Chapter V
WHAT WE MUST DO
WHAT then must we all do in order that we may take our part in abolishing the evil conditions of life which surround us, and establishing a saner and more honest state of society? There is no royal road or short cut to social salvation. Neither will Governmental machinery and organisation of itself accomplish our purpose. What we must first decide is our own attitude towards life. Do we wish that other men and women should enjoy the same opportunities that we desire for ourselves and those belonging to us, and, if so, are we of opinion that it is our duty to work in order that this may be secured? In the old-fashioned orthodox Christian religion great stress is laid on the necessity of “conviction of sin”; that is to say, on the necessity for men and women to convince themselves of their own wrong-doing. I think that in some ways this is an excellent doctrine, and I should like to see it expressed in regard to social and industrial matters. We must all clear our own minds of cant and be quite honest with ourselves as to the means whereby we secure our daily bread. None of us should be content until we know the why and the wherefore of our incomes, until we have traced them right back to their sources and convinced ourselves of the rightfulness or wrongfulness of our money-getting. No one can manage this for us. We can take advice from people, and can try to get knowledge from others, but once the facts are before us, it must be our own judgment that decides what is right or what is wrong for each individual man and woman. If we are convinced that the means whereby we live come to us in an honest and straightforward manner, and that taking usury and profit-making are true and right methods of living, there is not much more to be said. But if we decide for ourselves that profit-making and usury are evils which enable some of us to live at the expense of others, then our duty is quite plain: that is, to assist by every means in our power in destroying the system which gives to us so great a material advantage over our fellows.
There is a school of people who say that we ought to go on making money because, unless we do, others will make it, and that if we beggar ourselves we do not improve the social position at all. This may be true to some extent, but, all the same, it is also true that if men and women fill up their time simply money-making, no matter what they may call themselves, or what opinions they may hold, they are exactly in the same position as people who support the present order. Therefore, those who are convinced the present methods of money-making are wrong are called upon to live in the simplest manner, and to devote every hour of leisure and every penny of money they can spare to assisting the workers in their task of organising the transformation of the present social order from competition to co-operation. I say this because so many people imagine that they have really done their duty when they have denounced the present order as iniquitous, while others think they have fulfilled their duty when they have distributed large sums of money, either in charity or for similar purposes. It may still be that for many years to come the victims of our cruel social life will need to be tended by those whose ministrations are paid for out of funds provided by the rich; but this, after all, is only palliating evil, and not abolishing it. To-day, those workmen who are thinking are determined to abolish the causes of poverty, and wish to establish an entirely new social order. This may be accomplished by a violent and bloody revolution (or, at least, men may attempt this), though I do not believe the use of force will accomplish the social salvation of mankind. It is so true “Force is no remedy” that I cannot help believing that with the spread of education and the growth of religion we shall cease to rely on the mailed fist in both social and national affairs. Men and women belonging to the landed and capitalist classes who really care for their fellows must join hands with the workers, and by united effort establish the kingdom of brotherhood and of co-operation. Those who are convinced that the present order is unchristian and, in fact, unnatural must take their place in the great working-class movement.
This movement does many things that we all feel are hurtful both to itself and to society. That is only because the working class does not, as a class, yet know either its strength or what it wants. In the vast majority of cases working-class discontent is quite unorganised, and is but the expression of a righteous wrath against conditions which often are well-nigh intolerable. All the same, though, it is a good rule to remember that the workers are so often right and so seldom wrong as to make it, on the average, quite the wisest thing to stand by them all the time. Their enemies are never slow to put them down, and, consequently, I would urge every man and woman who wants really to change things to get into the working-class movement. At first people of a different class may be received with suspicion and distrust, but if they are not self-seekers, if they go into the movement asking for nothing, but willing to give all they have to give, whether it is brain power or merely material resources, they will very soon find that a place will be made for them and their help cordially welcomed.
But what the working-class movement less and less will tolerate is patronage from anyone. So many superior young men and women try to join it in order to direct and control it. These usually end by becoming Government bosses in one form or another. The main thing for us all to bear in mind is that, in joining the labour movement or in supporting it, we must be prepared to become just one of the people. This necessity always reminds me of the saying that unless we become as little children we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Such is the attitude of mind which should dominate our relationships with one another; that is to say, we must have the mind of little children in that our words and actions must carry conviction because people understand that there is nothing more behind them than they are intended to convey. This is true of little children; we know what they mean because of what they say; and it must also be true of men and women who want to be in the labour movement. There have been too many men and women who have used the movement to become what are called leaders and so on, and that is not what middle-class people should go into the movement for. They should join in order to be part of it, all the time keeping steadily in mind the fact that true democracy means people thinking and doing things for themselves, and that the word democracy does not always guarantee that those who use it are themselves true democrats. Any who join or who are willing to support the labour movement must be prepared for disappointments and disillusionment. The working classes are just like the rest of the people, liable to fits of depression and fits of elation. All the same, the salvation of humanity must come by and through them. The better educated, the more moneyed, can help to stimulate and train them, but this must all be on impersonal lines. The labour movement must stand for the whole of the people; and the present method, by which social settlements, workers’ educational societies, labour colleges, no matter who controls them, select out and train just a few of the working class, can only be regarded as quite temporary measures. Meanwhile, even to the men and women who are educated and trained in these establishments, the object of such education and training must always be that they may be better servants of the working classes, not better masters, not even better leaders in the sense of desiring to be something more than the rest of their class. In fact, we have all to take the workers as human beings, and those who have the best kind of brains must be content to give their brains for the service of the others.
No one to-day considers it right that because a man is physically stronger than his neighbours he should be allowed to rob or ill-use them. Physical force used in that way has long been looked upon as something anti-social and evil, but we have not yet reached the point when we can say that brain-power shall not be exercised for personal gain only, and this is just what I think we have to get to. We have to make clever people understand that their brains should be used impersonally, and for the service of the whole community, and to create such a public opinion as will make us all realise that it is just as dishonourable to exploit our neighbours by the use of our brain-power as it would be to exploit them by use of our physical power. Further, those who want to help the labour movement must come into it in the spirit of comradeship, and without expecting to do more than give themselves to its service; and in doing so they must strive to understand how the labour movement proposes to work out its salvation. It is impossible for me to do more than just to indicate a few of the things which labour needs to get done now; none of us expect that by a stroke of the pen or by some sudden action we shall change from a competitive to a co-operative State. And in judging what I propose I would urge my readers to bear in mind that often the most simple things are the most important and the most far-reaching in their effects. People often refuse to take part in simple movements because these are apparently dull and uninteresting. The business of a Trade Union branch meeting or of any labour organisation is sometimes very uninteresting; but it is in these meetings that the best work can be carried through, because in them men and women get to understand one another’s point of view, and are also able to think out and organise their plans of campaign. I say this because I think it is so important that we should get out of our minds the idea that mere law-making, or even administration of law, is an effective means of bringing about great changes. It is, as I said a little way back, a change of mind that is so much needed. To explain what I mean I would call attention to the old story to be found in the Old Testament about Naaman the leper. This man, suffering from leprosy, went to a prophet of Israel to find out a cure, and was told, in effect, to go and wash himself, to cleanse his sores. It was a perfectly sane and sensible suggestion, but it was so simple and so obvious that the great Captain of Syria was inclined to feel himself too big and mighty a personage for it. And this often happens in modern life: distrusting the simple and obvious, we rush off with our apparently big ventures, and are disappointed at the end to find they have led nowhere. It is because of this that to-day the workers have decided (at least those of them who are thinking about vital things) that their first aim and object in life should be to educate themselves, not that they may the more easily compete with one another, but that they may use their education and brain power in order to establish a truly co-operative system. They are demanding the full control and ownership of their life and work. They desire that the nation shall own land and other means of life, and that these shall be used by the workmen in partnership with the State. In effect, the workers must, if they are to get any kind of control of their lives, join together in great industrial unions or guilds, representative of particular industries, within which guilds a brain-worker and a hand-worker shall organise side by side and, in contract or partnership with the nation, carry on the work of supplying the nation’s needs.
I can only give one instance of how I think this would work in practice, and I do so, not because I shall be able to fill in all the details even in one instance, but because I want to express in a rough sort of way what I mean by national ownership and organisation and control by the workers. Those who wish to know more about this cannot do better than read “National Guilds,” by A. R. Orage, or “The World of Labour,” by G. D. H. Cole; or they might write to the hon. sec. of the National Guilds League, Mrs. Ewer, 17, Acacia Road, N.W. For my purpose I would ask you to consider what would happen if the mines of Britain were owned by the nation. These mines would have to be worked. The proposal is to form a miners’ guild, or a guild of coal-workers, including all persons engaged in the industry, and these would determine, through delegates or by any other means they might choose, the rates of pay which the community should pay for the getting of coal. But all the workers within this industry would share and share alike in the product. There would be no such thing as salaried persons and wage-earners. The total reward of the labour engaged in the production of coal would belong to the whole of those who assist in whatever way in that production. They would elect their own organisers and determine their own hours and fix their own holidays, and so on. No one would be allowed to work in this industry who was not a member of the guild, and the whole organisation from beginning to end would be under the control of the guild. It will be at once noticed that equality in the sharing of the wealth produced would abolish once and for all the present practice of giving huge salaries and profits to a few and a mere subsistence wage to the mass of the workers. In addition, the guild being “blackleg”-proof, there would never be any “blacklegs” to undersell or undercut the price of labour.
It is argued against this that the miners would be able to dictate their own terms to the rest of the community, but this difficulty is more apparent than real, because each industry is really dependent on the others, and that fact would prevent the one industry from striving to exploit the others. Exploitation, moreover, would not enter in, because, once industry was organised on these lines, there would be more than sufficient for all. We must all realise that the nineteenth century, with its enormous development of machinery and scientific invention, has settled the question of production. We can produce all we desire. It remains for the twentieth century to find an equitable method of distribution. Incidentally, in the case of mines, another question would be settled. Coal-mining is an industry in which the wages of those engaged vary considerably. It is true that a minimum wage of a sort has been fixed for the whole country, but there is great discrepancy in the maximum amounts that miners can earn. Coal-mining is coal-mining wherever it is carried on, but the fact that there are thick seams in some parts of the country and thin seams in others, added to the fact that there are different methods of working, tends to bring about variations of remuneration. Now, in the guild system, when all share alike, methods would be improved, and the natural value of one mine would be matched against the lesser value of another mine, and the workers and the community between them would thus secure all the advantages which the possession of minerals gives to the land.
There is the further fact that in this particular industry, as is well known, many more labour-saving devices would be employed and better arrangements for preventing accidents would be adopted if the industry were organised as a social service on co-operative lines. It is the profit- and dividend-making business which prevents these matters from being dealt with. It may be urged that labour-saving machinery introduced into the mines would necessitate people being discharged, but this would not be so. Instead of discharging workpeople the guild would reduce the hours of labour of all the workers in the industry—which is the true use to which machinery should be put. Machinery is only of service to the community when it is used to lessen labour or to give a better supply of the things needed by the nation.
This, then, is what the forward school of Trade Unionists are demanding for all industries. It is, in effect, the abolition of the wages and profit system; and it is this proposal that I earnestly beg those who desire to bring about a complete change in our spiritual and social life to support. I trust no one will allow personal interests to blur his or her mind and conscience. We do wish to get rid of rich monopolists because we also want to get rid of the poor, but no one will suffer. The nation can, if it will, effect this great change in our social relationship without hurting any one. Already we are, as a nation, organising great industries for purposes of war, have destroyed businesses, broken up and ruined homes, wiped out in many cases the whole life’s savings of men and women. All this in order to win the war against Germany. No sacrifice, we are told, is, or will be, too great. Surely we will all make an effort to destroy social evil, surely we are able to see that co-operative production and distribution is a finer, nobler, and more Christian social order than the present chaotic competitive struggle which robs children of life and well nigh destroys the morale of us all. To change our present methods means injury for none, but a better life for all. There are many other things that we can help forward in the labour movement. There is the whole great question of what we are to do with our land. All through my public life I have felt the sinfulness, the crime against society, which the mere fact of landlordism entails. Men of my age who have seen great areas of London cleared at the public expense, who have seen parks and open spaces created and paid for by the people, and even in this process used for the enrichment of those who own land, cannot but be struck with the fact that so far the great land monopoly has gone untouched. I see no means for dealing effectually with the land question as a whole except by making all those who wish to use land pay, not to private individuals, but to the State, for the use of such land. Some places are more desirable to live in than others, some pieces of land will give a better return than others, and this excess value—indeed, all forms of “site values”—should always come into the national exchequer in one form or another.
The only proposal at present for dealing with this problem is the taxation of land values, and that appears to me to be a perfectly legitimate means of raising revenue. Whatever system we are living under, if any of us wish to enjoy something which it is impossible for others to enjoy, we ought to pay either in extra service or in some other way for the privilege. Henry George, when he called attention to the land question thirty years ago, was on perfectly sound ground. We cannot hope for a reformed society if land remains private property and all the value which the pressure of population gives it goes into the pockets of private people. This is another form of profit-making which has to be somehow put right. To travel through the United Kingdom these days and to use one’s eyes is to become aware that to a large extent our country is unpopulated. The war is making us understand this and is making us also understand how dependent we are on other nations for our food and other things needed for our subsistence. The progressive workman is asking himself with a very bitter insistence how it is that he and his should be cooped up, in the great cities (yes, and in the tiny villages too), in little bits of houses with scarcely room to breathe, whilst all around him are hundreds of thousands of acres of land practically unused, and great parks, with walls and railings surrounding them, used only for the pleasure and convenience of just a handful of people.
Therefore on this question we should all unite, and push forward the solution of it with all the force of which we are capable.
There are two other questions with which I wish to deal in this chapter. The first is that of political power. I am convinced that the first thing for the workers is to recognise their economic power, and for this reason. All forms of production have changed; individual production is practically nonexistent, and co-operative production is now an absolute necessity; but at present that which is co-operatively produced is privately owned, and the object of the workers is to substitute co-operation both in production and in distribution, and to establish the right of those who produce to own everything they produce. Therefore, I have put economic questions first, but, to obtain possession of the land and to obtain possession of the railways and other means of life, we shall need political power, and this political power should be in the hands of women as well as men.
I believe that the grant of citizenship to all adults, men and women, from the age of twenty-one, would be one of the most far-reaching reforms possible, and would establish the working class with a status that would enable them to take a much more intelligent interest in their affairs than now. The difficulty that we are in with regard to this question is the fact that for so long sex domination has been rampant in the civilised world; but this is slowly being overcome. Some millions of women now have the vote for the election of the President of the American Republic; many thousands of women voted in the Australian Commonwealth on the question of conscription; so the enfranchisement of women to the extent of allowing them a voice in what are called Imperial and international affairs is not a novel proposal, but is actually in operation.
Our country cannot for much longer lag behind. When it is remembered that men and women are equally interested in the organisation of society and industry, there seems no reason for denying women equal status as citizens. On international questions and questions relating to war no argument is needed. It is the women of Europe in every belligerent country who, in their breasts, are bearing the main burden of sorrow and suffering entailed by the frightful slaughter and loss on every battlefield. Those women who, in Belgium, Poland, Serbia, and now Roumania, have seen their homes and their belongings destroyed by the devilish business of blasting a way through any of the parts of Europe cursed by the presence of war, have clearly established the right of women to vote as to whether such things shall or shall not be. Besides, if anything else is needed to convince anyone of the justice of women’s claims, you have only to remember that, as in international affairs, so in national affairs, women are the biggest sufferers from our unchristian and devilish form of society. They suffer most from unemployment, sweating, low wages—from all the social evils which afflict our land. Those who seek to redeem humanity and intend to use political machinery must support in every way possible the claim of women to political enfranchisement and citizenship.
The other, the last thing of all, that I wish to mention is the matter of children. Long ere this our children should have been freed from work of any kind. In a civilised nation a child’s playtime ought to be its best time. The driving of children to work half-time in mills and factories is acknowledged by all thinking persons as a great social evil. I suppose all my readers will have heard that the Bantam Battalions are mainly recruited from Lancashire, where women work in the factories and children work half-time. There must be some connection between the low standard of physique and conditions of child life. We must abolish the half-time system and tell the capitalists, and those who support the system, that any business which depends on the robbery of our children’s birthright is not worth preserving. We must insist that the age for leaving school shall be raised to sixteen, and that from sixteen to eighteen every child shall be trained for such work as he or she appears most fitted for, whether it be hand or brain work. What this will cost we need not stop to consider. The war has demonstrated our ability to raise and spend money for destruction; we must not be put off by any thought as to the money-cost of construction. The one chief thing to do is to insist that children shall not be used as machines for mere money-making, but shall be taken out of the competitive labour market, where so very often they are used to bring down the standard of life and destroy not only their own future but the whole standard of living for their parents.
There is much more to be said on these and kindred subjects, but I have written, I hope, enough to stimulate thought amongst those who desire to help in the work of social reconstruction. In conclusion, may I ask all my readers to keep in mind the one central thing I have tried to insist upon all through this book? It is just this, that we all need a complete change of heart. I do not mean this only in the old religious sense, though I think the expression is quite the soundest that can be used. We have all been so accustomed to think along personal lines, so accustomed to imagine that our own good could not at the same time be our neighbour’s good, that we have drifted into the position we are in to-day. When I say that it is a change of heart that we need, I mean an entire change of outlook. We must get it out of our heads that there is not enough wealth for all men, women, and children. We must get rid of the idea that either an individual or a nation can be benefited by using its power to dominate others. The futility of this has been proved beyond dispute; the class war and the great international war both demonstrate the fact. For all this we must not be discouraged. None of us are able to see all the good or all the evil there is in the world. We can see what appears on the surface, but all down the ages men and women have been striving to reach forward to the day when, the world over, we all shall live in peace and harmony with one another. Through all time there have been those who have dreamed dreams and seen visions, who, because of their visions, have given hope and courage to the common people. We, too, must dream our dreams and see our visions of a nobler order yet to be: we must look beyond to-day and see the future. This humanity, of which we are part, is capable of fine and noble things. The records of history are full of the stories of what men and women have done, and what has been done in the past can certainly be done over again.
Just now we can see around us how much sacrifice people are making, how much they are giving up, in the great effort to destroy the Germans. It is the spirit behind this effort which we want to put into the work of destroying evil in our midst. We need all the enthusiasm, all the sacrifice, all the grit and determination that the men who are fighting in Europe have shown, but we shall have this satisfaction all the time, that the things we are striving to destroy are evil conditions, not human life.
The war on the Continent and the class war at home are horrible, and they are unnatural and inhuman, and the very fact that we are all ashamed of the conditions which cause them, and excuse and seek to palliate them, proves that this is so. Mankind has turned its face from God, says a Hindu writer: and this, of course, is true, just as it is untrue to say that God has turned His face from the world.
I have faith in the common people. There has been plenty of disillusionment in my lifetime, but, in the main, I, like every other man and woman who is working amongst the people, know quite well that, given the chance, the mass of people always respond to the best that is put before them. It is not a bit true that human nature is necessarily ugly or brutal or destitute of idealism. Just before the war multitudes of young men and women were engaged in the labour and suffrage movements. These two movements were working to a large extent hand-in-hand, and the enthusiasm which both called forth came from the young people. Those with whom I came in contact and who formed the “Herald League” were just young rebels fighting for a great impersonal ideal. Few of them had a clear-cut scheme for social salvation, but all of them had a very clear-cut idea of what they wanted to accomplish. It was liberty, fraternity, comradeship which they were setting before themselves. Some of these men you will find on the battle-fields of France, called there by the cry of Belgium; others you will find, equally honourable, in the prisons of our country, flung there because some of the older men who rule us do not understand what the word conscience means. And it is these who will come back when the war is over and form the vanguard of the great army of men and women who are going out in another kind of war—the war against poverty, crime, and sorrow. Comfortable, well-to-do people may stand aloof, may refuse to assist or take part, but the truly religious men and women, those men and women who believe in the unity of life and the one-ness of the great human family, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, will step into the ranks, and will take their place as soldiers in this great army, and will be content to work and organise and to give all they have to give, in order that the end may be reached. To some this will mean sacrifice of material things, to others it will mean the sacrifice of place, of privilege and power; but to the true man and woman that will not count as of any importance if by their sacrifices the great movement of human solidarity may be helped forward.