The Future of England/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE PRESENT ISSUE
As the eye ranged from the slope of Traitor's Hill through the golden haze of summer, London seemed a city of gold.
Was not this a true emblem of our future? Had not the time come for the people to enjoy those riches which they had wrested from Nature during a century and a half of industrial revolution? Such an outcome might present itself as a natural sequence from our past. For England, in deciding to be free, chose next to be industrial. But the aim and object of industrialism is prosperity. Hence the future of England might primarily lie in the general fruition of that wealth which we had won.
Are not things tending that way from a remote history? Under the Tudors, England was governed according to the will of her monarchs. In the succeeding seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we were managed by our landed gentry and aristocracy, the lovers of freedom. In the nineteenth century our directors were the middle classes, the trustees of industrialism. But now the twentieth century is to belong to the masses, the people. These think, perhaps, that after their long campaign of labour it is time to pile arms, to pitch tents, to divide the spoil, and enter Capua. At any rate, hopes of a prosperity reasonably diffused will dictate our future. For the hopes of the people are the future of England.
Will these hopes be gratified? Will our industrial revolution which, beginning in the eighteenth century, is still in process, yield such fruit? This is the first issue ahead, and it is of primary, of radical, importance. For, in these days and in those to come, there are, and will be, many who, if they cannot obtain from their nation that substance which it purports to give them, are ready to question, or quash, its title-deeds.
In simpler terms, is our existing industrial organisation so defective that, as suggested by many, we shall be obliged to change it fundamentally? Or is it so sound, and so well suited to the facts of life, and so well calculated on the whole to satisfy the nation that, with due amendments, we shall adhere to it in the future? That is a plain issue, and it needs, now more than ever before, a plain reply.
I endeavoured to arrive at that answer, not by reliance on any personal predilection, or on any party view, or on any old economics, or on any conscious self-interest, but by attending to the ultimate direction which the central common sense of the English people, in spite of natural oscillations of judgment, will take.
To look back, for a moment, to the first eighty years, or thereabouts, of the industrial movement in question, it must be said that it failed, on the whole, to attain its proper end. The sober historian of nineteenth-century England, Spencer Walpole, has pointed out that in the early part of that period the labouring classes "were perpetually becoming more and more impoverished," "the most frightful distress was almost universally prevalent." And, as time went on, things got worse. By 1830 their condition was "growing more and more intolerable." But even this was "as nothing compared with the protracted wretchedness which commenced in 1837 and continued in 1842." And he concluded by saying: "I desire to express my deliberate opinion that the wave of misery in Britain reached its summit in the course of 1842."
Since that date, for seventy years our statesmen have laboured with zeal to remedy such a condition of affairs. They have pursued a sixfold domestic policy, not always consistent with itself, perhaps, but creditable, at any rate, to their goodwill and resource.
First, there has been the establishment of Free Trade, in the hope that cheap food for the masses and cheap raw materials for the manufacturers would curb the evils of the commonwealth. Secondly, there was the policy of economy in public expenditure, which culminated with Mr. Gladstone's proposal in 1874 to abolish the income tax. I remember being told by Mr. Gladstone, some two years before his death, that he, the last of the Peelites, regarded economy as a main principle in his domestic policy, and as a weapon which he had borrowed from the armoury of his master, Sir Robert Peel. For these statesmen considered that money fructified better in the pockets of the people than in the greenhouse of the Treasury.
Thirdly, there has been the enactment of a multitude of laws in restraint of capital, on the view that, in our industrial revolution, as in other revolutions, undue ascendency is secured by men intent upon what Bacon called "the Sabbathless pursuit of fortune." To that end the State, formerly aloof as Buddha, has emerged as the busy tutelary god of labour.
Fourthly, we have embarked on socialism, chiefly of a municipal kind. As long ago as 1889 the Fabian essayists pointed out the wide extent to which socialism of this sort was already in operation here. And during the quarter of a century since those days, our advance in that direction has been decided.
The fifth line of remedy has been an extensive alteration of our institutions, with the object, it is hoped, of enabling the voice of the people to be heard more clearly, more emphatically, and more immediately. And sixthly, we have launched out, since the retirement of Mr. Gladstone, upon that running tide of public expenditure, so bewildering in its speed of current and volume, and so familiar to us all.
Such, during seventy years, has been the gist of our domestic and social policy. Never, assuredly, has a great nation been more ill at ease than was England in 1842. Never, assuredly, has a great nation made such strenuous efforts to cure her inward evils, as has England from then till now.
And the result of all this reformation? Not unimportant, obviously. Though no one can approve all these policies, for some are inconsistent with others of them, and though it may be felt by many of us that certain of them have been mischievous, yet since 1842, by whatever measure we test social progress, whether by average earnings, or by consumption of food, or by the death-rate, or by judicial statistics, or by deposits in savings banks, there has been the improvement of which we are aware.
Nevertheless, at the very moment when, at the opening of the twentieth century, we might have hoped to raise our voice in paean, cruel blows of disappointment descended in hail upon our bewildered and humbled crest.
In 1903, especially, these strokes came thick. The position of our main industries was pronounced to be very critical, while we heard from another standpoint the sensational statement that about 30 per cent of our population is "on the verge of hunger."
Are we, then, to think—and this is the crux and core of everything—that our industrial system is rotten and must go?
My conclusion is that, though the spread and vogue of such an idea among the people may be considerable, our industrial system, apart from certain curable weaknesses, is sound. With the adoption of certain amendments, it is capable of satisfying the people of this country, and of thus resuming or retaining their allegiance. It may even be asserted that our system, thus rectified, will be one of the highest excellence, and that it is thus capable and assured of a long and goodly future.
But let us first inspect the forces that seem to be bearing us the other way.
As long ago as 1884, Herbert Spencer, in The Coming Slavery, foretold that socialism would win the day here. He said, "The changes made, the changes in progress, and the changes urged will carry us towards State usurpation of all industries, the private forms of which, disadvantaged more and more in competition with the State, will more and more die away."
If, however, we follow the history of the working classes subsequent to that date, we shall find that, at any rate during the last decade of the nineteenth century, State socialism did not achieve more than very limited success. Although an Independent Labour Party was instituted with the object of winning over the trade unions to socialism, the latter movement did not gain ground. As the authors of the History of Trade Unionism have pointed out, during that decade the interest of English working-men in labour politics "gradually diminished," and there was "comparative peace in the industrial world."
But, with the new century, things began to alter. As a prominent trade unionist has recently stated, though perhaps too absolutely, "It was not until after the year 1900 that anything of a party nature was to be found in any trade union rules … it was into this united family that the socialists threw the apple of discord when they formed the Labour Party." In other words, trade unionism proper began to alter its course.
In order to mark this change precisely, a word or two is needed. Trade unionism seeks to utilise private ownership, in order to obtain good wages, short hours, and favourable conditions for the men; socialism would withdraw capital from individuals. The socialists would regulate the whole State; the trade unionists would only look after their own people. Socialism is universal collectivism; trade unionism is corporate individualism. For instance, a great trade union declares, "The object of this Society shall be to improve the condition and protect the interests of its members." But when, at the Hull Conference of 1908, the Labour Party had already become socialist, it resolved that, "The Labour Party should have, as a definite object, the socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, to be controlled by a Democratic State in the interest of the entire community." These two purposes are opposites.
Nevertheless, in the kaleidoscopic world of labour politics, this new view had scarcely established itself ere another movement, long familiar on the continent, began to undermine socialism itself.
A leading advocate of this departure was Mr. Tom Mann, who, in his Industrial Syndicalist organ, started in 1910, has definitely presented this project, a conception of the future totally distinct from trade unionism and socialism alike. We are told in that paper that "the struggle must go on until the workers of the world, organised as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system." Obviously, this diverges acutely from socialism, for it is rule by "a class." The whole scheme is to be "revolutionary in character—revolutionary in aim—revolutionary in methods." For, we are informed, a working-class movement that is not of this nature is useless to the working class. "Industrial syndicalism aims at perfect organisation, so as to enable the workers to manage the industrial system themselves, once they have seized it."
Thus the three main schemes which competed for the favour of our working classes were trade unionism, socialism, and syndicalism. Under the first, the employers are still to conduct industry; under the second, the State, and under the third, the workers themselves, are to discharge that function.
And then, in the swift progress of current events, syndicalism itself commenced to go under, and its "perfect organisation" to disappear. It began, in its turn, to be ousted by something akin to anarchy.
The latter word is accurate. There is no other suitable to describe the events of the summer of 1911, when the chief port in the world was held up for ten days; when our second port, Liverpool, was in a state of siege; when disorder spread from Southampton to Glasgow, and from Hull to Cardiff; when for two days the railway system was partially paralysed; when for four whole days the transport trade of North-Eastern England was shut down; when Irish railwaymen struck for no adequate reason; and when, in a word, famine began to present itself as a practical possibility.
Thus, in the brief space of a decade, trade unionism was jostled by socialism, and socialism by syndicalism, and syndicalism by anarchy. We reached the flash point of England.
What has been the cause of this quick revolution of events? To answer that question correctly is vital for those who wish to know the England of our own hour, and to look ahead. For the national future itself is at stake.
The development of English industry in our day has had a double effect upon the condition of our working classes. It has exposed them, as it were, to the simultaneous play of two opposite influences, the former leading many of them upward to a better fortune, and the latter dragging others of them downward to a worse. And this is why economists and statisticians can so easily confuse us with the pessimism or optimism of their antagonistic figures as to our social state.
For instance, the series of our fiscal blue-books, published since 1903, exhibits to us workmen more highly paid, working shorter hours, and better housed than the corresponding workmen elsewhere in Europe, and enjoying, as regards prices, a greater command over the necessaries and comforts of life. On the other hand, the reports of the Royal Poor Law Commission of 1909 reveal to us a vast mass of casual, under-employed, unskilled, low grade labour, in depths, some of it, of profound misfortune. These contra-indicants are alike genuine. As the author of Life and Labour in London remarked years ago, "The cleavage between the higher and lower grades of manual labour has become more marked industrially." He who does not realise that fact firmly is apt to lose himself on this stricken battlefield of thought.
According to modern astronomy, the sky, as far as we can observe it, is filled by two currents of worlds, of like chemical constitution and probably of like origin, moving in opposite directions through space. Our social system has two analogous currents within it.
It is superfluous to analyse the causes of this growth of inferior labour. Partly, it has always existed, and the swamp has stood undrained from old days. Partly, our expanding foreign commerce has multiplied these men at our ports. Partly, there is a constant variation or contraction of industries under the stress of taxation, or of invention, or the fierceness of domestic or external rivalry, whereby men are thrown out. Partly, legislation has sometimes unwittingly favoured in the past the classes of organised labour at the expense of this unorganised class.
During the two last decades this portion of the population increased in number, and its wages, so far as the records show, did not rise, at any rate as they did in other more organised trades. But prices rose, and made its condition yearly more difficult, more serious, and sometimes cruel.
It was from these multitudes of men, thus circumstanced, that there have been issuing those forces which have caused trade unionism to give way to socialism, socialism to syndicalism, and the latter to disorder and anarchy before our eyes. To comprehend how this has happened, let us get, as General Gordon recommended, into the skin of the labourers of this class.
The casual labourer had no regard for the older trade unions, for they were the aristocracy of labour, the men on the upward way. And this was why the socialists so easily dominated the trade union movement. For though the socialists were few, the trade unionists knew that the former had the big cohorts of unskilled labour at their back, that same unskilled labour which the trade unionists had passed by, and had left to the economic elements.
Nevertheless, the low grade labourer, when he came to listen to the socialists, had no particular love for them either. If the industries of the country were nationalised, they would only be managed by a big bureaucracy in Whitehall, who were nothing but aristocrats to the docker and his fellows. So casual labour turned to Tom Mann and those who were with him.
And then, in the rapid haste of events, Tom Mann himself, with his idea of "perfect organisation," was left behind by the labourer. The latter had no idea as yet of any such thing as organisation; so, when his opportunity arose, he struck hastily, irregularly, and hard, with consequences that were startling for everybody. He left behind all his advisers, trade unionists, socialists, and syndicalists together, and went out "on his own."
The first immediate result of this rising of low grade labour was that many other allied grades in the country, and many grades immediately above it, contemplated striking too, or did strike.
So far, then, an endeavour has been made to explain the course of events up till now. What of the future?
It is evident that, to the minds of those who seek to control the labour world, all that we have hitherto witnessed, from the downfall of trade unionism up to the rise of occasional anarchy, is but a foretaste of what is to come in the future. We must attend, therefore, in surveying the tendencies of the time, to what such extremists may contemplate.
These appear to desire to pass from the conditions of the moment to much stronger measures. They regard the recent outbreaks with dissatisfaction, as being irregular, informal, and unauthorised, and they indicate another departure still. They would turn the forces of low grade labour to more definite account. The strike, whenever called for, should be so organised as not to drag itself out or prolong the agony: it is to be universal, summary, and final. Add to this that the indirect and intermittent control of the State by a small Parliamentary party is to be superseded by a party sufficiently strong to form a government, and that this labour organisation is to be rendered international, so that external considerations may not interrupt its domestic triumph. But a general strike is to be the real power in the State. Thus, having trodden the round of trade unionism, socialism, syndicalism, and disorder, we are finally to be starved into an autocracy wielded by a few.
Two separate issues are here involved under one head. First, shall we be content to be ruled in this way? He who estimates the future of England can decline even to consider such an outcome, for it would mean the abrogation of any future at all.
But the second issue, and this must be looked at carefully, is whether labour can improve matters by substituting something better than our existing industrial system. He would be very blind to the future who, in the twentieth century, attempted to dismiss such an idea off-hand without impartial consideration. For clearly, if labour can, by abolishing our present industrial system, improve matters decidedly, then England will agree to such a proposition.
It has been indicated already that, putting sheer disorder and autocracy aside at once, there are three various solutions of our industrial position which have commended themselves to labour. These have been trade unionism, socialism, and syndicalism. Trade unionism, however, recognises capital and the existing order, and would work with them. It has been the breakdown of trade unionism before forces alien to itself that has made way for all this trouble, for trade unionism, purged of socialism and syndicalism, works well with the existing system. Accordingly, the only new constructive solutions of our problem that remain for labour to impose, once it is in power, are socialism and syndicalism, that is, the possession of all industry by the State, and, alternatively, by labour itself.
Therefore, in order to see whether any such schemes will prove acceptable in the future to the English people, we must compare them with our existing industrial system, to know whether the latter is doomed to die.