Now it is this offering of a false economic excuse for the sweater that
is the danger in perpetually saying that the poor woman will use the
vote and that the poor man has not used it. The poor man is prevented
from using it; prevented by the rich man, and the poor woman would be
prevented in exactly the same gross and stringent style. I do not deny,
of course, that there is something in the English temperament, and in
the heritage of the last few centuries that makes the English workman
more tolerant of wrong than most foreign workmen would be. But this only
slightly modifies the main fact of the moral responsibility. To take an
imperfect parallel, if we said that negro slaves would have rebelled
if negroes had been more intelligent, we should be saying what is
reasonable. But if we were to say that it could by any possibility be
represented as being the negro’s fault that he was at that moment
in America and not in Africa, we should be saying what is frankly
unreasonable. It is every bit as unreasonable to say the mere supineness
of the English workmen has put them in the capitalist slave-yard. The
capitalist has put them in the capitalist slaveyard; and very cunning
smiths have hammered the chains. It is just this creative criminality in
the authors of the system that we must not allow to be slurred over. The
capitalist is in the dock to-day; and so far as I at least can prevent
him, he shall not get out of it.