in the event of which 
 the workers would have power to do as they chose. But do 
 what? Merely regulate the conditions of employment? That 
 would be a mountain in labour to bring forth a mouse, with a
 
 21 
 
 vengeance ! But the proposition that a national, not to speak 
 of an international, combination of the workers could be accom- 
 plished is untenable. It is -almost inconceivable that all the 
 workers in employment in every trade could be enrolled, and it 
 certainly is inconceivable that these, even if enrolled, could 
 support and carry with them all the unemployed, for whom 
 there is no work now and never will be so long as the industries 
 of the country are in the possession and worked for the profit of 
 the Capitalist class. The further supposition that it is possible 
 to combine all the workers of the world under existing national 
 and economic conditions will not bear a moment's thought. 
 
 And about the masters. Already they are combining 
 nationally and internationally, far faster than the workers can 
 do or have any hope of doing. Suppose, if you will, that all the 
 workers of this country were embraced in one vast federation of 
 Trade Unions to-morrow, and all the capitalists were combined 
 against them what then ? Truly the position would be as hope- 
 less for the workers as it is in any instance to-day where it 
 happens that all the men in one workshop go out on strike 
 against one employer. If the workers were not resolved to take 
 possession of the factories and the food supply ; if they claimed 
 only to be employed on better terms, then the masters would 
 starve them out, or rather in, by the end of the first week. 
 
 If! But that " if " would never be. For did all the 
 workers by any possibility ever come out on strike, and they 
 realised what had really happened, they never would go back 
 again to work for employers. The gigantic folly of such a, 
 course would appal them. All the trappings of privilege with 
 which their superstition had invested their masters would 
 instantly disappear. They would perceive that without their 
 labour the richest idlers in the land would have to betake them- 
 selves out of the country, or become wretched vagabonds, 
 grubbing scraps of offal from the streets, and that while the 
 capitalists could not do without them, they could do admirably 
 without the capitalists. 
 
 And it is precisely that fact which we as Socialists wish the 
 workers to see now. We wish them to realise beforehand what 
 would happen even if the workers and their masters were pitted 
 against each other in one final nation-wide Trade Union conflict. 
 Surely there is no workman but can form the picture in his 
 mind's eye, and thus perceive that there would be only two 
 alternatives before the workers in that improbable event. If 
 they did no more than merely cease work they would speedily
 
 22 
 
 be in extremest destitution, while the richer capitalists might 
 at a pinch get over to some foreign land, and there live comfort- 
 ably till the workers begged them to come back and give them 
 employment again ! That the workers would be so insane as to 
 starve themselves into submission in that manner is beyond 
 belief. They would assuredly seize possession of the means of 
 production and exchange, and never again allow their rich 
 exploiters to touch a particle of their produce. In other words, 
 they would cease to be mere strikers and become insurrection- 
 ists; they would no longer be Trade Unionists willing to work 
 for wages, but Socialists determined to work co-operatively for 
 the commonweal. And if that would be the upshot of a universal 
 strike, could the same end not be achieved much better and 
 more quickly without the disorganisation and disorder of a strike 
 at all? And cannot the workmen living to-day, to whom the 
 probability of there ever being a unanimous and simultaneous 
 cessation of work must seem remote indeed, begin to act now? 
 
 While approving in the main what has been said, there are 
 many who will exclaim: " But have strikes done no good? 
 What would be the use of Trade Union combination at all unless 
 strikes were resorted to on critical occasions? and, Have not 
 Trade Unions raised wages and benefited the workers generally? 
 Look at those industries in which there have been no Trade 
 Unions and no strikes ; compare the status of the disorganised 
 with that of the organised workers! " 
 
 I am far from saying that nothing has been or that nothing 
 can be done by strikes. Strikes have slightly increased wages, 
 slightly reduced the hours, and slightly improved the general 
 condition of the toilers, and may continue to do so in the future, 
 but almost certainly to a lesser extent than formerly. Without 
 the Trade Unions the workers would be a mere rabble of broken - 
 spirited and utterly degraded helots, and there would be little 
 hope of their redemption. But what I wish to make very clear 
 and convincing is, that by no strikes in the past have the 
 workers dealt any effective blow at the system that persistently 
 crushes them down ; and that by no striking merely for wages 
 or reduced hours can they in the future emancipate themselves. 
 
 If the workers do not wish to emancipate themselves, if 
 they are content to remain mere raw material for the rent- 
 grinding and profit-extracting processes of the rich, then strikes 
 may perhaps compel their masters to adopt more refined 
 methods of treatment; but if they wish to be no longer mere 
 clay for the extraction of gold, but living men, rejoicing in the
 
 aa 
 
 freedom of their lives and the fruits of their labour; then they 
 must strike with their supremest strength, so as to splinter into 
 fragments and dust the whole mechanism of the system that 
 makes fragments and dust of themselves. 
 
 In the past the workers were ignorant, without combina- 
 tion, without political .power. Trade Unions did almost magical 
 work in giving them solidarity, strength, and political effective- 
 ness. But they did not know they could not know, for they 
 were ignorant nay, not they alone, but their masters also were 
 ignorant, of the meaning of the struggle in which they found 
 themselves involved. The Church had poured the poison cf 
 " original sin " and God's decrees into their minds, and they 
 believed that everything was as it must be and only could be. 
 All, therefore, that the Trade Unions hoped to be able to do was 
 to lessen, if possible, the brutality of the power of the masters; 
 and wherever Trade Unions have had a fair chance 'they have 
 succeeded in their object. But to-day, the knowledge of the 
 meaning of riches and poverty; the knowledge of the causes of 
 the enslavement of the workers and the iniquity of the idleness 
 and extravagance of the rich ; the knowledge of the possibility 
 of a new and nobler social and industrial life, has burst upon us 
 with all the brightness and vivifying power of the summer sun ; 
 and are we now going to shut our eyes to the light, and grope 
 about blindly in torment and fear as we did when in darkness? 
 Shall we not rather see the error of our ways, the insufficiency 
 of our deeds, and let our hearts, our thoughts, and our hands 
 respond swiftly to the revelation that has come upon* us? 
 
 When there were no highways in the land, travellers could 
 not help losing their way sometimes, and even their lives. But 
 what would you say of even the poor tramp who nowadays would 
 refuse to see or avail himself of the great broad public paths, and 
 preferred to wander up and down and round and round about in 
 woods, bogs, and ditches, always coming back to the same place 
 bruised, torn, and dripping with mud, under the impression that 
 he was making great tracks ahead? What would you say of the 
 man who would refuse to read books or newspapers, use the 
 post-office or the steamboats or trains, who knew nothing about 
 anything that was going on in the world except what he heard 
 people talk of, and never went to see his sweetheart fifty miles 
 up in the country, except when he had a week's holiday and 
 could walk there? It is precisely the same with workmen who 
 go out in the old-fashioned way on strike when they are a little 
 more hard pressed than usual, and return to work when their
 
 24 
 
 bellies get empty, and never think of using the knowledge con- 
 cerning their position and the political power of getting out of it, 
 which is available at every hand. That workmen, until they 
 have effectively used their knowledge and power, must still hold 
 fast to their Trade Unions and come out as often, and stay out 
 as long as possible, is of course obvious, just as it is obvious 
 that where there is no highway across the country travellers 
 must still find a path through woods and bogs and streams, and 
 just as people must still accept information by word of mouth 
 when they cannot get it otherwise, and tramp long distances 
 on foot when they cannot obtain or pay for a train, or a steam- 
 boat, or a bicycle. 
 
 It is not the going out on strike when expedient that I am 
 objecting to. It is to the fact that going out on strike should 
 be expedient at all at this time of day ; and that workmen, who 
 ought to perceive the hopelessness of that means of progress, 
 do absolutely nothing towards the plain, effective method of 
 abolishing the conditions that render such a makeshift 
 necessary. 
 
 Nor, surely, need I say that if strikes are wretched 
 expedients, conciliation boards, sliding scales, and arbitrations 
 are unspeakably worse. Folly, surely, could hardly go further 
 than these. It is bad enough that workmen, because of their 
 apathy and superstition, should have to submit to be robbed by 
 the rich; but that they should form a joint tribunal, or make 
 an agreeable arrangement with those who rob them, whereby 
 the rate of'robbery shall be mutually agreed upon, so that the 
 rich shall be surer of their plunder and obtain it as pleasantly 
 as possible, is a proposition that passes right out of the range 
 of all rational contemplation. Let the rich, if they will, take 
 like freebooters of old what they can, so long as they have the 
 power, but make their taking as arduous and uncertain as 
 possible. The easier and more agreeable their nefarious calling 
 is made, the more tenaciously will they cling to it, and the more 
 leisure they and their political hirelings will have to devote 
 themselves to the recreation of obstructing the progress and 
 corrupting the cause of the workers. The notion that although 
 a man may give his master a day's labour of equal quantity and 
 quality from week to week, yet the master may pay him a price 
 that varies from week to week, may be admirably in accordance 
 with the instincts of commerce, but hardly with those of good 
 feeling and fair dealing. When a miner hews and draws three 
 tons of coal to-day, he performs what is, presumably, a needful
 
 25 
 
 service to the community; if not, it is hardly his fault. When 
 he does so three months hence his labour is presumably equally 
 needful. And if his labour is equally needful then as now, why 
 should he be paid a lower rate for it ? No reason at all, save that 
 his labour goes into a thieves' market. Certain it is that how- 
 ever the labour of a workman may vary from time to time Jn 
 selling value, his own and his family's need for adequate 
 sustenance and healthful conditions remains sufficiently 
 constant and imperative. 
 
 Moreover, what has been said against strikes as a means of 
 permanently uplifting the conditions of the working class 
 applies with equal force against all remedial and palliative 
 measures that do not make for the extinction of the present 
 I system of competitive capitalistic production. So long as the 
 land and all the chief means of production are withheld from 
 the workers, there is no hope either of any substantial or 
 permanent improvement in the wages of the workers as a whole, 
 or of any considerable section of them. For the only thing that 
 a workman possesses, by which he can obtain the means of 
 living, is his labour. Having no land and no material to labour 
 upon, and no factories or machinery to assist him in his labour, 
 and no means at his disposal for exchanging what he may 
 produce by his labour, he is forced to sell his labour to those who 
 possess these things, and who will only buy his labour at the 
 lowest figure for which it can be had in the market. His labour, 
 therefore, is merely a commodity that is, a thing like cotton, 
 iron, or bacon, the price of which to-day depends upon supply 
 and demand. If there is much labour or much bacon wanted, 
 and little to be had, the price goes up; if contrariwise, there is 
 little demand for it and much to be had, the price goes down. 
 It will thus be seen that the question of how far wages are likely 
 to rise or fall in the market is very similar to that of how far the 
 price of bacon is likely to rise or fall. If, therefore, we wish to 
 ascertain what prospects there are of the workers being able to 
 improve their position, either by strikes or any other expedient 
 that still leaves them at the mercy of the market, we have 
 simply to put the two following questions to ourselves : 
 
 Is there any likelihood of the demand for labour increasing 
 relative to the quantity of production? 
 
 Is there any likelihood of the supply of labour diminishing 
 again relative to the quantity of production ? 
 
 To both of these questions a negative answer must be given 
 ven in face of the great shortages temporarily produced by the
 
 26 
 
 war unless, as I have already said, some direct legislative 
 interference with competition and existing property rights takes 
 place. Only a few of the reasons which justify this reply can be 
 stated here, and necessarily very briefly. With respect to the 
 first statement that the demand for labour is not likely to 
 increase, the following facts, which are persistent, may be 
 cited : 
 
 1. The increasing use of machinery and improved 
 processes of manufacture which enable manufacturers to 
 dispense with the labour, especially of the skilled labour, 
 of workmen. 
 
 2. The sub-division of the various branches of work- 
 manship which likewise enables employers who manufacture 
 on a large scale to do with less workmen, and here again 
 especially of the skilled artisan class. Complementary to 
 this may be included the extension of technical education, 
 which by increasing the general efficiency of workmen's 
 labour lessens the number of workmen required. 
 
 3. The loss of our foreign markets. Every day that 
 passes brings other lands nearer an equality with our own 
 in productive capacity. At one time Britain manu- 
 factured so largely for foreign lands that it gained the 
 appellation of the " workshop of the world." But now 
 the world is fast becoming its own workshop; and the 
 colonies and foreign nations are not only beginning to 
 manufacture most things for themselves, but to compete 
 with us in our own and other markets. Hopes have been 
 entertained that there may at least be a temporary 
 increase in production owing to the opening up of new 
 markets in Africa and other " virgin " lands. The pros- 
 pects of this occurring are, however, diminishing daily ; 
 and even if it did occur it would be of small importance to 
 the wage-earners. 
 
 4. The 'formation of trusts, syndicates, and other 
 combinations amongst capitalists, and co operative stores 
 amongst working people, by means of which the waste of 
 goods and labour of every description involved in 
 competition is largely diminished, and thus also the need 
 for workmen. 
 
 The second statement : That there is little likelihood of the 
 supply of Labour diminishing, is confirmed by the following 
 and many other circumstances :
 
 27 
 
 1. The rapid increase of the population, especially of 
 the wage-earning class, which no probable current of 
 emigration, or the adoption of artificial or prudential 
 restriction of the birth-rate, is likely to materially lessen. 
 With reference to the former, it may be noted that the 
 advantage of starting in new lands is becoming less every 
 day, and that the influx of immigrants from other countries 
 into Britain is about as likely to augment the number of 
 impoverished workers as the efflux of better-class artisans 
 is to diminish it. Concerning the restriction of the birth- 
 rate, it need only be observed that in France, where the 
 population does not increase at all, poverty is almost as 
 accentuated as at home. 
 
 2. The drifting of the rural population into the towns 
 and manufacturing districts, a direct result of the present 
 
 system of land monopoly. 
 
 3. The increasing opportunity for the employment of 
 women and child labour through the introduction of 
 machinery, new processes and sub -division of branches of 
 manufacture, by which the need of strong and specially 
 trained workmen is done away with. 
 
 4. The probable success of temperance legislation, 
 which, if the hopes of its promoters are realised, will 
 greatly increase the number of sober and industrious 
 among existing competitors for work. To this may be 
 added the proposed reduction or abolition of standing 
 armies, and all other progressive measures likely to swell 
 the ranks of the workers, or add to the efficiency of those 
 already in the market. 
 
 Even, however, were it probable, notwithstanding all 
 these apparently opposing circumstances, that labour would, 
 from some cause or another, become " appreciated " in value, 
 and wages rise somewhat, it is by no means certain that a rise 
 in wages would be of any real advantage to the worliers. For, 
 paradoxical as it may sound, it is very doubtful if under the 
 existing system of capitalistic production an increase in the 
 nominal amount of wages enables the working class to obtain 
 a corresponding increase in their share of the world's goods. 
 For, mark you, the monopoly of land and capital is antecedent 
 to competition, and capitalists only compete with a view to 
 profit-making. When competition brings down the price of 
 goods towards the point where profits vanish, competition
 
 28 
 
 automatically diminishes or ceases altogether. Usually when 
 employers in a given trade are compelled to increase wages, 
 they recoup themselves by increasing the price of what they 
 sell, or by contriving to do with less wage-paid labour. 
 
 The advance in wages comes, therefore, not out of the 
 pockets of the employers, but chiefly out of the pockets of the 
 general community of workers. Even were wages increased 
 all round the price of commodities would probably be increased 
 all round also, and the seeming advantage to the workers prove 
 illusory. If, for example, the average wage were raised from 
 20/- to 25/- the workers would find that they could purchase 
 little if anything more with 25/- than they formerly did with 
 20/-. The accuracy of this statement is borne out by a com- 
 parison of the wages paid in various lands. Eoughly speaking, 
 the nominal rate of artisans' wages in America is twice as high 
 as in Britain, and in Britain twice as high as in Germany. 
 Nobody, however, who is acquainted with the condition of the 
 working class in these countries, would affirm that workmen in 
 America are twice better off than workmen in Britain, and 
 four times better off than workmen in Germany. The cost of 
 living in America and England is higher than in Germany 
 proportionately, or nearly so, to the higher wages. As a 
 matter of fact the average economic conditions of the artisan 
 class, if accurately investigated, are much the same in all 
 capitalist countries, irrespective of what the rate of wages 
 may be.* 
 
 This unfavourable forecast of the future of Labour, pro- 
 ceeds, I must again repeat, on the assumption that the present 
 unrestrained " free sale" of labour in the market shall not 
 be interfered with by protective legislation, or by State or 
 Municipal undertakings conducted on Socialist principles with- 
 out regard to profit-making. In other words, it proceeds upon 
 the supposition that the fight between the owners of the 
 instruments of production and the workers shall be fought on 
 the old field of " freedom of contract " with the old Trade 
 Union weapons, and with no force of the State to back up the 
 workers in their contest. Such a supposition is, you will 
 readily perceive, a very unwarranted one. Already the State 
 has interfered with the so-called rights of property and the 
 liberty of employers to deal exactly as they choose with their 
 
 * The soundness of this reasoning has been proved so clearly by the after-war 
 relations between wages and prices, or "the cost of living," that even the dullest 
 thinker will to-day admit it* truth.
 
 29 
 
 wage-slaves, and at the present moment are there not demands 
 on all hands for further intervention on behalf of the workers ? 
 Yes, but pray observe what that admission signifies. It 
 implies, and that most accurately too, that the workers have 
 been unable to sustain themselves in their struggle with the 
 capitalist classes, and have already had to appeal for help to 
 the common conscience of the community. It implies that 
 Trade Unions, with all their weapons of offence and defence, 
 have failed in the contest, and that the State, in its capacity 
 as the preserver (however inadequately) of the commonweal, 
 has had to take up the workers' cause. It implies that the 
 people as a community cannot allow its well-being to be 
 jeopardised, or the fate of its members decided by an unseemly 
 and continual squabble between starving workmen and rich 
 employers, and that whenever a peace bargain is made that 
 is obviously detrimental to the prosperity of the people it must 
 be eet aside. 
 
 Thus it seems clearly proven that not only have Trade 
 Union conflicts been unsuccessful in destroying the oppression 
 and preventing the exploitation of labour in the past, but that 
 in the future they are not likely, unaided, even to maintain what 
 little ground of vantage they have gained. On the other hand, 
 it is equally evident that whatever substantial and permanent 
 modification of the merciless power of capitalism has taken 
 place has been accomplished by the sentiment and action of 
 the community as such, and that to this community or State 
 effort we must look for all desirable and attainable improve- 
 ment in the lot of the working class in the future. . 
 
 IV. 
 
 MANIFESTLY, then, the problem now before the workers is not 
 how they can best strive by combination, and if need be by 
 strikes, to compel their masters to give them an increase of 
 wages or a reduction of hours ; but rather how they can soonest 
 and best obtain possession of all the wealth, and avail them- 
 selves of all the leisure which their own industry entitles them 
 to. And it is surely equally clear that they never can gain 
 these except by undoing the power of their masters altogether, 
 by themselves regaining possession of the land and other 
 instruments of industry which have been cultivated or created 
 by their own and their forefathers' intelligence and toil.
 
 30 
 
 In other words, the workers must strike, if they would 
 strike with enduring results, not against the effects of monopoly, 
 hut against monopoly itself; not against the conditions which 
 their masters impose upon them, but against the power of 
 their masters to impose conditions at all. 
 
 And how can this be done? Only by, it is obvious, 
 exercising their sovereignty as the PEOPLE, and declaring void 
 all the legal claims and customs by which their masters hold 
 possession of their wealth and dominion over the workers' lives. 
 By, in fact, asserting their own just right and actual might 
 over the spurious rights and fictitious might of those who have 
 appropriated the land and capital of the country. For it is 
 only in the name of and by the assumed consent of the people 
 that their intolerable privileges are preserved by the legal 
 statutes and the power of the military and police ; and so soon 
 as the people choose, they can in their own name, and of their 
 own will, revoke these statutes; and, if need be, which is not 
 likely, call upcn the military and police to give effect to their 
 decrees, or, what would be more effectual, disband these dis- 
 credited agents of law and order altogether. 
 
 Thus we see that it is by combining and striking politically 
 as the People against the system of monopoly itself, rather 
 than by combining and striking as wage slaves against the 
 mere operations of the system, that the freedom and wealth 
 of the working classes can be regained. But the question 
 comes how can we strike politically? How can we dislodge 
 the rich people from all the places of council and adminis- 
 tration which they occupy in the land without at the same 
 time producing great disturbances, probably bloodshed, and 
 raaybe landing ourselves in a worse predicament than before? 
 Give us, it may be asked, some practical proposal, something 
 that we can set about doing now, not something which perhaps 
 we ought to do, but which we cannot do all of a heap until 
 may be many generations to come. Very good. But- 
 astounding as it may seem at first sight, the most practical, 
 the simplest, and the most equitable proposal that can be made 
 is for us to do it now and completely when we are at it ! Half 
 truths are usually worse than whole lies ; and half, quarter, 
 and hundredth part measures of justice are, to say the least 
 of it, generally little better than no justice at all. One of the 
 greatest of the seeming justifications of political conservatism 
 is the fact that so many half or quarter measures of reform 
 have been tried in place of whole ones, and have, not only
 
 31 A 000103676 3 
 
 failed to accomplish their object, but have made matters 
 worse than before. Half loaves may be better than no bread, 
 but half an oven cannot bake them. It isn't political loaves 
 we want. It is access to the ovens. If we don't have access 
 to the ovens, and bake our bread ourselves, it will be sorry 
 half loaves that we will get, more likely half bricks ! 
 
 In many countries now, insurrectionary methods have 
 been resorted to by strikers without visible success save as a 
 costly political demonstration. Violent rebellion on the part of 
 a portion of the workers is & hopeless expedient, so long as they 
 must count upon the opposition of the forces of the State, 
 backed up by the political support of the majority of the people, 
 including the majority of the working class. When the 
 insurrectionists form or can hope by any manifestation of their 
 resolution, to form the majority, they can then also form the 
 State, and physical rebellion will be unnecessary. However 
 heroic an appeal to guns, swords, and dynamite the weapons 
 of imperial and religious barbarism may sound, it nevertheless 
 resolves itself eventually into a prosaic counting of noses ; and 
 noses may as well be counted peacefully and accurately at the 
 ballot box, as turbulently and inaccurately amid the dripping uf 
 blood and splashing of brains. Whatever is established by the 
 sword has usually to be secured by chains, you cannot displace 
 one force without replacing it by another. When the workers 
 are opposed by physical force, the workers certainly the Rebel 
 section will not hesitate to resort to it also : but meanwhile it 
 is not the force of the landlords and capitalists, nor of their 
 armies nor police, that keeps the workers in servitude or keeps 
 back Socialism, but the ignorance and apathy and the force of 
 the workers themselves. The Social Revolution is not the 
 despotism of a class but the co-operation of the people. 
 
 Hitherto the House of Commons, Municipal Councils, 
 School Boards and all other administrative bodies which derive 
 their authority and their funds from the people, of which the 
 workers form the egregious majority, have been mainly, and 
 often exclusively, composed of their masters the landlords, 
 employers of labour, rich merchants, and their legal abettors ; 
 and the people have placed them there. They have voted for 
 them because they are so much accustomed to doing as they are 
 bid in their factories and workshops that they follow their 
 masters' call even into the polling booth ! 
 
 Trade Unionists feel deeply incensed when their fellow 
 workmen " blackleg " during a strike; but a man may blackleg
 
 82 
 
 against Labour in the ballot-box as well as in the workshop. 
 And the Trade Unionist who votes for an employer of labour, 
 or a landlord, or for any other than an avowed Socialist, is 
 guilty of a far mote hurtful and disgusting form of blacklegging 
 than is the poor unemployed workman who hastens to take the 
 job of a man on strike. 
 
 If a fraction of the money spent unavailingly on strikes 
 were devoted to direct political effort, within the next five years 
 the workers could turn every landlord and capitalist out of 
 every legislative and administrative body in the land and put in 
 Socialist delegates instead. They could thus, without confusion 
 and without fear, become themselves the possessors of their own 
 land, and all the stores, factories, machinery, mines, railways, 
 ships, and other useful things which have been created by their 
 own and their fathers' labour and skill, and use them in the 
 interest of the whole community. They could arrange and 
 manage their own industries just as they manage their own 
 National Postal and Educational Systems to-day, their various 
 Municipal undertakings, their co-operative stores, their trade 
 and friendly societies, etc., only with this difference, that the 
 wealth produced would be for the common advantage of all who 
 helped in its production or otherwise served the community, and 
 not chiefly for the advantage of particular classes or highly-paid 
 officials. They could make sure that everyone had an oppor- 
 tunity of assisting in the production of wealth, and that every- 
 one had an opportunity of enjoying it. The old, the sick, the 
 physically or mentally unfit would be as tenderly cared for as 
 our own children, and neither hardship for to-day nor anxiety 
 for to-morrow would mar the excellence of our lives. 
 
 The realisation of such a state of society would surely be 
 worth striving, worth striking for. And when we bear in mind 
 that it could be done in the course of a year or two, by availing 
 ourselves of our rights and performing our public duties as 
 citizens, surely we ought to be ashamed of our apathy, iand of 
 the miserable makeshift of strikes, which has served as the 
 utmost manifestation of our manhood's courage and intelligence 
 for so long.