[18] Some curious instances of inequality appear in the cities. In Berlin in one precinct one man paid one-third of the taxes and consequently possessed one-third of the legislative influence in that precinct. In another precinct the president of a large bank paid one-third of the taxes, and two of his associates paid another third. These three men named the member of the Diet from that precinct.
[19] For the struggle for ballot reform in Bavaria, see Der Kampf um die Wahlreform in Bayern, issued in 1905 by the Bavarian Social Democratic Party Executive Committee.
[20] February 13, 1910, was set aside as a day for suffrage demonstration throughout the empire. In Berlin alone forty-two meetings were announced. These provoked the following edict: "Notice! The 'right to the streets' is hereby proclaimed. The streets serve primarily for traffic. Resistance to state authority will be met by the force of arms. I warn the curious. Berlin, February 13, 1910. Police-president, Von Iagow." The Social Democratic papers called attention to the fact that these notices were printed on the same forms that the Police-president often used to announce that the streets would be closed to all traffic on account of military parades.
[21] Protokoll, 1890, pp. 119-120.
[22] Protokoll, 1890, pp. 96-7.
[23] There are eight secretaries elected. They are distributed, by custom, among the parties, according to their voting strength. The Social Democrats had always refrained from taking part in any of the elections; now they enter the lists, abstaining from voting for any candidate except their own—who, in turn, received no other votes.
[24] Bebel was not present in the Reichstag at the time this vote was taken, but he told the convention that, had he been present, he should have supported the Tax Bill. Protokoll, 1908, p. 364.
[25] Protokoll, 1892, p. 173.
[26] Protokoll, 1910, p. 469.
[27] Protokoll, 1910, p. 95.
[28] Reichstag Debates, December 2, 1908.
[29] In the election of January, 1912, the Social Democrats carried every district in Berlin excepting the one in which the Kaiser's palace is situated. Here a spirited contest took place. A second ballot was made necessary between the Radicals and Social Democrats, and the Conservatives, throwing all their forces on to the Radical side, succeeded in keeping this last stronghold from their enemies. But Herr Kaempf's majority was only 6 votes.
[30] Protokoll, 1898, p. 89.
[31] Supra cit., p. 90.
[32] This controversy is known as the "revisionist movement." The revisionists' position is set forth in Bernstein's book, Die Voraussetzung des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozial-Demokratie. The Marxian position is set forth in Kautsky's reply, Bernstein und die Sozial-Demokratie. An English edition of Bernstein's book has been published in the Labor Party series in London.
[33] Protokoll, 1899.
[34] Supra cit., p. 94.
[35] Supra cit., p. 127.
[36] Protokoll, 1903, pp. 321-45.
[37] In the congress of 1907 Bebel tried to dispel the gloom by a long and optimistic speech in which he declared that their success was not to be measured by the number of seats they won, but by the number of voters. He closed by saying, "We are the coming ones, ours is the future in spite of all things and everything."—Protokoll, 1907, p. 323.
[38] One of the veteran party leaders answered my question as to the present-day influence of Marx as follows: "The bulk of our party have never read Marx. It takes a well-trained mind to understand him. Conditions have entirely changed since his day, and we are busy with questions of which Marx never dreamed and of which he could not foretell. He laid the philosophical basis for our party, but our party is practical, not philosophical."
[39] In 1900 Bebel proposed the necessity of a working coalition with other parties in Prussia to gain electoral reform. He said: "We cannot stand alone. We must attempt to go hand in hand with certain elements in the bourgeois parties—without, however, endangering our identity." But the party was not willing to go as far as the veteran, and a resolution was adopted limiting such co-operation strictly to Prussia and giving the central committee full power to veto the acts any electoral district might take in this direction.
[40] Protokoll, 1910, p. 249.
[41] Protokoll, 1910, p. 272.
[42] In November, 1911, Berlin's new city hall was dedicated. The members of the city council were invited to be present. The Social Democrats cast a large majority of all the votes in Berlin. But the Social Democrats refused to attend the ceremonies. The program, as published, called for a "Hoch!" to the Kaiser, and the Social Democrats never joined in public approval of the government. Vorwärts, the leading Social Democratic daily, said that Social Democrats have nothing to do with such a display of "Byzantinism." "If any one thought it necessary to shout 'Hoch!' he could shout 'Hoch!' to the working population of Berlin."
[43] Protokoll, 1907, pp. 227-8.
[44] Amongst the business people of Mannheim, Munich, and other cities in Baden, Bavaria, and Hesse, there are many who support the Social Democratic candidates, because, they say, there is no genuinely liberal party. It should, however, be borne in mind that the Social Democrats of these southern districts are liberal and progressive, not the unbending, orthodox variety of Prussia.
[45] Von Vollmar, Über die Aufgaben der Deutschen Social-Demokratie.
[46] The Hansa Bund (Hanseatic League), organized a few years ago, may be the nucleus of such a party. It is composed of smaller manufacturers and business men opposed to tariffs and the trusts, and in favor of a more liberal government.
[47] Protokoll, Social Democratic Party, 1907, p. 228.
[48] Protokoll, 1892, p. 132.
[49] Protokoll, 1907, p. 255.
[50] See Die Sozial-Demokratie im Münchener Rathaus, issued by the Bavarian party executive committee, 1908. Also Die Sozial-Demokratie im Bayerischen Landtag, 1888-1905, 3 vols., issued by the Party Press in Munich; and E. Auer, Arbeiterpolitik im Bayerischen Landtag.
CHAPTER IX
THE ENGLISH LABOR PARTYToC
I
We come now to the land of the industrial revolution—that colossal upheaval which changed the face of society, as the vast continental uplifts of past geological epochs changed the face of the earth. And just as the continents were centuries in settling themselves to their new conditions, so human society is now slowly adjusting itself to the conditions wrought by this violent change. One of the evidences of this gradual readjustment is Socialism. For to Socialism machine industry is a condition precedent. In this sense England has produced modern Socialism.
There is no blacker picture than the England of 1780 to 1840, and no drearier contrast than the quaint villages and their household industries of the earlier period and the "spreading of the hideous town," after Arkwright and Hargreaves and Watt. These inhuman conditions are faithfully and dispassionately revealed in the reports of the various Royal Commissions of Inquiry: statistical mines where Marx and Engels found abundant material for their philosophy of gloom. And from these dull and depressing government folios Charles Kingsley drew his indignant invectives, and Carlyle his trenchant indictments against a society that would imprison its eight-year-old children, its mothers, and its grandmothers in dingy factories fourteen hours a day for the sake of profits, and then release them at night only to find lodgings in the most miserable hovels and rickety tenements. It is almost surprising to one familiar with the details of this gruesome record that a social revolution did not follow immediately in the wake of the industrial revolution.
There were riots at first, and machines were smashed. But the hand of the worker was impotent against the arm of steel. The workman soon resigned himself to his fate and his misery. The poor laws did not help, they only multiplied the burdens upon the state without taking the load from the poor. The laborer was too helpless to help himself, and the state and society were apathetic. The rapid expansion of industry found an ample outlet in the growing commerce to every corner of the world. England was making money. She was gradually shifting control from the traditional landowner to the new factory owner. The landed gentry had inherited a fine sense of patriarchal responsibility. The factory owner had no traditions. He was a parvenu. His interests were machinery and ships, not politics and humanity. He acquiesced in the poor laws as the easiest way out of a miserable mess; he let private charity take its feeble and intermittent course, paying his rates and giving his donations with self-satisfied sanctity.
All this time labor was abundant. The markets of the world were hungry for the goods of English mills. Then came suddenly the Chartist Movement.[1] The flame of discontent spread and a revolution seemed impending. This first great outbreak of English labor was a political movement, fed by economic causes. The repeal of the corn laws and the passage of the factory acts modified economic conditions and mollified labor for the time. The repeal of the corn laws brought cheaper food; the factory acts brought better conditions of labor.
Meanwhile individualism was evolving an economic creed. The Manchester doctrine was the logical outcome of England's insular position and her driving individualistic manufactures. But it was laissez-faire in industrialism, not in unionism. The laboring men were now beginning to organize, and Cobden himself proposed the act that made unionism ineffective as a political force. However, indirectly, free trade stimulated labor, because it brought great prosperity, made work abundant, and employers sanguine. Unions now rapidly multiplied, but they were local, isolated. Their federation into a great national body came later.
Socialism, or unionism, or any other general movement cannot develop in England with the rapidity and enthusiasm that is shown for "movements" on the Continent. The traditions of the English people are constitutional. Socialism can thrive among them only if it is "constitutional," and the Fabians are to-day talking about "constitutional Socialism" with judicial solemnity. All the training of the English people is contrary to the theory of progress through violence. They have had few revolutions accompanied by bloodshed, they have had a great many accompanied by prayers and Parliamentary oratory—"constitutional" methods. They have, moreover, a real reverence for property. The poor who have none are taught to respect the rich who have. The Church, the common law, the statute law, the customs, all the sources of tradition and habit, have emphasized the sanctity of property. Only within the last few decades, as will be seen presently, has a radical change, a veritable revolution, come over the people in this respect.
The British temperament is not given to nerves. This stolid, phlegmatic, self-contained individualist has no inflammable material in his heart. Ruskin failed to arouse him, he wove too much artistry into his appeal; and Carlyle could not move him, his epigrams were too rhapsodical. Such temperaments are not given to rapid propagandism. And finally, the Englishman is too practical to be a utopist. He concerns himself with the duties of to-day rather than the vagaries of to-morrow. Utopianism made no impression on him. Owen, the great Utopian, was a Welshman. The Celt has imagination. Nor do intricate theories or involved philosophies touch the mind of the Briton. The splendor that enraptures the Frenchman, the abstruse reasoning that delights the German, are alike boredom to this practical inventor of machinery and builder of ships.
In spite of these characteristics there is no country in Europe where there is more agitation about Socialism than there is in England to-day. It is discussed everywhere. Almost the entire time of Parliament during the past few years has been taken up with more or less "Socialistic" legislation. The public mind is steeped in it.
There is more actually being done in England toward the "socialization" of property, and the state, than in any other European country. And less being said about the theory of value, the class war, capitalistic production, proletariat and bourgeois, and the other Continental pet phrases of Socialism.
Marx, who lived among the English for many years, but whose heart was never with them, would not call this rapid social movement Socialistic, because it does not avowedly "aim" at "socializing capitalistic production." The doings of the English are certainly not accomplished in the spirit of his orthodoxy. But the current toward state control, toward pure democracy, land nationalization, nationalization of railways and mines, has set in with the swiftness of a mill-race and is grinding grist with an amazing rapidity.
As I write these words, London and the whole country are wrought up over Lloyd George's Insurance Bill and the projected ballot reform bill. Meetings everywhere, fervid Parliamentary debate, the papers filled with letters from everybody; every organization, debating society, and board of directors of great industries passing resolutions. Even the Labor Party is divided over the paternalistic measure that aims to bring relief to the sick and disabled working man and woman. Amidst all this discussion, noise, and party zeal is discerned the drift of the nation toward a new and unexpected goal.
Nowhere is it so difficult to define a Socialist, or to mark boundaries to the movement. But why mark shore-lines? The flood is on. I will here take the position that whatever extends the functions of the state (community) over property, or into activities formerly left to individuals or to the home, is an indication of the Socialistic trend. Old-fashioned Socialists like Keir Hardie are constantly warning the people that what is now going on in England is only social reform, not Socialism. The Fabians, on the other hand, are exerting every effort to add to the swiftness of the present movement.
To a student of democracy things now passing into law, and events now shaping into history, in England, are of peculiar significance. Such events, transpiring in a country so long abandoned to a rampant individualism, are portents of a newer time. They are signals of approaching changes to America, to us who have inherited the common law, the governmental traditions, the democratic ideals of liberty, if not the substantial stolidity of temperament and self-complacent egoism of the Briton.
All parties, Socialists and Conservatives, will admit this: that all this turmoil, these rapidly succeeding general elections, these public discussions, these new laws, indicate that a new social ideal is being formed. That in itself is worthy of consideration. For the ideal will shape the destiny.
II
Present-day Socialism in England seems to have risen to sudden magnitude from vacuity, to have permeated this cautious island over night. For over a generation all Socialism had disappeared from view. The elaborate schemes of Owen, the altruistic propaganda under the gentle Kingsley and his noble companion Maurice, the artistic revolt against the ugliness of commercialism led by Ruskin, who even shared the toil of the breakers of stones to prove his sincerity—all these movements seem suddenly to have disappeared from the face of the island, like a glacial current dropping suddenly, without warning, into the depths of the Moulin.
England was given over to a highly prosperous industrialism. The Manchester doctrine was enthroned. Commercialism and a glittering pseudo-humanitarian internationalism found expression in the alternating victories of the astute Disraeli and the grandiloquent Gladstone.
Meanwhile poverty and misery infested the underplaces of the land, a poverty and misery that was appalling. Every protester was proudly pointed to the repeal of the corn laws, the revision of the poor laws, the reform act of 1832, and the factory acts.
When Sir Henry Vane had ascended the scaffold which his sacrifice made historic, he said: "The people of England have long been asleep; when they awake they will be hungry." When the England of to-day awoke it was to a greater hunger than the politically starved Roundhead or Cavalier ever endured.
It is no figure of speech to speak of hungry England. Its brilliant industrialism has always had a drab background of want. Chiozza Money says of the present position of labor: "The aggregate income of the 44,500,000 people in the United Kingdom in 1908-9 was approximately £1,844,000,000; 1,400,000 persons took £634,000,000; 4,100,000 persons took £275,000,000; 39,000,000 persons took £935,000,000."[2] And he sums up the condition as follows: "The position of the manual workers in relation to the general wealth of the country has not improved. They formed, with those dependent upon them, the greater part of the nation in 1867, and they enjoyed but about forty per cent. of the national income, according to the careful estimate of Dudley Baxter. To-day, with their army of dependents, they still form the greater part of the nation, although not quite so great a part, and, according to the best information available, they take less than forty per cent. of the entire income of the nation." Although during this time the national income had increased much faster than the rate of population, "the Board of Trade, after a careful examination of the question of unemployment in 1904, arrived at the general conclusion that 'the average level of employment during the last 4 years has been almost exactly the same as the average of the preceding 40 years.'"[3]
While the general level of wage-earners has been maintained, and while wealth has greatly increased, the poverty of the kingdom has shown little tendency to diminish. "As for pauperism, it is difficult to congratulate ourselves upon improvement since 1867, when we remember that in England and Wales alone 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 persons are in receipt of relief in the course of a single year. This means one person in every 20 has recourse to the poor-law guardians during a single year."
"If our national income had but increased at the same rate as our population since 1867, it would in 1908 have amounted to but about £1,200,000,000. As we have seen, it is now about £1,840,000,000. Yet the Error in Distribution remains so great, that, while the total population in 1867 was 30,000,000, we have to-day a nation of 30,000,000 poor people in our rich country, and many millions of these are living under conditions of degrading poverty. Of those above the line of primary poverty, millions are tied down by the conditions of their labor to live in surroundings which preclude the proper enjoyment of life or the proper raising of children."[4]
An event occurred in 1889 that aroused public opinion on the question of labor conditions. The dockers along the great wharves in London went out on strike, and forced public attention upon the misery of these most wretched of British workmen,[5] whose wages were so low that they could not buy bread for their families and their employment was so irregular that they were idle half of the time. John Burns came into prominence first during this strike. He raised over $200,000 by public appeals to support the strikers. General sympathy was with the men; and the arbitrators to whom their grievances were submitted awarded most of their demands.
The effect of this strike was far-reaching. All over the kingdom unskilled labor was roused to its power, and a new era in labor organization began.
III
In no country has the labor-union movement achieved a greater degree of organization than in England.[6] The movement has been economic, turning to politics only in recent years; it concerned itself with wages and conditions of labor, not with party programs and Parliamentary candidates.
The characteristic feature of English trade-unionism is collective bargaining, long since introduced into America, but unknown in most European countries. The English unions also organized insurance societies called "Friendly Societies."[7]
For many years the laws regulating labor unions had been liberally construed by the courts, and the unions had done very much as they pleased. Two decisions have been rendered during the last decade that threatened the unions' existence both as a political and economic force.
In 1900 the Taff Vale Railway Company brought suit against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, charging the men with conspiring to induce the workmen to break their contracts with the company. The court enjoined the union from picketing and from interfering with the men in their contractual relations with the employing company, and assessed the damages at $100,000 against the offending union. The House of Lords, sitting in final appeal, affirmed the judgment of the trial court. This virtually meant the stopping of strikes, for strikes without pickets and vigilance would usually be unavailing. It also meant financial bankruptcy.
A second far-reaching decision was made by the House of Lords in December, 1909, when the "Osborne Judgment" was affirmed, granting to one Osborne, a member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, an injunction restraining the union from making a levy on its members, and from using any of its funds for the purpose of maintaining any of its members, or any other person, in Parliament. The unions had taken it for granted that they had the legal right to contribute out of their funds to political campaigns, and to pay the labor members of Parliament a salary out of the union treasury.[8] The court held such payments were illegal, on the ground that they were ultra vires. The charter of the unions did not sanction it.[9]
The English workman has not only had the trade union for a training school in practical affairs, but the co-operative movement began here; and here it flourishes, not as widely spread among the poorer workmen as in Belgium, but among the better-paid workers it is very popular.
It is singular that the only practical result left of Owen's stupendous plans was the little co-operative shop, opened in 1844 at Rochdale, with a capital of $140 and a gross weekly income of $10. Owen did not start this shop, but a handful of his followers were the promoters of the tiny enterprise. The co-operative union to-day embraces wholesale, retail, productive, and special societies, with nearly 3,000,000 members, increasing at the rate of 70,000 a year, and doing $550,000,000 worth of business annually.
There is also a rapidly growing co-partnership movement, especially in the building of "garden suburbs" and tenements. In 1903 there were two such companies, with $200,000 worth of property. In 1909 they had increased to 15 associations, with over $3,085,000 worth of property. The membership is not confined to workingmen, but they form the bulk.[10]
From the beginning of the modern labor movement we see that the British workmen have shown a strong tendency to organize. Their organizations included at first only the skilled workers. There was a gulf between the trained worker and the unskilled worker. The latter, forming the substratum of poverty, were too abject for organizing.
These two great bodies of workers, skilled and unskilled, have been gradually brought together and their interests united. The Taff Vale and Osborne judgments have forced them into politics. The unskilled have been given the benefit of the experience of the skilled, and a fair degree of homogeneity and group ambition has been reached.
To enter politics a new form of organization was necessary. We will see how one was prepared for them.
IV
We will now turn to the Socialist organizations. They are more numerous than in the other countries we have studied, and more varied in color. But not any of them are as strong as the French or German organizations.
In 1880 William Morris and H.M. Hyndman, a personal friend of Marx, organized the "Democratic Federation." For a few years it was the only Socialist organization. It split on the question of revolution. Morris and his friends, many of them inclined toward Anarchy, founded the "Socialist League." This league has long since vanished. Hyndman and his followers renamed their society the "Social Democratic Federation." It still persists, under the name Social Democratic Party (popularly "S.D.P."), and remains the only organized trace of militant, reactionary Marxianism in England. For a long time it refrained from politics, advocated violence, and was the faithful imitator of the Guesdist party in France. These are doctrines and methods that repel the English mind, and the Federation never has been strong. It has a weekly paper, Justice, and a monthly paper, The Social Democrat; claims one member in Parliament, elected however by the Labor Party, and (in 1907) 124 members of various local governing bodies. Its aged leader, Hyndman, clings tenaciously to the dogmas of Marx, and all the changes that have come over the Socialist movement during the last decades have not altered his views or methods.[11] The Federation's affiliations and sympathy have been with the International rather than the British movement, and until a few years ago it monopolized British representation on the International Executive Committee.
Soon after Morris left the Federation a new and novel Socialist society was formed in London. Two Americans gave the impulse that started the movement—Henry George, through his works on Single Tax, and Thomas Davidson of New York, a gentle dreamer of the New To-morrow. Henry George's books had been read by a group of young men in London, and when Dr. Davidson went there to lecture he found these young men ready to listen to his utopian generalizations. Soon these men organized the Fabian Society. They were not sure of their ground, and took for their motto: "For the right moment you must wait as Fabius did when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain and fruitless."
A number of brilliant young men soon joined the Fabians, and their "tracts" have become famous. Among their members they include Sidney Webb, the sociologist; George Bernard Shaw, the playwright and cynic; Chiozza Money, statistician and member of Parliament; Rev. R.J. Campbell of the City Temple; Rev. Stewart Headlam, leader in the Church Socialist Movement; and a horde of others, famous in letters, the professions, and the arts.
It is difficult to estimate the influence of this unique group of personages, and it is very easy to underestimate it. From the first they committed themselves to the policy of "permeation," instead of aggressive propaganda. They would transform the world by intellectual osmosis. They have, thus, not only contributed by far the most brilliant literature to modern Socialism, but have touched some of the inner springs of political and social power. Prime ministers and borough councilmen, poor-law guardians and chancellors of the exchequer, have been influenced by the propulsion of their ideas. But it has all been done so noiselessly and so well disguised, that to the Social Democratic Federation the Fabians are "mere academicians," and to the Independent Labor Party they are forerunners of "tyrannical bureaucracy."
Eleven Fabians are in Parliament, and they are not silent onlookers. For years the Fabians have dominated the London County Council. Its brilliant "missionaries" attract large audiences, and "Fabian Essays" have passed through many editions. Each member of this society is the creator of his own dogma. The Marxian formulas, especially the theory of surplus value, are not reverenced by them.
England is the only country in Europe where there is a strong Church Socialist Movement. In 1889 the Christian Social Union was formed by members of the Church of England. It is not a Socialist organization, but it has enlisted a wide practical interest in the labor movement. It was the outgrowth of the Pan-Anglican Congress, which met at Lambeth in 1888. At this conference a committee on Socialism made a noteworthy report, recommending the bringing together of capital and labor through the agency of co-operation and association.[12]
In 1906 "The Church Socialist League" was organized. "It seeks to convert the christened people of England to Socialism. Its members are committed to the definite economic Socialism of accredited Socialist bodies. The League is growing rapidly. Branches are springing up all over the country. Its members have addressed thousands of meetings on behalf of both Socialist and labor candidates at Parliamentary and principal elections.... The members of the League are Socialists. They seek to establish a commonwealth in which the people shall own the land and industrial capital collectively and administer the same collectively."[13]
The influence of the Church Socialist League and the Fabians has spread to the universities, especially to Oxford and Cambridge. A number of distinguished professors are active Socialists.
The movement thus gained ground more rapidly among the intellectuals than among the workingmen. It was not until 1893 that a Socialist Labor Party was organized. The Social Democratic Federation was too dogmatic, hard, and bitter to draw the English laboring man; the Fabians and the Church Socialists were avowedly not partisan. In 1893 a group of labor delegates met at Bradford and, under the leadership of Keir Hardie, organized the Independent Labor Party (I.L.P.). This definite step had been preceded by many local political organizations among labor unionists. The necessity for political activity had been felt in many places. The Bradford convention was merely the coalescing of many local movements. The I.L.P. is a Socialist body, but it is not dogmatically, not obnoxiously so. It forms, rather, a connecting link between Socialism and labor unions.
It entered politics at once, but with discouraging results. Its 29 candidates polled only 63,000 votes; only 5 were elected. A closer alliance with the labor unions was necessary. This was accomplished when the unions, in 1899, appointed a Labor Representative Committee, whose duty it was, as the name implies, to increase labor's representation in Parliament.[14] This committee had first to determine its relation to the other political parties. The Liberals and Conservatives among the laborites were outvoted, and the committee determined upon a new course. Representatives from the Socialist bodies—the I.L.P., S.D.F., and Fabians—were asked to join the unions in an alliance that should use its united strength in electing members to Parliament. All agreed, but the S.D.F. soon withdrew.
In 1906 the name of the committee was changed to the Labor Party. It is founded upon the broadest basis of co-operation, so that neither Socialist, no matter how radical, nor non-Socialist should find it impossible to work with the party. Its constitution defines this coalition: "The Labor Party is a federation consisting of Trade Unions, Trade Councils, Socialist Societies, and Local Labor Parties." "Co-operative Societies are also eligible," as are "national organizations of women accepting the basis of this constitution and the policy of the party."
The object of the party is "to secure the election of candidates to Parliament and to organize and maintain a Labor Party with its own whips and policy."
Party rigor is carefully prescribed: "Candidates and members must accept this constitution and agree to abide by the decisions of the Parliamentary party in carrying out the aims of this constitution; appear before their constituents under the title of labor candidates; abstain strictly from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests of any Parliamentary party not affiliated, or its candidates; and they must not oppose any candidate recognized by the national executive of the party." "Before a candidate can be regarded as adopted for a constituency, his candidature must be sanctioned by the national executive."
The party, thus centrally controlled, is well organized in every part of the kingdom. It maintains a fund for paying the election expenses of its members.[15] The Osborne judgment has been a serious setback to the party, especially in local elections. The payment of members was voted in 1911 by Parliament as a partial remedy, and the government has promised a reform election bill that will impose the burden of all necessary election expenses upon the state.
The party membership has grown from 375,000 in 1900 to nearly 1,500,000 in 1912. Such leading members of the party as J. Ramsay MacDonald, Keir Hardie, Philip Snowden, and over one-half of the Parliamentary group, are Socialists. The party refused to commit itself to Socialistic principles until 1907, when it declared itself in favor of the following resolution: "The socialization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange to be controlled in a democratic state in the interests of the entire community, and the complete emancipation of labor from the domination of capitalism and landlordism, with the establishment of social and economic equality between the sexes."[16]
In 1908 the party had 26 members in county councils, 262 in town councils, 168 in urban district councils, 27 in rural district councils, 124 in parish councils, 145 on poor-law boards, 23 on school boards. There are (1910) about 1,500 labor men and Socialist members on the various local governing bodies in Great Britain.[17]