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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Britain for the British, by Robert Blatchford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Britain for the British
+
+Author: Robert Blatchford
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2010 [EBook #34534]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH
+
+BY
+
+_ROBERT BLATCHFORD_
+EDITOR OF THE CLARION
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+LONDON
+CLARION PRESS, 72 FLEET STREET, E. C.
+
+CHICAGO
+CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
+56 FIFTH AVENUE
+
+
+Copyright, 1902,
+BY CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY.
+
+Printed in the United States.
+
+
+DEDICATED TO A. M. THOMPSON
+
+AND THE CLARION FELLOWSHIP
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.                                                            PAGE
+
+THE TITLE, PURPOSE, AND METHOD OF THIS BOOK                         1
+
+FOREWORDS                                                           6
+
+I. THE UNEQUAL DIVISION OF WEALTH                                  10
+
+II. WHAT IS WEALTH? WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? WHO CREATES IT?       26
+
+III. HOW THE FEW GET RICH AND KEEP THE MANY POOR                   33
+
+IV. THE BRAIN-WORKER, OR INVENTOR                                  45
+
+V. THE LANDLORD'S RIGHTS AND THE PEOPLE'S RIGHTS                   51
+
+VI. LUXURY AND THE GREAT USEFUL EMPLOYMENT FRAUD                   63
+
+VII. WHAT SOCIALISM IS NOT                                         74
+
+VIII. WHAT SOCIALISM IS                                            82
+
+IX. COMPETITION _v._ CO-OPERATION                                  90
+
+X. FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN FOOD                                  97
+
+XI. HOW TO KEEP FOREIGN TRADE                                     102
+
+XII. CAN BRITAIN FEED HERSELF?                                    110
+
+XIII. THE SUCCESSFUL MAN                                          119
+
+XIV. TEMPERANCE AND THRIFT                                        127
+
+XV. THE SURPLUS LABOUR MISTAKE                                    135
+
+XVI. IS SOCIALISM POSSIBLE, AND WILL IT PAY?                      141
+
+XVII. THE NEED FOR A LABOUR PARTY                                 148
+
+XVIII. WHY THE OLD PARTIES WILL NOT DO                            156
+
+XIX. TO-DAY'S WORK                                                166
+
+WHAT TO READ                                                      174
+
+
+
+
+THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK
+
+
+The motto of this book is expressed in its title: BRITAIN FOR THE
+BRITISH.
+
+At present Britain does not belong to the British: it belongs to a few
+of the British, who employ the bulk of the population as servants or as
+workers.
+
+It is because Britain does not belong to the British that a few are very
+rich and the many are very poor.
+
+It is because Britain does not belong to the British that we find
+amongst the _owning_ class a state of useless luxury and pernicious
+idleness, and amongst the _working_ classes a state of drudging toil, of
+wearing poverty and anxious care.
+
+This state of affairs is contrary to Christianity, is contrary to
+justice, and contrary to reason. It is bad for the rich, it is bad for
+the poor; it is against the best interests of the British nation and the
+human race.
+
+The remedy for this evil state of things--the _only_ remedy yet
+suggested--is _Socialism_. And _Socialism_ is broadly expressed in the
+title and motto of this book: BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH.
+
+
+THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
+
+
+The purpose of this book is to convert the reader to _Socialism_: to
+convince him that the present system--political, industrial, and
+social--is bad; to explain to him why it is bad, and to prove to him
+that Socialism is the only true remedy.
+
+
+FOR WHOM THIS BOOK IS INTENDED
+
+
+This book is intended for any person who does not understand, or has, so
+far, refused to accept the principles of _Socialism_.
+
+But it is especially addressed, as my previous book, _Merrie England_,
+was addressed, to JOHN SMITH, a typical British working man, not yet
+converted to _Socialism_.
+
+I hope this book will be read by every opponent of _Socialism_; and I
+hope it will be read by all those good folks who, though not yet
+_Socialists_, are anxious to help their fellow-creatures, to do some
+good in their own day and generation, and to leave the world a little
+better than they found it.
+
+I hope that all lovers of justice and of truth will read this book, and
+that many of them will be thereby led to a fuller study of _Socialism_.
+
+To the Tory and the Radical; to the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and
+the Nonconformist; to the workman and the employer; to the scholar and
+the peer; to the labourer's wife, the housemaid, and the duchess; to the
+advocates of Temperance and of Co-operation; to the Trade Unionist and
+the non-Unionist; to the potman, the bishop, and the brewer; to the
+artist and the merchant; to the poet and the navvy; to the Idealist and
+the Materialist; to the poor clerk, the rich financier, the great
+scientist, and the little child, I commend the following beautiful
+prayer from the Litany of the Church of England:--
+
+
+    That it may please thee to bring into the way of truth _all_ such as
+    have erred, and are deceived.
+
+    That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; and to
+    comfort and help the weak-hearted; and to raise up them that fall;
+    and finally to beat down Satan under our feet.
+
+    That it may please thee to succour, help, and comfort _all_ that are
+    in danger, necessity, and tribulation.
+
+    That it may please thee to preserve _all_ that travel by land or by
+    water, _all_ women labouring of child, _all_ sick persons, and young
+    children; and to shew thy pity upon _all_ prisoners and captives.
+
+    That it may please thee to defend, and provide for, the fatherless
+    children, and widows, and _all_ that are desolate and oppressed.
+
+    That it may please thee to have mercy upon _all_ men.
+
+    That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and
+    slanderers, and to turn their hearts.
+
+    That it may please thee to give and preserve to our use the kindly
+    fruits of the earth, so as in due time we may enjoy them.
+
+    _We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord._
+
+
+I have italicised the word "all" in that prayer to emphasise the fact
+that mercy, succour, comfort, and pardon are here asked for _all_, and
+not for a few.
+
+I now ask the reader of this book, with those words of broad charity and
+sweet kindliness still fresh in mind, to remember the unmerited
+miseries, the ill-requited labour, the gnawing penury, and the loveless
+and unhonoured lives to which an evil system dooms millions of British
+men and women. I ask the reader to discover for himself how much pity we
+bestow upon our "prisoners and captives," how much provision we make for
+the "fatherless children and widows," what nature and amount of
+"succour, help, and comfort" we vouchsafe to "all who are in danger,
+necessity, and tribulation." I ask him to consider, with regard to those
+"kindly fruits of the earth," who produces, and who enjoys them; and I
+beg him next to proceed in a judicial spirit, by means of candour and
+right reason, to examine fairly and weigh justly the means proposed by
+Socialists for abolishing poverty and oppression, and for conferring
+prosperity, knowledge, and freedom upon _all_ men.
+
+BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH: that is our motto. We ask for a fair and open
+trial. We solicit an impartial hearing of the case for _Socialism_.
+Listen patiently to our statements; consider our arguments; accord to us
+a fair field and no favour; and may the truth prevail.
+
+
+THE METHOD OF THIS BOOK
+
+
+As to the method of this book, I shall begin by calling attention to
+some of the evils of the present industrial, social, and political
+system.
+
+I shall next try to show the sources of those evils, the causes from
+which they arise.
+
+I shall go on to explain what _Socialism_ is, and what _Socialism_ is
+not.
+
+I shall answer the principal objections commonly urged against
+_Socialism_.
+
+And I shall, in conclusion, point out the chief ways in which I think
+the reader of this book may help the cause of _Socialism_ if he believes
+that cause to be just and wise.
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORDS
+
+
+Years ago, before _Socialism_ had gained a footing in this country, some
+of us democrats used often to wonder how any working man could be a
+Tory.
+
+To-day we Socialists are still more puzzled by the fact that the
+majority of our working men are not Socialists.
+
+How is it that middle class and even wealthy people often accept
+_Socialism_ more readily than do the workers?
+
+Perhaps it is because the men and women of the middle and upper classes
+are more in the habit of reading and thinking for themselves, whereas
+the workers take most of their opinions at second-hand from priests,
+parsons, journalists, employers, and members of Parliament, whose little
+knowledge is a dangerous thing, and whose interests lie in bolstering up
+class privilege by darkening counsel with a multitude of words.
+
+I have been engaged for more than a dozen years in studying political
+economy and _Socialism_, and in trying, as a Socialist, pressman, and
+author, to explain _Socialism_ and to confute the arguments and answer
+the objections of non-Socialists, and I say, without any hesitation,
+that I have never yet come across a single argument against practical
+_Socialism_ that will hold water.
+
+I do not believe that any person of fair intelligence and education, who
+will take the trouble to study _Socialism_ fairly and thoroughly, will
+be able to avoid the conclusion that _Socialism_ is just and wise.
+
+I defy any man, of any nation, how learned, eminent, and intellectual
+soever, to shake the case for practical _Socialism_, or to refute the
+reasoning contained in this book.
+
+And now I will address myself to Mr. John Smith, a typical British
+workman, not yet converted to _Socialism_.
+
+
+Dear Mr. Smith, I assume that you are opposed to _Socialism_, and I
+assume that you would say that you are opposed to it for one or more of
+the following reasons:--
+
+
+    1. Because you think _Socialism_ is unjust.
+    2. Because you think _Socialism_ is unpractical.
+    3. Because you think that to establish _Socialism_ is not possible.
+
+
+But I suspect that the real reason for your opposition to _Socialism_ is
+simply that you do not understand it.
+
+The reasons you generally give for opposing _Socialism_ are reasons
+suggested to you by pressmen or politicians who know very little about
+it, or are interested in its rejection.
+
+I am strongly inclined to believe that the _Socialism_ to which you are
+opposed is not _Socialism_ at all, but only a bogey erected by the
+enemies of _Socialism_ to scare you away from the genuine _Socialism_,
+which it would be so much to your advantage to discover.
+
+Now you would not take your opinions of Trade Unionism from
+non-Unionists, and why, then, should you take your opinions of
+_Socialism_ from non-Socialists?
+
+If you will be good enough to read this book you will find out what
+_Socialism_ really is, and what it is not. If after reading this book
+you remain opposed to _Socialism_, I must leave it for some Socialist
+more able than I to convert you.
+
+When it pleases those who call themselves your "betters" to flatter you,
+Mr. Smith (which happens oftener at election times than during strikes
+or lock-outs), you hear that you are a "shrewd, hard-headed, practical
+man." I hope that is true, whether your "betters" believe it or not.
+
+I am a practical man myself, and shall offer you in this book nothing
+but hard fact and cold reason.
+
+I assume, Mr. Smith, that you, as a hard-headed, practical man, would
+rather be well off than badly off, and that with regard to your own
+earnings you would rather be paid twenty shillings in the pound than
+five shillings or even nineteen shillings and elevenpence in the pound.
+
+And I assume that as a family man you would rather live in a
+comfortable and healthy house than in an uncomfortable and unhealthy
+house; that you would be glad if you could buy beef, bread, gas, coal,
+water, tea, sugar, clothes, boots, and furniture for less money than you
+now pay for them; and that you would think it a good thing, and not a
+bad thing, if your wife had less work and more leisure, fewer worries
+and more nice dresses, and if your children had more sports, and better
+health, and better education.
+
+And I assume that you would like to pay lower rents, even if some rich
+landlord had to keep fewer race-horses.
+
+And I assume that as a humane man you would prefer that other men and
+women and their children should not suffer if their sufferings could be
+prevented.
+
+If, then, I assure you that you are paying too much and are being paid
+too little, and that many other Britons, especially weak women and young
+children, are enduring much preventible misery; and if I assert,
+further, that I know of a means whereby you might secure more ease and
+comfort, and they might secure more justice, you will, surely, as a kind
+and sensible man, consent to listen to the arguments and statements I
+propose to place before you.
+
+Suppose a stranger came to tell you where you could get a better house
+at a lower rent, and suppose your present landlord assured you that the
+man who offered the information was a fool or a rogue, would you take
+the landlord's word without investigation? Would it not be more
+practical and hard-headed to hear first what the bringer of such good
+news had to tell?
+
+Well, the Socialist brings you better news than that of a lower rent.
+Will you not hear him? Will you turn your back on him for no better
+reason than because he is denounced as a fraud by the rich men whose
+wealth depends upon the continuation of the present system?
+
+Your "betters" tell you that you always display a wise distrust of new
+ideas. But to reject an idea because it is new is not a proof of
+shrewdness and good sense; it is a sign of bigotry and ignorance. Trade
+Unionism was new not so long ago, and was denounced, and is still
+denounced, by the very same persons who now denounce _Socialism_. If
+you find a newspaper or an employer to be wrong when he denounces Trade
+Unionism, which you do understand, why should you assume that the same
+authority is right in denouncing _Socialism_, which you do not
+understand? You know that in attacking Trade Unionism the employer and
+the pressman are speaking in their own interest and against yours; why,
+then, should you be ready to believe that in counselling you against
+_Socialism_ the same men are speaking in your interest and not in their
+own?
+
+I ask you, as a practical man, to forget both the Socialist and the
+non-Socialist, and to consider the case for and against _Socialism_ on
+its merits. As I said in _Merrie England_--
+
+
+    Forget that you are a joiner or a spinner, a Catholic or a
+    Freethinker, a Liberal or a Tory, a moderate drinker or a
+    teetotaler, and consider the problem as a _man_.
+
+    If you had to do a problem in arithmetic, or if you were cast adrift
+    in an open boat at sea, you would not set to work as a Wesleyan, or
+    a Liberal Unionist; but you would tackle the sum by the rules of
+    arithmetic, and would row the boat by the strength of your own
+    manhood, and keep a lookout for passing ships under _any_ flag. I
+    ask you, then, Mr. Smith, to hear what I have to say, and to decide
+    by your own judgment whether I am right or wrong.
+
+
+I was once opposed to _Socialism_ myself; but it was before I understood
+it.
+
+When you understand it you will, I feel sure, agree with me that it is
+perfectly logical, and just, and practical; and you will, I hope,
+yourself become a _Socialist_, and will help to abolish poverty and
+wrong by securing BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE UNEQUAL DIVISION OF WEALTH
+
+
+_Section A: the Rich_
+
+Non-socialists say that self-interest is the strongest motive in human
+nature.
+
+Let us take them at their word.
+
+Self-interest being the universal ruling motive, it behoves you, Mr.
+Smith, to do the best you can for yourself and family.
+
+Self-interest being the universal ruling motive, it is evident that the
+rich man will look out for his own advantage, and not for yours.
+
+Therefore as a selfish man, alive to your own interests, it is clear
+that you will not trust the rich man, nor believe in the unselfishness
+of his motives.
+
+As a selfish man you will look out first for yourself. If you can get
+more wages for the work you do, if you can get the same pay for fewer
+hours and lighter work, self-interest tells you that you would be a fool
+to go on as you are. If you can get cheaper houses, cheaper clothes,
+food, travelling, and amusement than you now get, self-interest tells
+you that you would be a fool to go on paying present prices.
+
+Your landlord, your employer, your tradesman will not take less work or
+money from you if he can get more.
+
+Self-interest counsels you not to pay a high price if you can get what
+you want at a lower price.
+
+Your employer will not employ you unless you are useful to him, nor will
+he employ you if he can get another man as useful to him as you at a
+lower wage.
+
+Such persons as landlords, capitalists, employers, and contractors will
+tell you that they are useful, and even necessary, to the working class,
+of which class you are one.
+
+Self-interest will counsel you, firstly, that if these persons are
+really useful or necessary to you, it is to your interest to secure
+their services at the lowest possible price; and, secondly, that if you
+can replace them by other persons more useful or less costly, you will
+be justified in dispensing with their services.
+
+Now, the Socialist claims that it is cheaper and better for the people
+to manage their own affairs than to pay landlords, capitalists,
+employers, and contractors to manage their affairs for them.
+
+That is to say, that as it is cheaper and better for a city to make its
+own gas, or to provide its own water, or to lay its own roads, so it
+would be cheaper and better for the nation to own its own land, its own
+mines, its own railways, houses, factories, ships, and workshops, and to
+manage them as the corporation tramways, gasworks, and waterworks are
+now owned and managed.
+
+Your "betters," Mr. Smith, will tell you that you might be worse off
+than you are now. That is not the question. The question is, Might you
+be better off than you are now?
+
+They will tell you that the working man is better off now than he was a
+hundred years ago. That is not the question. The question is, Are the
+workers as well off now as they ought to be and might be?
+
+They will tell you that the British workers are better off than the
+workers of any other nation. That is not the question. The question is,
+Are the British workers as well off as they ought to be and might be?
+
+They will tell you that Socialists are discontented agitators, and that
+they exaggerate the evils of the present time. That is not the question.
+The question is, Do evils exist at all to-day, and if so, is no remedy
+available?
+
+Your "betters" have admitted, and do admit, as I will show you
+presently, that evils do exist; but they have no remedy to propose.
+
+The Socialist tells you that your "betters" are deceived or are
+deceiving you, and that _Socialism_ is a remedy, and the only one
+possible.
+
+Self-interest will counsel you to secure the best conditions you can
+for yourself, and will warn you not to expect unselfish service from
+selfish men.
+
+Ask yourself, then, whether, since self-interest is the universal
+motive, it would not be wise for you to make some inquiry as to whether
+the persons intrusted by you with the management of your affairs are
+managing your affairs to your advantage or to their own.
+
+As a selfish man, is it sensible to elect selfish men, or to accept
+selfish men, to govern you, to make your laws, to manage your business,
+and to affix your taxes, prices, and wages?
+
+The mild Hindoo has a proverb which you might well remember in this
+connection. It is this--
+
+
+    The wise man is united in this life with that with which it is
+    proper he should be united. I am bread; thou art the eater: how can
+    harmony exist between us?
+
+
+Appealing, then, entirely to your self-interest, I ask you to consider
+whether the workers of Britain to-day are making the best bargain
+possible with the other classes of society. Do the workers receive their
+full due? Do evils exist in this country to-day? and if so, is there a
+remedy? and if there is a remedy, what is it?
+
+The first charge brought by Socialists against the present system is the
+charge of the unjust distribution of wealth.
+
+The rich obtain wealth beyond their need, and beyond their deserving;
+the workers are, for the most part, condemned to lead laborious,
+anxious, and penurious lives. Nearly all the wealth of the nation is
+produced by the workers; most of it is consumed by the rich, who
+squander it in useless or harmful luxury, leaving the majority of those
+who produced it, not enough for human comfort, decency, and health.
+
+If you wish for a plain and clear statement of the unequal distribution
+of wealth in this country, get Fabian Tract No. 5, price one penny, and
+study it well.
+
+According to that tract, the total value of the wealth produced in this
+country is £1,700,000,000. Of this total £275,000,000 is paid in rent,
+£340,000,000 is paid in interest, £435,000,000 is paid in profits and
+salaries. That makes a total of £1,050,000,000 in rent, interest,
+profits, and salaries, nearly the whole of which goes to about 5,000,000
+of people comprising the middle and upper classes.
+
+The balance of £650,000,000 is paid in wages to the remaining 35,000,000
+of people comprising the working classes. Roughly, then, two-thirds of
+the national wealth goes to 5,000,000 of persons, quite half of whom are
+idle, and one-third is _shared_ by seven times as many people, nearly
+half of whom are workers.
+
+These figures have been before the public for many years, and so far as
+I know have never been questioned.
+
+There are, say the Fabian tracts, more than 2,000,000 of men, women, and
+children living without any kind of occupation: that is, they live
+without working.
+
+Ten-elevenths of all the land in the British Islands belong to 176,520
+persons. The rest of the 40,000,000 own the other eleventh. Or, dividing
+Britain into eleven parts, you may say that one two-hundredth part of
+the population owns ten-elevenths of Britain, while the other one
+hundred and ninety-nine two-hundredths of the population own
+one-eleventh of Britain. That is as though a cake were divided amongst
+200 persons by giving to one person ten slices, and dividing one slice
+amongst 199 persons. I told you just now that Britain does not belong to
+the British, but only to a few of the British.
+
+In Fabian Tract No. 7 I read--
+
+
+    One-half of the _wealth_ of the kingdom is held by persons who leave
+    at death at least £20,000, exclusive of land and houses. _These
+    persons form a class somewhat over 25,000 in number._
+
+
+Half the wealth of Britain, then, is held by one fifteen-hundredth part
+of the population. It is as if a cake were cut in half, one half being
+given to one man and the other half being divided amongst 1499 men.
+
+How much cake does a working mechanic get?
+
+In 1898 the estates of seven persons were proved at over £45,000,000.
+That is to say, those seven left £45,000,000 when they died.
+
+Putting a workman's wages at £75 a year, and his working life at twenty
+years, it would take 30,000 workmen all their lives to _earn_ (not to
+_save_) the money left by those seven rich men.
+
+Many rich men have incomes of £150,000 a year. The skilled worker draws
+about £75 a year in wages.
+
+Therefore one man with £150,000 a year gets more than 2000 skilled
+workmen, and the workmen have to do more than 600,000 days' work for
+their wages, while the rich man does _nothing_.
+
+One of our richest dukes gets as much money in one year for doing
+nothing, as a skilled workman would get for 14,000 years of hard and
+useful work.
+
+A landowner is a millionaire. He has £1,000,000. It would take an
+agricultural labourer, at 10s. a week wages, nearly 40,000 years to earn
+£1,000,000.
+
+I need not burden you with figures. Look about you and you will see
+evidences of wealth on every side. Go through the suburbs of London, or
+any large town, and notice the large districts composed of villas and
+mansions, at rentals of from £100 to £1000 a year. Go through the
+streets of a big city, and observe the miles of great shops stored with
+flaming jewels, costly gold and silver plate, rich furs, silks,
+pictures, velvets, furniture, and upholsteries. Who buys all these
+expensive luxuries? They are not for you, nor for your wife, nor for
+your children.
+
+You do not live in a £200 flat. Your floor is not covered with a £50
+Persian rug; your wife does not wear diamond rings, nor silk
+underclothing, nor gowns of brocaded silk, nor sable collars, nor
+Maltese lace cuffs worth many guineas. She does not sit in the stalls at
+the opera, nor ride home in a brougham, nor sup on oysters and
+champagne, nor go, during the heat of the summer, on a yachting cruise
+in the Mediterranean. And is not your wife as much to you as the duchess
+to the duke?
+
+And now let us go on to the next section, and see how it fares with the
+poor.
+
+
+_Section B: The Poor_
+
+At present the average age at death among the nobility, gentry, and
+professional classes in England and Wales is fifty-five years; but among
+the artisan classes of Lambeth it only amounts to twenty-nine years; and
+whilst the infantile death-rate among the well-to-do classes is such
+that only 8 children die in the first year of life out of 100 born, as
+many as 30 per cent. succumb at that age among the children of the poor
+in some districts of our large cities.
+
+Dr. Playfair says that amongst the upper class 18 per cent. of the
+children die before they reach five years of age; of the tradesman class
+36 per cent., and of the working class 55 per cent, of the children die
+before they reach five years of age.
+
+Out of every 1000 persons 939 die without leaving any property at all
+worth mentioning.
+
+About 8,000,000 persons exist always on the borders of starvation. About
+20,000,000 are poor. More than half the national wealth belongs to about
+25,000 people; the remaining 39,000,000 share the other half unequally
+amongst them.
+
+About 30,000 persons own fifty-five fifty-sixths of the land and capital
+of the nation; but of the 39,000,000 of other persons only 1,500,000
+earn (or receive) as much as £3 a week.
+
+In London 1,292,737 persons, or 37.8 per cent. of the whole population,
+get less than a guinea a week _per family_.
+
+The number of persons in receipt of poor-law relief on any one day in
+the British Islands is over 1,000,000; but 2,360,000 persons receive
+poor-law relief during one year, or one in eleven of the whole manual
+labouring class.
+
+In England and Wales alone 72,000 persons die each year in workhouse
+hospitals, infirmaries, or asylums.
+
+In London alone there are 99,830 persons in workhorses, hospitals,
+prisons, or industrial schools.
+
+In London one person out of every four will die in a workhouse,
+hospital, or lunatic asylum.
+
+It is estimated that 3,225,000 persons in the British Islands live in
+overcrowded dwellings, with an average of three persons in each room.
+
+There are 30,000 persons in London alone whose _home_ is a common
+lodging-house. In London alone 1100 persons sleep every night in casual
+wards.
+
+From Fabian Tract No. 75 I quote--
+
+
+    Much has been done in the way of improvement in various parts of
+    Scotland, but 22 per cent. of Scottish families still dwell in a
+    single room each, and the proportion in the case of Glasgow rises to
+    33 per cent. The little town of Kilmarnock, with only 28,447
+    inhabitants, huddles even a slightly larger proportion of its
+    families into single-room tenements. Altogether, there are in
+    Glasgow over 120,000, and in all Scotland 560,000 persons (more than
+    one-eighth of the whole population), who do not know the decency of
+    even a two-roomed home.
+
+
+A similar state of things exists in nearly all our large towns, the
+colliery districts being amongst the worst.
+
+_The working class._--The great bulk of the British people are
+overworked, underpaid, badly housed, unfairly taxed but besides all
+that, they are exposed to serious risks.
+
+Read _The Tragedy of Toil_, by John Burns, M.P. (Clarion Press, 1d.).
+
+In sixty years 60,000 colliers have been accidentally killed. In the
+South Wales coalfield in 1896, 232 were killed out of 71,000. In 1897,
+out of 76,000 no less than 10,230 were injured.
+
+In 1897, of the men employed in railway shunting, 1 in 203 was killed
+and 1 in 12 was injured.
+
+In 1897, out of 465,112 railway workers, 510 were killed, 828 were
+permanently disabled, and 67,000 were temporarily disabled.
+
+John Burns says--
+
+
+    This we do know, that 60 per cent. of the common labourers engaged
+    on the Panama Canal were either killed, injured, or died from
+    disease every year, whilst 80 per cent. of the Europeans died. Out
+    of 70 French engineers, 45 died, and only 10 of the remainder were
+    fit for subsequent work.
+
+    The men engaged on the Manchester Ship Canal claim that 1000 to 1100
+    men were killed and 1700 men were severely injured, whilst 2500 were
+    temporarily disabled.
+
+
+Again--
+
+
+    Taking mechanics first, and selecting one firm--Armstrong's, at
+    Elswick--we find that in 1892 there were 588 accidents, or 7.9 per
+    cent. of men engaged. They have steadily risen to 1512, or 13.9 per
+    cent. of men engaged in 1897. In some departments, notably the blast
+    furnace, 43 per cent. of the men employed were injured in 1897 The
+    steel works had 296 injured, or 24.4 per cent. of its number.
+
+
+Of sailors John Burns says--
+
+
+    The last thirteen years, 1884-85 to 1896-97, show a loss of 28,302
+    from wreck, casualties, and accidents, or an average of 2177 from
+    the industrial risks of the sailor's life.
+
+
+But the most startling statement is to come--
+
+
+    Sir A. Forwood has recently indicated, and recent facts confirm
+    this general view, that
+
+       1 of every 1400 workmen is killed annually.
+       "      "   2500    "    is totally disabled.
+       "      "    300    "    is permanently partially disabled.
+     125 per 1000 are temporarily disabled for three or four weeks.
+
+
+One workman in 1400 is killed annually. Let us say there are 6,000,000
+workmen in the British Islands, and we shall find that no less than 4280
+are killed, and 20,000 permanently or partially disabled.
+
+That is as high as the average year's casualties in the Boer war.
+
+But the high death-rate from accidents amongst the workers is not nearly
+the greatest evil to which the poor are exposed.
+
+In the poorest districts of the great towns the children die like flies,
+and diseases caused by overcrowding, insufficient or improper food,
+exposure, dirt, neglect, and want of fuel and clothing, play havoc with
+the infants, the weakly, and the old.
+
+What are the chief diseases almost wholly due to the surroundings of
+poverty? They are consumption, bronchitis, rheumatism, epilepsy, fevers,
+smallpox, and cancer. Add to those the evil influences with which some
+trades are cursed, such as rupture, lead and phosphorous poisoning, and
+irritation of the lungs by dust, and you have a whole arsenal of deadly
+weapons aimed at the lives of the laborious poor.
+
+The average death-rate amongst the well-to-do classes is less than 10 in
+the thousand. Amongst the poorer workers it is often as high as 70 and
+seldom as low as 20.
+
+Put the average at 25 in the thousand amongst the poor: put the numbers
+of the poor at 10,000,000. We shall find that the difference between the
+death-rates of the poor and the well-to-do, is 15 to the thousand or
+15,000 to the million.
+
+We may say, then, that the 10,000,000 of poor workers lose every year
+150,000 lives from accidents and diseases due to poverty and to labour.
+
+Taking the entire population of the British Islands, I dare assert that
+the excess death-rate over the normal death-rate, will show that every
+year 300,000 lives are sacrificed to the ignorance and the injustice of
+the inhuman chaos which we call British civilisation.
+
+Some have cynically said that these lives are not worth saving, that the
+death-rate shows the defeat of the unfit, and that if all survived there
+would not be enough for them to live on.
+
+But except in the worst cases--where sots and criminals have bred human
+weeds--no man is wise enough to select the "fit" from the "unfit"
+amongst the children. The thin, pale child killed by cold, by hunger, by
+smallpox, or by fever, may be a seedling Stephenson, or Herschel, or
+Wesley; and I take it that in the West End the parents would not be
+consoled for the sacrifice of their most delicate child by the brutal
+suggestion that it was one of the "unfit." The "fit" may be a hooligan,
+a sweater, a fraudulent millionaire, a dissolute peer, or a fool.
+
+But there are two sides to this question of physical fitness. To excuse
+the evils of society on the ground that they weed out the unfit, is as
+foolish as to excuse bad drainage on the same plea. In a low-lying
+district where the soil is marshy the population will be weeded swiftly;
+but who would offer that as a reason why the land should not be drained?
+This heartless, fatuous talk about the survival of the fittest is only
+another example of the insults to which the poor are subjected. It
+fills one with despair to think that working men--fathers and
+husbands--will read or hear such things said of their own class, and not
+resent them. It is the duty of every working man to fight against such
+pitiless savagery, and to make every effort to win for his class and his
+family, respect and human conditions of life.
+
+Moreover, the shoddy science which talks so glibly about the "weeding
+out" of little helpless children is too blear-eyed to perceive that the
+same conditions of inhuman life which destroy the "weeds," _breed_ the
+weeds. Children born of healthy parents in healthy surroundings are not
+weeds. But to-day the British race is deteriorating, and the nation is
+in danger because of the greed of money-seekers and the folly of rulers
+and of those who claim to teach. The nation that gives itself up to the
+worship of luxury, wealth, and ease, is doomed. Nothing can save the
+British race but an awakening of the workers to the dangerous pass to
+which they have been brought by those who affect to guide and to govern
+them.
+
+But the workers, besides being underpaid, over-taxed, badly housed, and
+exposed to all manner of hardship, poverty, danger, and anxiety of mind,
+are also, by those who live upon them, denied respect.
+
+Do you doubt this? Do not the "better classes," as they call themselves,
+allude to the workers as "the lower orders," and "the great unwashed"?
+Does not the employer commonly speak of the workers as "hands"? Does the
+fine gentleman, who raises his hat and airs his nicest manners for a
+"lady," extend his chivalry and politeness to a "woman"? Do not the silk
+hats and the black coats and the white collars treat the caps and the
+overalls and the smocks as inferiors? Do not the men of the "better
+class" address each other as "sir"? And when did you last hear a
+"gentleman" say "sir" to a train-guard, to a railway porter, or to the
+"man" who has come to mend the drawing-room stove?
+
+Man cannot live by bread alone; neither can woman or child. And how much
+honour, culture, pleasure, rest, or love falls to the lot of the wives
+and children of the poor?
+
+Do not think I wish to breed class hatred. I do not. Doubtless the
+"better class" are graceful, amiable, honourable, and well-meaning
+folks. Doubtless they honestly believe they have a just claim to all
+their wealth and privileges. Doubtless they are no more selfish, no more
+arrogant, no more covetous nor idle than any working man would be in
+their place.
+
+What of that? It is nothing at all to you. They may be the finest people
+in the world. But does their fineness help you to pay your rent, or your
+wife to mend the clothes? or does it give you more wages, or her more
+rest? or does it in any way help to educate, and feed, and make happy
+your children?
+
+It does not. Nor do all the graces and superiorities of the West End
+make the lot of the East less bitter, less anxious, or more human.
+
+If self-interest be the ruling motive of mankind, why do not the working
+men transfer their honour and their service from the fine ladies and
+fine gentlemen to their own wives and children?
+
+These need every atom of love and respect the men can give them. Why
+should the many be poor, be ignorant, despised? Why should the rich
+monopolise the knowledge and the culture, the graces and elegancies of
+life, as well as the wealth?
+
+Ignorance is a curse: it is a deadlier curse than poverty. Indeed, but
+for ignorance, poverty and wealth could not continue to exist side by
+side; for only ignorance permits the rich to uphold and the poor to
+endure the injustices and the criminal follies of British society, as
+now to our shame and grief they environ us, like some loathly vision
+beheld with horror under nightmare.
+
+Is it needful to tell you more, Mr. Smith, you who are yourself a
+worker? Have you not witnessed, perhaps suffered, many of these evils?
+
+Yes; perhaps you yourself have smarted under "the insolence of office,
+and the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes"; perhaps you
+have borne the tortures of long suspense as one of the unemployed;
+perhaps on some weary tramp after work you have learned what it is to be
+a stranger in your own land; perhaps you have seen some old veteran
+worker, long known to you, now broken in health and stricken in years,
+compelled to seek the shameful shelter of a workhouse; perhaps you have
+had comrades of your own or other trades, who have been laid low by
+sickness, sickness caused by exposure or overstrain, and have died what
+coroners' juries call "natural deaths," or, in plain English, have been
+killed by overwork; perhaps you have known widows and little children,
+left behind by those unfortunate men, and can remember how much succour
+and compassion they received in this Christian country; perhaps as you
+think of the grim prophecy that one worker in four must die in a
+workhouse, you may yourself, despite your strength and your skill,
+glance anxiously towards the future, as a bold sailor glances towards a
+stormy horizon.
+
+Well, Mr. Smith, will you look through a book of mine called _Dismal
+England_, and there read how men and women and children of your class
+are treated in the workhouse, in the workhouse school, in the police
+court, in the chain works, on the canals, in the chemical hells, and in
+the poor and gloomy districts known as slums? I would quote some
+passages from _Dismal England_ now, but space forbids.
+
+Or, maybe, you would prefer the evidence of men of wealth and eminence
+who are not Socialists. If so, please read the testimony given in the
+next section.
+
+
+_Section C: Reliable Evidence_
+
+The Salvation Army see a great deal of the poor. Here is the evidence of
+General Booth--
+
+
+    444 persons are reported by the police to have attempted to commit
+    suicide in London last year, and probably as many more succeeded in
+    doing so. 200 persons died from starvation in the same period. We
+    have in this one city about 100,000 paupers, 30,000 prostitutes,
+    33,000 homeless adults, and 35,000 wandering children of the slums.
+    There is a standing army of out-of-works numbering 80,000, which is
+    often increased in special periods of commercial depression or trade
+    disputes to 100,000. 12,000 criminals are always inside Her
+    Majesty's prisons, and about 15,000 are outside. 70,000 charges for
+    petty offences are dealt with by the London magistrates every year.
+    The best authorities estimate that 10,000 new criminals are
+    manufactured per annum. We have tens of thousands of dwellings known
+    to be overcrowded, unsanitary, or dangerous.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of a man of letters, Mr. Frederic Harrison--
+
+
+    To me, at least, it would be enough to condemn modern society as
+    hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition
+    of industry were to be that which we behold, that 90 per cent. of
+    the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call their
+    own beyond the end of the week; have no bit of soil, or so much as a
+    room that belongs to them; have nothing of value of any kind except
+    as much old furniture as will go in a cart; have the precarious
+    chance of weekly wages which barely suffice to keep them in health;
+    are housed for the most part in places that no man thinks fit for
+    his horse; are separated by so narrow a margin from destitution,
+    that a month of bad trade, sickness, or unexpected loss brings them
+    face to face with hunger and pauperism.... This is the normal state
+    of the average workman in town or country.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of a man of science, Professor Huxley--
+
+
+    Anyone who is acquainted with the state of the population of all
+    great industrial centres, whether in this or other countries, is
+    aware that amidst a large and increasing body of that population
+    there reigns supreme ... that condition which the French call _la
+    misère_, a word for which I do not think there is any exact English
+    equivalent. It is a condition in which the food, warmth, and
+    clothing which are necessary for the mere maintenance of the
+    functions of the body in their normal state cannot be obtained; in
+    which men, women, and children are forced to crowd into dens wherein
+    decency is abolished, and the most ordinary conditions of healthful
+    existence are impossible of attainment; in which the pleasures
+    within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness; in which the
+    pains accumulate at compound interest in the shape of starvation,
+    disease, stunted development, and moral degradation; in which the
+    prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of
+    unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave....
+    When the organisation of society, instead of mitigating this
+    tendency, tends to continue and intensify it; when a given social
+    order plainly makes for evil and not for good, men naturally enough
+    begin to think it high time to try a fresh experiment. I take it to
+    be a mere plain truth that throughout industrial Europe there is not
+    a single large manufacturing city which is free from a vast mass of
+    people whose condition is exactly that described, and from a still
+    greater mass who, living just on the edge of the social swamp, are
+    liable to be precipitated into it.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of a British peer, Lord Durham--
+
+
+    There was still more sympathy and no reproach whatever to be
+    bestowed upon the children--perhaps waifs and strays in their
+    earliest days--of parents destitute, very likely deserving, possibly
+    criminal, who had had to leave these poor children to fight their
+    way in life alone. What did these children know or care for the
+    civilisation or the wealth of their native land? _What example, what
+    incentive had they ever had to lead good and honest lives?_ Possibly
+    from the moment of their birth they had never known contentment,
+    what it had been to feel bodily comfort. They were cast into that
+    world, and looked upon it as a cruel and heartless world, with no
+    guidance, no benign influence to guide them in their way, and _thus
+    they were naturally prone to fall into any vicious or criminal
+    habits which would procure them a bare subsistence_.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of a Tory Minister, Sir John Gorst--
+
+
+    I do not think there is any doubt as to the reality of the evil;
+    that is to say, that there are in our civilisation men able and
+    willing to work who can't find work to do.... Work will have to be
+    found for them.... What are usually called relief works may be a
+    palliative for acute temporary distress, but they are no remedy for
+    the unemployed evil in the long-run. Not only so; they tend to
+    aggravate it.... If you can set 100 unemployed men to produce food,
+    they are not taking bread out of other people's mouths. Men so
+    employed would be producing what is now imported from abroad and
+    what they themselves would consume. An unemployed man--_whether he
+    is a duke or a docker_--is living on the community. If you set him
+    to grow food he is enriching the community by what he produces.
+    Therefore, my idea is that the direction in which a remedy for the
+    unemployed evil is to be sought is in the production of food.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of the Tory Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury--
+
+
+    They looked around them and saw a _growing_ mass of _poverty_ and
+    _want of employment_, and of course the one object which every
+    statesman who loved his country should desire to attain, was that
+    there might be the largest amount of profitable employment for the
+    mass of the people.
+
+    He did not say that he had any patent or certain remedy for _the
+    terrible evils which beset us on all sides_, but he did say that it
+    was time they left off mending the constitution of Parliament, and
+    that they turned all the wisdom and energy Parliament could combine
+    together in order to remedy the _sufferings_ under which so _many_
+    of their countrymen laboured.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of the Colonial Secretary, the Right Hon. Joseph
+Chamberlain, M.P.--
+
+
+    The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights of
+    the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is hardly
+    too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the
+    liberties of a great proportion of the population have been laid at
+    the feet of a small number of proprietors, who "neither toil nor
+    spin."
+
+
+And here is further evidence from Mr. Chamberlain--
+
+
+    For my part neither sneers, nor abuse, nor opposition shall induce
+    me to accept as the will of the Almighty, and the unalterable
+    dispensation of His providence, a state of things under which
+    _millions lead sordid, hopeless, and monotonous lives, without
+    pleasure in the present, and without prospect for the future_.
+
+
+And here is still stronger testimony from Mr. Chamberlain--
+
+
+    The ordinary conditions of life among a large proportion of the
+    population are such that common decency is absolutely impossible;
+    and all this goes on in sight of the mansions of the rich, where
+    undoubtedly there are people who would gladly remedy it if they
+    could. It goes on in presence of wasteful extravagance and luxury,
+    which bring but little pleasure to those who indulge in them; and
+    private charity is powerless, religious organisations can do
+    nothing, to remedy the evils which are so deep-seated in our social
+    system.
+
+
+You have read what these eminent men have said, Mr. Smith, as to the
+evils of the present time.
+
+Well, Mr. Atkinson, a well-known American statistical authority, has
+said--
+
+
+    Four or five men can produce the bread for a thousand. With the best
+    machinery one workman can produce cotton cloth for 250 people,
+    woollens for 300, or boots and shoes for 1000.
+
+
+How is it, friend John Smith, that with all our energy, all our
+industry, all our genius, and all our machinery, there are 8,000,000 of
+hungry poor in this country?
+
+If five men can produce bread for a thousand, and one man can produce
+shoes for a thousand, how is it we have so many British citizens
+suffering from hunger and bare feet?
+
+That, Mr. Smith, is the question I shall endeavour in this book to
+answer.
+
+Meanwhile, if you have any doubts as to the verity of my statements of
+the sufferings of the poor, or as to the urgent need for your immediate
+and earnest aid, read the following books, and form your own opinion:--
+
+    _Labour and Life of the People._ Charles Booth. To be seen at most
+    free libraries.
+
+    _Poverty: A Study of Town Life._ By B. S. Rountree. Macmillan. 10s.
+    6d.
+
+    _Dismal England._ By R. Blatchford, 72 Fleet Street, E.C. 2s. 6d.
+    and 1s.
+
+    _No Room to Live._ By G. Haw, 72 Fleet Street, E.C. 1s.
+
+    _The White Slaves of England._ By R. Sherard. London, James Bowden.
+    1s.
+
+    _Pictures and Problems from the Police Courts._ By T. Holmes. Ed.
+    Arnold, Bedford Street, W.C.
+
+And the Fabian Tracts, especially No. 5 and No. 7. These are 1d. each.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHAT IS WEALTH? WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? WHO CREATES IT?
+
+
+Those who have read anything about political economy or _Socialism_ must
+often have found such thoughts as these rise up in their minds--
+
+How is it some are rich and others poor? How is it some who are able and
+willing to work can get no work to do? How is it that some who work very
+hard are so poorly paid? How is it that others who do not work at all
+have more money than they need? Why is one man born to pay rent and
+another to spend it?
+
+Let us first face the question of why there is so much poverty.
+
+This question has been answered in many strange ways.
+
+It has been said that poverty is due to drink. But that is not true, for
+we find many sober people poor, and we find awful poverty in countries
+where drunkenness is almost unknown.
+
+Drink does not cause the poverty of the sober Hindoos. Drink does not
+cause the poverty of our English women workers.
+
+It has been said that poverty is due to "over-production," and it has
+been said that it is due to "under-consumption." Let us see what these
+phrases mean.
+
+First, over-production. Poverty is due to over-production--of _what_? Of
+wealth. So we are to believe that the people are poor because they make
+too much wealth, that they are hungry because they produce too much
+food, naked because they make too many clothes, cold because they get
+too much coal, homeless because they build too many houses!
+
+Next, under-consumption. We are told that poverty is due to
+under-consumption--under-consumption of _what_? Of wealth. The people
+are poor because they do not destroy enough wealth. The way for them to
+grow rich is by consuming riches. They are to make their cake larger by
+eating it.
+
+Alas! the trouble is that they can get no cake to eat; they can get no
+wealth to consume.
+
+But I think the economists mean that the poor will grow richer if the
+rich consume more wealth.
+
+A rich man has two slaves. The slaves grow corn and make bread. The rich
+man takes half the bread and eats it. The slaves have only one man's
+share between two.
+
+Will it mend matters here if the rich man "consumes more"? Will it be
+better for the two slaves if the master takes half the bread left to
+them, and eats that as well as the bread he has already taken?
+
+See what a pretty mess the economists have led us into. The rich have
+too much and the poor too little. The economist says, let the poor
+produce less and the rich consume more, and all will be well!
+
+Wonderful! But if the poor produce less, there will be less to eat; and
+if the rich eat more, the share of the poor will be smaller than ever.
+
+Let us try another way. Suppose the poor produce more and the rich
+consume less! Does it not seem likely that then the share of the poor
+would be bigger?
+
+Well, then, we must turn the wisdom of the economists the other way up.
+We must say over-production of wealth _cannot_ make poverty, for that
+means that the more of a thing is produced the less of that thing there
+is; and we must say that under-consumption _cannot_ cause poverty, for
+that means that the more of a loaf you eat the more you will have left.
+
+Such rubbish as that may do for statesmen and editors, but it is of no
+use to sensible men and women. Let us see if we cannot think a little
+better for ourselves than these very superior persons have thought for
+us. I think that we, without being at all clever or learned, may get
+nearer to the truth than some of those who pass for great men.
+
+Now, what is it we have to find out? We want to know how the British
+people may make the best of their country and themselves.
+
+We know they are not making the best of either at present.
+
+There must, therefore, be something wrong. Our business is to find out
+what is wrong, and how it may be righted.
+
+We will begin by asking ourselves three questions, and by trying to
+answer them.
+
+These questions are--
+
+
+    1. What is wealth?
+    2. Where does wealth come from?
+    3. Where does wealth go to?
+
+
+First, then, what _is_ wealth? There is no need to go into long and
+confusing explanations; there is no use in splitting hairs. We want an
+answer that is short and simple, and at the same time good enough for
+the purpose.
+
+I should say, then, that wealth is all those things which we use.
+
+Mr. Ruskin uses two words, "wealth" and "illth." He divides the things
+which it is good for us to have from the things which it is not good for
+us to have, and he calls the good things "wealth" and the bad things
+"illth"--or ill things.
+
+Thus opium prepared for smoking is illth, because it does harm or works
+"ill" to all who smoke it; but opium prepared as medicine is wealth,
+because it saves life or stays pain.
+
+A dynamite bomb is "illth," for it is used to destroy life, but a
+dynamite cartridge is wealth, for it is used in getting slate or coal.
+
+Mr. Ruskin is right, and if we are to make the best of our country and
+of ourselves, we ought clearly to give up producing bad things, or
+"illth," and produce more good things, or wealth.
+
+But, for our purpose, it will be simpler and shorter to call all things
+we use wealth.
+
+Thus a good book is wealth and a bad book "illth"; but as it is not easy
+to agree as to which books are good, which bad, and which indifferent,
+we had better call all books wealth.
+
+By this word wealth, then, when we use it in this book, we shall mean
+all the things we use.
+
+Thus we shall put down as wealth all such things as food, clothing,
+fuel, houses, ornaments, musical instruments, arms, tools, machinery,
+books, horses, dogs, medicines, toys, ships, trains, coaches, tobacco,
+churches, hospitals, lighthouses, theatres, shops, and all other things
+that we _use_.
+
+Now comes our second question: Where does wealth come from?
+
+This question we must make into two questions--
+
+
+    1. Where does wealth come from?
+    2. Who produces wealth?
+
+
+Because the question, "Where does wealth come from?" really means, "How
+is wealth produced?"
+
+_All_ wealth comes from the land.
+
+All food comes from the land--all flesh is grass. Vegetable food comes
+directly from the land; animal food comes indirectly from the land, all
+animals being fed on the land.
+
+So the stuff of which we make our clothing, our houses, our fuel, our
+tools, arms, ships, engines, toys, ornaments, is all got from the land.
+For the land yields timber, metals, vegetables, and the food on which
+feed the animals from which we get feathers, fur, meat, milk, leather,
+ivory, bone, glue, and many other things.
+
+Even in the case of the things that come from the sea, as sealskin,
+whale oil, fish, iodine, shells, pearls, and other things, we are to
+remember that we need boats, or nets, or tools to get them with, and
+that boats, nets, and tools are made from minerals and vegetables got
+from the land.
+
+We may say, then, that all wealth comes from the land.
+
+This brings us to the second part of our question: "Who produces
+wealth?" or "How is wealth produced?"
+
+Wealth is produced by human beings. It is the people of a country who
+produce the wealth of that country.
+
+Wealth is produced by labour. Wealth cannot be produced by any other
+means or in any other way. _All_ wealth is produced _from_ the LAND _by_
+human LABOUR.
+
+A coal seam is not wealth; but a coalmine is wealth. Coal is not wealth
+while it is in the bowels of the earth; but coal is wealth as soon as it
+is brought up out of the pit and made available for use.
+
+A whale or a seal is not wealth until it is caught.
+
+In a country without inhabitants there would be no wealth.
+
+Land is not wealth. To produce wealth you must have land and human
+beings.
+
+There can be no wealth without labour.
+
+And now we come to the first error of the economists. There are some
+economists who tell us that wealth is not produced by labour, but by
+"capital."
+
+There is neither truth nor reason in this assertion.
+
+What is "capital"?
+
+"Capital" is only another word for _stores_. Adam Smith calls capital
+"stock." Capital is any tools, machinery, or other stores used in
+producing wealth. Capital is any food, fuel, shelter, clothing supplied
+to those engaged in producing wealth.
+
+The hunter, before he can shoot game, needs weapons. His weapons are
+"capital." The farmer has to wait for his wheat and potatoes to ripen
+before he can use them as food. The stock of food and the tools he uses
+to produce the wheat or potatoes, and to live on while they ripen, are
+"capital."
+
+Robinson Crusoe's capital was the arms, food, and tools he saved from
+the wreck. On these he lived until he had planted corn, and tamed goats
+and built a hut, and made skin clothing and vessels of wood and clay.
+
+Capital, then, is stores. Now, where do the stores come from? Stores are
+wealth. Stores, whether they be food or tools, come from the land, and
+are made or produced by human labour.
+
+There is not an atom of capital in the world that has not been produced
+by labour.
+
+Every spade, every plough, every hammer, every loom, every cart, barrow,
+loaf, bottle, ham, haddock, pot of tea, barrel of ale, pair of boots,
+gold or silver coin, railway sleeper or rail, boat, road, canal, every
+kind of tools and stores has been produced by labour from the land.
+
+It is evident, then, that if there were no labour there would be no
+capital. Labour is _before_ capital, for labour _makes_ capital.
+
+Now, what folly it is to say that capital produces wealth. Capital is
+used by labour in the production of wealth, but capital itself is
+incapable of motion and can produce nothing.
+
+A spade is "capital." Is it true, then, to say that it is not the navvy
+but the spade that makes the trench?
+
+A plough is capital. Is it true to say that not the ploughman but the
+plough makes the furrow?
+
+A loom is capital. Is it true to say that the loom makes the cloth? It
+is the weaver who weaves the cloth. He _uses_ the loom, and the loom was
+made by the miner, the smith, the joiner, and the engineer.
+
+There are wood and iron and brass in the loom. But you would not say
+that the cloth was produced by the iron-mine and the forest! It is
+produced by miners, engineers, sheep farmers, wool-combers, sailors,
+spinners, weavers, and other workers. It is produced entirely by labour,
+and could not be produced in any other way.
+
+How can capital produce wealth? Take a steam plough, a patent harrow, a
+sack of wheat, a bankbook, a dozen horses, enough food and clothing to
+last a hundred men a year; put all that capital down in a forty-acre
+field, and it will not produce a single ear of corn in fifty years
+unless you send a _man_ to _labour_.
+
+But give a boy a forked stick, a rood of soil, and a bag of seed, and he
+will raise a crop for you.
+
+If he is a smart boy, and has the run of the woods and streams, he will
+also contrive to find food to live on till the crop is ready.
+
+We find, then, that all wealth is produced _from_ the land _by_ labour,
+and that capital is only a part of wealth, that it has been produced by
+labour, stored by labour, and is finally used by labour in the
+production of more wealth.
+
+Our third question asks, "What becomes of the wealth?"
+
+This is not easy to answer. But we may say that the wealth is divided
+into three parts--not _equal_ parts--called Rent, Interest, and Wages.
+
+Rent is wealth paid to the landlords for the use of the land. Interest
+is wealth paid to the capitalists (the owners of tools and stores) for
+the use of the "capital."
+
+Wages is wealth paid to the workers for their labour in producing _all_
+the wealth.
+
+There are but a few landlords, but they take a large share of the
+wealth.
+
+There are but a few capitalists, but _they_ take a large share of the
+wealth.
+
+There are very many workers, but they do not get much more than a third
+share of the wealth they produce.
+
+The landlord produces _nothing_. He takes part of the wealth for
+allowing the workers to use the land.
+
+The capitalist produces nothing. He takes part of the wealth for
+allowing the workers to use the capital.
+
+The workers produce _all_ the wealth, and are obliged to give a great
+deal of it to the landlords and capitalists who produce nothing.
+
+Socialists claim that the landlord is useless under _any_ form of
+society, that the capitalist is not needed in a properly ordered
+society, and that the people should become their own landlords and their
+own capitalists.
+
+If the people were their own landlords and capitalists, _all_ the wealth
+would belong to the workers by whom it is all produced.
+
+Now, a word of caution. We say that _all_ wealth is produced by labour.
+_What is labour?_
+
+Labour is work. Work is said to be of two kinds: hand work and brain
+work. But really work is of one kind--the labour of hand and brain
+together; for there is hardly any head work wherein the hand has no
+share, and there is no hand work wherein the head has no share.
+
+The hand is really a part of the brain, and can do nothing without the
+brain's direction.
+
+So when we say that all wealth is produced by labour, we mean by the
+labour of hand and brain.
+
+I want to make this quite plain, because you will find, if you come to
+deal with the economists, that attempts have been made to use the word
+labour as meaning chiefly hand labour.
+
+When we say labour produces all wealth, we do not mean that all wealth
+is produced by farm labourers, mechanics, and navvies, but that it is
+all produced by _workers_--that is, by thinkers as well as doers; by
+inventors and directors as well as by the man with the hammer, the file,
+or the spade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HOW THE FEW GET RICH AND KEEP THE MANY POOR
+
+
+We have already seen that most of the wealth produced by labour goes
+into the pockets of a few rich men: we have now to find out how it gets
+there.
+
+By what means do the landlords and the capitalists get the meat and
+leave the workers the bones?
+
+Let us deal first with the land, and next with the capital.
+
+A landlord is one who owns land.
+
+Rent is a price paid to the landlord for permission to use or occupy
+land.
+
+Here is a diagram of a square piece of land--
+
+
+    +----------+
+    |          |
+    |          |
+    |    *L    |     W
+    |          |
+    |          |
+    +----------+
+       Fig. 1
+
+
+In the centre stands the landlord (L), outside stands a labourer (W).
+
+The landlord owns the land, the labourer owns no land. The labourer
+cannot get food except from the land. The landlord will not allow him to
+use the land unless he pays rent. The labourer has no money. How can he
+pay rent?
+
+He must first raise a crop from the land, and then give a part of the
+crop to the landlord as rent; or he may sell the crop and give to the
+landlord, as rent, part of the money for which the crop is sold.
+
+We find, then, that the labourer cannot get food without working, and
+cannot work without land, and that, as he has no land, he must pay rent
+for the use of land owned by some other person--a landlord.
+
+We find that the labourer produces the whole of the crop, and that the
+landlord produces nothing; and we find that, when the crop is produced,
+some of it has to be given to the landlord.
+
+Thus it is clear that where one man owns land, and another man owns no
+land, the landless man is dependent upon the landed man for permission
+to work and to live, while the landed man is able to live without
+working.
+
+Let us go into this more fully.
+
+Here (Fig. 2) are two squares of land--
+
+
+         _a_               _b_
+    +----------+      +----------+
+    |          |      |          |
+    |    *W    |      |          |
+    |          |      |          |
+    +----------+      |  *   *   |
+    |          |      |  W   W   |
+    |    *W    |      |          |
+    |          |      |          |
+    +----------+      +----------+
+                Fig. 2
+
+
+Each piece of land is owned and worked by two men. The field _a_ is
+divided into two equal parts, each part owned and worked by one man. The
+field _b_ is owned and worked by two men jointly.
+
+In the case of field _a_ each man has what he produces, and _all_ he
+produces. In the case of field _b_ each man takes half of _all_ that
+_both_ produce.
+
+These men in both cases are their own landlords. They own the land they
+use.
+
+But now suppose that field _b_ does not belong to two men, but to one
+man. The same piece of land will be there, but only one man will be
+working on it. The other does not work: he lives by charging rent.
+
+Therefore if the remaining labourer, now a _tenant_, is to live as well
+as he did when he was part owner, and pay the rent, he must work twice
+as hard as he did before.
+
+Take the field _a_ (Fig. 2). It is divided into two equal parts, and one
+man tills each half. Remove one man and compel the other to pay half the
+produce in rent, and you will find that the man who has become landlord
+now gets as much without working as he got when he tilled half the
+field, and that the man left as tenant now has to till the whole field
+for the same amount of produce as he got formerly for tilling half of
+it.
+
+We see, then, that the landlord is a useless and idle burden upon the
+worker, and that he takes a part of what the worker alone produces, and
+calls it rent.
+
+The defence set up for the landlord is (1) that he has a right to the
+land, and (2) that he spends his wealth for the public advantage.
+
+I shall show you in later chapters that both these statements are
+untrue.
+
+Let us now turn to the capitalist. What is a capitalist? He is really a
+money-lender. He lends money, or machinery, and he charges interest on
+it.
+
+Suppose Brown wants to dig, but has no spade. He borrows a spade of
+Jones, who charges him a price for the use of the spade. Then Jones is a
+capitalist: he takes part of the wealth Brown produces, and calls it
+_interest_.
+
+Suppose Jones owns a factory and machinery, and suppose Brown is a
+spinner, who owns nothing but his strength and skill.
+
+In that case Brown the spinner stands in the same relation to Jones the
+capitalist as the landless labourer stands in to the landlord. That is
+to say, the spinner cannot get food without money, and he can only get
+money by working as a spinner for the man who owns the factory.
+
+Therefore Brown the spinner goes to Jones the capitalist, who engages
+him as a spinner, and pays him wages.
+
+There are many other spinners in the same position. They work for Jones,
+who pays them wages. They spin yarn, and Jones sells it. Does Jones
+spin any of the yarn? Not a thread: the spinners spin it all. Do the
+spinners get all the money the yarn is sold for? No. How is the money
+divided? It is divided in this way--
+
+A quantity of yarn is sold for twenty shillings, but of that twenty
+shillings the factory owner pays the cost of the raw material, the wages
+of the spinners, the cost of rent, repairs to machinery, fuel and oil,
+and the salaries and commissions of clerks, travellers, and managers.
+What remains of the twenty shillings he takes for himself as _profit_.
+
+This "profit," then, is the difference between the cost price of the
+yarn and the sale price. If a certain weight of yarn costs nineteen
+shillings to produce, and sells for twenty shillings, there is a profit
+of one shilling. If yarn which cost £9000 to produce is sold for
+£10,000, the profit is £1000.
+
+This profit the factory owner, Jones the capitalist, claims as interest
+on his capital. It is then a kind of rent charged by him for the use of
+his money, his factory, and his machinery.
+
+Now we must be careful here not to confuse the landlord with the farmer,
+nor the capitalist with the manager. I am, so far, dealing only with
+those who _own_ and _let_ land or capital, and not with those who manage
+them.
+
+A capitalist is one who lends capital. A capitalist may use capital, but
+in so far as he uses capital he is a worker.
+
+So a landlord may farm land, but in so far as he farms land he is a
+farmer, and therefore a worker.
+
+The man who finds the capital for a factory, and manages the business
+himself, is a capitalist, for he lends his factory and machines to the
+men who work for him. But he is also a worker, since he conducts the
+manufacture and the sale of goods. As a capitalist he claims interest,
+as a worker he claims salary. And he is as much a worker as a general is
+a soldier or an admiral a sailor.
+
+Well, the _idle_ landlord and the _idle_ capitalist charge rent or
+interest for the use of their land or capital.
+
+The landlord justifies himself by saying that the land is _his_, and
+that he has a right to charge for it the highest rent he can get.
+
+The capitalist justifies himself by saying that the capital is _his_,
+and that he has a right to charge for it the highest rate of interest he
+can get.
+
+Both claim that it is better for the nation that the land and the
+capital should remain in their hands; both tell us that the nation will
+go headlong to ruin if we try to dispense with their valuable services.
+
+I am not going to denounce either landlord or capitalist as a tyrant, a
+usurer, or a robber. Landlords and capitalists may be, and very often
+are, upright and well-meaning men. As such let us respect them.
+
+Neither shall I enter into a long argument as to whether it is right or
+wrong to charge interest on money lent or capital let, or as to whether
+it is right or wrong to "buy in the cheapest market and sell in the
+dearest."
+
+The non-Socialist will claim that as the capital belongs to the
+capitalist he has a right to ask what interest he pleases for its use,
+and that he has also a perfect right to get as much for the goods he
+sells as the buyer will give, and to pay as little wages as the workers
+will accept.
+
+Let us concede all that, and save talk.
+
+But those claims being granted to the capitalist, the counter-claims of
+the worker and the buyer--the producer and the consumer--must be
+recognised as equally valid.
+
+If the capitalist is justified in paying the lowest wages the worker
+will take, the worker is justified in paying the lowest interest the
+capitalist will take.
+
+If the seller is justified in asking the highest price for goods, the
+buyer is justified in offering the lowest.
+
+If a capitalist manager is justified in demanding a big salary for his
+services of management, the worker and the consumer are justified in
+getting another capitalist or another manager at a lower price, if they
+can.
+
+Surely that is just and reasonable. And that is what Socialists advise.
+
+A capitalist owns a large factory and manages it. He pays his spinners
+fifteen shillings a week; he sells his goods to the public at the best
+price he can get; and he makes an income of £10,000 a year. He makes
+his money fairly and lawfully.
+
+But if the workers and the users of yarn can find their own capital,
+build their own factory, and spin their own yarn, they have a perfect
+right to set up on their own account.
+
+And if by so doing they can pay the workers better wages, sell the yarn
+to the public at a lower price, and have a profit left to build other
+factories with, no one can accuse them of doing wrong, nor can anyone
+deny that the workers and the users have proved that they, the producers
+and consumers, have done better without the capitalist (or middleman)
+than with him.
+
+But there is another kind of capitalist--the shareholder. A company is
+formed to manufacture mouse-traps. The capital is £100,000. There are
+ten shareholders, each holding £10,000 worth of shares. The company
+makes a profit of 10 per cent. The dividend at 10 per cent. paid to each
+shareholder will be £1000 a year.
+
+The shareholders do no more than find the capital. They do not manage
+the business, nor get the orders, nor conduct the sales, nor make the
+mouse-traps. The business is managed by a paid manager, the sales are
+conducted by paid travellers, and the mouse-traps are made by paid
+workmen.
+
+Let us now see how it fares with any one of these shareholders. He lends
+to the company £10,000. He receives from the company 10 per cent.
+dividend, or £1000 a year. In ten years he gets back the whole of his
+£10,000, but he still owns the shares, and he still draws a dividend of
+£1000 a year. If the company go on working and making 10 per cent. for a
+hundred years they will still be paying £1000 a year for the loan of the
+£10,000. It will be quite evident, then, that in twenty years this
+shareholder will have received his money twice over; that is to say, his
+£10,000 will have become £20,000 without his having done a stroke of
+work or even knowing anything about the business.
+
+On the other hand, the manager, the salesman, and the workman, who have
+done all the work and earned all the profits, will receive no dividend
+at all. They are paid their weekly wages, and no more. A man who starts
+at a pound a week will at the end of twenty years be still working for a
+pound a week.
+
+The non-Socialist will claim that this is quite right; that the
+shareholder is as much entitled to rent on his money as the worker is
+entitled to wages for his work. We need not contradict him. Let us keep
+to simple facts.
+
+Suppose the mouse-trap makers started a factory of their own. Suppose
+they fixed the wages of the workers at the usual rate. Suppose they
+borrowed the capital to carry on the business. Suppose they borrowed
+£100,000. They would not have to pay 10 per cent. for the loan, they
+would not have to pay 5 per cent. for the loan. But fix it at 5 per
+cent. interest, and suppose that, as in the case of the company, the
+mouse-trap makers made a profit of 10 per cent. That would give them a
+profit of £10,000 a year. In twenty years they would have made a profit
+of £200,000. The interest on the loan at 5 per cent. for twenty years
+would be £100,000. The amount of the loan is £100,000. Therefore after
+working twenty years they would have paid off the whole of the money
+borrowed, and the business, factory, and machinery would be their own.
+
+Thus, instead of being in the position of the men who had worked twenty
+years for the mouse-trap company, these men, after receiving the same
+wages as the others for twenty years, would now be in possession of the
+business paying them £10,000 a year over and above their wages.
+
+But, the non-Socialist will object, these working men could not borrow
+£100,000, as they would have no security. That is quite true; but the
+Corporation of Manchester or Birmingham could borrow the money to start
+such a work, and could borrow it at 3 per cent. And by making their own
+mouse-traps, or gas, or bread, instead of buying them from a private
+maker or a company, and paying the said company or maker £10,000 a year
+for ever and ever amen, they would, in less than twenty years, become
+possessors of their own works and machinery, and be in a position to
+save £10,000 a year on the cost of mouse-traps or gas or bread.
+
+This is what the Socialist means by saying that the capitalist is
+unnecessary, and is paid too much for the use of his capital.
+
+Against the capitalist or landlord worker or manager the same complaint
+holds good; the large profits taken by these men as payment for
+management or direction are out of all proportion to the value of their
+work. These profits, or salaries, called by economists "the wages of
+ability," are in excess of any salary that would be paid to a farmer,
+engineer, or director of any factory either by Government, by the County
+Council, by a Municipality, or by any capitalist or company engaging
+such a person at a fixed rate for services. That is to say, the
+capitalist or landlord director is paid very much above the market value
+of the "wages of ability."
+
+These facts generally escape the notice of the worker. As a rule his
+attention is confined to his own wages, and he thinks himself well off
+or ill off as his wages are what he considers high or low. But there are
+two sides to the question of wages. It is not only the amount of wages
+received that matters, but it is also the amount of commodities the
+wages will buy. The worker has to consider how much he spends as well as
+how much he gets; and if he can got as much for 15s. as he used to get
+for £1, he is as much better off as he would be were his wages raised 25
+per cent.
+
+Now on every article the workman uses there is one profit or a dozen;
+one charge or many charges placed upon his food, clothing, house, fuel,
+light, travelling, and everything he requires by the landlord, the
+capitalist, or the shareholders.
+
+Take the case of the coal bought by a poor London clerk at 30s. a ton.
+It pays a royalty to the royalty owner, it pays a profit to the mine
+owner, it pays a profit to the coal merchant, it pays a profit to the
+railway company, and these profits are over and above the cost in wages
+and wear and tear of machinery.
+
+Yet this same London clerk is very likely a Tory, who says many bitter
+things against _Socialism_, but never thinks of resenting the heavy
+taxes levied on his small income by landlords, railway companies, water
+companies, building companies, ship companies, and all the other
+companies and private firms who live upon him.
+
+Imagine this poor London clerk, whose house stands on land owned by a
+peer worth £300,000 a year, whose "boss" makes £50,000 a year out of
+timber or coals, whose pipe pays four shillings taxes on every
+shilling's worth of tobacco (while the rich man's cigar pays a tax of
+five shillings in the pound), whose children go to the board school,
+while those of the coalowner, the company promoter, the railway
+director, and the landlord go to the university. Imagine this man,
+anxious, worried, overworked, poor, and bled by a horde of rich
+parasites. Imagine him standing in a well-dressed crowd, amongst the
+diamond shops, fur shops, and costly furniture shops of Regent Street,
+and asking with a bitter sneer where John Burns got his new suit of
+clothes.
+
+Is it not marvellous? He does not ask who gets the 4s. on his pound of
+smoking mixture! Nor why he pays 4s. a thousand for bad gas (as I did in
+Finchley) while the Manchester clerk gets good gas for 2s. 2d.! Nor does
+he ask why the Duke of Bedford should put a tax on his wife's apple
+pudding or his children's bananas! He does not even ask what became of
+the £80,000,000 which the coal-owners wrung out of the public when he,
+the poor clerk, was paying 2s. per cwt. for coal for his tiny parlour
+grate! No. The question he asks is: Where Ben Tillett got his new straw
+hat!
+
+How the Duke, and the Coalowner, and the Money-lender, and the
+Jerry-builder must laugh!
+
+Yet so it is. It is not the landlord, the company promoter, the
+coalowner, the jerry-builder, and all the other useless rich who prey
+upon his wife and his children whom he mistrusts. His enemies, poor man,
+are the Socialists; the men and women who work for him, teach him,
+sacrifice their health, their time, their money, and their prospects to
+awaken his manhood, to sting his pride, to drive the mists of prejudice
+from his worried mind and give his common sense a chance. _These_ are
+the men and women he despises and mistrusts. And he reads the _Daily
+Mail_, and shudders at the name of the _Clarion_; and he votes for Mr.
+Facing-both-ways and Lord Plausible, and is filled with bitterness
+because of honest John's summer trousers.
+
+Again I tell you, Mr. Smith, that I do not wish to stir up class hatred.
+Lady Dedlock, wife of the great ground landlord, is a charming lady,
+handsome, clever, and very kind to the poor.
+
+But if I were a docker, and if my wife had to go out in leaky boots, or
+if my delicate child could not get sea air and nourishing food, I should
+be apt to ask whether his lordship, the great ground landlord, could not
+do with less rent and his sweet wife with fewer pearls. I should ask
+that. I should not think myself a man if I did not ask it; nor should I
+feel happy if I did not strain every nerve to get an answer.
+
+Non-Socialists often reproach Socialists for sentimentality. But surely
+it is sentimentality to talk as the non-Socialist does about the
+personal excellences of the aristocracy. What have Lady Dedlock's
+amiability and beauty to do with the practical questions of gas rates
+and wages?
+
+I am "setting class against class." Quite right, too, so long as one
+class oppresses another.
+
+But let us reverse the position. Suppose you go to the Duke of Hebden
+Bridge and ask for an engagement as clerk in his Grace's colliery at a
+salary of £5000 a year. Will the duke give it to you because your wife
+is pretty and your daughter thinks you are a great man? Not at all. His
+Grace would say, "My dear sir, you are doubtless an excellent citizen,
+husband, and father; but I can get a better clerk at a pound a week,
+sir; and I cannot afford to pay more, sir."
+
+The duke would be quite correct. He could get a better clerk for £1 a
+week. And as for the amiability of your family, or your own personal
+merits, what have they to do with business?
+
+As a business man the duke will not pay £2 a week to a clerk if he can
+get a man as good for £1 a week.
+
+Then why should the clerk pay 4s. a thousand for his gas if he can get
+it for 2s. 2d.? Or why should the docker pay the duke 5s. rent if he can
+get a house for 2s. 6d.?
+
+Should I be offended with the duke for refusing to pay me more than I
+am worth? Should I accuse him of class hatred? Not at all. Then why
+should I be blamed for suggesting that it is folly to pay a duke more
+than he is worth? Or why should the duke mutter about class hatred if I
+suggest that we can get a colliery director at a lower salary than his
+Grace? Talk about sentimentality! Are we to pay a guinea each for dukes
+if we can get them three a penny? It is not business.
+
+I grudge no man his wealth nor his fortune. I want nothing that is his.
+I do not hate the rich: I pity the poor. It is of the women and children
+of the poor I think when I am agitating for _Socialism_, not of the
+coffers of the wealthy.
+
+I believe in universal brotherhood; nay, I go even further, for I
+maintain that the sole difference between the worst man and the best is
+a difference of opportunity--that is to say, that since heredity and
+environment make one man amiable and another churlish, one generous and
+another mean, one faithful and another treacherous, one wise and another
+foolish, one strong and another weak, one vile and another pure,
+therefore the bishop and the hooligan, the poet and the boor, the idiot,
+the philosopher, the thief, the hero, and the brutalised drab in the
+kennel _are all equal in the sight of God and of justice_, and that
+every word of censure uttered by man is a word of error, growing out of
+ignorance. As the sun shines alike upon the evil and the good, so must
+we give love and mercy to all our fellow-creatures. "Judgment is mine,
+saith the Lord."
+
+But that does not prevent me from defending a brother of the East End
+against a brother of the West End. Truly we should love all men. Let us,
+then, begin by loving the weakest and the worst, for they have so little
+love and counsel, while the rich and the good have so much.
+
+We will not, Mr. Smith, accuse the capitalist of base conduct. But we
+will say that as a money-lender his rate of interest is too high, and
+that as a manager his salary is too large. And we will say that if by
+combining we can, as workers, get better wages, and as buyers get
+cheaper goods, we shall do well and wisely to combine. For it is to our
+interest in the one case, as it is to the interest of the capitalist in
+the other case, to "buy in the cheapest market and to sell in the
+dearest."
+
+So much for the capitalist; but, before we deal with the landlord, we
+have to consider another very important person, and that is the
+inventor, or brain-worker.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BRAIN WORKER, OR INVENTOR
+
+
+It has, I think, never been denied that much wealth goes to the
+capitalist, but it has been claimed that the capitalist deserves all he
+gets because wealth is produced by capital. And although this is as
+foolish as to say that the tool does the work and not the hand that
+wields it, yet books have been written to convince the people that it is
+true.
+
+Some of these books try to deceive us into supposing that capital and
+ability are interchangeable terms. That is to say, that "capital," which
+means "stock," is the same thing as "ability," which means cleverness or
+skill. We might as well believe that a machine is the same thing as the
+brain that invented it. But there is a trick in it. The trick lies in
+first declaring that the bulk of the national wealth is produced by
+"ability," and then confusing the word "ability" with the word
+"capital."
+
+But it is one thing to say that wealth is due to the man who _invented_
+a machine, and it is quite another thing to say that wealth is due to
+the man who _owns_ the machine.
+
+In his book called _Labour and the Popular Welfare_, Mr. Mallock assures
+us that ability produces more wealth than is produced by labour.
+
+He says that two-thirds of the national wealth are due to ability and
+only one-third to labour. A hundred years ago, Mr. Mallock says, the
+population of this country was 10,000,000 and the wealth produced
+yearly; £140,000,000, giving an average of £14 a head.
+
+The recent production is £350,000,000 for every 10,000,000 of the
+population, or £35 a head.
+
+The argument is that _labour_ is only able to produce as much now as it
+could produce a hundred years ago, for labour does not vary. Therefore,
+the increase from £14 a head to £35 a head is not due to labour but to
+machinery.
+
+Now, we owe this machinery, not to labour, but to invention. Therefore
+the various inventors have enabled the people to produce more than twice
+as much as they produced a century back.
+
+Therefore, according to Mr. Mallock, all the extra wealth, amounting to
+£800,000,000 a year, is earned by the _machines_, and ought to be paid
+to the men who _own_ the machines.
+
+Pretty reasoning, isn't it? And Mr. Mallock is one of those who talk
+about the inaccurate thinking of Socialists.
+
+Let us see what it comes to. John Smith invents a machine which makes
+three yards of calico where one was made by hand. Tom Jones buys the
+machine, or the patent, to make calico. Which of these men is the cause
+of the calico output being multiplied by three? Is it the man who owns
+the patent, or the man who invented the machine? It is the man who
+invented the machine. It is the ability of John Smith which caused the
+increase in the calico output. It is, therefore, the ability of John
+Smith which earns the extra wealth. Tom Jones, who bought the machines,
+is no more the producer of that _extra_ wealth than are the spinners and
+weavers he employs.
+
+To whom, then, should the extra wealth belong? To the man who creates
+it? or to the man who does not create it? Clearly the wealth should
+belong to the man who creates it. Therefore, the whole of the extra
+wealth should go to the inventor, to whose ability it is due, and _not_
+to the mere capitalist, who only uses the machine.
+
+"But," you may say, "Jones bought the patent from Smith." He did. And he
+also buys their labour and skill from the spinners and weavers who work
+for him, and in all three cases he pays less than the thing he buys is
+worth.
+
+Mr. Mallock makes a great point of telling us that men are not equally
+clever, that cleverness produces more wealth than labour produces, and
+that one man is worth more than another to the nation.
+
+Labour, he says, is common to all men, but ability is the monopoly of
+the few. The bulk of the wealth is produced by the few, and ought by
+them to be enjoyed.
+
+But I don't think any Socialist ever claimed that all men were of equal
+value to the nation, nor that any one man could produce just as much
+wealth as any other. We know that one man is stronger than another, that
+one is cleverer than another, and that an inventor or thinker may design
+or invent some machine or process which will enable the workers to
+produce more wealth in one year than they could by their own methods
+produce in twenty.
+
+Now, before we go into the matter of the inventor, or of the value of
+genius to the nation, let us test these ideas of Mr. W. H. Mallock's and
+see what they lead to.
+
+A man invents a machine which does the work of ten handloom weavers. He
+is therefore worth more, as a weaver, than the ordinary weaver who
+invents nothing. How much more?
+
+If his machine does the work of ten men, you might think he was worth
+ten men. But he is worth very much more.
+
+Suppose there are 10,000 weavers, and all of them use his machine. They
+will produce not 10,000 men's work, but 100,000 men's work. Here, then,
+our inventor is equal to 90,000 weavers. That is to say, that his
+thought, his idea, his labour _produces_ as much wealth as could be
+produced by 100,000 weavers without it.
+
+On no theory of value, and on no grounds of reason that I know, can we
+claim that this inventor is of no more value, as a producer, than an
+ordinary, average handloom weaver.
+
+Granting the claim of the non-Socialist, that every man belongs to
+himself; and granting the claim of Mr. Mallock, that two-thirds of our
+national wealth are produced by inventors; and granting the demand of
+exact mathematical justice, that every man shall receive the exact value
+of the wealth he produces; it would follow that two-thirds of the
+wealth of this nation would be paid yearly to the inventors, or to their
+heirs or assigns.
+
+The wealth is _not_ to be paid to labour; that is Mr. Mallock's claim.
+And it is not to be paid to labour because it has been earned by
+ability. And Mr. Mallock tells us that labour does not vary nor increase
+in its productive power. Good.
+
+Neither does the landlord nor the capitalist increase his productive
+power. Therefore it is not the landlord nor the capitalist who earns--or
+produces--this extra wealth; it is the inventor.
+
+And since the labourer is not to have the wealth, because he does not
+produce it, neither should the landlord or capitalist have it, because
+he does not produce it.
+
+So much for the _right_ of the thing. Mr. Mallock shows that the
+inventor creates all this extra wealth; he shows that the inventor ought
+to have it. Good.
+
+Now, how is it that the inventor does _not_ get it, and how is it that
+the landlord and the capitalist _do_ get it?
+
+Just because the laws, which have been made by landlords and
+capitalists, enable these men to rob the inventor and the labourer with
+impunity.
+
+Thus: A man owns a piece of land in a town. As the town increases its
+business and population, the owner of the land raises the rent. He can
+get double the rent because the town has doubled its trade, and the land
+is worth more for business purposes or for houses. Has the landlord
+increased the value? Not at all. He has done nothing but draw the rent.
+The increase of value is due to the industry or ability of the people
+who live and work in the town, chiefly, as Mr. Mallock claims, to
+different inventors. Do these inventors get the increased rent? No. Do
+the workers in the town get it? No. The landlord demands this extra
+rent, and the law empowers him to evict if the rent is not paid.
+
+Next, let us see how the inventor is treated. If a man invents a machine
+and patents it, the law allows him to charge a royalty for its use for
+the space of fourteen years.
+
+At the end of that time the patent lapses, and the invention may be
+worked by anyone.
+
+Observe here the difference of the treatment given to the inventor and
+the landlord.
+
+The landlord does not make the land, he does not till the land, he does
+not improve the land; he only draws the rent, and he draws that _for
+ever_. _His_ patent never lapses; and the harder the workers work, and
+the more wealth inventors and workers produce, the more rent he
+draws--for nothing.
+
+The inventor _does_ make his invention. He is, upon Mr. Mallock's
+showing, the creator of immense wealth. And, even if he is lucky, he can
+only draw rent on his ability for fourteen years.
+
+But suppose the inventor is a poor man--and a great many inventors are
+poor men--his chance of getting paid for his ability is very small.
+Because, to begin with, he has to pay a good deal to patent his
+invention, and then, often enough, he needs capital to work the patent,
+and has none.
+
+What is he to do? He must find a capitalist to work the patent for him,
+or he must find a man rich enough to buy it from him.
+
+And it very commonly happens, either that the poor man cannot pay the
+renewal fees for his patent, and so loses it entirely, or that the
+capitalist buys it out and out for an old song, or that the capitalist
+obliges him to accept terms which give a huge profit to the capitalist
+and a small royalty to the inventor.
+
+The patent laws are so constructed as to make the poor inventor an easy
+prey to the capitalist.
+
+Many inventors die poor, many are robbed by agents or capitalists, many
+lose their patents because they cannot pay the renewal fees. Even when
+an inventor is lucky he can only draw rent for fourteen years. We see,
+then, that the men who make most of the wealth are hindered and robbed
+by the law, and we know that the law has been made by capitalists and
+landlords.
+
+Apply the same law to land that is applied to patents, and the whole
+land of England would be public property in fourteen years.
+
+Apply the same law to patents that is applied to land, and every
+article we use would be increased in price, and we should still be
+paying royalties to the descendants, or to their assigns, of James Watt,
+George Stephenson, and ten thousand other inventors.
+
+And now will some non-Socialist, Mr. Mallock or another, write a nice
+new book, and explain to us upon what rules of justice or of reason the
+present unequal treatment of the useless, idle landlord and the valuable
+and industrious inventor can be defended?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE LANDLORD'S RIGHTS AND THE PEOPLE'S RIGHTS
+
+
+Socialists are often accused of being advocates of violence and plunder.
+You will be told, no doubt, that Socialists wish to take the land from
+its present owners, by force, and "share it out" amongst the landless.
+
+Socialists have no more idea of taking the land from its present holders
+and "sharing it out" amongst the poor than they have of taking the
+railways from the railway companies and sharing the carriages and
+engines amongst the passengers.
+
+When the London County Council municipalised the tram service they did
+not rob the companies, nor did they share out the cars amongst the
+people.
+
+_Socialism_ does not mean the "sharing out" of property; on the
+contrary, it means the collective ownership of property.
+
+"Britain for the British" does not mean one acre and half a cow for each
+subject; it means that Britain shall be owned intact by the whole
+people, and shall be governed and worked by the whole people, for the
+benefit of the whole people.
+
+Just as the Glasgow tram service, the Manchester gas service, and the
+general postal service are owned, managed, and used by the citizens of
+Manchester and Glasgow, or by the people of Britain, for the general
+advantage.
+
+You will be told that the present holders of the land have as much right
+to the land as you have to your hat or your boots.
+
+Now, as a matter of law and of right, the present holders of the land
+have no fixed title to the land. But moderation, it has been well said,
+is the common sense of politics, and if we all got bare justice, "who,"
+as Shakespeare asks, "would 'scape whipping?"
+
+Socialists propose, then, to act moderately and to temper justice with
+amity. They do not suggest the "confiscation" of the land. They do
+suggest that the land should be taken over by the nation, at a fair
+price.
+
+But what is a fair price? The landlord, standing upon his alleged
+rights, may demand a price out of all reason and beyond all possibility.
+
+Therefore I propose here to examine the nature of those alleged rights,
+and to compare the claims of the landholders with the practice of law as
+it is applied to holders of property in brains; that is to say, as it is
+applied to authors and to inventors.
+
+Private ownership of land rests always on one of three pleas--
+
+
+    1. The right of conquest: the land has been stolen or "won" by the
+    owner or his ancestors.
+
+    2. The right of gift: the land has been received as a gift, bequest,
+    or grant.
+
+    3. The right of purchase: the land has been bought and paid for.
+
+
+Let us deal first with the rights of gift and purchase. It is manifest
+that no man can have a moral right to anything given or sold to him by
+another person who had no right to the thing given or sold.
+
+He who buys a watch, a horse, a house, or any other article from one who
+has no right to the horse, or house, or watch, must render up the
+article to the rightful owner, and lose the price or recover it from the
+seller.
+
+If a man has no moral right to own land, he can have no moral right to
+sell or give land.
+
+If a man has no moral right to sell or to give land, then another man
+can have no moral right to keep land bought or received in gift from
+him.
+
+So that to test the right of a man to land bought by or given to him, we
+must trace the land back to its original title.
+
+Now, the original titles of most land rest upon conquest or theft.
+Either the land was won from the Saxons by William the Conqueror, and
+by him given in fief to his barons, or it has been stolen from the
+common right and "enclosed" by some lord of the manor or other brigand.
+
+I am sorry to use the word brigand, but what would you call a man who
+stole your horse or watch; and it is a far greater crime to steal land.
+
+Now, stolen land carries no title, except one devised by landlords. That
+is, there is no _moral_ title.
+
+So we come to the land "won" from the Saxons. The title of this land is
+the title of conquest, and only by that title can it be held, and only
+with that title can it be sold. What the sword has won the sword must
+hold. He who has taken land by force has a title to it only so long as
+he can hold it by force.
+
+This point is neatly expressed in a story told by Henry George--
+
+
+    A nobleman stops a tramp, who is crossing his park, and orders him
+    off _his_ land. The tramp asks him how came the land to be his? The
+    noble replies that he inherited it from his father. "How did _he_
+    get it?" asks the tramp. "From his father," is the reply; and so the
+    lord is driven back to the proud days of his origin--the Conquest.
+    "And how did your great, great, great, etc., grandfather get it?"
+    asks the tramp. The nobleman draws himself up, and replies, "He
+    fought for it and won it." "Then," says the unabashed vagrant,
+    beginning to remove his coat, "I will fight _you_ for it."
+
+
+The tramp was quite logical. Land won by the sword may be rewon by the
+sword, and the right of conquest implies the right of any party strong
+enough for the task to take the conquered land from its original
+conqueror.
+
+And yet the very men who claim the land as theirs by right of ancient
+conquest would be the first to deny the right of conquest to others.
+They claim the land as theirs because eight hundred years ago their
+fathers took it from the English people, but they deny the right of the
+English people to take it back from them. A duke holds lands taken by
+the Normans under William. He holds them by right of the fact that his
+ancestor stole them, or, as the duke would say, "won" them. But let a
+party of revolutionaries propose to-day to win these lands back from him
+in the same manner, and the duke would cry out, "Thief! thief! thief!"
+and call for the protection of the law.
+
+It would be "immoral" and "illegal," the duke would say, for the British
+people to seize his estates.
+
+Should such a proposal be made, the modern duke would not defend
+himself, as his ancestors did, by force of arms, but would appeal to the
+law. Who made the law? The law was made by the same gentlemen who
+appropriated and held the land. As the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain
+said in his speech at Denbigh in 1884--
+
+
+    The House of Lords, that club of Tory landlords, in its gilded
+    chamber, has disposed of the welfare of the people with almost
+    exclusive regard to the interests of a class.
+
+
+Or, as the same statesman said at Hull in 1885--
+
+
+    The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights of
+    the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is hardly
+    too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the
+    liberties of a great proportion of the population have been laid at
+    the feet of a small number of proprietors, who neither toil nor
+    spin.
+
+
+Well, then, the duke may defend his right by duke-made law. We do not
+object to that, for it justifies us in attacking him by Parliament-made
+law: by new law, made by a Parliament of the people.
+
+Is there any law of equity which says it is unjust to take by force from
+a robber what the robber took by force from another robber? Or is there
+any law of equity which says it is unjust that a law made by a
+Parliament of landlords should not be reversed by another law made by a
+Parliament of the people?
+
+The landlords will call this an "immoral" proposal. It is based upon the
+claim that the land is wanted for the use and advantage of the nation.
+Their lordships may ask for precedent. I will provide them with one.
+
+A landlord does not make the land; he holds it.
+
+But if a man invent a new machine or a new process, or if he write a
+poem or a book, he may claim to have made the invention or the book,
+and may justly claim payment for the use of them by other men.
+
+An inventor or an author has, therefore, a better claim to payment for
+his work than a landlord has to payment for the use of the land he calls
+his. Now, how does the law act towards these men?
+
+The landlord may call the land his all the days of his life, and at his
+death may bequeath it to his heirs. For a thousand years the owners of
+an estate may charge rent for it, and at the end of the thousand years
+the estate will still be theirs, and the rent will still be running on
+and growing ever larger and larger. And at any suggestion that the
+estate should lapse from the possession of the owners and become the
+property of the people, the said owners will lustily raise the cry of
+"Confiscation."
+
+The patentee of an invention may call the invention his own, and may
+charge royalties upon its use for _a space of fourteen years_. At the
+end of that time his patent lapses and becomes public property, without
+any talk of compensation or any cry of confiscation. Thus the law holds
+that an inventor is well paid by fourteen years' rent for a thing he
+made himself, while the landlord is _never_ paid for the land he did not
+make.
+
+The author of a book holds the copyright of the book for a period of
+forty-four years, or for his own life and seven years after, whichever
+period be the longer. At the expiration of that time the book becomes
+public property. Thus the law holds that an author is well paid by
+forty-four years' rent for a book which he has made, but that the
+landlord is _never_ paid for the land which he did not make.
+
+If the same law that applies to the land applied to books and to
+inventions, the inheritors of the rights of Caxton and Shakespeare would
+still be able to charge, the one a royalty on every printing press in
+use, and the other a royalty on every copy of Shakespeare's poems sold.
+Then there would be royalties on all the looms, engines, and other
+machines, and upon all the books, music, engravings, and what not; so
+that the cost of education, recreation, travel, clothing, and nearly
+everything else we use would be enhanced enormously. But, thanks to a
+very wise and fair arrangement an author or an inventor has a good
+chance to be well paid, and after that the people have a chance to enjoy
+the benefits of his genius.
+
+Now, if it is right and expedient thus to deprive the inventor or the
+author of his own production after a time, and to give the use thereof
+to the public, what sense or justice is there in allowing a landowner to
+hold land and to draw an ever-swelling rent to the exclusion,
+inconvenience, and expense of the people for ever? And by what process
+of reasoning can a landlord charge me, an author, with immorality or
+confiscation for suggesting that the same law should apply to the land
+he did not make, that I myself cheerfully allow to be applied to the
+books I do make?
+
+For the landlord to speak of confiscation in the face of the laws of
+patent and of copyright seems to me the coolest impudence.
+
+But there is something else to be said of the landlord's title to the
+land. He claims the right to hold the land, and to exact rent for the
+land, on the ground that the land is lawfully his.
+
+The land is _not_ his.
+
+There is no such thing, and there never was any such thing, in English
+law as private ownership of land. In English law the land belongs to the
+Crown, and can only be held in trust by any subject.
+
+Allow me to give legal warranty for this statement. The great lawyer,
+Sir William Blackstone, says--
+
+
+    Accurately and strictly speaking, there is no foundation in nature
+    or in natural law why a set of words on parchment should convey the
+    dominion of land. Allodial (absolute) property no subject in England
+    now has; it being a received and now undeniable principle in law,
+    that all lands in England are holden mediately or immediately of the
+    King.
+
+
+Sir Edward Coke says--
+
+
+    All lands or tenements in England in the hands of subjects, are
+    holden mediately or immediately of the King. For, in the law of
+    England, we have not any subject's land that is not holden.
+
+
+And Sir Frederick Pollock, in _English Land Lords_, says--
+
+
+    No absolute ownership of land is recognised by our law books,
+    except in the Crown. All lands are supposed to be held immediately
+    or mediately of the Crown, though no rent or service may be payable
+    and no grant from the Crown on record.
+
+
+I explained at first that I do not suggest confiscation. Really the land
+is the King's, and by him can be claimed; but we will let that pass.
+Here we will speak only of what is reasonable and fair. Let me give a
+more definite idea of the hardships imposed upon the nation by the
+landlords.
+
+We all know how the landlord takes a part of the wealth produced by
+labour and calls it "rent." But that is only simple rent. There is a
+worse kind of rent, which I will call "compound rent." It is known to
+economists as "unearned increment."
+
+I need hardly remind you that rents are higher in large towns than in
+small villages. Why? Because land is more "valuable." Why is it more
+valuable? Because there is more trade done.
+
+Thus a plot of land in the city of London will bring in a hundredfold
+more rent than a plot of the same size in some Scottish valley. For
+people must have lodgings, and shops, and offices, and works in the
+places where their business lies. Cases have been known in which land
+bought for a few shillings an acre has increased within a man's lifetime
+to a value of many guineas a yard.
+
+This increase in value is not due to any exertion, genius, or enterprise
+on the part of the landowner. It is entirely due to the energy and
+intelligence of those who made the trade and industry of the town.
+
+The landowner sits idle while the Edisons, the Stephensons, the
+Jacquards, Mawdsleys, Bessemers, and the thousands of skilled workers
+expand a sleepy village into a thriving town; but when the town is
+built, and the trade is flourishing, he steps in to reap the harvest. He
+raises the rent.
+
+He raises the rent, and evermore raises the rent, so that the harder the
+townsfolk work, and the more the town prospers, the greater is the price
+he charges for the use of his land. This extortionate rent is really a
+fine inflicted by idleness on industry. It is simple _plunder_, and is
+known by the technical name of unearned increment.
+
+It is unearned increment which condemns so many of the workers in our
+British towns to live in narrow streets, in back-to-back cottages, in
+hideous tenements. It is unearned increment which forces up the
+death-rate and fosters all manner of disease and vice. It is unearned
+increment which keeps vast areas of London, Glasgow, Liverpool,
+Manchester, and all our large towns ugly, squalid, unhealthy, and vile.
+And unearned increment is an inevitable outcome and an invariable
+characteristic of the private ownership of land.
+
+On this subject Professor Thorold Rogers said--
+
+
+    Every permanent improvement of the soil, every railway and road,
+    every bettering of the general condition of society, every facility
+    given for production, every stimulus applied to consumption, _raises
+    rent_. The landowner sleeps, but thrives.
+
+
+The volume of this unearned increment is tremendous. Mr. H. B. Haldane,
+M.P., speaking at Stepney in 1894, declared that the land upon which
+London stands would be worth, apart from its population and special
+industries, "at the outside not more than £16,000 a year." Instead of
+which "the people pay in rent for the land alone £16,000,000, and, with
+the buildings, £40,000,000 a year." Those £16,000,000 constitute a fine
+levied upon the workers of London by landlords.
+
+A similar state of affairs exists in the country, where the farms are
+let chiefly on short leases. Here the tenant having improved his land
+has often lost his improvements, or, for fear of losing the
+improvements, has not improved his land nor even farmed it properly. In
+either case the landlord has been enriched while the tenant or the
+public has suffered.
+
+A landlord has an estate which no farmer can make pay. A number of
+labourers take small plots at £5 an acre, and go in for flower culture.
+They work so hard, and become so skilful, that they get £50 an acre for
+their produce. And the landlord raises the rent to £40 an acre.
+
+That is "unearned increment," or "compound rent." The landlord could not
+make the estate pay, the farmer could not make it pay. The labourer, by
+his own skill and industry, does make it pay, and the landlord takes the
+proceeds.
+
+And these are the men who talk about confiscation and robbery!
+
+Do I blame the landlord? Not very much. But I blame the people for
+allowing him to deprive their wives and children of the necessaries, the
+decencies, and the joys of life.
+
+But if you wish to know more about the treatment of tenants by landlords
+in England, Scotland, and Ireland, get a book called _Land
+Nationalisation_, by Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, published by Swan
+Sonnenschein, at 1s.
+
+That private landowners should be allowed to take millions out of the
+pockets of the workers is neither just nor reasonable. There is no
+argument in favour of landlordism that would not hold good in the case
+of a private claim to the sea and the air.
+
+Imagine a King or Parliament granting to an individual the exclusive
+ownership of the Bristol Channel or the air of Cornwall! Such a grant
+would rouse the ridicule of the whole nation. The attempt to enforce
+such a grant would cause a revolution.
+
+But in what way is such a grant more iniquitous or absurd than is the
+claim of a private citizen to the possession of Monsall Dale, or
+Sherwood Forest, or Covent Garden Market, or the corn lands of Essex, or
+the iron ore of Cumberland?
+
+The Bristol Channel, the river Thames, all our high roads, and most of
+our bridges are public property, free for the use of all. No power in
+the kingdom could wrest a yard of the highway nor an acre of green sea
+from the possession of the nation. It is right that the road and the
+river, the sea and the air should be the property of the people; it is
+expedient that they should be the property of the people. Then by what
+right or by what reason can it be held that the land--Britain
+herself--should belong to any man, or by any man be withheld from the
+people--who are the British nation?
+
+But it may be thought, because I am a Socialist, and neither rich nor
+influential, that my opinion should be regarded with suspicion. Allow me
+to offer the authority of more eminent men.
+
+The late Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge said, in 1887--
+
+
+    These (our land laws) might be for the general advantage, and if
+    they could be shown to be so, by all means they should be
+    maintained; but if not, does any man, with what he is pleased to
+    call his mind, deny that a state of law under which such mischief
+    could exist, under which the country itself would exist, not for its
+    people, but for a mere handful of them, ought to be instantly and
+    absolutely set aside?
+
+
+Two years later, in 1889, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone said--
+
+
+    Those persons who possess large portions of the earth's space are
+    not altogether in the same position as possessors of mere
+    personality. Personality does not impose limitations on the action
+    and industry of man and the well-being of the community as
+    possession of land does, and therefore _I freely own that compulsory
+    expropriation is a thing which is admissible, and even sound in
+    principle_.
+
+
+Speaking at Hull, in August 1885, the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain
+said--
+
+
+    The soil of every country originally belonged to its inhabitants,
+    and if it has been thought expedient to create private ownership in
+    place of common rights, at least that private ownership must be
+    considered as a trust, and subject to the conditions of a trust.
+
+
+And again, at Inverness, in September 1885, Mr. Chamberlain said--
+
+
+    When an exorbitant rent is demanded, which takes from a tenant the
+    savings of his life, and turns him out at the end of his lease
+    stripped of all his earnings, when a man is taxed for his own
+    improvements, that is confiscation, and it is none the less
+    reprehensible because it is sanctioned by the law.
+
+
+These views of the land question are not merely the views of ignorant
+demagogues, but are fully indorsed by great lawyers, great statesmen,
+great authors, great divines, and great economists.
+
+What is the principle which these eminent men teach? It is the principle
+enforced in the patent law, in the income tax, and in the law of
+copyright, that the privileges and claims, even the _rights_ of the few,
+must give way to the needs of the many and the welfare of the whole.
+
+What, then, do we propose to do? I think there are very few Socialists
+who wish to confiscate the land without any kind of compensation. But
+all Socialists demand that the land shall return to the possession of
+the people. Britain for the British! What could be more just?
+
+How are the people to get the land? There are many suggestions. Perhaps
+the fairest would be to allow the landowner the same latitude that is
+allowed to the inventor, who, as Mr. Mallock claims, is really the
+creator of two-thirds of our wealth.
+
+We allow the inventor to draw rent on his patent for fourteen years. Why
+not limit the private possession of land to the same term? Pay the
+present owners of land the full rent for fourteen or, say, twenty years,
+or, in a case where land has been bought in good faith, within the past
+fifty years, allow the owner the full rent for thirty years. This would
+be more than we grant our inventors, though they _add_ to the national
+wealth, whereas the landlord simply takes wealth away from the national
+store.
+
+The method I here advise would require a "Compulsory Purchase Act" to
+compel landowners to sell their land at a fair price to the nation when
+and wherever the public convenience required it.
+
+This view is expressed clearly in a speech made by the Right Hon. Joseph
+Chamberlain at Trowbridge in 1885--
+
+
+    We propose that local authorities shall have power in every case to
+    take land by compulsion at a fair price for every public purpose,
+    and that they should be able to let the land again, with absolute
+    security of tenure, for allotments and for small holdings.
+
+
+Others, again, recommend a land tax, and with perfect justice. If the
+City Council improves a street, at the cost of the ratepayer, the
+landlord raises his rent. What does that mean? It means that the
+ratepayer has increased the value of the landlord's property at the cost
+of the rates. It would only be just, then, that the whole increase
+should be taken back from the landlord by the city.
+
+Therefore, it would be quite just to tax the landlords to the full
+extent of their "unearned increment."
+
+In _Progress and Poverty_, and in the book on _Land Nationalisation_ by
+Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, you will find these subjects of the taxation
+and the purchase of land fully and clearly treated.
+
+My object is to show that it is to the interest of the nation that the
+private ownership of land should cease.
+
+
+_Books to Read on the Land_:--
+
+    _Progress and Poverty._ By Henry George, 1s. Kegan Paul, Trench,
+    Trübner, & Co.
+
+    _Land Nationalisation._ By Alfred Russell Wallace, 1s. Swan
+    Sonnenschein.
+
+    _Five Precursors of Henry George._ By J. Morrison Davidson. London,
+    Labour Leader Office, 1s.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LUXURY AND THE GREAT USEFUL EMPLOYMENT FRAUD
+
+
+There is one excuse which is still too often made for the extravagance
+of the rich, and that is the excuse that "_The consumption of luxuries
+by the rich finds useful employment for the poor_."
+
+It is a ridiculous excuse, and there is no eminent economist in the
+world who does not laugh at it; but the capitalist, the landlord, and
+many pressmen still think it is good enough to mislead or silence the
+people with.
+
+As it is the _only_ excuse the rich have to offer for their wasteful
+expenditure and costly idleness, it is worth while taking pains to
+convince the workers that it is no excuse at all.
+
+It is a mere error or falsehood, of course, but it is such an
+old-established error, such a plausible lie, and is repeated so often
+and so loudly by non-Socialists, that its disproof is essential. Indeed,
+I regard it as a matter of great importance that this subject of luxury
+and labour should be thoroughly understanded of the people.
+
+Here is this rich man's excuse, or defence, as it was stated by the Duke
+of Argyll about a dozen years ago. So slowly do the people learn, and so
+ignorant or dishonest does the Press remain, that the foolish statement
+is still quite up to date--
+
+
+    But there are at least some things to be seen which are in the
+    nature of facts and not at all in the nature of speculation or mere
+    opinion. Amongst these some become clear from the mere clearing up
+    of the meaning of words such as "the unemployed." Employment in this
+    sense is the hiring of manual labour for the supply of human wants.
+    _The more these wants are stimulated and multiplied the more
+    widespread will be the inducement to hire. Therefore all outcries
+    and prejudices against the progress of wealth and of what is called
+    "luxury" are nothing but outcries of prejudice against the very
+    sources and fountains of all employment._ This conclusion is
+    absolutely certain.
+
+
+I have no doubt at all that the duke honestly believed that statement,
+and I daresay there are hundreds of eminent persons still alive who are
+no wiser than he.
+
+The duke is quite correct in saying that "the more the wants of the rich
+are stimulated" the more employment there will be for the people. But
+after all, that only means that the more the rich waste, the harder the
+poor must work.
+
+The fact is, the duke has omitted the most essential factor from the
+sum: he does not say how the rich man gets his money, nor from _whom_ he
+gets his money. A ducal landlord draws, say, £100,000 a year in rent
+from his estates.
+
+Who pays the rent? The farmers. Who earns the rent? The farmers and the
+labourers.
+
+These men earn and pay the rent, and the ducal landlord takes it.
+
+What does the duke do with the rent? He spends it. We are told that he
+spends it in finding useful employment for the poor, and one intelligent
+newspaper says--
+
+
+    A rich man cannot spend his money without finding employment for
+    vast numbers of people who, without him, would starve.
+
+
+That implies that the poor live on the rich. Now, I maintain that the
+rich live on the poor. Let us see.
+
+The duke buys food, clothing, and lodging for himself, for his family,
+and for his servants. He buys, let us say, a suit of clothes for
+himself. That finds work for a tailor. And we are told that but for the
+duke the tailor must starve. _Why?_
+
+The agricultural labourer is badly in want of clothes; cannot _he_ find
+the tailor work? No. The labourer wants clothes, but he has no money.
+_Why_ has he no money? _Because the duke has taken his clothing money
+for rent!_
+
+Then in the first place it is because the duke has taken the labourer's
+money that the tailor has no work. Then if the duke did not take the
+labourer's money the labourer could buy clothes? Yes. Then if the duke
+did not take the labourer's money the tailor _would_ have work? Yes.
+Then it is not the duke's money, but the labourer's money, which keeps
+the tailor from starving? Yes. Then in this case the duke is no use? He
+is worse than useless. The labourer, who _earns_ the money, has no
+clothes, and the idle duke has clothes.
+
+So that what the duke really does is to take the earnings of the
+labourer and spend them on clothes for _himself_.
+
+Well, suppose I said to a farmer, "You give me five shillings a week out
+of your earnings, and I will find employment for a man to make cigars,
+_I_ will smoke the cigars."
+
+What would the farmer say? Would he not say, "Why should I employ you to
+smoke cigars which I pay for? If the cigar maker needs work, why should
+I not employ him myself, and smoke the cigars myself, since I am to pay
+for them?"
+
+Would not the farmer speak sense? And would not the labourer speak sense
+if he said to the duke, "Why should I employ you to wear out breeches
+which I pay for?"
+
+My offer to smoke the farmer's cigars is no more impudent than the
+assertion of the Duke of Argyll, that he, the duke, finds employment for
+a tailor by wearing out clothes for which the farmer has to pay.
+
+If the farmer paid no rent, _he_ could employ the tailor, and he would
+have the clothes. The duke does nothing more than deprive the farmer of
+his clothes.
+
+But this is not the whole case against the duke. The duke does not spend
+_all_ the rent in finding work for the poor. He spends a good deal of it
+on food and drink for himself and his dependants. This wealth is
+consumed--it is _wasted_, for it is consumed by men who produce nothing.
+And it all comes from the earnings of the men who pay the rent.
+Therefore, if the farmer and his men, instead of giving the money to the
+duke for rent, could spend it on themselves, they would find more
+employment for the poor than the duke can, because they would be able to
+spend all that the duke and his enormous retinue of servants waste.
+
+Although the duke (with the labourer's money) does find work for some
+tailors, milliners, builders, bootmakers, and others, yet he does not
+find work for them all. There are always some tailors, bootmakers, and
+builders out of work.
+
+Now, I understand that in this country about £14,000,000 a year are
+spent on horse-racing and hunting. This is spent by the rich. If it were
+not spent on horse-racing and hunting, it could be spent on useful
+things, and then, perhaps, there would be fewer tailors and other
+working men out of work.
+
+But you may say, "What then would become of the huntsmen, jockeys,
+servants, and others who now live on hunting and on racing?" A very
+natural question. Allow me to explain the difference between necessaries
+and luxuries.
+
+All the things made or used by man may be divided into two classes,
+under the heads of necessaries and luxuries.
+
+I should count as necessaries all those things which are essential to
+the highest form of human life.
+
+All those things which are not necessary to the highest form of human
+life I should call luxuries, or superfluities.
+
+For instance, I should call food, clothing, houses, fuel, books,
+pictures, and musical instruments, necessaries; and I should call
+diamond ear-rings, racehorses, and broughams luxuries.
+
+Now it is evident that all those things, whether luxuries or
+necessaries, are made by labour. Diamond rings, loaves of bread, grand
+pianos, and flat irons do not grow on trees; they must be made by the
+labour of the people. And it is very clear that the more luxuries a
+people produce, the fewer necessaries they will produce.
+
+If a community consists of 10,000 people, and if 9000 people are making
+bread and 1000 are making jewellery, it is evident that there will be
+more bread than jewellery.
+
+If in the same community 9000 make jewellery and only 1000 make bread,
+there will be more jewellery than bread.
+
+In the first case there will be food enough for all, though jewels be
+scarce. In the second case the people must starve, although they wear
+diamond rings on all their fingers.
+
+In a well-ordered State no luxuries would be produced until there were
+enough necessaries for all.
+
+Robinson Crusoe's first care was to secure food and shelter. Had he
+neglected his goats and his raisins, and spent his time in making
+shell-boxes, he would have starved. Under those circumstances he would
+have been a fool. But what are we to call the delicate and refined
+ladies who wear satin and pearls, while the people who earn them lack
+bread?
+
+Take a community of two men. They work upon a plot of land and grow
+grain for food. By each working six hours a day they produce enough food
+for both.
+
+Now take one of those men away from the cultivation of the land, and set
+him to work for six hours a day at the making of bead necklaces. What
+happens?
+
+This happens--that the man who is left upon the land must now work
+twelve hours a day. Why? Because although his companion has ceased to
+grow grain he has not ceased to _eat bread_. Therefore the man who grows
+the grain must now grow grain enough for two. That is to say, that the
+more men are set to the making of luxuries, the heavier will be the
+burden of the men who produce necessaries.
+
+But in this case, you see, the farmer does get some return for his extra
+labour. That is to say, he gets half the necklaces in exchange for half
+his grain; for there is no rich man.
+
+Suppose next a community of three--one of whom is a landlord, while the
+other two are farmers.
+
+The landlord takes half the produce of the land in rent, but does no
+work. What happens?
+
+We saw just now that the two workers could produce enough grain in six
+hours to feed two men for one day. Of this the landlord takes half.
+Therefore, the two men must now produce four men's food in one day, of
+which the landlord will take two, leaving the workers each one. Well, if
+it takes a man six hours to produce a day's keep for one, it will take
+him twelve hours to produce a day's keep for two. So that our two
+farmers must now work twice as long as before.
+
+But now the landlord has got twice as much grain as he can eat. He
+therefore proceeds to _spend_ it, and in spending it he "finds useful
+employment" for one of the farmers. That is to say, he takes one of the
+farmers off the land and sets him to building a house for the landlord.
+What is the effect of this?
+
+The effect of it is that the one man left upon the land has now to find
+food for all three, and in return gets nothing.
+
+Consider this carefully. All men must eat, and here are two men who do
+not produce food. To produce food for one man takes one man six hours.
+To produce food for three men takes one man eighteen hours. The one man
+left on the land has, therefore, to work three times as long, or three
+times as hard, as he did at first. In the case of the two men, we saw
+that the farmer did get his share of the bead necklaces, but in the case
+of the three men the farmer gets nothing. The luxuries produced by the
+man taken from the land are enjoyed by the rich man.
+
+The landlord takes from the farmer two-thirds of his produce, and
+employs another man to help him to spend it.
+
+We have here three classes--
+
+1. The landlord, who does no work.
+
+2. The landlord's servant, who does work for the benefit of the
+landlord.
+
+3. The farmer, who produces food for himself and the other two.
+
+Now, all the peoples of Europe, if not of the world, are divided into
+those three classes.
+
+And it is _most important_ that you should thoroughly understand those
+three classes, never forget them, and never allow the rich man, nor the
+champions of the rich man, to forget them.
+
+The jockeys, huntsmen, and flunkeys alluded to just now, belong to the
+class who work, but whose work is all done for the benefit of the idle.
+
+Do not be deceived into supposing that there are but _two_ classes:
+there are _three_. Do not believe that the people may be divided into
+workers and idlers: they must be divided into (1) idlers, (2) workers
+who work for the idlers, and (3) workers who support the idlers and
+those who work for the idlers.
+
+These three classes are a relic of the feudal times: they represent the
+barons, the vassals, and the retainers.
+
+The rich man is the baron, who draws his wealth from the workers; the
+jockeys, milliners, flunkeys, upholsterers, designers, musicians, and
+others who serve the rich man, and live upon his custom and employment,
+are the retainers; the workers, who earn the money upon which the rich
+man and his following exist, are the vassals.
+
+Remember the _three_ classes: the rich, who produce nothing; the
+employees of the rich, who produce luxuries for the rich; and the
+workers, who find everything for themselves and all the wealth for the
+other two classes.
+
+It is like two men on one donkey. The duke rides the donkey, and boasts
+that he carries the flunkey on his back. So he does. But the donkey
+carries both flunkey and duke.
+
+Clearly, then, the duke confers no favour on the agricultural labourer
+by employing jockeys and servants, for the labourer has to pay for them,
+and the duke gets the benefit of their services.
+
+But the duke confers a benefit on the men he employs as huntsmen and
+servants, and without the duke they would starve? No; without him they
+would not starve, for the wealth which supports them would still exist,
+and they could be found other work, and could even add to the general
+store of wealth by producing some by their own labour.
+
+The same remark applies to all those of the second class, from the
+fashionable portrait-painter and the diamond-cutter down to the
+scullery-maid and the stable-boy.
+
+Compare the position of an author of to-day with the position of an
+author in the time of Dr. Johnson. In Johnson's day the man of genius
+was poor and despised, dependent on rich patrons: in our day the man of
+genius writes for the public, and the rich patron is unknown.
+
+The best patron is the People; the best employer is the People; the
+proper person to enjoy luxuries is the man who works for and creates
+them.
+
+My Lady Dedlock finds useful employment for Mrs. Jones. She employs Mrs.
+Jones to make her ladyship a ball-dress.
+
+Where does my lady get her money? She gets it from her husband, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, who gets it from his tenant farmer, who gets it from
+the agricultural labourer, Hodge.
+
+Then her ladyship orders the ball-dress of Mrs. Jones, and pays her with
+Hodge's money.
+
+But if Mrs. Jones were not employed making the ball-dress for my Lady
+Dedlock, she could be making gowns for Mrs. Hodge, or frocks for Hodge's
+girls.
+
+Whereas now Hodge cannot buy frocks for his children, and his wife is a
+dowdy, because Sir Leicester Dedlock has taken Hodge's earnings and
+given them to his lady to buy ball costumes.
+
+Take a larger instance. There are many yachts which, in building and
+decoration, have cost a quarter of a million.
+
+Average the wages of all the men engaged in the erection and fitting of
+such a vessel at 30s. a week. We shall find that the yacht has "found
+employment" for 160 men for twenty years. Now, while those men were
+engaged on that work they produced no necessaries for themselves. But
+they _consumed_ necessaries, and those necessaries were produced by the
+same people who found the money for the owner of the yacht to spend.
+That is to say, that the builders were kept by the producers of
+necessaries, and the producers of necessaries were paid for the
+builders' keep, with money which they, the producers of necessaries, had
+earned for the owner of the yacht.
+
+The conclusion of this sum being that the producers of necessaries had
+been compelled to support 160 men, and their wives and children, for
+twenty years; and for what?
+
+That they might build _one yacht_ for the pleasure of _one idle man_.
+
+Would those yacht builders have starved without the rich man? Not at
+all. But for the rich man, the other workers would have had more money,
+could afford more holidays, and that quarter of a million spent on the
+one yacht would have built a whole fleet of pleasure boats.
+
+And note also that the pleasure boats would find more employment than
+the yacht, for there would be more to spend on labour and less on costly
+materials.
+
+So with other dependants of the rich. The duke's gardeners could find
+work in public parks for the people; the artists, who now sell their
+pictures to private collections, could sell them to public galleries;
+and some of the decorators and upholsterers who now work on the rich
+men's palaces might turn their talents to our town halls and hospitals
+and public pavilions. And that reminds me of a quotation from Mr.
+Mallock, cited in _Merrie England_. Mr. Mallock said--
+
+
+    Let us take, for instance, a large and beautiful cabinet, for which
+    a rich man of taste pays £2000. The cabinet is of value to him for
+    reasons which we will consider presently; as possessed by him it
+    constitutes a portion of his wealth. But how could such a piece of
+    wealth be distributed? Not only is it incapable of physical
+    partition and distribution, but, if taken from the rich man and
+    given to the poor man, the latter is not the least enriched by it.
+    Put a priceless buhl cabinet into an Irish labourer's cottage, and
+    it will probably only add to his discomforts; or, if he finds it
+    useful, it will only be because he keeps his pigs in it. A picture
+    by Titian, again, may be worth thousands, but it is worth thousands
+    only to the man who can enjoy it.
+
+
+Now, isn't that a precious piece of nonsense? There are two things to be
+said about that rich man's cabinet. The first is, that it was made by
+some workman who, if he had not been so employed, might have been
+producing what _would_ be useful to the poor. So that the cabinet has
+cost the poor something. The second is, that a priceless buhl cabinet
+_can_ be divided. Of course, it would be folly to hack it into shavings
+and serve them out amongst the mob; but if that cabinet is a thing of
+beauty and worth the seeing, it ought to be taken from the rich
+benefactor, whose benefaction consists in his having plundered it from
+the poor, and it ought to be put into a public museum where thousands
+could see it, and where the rich man could see it also if he chose.
+This, indeed, is the proper way to deal with all works of art, and this
+is one of the rich man's greatest crimes--that he keeps hoarded up in
+his house a number of things that ought to be the common heritage of the
+people.
+
+Every article of luxury has to be paid for not in _money_, but in
+_labour_. Every glass of wine drunk by my lord, and every diamond star
+worn by my lady, has to be paid for with the sweat and the tears of the
+poorest of our people. I believe it is a literal fact that many of the
+artificial flowers worn at Court are actually stained with the tears of
+the famished and exhausted girls who make them.
+
+To say that the extravagance of the rich finds useful employment for the
+poor, is more foolish than to say that the drunkard finds useful
+employment for the brewers.
+
+The drunkard may have a better defence than the duke, because he may
+perhaps have produced, or earned, the money he spends in beer, whereas
+the duke's rents are not produced by the duke nor earned by him.
+
+That is clear, is it not? And yet a few weeks since I saw an article in
+a London weekly paper in which we were told that the thief was an
+indispensable member of society, because he found employment for
+policemen, gaolers, builders of gaols, and other persons.
+
+The excuse for the thief is as valid as the excuse for the duke. The
+thief finds plenty of employment for the people. But who _pays_ the
+persons employed?
+
+The police, the gaolers, and all the other persons employed in catching,
+holding, and feeding the thief, are paid out of the rates and taxes. Who
+pays the taxes? The British public. Then the British public have to
+support not only the police and the rest, but the thief as well.
+
+What do the police, the thief, and the gaoler produce? Do they produce
+any wealth? No. They consume wealth, and the thief is so useful that if
+he died out for ever, it would pay us better to feed the gaolers and
+police for doing nothing than to fetch the thief back again to feed him
+as well.
+
+Work is useless unless it be productive work. It would be work for a man
+to dig a hole and then fill it up again; but the work would be of no
+benefit to the nation. It would be work for a man to grow strawberries
+to feed the Duke of Argyll's donkey on, but it would be useless work,
+because it would add nothing to the general store of wealth.
+
+Policemen and gaolers are men withdrawn from the work of producing
+wealth to wait upon useless criminals. They, like soldiers and many
+others, do not produce wealth, but they consume it, and the greater the
+number of producers and the smaller the number of consumers the richer
+the State must be. For which family would be the better off--the family
+wherein ten earned wages and none wasted them, or the family in which
+two earned wages and eight spent them?
+
+Do not imagine, as some do, that increased consumption is a blessing. It
+is the amount of wealth you produce that makes a nation prosperous; and
+the idle rich man, who produces nothing, only makes his crime worse by
+spending a great deal.
+
+The great mass of the workers lead mean, penurious, and joyless lives;
+they crowd into small and inconvenient houses; they occupy the darkest,
+narrowest, and dirtiest streets; they eat coarse and cheap food, when
+they do not go hungry; they drink adulterated beer and spirits; they
+wear shabby and ill-made clothes; they ride in third-class carriages,
+sit in the worst seats of the churches and theatres; and they stint
+their wives of rest, their children of education, and themselves of
+comfort and of honour, that they may pay rent, and interest, and profits
+for the idle rich to spend in luxury and folly.
+
+And if the workers complain, or display any signs of suspicion or
+discontent, they are told that the rich are keeping them.
+
+That is not _true_. It is the workers who are keeping the rich.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WHAT SOCIALISM IS NOT
+
+
+It is no use telling you what _Socialism_ is until I have told you what
+it is not. Those who do not wish you to be Socialists have given you
+very false notions about _Socialism_, in the hope of setting you against
+it. They have brought many false charges against Socialists, in the hope
+of setting you against them. So you have come to think of _Socialism_ as
+a thing foolish, or vile, and when it is spoken of, you turn up your
+noses (instead of trying to see beyond them) and turn your backs on it.
+
+A friend offers to give you a good house-dog; but someone tells you it
+is mad. Your friend will be wise to satisfy you that the dog is _not_
+mad before he begins to tell you how well it can guard a house. Because,
+as long as you think the dog will bite you, you are not in the frame of
+mind to hear about its usefulness.
+
+A sailor is offering to sell an African chief a telescope; but the chief
+has been told that the thing is a gun. Then before the sailor shows the
+chief what the glass is good for, he will be wise to prove to him that
+it will not go off at half-cock and blow his eye out.
+
+So with _Socialism_: before I try to show you what it really is, I must
+try to clear your mind of the prejudice which has been sown there by
+those who wish to make you hate Socialism because they fear it.
+
+As a rule, my friends, it will be wise for you to look very carefully
+and hopefully at anything which Parliament men, or employers, or
+pressmen, call bad or foolish, because what helps you hinders them, and
+the stronger you grow the weaker they become.
+
+Well, the men who have tried to smash your unions, who have written
+against you, and spoken against you, and acted against you in all great
+strikes and lock-outs, are the same men who speak and write against
+_Socialism_.
+
+And what have they told you? Let us take their commonest statements, and
+see what they are made of.
+
+They say that Socialists want to get up a revolution, to turn the
+country upside down by force, to seize all property, and to divide it
+equally amongst the whole people.
+
+We will take these charges one at a time.
+
+As to _Revolution_. I think I shall be right if I say that not one
+Socialist in fifty, at this day, expects or wishes to get _Socialism_ by
+force of arms.
+
+In the early days of _Socialism_, when there were very few Socialists,
+and some of those rash, or angry, men, it may have been true that
+_Socialism_ implied revolution and violence. But to-day there are very
+few Socialists who believe in brute force, or who think a revolution
+possible or desirable. The bulk of our Socialists are for peaceful and
+lawful means. Some of them hope to bring _Socialism_ to pass by means of
+a reformed Parliament; others hope to bring it to pass by means of a
+newer, wiser, and juster public opinion.
+
+I have always been dead against the idea of revolution, for many
+reasons. I do not think a revolution is _possible_ in Britain. Firstly,
+because the people have too much sense; secondly, because the people are
+by nature patient and kindly; thirdly, because the people are too _free_
+to make force needful.
+
+I do not think a revolution is _advisable_. Because, firstly, it would
+be almost sure to fail; secondly, if it did not fail it would put the
+worst kind of men into power, and would destroy order and method before
+it was ready to replace them; thirdly, because a State built up on force
+is very likely to succumb to fraud; so that after great bloodshed,
+trouble, labour, and loss the people would almost surely slip down into
+worse evils than those against which they had fought, and would find
+that they had suffered and sinned in vain.
+
+I do not believe in force, and I do not believe in haste. What we want
+is _reason_ and _right_; and we can only hope to get reason and right by
+right and reasonable means.
+
+The men who would come to the top in a civil war would be fighters and
+strivers; they would not be the kind of men to wisely model and
+patiently and justly rule or lead a new State. Your barricade man may be
+very useful--at the barricades; but when the fighting is over, and his
+work is done, he may be a great danger, for he is not the man, usually,
+to stand aside and make way for the builders to replace by right laws
+the wrong laws which his arms have destroyed.
+
+Revolution by force of arms is not desirable nor feasible; but there is
+another kind of revolution from which we hope great things. This is a
+revolution of _thought_. Let us once get the people, or a big majority
+of the people, to understand _Socialism_, to believe in _Socialism_, and
+to work for _Socialism_, and the _real_ revolution is accomplished.
+
+In a free country, such as ours, the almighty voice is the voice of
+public opinion. What the public _believe in_ and _demand_ has got to be
+given. Who is to refuse? Neither King nor Parliament can stand against a
+united and resolute British people.
+
+And do not suppose, either, that brute force, which is powerless to get
+good or to keep it, has power to resist it or destroy it. Neither
+truncheons nor bayonets can kill a truth. The sword and the cannon are
+impotent against the pen and the tongue.
+
+Believe me, we can overcome the constable, the soldier, the Parliament
+man, the landlord, and the man of wealth, without shedding one drop of
+blood, or breaking one pane of glass, or losing one day's work.
+
+Our real task is to win the trust and help of the _people_ (I don't mean
+the workers only, but the British people), and the first thing to be
+done is to educate them--to teach them and tell them what we mean; to
+make quite clear to them what _Socialism_ is, and what it is _not_.
+
+One of the things it is not, is British imitation of the French
+Revolution. Our method is persuasion; our cause is justice; our weapons
+are the tongue and the pen.
+
+Next: As to seizing the wealth of the country and sharing it out amongst
+the people. First, we do not propose to _seize_ anything. We do propose
+to get some things,--the land, for instance,--and to make them the
+property of the whole nation; but we mean that to be done by Act of
+Parliament, and by purchase. Second, we have no idea of "sharing out"
+the land, nor the railways, nor the money, nor any other kind of wealth
+or property, equally amongst the people. To share these things out--if
+they _could_ be shared, which they could not be--would be to make them
+_private_ property, whereas we want them to be _public_ property, the
+property of the British _nation_.
+
+Yet, how often have you been told that Socialists want to have the
+wealth equally divided amongst all? And how often have you been told
+that if you divided the wealth in that way it would soon cease to be
+equally divided, because some would waste and some would save?
+
+"Make all men equal in possessions," cry the non-Socialists, "and in a
+very short time there would be rich and poor, as before."
+
+This is no argument against _Socialism_, for Socialists do not seek any
+such division. But I want to point out to you that though it _looks_
+true, it is _not_ true.
+
+It is quite true that, did we divide all wealth equally to-morrow, there
+would in a short time be many penniless, and a few in a way of getting
+rich; but it is only true if we suppose that after the sharing we
+allowed private ownership of land and the old system of trade and
+competition to go on as before. Change those things: do away with the
+bad system which leads to poverty and to wealth, and we should have no
+more rich and poor.
+
+_Destroy_ all the wealth of England to-morrow--we will not talk of
+"sharing" it out, but _destroy_ it--and establish _Socialism_ on the
+ruins and the bareness, and in a few years we should have a prosperous,
+a powerful, and a contented nation. There would be no rich and there
+would be no poor. But the nation would be richer and happier than it
+ever has been.
+
+Another charge against Socialists is that they are _Atheists_, whose aim
+is to destroy all religion and all morality.
+
+This is not true. It is true that some Socialists are Agnostics and some
+are Atheists. But Atheism is no more a part of Socialism than it is a
+part of Toryism, or of Radicalism, or of Liberalism. Many prominent
+Socialists are Christians, not a few are clergymen. Many Liberal and
+Tory leaders are Agnostics or Atheists. Mr. Bradlaugh was a Radical, and
+an Atheist; Prof. Huxley was an opponent of Socialism, and an Agnostic.
+Socialism does not touch religion at any point. It deals with laws, and
+with _industrial_ and _political_ government.
+
+It is not sense to say, because some Atheists are Socialists, that all
+Socialists are Atheists.
+
+Christ's teaching is often said to be socialistic. It is not
+socialistic; but it is communistic, and Communism is the most advanced
+form of the policy generally known as _Socialism_.
+
+The charge of _Immorality_ is absurd. Socialists demand a higher
+morality than any now to be found. They demand perfect _honesty_.
+Indeed, it is just the stern morality of _Socialism_ which causes
+ambitious and greedy men to hate _Socialism_ and resist it.
+
+Another charge against Socialists is the charge of desiring _Free Love_.
+
+Socialists, it has been said, want to destroy home life, to abolish
+marriage, to take the children from their parents, and to establish
+"Free _Love_."
+
+"Free Love," I may say, means that all men and women shall be free to
+love as they please, and to live with whom they please. Therefore, that
+they shall be free to live as "man and wife" without marriage, to part
+when they please without divorce, and to take other partners as they
+please without shame or penalty.
+
+Now, I say of this charge, as I have said of the others, that there may
+be some Socialists in favour of free love, just as there are some
+Socialists in favour of revolution, and some who are not Christians; but
+I say also that a big majority of Socialists are not in favour of free
+love, and that in any case free love is no more a part of _Socialism_
+than it is a part of Toryism or of Liberalism.
+
+It is not sense to say, because some Free-Lovers are Socialists, that
+all Socialists are Free-Lovers.
+
+I believe there is not one English Socialist in a hundred who would vote
+for doing away with marriage, or for handing over the children to the
+State. I for one would see the State farther before I would part with a
+child of mine. And I think you will generally find that those who are
+really eager to have all children given up to the State are men and
+women who have no children of their own.
+
+Now, I submit that a childless man is not the right man to make laws
+about children.
+
+As for the questions of free love and legal marriage, they are very hard
+to deal with, and this is not the time to deal with them. But I shall
+say here that many of those who talk the loudest about free love do not
+even know what love _is_, or have not sense enough to see that just as
+love and lust are two very different things, so are free love and free
+lust very different things.
+
+Again, you are not to fall into the error of supposing that the
+relations of the sexes are all they should be at present. Free _love_,
+it is true, is not countenanced; but free _lust_ is very common.
+
+And although some Socialists may be in favour of free _love_, I never
+heard of a Socialist who had a word to say in favour of prostitution. It
+may be a very wicked thing to enable a free woman to _give_ her love
+freely; but it is a much worse thing to allow, and even at times compel
+(for it amounts to that, by force of hunger) a free woman to _sell_ her
+love--no, not her _love_, poor creature; the vilest never sold that--but
+to sell her honour, her body, and her soul.
+
+I would do a great deal for _Socialism_ if it were only to do that one
+good act of wiping out for ever the shameful sin of prostitution. This
+thing, indeed, is so horrible that I never think of it without feeling
+tempted to apologise for calling myself a man in a country where it is
+so common as it is in moral Britain.
+
+There are several other common charges against Socialists; as that they
+are poor and envious--what we may call Have-nots-on-the-Have; that they
+are ignorant and incapable men, who know nothing, and cannot think;
+that, in short, they are failures and wasters, fools and knaves.
+
+These charges are as true and as false as the others. There may be some
+Socialists who are ignorant and stupid; there may be some who are poor
+_and_ envious; there may be some who are Socialists because they like
+cakes and ale better than work; and there may be some who are clever,
+but not too good--men who will feather their nests if they can find any
+geese for the plucking.
+
+But I don't think that _all_ Tories and Liberals are wise, learned,
+pure, unselfish, and clever men, eager to devote their talents to the
+good of their fellows, and unwilling to be paid, or thanked, or praised,
+for what they do.
+
+I think there are fools and knaves,--even in Parliament,--and that some
+of the "Bounders-on-the-Bounce" find it pays a great deal better to
+toady to the "Haves" than to sacrifice themselves to the "Have-nots."
+
+And I think I may claim that Socialists are in the main honest and
+sensible men, who work for _Socialism_ because they believe in it, and
+not because it pays; for its advocacy seldom pays at all, and it never
+pays well; and I am sure that _Socialism_ makes quicker progress amongst
+the educated than amongst the ignorant, and amongst the intelligent than
+amongst the dull.
+
+As for brains: I hope such men as William Morris, Karl Marx, and
+Liebknecht are as well endowed with brains as--well, let us be modest,
+and say as the average Tory or Liberal leader.
+
+But most of the charges and arguments I have quoted are not aimed at
+_Socialism_ at all, but at Socialists.
+
+Now, to prove that some of the men who espouse a cause are unworthy, is
+not the same thing as proving that the cause is bad.
+
+Some parsons are foolish, some are insincere; but we do not therefore
+say that Christianity is unwise or untrue. Even if _most_ parsons were
+really bad men we should only despise and condemn the clergy, and not
+the religion they dishonoured and misrepresented.
+
+The question is not whether all Socialists are as wise as Mr. Samuel
+Woods, M.P., or as honest as Jabez Balfour; _the_ question is whether
+_Socialism_ is a thing in itself just, and wise, and _possible_.
+
+If you find a Socialist who is foolish, laugh at him; it you find one
+who is a rogue, don't trust him; if you find one "on the make," stop his
+making. But as for _Socialism_, if it be good, accept it; if it be bad,
+reject it.
+
+Here allow me to quote a few lines from _Merrie England_--
+
+
+    Half our time as champions of Socialism is wasted in denials of
+    false descriptions of Socialism; and to a large extent the anger,
+    the ridicule, and the argument of the opponents of Socialism are
+    hurled against a Socialism which has no existence except in their
+    own heated minds.
+
+    Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of
+    the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor.
+
+    Socialism is not a wild dream of a happy land where the apples will
+    drop off the trees into our open mouths, the fish come out of the
+    rivers and fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out
+    ready-made suits of velvet with golden buttons without the trouble
+    of coaling the engine. Neither is it a dream of a nation of
+    stained-glass angels, who never say damn, who always love their
+    neighbours better than themselves, and who never need to work unless
+    they wish to.
+
+
+And now, having told you what _Socialism is not_, it remains for me to
+tell you what _Socialism is_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WHAT SOCIALISM IS
+
+
+To those who are writing about such things as _Socialism_ or Political
+Economy, one of the stumbling-blocks is in the hard or uncommon words,
+and another in the tediousness--the "dryness"--of the arguments and
+explanations.
+
+It is not easy to say what has to be said so that anybody may see quite
+clearly what is meant, and it is still harder to say it so as to hold
+the attention and arouse the interest of men and women who are not used
+to reading or thinking about matters outside the daily round of their
+work and their play. As I want this book to be plain to all kinds of
+workers, even to those who have no "book-learning" and to whom a "hard
+word" is a "boggart," and a "dry" description or a long argument a
+weariness of the flesh, I must beg those of you who are more used to
+bookish talk and scientific terms (or names) to bear with me when I stop
+to show the meaning of things that to you are quite clear.
+
+If I can make my meaning plain to members of Parliament, bishops,
+editors, and other half-educated persons, and to labouring men and women
+who have had but little schooling, and have never been used to think or
+care about _Socialism_, or Economics, or Politics, or "any such dry
+rot"--as they would call them--if I can catch the ear of the heedless
+and the untaught, the rest of you cannot fail to follow.
+
+The terms, or names, used in speaking of Socialism--that is to say, the
+names given to ideas, or "thoughts," or to kinds of ideas, or "schools"
+of thought, are not easy to put into the plain words of common speech.
+To an untaught labourer _Socialism_ is a hard word, so is
+_Co-operation_; and such a phrase, or name, as _Political Economy_ is
+enough to clear a taproom, or break up a meeting, or close a book.
+
+So I want to steer clear of "hard words," and "dry talk," and
+long-windedness, and I want to tell my tale, if I can, in "tinker's
+English."
+
+_What is Socialism?_
+
+There is more than one kind of _Socialism_, for we hear of State
+_Socialism_, of Practical _Socialism_, of Communal _Socialism_; and
+these kinds differ from each other, though they are all _Socialism_.
+
+So you have different kinds of Liberals. There are old-school Whigs, and
+advanced Whigs, and Liberals, and Radicals, and advanced Radicals; but
+they are all _Liberals_.
+
+So you have horse soldiers, foot soldiers, riflemen, artillery, and
+engineers; but they are all _soldiers_.
+
+Amongst the Liberals are men of many minds: there are Churchmen,
+Nonconformists, Atheists; there are teetotalers and there are drinkers;
+there are Trade Union leaders, and there are leaders of the Masters'
+Federation. These men differ on many points, but they all agree upon
+_one_ point.
+
+Amongst the Socialists are many men of many minds: there are parsons,
+atheists, labourers, employers, men of peace, and men of force. These
+men differ on many points, but they all agree upon _one_ point.
+
+Now, this point on which men of different views agree is called a
+_principle_.
+
+A principle is a main idea, or main thought. It is like the keelson of a
+ship or the backbone of a fish--it is the foundation on which the thing
+is built.
+
+Thus, the _principle_ of Trade Unionism is "combination," the combining,
+or joining together, of a number of workers, for the general good of
+all.
+
+The _principle_ of Democratic (or Popular) Government is the law that
+the will of the majority shall rule.
+
+Do away with the "right of combination," and Trade Unionism is
+destroyed.
+
+Do away with majority rule, and Popular Government is destroyed.
+
+So if we can find the _principle_ of _Socialism_, if we can find the
+one point on which all kinds of Socialists agree, we shall be able to
+see what _Socialism_ really is.
+
+Now, here in plain words is the _principle_, or root idea, on which
+_all_ Socialists agree--
+
+That the country, and all the machinery of production in the country,
+shall belong to the whole people (the nation), and shall be used _by_
+the people and _for_ the people.
+
+That "principle," the root idea of Socialism, means two things--
+
+
+    1. That the land and all the machines, tools, and buildings used in
+    making needful things, together with all the canals, rivers, roads,
+    railways, ships, and trains used in moving, sharing (distributing)
+    needful things, and all the shops, markets, scales, weights, and
+    money used in selling or dividing needful things, shall be the
+    property of (belong to) the whole people (the nation).
+
+    2. That the land, tools, machines, trains, rivers, shops, scales,
+    money, and all the other things belonging to the people, shall be
+    worked, managed, divided, and used by the whole people in such a way
+    as the greater number of the whole people shall deem best.
+
+
+This is the principle of collective, or national, ownership, and
+co-operative, or national, use and control.
+
+Socialism may, you see, be summed up in one line, in four words, as
+really meaning
+
+BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH.
+
+I will make all this as plain as the nose on your face directly. Let us
+now look at the _other_ side.
+
+To-day Britain does _not_ belong to the British; it belongs to a few of
+the British. There are bits of it which belong to the whole people, as
+Wimbledon Common, Portland Gaol, the highroads; but most of it is
+"private property."
+
+Now, as there are Liberals and Tories, Catholics and Protestants,
+Dockers' Unions and Shipping Federations in England; so there are
+Socialists and non-Socialists.
+
+And as there are different kinds of Socialists, so there are different
+kinds of non-Socialists.
+
+As there is one point, or _principle_, on which all kinds of Socialists
+agree; so there is one point, or _principle_, on which all kinds of
+non-Socialists agree.
+
+Amongst the non-Socialists there are Liberals and Tories, Catholics and
+Protestants, masters and workmen, rich and poor, lords and labourers,
+publicans and teetotalers; and these folks, as you know, differ in their
+ideas, and quarrel with and go against each other; but they are all
+non-Socialists, they are all against _Socialism_, and they all agree
+upon _one point_.
+
+So, if we can find the one point on which all kinds of non-Socialists
+agree, we shall find the _principle_, or root idea, of non-Socialism.
+
+Well, the "principle" of non-Socialism is just the opposite of the
+"principle" of _Socialism_. As the "principle" of _Socialism_ is
+national ownership, so the "principle" of non-Socialism is _private_
+ownership. As the principle of _Socialism_ is _Britain for the British_,
+so the principle of non-Socialism is _Every Briton for Himself_.
+
+Again, as the principle of _Socialism_ means two things, so does the
+principle of non-Socialism mean two things.
+
+As the principle of _Socialism_ means national ownership and
+co-operative national management, so the principle of non-Socialism
+means _private ownership_ and _private management_.
+
+_Socialism_ says that Britain shall be owned and managed _by_ the people
+_for_ the people.
+
+Non-Socialism says Britain shall be owned and managed _by_ some persons
+_for_ some persons.
+
+Under _Socialism_ you would have _all_ the people working _together_ for
+the good of _all_.
+
+Under non-Socialism you have all the _persons_ working _separately_ (and
+mostly _against_ each other), each for the good of _himself_.
+
+So we find _Socialism_ means _Co-operation_, and non-Socialism means
+_Competition_.
+
+Co-operation, as here used, means operating or working together for a
+common end or purpose.
+
+Competition means competing or vying with each other for personal ends
+or gain.
+
+I'm afraid that is all as "dry" as bran, and as sad as a half-boiled
+dumpling; but I want to make it quite plain.
+
+And now we will run over it all again in a more homely and lively way.
+
+You know that to-day most of the land in Britain belongs to landlords,
+who let it to farmers or builders, and charge _rent_ for it.
+
+Socialists (_all_ Socialists) say that _all_ the land should belong to
+the British people, to the nation.
+
+You know that the railways belong to railway companies, who carry goods
+and passengers, and charge fares and rates, to make _profit_.
+
+Socialists _all_ say that the railways should be bought by the people.
+Some say that fares should be charged, some that the railways should be
+free--just as the roads, rivers, and bridges now are; but all agree that
+any profit made by the railways should belong to the whole nation. Just
+as do the profits now made by the post office and the telegraphs.
+
+You know that cotton mills, coalmines, and breweries now belong to rich
+men, or to companies, who sell the coal, the calico, or the beer, for
+profit.
+
+Socialists say that all mines, mills, breweries, shops, works, ships,
+and farms should belong to the whole people, and should be managed by
+persons chosen by the people, or chosen by officials elected by the
+people, and that all the bread, beer, calico, coal, and other goods
+should be either _sold_ to the people, or _given_ to the people, or sold
+to foreign buyers for the benefit of the British nation.
+
+Some Socialists would _give_ the goods to the people, some would _sell_
+them; but _all_ agree that any profit on such sales should belong to the
+whole people--just as any profit made on the sale of gas by the
+Manchester Corporation goes to the credit of the city.
+
+Now you will begin to see what is meant by Socialism.
+
+To-day the nation owns _some_ things; under Socialism the nation would
+own _all_ things.
+
+To-day the nation owns the ships of the navy, the forts, arsenals,
+public buildings, Government factories, and some other things.
+
+To-day the Government, _for the nation_, manages the post office and
+telegraphs, makes some of the clothes and food and arms for the army and
+navy, builds some of the warships, and oversees the Church, the prisons,
+and the schools.
+
+Socialists want the nation to own _all_ the buildings, factories, lands,
+rivers, ships, schools, machines, and goods, and to manage _all_ their
+business and work, and to buy and sell and make and use _all_ goods for
+themselves.
+
+To-day some cities (as Manchester and Glasgow) make gas, and supply gas
+and water to the citizens. Some cities (as London) let their citizens
+buy their gas and water from gas and water companies.
+
+Socialists want _all_ the gas and water to be supplied to the people by
+their own officials, as in Glasgow and Manchester.
+
+Under _Socialism_ all the work of the nation would be _organised_--that
+is to say, it would be "ordered," or "arranged," so that no one need be
+out of work, and so that no useless work need be done, and so that no
+work need be done twice where once would serve.
+
+At present the work is _not_ organised, except in the post office and in
+the various works of the Corporations.
+
+Let us take a look at the state of things in England to-day.
+
+To-day the industries of England are not ordered nor arranged, but are
+left to be disordered by chance and by the ups and downs of trade.
+
+So we have at one and the same time, and in one and the same trade, and,
+often enough, in one and the same town, some men working overtime and
+other men out of work.
+
+We have at one time the cotton mills making more goods than they can
+sell, and at another time we have them unable to fulfil their orders.
+
+We have in one street a dozen small shops all selling the same kind of
+goods, and so spending in rent, in fittings, in wages of servants, and
+other ways, about four times as much as would be spent if all the work
+were done in one big shop.
+
+We have one contractor sending men and tools and bricks and wood from
+north London to build a house in south London, and another contractor in
+south London going to the same trouble and expense to build a house in
+north London.
+
+We have in Essex and other parts of England thousands of acres of good
+land lying idle because it does not _pay_ to till it, and at the same
+time we have thousands of labourers out of work who would be only too
+glad to till it.
+
+So in one part of a city you may see hundreds of houses standing empty,
+and in another part of the same city you may see hard-working people
+living three and four families in a small cottage.
+
+Then, under competition, where there are many firms in the same trade,
+and where each firm wants to get as much trade as it can, a great deal
+of money is spent by these firms in trying to get the trade from each
+other.
+
+Thus all the cost of advertisements, of travellers' wages, and a lot of
+the cost of book-keeping, arise from the fact that there are many firms
+all trying to snatch the trade from each other.
+
+Non-Socialists claim that this clumsy and costly way of going to work is
+really the best way there is. They say that competition gets the work
+done by the best men and at the lowest rate.
+
+Perhaps some of them believe this; but it is not true. The mistake is
+caused by the fact that _competition_ is better than _monopoly_.
+
+That is to say, if there is only one tram company in a town the fares
+will be higher than if there are two; because when there are two one
+tries to undersell the other.
+
+But take a town where there are two tram companies undercutting and
+working against each other, and hand the trams over to the Corporation,
+and you will find that the work is done better, is done cheaper, and the
+men are better paid than under competition.
+
+This is because the Corporation is at less cost, has less waste, and
+does not want _profits_.
+
+Well, under _Socialism_ all the work of the nation would be managed by
+the nation--or perhaps I had better say by "the people," for some of the
+work would be _local_ and some would be _national_. I will show you what
+I mean.
+
+It might be better for each town to manage its own gas and water, to
+bake its own bread and brew its own beer. But it would be better for the
+post office to be managed by the nation, because that has to do with
+_all_ the towns.
+
+So we should find that some kinds of work were best done locally--that
+is, by each town or county--and that some were best done nationally,
+that is, by a body of officials acting for the nation.
+
+For instance, tramways would be local and railways national; gas and
+water would be local and collieries national; police would be local and
+the army and navy national.
+
+The kind of _Socialism_ I am advocating here is Collectivism, or
+_Practical Socialism_. Motto: Britain for the British, the land and all
+the instruments of production, distribution, and exchange to be the
+property of the nation, and to be managed _by_ the nation _for_ the
+nation.
+
+The land and railways, collieries, etc., to be _bought_ from the present
+owners, but not at fancy prices.
+
+Wages to be paid, and goods to be sold.
+
+Thus, you see, Collectivism is really an extension of the _principles_,
+or ideas, of local government, and of the various corporation and civil
+services.
+
+And now I tell you that is Socialism, and I ask you what is there in it
+to prevent any man from being a Christian, or from attending a place of
+worship, or from marrying, or being faithful to his wife, or from
+keeping and bringing up his children at home?
+
+There is nothing in it to destroy religion, and there is nothing in it
+to destroy the home, and there is nothing in it to foster vice.
+
+But there _is_ something in it to kill ignorance and to destroy vice.
+There is something in it to shut up the gaols, to do away with
+prostitution, to reduce crime and drunkenness, and wipe out for ever the
+sweater and the slums, the beggars and the idle rich, the useless fine
+ladies and lords, and to make it possible for sober and willing workers
+to live healthy and happy and honourable lives.
+
+For Socialism would teach and train all children wisely; it would foster
+genius and devotion to the common good; it would kill scamping and
+loafing and jerrymandering; it would give us better health, better
+homes, better work, better food, better lives, and better men and women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+COMPETITION _v._ CO-OPERATION
+
+
+A comparison of competition with co-operation is a comparison of
+non-Socialism with Socialism.
+
+For the principle of non-Socialism is competition, and the principle of
+Socialism is co-operation.
+
+Non-Socialists tell us that competition is to the general advantage,
+because it lowers prices in favour of the consumer.
+
+But competition in trade only seems desirable when we contrast it with
+private monopoly.
+
+When we compare the effects of trade competition with the effects of
+State or Municipal co-operation, we find that competition is badly
+beaten.
+
+Let us try to find the reasons of this.
+
+The claim for the superior cheapness of competition rests on the theory
+that where two sellers compete against each other for trade each tries
+to undersell the other.
+
+This sounds plausible, but, like many other plausible things, it is
+untrue. It is a theory, but the theory is incomplete.
+
+If business men were fools the theory would work with mathematical
+precision, to the great joy and profit of the consumer; but business men
+are not built on those lines.
+
+The seller of any article does not trade for trading's sake; he trades
+for profit.
+
+It is a mistake to suppose that undercutting each other's prices is the
+only method of competing between rival firms in trade. There are other
+ways.
+
+A trader, in order to defeat a rival, may
+
+
+    1. Give better quality at the same price, which is equal to giving
+    more for the money, and is therefore a form of underselling; or
+
+    2. He may give the same quantity and quality at a lower price; or
+
+    3. He may balance the lowering of his price by resorting to
+    adulteration or the use of inferior workmanship or material; or
+
+    4. He may try to overreach his rival by employing more travellers or
+    by advertising more extensively.
+
+
+As to underselling. This is not carried on to such extremes as the
+theorists would have us believe.
+
+The object of a trader is to make money. He only desires increased trade
+if it brings more money.
+
+Brown and Jones make soap for sale. Each desires to get as much of the
+trade as he can, consistently with profits.
+
+It will pay Brown better to sell 1000 boxes of soap at a profit of
+sixpence on each box than to sell 2000 boxes at a profit of twopence a
+box, and it will pay him better to sell 4000 boxes at a profit of
+twopence each than it will to sell 1000 boxes at a profit of sixpence
+each.
+
+Now, suppose there is a demand for 20,000 boxes of soap in a week. If
+Brown and Jones are content to divide the trade, each may sell 10,000
+boxes at a profit of sixpence, and so may clear a total profit of £250.
+
+If, by repeated undercutting, the profit falls to a penny a box, Brown
+and Jones will have very little more than £80 to divide between them.
+And it is clear that it will pay them better to divide the trade, for it
+would pay either of them better to take half the trade at even a
+threepenny profit than to secure it all at a profit of one penny.
+
+Well, Brown and Jones have the full use of their faculties, and are well
+aware of the number of beans that make five.
+
+Therefore they will not compete beyond the point at which competition
+will increase their gross profits.
+
+And so we shall find in most businesses, from great railways down to
+tooth brushes, that the difference in prices, quality being equal, is
+not very great amongst native traders, and that a margin of profit is
+always left.
+
+At the same time, so far as competition _does_ lower prices without
+lowering quality, the benefit is to the consumer, and that much is to be
+put to the credit of competition.
+
+But even there, on its strongest line, competition is beaten by State
+or Municipal co-operation.
+
+Because, assuming that the State or Municipality can produce any article
+as cheaply as a private firm, the State or the Municipality can always
+beat the private trader in price to the extent of the trader's profit.
+
+For no trader will continue to trade unless he makes some profit,
+whereas the State or Municipality wants no profit, but works for use or
+for service.
+
+Therefore, if a private trader sells soap at a profit of one farthing a
+box, the State or Municipality can sell soap one farthing a box cheaper,
+other things being equal.
+
+It is evident, then, that the trader must be beaten unless he can
+produce more cheaply than the State or Municipality.
+
+Can he produce more cheaply? No. The State or Municipality can always
+produce more cheaply than the private trader, under equal conditions.
+Why? For the same reason that a large firm can beat a small one, or a
+trust can beat a number of large firms.
+
+Suppose there are three separate firms making soap. Each firm must have
+its separate factory, its separate offices, its separate management, its
+separate power, its separate profits, and its separate plant.
+
+But if one firm made all the soap, it would save a great deal of
+expense; for one large factory is cheaper than two of half its size, and
+one manager costs less than three.
+
+If the London County Council made all the soap for London, it could make
+soap more cheaply than any one of a dozen private firms; because it
+would save so largely in rent, plant, and management.
+
+Thus the State or Municipality scores over the private firm, and
+co-operation scores over competition in two ways: first, it cuts off the
+profit; and, second, it reduces the cost of production.
+
+But that does not exhaust the advantages of co-operation over
+competition. There are two other forms of competition still to examine:
+these are adulteration and advertisement.
+
+We all know the meaning of the phrase "cheap and nasty." We can get
+pianos, bicycles, houses, boots, tea, and many other things at various
+prices, and we find that many of the cheap pianos will not keep in tune,
+that the bicycles are always out of repair, that the houses fall down,
+the boots let in water, and the tea tastes like what it _is_--a mixture
+of dried tea leaves and rubbish.
+
+Adulteration, as John Bright frankly declared, is a form of competition.
+It is also a form of rascality and fraud. It is a device for retaining
+profits for the seller, but it is seriously to the disadvantage of the
+consumer.
+
+This form of competition, then, has to be put to the debit of
+competition.
+
+And the absence of this form of competition has to be put to the credit
+of the State or the Municipal supply. For since the State or
+Municipality has no competitor to displace, it never descends to the
+baseness of adulteration.
+
+The London County Council would not build jerry houses for the citizens,
+nor supply them with tea leaves for tea, nor logwood and water for port
+wine.
+
+The sale of wooden nutmegs is a species of enterprise confined
+exclusively to the private trader. It is a form of competition, but
+never of commercial co-operation. It is peculiar to non-Socialism:
+Socialists would abolish it entirely.
+
+We come now to the third device of the private trader in competition:
+the employment of commercial travellers and advertisement.
+
+Of two firms selling similar goods, of equal quality, at equal prices,
+that firm will do the larger trade which keeps the greater number of
+commercial travellers and spends the greater sum upon advertisement.
+
+But travellers cost money, and advertising costs money. And so we find
+that travellers and advertisements add to the cost of distribution.
+
+Therefore competition, although by underbidding it has a limited
+tendency to lower the prices of goods, has also a tendency to increase
+the price in another way.
+
+If Brown lowers the price of his soap the user of soap is the gainer.
+But if Brown increases the cost of his advertisements and his staff of
+travellers, the user is the loser, because the extra cost has to be paid
+for in the price of soap.
+
+Now, if the London County Council made soap for all London, there would
+be
+
+1. A saving in cost of rent, plant, and management.
+
+2. A saving of profits by selling at cost price.
+
+3. A saving of the whole cost of advertising.
+
+4. A saving of the wages of the commercial travellers.
+
+Under a system of trade competition all those four items (plus the
+effects of adulteration) have to be paid for by the consumer, that is to
+say, by the users of soap.
+
+And what is true of soap is true of most other things.
+
+That is why co-operation for use beats competition for sale and profit.
+
+That is why the Municipal gas, water, and tram services are better and
+cheaper than the same services under the management of private
+companies.
+
+That is _one_ reason why Socialism is better than non-Socialism.
+
+As an example of the difference between private and Municipal works, let
+us take the case of the gas supply in Liverpool and Manchester. These
+cities are both commercial, both large, both near the coalfields.
+
+The gas service in Liverpool is a private monopoly, for profit; that of
+Manchester is a co-operative monopoly, for service.
+
+In Liverpool (figures of 1897) the price of gas was 2s. 9d. per thousand
+feet. In Manchester the price of gas was 2s. 3d.
+
+In Liverpool the profit on gas was 8½d. per thousand feet. In
+Manchester the profit was 7½d. per thousand feet.
+
+In Liverpool the profits went to the company. In Manchester the profits
+went to the ratepayers.
+
+Thus the Manchester ratepayer was getting his gas for 2s. 3d. less
+7½d., which means that he was getting it at 1s. 7½d., while the
+Liverpool ratepayer was being charged 2s. 9d. The public monopoly of
+Manchester was, therefore, beating the private monopoly of Liverpool by
+1s. 1½d. per thousand feet in the price of gas.
+
+In _To-day's Work_, by George Haw, and in _Does Municipal Management
+Pay?_ by R. B. Suthers, you will find many examples as striking and
+conclusive as the one I have suggested above.
+
+The waste incidental to private traders' competition is enormous. Take
+the one item of advertisement alone. There are draughtsmen,
+paper-makers, printers, billposters, painters, carpenters, gilders,
+mechanics, and a perfect army of other people all employed in making
+advertisement bills, pictures, hoardings, and other abominations--for
+_what_? Not to benefit the consumer, but to enable one private dealer to
+sell more of his wares than another. In _Merrie England_ I dealt with
+this question, and I quoted from an excellent pamphlet by Mr.
+Washington, a man of splendid talents, whose death we have unfortunately
+to deplore. Mr. Washington, who was an inventor and a thoroughly
+practical man of business, spoke as follows:--
+
+
+    Taking soap as an example, it requires a purchaser of this commodity
+    to expend a shilling in obtaining sixpennyworth of it, the
+    additional sixpence being requisite to cover the cost of
+    advertising, travelling, etc. It requires him to expend 1s. 1½d. to
+    obtain twopennyworth of pills for the same reason. For a sewing
+    machine he must, if spending £7 on it, part with £4 of this amount
+    on account of unnecessary cost; and so on in the case of all widely
+    advertised articles. In the price of less-advertised commodities
+    there is, in like manner, included as unnecessary cost a long string
+    of middlemen's profits and expenses. It may be necessary to treat of
+    these later, but for the present suffice it to say that in the price
+    of goods as sold by retail the margin of unnecessary cost ranges
+    from threepence to tenpence in the shilling, and taking an average
+    of one thing with another, it may be safely stated that one-half of
+    the price paid is rendered necessary simply through the foolish and
+    inconvenient manner in which the business is carried on.
+
+
+All this expense would be saved by State or Municipal production for
+use. The New York Milk Trust, I understand, on its formation dispensed
+with the services of 15,000 men.
+
+You may ask what is to become of these men, and of the immense numbers
+of other men, now uselessly employed, who would not be needed under
+Socialism.
+
+Well! What are these men now doing? Are they adding to the wealth of the
+nation? No. Are they not doing work that is unnecessary to the nation?
+Yes. Are they not now being paid wages? Yes.
+
+Then, since their work is useless, and since they are now being paid, is
+it not evident that under Socialism we could actually pay them their
+full wages for doing _nothing_, and still be as well off as we are now?
+
+But I think under Socialism we could, and should, find a very great many
+of them congenial and useful work.
+
+Under the "Trusts" they will be thrown out of work, and it will be
+nobody's business to see that they do not starve.
+
+Yes: Socialism would displace labour. But does not non-Socialism
+displace labour?
+
+Why was the linotype machine adopted? Because it was a saving of cost.
+What became of the compositors? They were thrown out of work. Did
+anybody help them?
+
+Well, Socialism would save cost. If it displaces labour, as the machine
+does, should that prevent us from adopting Socialism?
+
+Socialism would organise labour, and leave no man to starve.
+
+But will the Trusts do that? No. And the Trusts are coming; the Trusts
+which will swallow up the small firms and destroy competition; the
+Trusts which will use their monopolies not to lower prices, but to make
+profits.
+
+You will have your choice, then, between the grasping and grinding Trust
+and the beneficent Municipality.
+
+Can any reasonable, practical, hard-headed man hesitate for one moment
+over his choice?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN FOOD
+
+
+We have heard a great deal lately about the danger of losing our foreign
+trade, and it has been very openly suggested that the only hope of
+keeping our foreign trade lies in reducing the wages of our British
+workers. Sometimes this idea is wrapped up, and called "reducing the
+cost of production."
+
+Now, if we must have foreign trade, and as much of it as we have now,
+and if we can only keep it by competing against foreign dealers in
+price, then it is true that we must try to reduce the cost of
+production.
+
+But as there are more ways of killing a dog besides that of choking him
+with butter, so there are other ways of reducing the cost of production
+besides that of reducing the wages of our British workers.
+
+But on that question I will speak in the next chapter. Here I want to
+deal with foreign trade and foreign food.
+
+It is very important that every worker in the kingdom should understand
+the relations of our foreign trade and our native agriculture.
+
+The creed of the commercial school is that manufactures _pay_ us better
+than agriculture; so that by making goods for export and buying food
+from abroad we are doing good business.
+
+The idea is, that if by making cloth, cutlery, and other goods, we can
+buy more food than we can produce at home with the same amount of
+labour, it _pays_ us to let the land go out of cultivation and make
+Britain the "workshop of the world."
+
+Now, assuming that we _can_ keep our foreign trade, and assuming that we
+can get more food by foreign trade than we could produce by the same
+amount of work, is it quite certain that we are making a good bargain
+when we desert our fields for our factories?
+
+Suppose men _can_ earn more in the big towns than they _could_ earn in
+the fields, is the difference _all_ gain?
+
+Rents and prices are higher in the towns; the life is less healthy, less
+pleasant. It is a fact that the death-rates in the towns are higher,
+that the duration of life is shorter, and that the stamina and physique
+of the workers are lowered by town life and by employment in the
+factories.
+
+And there is another very serious evil attached to the commercial policy
+of allowing our British agriculture to decay, and that is the evil of
+our dependence upon foreign countries for our food.
+
+Of every 30 bushels of wheat we require in Britain, more than 23 bushels
+come from abroad. Of these 23 bushels 19 bushels come from America, and
+nearly all the rest from Russia.
+
+You are told at intervals--when more money is wanted for
+battle-ships--that unless we have a strong fleet we shall, in time of
+war, be starved into surrender.
+
+But the plain and terrible truth is that even if we have a perfect
+fleet, and keep entire control of the seas, we shall still be exposed to
+the risk of almost certain starvation during a European war.
+
+Nearly four-fifths of our bread come from Russia and America. Suppose we
+are at war with France and Russia. What will happen? Will not the corn
+dealers in America put up the price? Will not the Russians stop the
+export of corn from their ports? Will not the French and Russian
+Governments try to corner the American wheat?
+
+Then one-seventh of our wheat would be stopped at Russian ports, and the
+American supply, even if it could be safely guarded to our shores, would
+be raised to double or treble the present price.
+
+What would our millions of poor workers do if wheat went up to 75s. or
+100s. a quarter?
+
+And every other article of food would go up in price at the same time:
+tea, coffee, sugar, meat, canned goods, cheese, would all double their
+prices.
+
+And we must not forget that we import millions of pounds' worth of
+eggs, butter, and cheese from France, all of which would be stopped.
+
+Nor is that all. Do we not pay for our imported food in exported goods?
+Well, besides the risk and cost of carrying raw material to this country
+and manufactured goods to other countries across the seas, we should
+lose at one blow all our French and Russian trade.
+
+That means that with food at famine prices many of our workers would be
+out of work or on short time.
+
+The result would be that in less than half a year there would be
+1,000,000 unemployed, and ten times that number on the borders of
+starvation.
+
+And all these horrors might come upon us without a single shot being
+fired by our enemies. Talk about invasion! In a big European war we
+should be half beaten before we could strike a blow, and even if our
+fleets were victorious in a dozen battles we must starve or make peace.
+
+Or suppose such a calamity as war with America! The Americans could
+close their ports to food and raw material, and stop half our food and a
+large part of our trade at one blow. And so we should be half beaten
+before a sword was drawn.
+
+All these dangers are due to the commercial plan of sacrificing
+agriculture to trade. All these dangers must be placed to the debit side
+of our foreign trade account.
+
+But apart from the dangers of starvation in time of war, and apart from
+all the evils of the factory system and the bad effects of overcrowding
+in the towns, it has still to be said that foreign trade only beats
+agriculture as long as it pays so well that we can buy more food with
+our earnings than we could ourselves produce with the same amount of
+labour.
+
+Are we quite sure that it pays us as well as that _now_? And if it does
+pay as well as that now, can we hope that it will go on paying as well
+for any length of time.
+
+In the early days of our great trade the commercial school wished
+Britain to be the "workshop of the world"; and for a good while she was
+the workshop of the world.
+
+But now a change is coming. Other nations have opened world-workshops,
+and we have to face competition.
+
+France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and America are all eager to take our
+coveted place as general factory, and China and Japan are changing
+swiftly from customers into rival dealers.
+
+Is it likely, then, that we can keep all our foreign trade, or that what
+we keep will be as profitable as it is at present?
+
+During the last few years there have emanated from the Press and from
+Chambers of Commerce certain ominous growlings about the evils of Trade
+Unionism. What do these growls portend? Much the same thing as the
+mutterings about the need for lowering wages.
+
+Do we not remember how, when the colliers were struggling for a "living
+wage," the Press scolded them for their "selfishness"? The Press
+declared that if the colliers persisted in having a living wage we
+should be beaten by foreign competitors and must lose our foreign trade.
+
+That is what is hanging over us now. A demand for a general reduction of
+wages. That is the end of the fine talk about big profits, national
+prosperity, and the "workshop of the world." The British workers are to
+emulate the thrift of the Japanese, the Hindoos, and the Chinese, and
+learn to live on boiled rice and water. Why? So that they can accept
+lower wages and retain our precious foreign trade.
+
+Yes; that is the latest idea. With brutal frankness the workers of
+Britain have been told again and again that "if we are to keep our
+foreign trade the British workers must accept the conditions of their
+foreign rivals."
+
+And that is the result of our commercial glory! For that we have
+sacrificed our agriculture and endangered the safety of our empire.
+
+Let us put the two statements of the commercial school side by side.
+
+They tell us first that the workers must abandon the land and go into
+the factories, because there they can earn a better living.
+
+They tell us now that the British worker must be content with the wages
+of a coolie, because foreign trade will pay no more.
+
+We are to give up agriculture because we can buy more food with exported
+goods than we can grow; and we must learn to live on next to nothing, or
+lose our foreign trade.
+
+Well, since we left the land in the hope that the factories would feed
+us better, why not go back to the land if the factories fail to feed us
+at all?
+
+Ah! but the commercial school have another string to their bow: "You
+cannot go back to the land, for it will not feed you all. This country
+will not produce enough food for its people to live upon."
+
+So the position in which the workers are placed, according to the
+commercial school, is this: You cannot produce your own food; therefore
+you must buy it by export trade. But you will lose your export trade
+unless you work for lower wages.
+
+Well, Mr. Smith, I for one do not believe those things. I believe--
+
+1. That we can produce most of our food.
+
+2. That we can keep as much of our trade as we need, and
+
+3. That we can keep the trade without reducing the wages of the workers.
+
+In my next chapter I will deal with the question of foreign trade and
+the workers' wages. We will then go on to consider the question of the
+food supply.
+
+For the argument as to our defencelessness in time of war through the
+inevitable rise in the price of corn, I am indebted to a pamphlet by
+Captain Stewart L. Murray of the Gordon Highlanders. I strongly
+recommend all working men and women to read that pamphlet. It is
+entitled _Our Food Supply in Time of War_, and can be ordered through
+the _Clarion_. The price is 6d.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HOW TO KEEP FOREIGN TRADE
+
+
+The problem is how to keep our foreign export trade.
+
+We are told that unless we can compete in price with foreign nations we
+must lose our foreign trade; and we are told that the only means of
+competing with foreign nations in price is to lower the wages of the
+British worker.
+
+We will test these statements by looking into the conditions of one of
+our great industries, an industry upon which many other industries more
+or less depend: I mean the coal trade.
+
+At the time of the great coal strike the colliers were asked to accept a
+reduction of wages because their employers could not get the price they
+were asking for coal.
+
+The colliers refused, and demanded a "living wage." And they were
+severely censured by the Press for their "selfishness" in "keeping up
+the price of coal," and thereby preventing other trades, in which coal
+was largely used, from earning a living. They were reproached also with
+keeping the price of coal so high that the poor could not afford fires.
+
+Now, if those other trades which used coal, as the iron and the cotton
+trades, could not carry on their business with coal at the price it was
+then at, and if those trades had no other ways and means of reducing
+expenses, and if the only factor in the price of coal had been the wages
+of the collier, there might have been some ground for the arguments of
+the Press against the colliers.
+
+But in the iron trade one item of the cost of production is the
+_royalty_ on the iron. Royalty is a kind of rent paid to the landlord
+for getting the iron from his land.
+
+Now, I want to ask about the iron trade, Would it not be as just and as
+possible to reduce the royalty on iron in order to compete with foreign
+iron dealers as to reduce the wages of the iron-worker or the collier?
+
+The collier and the iron-worker work, and work hard, but the royalty
+owner does nothing.
+
+The twenty-five per cent. reduction in the colliers' wages demanded
+before the great strike would not have made a difference of sixpence a
+ton in the cost of coal.
+
+Now the royalties charged upon a ton of manufactured pig iron in
+Cumberland at that time amounted to 6s. 3d.; whereas the royalties on a
+ton of manufactured pig iron in Germany were 6d., in France 8d., in
+Belgium 1s. 3d. Now read this--
+
+
+    In 1885 a firm in West Cumberland had half their furnaces idle, not
+    because the firm had no work, but simply owing to the high royalties
+    demanded by the landowner. This company had to import iron from
+    Belgium to fulfil their contract with the Indian Government. With a
+    furnace turning out about 600 tons of pig iron per week the
+    royalties amounted to £202, while the wages to everyone, from the
+    manager downwards, amounted to only £95. This very company is now
+    amongst our foreign competitors.
+
+
+The royalties were more than twice the amount of the wages, and yet we
+are to believe that we can only keep our iron trade by lowering the
+wages.
+
+The fact is that in the iron trade our export goods are taxed by the
+idle royalty owner to an amount varying from five to twelve times that
+of the royalty paid by our French, German, and Belgian competitors.
+
+Now think over the iron and cotton and other trades, and remember the
+analysis we made of the cost of production, and tell me why, since the
+rich landlord gets his rent, and since the rich capitalist gets his
+interest or profits out of cotton, wool, or iron, the invariable
+suggestion of those who would retain our foreign trade by reducing the
+cost of production amounts to no more nor less than a reduction of the
+poor workers' wages.
+
+Let us go back to the coal trade. The collier was called selfish because
+his demand for a living wage kept up the price of coal. The reduction
+asked would not have come to 6d. a ton. Could not that sixpence have
+been saved from the rents, or interest, or profits, or royalties paid
+at the cost of the production of other goods? I think you will find that
+it could.
+
+But leave that point, and let us see whether there are not other factors
+in the cost of coal which could more fairly be reduced than could the
+wages of the collier.
+
+Coals sells at prices from 10s. to 30s. a ton. The wages of the collier
+do not add up to more than 2s. 6d. a ton.
+
+In the year before the last great coal strike 300,000 miners were paid
+£15,000,000, and in the same time £6,000,000 were paid in royalties. Sir
+G. Elliot's estimate of coal owners' _profits_ for the same year was
+£11,000,000. This, with the £6,000,000 paid in royalties, made
+£17,000,000 taken by royalty owners and mine owners out of the coal
+trade in one year.
+
+So there are other items in the price of coal besides the wages of the
+colliers. What are they? They may be divided into nine parts, thus--
+
+
+    1. Rent.
+    2. Royalties.
+    3. Coal masters' profits.
+    4. Profits of railway companies and other carriers.
+    5. Wages of railway servants and other carriers' labourers.
+    6. Profits of merchants and other "middlemen."
+    7. Profits of retailers.
+    8. Wages of agents, travellers, and other salesmen.
+    9. The wages of the colliers.
+
+
+The prices of coal fluctuate (vary), and the changes in the prices of
+coal cause now a rise and now a fall in the wages and profits of coal
+masters, railway shareholders, merchants, and retailers.
+
+But the fluctuations in the prices of coal cause very little fluctuation
+in rent and _none_ in royalties.
+
+Again, no matter how low the price of coal may be, the agents,
+travellers, and other salesmen always get a living wage, and the coal
+owners, railway shareholders, merchants, landlords, and royalty owners
+always get a great deal more than a living wage.
+
+But what about the colliers and the carriers' labourers, such as railway
+men, dischargers, and carters?
+
+These men perform nearly all the work of production and of
+distribution. They get the coal, and they carry the coal.
+
+Their wages are lower than those of any of the other seven classes
+engaged in the coal trade.
+
+They work harder, they work longer hours, and they run more risk to life
+and limb than any other class in the trade; and yet!----
+
+And yet the only means of reducing the price of coal is said to be _a
+reduction in the collier's wage_.
+
+Now, I say that in reducing the price of coal the _last_ thing we should
+touch is the collier's wage.
+
+If we _must_ reduce the price of coal, we should begin with the owners
+of royalties. As to the "right" of the royalty owner to exact a fine
+from labour, I will content myself with making two claims--
+
+
+    1. That even if the royalty owner has a "right" to _a_ royalty, yet
+    there is no reason why he, of all the nine classes engaged in the
+    coal trade, should be the only one whose receipts from the sale of
+    coal shall never be lessened, no matter how the price of coal may
+    fall.
+
+    2. Since the royalty owner and the landlord are the only persons
+    engaged in the trade who cannot make even a pretence of doing
+    anything for their money, and since the price of coal must be
+    lowered, they should be the first to bear a reduction in the amount
+    they charge on the sale of it.
+
+
+Next to the landlords and royalty owners I should place the railway
+companies. The prices charged for the carriage of coal are very high,
+and if the price of coal must be reduced, the profits made on the
+carriage should be reduced.
+
+Third in order come the coal owners, with what they call "a fair rate of
+interest on invested capital."
+
+How is it that the Press never reproaches any of those four idle and
+overpaid classes with selfishness in causing the poor workers of other
+trades to go short of fuel?
+
+How is it that the Press never chides these men for their folly in
+trying to keep up profits, royalties, and interest in a "falling
+market"?
+
+It looks as if the "immutable laws" of political economy resemble the
+laws of the land. It looks as if there is one economic law for the rich
+and another for the poor.
+
+The merchants, commission agents, and other middlemen I leave out of the
+question. These men are worse than worthless--they are harmful. They
+thwart; and hinder, and disorder the trade, and live on the colliers,
+the coal masters, and the public. There is no excuse, economic or moral,
+for their existence. But there is only one cure for the evil they do,
+and that is to drive them right out of the trade.
+
+I claim, then, that if the price of coal must be reduced, the sums paid
+to the above-named three classes should be cut down first, because they
+get a great deal more, and do a great deal less, than the carriers'
+labourers and the colliers.
+
+First as to the coal owners and the royalty owners. We see that the
+_whole sum_ of the wages of the colliers for a year was only £6,000,000,
+while the royalty owners and the coal owners took £17,000,000, or nearly
+three times as much.
+
+And yet we were told that the _miners_, the men who _work_, were
+"selfish" for refusing to have their wages reduced.
+
+Nationalise the land and the mines, and you at once save £17,000,000,
+and all that on the one trade.
+
+So with the railways. Nationalise the railways, and you may reduce the
+cost of the carriage of coal (and of all goods and passengers) by the
+amount of the profits now made by the railway companies, plus a good
+deal of the expense of management.
+
+For if the Municipalities can give you better trams, pay the guards and
+drivers better wages for shorter hours, and reduce penny fares to
+halfpenny fares, and still clear a big profit, is it not likely that the
+State could lower the freights of the railways, and so reduce the cost
+of carrying foods and manufactured goods and raw material?
+
+Our foreign trade, and our home industries also, are taxed and
+handicapped in their competition by every shilling paid in royalties,
+in rents, in interest, in profits, and in dividends to persons who do no
+work and produce no wealth; they are handicapped further by the salaries
+and commissions of all the superfluous managers, canvassers, agents,
+travellers, clerks, merchants, small dealers, and other middlemen who
+now live upon the producer and consumer.
+
+Socialism would abolish all these rents, taxes, royalties, salaries,
+commissions, profits, and interests, and thereby so greatly reduce the
+cost of production and of carriage that in the open market we should be
+able to offer our goods at such prices as to defy the competition of any
+but a Socialist State.
+
+But there is another way in which British trade is handicapped in
+competition with the trade of other nations.
+
+It is instructive to notice that our most dangerous rival is America,
+where wages are higher and all the conditions of the worker better than
+in this country.
+
+How, then, do the Americans contrive so often to beat us?
+
+Is it not notorious that the reason given for America's success is the
+superior energy and acuteness of the American over the British manager
+and employer? American firms are more pushing, more up-to-date. They
+seek new markets, and study the desires of consumers; they use more
+modern machinery, and they produce more new inventions. Are the paucity
+of our invention and the conservatism of our management due to the
+"invincible ignorance" or restrictive policy of the British working man?
+They are due to quite other causes. The conservatism and sluggishness of
+our firms are due to British conceit: to the belief that when "Britain
+first at Heaven's command arose from out the azure main" she was
+invested with an eternal and unquestionable charter to act henceforth
+and for ever as the "workshop of the world"; and say what they will in
+their inmost hearts, her manufacturers still have unshaken faith in
+their destiny, and think scorn of any foreigner who presumes to cross
+their path. Therefore the British manufacturer remains conservative, and
+gets left by more enterprising rivals.
+
+A word as to the superior inventiveness of the Americans. There are two
+great reasons why America produces more new and valuable patents. The
+first cause is the eagerness of the American manufacturer to secure the
+newest and the best machinery, and the apathetic contentment of the
+British manufacturer with old and cheap methods of production. There is
+a better market in America for inventions. The second cause is the
+superiority of the American patent law and patent office.
+
+In England a patentee has to pay £99 for a fourteen years' patent, and
+even then gets no guarantee of validity.
+
+In America the patentee gets a seventeen years' patent for £7.
+
+In England, out of 56,000 patents more than 54,000 were voided and less
+than 2000 survived.
+
+In America there is no voiding.
+
+One of the consequences of this is that American firms have a choice of
+thirty-two patents where our firms have _one_.
+
+According to the American patent office report for 1897, the American
+patents had, in seventeen years, found employment for 1,776,152 persons,
+besides raising wages in many cases as much as 173 per cent.
+
+These few figures only give a view of part of the disadvantage under
+which British inventors and British manufacturers suffer.
+
+I suggest, as the lawyers say, that British commercial conservatism and
+the British patent law have as much to do with the success of our clever
+and energetic American rivals as has what the _Times_ calls the
+"invincible ignorance" of the British workman who declines to sacrifice
+his Union to atone by longer hours and lower wages for the apathy of his
+employers and the folly of his laws.
+
+I submit, then, that the remedy is not the destruction of the Trade
+Unions, nor the lowering of wages, nor the lengthening of hours, but the
+nationalisation of the land, the abolition of royalties, the restoration
+of agriculture, and the municipalisation or the nationalisation of the
+collieries, the iron mines, the steel works, and the railways.
+
+The trade of this country _is_ handicapped; but it is not handicapped by
+the poor workers, but by the rich idlers, whose enormous rents and
+profits make it impossible for England to retain the foremost place in
+the markets of the world.
+
+So I submit to the British workman that, since the Press, with some few
+exceptions, finds no remedy for loss of trade but in a reduction of his
+wages, he would do well to look upon the Press with suspicion, and,
+better still, to study these questions for himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CAN BRITAIN FEED HERSELF?
+
+
+Is it impossible for this nation to produce food for 40,000,000 of
+people?
+
+We cannot produce _all_ our food. We cannot produce our own tea, coffee,
+cocoa, oranges, lemons, currants, raisins, figs, dates, bananas,
+treacle, tobacco, sugar, and many other things not suitable to our
+climate. But at a pinch, as during a war, we could do without most of
+these.
+
+Can we produce our own bread, meat, and vegetables? Can we produce all,
+or nearly all, our butter, milk, eggs, cheese, and fruit?
+
+And will it _pay_ to produce these things if we are able to produce them
+at all?
+
+The great essential is bread. Can we grow our own wheat? On this point I
+do not see how there can be any doubt whatever.
+
+In 1841 Britain grew wheat for 24,000,000 of people, and at that time
+not nearly all her land was in use, nor was her farming of the best.
+
+Now we have to find food, or at any rate bread and meat and vegetables,
+for 40,000,000.
+
+Wheat, then, for 40,000,000. At present we consume 29,000,000 quarters.
+Can we grow 29,000,000 quarters in our own country?
+
+Certainly we can. The _average_ yield per acre in Britain is 28 bushels,
+or 3½ quarters. That is the _average_ yield on British farms. It can be
+increased; but let us take it first upon that basis.
+
+At 3½ quarters to the acre, 8,000,000 acres would produce 28,000,000
+quarters; 9,000,000 acres would produce 31,500,000 quarters.
+
+Therefore we require less than 9,000,000 acres of wheat land to grow a
+year's supply of wheat for 40,000,000 persons.
+
+Now we have in Great Britain and Ireland about 33,000,000 acres of
+cultivatable land. Deduct 9,000,000 for wheat, and we have 24,000,000
+acres left for vegetables, fruit, cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry.
+
+Can any man say, in the face of these figures, that we are incapable of
+growing our own wheat?
+
+Suppose the average is put too high. Suppose we could only average a
+yield of 20 bushels to the acre, or 2½ quarters, we could still grow
+29,000,000 quarters on less than 12,000,000 acres.
+
+It is evident, then, that we can at anyrate grow our own wheat.
+
+Here I shall quote from an excellent book, _Fields, Factories, and
+Workshops_, by Prince Kropotkin. Having gone very carefully into the
+facts, the Prince has arrived at the following conclusions:--
+
+
+    1. If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated only as it
+    _was_ thirty-five years ago, 24,000,000 people could live on
+    home-grown food.
+
+    2. If the cultivatable soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated as
+    the soil is cultivated _on the average_ in Belgium, the United
+    Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000 inhabitants.
+
+    3. If the population of this country came to be doubled, all that
+    would be required for producing food for 80,000,000 inhabitants
+    would be to cultivate the soil as it is _now_ cultivated in the best
+    farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders.
+
+
+Why, indeed, should we not be able to raise 29,000,000 quarters of
+wheat? We have plenty of land. Other European countries can produce, and
+do produce, their own food.
+
+Take the example of Belgium. In Belgium the people produce their own
+food. Yet their soil is no better than ours, and their country is more
+densely populated, the figures being: Great Britain, per square mile,
+378 persons; Belgium, per square mile, 544 persons.
+
+Does that silence the commercial school? No. They have still one
+argument left. They say that even if we can grow our own wheat we cannot
+grow it as cheaply as we can buy it.
+
+Suppose we cannot. Suppose it will cost us 2s. a quarter more to grow
+it than to buy it. On the 23,000,000 quarters we now import we should be
+saving £2,000,000 a year.
+
+Is that a very high price to pay for security against defeat by
+starvation in time of war?
+
+A battle-ship costs £1,000,000. If we build two extra battle-ships in a
+year to protect our food supply we spend nearly all we gain by importing
+our wheat, even supposing that it costs us 2s. a quarter more to grow
+than to buy it.
+
+But is it true that we cannot grow wheat as cheaply as we can buy it? If
+it is true, the fact may doubtless be put down to two causes. First,
+that we do not go to work in the best way, nor with the best machinery;
+second, that the farmer is handicapped by rent. Of course if we have to
+pay rent to private persons for the use of our own land, that adds to
+the cost of the rent.
+
+One acre yields 28 bushels, or 3½ quarters of wheat in a year. If the
+land be rented at 21s. an acre that will add 6s. a quarter to the cost
+of wheat.
+
+In the _Industrial History of England_ I find the question of why the
+English farmer is undersold answered in this way--
+
+
+    The answer is simple. His capital has been filched from him surely,
+    but not always slowly, by a tremendous increase in his rent. The
+    landlords of the eighteenth century made the English farmer the
+    foremost agriculturist in the world, but their successors of the
+    nineteenth have ruined him by their extortions.... In 1799 we find
+    land paying nearly 20s. an acre.... By 1850 it had risen to 38s.
+    6d.... £2 an acre was not an uncommon rent for land a few years ago,
+    the average increase of English rents being no less than 26½ per
+    cent. between 1854 and 1879.... The result has been that the average
+    capital per acre now employed in agriculture is only about £4 or £5,
+    instead of at least £10, as it ought to be.
+
+
+If the rents were as high as £2 an acre when our poor farmers were
+struggling to make both ends meet, it is little wonder they failed. A
+rent of £2 an acre means a land tax of more than 11s. a quarter on
+wheat. The price of wheat in the market at present is about 25s. a
+quarter. A rent charge of 21s. per acre would amount to more than
+£10,000,000 on the 9,000,000 we should need to grow all our wheat. A
+rent charge of £2 an acre would amount to £18,000,000. That would be a
+heavy sum for our farmers to lift before they went to market.
+
+Moreover, agriculture has been neglected because all the mechanical and
+chemical skill, and all the capital and energy of man, have been thrown
+into the struggle for trade profits and manufacturing pre-eminence. We
+want a few Faradays, Watts, Stephensons, and Cobdens to devote their
+genius and industry to the great food question. Once let the public
+interest and the public genius be concentrated upon the agriculture of
+England, and we shall soon get silenced the croakers who talk about the
+impossibility of the country feeding her people.
+
+But is it true that under fair conditions wheat can be brought from the
+other side of the world and sold here at a price with which we cannot
+compete? Prince Kropotkin thinks not. He says the French can produce
+their food more cheaply than they can buy it; and if the French can do
+this, why cannot we?
+
+But in case it should be thought that I am prejudiced in favour of
+Prince Kropotkin's book or against the factory system, I will here print
+a quotation from a criticism of the book which appeared in the _Times_
+newspaper, which paper can hardly be suspected of any leanings towards
+Prince Kropotkin, or of any eagerness to acknowledge that the present
+industrial system possesses "acknowledged evils."
+
+
+    Seriously, Prince Kropotkin has a great deal to say for his
+    theories.... He has the genuine scientific temper, and nobody can
+    say that he does not extend his observations widely enough, for he
+    seems to have been everywhere and to have read everything....
+    Perhaps his chief fault is that he does not allow sufficiently for
+    the ingrained conservatism of human nature and for the tenacity of
+    vested interests. But that is no reason why people should not read
+    his book, which will certainly set them thinking, and may lead a few
+    of them to try, by practical experiments, to lessen some of the
+    acknowledged evils of the present industrial system.
+
+
+Just notice what the Tory _Times_ says about "the tenacity of _vested
+interests_" and the "_acknowledged evils_ of the present industrial
+system." It is a great deal for the _Times_ to say.
+
+But what about the meat?
+
+Prince Kropotkin deals as satisfactorily with the question of
+meat-growing as with that of growing wheat, and his conclusion is this--
+
+
+    Our means of obtaining from the soil whatever we want, under _any_
+    climate and upon _any_ soil, have lately improved at such a rate
+    that we cannot foresee yet what is the limit of productivity of a
+    few acres of land. The limit vanishes in proportion to our better
+    study of the subject, and every year makes it vanish farther and
+    farther from our sight.
+
+
+I have, I think, quoted enough to show that there is no natural obstacle
+to our production in this country of all the food our people need.
+Britain _can_ feed herself, and therefore, upon the ground of her use
+for foreign-grown food, the factory system is not necessary.
+
+But I hope my readers will buy this book of Prince Kropotkin, and read
+it. For it is a very fine book, a much better book than I can write.
+
+It can be ordered from the _Clarion_ Office, 72 Fleet Street, and the
+price is 1s. 3d. post free.
+
+As to the vegetables and the fruit, I must refer you to the Prince's
+book; but I shall quote a few passages just to give an idea of what
+_can_ be done, and _is being done_, in other countries in the way of
+intensive cultivation of vegetables and fruit.
+
+Prince Kropotkin says that the question of soil is a common
+stumbling-block to those who write about agriculture. Soil, he says,
+does not matter now, nor climate very much. There is a quite new science
+of agriculture which _makes_ its own soil and modifies its climate. Corn
+and fruit can be grown on _any_ soil--on rock, on sand, on clay.
+
+
+    Man, not Nature, has given to the Belgian soil its present
+    productivity.
+
+
+And now read this--
+
+
+    While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a
+    limited number of lovers of Nature, and a legion of workers whose
+    very names will remain unknown to posterity, have created of late
+    quite a new agriculture, as superior to modern farming as modern
+    farming is superior to the old three-fields system of our
+    ancestors.... Science seldom has guided them; they proceeded in the
+    empirical way; but like the cattle-growers who opened new horizons
+    to biology, they have opened a new field of experimental research
+    for the physiology of plants. They have created a totally new
+    agriculture. They smile when we boast about the rotation system
+    having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or
+    four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six
+    and nine crops from the very same plot of land during the twelve
+    months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad soils,
+    because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such
+    quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise
+    it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an inch every
+    year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the
+    acre, as we do, but from fifty to a hundred tons of vegetables on
+    the same space; not £5 worth of hay, but £100 worth of vegetables of
+    the plainest description--cabbage and carrots.
+
+
+Look now at these figures from America--
+
+
+    At a recent competition, in which hundreds of farmers took part, the
+    first ten prizes were awarded to ten farmers who had grown, on three
+    acres each, from 262 to 346¾ bushels of Indian corn; in other words,
+    _from 87 to 115 bushels to the acre_. In Minnesota the prizes were
+    given for crops of 300 to 1120 bushels of potatoes to the acre,
+    _i.e._ from 8¼ to 31 tons to the acre, while the average potato crop
+    in Great Britain is only 6 tons.
+
+
+These are _facts_, not theories. Here is another quotation from Prince
+Kropotkin's book. It also relates to America--
+
+
+    The crop from each acre was small, but the machinery was so
+    perfected that in this way 300 days of one man's labour produced
+    from 200 to 300 quarters of wheat; in other words, the areas of land
+    being of no account, every man produced in one day his yearly bread
+    food.
+
+
+I shall only make one more quotation. It alludes to the intensive
+wheat-growing on Major Hallett's method in France, and is as follows:--
+
+
+    In fact, the 8½ bushels required for one man's annual food were
+    actually grown at the Tomblaine station on a surface of 2250 square
+    feet, or 47 feet square, _i.e._ on very nearly one-twentieth of an
+    acre.
+
+
+Now remember that our agricultural labourers crowd into the towns and
+compete with the town labourers for work. Remember that we have millions
+of acres of land lying idle, and generally from a quarter to
+three-quarters of a million of men unemployed. Then consider this
+position.
+
+Here we have a million acres of good land producing nothing, and half a
+million men also producing nothing. Land and labour, the two factors of
+wealth production, both idle. Could we not set the men to work? Of
+course we could. Would it pay? To be sure it would pay.
+
+In America, on soil no better than ours, one man can by one day's labour
+produce one man's year's bread. That is, 8½ bushels of wheat.
+
+Suppose we organise our out-of-works under skilled farmers, and give
+them the best machinery. Suppose they only produce one-half the American
+product. They will still be earning more than their keep.
+
+Or set them to work, under skilled directors, on the French or the
+Belgian plan, at the intensive cultivation of vegetables. Let them grow
+huge crops of potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, onions; and in the coal
+counties, where fuel is cheap, let them raise tomatoes and grapes, under
+glass, and they will produce wealth, and be no longer starvelings or
+paupers.
+
+Another good plan would be to allow a Municipality to obtain land, under
+a Compulsory Purchase Act, at a fair rent and near a town, and to relet
+the land to gardeners and small farmers, to work on the French and
+Belgian systems. Let the local Corporation find the capital to make soil
+and lay down heating and draining pipes. Let the Corporation charge rent
+and interest, buy the produce from the growers and resell it to the
+citizens, and let the tenant gardeners be granted fixity of tenure and
+fair payment for improvements, and we shall increase and improve our
+food supply, lessen the overcrowding in our towns, and reduce the
+unemployed to the small number of lazy men who _will_ not work.
+
+It is the imperative duty of every British citizen to insist upon the
+Government doing everything that can be done to restore the national
+agriculture and to remove the dreadful danger of famine in time of war.
+
+National granaries should be formed at once, and at least a year's
+supply of wheat should be kept in stock.
+
+What are the Government doing in this way? Nothing at all.
+
+The only remedy they have to suggest is _Protection_!
+
+What is Protection? It is a tax on foreign wheat. What would be the
+result of Protection? The result would be that the landowner would get
+higher rents and the people would get dearer bread.
+
+How true is Tolstoy's gibe, that "the rich man will do anything for the
+poor man--except get off his back." "Our agriculture," the Tory
+protectionist shrieks, "is perishing. Our farmers cannot make a living.
+Our landlords cannot let their farms. The remedy is Protection." A truly
+practical Tory suggestion. "The farmers cannot pay our rents. British
+agriculture is dying out. Let us put a tax upon the poor man's bread."
+
+Yes; Protection is a remedy, but it must be the protection of the farmer
+against the landlord. Give our farmers fixity of tenure, compensation
+for improvements, and prevent the landlord from taxing the industry and
+brains of the farmer by increase of rent, and British agriculture will
+soon rear its head again.
+
+Quite recently we have had an example of Protection. The coal owners
+combined and raised the price of coal some 6s. to 10s. a ton. It is said
+they cleared more than £60,000,000 sterling on the deal. What good did
+that do the workers? Did the colliers get any of the spoil in wages? No;
+that money is lying up ready to crush the colliers when they next
+strike.
+
+It is the same story over and over again. We cannot have cheap coal
+because the rich owners demand big fortunes; we cannot have cheap houses
+or decent homes because the landlords raise the rents faster than the
+people can increase our trade; we cannot grow our food as cheaply as we
+can buy it because the rich owners of the land squeeze the farmer dry
+and make it impossible for him to live. And the harder the collier, the
+weaver, the farmer, and the mechanic work, the harder the landlord and
+the capitalist squeeze. The industry, skill, and perseverance of the
+workers avail nothing but to make a few rich and idle men richer and
+more idle.
+
+As I have repeatedly pointed out before, we have by sacrificing our
+agriculture destroyed our insular position. As an island we may be, or
+_should be_, free from serious danger of invasion. But of what avail is
+our vaunted silver shield of the sea if we depend upon other nations for
+our food? We are helpless in case of a great war. It is not necessary
+to invade England in order to conquer her. Once our food supply is
+stopped we are shut up like a beleagured city to starve or to surrender.
+
+Stop the import of food into England for three months, and we shall be
+obliged to surrender at discretion.
+
+And our agriculture is to be ruined, and the safety and honour of the
+Empire are to be endangered, that a few landlords, coal owners, and
+money-lenders may wax fat upon the vitals of the nation.
+
+So, I say, we do need Protection; but it is the protection of our
+farmers and colliers, our weavers and our mechanics, our homes, our
+health, our food, our cities, our children and women, yes, our national
+existence--against the rapacity of the rich lords, employers, and
+money-lenders, who impudently pose as the champions of patriotism and
+the expansion of the Empire.
+
+Again, I recommend every Socialist to read the new edition of Prince
+Kropotkin's _Fields, Factories, and Workshops_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE SUCCESSFUL MAN
+
+
+There are many who believe that if all the workers became abstainers,
+worked harder, lived sparely, and saved every penny they could; and that
+if they avoided early marriages and large families, they would all be
+happy and prosperous without Socialism.
+
+And, of course, these same persons believe that the bulk of the
+suffering and poverty of the poor is due to drink, to thriftlessness,
+and to imprudent marriages.
+
+I know that many, very many, do believe these things, because I used to
+meet such persons when I went out lecturing.
+
+Now I know that belief to be wrong. I know that if every working man and
+woman in England turned teetotaler to-morrow, if they all remained
+single, if they all worked like niggers, if they all worked for twelve
+hours a day, if they lived on oatmeal and water, and if they saved every
+farthing they could spare, they would, at the end of twenty years, be a
+great deal worse off than they are to-day.
+
+Sobriety, thrift, industry, skill, self-denial, holiness, are all good
+things; but they would, if adopted by _all_ the workers, simply enrich
+the idle and the wicked, and reduce the industrious and the righteous to
+slavery.
+
+Teetotalism will not do; industry will not do; saving will not do;
+increased skill will not do; keeping single will not do; reducing the
+population will not do. Nothing _will_ do but _Socialism_.
+
+I mean to make these things plain to you if I can.
+
+I will begin by answering a statement made by a Tory M.P. As reported in
+the Press, the M.P. said, "There was nothing to prevent the son of a
+crossing-sweeper from rising to be Lord Chancellor of England."
+
+This, at first sight, would seem to have nothing to do with the theories
+regarding thrift, temperance, and prudent marriages. But we shall find
+that it arises from the same error.
+
+This error has two faces. On one face it says that any man may do well
+if he will try, and on the other face it says that those who do not do
+well have no one but themselves to blame.
+
+The error rises from a slight confusion of thought. Men know that a man
+may rise from the lowest place in life to almost the highest, and they
+suppose that because one man can do it, _all_ men can do it; they know
+that if one man works hard, saves, keeps sober, and remains single, he
+will get more money than other men who drink and spend and take life
+easily, and they suppose because thrift, single life, industry, and
+temperance spell success to one man, they would spell success to _all_.
+
+I will show you that this is a mistake, and I will show you why it is a
+mistake. Let us begin with the crossing-sweeper.
+
+We are told that "_there is nothing to prevent_ the son of _a_
+crossing-sweeper from becoming Lord Chancellor of England." But our M.P.
+does not mean that there is nothing to prevent the son of some one
+particular crossing-sweeper from becoming Chancellor; he means that
+there is nothing to prevent _any_ son of _any_ crossing-sweeper, or the
+son of _any_ very poor man, from becoming rich and famous.
+
+Now, let me show you what nonsense this is.
+
+There are in all England, let us say, some 2,000,000 of poor and
+friendless and untaught boys.
+
+And there is _one_ Lord Chancellor. Now, it is just possible for _one_
+boy out of the 2,000,000 to become Lord Chancellor; but it is quite
+impossible for _all_ the boys, or even for one boy in 1000, or for one
+boy in 10,000, to become Lord Chancellor.
+
+Our M.P. means that if a boy is clever and industrious he may become
+Lord Chancellor.
+
+But suppose _all_ the boys are as clever and as industrious as he is,
+they cannot _all_ become chancellors.
+
+The one boy can only succeed because he is stronger, cleverer, more
+pushing, more persistent, or more _lucky_ than any other boy.
+
+In my story, _Bob's Fairy_, this very point is raised. I will quote it
+for you here. Bob, who is a boy, is much troubled about the poor; his
+father, who is a self-made man and mayor of his native town, tells Bob
+that the poor are suffering because of their own faults. The parson then
+tries to make Bob understand--
+
+
+    "Come, come, come," said the reverend gentleman, "you are too young
+    for such questions. Ah--let me try to--ah--explain it to you. Here
+    is your father. He is wealthy. He is honoured. He is mayor of his
+    native town. Now, how did he make his way?"
+
+    Mr. Toppinroyd smiled, and poured himself out another glass of wine.
+    His wife nodded her head approvingly at the minister.
+
+    "Your father," continued the minister, "made himself what he is by
+    industry, thrift, and talent."
+
+    "If another man was as clever, and as industrious and thrifty as
+    father," said Bob, "could he get on as well?"
+
+    "Of course he could," replied Mr. Toppinroyd.
+
+    "Then the poor are not like that?" asked Bob.
+
+    "I regret to say," said the parson, "that--ah--they are not."
+
+    "But if they were like father, they could do what he has done?" Bob
+    said.
+
+    "Of course, you silly," exclaimed his mother.
+
+    Ned chuckled behind his paper. Kate turned to the piano.
+
+    Bob nodded and smiled. "How droll!" said he.
+
+    "What's droll?" his father asked sharply.
+
+    "Why," said Bob, "how funny it would be if all the people were
+    industrious, and clever, and steady!"
+
+    "Funny?" ejaculated the parson.
+
+    "Funny?" repeated Mr. Toppinroyd.
+
+    "What do you mean, dear?" inquired Mrs. Toppinroyd mildly.
+
+    "If all the men in Loomborough were as clever and as good as
+    father," said Bob simply, "there would be 50,000 rich mill-owners,
+    and they would all be mayor of the same town."
+
+    Mr. Toppinroyd gave a sharp glance at his son, then leaned forward,
+    boxed his ears, and said--
+
+    "Get to bed, you young monkey. Go!"
+
+
+Do you see the idea? The poor cannot _all_ be mayors and chancellors and
+millionaires, because there are too many of them and not enough high
+places.
+
+But they can all be asses, and they will be asses, if they listen to
+such rubbish as that uttered by this Tory M.P.
+
+You have twenty men starting for a race. You may say, "There is nothing
+to prevent any man from winning the race," but you mean any one man who
+is luckier or swifter than the rest. You would never be foolish enough
+to believe that _all_ the men could win. You know that nineteen of the
+men _must lose_.
+
+So we know that in a race for the Chancellorship _only one_ boy can win,
+and the other 1,999,999 _must lose_.
+
+It is the same thing with temperance, industry, and cleverness. Of
+10,000 mechanics one is steadier, more industrious, and more skilful
+than the others. Therefore he will get work where the others cannot. But
+_why_? Because he is worth more as a workman. But don't you see that if
+all the others were as good as he, he would _not_ be worth more?
+
+Then you see that to tell 1,000,000 men that they will get more work or
+more wages if they are cleverer, or soberer, or more industrious, is as
+foolish as to tell the twenty men starting for a race that they can all
+win if they will all try.
+
+If all the men were just as fast as the winner, the race would end in a
+dead heat.
+
+There is a fire panic in a big hall. The hall is full of people, and
+there is only one door. A rush is made for that door. Some of the crowd
+get out, some are trampled to death, some are injured, some are burned.
+
+Now, of that crowd of people, who are most likely to escape?
+
+Those nearest to the door have a better chance than those farthest, have
+they not?
+
+Then the strong have a better chance than the weak, have they not?
+
+And the men have a better chance than the women, and the children the
+worst chance of all. Is it not so?
+
+Then, again, which is most likely to be saved--the selfish man who
+fights and drags others down, who stands upon the fallen bodies of women
+and children, and wins his way by force; or the brave and gentle man who
+tries to help the women and the children, and will not trample upon the
+wounded?
+
+Don't you know that the noble and brave man stands a poor chance of
+escape, and that the selfish, brutal man stands a good chance of escape?
+
+Well, now, suppose a man to have got out, perhaps because he was near
+the door, or perhaps because he was very strong, or perhaps because he
+was very lucky, or perhaps because he did not stop to help the women and
+children, and suppose him to stand outside the door, and cry out to the
+struggling and dying creatures in the burning hall, "Serves you jolly
+well right if you _do_ suffer. Why don't you get out? _I_ got out. You
+can get out if you _try_. _There is nothing to prevent any one of you
+from getting out._"
+
+Suppose a man talked like that, what would you say of him? Would you
+call him a sensible man? Would you call him a Christian? Would you call
+him a gentleman?
+
+You will say I am severe. I am. Every time a successful man talks as
+this M.P. talks he inflicts a brutal insult upon the unsuccessful, many
+thousands of whom, both men and women, are worthier and better than
+himself.
+
+But let us go back to our subject. That fire panic in the big hall is a
+picture of _life_ as it is to-day.
+
+It is a scramble of a big crowd to get through a small door. Those who
+get through are cheered and rewarded, and few questions are asked as to
+_how_ they got through.
+
+Now, Socialists say that there should be more doors, and no scramble.
+
+But let me use this example of the hall and the panic more fully.
+
+Suppose the hall to be divided into three parts. First the stalls, then
+the pit stalls, then the pit. Suppose the only door is the door in the
+stalls. Suppose the people in the pit stalls have to climb a high
+barrier to get to the stalls. Suppose those in the pit have to climb a
+high barrier to get to the pit stalls, and then the high barrier that
+parts the pit stalls from the stalls. Suppose there is, right at the
+back of the pit, a small, weak boy. Now, I ask you, as sensible men, is
+there "nothing to prevent" that boy from getting through that door? You
+know the boy has only the smallest of chances of getting out of that
+hall. But he has a thousand times a better chance of getting safely out
+of that door than the son of a crossing-sweeper has of becoming Lord
+Chancellor of England.
+
+In our hall the upper classes would sit in the stalls, the middle
+classes in the pit stalls, and the workers in the pit. _Whose son would
+have the best chance for the door?_
+
+I compared the race for the Chancellorship just now to a foot-race of
+twenty men; and I showed you that if all the runners were as fleet as
+greyhounds only one could win, and nineteen _must_ lose.
+
+But the M.P.'s crossing-sweeper's son has to enter a race where there
+are millions of starters, and where the race is a _handicap_ in which he
+is on scratch, with thousands of men more than half the course in front
+of him.
+
+For don't you see that this race which the lucky or successful men tell
+us we can _all_ win is not a fair race?
+
+The son of the crossing-sweeper has terrible odds against him. The son
+of the gentleman has a long start, and carries less weight.
+
+What are the qualities needed in a race for the Chancellorship? The boy
+who means to win must be marvellously strong, clever, brave, and
+persevering.
+
+Now, will he be likely to be strong? He _may_ be, but the odds are
+against him. His father may not be strong nor his mother, for they may
+have worked hard, and they may not have been well fed, nor well nursed,
+nor well doctored. They probably live in a slum, and they cannot train,
+nor teach, nor feed their son in a healthy and proper way, because they
+are ignorant and poor. And the boy gets a few years at a board school,
+and then goes to work.
+
+But the gentleman's son is well bred, well fed, well nursed, well
+trained, and lives in a healthy place. He goes to good schools, and from
+school to college.
+
+And when he leaves college he has money to pay fees, and he has a name,
+and he has education; and I ask you, what are the odds against the son
+of a crossing-sweeper in a race like that?
+
+Well, there is not a single case where men are striving for wealth or
+for place where the sons of the workers are not handicapped in the same
+way. Now and again a worker's son wins. He may win because he is a
+genius like Stephenson or Sir William Herschel; or he may win because he
+is cruel and unscrupulous, like Jay Gould; or he may win because he is
+lucky.
+
+But it is folly to say that there is "nothing to prevent him" from
+winning. There is almost everything to prevent him. To begin with, his
+chances of dying before he's five years old are about ten times as
+numerous as the chances of a rich man's son.
+
+Look at Lord Salisbury. He is Prime Minister of England. Had he been
+born the son of a crossing-sweeper do you think he would have been Prime
+Minister?
+
+I would undertake to find a hundred better minds than Lord Salisbury's
+in any English town of 10,000 inhabitants. But will any one of the boys
+I should select become Prime Minister of England? You know they will
+not. But yet they ought to, if "there is nothing to prevent them."
+
+But there is something to prevent them. There is poverty to prevent
+them, there is privilege to prevent them, there is snobbery to prevent
+them, there is class feeling to prevent them, there are hundreds of
+other things to prevent them, and amongst those hundreds of other things
+to prevent them from becoming Prime Ministers I hope that their own
+honesty and goodness and wisdom may be counted; for honesty and goodness
+and true wisdom are things which will often prevent a poor boy who is
+lucky enough to possess them from ever becoming what the world of
+politics and commerce considers a "successful man."
+
+Do not believe the doctrine that the rich and poor, the successful and
+the unsuccessful, get what they deserve. If that were true we should
+find intelligence and virtue keeping level with income. Then the
+mechanic at 30s. a week would be half as good again as the labourer at
+20s. a week; the small merchant, making £200 a year, would be a far
+better man than one mechanic; the large merchant, making £2000 a year,
+would be ten times as good as the small merchant; and the millionaire
+would be too intellectual, too noble, and too righteous for this sinful
+world.
+
+But don't you know that there are stupid and drunken mechanics, and
+steady and intelligent labourers? And don't you know that some
+successful men are rascals, and that some very wealthy men are fools?
+
+Take the story of Jacob and Esau. After Jacob cheated his hungry brother
+into selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, Jacob was rich and
+Esau poor. Did each get what he deserved? Was Jacob the better man?
+
+Christ lived poor, a homeless wanderer, and died the death of a felon.
+Jay Gould made millions of money, and died one of the wealthiest men in
+the world. Did each get what he deserved? Did the wealth of Gould and
+the poverty of Christ indicate the intellectual and moral merits of
+those two sons of men?
+
+Some of us would get whipped if all of us got our deserts; but who would
+deserve applause and wealth and a crown?
+
+In a sporting handicap the weakest have the most start: in real life the
+strongest have the start and the weakest are put on scratch.
+
+And I _have_ heard it hinted that the man who runs the straightest does
+not always win.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+TEMPERANCE AND THRIFT
+
+
+I said in the previous chapter that if _all_ the workers were very
+thrifty, sober, industrious, and abstemious they would be worse off in
+the matter of wages than they are now.
+
+This, at first sight, seems strange, because we know that the sober and
+thrifty workman is generally better off than the workman who drinks or
+wastes his money.
+
+But why is he better off? He is better off because, being a steady man,
+he can often get work when an unsteady man cannot. He is better off
+because he buys things that add to his comfort, or he saves money, and
+so grows more independent. And he is able to save money, and to make his
+home more cosy, because, while he is more regularly employed than the
+unsteady men, his wages remain the same, or, perhaps, are something
+higher than theirs.
+
+That is to say, he benefits by his own steadiness and thrift because his
+steadiness makes him a more reliable, and therefore a more valuable,
+workman than one who is not steady.
+
+But, you see, he is only more valuable because other men are less
+steady. If all the other workmen were as steady as he is he would be no
+more valuable than they are. Not being more valuable than they are, he
+would not be more certain of getting work.
+
+That is to say, if all the workers were sober and thrifty, they would
+all be of equal value to the employer.
+
+But you may say they would still be better off than if they drank and
+wasted their wages. They would have better health, and they would have
+happier lives and more comfortable homes.
+
+Yes, so long as their wages were as high as before. But their wages
+would _not_ be as high as before.
+
+You must know that as things now are, where all the work is in the gift
+of private employers, and where wages and prices are ruled by
+competition, and where new inventions of machinery are continually
+throwing men out of work, and where farm labourers are always drifting
+to the towns, there are more men in need of work than work can be found
+for.
+
+Therefore, there is always a large number of workers out of work.
+
+Now, under competition, where two men offer themselves for one place,
+you know that the place will be given to the man who will take the lower
+wage.
+
+And you know that the thrifty and the sober man can live on less than
+the thriftless man.
+
+And you know that where two or more employers are offering their goods
+against each other for sale in the open market, the one who sells his
+goods the cheapest will get the trade. And you know that in order to
+sell their goods at a cheaper rate than other dealers, the employers
+will try to _get_ their goods at the cheapest rate possible.
+
+And you know that with most goods the chief cost is the cost of the
+labour used in the making--that is to say, the wages of the workers.
+
+Very well, you have more workers than are needed, so that there is
+competition amongst those workers as to who shall be employed.
+
+And those will be employed who are the cheapest.
+
+And those who can live upon least can afford to work for least.
+
+And all the workers being sober and thrifty, they can all live on less
+than when many of them were wasteful and fond of drink.
+
+Then, on the other hand, all the employers are competing for the trade,
+and so are all wanting cheap labour; and so are eager to lower wages.
+
+Therefore wages will come down, and the general thrift and steadiness of
+the workers will make them poorer. Do you doubt this? What is that tale
+the masters so often tell you? Do they not tell you that England
+depends upon her foreign trade for her food? And do they not tell you
+that foreign traders are stealing the trade from the English traders?
+And do they not tell you that the foreign traders can undersell us in
+the world's markets because their labour is cheaper? And do they not say
+that if the British workers wish to keep the foreign trade they will
+have to be as thrifty and as industrious and as sober as the foreign
+workers?
+
+Well, what does that mean? It means that if the British workers were as
+thrifty and sober and industrious as the foreign workers, they could
+live on less than they now need. It means that if you were all
+teetotalers and all thrifty, you could work for less wages than they now
+pay, and so they would be able to sell their goods at a lower price than
+they can now; and thus they would keep the foreign trade.
+
+Is not that all quite clear and plain? And is it not true that in
+France, in Germany, and all other countries where the workers live more
+sparely, and are more temperate than the workers are in England, the
+wages are lower and the hours of work longer?
+
+And is it not true that the Chinese and the Hindoos, who are the most
+temperate and the most thrifty people in the world, are always the worst
+paid?
+
+And do you not know very well that the "Greeners"--the foreign Jews who
+come to England for work and shelter--are very sober and very thrifty
+and very industrious men, and that they are about the worst-paid workers
+in this country?
+
+Take now, as an example, the case of the cotton trade. The masters tell
+you that they find it hard to compete against the Indian factories, and
+they say if Lancashire wants to keep the trade the Lancashire workers
+must accept the conditions of the Indian workers.
+
+The Indian workers live chiefly on rice and water, and work far longer
+hours than do the English workers.
+
+And don't you see that if the Lancashire workers would live upon rice
+and water, the masters would soon have their wages down to rice and
+water point?
+
+And then the Indians would have to live on less, or work still longer
+hours, and so the game would go on.
+
+And who would reap the benefit? The English masters and the Indian
+masters (who are often one and the same) would still take a large share,
+but the chief benefit of the fall in price would go to the buyers--or
+users, or "consumers"--of the goods.
+
+That is to say, that the workers of India and of England would be
+starved and sweated, so that the natives of other countries could have
+cheap clothing.
+
+If you doubt what I say, look at the employers' speeches, read the
+newspapers which are in the employers' pay, add two and two together,
+and you will find it all out for yourselves.
+
+To return to the question of temperance and thrift. You see, I hope,
+that if _all_ the people were sober and thrifty they would be really
+worse off than they now are. This is because the workers must have work,
+must ask the employers to give them work, and must ask employers who,
+being in competition with each other, are always trying to get the work
+done at the lowest price.
+
+And the lowest price is always the price which the bulk of the workers
+are content to live upon.
+
+In all foreign nations where the standard of living is lower than in
+England, you will find that the wages are lower also.
+
+Have we not often heard our manufacturers declare that if the British
+workers would emulate the thrift and sobriety of the foreigner they
+might successfully compete against foreign competition in the foreign
+market? What does that mean, but that thrift would enable our people to
+live on less, and so to accept less wages?
+
+Why are wages of women in the shirt trade low?
+
+It is because capitalism always keeps the wages down to the lowest
+standard of subsistence which the people will accept.
+
+So long as our English women will consent to work long hours, and live
+on tea and bread, the "law of supply and demand" will maintain the
+present condition of sweating in the shirt trade.
+
+If all our women became firmly convinced that they could not exist
+without chops and bottled stout, the wages _must_ go up to a price to
+pay for those things.
+
+_Because there would be no women offering to live on tea and bread_; and
+shirts _must_ be had.
+
+But what is the result of the abstinence of these poor sisters of ours?
+Low wages for themselves, and, for others?----
+
+A young merchant wants a dozen shirts. He pays 10s. each for them. He
+meets a friend who only gave 8s. for his. He goes to the 8s. shop and
+saves 2s. This is clear profit, and he spends it in cigars, or
+champagne, or in some other luxury; _and the poor seamstress lives on
+toast and tea._
+
+But although I say that sobriety and thrift, if adopted by _all_ the
+workers, would result in lower wages, you are not to suppose that I
+advise you all to be drunkards and spendthrifts.
+
+No. The proper thing is to do away with competition. At present the
+employers, in the scramble to undersell each other, actually fine you
+for your virtue and self-denial by lowering your wages, just as the
+landlords fine a tenant for improving his land or enlarging his house or
+extending his business--fine him by raising his rent.
+
+And now we may, I think, come to the question of imprudent marriages.
+
+The idea seems to be that a man should not marry until he is "in a
+position to keep a wife." And it is a very common thing for employers,
+and other well-to-do persons, to tell working men that they "have no
+right to bring children into the world until they are able to provide
+for them."
+
+Now let us clear the ground a little before we begin to deal with this
+question on its economic side--that is, as it affects wages.
+
+It is bad for men and women to marry too young. It is bad for two
+reasons. Firstly, because the body is not mature; and secondly, because
+the mind is not settled. That is to say, an over-early marriage has a
+bad effect on the health; and since young people must, in the nature of
+things, change very much as they grow older, an over-early marriage is
+often unhappy.
+
+I think a woman would be wise not to marry before she is about
+four-and-twenty; and I think it is better that the husband should be
+from five to ten years older than the wife.
+
+Then it is very bad for a woman to have many children; and not only is
+it bad for her health, but it destroys nearly all the pleasure of her
+life, so that she is an enfeebled and weary drudge through her best
+years, and is old before her time.
+
+That much conceded, I ask you, Mr. John Smith, what do you think of the
+request that you shall work hard, live spare, and give up a man's right
+to love, to a home, to children, in order that you may be able to "make
+a living"? Such a living is not worth working for. It would be a manlier
+and a happier lot to die.
+
+Here is the idea as it has been expressed by a working man--
+
+
+    Up to now I had thought that the object of life was to live, and
+    that the object of love was to love. But the economists have changed
+    all that. There is neither love nor life, sentiment nor affection.
+    The earth is merely a vast workshop, where all is figured by debit
+    and credit, and where supply and demand regulates everything. You
+    have no right to live unless the industrial market demands hands; a
+    woman has no business to bring forth a child unless the capitalist
+    requires live stock.
+
+
+I cannot really understand a _man_ selling his love and his manhood, and
+talking like a coward or a slave about "imprudent marriages"; and all
+for permission to drudge at an unwelcome task, and to eat and sleep for
+a few lonely and dishonourable years in a loveless and childless world.
+
+You don't think _that_ is going to save you, men, do you? You don't
+think you are going to make the best of life by selling for the sake of
+drudgery and bread and butter your proud man's right to work for, fight
+for, and die for the woman you love?
+
+For, having sold your love for permission to work, how long will you be
+before you sell your honour? Nay, is it not true that many of you have
+sold it already?
+
+For every man who works at jerry work, or takes a part in any kind of
+adulteration, scampery, or trade rascality, is selling his honour for
+wages, and is just as big a scamp and a good deal more of a coward than
+a burglar or a highwayman.
+
+And the commercial travellers and the canvassers and the agents who get
+their living by telling lies,--as some of them do,--do you call those
+_men_?
+
+And the gentlemen of the Press who write against their convictions for a
+salary, and for the sake of a suburban villa, a silk hat, and some cheap
+claret, devote their energies and talents to the perpetuation of
+falsehood and wrong--do you call _those_ men?
+
+If we cannot keep our foreign trade without giving up our love and our
+manhood and our honour, it is time the foreign trade went to the devil
+and took the British employers with it.
+
+If the state of things in England to-day makes it impossible for men and
+women to love and marry, then the state of things in England to-day will
+not do.
+
+Well, do you still think that single life, a crust of bread, and rags,
+will alone enable you to hold your own and to keep your foreign trade?
+And do you still think that poverty is a mark of unworthiness, and
+wealth the sure proof of merit? If so, just read these few lines from an
+article by a Tory Minister, Sir John Gorst--
+
+
+    The "won't-works" are very few in number, but the section of the
+    population who cannot earn enough wages all the year round to live
+    decently is very large.
+
+    Professional criminals are not generally poor, for when out of gaol
+    they live very comfortably as a rule. There are wastrels, of course,
+    who have sunk so low as to have a positive aversion to work, and it
+    is people of this kind who are most noisy in parading their poverty.
+    The industrious poor, on the other hand, shrink from exposing their
+    wretchedness to the world, and strive as far as possible to keep it
+    out of sight.
+
+
+Now, contrast those sensible and kindly words with the following
+quotation from a mercantile journal:--
+
+
+    The talk about every man having a right to work is fallacious, for
+    he can only have the right of every free man to do work if he can
+    get it.
+
+
+Yes! But he has other "rights." He has the right to combine to defeat
+attempts to rob him of work or to lower his wages; he has the right to
+vote for parliamentary and municipal candidates who will alter the laws
+and the conditions of society which enable a few greedy and heartless
+men to disorganise the industries of the nation, to keep the Briton off
+the land which is his birthright, to exploit the brain and the sinew of
+the people, and to condemn millions of innocent and helpless women and
+children to poverty, suffering, ignorance, and too often to disgrace or
+early death.
+
+A man, John Smith, has the right to _be a man_, and, if he is a Briton,
+has a right to be a free man. It is to persuade every man in Britain to
+exercise this right, and to do his duty to the children and the women of
+his class and family, that I am publishing this book.
+
+"The right to do work if he can get it," John, and to starve if he
+cannot get it.
+
+How long will you allow these insolent market-men to insult you? How
+long will you allow a mob of money-lending, bargain-driving,
+dividend-snatching parasites to live on you, to scorn you, and to treat
+you as "live stock"? How long? How long?
+
+I shall have to write a book for the women, John.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE SURPLUS LABOUR MISTAKE
+
+
+Many non-Socialists believe that the cause of poverty is "surplus
+labour," or over-population, and they tell us that if we could reduce
+our population we should have no poor.
+
+If this were true, we should find that in thinly populated countries the
+workers fare better than in countries where the population is more
+dense.
+
+But we do not find anything of the kind.
+
+The population of Ireland is thin. There are more people in London than
+in all Ireland. Yet the working people of Ireland are worse off than the
+working people of England.
+
+The population of Scotland is thinner than that of England, but wages
+rule higher in England.
+
+In Australia there is a large country and a small population, but there
+is plenty of poverty.
+
+In the Middle Ages the entire population of England would only be a few
+millions--say four or five millions--whereas it is now nearly thirty
+millions. Yet the working classes are very much better off to-day than
+they were in the eighth and ninth centuries.
+
+Reduce the population of Britain to one million and the workers would be
+in no better case than they are now. Increase the population to sixty
+millions and the workers will be no worse off--at least so far as wages
+are concerned.
+
+I will give you the reason for this in a few words, using an
+illustration which used to serve me for the same purpose in one of my
+lectures.
+
+No one will deny that all wealth--whether food, tools, clothing,
+furniture, machines, arms, or houses--comes from _the land_.
+
+For we feed our cattle and poultry on the land, and get from the land
+corn, malt, hops, iron, timber, and every other thing we use, except
+fish and a few sea-drugs; and we could not get fish without nets and
+boats, nor make nets and boats without fibre and wood and metals.
+
+Stand a decanter and a tumbler on a bare table. Call the table Britain,
+call the decanter a landlord, and call the tumbler a labourer.
+
+Now no man can produce wealth without land. If, then, Lord de Canter
+owns all the land, and Tommy Tumbler owns none, how is Tommy Tumbler to
+get his living?
+
+He will have to work for Lord de Canter, and he will have to take the
+wage his lordship offers him.
+
+Now you cannot say that Britain is over-populated with only two men, nor
+that it is suffering from a superfluity of labour when there is only one
+labourer. And yet you observe that with only two men in the country one
+is rich and the other poor.
+
+How, then, will a reduction of the population prevent poverty?
+
+Look at this diagram. A square board, with two men on it; one is black
+and one is white.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3.]
+
+Call the board England, the black pawn a landlord, and the white pawn a
+labourer.
+
+Let me repeat that every useful thing comes out of the land, and then
+ask this simple question: If _all_ the land--the whole of
+England--belongs to the black man, how is the white man going to get his
+living?
+
+You see, although the population of England consists of only two men,
+if one of these men owns _all_ the land, the other man must starve, or
+steal, or beg, or work for wages.
+
+Now, suppose our white man works for wages--works for the black
+man--what is going to regulate the wages? Will the fact that there is
+only one beggar make that beggar any richer? If there were ten white
+men, and _all_ the land belonged to the black man, the ten whites would
+be as well off as the one white was, for the landowner could find them
+all work, and could get them to work for just as much as they could live
+on.
+
+No: that idea of raising wages by reducing the population is a mistake.
+Do not the workers _make_ the wealth? They do. And is it not odd to say
+that we will increase the wealth by reducing the number of the wealth
+makers?
+
+But perhaps you think the workers might get a bigger _share_ of the
+wealth if there were fewer of them.
+
+How? Our black man owns all England. He has 100 whites working for him
+at wages just big enough to keep them alive. Of those 100 whites 50 die.
+Will the black man raise the wages of the remaining 50? Why should he?
+There is no reason why he should. But there is this reason why he should
+not, viz. that as he has now only 50 men working for him, he will only
+be half as rich as he was when he had 100 men working for him. But the
+land is still his, and the whites are still in his power. He will still
+pay them just as much as they can live on, and no more.
+
+But you may say that if the workers decreased and the masters did not
+decrease in numbers, wages must rise.
+
+Suppose you have in the export cotton trade 100 masters and 100,000
+workers. Half the workers die. You have now 100 masters and 50,000
+workers.
+
+Then you may say that, as foreign countries would still want the work of
+100,000 workers, the 100 masters would compete as to which got the
+biggest orders, and so wages would rise.
+
+But bear in mind two things. First, if the foreign workers were as
+numerous as before, the English masters could import hands; second, if
+the foreign workers died out as fast as the English, there would only
+be half as many foreigners needing shirts, and so the trade would keep
+pace with the decrease in workers, and the wages would remain as they
+were.
+
+To improve the wages of the English workers the price of cotton goods
+must rise or the profits of the masters must be cut down.
+
+Neither of these things depends on the number of the population.
+
+But now go back to our England with the three men in it. Here is the
+black landlord, rich and idle; and the two white workers, poor and
+industrious. One of the workers dies. The landlord gets less money, but
+the remaining worker gets no more. _There are only two men in all
+England, and one of them is poor._
+
+But suppose we have one black landlord and 100 white workers, and the
+workers adopt Socialism. Then every man of the 101 will have just what
+he earns, and _all_ that he earns, and all will be free men.
+
+Thus you see that under Socialism a big population will be better off
+than the smallest population can be under non-Socialism.
+
+But, the non-Socialist objects, wages are ruled by competition, and must
+fall when the supply of labour exceeds the demand; and when that happens
+it is because the country is over-populated.
+
+I admit that the supply of labour often exceeds the demand, and that
+when it does, wages may come down. But I deny that an excess of labour
+over the demand for labour proves the country to be over-populated. What
+it does prove is that the country is badly governed and
+under-cultivated.
+
+A country is over-populated when its soil cannot yield food for its
+people. At present our population is about 40,000,000 and our soil would
+support more than double the number.
+
+The country, then, is not over-populated; it is badly governed.
+
+There are, let us say, more shoemakers and tailors than there is
+employment for. But are there no bare feet and ill-clothed backs?
+Certainly. The bulk of our workers are not properly shod or clothed. It
+is not, then, true to say that we have more tailors and shoemakers than
+we require; but we ought to say instead that our tailors and shoemakers
+cannot live by their trades because the rest of the workers are too poor
+to pay them. Now, why are the rest of the workers too poor to buy boots
+and clothing? Is it because there are too many of them? Let us take an
+instance: the farm labourer. He cannot afford boots. Why? He is too
+poor. Why? Not because there are too many farm labourers,--for there are
+too few,--but because the wages of farm labourers are low. Why are they
+low? Because agriculture is neglected, and because rents are high. So we
+come back to my original statement, that the evil is due to the private
+ownership of land.
+
+The many are poor because the few are rich.
+
+But, again, it may be asserted that we have always about half a million
+of men unemployed, and that these men prove the existence of superfluous
+labour.
+
+Not at all. There are half a million of men out of work, but there are
+many millions of acres idle. Abolish private ownership of land, and the
+nation, being now owner of _all_ land, can at once find work for that
+so-called "superfluous labour."
+
+All wealth comes from the land. All wealth must be got from the land by
+labour. Given a sufficient quantity of land, one man can produce from
+the land more wealth than one man can consume. Therefore, as long as
+there is a sufficiency of land there can be no such thing as
+"superfluous labour," and no such thing as over-population. Given
+machinery and combination, and probably one man can produce from the
+land enough wealth for ten to consume. Why, then, should there be any
+such thing as poverty?
+
+One fundamental truth of economics is that every able-bodied and willing
+worker is worth more than his keep.
+
+There is such a thing as locked-out labour, but there is no such thing
+in this country as useless labour. While we have land lying idle, and
+while we have to import our food, how can we be so foolish as to call a
+man who is excluded from the land superfluous? He is one of the factors
+of wealth, and land is the other. Set the man on the land and he will
+produce wealth. At present he is out of work and the land out of use.
+But are either of them superfluous? No; we need both.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+IS SOCIALISM POSSIBLE, AND WILL IT PAY?
+
+
+Non-Socialists assert with the utmost confidence that Socialism is
+impossible. Let us consider this statement in a practical way.
+
+We are told that Socialism is impossible. That means that the people
+have not the ability to manage their own affairs, and must, perforce,
+give nearly all the wealth they produce to the superior persons who at
+present are kind enough to own, to govern, and to manage Britain for the
+British.
+
+A bold statement! The people _cannot_ manage their own business: it is
+_impossible_. They cannot farm the land, and build the factories, and
+weave the cloth, and feed and clothe and house themselves; they are not
+able to do it. They must have landlords and masters to do it for them.
+
+But the joke is that these landlords and masters do _not_ do it for the
+people. The people do it for the landlords and masters; and the latter
+gentlemen make the people pay them for allowing the people to work.
+
+But the people can only produce wealth under supervision; they must have
+superior persons to direct them. So the non-Socialist declares.
+
+Another bold assertion, which is not true. For nearly all those things
+which the non-Socialist tells us are impossible _are being done_. Nearly
+all those matters of management, of which the people are said to be
+incapable, are being accomplished by the people _now_.
+
+For if the nation can build warships, why can they not build cargo
+ships? If they can make rifles, why not sewing machines or ploughs? If
+they can build forts, why not houses? If they can make policemen's
+boots and soldiers' coats, why not make ladies' hats and mechanics'
+trousers? If they can pickle beef for the navy, why should they not make
+jam for the household? If they can run a railway across the African
+desert, why should they not run one from London to York?
+
+Look at the Co-operative Societies. They own and run cargo ships. They
+import and export goods. They make boots and foods. They build their own
+shops and factories. They buy and sell vast quantities of useful things.
+
+Well, these places were started by working men, and are owned by working
+men.
+
+Look at the post office. If the nation can carry its own letters, why
+not its own coals? If it can manage its telegraphs, why not its
+railways, its trams, its cabs, its factories?
+
+Look at the London County Council and the Glasgow and Manchester
+Corporations. If these bodies of public servants can build
+dwelling-houses, make roads, tunnels, and sewers, carry water from
+Thirlmere to Manchester, manage the Ship Canal, make and supply gas, own
+and work tramways, and take charge of art galleries, baths, wash-houses,
+and technical schools, what is there that landlords or masters do, or
+get done, which the cities and towns cannot do better and more cheaply
+for themselves?
+
+What sense is there in pretending that the colliers could not get coal
+unless they paid rent to a lord, or that the railways could not carry
+coal unless they paid dividends to a company, or that the weaver could
+not make shirtings, nor the milliners bonnets, nor the cutlers blades,
+just as well for the nation as for Mr. Bounderby or my Lord Tomnoddy?
+
+"But," the "Impossibles" will say, "you have not got the capital."
+
+Do not believe them. You _have_ got the capital. Where? In your brains
+and in your arms, where _all_ the capital comes from.
+
+Why, if what the "Impossibles" tell us be true--if the people are not
+able to do anything for themselves as well as the private dealers or
+makers can do it for them--the gas and water companies ought to have no
+fear of being cut out in price and quality by any County Council or
+Corporation.
+
+But the "Impossibles" know very well that, directly the people set up on
+their own account, the private trader or maker is beaten. Let one
+district of London begin to make its own gas, and see what will happen
+in the other districts.
+
+Twenty years ago this cry of "Impossible" was not so easy to dispose of,
+but to-day it can be silenced by the logic of accomplished facts. For
+within the last score of years the Municipalities of London, Glasgow,
+Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham, Bolton, Leicester, and
+other large towns have _proved_ that the Municipalities can manage large
+and small enterprises efficiently, and that in all cases it is to the
+advantage of the ratepayers, of the consumers, and of the workers that
+private management should be displaced by management under the
+Municipality.
+
+Impossible? Why, the capital already invested in municipal works amounts
+to nearly £100,000,000. And the money is well invested, and all the work
+is prosperous.
+
+Municipalities own and manage waterworks, gasworks, tramways,
+telephones, electric lighting, markets, baths, piers, docks, parks,
+farms, dwelling-houses, abattoirs, cemeteries, crematoriums, libraries,
+schools, art galleries, hotels, dairies, colleges, and technical
+schools. Many of the Municipalities also provide concerts, open-air
+music, science classes, and lectures; and quite recently the Alexandra
+Palace has been municipalised, and is now being successfully run by the
+people and for the people.
+
+How, then, can _Socialism_ be called impossible? As a matter of fact
+_Socialism_ is only a method of extending State management, as in the
+Post Office, and Municipal management, as in the cases above named,
+until State and Municipal management becomes universal all through the
+kingdom.
+
+Where is the impossibility of that? If a Corporation can manage trams,
+gas, and water, why can it not manage bread, milk, meat, and beer
+supplies?
+
+If Bradford can manage one hotel, why not more than one? If Bradford can
+manage more than one hotel, why cannot London, Glasgow, Leeds, and
+Portsmouth do the same?
+
+If the German, Austrian, French, Italian, Belgian, and other Governments
+can manage the railway systems of their countries, why cannot the
+British Government manage theirs?
+
+If the Government can manage a fleet of war vessels, why not fleets of
+liners and traders? If the Government can manage post and telegraph
+services, why not telephones and coalmines?
+
+The answer to all these questions is that the Government and the
+Municipalities have proved that they can manage vast and intricate
+businesses, and can manage them more cheaply, more efficiently, and more
+to the advantage and satisfaction of the public than the same class of
+business has ever been managed by private firms.
+
+How can it be maintained, then, that _Socialism_ is impossible?
+
+But, will it _pay_? What! _Will_ it pay? It _does_ pay. Read _To-Day's
+Work_, by George Haw, Clarion Press, 2s. 6d., and _Does Municipal
+Management Pay_? by R. B. Suthers, Clarion Press, 6d., and you will be
+surprised to find how well these large and numerous Municipal
+experiments in _Socialism_ do pay.
+
+From the book on Municipal Management, by R. B. Suthers, above
+mentioned, I will quote a few comparisons between Municipal and private
+tram and water services.
+
+
+WATER
+
+"In Glasgow they devote all profits to making the services cheaper and
+to paying off capital borrowed.
+
+"Thus, since the Glasgow Municipality took control of the water supply,
+forty years ago, they have reduced the price of water from 1s. 2d. in
+the pound rental to 5d. in the pound rental for domestic supply.
+
+"Compare that with the price paid by the London consumer under private
+enterprise.
+
+"On a £30 house in Glasgow the water rate amounts to 12s. 6d.
+
+"On a £30 house in Chelsea the water rate amounts to 30s.
+
+"On a £30 house in Lambeth the water rate is £2, 16s.
+
+"On a £30 house in Southwark the water rate is 32s.
+
+"And so on. The London consumer pays from two to five times as much as
+the Glasgow consumer. He does not get as much water, he does not get as
+good water, and a large part of the money he pays goes into the pockets
+of the water lords.
+
+"Last year the water companies took just over a million in profits from
+the intelligent electors of the Metropolis.
+
+"In Glasgow a part of the 5d. in the pound goes to paying off the
+capital borrowed to provide the waterworks. £2,350,000 has been so
+spent, and over one million of this has been paid back.
+
+"_Does_ Municipal management pay?
+
+"Look at Liverpool. The private companies did not give an adequate
+supply, so the Municipality took the matter in hand. What is the result?
+
+"The charge for water in Liverpool is a fixed rate of 3d. in the pound
+and a water rate of 7½d. in the pound.
+
+"For this comparatively small amount the citizen of Liverpool, as Sir
+Thomas Hughes said, "can have as many baths and as many water closets as
+he likes, and the same with regard to water for his garden."
+
+"In London the water companies make high charges for every separate bath
+and water closet."
+
+
+TRAMWAYS
+
+"In Glasgow from 1871 to 1894 a private company had a lease of the
+tramways from the Corporation.
+
+"When the lease was about to expire the Corporation tried to arrange
+terms with the company for a renewal, but the company would not accept
+the terms offered.
+
+"Moreover, there was a strong public feeling in favour of the
+Corporation working the tramways. The company service was not efficient;
+it was dear, and their bad treatment of their employees had roused
+general indignation.
+
+"So the Corporation decided to manage the tramways, and the day after
+the company's lease expired they placed on the streets an entirely new
+service of cars, cleaner, handsomer, and more comfortable in every way
+than their predecessors'.
+
+"The result of the first eleven months' working was a triumph for
+Municipal management.
+
+"The Corporation had many difficulties to contend with. Their horses
+were new and untrained, their staff was larger and new to the work, and
+the old company flooded the routes with 'buses to compete with the
+trams.
+
+"Notwithstanding these difficulties, they introduced halfpenny fares,
+they lengthened the distance for a penny, they raised the wages of the
+men and shortened their hours, they refused to disfigure the cars with
+advertisements, thus losing a handsome revenue, and in the end were able
+to show a profit of £24,000, which was devoted to the common-good fund
+and to depreciation account.
+
+"Since that time the success of the enterprise has been still more
+wonderful.
+
+"The private company during the last four weeks of their reign carried
+4,428,518 passengers.
+
+"The Corporation in the corresponding four weeks of 1895 carried
+6,114,789.
+
+
+    In the year 1895-6 the Corporation carried       87,000,000
+    In the year 1899-1900                           127,000,000
+    In the year 1900-1                              132,000,000
+    In 1895-6 the receipts were                        £222,121
+    In 1899-1900 the receipts were                     £464,886
+    In 1900-1 the receipts were                        £484,872
+    In 1895 there were                      31 miles of tramway
+    In 1901 there were                      44½    "      "
+    In 1895 the number of cars was                          170
+    In 1901       "        "   was                          322
+
+
+"The citizens of Glasgow have a much better service than the private
+company provided, the fares are from 30 to 50 per cent. lower, the men
+work four hours a day less, and get from 5s. a week more wages, and free
+uniforms, and the capital expended is being gradually wiped out.
+
+"In thirty-three years the capital borrowed will be paid back from a
+sinking fund provided out of the receipts.
+
+"The gross capital expenditure to May 1901 was £1,947,730.
+
+"The sinking fund amounts to £75,063.
+
+"But the Corporation have, in addition, written off £153,796 for
+depreciation, they have placed £91,350 to a Permanent Way Renewal Fund,
+and they have piled up a general reserve fund of £183,428.
+
+"Under a private company £100,000 would have gone into the pockets of a
+few shareholders _on last year's working_--even if the private company
+had charged the same fares and paid the same wages as the Corporation
+did, which is an unlikely assumption."
+
+If you will read the two books I have mentioned, by Messrs. Haw and
+Suthers, you will be convinced by _facts_ that _Socialism_ is possible,
+and that it _will_ pay.
+
+Bear in mind, also, that in all cases where the Municipality has taken
+over some department of public service and supply, the decrease in cost
+and the improvement in service which the ratepayers have secured are not
+the only improvements upon the management of the same work by private
+companies. Invariably the wages, hours, and conditions of men employed
+on Municipal work are superior to those of men employed by companies.
+
+Another thing should be well remembered. The private trader thinks only
+of profit. The Municipality considers the health and comfort of the
+citizens and the beauty and convenience of the city.
+
+Look about and see what the County Council have done and are doing for
+London; and all their improvements have to be carried out in the face of
+opposition from interested and privileged parties. They have to improve
+and beautify London almost by force of arms, working, as one might say,
+under the guns of the enemy.
+
+But if the citizens were all united, if the city had one will to work
+for the general boon, as under _Socialism_ happily it should be, London
+would in a score of years be the richest, the healthiest, and the most
+beautiful city in the world.
+
+_Socialism_, Mr. Smith, is quite possible, and will not only pay but
+bless the nation that has the wisdom to afford full scope to its
+beneficence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE NEED FOR A LABOUR PARTY
+
+
+I am now to persuade you, Mr. John Smith, a British workman, that you
+need a Labour Party. It is a queer task for a bookish man, a literary
+student, and an easy lounger through life, who takes no interest in
+politics and needs no party at all. To persuade you, a worker, that you
+need a worker's party, is like persuading you that you need food,
+shelter, love, and liberty. It is like persuading a soldier that he
+needs arms, a scholar that he needs books, a woman that she needs a
+home. Yet my chief object in writing this book has been to persuade you
+that you need a Labour Party.
+
+Why should Labour have a Labour Party? I will put the answer first into
+the words of the anti-Socialist, and say, Because "self-interest is the
+strongest motive of mankind."
+
+That covers the whole ground, and includes all the arguments that I
+shall advance in favour of a Labour Party.
+
+For if self-interest be the leading motive of human nature, does it not
+follow that when a man wants a thing done for his own advantage he will
+be wise to do it himself.
+
+An upper-class party may be expected to attend to the interests of the
+upper class. And you will find that such a party has always done what
+might be expected. A middle-class party may be expected to attend to the
+interests of the middle class. And history and the logic of current
+events prove that the middle class has done what might have been
+expected.
+
+And if you wish the interests of the working class to be attended to,
+you will take to heart the lesson contained in those examples, and will
+form a working-class party.
+
+Liberals will declare, and do declare, in most pathetic tones, that
+they have done more, and will do more, for the workers than the Tories
+have done or will do. And Liberals will assure you that they are really
+more anxious to help the workers than we Socialists believe.
+
+But those are side issues. The main thing to remember is, that even if
+the Liberals are all they claim to be, they will never do as much for
+Labour as Labour could do for itself.
+
+Is not self-interest the ruling passion in the human heart? Then how
+should _any_ party be so true to Labour and so diligent in Labour's
+service as a Labour Party would be?
+
+What is a Trade Union? It is a combination of workers to defend their
+own interests from the encroachments of the employers.
+
+Well, a Labour Party is a combination of workers to defend their own
+interests from the encroachments of the employers, or their
+representatives in Parliament and on Municipal bodies.
+
+Do you elect your employers as officials of your Trade Unions? Do you
+send employers as delegates to your Trade Union Congress? You would
+laugh at the suggestion. You know that the employer _could_ not attend
+to your interests in the Trade Union, which is formed as a defence
+against him.
+
+Do you think the employer is likely to be more useful or more
+disinterested in Parliament or the County Council than in the Trade
+Union?
+
+Whether he be in Parliament or in his own office, he is an employer, and
+he puts his own interest first and the interests of Labour behind.
+
+Yet these men whom as Trade Unionists you mistrust, you actually send as
+politicians to "represent" you.
+
+A Labour Party is a kind of political Trade Union, and to defend Trade
+Unionism is to defend Labour representation.
+
+If a Liberal or a Tory can be trusted as a parliamentary representative,
+why cannot he be trusted as an employer?
+
+If an employer's interests are opposed to your interests in business,
+what reason have you for supposing that his interests and yours are not
+opposed in politics?
+
+Am I to persuade you to join a Labour Party? Then why should I not
+persuade you to join a Trade Union? Trade Union and Labour Party are
+both class defences against class aggression.
+
+If you oppose a man as an employer, why do you vote for him as a Member
+of Parliament? His calling himself a Liberal or a Tory does not alter
+the fact that he is an employer.
+
+To be a Trade Unionist and fight for your class during a strike, and to
+be a Tory or a Liberal and fight against your class at an election, is
+folly. During a strike there are no Tories or Liberals amongst the
+strikers; they are all workers. At election times there are no workers;
+only Liberals and Tories.
+
+During an election there are Tory and Liberal capitalists, and all of
+them are friends of the workers. During a strike there are no Tories and
+no Liberals amongst the employers. They are all capitalists and enemies
+of the workers. Is there any logic in you workers? Is there any
+perception in you? Is there any _sense_ in you?
+
+As I said just now, you never elect an employer as president of a
+Trades' Council, or a chairman of a Trade Union Congress, or as a member
+of a Trade Union. You never ask an employer to lead you during a strike.
+But at election times, when you ought to stand by your class, the whole
+body of Trade Union workers turn into black-legs, and fight for the
+capitalist and against the workers.
+
+Even some of your Labour Members of Parliament go and help the
+candidature of employers against candidates standing for Labour. That is
+a form of political black-legging which I am surprised to find you
+allow.
+
+But besides the conflict of personal interests, there are other reasons
+why the Liberal and Tory parties are useless to Labour.
+
+One of these reasons is that the reform programmes of the old parties,
+such as they are, consist almost entirely of political reforms.
+
+But the improvement of the workers' condition depends more upon
+industrial reform.
+
+The nationalisation of the railways and the coalmines, the taxation of
+the land, and the handing over of all the gas, water, and food supplies,
+and all the tramway systems, to Municipal control, would do more good
+for the workers than extension of the franchise or payment of members.
+
+The old political struggles have mostly been fought for political
+reforms or for changes of taxation. The coming struggle will be for
+industrial reform.
+
+We want Britain for the British. We want the fruits of labour for those
+who produce them. We want a human life for all. The issue is not one
+between Liberals and Tories; it is an issue between the privileged
+classes and the workers.
+
+Neither of the political parties is of any use to the workers, because
+both the political parties are paid, officered, and led by capitalists
+whose interests are opposed to the interests of the workers. The
+Socialist laughs at the pretended friendship of Liberal and Tory leaders
+for the workers. These party politicians do not in the least understand
+what the rights, the interests, or the desires of the workers are; if
+they did understand, they would oppose them implacably. The demand of
+the Socialist is a demand for the nationalisation of the land and all
+other instruments of production and distribution. The party leaders will
+not hear of such a thing. If you want to get an idea how utterly
+destitute of sympathy with Labour the privileged classes really are,
+read carefully the papers which express their views. Read the organs of
+the landlords, the capitalists, and the employers; or read the Liberal
+and the Tory papers during a big strike, or during some bye-election
+when a Labour candidate is standing against a Tory and a Liberal.
+
+It is a very common thing to hear a party leader deprecate the increase
+of "class representation." What does that mean? It means Labour
+representation. But the "class" concerned in Labour representation is
+the working class, a "class" of thirty millions of people. Observe the
+calm effrontery of this sneer at "class representation." The thirty
+millions of workers are not represented by more than a dozen members.
+The other classes--the landlords, the capitalists, the military, the
+law, the brewers, and idle gentlemen--are represented by something like
+six hundred members. This is class representation with a vengeance.
+
+It is colossal _impudence_ for a party paper to talk against "class
+representation." Every class is over-represented--except the great
+working class. The mines, the railways, the drink trade, the land,
+finance, the army (officers), the navy (officers), the church, the law,
+and most of the big industries (employers), are represented largely in
+the House of Commons.
+
+And nearly thirty millions of the working classes are represented by
+about a dozen men, most of whom are palsied by their allegiance to the
+Liberal Party.
+
+And, mind you, this disproportion exists not only in Parliament, but in
+all County and Municipal institutions. How many working men are there on
+the County Councils, the Boards of Guardians, the School Boards, and the
+Town Councils?
+
+The capitalists, and their hangers-on, not only make the laws--they
+administer them. Is it any wonder, then, that laws are made and
+administered in the interests of the capitalist? And does it not seem
+reasonable to suppose that if the laws were made and administered by
+workers, they would be made and administered to the advantage of Labour?
+
+Well, my advice to working men is to return working men representatives,
+with definite and imperative instructions, to Parliament and to all
+other governing bodies.
+
+Some of the old Trade Unionists will tell you that there is no need for
+parliamentary interference in Labour matters. The Socialist does not ask
+for "parliamentary interference"; he asks for Government by the people
+and for the people.
+
+The older Unionists think that Trade Unionism is strong enough in itself
+to secure the rights of the worker. This is a great mistake. The rights
+of the worker are the whole of the produce of his labour. Trade Unionism
+not only cannot secure that, but has never even tried to secure that.
+The most that Trade Unionism has secured, or can ever hope to secure,
+for the workers, is a comfortable subsistence wage. They have not always
+secured even that much, and, when they have secured it, the cost has
+been serious. For the great weapon of Unionism is a strike, and a strike
+is at best a bitter, a painful, and a costly thing.
+
+Do not think that I am opposed to Trade Unionism. It is a good thing; it
+has long been the only defence of the workers against robbery and
+oppression; were it not for the Trade Unionism of the past and of the
+present, the condition of the British industrial classes would be one of
+abject slavery. But Trade Unionism, although some defence, is not
+sufficient defence.
+
+You must remember, also, that the employers have copied the methods of
+Trade Unionism. They also have organised and united, and, in the future,
+strikes will be more terrible and more costly than ever. The capitalist
+is the stronger. He holds the better strategic position. He can always
+outlast the worker, for the worker has to starve and see his children
+starve, and the capitalist never gets to that pass. Besides, capital is
+more mobile than labour. A stroke of the pen will divert wealth and
+trade from one end of the country to the other; but the workers cannot
+move their forces so readily.
+
+One difference between Socialism and Trade Unionism is, that whereas the
+Unions can only marshal and arm the workers for a desperate trial of
+endurance, Socialism can get rid of the capitalist altogether. The
+former helps you to resist the enemy, the latter destroys him.
+
+I suggest that you should join a Socialist Society and help to get
+others to join, and that you should send Socialist workers to sit upon
+all representative bodies.
+
+The Socialist tells you that you are men, with men's rights and with
+men's capacities for all that is good and great--and you hoot him, and
+call him a liar and a fool.
+
+The Politician despises you, declares that all your sufferings are due
+to your own vices, that you are incapable of managing your own affairs,
+and that if you were intrusted with freedom and the use of the wealth
+you create you would degenerate into a lawless mob of drunken loafers;
+and you cheer him until you are hoarse.
+
+The Politician tells you that _his_ party is the people's party, and
+that _he_ is the man to defend your interests; and in spite of all you
+know of his conduct in the past, you believe him.
+
+The Socialist begs you to form a party of your own, and to do your work
+yourselves; and you call him a _dreamer_. I do not know whether the
+working man is a dreamer, but he seems to me to spend a good deal of his
+time asleep.
+
+Still, there are hopeful signs of an awakening. The recent decision of
+the miners to pay one shilling each a year into a fund for securing
+parliamentary and other representation, is one of the most hopeful signs
+I have yet seen.
+
+The matter is really a simple one. The workers have enough votes, and
+they can easily find enough money.
+
+The 2,000,000 of Trade Unionists could alone find the money to elect and
+support more than a hundred labour representatives.
+
+Say that election expenses for each candidate were £500. A hundred
+candidates at £500 would cost £50,000.
+
+Pay for each representative at £200 a year would cost for a hundred
+M.P.s £20,000.
+
+If 2,000,000 Unionists gave 1s. a year each, the sum would be £100,000.
+That would pay for the election of 100 members, keep them for a year,
+and leave a balance of £30,000.
+
+With a hundred Labour Members in Parliament, and a proportionate
+representation of Labour on all County Councils, City, Borough, and
+Parish Councils, School Boards and Boards of Guardians, the interests of
+the workers would begin, for the first time in our history, to receive
+some real and valuable attention.
+
+But not only is it desirable that the workers should strive for solid
+reforms, but it is also imperative that they should prepare to defend
+the liberties and rights they have already won.
+
+A man must be very careless or very obtuse if he does not perceive that
+the classes are preparing to drive the workers back from the positions
+they now hold.
+
+Two ominous words, "Conscription" and "Protection" are being freely
+bandied about, and attacks, open or covert, are being made upon Trade
+Unionism and Education. If the workers mean to hold their own they must
+attack as well as defend. And to attack they need a strong and united
+Labour Party, that will fight for Labour in and out of Parliament, and
+will stand for Labour apart from the Liberal and the Tory parties.
+
+And now let us see what the Liberal and Tory parties offer the worker,
+and why they are not to be trusted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+WHY THE OLD PARTIES WILL NOT DO
+
+
+The old parties are no use to Labour for two reasons:--
+
+
+    1. Because their interests are mostly opposed to the interests of
+    Labour.
+
+    2. Because such reform as they promise is mostly political, and the
+    kind of reform needed by Labour is industrial and social reform.
+
+
+Liberal and Tory politicians call us Socialists _dreamers_. They claim
+to be practical men. They say theories are no use, that reform can only
+be secured by practical men and practical means, and for practical men
+and practical means you must look to the great parties.
+
+Being anxious to catch even the faintest streak of dawn in the dreary
+political sky, we _do_ look to the great parties. I have been looking to
+them for quite twenty years. And nothing has come of it.
+
+What _can_ come of it? What are the "practical" reforms about which we
+hear so much?
+
+Putting the broadest construction upon them, it may be said that the
+practical politics of both parties are within the lines of the following
+programme:--
+
+
+    1. Manhood Suffrage.
+    2. Payment of Members of Parliament.
+    3. Payment of Election Expenses.
+    4. The Second Ballot.
+    5. Abolition of Dual Voting.
+    6. Disestablishment of the Church.
+    7. Abolition of the House of Lords.
+
+
+And it is alleged by large numbers of people, all of them, for some
+inexplicable reason, proud of their hard common sense, that the passing
+of this programme into law would, in some manner yet to be expounded,
+make miserable England into merry England, and silence the visionaries
+and agitators for ever.
+
+Now, with all deference and in all humility, I say to these practical
+politicians that the above programme, if it became law to-morrow, would
+not, for any practical purpose, be worth the paper it was printed on.
+
+There are seven items, and not one of them would produce the smallest
+effect upon the mass of misery and injustice which is now crushing the
+life out of this nation.
+
+No. All those planks are political planks, and they all amount to the
+same thing--the shifting of political power from the classes to the
+masses. The idea being that when the people have the political power
+they will use it to their own advantage.
+
+A false idea. The people would not know _how_ to use the power, and if
+they did know how to use it, it by no means follows that they would use
+it.
+
+Some of the _real_ evils of the time, the real causes of England's
+distress, are:--
+
+
+    1. The unjust monopoly of the land.
+    2. The unjust extortion of interest.
+    3. The universal system of suicidal competition.
+    4. The baseness of popular ideals.
+    5. The disorganisation of the forces for the production of wealth.
+    6. The unjust distribution of wealth.
+    7. The confusions and contradictions of the moral ethics of the
+       nation, with resultant unjust laws and unfair conditions of life.
+
+
+There I will stop. Against the seven remedies I will put seven evils,
+and I say that not one of the remedies can cure any one of the evils.
+
+The seven remedies will give increased political power to the people.
+So. But, assuming that political power is the one thing needful, I say
+the people have it now.
+
+Supposing the masses in Manchester were determined to return to
+Parliament ten working men. They have an immense preponderance of votes.
+They could carry the day at every poll? But _do_ they? If not, why not?
+
+Then, as to expenses. Assuming the cost to be £200 a member, that would
+make a gross sum of £2000 for ten members, which sum would not amount to
+quite fivepence a head for 100,000 voters. But do voters find this
+money? If not, why not?
+
+Then, as to maintenance. Allowing each member £200 a year, that would
+mean another fivepence a year for the 100,000 men. So that it is not too
+much to say that, without passing one of the Acts in the seven-branched
+programme, the workers of Manchester could, at a cost of less than one
+penny a month per man, return and maintain ten working men Members of
+Parliament?
+
+Now, my practical friends, how many working-class members sit for
+Manchester to-day?
+
+And if the people, having so much power now, make no use of it, why are
+we to assume that all they need is a little more power to make them
+healthy, and wealthy, and wise?
+
+But allow me to offer a still more striking example--the example of
+America.
+
+In the first place, I assume that in America the electoral power of the
+people is much greater than it is here. I will give one or two examples.
+In America, I understand, they have:--
+
+
+    1. No Established Church.
+    2. No House of Lords.
+    3. Members of the Legislature are paid.
+    4. The people have Universal Suffrage.
+
+
+There are four out of the seven branches of the practical politicians'
+programme in actual existence. For the other three--
+
+
+    The Abolition of Dual Voting; The Payment of Election Expenses; and
+    The Second Ballot--
+
+
+I cannot answer; but these do not seem to have done quite as much for
+France as our practical men expect them to do for England.
+
+Very well, America has nearly all that our practical politicians promise
+us. Is America, therefore, so much better off as to justify us in
+accepting the seven-branched programme as salvation?
+
+Some years ago I read a book called _How the Other Half Lives_, written
+by an American citizen, and dealing with the conditions of the poor in
+New York.
+
+We should probably be justified in assuming that just as London is a
+somewhat intensified epitome of England, so is New York of America; but
+we will not assume that much. We will look at this book together, and we
+will select a few facts as to the state of the people in New York, and
+then I will ask you to consider this proposition:--
+
+1. That in New York the people already enjoy all the advantages of
+practical politics, as understood in England.
+
+2. That, nevertheless, New York is a more miserable and vicious city
+than London.
+
+3. That this seems to me to indicate that practical politics are
+hopeless, and that practical politicians are--not quite so wise as they
+imagine.
+
+About thirty years ago there was a committee appointed in New York to
+investigate the "great increase in crime." The Secretary of the New York
+Prison Association, giving evidence, said:--
+
+
+    Eighty per cent. at least of the crimes against property and against
+    the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost
+    connection with home life or never had any, or whose homes have
+    ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to afford
+    what are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and
+    family.
+
+    The younger criminals seem to come almost exclusively from the worst
+    tenement-house districts.
+
+
+These tenements, it seems, are slums. Of the evil of these places, of
+the miseries of them, we shall hear more presently. Our author, Mr.
+Jacob A. Riis, asserts again and again that the slums make the disease,
+the crime, and the wretchedness of New York:--
+
+
+    In the tenements all the influences make for evil, because they are
+    the hot-beds that carry death to rich and poor alike; the nurseries
+    of pauperism and crime, that fill our gaols and police-courts; that
+    throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island
+    asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out, in the last
+    eight years, a round half-million of beggars to prey upon our
+    charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps,
+    with all that that implies; because, above all, they touch the
+    family life with moral contagion.
+
+
+Well, that is what the American writer thinks of the tenement
+system--of the New York slums.
+
+_Now_ comes the important question, What is the extent of these slums?
+And on this point Mr. Riis declares more than once that the extent is
+enormous:--
+
+
+    To-day (1891) three-fourths of New York's people live in the
+    tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the
+    cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them.
+
+    Where are the tenements of to-day? Say, rather, where are they not?
+    In fifty years they have crept up from the Fourth Ward Slums and the
+    Fifth Points, the whole length of the island, and have polluted the
+    annexed district to the Westchester line. Crowding all the lower
+    wards, where business leaves a foot of ground unclaimed; strung
+    along both rivers, like ball and chain tied to the foot of every
+    street, and filling up Harlem with their restless, pent-up
+    multitudes, they hold within their clutch the wealth and business of
+    New York--hold them at their mercy, in the day of mob-rule and
+    wrath.
+
+
+So much, then, for the extent of these slums. Now for the nature of
+them. A New York doctor said of some of them--
+
+
+    If we could see the air breathed by these poor creatures in their
+    tenements, it would show itself to be fouler than the mud of the
+    gutters.
+
+
+And Mr. Riis goes on to tell of the police finding 101 adults and 91
+children in one Crosby Street House, 150 "lodgers" sleeping "on filthy
+floors in two buildings."
+
+But the most striking illustration I can give you of the state of the
+working-class dwellings in New York is by placing side by side the
+figures of the population per acre in the slums of New York and
+Manchester.
+
+The Manchester slums are bad--disgracefully, sinfully bad--and the
+overcrowding is terrible. But referring to the figures I took from
+various official documents when I was writing on the Manchester slums a
+few years ago, I find the worst cases of overcrowding to be:--
+
+
+                    District.  Pop. per Acre.
+    Ancoats          No. 3          256
+    Deansgate        No. 2          266
+    London Road      No. 3          267
+    Hulme            No. 3          270
+    St. George's     No. 6          274
+
+
+These are the worst cases from some of the worst English slums. Now let
+us look at the figures for New York--
+
+
+    DENSITY OF POPULATION PER ACRE IN 1890
+
+         Tenth Ward             522
+         Eleventh Ward          386
+         Thirteenth Ward        428
+
+
+The population of these three wards in the same year was over 179,000.
+The population of New York in 1890 was 1,513,501. In 1888 there were in
+New York 1,093,701 persons living in tenement houses.
+
+Then, in 1889, there died in New York hospitals 6102; in lunatic
+asylums, 448; while the number of pauper funerals was 3815.
+
+In 1890 there were in New York 37,316 tenements, with a gross population
+of 1,250,000.
+
+These things are facts, and our practical politicians love facts.
+
+But these are not all the facts. No. In this book about New York I find
+careful plans and drawings of the slums, and I can assure you we have
+nothing so horrible in all England. Nor do the revelations of Mr. Riis
+stop there. We have full details of the sweating shops, the men and
+women crowded together in filthy and noisome dens, working at starvation
+prices, from morning until late on in the night, "until brain and muscle
+break down together." We have pictures of the beggars, the tramps, the
+seamstresses, the unemployed, the thieves, the desperadoes, the lost
+women, the street arabs, the vile drinking and opium dens, and we have
+facts and figures to prove that this great capital of the great Republic
+is growing worse; and all this, my practical friends, in spite of the
+fact that in America they have
+
+
+    Manhood Suffrage;
+    Payment of Members;
+    No House of Peers;
+    No State  Church; and
+    Free Education;
+
+
+which is more than our most advanced politicians claim as the full
+extent to which England can be taken by means of practical politics--as
+understood by the two great parties.
+
+Now, I want to know, and I shall be glad if some practical friend will
+tell me, whether a programme of practical politics which leaves the
+metropolis of a free and democratic nation a nest of poverty, commercial
+slavery, vice, crime, insanity, and disease, is likely to make the
+English people healthy, and wealthy, and wise? And I ask you to consider
+whether this seven-branched programme is worth fighting for, if it is to
+result in a density of slum population nearly twice as great as that of
+the worst districts of the worst slums of Manchester?
+
+It seems to me, as an unpractical man, that a practical programme which
+results in 522 persons to the acre, 18 hours a day for bread and butter,
+and nearly 4000 pauper funerals a year in one city, is a programme which
+only _very_ practical men would be fools enough to fight for.
+
+At anyrate, I for one will have nothing to say to such a despicable
+sham. A programme which does not touch the sweater nor the slum; which
+does not hinder the system of fraud and murder called free competition;
+which does not give back to the English people their own country or
+their own earnings, may be good enough for politicians, but it is no use
+to men and women.
+
+No, my lads, there is no system of economics, politics, or ethics
+whereby it shall be made just or expedient to take that which you have
+not earned, or to take that which another man has earned; there can be
+no health, no hope in a nation where everyone is trying to get more than
+he has earned, and is hocussing his conscience with platitudes about
+God's Providence having endowed men with different degrees of intellect
+and virtue.
+
+How many years is it since the Newcastle programme was issued? What did
+it _promise_ that the poor workers of America and France have not
+already obtained? What good would it do you if you got it? _And when do
+you think you are likely to get it?_ Is it any nearer now than it was
+seven years ago? Will it be any nearer ten years hence than it is now if
+you wait for the practical politicians of the old parties to give it to
+you?
+
+One of the great stumbling-blocks in the way of all progress for Labour
+is the lingering belief of the working man in the Liberal Party.
+
+In the past the Liberals were regarded as the party of progress. They
+won many fiscal and political reforms for the people. And now, when they
+will not, or cannot, go any farther, their leaders talk about
+"ingratitude" if the worker is advised to leave them and form a Labour
+Party.
+
+But when John Bright refused to go any farther, when he refused to go as
+far as Home Rule, did the Liberal Party think of gratitude to one of
+their greatest men? No. They dropped John Bright, and they blamed _him_
+because he had halted.
+
+They why should they demand that you shall stay with them out of
+gratitude now they have halted?
+
+The Liberal Party claim to be the workers' friends. What have they done
+for him during the last ten years? What are they willing to do for him
+now, or when they get office?
+
+Here is a quotation from a speech made some years ago by Sir William
+Harcourt--
+
+
+    An attempt is being sedulously made to identify the Liberal
+    Government and the Liberal Party with dreamers of dreams, with wild,
+    anarchical ideas, and anti-social projects. Gentlemen, I say, if I
+    have a right to speak on behalf of the Liberal Party, that we have
+    no sympathy with these mischief-makers at all. The Liberal Party has
+    no share in them; their policy is a constructive policy; they have
+    no revolutionary schemes either in politics, in society, or in
+    trade.
+
+
+You may say that is old. Try this new one. It is from the lips of Mr.
+Harmsworth, the "official Liberal candidate" at the last by-election in
+North-East Lanark--
+
+
+    My own opinion is that a _modus vivendi_ should be arrived at
+    between the official Liberal Party and such Labour organisations as
+    desire parliamentary representation, provided, of course, that they
+    are not _tainted with Socialist doctrines_. It should not be
+    difficult to come to something like an amicable settlement. I must
+    say that it came upon me with something of a shock to find that
+    amongst those who sent messages to the Socialist candidate wishing
+    success to him in his propaganda were two Members of Parliament who
+    profess allegiance to the Liberal Party.
+
+
+Provided, "of course," that _they are not tainted with Socialist
+doctrines_. With Socialist doctrines Sir William Harcourt and Mr.
+Harmsworth will have no dealings.
+
+Now, if you read what I have written in this book you will see that
+there is no possible reform that can do the workers any real or lasting
+good unless that reform is _tainted with Socialist doctrines_.
+
+Only legislation of a socialistic nature can benefit the working class.
+And that kind of legislation the Liberals will not touch.
+
+It is true there are some individual members amongst the Radicals who
+are prepared to go a good way with the Socialists. But what can they do?
+In the House they must obey the Party Whip, and the Party Whip never
+cracks for socialistic measures.
+
+I wonder how many Labour seats have been lost through Home Rule. Time
+after time good Labour candidates have been defeated because Liberal
+working men feared to lose a Home Rule vote in the House.
+
+And what has Labour got from the Home Rule Liberals it has elected?
+
+And where is Home Rule to-day?
+
+Let me give you a typical case. A Liberal Unionist lost his seat. He at
+once became a Home Ruler, and was adopted as Liberal candidate to stand
+against a Labour candidate and against a Tory. The Labour candidate was
+a Home Ruler, and had been a Home Ruler when the Liberal candidate was a
+Unionist.
+
+But the Liberal working men would not vote for the Labour man. Why?
+Because they were afraid he would not get in. If he did not get in the
+Tory would get in, and the Home Rule vote would be one less in the
+House.
+
+They voted for the Liberal, and he was returned. That is ten years ago.
+What good has that M.P. done for Home Rule, and what has he done for
+Labour?
+
+The Labour man could have done no more for Home Rule, but he would have
+worked hard for Labour, and no Party Whip would have checked him.
+
+Well, during those ten years it is not too much to say that fifty Labour
+candidates have been sacrificed in the same way to Home Rule.
+
+In ten years those men would have done good service. _And they were all
+Home Rulers._
+
+Such is the wisdom of the working men who cling to the tails of the
+Liberal Party.
+
+Return a hundred Labour men to the House of Commons, and the Liberal
+Party will be stronger than if a hundred Liberals were sent in their
+place, for there is not a sound plank in the Liberal programme which the
+Labour M.P. would wish removed.
+
+But do you doubt for a moment that the presence in the House of a
+hundred Labour members would do no more for Labour than the presence in
+their stead of a hundred Liberals? A working man must be very dull if he
+believes that.
+
+That is my case against the old parties. I could say no more if I tried.
+If you want to benefit your own class, if you want to hasten reform, if
+you want to frighten the Tories and wake up the Liberals, put your hands
+in your pockets, find a _farthing a week_ for election and for
+parliamentary expenses, send a hundred Labour men to the House, and
+watch the effects. I think you will be more than satisfied. And _that_
+is what _I_ call "practical politics."
+
+Finally, to end as I began, if self-interest is the strongest motive in
+human nature, the man who wants his own advantage secured will be wise
+to attend to it himself.
+
+The Liberal Party may be a better party than the Tory Party, but the
+_best_ party for Labour is a _Labour_ Party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+TO-DAY'S WORK
+
+
+Self-interest being the strongest motive in human nature, he who wishes
+his interests to be served will be wise to attend to them himself.
+
+If you, Mr. Smith, as a working man, wish to have better wages, shorter
+hours, more holidays, and cheaper living, you had better take a hand in
+the class war by becoming a recruit in the army of Labour.
+
+The first line of the Labour army is the Trade Unions.
+
+The second line is the Municipality.
+
+The third line is Parliament.
+
+If working men desire to improve their conditions they will be wise to
+serve their own interests by using the Trade Unions, the Municipalities,
+and the House of Commons for all they are worth; and they are worth a
+lot.
+
+Votes you have in plenty, for all practical purposes, and of money you
+can yourselves raise more than you need, without either hurting
+yourselves or incurring obligations to men of other classes.
+
+One penny a week from 4,000,000 of working men would mean a yearly
+income of £866,000.
+
+We are always hearing that the working classes cannot find enough money
+to pay the election expenses of their own parliamentary candidates nor
+to keep their own Labour members if elected.
+
+If 4,000,000 workers paid one penny a week (the price of a Sunday paper,
+or of one glass of cheap beer) they would have £866,000 at the end of a
+year.
+
+Election expenses of 200 Labour candidates at £500 each would be
+£100,000.
+
+Pay of 200 Labour members at £200 a year would be £40,000.
+
+Total, £140,000: leaving a balance in hand of £726,000.
+
+Election expenses of 2000 candidates for School Board, Municipal
+Councils, and Boards of Guardians at £50 per man would be £100,000.
+Leaving a balance of £626,000.
+
+Now the cause of Labour has very few friends amongst the newspapers. As
+I have said before, at times of strikes and other industrial crises, the
+Press goes almost wholly against the workers.
+
+The 4,000,000 men I have supposed to wake up to their own interest could
+establish weekly and daily papers of _their own_ at a cost of £50,000
+for each paper. Say one weekly paper at a penny, one daily paper at a
+penny, or one morning and one evening paper at a halfpenny each.
+
+These papers would have a ready-made circulation amongst the men who
+owned them. They could be managed, edited, and written by trained
+journalists engaged for the work, and could contain all the best
+features of the political papers now bought by working men.
+
+Say, then, that the weekly paper cost £50,000 to start, and that the
+morning and evening papers cost the same. That would be £150,000, and
+the papers would pay in less than a year.
+
+You see, then, that 4,000,000 of men could finance 3 newspapers, 200
+parliamentary and 2000 local elections, and pay one year's salary to 200
+Members of Parliament for £390,000, or less than _one halfpenny_ a week
+for one year.
+
+If you paid the full penny a week for one year you could do all I have
+said and have a balance in hand of £476,000.
+
+Surely, then, it is nonsense to talk about the difficulty of finding
+money for election expenses.
+
+But you might not be able to get 4,000,000 of men to pay even one penny.
+
+Then you could produce the same result if _one_ million (half your
+present Trade Union membership) pay twopence a week.
+
+And even at a cost of twopence a week do you not think the result would
+be worth the cost? Imagine the effect on the Press, and on Parliament,
+and on the employers, and on public opinion of your fighting 200
+parliamentary and 2000 municipal elections, and founding three
+newspapers. Then the moral effect of the work the newspapers would do
+would be sure to result in an increase of the Trade Union membership.
+
+A penny looks such a poor, contemptible coin, and even the poor labourer
+often wastes one. But remember that union is strength, and pennies make
+pounds. 1000 pennies make more than £4; 100,000 pennies come to more
+than £400; 1,000,000 pennies come to £4000; 1,000,000 pennies a week for
+a year give you the enormous sum of £210,000.
+
+We _Clarion_ men founded a paper called the _Clarion_ with less than
+£400 capital, and with no friends or backers, and although we have never
+given gambling news, nor general news, and had no Trade Unions behind
+us, we have carried our paper on for ten years, and it is stronger now
+than ever.
+
+Why, then, should the working classes, and especially the Trade Unions,
+submit to the insults and misrepresentations of newspapers run by
+capitalists, when they can have better papers of their own to plead
+their own cause?
+
+Suppose it cost £100,000 to start a first-class daily Trade Union organ.
+How much would that mean to 2,000,000 of Unionists? If it cost £100,000
+to start the paper, and if it lost £100,000 a year, it would only mean
+one halfpenny a week for the first year, and one farthing a week for the
+next. But I am quite confident that if the Unions did the thing in
+earnest they could start a paper for £50,000, and run it at a profit
+after the first six months.
+
+Do not forget the power of the penny. If 10,000,000 of working men and
+women gave _one penny a year_ it would reach a yearly income of _forty
+thousand pounds_. A good deal may be done with £40,000, Mr. Smith.
+
+Now a few words as to the three lines of operations. You have your Trade
+Unions, and you have a very modest kind of Federation. If your 2,000,000
+Unionists were federated at a weekly subscription of one penny per man,
+your yearly income would be nearly half a million: a very useful kind of
+fund. I should strongly advise you to strengthen your Trades Federation.
+
+Next as to Municipal affairs. These are of more importance to you than
+Parliament. Let me give you an idea. Suppose, as in the case of
+Manchester and Liverpool, the difference between a private gas company
+and a Municipal gas supply amounts to more than a shilling on each 1000
+feet of gas. Setting the average workman's gas consumption at 4000 feet
+per quarter, that means a saving to each Manchester working man of
+sixteen shillings a year, or just about fourpence a week.
+
+Suppose a tram company carries a man to his work and back at one penny,
+and the Corporation carries him at one halfpenny. The man saves a penny
+a day, or 25s. a year. Now if 100,000 men piled up their tram savings
+for one year as a labour fund it would come to £125,000.
+
+All that money those men are now giving to tram companies _for nothing_.
+Is that practical?
+
+You may apply the same process of thought to all the other things you
+use. Just figure out what you would save if you had Municipal or State
+managed
+
+
+    Railways        Coalmines
+    Tramways        Omnibuses
+    Gas             Water
+    Milk            Bread
+    Meat            Butter and cheese
+    Vegetables      Beer
+    Houses          Shops
+    Boots           Clothing
+
+
+and other necessaries.
+
+On all those needful things you are now paying big percentages of profit
+to private dealers, all of which the Municipality would save you.
+
+And you can municipalise all those things and save all that money by
+sticking together as a Labour Party, and by paying _one penny a week_.
+
+Again I advise you to read those books by George Haw and R. B. Suthers.
+Read them, and give them to other workers to read.
+
+And then set about making a Labour Party _at once_.
+
+Next as to Parliament. You ought to put at least 200 Labour members into
+the House. Never mind Liberalism and Toryism. Mr. Morley said in January
+that what puzzled him was to "find any difference between the new
+Liberalism and the new Conservatism." Do not try to find a difference,
+John. Have a Labour Party.
+
+"Self-interest is the strongest motive in human nature." Take care of
+your own interests and stand by your own class.
+
+You will ask, perhaps, what these 200 Labour representatives are to do.
+They should do anything and everything they can do in the House of
+Commons for the interests of the working class.
+
+But if you want programmes and lists of measures, get the Fabian
+Parliamentary and Municipal programmes, and study them. You will find
+the particulars as to price, etc., at the end of this book.
+
+But here are some measures which you might be pushing and helping
+whenever a chance presents itself, in Parliament or out of Parliament.
+
+    Removal of taxation from articles used by the workers, such as tea
+    and tobacco, and increase of taxation on large incomes and on land.
+
+    Compulsory sale of land for the purpose of Municipal houses, works,
+    farms, and gardens.
+
+    Nationalisation of railways and mines.
+
+    Taxation to extinction of all mineral royalties.
+
+    Vastly improved education for the working classes.
+
+    Old age pensions.
+
+    Adoption of the Initiative and Referendum.
+
+    Universal adult suffrage.
+
+    Eight hours' day and standard rates of wages in all Government and
+    Municipal works.
+
+    Establishment of a Department of Agriculture.
+
+    State insurance of life.
+
+    Nationalisation of all banks.
+
+    The second ballot.
+
+    Abolition of property votes.
+
+    Formation of a citizen army for home defence.
+
+    Abolition of workhouses.
+
+    Solid legislation on the housing question.
+
+    Government inquiry into the food question, with a view to restore
+    British agriculture.
+
+Those are a few steps towards the desired goal of _Socialism_.
+
+You may perhaps wonder why I do not ask you to found a Socialist Party.
+I do not think the workers are ready for it. And I feel that if you
+found a Labour Party every step you take towards the emancipation of
+Labour will be a step towards _Socialism_.
+
+But I should like to think that many workers will become Socialists at
+once, and more as they live and learn.
+
+The fact is, Mr. Smith, I do not want to ask too much of the mass of
+working folks, who have been taught little, and mostly taught wrong, and
+whose opportunities of getting knowledge have been but poor.
+
+I am not asking working men to be plaster saints nor stained-glass
+angels, but only to be really what their flatterers are so fond of
+telling them they are now: shrewd, hard-headed men, distrusting theories
+and believing in facts.
+
+For the statement that private trading and private management of
+production and distribution are the best, and the only "possible," ways
+of carrying on the business of the nation is only a _theory_, Mr. Smith;
+but the superiority of Municipal management in cheapness, in efficiency,
+in health, in comfort, and in pleasantness is a solid _fact_, Mr. Smith,
+which has been demonstrated just as often as Municipal and private
+management have been contrasted in their action.
+
+One other question I may anticipate. How are the workers to form a
+Labour Party?
+
+There are already two Labour parties formed.
+
+One is the Trade Union body, the other is the Independent Labour Party.
+
+The Trade Unions are numerous, but not politically organised nor united.
+
+The Independent Labour Party is organised and united, but is weak in
+numbers and poor in funds.
+
+I should like to see the Trade Unions fully federated, and formed into a
+political as well as an Industrial Labour Party on lines similar to
+those of the Independent Labour Party.
+
+Or I should like to see the whole of your 2,000,000 of Trade Unionists
+join the Independent Labour Party.
+
+Or, best of all, I should like to see the Unions, the Independent Labour
+Party, and the great and growing body of unorganised and unattached
+Socialists formed into one grand Socialist Party.
+
+But I do not want to ask too much.
+
+Meanwhile, I ask you, as a reader of this book, not to sit down in
+despair with the feeling that the workers will not move, but to try to
+move them. Be you _one_, John Smith. Be you the first. Then you shall
+surely win a few, and each of those few shall win a few, and so are
+multitudes composed.
+
+Let us make a long story short. I have here given you, as briefly and as
+plainly as I can, the best advice of which I am capable, after a dozen
+years' study and experience of Labour politics and economics and the
+lives of working men and women.
+
+If you approve of this little book I shall be glad if you will recommend
+it to your friends.
+
+You will find Labour matters treated of every week in the _Clarion_,
+which is a penny paper, published every Friday, and obtainable at 72
+Fleet Street, London, E.C., and of all newsagents.
+
+Heaven, friend John Smith, helps those who help themselves; but Heaven
+also helps those who try to help their fellow-creatures.
+
+If you are shrewd and strong and skilful, think a little and work a
+little for the millions of your own class who are ignorant and weak and
+friendless. If you have a wife and children whom you love, remember the
+many poor and wretched women and children who are robbed of love, of
+leisure, of sunshine and sweet air, of knowledge and of hope, in the
+pent and dismal districts of our big, misgoverned towns. If you as a
+Briton are proud of your country and your race, if you as a man have any
+pride of manhood, or as a worker have any pride of class, come over to
+us and help in the just and wise policy of winning Britain for the
+British, manhood for _all_ men, womanhood for _all_ women, and love
+to-day and hope to-morrow for the children whom Christ loved, but who
+by many Christians have unhappily been forgotten.
+
+
+    That it may please thee to succour, help, and comfort _all_ that are
+    in danger, necessity, and tribulation.
+
+    That it may please thee to defend, and provide for, the fatherless
+    children, and widows, and _all_ that are desolate and oppressed.
+
+    That it may please thee to have mercy upon _all_ men.
+
+
+I end as I began, by quoting those beautiful words from the Litany. If
+we would realise the prayer they utter, we must turn to _Socialism_; if
+we would win defence for the fatherless children and the widows,
+succour, help, and comfort for _all_ that are in danger, necessity, or
+tribulation, and mercy for _all_ men, we must win Britain for the
+British.
+
+Without the workers we cannot win, with the workers we cannot fail. Will
+you be one to help us--_now_?
+
+
+
+
+WHAT TO READ
+
+
+The following books and pamphlets treat more fully the various subjects
+dealt with in _Britain for the British_.
+
+TO-DAY'S WORK. G. Haw. Clarion Press, 72 Fleet Street. 2s. 6d.
+
+DOES MUNICIPAL MANAGEMENT PAY? By R. B. Suthers. 6d. Clarion Press, 72
+Fleet Street.
+
+LAND NATIONALISATION. A. R. Wallace. 1s. London, Swan Sonnenschein.
+
+FIVE PRECURSORS OF HENRY GEORGE. By J. Morrison Davidson. 1s. _Labour
+Leader_ Office, 53 Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+DISMAL ENGLAND. By R. Blatchford. Clarion Press, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.
+1s.
+
+THE WHITE SLAVES OF ENGLAND. By R. Sherard. London, James Bowden. 1s.
+
+NO ROOM TO LIVE. By G. Haw. 2s. 6d.
+
+FIELDS, FACTORIES, AND WORKSHOPS. By Prince Kropotkin. 1s. _Clarion_
+Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+THE FABIAN TRACTS, especially No. 5, No. 12, and Nos. 30-37. One penny
+each. Fabian Society, 3 Clement's Inn, Strand, or _Clarion_ Office, 72
+Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+OUR FOOD SUPPLY IN TIME OF WAR. By Captain Stewart L. Murray. 6d.
+_Clarion_ Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+THE CLARION. A newspaper for Socialists and Working Men. One penny
+weekly. Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+The _Clarion_ can be ordered of all newsagents
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+The American workingman will not find it very hard to see that the
+lesson of "Britain for the British" applies with even greater force to
+the conditions in his own country.
+
+American railroads, mines, and factories exploit, cripple and kill
+American laborers on an even larger scale than the British ones. We have
+even less laws for the protection of the workers and their children and
+what we have are not so well enforced.
+
+No one will deny the ability of America to feed herself. She feeds the
+world to-day save that some American workers and their families are
+rather poorly fed. The great problem with American capitalists is how to
+get rid of the wealth produced and given to them by American laborers.
+
+Where Liberal and Conservative parties are mentioned every American
+reader will find himself unconsciously substituting Democratic and
+Republican.
+
+It will do the average American good to "see himself as others see him"
+and to know that manhood suffrage, freedom from established Church and
+Republican institutions do not prevent his becoming an economic slave
+and living in a slum.
+
+But we fear that some American readers will be shrewd enough to call
+attention to the fact that municipal ownership has not abolished, or to
+any great extent improved the slums of London, Glasgow and Birmingham.
+It is certain some of the thousands of German laborers who are living in
+America would be quick to point out that although Bismark has
+nationalized the railroads and telegraphs of Germany this has not
+altered the fact of the exploitation of German workingmen. Worst of
+all, it would be hard to explain to the multitude of Russian exiles now
+living in America that they would have been better off had they remained
+at home, because the Czar has made more industries government property
+than belong to any other nation in the world.
+
+Even native Americans would find it somewhat hard to understand how
+matters would be improved by transferring the ownership of the coal
+mines, for example, from a Hanna-controlled corporation to a
+Hanna-directed government. There would be one or two different links in
+the chain of connection uniting Hanna to the mines and the miners but
+they would be as well forged and as capable of holding the laborer in
+slavery as the present ones.
+
+Happily the chapter on "Why the old Parties will not do" gives us a clue
+to the way out. While the government is controlled by capitalist parties
+government ownership of industries does little more than simplify the
+process of reorganization to be performed when a real labor party shall
+gain control. The victory of such a party will for the first time mean
+that government-owned industries will be owned and controlled by all the
+workers (who will also be all the people, since idlers will have
+disappeared).
+
+American workers are fortunate in that there is a political party
+already in the field which exactly meets the ideal described in the last
+three chapters. The Socialist Party is a trade-union party, a labor
+party and the political expression of all the workers in America who
+have become intelligent enough to understand their own self-interest.
+Those who feel that they wish to lend a hand in securing the triumph of
+the ideas set forth in "Britain for the British" should at once join
+that party and work for its success.
+
+A. M. SIMONS.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY ROBERT BLATCHFORD
+
+("NUNQUAM.")
+
+
++MERRIE ENGLAND.+--Cloth, crown 8vo, 2s, 6d., by Robert Blatchford.
+
+A book on sociology. Called by the Review of Reviews: "The Poor Man's
+Plato." Over a million copies sold. Translated into Welsh, Dutch,
+French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Norwegian, and Swedish.
+
++TALES FOR THE MARINES.+--A New Book of Soldier Stories. By Nunquam.
+
+The Daily Chronicle says:
+
+"This volume contains a batch of stories ('cuffers,' we understand is
+the correct technical term) supposed to be told by soldiers in the
+barrack-room after lights are out; and capital stories they are. If we
+were to call them 'rattling' and also 'ripping' we should not be saying
+a word too much. For our own part we never want to see a better fight
+than that between the bayonet and the sword in 'The Mousetrap,' or to
+read a sounder lecture on social philosophy than that delivered by
+Sergeant Wren in 'Dear Lady Disdain.' Mr. Blatchford knows the
+barrack-room from the inside, and obviously from the inside has learned
+to love and to enjoy it."
+
++JULIE.+--A Study of a Girl by a Man. Nunquam's Story of Slum Life. Price
+2/6; by post, 2/8.
+
+The Liverpool Review says:
+
+"'Julie,' unlike 'The Master Christian,' is beautiful inside as well as
+out. Nunquam, like Corelli, has a mission to perform--to utilize romance
+as a finger-post to indicate social wrongs; but, unlike Corelli, he
+succeeds in his purpose. And why does he succeed where she fails?
+Because he goes at his task sympathetically, with a warm heart; whereas
+she goes at it sourly, with a pen dipped in gall. It is all a question
+of temperament. If you want an object-lesson in the effect which
+temperament has upon artistic achievement, read 'The Master Christian'
+and follow it up with 'Julie.'"
+
++THE BOUNDER.+--The Story of a Man by his Friend. By Nunquam. Price 2/6;
+by post, 2/8.
+
+All who loved the Bounder and admired his work should avail themselves
+of the opportunity to possess this record of both, before the edition is
+exhausted.
+
++A BOHEMIAN GIRL.+--A Theatrical Novel. By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post,
+2/8.
+
+Manchester City News:
+
+"The swift interchange of thought and repartee in the conversations
+remind one of the brilliant 'Dolly Dialogues'; but there is an
+underlying earnestness and a deeper meaning in Mr. McGinnis's seemingly
+careless story than in Mr. Anthony Hope's society pictures."
+
++MY FAVORITE BOOKS.+--By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post, 2/8. With Portrait
+of the Author.
+
+The Christian Globe says:
+
+"Instinct with generous and eloquent appreciation of what is brightest
+and best in our literature, we have only to complain that there is so
+little of it after all. Again we feel the spell of old times in the
+charmed garden; the breeze blows fresh, sweet is the odor of the roses,
+and we wander with our guide wherever it pleases him to lead us. We can
+give the author no higher praise. May his book prosper as it deserves."
+
++TOMMY ATKINS.+--By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post, 2/8. Paper, 1/-; by post,
+1/3.
+
+A soldier story of great popularity which has already gone through
+several editions, and was long ago pronounced by Sir Evelyn Wood, and
+other great authorities on the army, to be the best story on army life
+ever written.
+
++DISMAL ENGLAND.+--By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post, 2/8. Paper, 1/-; by
+post, 1/2.
+
+A thrilling and life-like series of sketches of life in its darker
+phases.
+
++PINK DIAMONDS.+--A Wild Story. By Nunquam. Cloth, 2/-; by post, 2/2.
+Paper, 6d.; by post, 8d.
+
+A capital antidote to the dumps; full of rollicking action and wild
+humor.
+
++THE NUNQUAM PAPERS.+--2/-; by post, 2/2.
+
+Some of Nunquam's best articles and sketches.
+
++FANTASIAS.+--By Nunquam. Cloth, 2/-; by post, 2/2. Paper, 6d.; by post,
+8d.
+
+Tales and essays of graphic, humorous and pathetic interest.
+
++A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A DOG.+--By The Whatnot. Cloth and gold, 2/6; by
+post, 2/8.
+
++TO-DAY'S WORK.+--Municipal Government the Hope of Democracy. By George
+Haw, author of "No Room to Live." Price 2/6; by post, 2/8.
+
+A reprint, with revisions and additional chapters, of The Outlaw's
+articles on Local Government, published in the Clarion under the
+heading, "What we can do to-day."
+
++THE ART OF HAPPINESS.+--By Mont Bloug. With portrait of the Author.
+Cloth, 2/-; by post, 2/2.
+
+A mixture of fun and philosophy, of which the large edition is nearly
+exhausted, and is not likely to be reprinted. Those who have neglected
+to get it should do so while there is yet time. It is a book that any
+reader will be thankful for.
+
++DANGLE'S MIXTURE.+--By A. M. Thompson. Cloth, 1/6; by post, 1/8.
+
++DANGLE'S ROUGH CUT.+--By A. M. Thompson. Cloth, 1/6; by post, 1/8.
+
+Capital examples of Dangular humor, of which it can be truthfully said
+that each is better than the other, while both are amusing enough to
+bring out a cheerful smile upon the glummest face.
+
+CLARION PRESS, 72 Fleet Street, London, E. C.
+
+
+Read _The Clarion_
+
+The Pioneer Journal of Social Reform.
+
+Edited by ROBERT BLATCHFORD,
+_Author of "Merrie England," "Britain for the British," etc._
+
+EVERY FRIDAY.
+
+PRICE ONE PENNY.
+
+Send for Specimen Copy to the Clarion Office, 72, Fleet St.,
+London, E. C.
+
+
+W. Wilfred Head and Co., Ltd., "Dr. Johnson Press," Fleet Lane,
+Old Bailey, London, E. C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Britain for the British, by Robert Blatchford
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH ***
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Britain for the British, by Robert Blatchford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Britain for the British
+
+Author: Robert Blatchford
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2010 [EBook #34534]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
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+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h1><span>BRITAIN<br />FOR THE BRITISH</span><br /><span id="id1">BY</span><span><i>ROBERT BLATCHFORD</i></span></h1>
+
+<p class="center">EDITOR OF THE CLARION</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/logo.jpg" width='120' height='39' alt="logo" /></div>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="bold">LONDON<br />CLARION PRESS, <span class="smcap">72 Fleet Street</span>, E. C.<br />
+CHICAGO<br />CHARLES H. KERR &amp; COMPANY<br /><span class="smcap">56 Fifth Avenue</span></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">Copyright, 1902,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By Charles H. Kerr &amp; Company.</span>
+<br />Printed in the United States.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">DEDICATED<br /><br />TO<br /><br />A. M. THOMPSON<br />
+<br />AND THE<br /><br />CLARION FELLOWSHIP</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bold2">CONTENTS</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<table summary="CONTENTS">
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="left">CHAP.</td>
+    <td>PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE TITLE, PURPOSE, AND METHOD OF THIS BOOK</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;FOREWORDS</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>I.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE UNEQUAL DIVISION OF WEALTH</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>II.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;WHAT IS WEALTH? WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? WHO CREATES IT?</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>III.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;HOW THE FEW GET RICH AND KEEP THE MANY POOR</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>IV.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE BRAIN-WORKER, OR INVENTOR</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>V.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE LANDLORD'S RIGHTS AND THE PEOPLE'S RIGHTS</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VI.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;LUXURY AND THE GREAT USEFUL EMPLOYMENT FRAUD</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;WHAT SOCIALISM IS NOT</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VIII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;WHAT SOCIALISM IS</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>IX.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;COMPETITION <i>v.</i> CO-OPERATION</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>X.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN FOOD</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XI.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;HOW TO KEEP FOREIGN TRADE</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;CAN BRITAIN FEED HERSELF</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XIII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE SUCCESSFUL MAN</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XIV.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;TEMPERANCE AND THRIFT</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XV.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE SURPLUS LABOUR MISTAKE</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XVI.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;IS SOCIALISM POSSIBLE, AND WILL IT PAY?</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XVII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;THE NEED FOR A LABOUR PARTY</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XVIII.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;WHY THE OLD PARTIES WILL NOT DO</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XIX.</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;TO-DAY'S WORK</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;&nbsp;WHAT TO READ</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK</span></h2>
+
+<p>The motto of this book is expressed in its title: <span class="smcap">Britain for the
+British.</span></p>
+
+<p>At present Britain does not belong to the British: it belongs to a few
+of the British, who employ the bulk of the population as servants or as workers.</p>
+
+<p>It is because Britain does not belong to the British that a few are very
+rich and the many are very poor.</p>
+
+<p>It is because Britain does not belong to the British that we find
+amongst the <i>owning</i> class a state of useless luxury and pernicious
+idleness, and amongst the <i>working</i> classes a state of drudging toil, of
+wearing poverty and anxious care.</p>
+
+<p>This state of affairs is contrary to Christianity, is contrary to
+justice, and contrary to reason. It is bad for the rich, it is bad for
+the poor; it is against the best interests of the British nation and the human race.</p>
+
+<p>The remedy for this evil state of things&mdash;the <i>only</i> remedy yet
+suggested&mdash;is <i>Socialism</i>. And <i>Socialism</i> is broadly expressed in the
+title and motto of this book: <span class="smcap">Britain for the British</span>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK</span></h2>
+
+<p>The purpose of this book is to convert the reader to <i>Socialism</i>: to
+convince him that the present system&mdash;political, industrial, and
+social&mdash;is bad; to explain to him why it is bad, and to prove to him
+that Socialism is the only true remedy.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>FOR WHOM THIS BOOK IS INTENDED</span></h2>
+
+<p>This book is intended for any person who does not understand, or has, so
+far, refused to accept the principles of <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But it is especially addressed, as my previous book, <i>Merrie England</i>,
+was addressed, to <span class="smcap">John Smith</span>, a typical British working man, not yet
+converted to <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I hope this book will be read by every opponent of <i>Socialism</i>; and I
+hope it will be read by all those good folks who, though not yet
+<i>Socialists</i>, are anxious to help their fellow-creatures, to do some
+good in their own day and generation, and to leave the world a little
+better than they found it.</p>
+
+<p>I hope that all lovers of justice and of truth will read this book, and
+that many of them will be thereby led to a fuller study of <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To the Tory and the Radical; to the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and
+the Nonconformist; to the workman and the employer; to the scholar and
+the peer; to the labourer's wife, the housemaid, and the duchess; to the
+advocates of Temperance and of Co-operation; to the Trade Unionist and
+the non-Unionist; to the potman, the bishop, and the brewer; to the
+artist and the merchant; to the poet and the navvy; to the Idealist and
+the Materialist; to the poor clerk, the rich financier, the great
+scientist, and the little child, I commend the following beautiful
+prayer from the Litany of the Church of England:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>That it may please thee to bring into the way of truth <i>all</i> such
+as have erred, and are deceived.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p><p>That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; and to
+comfort and help the weak-hearted; and to raise up them that fall;
+and finally to beat down Satan under our feet.</p>
+
+<p>That it may please thee to succour, help, and comfort <i>all</i> that
+are in danger, necessity, and tribulation.</p>
+
+<p>That it may please thee to preserve <i>all</i> that travel by land or by
+water, <i>all</i> women labouring of child, <i>all</i> sick persons, and
+young children; and to shew thy pity upon <i>all</i> prisoners and captives.</p>
+
+<p>That it may please thee to defend, and provide for, the fatherless
+children, and widows, and <i>all</i> that are desolate and oppressed.</p>
+
+<p>That it may please thee to have mercy upon <i>all</i> men.</p>
+
+<p>That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and
+slanderers, and to turn their hearts.</p>
+
+<p>That it may please thee to give and preserve to our use the kindly
+fruits of the earth, so as in due time we may enjoy them.</p>
+
+<p><i>We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I have italicised the word "all" in that prayer to emphasise the fact
+that mercy, succour, comfort, and pardon are here asked for <i>all</i>, and
+not for a few.</p>
+
+<p>I now ask the reader of this book, with those words of broad charity and
+sweet kindliness still fresh in mind, to remember the unmerited
+miseries, the ill-requited labour, the gnawing penury, and the loveless
+and unhonoured lives to which an evil system dooms millions of British
+men and women. I ask the reader to discover for himself how much pity we
+bestow upon our "prisoners and captives," how much provision we make for
+the "fatherless children and widows," what nature and amount of
+"succour, help, and comfort" we vouchsafe to "all who are in danger,
+necessity, and tribulation." I ask him to consider, with regard to those
+"kindly fruits of the earth," who produces, and who enjoys them; and I
+beg him next to proceed in a judicial spirit, by means of candour and
+right reason, to examine fairly and weigh justly the means proposed by
+Socialists for abolishing poverty and oppression, and for conferring
+prosperity, knowledge, and freedom upon <i>all</i> men.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Britain for the British</span>: that is our motto. We ask for a fair and open
+trial. We solicit an impartial hearing of the case for <i>Socialism</i>.
+Listen patiently to our statements; consider our arguments; accord to us
+a fair field and no favour; and may the truth prevail.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>THE METHOD OF THIS BOOK</span></h2>
+
+<p>As to the method of this book, I shall begin by calling attention to
+some of the evils of the present industrial, social, and political system.</p>
+
+<p>I shall next try to show the sources of those evils, the causes from
+which they arise.</p>
+
+<p>I shall go on to explain what <i>Socialism</i> is, and what <i>Socialism</i> is not.</p>
+
+<p>I shall answer the principal objections commonly urged against <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And I shall, in conclusion, point out the chief ways in which I think
+the reader of this book may help the cause of <i>Socialism</i> if he believes
+that cause to be just and wise.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>FOREWORDS</span></h2>
+
+<p>Years ago, before <i>Socialism</i> had gained a footing in this country, some
+of us democrats used often to wonder how any working man could be a Tory.</p>
+
+<p>To-day we Socialists are still more puzzled by the fact that the
+majority of our working men are not Socialists.</p>
+
+<p>How is it that middle class and even wealthy people often accept
+<i>Socialism</i> more readily than do the workers?</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it is because the men and women of the middle and upper classes
+are more in the habit of reading and thinking for themselves, whereas
+the workers take most of their opinions at second-hand from priests,
+parsons, journalists, employers, and members of Parliament, whose little
+knowledge is a dangerous thing, and whose interests lie in bolstering up
+class privilege by darkening counsel with a multitude of words.</p>
+
+<p>I have been engaged for more than a dozen years in studying political
+economy and <i>Socialism</i>, and in trying, as a Socialist, pressman, and
+author, to explain <i>Socialism</i> and to confute the arguments and answer
+the objections of non-Socialists, and I say, without any hesitation,
+that I have never yet come across a single argument against practical
+<i>Socialism</i> that will hold water.</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe that any person of fair intelligence and education, who
+will take the trouble to study <i>Socialism</i> fairly and thoroughly, will
+be able to avoid the conclusion that <i>Socialism</i> is just and wise.</p>
+
+<p>I defy any man, of any nation, how learned, eminent, and intellectual
+soever, to shake the case for practical <i>Socialism</i>, or to refute the
+reasoning contained in this book.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p><p>And now I will address myself to Mr. John Smith, a typical British
+workman, not yet converted to <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Smith, I assume that you are opposed to <i>Socialism</i>, and I
+assume that you would say that you are opposed to it for one or more of
+the following reasons:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. Because you think <i>Socialism</i> is unjust.<br />2. Because you think
+<i>Socialism</i> is unpractical.<br />3. Because you think that to establish
+<i>Socialism</i> is not possible.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>But I suspect that the real reason for your opposition to <i>Socialism</i> is
+simply that you do not understand it.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons you generally give for opposing <i>Socialism</i> are reasons
+suggested to you by pressmen or politicians who know very little about
+it, or are interested in its rejection.</p>
+
+<p>I am strongly inclined to believe that the <i>Socialism</i> to which you are
+opposed is not <i>Socialism</i> at all, but only a bogey erected by the
+enemies of <i>Socialism</i> to scare you away from the genuine <i>Socialism</i>,
+which it would be so much to your advantage to discover.</p>
+
+<p>Now you would not take your opinions of Trade Unionism from
+non-Unionists, and why, then, should you take your opinions of
+<i>Socialism</i> from non-Socialists?</p>
+
+<p>If you will be good enough to read this book you will find out what
+<i>Socialism</i> really is, and what it is not. If after reading this book
+you remain opposed to <i>Socialism</i>, I must leave it for some Socialist
+more able than I to convert you.</p>
+
+<p>When it pleases those who call themselves your "betters" to flatter you,
+Mr. Smith (which happens oftener at election times than during strikes
+or lock-outs), you hear that you are a "shrewd, hard-headed, practical
+man." I hope that is true, whether your "betters" believe it or not.</p>
+
+<p>I am a practical man myself, and shall offer you in this book nothing
+but hard fact and cold reason.</p>
+
+<p>I assume, Mr. Smith, that you, as a hard-headed, practical man, would
+rather be well off than badly off, and that with regard to your own
+earnings you would rather be paid twenty shillings in the pound than
+five shillings or even nineteen shillings and elevenpence in the pound.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p><p>And I assume that as a family man you would rather live in a
+comfortable and healthy house than in an uncomfortable and unhealthy
+house; that you would be glad if you could buy beef, bread, gas, coal,
+water, tea, sugar, clothes, boots, and furniture for less money than you
+now pay for them; and that you would think it a good thing, and not a
+bad thing, if your wife had less work and more leisure, fewer worries
+and more nice dresses, and if your children had more sports, and better
+health, and better education.</p>
+
+<p>And I assume that you would like to pay lower rents, even if some rich
+landlord had to keep fewer race-horses.</p>
+
+<p>And I assume that as a humane man you would prefer that other men and
+women and their children should not suffer if their sufferings could be prevented.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, I assure you that you are paying too much and are being paid
+too little, and that many other Britons, especially weak women and young
+children, are enduring much preventible misery; and if I assert,
+further, that I know of a means whereby you might secure more ease and
+comfort, and they might secure more justice, you will, surely, as a kind
+and sensible man, consent to listen to the arguments and statements I
+propose to place before you.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose a stranger came to tell you where you could get a better house
+at a lower rent, and suppose your present landlord assured you that the
+man who offered the information was a fool or a rogue, would you take
+the landlord's word without investigation? Would it not be more
+practical and hard-headed to hear first what the bringer of such good
+news had to tell?</p>
+
+<p>Well, the Socialist brings you better news than that of a lower rent.
+Will you not hear him? Will you turn your back on him for no better
+reason than because he is denounced as a fraud by the rich men whose
+wealth depends upon the continuation of the present system?</p>
+
+<p>Your "betters" tell you that you always display a wise distrust of new
+ideas. But to reject an idea because it is new is not a proof of
+shrewdness and good sense; it is a sign of bigotry and ignorance. Trade
+Unionism was new not so long ago, and was denounced, and is still
+denounced,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> by the very same persons who now denounce <i>Socialism</i>. If
+you find a newspaper or an employer to be wrong when he denounces Trade
+Unionism, which you do understand, why should you assume that the same
+authority is right in denouncing <i>Socialism</i>, which you do not
+understand? You know that in attacking Trade Unionism the employer and
+the pressman are speaking in their own interest and against yours; why,
+then, should you be ready to believe that in counselling you against
+<i>Socialism</i> the same men are speaking in your interest and not in their own?</p>
+
+<p>I ask you, as a practical man, to forget both the Socialist and the
+non-Socialist, and to consider the case for and against <i>Socialism</i> on
+its merits. As I said in <i>Merrie England</i>&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Forget that you are a joiner or a spinner, a Catholic or a
+Freethinker, a Liberal or a Tory, a moderate drinker or a
+teetotaler, and consider the problem as a <i>man</i>.</p>
+
+<p>If you had to do a problem in arithmetic, or if you were cast
+adrift in an open boat at sea, you would not set to work as a
+Wesleyan, or a Liberal Unionist; but you would tackle the sum by
+the rules of arithmetic, and would row the boat by the strength of
+your own manhood, and keep a lookout for passing ships under <i>any</i>
+flag. I ask you, then, Mr. Smith, to hear what I have to say, and
+to decide by your own judgment whether I am right or wrong.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I was once opposed to <i>Socialism</i> myself; but it was before I understood it.</p>
+
+<p>When you understand it you will, I feel sure, agree with me that it is
+perfectly logical, and just, and practical; and you will, I hope,
+yourself become a <i>Socialist</i>, and will help to abolish poverty and
+wrong by securing <span class="smcap">Britain for the British</span>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER I</span> <span class="smaller">THE UNEQUAL DIVISION OF WEALTH</span></h2>
+
+<p class="bold"><i>Section A: the Rich</i></p>
+
+<p>Non-socialists say that self-interest is the strongest motive in human nature.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take them at their word.</p>
+
+<p>Self-interest being the universal ruling motive, it behoves you, Mr.
+Smith, to do the best you can for yourself and family.</p>
+
+<p>Self-interest being the universal ruling motive, it is evident that the
+rich man will look out for his own advantage, and not for yours.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore as a selfish man, alive to your own interests, it is clear
+that you will not trust the rich man, nor believe in the unselfishness
+of his motives.</p>
+
+<p>As a selfish man you will look out first for yourself. If you can get
+more wages for the work you do, if you can get the same pay for fewer
+hours and lighter work, self-interest tells you that you would be a fool
+to go on as you are. If you can get cheaper houses, cheaper clothes,
+food, travelling, and amusement than you now get, self-interest tells
+you that you would be a fool to go on paying present prices.</p>
+
+<p>Your landlord, your employer, your tradesman will not take less work or
+money from you if he can get more.</p>
+
+<p>Self-interest counsels you not to pay a high price if you can get what
+you want at a lower price.</p>
+
+<p>Your employer will not employ you unless you are useful to him, nor will
+he employ you if he can get another man as useful to him as you at a lower wage.</p>
+
+<p>Such persons as landlords, capitalists, employers, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> contractors will
+tell you that they are useful, and even necessary, to the working class,
+of which class you are one.</p>
+
+<p>Self-interest will counsel you, firstly, that if these persons are
+really useful or necessary to you, it is to your interest to secure
+their services at the lowest possible price; and, secondly, that if you
+can replace them by other persons more useful or less costly, you will
+be justified in dispensing with their services.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the Socialist claims that it is cheaper and better for the people
+to manage their own affairs than to pay landlords, capitalists,
+employers, and contractors to manage their affairs for them.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, that as it is cheaper and better for a city to make its
+own gas, or to provide its own water, or to lay its own roads, so it
+would be cheaper and better for the nation to own its own land, its own
+mines, its own railways, houses, factories, ships, and workshops, and to
+manage them as the corporation tramways, gasworks, and waterworks are
+now owned and managed.</p>
+
+<p>Your "betters," Mr. Smith, will tell you that you might be worse off
+than you are now. That is not the question. The question is, Might you
+be better off than you are now?</p>
+
+<p>They will tell you that the working man is better off now than he was a
+hundred years ago. That is not the question. The question is, Are the
+workers as well off now as they ought to be and might be?</p>
+
+<p>They will tell you that the British workers are better off than the
+workers of any other nation. That is not the question. The question is,
+Are the British workers as well off as they ought to be and might be?</p>
+
+<p>They will tell you that Socialists are discontented agitators, and that
+they exaggerate the evils of the present time. That is not the question.
+The question is, Do evils exist at all to-day, and if so, is no remedy available?</p>
+
+<p>Your "betters" have admitted, and do admit, as I will show you
+presently, that evils do exist; but they have no remedy to propose.</p>
+
+<p>The Socialist tells you that your "betters" are deceived or are
+deceiving you, and that <i>Socialism</i> is a remedy, and the only one possible.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p><p>Self-interest will counsel you to secure the best conditions you can
+for yourself, and will warn you not to expect unselfish service from selfish men.</p>
+
+<p>Ask yourself, then, whether, since self-interest is the universal
+motive, it would not be wise for you to make some inquiry as to whether
+the persons intrusted by you with the management of your affairs are
+managing your affairs to your advantage or to their own.</p>
+
+<p>As a selfish man, is it sensible to elect selfish men, or to accept
+selfish men, to govern you, to make your laws, to manage your business,
+and to affix your taxes, prices, and wages?</p>
+
+<p>The mild Hindoo has a proverb which you might well remember in this
+connection. It is this&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The wise man is united in this life with that with which it is
+proper he should be united. I am bread; thou art the eater: how can
+harmony exist between us?</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Appealing, then, entirely to your self-interest, I ask you to consider
+whether the workers of Britain to-day are making the best bargain
+possible with the other classes of society. Do the workers receive their
+full due? Do evils exist in this country to-day? and if so, is there a
+remedy? and if there is a remedy, what is it?</p>
+
+<p>The first charge brought by Socialists against the present system is the
+charge of the unjust distribution of wealth.</p>
+
+<p>The rich obtain wealth beyond their need, and beyond their deserving;
+the workers are, for the most part, condemned to lead laborious,
+anxious, and penurious lives. Nearly all the wealth of the nation is
+produced by the workers; most of it is consumed by the rich, who
+squander it in useless or harmful luxury, leaving the majority of those
+who produced it, not enough for human comfort, decency, and health.</p>
+
+<p>If you wish for a plain and clear statement of the unequal distribution
+of wealth in this country, get Fabian Tract No. 5, price one penny, and study it well.</p>
+
+<p>According to that tract, the total value of the wealth produced in this
+country is &pound;1,700,000,000. Of this total &pound;275,000,000 is paid in rent,
+&pound;340,000,000 is paid in interest, &pound;435,000,000 is paid in profits and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+salaries. That makes a total of &pound;1,050,000,000 in rent, interest,
+profits, and salaries, nearly the whole of which goes to about 5,000,000
+of people comprising the middle and upper classes.</p>
+
+<p>The balance of &pound;650,000,000 is paid in wages to the remaining 35,000,000
+of people comprising the working classes. Roughly, then, two-thirds of
+the national wealth goes to 5,000,000 of persons, quite half of whom are
+idle, and one-third is <i>shared</i> by seven times as many people, nearly
+half of whom are workers.</p>
+
+<p>These figures have been before the public for many years, and so far as
+I know have never been questioned.</p>
+
+<p>There are, say the Fabian tracts, more than 2,000,000 of men, women, and
+children living without any kind of occupation: that is, they live without working.</p>
+
+<p>Ten-elevenths of all the land in the British Islands belong to 176,520
+persons. The rest of the 40,000,000 own the other eleventh. Or, dividing
+Britain into eleven parts, you may say that one two-hundredth part of
+the population owns ten-elevenths of Britain, while the other one
+hundred and ninety-nine two-hundredths of the population own
+one-eleventh of Britain. That is as though a cake were divided amongst
+200 persons by giving to one person ten slices, and dividing one slice
+amongst 199 persons. I told you just now that Britain does not belong to
+the British, but only to a few of the British.</p>
+
+<p>In Fabian Tract No. 7 I read&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>One-half of the <i>wealth</i> of the kingdom is held by persons who
+leave at death at least &pound;20,000, exclusive of land and houses.
+<i>These persons form a class somewhat over 25,000 in number.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Half the wealth of Britain, then, is held by one fifteen-hundredth part
+of the population. It is as if a cake were cut in half, one half being
+given to one man and the other half being divided amongst 1499 men.</p>
+
+<p>How much cake does a working mechanic get?</p>
+
+<p>In 1898 the estates of seven persons were proved at over &pound;45,000,000.
+That is to say, those seven left &pound;45,000,000 when they died.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p><p>Putting a workman's wages at &pound;75 a year, and his working life at twenty
+years, it would take 30,000 workmen all their lives to <i>earn</i> (not to
+<i>save</i>) the money left by those seven rich men.</p>
+
+<p>Many rich men have incomes of &pound;150,000 a year. The skilled worker draws
+about &pound;75 a year in wages.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore one man with &pound;150,000 a year gets more than 2000 skilled
+workmen, and the workmen have to do more than 600,000 days' work for
+their wages, while the rich man does <i>nothing</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One of our richest dukes gets as much money in one year for doing
+nothing, as a skilled workman would get for 14,000 years of hard and useful work.</p>
+
+<p>A landowner is a millionaire. He has &pound;1,000,000. It would take an
+agricultural labourer, at 10s. a week wages, nearly 40,000 years to earn &pound;1,000,000.</p>
+
+<p>I need not burden you with figures. Look about you and you will see
+evidences of wealth on every side. Go through the suburbs of London, or
+any large town, and notice the large districts composed of villas and
+mansions, at rentals of from &pound;100 to &pound;1000 a year. Go through the
+streets of a big city, and observe the miles of great shops stored with
+flaming jewels, costly gold and silver plate, rich furs, silks,
+pictures, velvets, furniture, and upholsteries. Who buys all these
+expensive luxuries? They are not for you, nor for your wife, nor for your children.</p>
+
+<p>You do not live in a &pound;200 flat. Your floor is not covered with a &pound;50
+Persian rug; your wife does not wear diamond rings, nor silk
+underclothing, nor gowns of brocaded silk, nor sable collars, nor
+Maltese lace cuffs worth many guineas. She does not sit in the stalls at
+the opera, nor ride home in a brougham, nor sup on oysters and
+champagne, nor go, during the heat of the summer, on a yachting cruise
+in the Mediterranean. And is not your wife as much to you as the duchess to the duke?</p>
+
+<p>And now let us go on to the next section, and see how it fares with the poor.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p><p class="bold"><i>Section B: The Poor</i></p>
+
+<p>At present the average age at death among the nobility, gentry, and
+professional classes in England and Wales is fifty-five years; but among
+the artisan classes of Lambeth it only amounts to twenty-nine years; and
+whilst the infantile death-rate among the well-to-do classes is such
+that only 8 children die in the first year of life out of 100 born, as
+many as 30 per cent. succumb at that age among the children of the poor
+in some districts of our large cities.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Playfair says that amongst the upper class 18 per cent. of the
+children die before they reach five years of age; of the tradesman class
+36 per cent., and of the working class 55 per cent, of the children die
+before they reach five years of age.</p>
+
+<p>Out of every 1000 persons 939 die without leaving any property at all
+worth mentioning.</p>
+
+<p>About 8,000,000 persons exist always on the borders of starvation. About
+20,000,000 are poor. More than half the national wealth belongs to about
+25,000 people; the remaining 39,000,000 share the other half unequally amongst them.</p>
+
+<p>About 30,000 persons own fifty-five fifty-sixths of the land and capital
+of the nation; but of the 39,000,000 of other persons only 1,500,000
+earn (or receive) as much as &pound;3 a week.</p>
+
+<p>In London 1,292,737 persons, or 37.8 per cent. of the whole population,
+get less than a guinea a week <i>per family</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The number of persons in receipt of poor-law relief on any one day in
+the British Islands is over 1,000,000; but 2,360,000 persons receive
+poor-law relief during one year, or one in eleven of the whole manual labouring class.</p>
+
+<p>In England and Wales alone 72,000 persons die each year in workhouse
+hospitals, infirmaries, or asylums.</p>
+
+<p>In London alone there are 99,830 persons in workhorses, hospitals,
+prisons, or industrial schools.</p>
+
+<p>In London one person out of every four will die in a workhouse,
+hospital, or lunatic asylum.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p><p>It is estimated that 3,225,000 persons in the British Islands live in
+overcrowded dwellings, with an average of three persons in each room.</p>
+
+<p>There are 30,000 persons in London alone whose <i>home</i> is a common
+lodging-house. In London alone 1100 persons sleep every night in casual wards.</p>
+
+<p>From Fabian Tract No. 75 I quote&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Much has been done in the way of improvement in various parts of
+Scotland, but 22 per cent. of Scottish families still dwell in a
+single room each, and the proportion in the case of Glasgow rises
+to 33 per cent. The little town of Kilmarnock, with only 28,447
+inhabitants, huddles even a slightly larger proportion of its
+families into single-room tenements. Altogether, there are in
+Glasgow over 120,000, and in all Scotland 560,000 persons (more
+than one-eighth of the whole population), who do not know the
+decency of even a two-roomed home.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>A similar state of things exists in nearly all our large towns, the
+colliery districts being amongst the worst.</p>
+
+<p><i>The working class.</i>&mdash;The great bulk of the British people are
+overworked, underpaid, badly housed, unfairly taxed but besides all
+that, they are exposed to serious risks.</p>
+
+<p>Read <i>The Tragedy of Toil</i>, by John Burns, M.P. (Clarion Press, 1d.).</p>
+
+<p>In sixty years 60,000 colliers have been accidentally killed. In the
+South Wales coalfield in 1896, 232 were killed out of 71,000. In 1897,
+out of 76,000 no less than 10,230 were injured.</p>
+
+<p>In 1897, of the men employed in railway shunting, 1 in 203 was killed
+and 1 in 12 was injured.</p>
+
+<p>In 1897, out of 465,112 railway workers, 510 were killed, 828 were
+permanently disabled, and 67,000 were temporarily disabled.</p>
+
+<p>John Burns says&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>This we do know, that 60 per cent. of the common labourers engaged
+on the Panama Canal were either killed, injured, or died from
+disease every year, whilst 80 per cent. of the Europeans died. Out
+of 70 French engineers, 45 died, and only 10 of the remainder were
+fit for subsequent work.</p>
+
+<p>The men engaged on the Manchester Ship Canal claim that 1000 to
+1100 men were killed and 1700 men were severely injured, whilst
+2500 were temporarily disabled.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p><p>Again&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Taking mechanics first, and selecting one firm&mdash;Armstrong's, at
+Elswick&mdash;we find that in 1892 there were 588 accidents, or 7.9 per
+cent. of men engaged. They have steadily risen to 1512, or 13.9 per
+cent. of men engaged in 1897. In some departments, notably the
+blast furnace, 43 per cent. of the men employed were injured in
+1897 The steel works had 296 injured, or 24.4 per cent. of its
+number.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Of sailors John Burns says&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The last thirteen years, 1884-85 to 1896-97, show a loss of 28,302
+from wreck, casualties, and accidents, or an average of 2177 from
+the industrial risks of the sailor's life.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>But the most startling statement is to come&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Sir A. Forwood has recently indicated, and recent facts confirm
+this general view, that</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1 of every 1400 workmen is killed annually.<br />
+"<span class="s2">&nbsp;</span>"<span class="s2">&nbsp;</span>2500<span class="s2">&nbsp;</span>"<span class="s2">&nbsp;</span>is totally disabled.<br />
+"<span class="s2">&nbsp;</span>"<span class="s2">&nbsp;</span>&nbsp;300<span class="s2">&nbsp;</span>"<span class="s2">&nbsp;</span>is permanently partially disabled.<br />
+125 per 1000 are temporarily disabled for three or four weeks.</p></blockquote></blockquote>
+
+<p>One workman in 1400 is killed annually. Let us say there are 6,000,000
+workmen in the British Islands, and we shall find that no less than 4280
+are killed, and 20,000 permanently or partially disabled.</p>
+
+<p>That is as high as the average year's casualties in the Boer war.</p>
+
+<p>But the high death-rate from accidents amongst the workers is not nearly
+the greatest evil to which the poor are exposed.</p>
+
+<p>In the poorest districts of the great towns the children die like flies,
+and diseases caused by overcrowding, insufficient or improper food,
+exposure, dirt, neglect, and want of fuel and clothing, play havoc with
+the infants, the weakly, and the old.</p>
+
+<p>What are the chief diseases almost wholly due to the surroundings of
+poverty? They are consumption, bronchitis, rheumatism, epilepsy, fevers,
+smallpox, and cancer. Add to those the evil influences with which some
+trades are cursed, such as rupture, lead and phosphorous poisoning, and
+irritation of the lungs by dust, and you have a whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> arsenal of deadly
+weapons aimed at the lives of the laborious poor.</p>
+
+<p>The average death-rate amongst the well-to-do classes is less than 10 in
+the thousand. Amongst the poorer workers it is often as high as 70 and
+seldom as low as 20.</p>
+
+<p>Put the average at 25 in the thousand amongst the poor: put the numbers
+of the poor at 10,000,000. We shall find that the difference between the
+death-rates of the poor and the well-to-do, is 15 to the thousand or
+15,000 to the million.</p>
+
+<p>We may say, then, that the 10,000,000 of poor workers lose every year
+150,000 lives from accidents and diseases due to poverty and to labour.</p>
+
+<p>Taking the entire population of the British Islands, I dare assert that
+the excess death-rate over the normal death-rate, will show that every
+year 300,000 lives are sacrificed to the ignorance and the injustice of
+the inhuman chaos which we call British civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>Some have cynically said that these lives are not worth saving, that the
+death-rate shows the defeat of the unfit, and that if all survived there
+would not be enough for them to live on.</p>
+
+<p>But except in the worst cases&mdash;where sots and criminals have bred human
+weeds&mdash;no man is wise enough to select the "fit" from the "unfit"
+amongst the children. The thin, pale child killed by cold, by hunger, by
+smallpox, or by fever, may be a seedling Stephenson, or Herschel, or
+Wesley; and I take it that in the West End the parents would not be
+consoled for the sacrifice of their most delicate child by the brutal
+suggestion that it was one of the "unfit." The "fit" may be a hooligan,
+a sweater, a fraudulent millionaire, a dissolute peer, or a fool.</p>
+
+<p>But there are two sides to this question of physical fitness. To excuse
+the evils of society on the ground that they weed out the unfit, is as
+foolish as to excuse bad drainage on the same plea. In a low-lying
+district where the soil is marshy the population will be weeded swiftly;
+but who would offer that as a reason why the land should not be drained?
+This heartless, fatuous talk about the survival of the fittest is only
+another example of the insults<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> to which the poor are subjected. It
+fills one with despair to think that working men&mdash;fathers and
+husbands&mdash;will read or hear such things said of their own class, and not
+resent them. It is the duty of every working man to fight against such
+pitiless savagery, and to make every effort to win for his class and his
+family, respect and human conditions of life.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the shoddy science which talks so glibly about the "weeding
+out" of little helpless children is too blear-eyed to perceive that the
+same conditions of inhuman life which destroy the "weeds," <i>breed</i> the
+weeds. Children born of healthy parents in healthy surroundings are not
+weeds. But to-day the British race is deteriorating, and the nation is
+in danger because of the greed of money-seekers and the folly of rulers
+and of those who claim to teach. The nation that gives itself up to the
+worship of luxury, wealth, and ease, is doomed. Nothing can save the
+British race but an awakening of the workers to the dangerous pass to
+which they have been brought by those who affect to guide and to govern them.</p>
+
+<p>But the workers, besides being underpaid, over-taxed, badly housed, and
+exposed to all manner of hardship, poverty, danger, and anxiety of mind,
+are also, by those who live upon them, denied respect.</p>
+
+<p>Do you doubt this? Do not the "better classes," as they call themselves,
+allude to the workers as "the lower orders," and "the great unwashed"?
+Does not the employer commonly speak of the workers as "hands"? Does the
+fine gentleman, who raises his hat and airs his nicest manners for a
+"lady," extend his chivalry and politeness to a "woman"? Do not the silk
+hats and the black coats and the white collars treat the caps and the
+overalls and the smocks as inferiors? Do not the men of the "better
+class" address each other as "sir"? And when did you last hear a
+"gentleman" say "sir" to a train-guard, to a railway porter, or to the
+"man" who has come to mend the drawing-room stove?</p>
+
+<p>Man cannot live by bread alone; neither can woman or child. And how much
+honour, culture, pleasure, rest, or love falls to the lot of the wives
+and children of the poor?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p><p>Do not think I wish to breed class hatred. I do not. Doubtless the
+"better class" are graceful, amiable, honourable, and well-meaning
+folks. Doubtless they honestly believe they have a just claim to all
+their wealth and privileges. Doubtless they are no more selfish, no more
+arrogant, no more covetous nor idle than any working man would be in their place.</p>
+
+<p>What of that? It is nothing at all to you. They may be the finest people
+in the world. But does their fineness help you to pay your rent, or your
+wife to mend the clothes? or does it give you more wages, or her more
+rest? or does it in any way help to educate, and feed, and make happy your children?</p>
+
+<p>It does not. Nor do all the graces and superiorities of the West End
+make the lot of the East less bitter, less anxious, or more human.</p>
+
+<p>If self-interest be the ruling motive of mankind, why do not the working
+men transfer their honour and their service from the fine ladies and
+fine gentlemen to their own wives and children?</p>
+
+<p>These need every atom of love and respect the men can give them. Why
+should the many be poor, be ignorant, despised? Why should the rich
+monopolise the knowledge and the culture, the graces and elegancies of
+life, as well as the wealth?</p>
+
+<p>Ignorance is a curse: it is a deadlier curse than poverty. Indeed, but
+for ignorance, poverty and wealth could not continue to exist side by
+side; for only ignorance permits the rich to uphold and the poor to
+endure the injustices and the criminal follies of British society, as
+now to our shame and grief they environ us, like some loathly vision
+beheld with horror under nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>Is it needful to tell you more, Mr. Smith, you who are yourself a
+worker? Have you not witnessed, perhaps suffered, many of these evils?</p>
+
+<p>Yes; perhaps you yourself have smarted under "the insolence of office,
+and the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes"; perhaps you
+have borne the tortures of long suspense as one of the unemployed;
+perhaps on some weary tramp after work you have learned what it is to be
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> stranger in your own land; perhaps you have seen some old veteran
+worker, long known to you, now broken in health and stricken in years,
+compelled to seek the shameful shelter of a workhouse; perhaps you have
+had comrades of your own or other trades, who have been laid low by
+sickness, sickness caused by exposure or overstrain, and have died what
+coroners' juries call "natural deaths," or, in plain English, have been
+killed by overwork; perhaps you have known widows and little children,
+left behind by those unfortunate men, and can remember how much succour
+and compassion they received in this Christian country; perhaps as you
+think of the grim prophecy that one worker in four must die in a
+workhouse, you may yourself, despite your strength and your skill,
+glance anxiously towards the future, as a bold sailor glances towards a stormy horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Mr. Smith, will you look through a book of mine called <i>Dismal
+England</i>, and there read how men and women and children of your class
+are treated in the workhouse, in the workhouse school, in the police
+court, in the chain works, on the canals, in the chemical hells, and in
+the poor and gloomy districts known as slums? I would quote some
+passages from <i>Dismal England</i> now, but space forbids.</p>
+
+<p>Or, maybe, you would prefer the evidence of men of wealth and eminence
+who are not Socialists. If so, please read the testimony given in the next section.</p>
+
+<p class="bold"><i>Section C: Reliable Evidence</i></p>
+
+<p>The Salvation Army see a great deal of the poor. Here is the evidence of General Booth&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>444 persons are reported by the police to have attempted to commit
+suicide in London last year, and probably as many more succeeded in
+doing so. 200 persons died from starvation in the same period. We
+have in this one city about 100,000 paupers, 30,000 prostitutes,
+33,000 homeless adults, and 35,000 wandering children of the slums.
+There is a standing army of out-of-works numbering 80,000, which is
+often increased in special periods of commercial depression or
+trade disputes to 100,000. 12,000 criminals are always inside Her
+Majesty's prisons, and about 15,000 are outside. 70,000 charges
+for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> petty offences are dealt with by the London magistrates every
+year. The best authorities estimate that 10,000 new criminals are
+manufactured per annum. We have tens of thousands of dwellings
+known to be overcrowded, unsanitary, or dangerous.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Here is the evidence of a man of letters, Mr. Frederic Harrison&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>To me, at least, it would be enough to condemn modern society as
+hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition
+of industry were to be that which we behold, that 90 per cent. of
+the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call
+their own beyond the end of the week; have no bit of soil, or so
+much as a room that belongs to them; have nothing of value of any
+kind except as much old furniture as will go in a cart; have the
+precarious chance of weekly wages which barely suffice to keep them
+in health; are housed for the most part in places that no man
+thinks fit for his horse; are separated by so narrow a margin from
+destitution, that a month of bad trade, sickness, or unexpected
+loss brings them face to face with hunger and pauperism.... This is
+the normal state of the average workman in town or country.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Here is the evidence of a man of science, Professor Huxley&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Anyone who is acquainted with the state of the population of all
+great industrial centres, whether in this or other countries, is
+aware that amidst a large and increasing body of that population
+there reigns supreme ... that condition which the French call <i>la
+mis&egrave;re</i>, a word for which I do not think there is any exact English
+equivalent. It is a condition in which the food, warmth, and
+clothing which are necessary for the mere maintenance of the
+functions of the body in their normal state cannot be obtained; in
+which men, women, and children are forced to crowd into dens
+wherein decency is abolished, and the most ordinary conditions of
+healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in which the
+pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness; in
+which the pains accumulate at compound interest in the shape of
+starvation, disease, stunted development, and moral degradation; in
+which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of
+unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave....
+When the organisation of society, instead of mitigating this
+tendency, tends to continue and intensify it; when a given social
+order plainly makes for evil and not for good, men naturally enough
+begin to think it high time to try a fresh experiment. I take it to
+be a mere plain truth that throughout industrial Europe there is
+not a single large manufacturing city which is free from a vast
+mass of people whose condition is exactly that described, and from
+a still greater mass who, living just on the edge of the social
+swamp, are liable to be precipitated into it.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p><p>Here is the evidence of a British peer, Lord Durham&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>There was still more sympathy and no reproach whatever to be
+bestowed upon the children&mdash;perhaps waifs and strays in their
+earliest days&mdash;of parents destitute, very likely deserving,
+possibly criminal, who had had to leave these poor children to
+fight their way in life alone. What did these children know or care
+for the civilisation or the wealth of their native land? <i>What
+example, what incentive had they ever had to lead good and honest
+lives?</i> Possibly from the moment of their birth they had never
+known contentment, what it had been to feel bodily comfort. They
+were cast into that world, and looked upon it as a cruel and
+heartless world, with no guidance, no benign influence to guide
+them in their way, and <i>thus they were naturally prone to fall into
+any vicious or criminal habits which would procure them a bare
+subsistence</i>.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Here is the evidence of a Tory Minister, Sir John Gorst&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>I do not think there is any doubt as to the reality of the evil;
+that is to say, that there are in our civilisation men able and
+willing to work who can't find work to do.... Work will have to be
+found for them.... What are usually called relief works may be a
+palliative for acute temporary distress, but they are no remedy for
+the unemployed evil in the long-run. Not only so; they tend to
+aggravate it.... If you can set 100 unemployed men to produce food,
+they are not taking bread out of other people's mouths. Men so
+employed would be producing what is now imported from abroad and
+what they themselves would consume. An unemployed man&mdash;<i>whether he
+is a duke or a docker</i>&mdash;is living on the community. If you set him
+to grow food he is enriching the community by what he produces.
+Therefore, my idea is that the direction in which a remedy for the
+unemployed evil is to be sought is in the production of food.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Here is the evidence of the Tory Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>They looked around them and saw a <i>growing</i> mass of <i>poverty</i> and
+<i>want of employment</i>, and of course the one object which every
+statesman who loved his country should desire to attain, was that
+there might be the largest amount of profitable employment for the mass of the people.</p>
+
+<p>He did not say that he had any patent or certain remedy for <i>the
+terrible evils which beset us on all sides</i>, but he did say that it
+was time they left off mending the constitution of Parliament, and
+that they turned all the wisdom and energy Parliament could combine
+together in order to remedy the <i>sufferings</i> under which so <i>many</i>
+of their countrymen laboured.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p><p>Here is the evidence of the Colonial Secretary, the Right Hon. Joseph
+Chamberlain, M.P.&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights
+of the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is
+hardly too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the
+liberties of a great proportion of the population have been laid at
+the feet of a small number of proprietors, who "neither toil nor spin."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And here is further evidence from Mr. Chamberlain&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>For my part neither sneers, nor abuse, nor opposition shall induce
+me to accept as the will of the Almighty, and the unalterable
+dispensation of His providence, a state of things under which
+<i>millions lead sordid, hopeless, and monotonous lives, without
+pleasure in the present, and without prospect for the future</i>.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And here is still stronger testimony from Mr. Chamberlain&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The ordinary conditions of life among a large proportion of the
+population are such that common decency is absolutely impossible;
+and all this goes on in sight of the mansions of the rich, where
+undoubtedly there are people who would gladly remedy it if they
+could. It goes on in presence of wasteful extravagance and luxury,
+which bring but little pleasure to those who indulge in them; and
+private charity is powerless, religious organisations can do
+nothing, to remedy the evils which are so deep-seated in our social system.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>You have read what these eminent men have said, Mr. Smith, as to the
+evils of the present time.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Mr. Atkinson, a well-known American statistical authority, has said&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Four or five men can produce the bread for a thousand. With the
+best machinery one workman can produce cotton cloth for 250 people,
+woollens for 300, or boots and shoes for 1000.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>How is it, friend John Smith, that with all our energy, all our
+industry, all our genius, and all our machinery, there are 8,000,000 of
+hungry poor in this country?</p>
+
+<p>If five men can produce bread for a thousand, and one man can produce
+shoes for a thousand, how is it we have so many British citizens
+suffering from hunger and bare feet?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>That, Mr. Smith, is the question I shall endeavour in this book to
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, if you have any doubts as to the verity of my statements of
+the sufferings of the poor, or as to the urgent need for your immediate
+and earnest aid, read the following books, and form your own opinion:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Labour and Life of the People.</i> Charles Booth. To be seen at most free libraries.</p>
+
+<p><i>Poverty: A Study of Town Life.</i> By B. S. Rountree. Macmillan. 10s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dismal England.</i> By R. Blatchford, 72 Fleet Street, E.C. 2s. 6d. and 1s.</p>
+
+<p><i>No Room to Live.</i> By G. Haw, 72 Fleet Street, E.C. 1s.</p>
+
+<p><i>The White Slaves of England.</i> By R. Sherard. London, James Bowden. 1s.</p>
+
+<p><i>Pictures and Problems from the Police Courts.</i> By T. Holmes. Ed.
+Arnold, Bedford Street, W.C.</p>
+
+<p>And the Fabian Tracts, especially No. 5 and No. 7. These are 1d. each.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER II</span> <span class="smaller">WHAT IS WEALTH? WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? WHO CREATES IT?</span></h2>
+
+<p>Those who have read anything about political economy or <i>Socialism</i> must
+often have found such thoughts as these rise up in their minds&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>How is it some are rich and others poor? How is it some who are able and
+willing to work can get no work to do? How is it that some who work very
+hard are so poorly paid? How is it that others who do not work at all
+have more money than they need? Why is one man born to pay rent and
+another to spend it?</p>
+
+<p>Let us first face the question of why there is so much poverty.</p>
+
+<p>This question has been answered in many strange ways.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that poverty is due to drink. But that is not true, for
+we find many sober people poor, and we find awful poverty in countries
+where drunkenness is almost unknown.</p>
+
+<p>Drink does not cause the poverty of the sober Hindoos. Drink does not
+cause the poverty of our English women workers.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that poverty is due to "over-production," and it has
+been said that it is due to "under-consumption." Let us see what these phrases mean.</p>
+
+<p>First, over-production. Poverty is due to over-production&mdash;of <i>what</i>? Of
+wealth. So we are to believe that the people are poor because they make
+too much wealth, that they are hungry because they produce too much
+food, naked because they make too many clothes, cold because they get
+too much coal, homeless because they build too many houses!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p><p>Next, under-consumption. We are told that poverty is due to
+under-consumption&mdash;under-consumption of <i>what</i>? Of wealth. The people
+are poor because they do not destroy enough wealth. The way for them to
+grow rich is by consuming riches. They are to make their cake larger by eating it.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! the trouble is that they can get no cake to eat; they can get no
+wealth to consume.</p>
+
+<p>But I think the economists mean that the poor will grow richer if the
+rich consume more wealth.</p>
+
+<p>A rich man has two slaves. The slaves grow corn and make bread. The rich
+man takes half the bread and eats it. The slaves have only one man's
+share between two.</p>
+
+<p>Will it mend matters here if the rich man "consumes more"? Will it be
+better for the two slaves if the master takes half the bread left to
+them, and eats that as well as the bread he has already taken?</p>
+
+<p>See what a pretty mess the economists have led us into. The rich have
+too much and the poor too little. The economist says, let the poor
+produce less and the rich consume more, and all will be well!</p>
+
+<p>Wonderful! But if the poor produce less, there will be less to eat; and
+if the rich eat more, the share of the poor will be smaller than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Let us try another way. Suppose the poor produce more and the rich
+consume less! Does it not seem likely that then the share of the poor
+would be bigger?</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, we must turn the wisdom of the economists the other way up.
+We must say over-production of wealth <i>cannot</i> make poverty, for that
+means that the more of a thing is produced the less of that thing there
+is; and we must say that under-consumption <i>cannot</i> cause poverty, for
+that means that the more of a loaf you eat the more you will have left.</p>
+
+<p>Such rubbish as that may do for statesmen and editors, but it is of no
+use to sensible men and women. Let us see if we cannot think a little
+better for ourselves than these very superior persons have thought for
+us. I think that we, without being at all clever or learned, may get
+nearer to the truth than some of those who pass for great men.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what is it we have to find out? We want to know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> how the British
+people may make the best of their country and themselves.</p>
+
+<p>We know they are not making the best of either at present.</p>
+
+<p>There must, therefore, be something wrong. Our business is to find out
+what is wrong, and how it may be righted.</p>
+
+<p>We will begin by asking ourselves three questions, and by trying to answer them.</p>
+
+<p>These questions are&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. What is wealth?<br />2. Where does wealth come from?<br />3. Where does
+wealth go to?</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>First, then, what <i>is</i> wealth? There is no need to go into long and
+confusing explanations; there is no use in splitting hairs. We want an
+answer that is short and simple, and at the same time good enough for the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>I should say, then, that wealth is all those things which we use.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ruskin uses two words, "wealth" and "illth." He divides the things
+which it is good for us to have from the things which it is not good for
+us to have, and he calls the good things "wealth" and the bad things
+"illth"&mdash;or ill things.</p>
+
+<p>Thus opium prepared for smoking is illth, because it does harm or works
+"ill" to all who smoke it; but opium prepared as medicine is wealth,
+because it saves life or stays pain.</p>
+
+<p>A dynamite bomb is "illth," for it is used to destroy life, but a
+dynamite cartridge is wealth, for it is used in getting slate or coal.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ruskin is right, and if we are to make the best of our country and
+of ourselves, we ought clearly to give up producing bad things, or
+"illth," and produce more good things, or wealth.</p>
+
+<p>But, for our purpose, it will be simpler and shorter to call all things
+we use wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Thus a good book is wealth and a bad book "illth"; but as it is not easy
+to agree as to which books are good, which bad, and which indifferent,
+we had better call all books wealth.</p>
+
+<p>By this word wealth, then, when we use it in this book, we shall mean
+all the things we use.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>Thus we shall put down as wealth all such things as food, clothing,
+fuel, houses, ornaments, musical instruments, arms, tools, machinery,
+books, horses, dogs, medicines, toys, ships, trains, coaches, tobacco,
+churches, hospitals, lighthouses, theatres, shops, and all other things
+that we <i>use</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now comes our second question: Where does wealth come from?</p>
+
+<p>This question we must make into two questions&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. Where does wealth come from?<br />2. Who produces wealth?</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Because the question, "Where does wealth come from?" really means, "How
+is wealth produced?"</p>
+
+<p><i>All</i> wealth comes from the land.</p>
+
+<p>All food comes from the land&mdash;all flesh is grass. Vegetable food comes
+directly from the land; animal food comes indirectly from the land, all
+animals being fed on the land.</p>
+
+<p>So the stuff of which we make our clothing, our houses, our fuel, our
+tools, arms, ships, engines, toys, ornaments, is all got from the land.
+For the land yields timber, metals, vegetables, and the food on which
+feed the animals from which we get feathers, fur, meat, milk, leather,
+ivory, bone, glue, and many other things.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the case of the things that come from the sea, as sealskin,
+whale oil, fish, iodine, shells, pearls, and other things, we are to
+remember that we need boats, or nets, or tools to get them with, and
+that boats, nets, and tools are made from minerals and vegetables got from the land.</p>
+
+<p>We may say, then, that all wealth comes from the land.</p>
+
+<p>This brings us to the second part of our question: "Who produces
+wealth?" or "How is wealth produced?"</p>
+
+<p>Wealth is produced by human beings. It is the people of a country who
+produce the wealth of that country.</p>
+
+<p>Wealth is produced by labour. Wealth cannot be produced by any other
+means or in any other way. <i>All</i> wealth is produced <i>from</i> the <span class="smcap">Land</span> <i>by</i>
+human <span class="smcap">Labour</span>.</p>
+
+<p>A coal seam is not wealth; but a coalmine is wealth. Coal is not wealth
+while it is in the bowels of the earth; but coal is wealth as soon as it
+is brought up out of the pit and made available for use.</p>
+
+<p>A whale or a seal is not wealth until it is caught.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p><p>In a country without inhabitants there would be no wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Land is not wealth. To produce wealth you must have land and human beings.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no wealth without labour.</p>
+
+<p>And now we come to the first error of the economists. There are some
+economists who tell us that wealth is not produced by labour, but by "capital."</p>
+
+<p>There is neither truth nor reason in this assertion.</p>
+
+<p>What is "capital"?</p>
+
+<p>"Capital" is only another word for <i>stores</i>. Adam Smith calls capital
+"stock." Capital is any tools, machinery, or other stores used in
+producing wealth. Capital is any food, fuel, shelter, clothing supplied
+to those engaged in producing wealth.</p>
+
+<p>The hunter, before he can shoot game, needs weapons. His weapons are
+"capital." The farmer has to wait for his wheat and potatoes to ripen
+before he can use them as food. The stock of food and the tools he uses
+to produce the wheat or potatoes, and to live on while they ripen, are
+"capital."</p>
+
+<p>Robinson Crusoe's capital was the arms, food, and tools he saved from
+the wreck. On these he lived until he had planted corn, and tamed goats
+and built a hut, and made skin clothing and vessels of wood and clay.</p>
+
+<p>Capital, then, is stores. Now, where do the stores come from? Stores are
+wealth. Stores, whether they be food or tools, come from the land, and
+are made or produced by human labour.</p>
+
+<p>There is not an atom of capital in the world that has not been produced by labour.</p>
+
+<p>Every spade, every plough, every hammer, every loom, every cart, barrow,
+loaf, bottle, ham, haddock, pot of tea, barrel of ale, pair of boots,
+gold or silver coin, railway sleeper or rail, boat, road, canal, every
+kind of tools and stores has been produced by labour from the land.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident, then, that if there were no labour there would be no
+capital. Labour is <i>before</i> capital, for labour <i>makes</i> capital.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what folly it is to say that capital produces wealth. Capital is
+used by labour in the production of wealth, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> capital itself is
+incapable of motion and can produce nothing.</p>
+
+<p>A spade is "capital." Is it true, then, to say that it is not the navvy
+but the spade that makes the trench?</p>
+
+<p>A plough is capital. Is it true to say that not the ploughman but the
+plough makes the furrow?</p>
+
+<p>A loom is capital. Is it true to say that the loom makes the cloth? It
+is the weaver who weaves the cloth. He <i>uses</i> the loom, and the loom was
+made by the miner, the smith, the joiner, and the engineer.</p>
+
+<p>There are wood and iron and brass in the loom. But you would not say
+that the cloth was produced by the iron-mine and the forest! It is
+produced by miners, engineers, sheep farmers, wool-combers, sailors,
+spinners, weavers, and other workers. It is produced entirely by labour,
+and could not be produced in any other way.</p>
+
+<p>How can capital produce wealth? Take a steam plough, a patent harrow, a
+sack of wheat, a bankbook, a dozen horses, enough food and clothing to
+last a hundred men a year; put all that capital down in a forty-acre
+field, and it will not produce a single ear of corn in fifty years
+unless you send a <i>man</i> to <i>labour</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But give a boy a forked stick, a rood of soil, and a bag of seed, and he
+will raise a crop for you.</p>
+
+<p>If he is a smart boy, and has the run of the woods and streams, he will
+also contrive to find food to live on till the crop is ready.</p>
+
+<p>We find, then, that all wealth is produced <i>from</i> the land <i>by</i> labour,
+and that capital is only a part of wealth, that it has been produced by
+labour, stored by labour, and is finally used by labour in the
+production of more wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Our third question asks, "What becomes of the wealth?"</p>
+
+<p>This is not easy to answer. But we may say that the wealth is divided
+into three parts&mdash;not <i>equal</i> parts&mdash;called Rent, Interest, and Wages.</p>
+
+<p>Rent is wealth paid to the landlords for the use of the land. Interest
+is wealth paid to the capitalists (the owners of tools and stores) for
+the use of the "capital."</p>
+
+<p>Wages is wealth paid to the workers for their labour in producing <i>all</i> the wealth.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>There are but a few landlords, but they take a large share of the
+wealth.</p>
+
+<p>There are but a few capitalists, but <i>they</i> take a large share of the wealth.</p>
+
+<p>There are very many workers, but they do not get much more than a third
+share of the wealth they produce.</p>
+
+<p>The landlord produces <i>nothing</i>. He takes part of the wealth for
+allowing the workers to use the land.</p>
+
+<p>The capitalist produces nothing. He takes part of the wealth for
+allowing the workers to use the capital.</p>
+
+<p>The workers produce <i>all</i> the wealth, and are obliged to give a great
+deal of it to the landlords and capitalists who produce nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Socialists claim that the landlord is useless under <i>any</i> form of
+society, that the capitalist is not needed in a properly ordered
+society, and that the people should become their own landlords and their
+own capitalists.</p>
+
+<p>If the people were their own landlords and capitalists, <i>all</i> the wealth
+would belong to the workers by whom it is all produced.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a word of caution. We say that <i>all</i> wealth is produced by labour.
+<i>What is labour?</i></p>
+
+<p>Labour is work. Work is said to be of two kinds: hand work and brain
+work. But really work is of one kind&mdash;the labour of hand and brain
+together; for there is hardly any head work wherein the hand has no
+share, and there is no hand work wherein the head has no share.</p>
+
+<p>The hand is really a part of the brain, and can do nothing without the
+brain's direction.</p>
+
+<p>So when we say that all wealth is produced by labour, we mean by the
+labour of hand and brain.</p>
+
+<p>I want to make this quite plain, because you will find, if you come to
+deal with the economists, that attempts have been made to use the word
+labour as meaning chiefly hand labour.</p>
+
+<p>When we say labour produces all wealth, we do not mean that all wealth
+is produced by farm labourers, mechanics, and navvies, but that it is
+all produced by <i>workers</i>&mdash;that is, by thinkers as well as doers; by
+inventors and directors as well as by the man with the hammer, the file,
+or the spade.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER III</span> <span class="smaller">HOW THE FEW GET RICH AND KEEP THE MANY POOR</span></h2>
+
+<p>We have already seen that most of the wealth produced by labour goes
+into the pockets of a few rich men: we have now to find out how it gets there.</p>
+
+<p>By what means do the landlords and the capitalists get the meat and
+leave the workers the bones?</p>
+
+<p>Let us deal first with the land, and next with the capital.</p>
+
+<p>A landlord is one who owns land.</p>
+
+<p>Rent is a price paid to the landlord for permission to use or occupy
+land.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a diagram of a square piece of land&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/fig1.jpg" width='300' height='230' alt="fig. 1" /></div>
+
+<p>In the centre stands the landlord (L), outside stands a labourer (W).</p>
+
+<p>The landlord owns the land, the labourer owns no land. The labourer
+cannot get food except from the land. The landlord will not allow him to
+use the land unless he pays rent. The labourer has no money. How can he pay rent?</p>
+
+<p>He must first raise a crop from the land, and then give a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> part of the
+crop to the landlord as rent; or he may sell the crop and give to the
+landlord, as rent, part of the money for which the crop is sold.</p>
+
+<p>We find, then, that the labourer cannot get food without working, and
+cannot work without land, and that, as he has no land, he must pay rent
+for the use of land owned by some other person&mdash;a landlord.</p>
+
+<p>We find that the labourer produces the whole of the crop, and that the
+landlord produces nothing; and we find that, when the crop is produced,
+some of it has to be given to the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it is clear that where one man owns land, and another man owns no
+land, the landless man is dependent upon the landed man for permission
+to work and to live, while the landed man is able to live without working.</p>
+
+<p>Let us go into this more fully.</p>
+
+<p>Here (Fig. 2) are two squares of land&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/fig2.jpg" width='400' height='202' alt="fig. 2" /></div>
+
+<p>Each piece of land is owned and worked by two men. The field <i>a</i> is
+divided into two equal parts, each part owned and worked by one man. The
+field <i>b</i> is owned and worked by two men jointly.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of field <i>a</i> each man has what he produces, and <i>all</i> he
+produces. In the case of field <i>b</i> each man takes half of <i>all</i> that
+<i>both</i> produce.</p>
+
+<p>These men in both cases are their own landlords. They own the land they use.</p>
+
+<p>But now suppose that field <i>b</i> does not belong to two men, but to one
+man. The same piece of land will be there, but only one man will be
+working on it. The other does not work: he lives by charging rent.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p><p>Therefore if the remaining labourer, now a <i>tenant</i>, is to live as well
+as he did when he was part owner, and pay the rent, he must work twice
+as hard as he did before.</p>
+
+<p>Take the field <i>a</i> (Fig. 2). It is divided into two equal parts, and one
+man tills each half. Remove one man and compel the other to pay half the
+produce in rent, and you will find that the man who has become landlord
+now gets as much without working as he got when he tilled half the
+field, and that the man left as tenant now has to till the whole field
+for the same amount of produce as he got formerly for tilling half of it.</p>
+
+<p>We see, then, that the landlord is a useless and idle burden upon the
+worker, and that he takes a part of what the worker alone produces, and
+calls it rent.</p>
+
+<p>The defence set up for the landlord is (1) that he has a right to the
+land, and (2) that he spends his wealth for the public advantage.</p>
+
+<p>I shall show you in later chapters that both these statements are untrue.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now turn to the capitalist. What is a capitalist? He is really a
+money-lender. He lends money, or machinery, and he charges interest on it.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose Brown wants to dig, but has no spade. He borrows a spade of
+Jones, who charges him a price for the use of the spade. Then Jones is a
+capitalist: he takes part of the wealth Brown produces, and calls it <i>interest</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose Jones owns a factory and machinery, and suppose Brown is a
+spinner, who owns nothing but his strength and skill.</p>
+
+<p>In that case Brown the spinner stands in the same relation to Jones the
+capitalist as the landless labourer stands in to the landlord. That is
+to say, the spinner cannot get food without money, and he can only get
+money by working as a spinner for the man who owns the factory.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore Brown the spinner goes to Jones the capitalist, who engages
+him as a spinner, and pays him wages.</p>
+
+<p>There are many other spinners in the same position. They work for Jones,
+who pays them wages. They spin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> yarn, and Jones sells it. Does Jones
+spin any of the yarn? Not a thread: the spinners spin it all. Do the
+spinners get all the money the yarn is sold for? No. How is the money
+divided? It is divided in this way&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A quantity of yarn is sold for twenty shillings, but of that twenty
+shillings the factory owner pays the cost of the raw material, the wages
+of the spinners, the cost of rent, repairs to machinery, fuel and oil,
+and the salaries and commissions of clerks, travellers, and managers.
+What remains of the twenty shillings he takes for himself as <i>profit</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This "profit," then, is the difference between the cost price of the
+yarn and the sale price. If a certain weight of yarn costs nineteen
+shillings to produce, and sells for twenty shillings, there is a profit
+of one shilling. If yarn which cost &pound;9000 to produce is sold for
+&pound;10,000, the profit is &pound;1000.</p>
+
+<p>This profit the factory owner, Jones the capitalist, claims as interest
+on his capital. It is then a kind of rent charged by him for the use of
+his money, his factory, and his machinery.</p>
+
+<p>Now we must be careful here not to confuse the landlord with the farmer,
+nor the capitalist with the manager. I am, so far, dealing only with
+those who <i>own</i> and <i>let</i> land or capital, and not with those who manage
+them.</p>
+
+<p>A capitalist is one who lends capital. A capitalist may use capital, but
+in so far as he uses capital he is a worker.</p>
+
+<p>So a landlord may farm land, but in so far as he farms land he is a
+farmer, and therefore a worker.</p>
+
+<p>The man who finds the capital for a factory, and manages the business
+himself, is a capitalist, for he lends his factory and machines to the
+men who work for him. But he is also a worker, since he conducts the
+manufacture and the sale of goods. As a capitalist he claims interest,
+as a worker he claims salary. And he is as much a worker as a general is
+a soldier or an admiral a sailor.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the <i>idle</i> landlord and the <i>idle</i> capitalist charge rent or
+interest for the use of their land or capital.</p>
+
+<p>The landlord justifies himself by saying that the land is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> <i>his</i>, and
+that he has a right to charge for it the highest rent he can get.</p>
+
+<p>The capitalist justifies himself by saying that the capital is <i>his</i>,
+and that he has a right to charge for it the highest rate of interest he
+can get.</p>
+
+<p>Both claim that it is better for the nation that the land and the
+capital should remain in their hands; both tell us that the nation will
+go headlong to ruin if we try to dispense with their valuable services.</p>
+
+<p>I am not going to denounce either landlord or capitalist as a tyrant, a
+usurer, or a robber. Landlords and capitalists may be, and very often
+are, upright and well-meaning men. As such let us respect them.</p>
+
+<p>Neither shall I enter into a long argument as to whether it is right or
+wrong to charge interest on money lent or capital let, or as to whether
+it is right or wrong to "buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest."</p>
+
+<p>The non-Socialist will claim that as the capital belongs to the
+capitalist he has a right to ask what interest he pleases for its use,
+and that he has also a perfect right to get as much for the goods he
+sells as the buyer will give, and to pay as little wages as the workers will accept.</p>
+
+<p>Let us concede all that, and save talk.</p>
+
+<p>But those claims being granted to the capitalist, the counter-claims of
+the worker and the buyer&mdash;the producer and the consumer&mdash;must be
+recognised as equally valid.</p>
+
+<p>If the capitalist is justified in paying the lowest wages the worker
+will take, the worker is justified in paying the lowest interest the
+capitalist will take.</p>
+
+<p>If the seller is justified in asking the highest price for goods, the
+buyer is justified in offering the lowest.</p>
+
+<p>If a capitalist manager is justified in demanding a big salary for his
+services of management, the worker and the consumer are justified in
+getting another capitalist or another manager at a lower price, if they can.</p>
+
+<p>Surely that is just and reasonable. And that is what Socialists advise.</p>
+
+<p>A capitalist owns a large factory and manages it. He pays his spinners
+fifteen shillings a week; he sells his goods to the public at the best
+price he can get; and he makes an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> income of &pound;10,000 a year. He makes
+his money fairly and lawfully.</p>
+
+<p>But if the workers and the users of yarn can find their own capital,
+build their own factory, and spin their own yarn, they have a perfect
+right to set up on their own account.</p>
+
+<p>And if by so doing they can pay the workers better wages, sell the yarn
+to the public at a lower price, and have a profit left to build other
+factories with, no one can accuse them of doing wrong, nor can anyone
+deny that the workers and the users have proved that they, the producers
+and consumers, have done better without the capitalist (or middleman)
+than with him.</p>
+
+<p>But there is another kind of capitalist&mdash;the shareholder. A company is
+formed to manufacture mouse-traps. The capital is &pound;100,000. There are
+ten shareholders, each holding &pound;10,000 worth of shares. The company
+makes a profit of 10 per cent. The dividend at 10 per cent. paid to each
+shareholder will be &pound;1000 a year.</p>
+
+<p>The shareholders do no more than find the capital. They do not manage
+the business, nor get the orders, nor conduct the sales, nor make the
+mouse-traps. The business is managed by a paid manager, the sales are
+conducted by paid travellers, and the mouse-traps are made by paid workmen.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now see how it fares with any one of these shareholders. He lends
+to the company &pound;10,000. He receives from the company 10 per cent.
+dividend, or &pound;1000 a year. In ten years he gets back the whole of his
+&pound;10,000, but he still owns the shares, and he still draws a dividend of
+&pound;1000 a year. If the company go on working and making 10 per cent. for a
+hundred years they will still be paying &pound;1000 a year for the loan of the
+&pound;10,000. It will be quite evident, then, that in twenty years this
+shareholder will have received his money twice over; that is to say, his
+&pound;10,000 will have become &pound;20,000 without his having done a stroke of
+work or even knowing anything about the business.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the manager, the salesman, and the workman, who have
+done all the work and earned all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> profits, will receive no dividend
+at all. They are paid their weekly wages, and no more. A man who starts
+at a pound a week will at the end of twenty years be still working for a pound a week.</p>
+
+<p>The non-Socialist will claim that this is quite right; that the
+shareholder is as much entitled to rent on his money as the worker is
+entitled to wages for his work. We need not contradict him. Let us keep to simple facts.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose the mouse-trap makers started a factory of their own. Suppose
+they fixed the wages of the workers at the usual rate. Suppose they
+borrowed the capital to carry on the business. Suppose they borrowed
+&pound;100,000. They would not have to pay 10 per cent. for the loan, they
+would not have to pay 5 per cent. for the loan. But fix it at 5 per
+cent. interest, and suppose that, as in the case of the company, the
+mouse-trap makers made a profit of 10 per cent. That would give them a
+profit of &pound;10,000 a year. In twenty years they would have made a profit
+of &pound;200,000. The interest on the loan at 5 per cent. for twenty years
+would be &pound;100,000. The amount of the loan is &pound;100,000. Therefore after
+working twenty years they would have paid off the whole of the money
+borrowed, and the business, factory, and machinery would be their own.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, instead of being in the position of the men who had worked twenty
+years for the mouse-trap company, these men, after receiving the same
+wages as the others for twenty years, would now be in possession of the
+business paying them &pound;10,000 a year over and above their wages.</p>
+
+<p>But, the non-Socialist will object, these working men could not borrow
+&pound;100,000, as they would have no security. That is quite true; but the
+Corporation of Manchester or Birmingham could borrow the money to start
+such a work, and could borrow it at 3 per cent. And by making their own
+mouse-traps, or gas, or bread, instead of buying them from a private
+maker or a company, and paying the said company or maker &pound;10,000 a year
+for ever and ever amen, they would, in less than twenty years, become
+possessors of their own works and machinery, and be in a position to
+save &pound;10,000 a year on the cost of mouse-traps or gas or bread.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p><p>This is what the Socialist means by saying that the capitalist is
+unnecessary, and is paid too much for the use of his capital.</p>
+
+<p>Against the capitalist or landlord worker or manager the same complaint
+holds good; the large profits taken by these men as payment for
+management or direction are out of all proportion to the value of their
+work. These profits, or salaries, called by economists "the wages of
+ability," are in excess of any salary that would be paid to a farmer,
+engineer, or director of any factory either by Government, by the County
+Council, by a Municipality, or by any capitalist or company engaging
+such a person at a fixed rate for services. That is to say, the
+capitalist or landlord director is paid very much above the market value
+of the "wages of ability."</p>
+
+<p>These facts generally escape the notice of the worker. As a rule his
+attention is confined to his own wages, and he thinks himself well off
+or ill off as his wages are what he considers high or low. But there are
+two sides to the question of wages. It is not only the amount of wages
+received that matters, but it is also the amount of commodities the
+wages will buy. The worker has to consider how much he spends as well as
+how much he gets; and if he can got as much for 15s. as he used to get
+for &pound;1, he is as much better off as he would be were his wages raised 25 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>Now on every article the workman uses there is one profit or a dozen;
+one charge or many charges placed upon his food, clothing, house, fuel,
+light, travelling, and everything he requires by the landlord, the
+capitalist, or the shareholders.</p>
+
+<p>Take the case of the coal bought by a poor London clerk at 30s. a ton.
+It pays a royalty to the royalty owner, it pays a profit to the mine
+owner, it pays a profit to the coal merchant, it pays a profit to the
+railway company, and these profits are over and above the cost in wages
+and wear and tear of machinery.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this same London clerk is very likely a Tory, who says many bitter
+things against <i>Socialism</i>, but never thinks of resenting the heavy
+taxes levied on his small income by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> landlords, railway companies, water
+companies, building companies, ship companies, and all the other
+companies and private firms who live upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine this poor London clerk, whose house stands on land owned by a
+peer worth &pound;300,000 a year, whose "boss" makes &pound;50,000 a year out of
+timber or coals, whose pipe pays four shillings taxes on every
+shilling's worth of tobacco (while the rich man's cigar pays a tax of
+five shillings in the pound), whose children go to the board school,
+while those of the coalowner, the company promoter, the railway
+director, and the landlord go to the university. Imagine this man,
+anxious, worried, overworked, poor, and bled by a horde of rich
+parasites. Imagine him standing in a well-dressed crowd, amongst the
+diamond shops, fur shops, and costly furniture shops of Regent Street,
+and asking with a bitter sneer where John Burns got his new suit of clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Is it not marvellous? He does not ask who gets the 4s. on his pound of
+smoking mixture! Nor why he pays 4s. a thousand for bad gas (as I did in
+Finchley) while the Manchester clerk gets good gas for 2s. 2d.! Nor does
+he ask why the Duke of Bedford should put a tax on his wife's apple
+pudding or his children's bananas! He does not even ask what became of
+the &pound;80,000,000 which the coal-owners wrung out of the public when he,
+the poor clerk, was paying 2s. per cwt. for coal for his tiny parlour
+grate! No. The question he asks is: Where Ben Tillett got his new straw hat!</p>
+
+<p>How the Duke, and the Coalowner, and the Money-lender, and the
+Jerry-builder must laugh!</p>
+
+<p>Yet so it is. It is not the landlord, the company promoter, the
+coalowner, the jerry-builder, and all the other useless rich who prey
+upon his wife and his children whom he mistrusts. His enemies, poor man,
+are the Socialists; the men and women who work for him, teach him,
+sacrifice their health, their time, their money, and their prospects to
+awaken his manhood, to sting his pride, to drive the mists of prejudice
+from his worried mind and give his common sense a chance. <i>These</i> are
+the men and women he despises and mistrusts. And he reads the <i>Daily
+Mail</i>, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> shudders at the name of the <i>Clarion</i>; and he votes for Mr.
+Facing-both-ways and Lord Plausible, and is filled with bitterness
+because of honest John's summer trousers.</p>
+
+<p>Again I tell you, Mr. Smith, that I do not wish to stir up class hatred.
+Lady Dedlock, wife of the great ground landlord, is a charming lady,
+handsome, clever, and very kind to the poor.</p>
+
+<p>But if I were a docker, and if my wife had to go out in leaky boots, or
+if my delicate child could not get sea air and nourishing food, I should
+be apt to ask whether his lordship, the great ground landlord, could not
+do with less rent and his sweet wife with fewer pearls. I should ask
+that. I should not think myself a man if I did not ask it; nor should I
+feel happy if I did not strain every nerve to get an answer.</p>
+
+<p>Non-Socialists often reproach Socialists for sentimentality. But surely
+it is sentimentality to talk as the non-Socialist does about the
+personal excellences of the aristocracy. What have Lady Dedlock's
+amiability and beauty to do with the practical questions of gas rates and wages?</p>
+
+<p>I am "setting class against class." Quite right, too, so long as one
+class oppresses another.</p>
+
+<p>But let us reverse the position. Suppose you go to the Duke of Hebden
+Bridge and ask for an engagement as clerk in his Grace's colliery at a
+salary of &pound;5000 a year. Will the duke give it to you because your wife
+is pretty and your daughter thinks you are a great man? Not at all. His
+Grace would say, "My dear sir, you are doubtless an excellent citizen,
+husband, and father; but I can get a better clerk at a pound a week,
+sir; and I cannot afford to pay more, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The duke would be quite correct. He could get a better clerk for &pound;1 a
+week. And as for the amiability of your family, or your own personal
+merits, what have they to do with business?</p>
+
+<p>As a business man the duke will not pay &pound;2 a week to a clerk if he can
+get a man as good for &pound;1 a week.</p>
+
+<p>Then why should the clerk pay 4s. a thousand for his gas if he can get
+it for 2s. 2d.? Or why should the docker pay the duke 5s. rent if he can
+get a house for 2s. 6d.?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p><p>Should I be offended with the duke for refusing to pay me more than I
+am worth? Should I accuse him of class hatred? Not at all. Then why
+should I be blamed for suggesting that it is folly to pay a duke more
+than he is worth? Or why should the duke mutter about class hatred if I
+suggest that we can get a colliery director at a lower salary than his
+Grace? Talk about sentimentality! Are we to pay a guinea each for dukes
+if we can get them three a penny? It is not business.</p>
+
+<p>I grudge no man his wealth nor his fortune. I want nothing that is his.
+I do not hate the rich: I pity the poor. It is of the women and children
+of the poor I think when I am agitating for <i>Socialism</i>, not of the
+coffers of the wealthy.</p>
+
+<p>I believe in universal brotherhood; nay, I go even further, for I
+maintain that the sole difference between the worst man and the best is
+a difference of opportunity&mdash;that is to say, that since heredity and
+environment make one man amiable and another churlish, one generous and
+another mean, one faithful and another treacherous, one wise and another
+foolish, one strong and another weak, one vile and another pure,
+therefore the bishop and the hooligan, the poet and the boor, the idiot,
+the philosopher, the thief, the hero, and the brutalised drab in the
+kennel <i>are all equal in the sight of God and of justice</i>, and that
+every word of censure uttered by man is a word of error, growing out of
+ignorance. As the sun shines alike upon the evil and the good, so must
+we give love and mercy to all our fellow-creatures. "Judgment is mine,
+saith the Lord."</p>
+
+<p>But that does not prevent me from defending a brother of the East End
+against a brother of the West End. Truly we should love all men. Let us,
+then, begin by loving the weakest and the worst, for they have so little
+love and counsel, while the rich and the good have so much.</p>
+
+<p>We will not, Mr. Smith, accuse the capitalist of base conduct. But we
+will say that as a money-lender his rate of interest is too high, and
+that as a manager his salary is too large. And we will say that if by
+combining we can, as workers, get better wages, and as buyers get
+cheaper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> goods, we shall do well and wisely to combine. For it is to our
+interest in the one case, as it is to the interest of the capitalist in
+the other case, to "buy in the cheapest market and to sell in the dearest."</p>
+
+<p>So much for the capitalist; but, before we deal with the landlord, we
+have to consider another very important person, and that is the
+inventor, or brain-worker.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER IV</span> <span class="smaller">THE BRAIN WORKER, OR INVENTOR</span></h2>
+
+<p>It has, I think, never been denied that much wealth goes to the
+capitalist, but it has been claimed that the capitalist deserves all he
+gets because wealth is produced by capital. And although this is as
+foolish as to say that the tool does the work and not the hand that
+wields it, yet books have been written to convince the people that it is true.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these books try to deceive us into supposing that capital and
+ability are interchangeable terms. That is to say, that "capital," which
+means "stock," is the same thing as "ability," which means cleverness or
+skill. We might as well believe that a machine is the same thing as the
+brain that invented it. But there is a trick in it. The trick lies in
+first declaring that the bulk of the national wealth is produced by
+"ability," and then confusing the word "ability" with the word "capital."</p>
+
+<p>But it is one thing to say that wealth is due to the man who <i>invented</i>
+a machine, and it is quite another thing to say that wealth is due to
+the man who <i>owns</i> the machine.</p>
+
+<p>In his book called <i>Labour and the Popular Welfare</i>, Mr. Mallock assures
+us that ability produces more wealth than is produced by labour.</p>
+
+<p>He says that two-thirds of the national wealth are due to ability and
+only one-third to labour. A hundred years ago, Mr. Mallock says, the
+population of this country was 10,000,000 and the wealth produced
+yearly; &pound;140,000,000, giving an average of &pound;14 a head.</p>
+
+<p>The recent production is &pound;350,000,000 for every 10,000,000 of the
+population, or &pound;35 a head.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p><p>The argument is that <i>labour</i> is only able to produce as much now as it
+could produce a hundred years ago, for labour does not vary. Therefore,
+the increase from &pound;14 a head to &pound;35 a head is not due to labour but to
+machinery.</p>
+
+<p>Now, we owe this machinery, not to labour, but to invention. Therefore
+the various inventors have enabled the people to produce more than twice
+as much as they produced a century back.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, according to Mr. Mallock, all the extra wealth, amounting to
+&pound;800,000,000 a year, is earned by the <i>machines</i>, and ought to be paid
+to the men who <i>own</i> the machines.</p>
+
+<p>Pretty reasoning, isn't it? And Mr. Mallock is one of those who talk
+about the inaccurate thinking of Socialists.</p>
+
+<p>Let us see what it comes to. John Smith invents a machine which makes
+three yards of calico where one was made by hand. Tom Jones buys the
+machine, or the patent, to make calico. Which of these men is the cause
+of the calico output being multiplied by three? Is it the man who owns
+the patent, or the man who invented the machine? It is the man who
+invented the machine. It is the ability of John Smith which caused the
+increase in the calico output. It is, therefore, the ability of John
+Smith which earns the extra wealth. Tom Jones, who bought the machines,
+is no more the producer of that <i>extra</i> wealth than are the spinners and
+weavers he employs.</p>
+
+<p>To whom, then, should the extra wealth belong? To the man who creates
+it? or to the man who does not create it? Clearly the wealth should
+belong to the man who creates it. Therefore, the whole of the extra
+wealth should go to the inventor, to whose ability it is due, and <i>not</i>
+to the mere capitalist, who only uses the machine.</p>
+
+<p>"But," you may say, "Jones bought the patent from Smith." He did. And he
+also buys their labour and skill from the spinners and weavers who work
+for him, and in all three cases he pays less than the thing he buys is worth.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mallock makes a great point of telling us that men are not equally
+clever, that cleverness produces more wealth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> than labour produces, and
+that one man is worth more than another to the nation.</p>
+
+<p>Labour, he says, is common to all men, but ability is the monopoly of
+the few. The bulk of the wealth is produced by the few, and ought by
+them to be enjoyed.</p>
+
+<p>But I don't think any Socialist ever claimed that all men were of equal
+value to the nation, nor that any one man could produce just as much
+wealth as any other. We know that one man is stronger than another, that
+one is cleverer than another, and that an inventor or thinker may design
+or invent some machine or process which will enable the workers to
+produce more wealth in one year than they could by their own methods
+produce in twenty.</p>
+
+<p>Now, before we go into the matter of the inventor, or of the value of
+genius to the nation, let us test these ideas of Mr. W. H. Mallock's and
+see what they lead to.</p>
+
+<p>A man invents a machine which does the work of ten handloom weavers. He
+is therefore worth more, as a weaver, than the ordinary weaver who
+invents nothing. How much more?</p>
+
+<p>If his machine does the work of ten men, you might think he was worth
+ten men. But he is worth very much more.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose there are 10,000 weavers, and all of them use his machine. They
+will produce not 10,000 men's work, but 100,000 men's work. Here, then,
+our inventor is equal to 90,000 weavers. That is to say, that his
+thought, his idea, his labour <i>produces</i> as much wealth as could be
+produced by 100,000 weavers without it.</p>
+
+<p>On no theory of value, and on no grounds of reason that I know, can we
+claim that this inventor is of no more value, as a producer, than an
+ordinary, average handloom weaver.</p>
+
+<p>Granting the claim of the non-Socialist, that every man belongs to
+himself; and granting the claim of Mr. Mallock, that two-thirds of our
+national wealth are produced by inventors; and granting the demand of
+exact mathematical justice, that every man shall receive the exact value
+of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> wealth he produces; it would follow that two-thirds of the
+wealth of this nation would be paid yearly to the inventors, or to their
+heirs or assigns.</p>
+
+<p>The wealth is <i>not</i> to be paid to labour; that is Mr. Mallock's claim.
+And it is not to be paid to labour because it has been earned by
+ability. And Mr. Mallock tells us that labour does not vary nor increase
+in its productive power. Good.</p>
+
+<p>Neither does the landlord nor the capitalist increase his productive
+power. Therefore it is not the landlord nor the capitalist who earns&mdash;or
+produces&mdash;this extra wealth; it is the inventor.</p>
+
+<p>And since the labourer is not to have the wealth, because he does not
+produce it, neither should the landlord or capitalist have it, because
+he does not produce it.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the <i>right</i> of the thing. Mr. Mallock shows that the
+inventor creates all this extra wealth; he shows that the inventor ought
+to have it. Good.</p>
+
+<p>Now, how is it that the inventor does <i>not</i> get it, and how is it that
+the landlord and the capitalist <i>do</i> get it?</p>
+
+<p>Just because the laws, which have been made by landlords and
+capitalists, enable these men to rob the inventor and the labourer with impunity.</p>
+
+<p>Thus: A man owns a piece of land in a town. As the town increases its
+business and population, the owner of the land raises the rent. He can
+get double the rent because the town has doubled its trade, and the land
+is worth more for business purposes or for houses. Has the landlord
+increased the value? Not at all. He has done nothing but draw the rent.
+The increase of value is due to the industry or ability of the people
+who live and work in the town, chiefly, as Mr. Mallock claims, to
+different inventors. Do these inventors get the increased rent? No. Do
+the workers in the town get it? No. The landlord demands this extra
+rent, and the law empowers him to evict if the rent is not paid.</p>
+
+<p>Next, let us see how the inventor is treated. If a man invents a machine
+and patents it, the law allows him to charge a royalty for its use for
+the space of fourteen years.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p><p>At the end of that time the patent lapses, and the invention may be
+worked by anyone.</p>
+
+<p>Observe here the difference of the treatment given to the inventor and the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>The landlord does not make the land, he does not till the land, he does
+not improve the land; he only draws the rent, and he draws that <i>for
+ever</i>. <i>His</i> patent never lapses; and the harder the workers work, and
+the more wealth inventors and workers produce, the more rent he
+draws&mdash;for nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The inventor <i>does</i> make his invention. He is, upon Mr. Mallock's
+showing, the creator of immense wealth. And, even if he is lucky, he can
+only draw rent on his ability for fourteen years.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose the inventor is a poor man&mdash;and a great many inventors are
+poor men&mdash;his chance of getting paid for his ability is very small.
+Because, to begin with, he has to pay a good deal to patent his
+invention, and then, often enough, he needs capital to work the patent,
+and has none.</p>
+
+<p>What is he to do? He must find a capitalist to work the patent for him,
+or he must find a man rich enough to buy it from him.</p>
+
+<p>And it very commonly happens, either that the poor man cannot pay the
+renewal fees for his patent, and so loses it entirely, or that the
+capitalist buys it out and out for an old song, or that the capitalist
+obliges him to accept terms which give a huge profit to the capitalist
+and a small royalty to the inventor.</p>
+
+<p>The patent laws are so constructed as to make the poor inventor an easy
+prey to the capitalist.</p>
+
+<p>Many inventors die poor, many are robbed by agents or capitalists, many
+lose their patents because they cannot pay the renewal fees. Even when
+an inventor is lucky he can only draw rent for fourteen years. We see,
+then, that the men who make most of the wealth are hindered and robbed
+by the law, and we know that the law has been made by capitalists and landlords.</p>
+
+<p>Apply the same law to land that is applied to patents, and the whole
+land of England would be public property in fourteen years.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p><p>Apply the same law to patents that is applied to land, and every
+article we use would be increased in price, and we should still be
+paying royalties to the descendants, or to their assigns, of James Watt,
+George Stephenson, and ten thousand other inventors.</p>
+
+<p>And now will some non-Socialist, Mr. Mallock or another, write a nice
+new book, and explain to us upon what rules of justice or of reason the
+present unequal treatment of the useless, idle landlord and the valuable
+and industrious inventor can be defended?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER V</span> <span class="smaller">THE LANDLORD'S RIGHTS AND THE PEOPLE'S RIGHTS</span></h2>
+
+<p>Socialists are often accused of being advocates of violence and plunder.
+You will be told, no doubt, that Socialists wish to take the land from
+its present owners, by force, and "share it out" amongst the landless.</p>
+
+<p>Socialists have no more idea of taking the land from its present holders
+and "sharing it out" amongst the poor than they have of taking the
+railways from the railway companies and sharing the carriages and
+engines amongst the passengers.</p>
+
+<p>When the London County Council municipalised the tram service they did
+not rob the companies, nor did they share out the cars amongst the people.</p>
+
+<p><i>Socialism</i> does not mean the "sharing out" of property; on the
+contrary, it means the collective ownership of property.</p>
+
+<p>"Britain for the British" does not mean one acre and half a cow for each
+subject; it means that Britain shall be owned intact by the whole
+people, and shall be governed and worked by the whole people, for the
+benefit of the whole people.</p>
+
+<p>Just as the Glasgow tram service, the Manchester gas service, and the
+general postal service are owned, managed, and used by the citizens of
+Manchester and Glasgow, or by the people of Britain, for the general advantage.</p>
+
+<p>You will be told that the present holders of the land have as much right
+to the land as you have to your hat or your boots.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as a matter of law and of right, the present holders of the land
+have no fixed title to the land. But moderation, it has been well said,
+is the common sense of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> politics, and if we all got bare justice, "who,"
+as Shakespeare asks, "would 'scape whipping?"</p>
+
+<p>Socialists propose, then, to act moderately and to temper justice with
+amity. They do not suggest the "confiscation" of the land. They do
+suggest that the land should be taken over by the nation, at a fair price.</p>
+
+<p>But what is a fair price? The landlord, standing upon his alleged
+rights, may demand a price out of all reason and beyond all possibility.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I propose here to examine the nature of those alleged rights,
+and to compare the claims of the landholders with the practice of law as
+it is applied to holders of property in brains; that is to say, as it is
+applied to authors and to inventors.</p>
+
+<p>Private ownership of land rests always on one of three pleas&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. The right of conquest: the land has been stolen or "won" by the
+owner or his ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>2. The right of gift: the land has been received as a gift,
+bequest, or grant.</p>
+
+<p>3. The right of purchase: the land has been bought and paid for.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Let us deal first with the rights of gift and purchase. It is manifest
+that no man can have a moral right to anything given or sold to him by
+another person who had no right to the thing given or sold.</p>
+
+<p>He who buys a watch, a horse, a house, or any other article from one who
+has no right to the horse, or house, or watch, must render up the
+article to the rightful owner, and lose the price or recover it from the seller.</p>
+
+<p>If a man has no moral right to own land, he can have no moral right to
+sell or give land.</p>
+
+<p>If a man has no moral right to sell or to give land, then another man
+can have no moral right to keep land bought or received in gift from him.</p>
+
+<p>So that to test the right of a man to land bought by or given to him, we
+must trace the land back to its original title.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the original titles of most land rest upon conquest or theft.
+Either the land was won from the Saxons by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> William the Conqueror, and
+by him given in fief to his barons, or it has been stolen from the
+common right and "enclosed" by some lord of the manor or other brigand.</p>
+
+<p>I am sorry to use the word brigand, but what would you call a man who
+stole your horse or watch; and it is a far greater crime to steal land.</p>
+
+<p>Now, stolen land carries no title, except one devised by landlords. That
+is, there is no <i>moral</i> title.</p>
+
+<p>So we come to the land "won" from the Saxons. The title of this land is
+the title of conquest, and only by that title can it be held, and only
+with that title can it be sold. What the sword has won the sword must
+hold. He who has taken land by force has a title to it only so long as
+he can hold it by force.</p>
+
+<p>This point is neatly expressed in a story told by Henry George&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>A nobleman stops a tramp, who is crossing his park, and orders him
+off <i>his</i> land. The tramp asks him how came the land to be his? The
+noble replies that he inherited it from his father. "How did <i>he</i>
+get it?" asks the tramp. "From his father," is the reply; and so
+the lord is driven back to the proud days of his origin&mdash;the
+Conquest. "And how did your great, great, great, etc., grandfather
+get it?" asks the tramp. The nobleman draws himself up, and
+replies, "He fought for it and won it." "Then," says the unabashed
+vagrant, beginning to remove his coat, "I will fight <i>you</i> for it."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The tramp was quite logical. Land won by the sword may be rewon by the
+sword, and the right of conquest implies the right of any party strong
+enough for the task to take the conquered land from its original conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the very men who claim the land as theirs by right of ancient
+conquest would be the first to deny the right of conquest to others.
+They claim the land as theirs because eight hundred years ago their
+fathers took it from the English people, but they deny the right of the
+English people to take it back from them. A duke holds lands taken by
+the Normans under William. He holds them by right of the fact that his
+ancestor stole them, or, as the duke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> would say, "won" them. But let a
+party of revolutionaries propose to-day to win these lands back from him
+in the same manner, and the duke would cry out, "Thief! thief! thief!"
+and call for the protection of the law.</p>
+
+<p>It would be "immoral" and "illegal," the duke would say, for the British
+people to seize his estates.</p>
+
+<p>Should such a proposal be made, the modern duke would not defend
+himself, as his ancestors did, by force of arms, but would appeal to the
+law. Who made the law? The law was made by the same gentlemen who
+appropriated and held the land. As the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain
+said in his speech at Denbigh in 1884&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The House of Lords, that club of Tory landlords, in its gilded
+chamber, has disposed of the welfare of the people with almost
+exclusive regard to the interests of a class.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Or, as the same statesman said at Hull in 1885&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights
+of the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is
+hardly too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the
+liberties of a great proportion of the population have been laid at
+the feet of a small number of proprietors, who neither toil nor spin.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Well, then, the duke may defend his right by duke-made law. We do not
+object to that, for it justifies us in attacking him by Parliament-made
+law: by new law, made by a Parliament of the people.</p>
+
+<p>Is there any law of equity which says it is unjust to take by force from
+a robber what the robber took by force from another robber? Or is there
+any law of equity which says it is unjust that a law made by a
+Parliament of landlords should not be reversed by another law made by a
+Parliament of the people?</p>
+
+<p>The landlords will call this an "immoral" proposal. It is based upon the
+claim that the land is wanted for the use and advantage of the nation.
+Their lordships may ask for precedent. I will provide them with one.</p>
+
+<p>A landlord does not make the land; he holds it.</p>
+
+<p>But if a man invent a new machine or a new process, or if he write a
+poem or a book, he may claim to have made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> the invention or the book,
+and may justly claim payment for the use of them by other men.</p>
+
+<p>An inventor or an author has, therefore, a better claim to payment for
+his work than a landlord has to payment for the use of the land he calls
+his. Now, how does the law act towards these men?</p>
+
+<p>The landlord may call the land his all the days of his life, and at his
+death may bequeath it to his heirs. For a thousand years the owners of
+an estate may charge rent for it, and at the end of the thousand years
+the estate will still be theirs, and the rent will still be running on
+and growing ever larger and larger. And at any suggestion that the
+estate should lapse from the possession of the owners and become the
+property of the people, the said owners will lustily raise the cry of "Confiscation."</p>
+
+<p>The patentee of an invention may call the invention his own, and may
+charge royalties upon its use for <i>a space of fourteen years</i>. At the
+end of that time his patent lapses and becomes public property, without
+any talk of compensation or any cry of confiscation. Thus the law holds
+that an inventor is well paid by fourteen years' rent for a thing he
+made himself, while the landlord is <i>never</i> paid for the land he did not make.</p>
+
+<p>The author of a book holds the copyright of the book for a period of
+forty-four years, or for his own life and seven years after, whichever
+period be the longer. At the expiration of that time the book becomes
+public property. Thus the law holds that an author is well paid by
+forty-four years' rent for a book which he has made, but that the
+landlord is <i>never</i> paid for the land which he did not make.</p>
+
+<p>If the same law that applies to the land applied to books and to
+inventions, the inheritors of the rights of Caxton and Shakespeare would
+still be able to charge, the one a royalty on every printing press in
+use, and the other a royalty on every copy of Shakespeare's poems sold.
+Then there would be royalties on all the looms, engines, and other
+machines, and upon all the books, music, engravings, and what not; so
+that the cost of education, recreation, travel, clothing, and nearly
+everything else we use would be enhanced enormously. But, thanks to a
+very wise and fair arrangement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> an author or an inventor has a good
+chance to be well paid, and after that the people have a chance to enjoy
+the benefits of his genius.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if it is right and expedient thus to deprive the inventor or the
+author of his own production after a time, and to give the use thereof
+to the public, what sense or justice is there in allowing a landowner to
+hold land and to draw an ever-swelling rent to the exclusion,
+inconvenience, and expense of the people for ever? And by what process
+of reasoning can a landlord charge me, an author, with immorality or
+confiscation for suggesting that the same law should apply to the land
+he did not make, that I myself cheerfully allow to be applied to the
+books I do make?</p>
+
+<p>For the landlord to speak of confiscation in the face of the laws of
+patent and of copyright seems to me the coolest impudence.</p>
+
+<p>But there is something else to be said of the landlord's title to the
+land. He claims the right to hold the land, and to exact rent for the
+land, on the ground that the land is lawfully his.</p>
+
+<p>The land is <i>not</i> his.</p>
+
+<p>There is no such thing, and there never was any such thing, in English
+law as private ownership of land. In English law the land belongs to the
+Crown, and can only be held in trust by any subject.</p>
+
+<p>Allow me to give legal warranty for this statement. The great lawyer,
+Sir William Blackstone, says&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Accurately and strictly speaking, there is no foundation in nature
+or in natural law why a set of words on parchment should convey the
+dominion of land. Allodial (absolute) property no subject in
+England now has; it being a received and now undeniable principle
+in law, that all lands in England are holden mediately or
+immediately of the King.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Sir Edward Coke says&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>All lands or tenements in England in the hands of subjects, are
+holden mediately or immediately of the King. For, in the law of
+England, we have not any subject's land that is not holden.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And Sir Frederick Pollock, in <i>English Land Lords</i>, says&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>No absolute ownership of land is recognised by our law books,
+except<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> in the Crown. All lands are supposed to be held immediately
+or mediately of the Crown, though no rent or service may be payable
+and no grant from the Crown on record.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I explained at first that I do not suggest confiscation. Really the land
+is the King's, and by him can be claimed; but we will let that pass.
+Here we will speak only of what is reasonable and fair. Let me give a
+more definite idea of the hardships imposed upon the nation by the landlords.</p>
+
+<p>We all know how the landlord takes a part of the wealth produced by
+labour and calls it "rent." But that is only simple rent. There is a
+worse kind of rent, which I will call "compound rent." It is known to
+economists as "unearned increment."</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly remind you that rents are higher in large towns than in
+small villages. Why? Because land is more "valuable." Why is it more
+valuable? Because there is more trade done.</p>
+
+<p>Thus a plot of land in the city of London will bring in a hundredfold
+more rent than a plot of the same size in some Scottish valley. For
+people must have lodgings, and shops, and offices, and works in the
+places where their business lies. Cases have been known in which land
+bought for a few shillings an acre has increased within a man's lifetime
+to a value of many guineas a yard.</p>
+
+<p>This increase in value is not due to any exertion, genius, or enterprise
+on the part of the landowner. It is entirely due to the energy and
+intelligence of those who made the trade and industry of the town.</p>
+
+<p>The landowner sits idle while the Edisons, the Stephensons, the
+Jacquards, Mawdsleys, Bessemers, and the thousands of skilled workers
+expand a sleepy village into a thriving town; but when the town is
+built, and the trade is flourishing, he steps in to reap the harvest. He
+raises the rent.</p>
+
+<p>He raises the rent, and evermore raises the rent, so that the harder the
+townsfolk work, and the more the town prospers, the greater is the price
+he charges for the use of his land. This extortionate rent is really a
+fine inflicted by idleness on industry. It is simple <i>plunder</i>, and is
+known by the technical name of unearned increment.</p>
+
+<p>It is unearned increment which condemns so many of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> the workers in our
+British towns to live in narrow streets, in back-to-back cottages, in
+hideous tenements. It is unearned increment which forces up the
+death-rate and fosters all manner of disease and vice. It is unearned
+increment which keeps vast areas of London, Glasgow, Liverpool,
+Manchester, and all our large towns ugly, squalid, unhealthy, and vile.
+And unearned increment is an inevitable outcome and an invariable
+characteristic of the private ownership of land.</p>
+
+<p>On this subject Professor Thorold Rogers said&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Every permanent improvement of the soil, every railway and road,
+every bettering of the general condition of society, every facility
+given for production, every stimulus applied to consumption,
+<i>raises rent</i>. The landowner sleeps, but thrives.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The volume of this unearned increment is tremendous. Mr. H. B. Haldane,
+M.P., speaking at Stepney in 1894, declared that the land upon which
+London stands would be worth, apart from its population and special
+industries, "at the outside not more than &pound;16,000 a year." Instead of
+which "the people pay in rent for the land alone &pound;16,000,000, and, with
+the buildings, &pound;40,000,000 a year." Those &pound;16,000,000 constitute a fine
+levied upon the workers of London by landlords.</p>
+
+<p>A similar state of affairs exists in the country, where the farms are
+let chiefly on short leases. Here the tenant having improved his land
+has often lost his improvements, or, for fear of losing the
+improvements, has not improved his land nor even farmed it properly. In
+either case the landlord has been enriched while the tenant or the
+public has suffered.</p>
+
+<p>A landlord has an estate which no farmer can make pay. A number of
+labourers take small plots at &pound;5 an acre, and go in for flower culture.
+They work so hard, and become so skilful, that they get &pound;50 an acre for
+their produce. And the landlord raises the rent to &pound;40 an acre.</p>
+
+<p>That is "unearned increment," or "compound rent." The landlord could not
+make the estate pay, the farmer could not make it pay. The labourer, by
+his own skill and industry, does make it pay, and the landlord takes the proceeds.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p><p>And these are the men who talk about confiscation and robbery!</p>
+
+<p>Do I blame the landlord? Not very much. But I blame the people for
+allowing him to deprive their wives and children of the necessaries, the
+decencies, and the joys of life.</p>
+
+<p>But if you wish to know more about the treatment of tenants by landlords
+in England, Scotland, and Ireland, get a book called <i>Land
+Nationalisation</i>, by Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, published by Swan
+Sonnenschein, at 1s.</p>
+
+<p>That private landowners should be allowed to take millions out of the
+pockets of the workers is neither just nor reasonable. There is no
+argument in favour of landlordism that would not hold good in the case
+of a private claim to the sea and the air.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine a King or Parliament granting to an individual the exclusive
+ownership of the Bristol Channel or the air of Cornwall! Such a grant
+would rouse the ridicule of the whole nation. The attempt to enforce
+such a grant would cause a revolution.</p>
+
+<p>But in what way is such a grant more iniquitous or absurd than is the
+claim of a private citizen to the possession of Monsall Dale, or
+Sherwood Forest, or Covent Garden Market, or the corn lands of Essex, or
+the iron ore of Cumberland?</p>
+
+<p>The Bristol Channel, the river Thames, all our high roads, and most of
+our bridges are public property, free for the use of all. No power in
+the kingdom could wrest a yard of the highway nor an acre of green sea
+from the possession of the nation. It is right that the road and the
+river, the sea and the air should be the property of the people; it is
+expedient that they should be the property of the people. Then by what
+right or by what reason can it be held that the land&mdash;Britain
+herself&mdash;should belong to any man, or by any man be withheld from the
+people&mdash;who are the British nation?</p>
+
+<p>But it may be thought, because I am a Socialist, and neither rich nor
+influential, that my opinion should be regarded with suspicion. Allow me
+to offer the authority of more eminent men.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p><p>The late Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge said, in 1887&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>These (our land laws) might be for the general advantage, and if
+they could be shown to be so, by all means they should be
+maintained; but if not, does any man, with what he is pleased to
+call his mind, deny that a state of law under which such mischief
+could exist, under which the country itself would exist, not for
+its people, but for a mere handful of them, ought to be instantly
+and absolutely set aside?</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Two years later, in 1889, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone said&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Those persons who possess large portions of the earth's space are
+not altogether in the same position as possessors of mere
+personality. Personality does not impose limitations on the action
+and industry of man and the well-being of the community as
+possession of land does, and therefore <i>I freely own that
+compulsory expropriation is a thing which is admissible, and even
+sound in principle</i>.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Speaking at Hull, in August 1885, the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain said&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The soil of every country originally belonged to its inhabitants,
+and if it has been thought expedient to create private ownership in
+place of common rights, at least that private ownership must be
+considered as a trust, and subject to the conditions of a trust.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And again, at Inverness, in September 1885, Mr. Chamberlain said&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>When an exorbitant rent is demanded, which takes from a tenant the
+savings of his life, and turns him out at the end of his lease
+stripped of all his earnings, when a man is taxed for his own
+improvements, that is confiscation, and it is none the less
+reprehensible because it is sanctioned by the law.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>These views of the land question are not merely the views of ignorant
+demagogues, but are fully indorsed by great lawyers, great statesmen,
+great authors, great divines, and great economists.</p>
+
+<p>What is the principle which these eminent men teach? It is the principle
+enforced in the patent law, in the income tax, and in the law of
+copyright, that the privileges and claims, even the <i>rights</i> of the few,
+must give way to the needs of the many and the welfare of the whole.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p><p>What, then, do we propose to do? I think there are very few Socialists
+who wish to confiscate the land without any kind of compensation. But
+all Socialists demand that the land shall return to the possession of
+the people. Britain for the British! What could be more just?</p>
+
+<p>How are the people to get the land? There are many suggestions. Perhaps
+the fairest would be to allow the landowner the same latitude that is
+allowed to the inventor, who, as Mr. Mallock claims, is really the
+creator of two-thirds of our wealth.</p>
+
+<p>We allow the inventor to draw rent on his patent for fourteen years. Why
+not limit the private possession of land to the same term? Pay the
+present owners of land the full rent for fourteen or, say, twenty years,
+or, in a case where land has been bought in good faith, within the past
+fifty years, allow the owner the full rent for thirty years. This would
+be more than we grant our inventors, though they <i>add</i> to the national
+wealth, whereas the landlord simply takes wealth away from the national store.</p>
+
+<p>The method I here advise would require a "Compulsory Purchase Act" to
+compel landowners to sell their land at a fair price to the nation when
+and wherever the public convenience required it.</p>
+
+<p>This view is expressed clearly in a speech made by the Right Hon. Joseph
+Chamberlain at Trowbridge in 1885&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>We propose that local authorities shall have power in every case to
+take land by compulsion at a fair price for every public purpose,
+and that they should be able to let the land again, with absolute
+security of tenure, for allotments and for small holdings.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Others, again, recommend a land tax, and with perfect justice. If the
+City Council improves a street, at the cost of the ratepayer, the
+landlord raises his rent. What does that mean? It means that the
+ratepayer has increased the value of the landlord's property at the cost
+of the rates. It would only be just, then, that the whole increase
+should be taken back from the landlord by the city.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, it would be quite just to tax the landlords to the full
+extent of their "unearned increment."</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Progress and Poverty</i>, and in the book on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span><i>Land Nationalisation</i> by
+Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, you will find these subjects of the taxation
+and the purchase of land fully and clearly treated.</p>
+
+<p>My object is to show that it is to the interest of the nation that the
+private ownership of land should cease.</p>
+
+<p class="bold"><i>Books to Read on the Land</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Progress and Poverty.</i> By Henry George, 1s. Kegan Paul, Trench,
+Tr&uuml;bner, &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p><i>Land Nationalisation.</i> By Alfred Russell Wallace, 1s. Swan
+Sonnenschein.</p>
+
+<p><i>Five Precursors of Henry George.</i> By J. Morrison Davidson. London,
+Labour Leader Office, 1s.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER VI</span> <span class="smaller">LUXURY AND THE GREAT USEFUL EMPLOYMENT FRAUD</span></h2>
+
+<p>There is one excuse which is still too often made for the extravagance
+of the rich, and that is the excuse that "<i>The consumption of luxuries
+by the rich finds useful employment for the poor</i>."</p>
+
+<p>It is a ridiculous excuse, and there is no eminent economist in the
+world who does not laugh at it; but the capitalist, the landlord, and
+many pressmen still think it is good enough to mislead or silence the people with.</p>
+
+<p>As it is the <i>only</i> excuse the rich have to offer for their wasteful
+expenditure and costly idleness, it is worth while taking pains to
+convince the workers that it is no excuse at all.</p>
+
+<p>It is a mere error or falsehood, of course, but it is such an
+old-established error, such a plausible lie, and is repeated so often
+and so loudly by non-Socialists, that its disproof is essential. Indeed,
+I regard it as a matter of great importance that this subject of luxury
+and labour should be thoroughly understanded of the people.</p>
+
+<p>Here is this rich man's excuse, or defence, as it was stated by the Duke
+of Argyll about a dozen years ago. So slowly do the people learn, and so
+ignorant or dishonest does the Press remain, that the foolish statement
+is still quite up to date&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>But there are at least some things to be seen which are in the
+nature of facts and not at all in the nature of speculation or mere
+opinion. Amongst these some become clear from the mere clearing up
+of the meaning of words such as "the unemployed." Employment in
+this sense is the hiring of manual labour for the supply of human
+wants. <i>The more these wants are stimulated and multiplied the more
+widespread will be the inducement to hire. Therefore all outcries
+and prejudices against the progress of wealth and of what is called
+"luxury" are</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> <i>nothing but outcries of prejudice against the very
+sources and fountains of all employment.</i> This conclusion is absolutely certain.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I have no doubt at all that the duke honestly believed that statement,
+and I daresay there are hundreds of eminent persons still alive who are
+no wiser than he.</p>
+
+<p>The duke is quite correct in saying that "the more the wants of the rich
+are stimulated" the more employment there will be for the people. But
+after all, that only means that the more the rich waste, the harder the
+poor must work.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, the duke has omitted the most essential factor from the
+sum: he does not say how the rich man gets his money, nor from <i>whom</i> he
+gets his money. A ducal landlord draws, say, &pound;100,000 a year in rent
+from his estates.</p>
+
+<p>Who pays the rent? The farmers. Who earns the rent? The farmers and the labourers.</p>
+
+<p>These men earn and pay the rent, and the ducal landlord takes it.</p>
+
+<p>What does the duke do with the rent? He spends it. We are told that he
+spends it in finding useful employment for the poor, and one intelligent newspaper says&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>A rich man cannot spend his money without finding employment for
+vast numbers of people who, without him, would starve.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>That implies that the poor live on the rich. Now, I maintain that the
+rich live on the poor. Let us see.</p>
+
+<p>The duke buys food, clothing, and lodging for himself, for his family,
+and for his servants. He buys, let us say, a suit of clothes for
+himself. That finds work for a tailor. And we are told that but for the
+duke the tailor must starve. <i>Why?</i></p>
+
+<p>The agricultural labourer is badly in want of clothes; cannot <i>he</i> find
+the tailor work? No. The labourer wants clothes, but he has no money.
+<i>Why</i> has he no money? <i>Because the duke has taken his clothing money for rent!</i></p>
+
+<p>Then in the first place it is because the duke has taken the labourer's
+money that the tailor has no work. Then if the duke did not take the
+labourer's money the labourer could buy clothes? Yes. Then if the duke
+did not take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> the labourer's money the tailor <i>would</i> have work? Yes.
+Then it is not the duke's money, but the labourer's money, which keeps
+the tailor from starving? Yes. Then in this case the duke is no use? He
+is worse than useless. The labourer, who <i>earns</i> the money, has no
+clothes, and the idle duke has clothes.</p>
+
+<p>So that what the duke really does is to take the earnings of the
+labourer and spend them on clothes for <i>himself</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Well, suppose I said to a farmer, "You give me five shillings a week out
+of your earnings, and I will find employment for a man to make cigars,
+<i>I</i> will smoke the cigars."</p>
+
+<p>What would the farmer say? Would he not say, "Why should I employ you to
+smoke cigars which I pay for? If the cigar maker needs work, why should
+I not employ him myself, and smoke the cigars myself, since I am to pay for them?"</p>
+
+<p>Would not the farmer speak sense? And would not the labourer speak sense
+if he said to the duke, "Why should I employ you to wear out breeches
+which I pay for?"</p>
+
+<p>My offer to smoke the farmer's cigars is no more impudent than the
+assertion of the Duke of Argyll, that he, the duke, finds employment for
+a tailor by wearing out clothes for which the farmer has to pay.</p>
+
+<p>If the farmer paid no rent, <i>he</i> could employ the tailor, and he would
+have the clothes. The duke does nothing more than deprive the farmer of his clothes.</p>
+
+<p>But this is not the whole case against the duke. The duke does not spend
+<i>all</i> the rent in finding work for the poor. He spends a good deal of it
+on food and drink for himself and his dependants. This wealth is
+consumed&mdash;it is <i>wasted</i>, for it is consumed by men who produce nothing.
+And it all comes from the earnings of the men who pay the rent.
+Therefore, if the farmer and his men, instead of giving the money to the
+duke for rent, could spend it on themselves, they would find more
+employment for the poor than the duke can, because they would be able to
+spend all that the duke and his enormous retinue of servants waste.</p>
+
+<p>Although the duke (with the labourer's money) does find work for some
+tailors, milliners, builders, bootmakers, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> others, yet he does not
+find work for them all. There are always some tailors, bootmakers, and
+builders out of work.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I understand that in this country about &pound;14,000,000 a year are
+spent on horse-racing and hunting. This is spent by the rich. If it were
+not spent on horse-racing and hunting, it could be spent on useful
+things, and then, perhaps, there would be fewer tailors and other
+working men out of work.</p>
+
+<p>But you may say, "What then would become of the huntsmen, jockeys,
+servants, and others who now live on hunting and on racing?" A very
+natural question. Allow me to explain the difference between necessaries and luxuries.</p>
+
+<p>All the things made or used by man may be divided into two classes,
+under the heads of necessaries and luxuries.</p>
+
+<p>I should count as necessaries all those things which are essential to
+the highest form of human life.</p>
+
+<p>All those things which are not necessary to the highest form of human
+life I should call luxuries, or superfluities.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, I should call food, clothing, houses, fuel, books,
+pictures, and musical instruments, necessaries; and I should call
+diamond ear-rings, racehorses, and broughams luxuries.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is evident that all those things, whether luxuries or
+necessaries, are made by labour. Diamond rings, loaves of bread, grand
+pianos, and flat irons do not grow on trees; they must be made by the
+labour of the people. And it is very clear that the more luxuries a
+people produce, the fewer necessaries they will produce.</p>
+
+<p>If a community consists of 10,000 people, and if 9000 people are making
+bread and 1000 are making jewellery, it is evident that there will be
+more bread than jewellery.</p>
+
+<p>If in the same community 9000 make jewellery and only 1000 make bread,
+there will be more jewellery than bread.</p>
+
+<p>In the first case there will be food enough for all, though jewels be
+scarce. In the second case the people must starve, although they wear
+diamond rings on all their fingers.</p>
+
+<p>In a well-ordered State no luxuries would be produced until there were
+enough necessaries for all.</p>
+
+<p>Robinson Crusoe's first care was to secure food and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> shelter. Had he
+neglected his goats and his raisins, and spent his time in making
+shell-boxes, he would have starved. Under those circumstances he would
+have been a fool. But what are we to call the delicate and refined
+ladies who wear satin and pearls, while the people who earn them lack bread?</p>
+
+<p>Take a community of two men. They work upon a plot of land and grow
+grain for food. By each working six hours a day they produce enough food for both.</p>
+
+<p>Now take one of those men away from the cultivation of the land, and set
+him to work for six hours a day at the making of bead necklaces. What happens?</p>
+
+<p>This happens&mdash;that the man who is left upon the land must now work
+twelve hours a day. Why? Because although his companion has ceased to
+grow grain he has not ceased to <i>eat bread</i>. Therefore the man who grows
+the grain must now grow grain enough for two. That is to say, that the
+more men are set to the making of luxuries, the heavier will be the
+burden of the men who produce necessaries.</p>
+
+<p>But in this case, you see, the farmer does get some return for his extra
+labour. That is to say, he gets half the necklaces in exchange for half
+his grain; for there is no rich man.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose next a community of three&mdash;one of whom is a landlord, while the
+other two are farmers.</p>
+
+<p>The landlord takes half the produce of the land in rent, but does no work. What happens?</p>
+
+<p>We saw just now that the two workers could produce enough grain in six
+hours to feed two men for one day. Of this the landlord takes half.
+Therefore, the two men must now produce four men's food in one day, of
+which the landlord will take two, leaving the workers each one. Well, if
+it takes a man six hours to produce a day's keep for one, it will take
+him twelve hours to produce a day's keep for two. So that our two
+farmers must now work twice as long as before.</p>
+
+<p>But now the landlord has got twice as much grain as he can eat. He
+therefore proceeds to <i>spend</i> it, and in spending it he "finds useful
+employment" for one of the farmers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> That is to say, he takes one of the
+farmers off the land and sets him to building a house for the landlord.
+What is the effect of this?</p>
+
+<p>The effect of it is that the one man left upon the land has now to find
+food for all three, and in return gets nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Consider this carefully. All men must eat, and here are two men who do
+not produce food. To produce food for one man takes one man six hours.
+To produce food for three men takes one man eighteen hours. The one man
+left on the land has, therefore, to work three times as long, or three
+times as hard, as he did at first. In the case of the two men, we saw
+that the farmer did get his share of the bead necklaces, but in the case
+of the three men the farmer gets nothing. The luxuries produced by the
+man taken from the land are enjoyed by the rich man.</p>
+
+<p>The landlord takes from the farmer two-thirds of his produce, and
+employs another man to help him to spend it.</p>
+
+<p>We have here three classes&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. The landlord, who does no work.</p>
+
+<p>2. The landlord's servant, who does work for the benefit of the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>3. The farmer, who produces food for himself and the other two.</p>
+
+<p>Now, all the peoples of Europe, if not of the world, are divided into
+those three classes.</p>
+
+<p>And it is <i>most important</i> that you should thoroughly understand those
+three classes, never forget them, and never allow the rich man, nor the
+champions of the rich man, to forget them.</p>
+
+<p>The jockeys, huntsmen, and flunkeys alluded to just now, belong to the
+class who work, but whose work is all done for the benefit of the idle.</p>
+
+<p>Do not be deceived into supposing that there are but <i>two</i> classes:
+there are <i>three</i>. Do not believe that the people may be divided into
+workers and idlers: they must be divided into (1) idlers, (2) workers
+who work for the idlers, and (3) workers who support the idlers and
+those who work for the idlers.</p>
+
+<p>These three classes are a relic of the feudal times: they represent the
+barons, the vassals, and the retainers.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p><p>The rich man is the baron, who draws his wealth from the workers; the
+jockeys, milliners, flunkeys, upholsterers, designers, musicians, and
+others who serve the rich man, and live upon his custom and employment,
+are the retainers; the workers, who earn the money upon which the rich
+man and his following exist, are the vassals.</p>
+
+<p>Remember the <i>three</i> classes: the rich, who produce nothing; the
+employees of the rich, who produce luxuries for the rich; and the
+workers, who find everything for themselves and all the wealth for the
+other two classes.</p>
+
+<p>It is like two men on one donkey. The duke rides the donkey, and boasts
+that he carries the flunkey on his back. So he does. But the donkey
+carries both flunkey and duke.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, then, the duke confers no favour on the agricultural labourer
+by employing jockeys and servants, for the labourer has to pay for them,
+and the duke gets the benefit of their services.</p>
+
+<p>But the duke confers a benefit on the men he employs as huntsmen and
+servants, and without the duke they would starve? No; without him they
+would not starve, for the wealth which supports them would still exist,
+and they could be found other work, and could even add to the general
+store of wealth by producing some by their own labour.</p>
+
+<p>The same remark applies to all those of the second class, from the
+fashionable portrait-painter and the diamond-cutter down to the
+scullery-maid and the stable-boy.</p>
+
+<p>Compare the position of an author of to-day with the position of an
+author in the time of Dr. Johnson. In Johnson's day the man of genius
+was poor and despised, dependent on rich patrons: in our day the man of
+genius writes for the public, and the rich patron is unknown.</p>
+
+<p>The best patron is the People; the best employer is the People; the
+proper person to enjoy luxuries is the man who works for and creates them.</p>
+
+<p>My Lady Dedlock finds useful employment for Mrs. Jones. She employs Mrs.
+Jones to make her ladyship a ball-dress.</p>
+
+<p>Where does my lady get her money? She gets it from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> her husband, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, who gets it from his tenant farmer, who gets it from
+the agricultural labourer, Hodge.</p>
+
+<p>Then her ladyship orders the ball-dress of Mrs. Jones, and pays her with
+Hodge's money.</p>
+
+<p>But if Mrs. Jones were not employed making the ball-dress for my Lady
+Dedlock, she could be making gowns for Mrs. Hodge, or frocks for Hodge's girls.</p>
+
+<p>Whereas now Hodge cannot buy frocks for his children, and his wife is a
+dowdy, because Sir Leicester Dedlock has taken Hodge's earnings and
+given them to his lady to buy ball costumes.</p>
+
+<p>Take a larger instance. There are many yachts which, in building and
+decoration, have cost a quarter of a million.</p>
+
+<p>Average the wages of all the men engaged in the erection and fitting of
+such a vessel at 30s. a week. We shall find that the yacht has "found
+employment" for 160 men for twenty years. Now, while those men were
+engaged on that work they produced no necessaries for themselves. But
+they <i>consumed</i> necessaries, and those necessaries were produced by the
+same people who found the money for the owner of the yacht to spend.
+That is to say, that the builders were kept by the producers of
+necessaries, and the producers of necessaries were paid for the
+builders' keep, with money which they, the producers of necessaries, had
+earned for the owner of the yacht.</p>
+
+<p>The conclusion of this sum being that the producers of necessaries had
+been compelled to support 160 men, and their wives and children, for
+twenty years; and for what?</p>
+
+<p>That they might build <i>one yacht</i> for the pleasure of <i>one idle man</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Would those yacht builders have starved without the rich man? Not at
+all. But for the rich man, the other workers would have had more money,
+could afford more holidays, and that quarter of a million spent on the
+one yacht would have built a whole fleet of pleasure boats.</p>
+
+<p>And note also that the pleasure boats would find more employment than
+the yacht, for there would be more to spend on labour and less on costly materials.</p>
+
+<p>So with other dependants of the rich. The duke's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> gardeners could find
+work in public parks for the people; the artists, who now sell their
+pictures to private collections, could sell them to public galleries;
+and some of the decorators and upholsterers who now work on the rich
+men's palaces might turn their talents to our town halls and hospitals
+and public pavilions. And that reminds me of a quotation from Mr.
+Mallock, cited in <i>Merrie England</i>. Mr. Mallock said&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Let us take, for instance, a large and beautiful cabinet, for which
+a rich man of taste pays &pound;2000. The cabinet is of value to him for
+reasons which we will consider presently; as possessed by him it
+constitutes a portion of his wealth. But how could such a piece of
+wealth be distributed? Not only is it incapable of physical
+partition and distribution, but, if taken from the rich man and
+given to the poor man, the latter is not the least enriched by it.
+Put a priceless buhl cabinet into an Irish labourer's cottage, and
+it will probably only add to his discomforts; or, if he finds it
+useful, it will only be because he keeps his pigs in it. A picture
+by Titian, again, may be worth thousands, but it is worth thousands
+only to the man who can enjoy it.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Now, isn't that a precious piece of nonsense? There are two things to be
+said about that rich man's cabinet. The first is, that it was made by
+some workman who, if he had not been so employed, might have been
+producing what <i>would</i> be useful to the poor. So that the cabinet has
+cost the poor something. The second is, that a priceless buhl cabinet
+<i>can</i> be divided. Of course, it would be folly to hack it into shavings
+and serve them out amongst the mob; but if that cabinet is a thing of
+beauty and worth the seeing, it ought to be taken from the rich
+benefactor, whose benefaction consists in his having plundered it from
+the poor, and it ought to be put into a public museum where thousands
+could see it, and where the rich man could see it also if he chose.
+This, indeed, is the proper way to deal with all works of art, and this
+is one of the rich man's greatest crimes&mdash;that he keeps hoarded up in
+his house a number of things that ought to be the common heritage of the people.</p>
+
+<p>Every article of luxury has to be paid for not in <i>money</i>, but in
+<i>labour</i>. Every glass of wine drunk by my lord, and every diamond star
+worn by my lady, has to be paid for with the sweat and the tears of the
+poorest of our people. I believe it is a literal fact that many of the
+artificial flowers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> worn at Court are actually stained with the tears of
+the famished and exhausted girls who make them.</p>
+
+<p>To say that the extravagance of the rich finds useful employment for the
+poor, is more foolish than to say that the drunkard finds useful
+employment for the brewers.</p>
+
+<p>The drunkard may have a better defence than the duke, because he may
+perhaps have produced, or earned, the money he spends in beer, whereas
+the duke's rents are not produced by the duke nor earned by him.</p>
+
+<p>That is clear, is it not? And yet a few weeks since I saw an article in
+a London weekly paper in which we were told that the thief was an
+indispensable member of society, because he found employment for
+policemen, gaolers, builders of gaols, and other persons.</p>
+
+<p>The excuse for the thief is as valid as the excuse for the duke. The
+thief finds plenty of employment for the people. But who <i>pays</i> the
+persons employed?</p>
+
+<p>The police, the gaolers, and all the other persons employed in catching,
+holding, and feeding the thief, are paid out of the rates and taxes. Who
+pays the taxes? The British public. Then the British public have to
+support not only the police and the rest, but the thief as well.</p>
+
+<p>What do the police, the thief, and the gaoler produce? Do they produce
+any wealth? No. They consume wealth, and the thief is so useful that if
+he died out for ever, it would pay us better to feed the gaolers and
+police for doing nothing than to fetch the thief back again to feed him as well.</p>
+
+<p>Work is useless unless it be productive work. It would be work for a man
+to dig a hole and then fill it up again; but the work would be of no
+benefit to the nation. It would be work for a man to grow strawberries
+to feed the Duke of Argyll's donkey on, but it would be useless work,
+because it would add nothing to the general store of wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Policemen and gaolers are men withdrawn from the work of producing
+wealth to wait upon useless criminals. They, like soldiers and many
+others, do not produce wealth, but they consume it, and the greater the
+number of producers and the smaller the number of consumers the richer
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> State must be. For which family would be the better off&mdash;the family
+wherein ten earned wages and none wasted them, or the family in which
+two earned wages and eight spent them?</p>
+
+<p>Do not imagine, as some do, that increased consumption is a blessing. It
+is the amount of wealth you produce that makes a nation prosperous; and
+the idle rich man, who produces nothing, only makes his crime worse by
+spending a great deal.</p>
+
+<p>The great mass of the workers lead mean, penurious, and joyless lives;
+they crowd into small and inconvenient houses; they occupy the darkest,
+narrowest, and dirtiest streets; they eat coarse and cheap food, when
+they do not go hungry; they drink adulterated beer and spirits; they
+wear shabby and ill-made clothes; they ride in third-class carriages,
+sit in the worst seats of the churches and theatres; and they stint
+their wives of rest, their children of education, and themselves of
+comfort and of honour, that they may pay rent, and interest, and profits
+for the idle rich to spend in luxury and folly.</p>
+
+<p>And if the workers complain, or display any signs of suspicion or
+discontent, they are told that the rich are keeping them.</p>
+
+<p>That is not <i>true</i>. It is the workers who are keeping the rich.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER VII</span> <span class="smaller">WHAT SOCIALISM IS NOT</span></h2>
+
+<p>It is no use telling you what <i>Socialism</i> is until I have told you what
+it is not. Those who do not wish you to be Socialists have given you
+very false notions about <i>Socialism</i>, in the hope of setting you against
+it. They have brought many false charges against Socialists, in the hope
+of setting you against them. So you have come to think of <i>Socialism</i> as
+a thing foolish, or vile, and when it is spoken of, you turn up your
+noses (instead of trying to see beyond them) and turn your backs on it.</p>
+
+<p>A friend offers to give you a good house-dog; but someone tells you it
+is mad. Your friend will be wise to satisfy you that the dog is <i>not</i>
+mad before he begins to tell you how well it can guard a house. Because,
+as long as you think the dog will bite you, you are not in the frame of
+mind to hear about its usefulness.</p>
+
+<p>A sailor is offering to sell an African chief a telescope; but the chief
+has been told that the thing is a gun. Then before the sailor shows the
+chief what the glass is good for, he will be wise to prove to him that
+it will not go off at half-cock and blow his eye out.</p>
+
+<p>So with <i>Socialism</i>: before I try to show you what it really is, I must
+try to clear your mind of the prejudice which has been sown there by
+those who wish to make you hate Socialism because they fear it.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, my friends, it will be wise for you to look very carefully
+and hopefully at anything which Parliament men, or employers, or
+pressmen, call bad or foolish, because what helps you hinders them, and
+the stronger you grow the weaker they become.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the men who have tried to smash your unions, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> have written
+against you, and spoken against you, and acted against you in all great
+strikes and lock-outs, are the same men who speak and write against <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And what have they told you? Let us take their commonest statements, and
+see what they are made of.</p>
+
+<p>They say that Socialists want to get up a revolution, to turn the
+country upside down by force, to seize all property, and to divide it
+equally amongst the whole people.</p>
+
+<p>We will take these charges one at a time.</p>
+
+<p>As to <i>Revolution</i>. I think I shall be right if I say that not one
+Socialist in fifty, at this day, expects or wishes to get <i>Socialism</i> by
+force of arms.</p>
+
+<p>In the early days of <i>Socialism</i>, when there were very few Socialists,
+and some of those rash, or angry, men, it may have been true that
+<i>Socialism</i> implied revolution and violence. But to-day there are very
+few Socialists who believe in brute force, or who think a revolution
+possible or desirable. The bulk of our Socialists are for peaceful and
+lawful means. Some of them hope to bring <i>Socialism</i> to pass by means of
+a reformed Parliament; others hope to bring it to pass by means of a
+newer, wiser, and juster public opinion.</p>
+
+<p>I have always been dead against the idea of revolution, for many
+reasons. I do not think a revolution is <i>possible</i> in Britain. Firstly,
+because the people have too much sense; secondly, because the people are
+by nature patient and kindly; thirdly, because the people are too <i>free</i>
+to make force needful.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think a revolution is <i>advisable</i>. Because, firstly, it would
+be almost sure to fail; secondly, if it did not fail it would put the
+worst kind of men into power, and would destroy order and method before
+it was ready to replace them; thirdly, because a State built up on force
+is very likely to succumb to fraud; so that after great bloodshed,
+trouble, labour, and loss the people would almost surely slip down into
+worse evils than those against which they had fought, and would find
+that they had suffered and sinned in vain.</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe in force, and I do not believe in haste. What we want
+is <i>reason</i> and <i>right</i>; and we can only hope to get reason and right by
+right and reasonable means.</p>
+
+<p>The men who would come to the top in a civil war<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> would be fighters and
+strivers; they would not be the kind of men to wisely model and
+patiently and justly rule or lead a new State. Your barricade man may be
+very useful&mdash;at the barricades; but when the fighting is over, and his
+work is done, he may be a great danger, for he is not the man, usually,
+to stand aside and make way for the builders to replace by right laws
+the wrong laws which his arms have destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>Revolution by force of arms is not desirable nor feasible; but there is
+another kind of revolution from which we hope great things. This is a
+revolution of <i>thought</i>. Let us once get the people, or a big majority
+of the people, to understand <i>Socialism</i>, to believe in <i>Socialism</i>, and
+to work for <i>Socialism</i>, and the <i>real</i> revolution is accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>In a free country, such as ours, the almighty voice is the voice of
+public opinion. What the public <i>believe in</i> and <i>demand</i> has got to be
+given. Who is to refuse? Neither King nor Parliament can stand against a
+united and resolute British people.</p>
+
+<p>And do not suppose, either, that brute force, which is powerless to get
+good or to keep it, has power to resist it or destroy it. Neither
+truncheons nor bayonets can kill a truth. The sword and the cannon are
+impotent against the pen and the tongue.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, we can overcome the constable, the soldier, the Parliament
+man, the landlord, and the man of wealth, without shedding one drop of
+blood, or breaking one pane of glass, or losing one day's work.</p>
+
+<p>Our real task is to win the trust and help of the <i>people</i> (I don't mean
+the workers only, but the British people), and the first thing to be
+done is to educate them&mdash;to teach them and tell them what we mean; to
+make quite clear to them what <i>Socialism</i> is, and what it is <i>not</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One of the things it is not, is British imitation of the French
+Revolution. Our method is persuasion; our cause is justice; our weapons
+are the tongue and the pen.</p>
+
+<p>Next: As to seizing the wealth of the country and sharing it out amongst
+the people. First, we do not propose to <i>seize</i> anything. We do propose
+to get some things,&mdash;the land, for instance,&mdash;and to make them the
+property of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> whole nation; but we mean that to be done by Act of
+Parliament, and by purchase. Second, we have no idea of "sharing out"
+the land, nor the railways, nor the money, nor any other kind of wealth
+or property, equally amongst the people. To share these things out&mdash;if
+they <i>could</i> be shared, which they could not be&mdash;would be to make them
+<i>private</i> property, whereas we want them to be <i>public</i> property, the
+property of the British <i>nation</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, how often have you been told that Socialists want to have the
+wealth equally divided amongst all? And how often have you been told
+that if you divided the wealth in that way it would soon cease to be
+equally divided, because some would waste and some would save?</p>
+
+<p>"Make all men equal in possessions," cry the non-Socialists, "and in a
+very short time there would be rich and poor, as before."</p>
+
+<p>This is no argument against <i>Socialism</i>, for Socialists do not seek any
+such division. But I want to point out to you that though it <i>looks</i>
+true, it is <i>not</i> true.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite true that, did we divide all wealth equally to-morrow, there
+would in a short time be many penniless, and a few in a way of getting
+rich; but it is only true if we suppose that after the sharing we
+allowed private ownership of land and the old system of trade and
+competition to go on as before. Change those things: do away with the
+bad system which leads to poverty and to wealth, and we should have no
+more rich and poor.</p>
+
+<p><i>Destroy</i> all the wealth of England to-morrow&mdash;we will not talk of
+"sharing" it out, but <i>destroy</i> it&mdash;and establish <i>Socialism</i> on the
+ruins and the bareness, and in a few years we should have a prosperous,
+a powerful, and a contented nation. There would be no rich and there
+would be no poor. But the nation would be richer and happier than it ever has been.</p>
+
+<p>Another charge against Socialists is that they are <i>Atheists</i>, whose aim
+is to destroy all religion and all morality.</p>
+
+<p>This is not true. It is true that some Socialists are Agnostics and some
+are Atheists. But Atheism is no more a part of Socialism than it is a
+part of Toryism, or of Radicalism, or of Liberalism. Many prominent
+Socialists<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> are Christians, not a few are clergymen. Many Liberal and
+Tory leaders are Agnostics or Atheists. Mr. Bradlaugh was a Radical, and
+an Atheist; Prof. Huxley was an opponent of Socialism, and an Agnostic.
+Socialism does not touch religion at any point. It deals with laws, and
+with <i>industrial</i> and <i>political</i> government.</p>
+
+<p>It is not sense to say, because some Atheists are Socialists, that all
+Socialists are Atheists.</p>
+
+<p>Christ's teaching is often said to be socialistic. It is not
+socialistic; but it is communistic, and Communism is the most advanced
+form of the policy generally known as <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The charge of <i>Immorality</i> is absurd. Socialists demand a higher
+morality than any now to be found. They demand perfect <i>honesty</i>.
+Indeed, it is just the stern morality of <i>Socialism</i> which causes
+ambitious and greedy men to hate <i>Socialism</i> and resist it.</p>
+
+<p>Another charge against Socialists is the charge of desiring <i>Free Love</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Socialists, it has been said, want to destroy home life, to abolish
+marriage, to take the children from their parents, and to establish "Free <i>Love</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Free Love," I may say, means that all men and women shall be free to
+love as they please, and to live with whom they please. Therefore, that
+they shall be free to live as "man and wife" without marriage, to part
+when they please without divorce, and to take other partners as they
+please without shame or penalty.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I say of this charge, as I have said of the others, that there may
+be some Socialists in favour of free love, just as there are some
+Socialists in favour of revolution, and some who are not Christians; but
+I say also that a big majority of Socialists are not in favour of free
+love, and that in any case free love is no more a part of <i>Socialism</i>
+than it is a part of Toryism or of Liberalism.</p>
+
+<p>It is not sense to say, because some Free-Lovers are Socialists, that
+all Socialists are Free-Lovers.</p>
+
+<p>I believe there is not one English Socialist in a hundred who would vote
+for doing away with marriage, or for handing over the children to the
+State. I for one would see the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> State farther before I would part with a
+child of mine. And I think you will generally find that those who are
+really eager to have all children given up to the State are men and
+women who have no children of their own.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I submit that a childless man is not the right man to make laws about children.</p>
+
+<p>As for the questions of free love and legal marriage, they are very hard
+to deal with, and this is not the time to deal with them. But I shall
+say here that many of those who talk the loudest about free love do not
+even know what love <i>is</i>, or have not sense enough to see that just as
+love and lust are two very different things, so are free love and free
+lust very different things.</p>
+
+<p>Again, you are not to fall into the error of supposing that the
+relations of the sexes are all they should be at present. Free <i>love</i>,
+it is true, is not countenanced; but free <i>lust</i> is very common.</p>
+
+<p>And although some Socialists may be in favour of free <i>love</i>, I never
+heard of a Socialist who had a word to say in favour of prostitution. It
+may be a very wicked thing to enable a free woman to <i>give</i> her love
+freely; but it is a much worse thing to allow, and even at times compel
+(for it amounts to that, by force of hunger) a free woman to <i>sell</i> her
+love&mdash;no, not her <i>love</i>, poor creature; the vilest never sold that&mdash;but
+to sell her honour, her body, and her soul.</p>
+
+<p>I would do a great deal for <i>Socialism</i> if it were only to do that one
+good act of wiping out for ever the shameful sin of prostitution. This
+thing, indeed, is so horrible that I never think of it without feeling
+tempted to apologise for calling myself a man in a country where it is
+so common as it is in moral Britain.</p>
+
+<p>There are several other common charges against Socialists; as that they
+are poor and envious&mdash;what we may call Have-nots-on-the-Have; that they
+are ignorant and incapable men, who know nothing, and cannot think;
+that, in short, they are failures and wasters, fools and knaves.</p>
+
+<p>These charges are as true and as false as the others. There may be some
+Socialists who are ignorant and stupid; there may be some who are poor
+<i>and</i> envious; there may be some who are Socialists because they like
+cakes and ale<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> better than work; and there may be some who are clever,
+but not too good&mdash;men who will feather their nests if they can find any
+geese for the plucking.</p>
+
+<p>But I don't think that <i>all</i> Tories and Liberals are wise, learned,
+pure, unselfish, and clever men, eager to devote their talents to the
+good of their fellows, and unwilling to be paid, or thanked, or praised,
+for what they do.</p>
+
+<p>I think there are fools and knaves,&mdash;even in Parliament,&mdash;and that some
+of the "Bounders-on-the-Bounce" find it pays a great deal better to
+toady to the "Haves" than to sacrifice themselves to the "Have-nots."</p>
+
+<p>And I think I may claim that Socialists are in the main honest and
+sensible men, who work for <i>Socialism</i> because they believe in it, and
+not because it pays; for its advocacy seldom pays at all, and it never
+pays well; and I am sure that <i>Socialism</i> makes quicker progress amongst
+the educated than amongst the ignorant, and amongst the intelligent than
+amongst the dull.</p>
+
+<p>As for brains: I hope such men as William Morris, Karl Marx, and
+Liebknecht are as well endowed with brains as&mdash;well, let us be modest,
+and say as the average Tory or Liberal leader.</p>
+
+<p>But most of the charges and arguments I have quoted are not aimed at
+<i>Socialism</i> at all, but at Socialists.</p>
+
+<p>Now, to prove that some of the men who espouse a cause are unworthy, is
+not the same thing as proving that the cause is bad.</p>
+
+<p>Some parsons are foolish, some are insincere; but we do not therefore
+say that Christianity is unwise or untrue. Even if <i>most</i> parsons were
+really bad men we should only despise and condemn the clergy, and not
+the religion they dishonoured and misrepresented.</p>
+
+<p>The question is not whether all Socialists are as wise as Mr. Samuel
+Woods, M.P., or as honest as Jabez Balfour; <i>the</i> question is whether
+<i>Socialism</i> is a thing in itself just, and wise, and <i>possible</i>.</p>
+
+<p>If you find a Socialist who is foolish, laugh at him; it you find one
+who is a rogue, don't trust him; if you find one "on the make," stop his
+making. But as for <i>Socialism</i>, if it be good, accept it; if it be bad, reject it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p><p>Here allow me to quote a few lines from <i>Merrie England</i>&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Half our time as champions of Socialism is wasted in denials of
+false descriptions of Socialism; and to a large extent the anger,
+the ridicule, and the argument of the opponents of Socialism are
+hurled against a Socialism which has no existence except in their own heated minds.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property
+of the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism is not a wild dream of a happy land where the apples will
+drop off the trees into our open mouths, the fish come out of the
+rivers and fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out
+ready-made suits of velvet with golden buttons without the trouble
+of coaling the engine. Neither is it a dream of a nation of
+stained-glass angels, who never say damn, who always love their
+neighbours better than themselves, and who never need to work
+unless they wish to.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And now, having told you what <i>Socialism is not</i>, it remains for me to
+tell you what <i>Socialism is</i>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER VIII</span> <span class="smaller">WHAT SOCIALISM IS</span></h2>
+
+<p>To those who are writing about such things as <i>Socialism</i> or Political
+Economy, one of the stumbling-blocks is in the hard or uncommon words,
+and another in the tediousness&mdash;the "dryness"&mdash;of the arguments and explanations.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to say what has to be said so that anybody may see quite
+clearly what is meant, and it is still harder to say it so as to hold
+the attention and arouse the interest of men and women who are not used
+to reading or thinking about matters outside the daily round of their
+work and their play. As I want this book to be plain to all kinds of
+workers, even to those who have no "book-learning" and to whom a "hard
+word" is a "boggart," and a "dry" description or a long argument a
+weariness of the flesh, I must beg those of you who are more used to
+bookish talk and scientific terms (or names) to bear with me when I stop
+to show the meaning of things that to you are quite clear.</p>
+
+<p>If I can make my meaning plain to members of Parliament, bishops,
+editors, and other half-educated persons, and to labouring men and women
+who have had but little schooling, and have never been used to think or
+care about <i>Socialism</i>, or Economics, or Politics, or "any such dry
+rot"&mdash;as they would call them&mdash;if I can catch the ear of the heedless
+and the untaught, the rest of you cannot fail to follow.</p>
+
+<p>The terms, or names, used in speaking of Socialism&mdash;that is to say, the
+names given to ideas, or "thoughts," or to kinds of ideas, or "schools"
+of thought, are not easy to put into the plain words of common speech.
+To an untaught labourer <i>Socialism</i> is a hard word, so is
+<i>Co-operation</i>; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> such a phrase, or name, as <i>Political Economy</i> is
+enough to clear a taproom, or break up a meeting, or close a book.</p>
+
+<p>So I want to steer clear of "hard words," and "dry talk," and
+long-windedness, and I want to tell my tale, if I can, in "tinker's English."</p>
+
+<p><i>What is Socialism?</i></p>
+
+<p>There is more than one kind of <i>Socialism</i>, for we hear of State
+<i>Socialism</i>, of Practical <i>Socialism</i>, of Communal <i>Socialism</i>; and
+these kinds differ from each other, though they are all <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So you have different kinds of Liberals. There are old-school Whigs, and
+advanced Whigs, and Liberals, and Radicals, and advanced Radicals; but
+they are all <i>Liberals</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So you have horse soldiers, foot soldiers, riflemen, artillery, and
+engineers; but they are all <i>soldiers</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the Liberals are men of many minds: there are Churchmen,
+Nonconformists, Atheists; there are teetotalers and there are drinkers;
+there are Trade Union leaders, and there are leaders of the Masters'
+Federation. These men differ on many points, but they all agree upon <i>one</i> point.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the Socialists are many men of many minds: there are parsons,
+atheists, labourers, employers, men of peace, and men of force. These
+men differ on many points, but they all agree upon <i>one</i> point.</p>
+
+<p>Now, this point on which men of different views agree is called a <i>principle</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A principle is a main idea, or main thought. It is like the keelson of a
+ship or the backbone of a fish&mdash;it is the foundation on which the thing is built.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, the <i>principle</i> of Trade Unionism is "combination," the combining,
+or joining together, of a number of workers, for the general good of all.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>principle</i> of Democratic (or Popular) Government is the law that
+the will of the majority shall rule.</p>
+
+<p>Do away with the "right of combination," and Trade Unionism is destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>Do away with majority rule, and Popular Government is destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>So if we can find the <i>principle</i> of <i>Socialism</i>, if we can find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the
+one point on which all kinds of Socialists agree, we shall be able to
+see what <i>Socialism</i> really is.</p>
+
+<p>Now, here in plain words is the <i>principle</i>, or root idea, on which
+<i>all</i> Socialists agree&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>That the country, and all the machinery of production in the country,
+shall belong to the whole people (the nation), and shall be used <i>by</i>
+the people and <i>for</i> the people.</p>
+
+<p>That "principle," the root idea of Socialism, means two things&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. That the land and all the machines, tools, and buildings used in
+making needful things, together with all the canals, rivers, roads,
+railways, ships, and trains used in moving, sharing (distributing)
+needful things, and all the shops, markets, scales, weights, and
+money used in selling or dividing needful things, shall be the
+property of (belong to) the whole people (the nation).</p>
+
+<p>2. That the land, tools, machines, trains, rivers, shops, scales,
+money, and all the other things belonging to the people, shall be
+worked, managed, divided, and used by the whole people in such a
+way as the greater number of the whole people shall deem best.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This is the principle of collective, or national, ownership, and
+co-operative, or national, use and control.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism may, you see, be summed up in one line, in four words, as really meaning</p>
+
+<p class="bold">BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH.</p>
+
+<p>I will make all this as plain as the nose on your face directly. Let us
+now look at the <i>other</i> side.</p>
+
+<p>To-day Britain does <i>not</i> belong to the British; it belongs to a few of
+the British. There are bits of it which belong to the whole people, as
+Wimbledon Common, Portland Gaol, the highroads; but most of it is "private property."</p>
+
+<p>Now, as there are Liberals and Tories, Catholics and Protestants,
+Dockers' Unions and Shipping Federations in England; so there are
+Socialists and non-Socialists.</p>
+
+<p>And as there are different kinds of Socialists, so there are different
+kinds of non-Socialists.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p><p>As there is one point, or <i>principle</i>, on which all kinds of Socialists
+agree; so there is one point, or <i>principle</i>, on which all kinds of
+non-Socialists agree.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the non-Socialists there are Liberals and Tories, Catholics and
+Protestants, masters and workmen, rich and poor, lords and labourers,
+publicans and teetotalers; and these folks, as you know, differ in their
+ideas, and quarrel with and go against each other; but they are all
+non-Socialists, they are all against <i>Socialism</i>, and they all agree
+upon <i>one point</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So, if we can find the one point on which all kinds of non-Socialists
+agree, we shall find the <i>principle</i>, or root idea, of non-Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the "principle" of non-Socialism is just the opposite of the
+"principle" of <i>Socialism</i>. As the "principle" of <i>Socialism</i> is
+national ownership, so the "principle" of non-Socialism is <i>private</i>
+ownership. As the principle of <i>Socialism</i> is <i>Britain for the British</i>,
+so the principle of non-Socialism is <i>Every Briton for Himself</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Again, as the principle of <i>Socialism</i> means two things, so does the
+principle of non-Socialism mean two things.</p>
+
+<p>As the principle of <i>Socialism</i> means national ownership and
+co-operative national management, so the principle of non-Socialism
+means <i>private ownership</i> and <i>private management</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Socialism</i> says that Britain shall be owned and managed <i>by</i> the people
+<i>for</i> the people.</p>
+
+<p>Non-Socialism says Britain shall be owned and managed <i>by</i> some persons
+<i>for</i> some persons.</p>
+
+<p>Under <i>Socialism</i> you would have <i>all</i> the people working <i>together</i> for
+the good of <i>all</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Under non-Socialism you have all the <i>persons</i> working <i>separately</i> (and
+mostly <i>against</i> each other), each for the good of <i>himself</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So we find <i>Socialism</i> means <i>Co-operation</i>, and non-Socialism means
+<i>Competition</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Co-operation, as here used, means operating or working together for a
+common end or purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Competition means competing or vying with each other for personal ends or gain.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p><p>I'm afraid that is all as "dry" as bran, and as sad as a half-boiled
+dumpling; but I want to make it quite plain.</p>
+
+<p>And now we will run over it all again in a more homely and lively way.</p>
+
+<p>You know that to-day most of the land in Britain belongs to landlords,
+who let it to farmers or builders, and charge <i>rent</i> for it.</p>
+
+<p>Socialists (<i>all</i> Socialists) say that <i>all</i> the land should belong to
+the British people, to the nation.</p>
+
+<p>You know that the railways belong to railway companies, who carry goods
+and passengers, and charge fares and rates, to make <i>profit</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Socialists <i>all</i> say that the railways should be bought by the people.
+Some say that fares should be charged, some that the railways should be
+free&mdash;just as the roads, rivers, and bridges now are; but all agree that
+any profit made by the railways should belong to the whole nation. Just
+as do the profits now made by the post office and the telegraphs.</p>
+
+<p>You know that cotton mills, coalmines, and breweries now belong to rich
+men, or to companies, who sell the coal, the calico, or the beer, for profit.</p>
+
+<p>Socialists say that all mines, mills, breweries, shops, works, ships,
+and farms should belong to the whole people, and should be managed by
+persons chosen by the people, or chosen by officials elected by the
+people, and that all the bread, beer, calico, coal, and other goods
+should be either <i>sold</i> to the people, or <i>given</i> to the people, or sold
+to foreign buyers for the benefit of the British nation.</p>
+
+<p>Some Socialists would <i>give</i> the goods to the people, some would <i>sell</i>
+them; but <i>all</i> agree that any profit on such sales should belong to the
+whole people&mdash;just as any profit made on the sale of gas by the
+Manchester Corporation goes to the credit of the city.</p>
+
+<p>Now you will begin to see what is meant by Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the nation owns <i>some</i> things; under Socialism the nation would
+own <i>all</i> things.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the nation owns the ships of the navy, the forts, arsenals,
+public buildings, Government factories, and some other things.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the Government, <i>for the nation</i>, manages the post<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> office and
+telegraphs, makes some of the clothes and food and arms for the army and
+navy, builds some of the warships, and oversees the Church, the prisons, and the schools.</p>
+
+<p>Socialists want the nation to own <i>all</i> the buildings, factories, lands,
+rivers, ships, schools, machines, and goods, and to manage <i>all</i> their
+business and work, and to buy and sell and make and use <i>all</i> goods for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>To-day some cities (as Manchester and Glasgow) make gas, and supply gas
+and water to the citizens. Some cities (as London) let their citizens
+buy their gas and water from gas and water companies.</p>
+
+<p>Socialists want <i>all</i> the gas and water to be supplied to the people by
+their own officials, as in Glasgow and Manchester.</p>
+
+<p>Under <i>Socialism</i> all the work of the nation would be <i>organised</i>&mdash;that
+is to say, it would be "ordered," or "arranged," so that no one need be
+out of work, and so that no useless work need be done, and so that no
+work need be done twice where once would serve.</p>
+
+<p>At present the work is <i>not</i> organised, except in the post office and in
+the various works of the Corporations.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take a look at the state of things in England to-day.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the industries of England are not ordered nor arranged, but are
+left to be disordered by chance and by the ups and downs of trade.</p>
+
+<p>So we have at one and the same time, and in one and the same trade, and,
+often enough, in one and the same town, some men working overtime and
+other men out of work.</p>
+
+<p>We have at one time the cotton mills making more goods than they can
+sell, and at another time we have them unable to fulfil their orders.</p>
+
+<p>We have in one street a dozen small shops all selling the same kind of
+goods, and so spending in rent, in fittings, in wages of servants, and
+other ways, about four times as much as would be spent if all the work
+were done in one big shop.</p>
+
+<p>We have one contractor sending men and tools and bricks and wood from
+north London to build a house in south London, and another contractor in
+south London going to the same trouble and expense to build a house in north London.</p>
+
+<p>We have in Essex and other parts of England thousands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> of acres of good
+land lying idle because it does not <i>pay</i> to till it, and at the same
+time we have thousands of labourers out of work who would be only too
+glad to till it.</p>
+
+<p>So in one part of a city you may see hundreds of houses standing empty,
+and in another part of the same city you may see hard-working people
+living three and four families in a small cottage.</p>
+
+<p>Then, under competition, where there are many firms in the same trade,
+and where each firm wants to get as much trade as it can, a great deal
+of money is spent by these firms in trying to get the trade from each other.</p>
+
+<p>Thus all the cost of advertisements, of travellers' wages, and a lot of
+the cost of book-keeping, arise from the fact that there are many firms
+all trying to snatch the trade from each other.</p>
+
+<p>Non-Socialists claim that this clumsy and costly way of going to work is
+really the best way there is. They say that competition gets the work
+done by the best men and at the lowest rate.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps some of them believe this; but it is not true. The mistake is
+caused by the fact that <i>competition</i> is better than <i>monopoly</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, if there is only one tram company in a town the fares
+will be higher than if there are two; because when there are two one
+tries to undersell the other.</p>
+
+<p>But take a town where there are two tram companies undercutting and
+working against each other, and hand the trams over to the Corporation,
+and you will find that the work is done better, is done cheaper, and the
+men are better paid than under competition.</p>
+
+<p>This is because the Corporation is at less cost, has less waste, and
+does not want <i>profits</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Well, under <i>Socialism</i> all the work of the nation would be managed by
+the nation&mdash;or perhaps I had better say by "the people," for some of the
+work would be <i>local</i> and some would be <i>national</i>. I will show you what
+I mean.</p>
+
+<p>It might be better for each town to manage its own gas and water, to
+bake its own bread and brew its own beer. But it would be better for the
+post office to be managed by the nation, because that has to do with
+<i>all</i> the towns.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p><p>So we should find that some kinds of work were best done locally&mdash;that
+is, by each town or county&mdash;and that some were best done nationally,
+that is, by a body of officials acting for the nation.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, tramways would be local and railways national; gas and
+water would be local and collieries national; police would be local and
+the army and navy national.</p>
+
+<p>The kind of <i>Socialism</i> I am advocating here is Collectivism, or
+<i>Practical Socialism</i>. Motto: Britain for the British, the land and all
+the instruments of production, distribution, and exchange to be the
+property of the nation, and to be managed <i>by</i> the nation <i>for</i> the nation.</p>
+
+<p>The land and railways, collieries, etc., to be <i>bought</i> from the present
+owners, but not at fancy prices.</p>
+
+<p>Wages to be paid, and goods to be sold.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, you see, Collectivism is really an extension of the <i>principles</i>,
+or ideas, of local government, and of the various corporation and civil services.</p>
+
+<p>And now I tell you that is Socialism, and I ask you what is there in it
+to prevent any man from being a Christian, or from attending a place of
+worship, or from marrying, or being faithful to his wife, or from
+keeping and bringing up his children at home?</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing in it to destroy religion, and there is nothing in it
+to destroy the home, and there is nothing in it to foster vice.</p>
+
+<p>But there <i>is</i> something in it to kill ignorance and to destroy vice.
+There is something in it to shut up the gaols, to do away with
+prostitution, to reduce crime and drunkenness, and wipe out for ever the
+sweater and the slums, the beggars and the idle rich, the useless fine
+ladies and lords, and to make it possible for sober and willing workers
+to live healthy and happy and honourable lives.</p>
+
+<p>For Socialism would teach and train all children wisely; it would foster
+genius and devotion to the common good; it would kill scamping and
+loafing and jerrymandering; it would give us better health, better
+homes, better work, better food, better lives, and better men and women.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER IX</span> <span class="smaller">COMPETITION <i>v.</i> CO-OPERATION</span></h2>
+
+<p>A comparison of competition with co-operation is a comparison of
+non-Socialism with Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>For the principle of non-Socialism is competition, and the principle of
+Socialism is co-operation.</p>
+
+<p>Non-Socialists tell us that competition is to the general advantage,
+because it lowers prices in favour of the consumer.</p>
+
+<p>But competition in trade only seems desirable when we contrast it with
+private monopoly.</p>
+
+<p>When we compare the effects of trade competition with the effects of
+State or Municipal co-operation, we find that competition is badly beaten.</p>
+
+<p>Let us try to find the reasons of this.</p>
+
+<p>The claim for the superior cheapness of competition rests on the theory
+that where two sellers compete against each other for trade each tries
+to undersell the other.</p>
+
+<p>This sounds plausible, but, like many other plausible things, it is
+untrue. It is a theory, but the theory is incomplete.</p>
+
+<p>If business men were fools the theory would work with mathematical
+precision, to the great joy and profit of the consumer; but business men
+are not built on those lines.</p>
+
+<p>The seller of any article does not trade for trading's sake; he trades for profit.</p>
+
+<p>It is a mistake to suppose that undercutting each other's prices is the
+only method of competing between rival firms in trade. There are other ways.</p>
+
+<p>A trader, in order to defeat a rival, may</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. Give better quality at the same price, which is equal to giving
+more for the money, and is therefore a form of underselling; or</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p><p>2. He may give the same quantity and quality at a lower price; or</p>
+
+<p>3. He may balance the lowering of his price by resorting to
+adulteration or the use of inferior workmanship or material; or</p>
+
+<p>4. He may try to overreach his rival by employing more travellers
+or by advertising more extensively.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>As to underselling. This is not carried on to such extremes as the
+theorists would have us believe.</p>
+
+<p>The object of a trader is to make money. He only desires increased trade
+if it brings more money.</p>
+
+<p>Brown and Jones make soap for sale. Each desires to get as much of the
+trade as he can, consistently with profits.</p>
+
+<p>It will pay Brown better to sell 1000 boxes of soap at a profit of
+sixpence on each box than to sell 2000 boxes at a profit of twopence a
+box, and it will pay him better to sell 4000 boxes at a profit of
+twopence each than it will to sell 1000 boxes at a profit of sixpence each.</p>
+
+<p>Now, suppose there is a demand for 20,000 boxes of soap in a week. If
+Brown and Jones are content to divide the trade, each may sell 10,000
+boxes at a profit of sixpence, and so may clear a total profit of &pound;250.</p>
+
+<p>If, by repeated undercutting, the profit falls to a penny a box, Brown
+and Jones will have very little more than &pound;80 to divide between them.
+And it is clear that it will pay them better to divide the trade, for it
+would pay either of them better to take half the trade at even a
+threepenny profit than to secure it all at a profit of one penny.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Brown and Jones have the full use of their faculties, and are well
+aware of the number of beans that make five.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore they will not compete beyond the point at which competition
+will increase their gross profits.</p>
+
+<p>And so we shall find in most businesses, from great railways down to
+tooth brushes, that the difference in prices, quality being equal, is
+not very great amongst native traders, and that a margin of profit is always left.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, so far as competition <i>does</i> lower prices without
+lowering quality, the benefit is to the consumer, and that much is to be
+put to the credit of competition.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p><p>But even there, on its strongest line, competition is beaten by State
+or Municipal co-operation.</p>
+
+<p>Because, assuming that the State or Municipality can produce any article
+as cheaply as a private firm, the State or the Municipality can always
+beat the private trader in price to the extent of the trader's profit.</p>
+
+<p>For no trader will continue to trade unless he makes some profit,
+whereas the State or Municipality wants no profit, but works for use or for service.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, if a private trader sells soap at a profit of one farthing a
+box, the State or Municipality can sell soap one farthing a box cheaper,
+other things being equal.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident, then, that the trader must be beaten unless he can
+produce more cheaply than the State or Municipality.</p>
+
+<p>Can he produce more cheaply? No. The State or Municipality can always
+produce more cheaply than the private trader, under equal conditions.
+Why? For the same reason that a large firm can beat a small one, or a
+trust can beat a number of large firms.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose there are three separate firms making soap. Each firm must have
+its separate factory, its separate offices, its separate management, its
+separate power, its separate profits, and its separate plant.</p>
+
+<p>But if one firm made all the soap, it would save a great deal of
+expense; for one large factory is cheaper than two of half its size, and
+one manager costs less than three.</p>
+
+<p>If the London County Council made all the soap for London, it could make
+soap more cheaply than any one of a dozen private firms; because it
+would save so largely in rent, plant, and management.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the State or Municipality scores over the private firm, and
+co-operation scores over competition in two ways: first, it cuts off the
+profit; and, second, it reduces the cost of production.</p>
+
+<p>But that does not exhaust the advantages of co-operation over
+competition. There are two other forms of competition still to examine:
+these are adulteration and advertisement.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p><p>We all know the meaning of the phrase "cheap and nasty." We can get
+pianos, bicycles, houses, boots, tea, and many other things at various
+prices, and we find that many of the cheap pianos will not keep in tune,
+that the bicycles are always out of repair, that the houses fall down,
+the boots let in water, and the tea tastes like what it <i>is</i>&mdash;a mixture
+of dried tea leaves and rubbish.</p>
+
+<p>Adulteration, as John Bright frankly declared, is a form of competition.
+It is also a form of rascality and fraud. It is a device for retaining
+profits for the seller, but it is seriously to the disadvantage of the consumer.</p>
+
+<p>This form of competition, then, has to be put to the debit of competition.</p>
+
+<p>And the absence of this form of competition has to be put to the credit
+of the State or the Municipal supply. For since the State or
+Municipality has no competitor to displace, it never descends to the
+baseness of adulteration.</p>
+
+<p>The London County Council would not build jerry houses for the citizens,
+nor supply them with tea leaves for tea, nor logwood and water for port wine.</p>
+
+<p>The sale of wooden nutmegs is a species of enterprise confined
+exclusively to the private trader. It is a form of competition, but
+never of commercial co-operation. It is peculiar to non-Socialism:
+Socialists would abolish it entirely.</p>
+
+<p>We come now to the third device of the private trader in competition:
+the employment of commercial travellers and advertisement.</p>
+
+<p>Of two firms selling similar goods, of equal quality, at equal prices,
+that firm will do the larger trade which keeps the greater number of
+commercial travellers and spends the greater sum upon advertisement.</p>
+
+<p>But travellers cost money, and advertising costs money. And so we find
+that travellers and advertisements add to the cost of distribution.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore competition, although by underbidding it has a limited
+tendency to lower the prices of goods, has also a tendency to increase
+the price in another way.</p>
+
+<p>If Brown lowers the price of his soap the user of soap is the gainer.
+But if Brown increases the cost of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> advertisements and his staff of
+travellers, the user is the loser, because the extra cost has to be paid
+for in the price of soap.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if the London County Council made soap for all London, there would be</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. A saving in cost of rent, plant, and management.</p>
+
+<p>2. A saving of profits by selling at cost price.</p>
+
+<p>3. A saving of the whole cost of advertising.</p>
+
+<p>4. A saving of the wages of the commercial travellers.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Under a system of trade competition all those four items (plus the
+effects of adulteration) have to be paid for by the consumer, that is to
+say, by the users of soap.</p>
+
+<p>And what is true of soap is true of most other things.</p>
+
+<p>That is why co-operation for use beats competition for sale and profit.</p>
+
+<p>That is why the Municipal gas, water, and tram services are better and
+cheaper than the same services under the management of private companies.</p>
+
+<p>That is <i>one</i> reason why Socialism is better than non-Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>As an example of the difference between private and Municipal works, let
+us take the case of the gas supply in Liverpool and Manchester. These
+cities are both commercial, both large, both near the coalfields.</p>
+
+<p>The gas service in Liverpool is a private monopoly, for profit; that of
+Manchester is a co-operative monopoly, for service.</p>
+
+<p>In Liverpool (figures of 1897) the price of gas was 2s. 9d. per thousand
+feet. In Manchester the price of gas was 2s. 3d.</p>
+
+<p>In Liverpool the profit on gas was 8-1/2d. per thousand feet. In
+Manchester the profit was 7-1/2d. per thousand feet.</p>
+
+<p>In Liverpool the profits went to the company. In Manchester the profits
+went to the ratepayers.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Manchester ratepayer was getting his gas for 2s. 3d. less
+7-1/2d., which means that he was getting it at 1s. 7-1/2d., while the
+Liverpool ratepayer was being charged 2s. 9d. The public monopoly of
+Manchester was, therefore, beating the private monopoly of Liverpool by
+1s. 1-1/2d. per thousand feet in the price of gas.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p><p>In <i>To-day's Work</i>, by George Haw, and in <i>Does Municipal Management
+Pay?</i> by R. B. Suthers, you will find many examples as striking and
+conclusive as the one I have suggested above.</p>
+
+<p>The waste incidental to private traders' competition is enormous. Take
+the one item of advertisement alone. There are draughtsmen,
+paper-makers, printers, billposters, painters, carpenters, gilders,
+mechanics, and a perfect army of other people all employed in making
+advertisement bills, pictures, hoardings, and other abominations&mdash;for
+<i>what</i>? Not to benefit the consumer, but to enable one private dealer to
+sell more of his wares than another. In <i>Merrie England</i> I dealt with
+this question, and I quoted from an excellent pamphlet by Mr.
+Washington, a man of splendid talents, whose death we have unfortunately
+to deplore. Mr. Washington, who was an inventor and a thoroughly
+practical man of business, spoke as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Taking soap as an example, it requires a purchaser of this
+commodity to expend a shilling in obtaining sixpennyworth of it,
+the additional sixpence being requisite to cover the cost of
+advertising, travelling, etc. It requires him to expend 1s. 1-1/2d.
+to obtain twopennyworth of pills for the same reason. For a sewing
+machine he must, if spending &pound;7 on it, part with &pound;4 of this amount
+on account of unnecessary cost; and so on in the case of all widely
+advertised articles. In the price of less-advertised commodities
+there is, in like manner, included as unnecessary cost a long
+string of middlemen's profits and expenses. It may be necessary to
+treat of these later, but for the present suffice it to say that in
+the price of goods as sold by retail the margin of unnecessary cost
+ranges from threepence to tenpence in the shilling, and taking an
+average of one thing with another, it may be safely stated that
+one-half of the price paid is rendered necessary simply through the
+foolish and inconvenient manner in which the business is carried on.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>All this expense would be saved by State or Municipal production for
+use. The New York Milk Trust, I understand, on its formation dispensed
+with the services of 15,000 men.</p>
+
+<p>You may ask what is to become of these men, and of the immense numbers
+of other men, now uselessly employed, who would not be needed under Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>Well! What are these men now doing? Are they adding to the wealth of the
+nation? No. Are they not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> doing work that is unnecessary to the nation?
+Yes. Are they not now being paid wages? Yes.</p>
+
+<p>Then, since their work is useless, and since they are now being paid, is
+it not evident that under Socialism we could actually pay them their
+full wages for doing <i>nothing</i>, and still be as well off as we are now?</p>
+
+<p>But I think under Socialism we could, and should, find a very great many
+of them congenial and useful work.</p>
+
+<p>Under the "Trusts" they will be thrown out of work, and it will be
+nobody's business to see that they do not starve.</p>
+
+<p>Yes: Socialism would displace labour. But does not non-Socialism displace labour?</p>
+
+<p>Why was the linotype machine adopted? Because it was a saving of cost.
+What became of the compositors? They were thrown out of work. Did
+anybody help them?</p>
+
+<p>Well, Socialism would save cost. If it displaces labour, as the machine
+does, should that prevent us from adopting Socialism?</p>
+
+<p>Socialism would organise labour, and leave no man to starve.</p>
+
+<p>But will the Trusts do that? No. And the Trusts are coming; the Trusts
+which will swallow up the small firms and destroy competition; the
+Trusts which will use their monopolies not to lower prices, but to make profits.</p>
+
+<p>You will have your choice, then, between the grasping and grinding Trust
+and the beneficent Municipality.</p>
+
+<p>Can any reasonable, practical, hard-headed man hesitate for one moment over his choice?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER X</span> <span class="smaller">FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN FOOD</span></h2>
+
+<p>We have heard a great deal lately about the danger of losing our foreign
+trade, and it has been very openly suggested that the only hope of
+keeping our foreign trade lies in reducing the wages of our British
+workers. Sometimes this idea is wrapped up, and called "reducing the
+cost of production."</p>
+
+<p>Now, if we must have foreign trade, and as much of it as we have now,
+and if we can only keep it by competing against foreign dealers in
+price, then it is true that we must try to reduce the cost of production.</p>
+
+<p>But as there are more ways of killing a dog besides that of choking him
+with butter, so there are other ways of reducing the cost of production
+besides that of reducing the wages of our British workers.</p>
+
+<p>But on that question I will speak in the next chapter. Here I want to
+deal with foreign trade and foreign food.</p>
+
+<p>It is very important that every worker in the kingdom should understand
+the relations of our foreign trade and our native agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>The creed of the commercial school is that manufactures <i>pay</i> us better
+than agriculture; so that by making goods for export and buying food
+from abroad we are doing good business.</p>
+
+<p>The idea is, that if by making cloth, cutlery, and other goods, we can
+buy more food than we can produce at home with the same amount of
+labour, it <i>pays</i> us to let the land go out of cultivation and make
+Britain the "workshop of the world."</p>
+
+<p>Now, assuming that we <i>can</i> keep our foreign trade, and assuming that we
+can get more food by foreign trade than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> we could produce by the same
+amount of work, is it quite certain that we are making a good bargain
+when we desert our fields for our factories?</p>
+
+<p>Suppose men <i>can</i> earn more in the big towns than they <i>could</i> earn in
+the fields, is the difference <i>all</i> gain?</p>
+
+<p>Rents and prices are higher in the towns; the life is less healthy, less
+pleasant. It is a fact that the death-rates in the towns are higher,
+that the duration of life is shorter, and that the stamina and physique
+of the workers are lowered by town life and by employment in the factories.</p>
+
+<p>And there is another very serious evil attached to the commercial policy
+of allowing our British agriculture to decay, and that is the evil of
+our dependence upon foreign countries for our food.</p>
+
+<p>Of every 30 bushels of wheat we require in Britain, more than 23 bushels
+come from abroad. Of these 23 bushels 19 bushels come from America, and
+nearly all the rest from Russia.</p>
+
+<p>You are told at intervals&mdash;when more money is wanted for
+battle-ships&mdash;that unless we have a strong fleet we shall, in time of
+war, be starved into surrender.</p>
+
+<p>But the plain and terrible truth is that even if we have a perfect
+fleet, and keep entire control of the seas, we shall still be exposed to
+the risk of almost certain starvation during a European war.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly four-fifths of our bread come from Russia and America. Suppose we
+are at war with France and Russia. What will happen? Will not the corn
+dealers in America put up the price? Will not the Russians stop the
+export of corn from their ports? Will not the French and Russian
+Governments try to corner the American wheat?</p>
+
+<p>Then one-seventh of our wheat would be stopped at Russian ports, and the
+American supply, even if it could be safely guarded to our shores, would
+be raised to double or treble the present price.</p>
+
+<p>What would our millions of poor workers do if wheat went up to 75s. or
+100s. a quarter?</p>
+
+<p>And every other article of food would go up in price at the same time:
+tea, coffee, sugar, meat, canned goods, cheese, would all double their prices.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p><p>And we must not forget that we import millions of pounds' worth of
+eggs, butter, and cheese from France, all of which would be stopped.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is that all. Do we not pay for our imported food in exported goods?
+Well, besides the risk and cost of carrying raw material to this country
+and manufactured goods to other countries across the seas, we should
+lose at one blow all our French and Russian trade.</p>
+
+<p>That means that with food at famine prices many of our workers would be
+out of work or on short time.</p>
+
+<p>The result would be that in less than half a year there would be
+1,000,000 unemployed, and ten times that number on the borders of starvation.</p>
+
+<p>And all these horrors might come upon us without a single shot being
+fired by our enemies. Talk about invasion! In a big European war we
+should be half beaten before we could strike a blow, and even if our
+fleets were victorious in a dozen battles we must starve or make peace.</p>
+
+<p>Or suppose such a calamity as war with America! The Americans could
+close their ports to food and raw material, and stop half our food and a
+large part of our trade at one blow. And so we should be half beaten
+before a sword was drawn.</p>
+
+<p>All these dangers are due to the commercial plan of sacrificing
+agriculture to trade. All these dangers must be placed to the debit side
+of our foreign trade account.</p>
+
+<p>But apart from the dangers of starvation in time of war, and apart from
+all the evils of the factory system and the bad effects of overcrowding
+in the towns, it has still to be said that foreign trade only beats
+agriculture as long as it pays so well that we can buy more food with
+our earnings than we could ourselves produce with the same amount of labour.</p>
+
+<p>Are we quite sure that it pays us as well as that <i>now</i>? And if it does
+pay as well as that now, can we hope that it will go on paying as well
+for any length of time.</p>
+
+<p>In the early days of our great trade the commercial school wished
+Britain to be the "workshop of the world"; and for a good while she was
+the workshop of the world.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p><p>But now a change is coming. Other nations have opened world-workshops,
+and we have to face competition.</p>
+
+<p>France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and America are all eager to take our
+coveted place as general factory, and China and Japan are changing
+swiftly from customers into rival dealers.</p>
+
+<p>Is it likely, then, that we can keep all our foreign trade, or that what
+we keep will be as profitable as it is at present?</p>
+
+<p>During the last few years there have emanated from the Press and from
+Chambers of Commerce certain ominous growlings about the evils of Trade
+Unionism. What do these growls portend? Much the same thing as the
+mutterings about the need for lowering wages.</p>
+
+<p>Do we not remember how, when the colliers were struggling for a "living
+wage," the Press scolded them for their "selfishness"? The Press
+declared that if the colliers persisted in having a living wage we
+should be beaten by foreign competitors and must lose our foreign trade.</p>
+
+<p>That is what is hanging over us now. A demand for a general reduction of
+wages. That is the end of the fine talk about big profits, national
+prosperity, and the "workshop of the world." The British workers are to
+emulate the thrift of the Japanese, the Hindoos, and the Chinese, and
+learn to live on boiled rice and water. Why? So that they can accept
+lower wages and retain our precious foreign trade.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; that is the latest idea. With brutal frankness the workers of
+Britain have been told again and again that "if we are to keep our
+foreign trade the British workers must accept the conditions of their foreign rivals."</p>
+
+<p>And that is the result of our commercial glory! For that we have
+sacrificed our agriculture and endangered the safety of our empire.</p>
+
+<p>Let us put the two statements of the commercial school side by side.</p>
+
+<p>They tell us first that the workers must abandon the land and go into
+the factories, because there they can earn a better living.</p>
+
+<p>They tell us now that the British worker must be content <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>with the wages
+of a coolie, because foreign trade will pay no more.</p>
+
+<p>We are to give up agriculture because we can buy more food with exported
+goods than we can grow; and we must learn to live on next to nothing, or
+lose our foreign trade.</p>
+
+<p>Well, since we left the land in the hope that the factories would feed
+us better, why not go back to the land if the factories fail to feed us at all?</p>
+
+<p>Ah! but the commercial school have another string to their bow: "You
+cannot go back to the land, for it will not feed you all. This country
+will not produce enough food for its people to live upon."</p>
+
+<p>So the position in which the workers are placed, according to the
+commercial school, is this: You cannot produce your own food; therefore
+you must buy it by export trade. But you will lose your export trade
+unless you work for lower wages.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Mr. Smith, I for one do not believe those things. I believe&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. That we can produce most of our food.</p>
+
+<p>2. That we can keep as much of our trade as we need, and</p>
+
+<p>3. That we can keep the trade without reducing the wages of the workers.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In my next chapter I will deal with the question of foreign trade and
+the workers' wages. We will then go on to consider the question of the food supply.</p>
+
+<p>For the argument as to our defencelessness in time of war through the
+inevitable rise in the price of corn, I am indebted to a pamphlet by
+Captain Stewart L. Murray of the Gordon Highlanders. I strongly
+recommend all working men and women to read that pamphlet. It is
+entitled <i>Our Food Supply in Time of War</i>, and can be ordered through
+the <i>Clarion</i>. The price is 6d.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XI</span> <span class="smaller">HOW TO KEEP FOREIGN TRADE</span></h2>
+
+<p>The problem is how to keep our foreign export trade.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that unless we can compete in price with foreign nations we
+must lose our foreign trade; and we are told that the only means of
+competing with foreign nations in price is to lower the wages of the British worker.</p>
+
+<p>We will test these statements by looking into the conditions of one of
+our great industries, an industry upon which many other industries more
+or less depend: I mean the coal trade.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of the great coal strike the colliers were asked to accept a
+reduction of wages because their employers could not get the price they
+were asking for coal.</p>
+
+<p>The colliers refused, and demanded a "living wage." And they were
+severely censured by the Press for their "selfishness" in "keeping up
+the price of coal," and thereby preventing other trades, in which coal
+was largely used, from earning a living. They were reproached also with
+keeping the price of coal so high that the poor could not afford fires.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if those other trades which used coal, as the iron and the cotton
+trades, could not carry on their business with coal at the price it was
+then at, and if those trades had no other ways and means of reducing
+expenses, and if the only factor in the price of coal had been the wages
+of the collier, there might have been some ground for the arguments of
+the Press against the colliers.</p>
+
+<p>But in the iron trade one item of the cost of production is the
+<i>royalty</i> on the iron. Royalty is a kind of rent paid to the landlord
+for getting the iron from his land.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I want to ask about the iron trade, Would it not be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> as just and as
+possible to reduce the royalty on iron in order to compete with foreign
+iron dealers as to reduce the wages of the iron-worker or the collier?</p>
+
+<p>The collier and the iron-worker work, and work hard, but the royalty
+owner does nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The twenty-five per cent. reduction in the colliers' wages demanded
+before the great strike would not have made a difference of sixpence a
+ton in the cost of coal.</p>
+
+<p>Now the royalties charged upon a ton of manufactured pig iron in
+Cumberland at that time amounted to 6s. 3d.; whereas the royalties on a
+ton of manufactured pig iron in Germany were 6d., in France 8d., in
+Belgium 1s. 3d. Now read this&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>In 1885 a firm in West Cumberland had half their furnaces idle, not
+because the firm had no work, but simply owing to the high
+royalties demanded by the landowner. This company had to import
+iron from Belgium to fulfil their contract with the Indian
+Government. With a furnace turning out about 600 tons of pig iron
+per week the royalties amounted to &pound;202, while the wages to
+everyone, from the manager downwards, amounted to only &pound;95. This
+very company is now amongst our foreign competitors.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The royalties were more than twice the amount of the wages, and yet we
+are to believe that we can only keep our iron trade by lowering the wages.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is that in the iron trade our export goods are taxed by the
+idle royalty owner to an amount varying from five to twelve times that
+of the royalty paid by our French, German, and Belgian competitors.</p>
+
+<p>Now think over the iron and cotton and other trades, and remember the
+analysis we made of the cost of production, and tell me why, since the
+rich landlord gets his rent, and since the rich capitalist gets his
+interest or profits out of cotton, wool, or iron, the invariable
+suggestion of those who would retain our foreign trade by reducing the
+cost of production amounts to no more nor less than a reduction of the
+poor workers' wages.</p>
+
+<p>Let us go back to the coal trade. The collier was called selfish because
+his demand for a living wage kept up the price of coal. The reduction
+asked would not have come to 6d. a ton. Could not that sixpence have
+been saved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> from the rents, or interest, or profits, or royalties paid
+at the cost of the production of other goods? I think you will find that it could.</p>
+
+<p>But leave that point, and let us see whether there are not other factors
+in the cost of coal which could more fairly be reduced than could the
+wages of the collier.</p>
+
+<p>Coals sells at prices from 10s. to 30s. a ton. The wages of the collier
+do not add up to more than 2s. 6d. a ton.</p>
+
+<p>In the year before the last great coal strike 300,000 miners were paid
+&pound;15,000,000, and in the same time &pound;6,000,000 were paid in royalties. Sir
+G. Elliot's estimate of coal owners' <i>profits</i> for the same year was
+&pound;11,000,000. This, with the &pound;6,000,000 paid in royalties, made
+&pound;17,000,000 taken by royalty owners and mine owners out of the coal
+trade in one year.</p>
+
+<p>So there are other items in the price of coal besides the wages of the
+colliers. What are they? They may be divided into nine parts, thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. Rent.<br />2. Royalties.<br />3. Coal masters' profits.<br />4. Profits of
+railway companies and other carriers.<br />5. Wages of railway servants
+and other carriers' labourers.<br />6. Profits of merchants and other
+"middlemen."<br />7. Profits of retailers.<br />8. Wages of agents,
+travellers, and other salesmen.<br />9. The wages of the colliers.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The prices of coal fluctuate (vary), and the changes in the prices of
+coal cause now a rise and now a fall in the wages and profits of coal
+masters, railway shareholders, merchants, and retailers.</p>
+
+<p>But the fluctuations in the prices of coal cause very little fluctuation
+in rent and <i>none</i> in royalties.</p>
+
+<p>Again, no matter how low the price of coal may be, the agents,
+travellers, and other salesmen always get a living wage, and the coal
+owners, railway shareholders, merchants, landlords, and royalty owners
+always get a great deal more than a living wage.</p>
+
+<p>But what about the colliers and the carriers' labourers, such as railway
+men, dischargers, and carters?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>These men perform nearly all the work of production and of
+distribution. They get the coal, and they carry the coal.</p>
+
+<p>Their wages are lower than those of any of the other seven classes
+engaged in the coal trade.</p>
+
+<p>They work harder, they work longer hours, and they run more risk to life
+and limb than any other class in the trade; and yet!&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And yet the only means of reducing the price of coal is said to be <i>a
+reduction in the collier's wage</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I say that in reducing the price of coal the <i>last</i> thing we should
+touch is the collier's wage.</p>
+
+<p>If we <i>must</i> reduce the price of coal, we should begin with the owners
+of royalties. As to the "right" of the royalty owner to exact a fine
+from labour, I will content myself with making two claims&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. That even if the royalty owner has a "right" to <i>a</i> royalty, yet
+there is no reason why he, of all the nine classes engaged in the
+coal trade, should be the only one whose receipts from the sale of
+coal shall never be lessened, no matter how the price of coal may fall.</p>
+
+<p>2. Since the royalty owner and the landlord are the only persons
+engaged in the trade who cannot make even a pretence of doing
+anything for their money, and since the price of coal must be
+lowered, they should be the first to bear a reduction in the amount
+they charge on the sale of it.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Next to the landlords and royalty owners I should place the railway
+companies. The prices charged for the carriage of coal are very high,
+and if the price of coal must be reduced, the profits made on the
+carriage should be reduced.</p>
+
+<p>Third in order come the coal owners, with what they call "a fair rate of
+interest on invested capital."</p>
+
+<p>How is it that the Press never reproaches any of those four idle and
+overpaid classes with selfishness in causing the poor workers of other
+trades to go short of fuel?</p>
+
+<p>How is it that the Press never chides these men for their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> folly in
+trying to keep up profits, royalties, and interest in a "falling market"?</p>
+
+<p>It looks as if the "immutable laws" of political economy resemble the
+laws of the land. It looks as if there is one economic law for the rich
+and another for the poor.</p>
+
+<p>The merchants, commission agents, and other middlemen I leave out of the
+question. These men are worse than worthless&mdash;they are harmful. They
+thwart; and hinder, and disorder the trade, and live on the colliers,
+the coal masters, and the public. There is no excuse, economic or moral,
+for their existence. But there is only one cure for the evil they do,
+and that is to drive them right out of the trade.</p>
+
+<p>I claim, then, that if the price of coal must be reduced, the sums paid
+to the above-named three classes should be cut down first, because they
+get a great deal more, and do a great deal less, than the carriers'
+labourers and the colliers.</p>
+
+<p>First as to the coal owners and the royalty owners. We see that the
+<i>whole sum</i> of the wages of the colliers for a year was only &pound;6,000,000,
+while the royalty owners and the coal owners took &pound;17,000,000, or nearly
+three times as much.</p>
+
+<p>And yet we were told that the <i>miners</i>, the men who <i>work</i>, were
+"selfish" for refusing to have their wages reduced.</p>
+
+<p>Nationalise the land and the mines, and you at once save &pound;17,000,000,
+and all that on the one trade.</p>
+
+<p>So with the railways. Nationalise the railways, and you may reduce the
+cost of the carriage of coal (and of all goods and passengers) by the
+amount of the profits now made by the railway companies, plus a good
+deal of the expense of management.</p>
+
+<p>For if the Municipalities can give you better trams, pay the guards and
+drivers better wages for shorter hours, and reduce penny fares to
+halfpenny fares, and still clear a big profit, is it not likely that the
+State could lower the freights of the railways, and so reduce the cost
+of carrying foods and manufactured goods and raw material?</p>
+
+<p>Our foreign trade, and our home industries also, are taxed and
+handicapped in their competition by every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> shilling paid in royalties,
+in rents, in interest, in profits, and in dividends to persons who do no
+work and produce no wealth; they are handicapped further by the salaries
+and commissions of all the superfluous managers, canvassers, agents,
+travellers, clerks, merchants, small dealers, and other middlemen who
+now live upon the producer and consumer.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism would abolish all these rents, taxes, royalties, salaries,
+commissions, profits, and interests, and thereby so greatly reduce the
+cost of production and of carriage that in the open market we should be
+able to offer our goods at such prices as to defy the competition of any
+but a Socialist State.</p>
+
+<p>But there is another way in which British trade is handicapped in
+competition with the trade of other nations.</p>
+
+<p>It is instructive to notice that our most dangerous rival is America,
+where wages are higher and all the conditions of the worker better than
+in this country.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, do the Americans contrive so often to beat us?</p>
+
+<p>Is it not notorious that the reason given for America's success is the
+superior energy and acuteness of the American over the British manager
+and employer? American firms are more pushing, more up-to-date. They
+seek new markets, and study the desires of consumers; they use more
+modern machinery, and they produce more new inventions. Are the paucity
+of our invention and the conservatism of our management due to the
+"invincible ignorance" or restrictive policy of the British working man?
+They are due to quite other causes. The conservatism and sluggishness of
+our firms are due to British conceit: to the belief that when "Britain
+first at Heaven's command arose from out the azure main" she was
+invested with an eternal and unquestionable charter to act henceforth
+and for ever as the "workshop of the world"; and say what they will in
+their inmost hearts, her manufacturers still have unshaken faith in
+their destiny, and think scorn of any foreigner who presumes to cross
+their path. Therefore the British manufacturer remains conservative, and
+gets left by more enterprising rivals.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p><p>A word as to the superior inventiveness of the Americans. There are two
+great reasons why America produces more new and valuable patents. The
+first cause is the eagerness of the American manufacturer to secure the
+newest and the best machinery, and the apathetic contentment of the
+British manufacturer with old and cheap methods of production. There is
+a better market in America for inventions. The second cause is the
+superiority of the American patent law and patent office.</p>
+
+<p>In England a patentee has to pay &pound;99 for a fourteen years' patent, and
+even then gets no guarantee of validity.</p>
+
+<p>In America the patentee gets a seventeen years' patent for &pound;7.</p>
+
+<p>In England, out of 56,000 patents more than 54,000 were voided and less
+than 2000 survived.</p>
+
+<p>In America there is no voiding.</p>
+
+<p>One of the consequences of this is that American firms have a choice of
+thirty-two patents where our firms have <i>one</i>.</p>
+
+<p>According to the American patent office report for 1897, the American
+patents had, in seventeen years, found employment for 1,776,152 persons,
+besides raising wages in many cases as much as 173 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>These few figures only give a view of part of the disadvantage under
+which British inventors and British manufacturers suffer.</p>
+
+<p>I suggest, as the lawyers say, that British commercial conservatism and
+the British patent law have as much to do with the success of our clever
+and energetic American rivals as has what the <i>Times</i> calls the
+"invincible ignorance" of the British workman who declines to sacrifice
+his Union to atone by longer hours and lower wages for the apathy of his
+employers and the folly of his laws.</p>
+
+<p>I submit, then, that the remedy is not the destruction of the Trade
+Unions, nor the lowering of wages, nor the lengthening of hours, but the
+nationalisation of the land, the abolition of royalties, the restoration
+of agriculture, and the municipalisation or the nationalisation of the
+collieries, the iron mines, the steel works, and the railways.</p>
+
+<p>The trade of this country <i>is</i> handicapped; but it is not handicapped by
+the poor workers, but by the rich idlers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> whose enormous rents and
+profits make it impossible for England to retain the foremost place in
+the markets of the world.</p>
+
+<p>So I submit to the British workman that, since the Press, with some few
+exceptions, finds no remedy for loss of trade but in a reduction of his
+wages, he would do well to look upon the Press with suspicion, and,
+better still, to study these questions for himself.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XII</span> <span class="smaller">CAN BRITAIN FEED HERSELF?</span></h2>
+
+<p>Is it impossible for this nation to produce food for 40,000,000 of people?</p>
+
+<p>We cannot produce <i>all</i> our food. We cannot produce our own tea, coffee,
+cocoa, oranges, lemons, currants, raisins, figs, dates, bananas,
+treacle, tobacco, sugar, and many other things not suitable to our
+climate. But at a pinch, as during a war, we could do without most of these.</p>
+
+<p>Can we produce our own bread, meat, and vegetables? Can we produce all,
+or nearly all, our butter, milk, eggs, cheese, and fruit?</p>
+
+<p>And will it <i>pay</i> to produce these things if we are able to produce them at all?</p>
+
+<p>The great essential is bread. Can we grow our own wheat? On this point I
+do not see how there can be any doubt whatever.</p>
+
+<p>In 1841 Britain grew wheat for 24,000,000 of people, and at that time
+not nearly all her land was in use, nor was her farming of the best.</p>
+
+<p>Now we have to find food, or at any rate bread and meat and vegetables, for 40,000,000.</p>
+
+<p>Wheat, then, for 40,000,000. At present we consume 29,000,000 quarters.
+Can we grow 29,000,000 quarters in our own country?</p>
+
+<p>Certainly we can. The <i>average</i> yield per acre in Britain is 28 bushels,
+or 3&frac12; quarters. That is the <i>average</i> yield on British farms. It can
+be increased; but let us take it first upon that basis.</p>
+
+<p>At 3&frac12; quarters to the acre, 8,000,000 acres would produce 28,000,000
+quarters; 9,000,000 acres would produce 31,500,000 quarters.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p><p>Therefore we require less than 9,000,000 acres of wheat land to grow a
+year's supply of wheat for 40,000,000 persons.</p>
+
+<p>Now we have in Great Britain and Ireland about 33,000,000 acres of
+cultivatable land. Deduct 9,000,000 for wheat, and we have 24,000,000
+acres left for vegetables, fruit, cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry.</p>
+
+<p>Can any man say, in the face of these figures, that we are incapable of
+growing our own wheat?</p>
+
+<p>Suppose the average is put too high. Suppose we could only average a
+yield of 20 bushels to the acre, or 2&frac12; quarters, we could still grow
+29,000,000 quarters on less than 12,000,000 acres.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident, then, that we can at anyrate grow our own wheat.</p>
+
+<p>Here I shall quote from an excellent book, <i>Fields, Factories, and
+Workshops</i>, by Prince Kropotkin. Having gone very carefully into the
+facts, the Prince has arrived at the following conclusions:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated only as it
+<i>was</i> thirty-five years ago, 24,000,000 people could live on
+home-grown food.</p>
+
+<p>2. If the cultivatable soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated
+as the soil is cultivated <i>on the average</i> in Belgium, the United
+Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000 inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>3. If the population of this country came to be doubled, all that
+would be required for producing food for 80,000,000 inhabitants
+would be to cultivate the soil as it is <i>now</i> cultivated in the
+best farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Why, indeed, should we not be able to raise 29,000,000 quarters of
+wheat? We have plenty of land. Other European countries can produce, and
+do produce, their own food.</p>
+
+<p>Take the example of Belgium. In Belgium the people produce their own
+food. Yet their soil is no better than ours, and their country is more
+densely populated, the figures being: Great Britain, per square mile,
+378 persons; Belgium, per square mile, 544 persons.</p>
+
+<p>Does that silence the commercial school? No. They have still one
+argument left. They say that even if we can grow our own wheat we cannot
+grow it as cheaply as we can buy it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p><p>Suppose we cannot. Suppose it will cost us 2s. a quarter more to grow
+it than to buy it. On the 23,000,000 quarters we now import we should be
+saving &pound;2,000,000 a year.</p>
+
+<p>Is that a very high price to pay for security against defeat by
+starvation in time of war?</p>
+
+<p>A battle-ship costs &pound;1,000,000. If we build two extra battle-ships in a
+year to protect our food supply we spend nearly all we gain by importing
+our wheat, even supposing that it costs us 2s. a quarter more to grow
+than to buy it.</p>
+
+<p>But is it true that we cannot grow wheat as cheaply as we can buy it? If
+it is true, the fact may doubtless be put down to two causes. First,
+that we do not go to work in the best way, nor with the best machinery;
+second, that the farmer is handicapped by rent. Of course if we have to
+pay rent to private persons for the use of our own land, that adds to
+the cost of the rent.</p>
+
+<p>One acre yields 28 bushels, or 3&frac12; quarters of wheat in a year. If the
+land be rented at 21s. an acre that will add 6s. a quarter to the cost of wheat.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Industrial History of England</i> I find the question of why the
+English farmer is undersold answered in this way&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The answer is simple. His capital has been filched from him surely,
+but not always slowly, by a tremendous increase in his rent. The
+landlords of the eighteenth century made the English farmer the
+foremost agriculturist in the world, but their successors of the
+nineteenth have ruined him by their extortions.... In 1799 we find
+land paying nearly 20s. an acre.... By 1850 it had risen to 38s.
+6d.... &pound;2 an acre was not an uncommon rent for land a few years
+ago, the average increase of English rents being no less than
+26&frac12; per cent. between 1854 and 1879.... The result has been that
+the average capital per acre now employed in agriculture is only
+about &pound;4 or &pound;5, instead of at least &pound;10, as it ought to be.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>If the rents were as high as &pound;2 an acre when our poor farmers were
+struggling to make both ends meet, it is little wonder they failed. A
+rent of &pound;2 an acre means a land tax of more than 11s. a quarter on
+wheat. The price of wheat in the market at present is about 25s. a
+quarter. A rent charge of 21s. per acre would amount to more than
+&pound;10,000,000 on the 9,000,000 we should need to grow all our wheat. A
+rent charge of &pound;2 an acre would amount to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> &pound;18,000,000. That would be a
+heavy sum for our farmers to lift before they went to market.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, agriculture has been neglected because all the mechanical and
+chemical skill, and all the capital and energy of man, have been thrown
+into the struggle for trade profits and manufacturing pre-eminence. We
+want a few Faradays, Watts, Stephensons, and Cobdens to devote their
+genius and industry to the great food question. Once let the public
+interest and the public genius be concentrated upon the agriculture of
+England, and we shall soon get silenced the croakers who talk about the
+impossibility of the country feeding her people.</p>
+
+<p>But is it true that under fair conditions wheat can be brought from the
+other side of the world and sold here at a price with which we cannot
+compete? Prince Kropotkin thinks not. He says the French can produce
+their food more cheaply than they can buy it; and if the French can do
+this, why cannot we?</p>
+
+<p>But in case it should be thought that I am prejudiced in favour of
+Prince Kropotkin's book or against the factory system, I will here print
+a quotation from a criticism of the book which appeared in the <i>Times</i>
+newspaper, which paper can hardly be suspected of any leanings towards
+Prince Kropotkin, or of any eagerness to acknowledge that the present
+industrial system possesses "acknowledged evils."</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Seriously, Prince Kropotkin has a great deal to say for his
+theories.... He has the genuine scientific temper, and nobody can
+say that he does not extend his observations widely enough, for he
+seems to have been everywhere and to have read everything....
+Perhaps his chief fault is that he does not allow sufficiently for
+the ingrained conservatism of human nature and for the tenacity of
+vested interests. But that is no reason why people should not read
+his book, which will certainly set them thinking, and may lead a
+few of them to try, by practical experiments, to lessen some of the
+acknowledged evils of the present industrial system.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Just notice what the Tory <i>Times</i> says about "the tenacity of <i>vested
+interests</i>" and the "<i>acknowledged evils</i> of the present industrial
+system." It is a great deal for the <i>Times</i> to say.</p>
+
+<p>But what about the meat?</p>
+
+<p>Prince Kropotkin deals as satisfactorily with the question<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> of
+meat-growing as with that of growing wheat, and his conclusion is this&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Our means of obtaining from the soil whatever we want, under <i>any</i>
+climate and upon <i>any</i> soil, have lately improved at such a rate
+that we cannot foresee yet what is the limit of productivity of a
+few acres of land. The limit vanishes in proportion to our better
+study of the subject, and every year makes it vanish farther and
+farther from our sight.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I have, I think, quoted enough to show that there is no natural obstacle
+to our production in this country of all the food our people need.
+Britain <i>can</i> feed herself, and therefore, upon the ground of her use
+for foreign-grown food, the factory system is not necessary.</p>
+
+<p>But I hope my readers will buy this book of Prince Kropotkin, and read
+it. For it is a very fine book, a much better book than I can write.</p>
+
+<p>It can be ordered from the <i>Clarion</i> Office, 72 Fleet Street, and the
+price is 1s. 3d. post free.</p>
+
+<p>As to the vegetables and the fruit, I must refer you to the Prince's
+book; but I shall quote a few passages just to give an idea of what
+<i>can</i> be done, and <i>is being done</i>, in other countries in the way of
+intensive cultivation of vegetables and fruit.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Kropotkin says that the question of soil is a common
+stumbling-block to those who write about agriculture. Soil, he says,
+does not matter now, nor climate very much. There is a quite new science
+of agriculture which <i>makes</i> its own soil and modifies its climate. Corn
+and fruit can be grown on <i>any</i> soil&mdash;on rock, on sand, on clay.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Man, not Nature, has given to the Belgian soil its present productivity.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And now read this&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a
+limited number of lovers of Nature, and a legion of workers whose
+very names will remain unknown to posterity, have created of late
+quite a new agriculture, as superior to modern farming as modern
+farming is superior to the old three-fields system of our
+ancestors.... Science seldom has guided them; they proceeded in the
+empirical way; but like the cattle-growers who opened new horizons
+to biology, they have opened a new field of experimental research
+for the physiology of plants. They have created a totally new
+agriculture. They smile when we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> boast about the rotation system
+having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or
+four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six
+and nine crops from the very same plot of land during the twelve
+months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad soils,
+because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such
+quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise
+it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an inch every
+year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the
+acre, as we do, but from fifty to a hundred tons of vegetables on
+the same space; not &pound;5 worth of hay, but &pound;100 worth of vegetables
+of the plainest description&mdash;cabbage and carrots.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Look now at these figures from America&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>At a recent competition, in which hundreds of farmers took part,
+the first ten prizes were awarded to ten farmers who had grown, on
+three acres each, from 262 to 346&frac34; bushels of Indian corn; in
+other words, <i>from 87 to 115 bushels to the acre</i>. In Minnesota the
+prizes were given for crops of 300 to 1120 bushels of potatoes to
+the acre, <i>i.e.</i> from 8&frac14; to 31 tons to the acre, while the
+average potato crop in Great Britain is only 6 tons.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>These are <i>facts</i>, not theories. Here is another quotation from Prince
+Kropotkin's book. It also relates to America&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The crop from each acre was small, but the machinery was so
+perfected that in this way 300 days of one man's labour produced
+from 200 to 300 quarters of wheat; in other words, the areas of
+land being of no account, every man produced in one day his yearly bread food.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I shall only make one more quotation. It alludes to the intensive
+wheat-growing on Major Hallett's method in France, and is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>In fact, the 8&frac12; bushels required for one man's annual food were
+actually grown at the Tomblaine station on a surface of 2250 square
+feet, or 47 feet square, <i>i.e.</i> on very nearly one-twentieth of an acre.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Now remember that our agricultural labourers crowd into the towns and
+compete with the town labourers for work. Remember that we have millions
+of acres of land lying idle, and generally from a quarter to
+three-quarters of a million of men unemployed. Then consider this position.</p>
+
+<p>Here we have a million acres of good land producing nothing, and half a
+million men also producing nothing. Land and labour, the two factors of
+wealth production, both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> idle. Could we not set the men to work? Of
+course we could. Would it pay? To be sure it would pay.</p>
+
+<p>In America, on soil no better than ours, one man can by one day's labour
+produce one man's year's bread. That is, 8&frac12; bushels of wheat.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose we organise our out-of-works under skilled farmers, and give
+them the best machinery. Suppose they only produce one-half the American
+product. They will still be earning more than their keep.</p>
+
+<p>Or set them to work, under skilled directors, on the French or the
+Belgian plan, at the intensive cultivation of vegetables. Let them grow
+huge crops of potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, onions; and in the coal
+counties, where fuel is cheap, let them raise tomatoes and grapes, under
+glass, and they will produce wealth, and be no longer starvelings or paupers.</p>
+
+<p>Another good plan would be to allow a Municipality to obtain land, under
+a Compulsory Purchase Act, at a fair rent and near a town, and to relet
+the land to gardeners and small farmers, to work on the French and
+Belgian systems. Let the local Corporation find the capital to make soil
+and lay down heating and draining pipes. Let the Corporation charge rent
+and interest, buy the produce from the growers and resell it to the
+citizens, and let the tenant gardeners be granted fixity of tenure and
+fair payment for improvements, and we shall increase and improve our
+food supply, lessen the overcrowding in our towns, and reduce the
+unemployed to the small number of lazy men who <i>will</i> not work.</p>
+
+<p>It is the imperative duty of every British citizen to insist upon the
+Government doing everything that can be done to restore the national
+agriculture and to remove the dreadful danger of famine in time of war.</p>
+
+<p>National granaries should be formed at once, and at least a year's
+supply of wheat should be kept in stock.</p>
+
+<p>What are the Government doing in this way? Nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>The only remedy they have to suggest is <i>Protection</i>!</p>
+
+<p>What is Protection? It is a tax on foreign wheat. What would be the
+result of Protection? The result would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> that the landowner would get
+higher rents and the people would get dearer bread.</p>
+
+<p>How true is Tolstoy's gibe, that "the rich man will do anything for the
+poor man&mdash;except get off his back." "Our agriculture," the Tory
+protectionist shrieks, "is perishing. Our farmers cannot make a living.
+Our landlords cannot let their farms. The remedy is Protection." A truly
+practical Tory suggestion. "The farmers cannot pay our rents. British
+agriculture is dying out. Let us put a tax upon the poor man's bread."</p>
+
+<p>Yes; Protection is a remedy, but it must be the protection of the farmer
+against the landlord. Give our farmers fixity of tenure, compensation
+for improvements, and prevent the landlord from taxing the industry and
+brains of the farmer by increase of rent, and British agriculture will
+soon rear its head again.</p>
+
+<p>Quite recently we have had an example of Protection. The coal owners
+combined and raised the price of coal some 6s. to 10s. a ton. It is said
+they cleared more than &pound;60,000,000 sterling on the deal. What good did
+that do the workers? Did the colliers get any of the spoil in wages? No;
+that money is lying up ready to crush the colliers when they next strike.</p>
+
+<p>It is the same story over and over again. We cannot have cheap coal
+because the rich owners demand big fortunes; we cannot have cheap houses
+or decent homes because the landlords raise the rents faster than the
+people can increase our trade; we cannot grow our food as cheaply as we
+can buy it because the rich owners of the land squeeze the farmer dry
+and make it impossible for him to live. And the harder the collier, the
+weaver, the farmer, and the mechanic work, the harder the landlord and
+the capitalist squeeze. The industry, skill, and perseverance of the
+workers avail nothing but to make a few rich and idle men richer and more idle.</p>
+
+<p>As I have repeatedly pointed out before, we have by sacrificing our
+agriculture destroyed our insular position. As an island we may be, or
+<i>should be</i>, free from serious danger of invasion. But of what avail is
+our vaunted silver shield of the sea if we depend upon other nations for
+our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> food? We are helpless in case of a great war. It is not necessary
+to invade England in order to conquer her. Once our food supply is
+stopped we are shut up like a beleagured city to starve or to surrender.</p>
+
+<p>Stop the import of food into England for three months, and we shall be
+obliged to surrender at discretion.</p>
+
+<p>And our agriculture is to be ruined, and the safety and honour of the
+Empire are to be endangered, that a few landlords, coal owners, and
+money-lenders may wax fat upon the vitals of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>So, I say, we do need Protection; but it is the protection of our
+farmers and colliers, our weavers and our mechanics, our homes, our
+health, our food, our cities, our children and women, yes, our national
+existence&mdash;against the rapacity of the rich lords, employers, and
+money-lenders, who impudently pose as the champions of patriotism and
+the expansion of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Again, I recommend every Socialist to read the new edition of Prince
+Kropotkin's <i>Fields, Factories, and Workshops</i>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XIII</span> <span class="smaller">THE SUCCESSFUL MAN</span></h2>
+
+<p>There are many who believe that if all the workers became abstainers,
+worked harder, lived sparely, and saved every penny they could; and that
+if they avoided early marriages and large families, they would all be
+happy and prosperous without Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>And, of course, these same persons believe that the bulk of the
+suffering and poverty of the poor is due to drink, to thriftlessness,
+and to imprudent marriages.</p>
+
+<p>I know that many, very many, do believe these things, because I used to
+meet such persons when I went out lecturing.</p>
+
+<p>Now I know that belief to be wrong. I know that if every working man and
+woman in England turned teetotaler to-morrow, if they all remained
+single, if they all worked like niggers, if they all worked for twelve
+hours a day, if they lived on oatmeal and water, and if they saved every
+farthing they could spare, they would, at the end of twenty years, be a
+great deal worse off than they are to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Sobriety, thrift, industry, skill, self-denial, holiness, are all good
+things; but they would, if adopted by <i>all</i> the workers, simply enrich
+the idle and the wicked, and reduce the industrious and the righteous to slavery.</p>
+
+<p>Teetotalism will not do; industry will not do; saving will not do;
+increased skill will not do; keeping single will not do; reducing the
+population will not do. Nothing <i>will</i> do but <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I mean to make these things plain to you if I can.</p>
+
+<p>I will begin by answering a statement made by a Tory M.P. As reported in
+the Press, the M.P. said, "There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> was nothing to prevent the son of a
+crossing-sweeper from rising to be Lord Chancellor of England."</p>
+
+<p>This, at first sight, would seem to have nothing to do with the theories
+regarding thrift, temperance, and prudent marriages. But we shall find
+that it arises from the same error.</p>
+
+<p>This error has two faces. On one face it says that any man may do well
+if he will try, and on the other face it says that those who do not do
+well have no one but themselves to blame.</p>
+
+<p>The error rises from a slight confusion of thought. Men know that a man
+may rise from the lowest place in life to almost the highest, and they
+suppose that because one man can do it, <i>all</i> men can do it; they know
+that if one man works hard, saves, keeps sober, and remains single, he
+will get more money than other men who drink and spend and take life
+easily, and they suppose because thrift, single life, industry, and
+temperance spell success to one man, they would spell success to <i>all</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I will show you that this is a mistake, and I will show you why it is a
+mistake. Let us begin with the crossing-sweeper.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that "<i>there is nothing to prevent</i> the son of <i>a</i>
+crossing-sweeper from becoming Lord Chancellor of England." But our M.P.
+does not mean that there is nothing to prevent the son of some one
+particular crossing-sweeper from becoming Chancellor; he means that
+there is nothing to prevent <i>any</i> son of <i>any</i> crossing-sweeper, or the
+son of <i>any</i> very poor man, from becoming rich and famous.</p>
+
+<p>Now, let me show you what nonsense this is.</p>
+
+<p>There are in all England, let us say, some 2,000,000 of poor and
+friendless and untaught boys.</p>
+
+<p>And there is <i>one</i> Lord Chancellor. Now, it is just possible for <i>one</i>
+boy out of the 2,000,000 to become Lord Chancellor; but it is quite
+impossible for <i>all</i> the boys, or even for one boy in 1000, or for one
+boy in 10,000, to become Lord Chancellor.</p>
+
+<p>Our M.P. means that if a boy is clever and industrious he may become Lord Chancellor.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose <i>all</i> the boys are as clever and as industrious as he is,
+they cannot <i>all</i> become chancellors.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p><p>The one boy can only succeed because he is stronger, cleverer, more
+pushing, more persistent, or more <i>lucky</i> than any other boy.</p>
+
+<p>In my story, <i>Bob's Fairy</i>, this very point is raised. I will quote it
+for you here. Bob, who is a boy, is much troubled about the poor; his
+father, who is a self-made man and mayor of his native town, tells Bob
+that the poor are suffering because of their own faults. The parson then
+tries to make Bob understand&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Come, come, come," said the reverend gentleman, "you are too young
+for such questions. Ah&mdash;let me try to&mdash;ah&mdash;explain it to you. Here
+is your father. He is wealthy. He is honoured. He is mayor of his
+native town. Now, how did he make his way?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Toppinroyd smiled, and poured himself out another glass of
+wine. His wife nodded her head approvingly at the minister.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father," continued the minister, "made himself what he is by
+industry, thrift, and talent."</p>
+
+<p>"If another man was as clever, and as industrious and thrifty as
+father," said Bob, "could he get on as well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he could," replied Mr. Toppinroyd.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the poor are not like that?" asked Bob.</p>
+
+<p>"I regret to say," said the parson, "that&mdash;ah&mdash;they are not."</p>
+
+<p>"But if they were like father, they could do what he has done?" Bob said.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, you silly," exclaimed his mother.</p>
+
+<p>Ned chuckled behind his paper. Kate turned to the piano.</p>
+
+<p>Bob nodded and smiled. "How droll!" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"What's droll?" his father asked sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," said Bob, "how funny it would be if all the people were
+industrious, and clever, and steady!"</p>
+
+<p>"Funny?" ejaculated the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Funny?" repeated Mr. Toppinroyd.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, dear?" inquired Mrs. Toppinroyd mildly.</p>
+
+<p>"If all the men in Loomborough were as clever and as good as
+father," said Bob simply, "there would be 50,000 rich mill-owners,
+and they would all be mayor of the same town."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Toppinroyd gave a sharp glance at his son, then leaned forward,
+boxed his ears, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Get to bed, you young monkey. Go!"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Do you see the idea? The poor cannot <i>all</i> be mayors and chancellors and
+millionaires, because there are too many of them and not enough high
+places.</p>
+
+<p>But they can all be asses, and they will be asses, if they listen to
+such rubbish as that uttered by this Tory M.P.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p><p>You have twenty men starting for a race. You may say, "There is nothing
+to prevent any man from winning the race," but you mean any one man who
+is luckier or swifter than the rest. You would never be foolish enough
+to believe that <i>all</i> the men could win. You know that nineteen of the
+men <i>must lose</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So we know that in a race for the Chancellorship <i>only one</i> boy can win,
+and the other 1,999,999 <i>must lose</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is the same thing with temperance, industry, and cleverness. Of
+10,000 mechanics one is steadier, more industrious, and more skilful
+than the others. Therefore he will get work where the others cannot. But
+<i>why</i>? Because he is worth more as a workman. But don't you see that if
+all the others were as good as he, he would <i>not</i> be worth more?</p>
+
+<p>Then you see that to tell 1,000,000 men that they will get more work or
+more wages if they are cleverer, or soberer, or more industrious, is as
+foolish as to tell the twenty men starting for a race that they can all
+win if they will all try.</p>
+
+<p>If all the men were just as fast as the winner, the race would end in a dead heat.</p>
+
+<p>There is a fire panic in a big hall. The hall is full of people, and
+there is only one door. A rush is made for that door. Some of the crowd
+get out, some are trampled to death, some are injured, some are burned.</p>
+
+<p>Now, of that crowd of people, who are most likely to escape?</p>
+
+<p>Those nearest to the door have a better chance than those farthest, have
+they not?</p>
+
+<p>Then the strong have a better chance than the weak, have they not?</p>
+
+<p>And the men have a better chance than the women, and the children the
+worst chance of all. Is it not so?</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, which is most likely to be saved&mdash;the selfish man who
+fights and drags others down, who stands upon the fallen bodies of women
+and children, and wins his way by force; or the brave and gentle man who
+tries to help the women and the children, and will not trample upon the wounded?</p>
+
+<p>Don't you know that the noble and brave man stands a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> poor chance of
+escape, and that the selfish, brutal man stands a good chance of escape?</p>
+
+<p>Well, now, suppose a man to have got out, perhaps because he was near
+the door, or perhaps because he was very strong, or perhaps because he
+was very lucky, or perhaps because he did not stop to help the women and
+children, and suppose him to stand outside the door, and cry out to the
+struggling and dying creatures in the burning hall, "Serves you jolly
+well right if you <i>do</i> suffer. Why don't you get out? <i>I</i> got out. You
+can get out if you <i>try</i>. <i>There is nothing to prevent any one of you
+from getting out.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Suppose a man talked like that, what would you say of him? Would you
+call him a sensible man? Would you call him a Christian? Would you call him a gentleman?</p>
+
+<p>You will say I am severe. I am. Every time a successful man talks as
+this M.P. talks he inflicts a brutal insult upon the unsuccessful, many
+thousands of whom, both men and women, are worthier and better than himself.</p>
+
+<p>But let us go back to our subject. That fire panic in the big hall is a
+picture of <i>life</i> as it is to-day.</p>
+
+<p>It is a scramble of a big crowd to get through a small door. Those who
+get through are cheered and rewarded, and few questions are asked as to
+<i>how</i> they got through.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Socialists say that there should be more doors, and no scramble.</p>
+
+<p>But let me use this example of the hall and the panic more fully.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose the hall to be divided into three parts. First the stalls, then
+the pit stalls, then the pit. Suppose the only door is the door in the
+stalls. Suppose the people in the pit stalls have to climb a high
+barrier to get to the stalls. Suppose those in the pit have to climb a
+high barrier to get to the pit stalls, and then the high barrier that
+parts the pit stalls from the stalls. Suppose there is, right at the
+back of the pit, a small, weak boy. Now, I ask you, as sensible men, is
+there "nothing to prevent" that boy from getting through that door? You
+know the boy has only the smallest of chances of getting out of that
+hall. But he has a thousand times a better chance of getting safely out
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> that door than the son of a crossing-sweeper has of becoming Lord
+Chancellor of England.</p>
+
+<p>In our hall the upper classes would sit in the stalls, the middle
+classes in the pit stalls, and the workers in the pit. <i>Whose son would
+have the best chance for the door?</i></p>
+
+<p>I compared the race for the Chancellorship just now to a foot-race of
+twenty men; and I showed you that if all the runners were as fleet as
+greyhounds only one could win, and nineteen <i>must</i> lose.</p>
+
+<p>But the M.P.'s crossing-sweeper's son has to enter a race where there
+are millions of starters, and where the race is a <i>handicap</i> in which he
+is on scratch, with thousands of men more than half the course in front
+of him.</p>
+
+<p>For don't you see that this race which the lucky or successful men tell
+us we can <i>all</i> win is not a fair race?</p>
+
+<p>The son of the crossing-sweeper has terrible odds against him. The son
+of the gentleman has a long start, and carries less weight.</p>
+
+<p>What are the qualities needed in a race for the Chancellorship? The boy
+who means to win must be marvellously strong, clever, brave, and persevering.</p>
+
+<p>Now, will he be likely to be strong? He <i>may</i> be, but the odds are
+against him. His father may not be strong nor his mother, for they may
+have worked hard, and they may not have been well fed, nor well nursed,
+nor well doctored. They probably live in a slum, and they cannot train,
+nor teach, nor feed their son in a healthy and proper way, because they
+are ignorant and poor. And the boy gets a few years at a board school,
+and then goes to work.</p>
+
+<p>But the gentleman's son is well bred, well fed, well nursed, well
+trained, and lives in a healthy place. He goes to good schools, and from
+school to college.</p>
+
+<p>And when he leaves college he has money to pay fees, and he has a name,
+and he has education; and I ask you, what are the odds against the son
+of a crossing-sweeper in a race like that?</p>
+
+<p>Well, there is not a single case where men are striving for wealth or
+for place where the sons of the workers are not handicapped in the same
+way. Now and again a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> worker's son wins. He may win because he is a
+genius like Stephenson or Sir William Herschel; or he may win because he
+is cruel and unscrupulous, like Jay Gould; or he may win because he is lucky.</p>
+
+<p>But it is folly to say that there is "nothing to prevent him" from
+winning. There is almost everything to prevent him. To begin with, his
+chances of dying before he's five years old are about ten times as
+numerous as the chances of a rich man's son.</p>
+
+<p>Look at Lord Salisbury. He is Prime Minister of England. Had he been
+born the son of a crossing-sweeper do you think he would have been Prime Minister?</p>
+
+<p>I would undertake to find a hundred better minds than Lord Salisbury's
+in any English town of 10,000 inhabitants. But will any one of the boys
+I should select become Prime Minister of England? You know they will
+not. But yet they ought to, if "there is nothing to prevent them."</p>
+
+<p>But there is something to prevent them. There is poverty to prevent
+them, there is privilege to prevent them, there is snobbery to prevent
+them, there is class feeling to prevent them, there are hundreds of
+other things to prevent them, and amongst those hundreds of other things
+to prevent them from becoming Prime Ministers I hope that their own
+honesty and goodness and wisdom may be counted; for honesty and goodness
+and true wisdom are things which will often prevent a poor boy who is
+lucky enough to possess them from ever becoming what the world of
+politics and commerce considers a "successful man."</p>
+
+<p>Do not believe the doctrine that the rich and poor, the successful and
+the unsuccessful, get what they deserve. If that were true we should
+find intelligence and virtue keeping level with income. Then the
+mechanic at 30s. a week would be half as good again as the labourer at
+20s. a week; the small merchant, making &pound;200 a year, would be a far
+better man than one mechanic; the large merchant, making &pound;2000 a year,
+would be ten times as good as the small merchant; and the millionaire
+would be too intellectual, too noble, and too righteous for this sinful world.</p>
+
+<p>But don't you know that there are stupid and drunken mechanics, and
+steady and intelligent labourers? And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> don't you know that some
+successful men are rascals, and that some very wealthy men are fools?</p>
+
+<p>Take the story of Jacob and Esau. After Jacob cheated his hungry brother
+into selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, Jacob was rich and
+Esau poor. Did each get what he deserved? Was Jacob the better man?</p>
+
+<p>Christ lived poor, a homeless wanderer, and died the death of a felon.
+Jay Gould made millions of money, and died one of the wealthiest men in
+the world. Did each get what he deserved? Did the wealth of Gould and
+the poverty of Christ indicate the intellectual and moral merits of
+those two sons of men?</p>
+
+<p>Some of us would get whipped if all of us got our deserts; but who would
+deserve applause and wealth and a crown?</p>
+
+<p>In a sporting handicap the weakest have the most start: in real life the
+strongest have the start and the weakest are put on scratch.</p>
+
+<p>And I <i>have</i> heard it hinted that the man who runs the straightest does
+not always win.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XIV</span> <span class="smaller">TEMPERANCE AND THRIFT</span></h2>
+
+<p>I said in the previous chapter that if <i>all</i> the workers were very
+thrifty, sober, industrious, and abstemious they would be worse off in
+the matter of wages than they are now.</p>
+
+<p>This, at first sight, seems strange, because we know that the sober and
+thrifty workman is generally better off than the workman who drinks or
+wastes his money.</p>
+
+<p>But why is he better off? He is better off because, being a steady man,
+he can often get work when an unsteady man cannot. He is better off
+because he buys things that add to his comfort, or he saves money, and
+so grows more independent. And he is able to save money, and to make his
+home more cosy, because, while he is more regularly employed than the
+unsteady men, his wages remain the same, or, perhaps, are something
+higher than theirs.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, he benefits by his own steadiness and thrift because his
+steadiness makes him a more reliable, and therefore a more valuable,
+workman than one who is not steady.</p>
+
+<p>But, you see, he is only more valuable because other men are less
+steady. If all the other workmen were as steady as he is he would be no
+more valuable than they are. Not being more valuable than they are, he
+would not be more certain of getting work.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, if all the workers were sober and thrifty, they would
+all be of equal value to the employer.</p>
+
+<p>But you may say they would still be better off than if they drank and
+wasted their wages. They would have better health, and they would have
+happier lives and more comfortable homes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p><p>Yes, so long as their wages were as high as before. But their wages
+would <i>not</i> be as high as before.</p>
+
+<p>You must know that as things now are, where all the work is in the gift
+of private employers, and where wages and prices are ruled by
+competition, and where new inventions of machinery are continually
+throwing men out of work, and where farm labourers are always drifting
+to the towns, there are more men in need of work than work can be found for.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, there is always a large number of workers out of work.</p>
+
+<p>Now, under competition, where two men offer themselves for one place,
+you know that the place will be given to the man who will take the lower wage.</p>
+
+<p>And you know that the thrifty and the sober man can live on less than
+the thriftless man.</p>
+
+<p>And you know that where two or more employers are offering their goods
+against each other for sale in the open market, the one who sells his
+goods the cheapest will get the trade. And you know that in order to
+sell their goods at a cheaper rate than other dealers, the employers
+will try to <i>get</i> their goods at the cheapest rate possible.</p>
+
+<p>And you know that with most goods the chief cost is the cost of the
+labour used in the making&mdash;that is to say, the wages of the workers.</p>
+
+<p>Very well, you have more workers than are needed, so that there is
+competition amongst those workers as to who shall be employed.</p>
+
+<p>And those will be employed who are the cheapest.</p>
+
+<p>And those who can live upon least can afford to work for least.</p>
+
+<p>And all the workers being sober and thrifty, they can all live on less
+than when many of them were wasteful and fond of drink.</p>
+
+<p>Then, on the other hand, all the employers are competing for the trade,
+and so are all wanting cheap labour; and so are eager to lower wages.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore wages will come down, and the general thrift and steadiness of
+the workers will make them poorer. Do you doubt this? What is that tale
+the masters so often tell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> you? Do they not tell you that England
+depends upon her foreign trade for her food? And do they not tell you
+that foreign traders are stealing the trade from the English traders?
+And do they not tell you that the foreign traders can undersell us in
+the world's markets because their labour is cheaper? And do they not say
+that if the British workers wish to keep the foreign trade they will
+have to be as thrifty and as industrious and as sober as the foreign workers?</p>
+
+<p>Well, what does that mean? It means that if the British workers were as
+thrifty and sober and industrious as the foreign workers, they could
+live on less than they now need. It means that if you were all
+teetotalers and all thrifty, you could work for less wages than they now
+pay, and so they would be able to sell their goods at a lower price than
+they can now; and thus they would keep the foreign trade.</p>
+
+<p>Is not that all quite clear and plain? And is it not true that in
+France, in Germany, and all other countries where the workers live more
+sparely, and are more temperate than the workers are in England, the
+wages are lower and the hours of work longer?</p>
+
+<p>And is it not true that the Chinese and the Hindoos, who are the most
+temperate and the most thrifty people in the world, are always the worst paid?</p>
+
+<p>And do you not know very well that the "Greeners"&mdash;the foreign Jews who
+come to England for work and shelter&mdash;are very sober and very thrifty
+and very industrious men, and that they are about the worst-paid workers
+in this country?</p>
+
+<p>Take now, as an example, the case of the cotton trade. The masters tell
+you that they find it hard to compete against the Indian factories, and
+they say if Lancashire wants to keep the trade the Lancashire workers
+must accept the conditions of the Indian workers.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian workers live chiefly on rice and water, and work far longer
+hours than do the English workers.</p>
+
+<p>And don't you see that if the Lancashire workers would live upon rice
+and water, the masters would soon have their wages down to rice and water point?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p><p>And then the Indians would have to live on less, or work still longer
+hours, and so the game would go on.</p>
+
+<p>And who would reap the benefit? The English masters and the Indian
+masters (who are often one and the same) would still take a large share,
+but the chief benefit of the fall in price would go to the buyers&mdash;or
+users, or "consumers"&mdash;of the goods.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, that the workers of India and of England would be
+starved and sweated, so that the natives of other countries could have cheap clothing.</p>
+
+<p>If you doubt what I say, look at the employers' speeches, read the
+newspapers which are in the employers' pay, add two and two together,
+and you will find it all out for yourselves.</p>
+
+<p>To return to the question of temperance and thrift. You see, I hope,
+that if <i>all</i> the people were sober and thrifty they would be really
+worse off than they now are. This is because the workers must have work,
+must ask the employers to give them work, and must ask employers who,
+being in competition with each other, are always trying to get the work
+done at the lowest price.</p>
+
+<p>And the lowest price is always the price which the bulk of the workers
+are content to live upon.</p>
+
+<p>In all foreign nations where the standard of living is lower than in
+England, you will find that the wages are lower also.</p>
+
+<p>Have we not often heard our manufacturers declare that if the British
+workers would emulate the thrift and sobriety of the foreigner they
+might successfully compete against foreign competition in the foreign
+market? What does that mean, but that thrift would enable our people to
+live on less, and so to accept less wages?</p>
+
+<p>Why are wages of women in the shirt trade low?</p>
+
+<p>It is because capitalism always keeps the wages down to the lowest
+standard of subsistence which the people will accept.</p>
+
+<p>So long as our English women will consent to work long hours, and live
+on tea and bread, the "law of supply and demand" will maintain the
+present condition of sweating in the shirt trade.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p><p>If all our women became firmly convinced that they could not exist
+without chops and bottled stout, the wages <i>must</i> go up to a price to
+pay for those things.</p>
+
+<p><i>Because there would be no women offering to live on tea and bread</i>; and
+shirts <i>must</i> be had.</p>
+
+<p>But what is the result of the abstinence of these poor sisters of ours?
+Low wages for themselves, and, for others?&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A young merchant wants a dozen shirts. He pays 10s. each for them. He
+meets a friend who only gave 8s. for his. He goes to the 8s. shop and
+saves 2s. This is clear profit, and he spends it in cigars, or
+champagne, or in some other luxury; <i>and the poor seamstress lives on toast and tea.</i></p>
+
+<p>But although I say that sobriety and thrift, if adopted by <i>all</i> the
+workers, would result in lower wages, you are not to suppose that I
+advise you all to be drunkards and spendthrifts.</p>
+
+<p>No. The proper thing is to do away with competition. At present the
+employers, in the scramble to undersell each other, actually fine you
+for your virtue and self-denial by lowering your wages, just as the
+landlords fine a tenant for improving his land or enlarging his house or
+extending his business&mdash;fine him by raising his rent.</p>
+
+<p>And now we may, I think, come to the question of imprudent marriages.</p>
+
+<p>The idea seems to be that a man should not marry until he is "in a
+position to keep a wife." And it is a very common thing for employers,
+and other well-to-do persons, to tell working men that they "have no
+right to bring children into the world until they are able to provide for them."</p>
+
+<p>Now let us clear the ground a little before we begin to deal with this
+question on its economic side&mdash;that is, as it affects wages.</p>
+
+<p>It is bad for men and women to marry too young. It is bad for two
+reasons. Firstly, because the body is not mature; and secondly, because
+the mind is not settled. That is to say, an over-early marriage has a
+bad effect on the health; and since young people must, in the nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> of
+things, change very much as they grow older, an over-early marriage is often unhappy.</p>
+
+<p>I think a woman would be wise not to marry before she is about
+four-and-twenty; and I think it is better that the husband should be
+from five to ten years older than the wife.</p>
+
+<p>Then it is very bad for a woman to have many children; and not only is
+it bad for her health, but it destroys nearly all the pleasure of her
+life, so that she is an enfeebled and weary drudge through her best
+years, and is old before her time.</p>
+
+<p>That much conceded, I ask you, Mr. John Smith, what do you think of the
+request that you shall work hard, live spare, and give up a man's right
+to love, to a home, to children, in order that you may be able to "make
+a living"? Such a living is not worth working for. It would be a manlier
+and a happier lot to die.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the idea as it has been expressed by a working man&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Up to now I had thought that the object of life was to live, and
+that the object of love was to love. But the economists have
+changed all that. There is neither love nor life, sentiment nor
+affection. The earth is merely a vast workshop, where all is
+figured by debit and credit, and where supply and demand regulates
+everything. You have no right to live unless the industrial market
+demands hands; a woman has no business to bring forth a child
+unless the capitalist requires live stock.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I cannot really understand a <i>man</i> selling his love and his manhood, and
+talking like a coward or a slave about "imprudent marriages"; and all
+for permission to drudge at an unwelcome task, and to eat and sleep for
+a few lonely and dishonourable years in a loveless and childless world.</p>
+
+<p>You don't think <i>that</i> is going to save you, men, do you? You don't
+think you are going to make the best of life by selling for the sake of
+drudgery and bread and butter your proud man's right to work for, fight
+for, and die for the woman you love?</p>
+
+<p>For, having sold your love for permission to work, how long will you be
+before you sell your honour? Nay, is it not true that many of you have
+sold it already?</p>
+
+<p>For every man who works at jerry work, or takes a part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> in any kind of
+adulteration, scampery, or trade rascality, is selling his honour for
+wages, and is just as big a scamp and a good deal more of a coward than
+a burglar or a highwayman.</p>
+
+<p>And the commercial travellers and the canvassers and the agents who get
+their living by telling lies,&mdash;as some of them do,&mdash;do you call those <i>men</i>?</p>
+
+<p>And the gentlemen of the Press who write against their convictions for a
+salary, and for the sake of a suburban villa, a silk hat, and some cheap
+claret, devote their energies and talents to the perpetuation of
+falsehood and wrong&mdash;do you call <i>those</i> men?</p>
+
+<p>If we cannot keep our foreign trade without giving up our love and our
+manhood and our honour, it is time the foreign trade went to the devil
+and took the British employers with it.</p>
+
+<p>If the state of things in England to-day makes it impossible for men and
+women to love and marry, then the state of things in England to-day will not do.</p>
+
+<p>Well, do you still think that single life, a crust of bread, and rags,
+will alone enable you to hold your own and to keep your foreign trade?
+And do you still think that poverty is a mark of unworthiness, and
+wealth the sure proof of merit? If so, just read these few lines from an
+article by a Tory Minister, Sir John Gorst&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The "won't-works" are very few in number, but the section of the
+population who cannot earn enough wages all the year round to live
+decently is very large.</p>
+
+<p>Professional criminals are not generally poor, for when out of gaol
+they live very comfortably as a rule. There are wastrels, of
+course, who have sunk so low as to have a positive aversion to
+work, and it is people of this kind who are most noisy in parading
+their poverty. The industrious poor, on the other hand, shrink from
+exposing their wretchedness to the world, and strive as far as
+possible to keep it out of sight.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Now, contrast those sensible and kindly words with the following
+quotation from a mercantile journal:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The talk about every man having a right to work is fallacious, for
+he can only have the right of every free man to do work if he can get it.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p><p>Yes! But he has other "rights." He has the right to combine to defeat
+attempts to rob him of work or to lower his wages; he has the right to
+vote for parliamentary and municipal candidates who will alter the laws
+and the conditions of society which enable a few greedy and heartless
+men to disorganise the industries of the nation, to keep the Briton off
+the land which is his birthright, to exploit the brain and the sinew of
+the people, and to condemn millions of innocent and helpless women and
+children to poverty, suffering, ignorance, and too often to disgrace or early death.</p>
+
+<p>A man, John Smith, has the right to <i>be a man</i>, and, if he is a Briton,
+has a right to be a free man. It is to persuade every man in Britain to
+exercise this right, and to do his duty to the children and the women of
+his class and family, that I am publishing this book.</p>
+
+<p>"The right to do work if he can get it," John, and to starve if he cannot get it.</p>
+
+<p>How long will you allow these insolent market-men to insult you? How
+long will you allow a mob of money-lending, bargain-driving,
+dividend-snatching parasites to live on you, to scorn you, and to treat
+you as "live stock"? How long? How long?</p>
+
+<p>I shall have to write a book for the women, John.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XV</span> <span class="smaller">THE SURPLUS LABOUR MISTAKE</span></h2>
+
+<p>Many non-Socialists believe that the cause of poverty is "surplus
+labour," or over-population, and they tell us that if we could reduce
+our population we should have no poor.</p>
+
+<p>If this were true, we should find that in thinly populated countries the
+workers fare better than in countries where the population is more dense.</p>
+
+<p>But we do not find anything of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>The population of Ireland is thin. There are more people in London than
+in all Ireland. Yet the working people of Ireland are worse off than the
+working people of England.</p>
+
+<p>The population of Scotland is thinner than that of England, but wages
+rule higher in England.</p>
+
+<p>In Australia there is a large country and a small population, but there
+is plenty of poverty.</p>
+
+<p>In the Middle Ages the entire population of England would only be a few
+millions&mdash;say four or five millions&mdash;whereas it is now nearly thirty
+millions. Yet the working classes are very much better off to-day than
+they were in the eighth and ninth centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Reduce the population of Britain to one million and the workers would be
+in no better case than they are now. Increase the population to sixty
+millions and the workers will be no worse off&mdash;at least so far as wages
+are concerned.</p>
+
+<p>I will give you the reason for this in a few words, using an
+illustration which used to serve me for the same purpose in one of my lectures.</p>
+
+<p>No one will deny that all wealth&mdash;whether food, tools, clothing,
+furniture, machines, arms, or houses&mdash;comes from <i>the land</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p><p>For we feed our cattle and poultry on the land, and get from the land
+corn, malt, hops, iron, timber, and every other thing we use, except
+fish and a few sea-drugs; and we could not get fish without nets and
+boats, nor make nets and boats without fibre and wood and metals.</p>
+
+<p>Stand a decanter and a tumbler on a bare table. Call the table Britain,
+call the decanter a landlord, and call the tumbler a labourer.</p>
+
+<p>Now no man can produce wealth without land. If, then, Lord de Canter
+owns all the land, and Tommy Tumbler owns none, how is Tommy Tumbler to
+get his living?</p>
+
+<p>He will have to work for Lord de Canter, and he will have to take the
+wage his lordship offers him.</p>
+
+<p>Now you cannot say that Britain is over-populated with only two men, nor
+that it is suffering from a superfluity of labour when there is only one
+labourer. And yet you observe that with only two men in the country one
+is rich and the other poor.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, will a reduction of the population prevent poverty?</p>
+
+<p>Look at this diagram. A square board, with two men on it; one is black
+and one is white.</p>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/fig3.jpg" width='400' height='241' alt="fig. 3" /></div>
+
+<p>Call the board England, the black pawn a landlord, and the white pawn a labourer.</p>
+
+<p>Let me repeat that every useful thing comes out of the land, and then
+ask this simple question: If <i>all</i> the land&mdash;the whole of
+England&mdash;belongs to the black man, how is the white man going to get his living?</p>
+
+<p>You see, although the population of England consists of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> only two men,
+if one of these men owns <i>all</i> the land, the other man must starve, or
+steal, or beg, or work for wages.</p>
+
+<p>Now, suppose our white man works for wages&mdash;works for the black
+man&mdash;what is going to regulate the wages? Will the fact that there is
+only one beggar make that beggar any richer? If there were ten white
+men, and <i>all</i> the land belonged to the black man, the ten whites would
+be as well off as the one white was, for the landowner could find them
+all work, and could get them to work for just as much as they could live on.</p>
+
+<p>No: that idea of raising wages by reducing the population is a mistake.
+Do not the workers <i>make</i> the wealth? They do. And is it not odd to say
+that we will increase the wealth by reducing the number of the wealth makers?</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps you think the workers might get a bigger <i>share</i> of the
+wealth if there were fewer of them.</p>
+
+<p>How? Our black man owns all England. He has 100 whites working for him
+at wages just big enough to keep them alive. Of those 100 whites 50 die.
+Will the black man raise the wages of the remaining 50? Why should he?
+There is no reason why he should. But there is this reason why he should
+not, viz. that as he has now only 50 men working for him, he will only
+be half as rich as he was when he had 100 men working for him. But the
+land is still his, and the whites are still in his power. He will still
+pay them just as much as they can live on, and no more.</p>
+
+<p>But you may say that if the workers decreased and the masters did not
+decrease in numbers, wages must rise.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose you have in the export cotton trade 100 masters and 100,000
+workers. Half the workers die. You have now 100 masters and 50,000 workers.</p>
+
+<p>Then you may say that, as foreign countries would still want the work of
+100,000 workers, the 100 masters would compete as to which got the
+biggest orders, and so wages would rise.</p>
+
+<p>But bear in mind two things. First, if the foreign workers were as
+numerous as before, the English masters could import hands; second, if
+the foreign workers died out as fast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> as the English, there would only
+be half as many foreigners needing shirts, and so the trade would keep
+pace with the decrease in workers, and the wages would remain as they were.</p>
+
+<p>To improve the wages of the English workers the price of cotton goods
+must rise or the profits of the masters must be cut down.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of these things depends on the number of the population.</p>
+
+<p>But now go back to our England with the three men in it. Here is the
+black landlord, rich and idle; and the two white workers, poor and
+industrious. One of the workers dies. The landlord gets less money, but
+the remaining worker gets no more. <i>There are only two men in all
+England, and one of them is poor.</i></p>
+
+<p>But suppose we have one black landlord and 100 white workers, and the
+workers adopt Socialism. Then every man of the 101 will have just what
+he earns, and <i>all</i> that he earns, and all will be free men.</p>
+
+<p>Thus you see that under Socialism a big population will be better off
+than the smallest population can be under non-Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>But, the non-Socialist objects, wages are ruled by competition, and must
+fall when the supply of labour exceeds the demand; and when that happens
+it is because the country is over-populated.</p>
+
+<p>I admit that the supply of labour often exceeds the demand, and that
+when it does, wages may come down. But I deny that an excess of labour
+over the demand for labour proves the country to be over-populated. What
+it does prove is that the country is badly governed and
+under-cultivated.</p>
+
+<p>A country is over-populated when its soil cannot yield food for its
+people. At present our population is about 40,000,000 and our soil would
+support more than double the number.</p>
+
+<p>The country, then, is not over-populated; it is badly governed.</p>
+
+<p>There are, let us say, more shoemakers and tailors than there is
+employment for. But are there no bare feet and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> ill-clothed backs?
+Certainly. The bulk of our workers are not properly shod or clothed. It
+is not, then, true to say that we have more tailors and shoemakers than
+we require; but we ought to say instead that our tailors and shoemakers
+cannot live by their trades because the rest of the workers are too poor
+to pay them. Now, why are the rest of the workers too poor to buy boots
+and clothing? Is it because there are too many of them? Let us take an
+instance: the farm labourer. He cannot afford boots. Why? He is too
+poor. Why? Not because there are too many farm labourers,&mdash;for there are
+too few,&mdash;but because the wages of farm labourers are low. Why are they
+low? Because agriculture is neglected, and because rents are high. So we
+come back to my original statement, that the evil is due to the private
+ownership of land.</p>
+
+<p>The many are poor because the few are rich.</p>
+
+<p>But, again, it may be asserted that we have always about half a million
+of men unemployed, and that these men prove the existence of superfluous labour.</p>
+
+<p>Not at all. There are half a million of men out of work, but there are
+many millions of acres idle. Abolish private ownership of land, and the
+nation, being now owner of <i>all</i> land, can at once find work for that
+so-called "superfluous labour."</p>
+
+<p>All wealth comes from the land. All wealth must be got from the land by
+labour. Given a sufficient quantity of land, one man can produce from
+the land more wealth than one man can consume. Therefore, as long as
+there is a sufficiency of land there can be no such thing as
+"superfluous labour," and no such thing as over-population. Given
+machinery and combination, and probably one man can produce from the
+land enough wealth for ten to consume. Why, then, should there be any
+such thing as poverty?</p>
+
+<p>One fundamental truth of economics is that every able-bodied and willing
+worker is worth more than his keep.</p>
+
+<p>There is such a thing as locked-out labour, but there is no such thing
+in this country as useless labour. While we have land lying idle, and
+while we have to import our food, how can we be so foolish as to call a
+man who is excluded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> from the land superfluous? He is one of the factors
+of wealth, and land is the other. Set the man on the land and he will
+produce wealth. At present he is out of work and the land out of use.
+But are either of them superfluous? No; we need both.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XVI</span> <span class="smaller">IS SOCIALISM POSSIBLE, AND WILL IT PAY?</span></h2>
+
+<p>Non-Socialists assert with the utmost confidence that Socialism is
+impossible. Let us consider this statement in a practical way.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that Socialism is impossible. That means that the people
+have not the ability to manage their own affairs, and must, perforce,
+give nearly all the wealth they produce to the superior persons who at
+present are kind enough to own, to govern, and to manage Britain for the British.</p>
+
+<p>A bold statement! The people <i>cannot</i> manage their own business: it is
+<i>impossible</i>. They cannot farm the land, and build the factories, and
+weave the cloth, and feed and clothe and house themselves; they are not
+able to do it. They must have landlords and masters to do it for them.</p>
+
+<p>But the joke is that these landlords and masters do <i>not</i> do it for the
+people. The people do it for the landlords and masters; and the latter
+gentlemen make the people pay them for allowing the people to work.</p>
+
+<p>But the people can only produce wealth under supervision; they must have
+superior persons to direct them. So the non-Socialist declares.</p>
+
+<p>Another bold assertion, which is not true. For nearly all those things
+which the non-Socialist tells us are impossible <i>are being done</i>. Nearly
+all those matters of management, of which the people are said to be
+incapable, are being accomplished by the people <i>now</i>.</p>
+
+<p>For if the nation can build warships, why can they not build cargo
+ships? If they can make rifles, why not sewing machines or ploughs? If
+they can build forts, why not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> houses? If they can make policemen's
+boots and soldiers' coats, why not make ladies' hats and mechanics'
+trousers? If they can pickle beef for the navy, why should they not make
+jam for the household? If they can run a railway across the African
+desert, why should they not run one from London to York?</p>
+
+<p>Look at the Co-operative Societies. They own and run cargo ships. They
+import and export goods. They make boots and foods. They build their own
+shops and factories. They buy and sell vast quantities of useful things.</p>
+
+<p>Well, these places were started by working men, and are owned by working men.</p>
+
+<p>Look at the post office. If the nation can carry its own letters, why
+not its own coals? If it can manage its telegraphs, why not its
+railways, its trams, its cabs, its factories?</p>
+
+<p>Look at the London County Council and the Glasgow and Manchester
+Corporations. If these bodies of public servants can build
+dwelling-houses, make roads, tunnels, and sewers, carry water from
+Thirlmere to Manchester, manage the Ship Canal, make and supply gas, own
+and work tramways, and take charge of art galleries, baths, wash-houses,
+and technical schools, what is there that landlords or masters do, or
+get done, which the cities and towns cannot do better and more cheaply for themselves?</p>
+
+<p>What sense is there in pretending that the colliers could not get coal
+unless they paid rent to a lord, or that the railways could not carry
+coal unless they paid dividends to a company, or that the weaver could
+not make shirtings, nor the milliners bonnets, nor the cutlers blades,
+just as well for the nation as for Mr. Bounderby or my Lord Tomnoddy?</p>
+
+<p>"But," the "Impossibles" will say, "you have not got the capital."</p>
+
+<p>Do not believe them. You <i>have</i> got the capital. Where? In your brains
+and in your arms, where <i>all</i> the capital comes from.</p>
+
+<p>Why, if what the "Impossibles" tell us be true&mdash;if the people are not
+able to do anything for themselves as well as the private dealers or
+makers can do it for them&mdash;the gas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> and water companies ought to have no
+fear of being cut out in price and quality by any County Council or Corporation.</p>
+
+<p>But the "Impossibles" know very well that, directly the people set up on
+their own account, the private trader or maker is beaten. Let one
+district of London begin to make its own gas, and see what will happen
+in the other districts.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty years ago this cry of "Impossible" was not so easy to dispose of,
+but to-day it can be silenced by the logic of accomplished facts. For
+within the last score of years the Municipalities of London, Glasgow,
+Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham, Bolton, Leicester, and
+other large towns have <i>proved</i> that the Municipalities can manage large
+and small enterprises efficiently, and that in all cases it is to the
+advantage of the ratepayers, of the consumers, and of the workers that
+private management should be displaced by management under the Municipality.</p>
+
+<p>Impossible? Why, the capital already invested in municipal works amounts
+to nearly &pound;100,000,000. And the money is well invested, and all the work is prosperous.</p>
+
+<p>Municipalities own and manage waterworks, gasworks, tramways,
+telephones, electric lighting, markets, baths, piers, docks, parks,
+farms, dwelling-houses, abattoirs, cemeteries, crematoriums, libraries,
+schools, art galleries, hotels, dairies, colleges, and technical
+schools. Many of the Municipalities also provide concerts, open-air
+music, science classes, and lectures; and quite recently the Alexandra
+Palace has been municipalised, and is now being successfully run by the
+people and for the people.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, can <i>Socialism</i> be called impossible? As a matter of fact
+<i>Socialism</i> is only a method of extending State management, as in the
+Post Office, and Municipal management, as in the cases above named,
+until State and Municipal management becomes universal all through the kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Where is the impossibility of that? If a Corporation can manage trams,
+gas, and water, why can it not manage bread, milk, meat, and beer supplies?</p>
+
+<p>If Bradford can manage one hotel, why not more than one? If Bradford can
+manage more than one hotel, why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> cannot London, Glasgow, Leeds, and
+Portsmouth do the same?</p>
+
+<p>If the German, Austrian, French, Italian, Belgian, and other Governments
+can manage the railway systems of their countries, why cannot the
+British Government manage theirs?</p>
+
+<p>If the Government can manage a fleet of war vessels, why not fleets of
+liners and traders? If the Government can manage post and telegraph
+services, why not telephones and coalmines?</p>
+
+<p>The answer to all these questions is that the Government and the
+Municipalities have proved that they can manage vast and intricate
+businesses, and can manage them more cheaply, more efficiently, and more
+to the advantage and satisfaction of the public than the same class of
+business has ever been managed by private firms.</p>
+
+<p>How can it be maintained, then, that <i>Socialism</i> is impossible?</p>
+
+<p>But, will it <i>pay</i>? What! <i>Will</i> it pay? It <i>does</i> pay. Read <i>To-Day's
+Work</i>, by George Haw, Clarion Press, 2s. 6d., and <i>Does Municipal
+Management Pay</i>? by R. B. Suthers, Clarion Press, 6d., and you will be
+surprised to find how well these large and numerous Municipal
+experiments in <i>Socialism</i> do pay.</p>
+
+<p>From the book on Municipal Management, by R. B. Suthers, above
+mentioned, I will quote a few comparisons between Municipal and private
+tram and water services.</p>
+
+<p class="bold">WATER</p>
+
+<p>"In Glasgow they devote all profits to making the services cheaper and
+to paying off capital borrowed.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus, since the Glasgow Municipality took control of the water supply,
+forty years ago, they have reduced the price of water from 1s. 2d. in
+the pound rental to 5d. in the pound rental for domestic supply.</p>
+
+<p>"Compare that with the price paid by the London consumer under private enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>"On a &pound;30 house in Glasgow the water rate amounts to 12s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p><p>"On a &pound;30 house in Chelsea the water rate amounts to 30s.</p>
+
+<p>"On a &pound;30 house in Lambeth the water rate is &pound;2, 16s.</p>
+
+<p>"On a &pound;30 house in Southwark the water rate is 32s.</p>
+
+<p>"And so on. The London consumer pays from two to five times as much as
+the Glasgow consumer. He does not get as much water, he does not get as
+good water, and a large part of the money he pays goes into the pockets
+of the water lords.</p>
+
+<p>"Last year the water companies took just over a million in profits from
+the intelligent electors of the Metropolis.</p>
+
+<p>"In Glasgow a part of the 5d. in the pound goes to paying off the
+capital borrowed to provide the waterworks. &pound;2,350,000 has been so
+spent, and over one million of this has been paid back.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Does</i> Municipal management pay?</p>
+
+<p>"Look at Liverpool. The private companies did not give an adequate
+supply, so the Municipality took the matter in hand. What is the result?</p>
+
+<p>"The charge for water in Liverpool is a fixed rate of 3d. in the pound
+and a water rate of 7&frac12;d. in the pound.</p>
+
+<p>"For this comparatively small amount the citizen of Liverpool, as Sir
+Thomas Hughes said, "can have as many baths and as many water closets as
+he likes, and the same with regard to water for his garden."</p>
+
+<p>"In London the water companies make high charges for every separate bath
+and water closet."</p>
+
+<p class="bold">TRAMWAYS</p>
+
+<p>"In Glasgow from 1871 to 1894 a private company had a lease of the
+tramways from the Corporation.</p>
+
+<p>"When the lease was about to expire the Corporation tried to arrange
+terms with the company for a renewal, but the company would not accept
+the terms offered.</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover, there was a strong public feeling in favour of the
+Corporation working the tramways. The company service was not efficient;
+it was dear, and their bad treatment of their employees had roused
+general indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"So the Corporation decided to manage the tramways,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> and the day after
+the company's lease expired they placed on the streets an entirely new
+service of cars, cleaner, handsomer, and more comfortable in every way
+than their predecessors'.</p>
+
+<p>"The result of the first eleven months' working was a triumph for
+Municipal management.</p>
+
+<p>"The Corporation had many difficulties to contend with. Their horses
+were new and untrained, their staff was larger and new to the work, and
+the old company flooded the routes with 'buses to compete with the trams.</p>
+
+<p>"Notwithstanding these difficulties, they introduced halfpenny fares,
+they lengthened the distance for a penny, they raised the wages of the
+men and shortened their hours, they refused to disfigure the cars with
+advertisements, thus losing a handsome revenue, and in the end were able
+to show a profit of &pound;24,000, which was devoted to the common-good fund
+and to depreciation account.</p>
+
+<p>"Since that time the success of the enterprise has been still more wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>"The private company during the last four weeks of their reign carried
+4,428,518 passengers.</p>
+
+<p>"The Corporation in the corresponding four weeks of 1895 carried 6,114,789.</p>
+
+<table summary="tram service">
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">In the year 1895-6 the Corporation carried</td>
+    <td>87,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">In the year 1899-1900</td>
+    <td>127,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">In the year 1900-1</td>
+    <td>132,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">In 1895-6 the receipts were</td>
+    <td>&pound;222,121</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">In 1899-1900 the receipts were</td>
+    <td>&pound;464,886</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">In 1900-1 the receipts were</td>
+    <td>&pound;484,872</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">In 1895 there were</td>
+    <td>31 miles of tramway</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">In 1901 there were</td>
+    <td>44&frac12; miles of tramway</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">In 1895 the number of cars was</td>
+    <td>170</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">In 1901 the number of cars was</td>
+    <td>322</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>"The citizens of Glasgow have a much better service than the private
+company provided, the fares are from 30 to 50 per cent. lower, the men
+work four hours a day less, and get from 5s. a week more wages, and free
+uniforms, and the capital expended is being gradually wiped out.</p>
+
+<p>"In thirty-three years the capital borrowed will be paid back from a
+sinking fund provided out of the receipts.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p><p>"The gross capital expenditure to May 1901 was &pound;1,947,730.</p>
+
+<p>"The sinking fund amounts to &pound;75,063.</p>
+
+<p>"But the Corporation have, in addition, written off &pound;153,796 for
+depreciation, they have placed &pound;91,350 to a Permanent Way Renewal Fund,
+and they have piled up a general reserve fund of &pound;183,428.</p>
+
+<p>"Under a private company &pound;100,000 would have gone into the pockets of a
+few shareholders <i>on last year's working</i>&mdash;even if the private company
+had charged the same fares and paid the same wages as the Corporation
+did, which is an unlikely assumption."</p>
+
+<p>If you will read the two books I have mentioned, by Messrs. Haw and
+Suthers, you will be convinced by <i>facts</i> that <i>Socialism</i> is possible,
+and that it <i>will</i> pay.</p>
+
+<p>Bear in mind, also, that in all cases where the Municipality has taken
+over some department of public service and supply, the decrease in cost
+and the improvement in service which the ratepayers have secured are not
+the only improvements upon the management of the same work by private
+companies. Invariably the wages, hours, and conditions of men employed
+on Municipal work are superior to those of men employed by companies.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing should be well remembered. The private trader thinks only
+of profit. The Municipality considers the health and comfort of the
+citizens and the beauty and convenience of the city.</p>
+
+<p>Look about and see what the County Council have done and are doing for
+London; and all their improvements have to be carried out in the face of
+opposition from interested and privileged parties. They have to improve
+and beautify London almost by force of arms, working, as one might say,
+under the guns of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>But if the citizens were all united, if the city had one will to work
+for the general boon, as under <i>Socialism</i> happily it should be, London
+would in a score of years be the richest, the healthiest, and the most
+beautiful city in the world.</p>
+
+<p><i>Socialism</i>, Mr. Smith, is quite possible, and will not only pay but
+bless the nation that has the wisdom to afford full scope to its beneficence.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XVII</span> <span class="smaller">THE NEED FOR A LABOUR PARTY</span></h2>
+
+<p>I am now to persuade you, Mr. John Smith, a British workman, that you
+need a Labour Party. It is a queer task for a bookish man, a literary
+student, and an easy lounger through life, who takes no interest in
+politics and needs no party at all. To persuade you, a worker, that you
+need a worker's party, is like persuading you that you need food,
+shelter, love, and liberty. It is like persuading a soldier that he
+needs arms, a scholar that he needs books, a woman that she needs a
+home. Yet my chief object in writing this book has been to persuade you
+that you need a Labour Party.</p>
+
+<p>Why should Labour have a Labour Party? I will put the answer first into
+the words of the anti-Socialist, and say, Because "self-interest is the
+strongest motive of mankind."</p>
+
+<p>That covers the whole ground, and includes all the arguments that I
+shall advance in favour of a Labour Party.</p>
+
+<p>For if self-interest be the leading motive of human nature, does it not
+follow that when a man wants a thing done for his own advantage he will
+be wise to do it himself.</p>
+
+<p>An upper-class party may be expected to attend to the interests of the
+upper class. And you will find that such a party has always done what
+might be expected. A middle-class party may be expected to attend to the
+interests of the middle class. And history and the logic of current
+events prove that the middle class has done what might have been expected.</p>
+
+<p>And if you wish the interests of the working class to be attended to,
+you will take to heart the lesson contained in those examples, and will
+form a working-class party.</p>
+
+<p>Liberals will declare, and do declare, in most pathetic tones,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> that
+they have done more, and will do more, for the workers than the Tories
+have done or will do. And Liberals will assure you that they are really
+more anxious to help the workers than we Socialists believe.</p>
+
+<p>But those are side issues. The main thing to remember is, that even if
+the Liberals are all they claim to be, they will never do as much for
+Labour as Labour could do for itself.</p>
+
+<p>Is not self-interest the ruling passion in the human heart? Then how
+should <i>any</i> party be so true to Labour and so diligent in Labour's
+service as a Labour Party would be?</p>
+
+<p>What is a Trade Union? It is a combination of workers to defend their
+own interests from the encroachments of the employers.</p>
+
+<p>Well, a Labour Party is a combination of workers to defend their own
+interests from the encroachments of the employers, or their
+representatives in Parliament and on Municipal bodies.</p>
+
+<p>Do you elect your employers as officials of your Trade Unions? Do you
+send employers as delegates to your Trade Union Congress? You would
+laugh at the suggestion. You know that the employer <i>could</i> not attend
+to your interests in the Trade Union, which is formed as a defence against him.</p>
+
+<p>Do you think the employer is likely to be more useful or more
+disinterested in Parliament or the County Council than in the Trade Union?</p>
+
+<p>Whether he be in Parliament or in his own office, he is an employer, and
+he puts his own interest first and the interests of Labour behind.</p>
+
+<p>Yet these men whom as Trade Unionists you mistrust, you actually send as
+politicians to "represent" you.</p>
+
+<p>A Labour Party is a kind of political Trade Union, and to defend Trade
+Unionism is to defend Labour representation.</p>
+
+<p>If a Liberal or a Tory can be trusted as a parliamentary representative,
+why cannot he be trusted as an employer?</p>
+
+<p>If an employer's interests are opposed to your interests in business,
+what reason have you for supposing that his interests and yours are not
+opposed in politics?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p><p>Am I to persuade you to join a Labour Party? Then why should I not
+persuade you to join a Trade Union? Trade Union and Labour Party are
+both class defences against class aggression.</p>
+
+<p>If you oppose a man as an employer, why do you vote for him as a Member
+of Parliament? His calling himself a Liberal or a Tory does not alter
+the fact that he is an employer.</p>
+
+<p>To be a Trade Unionist and fight for your class during a strike, and to
+be a Tory or a Liberal and fight against your class at an election, is
+folly. During a strike there are no Tories or Liberals amongst the
+strikers; they are all workers. At election times there are no workers;
+only Liberals and Tories.</p>
+
+<p>During an election there are Tory and Liberal capitalists, and all of
+them are friends of the workers. During a strike there are no Tories and
+no Liberals amongst the employers. They are all capitalists and enemies
+of the workers. Is there any logic in you workers? Is there any
+perception in you? Is there any <i>sense</i> in you?</p>
+
+<p>As I said just now, you never elect an employer as president of a
+Trades' Council, or a chairman of a Trade Union Congress, or as a member
+of a Trade Union. You never ask an employer to lead you during a strike.
+But at election times, when you ought to stand by your class, the whole
+body of Trade Union workers turn into black-legs, and fight for the
+capitalist and against the workers.</p>
+
+<p>Even some of your Labour Members of Parliament go and help the
+candidature of employers against candidates standing for Labour. That is
+a form of political black-legging which I am surprised to find you allow.</p>
+
+<p>But besides the conflict of personal interests, there are other reasons
+why the Liberal and Tory parties are useless to Labour.</p>
+
+<p>One of these reasons is that the reform programmes of the old parties,
+such as they are, consist almost entirely of political reforms.</p>
+
+<p>But the improvement of the workers' condition depends more upon industrial reform.</p>
+
+<p>The nationalisation of the railways and the coalmines,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> the taxation of
+the land, and the handing over of all the gas, water, and food supplies,
+and all the tramway systems, to Municipal control, would do more good
+for the workers than extension of the franchise or payment of members.</p>
+
+<p>The old political struggles have mostly been fought for political
+reforms or for changes of taxation. The coming struggle will be for industrial reform.</p>
+
+<p>We want Britain for the British. We want the fruits of labour for those
+who produce them. We want a human life for all. The issue is not one
+between Liberals and Tories; it is an issue between the privileged
+classes and the workers.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of the political parties is of any use to the workers, because
+both the political parties are paid, officered, and led by capitalists
+whose interests are opposed to the interests of the workers. The
+Socialist laughs at the pretended friendship of Liberal and Tory leaders
+for the workers. These party politicians do not in the least understand
+what the rights, the interests, or the desires of the workers are; if
+they did understand, they would oppose them implacably. The demand of
+the Socialist is a demand for the nationalisation of the land and all
+other instruments of production and distribution. The party leaders will
+not hear of such a thing. If you want to get an idea how utterly
+destitute of sympathy with Labour the privileged classes really are,
+read carefully the papers which express their views. Read the organs of
+the landlords, the capitalists, and the employers; or read the Liberal
+and the Tory papers during a big strike, or during some bye-election
+when a Labour candidate is standing against a Tory and a Liberal.</p>
+
+<p>It is a very common thing to hear a party leader deprecate the increase
+of "class representation." What does that mean? It means Labour
+representation. But the "class" concerned in Labour representation is
+the working class, a "class" of thirty millions of people. Observe the
+calm effrontery of this sneer at "class representation." The thirty
+millions of workers are not represented by more than a dozen members.
+The other classes&mdash;the landlords, the capitalists, the military, the
+law, the brewers, and idle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> gentlemen&mdash;are represented by something like
+six hundred members. This is class representation with a vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>It is colossal <i>impudence</i> for a party paper to talk against "class
+representation." Every class is over-represented&mdash;except the great
+working class. The mines, the railways, the drink trade, the land,
+finance, the army (officers), the navy (officers), the church, the law,
+and most of the big industries (employers), are represented largely in
+the House of Commons.</p>
+
+<p>And nearly thirty millions of the working classes are represented by
+about a dozen men, most of whom are palsied by their allegiance to the Liberal Party.</p>
+
+<p>And, mind you, this disproportion exists not only in Parliament, but in
+all County and Municipal institutions. How many working men are there on
+the County Councils, the Boards of Guardians, the School Boards, and the Town Councils?</p>
+
+<p>The capitalists, and their hangers-on, not only make the laws&mdash;they
+administer them. Is it any wonder, then, that laws are made and
+administered in the interests of the capitalist? And does it not seem
+reasonable to suppose that if the laws were made and administered by
+workers, they would be made and administered to the advantage of Labour?</p>
+
+<p>Well, my advice to working men is to return working men representatives,
+with definite and imperative instructions, to Parliament and to all
+other governing bodies.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the old Trade Unionists will tell you that there is no need for
+parliamentary interference in Labour matters. The Socialist does not ask
+for "parliamentary interference"; he asks for Government by the people
+and for the people.</p>
+
+<p>The older Unionists think that Trade Unionism is strong enough in itself
+to secure the rights of the worker. This is a great mistake. The rights
+of the worker are the whole of the produce of his labour. Trade Unionism
+not only cannot secure that, but has never even tried to secure that.
+The most that Trade Unionism has secured, or can ever hope to secure,
+for the workers, is a comfortable subsistence wage. They have not always
+secured even that much, and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> when they have secured it, the cost has
+been serious. For the great weapon of Unionism is a strike, and a strike
+is at best a bitter, a painful, and a costly thing.</p>
+
+<p>Do not think that I am opposed to Trade Unionism. It is a good thing; it
+has long been the only defence of the workers against robbery and
+oppression; were it not for the Trade Unionism of the past and of the
+present, the condition of the British industrial classes would be one of
+abject slavery. But Trade Unionism, although some defence, is not
+sufficient defence.</p>
+
+<p>You must remember, also, that the employers have copied the methods of
+Trade Unionism. They also have organised and united, and, in the future,
+strikes will be more terrible and more costly than ever. The capitalist
+is the stronger. He holds the better strategic position. He can always
+outlast the worker, for the worker has to starve and see his children
+starve, and the capitalist never gets to that pass. Besides, capital is
+more mobile than labour. A stroke of the pen will divert wealth and
+trade from one end of the country to the other; but the workers cannot
+move their forces so readily.</p>
+
+<p>One difference between Socialism and Trade Unionism is, that whereas the
+Unions can only marshal and arm the workers for a desperate trial of
+endurance, Socialism can get rid of the capitalist altogether. The
+former helps you to resist the enemy, the latter destroys him.</p>
+
+<p>I suggest that you should join a Socialist Society and help to get
+others to join, and that you should send Socialist workers to sit upon
+all representative bodies.</p>
+
+<p>The Socialist tells you that you are men, with men's rights and with
+men's capacities for all that is good and great&mdash;and you hoot him, and
+call him a liar and a fool.</p>
+
+<p>The Politician despises you, declares that all your sufferings are due
+to your own vices, that you are incapable of managing your own affairs,
+and that if you were intrusted with freedom and the use of the wealth
+you create you would degenerate into a lawless mob of drunken loafers;
+and you cheer him until you are hoarse.</p>
+
+<p>The Politician tells you that <i>his</i> party is the people's party, and
+that <i>he</i> is the man to defend your interests; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> in spite of all you
+know of his conduct in the past, you believe him.</p>
+
+<p>The Socialist begs you to form a party of your own, and to do your work
+yourselves; and you call him a <i>dreamer</i>. I do not know whether the
+working man is a dreamer, but he seems to me to spend a good deal of his time asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Still, there are hopeful signs of an awakening. The recent decision of
+the miners to pay one shilling each a year into a fund for securing
+parliamentary and other representation, is one of the most hopeful signs
+I have yet seen.</p>
+
+<p>The matter is really a simple one. The workers have enough votes, and
+they can easily find enough money.</p>
+
+<p>The 2,000,000 of Trade Unionists could alone find the money to elect and
+support more than a hundred labour representatives.</p>
+
+<p>Say that election expenses for each candidate were &pound;500. A hundred
+candidates at &pound;500 would cost &pound;50,000.</p>
+
+<p>Pay for each representative at &pound;200 a year would cost for a hundred
+M.P.s &pound;20,000.</p>
+
+<p>If 2,000,000 Unionists gave 1s. a year each, the sum would be &pound;100,000.
+That would pay for the election of 100 members, keep them for a year,
+and leave a balance of &pound;30,000.</p>
+
+<p>With a hundred Labour Members in Parliament, and a proportionate
+representation of Labour on all County Councils, City, Borough, and
+Parish Councils, School Boards and Boards of Guardians, the interests of
+the workers would begin, for the first time in our history, to receive
+some real and valuable attention.</p>
+
+<p>But not only is it desirable that the workers should strive for solid
+reforms, but it is also imperative that they should prepare to defend
+the liberties and rights they have already won.</p>
+
+<p>A man must be very careless or very obtuse if he does not perceive that
+the classes are preparing to drive the workers back from the positions they now hold.</p>
+
+<p>Two ominous words, "Conscription" and "Protection" are being freely
+bandied about, and attacks, open or covert, are being made upon Trade
+Unionism and Education. If the workers mean to hold their own they must
+attack as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> well as defend. And to attack they need a strong and united
+Labour Party, that will fight for Labour in and out of Parliament, and
+will stand for Labour apart from the Liberal and the Tory parties.</p>
+
+<p>And now let us see what the Liberal and Tory parties offer the worker,
+and why they are not to be trusted.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XVIII</span> <span class="smaller">WHY THE OLD PARTIES WILL NOT DO</span></h2>
+
+<p>The old parties are no use to Labour for two reasons:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. Because their interests are mostly opposed to the interests of Labour.</p>
+
+<p>2. Because such reform as they promise is mostly political, and the
+kind of reform needed by Labour is industrial and social reform.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Liberal and Tory politicians call us Socialists <i>dreamers</i>. They claim
+to be practical men. They say theories are no use, that reform can only
+be secured by practical men and practical means, and for practical men
+and practical means you must look to the great parties.</p>
+
+<p>Being anxious to catch even the faintest streak of dawn in the dreary
+political sky, we <i>do</i> look to the great parties. I have been looking to
+them for quite twenty years. And nothing has come of it.</p>
+
+<p>What <i>can</i> come of it? What are the "practical" reforms about which we
+hear so much?</p>
+
+<p>Putting the broadest construction upon them, it may be said that the
+practical politics of both parties are within the lines of the following
+programme:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. Manhood Suffrage.<br />2. Payment of Members of Parliament.<br />3.
+Payment of Election Expenses.<br />4. The Second Ballot.<br />5. Abolition of
+Dual Voting.<br />6. Disestablishment of the Church.<br />7. Abolition of the
+House of Lords.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And it is alleged by large numbers of people, all of them, for some
+inexplicable reason, proud of their hard common sense, that the passing
+of this programme into law would,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> in some manner yet to be expounded,
+make miserable England into merry England, and silence the visionaries
+and agitators for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Now, with all deference and in all humility, I say to these practical
+politicians that the above programme, if it became law to-morrow, would
+not, for any practical purpose, be worth the paper it was printed on.</p>
+
+<p>There are seven items, and not one of them would produce the smallest
+effect upon the mass of misery and injustice which is now crushing the
+life out of this nation.</p>
+
+<p>No. All those planks are political planks, and they all amount to the
+same thing&mdash;the shifting of political power from the classes to the
+masses. The idea being that when the people have the political power
+they will use it to their own advantage.</p>
+
+<p>A false idea. The people would not know <i>how</i> to use the power, and if
+they did know how to use it, it by no means follows that they would use it.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the <i>real</i> evils of the time, the real causes of England's
+distress, are:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. The unjust monopoly of the land.<br />2. The unjust extortion of
+interest.<br />3. The universal system of suicidal competition.<br />4. The
+baseness of popular ideals.<br />5. The disorganisation of the forces
+for the production of wealth.<br />6. The unjust distribution of wealth.<br />
+7. The confusions and contradictions of the moral ethics of the
+nation, with resultant unjust laws and unfair conditions of life.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>There I will stop. Against the seven remedies I will put seven evils,
+and I say that not one of the remedies can cure any one of the evils.</p>
+
+<p>The seven remedies will give increased political power to the people.
+So. But, assuming that political power is the one thing needful, I say
+the people have it now.</p>
+
+<p>Supposing the masses in Manchester were determined to return to
+Parliament ten working men. They have an immense preponderance of votes.
+They could carry the day at every poll? But <i>do</i> they? If not, why not?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p><p>Then, as to expenses. Assuming the cost to be &pound;200 a member, that would
+make a gross sum of &pound;2000 for ten members, which sum would not amount to
+quite fivepence a head for 100,000 voters. But do voters find this
+money? If not, why not?</p>
+
+<p>Then, as to maintenance. Allowing each member &pound;200 a year, that would
+mean another fivepence a year for the 100,000 men. So that it is not too
+much to say that, without passing one of the Acts in the seven-branched
+programme, the workers of Manchester could, at a cost of less than one
+penny a month per man, return and maintain ten working men Members of Parliament?</p>
+
+<p>Now, my practical friends, how many working-class members sit for
+Manchester to-day?</p>
+
+<p>And if the people, having so much power now, make no use of it, why are
+we to assume that all they need is a little more power to make them
+healthy, and wealthy, and wise?</p>
+
+<p>But allow me to offer a still more striking example&mdash;the example of
+America.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, I assume that in America the electoral power of the
+people is much greater than it is here. I will give one or two examples.
+In America, I understand, they have:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. No Established Church.<br />2. No House of Lords.<br />3. Members of the
+Legislature are paid.<br />4. The people have Universal Suffrage.</p>
+
+<p>There are four out of the seven branches of the practical politicians'
+programme in actual existence. For the other three&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The Abolition of Dual Voting;<br />The Payment of Election Expenses; and<br />
+The Second  Ballot&mdash;</p></blockquote></blockquote>
+
+<p>I cannot answer; but these do not seem to have done quite as much for
+France as our practical men expect them to do for England.</p>
+
+<p>Very well, America has nearly all that our practical politicians promise
+us. Is America, therefore, so much better off as to justify us in
+accepting the seven-branched programme as salvation?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p><p>Some years ago I read a book called <i>How the Other Half Lives</i>, written
+by an American citizen, and dealing with the conditions of the poor in New York.</p>
+
+<p>We should probably be justified in assuming that just as London is a
+somewhat intensified epitome of England, so is New York of America; but
+we will not assume that much. We will look at this book together, and we
+will select a few facts as to the state of the people in New York, and
+then I will ask you to consider this proposition:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1. That in New York the people already enjoy all the advantages of
+practical politics, as understood in England.</p>
+
+<p>2. That, nevertheless, New York is a more miserable and vicious city than London.</p>
+
+<p>3. That this seems to me to indicate that practical politics are
+hopeless, and that practical politicians are&mdash;not quite so wise as they imagine.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>About thirty years ago there was a committee appointed in New York to
+investigate the "great increase in crime." The Secretary of the New York
+Prison Association, giving evidence, said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Eighty per cent. at least of the crimes against property and
+against the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either
+lost connection with home life or never had any, or whose homes
+have ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to
+afford what are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and family.</p>
+
+<p>The younger criminals seem to come almost exclusively from the
+worst tenement-house districts.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>These tenements, it seems, are slums. Of the evil of these places, of
+the miseries of them, we shall hear more presently. Our author, Mr.
+Jacob A. Riis, asserts again and again that the slums make the disease,
+the crime, and the wretchedness of New York:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>In the tenements all the influences make for evil, because they are
+the hot-beds that carry death to rich and poor alike; the nurseries
+of pauperism and crime, that fill our gaols and police-courts; that
+throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island
+asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out, in the last
+eight years, a round half-million of beggars to prey upon our
+charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps,
+with all that that implies; because, above all, they touch the
+family life with moral contagion.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p><p>Well, that is what the American writer thinks of the tenement
+system&mdash;of the New York slums.</p>
+
+<p><i>Now</i> comes the important question, What is the extent of these slums?
+And on this point Mr. Riis declares more than once that the extent is
+enormous:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>To-day (1891) three-fourths of New York's people live in the
+tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to
+the cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them.</p>
+
+<p>Where are the tenements of to-day? Say, rather, where are they not?
+In fifty years they have crept up from the Fourth Ward Slums and
+the Fifth Points, the whole length of the island, and have polluted
+the annexed district to the Westchester line. Crowding all the
+lower wards, where business leaves a foot of ground unclaimed;
+strung along both rivers, like ball and chain tied to the foot of
+every street, and filling up Harlem with their restless, pent-up
+multitudes, they hold within their clutch the wealth and business
+of New York&mdash;hold them at their mercy, in the day of mob-rule and
+wrath.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>So much, then, for the extent of these slums. Now for the nature of
+them. A New York doctor said of some of them&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>If we could see the air breathed by these poor creatures in their
+tenements, it would show itself to be fouler than the mud of the gutters.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And Mr. Riis goes on to tell of the police finding 101 adults and 91
+children in one Crosby Street House, 150 "lodgers" sleeping "on filthy
+floors in two buildings."</p>
+
+<p>But the most striking illustration I can give you of the state of the
+working-class dwellings in New York is by placing side by side the
+figures of the population per acre in the slums of New York and Manchester.</p>
+
+<p>The Manchester slums are bad&mdash;disgracefully, sinfully bad&mdash;and the
+overcrowding is terrible. But referring to the figures I took from
+various official documents when I was writing on the Manchester slums a
+few years ago, I find the worst cases of overcrowding to be:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="center" summary="overcrowding in Manchester">
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>District.</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pop. per Acre.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">Ancoats</td>
+    <td>No. 3</td>
+    <td>256</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">Deansgate</td>
+    <td>No. 2</td>
+    <td>266</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">London Road&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>No. 3</td>
+    <td>267</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">Hulme</td>
+    <td>No. 3</td>
+    <td>270</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">St. George's</td>
+    <td>No. 6</td>
+    <td>274</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p><p>These are the worst cases from some of the worst English slums. Now let
+us look at the figures for New York&mdash;</p>
+
+<table summary="overcrowding in New York">
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="smcap">Density of Population Per Acre in 1890</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">Tenth Ward</td>
+    <td>522</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">Eleventh Ward</td>
+    <td>386</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="left">Thirteenth Ward</td>
+    <td>428</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The population of these three wards in the same year was over 179,000.
+The population of New York in 1890 was 1,513,501. In 1888 there were in
+New York 1,093,701 persons living in tenement houses.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in 1889, there died in New York hospitals 6102; in lunatic
+asylums, 448; while the number of pauper funerals was 3815.</p>
+
+<p>In 1890 there were in New York 37,316 tenements, with a gross population
+of 1,250,000.</p>
+
+<p>These things are facts, and our practical politicians love facts.</p>
+
+<p>But these are not all the facts. No. In this book about New York I find
+careful plans and drawings of the slums, and I can assure you we have
+nothing so horrible in all England. Nor do the revelations of Mr. Riis
+stop there. We have full details of the sweating shops, the men and
+women crowded together in filthy and noisome dens, working at starvation
+prices, from morning until late on in the night, "until brain and muscle
+break down together." We have pictures of the beggars, the tramps, the
+seamstresses, the unemployed, the thieves, the desperadoes, the lost
+women, the street arabs, the vile drinking and opium dens, and we have
+facts and figures to prove that this great capital of the great Republic
+is growing worse; and all this, my practical friends, in spite of the
+fact that in America they have</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Manhood Suffrage;<br />Payment of Members;<br />No House of Peers;<br />No State
+Church; and<br />Free Education;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>which is more than our most advanced politicians claim as the full
+extent to which England can be taken by means of practical politics&mdash;as
+understood by the two great parties.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p><p>Now, I want to know, and I shall be glad if some practical friend will
+tell me, whether a programme of practical politics which leaves the
+metropolis of a free and democratic nation a nest of poverty, commercial
+slavery, vice, crime, insanity, and disease, is likely to make the
+English people healthy, and wealthy, and wise? And I ask you to consider
+whether this seven-branched programme is worth fighting for, if it is to
+result in a density of slum population nearly twice as great as that of
+the worst districts of the worst slums of Manchester?</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me, as an unpractical man, that a practical programme which
+results in 522 persons to the acre, 18 hours a day for bread and butter,
+and nearly 4000 pauper funerals a year in one city, is a programme which
+only <i>very</i> practical men would be fools enough to fight for.</p>
+
+<p>At anyrate, I for one will have nothing to say to such a despicable
+sham. A programme which does not touch the sweater nor the slum; which
+does not hinder the system of fraud and murder called free competition;
+which does not give back to the English people their own country or
+their own earnings, may be good enough for politicians, but it is no use
+to men and women.</p>
+
+<p>No, my lads, there is no system of economics, politics, or ethics
+whereby it shall be made just or expedient to take that which you have
+not earned, or to take that which another man has earned; there can be
+no health, no hope in a nation where everyone is trying to get more than
+he has earned, and is hocussing his conscience with platitudes about
+God's Providence having endowed men with different degrees of intellect and virtue.</p>
+
+<p>How many years is it since the Newcastle programme was issued? What did
+it <i>promise</i> that the poor workers of America and France have not
+already obtained? What good would it do you if you got it? <i>And when do
+you think you are likely to get it?</i> Is it any nearer now than it was
+seven years ago? Will it be any nearer ten years hence than it is now if
+you wait for the practical politicians of the old parties to give it to you?</p>
+
+<p>One of the great stumbling-blocks in the way of all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> progress for Labour
+is the lingering belief of the working man in the Liberal Party.</p>
+
+<p>In the past the Liberals were regarded as the party of progress. They
+won many fiscal and political reforms for the people. And now, when they
+will not, or cannot, go any farther, their leaders talk about
+"ingratitude" if the worker is advised to leave them and form a Labour Party.</p>
+
+<p>But when John Bright refused to go any farther, when he refused to go as
+far as Home Rule, did the Liberal Party think of gratitude to one of
+their greatest men? No. They dropped John Bright, and they blamed <i>him</i>
+because he had halted.</p>
+
+<p>They why should they demand that you shall stay with them out of
+gratitude now they have halted?</p>
+
+<p>The Liberal Party claim to be the workers' friends. What have they done
+for him during the last ten years? What are they willing to do for him
+now, or when they get office?</p>
+
+<p>Here is a quotation from a speech made some years ago by Sir William Harcourt&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>An attempt is being sedulously made to identify the Liberal
+Government and the Liberal Party with dreamers of dreams, with
+wild, anarchical ideas, and anti-social projects. Gentlemen, I say,
+if I have a right to speak on behalf of the Liberal Party, that we
+have no sympathy with these mischief-makers at all. The Liberal
+Party has no share in them; their policy is a constructive policy;
+they have no revolutionary schemes either in politics, in society,
+or in trade.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>You may say that is old. Try this new one. It is from the lips of Mr.
+Harmsworth, the "official Liberal candidate" at the last by-election in
+North-East Lanark&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>My own opinion is that a <i>modus vivendi</i> should be arrived at
+between the official Liberal Party and such Labour organisations as
+desire parliamentary representation, provided, of course, that they
+are not <i>tainted with Socialist doctrines</i>. It should not be
+difficult to come to something like an amicable settlement. I must
+say that it came upon me with something of a shock to find that
+amongst those who sent messages to the Socialist candidate wishing
+success to him in his propaganda were two Members of Parliament who
+profess allegiance to the Liberal Party.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Provided, "of course," that <i>they are not tainted with</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> <i>Socialist
+doctrines</i>. With Socialist doctrines Sir William Harcourt and Mr.
+Harmsworth will have no dealings.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if you read what I have written in this book you will see that
+there is no possible reform that can do the workers any real or lasting
+good unless that reform is <i>tainted with Socialist doctrines</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Only legislation of a socialistic nature can benefit the working class.
+And that kind of legislation the Liberals will not touch.</p>
+
+<p>It is true there are some individual members amongst the Radicals who
+are prepared to go a good way with the Socialists. But what can they do?
+In the House they must obey the Party Whip, and the Party Whip never
+cracks for socialistic measures.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder how many Labour seats have been lost through Home Rule. Time
+after time good Labour candidates have been defeated because Liberal
+working men feared to lose a Home Rule vote in the House.</p>
+
+<p>And what has Labour got from the Home Rule Liberals it has elected?</p>
+
+<p>And where is Home Rule to-day?</p>
+
+<p>Let me give you a typical case. A Liberal Unionist lost his seat. He at
+once became a Home Ruler, and was adopted as Liberal candidate to stand
+against a Labour candidate and against a Tory. The Labour candidate was
+a Home Ruler, and had been a Home Ruler when the Liberal candidate was a Unionist.</p>
+
+<p>But the Liberal working men would not vote for the Labour man. Why?
+Because they were afraid he would not get in. If he did not get in the
+Tory would get in, and the Home Rule vote would be one less in the House.</p>
+
+<p>They voted for the Liberal, and he was returned. That is ten years ago.
+What good has that M.P. done for Home Rule, and what has he done for Labour?</p>
+
+<p>The Labour man could have done no more for Home Rule, but he would have
+worked hard for Labour, and no Party Whip would have checked him.</p>
+
+<p>Well, during those ten years it is not too much to say that fifty Labour
+candidates have been sacrificed in the same way to Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p><p>In ten years those men would have done good service. <i>And they were all
+Home Rulers.</i></p>
+
+<p>Such is the wisdom of the working men who cling to the tails of the Liberal Party.</p>
+
+<p>Return a hundred Labour men to the House of Commons, and the Liberal
+Party will be stronger than if a hundred Liberals were sent in their
+place, for there is not a sound plank in the Liberal programme which the
+Labour M.P. would wish removed.</p>
+
+<p>But do you doubt for a moment that the presence in the House of a
+hundred Labour members would do no more for Labour than the presence in
+their stead of a hundred Liberals? A working man must be very dull if he believes that.</p>
+
+<p>That is my case against the old parties. I could say no more if I tried.
+If you want to benefit your own class, if you want to hasten reform, if
+you want to frighten the Tories and wake up the Liberals, put your hands
+in your pockets, find a <i>farthing a week</i> for election and for
+parliamentary expenses, send a hundred Labour men to the House, and
+watch the effects. I think you will be more than satisfied. And <i>that</i>
+is what <i>I</i> call "practical politics."</p>
+
+<p>Finally, to end as I began, if self-interest is the strongest motive in
+human nature, the man who wants his own advantage secured will be wise
+to attend to it himself.</p>
+
+<p>The Liberal Party may be a better party than the Tory Party, but the
+<i>best</i> party for Labour is a <i>Labour</i> Party.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>CHAPTER XIX</span> <span class="smaller">TO-DAY'S WORK</span></h2>
+
+<p>Self-interest being the strongest motive in human nature, he who wishes
+his interests to be served will be wise to attend to them himself.</p>
+
+<p>If you, Mr. Smith, as a working man, wish to have better wages, shorter
+hours, more holidays, and cheaper living, you had better take a hand in
+the class war by becoming a recruit in the army of Labour.</p>
+
+<p>The first line of the Labour army is the Trade Unions.</p>
+
+<p>The second line is the Municipality.</p>
+
+<p>The third line is Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>If working men desire to improve their conditions they will be wise to
+serve their own interests by using the Trade Unions, the Municipalities,
+and the House of Commons for all they are worth; and they are worth a lot.</p>
+
+<p>Votes you have in plenty, for all practical purposes, and of money you
+can yourselves raise more than you need, without either hurting
+yourselves or incurring obligations to men of other classes.</p>
+
+<p>One penny a week from 4,000,000 of working men would mean a yearly
+income of &pound;866,000.</p>
+
+<p>We are always hearing that the working classes cannot find enough money
+to pay the election expenses of their own parliamentary candidates nor
+to keep their own Labour members if elected.</p>
+
+<p>If 4,000,000 workers paid one penny a week (the price of a Sunday paper,
+or of one glass of cheap beer) they would have &pound;866,000 at the end of a year.</p>
+
+<p>Election expenses of 200 Labour candidates at &pound;500 each would be &pound;100,000.</p>
+
+<p>Pay of 200 Labour members at &pound;200 a year would be &pound;40,000.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p><p>Total, &pound;140,000: leaving a balance in hand of &pound;726,000.</p>
+
+<p>Election expenses of 2000 candidates for School Board, Municipal
+Councils, and Boards of Guardians at &pound;50 per man would be &pound;100,000.
+Leaving a balance of &pound;626,000.</p>
+
+<p>Now the cause of Labour has very few friends amongst the newspapers. As
+I have said before, at times of strikes and other industrial crises, the
+Press goes almost wholly against the workers.</p>
+
+<p>The 4,000,000 men I have supposed to wake up to their own interest could
+establish weekly and daily papers of <i>their own</i> at a cost of &pound;50,000
+for each paper. Say one weekly paper at a penny, one daily paper at a
+penny, or one morning and one evening paper at a halfpenny each.</p>
+
+<p>These papers would have a ready-made circulation amongst the men who
+owned them. They could be managed, edited, and written by trained
+journalists engaged for the work, and could contain all the best
+features of the political papers now bought by working men.</p>
+
+<p>Say, then, that the weekly paper cost &pound;50,000 to start, and that the
+morning and evening papers cost the same. That would be &pound;150,000, and
+the papers would pay in less than a year.</p>
+
+<p>You see, then, that 4,000,000 of men could finance 3 newspapers, 200
+parliamentary and 2000 local elections, and pay one year's salary to 200
+Members of Parliament for &pound;390,000, or less than <i>one halfpenny</i> a week
+for one year.</p>
+
+<p>If you paid the full penny a week for one year you could do all I have
+said and have a balance in hand of &pound;476,000.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, then, it is nonsense to talk about the difficulty of finding
+money for election expenses.</p>
+
+<p>But you might not be able to get 4,000,000 of men to pay even one penny.</p>
+
+<p>Then you could produce the same result if <i>one</i> million (half your
+present Trade Union membership) pay twopence a week.</p>
+
+<p>And even at a cost of twopence a week do you not think the result would
+be worth the cost? Imagine the effect on the Press, and on Parliament,
+and on the employers, and on public opinion of your fighting 200
+parliamentary and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> 2000 municipal elections, and founding three
+newspapers. Then the moral effect of the work the newspapers would do
+would be sure to result in an increase of the Trade Union membership.</p>
+
+<p>A penny looks such a poor, contemptible coin, and even the poor labourer
+often wastes one. But remember that union is strength, and pennies make
+pounds. 1000 pennies make more than &pound;4; 100,000 pennies come to more
+than &pound;400; 1,000,000 pennies come to &pound;4000; 1,000,000 pennies a week for
+a year give you the enormous sum of &pound;210,000.</p>
+
+<p>We <i>Clarion</i> men founded a paper called the <i>Clarion</i> with less than
+&pound;400 capital, and with no friends or backers, and although we have never
+given gambling news, nor general news, and had no Trade Unions behind
+us, we have carried our paper on for ten years, and it is stronger now than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Why, then, should the working classes, and especially the Trade Unions,
+submit to the insults and misrepresentations of newspapers run by
+capitalists, when they can have better papers of their own to plead their own cause?</p>
+
+<p>Suppose it cost &pound;100,000 to start a first-class daily Trade Union organ.
+How much would that mean to 2,000,000 of Unionists? If it cost &pound;100,000
+to start the paper, and if it lost &pound;100,000 a year, it would only mean
+one halfpenny a week for the first year, and one farthing a week for the
+next. But I am quite confident that if the Unions did the thing in
+earnest they could start a paper for &pound;50,000, and run it at a profit
+after the first six months.</p>
+
+<p>Do not forget the power of the penny. If 10,000,000 of working men and
+women gave <i>one penny a year</i> it would reach a yearly income of <i>forty
+thousand pounds</i>. A good deal may be done with &pound;40,000, Mr. Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Now a few words as to the three lines of operations. You have your Trade
+Unions, and you have a very modest kind of Federation. If your 2,000,000
+Unionists were federated at a weekly subscription of one penny per man,
+your yearly income would be nearly half a million: a very useful kind of
+fund. I should strongly advise you to strengthen your Trades Federation.</p>
+
+<p>Next as to Municipal affairs. These are of more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>importance to you than
+Parliament. Let me give you an idea. Suppose, as in the case of
+Manchester and Liverpool, the difference between a private gas company
+and a Municipal gas supply amounts to more than a shilling on each 1000
+feet of gas. Setting the average workman's gas consumption at 4000 feet
+per quarter, that means a saving to each Manchester working man of
+sixteen shillings a year, or just about fourpence a week.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose a tram company carries a man to his work and back at one penny,
+and the Corporation carries him at one halfpenny. The man saves a penny
+a day, or 25s. a year. Now if 100,000 men piled up their tram savings
+for one year as a labour fund it would come to &pound;125,000.</p>
+
+<p>All that money those men are now giving to tram companies <i>for nothing</i>.
+Is that practical?</p>
+
+<p>You may apply the same process of thought to all the other things you
+use. Just figure out what you would save if you had Municipal or State managed</p>
+
+<table class="left" summary="Municipal or State managed">
+  <tr>
+    <td>Railways</td>
+    <td>Coalmines</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Tramways</td>
+    <td>Omnibuses</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Gas</td>
+    <td>Water</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Milk</td>
+    <td>Bread</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Meat</td>
+    <td>Butter and cheese</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Vegetables&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Beer</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Houses</td>
+    <td>Shops</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Boots</td>
+    <td>Clothing</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>and other necessaries.</p>
+
+<p>On all those needful things you are now paying big percentages of profit
+to private dealers, all of which the Municipality would save you.</p>
+
+<p>And you can municipalise all those things and save all that money by
+sticking together as a Labour Party, and by paying <i>one penny a week</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Again I advise you to read those books by George Haw and R. B. Suthers.
+Read them, and give them to other workers to read.</p>
+
+<p>And then set about making a Labour Party <i>at once</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Next as to Parliament. You ought to put at least 200 Labour members into
+the House. Never mind Liberalism and Toryism. Mr. Morley said in January
+that what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> puzzled him was to "find any difference between the new
+Liberalism and the new Conservatism." Do not try to find a difference,
+John. Have a Labour Party.</p>
+
+<p>"Self-interest is the strongest motive in human nature." Take care of
+your own interests and stand by your own class.</p>
+
+<p>You will ask, perhaps, what these 200 Labour representatives are to do.
+They should do anything and everything they can do in the House of
+Commons for the interests of the working class.</p>
+
+<p>But if you want programmes and lists of measures, get the Fabian
+Parliamentary and Municipal programmes, and study them. You will find
+the particulars as to price, etc., at the end of this book.</p>
+
+<p>But here are some measures which you might be pushing and helping
+whenever a chance presents itself, in Parliament or out of Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>Removal of taxation from articles used by the workers, such as tea and
+tobacco, and increase of taxation on large incomes and on land.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Compulsory sale of land for the purpose of Municipal houses, works,
+farms, and gardens.</p>
+
+<p>Nationalisation of railways and mines.</p>
+
+<p>Taxation to extinction of all mineral royalties.</p>
+
+<p>Vastly improved education for the working classes.</p>
+
+<p>Old age pensions.</p>
+
+<p>Adoption of the Initiative and Referendum.</p>
+
+<p>Universal adult suffrage.</p>
+
+<p>Eight hours' day and standard rates of wages in all Government and
+Municipal works.</p>
+
+<p>Establishment of a Department of Agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>State insurance of life.</p>
+
+<p>Nationalisation of all banks.</p>
+
+<p>The second ballot.</p>
+
+<p>Abolition of property votes.</p>
+
+<p>Formation of a citizen army for home defence.</p>
+
+<p>Abolition of workhouses.</p>
+
+<p>Solid legislation on the housing question.</p>
+
+<p>Government inquiry into the food question, with a view to restore
+British agriculture.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p><p>Those are a few steps towards the desired goal of <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>You may perhaps wonder why I do not ask you to found a Socialist Party.
+I do not think the workers are ready for it. And I feel that if you
+found a Labour Party every step you take towards the emancipation of
+Labour will be a step towards <i>Socialism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But I should like to think that many workers will become Socialists at
+once, and more as they live and learn.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, Mr. Smith, I do not want to ask too much of the mass of
+working folks, who have been taught little, and mostly taught wrong, and
+whose opportunities of getting knowledge have been but poor.</p>
+
+<p>I am not asking working men to be plaster saints nor stained-glass
+angels, but only to be really what their flatterers are so fond of
+telling them they are now: shrewd, hard-headed men, distrusting theories
+and believing in facts.</p>
+
+<p>For the statement that private trading and private management of
+production and distribution are the best, and the only "possible," ways
+of carrying on the business of the nation is only a <i>theory</i>, Mr. Smith;
+but the superiority of Municipal management in cheapness, in efficiency,
+in health, in comfort, and in pleasantness is a solid <i>fact</i>, Mr. Smith,
+which has been demonstrated just as often as Municipal and private
+management have been contrasted in their action.</p>
+
+<p>One other question I may anticipate. How are the workers to form a Labour Party?</p>
+
+<p>There are already two Labour parties formed.</p>
+
+<p>One is the Trade Union body, the other is the Independent Labour Party.</p>
+
+<p>The Trade Unions are numerous, but not politically organised nor united.</p>
+
+<p>The Independent Labour Party is organised and united, but is weak in
+numbers and poor in funds.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to see the Trade Unions fully federated, and formed into a
+political as well as an Industrial Labour Party on lines similar to
+those of the Independent Labour Party.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p><p>Or I should like to see the whole of your 2,000,000 of Trade Unionists
+join the Independent Labour Party.</p>
+
+<p>Or, best of all, I should like to see the Unions, the Independent Labour
+Party, and the great and growing body of unorganised and unattached
+Socialists formed into one grand Socialist Party.</p>
+
+<p>But I do not want to ask too much.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, I ask you, as a reader of this book, not to sit down in
+despair with the feeling that the workers will not move, but to try to
+move them. Be you <i>one</i>, John Smith. Be you the first. Then you shall
+surely win a few, and each of those few shall win a few, and so are
+multitudes composed.</p>
+
+<p>Let us make a long story short. I have here given you, as briefly and as
+plainly as I can, the best advice of which I am capable, after a dozen
+years' study and experience of Labour politics and economics and the
+lives of working men and women.</p>
+
+<p>If you approve of this little book I shall be glad if you will recommend
+it to your friends.</p>
+
+<p>You will find Labour matters treated of every week in the <i>Clarion</i>,
+which is a penny paper, published every Friday, and obtainable at 72
+Fleet Street, London, E.C., and of all newsagents.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven, friend John Smith, helps those who help themselves; but Heaven
+also helps those who try to help their fellow-creatures.</p>
+
+<p>If you are shrewd and strong and skilful, think a little and work a
+little for the millions of your own class who are ignorant and weak and
+friendless. If you have a wife and children whom you love, remember the
+many poor and wretched women and children who are robbed of love, of
+leisure, of sunshine and sweet air, of knowledge and of hope, in the
+pent and dismal districts of our big, misgoverned towns. If you as a
+Briton are proud of your country and your race, if you as a man have any
+pride of manhood, or as a worker have any pride of class, come over to
+us and help in the just and wise policy of winning Britain for the
+British, manhood for <i>all</i> men, womanhood for <i>all</i> women, and love
+to-day and hope to-morrow for the children whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> Christ loved, but who
+by many Christians have unhappily been forgotten.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>That it may please thee to succour, help, and comfort <i>all</i> that
+are in danger, necessity, and tribulation.</p>
+
+<p>That it may please thee to defend, and provide for, the fatherless
+children, and widows, and <i>all</i> that are desolate and oppressed.</p>
+
+<p>That it may please thee to have mercy upon <i>all</i> men.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I end as I began, by quoting those beautiful words from the Litany. If
+we would realise the prayer they utter, we must turn to <i>Socialism</i>; if
+we would win defence for the fatherless children and the widows,
+succour, help, and comfort for <i>all</i> that are in danger, necessity, or
+tribulation, and mercy for <i>all</i> men, we must win Britain for the British.</p>
+
+<p>Without the workers we cannot win, with the workers we cannot fail. Will
+you be one to help us&mdash;<i>now</i>?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>WHAT TO READ</span></h2>
+
+<p>The following books and pamphlets treat more fully the various subjects
+dealt with in <i>Britain for the British</i>.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">To-day's Work.</span> G. Haw. Clarion Press, 72 Fleet Street. 2s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Does Municipal Management Pay?</span> By R. B. Suthers. 6d. Clarion Press, 72
+Fleet Street.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Land Nationalisation.</span> A. R. Wallace. 1s. London, Swan Sonnenschein.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Five Precursors of Henry George.</span> By J. Morrison Davidson. 1s. <i>Labour
+Leader</i> Office, 53 Fleet Street, E.C.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dismal England.</span> By R. Blatchford. Clarion Press, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.
+1s.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The White Slaves of England.</span> By R. Sherard. London, James Bowden. 1s.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">No Room to Live.</span> By G. Haw. 2s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fields, Factories, and Workshops.</span> By Prince Kropotkin. 1s. <i>Clarion</i>
+Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Fabian Tracts</span>, especially No. 5, No. 12, and Nos. 30-37. One penny
+each. Fabian Society, 3 Clement's Inn, Strand, or <i>Clarion</i> Office, 72
+Fleet Street, E.C.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p><p><span class="smcap">Our Food Supply in Time of War.</span> By Captain Stewart L. Murray. 6d.
+<i>Clarion</i> Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Clarion.</span> A newspaper for Socialists and Working Men. One penny
+weekly. Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Clarion</i> can be ordered of all newsagents</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>APPENDIX.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The American workingman will not find it very hard to see that the
+lesson of "Britain for the British" applies with even greater force to
+the conditions in his own country.</p>
+
+<p>American railroads, mines, and factories exploit, cripple and kill
+American laborers on an even larger scale than the British ones. We have
+even less laws for the protection of the workers and their children and
+what we have are not so well enforced.</p>
+
+<p>No one will deny the ability of America to feed herself. She feeds the
+world to-day save that some American workers and their families are
+rather poorly fed. The great problem with American capitalists is how to
+get rid of the wealth produced and given to them by American laborers.</p>
+
+<p>Where Liberal and Conservative parties are mentioned every American
+reader will find himself unconsciously substituting Democratic and Republican.</p>
+
+<p>It will do the average American good to "see himself as others see him"
+and to know that manhood suffrage, freedom from established Church and
+Republican institutions do not prevent his becoming an economic slave
+and living in a slum.</p>
+
+<p>But we fear that some American readers will be shrewd enough to call
+attention to the fact that municipal ownership has not abolished, or to
+any great extent improved the slums of London, Glasgow and Birmingham.
+It is certain some of the thousands of German laborers who are living in
+America would be quick to point out that although Bismark has
+nationalized the railroads and telegraphs of Germany this has not
+altered the fact of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> the exploitation of German workingmen. Worst of
+all, it would be hard to explain to the multitude of Russian exiles now
+living in America that they would have been better off had they remained
+at home, because the Czar has made more industries government property
+than belong to any other nation in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Even native Americans would find it somewhat hard to understand how
+matters would be improved by transferring the ownership of the coal
+mines, for example, from a Hanna-controlled corporation to a
+Hanna-directed government. There would be one or two different links in
+the chain of connection uniting Hanna to the mines and the miners but
+they would be as well forged and as capable of holding the laborer in
+slavery as the present ones.</p>
+
+<p>Happily the chapter on "Why the old Parties will not do" gives us a clue
+to the way out. While the government is controlled by capitalist parties
+government ownership of industries does little more than simplify the
+process of reorganization to be performed when a real labor party shall
+gain control. The victory of such a party will for the first time mean
+that government-owned industries will be owned and controlled by all the
+workers (who will also be all the people, since idlers will have disappeared).</p>
+
+<p>American workers are fortunate in that there is a political party
+already in the field which exactly meets the ideal described in the last
+three chapters. The Socialist Party is a trade-union party, a labor
+party and the political expression of all the workers in America who
+have become intelligent enough to understand their own self-interest.
+Those who feel that they wish to lend a hand in securing the triumph of
+the ideas set forth in "Britain for the British" should at once join
+that party and work for its success.</p>
+
+<p class="right">A. M. SIMONS.<br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span>BOOKS BY ROBERT BLATCHFORD</span> <span class="smaller">("NUNQUAM.")</span></h2>
+
+<p><b>MERRIE ENGLAND.</b>&mdash;Cloth, crown 8vo, 2s, 6d., by Robert Blatchford.</p>
+
+<p>A book on sociology. Called by the Review of Reviews: "The Poor Man's
+Plato." Over a million copies sold. Translated into Welsh, Dutch,
+French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Norwegian, and Swedish.</p>
+
+<p><b>TALES FOR THE MARINES.</b>&mdash;A New Book of Soldier Stories. By Nunquam.</p>
+
+<p>The Daily Chronicle says:</p>
+
+<p>"This volume contains a batch of stories ('cuffers,' we understand is
+the correct technical term) supposed to be told by soldiers in the
+barrack-room after lights are out; and capital stories they are. If we
+were to call them 'rattling' and also 'ripping' we should not be saying
+a word too much. For our own part we never want to see a better fight
+than that between the bayonet and the sword in 'The Mousetrap,' or to
+read a sounder lecture on social philosophy than that delivered by
+Sergeant Wren in 'Dear Lady Disdain.' Mr. Blatchford knows the
+barrack-room from the inside, and obviously from the inside has learned
+to love and to enjoy it."</p>
+
+<p><b>JULIE.</b>&mdash;A Study of a Girl by a Man. Nunquam's Story of Slum Life. Price
+2/6; by post, 2/8.</p>
+
+<p>The Liverpool Review says:</p>
+
+<p>"'Julie,' unlike 'The Master Christian,' is beautiful inside as well as
+out. Nunquam, like Corelli, has a mission to perform&mdash;to utilize romance
+as a finger-post to indicate social wrongs; but, unlike Corelli, he
+succeeds in his purpose. And why does he succeed where she fails?
+Because he goes at his task sympathetically, with a warm heart; whereas
+she goes at it sourly, with a pen dipped in gall. It is all a question
+of temperament. If you want an object-lesson in the effect which
+temperament has upon artistic achievement, read 'The Master Christian'
+and follow it up with 'Julie.'"</p>
+
+<p><b>THE BOUNDER.</b>&mdash;The Story of a Man by his Friend. By Nunquam. Price 2/6;
+by post, 2/8.</p>
+
+<p>All who loved the Bounder and admired his work should avail themselves
+of the opportunity to possess this record of both, before the edition is
+exhausted.</p>
+
+<p><b>A BOHEMIAN GIRL.</b>&mdash;A Theatrical Novel. By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post,
+2/8.</p>
+
+<p>Manchester City News:</p>
+
+<p>"The swift interchange of thought and repartee in the conversations
+remind one of the brilliant 'Dolly Dialogues'; but there is an
+underlying earnestness and a deeper meaning in Mr. McGinnis's seemingly
+careless story than in Mr. Anthony Hope's society pictures."</p>
+
+<p><b>MY FAVORITE BOOKS.</b>&mdash;By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post, 2/8. With Portrait
+of the Author.</p>
+
+<p>The Christian Globe says:</p>
+
+<p>"Instinct with generous and eloquent appreciation of what is brightest
+and best in our literature, we have only to complain that there is so
+little of it after all. Again we feel the spell of old times in the
+charmed garden; the breeze blows fresh, sweet is the odor of the roses,
+and we wander with our guide wherever it pleases him to lead us. We can
+give the author no higher praise. May his book prosper as it deserves."</p>
+
+<p><b>TOMMY ATKINS.</b>&mdash;By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post, 2/8. Paper, 1/-; by post,
+1/3.</p>
+
+<p>A soldier story of great popularity which has already gone through
+several editions, and was long ago pronounced by Sir Evelyn Wood, and
+other great authorities on the army, to be the best story on army life
+ever written.</p>
+
+<p><b>DISMAL ENGLAND.</b>&mdash;By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post, 2/8. Paper, 1/-; by
+post, 1/2.</p>
+
+<p>A thrilling and life-like series of sketches of life in its darker
+phases.</p>
+
+<p><b>PINK DIAMONDS.</b>&mdash;A Wild Story. By Nunquam. Cloth, 2/-; by post, 2/2.
+Paper, 6d.; by post, 8d.</p>
+
+<p>A capital antidote to the dumps; full of rollicking action and wild
+humor.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE NUNQUAM PAPERS.</b>&mdash;2/-; by post, 2/2.</p>
+
+<p>Some of Nunquam's best articles and sketches.</p>
+
+<p><b>FANTASIAS.</b>&mdash;By Nunquam. Cloth, 2/-; by post, 2/2. Paper, 6d.; by post,
+8d.</p>
+
+<p>Tales and essays of graphic, humorous and pathetic interest.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p><b>A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A DOG.</b>&mdash;By The Whatnot. Cloth and gold, 2/6; by
+post, 2/8.</p>
+
+<p><b>TO-DAY'S WORK.</b>&mdash;Municipal Government the Hope of Democracy. By George
+Haw, author of "No Room to Live." Price 2/6; by post, 2/8.</p>
+
+<p>A reprint, with revisions and additional chapters, of The Outlaw's
+articles on Local Government, published in the Clarion under the
+heading, "What we can do to-day."</p>
+
+<p><b>THE ART OF HAPPINESS.</b>&mdash;By Mont Bloug. With portrait of the Author.
+Cloth, 2/-; by post, 2/2.</p>
+
+<p>A mixture of fun and philosophy, of which the large edition is nearly
+exhausted, and is not likely to be reprinted. Those who have neglected
+to get it should do so while there is yet time. It is a book that any
+reader will be thankful for.</p>
+
+<p><b>DANGLE'S MIXTURE.</b>&mdash;By A. M. Thompson. Cloth, 1/6; by post, 1/8.</p>
+
+<p><b>DANGLE'S ROUGH CUT.</b>&mdash;By A. M. Thompson. Cloth, 1/6; by post, 1/8.</p>
+
+<p>Capital examples of Dangular humor, of which it can be truthfully said
+that each is better than the other, while both are amusing enough to
+bring out a cheerful smile upon the glummest face.</p>
+
+<p class="bold">CLARION PRESS, 72 Fleet Street, London, E. C.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/advert.jpg" width='429' height='350' alt="Clarion advert" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Britain for the British, by Robert Blatchford
+
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Britain for the British, by Robert Blatchford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Britain for the British
+
+Author: Robert Blatchford
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2010 [EBook #34534]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH
+
+BY
+
+_ROBERT BLATCHFORD_
+EDITOR OF THE CLARION
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+LONDON
+CLARION PRESS, 72 FLEET STREET, E. C.
+
+CHICAGO
+CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
+56 FIFTH AVENUE
+
+
+Copyright, 1902,
+BY CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY.
+
+Printed in the United States.
+
+
+DEDICATED TO A. M. THOMPSON
+
+AND THE CLARION FELLOWSHIP
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.                                                            PAGE
+
+THE TITLE, PURPOSE, AND METHOD OF THIS BOOK                         1
+
+FOREWORDS                                                           6
+
+I. THE UNEQUAL DIVISION OF WEALTH                                  10
+
+II. WHAT IS WEALTH? WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? WHO CREATES IT?       26
+
+III. HOW THE FEW GET RICH AND KEEP THE MANY POOR                   33
+
+IV. THE BRAIN-WORKER, OR INVENTOR                                  45
+
+V. THE LANDLORD'S RIGHTS AND THE PEOPLE'S RIGHTS                   51
+
+VI. LUXURY AND THE GREAT USEFUL EMPLOYMENT FRAUD                   63
+
+VII. WHAT SOCIALISM IS NOT                                         74
+
+VIII. WHAT SOCIALISM IS                                            82
+
+IX. COMPETITION _v._ CO-OPERATION                                  90
+
+X. FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN FOOD                                  97
+
+XI. HOW TO KEEP FOREIGN TRADE                                     102
+
+XII. CAN BRITAIN FEED HERSELF?                                    110
+
+XIII. THE SUCCESSFUL MAN                                          119
+
+XIV. TEMPERANCE AND THRIFT                                        127
+
+XV. THE SURPLUS LABOUR MISTAKE                                    135
+
+XVI. IS SOCIALISM POSSIBLE, AND WILL IT PAY?                      141
+
+XVII. THE NEED FOR A LABOUR PARTY                                 148
+
+XVIII. WHY THE OLD PARTIES WILL NOT DO                            156
+
+XIX. TO-DAY'S WORK                                                166
+
+WHAT TO READ                                                      174
+
+
+
+
+THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK
+
+
+The motto of this book is expressed in its title: BRITAIN FOR THE
+BRITISH.
+
+At present Britain does not belong to the British: it belongs to a few
+of the British, who employ the bulk of the population as servants or as
+workers.
+
+It is because Britain does not belong to the British that a few are very
+rich and the many are very poor.
+
+It is because Britain does not belong to the British that we find
+amongst the _owning_ class a state of useless luxury and pernicious
+idleness, and amongst the _working_ classes a state of drudging toil, of
+wearing poverty and anxious care.
+
+This state of affairs is contrary to Christianity, is contrary to
+justice, and contrary to reason. It is bad for the rich, it is bad for
+the poor; it is against the best interests of the British nation and the
+human race.
+
+The remedy for this evil state of things--the _only_ remedy yet
+suggested--is _Socialism_. And _Socialism_ is broadly expressed in the
+title and motto of this book: BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH.
+
+
+THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
+
+
+The purpose of this book is to convert the reader to _Socialism_: to
+convince him that the present system--political, industrial, and
+social--is bad; to explain to him why it is bad, and to prove to him
+that Socialism is the only true remedy.
+
+
+FOR WHOM THIS BOOK IS INTENDED
+
+
+This book is intended for any person who does not understand, or has, so
+far, refused to accept the principles of _Socialism_.
+
+But it is especially addressed, as my previous book, _Merrie England_,
+was addressed, to JOHN SMITH, a typical British working man, not yet
+converted to _Socialism_.
+
+I hope this book will be read by every opponent of _Socialism_; and I
+hope it will be read by all those good folks who, though not yet
+_Socialists_, are anxious to help their fellow-creatures, to do some
+good in their own day and generation, and to leave the world a little
+better than they found it.
+
+I hope that all lovers of justice and of truth will read this book, and
+that many of them will be thereby led to a fuller study of _Socialism_.
+
+To the Tory and the Radical; to the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and
+the Nonconformist; to the workman and the employer; to the scholar and
+the peer; to the labourer's wife, the housemaid, and the duchess; to the
+advocates of Temperance and of Co-operation; to the Trade Unionist and
+the non-Unionist; to the potman, the bishop, and the brewer; to the
+artist and the merchant; to the poet and the navvy; to the Idealist and
+the Materialist; to the poor clerk, the rich financier, the great
+scientist, and the little child, I commend the following beautiful
+prayer from the Litany of the Church of England:--
+
+
+    That it may please thee to bring into the way of truth _all_ such as
+    have erred, and are deceived.
+
+    That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; and to
+    comfort and help the weak-hearted; and to raise up them that fall;
+    and finally to beat down Satan under our feet.
+
+    That it may please thee to succour, help, and comfort _all_ that are
+    in danger, necessity, and tribulation.
+
+    That it may please thee to preserve _all_ that travel by land or by
+    water, _all_ women labouring of child, _all_ sick persons, and young
+    children; and to shew thy pity upon _all_ prisoners and captives.
+
+    That it may please thee to defend, and provide for, the fatherless
+    children, and widows, and _all_ that are desolate and oppressed.
+
+    That it may please thee to have mercy upon _all_ men.
+
+    That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and
+    slanderers, and to turn their hearts.
+
+    That it may please thee to give and preserve to our use the kindly
+    fruits of the earth, so as in due time we may enjoy them.
+
+    _We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord._
+
+
+I have italicised the word "all" in that prayer to emphasise the fact
+that mercy, succour, comfort, and pardon are here asked for _all_, and
+not for a few.
+
+I now ask the reader of this book, with those words of broad charity and
+sweet kindliness still fresh in mind, to remember the unmerited
+miseries, the ill-requited labour, the gnawing penury, and the loveless
+and unhonoured lives to which an evil system dooms millions of British
+men and women. I ask the reader to discover for himself how much pity we
+bestow upon our "prisoners and captives," how much provision we make for
+the "fatherless children and widows," what nature and amount of
+"succour, help, and comfort" we vouchsafe to "all who are in danger,
+necessity, and tribulation." I ask him to consider, with regard to those
+"kindly fruits of the earth," who produces, and who enjoys them; and I
+beg him next to proceed in a judicial spirit, by means of candour and
+right reason, to examine fairly and weigh justly the means proposed by
+Socialists for abolishing poverty and oppression, and for conferring
+prosperity, knowledge, and freedom upon _all_ men.
+
+BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH: that is our motto. We ask for a fair and open
+trial. We solicit an impartial hearing of the case for _Socialism_.
+Listen patiently to our statements; consider our arguments; accord to us
+a fair field and no favour; and may the truth prevail.
+
+
+THE METHOD OF THIS BOOK
+
+
+As to the method of this book, I shall begin by calling attention to
+some of the evils of the present industrial, social, and political
+system.
+
+I shall next try to show the sources of those evils, the causes from
+which they arise.
+
+I shall go on to explain what _Socialism_ is, and what _Socialism_ is
+not.
+
+I shall answer the principal objections commonly urged against
+_Socialism_.
+
+And I shall, in conclusion, point out the chief ways in which I think
+the reader of this book may help the cause of _Socialism_ if he believes
+that cause to be just and wise.
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORDS
+
+
+Years ago, before _Socialism_ had gained a footing in this country, some
+of us democrats used often to wonder how any working man could be a
+Tory.
+
+To-day we Socialists are still more puzzled by the fact that the
+majority of our working men are not Socialists.
+
+How is it that middle class and even wealthy people often accept
+_Socialism_ more readily than do the workers?
+
+Perhaps it is because the men and women of the middle and upper classes
+are more in the habit of reading and thinking for themselves, whereas
+the workers take most of their opinions at second-hand from priests,
+parsons, journalists, employers, and members of Parliament, whose little
+knowledge is a dangerous thing, and whose interests lie in bolstering up
+class privilege by darkening counsel with a multitude of words.
+
+I have been engaged for more than a dozen years in studying political
+economy and _Socialism_, and in trying, as a Socialist, pressman, and
+author, to explain _Socialism_ and to confute the arguments and answer
+the objections of non-Socialists, and I say, without any hesitation,
+that I have never yet come across a single argument against practical
+_Socialism_ that will hold water.
+
+I do not believe that any person of fair intelligence and education, who
+will take the trouble to study _Socialism_ fairly and thoroughly, will
+be able to avoid the conclusion that _Socialism_ is just and wise.
+
+I defy any man, of any nation, how learned, eminent, and intellectual
+soever, to shake the case for practical _Socialism_, or to refute the
+reasoning contained in this book.
+
+And now I will address myself to Mr. John Smith, a typical British
+workman, not yet converted to _Socialism_.
+
+
+Dear Mr. Smith, I assume that you are opposed to _Socialism_, and I
+assume that you would say that you are opposed to it for one or more of
+the following reasons:--
+
+
+    1. Because you think _Socialism_ is unjust.
+    2. Because you think _Socialism_ is unpractical.
+    3. Because you think that to establish _Socialism_ is not possible.
+
+
+But I suspect that the real reason for your opposition to _Socialism_ is
+simply that you do not understand it.
+
+The reasons you generally give for opposing _Socialism_ are reasons
+suggested to you by pressmen or politicians who know very little about
+it, or are interested in its rejection.
+
+I am strongly inclined to believe that the _Socialism_ to which you are
+opposed is not _Socialism_ at all, but only a bogey erected by the
+enemies of _Socialism_ to scare you away from the genuine _Socialism_,
+which it would be so much to your advantage to discover.
+
+Now you would not take your opinions of Trade Unionism from
+non-Unionists, and why, then, should you take your opinions of
+_Socialism_ from non-Socialists?
+
+If you will be good enough to read this book you will find out what
+_Socialism_ really is, and what it is not. If after reading this book
+you remain opposed to _Socialism_, I must leave it for some Socialist
+more able than I to convert you.
+
+When it pleases those who call themselves your "betters" to flatter you,
+Mr. Smith (which happens oftener at election times than during strikes
+or lock-outs), you hear that you are a "shrewd, hard-headed, practical
+man." I hope that is true, whether your "betters" believe it or not.
+
+I am a practical man myself, and shall offer you in this book nothing
+but hard fact and cold reason.
+
+I assume, Mr. Smith, that you, as a hard-headed, practical man, would
+rather be well off than badly off, and that with regard to your own
+earnings you would rather be paid twenty shillings in the pound than
+five shillings or even nineteen shillings and elevenpence in the pound.
+
+And I assume that as a family man you would rather live in a
+comfortable and healthy house than in an uncomfortable and unhealthy
+house; that you would be glad if you could buy beef, bread, gas, coal,
+water, tea, sugar, clothes, boots, and furniture for less money than you
+now pay for them; and that you would think it a good thing, and not a
+bad thing, if your wife had less work and more leisure, fewer worries
+and more nice dresses, and if your children had more sports, and better
+health, and better education.
+
+And I assume that you would like to pay lower rents, even if some rich
+landlord had to keep fewer race-horses.
+
+And I assume that as a humane man you would prefer that other men and
+women and their children should not suffer if their sufferings could be
+prevented.
+
+If, then, I assure you that you are paying too much and are being paid
+too little, and that many other Britons, especially weak women and young
+children, are enduring much preventible misery; and if I assert,
+further, that I know of a means whereby you might secure more ease and
+comfort, and they might secure more justice, you will, surely, as a kind
+and sensible man, consent to listen to the arguments and statements I
+propose to place before you.
+
+Suppose a stranger came to tell you where you could get a better house
+at a lower rent, and suppose your present landlord assured you that the
+man who offered the information was a fool or a rogue, would you take
+the landlord's word without investigation? Would it not be more
+practical and hard-headed to hear first what the bringer of such good
+news had to tell?
+
+Well, the Socialist brings you better news than that of a lower rent.
+Will you not hear him? Will you turn your back on him for no better
+reason than because he is denounced as a fraud by the rich men whose
+wealth depends upon the continuation of the present system?
+
+Your "betters" tell you that you always display a wise distrust of new
+ideas. But to reject an idea because it is new is not a proof of
+shrewdness and good sense; it is a sign of bigotry and ignorance. Trade
+Unionism was new not so long ago, and was denounced, and is still
+denounced, by the very same persons who now denounce _Socialism_. If
+you find a newspaper or an employer to be wrong when he denounces Trade
+Unionism, which you do understand, why should you assume that the same
+authority is right in denouncing _Socialism_, which you do not
+understand? You know that in attacking Trade Unionism the employer and
+the pressman are speaking in their own interest and against yours; why,
+then, should you be ready to believe that in counselling you against
+_Socialism_ the same men are speaking in your interest and not in their
+own?
+
+I ask you, as a practical man, to forget both the Socialist and the
+non-Socialist, and to consider the case for and against _Socialism_ on
+its merits. As I said in _Merrie England_--
+
+
+    Forget that you are a joiner or a spinner, a Catholic or a
+    Freethinker, a Liberal or a Tory, a moderate drinker or a
+    teetotaler, and consider the problem as a _man_.
+
+    If you had to do a problem in arithmetic, or if you were cast adrift
+    in an open boat at sea, you would not set to work as a Wesleyan, or
+    a Liberal Unionist; but you would tackle the sum by the rules of
+    arithmetic, and would row the boat by the strength of your own
+    manhood, and keep a lookout for passing ships under _any_ flag. I
+    ask you, then, Mr. Smith, to hear what I have to say, and to decide
+    by your own judgment whether I am right or wrong.
+
+
+I was once opposed to _Socialism_ myself; but it was before I understood
+it.
+
+When you understand it you will, I feel sure, agree with me that it is
+perfectly logical, and just, and practical; and you will, I hope,
+yourself become a _Socialist_, and will help to abolish poverty and
+wrong by securing BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE UNEQUAL DIVISION OF WEALTH
+
+
+_Section A: the Rich_
+
+Non-socialists say that self-interest is the strongest motive in human
+nature.
+
+Let us take them at their word.
+
+Self-interest being the universal ruling motive, it behoves you, Mr.
+Smith, to do the best you can for yourself and family.
+
+Self-interest being the universal ruling motive, it is evident that the
+rich man will look out for his own advantage, and not for yours.
+
+Therefore as a selfish man, alive to your own interests, it is clear
+that you will not trust the rich man, nor believe in the unselfishness
+of his motives.
+
+As a selfish man you will look out first for yourself. If you can get
+more wages for the work you do, if you can get the same pay for fewer
+hours and lighter work, self-interest tells you that you would be a fool
+to go on as you are. If you can get cheaper houses, cheaper clothes,
+food, travelling, and amusement than you now get, self-interest tells
+you that you would be a fool to go on paying present prices.
+
+Your landlord, your employer, your tradesman will not take less work or
+money from you if he can get more.
+
+Self-interest counsels you not to pay a high price if you can get what
+you want at a lower price.
+
+Your employer will not employ you unless you are useful to him, nor will
+he employ you if he can get another man as useful to him as you at a
+lower wage.
+
+Such persons as landlords, capitalists, employers, and contractors will
+tell you that they are useful, and even necessary, to the working class,
+of which class you are one.
+
+Self-interest will counsel you, firstly, that if these persons are
+really useful or necessary to you, it is to your interest to secure
+their services at the lowest possible price; and, secondly, that if you
+can replace them by other persons more useful or less costly, you will
+be justified in dispensing with their services.
+
+Now, the Socialist claims that it is cheaper and better for the people
+to manage their own affairs than to pay landlords, capitalists,
+employers, and contractors to manage their affairs for them.
+
+That is to say, that as it is cheaper and better for a city to make its
+own gas, or to provide its own water, or to lay its own roads, so it
+would be cheaper and better for the nation to own its own land, its own
+mines, its own railways, houses, factories, ships, and workshops, and to
+manage them as the corporation tramways, gasworks, and waterworks are
+now owned and managed.
+
+Your "betters," Mr. Smith, will tell you that you might be worse off
+than you are now. That is not the question. The question is, Might you
+be better off than you are now?
+
+They will tell you that the working man is better off now than he was a
+hundred years ago. That is not the question. The question is, Are the
+workers as well off now as they ought to be and might be?
+
+They will tell you that the British workers are better off than the
+workers of any other nation. That is not the question. The question is,
+Are the British workers as well off as they ought to be and might be?
+
+They will tell you that Socialists are discontented agitators, and that
+they exaggerate the evils of the present time. That is not the question.
+The question is, Do evils exist at all to-day, and if so, is no remedy
+available?
+
+Your "betters" have admitted, and do admit, as I will show you
+presently, that evils do exist; but they have no remedy to propose.
+
+The Socialist tells you that your "betters" are deceived or are
+deceiving you, and that _Socialism_ is a remedy, and the only one
+possible.
+
+Self-interest will counsel you to secure the best conditions you can
+for yourself, and will warn you not to expect unselfish service from
+selfish men.
+
+Ask yourself, then, whether, since self-interest is the universal
+motive, it would not be wise for you to make some inquiry as to whether
+the persons intrusted by you with the management of your affairs are
+managing your affairs to your advantage or to their own.
+
+As a selfish man, is it sensible to elect selfish men, or to accept
+selfish men, to govern you, to make your laws, to manage your business,
+and to affix your taxes, prices, and wages?
+
+The mild Hindoo has a proverb which you might well remember in this
+connection. It is this--
+
+
+    The wise man is united in this life with that with which it is
+    proper he should be united. I am bread; thou art the eater: how can
+    harmony exist between us?
+
+
+Appealing, then, entirely to your self-interest, I ask you to consider
+whether the workers of Britain to-day are making the best bargain
+possible with the other classes of society. Do the workers receive their
+full due? Do evils exist in this country to-day? and if so, is there a
+remedy? and if there is a remedy, what is it?
+
+The first charge brought by Socialists against the present system is the
+charge of the unjust distribution of wealth.
+
+The rich obtain wealth beyond their need, and beyond their deserving;
+the workers are, for the most part, condemned to lead laborious,
+anxious, and penurious lives. Nearly all the wealth of the nation is
+produced by the workers; most of it is consumed by the rich, who
+squander it in useless or harmful luxury, leaving the majority of those
+who produced it, not enough for human comfort, decency, and health.
+
+If you wish for a plain and clear statement of the unequal distribution
+of wealth in this country, get Fabian Tract No. 5, price one penny, and
+study it well.
+
+According to that tract, the total value of the wealth produced in this
+country is L1,700,000,000. Of this total L275,000,000 is paid in rent,
+L340,000,000 is paid in interest, L435,000,000 is paid in profits and
+salaries. That makes a total of L1,050,000,000 in rent, interest,
+profits, and salaries, nearly the whole of which goes to about 5,000,000
+of people comprising the middle and upper classes.
+
+The balance of L650,000,000 is paid in wages to the remaining 35,000,000
+of people comprising the working classes. Roughly, then, two-thirds of
+the national wealth goes to 5,000,000 of persons, quite half of whom are
+idle, and one-third is _shared_ by seven times as many people, nearly
+half of whom are workers.
+
+These figures have been before the public for many years, and so far as
+I know have never been questioned.
+
+There are, say the Fabian tracts, more than 2,000,000 of men, women, and
+children living without any kind of occupation: that is, they live
+without working.
+
+Ten-elevenths of all the land in the British Islands belong to 176,520
+persons. The rest of the 40,000,000 own the other eleventh. Or, dividing
+Britain into eleven parts, you may say that one two-hundredth part of
+the population owns ten-elevenths of Britain, while the other one
+hundred and ninety-nine two-hundredths of the population own
+one-eleventh of Britain. That is as though a cake were divided amongst
+200 persons by giving to one person ten slices, and dividing one slice
+amongst 199 persons. I told you just now that Britain does not belong to
+the British, but only to a few of the British.
+
+In Fabian Tract No. 7 I read--
+
+
+    One-half of the _wealth_ of the kingdom is held by persons who leave
+    at death at least L20,000, exclusive of land and houses. _These
+    persons form a class somewhat over 25,000 in number._
+
+
+Half the wealth of Britain, then, is held by one fifteen-hundredth part
+of the population. It is as if a cake were cut in half, one half being
+given to one man and the other half being divided amongst 1499 men.
+
+How much cake does a working mechanic get?
+
+In 1898 the estates of seven persons were proved at over L45,000,000.
+That is to say, those seven left L45,000,000 when they died.
+
+Putting a workman's wages at L75 a year, and his working life at twenty
+years, it would take 30,000 workmen all their lives to _earn_ (not to
+_save_) the money left by those seven rich men.
+
+Many rich men have incomes of L150,000 a year. The skilled worker draws
+about L75 a year in wages.
+
+Therefore one man with L150,000 a year gets more than 2000 skilled
+workmen, and the workmen have to do more than 600,000 days' work for
+their wages, while the rich man does _nothing_.
+
+One of our richest dukes gets as much money in one year for doing
+nothing, as a skilled workman would get for 14,000 years of hard and
+useful work.
+
+A landowner is a millionaire. He has L1,000,000. It would take an
+agricultural labourer, at 10s. a week wages, nearly 40,000 years to earn
+L1,000,000.
+
+I need not burden you with figures. Look about you and you will see
+evidences of wealth on every side. Go through the suburbs of London, or
+any large town, and notice the large districts composed of villas and
+mansions, at rentals of from L100 to L1000 a year. Go through the
+streets of a big city, and observe the miles of great shops stored with
+flaming jewels, costly gold and silver plate, rich furs, silks,
+pictures, velvets, furniture, and upholsteries. Who buys all these
+expensive luxuries? They are not for you, nor for your wife, nor for
+your children.
+
+You do not live in a L200 flat. Your floor is not covered with a L50
+Persian rug; your wife does not wear diamond rings, nor silk
+underclothing, nor gowns of brocaded silk, nor sable collars, nor
+Maltese lace cuffs worth many guineas. She does not sit in the stalls at
+the opera, nor ride home in a brougham, nor sup on oysters and
+champagne, nor go, during the heat of the summer, on a yachting cruise
+in the Mediterranean. And is not your wife as much to you as the duchess
+to the duke?
+
+And now let us go on to the next section, and see how it fares with the
+poor.
+
+
+_Section B: The Poor_
+
+At present the average age at death among the nobility, gentry, and
+professional classes in England and Wales is fifty-five years; but among
+the artisan classes of Lambeth it only amounts to twenty-nine years; and
+whilst the infantile death-rate among the well-to-do classes is such
+that only 8 children die in the first year of life out of 100 born, as
+many as 30 per cent. succumb at that age among the children of the poor
+in some districts of our large cities.
+
+Dr. Playfair says that amongst the upper class 18 per cent. of the
+children die before they reach five years of age; of the tradesman class
+36 per cent., and of the working class 55 per cent, of the children die
+before they reach five years of age.
+
+Out of every 1000 persons 939 die without leaving any property at all
+worth mentioning.
+
+About 8,000,000 persons exist always on the borders of starvation. About
+20,000,000 are poor. More than half the national wealth belongs to about
+25,000 people; the remaining 39,000,000 share the other half unequally
+amongst them.
+
+About 30,000 persons own fifty-five fifty-sixths of the land and capital
+of the nation; but of the 39,000,000 of other persons only 1,500,000
+earn (or receive) as much as L3 a week.
+
+In London 1,292,737 persons, or 37.8 per cent. of the whole population,
+get less than a guinea a week _per family_.
+
+The number of persons in receipt of poor-law relief on any one day in
+the British Islands is over 1,000,000; but 2,360,000 persons receive
+poor-law relief during one year, or one in eleven of the whole manual
+labouring class.
+
+In England and Wales alone 72,000 persons die each year in workhouse
+hospitals, infirmaries, or asylums.
+
+In London alone there are 99,830 persons in workhorses, hospitals,
+prisons, or industrial schools.
+
+In London one person out of every four will die in a workhouse,
+hospital, or lunatic asylum.
+
+It is estimated that 3,225,000 persons in the British Islands live in
+overcrowded dwellings, with an average of three persons in each room.
+
+There are 30,000 persons in London alone whose _home_ is a common
+lodging-house. In London alone 1100 persons sleep every night in casual
+wards.
+
+From Fabian Tract No. 75 I quote--
+
+
+    Much has been done in the way of improvement in various parts of
+    Scotland, but 22 per cent. of Scottish families still dwell in a
+    single room each, and the proportion in the case of Glasgow rises to
+    33 per cent. The little town of Kilmarnock, with only 28,447
+    inhabitants, huddles even a slightly larger proportion of its
+    families into single-room tenements. Altogether, there are in
+    Glasgow over 120,000, and in all Scotland 560,000 persons (more than
+    one-eighth of the whole population), who do not know the decency of
+    even a two-roomed home.
+
+
+A similar state of things exists in nearly all our large towns, the
+colliery districts being amongst the worst.
+
+_The working class._--The great bulk of the British people are
+overworked, underpaid, badly housed, unfairly taxed but besides all
+that, they are exposed to serious risks.
+
+Read _The Tragedy of Toil_, by John Burns, M.P. (Clarion Press, 1d.).
+
+In sixty years 60,000 colliers have been accidentally killed. In the
+South Wales coalfield in 1896, 232 were killed out of 71,000. In 1897,
+out of 76,000 no less than 10,230 were injured.
+
+In 1897, of the men employed in railway shunting, 1 in 203 was killed
+and 1 in 12 was injured.
+
+In 1897, out of 465,112 railway workers, 510 were killed, 828 were
+permanently disabled, and 67,000 were temporarily disabled.
+
+John Burns says--
+
+
+    This we do know, that 60 per cent. of the common labourers engaged
+    on the Panama Canal were either killed, injured, or died from
+    disease every year, whilst 80 per cent. of the Europeans died. Out
+    of 70 French engineers, 45 died, and only 10 of the remainder were
+    fit for subsequent work.
+
+    The men engaged on the Manchester Ship Canal claim that 1000 to 1100
+    men were killed and 1700 men were severely injured, whilst 2500 were
+    temporarily disabled.
+
+
+Again--
+
+
+    Taking mechanics first, and selecting one firm--Armstrong's, at
+    Elswick--we find that in 1892 there were 588 accidents, or 7.9 per
+    cent. of men engaged. They have steadily risen to 1512, or 13.9 per
+    cent. of men engaged in 1897. In some departments, notably the blast
+    furnace, 43 per cent. of the men employed were injured in 1897 The
+    steel works had 296 injured, or 24.4 per cent. of its number.
+
+
+Of sailors John Burns says--
+
+
+    The last thirteen years, 1884-85 to 1896-97, show a loss of 28,302
+    from wreck, casualties, and accidents, or an average of 2177 from
+    the industrial risks of the sailor's life.
+
+
+But the most startling statement is to come--
+
+
+    Sir A. Forwood has recently indicated, and recent facts confirm
+    this general view, that
+
+       1 of every 1400 workmen is killed annually.
+       "      "   2500    "    is totally disabled.
+       "      "    300    "    is permanently partially disabled.
+     125 per 1000 are temporarily disabled for three or four weeks.
+
+
+One workman in 1400 is killed annually. Let us say there are 6,000,000
+workmen in the British Islands, and we shall find that no less than 4280
+are killed, and 20,000 permanently or partially disabled.
+
+That is as high as the average year's casualties in the Boer war.
+
+But the high death-rate from accidents amongst the workers is not nearly
+the greatest evil to which the poor are exposed.
+
+In the poorest districts of the great towns the children die like flies,
+and diseases caused by overcrowding, insufficient or improper food,
+exposure, dirt, neglect, and want of fuel and clothing, play havoc with
+the infants, the weakly, and the old.
+
+What are the chief diseases almost wholly due to the surroundings of
+poverty? They are consumption, bronchitis, rheumatism, epilepsy, fevers,
+smallpox, and cancer. Add to those the evil influences with which some
+trades are cursed, such as rupture, lead and phosphorous poisoning, and
+irritation of the lungs by dust, and you have a whole arsenal of deadly
+weapons aimed at the lives of the laborious poor.
+
+The average death-rate amongst the well-to-do classes is less than 10 in
+the thousand. Amongst the poorer workers it is often as high as 70 and
+seldom as low as 20.
+
+Put the average at 25 in the thousand amongst the poor: put the numbers
+of the poor at 10,000,000. We shall find that the difference between the
+death-rates of the poor and the well-to-do, is 15 to the thousand or
+15,000 to the million.
+
+We may say, then, that the 10,000,000 of poor workers lose every year
+150,000 lives from accidents and diseases due to poverty and to labour.
+
+Taking the entire population of the British Islands, I dare assert that
+the excess death-rate over the normal death-rate, will show that every
+year 300,000 lives are sacrificed to the ignorance and the injustice of
+the inhuman chaos which we call British civilisation.
+
+Some have cynically said that these lives are not worth saving, that the
+death-rate shows the defeat of the unfit, and that if all survived there
+would not be enough for them to live on.
+
+But except in the worst cases--where sots and criminals have bred human
+weeds--no man is wise enough to select the "fit" from the "unfit"
+amongst the children. The thin, pale child killed by cold, by hunger, by
+smallpox, or by fever, may be a seedling Stephenson, or Herschel, or
+Wesley; and I take it that in the West End the parents would not be
+consoled for the sacrifice of their most delicate child by the brutal
+suggestion that it was one of the "unfit." The "fit" may be a hooligan,
+a sweater, a fraudulent millionaire, a dissolute peer, or a fool.
+
+But there are two sides to this question of physical fitness. To excuse
+the evils of society on the ground that they weed out the unfit, is as
+foolish as to excuse bad drainage on the same plea. In a low-lying
+district where the soil is marshy the population will be weeded swiftly;
+but who would offer that as a reason why the land should not be drained?
+This heartless, fatuous talk about the survival of the fittest is only
+another example of the insults to which the poor are subjected. It
+fills one with despair to think that working men--fathers and
+husbands--will read or hear such things said of their own class, and not
+resent them. It is the duty of every working man to fight against such
+pitiless savagery, and to make every effort to win for his class and his
+family, respect and human conditions of life.
+
+Moreover, the shoddy science which talks so glibly about the "weeding
+out" of little helpless children is too blear-eyed to perceive that the
+same conditions of inhuman life which destroy the "weeds," _breed_ the
+weeds. Children born of healthy parents in healthy surroundings are not
+weeds. But to-day the British race is deteriorating, and the nation is
+in danger because of the greed of money-seekers and the folly of rulers
+and of those who claim to teach. The nation that gives itself up to the
+worship of luxury, wealth, and ease, is doomed. Nothing can save the
+British race but an awakening of the workers to the dangerous pass to
+which they have been brought by those who affect to guide and to govern
+them.
+
+But the workers, besides being underpaid, over-taxed, badly housed, and
+exposed to all manner of hardship, poverty, danger, and anxiety of mind,
+are also, by those who live upon them, denied respect.
+
+Do you doubt this? Do not the "better classes," as they call themselves,
+allude to the workers as "the lower orders," and "the great unwashed"?
+Does not the employer commonly speak of the workers as "hands"? Does the
+fine gentleman, who raises his hat and airs his nicest manners for a
+"lady," extend his chivalry and politeness to a "woman"? Do not the silk
+hats and the black coats and the white collars treat the caps and the
+overalls and the smocks as inferiors? Do not the men of the "better
+class" address each other as "sir"? And when did you last hear a
+"gentleman" say "sir" to a train-guard, to a railway porter, or to the
+"man" who has come to mend the drawing-room stove?
+
+Man cannot live by bread alone; neither can woman or child. And how much
+honour, culture, pleasure, rest, or love falls to the lot of the wives
+and children of the poor?
+
+Do not think I wish to breed class hatred. I do not. Doubtless the
+"better class" are graceful, amiable, honourable, and well-meaning
+folks. Doubtless they honestly believe they have a just claim to all
+their wealth and privileges. Doubtless they are no more selfish, no more
+arrogant, no more covetous nor idle than any working man would be in
+their place.
+
+What of that? It is nothing at all to you. They may be the finest people
+in the world. But does their fineness help you to pay your rent, or your
+wife to mend the clothes? or does it give you more wages, or her more
+rest? or does it in any way help to educate, and feed, and make happy
+your children?
+
+It does not. Nor do all the graces and superiorities of the West End
+make the lot of the East less bitter, less anxious, or more human.
+
+If self-interest be the ruling motive of mankind, why do not the working
+men transfer their honour and their service from the fine ladies and
+fine gentlemen to their own wives and children?
+
+These need every atom of love and respect the men can give them. Why
+should the many be poor, be ignorant, despised? Why should the rich
+monopolise the knowledge and the culture, the graces and elegancies of
+life, as well as the wealth?
+
+Ignorance is a curse: it is a deadlier curse than poverty. Indeed, but
+for ignorance, poverty and wealth could not continue to exist side by
+side; for only ignorance permits the rich to uphold and the poor to
+endure the injustices and the criminal follies of British society, as
+now to our shame and grief they environ us, like some loathly vision
+beheld with horror under nightmare.
+
+Is it needful to tell you more, Mr. Smith, you who are yourself a
+worker? Have you not witnessed, perhaps suffered, many of these evils?
+
+Yes; perhaps you yourself have smarted under "the insolence of office,
+and the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes"; perhaps you
+have borne the tortures of long suspense as one of the unemployed;
+perhaps on some weary tramp after work you have learned what it is to be
+a stranger in your own land; perhaps you have seen some old veteran
+worker, long known to you, now broken in health and stricken in years,
+compelled to seek the shameful shelter of a workhouse; perhaps you have
+had comrades of your own or other trades, who have been laid low by
+sickness, sickness caused by exposure or overstrain, and have died what
+coroners' juries call "natural deaths," or, in plain English, have been
+killed by overwork; perhaps you have known widows and little children,
+left behind by those unfortunate men, and can remember how much succour
+and compassion they received in this Christian country; perhaps as you
+think of the grim prophecy that one worker in four must die in a
+workhouse, you may yourself, despite your strength and your skill,
+glance anxiously towards the future, as a bold sailor glances towards a
+stormy horizon.
+
+Well, Mr. Smith, will you look through a book of mine called _Dismal
+England_, and there read how men and women and children of your class
+are treated in the workhouse, in the workhouse school, in the police
+court, in the chain works, on the canals, in the chemical hells, and in
+the poor and gloomy districts known as slums? I would quote some
+passages from _Dismal England_ now, but space forbids.
+
+Or, maybe, you would prefer the evidence of men of wealth and eminence
+who are not Socialists. If so, please read the testimony given in the
+next section.
+
+
+_Section C: Reliable Evidence_
+
+The Salvation Army see a great deal of the poor. Here is the evidence of
+General Booth--
+
+
+    444 persons are reported by the police to have attempted to commit
+    suicide in London last year, and probably as many more succeeded in
+    doing so. 200 persons died from starvation in the same period. We
+    have in this one city about 100,000 paupers, 30,000 prostitutes,
+    33,000 homeless adults, and 35,000 wandering children of the slums.
+    There is a standing army of out-of-works numbering 80,000, which is
+    often increased in special periods of commercial depression or trade
+    disputes to 100,000. 12,000 criminals are always inside Her
+    Majesty's prisons, and about 15,000 are outside. 70,000 charges for
+    petty offences are dealt with by the London magistrates every year.
+    The best authorities estimate that 10,000 new criminals are
+    manufactured per annum. We have tens of thousands of dwellings known
+    to be overcrowded, unsanitary, or dangerous.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of a man of letters, Mr. Frederic Harrison--
+
+
+    To me, at least, it would be enough to condemn modern society as
+    hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition
+    of industry were to be that which we behold, that 90 per cent. of
+    the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call their
+    own beyond the end of the week; have no bit of soil, or so much as a
+    room that belongs to them; have nothing of value of any kind except
+    as much old furniture as will go in a cart; have the precarious
+    chance of weekly wages which barely suffice to keep them in health;
+    are housed for the most part in places that no man thinks fit for
+    his horse; are separated by so narrow a margin from destitution,
+    that a month of bad trade, sickness, or unexpected loss brings them
+    face to face with hunger and pauperism.... This is the normal state
+    of the average workman in town or country.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of a man of science, Professor Huxley--
+
+
+    Anyone who is acquainted with the state of the population of all
+    great industrial centres, whether in this or other countries, is
+    aware that amidst a large and increasing body of that population
+    there reigns supreme ... that condition which the French call _la
+    misere_, a word for which I do not think there is any exact English
+    equivalent. It is a condition in which the food, warmth, and
+    clothing which are necessary for the mere maintenance of the
+    functions of the body in their normal state cannot be obtained; in
+    which men, women, and children are forced to crowd into dens wherein
+    decency is abolished, and the most ordinary conditions of healthful
+    existence are impossible of attainment; in which the pleasures
+    within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness; in which the
+    pains accumulate at compound interest in the shape of starvation,
+    disease, stunted development, and moral degradation; in which the
+    prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of
+    unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave....
+    When the organisation of society, instead of mitigating this
+    tendency, tends to continue and intensify it; when a given social
+    order plainly makes for evil and not for good, men naturally enough
+    begin to think it high time to try a fresh experiment. I take it to
+    be a mere plain truth that throughout industrial Europe there is not
+    a single large manufacturing city which is free from a vast mass of
+    people whose condition is exactly that described, and from a still
+    greater mass who, living just on the edge of the social swamp, are
+    liable to be precipitated into it.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of a British peer, Lord Durham--
+
+
+    There was still more sympathy and no reproach whatever to be
+    bestowed upon the children--perhaps waifs and strays in their
+    earliest days--of parents destitute, very likely deserving, possibly
+    criminal, who had had to leave these poor children to fight their
+    way in life alone. What did these children know or care for the
+    civilisation or the wealth of their native land? _What example, what
+    incentive had they ever had to lead good and honest lives?_ Possibly
+    from the moment of their birth they had never known contentment,
+    what it had been to feel bodily comfort. They were cast into that
+    world, and looked upon it as a cruel and heartless world, with no
+    guidance, no benign influence to guide them in their way, and _thus
+    they were naturally prone to fall into any vicious or criminal
+    habits which would procure them a bare subsistence_.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of a Tory Minister, Sir John Gorst--
+
+
+    I do not think there is any doubt as to the reality of the evil;
+    that is to say, that there are in our civilisation men able and
+    willing to work who can't find work to do.... Work will have to be
+    found for them.... What are usually called relief works may be a
+    palliative for acute temporary distress, but they are no remedy for
+    the unemployed evil in the long-run. Not only so; they tend to
+    aggravate it.... If you can set 100 unemployed men to produce food,
+    they are not taking bread out of other people's mouths. Men so
+    employed would be producing what is now imported from abroad and
+    what they themselves would consume. An unemployed man--_whether he
+    is a duke or a docker_--is living on the community. If you set him
+    to grow food he is enriching the community by what he produces.
+    Therefore, my idea is that the direction in which a remedy for the
+    unemployed evil is to be sought is in the production of food.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of the Tory Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury--
+
+
+    They looked around them and saw a _growing_ mass of _poverty_ and
+    _want of employment_, and of course the one object which every
+    statesman who loved his country should desire to attain, was that
+    there might be the largest amount of profitable employment for the
+    mass of the people.
+
+    He did not say that he had any patent or certain remedy for _the
+    terrible evils which beset us on all sides_, but he did say that it
+    was time they left off mending the constitution of Parliament, and
+    that they turned all the wisdom and energy Parliament could combine
+    together in order to remedy the _sufferings_ under which so _many_
+    of their countrymen laboured.
+
+
+Here is the evidence of the Colonial Secretary, the Right Hon. Joseph
+Chamberlain, M.P.--
+
+
+    The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights of
+    the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is hardly
+    too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the
+    liberties of a great proportion of the population have been laid at
+    the feet of a small number of proprietors, who "neither toil nor
+    spin."
+
+
+And here is further evidence from Mr. Chamberlain--
+
+
+    For my part neither sneers, nor abuse, nor opposition shall induce
+    me to accept as the will of the Almighty, and the unalterable
+    dispensation of His providence, a state of things under which
+    _millions lead sordid, hopeless, and monotonous lives, without
+    pleasure in the present, and without prospect for the future_.
+
+
+And here is still stronger testimony from Mr. Chamberlain--
+
+
+    The ordinary conditions of life among a large proportion of the
+    population are such that common decency is absolutely impossible;
+    and all this goes on in sight of the mansions of the rich, where
+    undoubtedly there are people who would gladly remedy it if they
+    could. It goes on in presence of wasteful extravagance and luxury,
+    which bring but little pleasure to those who indulge in them; and
+    private charity is powerless, religious organisations can do
+    nothing, to remedy the evils which are so deep-seated in our social
+    system.
+
+
+You have read what these eminent men have said, Mr. Smith, as to the
+evils of the present time.
+
+Well, Mr. Atkinson, a well-known American statistical authority, has
+said--
+
+
+    Four or five men can produce the bread for a thousand. With the best
+    machinery one workman can produce cotton cloth for 250 people,
+    woollens for 300, or boots and shoes for 1000.
+
+
+How is it, friend John Smith, that with all our energy, all our
+industry, all our genius, and all our machinery, there are 8,000,000 of
+hungry poor in this country?
+
+If five men can produce bread for a thousand, and one man can produce
+shoes for a thousand, how is it we have so many British citizens
+suffering from hunger and bare feet?
+
+That, Mr. Smith, is the question I shall endeavour in this book to
+answer.
+
+Meanwhile, if you have any doubts as to the verity of my statements of
+the sufferings of the poor, or as to the urgent need for your immediate
+and earnest aid, read the following books, and form your own opinion:--
+
+    _Labour and Life of the People._ Charles Booth. To be seen at most
+    free libraries.
+
+    _Poverty: A Study of Town Life._ By B. S. Rountree. Macmillan. 10s.
+    6d.
+
+    _Dismal England._ By R. Blatchford, 72 Fleet Street, E.C. 2s. 6d.
+    and 1s.
+
+    _No Room to Live._ By G. Haw, 72 Fleet Street, E.C. 1s.
+
+    _The White Slaves of England._ By R. Sherard. London, James Bowden.
+    1s.
+
+    _Pictures and Problems from the Police Courts._ By T. Holmes. Ed.
+    Arnold, Bedford Street, W.C.
+
+And the Fabian Tracts, especially No. 5 and No. 7. These are 1d. each.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHAT IS WEALTH? WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? WHO CREATES IT?
+
+
+Those who have read anything about political economy or _Socialism_ must
+often have found such thoughts as these rise up in their minds--
+
+How is it some are rich and others poor? How is it some who are able and
+willing to work can get no work to do? How is it that some who work very
+hard are so poorly paid? How is it that others who do not work at all
+have more money than they need? Why is one man born to pay rent and
+another to spend it?
+
+Let us first face the question of why there is so much poverty.
+
+This question has been answered in many strange ways.
+
+It has been said that poverty is due to drink. But that is not true, for
+we find many sober people poor, and we find awful poverty in countries
+where drunkenness is almost unknown.
+
+Drink does not cause the poverty of the sober Hindoos. Drink does not
+cause the poverty of our English women workers.
+
+It has been said that poverty is due to "over-production," and it has
+been said that it is due to "under-consumption." Let us see what these
+phrases mean.
+
+First, over-production. Poverty is due to over-production--of _what_? Of
+wealth. So we are to believe that the people are poor because they make
+too much wealth, that they are hungry because they produce too much
+food, naked because they make too many clothes, cold because they get
+too much coal, homeless because they build too many houses!
+
+Next, under-consumption. We are told that poverty is due to
+under-consumption--under-consumption of _what_? Of wealth. The people
+are poor because they do not destroy enough wealth. The way for them to
+grow rich is by consuming riches. They are to make their cake larger by
+eating it.
+
+Alas! the trouble is that they can get no cake to eat; they can get no
+wealth to consume.
+
+But I think the economists mean that the poor will grow richer if the
+rich consume more wealth.
+
+A rich man has two slaves. The slaves grow corn and make bread. The rich
+man takes half the bread and eats it. The slaves have only one man's
+share between two.
+
+Will it mend matters here if the rich man "consumes more"? Will it be
+better for the two slaves if the master takes half the bread left to
+them, and eats that as well as the bread he has already taken?
+
+See what a pretty mess the economists have led us into. The rich have
+too much and the poor too little. The economist says, let the poor
+produce less and the rich consume more, and all will be well!
+
+Wonderful! But if the poor produce less, there will be less to eat; and
+if the rich eat more, the share of the poor will be smaller than ever.
+
+Let us try another way. Suppose the poor produce more and the rich
+consume less! Does it not seem likely that then the share of the poor
+would be bigger?
+
+Well, then, we must turn the wisdom of the economists the other way up.
+We must say over-production of wealth _cannot_ make poverty, for that
+means that the more of a thing is produced the less of that thing there
+is; and we must say that under-consumption _cannot_ cause poverty, for
+that means that the more of a loaf you eat the more you will have left.
+
+Such rubbish as that may do for statesmen and editors, but it is of no
+use to sensible men and women. Let us see if we cannot think a little
+better for ourselves than these very superior persons have thought for
+us. I think that we, without being at all clever or learned, may get
+nearer to the truth than some of those who pass for great men.
+
+Now, what is it we have to find out? We want to know how the British
+people may make the best of their country and themselves.
+
+We know they are not making the best of either at present.
+
+There must, therefore, be something wrong. Our business is to find out
+what is wrong, and how it may be righted.
+
+We will begin by asking ourselves three questions, and by trying to
+answer them.
+
+These questions are--
+
+
+    1. What is wealth?
+    2. Where does wealth come from?
+    3. Where does wealth go to?
+
+
+First, then, what _is_ wealth? There is no need to go into long and
+confusing explanations; there is no use in splitting hairs. We want an
+answer that is short and simple, and at the same time good enough for
+the purpose.
+
+I should say, then, that wealth is all those things which we use.
+
+Mr. Ruskin uses two words, "wealth" and "illth." He divides the things
+which it is good for us to have from the things which it is not good for
+us to have, and he calls the good things "wealth" and the bad things
+"illth"--or ill things.
+
+Thus opium prepared for smoking is illth, because it does harm or works
+"ill" to all who smoke it; but opium prepared as medicine is wealth,
+because it saves life or stays pain.
+
+A dynamite bomb is "illth," for it is used to destroy life, but a
+dynamite cartridge is wealth, for it is used in getting slate or coal.
+
+Mr. Ruskin is right, and if we are to make the best of our country and
+of ourselves, we ought clearly to give up producing bad things, or
+"illth," and produce more good things, or wealth.
+
+But, for our purpose, it will be simpler and shorter to call all things
+we use wealth.
+
+Thus a good book is wealth and a bad book "illth"; but as it is not easy
+to agree as to which books are good, which bad, and which indifferent,
+we had better call all books wealth.
+
+By this word wealth, then, when we use it in this book, we shall mean
+all the things we use.
+
+Thus we shall put down as wealth all such things as food, clothing,
+fuel, houses, ornaments, musical instruments, arms, tools, machinery,
+books, horses, dogs, medicines, toys, ships, trains, coaches, tobacco,
+churches, hospitals, lighthouses, theatres, shops, and all other things
+that we _use_.
+
+Now comes our second question: Where does wealth come from?
+
+This question we must make into two questions--
+
+
+    1. Where does wealth come from?
+    2. Who produces wealth?
+
+
+Because the question, "Where does wealth come from?" really means, "How
+is wealth produced?"
+
+_All_ wealth comes from the land.
+
+All food comes from the land--all flesh is grass. Vegetable food comes
+directly from the land; animal food comes indirectly from the land, all
+animals being fed on the land.
+
+So the stuff of which we make our clothing, our houses, our fuel, our
+tools, arms, ships, engines, toys, ornaments, is all got from the land.
+For the land yields timber, metals, vegetables, and the food on which
+feed the animals from which we get feathers, fur, meat, milk, leather,
+ivory, bone, glue, and many other things.
+
+Even in the case of the things that come from the sea, as sealskin,
+whale oil, fish, iodine, shells, pearls, and other things, we are to
+remember that we need boats, or nets, or tools to get them with, and
+that boats, nets, and tools are made from minerals and vegetables got
+from the land.
+
+We may say, then, that all wealth comes from the land.
+
+This brings us to the second part of our question: "Who produces
+wealth?" or "How is wealth produced?"
+
+Wealth is produced by human beings. It is the people of a country who
+produce the wealth of that country.
+
+Wealth is produced by labour. Wealth cannot be produced by any other
+means or in any other way. _All_ wealth is produced _from_ the LAND _by_
+human LABOUR.
+
+A coal seam is not wealth; but a coalmine is wealth. Coal is not wealth
+while it is in the bowels of the earth; but coal is wealth as soon as it
+is brought up out of the pit and made available for use.
+
+A whale or a seal is not wealth until it is caught.
+
+In a country without inhabitants there would be no wealth.
+
+Land is not wealth. To produce wealth you must have land and human
+beings.
+
+There can be no wealth without labour.
+
+And now we come to the first error of the economists. There are some
+economists who tell us that wealth is not produced by labour, but by
+"capital."
+
+There is neither truth nor reason in this assertion.
+
+What is "capital"?
+
+"Capital" is only another word for _stores_. Adam Smith calls capital
+"stock." Capital is any tools, machinery, or other stores used in
+producing wealth. Capital is any food, fuel, shelter, clothing supplied
+to those engaged in producing wealth.
+
+The hunter, before he can shoot game, needs weapons. His weapons are
+"capital." The farmer has to wait for his wheat and potatoes to ripen
+before he can use them as food. The stock of food and the tools he uses
+to produce the wheat or potatoes, and to live on while they ripen, are
+"capital."
+
+Robinson Crusoe's capital was the arms, food, and tools he saved from
+the wreck. On these he lived until he had planted corn, and tamed goats
+and built a hut, and made skin clothing and vessels of wood and clay.
+
+Capital, then, is stores. Now, where do the stores come from? Stores are
+wealth. Stores, whether they be food or tools, come from the land, and
+are made or produced by human labour.
+
+There is not an atom of capital in the world that has not been produced
+by labour.
+
+Every spade, every plough, every hammer, every loom, every cart, barrow,
+loaf, bottle, ham, haddock, pot of tea, barrel of ale, pair of boots,
+gold or silver coin, railway sleeper or rail, boat, road, canal, every
+kind of tools and stores has been produced by labour from the land.
+
+It is evident, then, that if there were no labour there would be no
+capital. Labour is _before_ capital, for labour _makes_ capital.
+
+Now, what folly it is to say that capital produces wealth. Capital is
+used by labour in the production of wealth, but capital itself is
+incapable of motion and can produce nothing.
+
+A spade is "capital." Is it true, then, to say that it is not the navvy
+but the spade that makes the trench?
+
+A plough is capital. Is it true to say that not the ploughman but the
+plough makes the furrow?
+
+A loom is capital. Is it true to say that the loom makes the cloth? It
+is the weaver who weaves the cloth. He _uses_ the loom, and the loom was
+made by the miner, the smith, the joiner, and the engineer.
+
+There are wood and iron and brass in the loom. But you would not say
+that the cloth was produced by the iron-mine and the forest! It is
+produced by miners, engineers, sheep farmers, wool-combers, sailors,
+spinners, weavers, and other workers. It is produced entirely by labour,
+and could not be produced in any other way.
+
+How can capital produce wealth? Take a steam plough, a patent harrow, a
+sack of wheat, a bankbook, a dozen horses, enough food and clothing to
+last a hundred men a year; put all that capital down in a forty-acre
+field, and it will not produce a single ear of corn in fifty years
+unless you send a _man_ to _labour_.
+
+But give a boy a forked stick, a rood of soil, and a bag of seed, and he
+will raise a crop for you.
+
+If he is a smart boy, and has the run of the woods and streams, he will
+also contrive to find food to live on till the crop is ready.
+
+We find, then, that all wealth is produced _from_ the land _by_ labour,
+and that capital is only a part of wealth, that it has been produced by
+labour, stored by labour, and is finally used by labour in the
+production of more wealth.
+
+Our third question asks, "What becomes of the wealth?"
+
+This is not easy to answer. But we may say that the wealth is divided
+into three parts--not _equal_ parts--called Rent, Interest, and Wages.
+
+Rent is wealth paid to the landlords for the use of the land. Interest
+is wealth paid to the capitalists (the owners of tools and stores) for
+the use of the "capital."
+
+Wages is wealth paid to the workers for their labour in producing _all_
+the wealth.
+
+There are but a few landlords, but they take a large share of the
+wealth.
+
+There are but a few capitalists, but _they_ take a large share of the
+wealth.
+
+There are very many workers, but they do not get much more than a third
+share of the wealth they produce.
+
+The landlord produces _nothing_. He takes part of the wealth for
+allowing the workers to use the land.
+
+The capitalist produces nothing. He takes part of the wealth for
+allowing the workers to use the capital.
+
+The workers produce _all_ the wealth, and are obliged to give a great
+deal of it to the landlords and capitalists who produce nothing.
+
+Socialists claim that the landlord is useless under _any_ form of
+society, that the capitalist is not needed in a properly ordered
+society, and that the people should become their own landlords and their
+own capitalists.
+
+If the people were their own landlords and capitalists, _all_ the wealth
+would belong to the workers by whom it is all produced.
+
+Now, a word of caution. We say that _all_ wealth is produced by labour.
+_What is labour?_
+
+Labour is work. Work is said to be of two kinds: hand work and brain
+work. But really work is of one kind--the labour of hand and brain
+together; for there is hardly any head work wherein the hand has no
+share, and there is no hand work wherein the head has no share.
+
+The hand is really a part of the brain, and can do nothing without the
+brain's direction.
+
+So when we say that all wealth is produced by labour, we mean by the
+labour of hand and brain.
+
+I want to make this quite plain, because you will find, if you come to
+deal with the economists, that attempts have been made to use the word
+labour as meaning chiefly hand labour.
+
+When we say labour produces all wealth, we do not mean that all wealth
+is produced by farm labourers, mechanics, and navvies, but that it is
+all produced by _workers_--that is, by thinkers as well as doers; by
+inventors and directors as well as by the man with the hammer, the file,
+or the spade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HOW THE FEW GET RICH AND KEEP THE MANY POOR
+
+
+We have already seen that most of the wealth produced by labour goes
+into the pockets of a few rich men: we have now to find out how it gets
+there.
+
+By what means do the landlords and the capitalists get the meat and
+leave the workers the bones?
+
+Let us deal first with the land, and next with the capital.
+
+A landlord is one who owns land.
+
+Rent is a price paid to the landlord for permission to use or occupy
+land.
+
+Here is a diagram of a square piece of land--
+
+
+    +----------+
+    |          |
+    |          |
+    |    *L    |     W
+    |          |
+    |          |
+    +----------+
+       Fig. 1
+
+
+In the centre stands the landlord (L), outside stands a labourer (W).
+
+The landlord owns the land, the labourer owns no land. The labourer
+cannot get food except from the land. The landlord will not allow him to
+use the land unless he pays rent. The labourer has no money. How can he
+pay rent?
+
+He must first raise a crop from the land, and then give a part of the
+crop to the landlord as rent; or he may sell the crop and give to the
+landlord, as rent, part of the money for which the crop is sold.
+
+We find, then, that the labourer cannot get food without working, and
+cannot work without land, and that, as he has no land, he must pay rent
+for the use of land owned by some other person--a landlord.
+
+We find that the labourer produces the whole of the crop, and that the
+landlord produces nothing; and we find that, when the crop is produced,
+some of it has to be given to the landlord.
+
+Thus it is clear that where one man owns land, and another man owns no
+land, the landless man is dependent upon the landed man for permission
+to work and to live, while the landed man is able to live without
+working.
+
+Let us go into this more fully.
+
+Here (Fig. 2) are two squares of land--
+
+
+         _a_               _b_
+    +----------+      +----------+
+    |          |      |          |
+    |    *W    |      |          |
+    |          |      |          |
+    +----------+      |  *   *   |
+    |          |      |  W   W   |
+    |    *W    |      |          |
+    |          |      |          |
+    +----------+      +----------+
+                Fig. 2
+
+
+Each piece of land is owned and worked by two men. The field _a_ is
+divided into two equal parts, each part owned and worked by one man. The
+field _b_ is owned and worked by two men jointly.
+
+In the case of field _a_ each man has what he produces, and _all_ he
+produces. In the case of field _b_ each man takes half of _all_ that
+_both_ produce.
+
+These men in both cases are their own landlords. They own the land they
+use.
+
+But now suppose that field _b_ does not belong to two men, but to one
+man. The same piece of land will be there, but only one man will be
+working on it. The other does not work: he lives by charging rent.
+
+Therefore if the remaining labourer, now a _tenant_, is to live as well
+as he did when he was part owner, and pay the rent, he must work twice
+as hard as he did before.
+
+Take the field _a_ (Fig. 2). It is divided into two equal parts, and one
+man tills each half. Remove one man and compel the other to pay half the
+produce in rent, and you will find that the man who has become landlord
+now gets as much without working as he got when he tilled half the
+field, and that the man left as tenant now has to till the whole field
+for the same amount of produce as he got formerly for tilling half of
+it.
+
+We see, then, that the landlord is a useless and idle burden upon the
+worker, and that he takes a part of what the worker alone produces, and
+calls it rent.
+
+The defence set up for the landlord is (1) that he has a right to the
+land, and (2) that he spends his wealth for the public advantage.
+
+I shall show you in later chapters that both these statements are
+untrue.
+
+Let us now turn to the capitalist. What is a capitalist? He is really a
+money-lender. He lends money, or machinery, and he charges interest on
+it.
+
+Suppose Brown wants to dig, but has no spade. He borrows a spade of
+Jones, who charges him a price for the use of the spade. Then Jones is a
+capitalist: he takes part of the wealth Brown produces, and calls it
+_interest_.
+
+Suppose Jones owns a factory and machinery, and suppose Brown is a
+spinner, who owns nothing but his strength and skill.
+
+In that case Brown the spinner stands in the same relation to Jones the
+capitalist as the landless labourer stands in to the landlord. That is
+to say, the spinner cannot get food without money, and he can only get
+money by working as a spinner for the man who owns the factory.
+
+Therefore Brown the spinner goes to Jones the capitalist, who engages
+him as a spinner, and pays him wages.
+
+There are many other spinners in the same position. They work for Jones,
+who pays them wages. They spin yarn, and Jones sells it. Does Jones
+spin any of the yarn? Not a thread: the spinners spin it all. Do the
+spinners get all the money the yarn is sold for? No. How is the money
+divided? It is divided in this way--
+
+A quantity of yarn is sold for twenty shillings, but of that twenty
+shillings the factory owner pays the cost of the raw material, the wages
+of the spinners, the cost of rent, repairs to machinery, fuel and oil,
+and the salaries and commissions of clerks, travellers, and managers.
+What remains of the twenty shillings he takes for himself as _profit_.
+
+This "profit," then, is the difference between the cost price of the
+yarn and the sale price. If a certain weight of yarn costs nineteen
+shillings to produce, and sells for twenty shillings, there is a profit
+of one shilling. If yarn which cost L9000 to produce is sold for
+L10,000, the profit is L1000.
+
+This profit the factory owner, Jones the capitalist, claims as interest
+on his capital. It is then a kind of rent charged by him for the use of
+his money, his factory, and his machinery.
+
+Now we must be careful here not to confuse the landlord with the farmer,
+nor the capitalist with the manager. I am, so far, dealing only with
+those who _own_ and _let_ land or capital, and not with those who manage
+them.
+
+A capitalist is one who lends capital. A capitalist may use capital, but
+in so far as he uses capital he is a worker.
+
+So a landlord may farm land, but in so far as he farms land he is a
+farmer, and therefore a worker.
+
+The man who finds the capital for a factory, and manages the business
+himself, is a capitalist, for he lends his factory and machines to the
+men who work for him. But he is also a worker, since he conducts the
+manufacture and the sale of goods. As a capitalist he claims interest,
+as a worker he claims salary. And he is as much a worker as a general is
+a soldier or an admiral a sailor.
+
+Well, the _idle_ landlord and the _idle_ capitalist charge rent or
+interest for the use of their land or capital.
+
+The landlord justifies himself by saying that the land is _his_, and
+that he has a right to charge for it the highest rent he can get.
+
+The capitalist justifies himself by saying that the capital is _his_,
+and that he has a right to charge for it the highest rate of interest he
+can get.
+
+Both claim that it is better for the nation that the land and the
+capital should remain in their hands; both tell us that the nation will
+go headlong to ruin if we try to dispense with their valuable services.
+
+I am not going to denounce either landlord or capitalist as a tyrant, a
+usurer, or a robber. Landlords and capitalists may be, and very often
+are, upright and well-meaning men. As such let us respect them.
+
+Neither shall I enter into a long argument as to whether it is right or
+wrong to charge interest on money lent or capital let, or as to whether
+it is right or wrong to "buy in the cheapest market and sell in the
+dearest."
+
+The non-Socialist will claim that as the capital belongs to the
+capitalist he has a right to ask what interest he pleases for its use,
+and that he has also a perfect right to get as much for the goods he
+sells as the buyer will give, and to pay as little wages as the workers
+will accept.
+
+Let us concede all that, and save talk.
+
+But those claims being granted to the capitalist, the counter-claims of
+the worker and the buyer--the producer and the consumer--must be
+recognised as equally valid.
+
+If the capitalist is justified in paying the lowest wages the worker
+will take, the worker is justified in paying the lowest interest the
+capitalist will take.
+
+If the seller is justified in asking the highest price for goods, the
+buyer is justified in offering the lowest.
+
+If a capitalist manager is justified in demanding a big salary for his
+services of management, the worker and the consumer are justified in
+getting another capitalist or another manager at a lower price, if they
+can.
+
+Surely that is just and reasonable. And that is what Socialists advise.
+
+A capitalist owns a large factory and manages it. He pays his spinners
+fifteen shillings a week; he sells his goods to the public at the best
+price he can get; and he makes an income of L10,000 a year. He makes
+his money fairly and lawfully.
+
+But if the workers and the users of yarn can find their own capital,
+build their own factory, and spin their own yarn, they have a perfect
+right to set up on their own account.
+
+And if by so doing they can pay the workers better wages, sell the yarn
+to the public at a lower price, and have a profit left to build other
+factories with, no one can accuse them of doing wrong, nor can anyone
+deny that the workers and the users have proved that they, the producers
+and consumers, have done better without the capitalist (or middleman)
+than with him.
+
+But there is another kind of capitalist--the shareholder. A company is
+formed to manufacture mouse-traps. The capital is L100,000. There are
+ten shareholders, each holding L10,000 worth of shares. The company
+makes a profit of 10 per cent. The dividend at 10 per cent. paid to each
+shareholder will be L1000 a year.
+
+The shareholders do no more than find the capital. They do not manage
+the business, nor get the orders, nor conduct the sales, nor make the
+mouse-traps. The business is managed by a paid manager, the sales are
+conducted by paid travellers, and the mouse-traps are made by paid
+workmen.
+
+Let us now see how it fares with any one of these shareholders. He lends
+to the company L10,000. He receives from the company 10 per cent.
+dividend, or L1000 a year. In ten years he gets back the whole of his
+L10,000, but he still owns the shares, and he still draws a dividend of
+L1000 a year. If the company go on working and making 10 per cent. for a
+hundred years they will still be paying L1000 a year for the loan of the
+L10,000. It will be quite evident, then, that in twenty years this
+shareholder will have received his money twice over; that is to say, his
+L10,000 will have become L20,000 without his having done a stroke of
+work or even knowing anything about the business.
+
+On the other hand, the manager, the salesman, and the workman, who have
+done all the work and earned all the profits, will receive no dividend
+at all. They are paid their weekly wages, and no more. A man who starts
+at a pound a week will at the end of twenty years be still working for a
+pound a week.
+
+The non-Socialist will claim that this is quite right; that the
+shareholder is as much entitled to rent on his money as the worker is
+entitled to wages for his work. We need not contradict him. Let us keep
+to simple facts.
+
+Suppose the mouse-trap makers started a factory of their own. Suppose
+they fixed the wages of the workers at the usual rate. Suppose they
+borrowed the capital to carry on the business. Suppose they borrowed
+L100,000. They would not have to pay 10 per cent. for the loan, they
+would not have to pay 5 per cent. for the loan. But fix it at 5 per
+cent. interest, and suppose that, as in the case of the company, the
+mouse-trap makers made a profit of 10 per cent. That would give them a
+profit of L10,000 a year. In twenty years they would have made a profit
+of L200,000. The interest on the loan at 5 per cent. for twenty years
+would be L100,000. The amount of the loan is L100,000. Therefore after
+working twenty years they would have paid off the whole of the money
+borrowed, and the business, factory, and machinery would be their own.
+
+Thus, instead of being in the position of the men who had worked twenty
+years for the mouse-trap company, these men, after receiving the same
+wages as the others for twenty years, would now be in possession of the
+business paying them L10,000 a year over and above their wages.
+
+But, the non-Socialist will object, these working men could not borrow
+L100,000, as they would have no security. That is quite true; but the
+Corporation of Manchester or Birmingham could borrow the money to start
+such a work, and could borrow it at 3 per cent. And by making their own
+mouse-traps, or gas, or bread, instead of buying them from a private
+maker or a company, and paying the said company or maker L10,000 a year
+for ever and ever amen, they would, in less than twenty years, become
+possessors of their own works and machinery, and be in a position to
+save L10,000 a year on the cost of mouse-traps or gas or bread.
+
+This is what the Socialist means by saying that the capitalist is
+unnecessary, and is paid too much for the use of his capital.
+
+Against the capitalist or landlord worker or manager the same complaint
+holds good; the large profits taken by these men as payment for
+management or direction are out of all proportion to the value of their
+work. These profits, or salaries, called by economists "the wages of
+ability," are in excess of any salary that would be paid to a farmer,
+engineer, or director of any factory either by Government, by the County
+Council, by a Municipality, or by any capitalist or company engaging
+such a person at a fixed rate for services. That is to say, the
+capitalist or landlord director is paid very much above the market value
+of the "wages of ability."
+
+These facts generally escape the notice of the worker. As a rule his
+attention is confined to his own wages, and he thinks himself well off
+or ill off as his wages are what he considers high or low. But there are
+two sides to the question of wages. It is not only the amount of wages
+received that matters, but it is also the amount of commodities the
+wages will buy. The worker has to consider how much he spends as well as
+how much he gets; and if he can got as much for 15s. as he used to get
+for L1, he is as much better off as he would be were his wages raised 25
+per cent.
+
+Now on every article the workman uses there is one profit or a dozen;
+one charge or many charges placed upon his food, clothing, house, fuel,
+light, travelling, and everything he requires by the landlord, the
+capitalist, or the shareholders.
+
+Take the case of the coal bought by a poor London clerk at 30s. a ton.
+It pays a royalty to the royalty owner, it pays a profit to the mine
+owner, it pays a profit to the coal merchant, it pays a profit to the
+railway company, and these profits are over and above the cost in wages
+and wear and tear of machinery.
+
+Yet this same London clerk is very likely a Tory, who says many bitter
+things against _Socialism_, but never thinks of resenting the heavy
+taxes levied on his small income by landlords, railway companies, water
+companies, building companies, ship companies, and all the other
+companies and private firms who live upon him.
+
+Imagine this poor London clerk, whose house stands on land owned by a
+peer worth L300,000 a year, whose "boss" makes L50,000 a year out of
+timber or coals, whose pipe pays four shillings taxes on every
+shilling's worth of tobacco (while the rich man's cigar pays a tax of
+five shillings in the pound), whose children go to the board school,
+while those of the coalowner, the company promoter, the railway
+director, and the landlord go to the university. Imagine this man,
+anxious, worried, overworked, poor, and bled by a horde of rich
+parasites. Imagine him standing in a well-dressed crowd, amongst the
+diamond shops, fur shops, and costly furniture shops of Regent Street,
+and asking with a bitter sneer where John Burns got his new suit of
+clothes.
+
+Is it not marvellous? He does not ask who gets the 4s. on his pound of
+smoking mixture! Nor why he pays 4s. a thousand for bad gas (as I did in
+Finchley) while the Manchester clerk gets good gas for 2s. 2d.! Nor does
+he ask why the Duke of Bedford should put a tax on his wife's apple
+pudding or his children's bananas! He does not even ask what became of
+the L80,000,000 which the coal-owners wrung out of the public when he,
+the poor clerk, was paying 2s. per cwt. for coal for his tiny parlour
+grate! No. The question he asks is: Where Ben Tillett got his new straw
+hat!
+
+How the Duke, and the Coalowner, and the Money-lender, and the
+Jerry-builder must laugh!
+
+Yet so it is. It is not the landlord, the company promoter, the
+coalowner, the jerry-builder, and all the other useless rich who prey
+upon his wife and his children whom he mistrusts. His enemies, poor man,
+are the Socialists; the men and women who work for him, teach him,
+sacrifice their health, their time, their money, and their prospects to
+awaken his manhood, to sting his pride, to drive the mists of prejudice
+from his worried mind and give his common sense a chance. _These_ are
+the men and women he despises and mistrusts. And he reads the _Daily
+Mail_, and shudders at the name of the _Clarion_; and he votes for Mr.
+Facing-both-ways and Lord Plausible, and is filled with bitterness
+because of honest John's summer trousers.
+
+Again I tell you, Mr. Smith, that I do not wish to stir up class hatred.
+Lady Dedlock, wife of the great ground landlord, is a charming lady,
+handsome, clever, and very kind to the poor.
+
+But if I were a docker, and if my wife had to go out in leaky boots, or
+if my delicate child could not get sea air and nourishing food, I should
+be apt to ask whether his lordship, the great ground landlord, could not
+do with less rent and his sweet wife with fewer pearls. I should ask
+that. I should not think myself a man if I did not ask it; nor should I
+feel happy if I did not strain every nerve to get an answer.
+
+Non-Socialists often reproach Socialists for sentimentality. But surely
+it is sentimentality to talk as the non-Socialist does about the
+personal excellences of the aristocracy. What have Lady Dedlock's
+amiability and beauty to do with the practical questions of gas rates
+and wages?
+
+I am "setting class against class." Quite right, too, so long as one
+class oppresses another.
+
+But let us reverse the position. Suppose you go to the Duke of Hebden
+Bridge and ask for an engagement as clerk in his Grace's colliery at a
+salary of L5000 a year. Will the duke give it to you because your wife
+is pretty and your daughter thinks you are a great man? Not at all. His
+Grace would say, "My dear sir, you are doubtless an excellent citizen,
+husband, and father; but I can get a better clerk at a pound a week,
+sir; and I cannot afford to pay more, sir."
+
+The duke would be quite correct. He could get a better clerk for L1 a
+week. And as for the amiability of your family, or your own personal
+merits, what have they to do with business?
+
+As a business man the duke will not pay L2 a week to a clerk if he can
+get a man as good for L1 a week.
+
+Then why should the clerk pay 4s. a thousand for his gas if he can get
+it for 2s. 2d.? Or why should the docker pay the duke 5s. rent if he can
+get a house for 2s. 6d.?
+
+Should I be offended with the duke for refusing to pay me more than I
+am worth? Should I accuse him of class hatred? Not at all. Then why
+should I be blamed for suggesting that it is folly to pay a duke more
+than he is worth? Or why should the duke mutter about class hatred if I
+suggest that we can get a colliery director at a lower salary than his
+Grace? Talk about sentimentality! Are we to pay a guinea each for dukes
+if we can get them three a penny? It is not business.
+
+I grudge no man his wealth nor his fortune. I want nothing that is his.
+I do not hate the rich: I pity the poor. It is of the women and children
+of the poor I think when I am agitating for _Socialism_, not of the
+coffers of the wealthy.
+
+I believe in universal brotherhood; nay, I go even further, for I
+maintain that the sole difference between the worst man and the best is
+a difference of opportunity--that is to say, that since heredity and
+environment make one man amiable and another churlish, one generous and
+another mean, one faithful and another treacherous, one wise and another
+foolish, one strong and another weak, one vile and another pure,
+therefore the bishop and the hooligan, the poet and the boor, the idiot,
+the philosopher, the thief, the hero, and the brutalised drab in the
+kennel _are all equal in the sight of God and of justice_, and that
+every word of censure uttered by man is a word of error, growing out of
+ignorance. As the sun shines alike upon the evil and the good, so must
+we give love and mercy to all our fellow-creatures. "Judgment is mine,
+saith the Lord."
+
+But that does not prevent me from defending a brother of the East End
+against a brother of the West End. Truly we should love all men. Let us,
+then, begin by loving the weakest and the worst, for they have so little
+love and counsel, while the rich and the good have so much.
+
+We will not, Mr. Smith, accuse the capitalist of base conduct. But we
+will say that as a money-lender his rate of interest is too high, and
+that as a manager his salary is too large. And we will say that if by
+combining we can, as workers, get better wages, and as buyers get
+cheaper goods, we shall do well and wisely to combine. For it is to our
+interest in the one case, as it is to the interest of the capitalist in
+the other case, to "buy in the cheapest market and to sell in the
+dearest."
+
+So much for the capitalist; but, before we deal with the landlord, we
+have to consider another very important person, and that is the
+inventor, or brain-worker.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BRAIN WORKER, OR INVENTOR
+
+
+It has, I think, never been denied that much wealth goes to the
+capitalist, but it has been claimed that the capitalist deserves all he
+gets because wealth is produced by capital. And although this is as
+foolish as to say that the tool does the work and not the hand that
+wields it, yet books have been written to convince the people that it is
+true.
+
+Some of these books try to deceive us into supposing that capital and
+ability are interchangeable terms. That is to say, that "capital," which
+means "stock," is the same thing as "ability," which means cleverness or
+skill. We might as well believe that a machine is the same thing as the
+brain that invented it. But there is a trick in it. The trick lies in
+first declaring that the bulk of the national wealth is produced by
+"ability," and then confusing the word "ability" with the word
+"capital."
+
+But it is one thing to say that wealth is due to the man who _invented_
+a machine, and it is quite another thing to say that wealth is due to
+the man who _owns_ the machine.
+
+In his book called _Labour and the Popular Welfare_, Mr. Mallock assures
+us that ability produces more wealth than is produced by labour.
+
+He says that two-thirds of the national wealth are due to ability and
+only one-third to labour. A hundred years ago, Mr. Mallock says, the
+population of this country was 10,000,000 and the wealth produced
+yearly; L140,000,000, giving an average of L14 a head.
+
+The recent production is L350,000,000 for every 10,000,000 of the
+population, or L35 a head.
+
+The argument is that _labour_ is only able to produce as much now as it
+could produce a hundred years ago, for labour does not vary. Therefore,
+the increase from L14 a head to L35 a head is not due to labour but to
+machinery.
+
+Now, we owe this machinery, not to labour, but to invention. Therefore
+the various inventors have enabled the people to produce more than twice
+as much as they produced a century back.
+
+Therefore, according to Mr. Mallock, all the extra wealth, amounting to
+L800,000,000 a year, is earned by the _machines_, and ought to be paid
+to the men who _own_ the machines.
+
+Pretty reasoning, isn't it? And Mr. Mallock is one of those who talk
+about the inaccurate thinking of Socialists.
+
+Let us see what it comes to. John Smith invents a machine which makes
+three yards of calico where one was made by hand. Tom Jones buys the
+machine, or the patent, to make calico. Which of these men is the cause
+of the calico output being multiplied by three? Is it the man who owns
+the patent, or the man who invented the machine? It is the man who
+invented the machine. It is the ability of John Smith which caused the
+increase in the calico output. It is, therefore, the ability of John
+Smith which earns the extra wealth. Tom Jones, who bought the machines,
+is no more the producer of that _extra_ wealth than are the spinners and
+weavers he employs.
+
+To whom, then, should the extra wealth belong? To the man who creates
+it? or to the man who does not create it? Clearly the wealth should
+belong to the man who creates it. Therefore, the whole of the extra
+wealth should go to the inventor, to whose ability it is due, and _not_
+to the mere capitalist, who only uses the machine.
+
+"But," you may say, "Jones bought the patent from Smith." He did. And he
+also buys their labour and skill from the spinners and weavers who work
+for him, and in all three cases he pays less than the thing he buys is
+worth.
+
+Mr. Mallock makes a great point of telling us that men are not equally
+clever, that cleverness produces more wealth than labour produces, and
+that one man is worth more than another to the nation.
+
+Labour, he says, is common to all men, but ability is the monopoly of
+the few. The bulk of the wealth is produced by the few, and ought by
+them to be enjoyed.
+
+But I don't think any Socialist ever claimed that all men were of equal
+value to the nation, nor that any one man could produce just as much
+wealth as any other. We know that one man is stronger than another, that
+one is cleverer than another, and that an inventor or thinker may design
+or invent some machine or process which will enable the workers to
+produce more wealth in one year than they could by their own methods
+produce in twenty.
+
+Now, before we go into the matter of the inventor, or of the value of
+genius to the nation, let us test these ideas of Mr. W. H. Mallock's and
+see what they lead to.
+
+A man invents a machine which does the work of ten handloom weavers. He
+is therefore worth more, as a weaver, than the ordinary weaver who
+invents nothing. How much more?
+
+If his machine does the work of ten men, you might think he was worth
+ten men. But he is worth very much more.
+
+Suppose there are 10,000 weavers, and all of them use his machine. They
+will produce not 10,000 men's work, but 100,000 men's work. Here, then,
+our inventor is equal to 90,000 weavers. That is to say, that his
+thought, his idea, his labour _produces_ as much wealth as could be
+produced by 100,000 weavers without it.
+
+On no theory of value, and on no grounds of reason that I know, can we
+claim that this inventor is of no more value, as a producer, than an
+ordinary, average handloom weaver.
+
+Granting the claim of the non-Socialist, that every man belongs to
+himself; and granting the claim of Mr. Mallock, that two-thirds of our
+national wealth are produced by inventors; and granting the demand of
+exact mathematical justice, that every man shall receive the exact value
+of the wealth he produces; it would follow that two-thirds of the
+wealth of this nation would be paid yearly to the inventors, or to their
+heirs or assigns.
+
+The wealth is _not_ to be paid to labour; that is Mr. Mallock's claim.
+And it is not to be paid to labour because it has been earned by
+ability. And Mr. Mallock tells us that labour does not vary nor increase
+in its productive power. Good.
+
+Neither does the landlord nor the capitalist increase his productive
+power. Therefore it is not the landlord nor the capitalist who earns--or
+produces--this extra wealth; it is the inventor.
+
+And since the labourer is not to have the wealth, because he does not
+produce it, neither should the landlord or capitalist have it, because
+he does not produce it.
+
+So much for the _right_ of the thing. Mr. Mallock shows that the
+inventor creates all this extra wealth; he shows that the inventor ought
+to have it. Good.
+
+Now, how is it that the inventor does _not_ get it, and how is it that
+the landlord and the capitalist _do_ get it?
+
+Just because the laws, which have been made by landlords and
+capitalists, enable these men to rob the inventor and the labourer with
+impunity.
+
+Thus: A man owns a piece of land in a town. As the town increases its
+business and population, the owner of the land raises the rent. He can
+get double the rent because the town has doubled its trade, and the land
+is worth more for business purposes or for houses. Has the landlord
+increased the value? Not at all. He has done nothing but draw the rent.
+The increase of value is due to the industry or ability of the people
+who live and work in the town, chiefly, as Mr. Mallock claims, to
+different inventors. Do these inventors get the increased rent? No. Do
+the workers in the town get it? No. The landlord demands this extra
+rent, and the law empowers him to evict if the rent is not paid.
+
+Next, let us see how the inventor is treated. If a man invents a machine
+and patents it, the law allows him to charge a royalty for its use for
+the space of fourteen years.
+
+At the end of that time the patent lapses, and the invention may be
+worked by anyone.
+
+Observe here the difference of the treatment given to the inventor and
+the landlord.
+
+The landlord does not make the land, he does not till the land, he does
+not improve the land; he only draws the rent, and he draws that _for
+ever_. _His_ patent never lapses; and the harder the workers work, and
+the more wealth inventors and workers produce, the more rent he
+draws--for nothing.
+
+The inventor _does_ make his invention. He is, upon Mr. Mallock's
+showing, the creator of immense wealth. And, even if he is lucky, he can
+only draw rent on his ability for fourteen years.
+
+But suppose the inventor is a poor man--and a great many inventors are
+poor men--his chance of getting paid for his ability is very small.
+Because, to begin with, he has to pay a good deal to patent his
+invention, and then, often enough, he needs capital to work the patent,
+and has none.
+
+What is he to do? He must find a capitalist to work the patent for him,
+or he must find a man rich enough to buy it from him.
+
+And it very commonly happens, either that the poor man cannot pay the
+renewal fees for his patent, and so loses it entirely, or that the
+capitalist buys it out and out for an old song, or that the capitalist
+obliges him to accept terms which give a huge profit to the capitalist
+and a small royalty to the inventor.
+
+The patent laws are so constructed as to make the poor inventor an easy
+prey to the capitalist.
+
+Many inventors die poor, many are robbed by agents or capitalists, many
+lose their patents because they cannot pay the renewal fees. Even when
+an inventor is lucky he can only draw rent for fourteen years. We see,
+then, that the men who make most of the wealth are hindered and robbed
+by the law, and we know that the law has been made by capitalists and
+landlords.
+
+Apply the same law to land that is applied to patents, and the whole
+land of England would be public property in fourteen years.
+
+Apply the same law to patents that is applied to land, and every
+article we use would be increased in price, and we should still be
+paying royalties to the descendants, or to their assigns, of James Watt,
+George Stephenson, and ten thousand other inventors.
+
+And now will some non-Socialist, Mr. Mallock or another, write a nice
+new book, and explain to us upon what rules of justice or of reason the
+present unequal treatment of the useless, idle landlord and the valuable
+and industrious inventor can be defended?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE LANDLORD'S RIGHTS AND THE PEOPLE'S RIGHTS
+
+
+Socialists are often accused of being advocates of violence and plunder.
+You will be told, no doubt, that Socialists wish to take the land from
+its present owners, by force, and "share it out" amongst the landless.
+
+Socialists have no more idea of taking the land from its present holders
+and "sharing it out" amongst the poor than they have of taking the
+railways from the railway companies and sharing the carriages and
+engines amongst the passengers.
+
+When the London County Council municipalised the tram service they did
+not rob the companies, nor did they share out the cars amongst the
+people.
+
+_Socialism_ does not mean the "sharing out" of property; on the
+contrary, it means the collective ownership of property.
+
+"Britain for the British" does not mean one acre and half a cow for each
+subject; it means that Britain shall be owned intact by the whole
+people, and shall be governed and worked by the whole people, for the
+benefit of the whole people.
+
+Just as the Glasgow tram service, the Manchester gas service, and the
+general postal service are owned, managed, and used by the citizens of
+Manchester and Glasgow, or by the people of Britain, for the general
+advantage.
+
+You will be told that the present holders of the land have as much right
+to the land as you have to your hat or your boots.
+
+Now, as a matter of law and of right, the present holders of the land
+have no fixed title to the land. But moderation, it has been well said,
+is the common sense of politics, and if we all got bare justice, "who,"
+as Shakespeare asks, "would 'scape whipping?"
+
+Socialists propose, then, to act moderately and to temper justice with
+amity. They do not suggest the "confiscation" of the land. They do
+suggest that the land should be taken over by the nation, at a fair
+price.
+
+But what is a fair price? The landlord, standing upon his alleged
+rights, may demand a price out of all reason and beyond all possibility.
+
+Therefore I propose here to examine the nature of those alleged rights,
+and to compare the claims of the landholders with the practice of law as
+it is applied to holders of property in brains; that is to say, as it is
+applied to authors and to inventors.
+
+Private ownership of land rests always on one of three pleas--
+
+
+    1. The right of conquest: the land has been stolen or "won" by the
+    owner or his ancestors.
+
+    2. The right of gift: the land has been received as a gift, bequest,
+    or grant.
+
+    3. The right of purchase: the land has been bought and paid for.
+
+
+Let us deal first with the rights of gift and purchase. It is manifest
+that no man can have a moral right to anything given or sold to him by
+another person who had no right to the thing given or sold.
+
+He who buys a watch, a horse, a house, or any other article from one who
+has no right to the horse, or house, or watch, must render up the
+article to the rightful owner, and lose the price or recover it from the
+seller.
+
+If a man has no moral right to own land, he can have no moral right to
+sell or give land.
+
+If a man has no moral right to sell or to give land, then another man
+can have no moral right to keep land bought or received in gift from
+him.
+
+So that to test the right of a man to land bought by or given to him, we
+must trace the land back to its original title.
+
+Now, the original titles of most land rest upon conquest or theft.
+Either the land was won from the Saxons by William the Conqueror, and
+by him given in fief to his barons, or it has been stolen from the
+common right and "enclosed" by some lord of the manor or other brigand.
+
+I am sorry to use the word brigand, but what would you call a man who
+stole your horse or watch; and it is a far greater crime to steal land.
+
+Now, stolen land carries no title, except one devised by landlords. That
+is, there is no _moral_ title.
+
+So we come to the land "won" from the Saxons. The title of this land is
+the title of conquest, and only by that title can it be held, and only
+with that title can it be sold. What the sword has won the sword must
+hold. He who has taken land by force has a title to it only so long as
+he can hold it by force.
+
+This point is neatly expressed in a story told by Henry George--
+
+
+    A nobleman stops a tramp, who is crossing his park, and orders him
+    off _his_ land. The tramp asks him how came the land to be his? The
+    noble replies that he inherited it from his father. "How did _he_
+    get it?" asks the tramp. "From his father," is the reply; and so the
+    lord is driven back to the proud days of his origin--the Conquest.
+    "And how did your great, great, great, etc., grandfather get it?"
+    asks the tramp. The nobleman draws himself up, and replies, "He
+    fought for it and won it." "Then," says the unabashed vagrant,
+    beginning to remove his coat, "I will fight _you_ for it."
+
+
+The tramp was quite logical. Land won by the sword may be rewon by the
+sword, and the right of conquest implies the right of any party strong
+enough for the task to take the conquered land from its original
+conqueror.
+
+And yet the very men who claim the land as theirs by right of ancient
+conquest would be the first to deny the right of conquest to others.
+They claim the land as theirs because eight hundred years ago their
+fathers took it from the English people, but they deny the right of the
+English people to take it back from them. A duke holds lands taken by
+the Normans under William. He holds them by right of the fact that his
+ancestor stole them, or, as the duke would say, "won" them. But let a
+party of revolutionaries propose to-day to win these lands back from him
+in the same manner, and the duke would cry out, "Thief! thief! thief!"
+and call for the protection of the law.
+
+It would be "immoral" and "illegal," the duke would say, for the British
+people to seize his estates.
+
+Should such a proposal be made, the modern duke would not defend
+himself, as his ancestors did, by force of arms, but would appeal to the
+law. Who made the law? The law was made by the same gentlemen who
+appropriated and held the land. As the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain
+said in his speech at Denbigh in 1884--
+
+
+    The House of Lords, that club of Tory landlords, in its gilded
+    chamber, has disposed of the welfare of the people with almost
+    exclusive regard to the interests of a class.
+
+
+Or, as the same statesman said at Hull in 1885--
+
+
+    The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights of
+    the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is hardly
+    too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the
+    liberties of a great proportion of the population have been laid at
+    the feet of a small number of proprietors, who neither toil nor
+    spin.
+
+
+Well, then, the duke may defend his right by duke-made law. We do not
+object to that, for it justifies us in attacking him by Parliament-made
+law: by new law, made by a Parliament of the people.
+
+Is there any law of equity which says it is unjust to take by force from
+a robber what the robber took by force from another robber? Or is there
+any law of equity which says it is unjust that a law made by a
+Parliament of landlords should not be reversed by another law made by a
+Parliament of the people?
+
+The landlords will call this an "immoral" proposal. It is based upon the
+claim that the land is wanted for the use and advantage of the nation.
+Their lordships may ask for precedent. I will provide them with one.
+
+A landlord does not make the land; he holds it.
+
+But if a man invent a new machine or a new process, or if he write a
+poem or a book, he may claim to have made the invention or the book,
+and may justly claim payment for the use of them by other men.
+
+An inventor or an author has, therefore, a better claim to payment for
+his work than a landlord has to payment for the use of the land he calls
+his. Now, how does the law act towards these men?
+
+The landlord may call the land his all the days of his life, and at his
+death may bequeath it to his heirs. For a thousand years the owners of
+an estate may charge rent for it, and at the end of the thousand years
+the estate will still be theirs, and the rent will still be running on
+and growing ever larger and larger. And at any suggestion that the
+estate should lapse from the possession of the owners and become the
+property of the people, the said owners will lustily raise the cry of
+"Confiscation."
+
+The patentee of an invention may call the invention his own, and may
+charge royalties upon its use for _a space of fourteen years_. At the
+end of that time his patent lapses and becomes public property, without
+any talk of compensation or any cry of confiscation. Thus the law holds
+that an inventor is well paid by fourteen years' rent for a thing he
+made himself, while the landlord is _never_ paid for the land he did not
+make.
+
+The author of a book holds the copyright of the book for a period of
+forty-four years, or for his own life and seven years after, whichever
+period be the longer. At the expiration of that time the book becomes
+public property. Thus the law holds that an author is well paid by
+forty-four years' rent for a book which he has made, but that the
+landlord is _never_ paid for the land which he did not make.
+
+If the same law that applies to the land applied to books and to
+inventions, the inheritors of the rights of Caxton and Shakespeare would
+still be able to charge, the one a royalty on every printing press in
+use, and the other a royalty on every copy of Shakespeare's poems sold.
+Then there would be royalties on all the looms, engines, and other
+machines, and upon all the books, music, engravings, and what not; so
+that the cost of education, recreation, travel, clothing, and nearly
+everything else we use would be enhanced enormously. But, thanks to a
+very wise and fair arrangement an author or an inventor has a good
+chance to be well paid, and after that the people have a chance to enjoy
+the benefits of his genius.
+
+Now, if it is right and expedient thus to deprive the inventor or the
+author of his own production after a time, and to give the use thereof
+to the public, what sense or justice is there in allowing a landowner to
+hold land and to draw an ever-swelling rent to the exclusion,
+inconvenience, and expense of the people for ever? And by what process
+of reasoning can a landlord charge me, an author, with immorality or
+confiscation for suggesting that the same law should apply to the land
+he did not make, that I myself cheerfully allow to be applied to the
+books I do make?
+
+For the landlord to speak of confiscation in the face of the laws of
+patent and of copyright seems to me the coolest impudence.
+
+But there is something else to be said of the landlord's title to the
+land. He claims the right to hold the land, and to exact rent for the
+land, on the ground that the land is lawfully his.
+
+The land is _not_ his.
+
+There is no such thing, and there never was any such thing, in English
+law as private ownership of land. In English law the land belongs to the
+Crown, and can only be held in trust by any subject.
+
+Allow me to give legal warranty for this statement. The great lawyer,
+Sir William Blackstone, says--
+
+
+    Accurately and strictly speaking, there is no foundation in nature
+    or in natural law why a set of words on parchment should convey the
+    dominion of land. Allodial (absolute) property no subject in England
+    now has; it being a received and now undeniable principle in law,
+    that all lands in England are holden mediately or immediately of the
+    King.
+
+
+Sir Edward Coke says--
+
+
+    All lands or tenements in England in the hands of subjects, are
+    holden mediately or immediately of the King. For, in the law of
+    England, we have not any subject's land that is not holden.
+
+
+And Sir Frederick Pollock, in _English Land Lords_, says--
+
+
+    No absolute ownership of land is recognised by our law books,
+    except in the Crown. All lands are supposed to be held immediately
+    or mediately of the Crown, though no rent or service may be payable
+    and no grant from the Crown on record.
+
+
+I explained at first that I do not suggest confiscation. Really the land
+is the King's, and by him can be claimed; but we will let that pass.
+Here we will speak only of what is reasonable and fair. Let me give a
+more definite idea of the hardships imposed upon the nation by the
+landlords.
+
+We all know how the landlord takes a part of the wealth produced by
+labour and calls it "rent." But that is only simple rent. There is a
+worse kind of rent, which I will call "compound rent." It is known to
+economists as "unearned increment."
+
+I need hardly remind you that rents are higher in large towns than in
+small villages. Why? Because land is more "valuable." Why is it more
+valuable? Because there is more trade done.
+
+Thus a plot of land in the city of London will bring in a hundredfold
+more rent than a plot of the same size in some Scottish valley. For
+people must have lodgings, and shops, and offices, and works in the
+places where their business lies. Cases have been known in which land
+bought for a few shillings an acre has increased within a man's lifetime
+to a value of many guineas a yard.
+
+This increase in value is not due to any exertion, genius, or enterprise
+on the part of the landowner. It is entirely due to the energy and
+intelligence of those who made the trade and industry of the town.
+
+The landowner sits idle while the Edisons, the Stephensons, the
+Jacquards, Mawdsleys, Bessemers, and the thousands of skilled workers
+expand a sleepy village into a thriving town; but when the town is
+built, and the trade is flourishing, he steps in to reap the harvest. He
+raises the rent.
+
+He raises the rent, and evermore raises the rent, so that the harder the
+townsfolk work, and the more the town prospers, the greater is the price
+he charges for the use of his land. This extortionate rent is really a
+fine inflicted by idleness on industry. It is simple _plunder_, and is
+known by the technical name of unearned increment.
+
+It is unearned increment which condemns so many of the workers in our
+British towns to live in narrow streets, in back-to-back cottages, in
+hideous tenements. It is unearned increment which forces up the
+death-rate and fosters all manner of disease and vice. It is unearned
+increment which keeps vast areas of London, Glasgow, Liverpool,
+Manchester, and all our large towns ugly, squalid, unhealthy, and vile.
+And unearned increment is an inevitable outcome and an invariable
+characteristic of the private ownership of land.
+
+On this subject Professor Thorold Rogers said--
+
+
+    Every permanent improvement of the soil, every railway and road,
+    every bettering of the general condition of society, every facility
+    given for production, every stimulus applied to consumption, _raises
+    rent_. The landowner sleeps, but thrives.
+
+
+The volume of this unearned increment is tremendous. Mr. H. B. Haldane,
+M.P., speaking at Stepney in 1894, declared that the land upon which
+London stands would be worth, apart from its population and special
+industries, "at the outside not more than L16,000 a year." Instead of
+which "the people pay in rent for the land alone L16,000,000, and, with
+the buildings, L40,000,000 a year." Those L16,000,000 constitute a fine
+levied upon the workers of London by landlords.
+
+A similar state of affairs exists in the country, where the farms are
+let chiefly on short leases. Here the tenant having improved his land
+has often lost his improvements, or, for fear of losing the
+improvements, has not improved his land nor even farmed it properly. In
+either case the landlord has been enriched while the tenant or the
+public has suffered.
+
+A landlord has an estate which no farmer can make pay. A number of
+labourers take small plots at L5 an acre, and go in for flower culture.
+They work so hard, and become so skilful, that they get L50 an acre for
+their produce. And the landlord raises the rent to L40 an acre.
+
+That is "unearned increment," or "compound rent." The landlord could not
+make the estate pay, the farmer could not make it pay. The labourer, by
+his own skill and industry, does make it pay, and the landlord takes the
+proceeds.
+
+And these are the men who talk about confiscation and robbery!
+
+Do I blame the landlord? Not very much. But I blame the people for
+allowing him to deprive their wives and children of the necessaries, the
+decencies, and the joys of life.
+
+But if you wish to know more about the treatment of tenants by landlords
+in England, Scotland, and Ireland, get a book called _Land
+Nationalisation_, by Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, published by Swan
+Sonnenschein, at 1s.
+
+That private landowners should be allowed to take millions out of the
+pockets of the workers is neither just nor reasonable. There is no
+argument in favour of landlordism that would not hold good in the case
+of a private claim to the sea and the air.
+
+Imagine a King or Parliament granting to an individual the exclusive
+ownership of the Bristol Channel or the air of Cornwall! Such a grant
+would rouse the ridicule of the whole nation. The attempt to enforce
+such a grant would cause a revolution.
+
+But in what way is such a grant more iniquitous or absurd than is the
+claim of a private citizen to the possession of Monsall Dale, or
+Sherwood Forest, or Covent Garden Market, or the corn lands of Essex, or
+the iron ore of Cumberland?
+
+The Bristol Channel, the river Thames, all our high roads, and most of
+our bridges are public property, free for the use of all. No power in
+the kingdom could wrest a yard of the highway nor an acre of green sea
+from the possession of the nation. It is right that the road and the
+river, the sea and the air should be the property of the people; it is
+expedient that they should be the property of the people. Then by what
+right or by what reason can it be held that the land--Britain
+herself--should belong to any man, or by any man be withheld from the
+people--who are the British nation?
+
+But it may be thought, because I am a Socialist, and neither rich nor
+influential, that my opinion should be regarded with suspicion. Allow me
+to offer the authority of more eminent men.
+
+The late Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge said, in 1887--
+
+
+    These (our land laws) might be for the general advantage, and if
+    they could be shown to be so, by all means they should be
+    maintained; but if not, does any man, with what he is pleased to
+    call his mind, deny that a state of law under which such mischief
+    could exist, under which the country itself would exist, not for its
+    people, but for a mere handful of them, ought to be instantly and
+    absolutely set aside?
+
+
+Two years later, in 1889, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone said--
+
+
+    Those persons who possess large portions of the earth's space are
+    not altogether in the same position as possessors of mere
+    personality. Personality does not impose limitations on the action
+    and industry of man and the well-being of the community as
+    possession of land does, and therefore _I freely own that compulsory
+    expropriation is a thing which is admissible, and even sound in
+    principle_.
+
+
+Speaking at Hull, in August 1885, the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain
+said--
+
+
+    The soil of every country originally belonged to its inhabitants,
+    and if it has been thought expedient to create private ownership in
+    place of common rights, at least that private ownership must be
+    considered as a trust, and subject to the conditions of a trust.
+
+
+And again, at Inverness, in September 1885, Mr. Chamberlain said--
+
+
+    When an exorbitant rent is demanded, which takes from a tenant the
+    savings of his life, and turns him out at the end of his lease
+    stripped of all his earnings, when a man is taxed for his own
+    improvements, that is confiscation, and it is none the less
+    reprehensible because it is sanctioned by the law.
+
+
+These views of the land question are not merely the views of ignorant
+demagogues, but are fully indorsed by great lawyers, great statesmen,
+great authors, great divines, and great economists.
+
+What is the principle which these eminent men teach? It is the principle
+enforced in the patent law, in the income tax, and in the law of
+copyright, that the privileges and claims, even the _rights_ of the few,
+must give way to the needs of the many and the welfare of the whole.
+
+What, then, do we propose to do? I think there are very few Socialists
+who wish to confiscate the land without any kind of compensation. But
+all Socialists demand that the land shall return to the possession of
+the people. Britain for the British! What could be more just?
+
+How are the people to get the land? There are many suggestions. Perhaps
+the fairest would be to allow the landowner the same latitude that is
+allowed to the inventor, who, as Mr. Mallock claims, is really the
+creator of two-thirds of our wealth.
+
+We allow the inventor to draw rent on his patent for fourteen years. Why
+not limit the private possession of land to the same term? Pay the
+present owners of land the full rent for fourteen or, say, twenty years,
+or, in a case where land has been bought in good faith, within the past
+fifty years, allow the owner the full rent for thirty years. This would
+be more than we grant our inventors, though they _add_ to the national
+wealth, whereas the landlord simply takes wealth away from the national
+store.
+
+The method I here advise would require a "Compulsory Purchase Act" to
+compel landowners to sell their land at a fair price to the nation when
+and wherever the public convenience required it.
+
+This view is expressed clearly in a speech made by the Right Hon. Joseph
+Chamberlain at Trowbridge in 1885--
+
+
+    We propose that local authorities shall have power in every case to
+    take land by compulsion at a fair price for every public purpose,
+    and that they should be able to let the land again, with absolute
+    security of tenure, for allotments and for small holdings.
+
+
+Others, again, recommend a land tax, and with perfect justice. If the
+City Council improves a street, at the cost of the ratepayer, the
+landlord raises his rent. What does that mean? It means that the
+ratepayer has increased the value of the landlord's property at the cost
+of the rates. It would only be just, then, that the whole increase
+should be taken back from the landlord by the city.
+
+Therefore, it would be quite just to tax the landlords to the full
+extent of their "unearned increment."
+
+In _Progress and Poverty_, and in the book on _Land Nationalisation_ by
+Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, you will find these subjects of the taxation
+and the purchase of land fully and clearly treated.
+
+My object is to show that it is to the interest of the nation that the
+private ownership of land should cease.
+
+
+_Books to Read on the Land_:--
+
+    _Progress and Poverty._ By Henry George, 1s. Kegan Paul, Trench,
+    Truebner, & Co.
+
+    _Land Nationalisation._ By Alfred Russell Wallace, 1s. Swan
+    Sonnenschein.
+
+    _Five Precursors of Henry George._ By J. Morrison Davidson. London,
+    Labour Leader Office, 1s.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LUXURY AND THE GREAT USEFUL EMPLOYMENT FRAUD
+
+
+There is one excuse which is still too often made for the extravagance
+of the rich, and that is the excuse that "_The consumption of luxuries
+by the rich finds useful employment for the poor_."
+
+It is a ridiculous excuse, and there is no eminent economist in the
+world who does not laugh at it; but the capitalist, the landlord, and
+many pressmen still think it is good enough to mislead or silence the
+people with.
+
+As it is the _only_ excuse the rich have to offer for their wasteful
+expenditure and costly idleness, it is worth while taking pains to
+convince the workers that it is no excuse at all.
+
+It is a mere error or falsehood, of course, but it is such an
+old-established error, such a plausible lie, and is repeated so often
+and so loudly by non-Socialists, that its disproof is essential. Indeed,
+I regard it as a matter of great importance that this subject of luxury
+and labour should be thoroughly understanded of the people.
+
+Here is this rich man's excuse, or defence, as it was stated by the Duke
+of Argyll about a dozen years ago. So slowly do the people learn, and so
+ignorant or dishonest does the Press remain, that the foolish statement
+is still quite up to date--
+
+
+    But there are at least some things to be seen which are in the
+    nature of facts and not at all in the nature of speculation or mere
+    opinion. Amongst these some become clear from the mere clearing up
+    of the meaning of words such as "the unemployed." Employment in this
+    sense is the hiring of manual labour for the supply of human wants.
+    _The more these wants are stimulated and multiplied the more
+    widespread will be the inducement to hire. Therefore all outcries
+    and prejudices against the progress of wealth and of what is called
+    "luxury" are nothing but outcries of prejudice against the very
+    sources and fountains of all employment._ This conclusion is
+    absolutely certain.
+
+
+I have no doubt at all that the duke honestly believed that statement,
+and I daresay there are hundreds of eminent persons still alive who are
+no wiser than he.
+
+The duke is quite correct in saying that "the more the wants of the rich
+are stimulated" the more employment there will be for the people. But
+after all, that only means that the more the rich waste, the harder the
+poor must work.
+
+The fact is, the duke has omitted the most essential factor from the
+sum: he does not say how the rich man gets his money, nor from _whom_ he
+gets his money. A ducal landlord draws, say, L100,000 a year in rent
+from his estates.
+
+Who pays the rent? The farmers. Who earns the rent? The farmers and the
+labourers.
+
+These men earn and pay the rent, and the ducal landlord takes it.
+
+What does the duke do with the rent? He spends it. We are told that he
+spends it in finding useful employment for the poor, and one intelligent
+newspaper says--
+
+
+    A rich man cannot spend his money without finding employment for
+    vast numbers of people who, without him, would starve.
+
+
+That implies that the poor live on the rich. Now, I maintain that the
+rich live on the poor. Let us see.
+
+The duke buys food, clothing, and lodging for himself, for his family,
+and for his servants. He buys, let us say, a suit of clothes for
+himself. That finds work for a tailor. And we are told that but for the
+duke the tailor must starve. _Why?_
+
+The agricultural labourer is badly in want of clothes; cannot _he_ find
+the tailor work? No. The labourer wants clothes, but he has no money.
+_Why_ has he no money? _Because the duke has taken his clothing money
+for rent!_
+
+Then in the first place it is because the duke has taken the labourer's
+money that the tailor has no work. Then if the duke did not take the
+labourer's money the labourer could buy clothes? Yes. Then if the duke
+did not take the labourer's money the tailor _would_ have work? Yes.
+Then it is not the duke's money, but the labourer's money, which keeps
+the tailor from starving? Yes. Then in this case the duke is no use? He
+is worse than useless. The labourer, who _earns_ the money, has no
+clothes, and the idle duke has clothes.
+
+So that what the duke really does is to take the earnings of the
+labourer and spend them on clothes for _himself_.
+
+Well, suppose I said to a farmer, "You give me five shillings a week out
+of your earnings, and I will find employment for a man to make cigars,
+_I_ will smoke the cigars."
+
+What would the farmer say? Would he not say, "Why should I employ you to
+smoke cigars which I pay for? If the cigar maker needs work, why should
+I not employ him myself, and smoke the cigars myself, since I am to pay
+for them?"
+
+Would not the farmer speak sense? And would not the labourer speak sense
+if he said to the duke, "Why should I employ you to wear out breeches
+which I pay for?"
+
+My offer to smoke the farmer's cigars is no more impudent than the
+assertion of the Duke of Argyll, that he, the duke, finds employment for
+a tailor by wearing out clothes for which the farmer has to pay.
+
+If the farmer paid no rent, _he_ could employ the tailor, and he would
+have the clothes. The duke does nothing more than deprive the farmer of
+his clothes.
+
+But this is not the whole case against the duke. The duke does not spend
+_all_ the rent in finding work for the poor. He spends a good deal of it
+on food and drink for himself and his dependants. This wealth is
+consumed--it is _wasted_, for it is consumed by men who produce nothing.
+And it all comes from the earnings of the men who pay the rent.
+Therefore, if the farmer and his men, instead of giving the money to the
+duke for rent, could spend it on themselves, they would find more
+employment for the poor than the duke can, because they would be able to
+spend all that the duke and his enormous retinue of servants waste.
+
+Although the duke (with the labourer's money) does find work for some
+tailors, milliners, builders, bootmakers, and others, yet he does not
+find work for them all. There are always some tailors, bootmakers, and
+builders out of work.
+
+Now, I understand that in this country about L14,000,000 a year are
+spent on horse-racing and hunting. This is spent by the rich. If it were
+not spent on horse-racing and hunting, it could be spent on useful
+things, and then, perhaps, there would be fewer tailors and other
+working men out of work.
+
+But you may say, "What then would become of the huntsmen, jockeys,
+servants, and others who now live on hunting and on racing?" A very
+natural question. Allow me to explain the difference between necessaries
+and luxuries.
+
+All the things made or used by man may be divided into two classes,
+under the heads of necessaries and luxuries.
+
+I should count as necessaries all those things which are essential to
+the highest form of human life.
+
+All those things which are not necessary to the highest form of human
+life I should call luxuries, or superfluities.
+
+For instance, I should call food, clothing, houses, fuel, books,
+pictures, and musical instruments, necessaries; and I should call
+diamond ear-rings, racehorses, and broughams luxuries.
+
+Now it is evident that all those things, whether luxuries or
+necessaries, are made by labour. Diamond rings, loaves of bread, grand
+pianos, and flat irons do not grow on trees; they must be made by the
+labour of the people. And it is very clear that the more luxuries a
+people produce, the fewer necessaries they will produce.
+
+If a community consists of 10,000 people, and if 9000 people are making
+bread and 1000 are making jewellery, it is evident that there will be
+more bread than jewellery.
+
+If in the same community 9000 make jewellery and only 1000 make bread,
+there will be more jewellery than bread.
+
+In the first case there will be food enough for all, though jewels be
+scarce. In the second case the people must starve, although they wear
+diamond rings on all their fingers.
+
+In a well-ordered State no luxuries would be produced until there were
+enough necessaries for all.
+
+Robinson Crusoe's first care was to secure food and shelter. Had he
+neglected his goats and his raisins, and spent his time in making
+shell-boxes, he would have starved. Under those circumstances he would
+have been a fool. But what are we to call the delicate and refined
+ladies who wear satin and pearls, while the people who earn them lack
+bread?
+
+Take a community of two men. They work upon a plot of land and grow
+grain for food. By each working six hours a day they produce enough food
+for both.
+
+Now take one of those men away from the cultivation of the land, and set
+him to work for six hours a day at the making of bead necklaces. What
+happens?
+
+This happens--that the man who is left upon the land must now work
+twelve hours a day. Why? Because although his companion has ceased to
+grow grain he has not ceased to _eat bread_. Therefore the man who grows
+the grain must now grow grain enough for two. That is to say, that the
+more men are set to the making of luxuries, the heavier will be the
+burden of the men who produce necessaries.
+
+But in this case, you see, the farmer does get some return for his extra
+labour. That is to say, he gets half the necklaces in exchange for half
+his grain; for there is no rich man.
+
+Suppose next a community of three--one of whom is a landlord, while the
+other two are farmers.
+
+The landlord takes half the produce of the land in rent, but does no
+work. What happens?
+
+We saw just now that the two workers could produce enough grain in six
+hours to feed two men for one day. Of this the landlord takes half.
+Therefore, the two men must now produce four men's food in one day, of
+which the landlord will take two, leaving the workers each one. Well, if
+it takes a man six hours to produce a day's keep for one, it will take
+him twelve hours to produce a day's keep for two. So that our two
+farmers must now work twice as long as before.
+
+But now the landlord has got twice as much grain as he can eat. He
+therefore proceeds to _spend_ it, and in spending it he "finds useful
+employment" for one of the farmers. That is to say, he takes one of the
+farmers off the land and sets him to building a house for the landlord.
+What is the effect of this?
+
+The effect of it is that the one man left upon the land has now to find
+food for all three, and in return gets nothing.
+
+Consider this carefully. All men must eat, and here are two men who do
+not produce food. To produce food for one man takes one man six hours.
+To produce food for three men takes one man eighteen hours. The one man
+left on the land has, therefore, to work three times as long, or three
+times as hard, as he did at first. In the case of the two men, we saw
+that the farmer did get his share of the bead necklaces, but in the case
+of the three men the farmer gets nothing. The luxuries produced by the
+man taken from the land are enjoyed by the rich man.
+
+The landlord takes from the farmer two-thirds of his produce, and
+employs another man to help him to spend it.
+
+We have here three classes--
+
+1. The landlord, who does no work.
+
+2. The landlord's servant, who does work for the benefit of the
+landlord.
+
+3. The farmer, who produces food for himself and the other two.
+
+Now, all the peoples of Europe, if not of the world, are divided into
+those three classes.
+
+And it is _most important_ that you should thoroughly understand those
+three classes, never forget them, and never allow the rich man, nor the
+champions of the rich man, to forget them.
+
+The jockeys, huntsmen, and flunkeys alluded to just now, belong to the
+class who work, but whose work is all done for the benefit of the idle.
+
+Do not be deceived into supposing that there are but _two_ classes:
+there are _three_. Do not believe that the people may be divided into
+workers and idlers: they must be divided into (1) idlers, (2) workers
+who work for the idlers, and (3) workers who support the idlers and
+those who work for the idlers.
+
+These three classes are a relic of the feudal times: they represent the
+barons, the vassals, and the retainers.
+
+The rich man is the baron, who draws his wealth from the workers; the
+jockeys, milliners, flunkeys, upholsterers, designers, musicians, and
+others who serve the rich man, and live upon his custom and employment,
+are the retainers; the workers, who earn the money upon which the rich
+man and his following exist, are the vassals.
+
+Remember the _three_ classes: the rich, who produce nothing; the
+employees of the rich, who produce luxuries for the rich; and the
+workers, who find everything for themselves and all the wealth for the
+other two classes.
+
+It is like two men on one donkey. The duke rides the donkey, and boasts
+that he carries the flunkey on his back. So he does. But the donkey
+carries both flunkey and duke.
+
+Clearly, then, the duke confers no favour on the agricultural labourer
+by employing jockeys and servants, for the labourer has to pay for them,
+and the duke gets the benefit of their services.
+
+But the duke confers a benefit on the men he employs as huntsmen and
+servants, and without the duke they would starve? No; without him they
+would not starve, for the wealth which supports them would still exist,
+and they could be found other work, and could even add to the general
+store of wealth by producing some by their own labour.
+
+The same remark applies to all those of the second class, from the
+fashionable portrait-painter and the diamond-cutter down to the
+scullery-maid and the stable-boy.
+
+Compare the position of an author of to-day with the position of an
+author in the time of Dr. Johnson. In Johnson's day the man of genius
+was poor and despised, dependent on rich patrons: in our day the man of
+genius writes for the public, and the rich patron is unknown.
+
+The best patron is the People; the best employer is the People; the
+proper person to enjoy luxuries is the man who works for and creates
+them.
+
+My Lady Dedlock finds useful employment for Mrs. Jones. She employs Mrs.
+Jones to make her ladyship a ball-dress.
+
+Where does my lady get her money? She gets it from her husband, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, who gets it from his tenant farmer, who gets it from
+the agricultural labourer, Hodge.
+
+Then her ladyship orders the ball-dress of Mrs. Jones, and pays her with
+Hodge's money.
+
+But if Mrs. Jones were not employed making the ball-dress for my Lady
+Dedlock, she could be making gowns for Mrs. Hodge, or frocks for Hodge's
+girls.
+
+Whereas now Hodge cannot buy frocks for his children, and his wife is a
+dowdy, because Sir Leicester Dedlock has taken Hodge's earnings and
+given them to his lady to buy ball costumes.
+
+Take a larger instance. There are many yachts which, in building and
+decoration, have cost a quarter of a million.
+
+Average the wages of all the men engaged in the erection and fitting of
+such a vessel at 30s. a week. We shall find that the yacht has "found
+employment" for 160 men for twenty years. Now, while those men were
+engaged on that work they produced no necessaries for themselves. But
+they _consumed_ necessaries, and those necessaries were produced by the
+same people who found the money for the owner of the yacht to spend.
+That is to say, that the builders were kept by the producers of
+necessaries, and the producers of necessaries were paid for the
+builders' keep, with money which they, the producers of necessaries, had
+earned for the owner of the yacht.
+
+The conclusion of this sum being that the producers of necessaries had
+been compelled to support 160 men, and their wives and children, for
+twenty years; and for what?
+
+That they might build _one yacht_ for the pleasure of _one idle man_.
+
+Would those yacht builders have starved without the rich man? Not at
+all. But for the rich man, the other workers would have had more money,
+could afford more holidays, and that quarter of a million spent on the
+one yacht would have built a whole fleet of pleasure boats.
+
+And note also that the pleasure boats would find more employment than
+the yacht, for there would be more to spend on labour and less on costly
+materials.
+
+So with other dependants of the rich. The duke's gardeners could find
+work in public parks for the people; the artists, who now sell their
+pictures to private collections, could sell them to public galleries;
+and some of the decorators and upholsterers who now work on the rich
+men's palaces might turn their talents to our town halls and hospitals
+and public pavilions. And that reminds me of a quotation from Mr.
+Mallock, cited in _Merrie England_. Mr. Mallock said--
+
+
+    Let us take, for instance, a large and beautiful cabinet, for which
+    a rich man of taste pays L2000. The cabinet is of value to him for
+    reasons which we will consider presently; as possessed by him it
+    constitutes a portion of his wealth. But how could such a piece of
+    wealth be distributed? Not only is it incapable of physical
+    partition and distribution, but, if taken from the rich man and
+    given to the poor man, the latter is not the least enriched by it.
+    Put a priceless buhl cabinet into an Irish labourer's cottage, and
+    it will probably only add to his discomforts; or, if he finds it
+    useful, it will only be because he keeps his pigs in it. A picture
+    by Titian, again, may be worth thousands, but it is worth thousands
+    only to the man who can enjoy it.
+
+
+Now, isn't that a precious piece of nonsense? There are two things to be
+said about that rich man's cabinet. The first is, that it was made by
+some workman who, if he had not been so employed, might have been
+producing what _would_ be useful to the poor. So that the cabinet has
+cost the poor something. The second is, that a priceless buhl cabinet
+_can_ be divided. Of course, it would be folly to hack it into shavings
+and serve them out amongst the mob; but if that cabinet is a thing of
+beauty and worth the seeing, it ought to be taken from the rich
+benefactor, whose benefaction consists in his having plundered it from
+the poor, and it ought to be put into a public museum where thousands
+could see it, and where the rich man could see it also if he chose.
+This, indeed, is the proper way to deal with all works of art, and this
+is one of the rich man's greatest crimes--that he keeps hoarded up in
+his house a number of things that ought to be the common heritage of the
+people.
+
+Every article of luxury has to be paid for not in _money_, but in
+_labour_. Every glass of wine drunk by my lord, and every diamond star
+worn by my lady, has to be paid for with the sweat and the tears of the
+poorest of our people. I believe it is a literal fact that many of the
+artificial flowers worn at Court are actually stained with the tears of
+the famished and exhausted girls who make them.
+
+To say that the extravagance of the rich finds useful employment for the
+poor, is more foolish than to say that the drunkard finds useful
+employment for the brewers.
+
+The drunkard may have a better defence than the duke, because he may
+perhaps have produced, or earned, the money he spends in beer, whereas
+the duke's rents are not produced by the duke nor earned by him.
+
+That is clear, is it not? And yet a few weeks since I saw an article in
+a London weekly paper in which we were told that the thief was an
+indispensable member of society, because he found employment for
+policemen, gaolers, builders of gaols, and other persons.
+
+The excuse for the thief is as valid as the excuse for the duke. The
+thief finds plenty of employment for the people. But who _pays_ the
+persons employed?
+
+The police, the gaolers, and all the other persons employed in catching,
+holding, and feeding the thief, are paid out of the rates and taxes. Who
+pays the taxes? The British public. Then the British public have to
+support not only the police and the rest, but the thief as well.
+
+What do the police, the thief, and the gaoler produce? Do they produce
+any wealth? No. They consume wealth, and the thief is so useful that if
+he died out for ever, it would pay us better to feed the gaolers and
+police for doing nothing than to fetch the thief back again to feed him
+as well.
+
+Work is useless unless it be productive work. It would be work for a man
+to dig a hole and then fill it up again; but the work would be of no
+benefit to the nation. It would be work for a man to grow strawberries
+to feed the Duke of Argyll's donkey on, but it would be useless work,
+because it would add nothing to the general store of wealth.
+
+Policemen and gaolers are men withdrawn from the work of producing
+wealth to wait upon useless criminals. They, like soldiers and many
+others, do not produce wealth, but they consume it, and the greater the
+number of producers and the smaller the number of consumers the richer
+the State must be. For which family would be the better off--the family
+wherein ten earned wages and none wasted them, or the family in which
+two earned wages and eight spent them?
+
+Do not imagine, as some do, that increased consumption is a blessing. It
+is the amount of wealth you produce that makes a nation prosperous; and
+the idle rich man, who produces nothing, only makes his crime worse by
+spending a great deal.
+
+The great mass of the workers lead mean, penurious, and joyless lives;
+they crowd into small and inconvenient houses; they occupy the darkest,
+narrowest, and dirtiest streets; they eat coarse and cheap food, when
+they do not go hungry; they drink adulterated beer and spirits; they
+wear shabby and ill-made clothes; they ride in third-class carriages,
+sit in the worst seats of the churches and theatres; and they stint
+their wives of rest, their children of education, and themselves of
+comfort and of honour, that they may pay rent, and interest, and profits
+for the idle rich to spend in luxury and folly.
+
+And if the workers complain, or display any signs of suspicion or
+discontent, they are told that the rich are keeping them.
+
+That is not _true_. It is the workers who are keeping the rich.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WHAT SOCIALISM IS NOT
+
+
+It is no use telling you what _Socialism_ is until I have told you what
+it is not. Those who do not wish you to be Socialists have given you
+very false notions about _Socialism_, in the hope of setting you against
+it. They have brought many false charges against Socialists, in the hope
+of setting you against them. So you have come to think of _Socialism_ as
+a thing foolish, or vile, and when it is spoken of, you turn up your
+noses (instead of trying to see beyond them) and turn your backs on it.
+
+A friend offers to give you a good house-dog; but someone tells you it
+is mad. Your friend will be wise to satisfy you that the dog is _not_
+mad before he begins to tell you how well it can guard a house. Because,
+as long as you think the dog will bite you, you are not in the frame of
+mind to hear about its usefulness.
+
+A sailor is offering to sell an African chief a telescope; but the chief
+has been told that the thing is a gun. Then before the sailor shows the
+chief what the glass is good for, he will be wise to prove to him that
+it will not go off at half-cock and blow his eye out.
+
+So with _Socialism_: before I try to show you what it really is, I must
+try to clear your mind of the prejudice which has been sown there by
+those who wish to make you hate Socialism because they fear it.
+
+As a rule, my friends, it will be wise for you to look very carefully
+and hopefully at anything which Parliament men, or employers, or
+pressmen, call bad or foolish, because what helps you hinders them, and
+the stronger you grow the weaker they become.
+
+Well, the men who have tried to smash your unions, who have written
+against you, and spoken against you, and acted against you in all great
+strikes and lock-outs, are the same men who speak and write against
+_Socialism_.
+
+And what have they told you? Let us take their commonest statements, and
+see what they are made of.
+
+They say that Socialists want to get up a revolution, to turn the
+country upside down by force, to seize all property, and to divide it
+equally amongst the whole people.
+
+We will take these charges one at a time.
+
+As to _Revolution_. I think I shall be right if I say that not one
+Socialist in fifty, at this day, expects or wishes to get _Socialism_ by
+force of arms.
+
+In the early days of _Socialism_, when there were very few Socialists,
+and some of those rash, or angry, men, it may have been true that
+_Socialism_ implied revolution and violence. But to-day there are very
+few Socialists who believe in brute force, or who think a revolution
+possible or desirable. The bulk of our Socialists are for peaceful and
+lawful means. Some of them hope to bring _Socialism_ to pass by means of
+a reformed Parliament; others hope to bring it to pass by means of a
+newer, wiser, and juster public opinion.
+
+I have always been dead against the idea of revolution, for many
+reasons. I do not think a revolution is _possible_ in Britain. Firstly,
+because the people have too much sense; secondly, because the people are
+by nature patient and kindly; thirdly, because the people are too _free_
+to make force needful.
+
+I do not think a revolution is _advisable_. Because, firstly, it would
+be almost sure to fail; secondly, if it did not fail it would put the
+worst kind of men into power, and would destroy order and method before
+it was ready to replace them; thirdly, because a State built up on force
+is very likely to succumb to fraud; so that after great bloodshed,
+trouble, labour, and loss the people would almost surely slip down into
+worse evils than those against which they had fought, and would find
+that they had suffered and sinned in vain.
+
+I do not believe in force, and I do not believe in haste. What we want
+is _reason_ and _right_; and we can only hope to get reason and right by
+right and reasonable means.
+
+The men who would come to the top in a civil war would be fighters and
+strivers; they would not be the kind of men to wisely model and
+patiently and justly rule or lead a new State. Your barricade man may be
+very useful--at the barricades; but when the fighting is over, and his
+work is done, he may be a great danger, for he is not the man, usually,
+to stand aside and make way for the builders to replace by right laws
+the wrong laws which his arms have destroyed.
+
+Revolution by force of arms is not desirable nor feasible; but there is
+another kind of revolution from which we hope great things. This is a
+revolution of _thought_. Let us once get the people, or a big majority
+of the people, to understand _Socialism_, to believe in _Socialism_, and
+to work for _Socialism_, and the _real_ revolution is accomplished.
+
+In a free country, such as ours, the almighty voice is the voice of
+public opinion. What the public _believe in_ and _demand_ has got to be
+given. Who is to refuse? Neither King nor Parliament can stand against a
+united and resolute British people.
+
+And do not suppose, either, that brute force, which is powerless to get
+good or to keep it, has power to resist it or destroy it. Neither
+truncheons nor bayonets can kill a truth. The sword and the cannon are
+impotent against the pen and the tongue.
+
+Believe me, we can overcome the constable, the soldier, the Parliament
+man, the landlord, and the man of wealth, without shedding one drop of
+blood, or breaking one pane of glass, or losing one day's work.
+
+Our real task is to win the trust and help of the _people_ (I don't mean
+the workers only, but the British people), and the first thing to be
+done is to educate them--to teach them and tell them what we mean; to
+make quite clear to them what _Socialism_ is, and what it is _not_.
+
+One of the things it is not, is British imitation of the French
+Revolution. Our method is persuasion; our cause is justice; our weapons
+are the tongue and the pen.
+
+Next: As to seizing the wealth of the country and sharing it out amongst
+the people. First, we do not propose to _seize_ anything. We do propose
+to get some things,--the land, for instance,--and to make them the
+property of the whole nation; but we mean that to be done by Act of
+Parliament, and by purchase. Second, we have no idea of "sharing out"
+the land, nor the railways, nor the money, nor any other kind of wealth
+or property, equally amongst the people. To share these things out--if
+they _could_ be shared, which they could not be--would be to make them
+_private_ property, whereas we want them to be _public_ property, the
+property of the British _nation_.
+
+Yet, how often have you been told that Socialists want to have the
+wealth equally divided amongst all? And how often have you been told
+that if you divided the wealth in that way it would soon cease to be
+equally divided, because some would waste and some would save?
+
+"Make all men equal in possessions," cry the non-Socialists, "and in a
+very short time there would be rich and poor, as before."
+
+This is no argument against _Socialism_, for Socialists do not seek any
+such division. But I want to point out to you that though it _looks_
+true, it is _not_ true.
+
+It is quite true that, did we divide all wealth equally to-morrow, there
+would in a short time be many penniless, and a few in a way of getting
+rich; but it is only true if we suppose that after the sharing we
+allowed private ownership of land and the old system of trade and
+competition to go on as before. Change those things: do away with the
+bad system which leads to poverty and to wealth, and we should have no
+more rich and poor.
+
+_Destroy_ all the wealth of England to-morrow--we will not talk of
+"sharing" it out, but _destroy_ it--and establish _Socialism_ on the
+ruins and the bareness, and in a few years we should have a prosperous,
+a powerful, and a contented nation. There would be no rich and there
+would be no poor. But the nation would be richer and happier than it
+ever has been.
+
+Another charge against Socialists is that they are _Atheists_, whose aim
+is to destroy all religion and all morality.
+
+This is not true. It is true that some Socialists are Agnostics and some
+are Atheists. But Atheism is no more a part of Socialism than it is a
+part of Toryism, or of Radicalism, or of Liberalism. Many prominent
+Socialists are Christians, not a few are clergymen. Many Liberal and
+Tory leaders are Agnostics or Atheists. Mr. Bradlaugh was a Radical, and
+an Atheist; Prof. Huxley was an opponent of Socialism, and an Agnostic.
+Socialism does not touch religion at any point. It deals with laws, and
+with _industrial_ and _political_ government.
+
+It is not sense to say, because some Atheists are Socialists, that all
+Socialists are Atheists.
+
+Christ's teaching is often said to be socialistic. It is not
+socialistic; but it is communistic, and Communism is the most advanced
+form of the policy generally known as _Socialism_.
+
+The charge of _Immorality_ is absurd. Socialists demand a higher
+morality than any now to be found. They demand perfect _honesty_.
+Indeed, it is just the stern morality of _Socialism_ which causes
+ambitious and greedy men to hate _Socialism_ and resist it.
+
+Another charge against Socialists is the charge of desiring _Free Love_.
+
+Socialists, it has been said, want to destroy home life, to abolish
+marriage, to take the children from their parents, and to establish
+"Free _Love_."
+
+"Free Love," I may say, means that all men and women shall be free to
+love as they please, and to live with whom they please. Therefore, that
+they shall be free to live as "man and wife" without marriage, to part
+when they please without divorce, and to take other partners as they
+please without shame or penalty.
+
+Now, I say of this charge, as I have said of the others, that there may
+be some Socialists in favour of free love, just as there are some
+Socialists in favour of revolution, and some who are not Christians; but
+I say also that a big majority of Socialists are not in favour of free
+love, and that in any case free love is no more a part of _Socialism_
+than it is a part of Toryism or of Liberalism.
+
+It is not sense to say, because some Free-Lovers are Socialists, that
+all Socialists are Free-Lovers.
+
+I believe there is not one English Socialist in a hundred who would vote
+for doing away with marriage, or for handing over the children to the
+State. I for one would see the State farther before I would part with a
+child of mine. And I think you will generally find that those who are
+really eager to have all children given up to the State are men and
+women who have no children of their own.
+
+Now, I submit that a childless man is not the right man to make laws
+about children.
+
+As for the questions of free love and legal marriage, they are very hard
+to deal with, and this is not the time to deal with them. But I shall
+say here that many of those who talk the loudest about free love do not
+even know what love _is_, or have not sense enough to see that just as
+love and lust are two very different things, so are free love and free
+lust very different things.
+
+Again, you are not to fall into the error of supposing that the
+relations of the sexes are all they should be at present. Free _love_,
+it is true, is not countenanced; but free _lust_ is very common.
+
+And although some Socialists may be in favour of free _love_, I never
+heard of a Socialist who had a word to say in favour of prostitution. It
+may be a very wicked thing to enable a free woman to _give_ her love
+freely; but it is a much worse thing to allow, and even at times compel
+(for it amounts to that, by force of hunger) a free woman to _sell_ her
+love--no, not her _love_, poor creature; the vilest never sold that--but
+to sell her honour, her body, and her soul.
+
+I would do a great deal for _Socialism_ if it were only to do that one
+good act of wiping out for ever the shameful sin of prostitution. This
+thing, indeed, is so horrible that I never think of it without feeling
+tempted to apologise for calling myself a man in a country where it is
+so common as it is in moral Britain.
+
+There are several other common charges against Socialists; as that they
+are poor and envious--what we may call Have-nots-on-the-Have; that they
+are ignorant and incapable men, who know nothing, and cannot think;
+that, in short, they are failures and wasters, fools and knaves.
+
+These charges are as true and as false as the others. There may be some
+Socialists who are ignorant and stupid; there may be some who are poor
+_and_ envious; there may be some who are Socialists because they like
+cakes and ale better than work; and there may be some who are clever,
+but not too good--men who will feather their nests if they can find any
+geese for the plucking.
+
+But I don't think that _all_ Tories and Liberals are wise, learned,
+pure, unselfish, and clever men, eager to devote their talents to the
+good of their fellows, and unwilling to be paid, or thanked, or praised,
+for what they do.
+
+I think there are fools and knaves,--even in Parliament,--and that some
+of the "Bounders-on-the-Bounce" find it pays a great deal better to
+toady to the "Haves" than to sacrifice themselves to the "Have-nots."
+
+And I think I may claim that Socialists are in the main honest and
+sensible men, who work for _Socialism_ because they believe in it, and
+not because it pays; for its advocacy seldom pays at all, and it never
+pays well; and I am sure that _Socialism_ makes quicker progress amongst
+the educated than amongst the ignorant, and amongst the intelligent than
+amongst the dull.
+
+As for brains: I hope such men as William Morris, Karl Marx, and
+Liebknecht are as well endowed with brains as--well, let us be modest,
+and say as the average Tory or Liberal leader.
+
+But most of the charges and arguments I have quoted are not aimed at
+_Socialism_ at all, but at Socialists.
+
+Now, to prove that some of the men who espouse a cause are unworthy, is
+not the same thing as proving that the cause is bad.
+
+Some parsons are foolish, some are insincere; but we do not therefore
+say that Christianity is unwise or untrue. Even if _most_ parsons were
+really bad men we should only despise and condemn the clergy, and not
+the religion they dishonoured and misrepresented.
+
+The question is not whether all Socialists are as wise as Mr. Samuel
+Woods, M.P., or as honest as Jabez Balfour; _the_ question is whether
+_Socialism_ is a thing in itself just, and wise, and _possible_.
+
+If you find a Socialist who is foolish, laugh at him; it you find one
+who is a rogue, don't trust him; if you find one "on the make," stop his
+making. But as for _Socialism_, if it be good, accept it; if it be bad,
+reject it.
+
+Here allow me to quote a few lines from _Merrie England_--
+
+
+    Half our time as champions of Socialism is wasted in denials of
+    false descriptions of Socialism; and to a large extent the anger,
+    the ridicule, and the argument of the opponents of Socialism are
+    hurled against a Socialism which has no existence except in their
+    own heated minds.
+
+    Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of
+    the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor.
+
+    Socialism is not a wild dream of a happy land where the apples will
+    drop off the trees into our open mouths, the fish come out of the
+    rivers and fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out
+    ready-made suits of velvet with golden buttons without the trouble
+    of coaling the engine. Neither is it a dream of a nation of
+    stained-glass angels, who never say damn, who always love their
+    neighbours better than themselves, and who never need to work unless
+    they wish to.
+
+
+And now, having told you what _Socialism is not_, it remains for me to
+tell you what _Socialism is_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WHAT SOCIALISM IS
+
+
+To those who are writing about such things as _Socialism_ or Political
+Economy, one of the stumbling-blocks is in the hard or uncommon words,
+and another in the tediousness--the "dryness"--of the arguments and
+explanations.
+
+It is not easy to say what has to be said so that anybody may see quite
+clearly what is meant, and it is still harder to say it so as to hold
+the attention and arouse the interest of men and women who are not used
+to reading or thinking about matters outside the daily round of their
+work and their play. As I want this book to be plain to all kinds of
+workers, even to those who have no "book-learning" and to whom a "hard
+word" is a "boggart," and a "dry" description or a long argument a
+weariness of the flesh, I must beg those of you who are more used to
+bookish talk and scientific terms (or names) to bear with me when I stop
+to show the meaning of things that to you are quite clear.
+
+If I can make my meaning plain to members of Parliament, bishops,
+editors, and other half-educated persons, and to labouring men and women
+who have had but little schooling, and have never been used to think or
+care about _Socialism_, or Economics, or Politics, or "any such dry
+rot"--as they would call them--if I can catch the ear of the heedless
+and the untaught, the rest of you cannot fail to follow.
+
+The terms, or names, used in speaking of Socialism--that is to say, the
+names given to ideas, or "thoughts," or to kinds of ideas, or "schools"
+of thought, are not easy to put into the plain words of common speech.
+To an untaught labourer _Socialism_ is a hard word, so is
+_Co-operation_; and such a phrase, or name, as _Political Economy_ is
+enough to clear a taproom, or break up a meeting, or close a book.
+
+So I want to steer clear of "hard words," and "dry talk," and
+long-windedness, and I want to tell my tale, if I can, in "tinker's
+English."
+
+_What is Socialism?_
+
+There is more than one kind of _Socialism_, for we hear of State
+_Socialism_, of Practical _Socialism_, of Communal _Socialism_; and
+these kinds differ from each other, though they are all _Socialism_.
+
+So you have different kinds of Liberals. There are old-school Whigs, and
+advanced Whigs, and Liberals, and Radicals, and advanced Radicals; but
+they are all _Liberals_.
+
+So you have horse soldiers, foot soldiers, riflemen, artillery, and
+engineers; but they are all _soldiers_.
+
+Amongst the Liberals are men of many minds: there are Churchmen,
+Nonconformists, Atheists; there are teetotalers and there are drinkers;
+there are Trade Union leaders, and there are leaders of the Masters'
+Federation. These men differ on many points, but they all agree upon
+_one_ point.
+
+Amongst the Socialists are many men of many minds: there are parsons,
+atheists, labourers, employers, men of peace, and men of force. These
+men differ on many points, but they all agree upon _one_ point.
+
+Now, this point on which men of different views agree is called a
+_principle_.
+
+A principle is a main idea, or main thought. It is like the keelson of a
+ship or the backbone of a fish--it is the foundation on which the thing
+is built.
+
+Thus, the _principle_ of Trade Unionism is "combination," the combining,
+or joining together, of a number of workers, for the general good of
+all.
+
+The _principle_ of Democratic (or Popular) Government is the law that
+the will of the majority shall rule.
+
+Do away with the "right of combination," and Trade Unionism is
+destroyed.
+
+Do away with majority rule, and Popular Government is destroyed.
+
+So if we can find the _principle_ of _Socialism_, if we can find the
+one point on which all kinds of Socialists agree, we shall be able to
+see what _Socialism_ really is.
+
+Now, here in plain words is the _principle_, or root idea, on which
+_all_ Socialists agree--
+
+That the country, and all the machinery of production in the country,
+shall belong to the whole people (the nation), and shall be used _by_
+the people and _for_ the people.
+
+That "principle," the root idea of Socialism, means two things--
+
+
+    1. That the land and all the machines, tools, and buildings used in
+    making needful things, together with all the canals, rivers, roads,
+    railways, ships, and trains used in moving, sharing (distributing)
+    needful things, and all the shops, markets, scales, weights, and
+    money used in selling or dividing needful things, shall be the
+    property of (belong to) the whole people (the nation).
+
+    2. That the land, tools, machines, trains, rivers, shops, scales,
+    money, and all the other things belonging to the people, shall be
+    worked, managed, divided, and used by the whole people in such a way
+    as the greater number of the whole people shall deem best.
+
+
+This is the principle of collective, or national, ownership, and
+co-operative, or national, use and control.
+
+Socialism may, you see, be summed up in one line, in four words, as
+really meaning
+
+BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH.
+
+I will make all this as plain as the nose on your face directly. Let us
+now look at the _other_ side.
+
+To-day Britain does _not_ belong to the British; it belongs to a few of
+the British. There are bits of it which belong to the whole people, as
+Wimbledon Common, Portland Gaol, the highroads; but most of it is
+"private property."
+
+Now, as there are Liberals and Tories, Catholics and Protestants,
+Dockers' Unions and Shipping Federations in England; so there are
+Socialists and non-Socialists.
+
+And as there are different kinds of Socialists, so there are different
+kinds of non-Socialists.
+
+As there is one point, or _principle_, on which all kinds of Socialists
+agree; so there is one point, or _principle_, on which all kinds of
+non-Socialists agree.
+
+Amongst the non-Socialists there are Liberals and Tories, Catholics and
+Protestants, masters and workmen, rich and poor, lords and labourers,
+publicans and teetotalers; and these folks, as you know, differ in their
+ideas, and quarrel with and go against each other; but they are all
+non-Socialists, they are all against _Socialism_, and they all agree
+upon _one point_.
+
+So, if we can find the one point on which all kinds of non-Socialists
+agree, we shall find the _principle_, or root idea, of non-Socialism.
+
+Well, the "principle" of non-Socialism is just the opposite of the
+"principle" of _Socialism_. As the "principle" of _Socialism_ is
+national ownership, so the "principle" of non-Socialism is _private_
+ownership. As the principle of _Socialism_ is _Britain for the British_,
+so the principle of non-Socialism is _Every Briton for Himself_.
+
+Again, as the principle of _Socialism_ means two things, so does the
+principle of non-Socialism mean two things.
+
+As the principle of _Socialism_ means national ownership and
+co-operative national management, so the principle of non-Socialism
+means _private ownership_ and _private management_.
+
+_Socialism_ says that Britain shall be owned and managed _by_ the people
+_for_ the people.
+
+Non-Socialism says Britain shall be owned and managed _by_ some persons
+_for_ some persons.
+
+Under _Socialism_ you would have _all_ the people working _together_ for
+the good of _all_.
+
+Under non-Socialism you have all the _persons_ working _separately_ (and
+mostly _against_ each other), each for the good of _himself_.
+
+So we find _Socialism_ means _Co-operation_, and non-Socialism means
+_Competition_.
+
+Co-operation, as here used, means operating or working together for a
+common end or purpose.
+
+Competition means competing or vying with each other for personal ends
+or gain.
+
+I'm afraid that is all as "dry" as bran, and as sad as a half-boiled
+dumpling; but I want to make it quite plain.
+
+And now we will run over it all again in a more homely and lively way.
+
+You know that to-day most of the land in Britain belongs to landlords,
+who let it to farmers or builders, and charge _rent_ for it.
+
+Socialists (_all_ Socialists) say that _all_ the land should belong to
+the British people, to the nation.
+
+You know that the railways belong to railway companies, who carry goods
+and passengers, and charge fares and rates, to make _profit_.
+
+Socialists _all_ say that the railways should be bought by the people.
+Some say that fares should be charged, some that the railways should be
+free--just as the roads, rivers, and bridges now are; but all agree that
+any profit made by the railways should belong to the whole nation. Just
+as do the profits now made by the post office and the telegraphs.
+
+You know that cotton mills, coalmines, and breweries now belong to rich
+men, or to companies, who sell the coal, the calico, or the beer, for
+profit.
+
+Socialists say that all mines, mills, breweries, shops, works, ships,
+and farms should belong to the whole people, and should be managed by
+persons chosen by the people, or chosen by officials elected by the
+people, and that all the bread, beer, calico, coal, and other goods
+should be either _sold_ to the people, or _given_ to the people, or sold
+to foreign buyers for the benefit of the British nation.
+
+Some Socialists would _give_ the goods to the people, some would _sell_
+them; but _all_ agree that any profit on such sales should belong to the
+whole people--just as any profit made on the sale of gas by the
+Manchester Corporation goes to the credit of the city.
+
+Now you will begin to see what is meant by Socialism.
+
+To-day the nation owns _some_ things; under Socialism the nation would
+own _all_ things.
+
+To-day the nation owns the ships of the navy, the forts, arsenals,
+public buildings, Government factories, and some other things.
+
+To-day the Government, _for the nation_, manages the post office and
+telegraphs, makes some of the clothes and food and arms for the army and
+navy, builds some of the warships, and oversees the Church, the prisons,
+and the schools.
+
+Socialists want the nation to own _all_ the buildings, factories, lands,
+rivers, ships, schools, machines, and goods, and to manage _all_ their
+business and work, and to buy and sell and make and use _all_ goods for
+themselves.
+
+To-day some cities (as Manchester and Glasgow) make gas, and supply gas
+and water to the citizens. Some cities (as London) let their citizens
+buy their gas and water from gas and water companies.
+
+Socialists want _all_ the gas and water to be supplied to the people by
+their own officials, as in Glasgow and Manchester.
+
+Under _Socialism_ all the work of the nation would be _organised_--that
+is to say, it would be "ordered," or "arranged," so that no one need be
+out of work, and so that no useless work need be done, and so that no
+work need be done twice where once would serve.
+
+At present the work is _not_ organised, except in the post office and in
+the various works of the Corporations.
+
+Let us take a look at the state of things in England to-day.
+
+To-day the industries of England are not ordered nor arranged, but are
+left to be disordered by chance and by the ups and downs of trade.
+
+So we have at one and the same time, and in one and the same trade, and,
+often enough, in one and the same town, some men working overtime and
+other men out of work.
+
+We have at one time the cotton mills making more goods than they can
+sell, and at another time we have them unable to fulfil their orders.
+
+We have in one street a dozen small shops all selling the same kind of
+goods, and so spending in rent, in fittings, in wages of servants, and
+other ways, about four times as much as would be spent if all the work
+were done in one big shop.
+
+We have one contractor sending men and tools and bricks and wood from
+north London to build a house in south London, and another contractor in
+south London going to the same trouble and expense to build a house in
+north London.
+
+We have in Essex and other parts of England thousands of acres of good
+land lying idle because it does not _pay_ to till it, and at the same
+time we have thousands of labourers out of work who would be only too
+glad to till it.
+
+So in one part of a city you may see hundreds of houses standing empty,
+and in another part of the same city you may see hard-working people
+living three and four families in a small cottage.
+
+Then, under competition, where there are many firms in the same trade,
+and where each firm wants to get as much trade as it can, a great deal
+of money is spent by these firms in trying to get the trade from each
+other.
+
+Thus all the cost of advertisements, of travellers' wages, and a lot of
+the cost of book-keeping, arise from the fact that there are many firms
+all trying to snatch the trade from each other.
+
+Non-Socialists claim that this clumsy and costly way of going to work is
+really the best way there is. They say that competition gets the work
+done by the best men and at the lowest rate.
+
+Perhaps some of them believe this; but it is not true. The mistake is
+caused by the fact that _competition_ is better than _monopoly_.
+
+That is to say, if there is only one tram company in a town the fares
+will be higher than if there are two; because when there are two one
+tries to undersell the other.
+
+But take a town where there are two tram companies undercutting and
+working against each other, and hand the trams over to the Corporation,
+and you will find that the work is done better, is done cheaper, and the
+men are better paid than under competition.
+
+This is because the Corporation is at less cost, has less waste, and
+does not want _profits_.
+
+Well, under _Socialism_ all the work of the nation would be managed by
+the nation--or perhaps I had better say by "the people," for some of the
+work would be _local_ and some would be _national_. I will show you what
+I mean.
+
+It might be better for each town to manage its own gas and water, to
+bake its own bread and brew its own beer. But it would be better for the
+post office to be managed by the nation, because that has to do with
+_all_ the towns.
+
+So we should find that some kinds of work were best done locally--that
+is, by each town or county--and that some were best done nationally,
+that is, by a body of officials acting for the nation.
+
+For instance, tramways would be local and railways national; gas and
+water would be local and collieries national; police would be local and
+the army and navy national.
+
+The kind of _Socialism_ I am advocating here is Collectivism, or
+_Practical Socialism_. Motto: Britain for the British, the land and all
+the instruments of production, distribution, and exchange to be the
+property of the nation, and to be managed _by_ the nation _for_ the
+nation.
+
+The land and railways, collieries, etc., to be _bought_ from the present
+owners, but not at fancy prices.
+
+Wages to be paid, and goods to be sold.
+
+Thus, you see, Collectivism is really an extension of the _principles_,
+or ideas, of local government, and of the various corporation and civil
+services.
+
+And now I tell you that is Socialism, and I ask you what is there in it
+to prevent any man from being a Christian, or from attending a place of
+worship, or from marrying, or being faithful to his wife, or from
+keeping and bringing up his children at home?
+
+There is nothing in it to destroy religion, and there is nothing in it
+to destroy the home, and there is nothing in it to foster vice.
+
+But there _is_ something in it to kill ignorance and to destroy vice.
+There is something in it to shut up the gaols, to do away with
+prostitution, to reduce crime and drunkenness, and wipe out for ever the
+sweater and the slums, the beggars and the idle rich, the useless fine
+ladies and lords, and to make it possible for sober and willing workers
+to live healthy and happy and honourable lives.
+
+For Socialism would teach and train all children wisely; it would foster
+genius and devotion to the common good; it would kill scamping and
+loafing and jerrymandering; it would give us better health, better
+homes, better work, better food, better lives, and better men and women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+COMPETITION _v._ CO-OPERATION
+
+
+A comparison of competition with co-operation is a comparison of
+non-Socialism with Socialism.
+
+For the principle of non-Socialism is competition, and the principle of
+Socialism is co-operation.
+
+Non-Socialists tell us that competition is to the general advantage,
+because it lowers prices in favour of the consumer.
+
+But competition in trade only seems desirable when we contrast it with
+private monopoly.
+
+When we compare the effects of trade competition with the effects of
+State or Municipal co-operation, we find that competition is badly
+beaten.
+
+Let us try to find the reasons of this.
+
+The claim for the superior cheapness of competition rests on the theory
+that where two sellers compete against each other for trade each tries
+to undersell the other.
+
+This sounds plausible, but, like many other plausible things, it is
+untrue. It is a theory, but the theory is incomplete.
+
+If business men were fools the theory would work with mathematical
+precision, to the great joy and profit of the consumer; but business men
+are not built on those lines.
+
+The seller of any article does not trade for trading's sake; he trades
+for profit.
+
+It is a mistake to suppose that undercutting each other's prices is the
+only method of competing between rival firms in trade. There are other
+ways.
+
+A trader, in order to defeat a rival, may
+
+
+    1. Give better quality at the same price, which is equal to giving
+    more for the money, and is therefore a form of underselling; or
+
+    2. He may give the same quantity and quality at a lower price; or
+
+    3. He may balance the lowering of his price by resorting to
+    adulteration or the use of inferior workmanship or material; or
+
+    4. He may try to overreach his rival by employing more travellers or
+    by advertising more extensively.
+
+
+As to underselling. This is not carried on to such extremes as the
+theorists would have us believe.
+
+The object of a trader is to make money. He only desires increased trade
+if it brings more money.
+
+Brown and Jones make soap for sale. Each desires to get as much of the
+trade as he can, consistently with profits.
+
+It will pay Brown better to sell 1000 boxes of soap at a profit of
+sixpence on each box than to sell 2000 boxes at a profit of twopence a
+box, and it will pay him better to sell 4000 boxes at a profit of
+twopence each than it will to sell 1000 boxes at a profit of sixpence
+each.
+
+Now, suppose there is a demand for 20,000 boxes of soap in a week. If
+Brown and Jones are content to divide the trade, each may sell 10,000
+boxes at a profit of sixpence, and so may clear a total profit of L250.
+
+If, by repeated undercutting, the profit falls to a penny a box, Brown
+and Jones will have very little more than L80 to divide between them.
+And it is clear that it will pay them better to divide the trade, for it
+would pay either of them better to take half the trade at even a
+threepenny profit than to secure it all at a profit of one penny.
+
+Well, Brown and Jones have the full use of their faculties, and are well
+aware of the number of beans that make five.
+
+Therefore they will not compete beyond the point at which competition
+will increase their gross profits.
+
+And so we shall find in most businesses, from great railways down to
+tooth brushes, that the difference in prices, quality being equal, is
+not very great amongst native traders, and that a margin of profit is
+always left.
+
+At the same time, so far as competition _does_ lower prices without
+lowering quality, the benefit is to the consumer, and that much is to be
+put to the credit of competition.
+
+But even there, on its strongest line, competition is beaten by State
+or Municipal co-operation.
+
+Because, assuming that the State or Municipality can produce any article
+as cheaply as a private firm, the State or the Municipality can always
+beat the private trader in price to the extent of the trader's profit.
+
+For no trader will continue to trade unless he makes some profit,
+whereas the State or Municipality wants no profit, but works for use or
+for service.
+
+Therefore, if a private trader sells soap at a profit of one farthing a
+box, the State or Municipality can sell soap one farthing a box cheaper,
+other things being equal.
+
+It is evident, then, that the trader must be beaten unless he can
+produce more cheaply than the State or Municipality.
+
+Can he produce more cheaply? No. The State or Municipality can always
+produce more cheaply than the private trader, under equal conditions.
+Why? For the same reason that a large firm can beat a small one, or a
+trust can beat a number of large firms.
+
+Suppose there are three separate firms making soap. Each firm must have
+its separate factory, its separate offices, its separate management, its
+separate power, its separate profits, and its separate plant.
+
+But if one firm made all the soap, it would save a great deal of
+expense; for one large factory is cheaper than two of half its size, and
+one manager costs less than three.
+
+If the London County Council made all the soap for London, it could make
+soap more cheaply than any one of a dozen private firms; because it
+would save so largely in rent, plant, and management.
+
+Thus the State or Municipality scores over the private firm, and
+co-operation scores over competition in two ways: first, it cuts off the
+profit; and, second, it reduces the cost of production.
+
+But that does not exhaust the advantages of co-operation over
+competition. There are two other forms of competition still to examine:
+these are adulteration and advertisement.
+
+We all know the meaning of the phrase "cheap and nasty." We can get
+pianos, bicycles, houses, boots, tea, and many other things at various
+prices, and we find that many of the cheap pianos will not keep in tune,
+that the bicycles are always out of repair, that the houses fall down,
+the boots let in water, and the tea tastes like what it _is_--a mixture
+of dried tea leaves and rubbish.
+
+Adulteration, as John Bright frankly declared, is a form of competition.
+It is also a form of rascality and fraud. It is a device for retaining
+profits for the seller, but it is seriously to the disadvantage of the
+consumer.
+
+This form of competition, then, has to be put to the debit of
+competition.
+
+And the absence of this form of competition has to be put to the credit
+of the State or the Municipal supply. For since the State or
+Municipality has no competitor to displace, it never descends to the
+baseness of adulteration.
+
+The London County Council would not build jerry houses for the citizens,
+nor supply them with tea leaves for tea, nor logwood and water for port
+wine.
+
+The sale of wooden nutmegs is a species of enterprise confined
+exclusively to the private trader. It is a form of competition, but
+never of commercial co-operation. It is peculiar to non-Socialism:
+Socialists would abolish it entirely.
+
+We come now to the third device of the private trader in competition:
+the employment of commercial travellers and advertisement.
+
+Of two firms selling similar goods, of equal quality, at equal prices,
+that firm will do the larger trade which keeps the greater number of
+commercial travellers and spends the greater sum upon advertisement.
+
+But travellers cost money, and advertising costs money. And so we find
+that travellers and advertisements add to the cost of distribution.
+
+Therefore competition, although by underbidding it has a limited
+tendency to lower the prices of goods, has also a tendency to increase
+the price in another way.
+
+If Brown lowers the price of his soap the user of soap is the gainer.
+But if Brown increases the cost of his advertisements and his staff of
+travellers, the user is the loser, because the extra cost has to be paid
+for in the price of soap.
+
+Now, if the London County Council made soap for all London, there would
+be
+
+1. A saving in cost of rent, plant, and management.
+
+2. A saving of profits by selling at cost price.
+
+3. A saving of the whole cost of advertising.
+
+4. A saving of the wages of the commercial travellers.
+
+Under a system of trade competition all those four items (plus the
+effects of adulteration) have to be paid for by the consumer, that is to
+say, by the users of soap.
+
+And what is true of soap is true of most other things.
+
+That is why co-operation for use beats competition for sale and profit.
+
+That is why the Municipal gas, water, and tram services are better and
+cheaper than the same services under the management of private
+companies.
+
+That is _one_ reason why Socialism is better than non-Socialism.
+
+As an example of the difference between private and Municipal works, let
+us take the case of the gas supply in Liverpool and Manchester. These
+cities are both commercial, both large, both near the coalfields.
+
+The gas service in Liverpool is a private monopoly, for profit; that of
+Manchester is a co-operative monopoly, for service.
+
+In Liverpool (figures of 1897) the price of gas was 2s. 9d. per thousand
+feet. In Manchester the price of gas was 2s. 3d.
+
+In Liverpool the profit on gas was 81/2d. per thousand feet. In
+Manchester the profit was 71/2d. per thousand feet.
+
+In Liverpool the profits went to the company. In Manchester the profits
+went to the ratepayers.
+
+Thus the Manchester ratepayer was getting his gas for 2s. 3d. less
+71/2d., which means that he was getting it at 1s. 71/2d., while the
+Liverpool ratepayer was being charged 2s. 9d. The public monopoly of
+Manchester was, therefore, beating the private monopoly of Liverpool by
+1s. 11/2d. per thousand feet in the price of gas.
+
+In _To-day's Work_, by George Haw, and in _Does Municipal Management
+Pay?_ by R. B. Suthers, you will find many examples as striking and
+conclusive as the one I have suggested above.
+
+The waste incidental to private traders' competition is enormous. Take
+the one item of advertisement alone. There are draughtsmen,
+paper-makers, printers, billposters, painters, carpenters, gilders,
+mechanics, and a perfect army of other people all employed in making
+advertisement bills, pictures, hoardings, and other abominations--for
+_what_? Not to benefit the consumer, but to enable one private dealer to
+sell more of his wares than another. In _Merrie England_ I dealt with
+this question, and I quoted from an excellent pamphlet by Mr.
+Washington, a man of splendid talents, whose death we have unfortunately
+to deplore. Mr. Washington, who was an inventor and a thoroughly
+practical man of business, spoke as follows:--
+
+
+    Taking soap as an example, it requires a purchaser of this commodity
+    to expend a shilling in obtaining sixpennyworth of it, the
+    additional sixpence being requisite to cover the cost of
+    advertising, travelling, etc. It requires him to expend 1s. 11/2d. to
+    obtain twopennyworth of pills for the same reason. For a sewing
+    machine he must, if spending L7 on it, part with L4 of this amount
+    on account of unnecessary cost; and so on in the case of all widely
+    advertised articles. In the price of less-advertised commodities
+    there is, in like manner, included as unnecessary cost a long string
+    of middlemen's profits and expenses. It may be necessary to treat of
+    these later, but for the present suffice it to say that in the price
+    of goods as sold by retail the margin of unnecessary cost ranges
+    from threepence to tenpence in the shilling, and taking an average
+    of one thing with another, it may be safely stated that one-half of
+    the price paid is rendered necessary simply through the foolish and
+    inconvenient manner in which the business is carried on.
+
+
+All this expense would be saved by State or Municipal production for
+use. The New York Milk Trust, I understand, on its formation dispensed
+with the services of 15,000 men.
+
+You may ask what is to become of these men, and of the immense numbers
+of other men, now uselessly employed, who would not be needed under
+Socialism.
+
+Well! What are these men now doing? Are they adding to the wealth of the
+nation? No. Are they not doing work that is unnecessary to the nation?
+Yes. Are they not now being paid wages? Yes.
+
+Then, since their work is useless, and since they are now being paid, is
+it not evident that under Socialism we could actually pay them their
+full wages for doing _nothing_, and still be as well off as we are now?
+
+But I think under Socialism we could, and should, find a very great many
+of them congenial and useful work.
+
+Under the "Trusts" they will be thrown out of work, and it will be
+nobody's business to see that they do not starve.
+
+Yes: Socialism would displace labour. But does not non-Socialism
+displace labour?
+
+Why was the linotype machine adopted? Because it was a saving of cost.
+What became of the compositors? They were thrown out of work. Did
+anybody help them?
+
+Well, Socialism would save cost. If it displaces labour, as the machine
+does, should that prevent us from adopting Socialism?
+
+Socialism would organise labour, and leave no man to starve.
+
+But will the Trusts do that? No. And the Trusts are coming; the Trusts
+which will swallow up the small firms and destroy competition; the
+Trusts which will use their monopolies not to lower prices, but to make
+profits.
+
+You will have your choice, then, between the grasping and grinding Trust
+and the beneficent Municipality.
+
+Can any reasonable, practical, hard-headed man hesitate for one moment
+over his choice?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN FOOD
+
+
+We have heard a great deal lately about the danger of losing our foreign
+trade, and it has been very openly suggested that the only hope of
+keeping our foreign trade lies in reducing the wages of our British
+workers. Sometimes this idea is wrapped up, and called "reducing the
+cost of production."
+
+Now, if we must have foreign trade, and as much of it as we have now,
+and if we can only keep it by competing against foreign dealers in
+price, then it is true that we must try to reduce the cost of
+production.
+
+But as there are more ways of killing a dog besides that of choking him
+with butter, so there are other ways of reducing the cost of production
+besides that of reducing the wages of our British workers.
+
+But on that question I will speak in the next chapter. Here I want to
+deal with foreign trade and foreign food.
+
+It is very important that every worker in the kingdom should understand
+the relations of our foreign trade and our native agriculture.
+
+The creed of the commercial school is that manufactures _pay_ us better
+than agriculture; so that by making goods for export and buying food
+from abroad we are doing good business.
+
+The idea is, that if by making cloth, cutlery, and other goods, we can
+buy more food than we can produce at home with the same amount of
+labour, it _pays_ us to let the land go out of cultivation and make
+Britain the "workshop of the world."
+
+Now, assuming that we _can_ keep our foreign trade, and assuming that we
+can get more food by foreign trade than we could produce by the same
+amount of work, is it quite certain that we are making a good bargain
+when we desert our fields for our factories?
+
+Suppose men _can_ earn more in the big towns than they _could_ earn in
+the fields, is the difference _all_ gain?
+
+Rents and prices are higher in the towns; the life is less healthy, less
+pleasant. It is a fact that the death-rates in the towns are higher,
+that the duration of life is shorter, and that the stamina and physique
+of the workers are lowered by town life and by employment in the
+factories.
+
+And there is another very serious evil attached to the commercial policy
+of allowing our British agriculture to decay, and that is the evil of
+our dependence upon foreign countries for our food.
+
+Of every 30 bushels of wheat we require in Britain, more than 23 bushels
+come from abroad. Of these 23 bushels 19 bushels come from America, and
+nearly all the rest from Russia.
+
+You are told at intervals--when more money is wanted for
+battle-ships--that unless we have a strong fleet we shall, in time of
+war, be starved into surrender.
+
+But the plain and terrible truth is that even if we have a perfect
+fleet, and keep entire control of the seas, we shall still be exposed to
+the risk of almost certain starvation during a European war.
+
+Nearly four-fifths of our bread come from Russia and America. Suppose we
+are at war with France and Russia. What will happen? Will not the corn
+dealers in America put up the price? Will not the Russians stop the
+export of corn from their ports? Will not the French and Russian
+Governments try to corner the American wheat?
+
+Then one-seventh of our wheat would be stopped at Russian ports, and the
+American supply, even if it could be safely guarded to our shores, would
+be raised to double or treble the present price.
+
+What would our millions of poor workers do if wheat went up to 75s. or
+100s. a quarter?
+
+And every other article of food would go up in price at the same time:
+tea, coffee, sugar, meat, canned goods, cheese, would all double their
+prices.
+
+And we must not forget that we import millions of pounds' worth of
+eggs, butter, and cheese from France, all of which would be stopped.
+
+Nor is that all. Do we not pay for our imported food in exported goods?
+Well, besides the risk and cost of carrying raw material to this country
+and manufactured goods to other countries across the seas, we should
+lose at one blow all our French and Russian trade.
+
+That means that with food at famine prices many of our workers would be
+out of work or on short time.
+
+The result would be that in less than half a year there would be
+1,000,000 unemployed, and ten times that number on the borders of
+starvation.
+
+And all these horrors might come upon us without a single shot being
+fired by our enemies. Talk about invasion! In a big European war we
+should be half beaten before we could strike a blow, and even if our
+fleets were victorious in a dozen battles we must starve or make peace.
+
+Or suppose such a calamity as war with America! The Americans could
+close their ports to food and raw material, and stop half our food and a
+large part of our trade at one blow. And so we should be half beaten
+before a sword was drawn.
+
+All these dangers are due to the commercial plan of sacrificing
+agriculture to trade. All these dangers must be placed to the debit side
+of our foreign trade account.
+
+But apart from the dangers of starvation in time of war, and apart from
+all the evils of the factory system and the bad effects of overcrowding
+in the towns, it has still to be said that foreign trade only beats
+agriculture as long as it pays so well that we can buy more food with
+our earnings than we could ourselves produce with the same amount of
+labour.
+
+Are we quite sure that it pays us as well as that _now_? And if it does
+pay as well as that now, can we hope that it will go on paying as well
+for any length of time.
+
+In the early days of our great trade the commercial school wished
+Britain to be the "workshop of the world"; and for a good while she was
+the workshop of the world.
+
+But now a change is coming. Other nations have opened world-workshops,
+and we have to face competition.
+
+France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and America are all eager to take our
+coveted place as general factory, and China and Japan are changing
+swiftly from customers into rival dealers.
+
+Is it likely, then, that we can keep all our foreign trade, or that what
+we keep will be as profitable as it is at present?
+
+During the last few years there have emanated from the Press and from
+Chambers of Commerce certain ominous growlings about the evils of Trade
+Unionism. What do these growls portend? Much the same thing as the
+mutterings about the need for lowering wages.
+
+Do we not remember how, when the colliers were struggling for a "living
+wage," the Press scolded them for their "selfishness"? The Press
+declared that if the colliers persisted in having a living wage we
+should be beaten by foreign competitors and must lose our foreign trade.
+
+That is what is hanging over us now. A demand for a general reduction of
+wages. That is the end of the fine talk about big profits, national
+prosperity, and the "workshop of the world." The British workers are to
+emulate the thrift of the Japanese, the Hindoos, and the Chinese, and
+learn to live on boiled rice and water. Why? So that they can accept
+lower wages and retain our precious foreign trade.
+
+Yes; that is the latest idea. With brutal frankness the workers of
+Britain have been told again and again that "if we are to keep our
+foreign trade the British workers must accept the conditions of their
+foreign rivals."
+
+And that is the result of our commercial glory! For that we have
+sacrificed our agriculture and endangered the safety of our empire.
+
+Let us put the two statements of the commercial school side by side.
+
+They tell us first that the workers must abandon the land and go into
+the factories, because there they can earn a better living.
+
+They tell us now that the British worker must be content with the wages
+of a coolie, because foreign trade will pay no more.
+
+We are to give up agriculture because we can buy more food with exported
+goods than we can grow; and we must learn to live on next to nothing, or
+lose our foreign trade.
+
+Well, since we left the land in the hope that the factories would feed
+us better, why not go back to the land if the factories fail to feed us
+at all?
+
+Ah! but the commercial school have another string to their bow: "You
+cannot go back to the land, for it will not feed you all. This country
+will not produce enough food for its people to live upon."
+
+So the position in which the workers are placed, according to the
+commercial school, is this: You cannot produce your own food; therefore
+you must buy it by export trade. But you will lose your export trade
+unless you work for lower wages.
+
+Well, Mr. Smith, I for one do not believe those things. I believe--
+
+1. That we can produce most of our food.
+
+2. That we can keep as much of our trade as we need, and
+
+3. That we can keep the trade without reducing the wages of the workers.
+
+In my next chapter I will deal with the question of foreign trade and
+the workers' wages. We will then go on to consider the question of the
+food supply.
+
+For the argument as to our defencelessness in time of war through the
+inevitable rise in the price of corn, I am indebted to a pamphlet by
+Captain Stewart L. Murray of the Gordon Highlanders. I strongly
+recommend all working men and women to read that pamphlet. It is
+entitled _Our Food Supply in Time of War_, and can be ordered through
+the _Clarion_. The price is 6d.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HOW TO KEEP FOREIGN TRADE
+
+
+The problem is how to keep our foreign export trade.
+
+We are told that unless we can compete in price with foreign nations we
+must lose our foreign trade; and we are told that the only means of
+competing with foreign nations in price is to lower the wages of the
+British worker.
+
+We will test these statements by looking into the conditions of one of
+our great industries, an industry upon which many other industries more
+or less depend: I mean the coal trade.
+
+At the time of the great coal strike the colliers were asked to accept a
+reduction of wages because their employers could not get the price they
+were asking for coal.
+
+The colliers refused, and demanded a "living wage." And they were
+severely censured by the Press for their "selfishness" in "keeping up
+the price of coal," and thereby preventing other trades, in which coal
+was largely used, from earning a living. They were reproached also with
+keeping the price of coal so high that the poor could not afford fires.
+
+Now, if those other trades which used coal, as the iron and the cotton
+trades, could not carry on their business with coal at the price it was
+then at, and if those trades had no other ways and means of reducing
+expenses, and if the only factor in the price of coal had been the wages
+of the collier, there might have been some ground for the arguments of
+the Press against the colliers.
+
+But in the iron trade one item of the cost of production is the
+_royalty_ on the iron. Royalty is a kind of rent paid to the landlord
+for getting the iron from his land.
+
+Now, I want to ask about the iron trade, Would it not be as just and as
+possible to reduce the royalty on iron in order to compete with foreign
+iron dealers as to reduce the wages of the iron-worker or the collier?
+
+The collier and the iron-worker work, and work hard, but the royalty
+owner does nothing.
+
+The twenty-five per cent. reduction in the colliers' wages demanded
+before the great strike would not have made a difference of sixpence a
+ton in the cost of coal.
+
+Now the royalties charged upon a ton of manufactured pig iron in
+Cumberland at that time amounted to 6s. 3d.; whereas the royalties on a
+ton of manufactured pig iron in Germany were 6d., in France 8d., in
+Belgium 1s. 3d. Now read this--
+
+
+    In 1885 a firm in West Cumberland had half their furnaces idle, not
+    because the firm had no work, but simply owing to the high royalties
+    demanded by the landowner. This company had to import iron from
+    Belgium to fulfil their contract with the Indian Government. With a
+    furnace turning out about 600 tons of pig iron per week the
+    royalties amounted to L202, while the wages to everyone, from the
+    manager downwards, amounted to only L95. This very company is now
+    amongst our foreign competitors.
+
+
+The royalties were more than twice the amount of the wages, and yet we
+are to believe that we can only keep our iron trade by lowering the
+wages.
+
+The fact is that in the iron trade our export goods are taxed by the
+idle royalty owner to an amount varying from five to twelve times that
+of the royalty paid by our French, German, and Belgian competitors.
+
+Now think over the iron and cotton and other trades, and remember the
+analysis we made of the cost of production, and tell me why, since the
+rich landlord gets his rent, and since the rich capitalist gets his
+interest or profits out of cotton, wool, or iron, the invariable
+suggestion of those who would retain our foreign trade by reducing the
+cost of production amounts to no more nor less than a reduction of the
+poor workers' wages.
+
+Let us go back to the coal trade. The collier was called selfish because
+his demand for a living wage kept up the price of coal. The reduction
+asked would not have come to 6d. a ton. Could not that sixpence have
+been saved from the rents, or interest, or profits, or royalties paid
+at the cost of the production of other goods? I think you will find that
+it could.
+
+But leave that point, and let us see whether there are not other factors
+in the cost of coal which could more fairly be reduced than could the
+wages of the collier.
+
+Coals sells at prices from 10s. to 30s. a ton. The wages of the collier
+do not add up to more than 2s. 6d. a ton.
+
+In the year before the last great coal strike 300,000 miners were paid
+L15,000,000, and in the same time L6,000,000 were paid in royalties. Sir
+G. Elliot's estimate of coal owners' _profits_ for the same year was
+L11,000,000. This, with the L6,000,000 paid in royalties, made
+L17,000,000 taken by royalty owners and mine owners out of the coal
+trade in one year.
+
+So there are other items in the price of coal besides the wages of the
+colliers. What are they? They may be divided into nine parts, thus--
+
+
+    1. Rent.
+    2. Royalties.
+    3. Coal masters' profits.
+    4. Profits of railway companies and other carriers.
+    5. Wages of railway servants and other carriers' labourers.
+    6. Profits of merchants and other "middlemen."
+    7. Profits of retailers.
+    8. Wages of agents, travellers, and other salesmen.
+    9. The wages of the colliers.
+
+
+The prices of coal fluctuate (vary), and the changes in the prices of
+coal cause now a rise and now a fall in the wages and profits of coal
+masters, railway shareholders, merchants, and retailers.
+
+But the fluctuations in the prices of coal cause very little fluctuation
+in rent and _none_ in royalties.
+
+Again, no matter how low the price of coal may be, the agents,
+travellers, and other salesmen always get a living wage, and the coal
+owners, railway shareholders, merchants, landlords, and royalty owners
+always get a great deal more than a living wage.
+
+But what about the colliers and the carriers' labourers, such as railway
+men, dischargers, and carters?
+
+These men perform nearly all the work of production and of
+distribution. They get the coal, and they carry the coal.
+
+Their wages are lower than those of any of the other seven classes
+engaged in the coal trade.
+
+They work harder, they work longer hours, and they run more risk to life
+and limb than any other class in the trade; and yet!----
+
+And yet the only means of reducing the price of coal is said to be _a
+reduction in the collier's wage_.
+
+Now, I say that in reducing the price of coal the _last_ thing we should
+touch is the collier's wage.
+
+If we _must_ reduce the price of coal, we should begin with the owners
+of royalties. As to the "right" of the royalty owner to exact a fine
+from labour, I will content myself with making two claims--
+
+
+    1. That even if the royalty owner has a "right" to _a_ royalty, yet
+    there is no reason why he, of all the nine classes engaged in the
+    coal trade, should be the only one whose receipts from the sale of
+    coal shall never be lessened, no matter how the price of coal may
+    fall.
+
+    2. Since the royalty owner and the landlord are the only persons
+    engaged in the trade who cannot make even a pretence of doing
+    anything for their money, and since the price of coal must be
+    lowered, they should be the first to bear a reduction in the amount
+    they charge on the sale of it.
+
+
+Next to the landlords and royalty owners I should place the railway
+companies. The prices charged for the carriage of coal are very high,
+and if the price of coal must be reduced, the profits made on the
+carriage should be reduced.
+
+Third in order come the coal owners, with what they call "a fair rate of
+interest on invested capital."
+
+How is it that the Press never reproaches any of those four idle and
+overpaid classes with selfishness in causing the poor workers of other
+trades to go short of fuel?
+
+How is it that the Press never chides these men for their folly in
+trying to keep up profits, royalties, and interest in a "falling
+market"?
+
+It looks as if the "immutable laws" of political economy resemble the
+laws of the land. It looks as if there is one economic law for the rich
+and another for the poor.
+
+The merchants, commission agents, and other middlemen I leave out of the
+question. These men are worse than worthless--they are harmful. They
+thwart; and hinder, and disorder the trade, and live on the colliers,
+the coal masters, and the public. There is no excuse, economic or moral,
+for their existence. But there is only one cure for the evil they do,
+and that is to drive them right out of the trade.
+
+I claim, then, that if the price of coal must be reduced, the sums paid
+to the above-named three classes should be cut down first, because they
+get a great deal more, and do a great deal less, than the carriers'
+labourers and the colliers.
+
+First as to the coal owners and the royalty owners. We see that the
+_whole sum_ of the wages of the colliers for a year was only L6,000,000,
+while the royalty owners and the coal owners took L17,000,000, or nearly
+three times as much.
+
+And yet we were told that the _miners_, the men who _work_, were
+"selfish" for refusing to have their wages reduced.
+
+Nationalise the land and the mines, and you at once save L17,000,000,
+and all that on the one trade.
+
+So with the railways. Nationalise the railways, and you may reduce the
+cost of the carriage of coal (and of all goods and passengers) by the
+amount of the profits now made by the railway companies, plus a good
+deal of the expense of management.
+
+For if the Municipalities can give you better trams, pay the guards and
+drivers better wages for shorter hours, and reduce penny fares to
+halfpenny fares, and still clear a big profit, is it not likely that the
+State could lower the freights of the railways, and so reduce the cost
+of carrying foods and manufactured goods and raw material?
+
+Our foreign trade, and our home industries also, are taxed and
+handicapped in their competition by every shilling paid in royalties,
+in rents, in interest, in profits, and in dividends to persons who do no
+work and produce no wealth; they are handicapped further by the salaries
+and commissions of all the superfluous managers, canvassers, agents,
+travellers, clerks, merchants, small dealers, and other middlemen who
+now live upon the producer and consumer.
+
+Socialism would abolish all these rents, taxes, royalties, salaries,
+commissions, profits, and interests, and thereby so greatly reduce the
+cost of production and of carriage that in the open market we should be
+able to offer our goods at such prices as to defy the competition of any
+but a Socialist State.
+
+But there is another way in which British trade is handicapped in
+competition with the trade of other nations.
+
+It is instructive to notice that our most dangerous rival is America,
+where wages are higher and all the conditions of the worker better than
+in this country.
+
+How, then, do the Americans contrive so often to beat us?
+
+Is it not notorious that the reason given for America's success is the
+superior energy and acuteness of the American over the British manager
+and employer? American firms are more pushing, more up-to-date. They
+seek new markets, and study the desires of consumers; they use more
+modern machinery, and they produce more new inventions. Are the paucity
+of our invention and the conservatism of our management due to the
+"invincible ignorance" or restrictive policy of the British working man?
+They are due to quite other causes. The conservatism and sluggishness of
+our firms are due to British conceit: to the belief that when "Britain
+first at Heaven's command arose from out the azure main" she was
+invested with an eternal and unquestionable charter to act henceforth
+and for ever as the "workshop of the world"; and say what they will in
+their inmost hearts, her manufacturers still have unshaken faith in
+their destiny, and think scorn of any foreigner who presumes to cross
+their path. Therefore the British manufacturer remains conservative, and
+gets left by more enterprising rivals.
+
+A word as to the superior inventiveness of the Americans. There are two
+great reasons why America produces more new and valuable patents. The
+first cause is the eagerness of the American manufacturer to secure the
+newest and the best machinery, and the apathetic contentment of the
+British manufacturer with old and cheap methods of production. There is
+a better market in America for inventions. The second cause is the
+superiority of the American patent law and patent office.
+
+In England a patentee has to pay L99 for a fourteen years' patent, and
+even then gets no guarantee of validity.
+
+In America the patentee gets a seventeen years' patent for L7.
+
+In England, out of 56,000 patents more than 54,000 were voided and less
+than 2000 survived.
+
+In America there is no voiding.
+
+One of the consequences of this is that American firms have a choice of
+thirty-two patents where our firms have _one_.
+
+According to the American patent office report for 1897, the American
+patents had, in seventeen years, found employment for 1,776,152 persons,
+besides raising wages in many cases as much as 173 per cent.
+
+These few figures only give a view of part of the disadvantage under
+which British inventors and British manufacturers suffer.
+
+I suggest, as the lawyers say, that British commercial conservatism and
+the British patent law have as much to do with the success of our clever
+and energetic American rivals as has what the _Times_ calls the
+"invincible ignorance" of the British workman who declines to sacrifice
+his Union to atone by longer hours and lower wages for the apathy of his
+employers and the folly of his laws.
+
+I submit, then, that the remedy is not the destruction of the Trade
+Unions, nor the lowering of wages, nor the lengthening of hours, but the
+nationalisation of the land, the abolition of royalties, the restoration
+of agriculture, and the municipalisation or the nationalisation of the
+collieries, the iron mines, the steel works, and the railways.
+
+The trade of this country _is_ handicapped; but it is not handicapped by
+the poor workers, but by the rich idlers, whose enormous rents and
+profits make it impossible for England to retain the foremost place in
+the markets of the world.
+
+So I submit to the British workman that, since the Press, with some few
+exceptions, finds no remedy for loss of trade but in a reduction of his
+wages, he would do well to look upon the Press with suspicion, and,
+better still, to study these questions for himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CAN BRITAIN FEED HERSELF?
+
+
+Is it impossible for this nation to produce food for 40,000,000 of
+people?
+
+We cannot produce _all_ our food. We cannot produce our own tea, coffee,
+cocoa, oranges, lemons, currants, raisins, figs, dates, bananas,
+treacle, tobacco, sugar, and many other things not suitable to our
+climate. But at a pinch, as during a war, we could do without most of
+these.
+
+Can we produce our own bread, meat, and vegetables? Can we produce all,
+or nearly all, our butter, milk, eggs, cheese, and fruit?
+
+And will it _pay_ to produce these things if we are able to produce them
+at all?
+
+The great essential is bread. Can we grow our own wheat? On this point I
+do not see how there can be any doubt whatever.
+
+In 1841 Britain grew wheat for 24,000,000 of people, and at that time
+not nearly all her land was in use, nor was her farming of the best.
+
+Now we have to find food, or at any rate bread and meat and vegetables,
+for 40,000,000.
+
+Wheat, then, for 40,000,000. At present we consume 29,000,000 quarters.
+Can we grow 29,000,000 quarters in our own country?
+
+Certainly we can. The _average_ yield per acre in Britain is 28 bushels,
+or 31/2 quarters. That is the _average_ yield on British farms. It can be
+increased; but let us take it first upon that basis.
+
+At 31/2 quarters to the acre, 8,000,000 acres would produce 28,000,000
+quarters; 9,000,000 acres would produce 31,500,000 quarters.
+
+Therefore we require less than 9,000,000 acres of wheat land to grow a
+year's supply of wheat for 40,000,000 persons.
+
+Now we have in Great Britain and Ireland about 33,000,000 acres of
+cultivatable land. Deduct 9,000,000 for wheat, and we have 24,000,000
+acres left for vegetables, fruit, cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry.
+
+Can any man say, in the face of these figures, that we are incapable of
+growing our own wheat?
+
+Suppose the average is put too high. Suppose we could only average a
+yield of 20 bushels to the acre, or 21/2 quarters, we could still grow
+29,000,000 quarters on less than 12,000,000 acres.
+
+It is evident, then, that we can at anyrate grow our own wheat.
+
+Here I shall quote from an excellent book, _Fields, Factories, and
+Workshops_, by Prince Kropotkin. Having gone very carefully into the
+facts, the Prince has arrived at the following conclusions:--
+
+
+    1. If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated only as it
+    _was_ thirty-five years ago, 24,000,000 people could live on
+    home-grown food.
+
+    2. If the cultivatable soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated as
+    the soil is cultivated _on the average_ in Belgium, the United
+    Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000 inhabitants.
+
+    3. If the population of this country came to be doubled, all that
+    would be required for producing food for 80,000,000 inhabitants
+    would be to cultivate the soil as it is _now_ cultivated in the best
+    farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders.
+
+
+Why, indeed, should we not be able to raise 29,000,000 quarters of
+wheat? We have plenty of land. Other European countries can produce, and
+do produce, their own food.
+
+Take the example of Belgium. In Belgium the people produce their own
+food. Yet their soil is no better than ours, and their country is more
+densely populated, the figures being: Great Britain, per square mile,
+378 persons; Belgium, per square mile, 544 persons.
+
+Does that silence the commercial school? No. They have still one
+argument left. They say that even if we can grow our own wheat we cannot
+grow it as cheaply as we can buy it.
+
+Suppose we cannot. Suppose it will cost us 2s. a quarter more to grow
+it than to buy it. On the 23,000,000 quarters we now import we should be
+saving L2,000,000 a year.
+
+Is that a very high price to pay for security against defeat by
+starvation in time of war?
+
+A battle-ship costs L1,000,000. If we build two extra battle-ships in a
+year to protect our food supply we spend nearly all we gain by importing
+our wheat, even supposing that it costs us 2s. a quarter more to grow
+than to buy it.
+
+But is it true that we cannot grow wheat as cheaply as we can buy it? If
+it is true, the fact may doubtless be put down to two causes. First,
+that we do not go to work in the best way, nor with the best machinery;
+second, that the farmer is handicapped by rent. Of course if we have to
+pay rent to private persons for the use of our own land, that adds to
+the cost of the rent.
+
+One acre yields 28 bushels, or 31/2 quarters of wheat in a year. If the
+land be rented at 21s. an acre that will add 6s. a quarter to the cost
+of wheat.
+
+In the _Industrial History of England_ I find the question of why the
+English farmer is undersold answered in this way--
+
+
+    The answer is simple. His capital has been filched from him surely,
+    but not always slowly, by a tremendous increase in his rent. The
+    landlords of the eighteenth century made the English farmer the
+    foremost agriculturist in the world, but their successors of the
+    nineteenth have ruined him by their extortions.... In 1799 we find
+    land paying nearly 20s. an acre.... By 1850 it had risen to 38s.
+    6d.... L2 an acre was not an uncommon rent for land a few years ago,
+    the average increase of English rents being no less than 261/2 per
+    cent. between 1854 and 1879.... The result has been that the average
+    capital per acre now employed in agriculture is only about L4 or L5,
+    instead of at least L10, as it ought to be.
+
+
+If the rents were as high as L2 an acre when our poor farmers were
+struggling to make both ends meet, it is little wonder they failed. A
+rent of L2 an acre means a land tax of more than 11s. a quarter on
+wheat. The price of wheat in the market at present is about 25s. a
+quarter. A rent charge of 21s. per acre would amount to more than
+L10,000,000 on the 9,000,000 we should need to grow all our wheat. A
+rent charge of L2 an acre would amount to L18,000,000. That would be a
+heavy sum for our farmers to lift before they went to market.
+
+Moreover, agriculture has been neglected because all the mechanical and
+chemical skill, and all the capital and energy of man, have been thrown
+into the struggle for trade profits and manufacturing pre-eminence. We
+want a few Faradays, Watts, Stephensons, and Cobdens to devote their
+genius and industry to the great food question. Once let the public
+interest and the public genius be concentrated upon the agriculture of
+England, and we shall soon get silenced the croakers who talk about the
+impossibility of the country feeding her people.
+
+But is it true that under fair conditions wheat can be brought from the
+other side of the world and sold here at a price with which we cannot
+compete? Prince Kropotkin thinks not. He says the French can produce
+their food more cheaply than they can buy it; and if the French can do
+this, why cannot we?
+
+But in case it should be thought that I am prejudiced in favour of
+Prince Kropotkin's book or against the factory system, I will here print
+a quotation from a criticism of the book which appeared in the _Times_
+newspaper, which paper can hardly be suspected of any leanings towards
+Prince Kropotkin, or of any eagerness to acknowledge that the present
+industrial system possesses "acknowledged evils."
+
+
+    Seriously, Prince Kropotkin has a great deal to say for his
+    theories.... He has the genuine scientific temper, and nobody can
+    say that he does not extend his observations widely enough, for he
+    seems to have been everywhere and to have read everything....
+    Perhaps his chief fault is that he does not allow sufficiently for
+    the ingrained conservatism of human nature and for the tenacity of
+    vested interests. But that is no reason why people should not read
+    his book, which will certainly set them thinking, and may lead a few
+    of them to try, by practical experiments, to lessen some of the
+    acknowledged evils of the present industrial system.
+
+
+Just notice what the Tory _Times_ says about "the tenacity of _vested
+interests_" and the "_acknowledged evils_ of the present industrial
+system." It is a great deal for the _Times_ to say.
+
+But what about the meat?
+
+Prince Kropotkin deals as satisfactorily with the question of
+meat-growing as with that of growing wheat, and his conclusion is this--
+
+
+    Our means of obtaining from the soil whatever we want, under _any_
+    climate and upon _any_ soil, have lately improved at such a rate
+    that we cannot foresee yet what is the limit of productivity of a
+    few acres of land. The limit vanishes in proportion to our better
+    study of the subject, and every year makes it vanish farther and
+    farther from our sight.
+
+
+I have, I think, quoted enough to show that there is no natural obstacle
+to our production in this country of all the food our people need.
+Britain _can_ feed herself, and therefore, upon the ground of her use
+for foreign-grown food, the factory system is not necessary.
+
+But I hope my readers will buy this book of Prince Kropotkin, and read
+it. For it is a very fine book, a much better book than I can write.
+
+It can be ordered from the _Clarion_ Office, 72 Fleet Street, and the
+price is 1s. 3d. post free.
+
+As to the vegetables and the fruit, I must refer you to the Prince's
+book; but I shall quote a few passages just to give an idea of what
+_can_ be done, and _is being done_, in other countries in the way of
+intensive cultivation of vegetables and fruit.
+
+Prince Kropotkin says that the question of soil is a common
+stumbling-block to those who write about agriculture. Soil, he says,
+does not matter now, nor climate very much. There is a quite new science
+of agriculture which _makes_ its own soil and modifies its climate. Corn
+and fruit can be grown on _any_ soil--on rock, on sand, on clay.
+
+
+    Man, not Nature, has given to the Belgian soil its present
+    productivity.
+
+
+And now read this--
+
+
+    While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a
+    limited number of lovers of Nature, and a legion of workers whose
+    very names will remain unknown to posterity, have created of late
+    quite a new agriculture, as superior to modern farming as modern
+    farming is superior to the old three-fields system of our
+    ancestors.... Science seldom has guided them; they proceeded in the
+    empirical way; but like the cattle-growers who opened new horizons
+    to biology, they have opened a new field of experimental research
+    for the physiology of plants. They have created a totally new
+    agriculture. They smile when we boast about the rotation system
+    having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or
+    four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six
+    and nine crops from the very same plot of land during the twelve
+    months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad soils,
+    because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such
+    quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise
+    it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an inch every
+    year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the
+    acre, as we do, but from fifty to a hundred tons of vegetables on
+    the same space; not L5 worth of hay, but L100 worth of vegetables of
+    the plainest description--cabbage and carrots.
+
+
+Look now at these figures from America--
+
+
+    At a recent competition, in which hundreds of farmers took part, the
+    first ten prizes were awarded to ten farmers who had grown, on three
+    acres each, from 262 to 3463/4 bushels of Indian corn; in other words,
+    _from 87 to 115 bushels to the acre_. In Minnesota the prizes were
+    given for crops of 300 to 1120 bushels of potatoes to the acre,
+    _i.e._ from 81/4 to 31 tons to the acre, while the average potato crop
+    in Great Britain is only 6 tons.
+
+
+These are _facts_, not theories. Here is another quotation from Prince
+Kropotkin's book. It also relates to America--
+
+
+    The crop from each acre was small, but the machinery was so
+    perfected that in this way 300 days of one man's labour produced
+    from 200 to 300 quarters of wheat; in other words, the areas of land
+    being of no account, every man produced in one day his yearly bread
+    food.
+
+
+I shall only make one more quotation. It alludes to the intensive
+wheat-growing on Major Hallett's method in France, and is as follows:--
+
+
+    In fact, the 81/2 bushels required for one man's annual food were
+    actually grown at the Tomblaine station on a surface of 2250 square
+    feet, or 47 feet square, _i.e._ on very nearly one-twentieth of an
+    acre.
+
+
+Now remember that our agricultural labourers crowd into the towns and
+compete with the town labourers for work. Remember that we have millions
+of acres of land lying idle, and generally from a quarter to
+three-quarters of a million of men unemployed. Then consider this
+position.
+
+Here we have a million acres of good land producing nothing, and half a
+million men also producing nothing. Land and labour, the two factors of
+wealth production, both idle. Could we not set the men to work? Of
+course we could. Would it pay? To be sure it would pay.
+
+In America, on soil no better than ours, one man can by one day's labour
+produce one man's year's bread. That is, 81/2 bushels of wheat.
+
+Suppose we organise our out-of-works under skilled farmers, and give
+them the best machinery. Suppose they only produce one-half the American
+product. They will still be earning more than their keep.
+
+Or set them to work, under skilled directors, on the French or the
+Belgian plan, at the intensive cultivation of vegetables. Let them grow
+huge crops of potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, onions; and in the coal
+counties, where fuel is cheap, let them raise tomatoes and grapes, under
+glass, and they will produce wealth, and be no longer starvelings or
+paupers.
+
+Another good plan would be to allow a Municipality to obtain land, under
+a Compulsory Purchase Act, at a fair rent and near a town, and to relet
+the land to gardeners and small farmers, to work on the French and
+Belgian systems. Let the local Corporation find the capital to make soil
+and lay down heating and draining pipes. Let the Corporation charge rent
+and interest, buy the produce from the growers and resell it to the
+citizens, and let the tenant gardeners be granted fixity of tenure and
+fair payment for improvements, and we shall increase and improve our
+food supply, lessen the overcrowding in our towns, and reduce the
+unemployed to the small number of lazy men who _will_ not work.
+
+It is the imperative duty of every British citizen to insist upon the
+Government doing everything that can be done to restore the national
+agriculture and to remove the dreadful danger of famine in time of war.
+
+National granaries should be formed at once, and at least a year's
+supply of wheat should be kept in stock.
+
+What are the Government doing in this way? Nothing at all.
+
+The only remedy they have to suggest is _Protection_!
+
+What is Protection? It is a tax on foreign wheat. What would be the
+result of Protection? The result would be that the landowner would get
+higher rents and the people would get dearer bread.
+
+How true is Tolstoy's gibe, that "the rich man will do anything for the
+poor man--except get off his back." "Our agriculture," the Tory
+protectionist shrieks, "is perishing. Our farmers cannot make a living.
+Our landlords cannot let their farms. The remedy is Protection." A truly
+practical Tory suggestion. "The farmers cannot pay our rents. British
+agriculture is dying out. Let us put a tax upon the poor man's bread."
+
+Yes; Protection is a remedy, but it must be the protection of the farmer
+against the landlord. Give our farmers fixity of tenure, compensation
+for improvements, and prevent the landlord from taxing the industry and
+brains of the farmer by increase of rent, and British agriculture will
+soon rear its head again.
+
+Quite recently we have had an example of Protection. The coal owners
+combined and raised the price of coal some 6s. to 10s. a ton. It is said
+they cleared more than L60,000,000 sterling on the deal. What good did
+that do the workers? Did the colliers get any of the spoil in wages? No;
+that money is lying up ready to crush the colliers when they next
+strike.
+
+It is the same story over and over again. We cannot have cheap coal
+because the rich owners demand big fortunes; we cannot have cheap houses
+or decent homes because the landlords raise the rents faster than the
+people can increase our trade; we cannot grow our food as cheaply as we
+can buy it because the rich owners of the land squeeze the farmer dry
+and make it impossible for him to live. And the harder the collier, the
+weaver, the farmer, and the mechanic work, the harder the landlord and
+the capitalist squeeze. The industry, skill, and perseverance of the
+workers avail nothing but to make a few rich and idle men richer and
+more idle.
+
+As I have repeatedly pointed out before, we have by sacrificing our
+agriculture destroyed our insular position. As an island we may be, or
+_should be_, free from serious danger of invasion. But of what avail is
+our vaunted silver shield of the sea if we depend upon other nations for
+our food? We are helpless in case of a great war. It is not necessary
+to invade England in order to conquer her. Once our food supply is
+stopped we are shut up like a beleagured city to starve or to surrender.
+
+Stop the import of food into England for three months, and we shall be
+obliged to surrender at discretion.
+
+And our agriculture is to be ruined, and the safety and honour of the
+Empire are to be endangered, that a few landlords, coal owners, and
+money-lenders may wax fat upon the vitals of the nation.
+
+So, I say, we do need Protection; but it is the protection of our
+farmers and colliers, our weavers and our mechanics, our homes, our
+health, our food, our cities, our children and women, yes, our national
+existence--against the rapacity of the rich lords, employers, and
+money-lenders, who impudently pose as the champions of patriotism and
+the expansion of the Empire.
+
+Again, I recommend every Socialist to read the new edition of Prince
+Kropotkin's _Fields, Factories, and Workshops_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE SUCCESSFUL MAN
+
+
+There are many who believe that if all the workers became abstainers,
+worked harder, lived sparely, and saved every penny they could; and that
+if they avoided early marriages and large families, they would all be
+happy and prosperous without Socialism.
+
+And, of course, these same persons believe that the bulk of the
+suffering and poverty of the poor is due to drink, to thriftlessness,
+and to imprudent marriages.
+
+I know that many, very many, do believe these things, because I used to
+meet such persons when I went out lecturing.
+
+Now I know that belief to be wrong. I know that if every working man and
+woman in England turned teetotaler to-morrow, if they all remained
+single, if they all worked like niggers, if they all worked for twelve
+hours a day, if they lived on oatmeal and water, and if they saved every
+farthing they could spare, they would, at the end of twenty years, be a
+great deal worse off than they are to-day.
+
+Sobriety, thrift, industry, skill, self-denial, holiness, are all good
+things; but they would, if adopted by _all_ the workers, simply enrich
+the idle and the wicked, and reduce the industrious and the righteous to
+slavery.
+
+Teetotalism will not do; industry will not do; saving will not do;
+increased skill will not do; keeping single will not do; reducing the
+population will not do. Nothing _will_ do but _Socialism_.
+
+I mean to make these things plain to you if I can.
+
+I will begin by answering a statement made by a Tory M.P. As reported in
+the Press, the M.P. said, "There was nothing to prevent the son of a
+crossing-sweeper from rising to be Lord Chancellor of England."
+
+This, at first sight, would seem to have nothing to do with the theories
+regarding thrift, temperance, and prudent marriages. But we shall find
+that it arises from the same error.
+
+This error has two faces. On one face it says that any man may do well
+if he will try, and on the other face it says that those who do not do
+well have no one but themselves to blame.
+
+The error rises from a slight confusion of thought. Men know that a man
+may rise from the lowest place in life to almost the highest, and they
+suppose that because one man can do it, _all_ men can do it; they know
+that if one man works hard, saves, keeps sober, and remains single, he
+will get more money than other men who drink and spend and take life
+easily, and they suppose because thrift, single life, industry, and
+temperance spell success to one man, they would spell success to _all_.
+
+I will show you that this is a mistake, and I will show you why it is a
+mistake. Let us begin with the crossing-sweeper.
+
+We are told that "_there is nothing to prevent_ the son of _a_
+crossing-sweeper from becoming Lord Chancellor of England." But our M.P.
+does not mean that there is nothing to prevent the son of some one
+particular crossing-sweeper from becoming Chancellor; he means that
+there is nothing to prevent _any_ son of _any_ crossing-sweeper, or the
+son of _any_ very poor man, from becoming rich and famous.
+
+Now, let me show you what nonsense this is.
+
+There are in all England, let us say, some 2,000,000 of poor and
+friendless and untaught boys.
+
+And there is _one_ Lord Chancellor. Now, it is just possible for _one_
+boy out of the 2,000,000 to become Lord Chancellor; but it is quite
+impossible for _all_ the boys, or even for one boy in 1000, or for one
+boy in 10,000, to become Lord Chancellor.
+
+Our M.P. means that if a boy is clever and industrious he may become
+Lord Chancellor.
+
+But suppose _all_ the boys are as clever and as industrious as he is,
+they cannot _all_ become chancellors.
+
+The one boy can only succeed because he is stronger, cleverer, more
+pushing, more persistent, or more _lucky_ than any other boy.
+
+In my story, _Bob's Fairy_, this very point is raised. I will quote it
+for you here. Bob, who is a boy, is much troubled about the poor; his
+father, who is a self-made man and mayor of his native town, tells Bob
+that the poor are suffering because of their own faults. The parson then
+tries to make Bob understand--
+
+
+    "Come, come, come," said the reverend gentleman, "you are too young
+    for such questions. Ah--let me try to--ah--explain it to you. Here
+    is your father. He is wealthy. He is honoured. He is mayor of his
+    native town. Now, how did he make his way?"
+
+    Mr. Toppinroyd smiled, and poured himself out another glass of wine.
+    His wife nodded her head approvingly at the minister.
+
+    "Your father," continued the minister, "made himself what he is by
+    industry, thrift, and talent."
+
+    "If another man was as clever, and as industrious and thrifty as
+    father," said Bob, "could he get on as well?"
+
+    "Of course he could," replied Mr. Toppinroyd.
+
+    "Then the poor are not like that?" asked Bob.
+
+    "I regret to say," said the parson, "that--ah--they are not."
+
+    "But if they were like father, they could do what he has done?" Bob
+    said.
+
+    "Of course, you silly," exclaimed his mother.
+
+    Ned chuckled behind his paper. Kate turned to the piano.
+
+    Bob nodded and smiled. "How droll!" said he.
+
+    "What's droll?" his father asked sharply.
+
+    "Why," said Bob, "how funny it would be if all the people were
+    industrious, and clever, and steady!"
+
+    "Funny?" ejaculated the parson.
+
+    "Funny?" repeated Mr. Toppinroyd.
+
+    "What do you mean, dear?" inquired Mrs. Toppinroyd mildly.
+
+    "If all the men in Loomborough were as clever and as good as
+    father," said Bob simply, "there would be 50,000 rich mill-owners,
+    and they would all be mayor of the same town."
+
+    Mr. Toppinroyd gave a sharp glance at his son, then leaned forward,
+    boxed his ears, and said--
+
+    "Get to bed, you young monkey. Go!"
+
+
+Do you see the idea? The poor cannot _all_ be mayors and chancellors and
+millionaires, because there are too many of them and not enough high
+places.
+
+But they can all be asses, and they will be asses, if they listen to
+such rubbish as that uttered by this Tory M.P.
+
+You have twenty men starting for a race. You may say, "There is nothing
+to prevent any man from winning the race," but you mean any one man who
+is luckier or swifter than the rest. You would never be foolish enough
+to believe that _all_ the men could win. You know that nineteen of the
+men _must lose_.
+
+So we know that in a race for the Chancellorship _only one_ boy can win,
+and the other 1,999,999 _must lose_.
+
+It is the same thing with temperance, industry, and cleverness. Of
+10,000 mechanics one is steadier, more industrious, and more skilful
+than the others. Therefore he will get work where the others cannot. But
+_why_? Because he is worth more as a workman. But don't you see that if
+all the others were as good as he, he would _not_ be worth more?
+
+Then you see that to tell 1,000,000 men that they will get more work or
+more wages if they are cleverer, or soberer, or more industrious, is as
+foolish as to tell the twenty men starting for a race that they can all
+win if they will all try.
+
+If all the men were just as fast as the winner, the race would end in a
+dead heat.
+
+There is a fire panic in a big hall. The hall is full of people, and
+there is only one door. A rush is made for that door. Some of the crowd
+get out, some are trampled to death, some are injured, some are burned.
+
+Now, of that crowd of people, who are most likely to escape?
+
+Those nearest to the door have a better chance than those farthest, have
+they not?
+
+Then the strong have a better chance than the weak, have they not?
+
+And the men have a better chance than the women, and the children the
+worst chance of all. Is it not so?
+
+Then, again, which is most likely to be saved--the selfish man who
+fights and drags others down, who stands upon the fallen bodies of women
+and children, and wins his way by force; or the brave and gentle man who
+tries to help the women and the children, and will not trample upon the
+wounded?
+
+Don't you know that the noble and brave man stands a poor chance of
+escape, and that the selfish, brutal man stands a good chance of escape?
+
+Well, now, suppose a man to have got out, perhaps because he was near
+the door, or perhaps because he was very strong, or perhaps because he
+was very lucky, or perhaps because he did not stop to help the women and
+children, and suppose him to stand outside the door, and cry out to the
+struggling and dying creatures in the burning hall, "Serves you jolly
+well right if you _do_ suffer. Why don't you get out? _I_ got out. You
+can get out if you _try_. _There is nothing to prevent any one of you
+from getting out._"
+
+Suppose a man talked like that, what would you say of him? Would you
+call him a sensible man? Would you call him a Christian? Would you call
+him a gentleman?
+
+You will say I am severe. I am. Every time a successful man talks as
+this M.P. talks he inflicts a brutal insult upon the unsuccessful, many
+thousands of whom, both men and women, are worthier and better than
+himself.
+
+But let us go back to our subject. That fire panic in the big hall is a
+picture of _life_ as it is to-day.
+
+It is a scramble of a big crowd to get through a small door. Those who
+get through are cheered and rewarded, and few questions are asked as to
+_how_ they got through.
+
+Now, Socialists say that there should be more doors, and no scramble.
+
+But let me use this example of the hall and the panic more fully.
+
+Suppose the hall to be divided into three parts. First the stalls, then
+the pit stalls, then the pit. Suppose the only door is the door in the
+stalls. Suppose the people in the pit stalls have to climb a high
+barrier to get to the stalls. Suppose those in the pit have to climb a
+high barrier to get to the pit stalls, and then the high barrier that
+parts the pit stalls from the stalls. Suppose there is, right at the
+back of the pit, a small, weak boy. Now, I ask you, as sensible men, is
+there "nothing to prevent" that boy from getting through that door? You
+know the boy has only the smallest of chances of getting out of that
+hall. But he has a thousand times a better chance of getting safely out
+of that door than the son of a crossing-sweeper has of becoming Lord
+Chancellor of England.
+
+In our hall the upper classes would sit in the stalls, the middle
+classes in the pit stalls, and the workers in the pit. _Whose son would
+have the best chance for the door?_
+
+I compared the race for the Chancellorship just now to a foot-race of
+twenty men; and I showed you that if all the runners were as fleet as
+greyhounds only one could win, and nineteen _must_ lose.
+
+But the M.P.'s crossing-sweeper's son has to enter a race where there
+are millions of starters, and where the race is a _handicap_ in which he
+is on scratch, with thousands of men more than half the course in front
+of him.
+
+For don't you see that this race which the lucky or successful men tell
+us we can _all_ win is not a fair race?
+
+The son of the crossing-sweeper has terrible odds against him. The son
+of the gentleman has a long start, and carries less weight.
+
+What are the qualities needed in a race for the Chancellorship? The boy
+who means to win must be marvellously strong, clever, brave, and
+persevering.
+
+Now, will he be likely to be strong? He _may_ be, but the odds are
+against him. His father may not be strong nor his mother, for they may
+have worked hard, and they may not have been well fed, nor well nursed,
+nor well doctored. They probably live in a slum, and they cannot train,
+nor teach, nor feed their son in a healthy and proper way, because they
+are ignorant and poor. And the boy gets a few years at a board school,
+and then goes to work.
+
+But the gentleman's son is well bred, well fed, well nursed, well
+trained, and lives in a healthy place. He goes to good schools, and from
+school to college.
+
+And when he leaves college he has money to pay fees, and he has a name,
+and he has education; and I ask you, what are the odds against the son
+of a crossing-sweeper in a race like that?
+
+Well, there is not a single case where men are striving for wealth or
+for place where the sons of the workers are not handicapped in the same
+way. Now and again a worker's son wins. He may win because he is a
+genius like Stephenson or Sir William Herschel; or he may win because he
+is cruel and unscrupulous, like Jay Gould; or he may win because he is
+lucky.
+
+But it is folly to say that there is "nothing to prevent him" from
+winning. There is almost everything to prevent him. To begin with, his
+chances of dying before he's five years old are about ten times as
+numerous as the chances of a rich man's son.
+
+Look at Lord Salisbury. He is Prime Minister of England. Had he been
+born the son of a crossing-sweeper do you think he would have been Prime
+Minister?
+
+I would undertake to find a hundred better minds than Lord Salisbury's
+in any English town of 10,000 inhabitants. But will any one of the boys
+I should select become Prime Minister of England? You know they will
+not. But yet they ought to, if "there is nothing to prevent them."
+
+But there is something to prevent them. There is poverty to prevent
+them, there is privilege to prevent them, there is snobbery to prevent
+them, there is class feeling to prevent them, there are hundreds of
+other things to prevent them, and amongst those hundreds of other things
+to prevent them from becoming Prime Ministers I hope that their own
+honesty and goodness and wisdom may be counted; for honesty and goodness
+and true wisdom are things which will often prevent a poor boy who is
+lucky enough to possess them from ever becoming what the world of
+politics and commerce considers a "successful man."
+
+Do not believe the doctrine that the rich and poor, the successful and
+the unsuccessful, get what they deserve. If that were true we should
+find intelligence and virtue keeping level with income. Then the
+mechanic at 30s. a week would be half as good again as the labourer at
+20s. a week; the small merchant, making L200 a year, would be a far
+better man than one mechanic; the large merchant, making L2000 a year,
+would be ten times as good as the small merchant; and the millionaire
+would be too intellectual, too noble, and too righteous for this sinful
+world.
+
+But don't you know that there are stupid and drunken mechanics, and
+steady and intelligent labourers? And don't you know that some
+successful men are rascals, and that some very wealthy men are fools?
+
+Take the story of Jacob and Esau. After Jacob cheated his hungry brother
+into selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, Jacob was rich and
+Esau poor. Did each get what he deserved? Was Jacob the better man?
+
+Christ lived poor, a homeless wanderer, and died the death of a felon.
+Jay Gould made millions of money, and died one of the wealthiest men in
+the world. Did each get what he deserved? Did the wealth of Gould and
+the poverty of Christ indicate the intellectual and moral merits of
+those two sons of men?
+
+Some of us would get whipped if all of us got our deserts; but who would
+deserve applause and wealth and a crown?
+
+In a sporting handicap the weakest have the most start: in real life the
+strongest have the start and the weakest are put on scratch.
+
+And I _have_ heard it hinted that the man who runs the straightest does
+not always win.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+TEMPERANCE AND THRIFT
+
+
+I said in the previous chapter that if _all_ the workers were very
+thrifty, sober, industrious, and abstemious they would be worse off in
+the matter of wages than they are now.
+
+This, at first sight, seems strange, because we know that the sober and
+thrifty workman is generally better off than the workman who drinks or
+wastes his money.
+
+But why is he better off? He is better off because, being a steady man,
+he can often get work when an unsteady man cannot. He is better off
+because he buys things that add to his comfort, or he saves money, and
+so grows more independent. And he is able to save money, and to make his
+home more cosy, because, while he is more regularly employed than the
+unsteady men, his wages remain the same, or, perhaps, are something
+higher than theirs.
+
+That is to say, he benefits by his own steadiness and thrift because his
+steadiness makes him a more reliable, and therefore a more valuable,
+workman than one who is not steady.
+
+But, you see, he is only more valuable because other men are less
+steady. If all the other workmen were as steady as he is he would be no
+more valuable than they are. Not being more valuable than they are, he
+would not be more certain of getting work.
+
+That is to say, if all the workers were sober and thrifty, they would
+all be of equal value to the employer.
+
+But you may say they would still be better off than if they drank and
+wasted their wages. They would have better health, and they would have
+happier lives and more comfortable homes.
+
+Yes, so long as their wages were as high as before. But their wages
+would _not_ be as high as before.
+
+You must know that as things now are, where all the work is in the gift
+of private employers, and where wages and prices are ruled by
+competition, and where new inventions of machinery are continually
+throwing men out of work, and where farm labourers are always drifting
+to the towns, there are more men in need of work than work can be found
+for.
+
+Therefore, there is always a large number of workers out of work.
+
+Now, under competition, where two men offer themselves for one place,
+you know that the place will be given to the man who will take the lower
+wage.
+
+And you know that the thrifty and the sober man can live on less than
+the thriftless man.
+
+And you know that where two or more employers are offering their goods
+against each other for sale in the open market, the one who sells his
+goods the cheapest will get the trade. And you know that in order to
+sell their goods at a cheaper rate than other dealers, the employers
+will try to _get_ their goods at the cheapest rate possible.
+
+And you know that with most goods the chief cost is the cost of the
+labour used in the making--that is to say, the wages of the workers.
+
+Very well, you have more workers than are needed, so that there is
+competition amongst those workers as to who shall be employed.
+
+And those will be employed who are the cheapest.
+
+And those who can live upon least can afford to work for least.
+
+And all the workers being sober and thrifty, they can all live on less
+than when many of them were wasteful and fond of drink.
+
+Then, on the other hand, all the employers are competing for the trade,
+and so are all wanting cheap labour; and so are eager to lower wages.
+
+Therefore wages will come down, and the general thrift and steadiness of
+the workers will make them poorer. Do you doubt this? What is that tale
+the masters so often tell you? Do they not tell you that England
+depends upon her foreign trade for her food? And do they not tell you
+that foreign traders are stealing the trade from the English traders?
+And do they not tell you that the foreign traders can undersell us in
+the world's markets because their labour is cheaper? And do they not say
+that if the British workers wish to keep the foreign trade they will
+have to be as thrifty and as industrious and as sober as the foreign
+workers?
+
+Well, what does that mean? It means that if the British workers were as
+thrifty and sober and industrious as the foreign workers, they could
+live on less than they now need. It means that if you were all
+teetotalers and all thrifty, you could work for less wages than they now
+pay, and so they would be able to sell their goods at a lower price than
+they can now; and thus they would keep the foreign trade.
+
+Is not that all quite clear and plain? And is it not true that in
+France, in Germany, and all other countries where the workers live more
+sparely, and are more temperate than the workers are in England, the
+wages are lower and the hours of work longer?
+
+And is it not true that the Chinese and the Hindoos, who are the most
+temperate and the most thrifty people in the world, are always the worst
+paid?
+
+And do you not know very well that the "Greeners"--the foreign Jews who
+come to England for work and shelter--are very sober and very thrifty
+and very industrious men, and that they are about the worst-paid workers
+in this country?
+
+Take now, as an example, the case of the cotton trade. The masters tell
+you that they find it hard to compete against the Indian factories, and
+they say if Lancashire wants to keep the trade the Lancashire workers
+must accept the conditions of the Indian workers.
+
+The Indian workers live chiefly on rice and water, and work far longer
+hours than do the English workers.
+
+And don't you see that if the Lancashire workers would live upon rice
+and water, the masters would soon have their wages down to rice and
+water point?
+
+And then the Indians would have to live on less, or work still longer
+hours, and so the game would go on.
+
+And who would reap the benefit? The English masters and the Indian
+masters (who are often one and the same) would still take a large share,
+but the chief benefit of the fall in price would go to the buyers--or
+users, or "consumers"--of the goods.
+
+That is to say, that the workers of India and of England would be
+starved and sweated, so that the natives of other countries could have
+cheap clothing.
+
+If you doubt what I say, look at the employers' speeches, read the
+newspapers which are in the employers' pay, add two and two together,
+and you will find it all out for yourselves.
+
+To return to the question of temperance and thrift. You see, I hope,
+that if _all_ the people were sober and thrifty they would be really
+worse off than they now are. This is because the workers must have work,
+must ask the employers to give them work, and must ask employers who,
+being in competition with each other, are always trying to get the work
+done at the lowest price.
+
+And the lowest price is always the price which the bulk of the workers
+are content to live upon.
+
+In all foreign nations where the standard of living is lower than in
+England, you will find that the wages are lower also.
+
+Have we not often heard our manufacturers declare that if the British
+workers would emulate the thrift and sobriety of the foreigner they
+might successfully compete against foreign competition in the foreign
+market? What does that mean, but that thrift would enable our people to
+live on less, and so to accept less wages?
+
+Why are wages of women in the shirt trade low?
+
+It is because capitalism always keeps the wages down to the lowest
+standard of subsistence which the people will accept.
+
+So long as our English women will consent to work long hours, and live
+on tea and bread, the "law of supply and demand" will maintain the
+present condition of sweating in the shirt trade.
+
+If all our women became firmly convinced that they could not exist
+without chops and bottled stout, the wages _must_ go up to a price to
+pay for those things.
+
+_Because there would be no women offering to live on tea and bread_; and
+shirts _must_ be had.
+
+But what is the result of the abstinence of these poor sisters of ours?
+Low wages for themselves, and, for others?----
+
+A young merchant wants a dozen shirts. He pays 10s. each for them. He
+meets a friend who only gave 8s. for his. He goes to the 8s. shop and
+saves 2s. This is clear profit, and he spends it in cigars, or
+champagne, or in some other luxury; _and the poor seamstress lives on
+toast and tea._
+
+But although I say that sobriety and thrift, if adopted by _all_ the
+workers, would result in lower wages, you are not to suppose that I
+advise you all to be drunkards and spendthrifts.
+
+No. The proper thing is to do away with competition. At present the
+employers, in the scramble to undersell each other, actually fine you
+for your virtue and self-denial by lowering your wages, just as the
+landlords fine a tenant for improving his land or enlarging his house or
+extending his business--fine him by raising his rent.
+
+And now we may, I think, come to the question of imprudent marriages.
+
+The idea seems to be that a man should not marry until he is "in a
+position to keep a wife." And it is a very common thing for employers,
+and other well-to-do persons, to tell working men that they "have no
+right to bring children into the world until they are able to provide
+for them."
+
+Now let us clear the ground a little before we begin to deal with this
+question on its economic side--that is, as it affects wages.
+
+It is bad for men and women to marry too young. It is bad for two
+reasons. Firstly, because the body is not mature; and secondly, because
+the mind is not settled. That is to say, an over-early marriage has a
+bad effect on the health; and since young people must, in the nature of
+things, change very much as they grow older, an over-early marriage is
+often unhappy.
+
+I think a woman would be wise not to marry before she is about
+four-and-twenty; and I think it is better that the husband should be
+from five to ten years older than the wife.
+
+Then it is very bad for a woman to have many children; and not only is
+it bad for her health, but it destroys nearly all the pleasure of her
+life, so that she is an enfeebled and weary drudge through her best
+years, and is old before her time.
+
+That much conceded, I ask you, Mr. John Smith, what do you think of the
+request that you shall work hard, live spare, and give up a man's right
+to love, to a home, to children, in order that you may be able to "make
+a living"? Such a living is not worth working for. It would be a manlier
+and a happier lot to die.
+
+Here is the idea as it has been expressed by a working man--
+
+
+    Up to now I had thought that the object of life was to live, and
+    that the object of love was to love. But the economists have changed
+    all that. There is neither love nor life, sentiment nor affection.
+    The earth is merely a vast workshop, where all is figured by debit
+    and credit, and where supply and demand regulates everything. You
+    have no right to live unless the industrial market demands hands; a
+    woman has no business to bring forth a child unless the capitalist
+    requires live stock.
+
+
+I cannot really understand a _man_ selling his love and his manhood, and
+talking like a coward or a slave about "imprudent marriages"; and all
+for permission to drudge at an unwelcome task, and to eat and sleep for
+a few lonely and dishonourable years in a loveless and childless world.
+
+You don't think _that_ is going to save you, men, do you? You don't
+think you are going to make the best of life by selling for the sake of
+drudgery and bread and butter your proud man's right to work for, fight
+for, and die for the woman you love?
+
+For, having sold your love for permission to work, how long will you be
+before you sell your honour? Nay, is it not true that many of you have
+sold it already?
+
+For every man who works at jerry work, or takes a part in any kind of
+adulteration, scampery, or trade rascality, is selling his honour for
+wages, and is just as big a scamp and a good deal more of a coward than
+a burglar or a highwayman.
+
+And the commercial travellers and the canvassers and the agents who get
+their living by telling lies,--as some of them do,--do you call those
+_men_?
+
+And the gentlemen of the Press who write against their convictions for a
+salary, and for the sake of a suburban villa, a silk hat, and some cheap
+claret, devote their energies and talents to the perpetuation of
+falsehood and wrong--do you call _those_ men?
+
+If we cannot keep our foreign trade without giving up our love and our
+manhood and our honour, it is time the foreign trade went to the devil
+and took the British employers with it.
+
+If the state of things in England to-day makes it impossible for men and
+women to love and marry, then the state of things in England to-day will
+not do.
+
+Well, do you still think that single life, a crust of bread, and rags,
+will alone enable you to hold your own and to keep your foreign trade?
+And do you still think that poverty is a mark of unworthiness, and
+wealth the sure proof of merit? If so, just read these few lines from an
+article by a Tory Minister, Sir John Gorst--
+
+
+    The "won't-works" are very few in number, but the section of the
+    population who cannot earn enough wages all the year round to live
+    decently is very large.
+
+    Professional criminals are not generally poor, for when out of gaol
+    they live very comfortably as a rule. There are wastrels, of course,
+    who have sunk so low as to have a positive aversion to work, and it
+    is people of this kind who are most noisy in parading their poverty.
+    The industrious poor, on the other hand, shrink from exposing their
+    wretchedness to the world, and strive as far as possible to keep it
+    out of sight.
+
+
+Now, contrast those sensible and kindly words with the following
+quotation from a mercantile journal:--
+
+
+    The talk about every man having a right to work is fallacious, for
+    he can only have the right of every free man to do work if he can
+    get it.
+
+
+Yes! But he has other "rights." He has the right to combine to defeat
+attempts to rob him of work or to lower his wages; he has the right to
+vote for parliamentary and municipal candidates who will alter the laws
+and the conditions of society which enable a few greedy and heartless
+men to disorganise the industries of the nation, to keep the Briton off
+the land which is his birthright, to exploit the brain and the sinew of
+the people, and to condemn millions of innocent and helpless women and
+children to poverty, suffering, ignorance, and too often to disgrace or
+early death.
+
+A man, John Smith, has the right to _be a man_, and, if he is a Briton,
+has a right to be a free man. It is to persuade every man in Britain to
+exercise this right, and to do his duty to the children and the women of
+his class and family, that I am publishing this book.
+
+"The right to do work if he can get it," John, and to starve if he
+cannot get it.
+
+How long will you allow these insolent market-men to insult you? How
+long will you allow a mob of money-lending, bargain-driving,
+dividend-snatching parasites to live on you, to scorn you, and to treat
+you as "live stock"? How long? How long?
+
+I shall have to write a book for the women, John.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE SURPLUS LABOUR MISTAKE
+
+
+Many non-Socialists believe that the cause of poverty is "surplus
+labour," or over-population, and they tell us that if we could reduce
+our population we should have no poor.
+
+If this were true, we should find that in thinly populated countries the
+workers fare better than in countries where the population is more
+dense.
+
+But we do not find anything of the kind.
+
+The population of Ireland is thin. There are more people in London than
+in all Ireland. Yet the working people of Ireland are worse off than the
+working people of England.
+
+The population of Scotland is thinner than that of England, but wages
+rule higher in England.
+
+In Australia there is a large country and a small population, but there
+is plenty of poverty.
+
+In the Middle Ages the entire population of England would only be a few
+millions--say four or five millions--whereas it is now nearly thirty
+millions. Yet the working classes are very much better off to-day than
+they were in the eighth and ninth centuries.
+
+Reduce the population of Britain to one million and the workers would be
+in no better case than they are now. Increase the population to sixty
+millions and the workers will be no worse off--at least so far as wages
+are concerned.
+
+I will give you the reason for this in a few words, using an
+illustration which used to serve me for the same purpose in one of my
+lectures.
+
+No one will deny that all wealth--whether food, tools, clothing,
+furniture, machines, arms, or houses--comes from _the land_.
+
+For we feed our cattle and poultry on the land, and get from the land
+corn, malt, hops, iron, timber, and every other thing we use, except
+fish and a few sea-drugs; and we could not get fish without nets and
+boats, nor make nets and boats without fibre and wood and metals.
+
+Stand a decanter and a tumbler on a bare table. Call the table Britain,
+call the decanter a landlord, and call the tumbler a labourer.
+
+Now no man can produce wealth without land. If, then, Lord de Canter
+owns all the land, and Tommy Tumbler owns none, how is Tommy Tumbler to
+get his living?
+
+He will have to work for Lord de Canter, and he will have to take the
+wage his lordship offers him.
+
+Now you cannot say that Britain is over-populated with only two men, nor
+that it is suffering from a superfluity of labour when there is only one
+labourer. And yet you observe that with only two men in the country one
+is rich and the other poor.
+
+How, then, will a reduction of the population prevent poverty?
+
+Look at this diagram. A square board, with two men on it; one is black
+and one is white.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3.]
+
+Call the board England, the black pawn a landlord, and the white pawn a
+labourer.
+
+Let me repeat that every useful thing comes out of the land, and then
+ask this simple question: If _all_ the land--the whole of
+England--belongs to the black man, how is the white man going to get his
+living?
+
+You see, although the population of England consists of only two men,
+if one of these men owns _all_ the land, the other man must starve, or
+steal, or beg, or work for wages.
+
+Now, suppose our white man works for wages--works for the black
+man--what is going to regulate the wages? Will the fact that there is
+only one beggar make that beggar any richer? If there were ten white
+men, and _all_ the land belonged to the black man, the ten whites would
+be as well off as the one white was, for the landowner could find them
+all work, and could get them to work for just as much as they could live
+on.
+
+No: that idea of raising wages by reducing the population is a mistake.
+Do not the workers _make_ the wealth? They do. And is it not odd to say
+that we will increase the wealth by reducing the number of the wealth
+makers?
+
+But perhaps you think the workers might get a bigger _share_ of the
+wealth if there were fewer of them.
+
+How? Our black man owns all England. He has 100 whites working for him
+at wages just big enough to keep them alive. Of those 100 whites 50 die.
+Will the black man raise the wages of the remaining 50? Why should he?
+There is no reason why he should. But there is this reason why he should
+not, viz. that as he has now only 50 men working for him, he will only
+be half as rich as he was when he had 100 men working for him. But the
+land is still his, and the whites are still in his power. He will still
+pay them just as much as they can live on, and no more.
+
+But you may say that if the workers decreased and the masters did not
+decrease in numbers, wages must rise.
+
+Suppose you have in the export cotton trade 100 masters and 100,000
+workers. Half the workers die. You have now 100 masters and 50,000
+workers.
+
+Then you may say that, as foreign countries would still want the work of
+100,000 workers, the 100 masters would compete as to which got the
+biggest orders, and so wages would rise.
+
+But bear in mind two things. First, if the foreign workers were as
+numerous as before, the English masters could import hands; second, if
+the foreign workers died out as fast as the English, there would only
+be half as many foreigners needing shirts, and so the trade would keep
+pace with the decrease in workers, and the wages would remain as they
+were.
+
+To improve the wages of the English workers the price of cotton goods
+must rise or the profits of the masters must be cut down.
+
+Neither of these things depends on the number of the population.
+
+But now go back to our England with the three men in it. Here is the
+black landlord, rich and idle; and the two white workers, poor and
+industrious. One of the workers dies. The landlord gets less money, but
+the remaining worker gets no more. _There are only two men in all
+England, and one of them is poor._
+
+But suppose we have one black landlord and 100 white workers, and the
+workers adopt Socialism. Then every man of the 101 will have just what
+he earns, and _all_ that he earns, and all will be free men.
+
+Thus you see that under Socialism a big population will be better off
+than the smallest population can be under non-Socialism.
+
+But, the non-Socialist objects, wages are ruled by competition, and must
+fall when the supply of labour exceeds the demand; and when that happens
+it is because the country is over-populated.
+
+I admit that the supply of labour often exceeds the demand, and that
+when it does, wages may come down. But I deny that an excess of labour
+over the demand for labour proves the country to be over-populated. What
+it does prove is that the country is badly governed and
+under-cultivated.
+
+A country is over-populated when its soil cannot yield food for its
+people. At present our population is about 40,000,000 and our soil would
+support more than double the number.
+
+The country, then, is not over-populated; it is badly governed.
+
+There are, let us say, more shoemakers and tailors than there is
+employment for. But are there no bare feet and ill-clothed backs?
+Certainly. The bulk of our workers are not properly shod or clothed. It
+is not, then, true to say that we have more tailors and shoemakers than
+we require; but we ought to say instead that our tailors and shoemakers
+cannot live by their trades because the rest of the workers are too poor
+to pay them. Now, why are the rest of the workers too poor to buy boots
+and clothing? Is it because there are too many of them? Let us take an
+instance: the farm labourer. He cannot afford boots. Why? He is too
+poor. Why? Not because there are too many farm labourers,--for there are
+too few,--but because the wages of farm labourers are low. Why are they
+low? Because agriculture is neglected, and because rents are high. So we
+come back to my original statement, that the evil is due to the private
+ownership of land.
+
+The many are poor because the few are rich.
+
+But, again, it may be asserted that we have always about half a million
+of men unemployed, and that these men prove the existence of superfluous
+labour.
+
+Not at all. There are half a million of men out of work, but there are
+many millions of acres idle. Abolish private ownership of land, and the
+nation, being now owner of _all_ land, can at once find work for that
+so-called "superfluous labour."
+
+All wealth comes from the land. All wealth must be got from the land by
+labour. Given a sufficient quantity of land, one man can produce from
+the land more wealth than one man can consume. Therefore, as long as
+there is a sufficiency of land there can be no such thing as
+"superfluous labour," and no such thing as over-population. Given
+machinery and combination, and probably one man can produce from the
+land enough wealth for ten to consume. Why, then, should there be any
+such thing as poverty?
+
+One fundamental truth of economics is that every able-bodied and willing
+worker is worth more than his keep.
+
+There is such a thing as locked-out labour, but there is no such thing
+in this country as useless labour. While we have land lying idle, and
+while we have to import our food, how can we be so foolish as to call a
+man who is excluded from the land superfluous? He is one of the factors
+of wealth, and land is the other. Set the man on the land and he will
+produce wealth. At present he is out of work and the land out of use.
+But are either of them superfluous? No; we need both.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+IS SOCIALISM POSSIBLE, AND WILL IT PAY?
+
+
+Non-Socialists assert with the utmost confidence that Socialism is
+impossible. Let us consider this statement in a practical way.
+
+We are told that Socialism is impossible. That means that the people
+have not the ability to manage their own affairs, and must, perforce,
+give nearly all the wealth they produce to the superior persons who at
+present are kind enough to own, to govern, and to manage Britain for the
+British.
+
+A bold statement! The people _cannot_ manage their own business: it is
+_impossible_. They cannot farm the land, and build the factories, and
+weave the cloth, and feed and clothe and house themselves; they are not
+able to do it. They must have landlords and masters to do it for them.
+
+But the joke is that these landlords and masters do _not_ do it for the
+people. The people do it for the landlords and masters; and the latter
+gentlemen make the people pay them for allowing the people to work.
+
+But the people can only produce wealth under supervision; they must have
+superior persons to direct them. So the non-Socialist declares.
+
+Another bold assertion, which is not true. For nearly all those things
+which the non-Socialist tells us are impossible _are being done_. Nearly
+all those matters of management, of which the people are said to be
+incapable, are being accomplished by the people _now_.
+
+For if the nation can build warships, why can they not build cargo
+ships? If they can make rifles, why not sewing machines or ploughs? If
+they can build forts, why not houses? If they can make policemen's
+boots and soldiers' coats, why not make ladies' hats and mechanics'
+trousers? If they can pickle beef for the navy, why should they not make
+jam for the household? If they can run a railway across the African
+desert, why should they not run one from London to York?
+
+Look at the Co-operative Societies. They own and run cargo ships. They
+import and export goods. They make boots and foods. They build their own
+shops and factories. They buy and sell vast quantities of useful things.
+
+Well, these places were started by working men, and are owned by working
+men.
+
+Look at the post office. If the nation can carry its own letters, why
+not its own coals? If it can manage its telegraphs, why not its
+railways, its trams, its cabs, its factories?
+
+Look at the London County Council and the Glasgow and Manchester
+Corporations. If these bodies of public servants can build
+dwelling-houses, make roads, tunnels, and sewers, carry water from
+Thirlmere to Manchester, manage the Ship Canal, make and supply gas, own
+and work tramways, and take charge of art galleries, baths, wash-houses,
+and technical schools, what is there that landlords or masters do, or
+get done, which the cities and towns cannot do better and more cheaply
+for themselves?
+
+What sense is there in pretending that the colliers could not get coal
+unless they paid rent to a lord, or that the railways could not carry
+coal unless they paid dividends to a company, or that the weaver could
+not make shirtings, nor the milliners bonnets, nor the cutlers blades,
+just as well for the nation as for Mr. Bounderby or my Lord Tomnoddy?
+
+"But," the "Impossibles" will say, "you have not got the capital."
+
+Do not believe them. You _have_ got the capital. Where? In your brains
+and in your arms, where _all_ the capital comes from.
+
+Why, if what the "Impossibles" tell us be true--if the people are not
+able to do anything for themselves as well as the private dealers or
+makers can do it for them--the gas and water companies ought to have no
+fear of being cut out in price and quality by any County Council or
+Corporation.
+
+But the "Impossibles" know very well that, directly the people set up on
+their own account, the private trader or maker is beaten. Let one
+district of London begin to make its own gas, and see what will happen
+in the other districts.
+
+Twenty years ago this cry of "Impossible" was not so easy to dispose of,
+but to-day it can be silenced by the logic of accomplished facts. For
+within the last score of years the Municipalities of London, Glasgow,
+Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham, Bolton, Leicester, and
+other large towns have _proved_ that the Municipalities can manage large
+and small enterprises efficiently, and that in all cases it is to the
+advantage of the ratepayers, of the consumers, and of the workers that
+private management should be displaced by management under the
+Municipality.
+
+Impossible? Why, the capital already invested in municipal works amounts
+to nearly L100,000,000. And the money is well invested, and all the work
+is prosperous.
+
+Municipalities own and manage waterworks, gasworks, tramways,
+telephones, electric lighting, markets, baths, piers, docks, parks,
+farms, dwelling-houses, abattoirs, cemeteries, crematoriums, libraries,
+schools, art galleries, hotels, dairies, colleges, and technical
+schools. Many of the Municipalities also provide concerts, open-air
+music, science classes, and lectures; and quite recently the Alexandra
+Palace has been municipalised, and is now being successfully run by the
+people and for the people.
+
+How, then, can _Socialism_ be called impossible? As a matter of fact
+_Socialism_ is only a method of extending State management, as in the
+Post Office, and Municipal management, as in the cases above named,
+until State and Municipal management becomes universal all through the
+kingdom.
+
+Where is the impossibility of that? If a Corporation can manage trams,
+gas, and water, why can it not manage bread, milk, meat, and beer
+supplies?
+
+If Bradford can manage one hotel, why not more than one? If Bradford can
+manage more than one hotel, why cannot London, Glasgow, Leeds, and
+Portsmouth do the same?
+
+If the German, Austrian, French, Italian, Belgian, and other Governments
+can manage the railway systems of their countries, why cannot the
+British Government manage theirs?
+
+If the Government can manage a fleet of war vessels, why not fleets of
+liners and traders? If the Government can manage post and telegraph
+services, why not telephones and coalmines?
+
+The answer to all these questions is that the Government and the
+Municipalities have proved that they can manage vast and intricate
+businesses, and can manage them more cheaply, more efficiently, and more
+to the advantage and satisfaction of the public than the same class of
+business has ever been managed by private firms.
+
+How can it be maintained, then, that _Socialism_ is impossible?
+
+But, will it _pay_? What! _Will_ it pay? It _does_ pay. Read _To-Day's
+Work_, by George Haw, Clarion Press, 2s. 6d., and _Does Municipal
+Management Pay_? by R. B. Suthers, Clarion Press, 6d., and you will be
+surprised to find how well these large and numerous Municipal
+experiments in _Socialism_ do pay.
+
+From the book on Municipal Management, by R. B. Suthers, above
+mentioned, I will quote a few comparisons between Municipal and private
+tram and water services.
+
+
+WATER
+
+"In Glasgow they devote all profits to making the services cheaper and
+to paying off capital borrowed.
+
+"Thus, since the Glasgow Municipality took control of the water supply,
+forty years ago, they have reduced the price of water from 1s. 2d. in
+the pound rental to 5d. in the pound rental for domestic supply.
+
+"Compare that with the price paid by the London consumer under private
+enterprise.
+
+"On a L30 house in Glasgow the water rate amounts to 12s. 6d.
+
+"On a L30 house in Chelsea the water rate amounts to 30s.
+
+"On a L30 house in Lambeth the water rate is L2, 16s.
+
+"On a L30 house in Southwark the water rate is 32s.
+
+"And so on. The London consumer pays from two to five times as much as
+the Glasgow consumer. He does not get as much water, he does not get as
+good water, and a large part of the money he pays goes into the pockets
+of the water lords.
+
+"Last year the water companies took just over a million in profits from
+the intelligent electors of the Metropolis.
+
+"In Glasgow a part of the 5d. in the pound goes to paying off the
+capital borrowed to provide the waterworks. L2,350,000 has been so
+spent, and over one million of this has been paid back.
+
+"_Does_ Municipal management pay?
+
+"Look at Liverpool. The private companies did not give an adequate
+supply, so the Municipality took the matter in hand. What is the result?
+
+"The charge for water in Liverpool is a fixed rate of 3d. in the pound
+and a water rate of 71/2d. in the pound.
+
+"For this comparatively small amount the citizen of Liverpool, as Sir
+Thomas Hughes said, "can have as many baths and as many water closets as
+he likes, and the same with regard to water for his garden."
+
+"In London the water companies make high charges for every separate bath
+and water closet."
+
+
+TRAMWAYS
+
+"In Glasgow from 1871 to 1894 a private company had a lease of the
+tramways from the Corporation.
+
+"When the lease was about to expire the Corporation tried to arrange
+terms with the company for a renewal, but the company would not accept
+the terms offered.
+
+"Moreover, there was a strong public feeling in favour of the
+Corporation working the tramways. The company service was not efficient;
+it was dear, and their bad treatment of their employees had roused
+general indignation.
+
+"So the Corporation decided to manage the tramways, and the day after
+the company's lease expired they placed on the streets an entirely new
+service of cars, cleaner, handsomer, and more comfortable in every way
+than their predecessors'.
+
+"The result of the first eleven months' working was a triumph for
+Municipal management.
+
+"The Corporation had many difficulties to contend with. Their horses
+were new and untrained, their staff was larger and new to the work, and
+the old company flooded the routes with 'buses to compete with the
+trams.
+
+"Notwithstanding these difficulties, they introduced halfpenny fares,
+they lengthened the distance for a penny, they raised the wages of the
+men and shortened their hours, they refused to disfigure the cars with
+advertisements, thus losing a handsome revenue, and in the end were able
+to show a profit of L24,000, which was devoted to the common-good fund
+and to depreciation account.
+
+"Since that time the success of the enterprise has been still more
+wonderful.
+
+"The private company during the last four weeks of their reign carried
+4,428,518 passengers.
+
+"The Corporation in the corresponding four weeks of 1895 carried
+6,114,789.
+
+
+    In the year 1895-6 the Corporation carried       87,000,000
+    In the year 1899-1900                           127,000,000
+    In the year 1900-1                              132,000,000
+    In 1895-6 the receipts were                        L222,121
+    In 1899-1900 the receipts were                     L464,886
+    In 1900-1 the receipts were                        L484,872
+    In 1895 there were                      31 miles of tramway
+    In 1901 there were                      441/2    "      "
+    In 1895 the number of cars was                          170
+    In 1901       "        "   was                          322
+
+
+"The citizens of Glasgow have a much better service than the private
+company provided, the fares are from 30 to 50 per cent. lower, the men
+work four hours a day less, and get from 5s. a week more wages, and free
+uniforms, and the capital expended is being gradually wiped out.
+
+"In thirty-three years the capital borrowed will be paid back from a
+sinking fund provided out of the receipts.
+
+"The gross capital expenditure to May 1901 was L1,947,730.
+
+"The sinking fund amounts to L75,063.
+
+"But the Corporation have, in addition, written off L153,796 for
+depreciation, they have placed L91,350 to a Permanent Way Renewal Fund,
+and they have piled up a general reserve fund of L183,428.
+
+"Under a private company L100,000 would have gone into the pockets of a
+few shareholders _on last year's working_--even if the private company
+had charged the same fares and paid the same wages as the Corporation
+did, which is an unlikely assumption."
+
+If you will read the two books I have mentioned, by Messrs. Haw and
+Suthers, you will be convinced by _facts_ that _Socialism_ is possible,
+and that it _will_ pay.
+
+Bear in mind, also, that in all cases where the Municipality has taken
+over some department of public service and supply, the decrease in cost
+and the improvement in service which the ratepayers have secured are not
+the only improvements upon the management of the same work by private
+companies. Invariably the wages, hours, and conditions of men employed
+on Municipal work are superior to those of men employed by companies.
+
+Another thing should be well remembered. The private trader thinks only
+of profit. The Municipality considers the health and comfort of the
+citizens and the beauty and convenience of the city.
+
+Look about and see what the County Council have done and are doing for
+London; and all their improvements have to be carried out in the face of
+opposition from interested and privileged parties. They have to improve
+and beautify London almost by force of arms, working, as one might say,
+under the guns of the enemy.
+
+But if the citizens were all united, if the city had one will to work
+for the general boon, as under _Socialism_ happily it should be, London
+would in a score of years be the richest, the healthiest, and the most
+beautiful city in the world.
+
+_Socialism_, Mr. Smith, is quite possible, and will not only pay but
+bless the nation that has the wisdom to afford full scope to its
+beneficence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE NEED FOR A LABOUR PARTY
+
+
+I am now to persuade you, Mr. John Smith, a British workman, that you
+need a Labour Party. It is a queer task for a bookish man, a literary
+student, and an easy lounger through life, who takes no interest in
+politics and needs no party at all. To persuade you, a worker, that you
+need a worker's party, is like persuading you that you need food,
+shelter, love, and liberty. It is like persuading a soldier that he
+needs arms, a scholar that he needs books, a woman that she needs a
+home. Yet my chief object in writing this book has been to persuade you
+that you need a Labour Party.
+
+Why should Labour have a Labour Party? I will put the answer first into
+the words of the anti-Socialist, and say, Because "self-interest is the
+strongest motive of mankind."
+
+That covers the whole ground, and includes all the arguments that I
+shall advance in favour of a Labour Party.
+
+For if self-interest be the leading motive of human nature, does it not
+follow that when a man wants a thing done for his own advantage he will
+be wise to do it himself.
+
+An upper-class party may be expected to attend to the interests of the
+upper class. And you will find that such a party has always done what
+might be expected. A middle-class party may be expected to attend to the
+interests of the middle class. And history and the logic of current
+events prove that the middle class has done what might have been
+expected.
+
+And if you wish the interests of the working class to be attended to,
+you will take to heart the lesson contained in those examples, and will
+form a working-class party.
+
+Liberals will declare, and do declare, in most pathetic tones, that
+they have done more, and will do more, for the workers than the Tories
+have done or will do. And Liberals will assure you that they are really
+more anxious to help the workers than we Socialists believe.
+
+But those are side issues. The main thing to remember is, that even if
+the Liberals are all they claim to be, they will never do as much for
+Labour as Labour could do for itself.
+
+Is not self-interest the ruling passion in the human heart? Then how
+should _any_ party be so true to Labour and so diligent in Labour's
+service as a Labour Party would be?
+
+What is a Trade Union? It is a combination of workers to defend their
+own interests from the encroachments of the employers.
+
+Well, a Labour Party is a combination of workers to defend their own
+interests from the encroachments of the employers, or their
+representatives in Parliament and on Municipal bodies.
+
+Do you elect your employers as officials of your Trade Unions? Do you
+send employers as delegates to your Trade Union Congress? You would
+laugh at the suggestion. You know that the employer _could_ not attend
+to your interests in the Trade Union, which is formed as a defence
+against him.
+
+Do you think the employer is likely to be more useful or more
+disinterested in Parliament or the County Council than in the Trade
+Union?
+
+Whether he be in Parliament or in his own office, he is an employer, and
+he puts his own interest first and the interests of Labour behind.
+
+Yet these men whom as Trade Unionists you mistrust, you actually send as
+politicians to "represent" you.
+
+A Labour Party is a kind of political Trade Union, and to defend Trade
+Unionism is to defend Labour representation.
+
+If a Liberal or a Tory can be trusted as a parliamentary representative,
+why cannot he be trusted as an employer?
+
+If an employer's interests are opposed to your interests in business,
+what reason have you for supposing that his interests and yours are not
+opposed in politics?
+
+Am I to persuade you to join a Labour Party? Then why should I not
+persuade you to join a Trade Union? Trade Union and Labour Party are
+both class defences against class aggression.
+
+If you oppose a man as an employer, why do you vote for him as a Member
+of Parliament? His calling himself a Liberal or a Tory does not alter
+the fact that he is an employer.
+
+To be a Trade Unionist and fight for your class during a strike, and to
+be a Tory or a Liberal and fight against your class at an election, is
+folly. During a strike there are no Tories or Liberals amongst the
+strikers; they are all workers. At election times there are no workers;
+only Liberals and Tories.
+
+During an election there are Tory and Liberal capitalists, and all of
+them are friends of the workers. During a strike there are no Tories and
+no Liberals amongst the employers. They are all capitalists and enemies
+of the workers. Is there any logic in you workers? Is there any
+perception in you? Is there any _sense_ in you?
+
+As I said just now, you never elect an employer as president of a
+Trades' Council, or a chairman of a Trade Union Congress, or as a member
+of a Trade Union. You never ask an employer to lead you during a strike.
+But at election times, when you ought to stand by your class, the whole
+body of Trade Union workers turn into black-legs, and fight for the
+capitalist and against the workers.
+
+Even some of your Labour Members of Parliament go and help the
+candidature of employers against candidates standing for Labour. That is
+a form of political black-legging which I am surprised to find you
+allow.
+
+But besides the conflict of personal interests, there are other reasons
+why the Liberal and Tory parties are useless to Labour.
+
+One of these reasons is that the reform programmes of the old parties,
+such as they are, consist almost entirely of political reforms.
+
+But the improvement of the workers' condition depends more upon
+industrial reform.
+
+The nationalisation of the railways and the coalmines, the taxation of
+the land, and the handing over of all the gas, water, and food supplies,
+and all the tramway systems, to Municipal control, would do more good
+for the workers than extension of the franchise or payment of members.
+
+The old political struggles have mostly been fought for political
+reforms or for changes of taxation. The coming struggle will be for
+industrial reform.
+
+We want Britain for the British. We want the fruits of labour for those
+who produce them. We want a human life for all. The issue is not one
+between Liberals and Tories; it is an issue between the privileged
+classes and the workers.
+
+Neither of the political parties is of any use to the workers, because
+both the political parties are paid, officered, and led by capitalists
+whose interests are opposed to the interests of the workers. The
+Socialist laughs at the pretended friendship of Liberal and Tory leaders
+for the workers. These party politicians do not in the least understand
+what the rights, the interests, or the desires of the workers are; if
+they did understand, they would oppose them implacably. The demand of
+the Socialist is a demand for the nationalisation of the land and all
+other instruments of production and distribution. The party leaders will
+not hear of such a thing. If you want to get an idea how utterly
+destitute of sympathy with Labour the privileged classes really are,
+read carefully the papers which express their views. Read the organs of
+the landlords, the capitalists, and the employers; or read the Liberal
+and the Tory papers during a big strike, or during some bye-election
+when a Labour candidate is standing against a Tory and a Liberal.
+
+It is a very common thing to hear a party leader deprecate the increase
+of "class representation." What does that mean? It means Labour
+representation. But the "class" concerned in Labour representation is
+the working class, a "class" of thirty millions of people. Observe the
+calm effrontery of this sneer at "class representation." The thirty
+millions of workers are not represented by more than a dozen members.
+The other classes--the landlords, the capitalists, the military, the
+law, the brewers, and idle gentlemen--are represented by something like
+six hundred members. This is class representation with a vengeance.
+
+It is colossal _impudence_ for a party paper to talk against "class
+representation." Every class is over-represented--except the great
+working class. The mines, the railways, the drink trade, the land,
+finance, the army (officers), the navy (officers), the church, the law,
+and most of the big industries (employers), are represented largely in
+the House of Commons.
+
+And nearly thirty millions of the working classes are represented by
+about a dozen men, most of whom are palsied by their allegiance to the
+Liberal Party.
+
+And, mind you, this disproportion exists not only in Parliament, but in
+all County and Municipal institutions. How many working men are there on
+the County Councils, the Boards of Guardians, the School Boards, and the
+Town Councils?
+
+The capitalists, and their hangers-on, not only make the laws--they
+administer them. Is it any wonder, then, that laws are made and
+administered in the interests of the capitalist? And does it not seem
+reasonable to suppose that if the laws were made and administered by
+workers, they would be made and administered to the advantage of Labour?
+
+Well, my advice to working men is to return working men representatives,
+with definite and imperative instructions, to Parliament and to all
+other governing bodies.
+
+Some of the old Trade Unionists will tell you that there is no need for
+parliamentary interference in Labour matters. The Socialist does not ask
+for "parliamentary interference"; he asks for Government by the people
+and for the people.
+
+The older Unionists think that Trade Unionism is strong enough in itself
+to secure the rights of the worker. This is a great mistake. The rights
+of the worker are the whole of the produce of his labour. Trade Unionism
+not only cannot secure that, but has never even tried to secure that.
+The most that Trade Unionism has secured, or can ever hope to secure,
+for the workers, is a comfortable subsistence wage. They have not always
+secured even that much, and, when they have secured it, the cost has
+been serious. For the great weapon of Unionism is a strike, and a strike
+is at best a bitter, a painful, and a costly thing.
+
+Do not think that I am opposed to Trade Unionism. It is a good thing; it
+has long been the only defence of the workers against robbery and
+oppression; were it not for the Trade Unionism of the past and of the
+present, the condition of the British industrial classes would be one of
+abject slavery. But Trade Unionism, although some defence, is not
+sufficient defence.
+
+You must remember, also, that the employers have copied the methods of
+Trade Unionism. They also have organised and united, and, in the future,
+strikes will be more terrible and more costly than ever. The capitalist
+is the stronger. He holds the better strategic position. He can always
+outlast the worker, for the worker has to starve and see his children
+starve, and the capitalist never gets to that pass. Besides, capital is
+more mobile than labour. A stroke of the pen will divert wealth and
+trade from one end of the country to the other; but the workers cannot
+move their forces so readily.
+
+One difference between Socialism and Trade Unionism is, that whereas the
+Unions can only marshal and arm the workers for a desperate trial of
+endurance, Socialism can get rid of the capitalist altogether. The
+former helps you to resist the enemy, the latter destroys him.
+
+I suggest that you should join a Socialist Society and help to get
+others to join, and that you should send Socialist workers to sit upon
+all representative bodies.
+
+The Socialist tells you that you are men, with men's rights and with
+men's capacities for all that is good and great--and you hoot him, and
+call him a liar and a fool.
+
+The Politician despises you, declares that all your sufferings are due
+to your own vices, that you are incapable of managing your own affairs,
+and that if you were intrusted with freedom and the use of the wealth
+you create you would degenerate into a lawless mob of drunken loafers;
+and you cheer him until you are hoarse.
+
+The Politician tells you that _his_ party is the people's party, and
+that _he_ is the man to defend your interests; and in spite of all you
+know of his conduct in the past, you believe him.
+
+The Socialist begs you to form a party of your own, and to do your work
+yourselves; and you call him a _dreamer_. I do not know whether the
+working man is a dreamer, but he seems to me to spend a good deal of his
+time asleep.
+
+Still, there are hopeful signs of an awakening. The recent decision of
+the miners to pay one shilling each a year into a fund for securing
+parliamentary and other representation, is one of the most hopeful signs
+I have yet seen.
+
+The matter is really a simple one. The workers have enough votes, and
+they can easily find enough money.
+
+The 2,000,000 of Trade Unionists could alone find the money to elect and
+support more than a hundred labour representatives.
+
+Say that election expenses for each candidate were L500. A hundred
+candidates at L500 would cost L50,000.
+
+Pay for each representative at L200 a year would cost for a hundred
+M.P.s L20,000.
+
+If 2,000,000 Unionists gave 1s. a year each, the sum would be L100,000.
+That would pay for the election of 100 members, keep them for a year,
+and leave a balance of L30,000.
+
+With a hundred Labour Members in Parliament, and a proportionate
+representation of Labour on all County Councils, City, Borough, and
+Parish Councils, School Boards and Boards of Guardians, the interests of
+the workers would begin, for the first time in our history, to receive
+some real and valuable attention.
+
+But not only is it desirable that the workers should strive for solid
+reforms, but it is also imperative that they should prepare to defend
+the liberties and rights they have already won.
+
+A man must be very careless or very obtuse if he does not perceive that
+the classes are preparing to drive the workers back from the positions
+they now hold.
+
+Two ominous words, "Conscription" and "Protection" are being freely
+bandied about, and attacks, open or covert, are being made upon Trade
+Unionism and Education. If the workers mean to hold their own they must
+attack as well as defend. And to attack they need a strong and united
+Labour Party, that will fight for Labour in and out of Parliament, and
+will stand for Labour apart from the Liberal and the Tory parties.
+
+And now let us see what the Liberal and Tory parties offer the worker,
+and why they are not to be trusted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+WHY THE OLD PARTIES WILL NOT DO
+
+
+The old parties are no use to Labour for two reasons:--
+
+
+    1. Because their interests are mostly opposed to the interests of
+    Labour.
+
+    2. Because such reform as they promise is mostly political, and the
+    kind of reform needed by Labour is industrial and social reform.
+
+
+Liberal and Tory politicians call us Socialists _dreamers_. They claim
+to be practical men. They say theories are no use, that reform can only
+be secured by practical men and practical means, and for practical men
+and practical means you must look to the great parties.
+
+Being anxious to catch even the faintest streak of dawn in the dreary
+political sky, we _do_ look to the great parties. I have been looking to
+them for quite twenty years. And nothing has come of it.
+
+What _can_ come of it? What are the "practical" reforms about which we
+hear so much?
+
+Putting the broadest construction upon them, it may be said that the
+practical politics of both parties are within the lines of the following
+programme:--
+
+
+    1. Manhood Suffrage.
+    2. Payment of Members of Parliament.
+    3. Payment of Election Expenses.
+    4. The Second Ballot.
+    5. Abolition of Dual Voting.
+    6. Disestablishment of the Church.
+    7. Abolition of the House of Lords.
+
+
+And it is alleged by large numbers of people, all of them, for some
+inexplicable reason, proud of their hard common sense, that the passing
+of this programme into law would, in some manner yet to be expounded,
+make miserable England into merry England, and silence the visionaries
+and agitators for ever.
+
+Now, with all deference and in all humility, I say to these practical
+politicians that the above programme, if it became law to-morrow, would
+not, for any practical purpose, be worth the paper it was printed on.
+
+There are seven items, and not one of them would produce the smallest
+effect upon the mass of misery and injustice which is now crushing the
+life out of this nation.
+
+No. All those planks are political planks, and they all amount to the
+same thing--the shifting of political power from the classes to the
+masses. The idea being that when the people have the political power
+they will use it to their own advantage.
+
+A false idea. The people would not know _how_ to use the power, and if
+they did know how to use it, it by no means follows that they would use
+it.
+
+Some of the _real_ evils of the time, the real causes of England's
+distress, are:--
+
+
+    1. The unjust monopoly of the land.
+    2. The unjust extortion of interest.
+    3. The universal system of suicidal competition.
+    4. The baseness of popular ideals.
+    5. The disorganisation of the forces for the production of wealth.
+    6. The unjust distribution of wealth.
+    7. The confusions and contradictions of the moral ethics of the
+       nation, with resultant unjust laws and unfair conditions of life.
+
+
+There I will stop. Against the seven remedies I will put seven evils,
+and I say that not one of the remedies can cure any one of the evils.
+
+The seven remedies will give increased political power to the people.
+So. But, assuming that political power is the one thing needful, I say
+the people have it now.
+
+Supposing the masses in Manchester were determined to return to
+Parliament ten working men. They have an immense preponderance of votes.
+They could carry the day at every poll? But _do_ they? If not, why not?
+
+Then, as to expenses. Assuming the cost to be L200 a member, that would
+make a gross sum of L2000 for ten members, which sum would not amount to
+quite fivepence a head for 100,000 voters. But do voters find this
+money? If not, why not?
+
+Then, as to maintenance. Allowing each member L200 a year, that would
+mean another fivepence a year for the 100,000 men. So that it is not too
+much to say that, without passing one of the Acts in the seven-branched
+programme, the workers of Manchester could, at a cost of less than one
+penny a month per man, return and maintain ten working men Members of
+Parliament?
+
+Now, my practical friends, how many working-class members sit for
+Manchester to-day?
+
+And if the people, having so much power now, make no use of it, why are
+we to assume that all they need is a little more power to make them
+healthy, and wealthy, and wise?
+
+But allow me to offer a still more striking example--the example of
+America.
+
+In the first place, I assume that in America the electoral power of the
+people is much greater than it is here. I will give one or two examples.
+In America, I understand, they have:--
+
+
+    1. No Established Church.
+    2. No House of Lords.
+    3. Members of the Legislature are paid.
+    4. The people have Universal Suffrage.
+
+
+There are four out of the seven branches of the practical politicians'
+programme in actual existence. For the other three--
+
+
+    The Abolition of Dual Voting; The Payment of Election Expenses; and
+    The Second Ballot--
+
+
+I cannot answer; but these do not seem to have done quite as much for
+France as our practical men expect them to do for England.
+
+Very well, America has nearly all that our practical politicians promise
+us. Is America, therefore, so much better off as to justify us in
+accepting the seven-branched programme as salvation?
+
+Some years ago I read a book called _How the Other Half Lives_, written
+by an American citizen, and dealing with the conditions of the poor in
+New York.
+
+We should probably be justified in assuming that just as London is a
+somewhat intensified epitome of England, so is New York of America; but
+we will not assume that much. We will look at this book together, and we
+will select a few facts as to the state of the people in New York, and
+then I will ask you to consider this proposition:--
+
+1. That in New York the people already enjoy all the advantages of
+practical politics, as understood in England.
+
+2. That, nevertheless, New York is a more miserable and vicious city
+than London.
+
+3. That this seems to me to indicate that practical politics are
+hopeless, and that practical politicians are--not quite so wise as they
+imagine.
+
+About thirty years ago there was a committee appointed in New York to
+investigate the "great increase in crime." The Secretary of the New York
+Prison Association, giving evidence, said:--
+
+
+    Eighty per cent. at least of the crimes against property and against
+    the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost
+    connection with home life or never had any, or whose homes have
+    ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to afford
+    what are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and
+    family.
+
+    The younger criminals seem to come almost exclusively from the worst
+    tenement-house districts.
+
+
+These tenements, it seems, are slums. Of the evil of these places, of
+the miseries of them, we shall hear more presently. Our author, Mr.
+Jacob A. Riis, asserts again and again that the slums make the disease,
+the crime, and the wretchedness of New York:--
+
+
+    In the tenements all the influences make for evil, because they are
+    the hot-beds that carry death to rich and poor alike; the nurseries
+    of pauperism and crime, that fill our gaols and police-courts; that
+    throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island
+    asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out, in the last
+    eight years, a round half-million of beggars to prey upon our
+    charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps,
+    with all that that implies; because, above all, they touch the
+    family life with moral contagion.
+
+
+Well, that is what the American writer thinks of the tenement
+system--of the New York slums.
+
+_Now_ comes the important question, What is the extent of these slums?
+And on this point Mr. Riis declares more than once that the extent is
+enormous:--
+
+
+    To-day (1891) three-fourths of New York's people live in the
+    tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the
+    cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them.
+
+    Where are the tenements of to-day? Say, rather, where are they not?
+    In fifty years they have crept up from the Fourth Ward Slums and the
+    Fifth Points, the whole length of the island, and have polluted the
+    annexed district to the Westchester line. Crowding all the lower
+    wards, where business leaves a foot of ground unclaimed; strung
+    along both rivers, like ball and chain tied to the foot of every
+    street, and filling up Harlem with their restless, pent-up
+    multitudes, they hold within their clutch the wealth and business of
+    New York--hold them at their mercy, in the day of mob-rule and
+    wrath.
+
+
+So much, then, for the extent of these slums. Now for the nature of
+them. A New York doctor said of some of them--
+
+
+    If we could see the air breathed by these poor creatures in their
+    tenements, it would show itself to be fouler than the mud of the
+    gutters.
+
+
+And Mr. Riis goes on to tell of the police finding 101 adults and 91
+children in one Crosby Street House, 150 "lodgers" sleeping "on filthy
+floors in two buildings."
+
+But the most striking illustration I can give you of the state of the
+working-class dwellings in New York is by placing side by side the
+figures of the population per acre in the slums of New York and
+Manchester.
+
+The Manchester slums are bad--disgracefully, sinfully bad--and the
+overcrowding is terrible. But referring to the figures I took from
+various official documents when I was writing on the Manchester slums a
+few years ago, I find the worst cases of overcrowding to be:--
+
+
+                    District.  Pop. per Acre.
+    Ancoats          No. 3          256
+    Deansgate        No. 2          266
+    London Road      No. 3          267
+    Hulme            No. 3          270
+    St. George's     No. 6          274
+
+
+These are the worst cases from some of the worst English slums. Now let
+us look at the figures for New York--
+
+
+    DENSITY OF POPULATION PER ACRE IN 1890
+
+         Tenth Ward             522
+         Eleventh Ward          386
+         Thirteenth Ward        428
+
+
+The population of these three wards in the same year was over 179,000.
+The population of New York in 1890 was 1,513,501. In 1888 there were in
+New York 1,093,701 persons living in tenement houses.
+
+Then, in 1889, there died in New York hospitals 6102; in lunatic
+asylums, 448; while the number of pauper funerals was 3815.
+
+In 1890 there were in New York 37,316 tenements, with a gross population
+of 1,250,000.
+
+These things are facts, and our practical politicians love facts.
+
+But these are not all the facts. No. In this book about New York I find
+careful plans and drawings of the slums, and I can assure you we have
+nothing so horrible in all England. Nor do the revelations of Mr. Riis
+stop there. We have full details of the sweating shops, the men and
+women crowded together in filthy and noisome dens, working at starvation
+prices, from morning until late on in the night, "until brain and muscle
+break down together." We have pictures of the beggars, the tramps, the
+seamstresses, the unemployed, the thieves, the desperadoes, the lost
+women, the street arabs, the vile drinking and opium dens, and we have
+facts and figures to prove that this great capital of the great Republic
+is growing worse; and all this, my practical friends, in spite of the
+fact that in America they have
+
+
+    Manhood Suffrage;
+    Payment of Members;
+    No House of Peers;
+    No State  Church; and
+    Free Education;
+
+
+which is more than our most advanced politicians claim as the full
+extent to which England can be taken by means of practical politics--as
+understood by the two great parties.
+
+Now, I want to know, and I shall be glad if some practical friend will
+tell me, whether a programme of practical politics which leaves the
+metropolis of a free and democratic nation a nest of poverty, commercial
+slavery, vice, crime, insanity, and disease, is likely to make the
+English people healthy, and wealthy, and wise? And I ask you to consider
+whether this seven-branched programme is worth fighting for, if it is to
+result in a density of slum population nearly twice as great as that of
+the worst districts of the worst slums of Manchester?
+
+It seems to me, as an unpractical man, that a practical programme which
+results in 522 persons to the acre, 18 hours a day for bread and butter,
+and nearly 4000 pauper funerals a year in one city, is a programme which
+only _very_ practical men would be fools enough to fight for.
+
+At anyrate, I for one will have nothing to say to such a despicable
+sham. A programme which does not touch the sweater nor the slum; which
+does not hinder the system of fraud and murder called free competition;
+which does not give back to the English people their own country or
+their own earnings, may be good enough for politicians, but it is no use
+to men and women.
+
+No, my lads, there is no system of economics, politics, or ethics
+whereby it shall be made just or expedient to take that which you have
+not earned, or to take that which another man has earned; there can be
+no health, no hope in a nation where everyone is trying to get more than
+he has earned, and is hocussing his conscience with platitudes about
+God's Providence having endowed men with different degrees of intellect
+and virtue.
+
+How many years is it since the Newcastle programme was issued? What did
+it _promise_ that the poor workers of America and France have not
+already obtained? What good would it do you if you got it? _And when do
+you think you are likely to get it?_ Is it any nearer now than it was
+seven years ago? Will it be any nearer ten years hence than it is now if
+you wait for the practical politicians of the old parties to give it to
+you?
+
+One of the great stumbling-blocks in the way of all progress for Labour
+is the lingering belief of the working man in the Liberal Party.
+
+In the past the Liberals were regarded as the party of progress. They
+won many fiscal and political reforms for the people. And now, when they
+will not, or cannot, go any farther, their leaders talk about
+"ingratitude" if the worker is advised to leave them and form a Labour
+Party.
+
+But when John Bright refused to go any farther, when he refused to go as
+far as Home Rule, did the Liberal Party think of gratitude to one of
+their greatest men? No. They dropped John Bright, and they blamed _him_
+because he had halted.
+
+They why should they demand that you shall stay with them out of
+gratitude now they have halted?
+
+The Liberal Party claim to be the workers' friends. What have they done
+for him during the last ten years? What are they willing to do for him
+now, or when they get office?
+
+Here is a quotation from a speech made some years ago by Sir William
+Harcourt--
+
+
+    An attempt is being sedulously made to identify the Liberal
+    Government and the Liberal Party with dreamers of dreams, with wild,
+    anarchical ideas, and anti-social projects. Gentlemen, I say, if I
+    have a right to speak on behalf of the Liberal Party, that we have
+    no sympathy with these mischief-makers at all. The Liberal Party has
+    no share in them; their policy is a constructive policy; they have
+    no revolutionary schemes either in politics, in society, or in
+    trade.
+
+
+You may say that is old. Try this new one. It is from the lips of Mr.
+Harmsworth, the "official Liberal candidate" at the last by-election in
+North-East Lanark--
+
+
+    My own opinion is that a _modus vivendi_ should be arrived at
+    between the official Liberal Party and such Labour organisations as
+    desire parliamentary representation, provided, of course, that they
+    are not _tainted with Socialist doctrines_. It should not be
+    difficult to come to something like an amicable settlement. I must
+    say that it came upon me with something of a shock to find that
+    amongst those who sent messages to the Socialist candidate wishing
+    success to him in his propaganda were two Members of Parliament who
+    profess allegiance to the Liberal Party.
+
+
+Provided, "of course," that _they are not tainted with Socialist
+doctrines_. With Socialist doctrines Sir William Harcourt and Mr.
+Harmsworth will have no dealings.
+
+Now, if you read what I have written in this book you will see that
+there is no possible reform that can do the workers any real or lasting
+good unless that reform is _tainted with Socialist doctrines_.
+
+Only legislation of a socialistic nature can benefit the working class.
+And that kind of legislation the Liberals will not touch.
+
+It is true there are some individual members amongst the Radicals who
+are prepared to go a good way with the Socialists. But what can they do?
+In the House they must obey the Party Whip, and the Party Whip never
+cracks for socialistic measures.
+
+I wonder how many Labour seats have been lost through Home Rule. Time
+after time good Labour candidates have been defeated because Liberal
+working men feared to lose a Home Rule vote in the House.
+
+And what has Labour got from the Home Rule Liberals it has elected?
+
+And where is Home Rule to-day?
+
+Let me give you a typical case. A Liberal Unionist lost his seat. He at
+once became a Home Ruler, and was adopted as Liberal candidate to stand
+against a Labour candidate and against a Tory. The Labour candidate was
+a Home Ruler, and had been a Home Ruler when the Liberal candidate was a
+Unionist.
+
+But the Liberal working men would not vote for the Labour man. Why?
+Because they were afraid he would not get in. If he did not get in the
+Tory would get in, and the Home Rule vote would be one less in the
+House.
+
+They voted for the Liberal, and he was returned. That is ten years ago.
+What good has that M.P. done for Home Rule, and what has he done for
+Labour?
+
+The Labour man could have done no more for Home Rule, but he would have
+worked hard for Labour, and no Party Whip would have checked him.
+
+Well, during those ten years it is not too much to say that fifty Labour
+candidates have been sacrificed in the same way to Home Rule.
+
+In ten years those men would have done good service. _And they were all
+Home Rulers._
+
+Such is the wisdom of the working men who cling to the tails of the
+Liberal Party.
+
+Return a hundred Labour men to the House of Commons, and the Liberal
+Party will be stronger than if a hundred Liberals were sent in their
+place, for there is not a sound plank in the Liberal programme which the
+Labour M.P. would wish removed.
+
+But do you doubt for a moment that the presence in the House of a
+hundred Labour members would do no more for Labour than the presence in
+their stead of a hundred Liberals? A working man must be very dull if he
+believes that.
+
+That is my case against the old parties. I could say no more if I tried.
+If you want to benefit your own class, if you want to hasten reform, if
+you want to frighten the Tories and wake up the Liberals, put your hands
+in your pockets, find a _farthing a week_ for election and for
+parliamentary expenses, send a hundred Labour men to the House, and
+watch the effects. I think you will be more than satisfied. And _that_
+is what _I_ call "practical politics."
+
+Finally, to end as I began, if self-interest is the strongest motive in
+human nature, the man who wants his own advantage secured will be wise
+to attend to it himself.
+
+The Liberal Party may be a better party than the Tory Party, but the
+_best_ party for Labour is a _Labour_ Party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+TO-DAY'S WORK
+
+
+Self-interest being the strongest motive in human nature, he who wishes
+his interests to be served will be wise to attend to them himself.
+
+If you, Mr. Smith, as a working man, wish to have better wages, shorter
+hours, more holidays, and cheaper living, you had better take a hand in
+the class war by becoming a recruit in the army of Labour.
+
+The first line of the Labour army is the Trade Unions.
+
+The second line is the Municipality.
+
+The third line is Parliament.
+
+If working men desire to improve their conditions they will be wise to
+serve their own interests by using the Trade Unions, the Municipalities,
+and the House of Commons for all they are worth; and they are worth a
+lot.
+
+Votes you have in plenty, for all practical purposes, and of money you
+can yourselves raise more than you need, without either hurting
+yourselves or incurring obligations to men of other classes.
+
+One penny a week from 4,000,000 of working men would mean a yearly
+income of L866,000.
+
+We are always hearing that the working classes cannot find enough money
+to pay the election expenses of their own parliamentary candidates nor
+to keep their own Labour members if elected.
+
+If 4,000,000 workers paid one penny a week (the price of a Sunday paper,
+or of one glass of cheap beer) they would have L866,000 at the end of a
+year.
+
+Election expenses of 200 Labour candidates at L500 each would be
+L100,000.
+
+Pay of 200 Labour members at L200 a year would be L40,000.
+
+Total, L140,000: leaving a balance in hand of L726,000.
+
+Election expenses of 2000 candidates for School Board, Municipal
+Councils, and Boards of Guardians at L50 per man would be L100,000.
+Leaving a balance of L626,000.
+
+Now the cause of Labour has very few friends amongst the newspapers. As
+I have said before, at times of strikes and other industrial crises, the
+Press goes almost wholly against the workers.
+
+The 4,000,000 men I have supposed to wake up to their own interest could
+establish weekly and daily papers of _their own_ at a cost of L50,000
+for each paper. Say one weekly paper at a penny, one daily paper at a
+penny, or one morning and one evening paper at a halfpenny each.
+
+These papers would have a ready-made circulation amongst the men who
+owned them. They could be managed, edited, and written by trained
+journalists engaged for the work, and could contain all the best
+features of the political papers now bought by working men.
+
+Say, then, that the weekly paper cost L50,000 to start, and that the
+morning and evening papers cost the same. That would be L150,000, and
+the papers would pay in less than a year.
+
+You see, then, that 4,000,000 of men could finance 3 newspapers, 200
+parliamentary and 2000 local elections, and pay one year's salary to 200
+Members of Parliament for L390,000, or less than _one halfpenny_ a week
+for one year.
+
+If you paid the full penny a week for one year you could do all I have
+said and have a balance in hand of L476,000.
+
+Surely, then, it is nonsense to talk about the difficulty of finding
+money for election expenses.
+
+But you might not be able to get 4,000,000 of men to pay even one penny.
+
+Then you could produce the same result if _one_ million (half your
+present Trade Union membership) pay twopence a week.
+
+And even at a cost of twopence a week do you not think the result would
+be worth the cost? Imagine the effect on the Press, and on Parliament,
+and on the employers, and on public opinion of your fighting 200
+parliamentary and 2000 municipal elections, and founding three
+newspapers. Then the moral effect of the work the newspapers would do
+would be sure to result in an increase of the Trade Union membership.
+
+A penny looks such a poor, contemptible coin, and even the poor labourer
+often wastes one. But remember that union is strength, and pennies make
+pounds. 1000 pennies make more than L4; 100,000 pennies come to more
+than L400; 1,000,000 pennies come to L4000; 1,000,000 pennies a week for
+a year give you the enormous sum of L210,000.
+
+We _Clarion_ men founded a paper called the _Clarion_ with less than
+L400 capital, and with no friends or backers, and although we have never
+given gambling news, nor general news, and had no Trade Unions behind
+us, we have carried our paper on for ten years, and it is stronger now
+than ever.
+
+Why, then, should the working classes, and especially the Trade Unions,
+submit to the insults and misrepresentations of newspapers run by
+capitalists, when they can have better papers of their own to plead
+their own cause?
+
+Suppose it cost L100,000 to start a first-class daily Trade Union organ.
+How much would that mean to 2,000,000 of Unionists? If it cost L100,000
+to start the paper, and if it lost L100,000 a year, it would only mean
+one halfpenny a week for the first year, and one farthing a week for the
+next. But I am quite confident that if the Unions did the thing in
+earnest they could start a paper for L50,000, and run it at a profit
+after the first six months.
+
+Do not forget the power of the penny. If 10,000,000 of working men and
+women gave _one penny a year_ it would reach a yearly income of _forty
+thousand pounds_. A good deal may be done with L40,000, Mr. Smith.
+
+Now a few words as to the three lines of operations. You have your Trade
+Unions, and you have a very modest kind of Federation. If your 2,000,000
+Unionists were federated at a weekly subscription of one penny per man,
+your yearly income would be nearly half a million: a very useful kind of
+fund. I should strongly advise you to strengthen your Trades Federation.
+
+Next as to Municipal affairs. These are of more importance to you than
+Parliament. Let me give you an idea. Suppose, as in the case of
+Manchester and Liverpool, the difference between a private gas company
+and a Municipal gas supply amounts to more than a shilling on each 1000
+feet of gas. Setting the average workman's gas consumption at 4000 feet
+per quarter, that means a saving to each Manchester working man of
+sixteen shillings a year, or just about fourpence a week.
+
+Suppose a tram company carries a man to his work and back at one penny,
+and the Corporation carries him at one halfpenny. The man saves a penny
+a day, or 25s. a year. Now if 100,000 men piled up their tram savings
+for one year as a labour fund it would come to L125,000.
+
+All that money those men are now giving to tram companies _for nothing_.
+Is that practical?
+
+You may apply the same process of thought to all the other things you
+use. Just figure out what you would save if you had Municipal or State
+managed
+
+
+    Railways        Coalmines
+    Tramways        Omnibuses
+    Gas             Water
+    Milk            Bread
+    Meat            Butter and cheese
+    Vegetables      Beer
+    Houses          Shops
+    Boots           Clothing
+
+
+and other necessaries.
+
+On all those needful things you are now paying big percentages of profit
+to private dealers, all of which the Municipality would save you.
+
+And you can municipalise all those things and save all that money by
+sticking together as a Labour Party, and by paying _one penny a week_.
+
+Again I advise you to read those books by George Haw and R. B. Suthers.
+Read them, and give them to other workers to read.
+
+And then set about making a Labour Party _at once_.
+
+Next as to Parliament. You ought to put at least 200 Labour members into
+the House. Never mind Liberalism and Toryism. Mr. Morley said in January
+that what puzzled him was to "find any difference between the new
+Liberalism and the new Conservatism." Do not try to find a difference,
+John. Have a Labour Party.
+
+"Self-interest is the strongest motive in human nature." Take care of
+your own interests and stand by your own class.
+
+You will ask, perhaps, what these 200 Labour representatives are to do.
+They should do anything and everything they can do in the House of
+Commons for the interests of the working class.
+
+But if you want programmes and lists of measures, get the Fabian
+Parliamentary and Municipal programmes, and study them. You will find
+the particulars as to price, etc., at the end of this book.
+
+But here are some measures which you might be pushing and helping
+whenever a chance presents itself, in Parliament or out of Parliament.
+
+    Removal of taxation from articles used by the workers, such as tea
+    and tobacco, and increase of taxation on large incomes and on land.
+
+    Compulsory sale of land for the purpose of Municipal houses, works,
+    farms, and gardens.
+
+    Nationalisation of railways and mines.
+
+    Taxation to extinction of all mineral royalties.
+
+    Vastly improved education for the working classes.
+
+    Old age pensions.
+
+    Adoption of the Initiative and Referendum.
+
+    Universal adult suffrage.
+
+    Eight hours' day and standard rates of wages in all Government and
+    Municipal works.
+
+    Establishment of a Department of Agriculture.
+
+    State insurance of life.
+
+    Nationalisation of all banks.
+
+    The second ballot.
+
+    Abolition of property votes.
+
+    Formation of a citizen army for home defence.
+
+    Abolition of workhouses.
+
+    Solid legislation on the housing question.
+
+    Government inquiry into the food question, with a view to restore
+    British agriculture.
+
+Those are a few steps towards the desired goal of _Socialism_.
+
+You may perhaps wonder why I do not ask you to found a Socialist Party.
+I do not think the workers are ready for it. And I feel that if you
+found a Labour Party every step you take towards the emancipation of
+Labour will be a step towards _Socialism_.
+
+But I should like to think that many workers will become Socialists at
+once, and more as they live and learn.
+
+The fact is, Mr. Smith, I do not want to ask too much of the mass of
+working folks, who have been taught little, and mostly taught wrong, and
+whose opportunities of getting knowledge have been but poor.
+
+I am not asking working men to be plaster saints nor stained-glass
+angels, but only to be really what their flatterers are so fond of
+telling them they are now: shrewd, hard-headed men, distrusting theories
+and believing in facts.
+
+For the statement that private trading and private management of
+production and distribution are the best, and the only "possible," ways
+of carrying on the business of the nation is only a _theory_, Mr. Smith;
+but the superiority of Municipal management in cheapness, in efficiency,
+in health, in comfort, and in pleasantness is a solid _fact_, Mr. Smith,
+which has been demonstrated just as often as Municipal and private
+management have been contrasted in their action.
+
+One other question I may anticipate. How are the workers to form a
+Labour Party?
+
+There are already two Labour parties formed.
+
+One is the Trade Union body, the other is the Independent Labour Party.
+
+The Trade Unions are numerous, but not politically organised nor united.
+
+The Independent Labour Party is organised and united, but is weak in
+numbers and poor in funds.
+
+I should like to see the Trade Unions fully federated, and formed into a
+political as well as an Industrial Labour Party on lines similar to
+those of the Independent Labour Party.
+
+Or I should like to see the whole of your 2,000,000 of Trade Unionists
+join the Independent Labour Party.
+
+Or, best of all, I should like to see the Unions, the Independent Labour
+Party, and the great and growing body of unorganised and unattached
+Socialists formed into one grand Socialist Party.
+
+But I do not want to ask too much.
+
+Meanwhile, I ask you, as a reader of this book, not to sit down in
+despair with the feeling that the workers will not move, but to try to
+move them. Be you _one_, John Smith. Be you the first. Then you shall
+surely win a few, and each of those few shall win a few, and so are
+multitudes composed.
+
+Let us make a long story short. I have here given you, as briefly and as
+plainly as I can, the best advice of which I am capable, after a dozen
+years' study and experience of Labour politics and economics and the
+lives of working men and women.
+
+If you approve of this little book I shall be glad if you will recommend
+it to your friends.
+
+You will find Labour matters treated of every week in the _Clarion_,
+which is a penny paper, published every Friday, and obtainable at 72
+Fleet Street, London, E.C., and of all newsagents.
+
+Heaven, friend John Smith, helps those who help themselves; but Heaven
+also helps those who try to help their fellow-creatures.
+
+If you are shrewd and strong and skilful, think a little and work a
+little for the millions of your own class who are ignorant and weak and
+friendless. If you have a wife and children whom you love, remember the
+many poor and wretched women and children who are robbed of love, of
+leisure, of sunshine and sweet air, of knowledge and of hope, in the
+pent and dismal districts of our big, misgoverned towns. If you as a
+Briton are proud of your country and your race, if you as a man have any
+pride of manhood, or as a worker have any pride of class, come over to
+us and help in the just and wise policy of winning Britain for the
+British, manhood for _all_ men, womanhood for _all_ women, and love
+to-day and hope to-morrow for the children whom Christ loved, but who
+by many Christians have unhappily been forgotten.
+
+
+    That it may please thee to succour, help, and comfort _all_ that are
+    in danger, necessity, and tribulation.
+
+    That it may please thee to defend, and provide for, the fatherless
+    children, and widows, and _all_ that are desolate and oppressed.
+
+    That it may please thee to have mercy upon _all_ men.
+
+
+I end as I began, by quoting those beautiful words from the Litany. If
+we would realise the prayer they utter, we must turn to _Socialism_; if
+we would win defence for the fatherless children and the widows,
+succour, help, and comfort for _all_ that are in danger, necessity, or
+tribulation, and mercy for _all_ men, we must win Britain for the
+British.
+
+Without the workers we cannot win, with the workers we cannot fail. Will
+you be one to help us--_now_?
+
+
+
+
+WHAT TO READ
+
+
+The following books and pamphlets treat more fully the various subjects
+dealt with in _Britain for the British_.
+
+TO-DAY'S WORK. G. Haw. Clarion Press, 72 Fleet Street. 2s. 6d.
+
+DOES MUNICIPAL MANAGEMENT PAY? By R. B. Suthers. 6d. Clarion Press, 72
+Fleet Street.
+
+LAND NATIONALISATION. A. R. Wallace. 1s. London, Swan Sonnenschein.
+
+FIVE PRECURSORS OF HENRY GEORGE. By J. Morrison Davidson. 1s. _Labour
+Leader_ Office, 53 Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+DISMAL ENGLAND. By R. Blatchford. Clarion Press, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.
+1s.
+
+THE WHITE SLAVES OF ENGLAND. By R. Sherard. London, James Bowden. 1s.
+
+NO ROOM TO LIVE. By G. Haw. 2s. 6d.
+
+FIELDS, FACTORIES, AND WORKSHOPS. By Prince Kropotkin. 1s. _Clarion_
+Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+THE FABIAN TRACTS, especially No. 5, No. 12, and Nos. 30-37. One penny
+each. Fabian Society, 3 Clement's Inn, Strand, or _Clarion_ Office, 72
+Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+OUR FOOD SUPPLY IN TIME OF WAR. By Captain Stewart L. Murray. 6d.
+_Clarion_ Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+THE CLARION. A newspaper for Socialists and Working Men. One penny
+weekly. Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.
+
+The _Clarion_ can be ordered of all newsagents
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+The American workingman will not find it very hard to see that the
+lesson of "Britain for the British" applies with even greater force to
+the conditions in his own country.
+
+American railroads, mines, and factories exploit, cripple and kill
+American laborers on an even larger scale than the British ones. We have
+even less laws for the protection of the workers and their children and
+what we have are not so well enforced.
+
+No one will deny the ability of America to feed herself. She feeds the
+world to-day save that some American workers and their families are
+rather poorly fed. The great problem with American capitalists is how to
+get rid of the wealth produced and given to them by American laborers.
+
+Where Liberal and Conservative parties are mentioned every American
+reader will find himself unconsciously substituting Democratic and
+Republican.
+
+It will do the average American good to "see himself as others see him"
+and to know that manhood suffrage, freedom from established Church and
+Republican institutions do not prevent his becoming an economic slave
+and living in a slum.
+
+But we fear that some American readers will be shrewd enough to call
+attention to the fact that municipal ownership has not abolished, or to
+any great extent improved the slums of London, Glasgow and Birmingham.
+It is certain some of the thousands of German laborers who are living in
+America would be quick to point out that although Bismark has
+nationalized the railroads and telegraphs of Germany this has not
+altered the fact of the exploitation of German workingmen. Worst of
+all, it would be hard to explain to the multitude of Russian exiles now
+living in America that they would have been better off had they remained
+at home, because the Czar has made more industries government property
+than belong to any other nation in the world.
+
+Even native Americans would find it somewhat hard to understand how
+matters would be improved by transferring the ownership of the coal
+mines, for example, from a Hanna-controlled corporation to a
+Hanna-directed government. There would be one or two different links in
+the chain of connection uniting Hanna to the mines and the miners but
+they would be as well forged and as capable of holding the laborer in
+slavery as the present ones.
+
+Happily the chapter on "Why the old Parties will not do" gives us a clue
+to the way out. While the government is controlled by capitalist parties
+government ownership of industries does little more than simplify the
+process of reorganization to be performed when a real labor party shall
+gain control. The victory of such a party will for the first time mean
+that government-owned industries will be owned and controlled by all the
+workers (who will also be all the people, since idlers will have
+disappeared).
+
+American workers are fortunate in that there is a political party
+already in the field which exactly meets the ideal described in the last
+three chapters. The Socialist Party is a trade-union party, a labor
+party and the political expression of all the workers in America who
+have become intelligent enough to understand their own self-interest.
+Those who feel that they wish to lend a hand in securing the triumph of
+the ideas set forth in "Britain for the British" should at once join
+that party and work for its success.
+
+A. M. SIMONS.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY ROBERT BLATCHFORD
+
+("NUNQUAM.")
+
+
++MERRIE ENGLAND.+--Cloth, crown 8vo, 2s, 6d., by Robert Blatchford.
+
+A book on sociology. Called by the Review of Reviews: "The Poor Man's
+Plato." Over a million copies sold. Translated into Welsh, Dutch,
+French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Norwegian, and Swedish.
+
++TALES FOR THE MARINES.+--A New Book of Soldier Stories. By Nunquam.
+
+The Daily Chronicle says:
+
+"This volume contains a batch of stories ('cuffers,' we understand is
+the correct technical term) supposed to be told by soldiers in the
+barrack-room after lights are out; and capital stories they are. If we
+were to call them 'rattling' and also 'ripping' we should not be saying
+a word too much. For our own part we never want to see a better fight
+than that between the bayonet and the sword in 'The Mousetrap,' or to
+read a sounder lecture on social philosophy than that delivered by
+Sergeant Wren in 'Dear Lady Disdain.' Mr. Blatchford knows the
+barrack-room from the inside, and obviously from the inside has learned
+to love and to enjoy it."
+
++JULIE.+--A Study of a Girl by a Man. Nunquam's Story of Slum Life. Price
+2/6; by post, 2/8.
+
+The Liverpool Review says:
+
+"'Julie,' unlike 'The Master Christian,' is beautiful inside as well as
+out. Nunquam, like Corelli, has a mission to perform--to utilize romance
+as a finger-post to indicate social wrongs; but, unlike Corelli, he
+succeeds in his purpose. And why does he succeed where she fails?
+Because he goes at his task sympathetically, with a warm heart; whereas
+she goes at it sourly, with a pen dipped in gall. It is all a question
+of temperament. If you want an object-lesson in the effect which
+temperament has upon artistic achievement, read 'The Master Christian'
+and follow it up with 'Julie.'"
+
++THE BOUNDER.+--The Story of a Man by his Friend. By Nunquam. Price 2/6;
+by post, 2/8.
+
+All who loved the Bounder and admired his work should avail themselves
+of the opportunity to possess this record of both, before the edition is
+exhausted.
+
++A BOHEMIAN GIRL.+--A Theatrical Novel. By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post,
+2/8.
+
+Manchester City News:
+
+"The swift interchange of thought and repartee in the conversations
+remind one of the brilliant 'Dolly Dialogues'; but there is an
+underlying earnestness and a deeper meaning in Mr. McGinnis's seemingly
+careless story than in Mr. Anthony Hope's society pictures."
+
++MY FAVORITE BOOKS.+--By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post, 2/8. With Portrait
+of the Author.
+
+The Christian Globe says:
+
+"Instinct with generous and eloquent appreciation of what is brightest
+and best in our literature, we have only to complain that there is so
+little of it after all. Again we feel the spell of old times in the
+charmed garden; the breeze blows fresh, sweet is the odor of the roses,
+and we wander with our guide wherever it pleases him to lead us. We can
+give the author no higher praise. May his book prosper as it deserves."
+
++TOMMY ATKINS.+--By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post, 2/8. Paper, 1/-; by post,
+1/3.
+
+A soldier story of great popularity which has already gone through
+several editions, and was long ago pronounced by Sir Evelyn Wood, and
+other great authorities on the army, to be the best story on army life
+ever written.
+
++DISMAL ENGLAND.+--By Nunquam. Price 2/6; by post, 2/8. Paper, 1/-; by
+post, 1/2.
+
+A thrilling and life-like series of sketches of life in its darker
+phases.
+
++PINK DIAMONDS.+--A Wild Story. By Nunquam. Cloth, 2/-; by post, 2/2.
+Paper, 6d.; by post, 8d.
+
+A capital antidote to the dumps; full of rollicking action and wild
+humor.
+
++THE NUNQUAM PAPERS.+--2/-; by post, 2/2.
+
+Some of Nunquam's best articles and sketches.
+
++FANTASIAS.+--By Nunquam. Cloth, 2/-; by post, 2/2. Paper, 6d.; by post,
+8d.
+
+Tales and essays of graphic, humorous and pathetic interest.
+
++A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A DOG.+--By The Whatnot. Cloth and gold, 2/6; by
+post, 2/8.
+
++TO-DAY'S WORK.+--Municipal Government the Hope of Democracy. By George
+Haw, author of "No Room to Live." Price 2/6; by post, 2/8.
+
+A reprint, with revisions and additional chapters, of The Outlaw's
+articles on Local Government, published in the Clarion under the
+heading, "What we can do to-day."
+
++THE ART OF HAPPINESS.+--By Mont Bloug. With portrait of the Author.
+Cloth, 2/-; by post, 2/2.
+
+A mixture of fun and philosophy, of which the large edition is nearly
+exhausted, and is not likely to be reprinted. Those who have neglected
+to get it should do so while there is yet time. It is a book that any
+reader will be thankful for.
+
++DANGLE'S MIXTURE.+--By A. M. Thompson. Cloth, 1/6; by post, 1/8.
+
++DANGLE'S ROUGH CUT.+--By A. M. Thompson. Cloth, 1/6; by post, 1/8.
+
+Capital examples of Dangular humor, of which it can be truthfully said
+that each is better than the other, while both are amusing enough to
+bring out a cheerful smile upon the glummest face.
+
+CLARION PRESS, 72 Fleet Street, London, E. C.
+
+
+Read _The Clarion_
+
+The Pioneer Journal of Social Reform.
+
+Edited by ROBERT BLATCHFORD,
+_Author of "Merrie England," "Britain for the British," etc._
+
+EVERY FRIDAY.
+
+PRICE ONE PENNY.
+
+Send for Specimen Copy to the Clarion Office, 72, Fleet St.,
+London, E. C.
+
+
+W. Wilfred Head and Co., Ltd., "Dr. Johnson Press," Fleet Lane,
+Old Bailey, London, E. C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Britain for the British, by Robert Blatchford
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