men united for purposes of trade and profit. The craftsman of the
town, who made things and sold them, found out by the experience of
some generations that his only chance, if he would not become a slave,
was to combine with others who made the same things for the same
purposes. He therefore formed--here in London, as early as the Saxon
times an association for the protection of his craft--a
rough-and-ready association at first, a religious guild or fraternity,
something which should persuade men to come together as friends, not
rivals, what we should now call a benefit society, gradually
developing into an association of officers, a constitution, and rules;
growing by slow degrees into a powerful and wealthy body, having its
period of birth, development, vigour, and decay. In illustration of
such an association, I will sketch out for you the history of a
certain London Company--what was called a Craft Company; a society of
working-men who were engaged upon the same craft; who all made the
same thing: as the Company of Bowyers who made bows, or of Fletchers
who made arrows. The society began first of all with a Guild of the
Craft, such as I have just mentioned; that is to say, all those who
belonged to the Craft--according to the custom of the time, they all
lived in the same quarter and were well known to each other--were
persuaded or compelled to belong to the Guild. Here religion stepped
in, for every Guild had its own patron saint, and if a craftsman stood
aloof, he lost the protection and incurred the displeasure of that
saint, so that, apart from considerations of the common weal, terror
of how the offended saint might punish the blackleg forced men to
join. Thus, St. George protected the armourers; St. Mary and St.
Thomas the Martyr, the bowyers; St. Catharine the Virgin, the
haberdashers; St. Martin, the sadlers; the Virgin Mary, the
cloth-workers, and so on. On the saint's day they marched in
procession to the parish church and heard Mass; every year each man
paid his fees of membership; the Guild looked after the sick and
maintained the aged of the Craft. The next step, which was not taken
until after many years, and was not at first contemplated, was to
obtain for the Guild--_i.e._, for the Craft--a Royal Charter. This
favour of the Sovereign conferred certain powers of regulating their
trade; and, this once obtained, we hear no more of the Guild--it
became absorbed into the Company. The religious observances remained,
but they were no longer put forward as the chief 'articles' of
association. The powers granted by Royal Charter were very strong. The
Company was empowered to prohibit anyone from working at that trade
within the jurisdiction of the City who was not a member of the
Company; it could prevent markets from being held within a certain
distance of the City; it could oblige all the youth of the City to be
apprenticed to some Company; it could regulate wages and hours of
work; it could examine the work before it could be sold; and it could
limit the number of the workmen. The Company, in fact, ruled its own
trade with an authority from which there was no appeal. On the other
hand, the Company exercised a paternal care over its members. When
they were sick, the Company provided for them; when they became old,
the Company maintained them; if any became dishonest, the Company
turned them out of the City. You, who think yourselves strong with
your Trades Unions (things as yet undeveloped and with all their
history before them), have never yet succeeded in getting a tenth part
of the power and authority over your own men that was excercised by a
City Company in the time of Richard II. over its Livery.
Then, in order to maintain the dignity of the Craft, a livery was
chosen, the colours of which were worn by every member. On their
saint's day, as in the old days of the Guild, the Company marched in
great magnificence, with music and flags and new liveries, with their
wardens, officers, schoolboys, almsmen, and priests, to church. After
church they banqueted together in the Company's Hall, a splendid
building, where a great feast was served, and where the day was
honoured by the presence of guests--great nobles, city worthies, even
the Lord Mayor, perhaps, or some of the Aldermen, or the Bishop, or
one of the Abbots of the City Religious Houses. Every man was bidden
to bring his wife to the feast of the Company's grand day--if not his
wife, then his sweetheart, for all were to feast together. During
dinner the musicians in their gallery made sweet music. After dinner,
actors and tumblers came in, and they had pageants and shows, and
marvellous feats of skill and legerdemain.
Ask yourselves, at this point, whether it is possible to conceive of
an institution more purely democratic than such a company as
originally designed. All the craftsmen of every craft combining
together, not one allowed to stand out, electing their own officers,
obeying rules for the general good, building halls, holding banquets,
and creating a spirit of pride in their craft. What more could be
desired? Why do we not imitate this excellent example?
Yet, when we look at the City Companies, what do we find? The old
Craft Companies, it is true, still exist; they have an income of many
thousands a year, and a livery, or list of members, in number varying
from twenty to four hundred, and not one single craftsman left among
them. What has become, then, or the Association? Well, that remains,
the shadow remains, but the substance has long since gone. Even the
craft itself, in many cases, has disappeared. There are no longer in
existence, for instance, Armourers, Bowyers, Fletchers, or Poulterers.
What has happened, then? Why did this essentially democratic
Company--in which all were subject to rules for the general good, and
none should undersell his brother, and the rate of wages and the hours
of labour were regulated--so completely fail?
For many reasons, some of which concern ourselves: it failed, because
the members themselves forgot the original reason of their
combination, and neglected to look after their own interests; it
failed, because the members were too ignorant to remember, or to know,
that the Company was founded for the interests of the Craft itself,
and not for those of the masters alone or the men alone. Now every
Association must needs, of course, have wardens or masters; it must
needs elect to those posts of dignity and responsibility such men as
could understand law and maintain their privileges if necessary before
the dread Sovereign, his Highness the King. The men they necessarily
elected were therefore those who had received some education,
master-workmen--their own employers--not their fellows. It speedily
came about, therefore, that the masters, not the men, ruled the hours
of work, the wages of work, the quantity and quality of work: the
masters, not the craftsmen, admitted members and limited their number.
Do you now understand? The officers ruled the Company of the Craftsmen
for the benefit of the masters and not the men. Nay, they did more.
Since in some trades the men showed a disposition, on dimly perceiving
the reality, to form a union within a union, the masters were strong
enough to put down all combinations for the raising of wages as
illegal; to attempt such combinations was ruled to be conspiracy. And
conspiracy all unions of working men have remained down to the present
day, as the founders of the first Trades Unions in this country
discovered to their cost. So the men were gagged; they were silenced;
they were enslaved by the very institution that they had founded for
the insurance of their own freedom. The thing was inevitable because
they were ignorant, and because, if you put into any man's hands the
power of robbing his neighbour with impunity, that man will inevitably
sooner or later rob his neighbour. I fear that we must acknowledge the
sorrowful fact that not a single man in the whole world, whatever his
position, can be trusted with irresponsible and absolute power--with
the power of robbery coupled with the certainty of immunity.
Well, in this way came about the first enslavement of the working man.
It lasted for three hundred years. Then followed a time of comparative
freedom, when, the wealth and population of the city increasing, the
craftsmen found themselves pushed out beyond the walls, and taking up
their quarters beyond the power of the Companies. But it was a freedom
without knowledge, without order, without forethought. It was the
freedom of the savage who lives only for himself. For they were now
unable to combine. In the long course of centuries they had lost the
very idea of combination; they had forgotten that in an age we call
rude and rough they possessed the power and perceived the importance
of combination. The great-grandchildren of the men who had formed this
union of the trade had entirely forgotten the meaning, the reason, the
possibility, of the old combination. In this way, then, the Companies
gradually lost their craftsmen, but retained their property.
One very remarkable result may be noticed. Formerly, the Lord Mayor of
London was elected by the whole of the commonalty. All the citizens
assembled at Paul's Cross, and there, sometimes with tumult and
sometimes with fighting, they elected their mayor for the next year.
But since every man in the City was compelled to belong to his own
Company, to speak of the commonalty meant to speak of the Companies.
Every man who voted for the election of Lord Mayor was therefore bound
to be a liveryman--_i.e_., a member of a Company. This restriction is
still in force; that is to say, the City of London, the richest and
the greatest city in the world, now allows eight thousand liverymen,
or members of the Companies, to elect their chief magistrate.
Why do I tell over again this old threadbare tale? Perhaps, however,
it is not old or threadbare to you: perhaps there are some here who
learn for the first time that association, trade union, combination,
is a thousand years old in this ancient city. I have told it chiefly,
however, because the history should be a warning to you of London;
because it shows that association itself may be made the very weapon
with which to destroy its own objects; in other words, because you
must find in this history an illustration or the great truth that the
forms of liberty require the most unceasing vigilance to prevent them
from becoming the means of destroying liberty. The Companies failed
because they could be, and were, used to destroy the freedom of the
very men for whose benefit they were founded. At present, as you know,
some of them are very poor indeed: those which are rich are probably
doing far more good with their wealth in promoting all kinds of useful
work than ever they did in all their past history.
There followed, I said, a long period in which association among
working men was absolutely unknown. The history of this period, from a
craftsman's point of view, has never been written. It is, indeed, a
most terrible chapter in the history of industry.
Imagine, if you can, crowded districts in which there were no schools,
or but one school for a very few, no churches, no newspapers or books,
a place in which no one could read; a place in which every man, woman
and child regarded the Government of the country, in which they had
not the least share, as their natural enemy and oppressor. Among them
lurked the housebreaker, the highway robber, and the pickpocket. Along
the riverside, where many thousands of working men lived--at St.
Katherine's, Wapping, Shadwell, and Ratcliff--all the people together,
high and low, were in league with the men who loaded and unloaded the
ships in the river and robbed them all day long. What could be
expected of people left thus absolutely to themselves, without any
power of action, without the least thought that amendment was possible
or desirable? Can we wonder if the people sank lower and lower, until,
by the middle of the last century, the working men of London had
reached a depth of degradation that terrified everyone who knew what
things meant? Listen to the following words, written in the year 1772:
'To paint the manners of the lower rank of the inhabitants of London
is to draw a most disagreeable caricature, since the blackest vices
and the most perpetual scenes of villainy and wickedness are
constantly to be met with there. The most thorough contempt for all
order, morality, and decency is almost universal among the poorer sort
of people, whose manners I cannot but regard as the worst in the whole
world. The open street for ever presents the spectator with the most
loathsome scenes of beastliness, cruelty, and all manner of vice. In a
word, if you would take a view of man in his debased state, go neither
to the savages nor the Hottentots; they are decent, cleanly, and
elegant, compared with the poor people of London.'
This is very strongly put. If you will look at some of Hogarth's
pictures you will admit that the words are not too strong.
Union had long since been forbidden; union was called conspiracy;
conspiracy was punishable by imprisonment. If men cannot combine they
sink into their natural condition and become savages again. All these
evils fell upon our unfortunate working men as a natural result of
neglect first, and of enforced isolation. Union was forbidden. During
all these years every man worked for himself, stood by himself; there
was no association. Therefore, there followed savagery. There was no
education. Had there been either, association or rebellion must have
followed. The awakening of associated effort took place at the
beginning of the French Revolution. It was caused, or stimulated, by
that prodigious movement; and the first combinations of working men
were formed for political purposes. Since then, what have we seen?
Associations for political purposes formed, prohibited, persecuted,
formed again in spite of ancient laws. Associations victorious; we
have seen Trades Unions formed, prohibited, formed again, and now
flourishing, though not quite victorious. And the spirit of
association, I cannot but believe, grows stronger every day. In this
most glorious century--the noblest century for the advancement of
mankind that the world has ever seen, yet only the beginning of the
things that are to follow--we have gained an immense number of things:
the suffrage, vote by ballot, the Factory Acts, abolition of flogging,
the freedom of the press, the right of public meeting, the right of
combination, and a system of free education by which the national
character, the national modes of thought; the national customs, will
be changed in ways we cannot forecast; but since the national
character will always remain British we need have no fear of that
change. All these things--remember, all these things; every one of
these things--is the result, direct or indirect, of association.
Think, for instance, of one difference in custom between now and a
hundred years ago. Formerly, when a wrong thing had to be denounced,
or an iniquity attacked, the man who saw the thing wrote a pamphlet or
a book, which never probably reached the class for whom it was
intended at all. He now writes to the papers, which are read by
millions. He thus, to begin with, creates a certain amount of public
opinion; he then forms a society composed of those who think like
himself; then, for his companions, he spreads his doctrines in all
directions. That is our modern method; not to stand up alone like a
prophet, and to preach and cry aloud while the world, unheeding,
passes by, but to march in the ranks with brother soldiers, exhorting
and calling on our comrades to take up the word, and pass it on--and
when the soldiers in the ranks are firm and fixed to carry that cause.
We are now witnessing one of the most remarkable, one of the most
suggestive, signs of the time--a time which is, I verily believe,
teeming with social mange--a time, as I have said above, of the most
stupendous importance in the history of mankind. We read constantly,
in the paper and everywhere, fears, prophecies, bogies of approaching
revolution. Approaching! Fears of approaching revolution! Why, we are
in the midst of this revolution, we are actually in the midst of the
most wonderful social revolution! People don't perceive it, simply
because the revolutionaries are not chopping off heads, as they did in
France. But it has begun, all the same, and it is going on around us
silently, swiftly, irresistibly. We are actually in the midst of
revolution. Everywhere the old order of things is slipping away;
everywhere things new and unexpected are asserting themselves. Let me
only point out a few things. We have become within the last twenty
years a nation of readers--we all read; most of us, it is true, read
only newspapers. But what newspapers? Why, exactly the same papers as
are read by the people of the highest position in the land. Perhaps
you have not thought of the significance, the extreme significance, of
this fact. Certainly those who continually talk of the ignorance of
the people have never thought of it! What does it mean? Why, that
every reasoning man in the country, whatever his social position,
reads the same news, the same debates, the same arguments as the
statesman, the scholar, the philosopher, the preacher, or the man of
science. He bases his opinions on the same reasoning and on the same
information as the Leader of the House of Commons, as my Lord
Chancellor, as my Lord Archbishop himself. Formerly the working man
read nothing, and he knew nothing, and he had no power. He has now,
not only his vote, but he has as much personal influence among his own
friends as depends upon his knowledge and his force of character, and
he can acquire as much political knowledge as any noble lord not
actually in official circles, if he only chooses to reach out his hand
and take what is offered him! Is not that a revolution which has so
much raised the working man? Again, he was, formerly, the absolute
slave of his employer; he was obliged to take with a semblance of
gratitude whatever wages were offered him. What is he now? A man of
business, who negotiates for his skill. Is not that a revolution?
Formerly he lived where he could. Look, now, at the efforts made
everywhere to house him properly. For, understand, association on one
side, which shows power, commands recognition and respect on the
other. None of these fine things would have been done for the working
men had they not shown that they could combine. Consider, again, the
question of education. Here, indeed, is a mighty revolution going on
around us: the Board Schools teaching things never before presented to
the children of the people; technical schools teaching work of all
kinds; and--a most remarkable sign of the times--thousands upon
thousands of working lads, after a hard day's work, going off to a
Polytechnic for a hard evening's work of another kind. And of what
kind? It is exactly the same kind as is found in the colleges of the
rich. The same sciences, the same languages, the same arts, the same
intellectual culture, are learned by these working lads in their
evenings as are learned by their richer brothers in the mornings. In
many cases the teachers are men of the same standing at the University
as those who teach at the public schools. There are, I believe, a
hundred thousand of these ambitious boys scattered over London, and
the number increases daily. If this is not revolution, I should like
to know what is. That the working classes should study in the highest
schools; that they should enjoy an equal chance with the richest and
noblest of acquiring knowledge of the highest kind; that they should
be found capable actually of foregoing the pleasures of youth--the
rest, the society, the amusements of the evenings--in order to acquire
knowledge--what is this if it is not a revolution and an upsetting? As
for what is coming out of all these things, I have formed, for myself,
very strong views indeed, and I think that I could, if this were a
fitting time, prophesy unto you. But, for the present, let us be
content with simply marking what has been done, and especially with
the recognition that everything--every single thing--that has been
gained has been either achieved by association, or has naturally grown
and developed out of association.
Through association the way to the higher education is open to you;
through association political power has been acquired for you; through
association you have made yourselves free to combine for trade
purposes; through association you have made yourselves strong, and
even, in the eyes of some, terrible; it remains in these respects only
that you should make, as one believes you will make, a fit and proper
use of advantages and weapons which have never before been placed in
the hands of any nation, not even Germany; certainly not the United
States.
But what about the other side of life--the social side, the side of
recreation, the side which has been so persistently ignored and
neglected up to the present day? Now, when we look round us and
consider that side of life we observe the plainest and the most
significant proof possible of the great social revolution which is
among us; plainer, more significant, than the success of the Trades
Unions. For we see sprung up, already a vigorous plant, the associated
life applied to purposes above the mere material interests. You have
made them safe, as far as possible, by your unions. The social and
recreative side of life you have now taken over into your keeping, you
order recreation which shall be as music or as poetry in your
associated lives, harmonious, melodious, rhythmic, metrical. All that
I have said to-night leads up to this, that the Associated Life is
necessary for the enjoyment and the attainment of the best and the
highest things that the world can give, as the Guild and the Company
formerly, and the Trade Union is now, for the safeguarding of the
craft. In entering upon this new association, men and women together,
learn the lessons of the past. Be jealous of your democratic lines.
Let every step be a step for the general interest. Let the individual
perish. Let the wishes and intentions of your founders be never lost
to sight. Be not carried away by religion, by politics, by any new
thing; never lose the principles of your association.
And now, I ask, when, before this day, has it been recorded in the
history of any city that men and women should unite in order to
procure for themselves those social advantages which up to the present
have been enjoyed only by the richer class, and not always by them?
When, before this time, has it been reported that men and women have
banded themselves together resolved that whatever good things rich
people could procure for themselves, they would also make for
themselves? Since the magistrates refused to allow dancing, one of the
most innocent and delightful amusements, they would arrange their own
dancing for themselves without troubling the magistrates for
permission. Since going to concerts cost money, they would have their
own musicians and their own singers. Since selection of companions is
the first essence of social enjoyment, they would have their own rooms
for themselves, where they would meet none but those who, like
themselves, desired education, culture, and orderly recreation. In one
word, when, in the history of any city, has there been found such a
combination, so resolute for culture, as the combination of men and
women which has raised this temple, this sacred Temple of Humanity?
You are, indeed, I plainly perceive, revolutionaries of the most
dangerous kind. As revolutionaries you are engaged in the cultivation
of all those arts and accomplishments which have hitherto belonged to
the West-end; as revolutionaries you claim the right to meet, read,
sing, dance, act, play, debate, with as much freedom as if you lived
in Berkeley Square. Where will these things stop?
[1893.]
[Illustration.]
End of Project Gutenberg's As We Are and As We May Be, by Sir Walter Besant