little known and understood. Those who stand outside a revolutionary
agitation, or who look down on it from above, necessarily only see the
defiant subversive elements of it, they do not guess the glowing heart
within. To me, passing from time to time from one stratum of life to
quite another, it was a strange experience and not without its comic
side, to see the wildly different features which one and the same
movement wore to those within and those without; to hear Socialism
spoken of from above, as nothing but an envious shriek and a threat, a
gospel of bread and butter, a grab, a “divide up all round”—the work of
unscrupulous demagogues and tinsel politicians; and then the next moment
to pass into the heart of the thing and to find oneself in an atmosphere
of the most simple fraternity and idealism, where the coming of the
kingdom of Heaven, a kingdom of social order and decency, was
entertained with a childlike faith that might almost make one smile;
where it seemed only necessary to go out into the streets and preach the
better ideals for crowds to flock to the standard; and where, if a
betterment of conditions was the main thing sought for, it was a
betterment of social life and a satisfaction of the needs of the heart
fully as much as an increased allowance of bread and butter. It was a
strange experience to pass from cold to hot, and from hot to cold, as it
were, and to realize how little those in the one current could
understand what was going on in the other.
Certainly from what experience I have had of a movement at one time
thought very revolutionary, I am inclined to think that most revolutions
must have been pretty well justified before they took place. One hears
of dangerous mobs led by demagogues and fed on fancied wrongs; and of
course there are such things in every movement as self-seeking
blusterers, or designing misleaders; there is ignorance and
non-reasoning exasperation; but my experience of the (British) masses is
that instead of being too inflammable, they are surely only too _slow_
to move, too slow to perceive the burdens which they bear, or to point
out the cause of their own suffering; and—in the Socialist agitation—the
number and influence of the blusterers and self-seekers compared with
the genuine leaders has always been very small. No, revolutions do not
take place without cause; and I doubt whether in any case the excesses
accompanying a rising have exceeded the cruelties and injuries of the
preceding tyranny. There is such a heart of tenderness and patient
common sense in the mass of the people—everywhere I believe—as to
convince one that, notwithstanding the slanders that have been heaped up
by the armchair historian, they are really more inclined to endure than
to accuse, more ready to forgive than retaliate. No—the general
Socialist movement (including therein the Anarchist) has done and is
still doing a great and necessary work—and I am proud to have belonged
to it. It has defined a dream and an ideal, that of the common life
conjoined to the free individuality, which somewhere and somewhen must
be realized, because it springs from and is the expression of the very
root-nature of Man.
Our “Sheffield Socialists,” though common working men and women,
understood well enough the broad outlines of this ideal. They hailed
William Morris and his work with the most sincere appreciation. I found
among them the most interesting personalities, saturated for the most
part, as I have said, with the thought of fraternity and fellowship; and
I made one or two lifelong friends.
[Illustration:
G. E. H.
(One of the first “Sheffield Socialists.”)
]
We organized lectures, addresses, pamphlets, with a street-corner
propaganda which soon brought us in amusing and exciting incidents in
the way of wrangles with the police and the town-crowds. At first an
atmosphere of considerable suspicion rested upon the movement, and
dynamite and daggers were assumed by outsiders to be indispensable parts
of our equipment; but as time went on, and after a few years, this died
away—and where there had been only jeers or taunts at first, crowds came
to listen with serious and sympathetic mien. A dozen or twenty at most
formed the moving and active element of our society—though its
membership may have been a hundred or more; and these disposed
themselves to their various functions. Mrs. Usher, large-bosomed and
large-hearted, would move on the outskirts of our open-air meetings,
armed with a bundle of literature. She was an excellent saleswoman and
few could resist her hearty appeal “Buy this pamphlet, love, it will do
you good!” Even in the streets or the tramcars the most solemn and
substantial old gentlemen fell a prey to her. Her brothers, the two
Binghams, were among our two speakers, and both of them pretty
effective, the one in a logical, the other in a more oratorical way.
They were provision merchants in the town; and their business suffered
at first, but afterwards gained, by the connection. Then there was
Shortland, handsome, fiery and athletic, an engine fitter, always ready
for a row and to act as ‘chucker out’ if required. Or J. M. Brown, who
took quite an opposite part. He (tailor by trade) the very picture of
kindness and broad good-nature would move among the crowd as if he
hardly belonged to us, and engaging persuasively in conversation, first
with one and then with another, would draw many a doubter into the fold;
or George E. Hukin, with his Dutch-featured face and Dutch build—no
speaker, nor prominent in public—but though young an excellent help at
our committee meetings, where his shrewd strong brain and tactful nature
gave his counsels much weight; and always from the beginning a special
ally of mine; or George Adams, afterwards associated with me at
Millthorpe, with his amusing quips and sallies, and plucky antagonisms,
a good friend and a good hater, and always ready for an adventurous
bout; or Raymond Unwin, who would come over from Chesterfield to help
us, a young man of cultured antecedents, of first-rate ability and good
sense, healthy, democratic, vegetarian, and now I need not say a
well-known architect and promoter of Garden Cities.
Then at one time there was Fred Charles—who was afterwards accused of an
anarchist plot and sentenced, most unfairly, to ten years’ hard labour.
He was already leaning to the Anarchist side of the movement, but was
ready to work with us; and certainly was one of the most devoted of
workers. No surrender or sacrifice for the ‘cause’ was too great for
him; and as to his own earnings (as clerk) or possessions, he
practically gave them all away to tramps or the unemployed. The case was
tried at Stafford in March ’92 by Justice Hawkins, and though the
incriminating evidence was quite slender yet, there being a panic on at
the time with regard to Anarchism, there was an obvious determination to
convict. I appeared in the box to testify to Charles’ excellent
character and public spirit, but needless to say without success. Or
there was Burton, enginetenter, rather a type of the stout, somewhat
self-satisfied and ignorant street-speaker, who would get us into
trouble shouting “The land for the people!” or other cant phrases of the
period, with really no clear idea of what they meant, and would have to
be rescued when attacked or challenged by some keener critic among the
audience; or again, Jonathan Taylor, the very opposite in type to these,
tall, lean, logical and conclusive to the last degree; who with a kind
of homely unconquerable humour, compelled his hearers from finger to
finger, and from point to point, of his argument, and somehow always
succeeded in holding the most restive crowd, and for any period. He had
been on the school-board at one time, and was useful to us also by his
knowledge of local and municipal expediencies. Or again, John Furniss:
he was a remarkable man, and perhaps the very first to preach the modern
Socialism in the streets of Sheffield. A quarryman by trade, keen and
wiry both in body and in mind, a thorough-going _Christian_ Socialist,
and originally I believe a bit of a local preacher; he had somehow at an
early date got hold of the main ideas of the movement; and in the early
’eighties used to stride in—he and his companion George Pearson—five or
six miles over the Moors, to Sheffield in order to speak at the Pump or
the Monolith; and then stride out again in the middle of the night. And
this he kept up for years and years, and when later he migrated to
another quarry about the same distance from Chesterfield did exactly the
same thing there; for perhaps twenty years, with marvellous energy and
perseverance, he must have kept up this propaganda; and the amount of
effective influence he must have exercised would be hard to reckon.
Such were some of the characters with whom I found myself associated,
and for five or six years we carried on the Society with the utmost
friendliness, accord and enthusiasm. It was a most interesting time. I
knew all those mentioned and many others, very intimately, was familiar
in their houses, stayed with them, knew all their goings-out and
comings-in, and something of the details of their various trades.
In 1887 we took a large house and shop in Scotland Street, a poor
district of the town; and opened a café, using the large room above for
a meeting and lecture room, and the house for a joint residence for some
of us who were more immediately concerned in carrying on the business.
We had all sorts of social gatherings, lectures, teas, entertainments in
the Hall—the wives and sisters of the “comrades” helping, especially in
the social work; we had Annie Besant, Charlotte Wilson, Kropotkin,
Hyndman, and other notables down to speak for us; we gave teas to the
slum-children who dwelt in the neighboring crofts and alleys (but these
had at first to be given up on account of the poor little things tearing
themselves and each other to pieces, perfect mobs of them, in their
frantic attempts to gain admittance—a difficulty which no arrangement of
tickets or of personal supervision seemed to obviate); and we organized
excursions into municipal politics; and country propaganda. This last
was often amusing as well as interesting. While, in the towns, as time
went on, audiences grew in numbers and attentiveness, it still remained
very difficult to capture the country districts. The miners would really
not be uninterested, but in their sullen combative way they would take
care not to show it. Many a time we have gone down to some mining
village and taken up our stand on some heap of slag or broken wall, and
the miners would come round and stand about or sit down deliberately
_with their backs to the speaker_, and spit, and converse, as if quite
heedless of the oration going on. But after a time, and as speaker
succeeded speaker, one by one they would turn round—their lower jaws
dropping—fairly captivated by the argument. It was much the same with
the country rustics—but as a rule less successful. I remember on one
occasion seven or eight of us, armed with literature, going for a long
country walk to Hathersage in the Derbyshire dales. We had Tom Maguire
with us, from Leeds, an excellent speaker, full of Irish wit and
persuasiveness. We set him upon a stoneheap in the middle of the village
and standing round him ourselves while he spoke, acted as decoy ducks to
bring the villagers together. The latter full of curiosity came, in
moderate numbers, but not one of them would approach nearer than a
distance of twenty or thirty yards—just far enough to make the speaker
despair of really reaching them. In vain we separated and going round
tried to coax them to come nearer. In vain the speaker shouted himself
hoarse and fired off his best jokes. Not a bit of it—they weren’t going
to be fooled by us! and at last red in the face and out of breath and
with a string of curses, Tom descended from his cairn, and we all,
shaking the dust of the village off our feet, departed!
I meanwhile and during these years, not only took part in our local
work, but spoke and lectured in the Socialist connection all round the
country—at Bradford, Halifax, Leeds, Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh, Hull,
Liverpool, Nottingham and other places—my subjects the failures of the
present Commercial system, and the possible reorganization of the
future. As to the Café, we were only able to hold to it for a year.
Though quite a success from the propagandist point of view, financially
it was a failure. The refreshment department was not patronized nearly
enough to make it pay. The neighborhood was an exceedingly poor one. And
so we were obliged to surrender the place, and retire to smaller
quarters. During that year however I really lived most of the time at
the Scotland Street place. I occupied a large attic at the top of the
house, _almost_ high enough to escape the smells of the street below,
but exposed to showers of blacks which fell from the innumerable
chimneys around. In the early morning at 5 a.m. there was the strident
sound of the ‘hummers’ and the clattering of innumerable clogs of men
and girls going to their work, and on till late at night there were
drunken cries and shouting. Far around stretched nothing but factory
chimneys and foul courts inhabited by the wretched workers. It was, I
must say, frightfully depressing; and all the more so because of tragic
elements in my personal life at the time. Only the enthusiasm of our
social work, and the abiding thoughts which had inspired _Towards
Democracy_ kept me going. I spent my spare time during the year in
arranging and editing the collection of songs and music called _Chants
of Labour_—a thing which might have been much better done by some one
else, but I could find no one to do it. And it was a queer experience,
collecting these songs of hope and enthusiasm, and composing such
answering tunes and harmonies as I could, in the midst of these gloomy
and discordant conditions.
As I say, we only stayed a year here, and as far as my health was
concerned I don’t think I could have endured it much longer. I realized
the terrible drawback to health and vitality consequent on living in
these slums of manufacturing towns, and the way these conditions are
inevitably sapping the strength of our populations.
VIII
TRADE AND PHILOSOPHY
In 1887 or 1888 I turned over the organization and commercial side of
the garden at Millthorpe to my friend Albert Fearnehough. During the
first four years or so I had taken the responsibility, and by many
mistakes bought some valuable experience—but now I found that my
literary and social work demanded so much time that I wanted my brain
free from agricultural cares. So after this, while still contributing a
fair amount of manual labour I left the organization alone.
I cannot say that, adopting the commercial standard, the experiment at
Millthorpe could at any time be called _paying_. At the same time it was
never (to me) disheartening. Taking strawberries as our main crop, we
found, with several years’ experience, that £40 per acre was a fair
estimate of the gross produce. (And I do not think that this is
excessive since I know that £60 or £70 is a not uncommon estimate.) If
we had put, say, 5 acres out of our 7½ under strawberries, this would
have yielded £200 a year, which, allowing for extra labour, manure,
etc., would still have maintained a man and his family; 100 fowls would
probably have paid the rent (if it had not been a freehold); and the 2½
acres would have gone far to keep a horse or pony. But I had not the
time to give to a complete organization, nor perhaps felt the necessary
interest in it; and my friend had hardly the required energy; so we just
paddled along, keeping two or three acres only under spade cultivation,
and making a small sum, but not sufficient to meet expenses. I think, as
I say, that the thing might have been made to pay in the commercial
sense—but there is no doubt that under prevailing conditions and prices
in England, agriculture of any kind requires pretty hard work and long
hours to make it fairly successful. One of the reasons of this is the
want of a prosperous country population and the local markets which this
would afford. With industrial villages scattered over the land, eggs,
fruits, vegetables would be in great demand—even in country
districts—prices would be fair, the middleman would be dispensed with;
even the horse and cart might not be needed. But it is quite a different
matter when the stuff has to be sent to a distant market, there to be
bought by hucksters, and to feed middlemen and railway shareholders,
before it feeds either the producer or consumer. This trouble is really
one of the great troubles of modern civilization—and while there is no
doubt a certain advantage gained by division of labour among nations and
provinces, and by the raising of products in the most suitable
localities, it is a matter quite open to question whether the enormous
expenses of the present world-wide exchange and the maintenance of these
swarms of merchants, traders, shipping and railroad companies, with
their innumerable shareholders and employees, does not quite obliterate
or absorb the advantage so gained. Indeed when one thinks of the immense
numbers of people in this way withdrawn from any direct service in
production and made systematically dependent on the others, one may
question whether the gain does not at times come very near a loss; and
one ceases to wonder that the condition of the actual producers,
agricultural and others, remains so poor and unimproved.
In ’86 and ’87 I prepared for the Press and published the volume called
_England’s Ideal_. The papers composing it had been written at different
times during the two or three years preceding—some of them at Brighton,
during intervals when family affairs had taken me back there for a time.
Especially I remember writing _Desirable Mansions_ in this way in an
interval when I was tangled in family business and the idiotic life of
the place—and with a kind of savage glee as I sought to tear the whole
sickly web to pieces. Descended from the transcendental generative
thought of _Towards Democracy_ on the one hand, and my new-found
acquaintance with intensely practical life on the other, these papers,
though crude in some respects, bear I believe a certain impetus about
them. Once or twice, by the violent opposition they have excited (always
a reassuring thing for an author), I have had evidence of this. When
_Desirable Mansions_ was first issued, as a separate pamphlet, I
received a copy, anonymously sent and written all over with the most
furious and scurrilous denials, challenges, abuse, etc.; and after the
publication of _England’s Ideal_ as a volume, a friend of mine had a
letter from a lady, in which she said that her husband had been reading
the book, and that she had got hold of it and “poked it into the fire,
as she found it was unsettling him so!” I have always regretted that I
did not get hold of that letter, with leave to publish it. It would have
made such a splendid advertisement.
The influences of Ruskin, in style and moral bias, and of Marx in
economics, are very apparent in the volume; and though I do not think
that I ever gave myself ‘hand and foot’ to Marx in his views; yet I was
very willing to adopt his theory of surplus value as a working
hypothesis. The truth is that though no exact measure of ‘surplus value’
or of the amount of which the workman is ‘defrauded’ by the capitalist,
is possible—and though any theory which attempts to exactly define this
amount is sure to be open to criticism[15]; yet, the general fact of
surplus value, namely that the workman does _not_ get the full value of
his labours, and that he is taken advantage of by the capitalist is
obvious—and serious—enough. And it is on this general position that
_England’s Ideal_—like the whole Socialist movement—is founded. The
seriousness of the matter may be seen from the fact that from this
original falsity (of the appropriation of other folks’ labour) are
flowing to-day by a perfectly logical evolution two other great
falsities or failures—Commercial Crises and shopkeeping
Imperialism—which are now threatening ruin to all the Western
Civilizations.
Commercial Crises, as has been often explained (see _England’s Ideal_,
pp. 42, 43) flow primarily from the fact that the working masses for
their wages only receive a fraction of the value of the goods produced,
and therefore can only _buy back_ a fractional part of the same, while
the capitalist classes (though with their share of the swag they _could_
buy back the remainder) do not want more than a part of the remainder.
Consequently there occurs every year on the one hand an accumulation of
goods unused and on the other an accumulation of capital waiting for
reinvestment; and these two things from time to time clog the Commercial
Machine so as to render it hardly workable, and will probably in the end
bring it to a standstill. As to modern Imperialism it is a logical
outcome of the last-mentioned item, the accumulation of capital waiting
for reinvestment. For all the openings for capital in the mother country
having been filled up there remains nothing but to invest it in
manufactures abroad. And since other Western countries are similarly
filled up, there further remains nothing but to go to savage and
outlying nations and force _them_ to become our employees and our
customers. But to do this with safety requires military occupation and
the country’s flag. Hence in a nutshell the flag-waving and Imperialism
of the day.
In 1889 I got off _Civilization: Its Cause and Cure_—another series of
reprints. And here too the philosophical position, though often crudely
expressed, and with more attempt at _suggestion_ than finish, is I think
in the main well-founded and valuable. The attacks on Civilization and
on Modern Science were both wrung from me, as it were by some inner
evolution or conviction and against my will; but in both cases the
position once taken became to me fully justified. In neither case did I
take any great precautions to guard against misunderstanding, and in
consequence I have been freely accused of blinding myself—in respect of
Civilization—to modern progress, and of desiring to return to the state
of primitive man; and in respect to Science—of preferring ignorance to
intelligence. But no careful reader would make these mistakes. The
monumental, patient, one may almost say heroic, work which has been done
by Science during the nineteenth century, in the way of exact
observation, classification, and detailed practical application, can
never be ignored and can hardly be over-estimated. None the less the
very decided criticism in _Civilization: Its Cause and Cure_, of the
limits of scientific theorizing and authority has been quite necessary;
as well as the forcible insistence on the fact that Science only deals
with the surface of life and not with its substance. As to Civilization
the advances of Humanity during the Civilization period have been
largely bound up with the advance of Science and have chiefly consisted
perhaps in increase of technical mastery over Nature and materials. Like
every increase of power this has led to greater opportunity of good and
greater opportunity of evil. On the moral side however, we may believe
that men’s sympathies _have_ broadened and widened during the
civilization period—so that there is a larger and more general sense of
Humanity. On the other hand during this period something of the
intensity of the old tribal kinship and community of life has been lost,
as well as something of the instinctive kinship of each individual to
Nature. It is obvious enough that there can be no _return_ to
pre-scientific or pre-civilization conditions—though it may be hoped
that a later age may combine some of the virtues of the more primitive
man with the powers that have been gained during civilization.