of intellectual culture. Intellectual culture and Labour are out
of touch. Labour seems to belong to another world, to live another
life, to have no _need_ for what is put for them to take. That is
surely because classes are too abruptly divided, they do not mix
enough; hence each class mistrusts the other! Labour mistrusts
the Capitalist, and the Capitalist mistrusts Labour. Each is apt
to regard the other as of a different species of humanity and one
that is inevitably in antagonism, forgetting that no labour means
no capital and the reverse. It is unfortunate that there is a gulf
between the classes where there should be neutral ground on which
they could meet. _Coercion_ will never create that meeting ground,
neither will continued suspicion and unrest. High wages even will not
tend to reconstruction as long as there is no intellectual basis of
sympathy and desire. The working class (I dislike the term) must make
an effort to rise, it must desire _acquisitiveness_, and I believe
many of it do desire it. It is very little use to place advantages
before people who do not want to use them. They must be _taught_ or
guided to want them, and by degrees to use them. The middleman is
an atrocious invention. The agitator is a middleman. He keeps up
friction. He is neither the “boss” nor the workman; he fiddles for
his own dancing. It is not impossible that he is responsible for the
absence of touch between employed and employer. Trades Unions widen
the differences.
The middleman thrives on labour of all kinds. He is represented in
the arts by the dealer, who, in most instances, secures a larger
share of profit than the producer. The musical middleman (or agent)
takes a large profit from the composer; the singer and executant
are alike sufferers. This constitutes a difficulty by no means easy
to get out of. As long as “advertisement” holds such a sway as it
does now, the wrong men make the chief profit, which is an entirely
unnatural state of things, demonstrating something wrong in the
relations existing between the public and the producer. “The State”
has not the power, inclination, or capacity to deal with what is,
after all, _authorised_ blackmail. It is only by force of public
opinion that a change in economics is likely to come about! By public
opinion we do not mean unenlightened, unskilled, ill-disciplined
agitation, but one arrived at by a better tone generated by ethical
as well as practical education, and a closer touch between teachers
and taught. Justice is not likely to be delivered by a class which
holds that its own interests are paramount; and that undoubtedly is
the present attitude of the class called Labour, which is apt to
forget that we are all, or ought to be, labourers, from the King to
the humblest peasant. Now let us move our ground. I ask my readers
to accompany me on a journey and share with me my observation while
reading the thoughts it has given rise to, and afterwards to the
Dream consequent, I suppose, upon those thoughts.
§ 30
I travelled in a not too clean third-class carriage from London,
which I left in a not uncommon black drizzle. Although it was morning
and a summer day, according to the calendar, the station was partly
lit by electric light which only seemed to accentuate the smoky gloom
within and without. It was depressing, passengers looked depressed,
porters were irritable, everybody seemed to be in everybodies’
way. There was the impression of Pandemonium in this specimen of
civilization. I wondered at all the pains that had been taken over
the strange medley of squalor, convenience and inconvenience. It
presented one vast, ugly muddle. This, then, is the chief railway
station in the, supposed to be, most civilized city in the world. I
looked forward to getting out of the noise, the smoke, and the mud,
away from the mad hurry of a people with no time to think, so bent
are they in pushing their fellows out of the way. I knew I was going
from bad to worse. Curiosity was taking me to a manufacturing town in
the north. I should have said City, for it possesses a Lord Mayor,
Corporation, and Cathedral, and other conventional essentials.
The journey was uneventful, nobody spoke to his neighbour, babies
howled, buns and oranges galore, and the floor was well littered
with slippery débris; I was not sorry to reach my destination. I had
resolved to leave the train at a station some three miles from the
City--a dirty little station it was--that I might walk thither. A
hot, damp atmosphere, charged with sulphuric acid, greeted me. The
land was undulating. What had once been beautiful has been rendered a
poisonous desert; the country surrounding the emporium of nastiness,
a capital of Industrialism, was a wreck. Occasionally a white circle
appeared and disappeared behind clouds of smoke and mist, beaten up
into a greasy black soup. It was the sun, but never a shadow did it
cast. The atmosphere, rendered solid by dirt, was heated as in a
furnace. Oxygen was at a minimum; hydrogen, in plenty, played its
part entirely up to date according to modern ideas of civilization.
Leaving the dirty station, I made my way over fields, or apologies
for them, not by the road which was ankle-deep in black mud. A
few thin cattle were feeding off patches of ill-nourished grass
growing unwillingly from cinders, mixed with poor and thin soil.
Groups of black sheep hurried from patch to patch of sapless grass
to find nourishment. Mostly wool these half-starved sheep were.
Four tumble-down stone walls served as boundaries, which they only
indicated. Straggling thin hedges there were making mourning black
fringes to the desolate fields unpruned and almost leafless. Although
it was July scarce a leaf remained on tree or shrub, none green, few
even brown, being mostly crinkled up and black, poisoned in their
early youth, but making a brave fight for existence in what should
have been their prime. A few broken down buildings appeared as
apologies for what had once been a considerable farmhouse in better
times. A few blackened haystacks only served to deepen the sense of
degradation. About these buildings, instead of flowers and shrubs,
was heterogeneous rubbish. Broken saucepans, smashed crockery, tin
boxes, glass bottles, rags, bits of old garments and soiled scraps
of newspapers. I noticed some garments, men’s and women’s, hanging
out to dry. I wondered how long it would take to do so, and what the
colour of them would be presently. A few dirty hens were scratching
among the débris. A pig or two, none too fat, were turning over
rubbish with their snouts. There was a kind of farm yard, which stank
of rotten wet straw, soaked in microbic poisons. Near by lay a pool,
coated with black slime through which a duck or two pushed their way.
A dirty woman came out of a broken down doorway carrying a still
dirtier child. She was pale--she looked permanently sad. Set, even
resentful, was her countenance, as she glanced a moment at me--a
stranger. What windows her hovel once had, now mostly broken, were
patched with bits of newspaper. Three or four men languidly worked or
lounged about. Every action pointed to ineptitude and indecision--out
of their element, evidently they were. Walking on, I came to a knoll
crowned with black, dead trees, once, perhaps, a sacred primitive
burying place. I could see the City now, grim in wreaths of black
smoke, now looming out as a cold metallic half-light, from what was
the sun, struck for an instant upon the gloomy pile of factories.
It was as a city of the dead from this distance, silent and grim,
hideous, forlorn, and even menacing. There seemed to spread over it
an awful silence, broken only now and then, as a light wind carried
a dull thud of the throbbing pulse of machinery doing its monotonous
task. I came nearer, even to the environs of this terrible place of
slavery and black life to the thousands of human beings created to
breathe the fresh air of God’s creation, now condemned to evil fumes
and soul-killing labour--the offspring of a monotonous, poisonous
existence. Hoarse voices, using not too choice language, made
discordant music, the like of which I do not wish to hear again. It
was now 12 o’clock. Hooters brayed, a cracked bell or two told the
hour in mournful tones.
I made my way to the heart of the City. Its narrow, dirty streets,
winding, serpentlike, among the black buildings. A slowly moving
crowd came along. It moved automatically, just mechanically, like
the revolving wheels it had just left. The men had no joy before
them, they were just going to eat, to grease the wheels of their
machine-made bodies, to return in an hour to resume the same
soul-killing toil. Their faces were all alike--very pale, very dirty,
very _neutral_. I thought to myself, this then is civilization, and
these are the slaves to the much vaunted Industrialism which has gone
to kill agriculture and stifle natural life wherever it is planted.
This is the life the people choose to live with an occasional strike,
and who can wonder? whose leisure is spent at football matches, too
often in dog-fighting, man-fighting and gambling; and who can wonder!
In this stifling place, this kind of systemised Hell, wages are high,
and _rightly_. The loss of the soul of living should be paid for at
a high price in money, it pays a high price for suffering. It is
some comfort to think that the majority of slaves to Industrialism
are unconscious of what they lose in life. But that ought not to
be a consolation; it should stimulate desire and determination to
change it. I thought of the health and happiness that had been here
in one of the most beautiful and fertile districts of England. The
contrast seemed terrible. Nothing can compensate for such a change.
Health, free agricultural life, invaded, ravished, and slaughtered
by the horrors, inevitable (apparently) horrors, which are part and
parcel of Industrialism. I thought of the silver streams once merrily
flowing, now sluggishly creeping, half-solid with filth and poison,
of the rich produce from a land of farms, of happy country festivals,
of content, of the prosperity of England; how she fed herself from
her own land, and in her craftsmanship was a leader of Europe. I
seem to hear a hard voice saying, “That’s all very well, these people
don’t know any other life than the one they live in and are used to.”
That may be true, but it only makes their case a sadder one. To
lose sensibility, to be ground down to the level of an automatic
machine, is an indignity. Man is an outdoor animal, not made to live
the Artificial life of huge, unhealthy cities. Nothing can make up
for the loss inflicted on man’s soul by depriving him of Light, by
forcing him to live in smoke, squalor, and foul air. Habit does go
a long way, no doubt; _they do get used to it_, but that does not
lessen the evil that the life is doing to the best part of every
man and woman who lives it. I hear another voice say, “But they
don’t care for the sun, or beautiful landscape, for flowers, for the
things _we_ care for,” as if these toilers were of a different race!
“They have lost touch with what you call Nature, and of God they
know nothing but as a kind of head of a rich firm who is autocratic
and hard, if he pays any attention to them.” “It is no use to put
sentiment into this class,” said the hard voice in my ear, “it would
be dangerous if they cared for all you want for them. They would be
discontented and cease work. Perhaps they would want to go back to
the land, to _Freedom_; that would not suit us at all. It is only
because they are ignorant of any other life that we get work out of
them--machines they are, machines they must remain.”
This was _true_ Industrial _talk_, and exactly typified the mind of
the Arch-Priests of Industrialism. “Well, you must remember,” spoke
the same voice, “they have their own pleasures, fitted for them
and their condition, they like their bit of sport--prize-fights,
dog-fighting and gambling--they can go to a ‘cinema,’ there are
several here, where they can see the things they understand--stories
of vice, of murder, a complete list from the Newgate calendar, that’s
what they like.”
“But look,” said I, “at the little box outside that dirty window
there; it has fading geraniums in it. Do you mean to tell me that the
hand that tries to tend them, and the eyes that enjoy their colour,
are yet quite paralysed?” “Oh, yes,” was the answer, “they do like
a bit of greenery, of course, but it’s mostly the women that are
sentimental.” At that moment a rough-looking fellow went by. “Look
at that,” said I, “he has a geranium flower in his button-hole.”
There was no answer! _I_ thought that geranium was a symbol of the
life of that man’s soul, and reflects the Garden of Eden, and an
instinctive desire to be there again. “Granted,” I went on to say,
“that Industrial life is a necessity, do you think that it need be
squalid, that the homes of these people should not be bettered,
and their self-respect encouraged thereby?” “They do not want to
be interfered with,” was the answer. “If they were given greater
comfort, better dwellings, and little gardens, as sentimentalists
desire, the dwellings would become squalid and dirty in a week, and
the garden would yield nothing; they’ve lost all touch with such
matters, they are grown to be of a different race; they like their
condition as long as they have plenty of beer, and may do a little
amateur prize-fighting and dog-fighting, and spend a good bit of
their week’s money in journeys to football matches.”
“Do you think, then, that their life is the best imaginable for them?
Is there no Ideal behind it?” “Yes, it _is_ the best for them. As to
Ideals, I don’t know what you mean; they’ve got to take life as it
is, there is no room in it for fanciful experiments! They are well
paid; for the rest, leave them alone in their ‘squalor,’ as you call
it; they like it, and would resent being made ‘respectable.’ Besides,
if they were, they would get out of hand.” I saw it was no use to
argue with the voice that came from a big, fat man, as hard as nails,
and as prosperous as a fatted pig! I went to see the “Mechanics’
Institute.” There were a few billiard tables, a strong smell of
stale tobacco and beer; a quantity of newspapers littered the tables,
dirtily thumbed on the pages relating to sport and “all the winners,”
the last prize fight, murder and burglary. Sport and crime appeared
the favourites of the moment. Could this be bettered? I thought. Yes,
was the answer from my better self, but it will not be if men of the
type of him who talked just now lead public opinion.
§ 31
I went to the theatre, the play was not invigorating; it provided
rotten food--money jugglery, a low love affair, and success of a
villain, were the parts. What was not immoral was vulgar. What was
neither, was dull. I venture to imagine whoever was there came away
a little more debased than he went. I found my way to the Cathedral,
a fine 15th century edifice. The stone (local and hard) was fast
being pulverised by acid fumes. Black deposit filled every crevice
of what once had been exquisite carving. The loving work of ancient
craftsmen was being rapidly destroyed by the “necessities” (?) of
Industrialism. An attempt was in progress to reface a portion of the
exterior--far better have left the noble old work decay than replace
it by commercial carving at so much a foot. It had been a noble
building. Standing high, it dominated, by a survival of dignity, the
hideous black factories. It was like a still small voice, speaking
out of a great past to a people who, if they heard it, could not
understand. Its chimes (eight bells) once echoing the hours to the
hills, were silent--better so, perhaps. I did not stay long in the
interior. It made me sad to think of the enlightened people who
had worshipped there, for it was a Benedictine Abbey Church of the
monastery hard by where was preserved all the learning of the times,
and where men led “creative and industrious lives.”
A pure unsullied sun had glowed through glorious glass, of which
fragments remained, but mostly had been replaced by commercial
attempts at _so much a foot_--commercial, indeed, it was. On the
very rock where stood the monastery--the place of scholarship, of
art, a home for exquisite craftsmanship--is now a huge manufactory,
belching out wreaths of black smoke, like serpents encircling shaft
and building, writhing in poison even along the cobbled ways deep
in black slush. Civilisation, so called? Here, are forged cannon to
kill human creatures. A very apotheosis of hideous war, and one of
the many homes of its implements. When will men be wise and see that
war is not only a hideous crime, a recognised murderer of millions,
an authorised waste of money and energy, but a folly as well? What
waste, cannon to destroy, and to be destroyed after a few hours of
vicious mischief! Oh, the foolishness of such a parody on Ambition,
on Statesmen, on the whole world’s Progress!
§ 32
Men, human beings, brothers, as they ought to be, earning their
livelihood in making engines of Destruction. “Ypres,” “Louvain,”
and “Rheims,” came into my mind, with the devastation of hundreds
of square miles of fair agriculture in France and Belgium, and for
what? That a materialistic nation, clever and unprincipled, and
lost to all moral restraint, audacious and mendacious, might govern
the world under the sovereignty of the mad egoist, William II. But
Britain had to fight. Her honour would have been stained for ever,
had she broken faith with Belgium in her extreme agony. Whether it
is desirable to make implements of destruction in the abstract, is a
question; during the war they had to be made and with all possible
speed, and British factories played an honourable part in saving
Britain, as her soldiers did who shed their blood for their country.
Is it indeed, Utopia, that place where men may come to regard war
as a folly, and where, being taught a better and higher Ideal than
quarrelling, is a reality? I like to think the time will come when
our greatest minds are concentrated on contributing to all that Peace
designs, and our skilled labour and craftsmen are employed on things
permanent. They will be things that last into the ages to come,
that ennobled the men who designed and made them, and bring a pride
for them in the making, and an honour gained in the estimation of
them in the future. The abolition of War might depress the purse of
Industrialism, but it would endow the country with riches that money
cannot purchase. Enormous, scarcely calculable, sums of money now
spent on “preparations” to kill our neighbours, would be converted
to create things enduring and elevating. Perhaps it may never be,
but why not dream of it and work for it as a possibility? There is
an _Ideal_ somewhere. Why not reach after it? There is so much that
needs doing for Education, for Beauty, provision of healthy work for
every one, and healthier lives for every one.
We ought to have no time for war. The late struggle for Freedom has
supplied Europe and Britain with the rest. Somehow or other, a change
must come. If we are to prosper, aye, to exist, pre-war conditions
cannot be renewed. We have to make a new start, to obtain a greater
simplicity of life. If you like, more primitive. Many good old
customs and systems may well be revived. We were in such a hurry to
coin money. We forgot that what we were leaving behind was better
than what we were recklessly trying to meet. We thought that money
was the “Summum bonum” of existence, to buy transient pleasure, to
gratify our lower instincts, to feed ourselves with luxuries, to be
victims to Vanity Fair, and slaves to it; to eclipse the sun the
giver of physical needs, the symbol of Eternal God, the Giver of
Light; hence, Life, has been as great a folly as War. It is, indeed,
a kind of war to do so, a war against Nature and her manifold gifts
through the Spirit of God, which were visible in the Sun. To live
under gloom, being poisonous to the body, is likewise poisonous to
the Soul, which, in time, it must injure, if not destroy, for it
paralyses Hope; it paralyses everyone of our finer sensibilities
and aspirations. It blinds us to Beauty, it hardens the heart,
destroys graceful sympathy, engenders selfishness, and, in time, it
annihilates Love, because absence of Light is enervating to manhood.
And that is what a _few_ have been doing to the many under promise
that they shall be enriched. Enriched with what? Money paid for bad
work? And when the money is there, how have they been taught to use
it? Palliatives in plenty have been offered them. More excitements
for leisure hours, which devitalise, have been sown broadcast; and
why? because, pandering to human weakness, it paid to keep the
people quiet. We have reaped that which has been sown. The people
have become restive, they want more wages, not for the purpose of
uplifting their finer sensibilities, but to gamble with first one
then another amusement. Instead of providing, for leisure hours of
our workmen, stimulus to educate themselves to be provident, to be
industrious, we have led them by promises to the silly idea that they
are the right class to govern the country!
§ 33
The precious gift of leisure, in which our working class might
acquire more funds, we have not taught them to use; on the contrary,
their leaders have taught them that they have a right to be idle,
to obtain high wages for bad work, and in their leisure do whatever
they like. This is something very near to Anarchy; any way, it is a
principle which, if persisted in, will ruin England. No! The thing
to do them good is to teach high principles and lead them on to be
useful citizens. And that must be done, unless Democracy is to prove
a disastrous failure! We have got to begin again, to start from the
bottom--that is the clear duty for the future, and the only one that
will succeed in the long run. If Democracy fails, it will be through
apathy in the conduct of our systems, of leaving them to chance,
and bad organisation. We have got to bring classes together, not
separate them. Working men have to bring their share of labour into
the halls of Democracy. An educated class has to bring its share, and
the rich class, in its own sphere, has to bring its share. The rich
have to supply means for labour, the labourer to do his labour up to
the highest point of honour. The Educated Class has to seminate from
the flowers ripened by study, and so each class, working out its own
destiny hopefully and earnestly will contribute to general progress,
which is the end to which democracy, to succeed, must strive. One
class must not try to supersede another. That would only mean some
form of Tyranny. There can be Tyranny from _democracy_, but only
through _Anarchy_, which is as destructive to one class as another.
To put down Anarchy, Force has to be resorted to. Anarchy is quite
as great an enemy to Freedom as Autocracy. It calls out the worst
form of human passion, resulting in civil war, the greatest evil that
any nation can encounter. Russia is going through it, poor Russia,
perhaps presently to become a victim to godless Germany! France
went through the fire. France, for a time, lost her soul. The most
delicately organised people in Europe turned themselves into brutes
for a time.
What came after? The great conqueror, Napoleon. What did he conquer?
Practically all Europe, save England! What remains to-day of his
conquests? Nothing! Had Napoleon used his genius, which was second
to none other in history, in consolidating France, in putting her
intellectually as well as conventionally at the head of nations,
which, by her innate genius she might have been, Europe would be
a different place to-day. Napoleon failed, not because he was a
conqueror, but because he tried to conquer wrongly. He threw away his
force in War, he might have spent it in Peace. The French Revolution
was the parent of his egoistic ambition, as Tyranny is the child
of Tyranny. A revolution in England--by that is meant a War of
Classes--would certainly give rebirth to Military Rule. This has been
said before; it needs to be enforced by reiteration.
§ 34
Germany knows that, and nothing would please that rapacious nation so
much as England’s failure to make Democracy a success. The success of
Democracy in Britain depends upon the British, not only on how they
choose their leaders, but on the direction taken by the people as a
whole. These, then, are the reasons that I have written and published
this “Book.” I want Democracy to succeed, and I see only one way
to it; _Perfect Unanimity_, a perfect system of education, simple,
not complicated, large-minded, generous rule, without weakness, all
embracing without being overbearing. I cannot see it arrive through
class warfare. I see it in wise concessions, in whole-hearted
justice; in _general_, not _particular_ rule; in the cultivation
of the whole human machinery of our country, not in parts only; of
the soul of England as well as her physical needs; in Industry of
all kinds duly guided, duly answered; of the needs special to every
district, each performing its part in a national enterprise. In that
way, each man and woman can find a place, a usefulness, and position
as citizens of “no mean country.” That is my Ideal for England of the
future.