YOUR PART IN POVERTY
_By_ GEORGE LANSBURY
[Illustration]
_FOURTH PRINTING_
New York B. W. HUEBSCH Mcmx
_My thanks to Gerald Gould for his valued suggestions
and his help in the reading of the proofs._
_G. L._
_First published January 20, 1917._
AUTHOR’S NOTE
TO FOURTH IMPRESSION
This _book was written at the time of the Church of England Mission
of Repentance and Hope--a fact which “dates” some of the references in
the text, but does not necessitate any modification in the argument. In
sending out a new edition of it, I would like readers to remember that
it was written mainly to help Christian people to understand what a
Socialist member of the Church of England means by Socialism, and also
to explain why an agitator like myself believes religion must play an
important part in the social and industrial redemption of the world. It
has been urged against me that I have produced no statistics, evolved
no scheme of reconstruction. This is true. Of books of statistics and
schemes of reconstruction there are no end; they come pouring out from
the printing presses in a steady stream day after day. My faith for the
future is built on what I conceive to be a surer foundation, which is
what the Churches call a change in heart and mind taking place in each
one of us, making us all understand that salvation is from within,
that heaven is here or nowhere, that hell and heaven on earth are of
our own making--which in turn means that it is within the power of each
of us to help redeem mankind, and that without our effort, our work,
the redemption of the world from social and industrial evil will never
take place. The war has destroyed much, swept away many illusions, but
has left untouched the eternal truth--that those who sow selfishness
reap what they sow, that nations who base their power and might and
majesty on materialism and force reap also what they sow, in the
ultimate ruin which inevitably follows injustice. As the war draws to
a close men are discussing what may happen “when the boys come home.”
One thing is certain: they will return with a bigger idea of their own
worth and the relative worthlessness of mere property as against life
and liberty. It will be the duty of Christians to meet them with open
arms, to join with them in building our society on a surer foundation
than that of “class supremacy”--a foundation of brotherhood and love.
Women and men have sacrificed a great deal in the hope of winning the
war; it is now time to sacrifice everything in one supreme effort to
rid the whole world of the spirit of domination, whether of class or
race, and establishing the true kingdom of the people, which is the
kingdom of God. If this little book succeeds in making ever so few
people think, it will have been worth while. If it makes one young
man or woman enlist in the great silent army of the people, willing
unselfishly to spend and be spent for God and the people, I shall be
glad to have written it. Many thanks to all the friends who have helped
to make the book known._
GEORGE LANSBURY.
_March, 1918._
CONTENTS
PREFACE BY THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, 7
INTRODUCTION, 11
I. WORKMEN, 25
II. WOMEN AND CHILDREN, 45
III. BUSINESS, 73
IV. CHURCHES, 88
V. WHAT WE MUST DO, 105
THE PREFACE
BY THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER
Mr. Lansbury has done me the honour, for as such I feel it, of asking
me to put a few words before his book.
Under ordinary circumstances I should possibly have declined, partly
because (with the exception of one chapter) I have not read the book,
partly because there would be points in any writing or action of
Mr. Lansbury’s with which I should disagree, perhaps in some cases
vehemently.
But the circumstances of to-day and to-morrow as we all know are
not ordinary but entirely extraordinary. And, in these matters, one
consideration, to my thinking, outweighs all others. It is that of the
imperative need that the men and women of organised religion and the
men and women of manual labour (thank God the division between them
is not mutually exclusive) should understand one another. The degree
of their present aloofness and misunderstanding is easily the most
sinister fact in our present condition.
On the side of the Church we are in no mood of complacency. The
National Mission of Repentance and Hope has been the sign on our part
of readiness to take ourselves to task and to acknowledge faults and
mistakes.
Therefore when a man with the integrity and enthusiasm of George
Lansbury, who belongs to both sorts, to whom the faith and worship of
Christendom mean what they do to his fellow-Churchmen and who, as a
popular leader, longs with righteous passion in his heart for social
changes in the interests of manual labour--when he comes forward
to tell us what Labour asks and what, in his judgment on Christian
principles Labour ought to have, and why, then I think that every
motive should make us of the Church give him not only a fair but a
ready, open-hearted, and brotherly hearing. He will probably ask more
of some of us than we can give. I myself, for example, who have done
the little I could in life to prevent Churchmanship from being bound
up with Toryism, should have very likely to maintain that it cannot
be bound up with political Socialism. But if we think, as I hope most
thoughtful Christian people do, that the changes of the future will
and ought to be in the direction of giving more status, security, and
influence to those who work with their hands, at the expense of those
who have had so much more, we shall want to get closer to such a man
as Mr. Lansbury, to understand his position better, and to ask him to
consider with us our difficulties about accepting the whole of it.
Strong political differences up to the point which each man’s honest
convictions allow, but therewith a great unity of ultimate aim, and
a genuine desire to find agreement--these, it seems to me, should
be the attitude for all of us. Mr. Lansbury generously allows me to
introduce his book in what may well seem this half-hearted way; and I
am able to ask for it the sympathetic and respectful attention of my
fellow-Churchmen and fellow-citizens almost as warmly as if I were more
fully agreed than is likely to be the case.
EDW. WINTON.
Farnham, Nov. 20, 1916.
INTRODUCTION
The National Mission organised by the Church of England is an effort
to arouse men and women who care for religion to a higher sense of
their corporate responsibility for the well-being of the nation. The
old idea that a man or woman should accept the teaching and sacrifice
of our Lord as a means of escape from the torments of hell, or as an
admission to a future heaven beyond the clouds, has proved quite futile
as a force for regenerating mankind. We all agree now that this life is
a much more serious thing, and that it cannot be dismissed and put out
of account by the very comfortable belief that, no matter how wicked
a person may have been right up to the last hour of life, if at that
moment he accepts the sacrifice of Christ’s death all will be well
with him throughout eternity. I do not here discuss the theological
question, but I do insist that, in the experience of those of us
who have lived through the last half of the nineteenth century, the
doctrine of salvation, as taught in almost all the Churches, has been,
in its effect on life and conduct, a ghastly failure. This failure
of Christendom to redeem the world is writ large on the blood-stained
battlefields which to-day stretch across Europe, Asia, and Africa. But
it is written still deeper on the social life of all those nations who
profess to serve God and to believe in the teaching of His blessed Son.
It is this aspect of life I shall write about in this book, because
I am convinced it is the one thing that matters in these days when
millions of men and women are called upon by their rulers to give up
everything that is valuable in life for the purpose of winning the war.
A victory over the Germans will be but Dead Sea fruit indeed unless our
nation can overcome the preventable poverty and misery, prostitution
and destitution, which exist and thrive all around us. We who remain
at home, rich and poor, old and young, must enlist in one great army
under Christ’s banner, accepting His teaching literally and in all its
fulness, determined in very deed to fight against the devil and all
his works, and by God’s good grace to establish the Kingdom of Heaven
on earth. Never was the need so great as now, never our opportunity
so great. People of every class have shown us of what fine sacrifice
humanity is capable against what is conceived to be a foreign danger.
We must organise this enthusiasm, this selflessness, for a greater
and nobler fight. We can do this all the more cheerfully because the
warfare in which we shall engage is one which will bring life and hope
to men and women of every race and every clime. In our march forward we
shall leave no hosts of wounded, maimed, or dying; no widows, orphans,
or devastated homes; but instead, as we succeed in destroying evil in
our own lives, and in calling men and women to repentance and hope, we
shall be bringing to others life, and life more abundantly, for they
will each be brought to see the sacredness, the beauty and nobility of
all life, and made to understand that personal salvation is of little
worth unless it is accompanied by the salvation of one’s fellow men and
women.
We may disagree on methods, we may fall out about theology, but we
cannot disagree on the one thing that matters: to believe in a God of
Love, to accept Love as the greatest factor in life, and to translate
into deeds of every day that belief and that acceptance. “Little
children, love one another,” is the teaching we must follow if we would
be saved. In that spirit I write this book and send it out, mainly as
an appeal to men and women of the comfortable classes, in order to put
before them some of the difficulties which dog the footsteps of the
common people throughout life, and also some ideas for establishing
better relationship and a more lasting friendship amongst all the
people. Not that I imagine for one moment that either rich or educated
people can alone save the working classes. I know only too well from
my own experience that if mankind is to be saved it must and can only
be done by the individual effort of every man and woman to work out
his or her own salvation. The rich and educated can only help; they,
too, need salvation as much as any section of the community. As Ruskin
has well said, the cruellest man living cannot sit at his feast unless
blind to the misery and evil which accompanies his wealth into the
world, and as Tolstoy well put it: “The rich will do anything for the
poor except get off their backs.” Many good people wish to help the
poor, want to give them something: I want such people to understand
that the one thing needed is that we should recognise life as a unity,
and realise how dependent we all are upon each other. When we do this
we shall value work of every kind; the dull weary drudgery of the
home as much as the learning and research of the student; the work of
a sewer-man as highly as the work of a doctor; and we shall see in
all labour something to be esteemed and honoured. I know that many
people long to be able to take this view. Then let those of us who
wish society to be organised in this way take the veil of ignorance
or of prejudice or of class-pride from our eyes, let us cast away
fear and see life as it is, and, seeing it, understand that each of
us is dependent on the others, and that those of us who control most
material wealth are in very deed _the most dependent of all_. And
let us keep in mind the fact that people who are clever, people who can
invent and organise, can do so only by building on the work of others:
true social co-operation means that we each give our very best, whether
of brain power or manual power, for the service of mankind, and thus by
equal service make possible, so far as material things are concerned,
equality of life for all.
No one will deny that under present conditions relationships are
artificial, and that for all practical purposes England is divided, not
into two nations only, as Disraeli said many years ago, but into dozens
of separate and distinct classes each warring to supplant the others.
When the class-war is spoken of, many people shrug their shoulders and
refuse to acknowledge its existence; they bury their heads in the sands
of make-believe. But the war of classes is here; it is a literal fact
in peace time and in war time; it is the most soul-destroying fact of
modern life; and every reader of this book (let him realise it!) is
inevitably one of the protagonists.
During the present war there has been a great deal of Press talk about
the breakdown of class distinctions; the nation has been represented as
showing a united front, and ready to spend and to be spent on behalf
of the country. Those acquainted with the facts of everyday life know
that this unity has been to a very large extent quite superficial.
It is true that on the battlefield men of all classes have sacrificed
themselves with a heroism and devotion unequalled in the history of the
world. But at home luxury and wealth, poverty and misery still abound.
High profits and dividends are still being accumulated, and large
numbers of people owning shares in shipping companies, munition works,
and other industrial concerns have piled up money to an ever-increasing
extent. We read of shipping companies whose profits have quadrupled,
of coal-owners whose dividends have been trebled, of monopolists who
by control of our food supplies and other necessaries of life have
piled up enormous profits, of Government contractors who are patriotic
enough to limit their profits for a few months’ work to the sum of
£170,000, of owners of land who receive almost a king’s ransom as the
purchase price of land which the nation needs. Other owners of land
keep so selfish a hold on it that they refuse its use to the poor for
cultivation, preferring to hold it idle until an altogether fabulous
price is paid for its use. And we also read of men discharged from
the Army without pensions, of others with a miserable dole of 4s. 8d.
or thereabouts. At the same time we hear of national gifts to great
generals of £100,000, of pensions for judges of £3,500 a year, of
Cabinet Ministers who retire on pensions of £1,200 a year; and these
men have all received great salaries. The soldier in the Army is said
to cost £250 a year. Out of the Army the same man is expected to keep
himself, wife, and family on wages from 16s. to 40s. a week. Not much
equality either of service or sacrifice is shown by these facts from
life to-day.
There is no comparison in the life conditions which prevail amongst the
wives and dependents of soldiers and sailors and those which prevail
amongst the commercial and landed classes. The soldier’s wife has been
plundered and robbed by high prices, and some of the very people who
have obtained their money because of these high prices have been good
enough to establish Tipperary and other clubs in order to provide some
recreation and amenities of life for the soldier’s and sailor’s folk.
All the talk about the unity of the nation comes not so much from
actual life as from the desire, which all decent people must share,
that the unity of life which is expressed in the words “comradeship
of the trenches” may find expression in our own lives at home. This
attitude of mind is, however, quite oblivious of the fact that under
present industrial and commercial conditions such comradeship is
impossible of realisation. The giving of doles, subscription to
charity, cannot make up to the workers the robbery and exploitation
from which they suffer.
In saying this I do not forget that many well-to-do women and men
have gone out with the Red Cross, that others are serving in hospitals
at home, and some devoting their leisure time to providing joy-rides
in motor-cars for the wounded soldiers and sailors, whilst others
are working in munition factories, Y.M.C.A. canteens, and so on.
Undoubtedly there is a good spirit abroad amongst all classes, but
the bedrock fact is that even in war time wealth and poverty remain
contrasted throughout the land. Even the women and girls who work in
munition factories, if they belong to the comfortable classes, never
dream of sharing the same kind of life as the ordinary working-class
women, and actually living on the wages they earn. For these well-to-do
women the work is but a change; to some it is recreation which may be
taken up or dropped at any time when some other rest or recreation
is needed. The story that is told of the lady who entertained her
co-workers from a munition factory at a dinner party is typical of what
I mean. This lady means well, but how can she possibly be a workmate
in the full sense unless she is actually living on the same wages as
those who work by her side, and who have no other means of support? If
she is ill she has only to go home and receive all the care, all the
rest and change of air she needs. Different indeed is the life of the
working-class girl who has no other income but her earnings, and often
lives in one or two rooms on a beggarly wage of 12s. to 20s. per week.
Even amongst most of those who earnestly desire better times there
appears to be no thought, so far as I understand them, of securing
equality of opportunity for all men and all women, no sort of demand
that riches and poverty shall be swept away and equal conditions of
life and service established. I do not mean “equality” in the sense
of everybody having to do the same kind of work, but I do mean that
men and women who toil shall receive the full fruits of their toil;
that for themselves there shall be secured good food, good clothes,
good houses, and for their children the best education it is possible
to give; and that nobody who is willing to serve the nation shall be
obliged to live, as so many millions live to-day, with no certainty as
to whence to-morrow’s daily bread will come. There is always the horror
of sickness and the dread of physical breakdown, which almost always
means semi-starvation for the whole family. The lot of the average
working-class family is one of respectable, precarious poverty. Cloak
it, gloss it over as we may, we cannot get away from this fact, and all
people who want conditions to be changed must first of all understand
how people live, and what the conditions of life are which it is
desired to change. They must also understand that it is impossible
to have the best of two worlds at one and the same time. The rich
cannot hope to see the poor living in comfortable surroundings until
these conditions are swept away. To improve conditions, a thorough and
radical change must take place. Poverty cannot be destroyed unless
the causes which produce poverty are destroyed. These causes are so
apparent to any thoughtful person that it is always a mystery to me why
those who are so anxious for a change do not attack the root causes of
poverty, rather than pour out so much money and effort in an attempt to
palliate the ruin and disaster which come from evil social conditions.
I propose to divide this book into several parts. I shall write, not
as an economist (for that is the last thing I would want to claim to
be), certainly not as any sort of philanthropist (because that, too,
is rather a weariness of the flesh), but just as an ordinary person
who sees a good deal of what is evil in the world, not in others only,
but in himself, and who is conscious that to many people money and
money’s-worth is the alpha and omega of life; as one aware that for
those who have children to feed and clothe, and wives to maintain,
either on low wages or by an interminable struggle in small businesses,
life is one miserably mean, sordid grind against poverty, in a world
in which men and women, boys and girls, are but pawns in the struggle
of mankind to heap up riches. I write as one who knows that nothing
divides friends and relations so easily as love of money; that nothing
causes so much hatred and contempt, so much bitterness between families
and friends, between good people as well as what are called bad people,
as the loss of money. The poor, we must all realise, so far as material
wealth is concerned, are always poor. Multitudes live in debt, through
no fault of their own, from one year’s end to another till they die.
The West-End money-lender is well known for his grasping demands of
usurious interest, but the poor are also victims of the same kind
of men and women of their own class, and in many poor districts big
incomes are received from the business of money-lending. This condition
of things comes about mainly because of low wages, times of sickness
and periods of unemployment, and often, too, because people long for a
fuller life than their ordinary means will allow--that is, they long
for recreation and pleasure, good clothes and food, all beyond the
reach of their scanty earnings. Even gambling and betting are often due
to the fact that by these means men and women hope to secure more of
the good things of life.
Yet if I know these things, and understand these aspects of life, I am
nevertheless convinced there is much more good-will than evil in the
world. But evil is organised, evil is strong, and the good in many gets
crushed beneath the heavy load of unnecessary care which accompanies
them through life. My object in life is to strive by God’s help to
beat down selfishness and greed and evil-doing in myself; and by every
means in my power to seek to remove from other people the weights that
hold them down--from the poor the burden of need, from the rich the
burden of those riches which make the poverty of the poor. The first
step towards this fuller life for the nation is to cast out fear and
have faith in our fellow-men. We often deceive each other because we
are afraid of the truth.
The truth we have to face is that it is only by basing our life and
conduct on the teachings of Christ--to forgive all things, hope all
things, endure all things by faith and love for each other--that we
can make a clean and wholesome place of our country. This is the
object we must set before ourselves if we would have a better England.
Governments and organisations may do much if guided and directed by men
and women imbued with the spirit of love, but all legislation has so
far failed to redeem mankind because there has not been this dynamic
force behind it.
All of us who are removed from the poverty line are--unless we have
been fighting evil conditions in order to pull others out of the
whirlpool of want and destitution--responsible for the material
miseries and horrors which the great proportion of the people have
perpetually to bear. And there will be very little hope from the
National Mission, very little to hope from all this religious effort,
unless we get right down to the root causes and conditions which
produce poverty, prostitution and destitution; unless we realise that
humanity, while capable of very fine things, is quite incapable of
living a decent, wholesome life while it is obliged to engage in a
vicious scramble for daily bread. We have, in some way, to destroy the
competitive system which puts us (in the workshop, in the market-place,
in the factory) one against the other, which makes us struggle to rise
above our fellows in order to secure for ourselves and dependents a
decent standard of life and comfort.
The only hope that can come to the world will come when we have
substituted co-operation for competition. To effect this we need an
entirely new spirit, a spirit which shall be the complete opposite of
that which dominates commercial and industrial life and conduct to-day.
And it is in the hope that this book will help in creating this spirit
that I am writing it. There is so much good in men and women: there
could be so much better. It is only because we are so divided one from
another, only because we are so ignorant of each other’s lives, that
we submit to these un-Christian conditions. When we know, we shall
all unite in a supreme and practical effort to destroy the man-made
conditions which produce the evils we have so genuinely but vaguely
deplored. Then we shall, by united efforts, build a new state based on
the foundation, not of hatred, not of competition, but of brotherhood,
co-operation, and love.
YOUR PART IN POVERTY
CHAPTER I
WORKMEN
A workman’s working life begins at a very early age. In some places
boys start work at thirteen or fourteen years of age, or even earlier,
and set out to face the world and all its hardships and dangers with
very little training, except such as may be given them by mother and
father. Once they have started, there is seldom anything between
them and the necessity for sticking at work, except the Poor Law and
its wretched institutions, until earth covers them in the grave. On
the boy’s ability to keep himself in health and strength depends his
ability to earn his bread and make a place for himself in the world.
Once having attained the age of manhood, the average workman reaches
the highest point in material wealth that he will ever reach. I do not
believe this factor of life is ever really grasped by most of those
who talk and write so glibly about the working classes. The skilled
artisan, who has served an apprenticeship in a given trade, knows
that he will earn so much an hour. As a rule he will marry on that
wage, which often amounts to only 30s. or £2 per week, and this will
be his standard for the remainder of his working life. As things go,
considering the standard set for the working class, this may appear a
reasonable and satisfactory condition of life. It is obvious, though,
that the coming of each new baby must lower the standard of life, owing
to the fact that the family income is fixed. Even that is not quite
true, for the income is fixed only while there is work for the man
to do. Often there are long periods of unemployment which bring down
the average of a man’s earnings, and often long periods of sickness
when--in the case of a workman--wages stop altogether. This is the
great difference between the wage-earner and the salaried person;
a clerk or manager generally continues to draw salary if away from
business owing to sickness, but an engineer or labourer finds his
wages stopped the moment he leaves work, from whatever cause--with
the exception of absence due to accident, in which case, under the
Workmen’s Compensation Act, certain payments are made, though even
these are often evaded and the men left penniless.
There are some few employers who treat their workers a little better
than this during times of sickness; such are Government departments,
municipalities, and a few large employers; but none of them treat
the wage-earner on the same terms as the salaried man or woman, and
wherever sick pay is granted it is granted for a strictly limited
period, and, after the first week or two, is cut down to vanishing
point.
It is the same with holidays. To many families holidays mean a shortage
of food, because there is less money coming into the home. All that
Bank Holidays mean for the working-class mother is more worry, more
anxiety, more difficulty in making ends meet. It is this which keeps
people who live in small houses and mean streets at home when they
should be out in the countryside enjoying the pure fresh air. It always
appears to me that those who manage our affairs for us imagine that
if workpeople were to enjoy holidays they would never want to go back
to work again. I am not at all sure that, even were this the case,
it would be so unmixed an evil as some of my friends think. It is
sometimes said with a sneer that working people do not know how to use
leisure--and working-class children, too; and good people like Mrs.
Humphry Ward establish play centres in order to teach the children of
the masses how to play. To my mind this is a most unnatural proceeding.
Luckily for me I was brought up in a home set in the midst of a great
open space on which I could play with my brothers and other children.
We were never trained to play, but just played the same old games our
fathers had played, till we were old enough to join sports clubs. All
children should have the chance of meeting in the open air away from
teachers, and be given the opportunity for developing their own powers
of initiative.
The man who toils for his bread is taught in the bitter school of
experience that he must not expect holidays except as expensive
luxuries. Even in Lancashire and Yorkshire, where, because the whole
family works for wages, a holiday is possible, an annual week’s holiday
at Blackpool or the Isle of Man is all that can be looked forward to.
In this matter of holidays, contrast what I have said about the workmen
with what happens to the other classes. The clerks and other salaried
people are paid full pay for all public holidays, and are given a
summer holiday which runs into one, two, or even four weeks at full
pay. Of course such people know how to use their leisure; they have
plenty of opportunity to learn. Let me repeat that the boy who goes to
work in an office grows up accustomed to holidays on full pay, but the
boy who goes into the workshop to hard manual labour grows to manhood
well drilled in the belief that holidays are not for him unless he is
prepared to lose his wages.
The employers, the managers and directors can and do take holiday
when they so desire. The well-to-do show us a splendid example of
how to get through life with a maximum of rest and holiday-making.
The shooting season, the London season, the season on the Riviera,
with an occasional trip further afield, make up the common round, the
daily task of many of those who are so fortunate as to find themselves
able to enjoy incomes derived from rent, profit, and interest. Even
in the midst of a great war we read of Cabinet Ministers enjoying
life on the golf course and taking their rest by the sea. Many of
the clergy of all denominations take long holidays away from their
congregations--not once a year, but perhaps twice and sometimes even
three times in one year. Indeed, all the official classes--religious,
civil, and military--feel the need for taking holidays at frequent
periods throughout the year, and always on full pay. Perhaps judges are
the public men who most thoroughly understand and enjoy the blessedness
of rest and peace from work. Their salaries vary from £5,000 to
£6,500 a year, with the prospect of a comfortable pension of £3,500
a year after a few years’ service. They also have their Christmas,
Easter, and Whitsun holidays, and then the Long Vacation running into
several months; and all the time their salaries run on. I must not be
understood as objecting to these holidays. I am a firm believer in
holidays, though I get precious few. I call attention to these facts
because I want to make rich people understand that their comfortable
holidays are paid for by the people who get practically no holidays at
all, and to point out how unjust it is that those who work the hardest
should be denied all means of rest and recreation.
Many people discuss this question as if there were some sort of virtue
in work as a means of keeping people in health and contentment. Work
is a benefit to mankind only when it is for some given end. We are
all acquainted with the words “change of work is rest.” This is true,
and those of us who fill all our waking time with work of one sort or
another know quite well we are able to do so only because our work is
of a very varied character; not one of us, if given the choice, would
care to change places with the labourer or artisan whose daily life,
year after year, is the same piece of dull, uninteresting toil, such as
minding an automatic machine or going to the pit to dig coal, and who
is able to find freedom and respite only at the cost of loss of wages.
No; those of us who were brought up to manual labour and have escaped
from it never want to go back under the same old bad conditions. We may
dig a garden for recreation; to prove our patriotism in war time we may
go to work in a munition factory or other Government works, but never
again, if we have our way, will one of us, man or woman, voluntarily
choose to become a day labourer with a labourer’s wages and conditions
of service.
There is another aspect of the workers’ life which needs stressing now
that the Church has organised its National Mission. In every church
throughout the world the words “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
holy” are said by the minister, and yet all these ministers know that
hundreds of thousands of men and women, boys and girls, are not allowed
to rest from their labours. There are multitudes who work every Sunday
of the year. For them there is not even one day’s rest in seven. This
is true in normal times as well as now. We are in the midst of a great
war. So destructive of mental and physical force is this denial of
one day’s rest in seven that the Ministry of Munitions now insists on
a six days’ week, not for religious reasons, but in order to secure
a bigger output, and also because it has been discovered that even
machines must have rest. For those who are given the day’s rest the day
is made as miserable as possible. In crowded towns the only places left
open are the public-houses and a few cinemas. There are parks and open
spaces, but girls and boys and young people are not allowed to play the
ordinary games. Football, cricket, hockey, netball, quoits, and bowls
are all forbidden. (On the rich man’s golf course play is allowed, and
tennis and cricket may be enjoyed by those who can afford them.) In
some country places men are even censured for working in their gardens
and allotments on Sundays. What a mad kind of world it is in which all
these contradictions in the name of religion exist! If the Church has
any message in this respect, it should be to teach people that the
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Church should
bid people meet for common worship, thanking and praising God with
hymns and psalms of thanksgiving for the loving-kindness which has made
so many things bright and beautiful; and after such a service as would
emphasise the true beauty and unity of life we should all settle down
to whatever joy or pleasure we are able to secure from sports and games
or other means of recreation.
To come back to sickness. A man who is sick may be getting 10s. a week
sick pay, and in some cases as much as 18s.; but even so it is always
less money than when he is at work. Employers and Friendly Societies
argue that it is quite wrong for the workman to get as much money when
he is sick as when he is in health, because, they say, unless a man
loses by not being at work he is likely to malinger. This argument is
one of those stupid, ridiculous theories of life and conduct which in
practice work out very badly and very cruelly indeed. For the man who
is sick and at home is a great burden on his wife, and every extra
penny that is spent on him means less food, less of the necessities of
life, for the rest of the family. It means also that a decent man drags
himself back to work long before he has any business to do so, and so
risks early permanent disablement or the bringing on of some chronic
illness from which he never properly recovers.
As a mere matter of expediency men who are sick ought to get not only
their normal wages, but something extra, so that they could secure the
necessary means of recovery.
In periods of unemployment a workman may also receive out-of-work pay
under the National Insurance Act at the rate of 7s. to 10s. per week.
This, again, is fixed low, because the authorities are afraid that if,
while unemployed, men are able to live decently and properly with their
wives and children, they will not be anxious to go to work again. A
more short-sighted policy it is impossible to find. The few miserable
shillings are only sufficient to starve on, and in large numbers of
cases mean demoralisation, because want of food and want of nourishment
always make men despondent and despairing, and often rob them of
character and morale.
How differently we treat soldiers! These we maintain on full pay
in peace time in order to keep them fit for the day when they may
be needed. The workman on whom we all depend is left to starve, or
given just enough to exist upon, and then we wonder that he loses
heart and dignity and sometimes even honesty, and often becomes quite
unemployable.
Contrast all this with the conditions of life enjoyed by the employer
and the comfortable classes. First of all, there is no going to work
at thirteen years of age; no half-timers are found amongst their
children; no stoppage of income takes place because of sickness; even
in times of bad trade the majority of employers and the majority of
people who live on salaries are never obliged to go short of the
necessities of life. We never expect Cabinet Ministers, whose wages
amount to £5,000 a year, to draw less during the time they are off
duty owing to sickness. It is illustrative of the attitude of mind we
have towards each other that it was the Cabinet Minister in charge
of the National Insurance Bill who, having laid down in Parliament
the principle that workmen must not be allowed a decent income when
unemployed or sick, was himself away from his duties for many weeks at
a time because of illness, during which time he drew his wages at the
rate of £5,000 a year as usual. No one appeared to think it necessary
even to ask for a doctor’s certificate to prove that he was really ill.
No one thought of accusing him of malingering. No one imagined for
a moment that a Cabinet Minister would stop away from work a minute
longer than was necessary. For the workman, it is another story. An
altogether different standard is set. He must be driven back to work at
the earliest possible moment; and the whip of starvation must be used
to send him back, irrespective of his condition of health.
These unequal conditions of service and unfair relationships are the
result of the outstanding fact that labour is looked upon by society as
something to be bought and sold, and is treated like any other piece of
machinery which is needed for a certain job.
When a worker becomes old and inefficient he is sacked; when profit
can no longer be secured from his labour he is sacked. If a machine
will do his work cheaper he is told to find some other job or starve.
Money-making is all that counts in the Capitalist system, and unless
it contributes to this end the labour of the workers is not required.
They have no ownership, no control, either of their own lives or of
their industry. They are just items in the machinery of production, and
it is this fact which separates them off from every other class and
makes them what, in fact, they are--the dependent wage-slaves of the
possessing classes.
Since 1870 the nation has given a certain amount of education to all
children above five years of age. Meagre as the education is, it has
nevertheless been sufficient to make many workmen understand their
social and economic subjection, and it is this realisation of their
helpless subjection to others which determines so many of them to join
the Trade Unionist and Socialist movements. They want to share in the
ownership of national industries; they want to control and organise
the working of industries. Up to a few years ago the workman only
demanded better wages and shorter hours, but he has now discovered by
actual experience that high prices and high rents continually swallow
up increases in wages. He has been educated by Mr. Lloyd George to
understand that private ownership of land means that a landowner can
sit down and, by just doing nothing, actually grow in riches because of
the power which ownership gives--power which the owner can exercise at
an opportune moment in order to squeeze rack rents from those who have
created the values which make such rack rents possible. In addition,
the workman understands that with the introduction of labour-saving
machinery the Capitalist has become able to put a man’s own children
in competition with the man himself. The automatic machine has made it
possible for a man’s economic foes to be members of his own household;
and, realising this, and understanding also that the opportunities of
rising in the social scale grow less and less, men are now organising
for a complete change in the present system. Their work in this
direction has been very much hampered because of the war, but there
are groups of people who are determined to keep together in order that
when the war is over they may once more take the field and by united
effort establish a co-operative system of production and distribution
to replace the present unsound order, based as it is on the subjection
of the workers by means of the wages- and profit-making system. We know
that until this fundamental change is made our labour is in vain.
People talk at large sometimes about the greed and avarice of the
working classes--their unwillingness to give service without payment
and their exorbitant demands in respect of wages and hours. I have
never been able to accept such a point of view at all, for it seems
to me all the old bad rules which govern our industrial relationships
are inherent in the system. What I mean is that, given a society where
men and women are expected to compete and scramble for a living, it is
inevitable that cheating and meanness should follow. Besides, what sort
of an example do the other classes set the workers? Is not their law of
life to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market? And do they
not insist that cheapness, not worth, is the governing factor in life?
Just before the war, when the governing classes wished to find some
means for pacifying the workers and soothing them to sleep, Liberal
capitalists organised deputations to Germany in order to be able to
prove what an awful place the Prussianised German Empire was for a
workman to live in because of the evils of Protection. It was the same
set of capitalists who gave Mr. Lloyd George the position which enabled
him to set the mark of servitude on the shoulders of the workers by
his German-inspired Insurance Act, and it has been because of that Act
and the accompanying Labour Exchange Acts that the Government have
been able, instead of relying on the workman’s loyalty and patriotism
to organise and carry through all national work, to arrange national
industry during the war on purely German lines by means of highly-paid
bureaucrats, without the workers having the least say as to how their
work should be done.
On the other side Tory capitalists organised deputations to Germany,
and to their own satisfaction proved that life for the working people
under Kaiser Wilhelm II. was much more desirable than under King George
V. of England.
We can now place our own value on the reports issued by both these
deputations and on the one issued by that other deputation organised
by the Labour Party. I recall these incidents of 1913-4 not to try and
score off anyone, but to show that those of the capitalist class who
wish to preserve and perpetuate the wages system are willing to use
every means to obtain their ends. It is beyond dispute that Mr. Lloyd
George, in passing Acts establishing National Insurance, &c., and the
Conservatives, in wishing to establish a system of tariffs, had the
same idea in mind: that is, they wished to ease and palliate some of
the evil effects of industrial life. None of them wished to abolish the
causes which produce strife and want and bitterness.
The class war which I mentioned earlier is a very real thing in the
life of the worker, and it shows itself in various ways and under
varying conditions. Often we can see the war being waged by means
of unemployment, when, because of some collapse in international
organisation, trade breaks down, and the first victims are the workers,
who by the hundred thousand are flung helpless on to the streets.
After the South African War such a condition of things prevailed. In
some industries this dislocation was still further accentuated because
of the invention of machinery by the use of which production was
increased and labour was displaced. The machine is always set against
the workman, and often brings starvation and misery into thousands of
working-class homes.
Is it not extraordinary that people should suffer because there is
power to produce more than we need? Yet unemployment is always the
first result of using what is known as labour-saving machinery; and,
if we would understand the conflict of interests which exists between
the employing and the working class, we must admit that the owner of
the machine (supported as he is by all the power of the State) who
drives out workmen and refuses to allow them to work is acting in an
anti-social manner, even though he is but following law and custom.
There is a complete division of interest here, which must be understood
by all those who wish to lend a hand in improving conditions, for until
this is overcome and machinery is made the servant of all men there
will be no peace in the world of industry.
Occasionally there are lock-outs and strikes. A lock-out is a
declaration of war by the employers, a strike is a declaration of war
by the workmen. In both cases the employers’ weapon is starvation.
The employers hope to beat the men by refusing to allow them to earn
wages, and the workmen strive to beat the employer by stopping profit
and dividends. During a lock-out or strike untold suffering and misery
are endured by the women and children, and it is this fact which
the employers rely upon to assist them in winning their fight, for,
although dividends may have stopped, it is very seldom the case that
an employer’s wife and children starve. In fact, some employers are
able to make a labour dispute pay, because they are able, owing to the
shortage produced by the dispute, to make money out of old stocks. It
is certain that during the great coal dispute coal-owners, by raising
prices and selling off rubbish which was otherwise unsaleable, more
than recouped themselves for any shortage of profit the strike may have
occasioned.
Look where we may, in times of prosperity or times of bad trade, there
is this strife which undermines confidence, destroys religion, and
makes us all warriors in a fight where all are losers--for we can all
surely echo the words of our Lord: “What shall it profit a man if he
gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” There is no soul in
business to-day; it is just one wretched struggle for pelf and place,
and the working class are pawns in the game. If it pays to employ them
they are given work; if it does not pay, out they have to go, for
business is business and business is profit-making. Consequently the
worker discovers that as he grows older he is wanted less and less.
Before the war the cry was “too old at forty.” That state of things
has changed for the time being, but will come back again when what are
called peace conditions once more prevail, unless, indeed, the war
changes our whole attitude of mind towards one another. How often I
have seen the aged worker sacked, with not a halfpenny of allowance,
and his son taken on in his stead! I have said there is no soul in
business, and it is true. Someone has traced all this down to the
limited liability companies, which have “no body to be kicked and no
soul to be damned.” No doubt the institution of such companies is to a
large extent responsible for modern relationships; but what I want to
emphasise is the point made a little way back--that if men are employed
for wages, and cannot get employment or earn their bread otherwise,
then they are living in subjection to other people. We may endeavour
to get round this as we will, but it will remain the outstanding fact
of present-day conditions, making of life one long struggle, not only
for comparative comfort even, but for mere existence. It is true
that classes merge more and more into each other, but new classes are
continually being created: more divisions, more ranks, in the perpetual
warfare which we make of life. For the multitude this strife and
struggle bring sorrow and sadness, the maiming and wounding of body, of
soul, of spirit. For us all it produces meanness and sordidness, making
us capable of brutal and demoralising conduct which stamps us with the
mark not of men but of beasts, turning us into liars and hypocrites,
destroying our faith and confidence in each other, and leaving us all
beggared and hopeless in the fight upward for a nobler life.
The sort of nonsense which tells us that there is plenty of room at
the top is only like a saying attributed to Napoleon I.--that every
private soldier carries a marshal’s bâton in his knapsack. That sort
of statement treats people as if they were destitute of intelligence.
Under present conditions we cannot all be employers or managers or
directors--if, indeed, that were a desirable consummation. For the vast
majority society as at present arranged allows no other means of living
but the kind of struggle I have been trying to describe, and those who
wish to see the world redeemed from sin and vice and crime must start
their work by finding out how to organise industry so as to ensure
that all useful labour shall be considered honourable and of value. In
other words, we must so raise the status of the worker in our minds
that he will at last begin to realise that his labour and himself are
things of real worth and consequence to the whole community. We must
unite in preaching discontent, and, in so preaching, emphasise the fact
that for the workers there is no chance of social redemption unless
they all combine and, by using the power which combination gives,
alter the whole basis of our social life. I do not ask that any of us
should preach or practise violence. I am more convinced than ever that
violence in any shape or form is an evil, that “we cannot cast out
devils by devils,” that the workers must discover some more excellent
way. Their greatest power is the power of standing still and just doing
nothing, but they must all stand still together. Those of us who wish
to help them must teach them that they must all stand together or else
remain as they are, slaves of the classes who own the land and all
other means of life. We who would help and stand by the workers can do
so in one way only, and that is by using our powers to teach the lesson
of solidarity. Napoleon’s motto in all his campaigns was “Divide and
Conquer.” The capitalist and commercial classes have learnt the same
lesson, and by very judicious and, at the same time, very mean methods
divide the working classes into various camps--some political, some
religious: in some places this result is attained by starting competing
Trade Unions. The employing classes do not scruple actually to buy the
leaders of the Trade Union movement by the gifts of money, place, and
power. A regular bureaucracy of ex-Labour leaders are in the employ
of the Government as strike settlers, or, as some of us think, as
strike breakers. Others are occasionally taken into partnership or are
appointed foremen and managers, and so removed out of their class. When
the working class is organised and actuated by true comradeship and
brotherhood there will be no such “great refusals” or betrayals, but,
instead, all men and women will stand as one great body, determined to
rise together: and it is the duty of Christians--in fact, it is the
duty of all good citizens--to assist in promoting this spirit, in order
that the working class may by its own efforts win its own salvation.