but now it has been translated into concrete fact, and the nation can
never forget the deep sense of corporate efficiency, even of corporate
joy, which has ensued from this obliteration of the old class
distinctions, this amalgamation of all and sundry in a common service.
The fact is that a new class distinction has in a measure taken the
place of the old, a distinction which has nothing to do with blood or
with money, but solely with service. The nation is graded, not in
degrees of social importance but in degrees of capacity for service. The
only superiority is one of sacrifice. And each grade takes its hat off
to the other on the equal standing ground of an all pervading
patriotism. The only social competition is not in getting but in giving.
National advantage takes the place of personal profit, and there is a
sense of neighbourliness such as Britain has not experienced for many a
long day, possibly for many a long century.
The supreme problem before us, I take it, is how to conserve this
relationship and carry it over from the day of war to the day of peace.
To do it will call for just that same spirit of sacrifice and service
which is its own most predominant characteristic.
For one thing we must be quite definitely prepared in every section of
society for a new way of life. From the economic point of view this will
mean that the rich will be less rich, and the poor will be enabled to
lead a larger life. Already the wealthy classes have been learning to
live a simple life, and to substitute the service of the country for
their own personal enjoyment. A serious call will come to them to
continue in that state of life when the war is over. In some degree at
least the pressure of the financial burden which the nation will have to
bear will compel them to do so.
To the workers too in the same way the call will come to a new and more
worthy way of life. I am thinking now of the workers at home who have
been earning unprecedented wages, and thereby in many cases are already
assaying a larger life. They will be reluctant to give this up, but only
a gradual redistribution of wealth can make it permanent. It is not of
course merely or mainly a matter of wages. The only real enlargement of
life is spiritual. It is an affair of the mind and the soul.
The more we bring a true education within reach of the workers the more
will there arise that sense of real kinship which only equality of
education can adequately guarantee.
And speaking at Cambridge one cannot refrain from remarking that the
University itself will have to submit to a considerable re-adjustment of
its life if it is to be a pioneer in this intellectual comradeship of
which I speak. A University may be a nursery of class distinction. In
some measure it certainly has been so in the past. The opportunity is
now before it to lead the way in establishing the only kind of equality
which is really worth having.
Then too there are obvious steps which can be taken without delay in a
new organisation of industry.
I am not one of those who think that the industrial problem can be
solved in five minutes or even in five years. None the less it should
not be impossible in wise ways to give the workers a true share of
responsibility, particularly in matters which concern the conditions of
their work and the remuneration of their labour.
If the sense of being driven by a taskmaster, whether it be the foreman
of the shop, or the manager of the works, could give place to a truer
co-operation in the management, and a larger measure of responsibility
for the worker, we should be well on the road to eliminating one of the
most persistent causes of just that kind of class distinction which we
want to abolish. The more men work together in a real comradeship, the
more mere social distinctions fade into the background. Is this not
written on every page of the chronicles of this war?
But the supreme factor in the situation, without which no mere
adjustment of organisation will prevail, is that new outlook on life
which can only be described as a subordination of private advantage to
the service of the country.
It is this alone which can really abolish the almost eternal class
distinctions which we have traced throughout our survey, the distinction
between the "haves" and the "have nots." For, as this spirit grows, the
"have nots" tend to disappear, and the "haves" look upon what they have
not as a selfish possession for their own enjoyment, but as a means of
service for the common weal. Property, that which is most proper to a
man, is seen to be precisely that contribution which he is capable of
making to the welfare of his fellows.
The crux, the very core of the whole problem, is to find some means by
which this new outlook can be produced, and a new motive by which men
can be constrained to turn the vision into fact.
Here will come in that power which, as I pointed out, has sometimes been
so potent and sometimes so impotent, but which, if it is allowed its
proper scope, can never fail. I mean of course religion.
If men can be brought to see that this new outlook with its
corresponding re-adjustment of social life is not merely a project of
reformers but the plan of the Most High God, the deliberate intention of
the supreme Spirit-force of the universe, the Scheme that was taught by
the Prince of men, then indeed we may hope that the class distinction of
which He spoke will at last be adopted: "Whosoever will be great among
you, shall be your minister: and whosoever of you will be the chiefest,
shall be servant of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for
many[30]."
FOOTNOTES:
[19] _Encycl. Brit._ xi. 604.
[20] Macaulay's _History of England_ (Longman's, 1885), pp. 38, 39, 40.
[21] _The Town Labourer_, p. 205.
[22] _Ibid._, p. 212.
[23] G. K. Chesterton, _Short History of England_, p. 98.
[24] Stubbs' _Lectures on Early English History_, pp. 18, 19.
[25] Benjamin Kidd, _Encycl. Brit._ vol. xxv. p. 329.
[26] Lucian quoted by Harnack, _Mission and expansion of Christianity_,
vol. I. p. 149.
[27] _Ibid._
[28] Lactantius quoted by Harnack, _Ibid._ p. 168.
[29] _History of England_ (Longman's, 1885), vol. I. p. 25.
[30] St Mark x. 43-45.
UNITY BETWEEN CLASSES
II
By the Right Hon. J. R. CLYNES, M.P.
I have not the advantage of knowing anything of the treatment of any
part of this subject by any preceding speaker. I myself intend to deal
with it from the industrial and social standpoint, for I think if we are
to seek unity amongst classes it is most important in the national
interest that unity should first be sought and secured in the industries
of the country. That there is disunity is suggested and admitted in the
terms of the subject. This disunity has grown out of conditions which
range over a few generations. I believe that these conditions grew
largely out of our ignoring the human side of industry and the general
life conditions of the masses of our workers. Our economic doctrine
ignored the human factor, and measured what was termed national progress
in terms merely of material wealth without due regard to who owned the
wealth, made mainly by the energy of the industrial population.
Religious doctrines and religious institutions were not the cause of
that unhappy situation, but they had suffered from it, until now we find
a very considerable number of the population engaged in a struggle for
life, in a struggle for the material means of existence, handicapped by
belief that their own unaided effort alone can assist them, that they
must not look for help to any other class, or to any other quarter.
Moral precepts have not the influence which they ought to have upon our
industrial relations. Workers are thrown back upon their own resources;
and in the use of those resources, during the past fifteen years
particularly, much has been revealed to us of what is now in the working
class mind. I am not suggesting that to seek a settlement of conditions
of disunity, or the trouble arising from those conditions, you must
coddle the working classes, praise them and pay them highly, and try to
keep them contented with conditions which in themselves cannot be
defended. I do not mean that at all. What I mean is that if unity
between classes in industrial and economic life is to be sought and
secured, it can be got only at a price, paid in a two-fold form; that of
giving a larger yield of the wealth of the nation to those who mainly by
their energies make that wealth, and of placing the producing classes
upon a level where they will receive a higher measure of respect, of
thanks, and regard than they previously have received from the nation as
a whole. I was asked among others some twelve months ago to share in the
investigations then made by representatives of the Government to
discover the immediate cause of the very serious unrest then displayed
in the country, and we went for a period of many weeks into the main
centres of the kingdom and brought a varied collection of witnesses
before us in order that the most reliable evidence should be obtained,
and one who favoured us with his views was the Rev. Canon Green, whom I
am going to quote because of his great experience among the working
class populations in various circumstances and over many years in
Manchester and elsewhere. This is what Canon Green writes:
They (the working classes) do not see why their hours should be so
long, and their wages so small, their lives so dull and colourless,
and their opportunities of reasonable rest and recreation so few.
Can we wonder that with growing education and intelligence the
workers of England are beginning to contrast their lot with that of
the rich and to ask whether so great inequalities are necessary?
There I believe you have put in the plainest and gentlest terms the
working of the working class mind as it is to-day. The country has given
them more opportunities of education. When they were less educated, or,
if I may say so, more ignorant than they are now, they were naturally
more submissive and content with conditions the cause of which they so
little understood. You cannot send the children of the poor to school,
and improve your State agencies for education, and increase the millions
annually which the country is ready to spend in teaching the masses of
the people more than they knew before, and expect those masses to remain
content with the economic and social conditions which even disturbed
their more ignorant fathers. In short, the more you educate and train
the working classes, the more naturally you bring them to the point of
revolt against conditions which are inhuman or unfair, or which cannot
be brought to square with the higher standard of education which they
may receive. I am sure when the community come to understand that it is
a natural and even a proper sense of revolt on the part of the masses of
the people they will not regret their education. Out of all this feeling
of discontent in the minds of the industrial population there has in the
last thirty odd years grown very strong organisation. The Trade Union
movement, which I mention first as a very great factor in all these
matters, is a most powerful and important factor, and the country will
have to pay greater regard to the steps which Trade Unionism may take
than the country has been disposed previously to do. The Trade Union
movement was stimulated and developed by the conditions which it was
brought into being to remedy. The Trade Union was not the growth of mere
agitation. The average Briton must be convinced that there is something
really wrong before he will try to remedy it at all, and you cannot by
lectures, and by telling the people that they have been and are being
oppressed, stir the people of this country to any resistance.
Particularly you cannot get them to pay a contribution for it. It was
because of the experience of the mass of the workers, their low wages
and long hours and the bad conditions of employment, that they organised
and used the might that comes from numbers, and paid contributions which
in the sum total now amount to many millions of pounds in the way of
reserve funds. No apology was needed for the working classes and no
defence is required for this step taken by the workers to unite
themselves in Trade Unions, and thereby secure by the unity of numbers
the power which, acting singly, it was impossible for them to exercise.
This Trade Union movement is quite alive to the division which exists
among our classes, and I am going to suggest that the movement might be
used, might be properly employed, in obtaining that unity of classes
which we are here to consider.
Well, then, we may, whilst not overlooking other helpful activities of a
large number of people in this country, seek this unity among three main
divisions of our people, viz. (_a_) in industries, (_b_) in agriculture,
and (_c_) in businesses. Given unity of interest and oneness of purpose
and aim in those three broad divisions of the nation, the rest must be
attracted and brought into harmony by mere force of example, if nothing
else, with the unity which might be secured in the three broad divisions
to which I have referred. One of the hopeful things, the significant
things, recently uttered in other quarters from which I am going to
quote, is clearly seeking this tendency to unity instead of the
different interests and classes being driven by the waste and folly of
the disuniting lines upon which so far we have persisted. I observe that
only a few days ago Lord Selborne, who is one of our principal
mouthpieces on agricultural matters, presided at a new body called into
existence within the past few weeks and to be known as the National
Agricultural Council. Now, that is not a body which will consist of
landowners, or of farmers, or of farm workers; it is a body to consist
of all three. The landowners, the farmers, and the agricultural workers
have come to recognise that they all have something in common touching
agriculture, touching the trade or industry in which they are brought
into close touch day by day. I know as a matter of fact that only a very
few years ago the Farmers' Union would not tolerate the idea of the farm
workers having a union, and the land workers looked with real dread upon
the farmers having a union, and now all three have come to the stage
when they agree to join in one Council, and, though it was admitted that
the interests of those three classes were primarily in conflict, it was
recognised that by holding meetings, by the representatives of all these
quite distinct interests frequently coming together, much good might be
done. For what? As they say, for agriculture. So, though none of them
will forfeit any rightful interest anyone of them may have in the
pursuit of a special claim, they will all recognise a higher sense of
duty, and feel there is an obligation upon them to make agriculture in
this country a greater thing not only for themselves as the three
partners, but for the mass of the community at large. And if it is
necessary to do that in the farmers' interest or the landowners'
interest, it was at least as necessary to do it in the interest of the
agricultural worker, and I put his claim first, not because he is the
sole contributor to any yield that may come from the land, but because
he is the most numerous body, and numbers in this as in other respects
may well be the determining factor; and because if he withholds his
labour there will be none of the fruit of the soil for which we look
year after year. I follow up this statement by an authoritative one from
another quarter. Lord Lee, who as we know was the Director of the Food
Production Department at the Board of Agriculture, spoke some time ago
on this aspect of the case, and said: "Take the agricultural labourer
for example. Does anyone suppose, or suggest, that he should return from
the trenches--where he has distinguished himself in a way unsurpassed by
any other class in the community--to the old miserable conditions under
which, in most parts of the country, he was under-paid, wretchedly
housed, and denied almost any pleasure in life, except such as the
public house could offer him? Those conditions were a disgrace to the
country, and I shall never be content until they are swept away for
ever. I do not say this only in the interest of the man himself; it is
necessary these conditions should go, in the best interests not merely
of the labourer but of the farmer and of agriculture." So it may be that
unity and oneness of purpose and of action will be driven upon us as one
of the bye-products of war conditions. For your simple plain
agricultural worker will come back feeling that as he has fought for the
liberties of his country he will be entitled to enjoy a little more of
it than ever before, that if the land is to be freed from designs of the
tyrant abroad it must be freed also from any wrong at home, and that he
must have a larger share in the fruits of his labour than he has enjoyed
before. My own view is that you will not on that account make the farm
worker a less efficient harvestman, but you will make him a happier
father, you will be making him a more contented citizen, and may make
him a more profitable worker than he has ever been.
Various remedies have been tried or thought of to give effect to what
are our common aspirations. One I have seen referred to frequently is
one I would like to see always avoided. It is the remedy of placing
before workmen as a necessity a greatly increased output from their
manual labour in the future; not that I am opposed to an increased
output, but I am not going to demand it as part of the bargain which
should itself be arranged and carried out, even if it did not
necessarily secure for us any greater sum total of wealth than we now
enjoy; for poor as we may have accounted ourselves we have seen in the
past few years how vastly we can spend and lend in support of any high
purpose to which the country may devote itself. Poverty can never again
be claimed by the nation as a whole whenever there is a proper and
reasonable demand for any social change or reform which may be
necessary and proper. Men are asking for a greater yield, for a greater
output, for building up our wealth higher than ever before, so as to
repair the ravages of the war, if for no other purpose. With all those
objects I agree, but we must not make them as terms to the worker in
exchange for those conditions of unity which we are asking our workers
to arrange with us. Greater output, increased efficiency, a bigger and
better return of wealth from industrial and agricultural energy, can
well come out of a better working system, a better rearrangement of
combined effort, a more extensive use of machinery, a more satisfactory
sub-division of labour, a wider employment of the personal experience
and technical skill of our industrial classes, a higher state of
administrative efficiency and management in the workshops, the creation
of a better and more humane atmosphere in the workshops. Out of all of
these things a greater yield of wealth could be produced, and it is
along those lines we must go in order not merely to convert but to
convince the workman that he is not being used as a mere tool for some
ulterior end for the benefit of some smaller class in the country. It
has been said by some that Trade Union restrictions and limitations must
go. I candidly admit there have been Trade Union regulations and
conditions which perhaps have stood in the way of some increased output,
but I am not here to apologise for Trade Union rules. Every class has
its regulations and rules. The more powerful and the more wealthy the
class the more rigid and stringent those rules have been. However, the
class which was most in need of regulations and rules, the working
class, was the first to set the example of setting them aside as a
general war measure when the country called upon the workers to take
action of that kind during 1915. We must, therefore, keep in mind the
fact that workmen are naturally suspicious. That suspicion is the growth
of the workshop system, into which I have not now the time to go, and we
must avoid causing the workman to suspect that our unity, the unity we
are seeking among classes, is a mere device for getting him to work
harder and produce greater wealth and perhaps labour even longer hours
than ever.
The first great step towards this unity is to secure the good will of
the Trade Unions. Having secured that, the next thing is to proceed upon
lines which will bring at once home to the individual workman in the
workshop some sense of responsibility with regard to the response which
he must make to the appeal which we put before him. In short, better
relations must precede any first step that could effectively be taken to
secure this greater unity, and better relations are impossible in
industry until we have given the individual workman a greater sense of
responsibility of what he is in the workshop for. Let me briefly outline
how that might be secured. It was put, I think, quite eloquently if
simply in an address to the Trade Union Congress a short time ago by the
President of the Congress, who said that the workman wanted a voice in
the daily management of the employment in which he spends his working
life, in the atmosphere and in the conditions under which he has to
work, in the hours of beginning and ending work, in the conditions of
remuneration, and even in the manners and practices of the foremen with
whom he had to be in contact. "In all these matters," said the
President, "workmen have a right to a voice--even to an equal
voice--with the management itself." I know that is a big, and to some an
extravagant claim to make, but to set it aside or ignore it is to
provoke and invite further trouble. Industry can no longer be run for
the profit which it produces, or even because of the wealth which
collective energy can make. That, indeed, was the mistake out of which,
as I said at the beginning, this disunion, and this suspicion, and this
selfishness, have grown. We have had greatly to modify our doctrines of
political economy during the course of the war, and all the things which
many teachers told us never could be done have come as natural to us
under war conditions which we could not resist, and of which we were the
creatures. Where now is the law of supply and demand? Indeed, if the law
of supply and demand were operating at this moment, there are few
workmen in the country who would not be receiving many, many pounds more
a week than they are. The workman is not paid to-day according to the
demand for his labour. A very much higher obligation decides for him
what his remuneration is to be. I have in mind, of course, the fact that
a considerable number of workers, who are employed upon munition
services and so on, are enjoying very high wages, but that is not at all
true of the masses of the industrial population, and we ought not to be
deceived by these rare instances which are quoted of men coming out of
the workshop with _£_20 or _£_30. Speaking of the industrial population
in the main, what was the outstanding economic doctrine?--the doctrine
that the demand for labour and the volume for supplying that demand
determined the remuneration. That doctrine has had to go by the board
like so many other things that could not exist under war pressure.