The other day the village was celebrating the birthday of its
Labourers' Union in a manner which used to be reserved for the coming
of age of the Squire's son, or for the Harvest Festival, in which the
farmer might give thanks for the harvest, and the peasant, perhaps,
for having been allowed to assist in winning it. I take a sort of
pride in recording a staidness in the observance which I believe to be
peculiar to the countryside in which I live. There was a service,
with a sermon, in church, all persuasions uniting; then a dinner with
speeches; then sports and dancing on the grass. Every stave of the
Pastoral was announced and punctuated by the village band. "God save
the King" closed all down at nine o'clock.
It was sober merry-making after our manner, yet one could feel the
undercurrent of a triumph not difficult to understand. Not a man there
but knew, or had heard his father tell, of how things used to be. Ten
years ago those men were earning sixteen shillings a week for twelve
hours a day; fifteen years ago they were earning twelve shillings;
thirty years ago they were earning nine shillings; a hundred years
ago they were on the rates, herded about in conscript gangs under the
hectorings of an overseer. Now--and it has seemed to come all in a
moment--the humblest of them earn their 36_s._ 6_d._; the head men
their 40_s._; their hours are down to fifty for the week, with a
half-holiday on Saturday; delegates of their kind sit at a board in
Trowbridge face to face and of equal worth with delegates of their
employers. All matters affecting their status, housing, terms of
employment can be brought before the board; and beside that, and
behind it, like a buttress, there is a Union, whose name recalls that
other grim fortress to which alone in times bygone they had to look
when old age was upon them. This new Union has been in existence here
little more than a twelvemonth, but they know now that it has spread
all over England.
They know more than that. They know that this plexus of organisations
is not only social, but political; they feel that the estate of the
realm which they stand for may soon become, and must before long
become, the predominant estate. They feel the rising tide already
lifting them off their feet. The elders are sobered by the flood; but
the young ones taste the salt water sprayed off the crest of the wave
and look at each other, laugh and cheer. If they rejoice they have
good reason, knowing what they know; and if I rejoice with them, I
think that I have good reason too. This time seven years ago I sang
at length of Hodge and his plow; and looking back and forth over his
blood-stained, sweat-stained and tear-stained history, I seemed to see
what was coming to him as the crown of his thousand years of toil.
I look and see the end of it,
How fair the well-lov'd land appears;
I see September's misty heat
Laid like a swooning on the corn;
I see the reaping of the wheat,
I hear afar the hunter's horn,
I see the cattle at the ford,
The panting sheep beneath the thorn!
The burden of the years is scor'd,
The reckoning made, Hodge walks alone,
Content, contenting, his own lord,
Master of what his pain has won.
And so indeed it is. The peasant now has his foot on the degrees of
the throne, and has only to step up, he and his mates of the mine, the
forge, the foundry and the railroad--to step up and lay hand to the
orb and sceptre.
If I had misgivings, and if those, when imparted to, were shared by an
old friend of mine who still gives me six hours a day of his strength
and skill when the weather and his rheumatics can hit it off together,
I may say at once that though they were renewed in me by the late
threat of the railwaymen arrogantly hurled at the only Government in
my recollection which has made arrogance in asking almost a necessary
stage in negotiation, they had been present for a long time--beyond
Mr. Smillie's wild proposals of direct action, beyond the Yorkshire
miners and the flooded coalfields; back to the day when electricians
refused to light the Albert Hall, and Merchant Seamen refused passage
to some politician or another because they didn't like his politics.
One and each of those direct and unsteady actions made me shiver for
the men with their feet on the throne's degrees. And now a Railway
Strike, which has injured every one and will throw back the railwaymen
and their Labour Party for many a year! If these things are done in
the green wood, I asked my friend, what will be done in the dry?
He couldn't answer me but by asking in his turn questions which
were but a variation of my own. He said: "Our people don't seem to
understand anything but 'each man for himself.' The miners hold up
the country for higher wages, and the country has to pay them; the
railwaymen do the same, and the country must find double fares and
high freight. They hit their own class hardest of all, because dear
coal and high tariffs touch everybody. And they don't even help
themselves, because directly wages are raised, up goes the price of
everything. Now what I want you to tell me is how are they going to
stop all that when they are the Government? For it will have to stop."
He is right: it will have to stop; but I don't see how the Labour
Party is going to stop it. So far as I can make out, the Labour Party,
as a responsible, political body, has no control whatsoever over the
trade unions; and the trade unions, as such, none over their members.
How, then, is one to look forward with comfort to the establishment
of a Labour Government? It will take a readier speech than even Mr.
Webb's, a more confident than even Mr. Smillie's to illuminate this
smoke-blurred scene whereon we make out every trade union preying upon
Mr. George's vitals (which are, unfortunately, for the moment our
own vitals), and with a success so disastrously easy as to make any
prospects of a return to sane, honest, dignified or just government
almost hopeless! Mr. George is destroying himself hand over fist, and
the sooner the better; but one does not want to see England go down
with him. I am all for anarchy myself when once it is thoroughly
grasped by everybody that anarchy means minding your own business.
But we are far from that as yet. Anarchy at present means minding, and
grudging, other people's business. Such anarchy is not government, but
plundering with both hands.
My point, however, is that, if we are to have a Labour Government,
it must be a Government of a nation, and not a class-affair. When the
Duke said that the King's Government must be carried on, he meant the
Government of King George or King William. Our present Prime Minister
means the Government of Mr. George, which is a very different affair.
In its way of simple egotism it is precisely the meaning of the trade
unions, and can be shortlier put as "After me the deluge." And that
won't do. We want neither autocracy nor anarchy; and just now the one
involves the other.