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'"man race from
poverty. But it has steadily undergone a broad-
ening of purpose under the pressure of its own
requirements. It has found that for self -preser-
ration it must include the release of talent and the
creation of spiritual values in its program. To
produce leaders and to enhance the meaning of
life are as much within its province as a pit)per
standard of living in terms of hours and wages.
It recognizes its need of an aristocracy of talent
The leaders of the democratic movement state
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DEMOCRACY ON THE MARCH
this: such men as A. E., Wells, Zimmern, and
Sidney Webb. This aristocracy will include so-
cial experts, artists, ethical leaders, teachers, im-
perial executives, organizers, and specialists in
foreign policy. War is only one of the many
situations where the democracy, with its dis-
tributed responsibility, does not possess in itself
the necessary intelhgence and unity of policy to
master the sudden crisis. The democracy is only
fulfilling its own nature in recognizing a diversity
of gifts.
But through all the adjustments of the coming
years, calling for expert treatment, the principle
of democratic control will prevail. In time the
democracy wiU develop its own tradition of pol-
icy and service and generate its own leaders.
The common people of Great Britain have never
spoken. It was therefore believed they were
dumb. But they were not dumb ; they were only
inarticulate. The common people of Great Brit-
ain have never acted with common purpose to one
end. It was therefore believed that they were
impotent. But they were not impotent; they
were only unawakened. Now they are learning
to speak and to act.
18
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CHAPTER II
LABOR
THE SOCIAL EEVOLUTION IN ENGLAND
The opinion has been wide-spread among so-
cial workers in America that the war has crushed
liberalism in England. They have formed this
opmion because social work has been postponed
trade-union rules have been abrogated, dissenters
like Bertrand A. W. RusseU silenced. Russian
revolutionary centers in London suppressed.
But It IS a characteristic of experts working in
details to miss the main currents of tendency.
No friend of radical democracy need be worried
by the results of the last two years. The blood
spilled by the working-classes at the front has
been justified by the profound modifications
wrought in English consciousness. A nation
mobUized and under arms is a rich field for radi-
cal ideas. Blood fertilizes the soil for change
Those of the school of Curzon and Gwynne, who
14
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believed that the good old days of special privilege
would be restored by conscription, are doomed to
an awakening more thorough than befeU the
French reactionaries of 1790. For this is not an
affair of a few noble heads. It is the remaking of
a nation.
England is taking strides toward cooperative
socij. ; ;m. For the first time in their history, the
English are thinking in terms of a state— "a
modern state, in all its complexity, with scientific
laws and regulations." This is a view "utterly
strange to English thought, steeped as it always
had been in empiricism, and only inclined to such
piecemeal legislation as a particular grievance
or a particular occasion might demand." I am
quoting a government investigator. These tend-
encies were already in operation before the war;
but what might have required twenty-five years
to bring to a head, the war has accelerated, inten-
sified, and even altered.
It is a misreading of Er glish character to think
that anything remotely resembling the state so-
cialism of Germany, the card-indexing of the
community for vocational training, the regiment-
ing of the intellectual life into a body of state-
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wntrolled professors, will result from the present
English revolution. The social change in Eng-
land IS not coming with any such over-emphasized
nationalism. The Enghshman wants to be let
alone for all his personal choices. He wants to
disagree with official statements. He will not be
coerced even for "his good," as that good is seen
by another. Nor wiU the change come as an in-
determmate, spreading internationalism, such as
has mfected radical thought for half a centmr
It will be English, inside an English environ-*
ment.
There are two truths so plain that we wonder
It required a hmidred years to find them out. It
IS the war that has finally revealed ttiem to our
blind eyes. The first truth is that high wages
give high productiveness. A well-fed, self-re-
specting, healthy workman can do more work
than an mider-nourished, servile workman. If
the employer wants a good product and plenty of
It. he must pay a living wage. The second truth
IS that workmen must work efficiently if they
wish high wages. If they cut down productive-
ness there is no money to pay them. The war has
smoked the workers out. Their sacred secret
16
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LABOR
processes which required hours to work h f>.^
LABOR
of labor; no restriction of output; no sabotage;
no discrimination by workers against workers,
but all to be employed, union and non-union,
male and female; efficiency; the use of machinery
up to its capacity instead of dribbling a process
through a day where a half-day of proper han-
dling would have completed the product.
There are broken planks all along the length
of this platfonn. But every sag has meant de-
creased output, a longer war, more young men
killed in battle. And once England had settled
the main question with a measure of honesty, she
found that some other things were added unto
her. When she paid a living wage to people who
had never had it before, and put before them a
national ideal instead of a benefit for another
class, she found that two million persons joined
her national savings fund, thereby breaking an
immemorial British habit. She found that her
prisons had fewer inmates, that the personal
morality of her inhabitants was in the main im-
;-roved. She found that her school children in
factory communities were better nourished than
they had been in the m^nory of the examining
physicians. She found that her woman question
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solved itself. The veiy suffragette leaders, such
as Mrs. Drummond and Mrs. Pankhurst, who
had put gray hairs on Lloyd-George's head and
lines of worry into his face, recruited soldiers, ex-
plained the national need to the men miners of the
north counties, assisted in organizing masses of
unemployable" women into industrial workers,
and were welcomed by Lloyd-George and the
Goyermnent as efficient helpers in miifying the
nation. And, far more important than the co-
operation of a handful of leaders, the unrest and
discontent of large numbers of women became
transformed into energy.
While it is true that only half a million women
have entered industry, that figure is only a frac-
tion of the nmnber of women who have trans-
f erred their activity from domestic service and the
parasitic trades into the main channels of in-
dustry. In munitions alone five hundred thou-
sand women have stepped over from unregulated
hours and low wages to sharply defined hours and
comparatively high wages. These women, and
several hundred thousand others in factory pro-
cesses, m railway, tram-car. and omnibus work
and m business superintendence, have "tasted
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blood.'* By that I mean they have won an in-
creased freedom and independence, however im-
perfect even yet, and a higher wage. To send
them " home" will prove a task larger than the
paper resolutions of any men's trade-union, that
women workers must give up their jobs.
It is one more of time's ironic revenges that it
is the entrance of women upon the scene which has
precipitated social questions to solution, where be-
fore they were seething in separate, repellent ele-
ments. Woman's long campaign for the vote
supplied the needed intellectual criticism of plural
voting and of suffrage restricted to a prop-
erty qualification. "Manhood" suffrage will be
granted. It is not possible for a nation to deny
a vote to men who have been ready to die for that
nation. This manhood suffrage will include
votes for women, for the women have mobilized
with an equal loyalty.
Woman's irritating presence in industry has
emphasized the demand for proper working con-
ditions. It has sharpened the wage controversy,
and it has revealed the need of far-reaching meas-
ures to deal with the unemployment situation that
the nation will face on the day of peace. Women
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are not going to enter industry. They have al-
ready entered it, and half a million fresh workers
have been added. It is clear that increasing the
number of workers does not lessen the problem
of a living wage. There is only one answer to
the violently acute situation which has been
forced by these women, and which will come to
a crisis when five million men hang their khaki in
the closet. The areas of production must be
widened not tenderly and with the imperceptible
gradualncss of a natural process, but swiftly.
(1) The land must be broken up into smaW
holdings. Cooperation in produce and market-
ing must be practised among the peasant tenants.
Ireland has blazed the way here.
(2) The state must institute fields of activity
at home, helping to establish new industries, such
as dye-works. It must make use of an immense
amount of new automatic machinery, installed to
make shells, and adapted to an expansion of gen-
eral engineering work and to the creation of new
industries. The head of a motor-car company
told me that two thirds of his present machinery
has been created since the war. The report of
the British Association states, "For the first time
LABOR
in the history of the west of Scotland engineering
shops had been filled with modem machine tools."
This enormous investment cannot be scrapped.
(8) The state must greatly extend its sphere
of activities throughout the empire in cattle-rais-
ing, in developing raw lands, in producing com-
modities from the land.
These methods will be used to meet the unem-
ployment situation by furnishing new jobs, and to
meet the burden of increased taxation by giving
an increased income. The larger program will of
course be postponed till its advocates are more
numerous and better orguiized. Such a pro-
gram will include:
(1) An extension of transportation facilities,
a greatly enlarged use of waterways, the building
of new and better roads.
(2) Improved housing. The foul slums of
great cities and towns, the vile homes of agri-
cultural laborers, will have to be razed by as dras-
tic a plan as that by which Haussmann drew his
blue pencil down through the jungle of Paris.
New dwellings in the place of the "lung blocks"
must be built.
(8) Afforestation. If it proves true that
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there are several million acres in the British Isles
that are unfit for intensive agriculture, this area
affords an opportunity for forest development,
which in eighty years would offer rich returns to
the state.
Under such an extension of enterprise there
would be plenty of work after the war, and there-
fore plenty of jobs. The problem is how to ob-
tain the money with which to finance the work.
The war has shown how to get the money. The
conscription of profits, death duties, and the taxa-
tion of incomes have availed, with new areas of
production, to give a more wide-spread, better-
distributed prosperity to England than she en-
joyed before the war. It is the line of solution
that will be enforced after the war. The exact
pressure that wiU enforce it is the demand for a
continuation of the present high wages.
This program is being postponed as long as
possible. Its items will be applied unevenly, and
parts will go neglected. Committees of Parlia-
ment are sure to bring in ingenious little outlines
for legislation, which wiU affect a few thousand
workers, while the army will demobilize at the
rate of five thousand a day. But for every fail-
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LABOR
ure in boldness and energy, for eicr/ lasr in ex-
ecution, the nation wiU pay in decreased exports,
falling wages, the pressure of taxation, and a
wrangle between masters and men. The new
order of life is stiU badly delayed at many poiifts.
The lot of the agricultural laborer is miserable.
The "East Ends" of the industrial cities remain
sodden. An immense number of workers are be-
ing underpaid, for the rise in wages has reached
only a fraction. A ministry of commerce and a
ministry of labor are needed at once, and in the
ministry of labor there should be a department
for women's work, conducted by women under-
secretaries.
Wages and hours remain the heart of the social
movement. The emphasis will not shift from
wages and hours. But a new demand has been
added to these "old timers." It is the demand by
labor for a voice in the control of its working
conditions. Mr. Lloyd-George responded to this
demand by greatly increasing the scope of wel-
fare work in factories. Through the famous
manufacturer and social worker, Seebohm
Rowntree, he has put protective agencies at work
in munition factories which affect the lives of half
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a mUlion persons who were not safeguarded to
the same extent formerly. This safeguarding is
done by welfare secretaries, whose duty it is to
study the health, home conditions, and sanitary
apphances of women. Grievances of workers
are laid before these secretaries. Welfare secre-
taries are not a new arrival in British industrv.
but there were few of them in relation to the im-
mense numbers of factories and workers. This
movement toward conducting industry in its so-
cial relationship from the point of view of the
worker is in its begimiing. Labor will press on
for an mcreasing recognition of its right to be
heard in management in workshop adjustments,
the speed of machinery, rest-times, hours of work,
details of discipline, and the grading of labor.
As this tide of reform rises higher, there is a
back wash. Class education, land monopoly, a
state church, persist down to our own day. Eng-
land has continued in a modified, far less harsh
form those special privileges of a ruling class that
m France led to the overthrow of the nobility and
the clergy. The industrial revolution of a cen-
tury ago suddenly altered the texture of feudal
English life, just as it would have altered France
26
LABOR
without the French Revolution. It added a new
upper layer to the pressure from overhead on the
manual worker in agriculture and industry, at the
same time that it gave an ever-increasing popula-
tion a share in the means of production. But the
coming of machinery, creating a new world, was
powerless in England to disturb the big land
holdings, the church, and restricted education.
They have continued to govern the conditions of
life. The best defense of the class system which
I have recently seen is that given in lectures to
the University of Pennsylvania by Geoffrey But-
ler under the title of "The Tory Tradition."
He clearly shows the contribution which has been
made by the Tory rejection of a utilitarian stand-
ard, their distrust of sectional control, their in-
sistence on the organic conception of the state,
their belief in the power of tradition and the an-
cient processes of government, their emphasis on
national duties, and therefore on a far-sighted
foreign poUcy. He says, "Our system of classes
represents the effect of selection by the capacity
to govern." And again, "Heredity is no Tory
invention, but a scientific fact."
In any analysis of unseemly class prepon-
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derance the honest student of English conditions
has to qualify the downright statement. Thus
the landed gentry have often exercised apersonal
care for their tenants and the village community
that the modem liberal captain of industry has
sometimes neglected to exercise toward his em-
ployees. But the land monopoly has prevented
England from being self-supporting and from
relieving the pressure on industry of an over-
crowded labor supply. It has robbed her of a
sturdy land-owmng peasantry like the French,
and has given her in their place a city-bred. under-*
sized, intellectually feeble, morally infirm lower
class.
The inteUectuals of the public schools and of
Oxford and Cambridge have supplied a poise
and dignity to modem life that a mediocre democ-
racy lacks. Their graduates have given honest
leadership in the Government. Recently theh-
young men have gone gallantly to a service from
which there is no returning. But much of the
defense for the rigid, medieval class system, in so
far as it possesses an intellectual basis, has been
supplied by public school and university men.
They are living in the home of lost causes.
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LABOR
The belated Tory Church of England clergy
have continued to be an ameUorating influence in
their communities. Their sane manner of living,
their personal kindliness, their patient absorption
in the humble lives about them— all these make a
contribution we overlook in our easy generaliza-
tions on the decayed church. And there are
abounding elements inside the established church
itself that are as liberal as any elements in modern
life. That church still has wise leaders, like Dean
Welldon of Manchester and a dozen others. The
sacramental view of life has profound and per-
manent values for certain persons. But when
aU has been said, it remains true that the church,
with its compromised theology, its indifference
to social injustice, its ignorance of where the
modern fight for righteousness is being waged,
its land-holding, its taxation, its absence of intel-
lectual force in seeking truth, has acted as a deter-
rent in the emancipation of the masses. A state
religion has been a soporific, drugging the laborer
to believe that his lot in Ufe was a part of the
scheme of things. As an institution the church,
and as a body the clergy, have not sought equality
for their communities. The present National
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Mission of Repentance and Hope, the most
ambitious crusade the church has launched in
many years, has been swung over into an evan-
gelistic campaign against the personal vices of
drink and sexual indulgence, and into an old-
fashioned appeal for personal righteousness and
the deepening of the religious life. The majority
of the bishopc remain blind to the demand of the
workers for an economic underpinning to their
lives. The workers believe that the way to a
proper life is by taking a hand in the control of
industry, by a living wage, and by fewer hours of
work. They are frankly uninterested in the
restriction of public houses and a more diligent
attendance in places of worship till they see that
their larder and their leisure are guaranteed.
These, then, are the forces of reaction tighten-
ing themselves for the struggle. These great
estates of the landed gentry, the clergy, and the
public school and university men will die hard in
defense of the class system. They will be power-
fully supported by the individualistic capitalist,
avid for his profits, and by the timid, uninte Jigent
middle class, fearfal of its narrow income from
rents, stock-holding, and small investment.
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LABOR
But the same quick action tLat turned out shells
by the acre will be enforced by the return of a
nation in arms. It is not that they will use the
rifle to shoot. It is that their strength has been
compacted where their eye can see it, their oigani-
zation ready-made for them, their service to the
nation acknowledged. Soldiers and workers are
the same men, inside the small area of an island.
At one stroke war won those things for which in
peace a portion of the English people seek in
vain: proper food, correct conditions for effi-
ciency, a pension for dependents, high honor for
service, a common sacrifice, and, embracing all
like a climate, a favoring public opinion, a great
universal equality. They will demand that the
same humanity be let loose into their daily life
of the factories. Is the basic work of peace less
worthy than trench routine?
There has been a certain vital force in new
countries that England has lacked in recent years.
Some of that living element went out to America
and the colonies. It founded free institutions,
established a wider equality, liberated a play for
individual initiative. It left England grayer
and heavier than in its great epochs. Next to the
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sleeping stren^h of the Russian peasantry, the
English mas is the slowest-moving force in the
modern European world.
Observers of England have written down this
slackemng of effort as laziness. But "kziness"
and 'drink" and "thriftlessness" are the inva-
riable resort of an imperfect analysis. What
was the cause of that laziness? I believe that we
have the answer in the weakness that sets in when
an organism gets out of touch with its environ-
ment. All the conditions of modem life were
changmg rapidly, and England revealed little
^Ptability in fitting herself to the change.
What the war has made clear is that England
was losing her stride in the modem world. She
was kgging in agriculture, industry, and applied
science. To put the matter clearly and frankly,
an anemia had spread over English life in recent
generations. Through lack of vocational train-
ing, the working-man had lost ambition, and his
power of production had lost pace with German
and American workers. The huddled, sheltered,
unproductive lives of middle-class people were
often without direction and purpose because they
were untrained. The upper class had lost power
32
LABOR
of constructive leadership in the traditions of an
education unrelated to the re. lities of modern
life.
This war has wakened England. It has made
the working-man work at full-tilt for the first
time in his life. He has been willing to do it,
because the product served a national purpose
instead of the profit of another person. He has
been physically able to do it, because an increased
wage gave him better food. He has discovered
how to do it, because the pressure of necessity has
unlocked brain cells which in ordinary times
would have requu-ed a term of education to
coordinate. The war has turned the middle-class
home inside out, and freed the resi)ectable unem-
ployed into usefulness. It has given new and
more active forms of employment to women
caught in domestic service and the parasitic trades
of "refined" dressmaking, millinery, and candy
manufacture. Finally, the war has given a
career to upper-class Englishmen. For the first
time in their lives they feel they have found some-
thing active to do through noble sacrifice. The
sigh of relief that went up at the discovery that
life was at last worth living, if only because of its
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brevity, was echoed in the poetry of officers as it
drifted back from the trenches.
The key to the present situation is the sudden
enormous release of energy. Male labor has felt
It, and has responded with increased production.
Women have felt it, and have transferred their
activities from low-pressure drudgery pvA par-
asitic employments to the main channels of
mdustrj'. The directors and capitalists have felt
It. and have sanctioned new areas of production
new automatic machinery, and more liberal terms
for their workers. The state has felt it, and has
taken a direct hand in the encouragement and
control of industry. Ar. incredible amount of
energy has been let loose in England which before
was lying latent in underpaid, undernourished
workmg-men, in individualistic businessmen, in
ummagmative government officials, in extra
daughters in the household, and in unattached
women of a moderate income and no profession
A spiritual transformation would come to pass
if atoms were dissociated and the latent energy in
matter released into a torpid world. What coal
and electricity and radimn accomplish in burning
through obstruction and speeding up life would
34
LABOR
be transcended by that new amazing release of
force. But that very thing took place in the
social organism. Industrial labor and the home
were each an "indestructible atom," the final unit
that could not be pried open, or separated into
parts. And suddenly it was broken up, and an
immense energy set going in the community.
To maintain this increased activity after the
war will require an enlarged system of state edu-
cation. Vocational training must be given to
the young in place of the present laissez-faire
policy, which lets children slip out from control,
at the age of fourteen and even younger, into
"blind-alley" pursuits. England will have to be
remodeled or else lose her place among the
nations.
If she fails to take action in accelerating indus-
trial democracy, she will see her surviving young
men saihng in droves for Canada and Australia.
The colonies are far-sighted, and their prop-
aganda in England is continuous, and has greatly
increased since the beginning of the war. Show-
windows on the Strand and King's Road, and like
strategic points of great cities, are filled with the
genial products of the soU and the mines,— ears
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of grain and slags of mctal,-and the background
• gay painting of an overseas city, with its hos-
Pitable harbor. Pleasant-voiced and energetic
gentlemen inside the roomy, prosperous offices
tell you what you can make of your life if you pull
up stakes and come with them to the new lands.
If England fails, she will be stripped of men. and
wiU become a feminist nation. But she will not
fail. The penalty is too severe.
It would be easy to play the role of a prophet
here and ride a radical gallop through the coming
England. But I have consistently limited this
outlme to the tendencies already under way. to
the currents already rumiing. I have struck out
the mmunmn of social remodeling, as recognized
by middle-of-the-way publicists. I can quote
The Saturday Review" on a minimum wage for
agricultural labor. "The Times" on the idea of
national syndication, the Government on the
pigsty" in which the farm-laborer has been
forced to live, and Mr. Asquith on woman's claim
to a vote on the basis of her war work.
To suppose that these changes are going
through gracefully is to dream in the daylight
They are coming jerkily, unevenly. Nothing
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LABOR
will be granted except as it is forced. I have
heard talk by persons in well-to-do homes about
the new brotherhood of the trenches. One of the
most distinguished English writers said to me;
"Do you think working-men will ever feel
bitterly again, now that they have seen their
officers leading them and dying for them?"
It did not occur to her to inquire how gallantry
in an infantry charge would prove a substitute
for a living wage. There wiU be brotherhood
after the war if the privileged classes pay a living
wage; but from what some of their repiesent-
atives have said to me I gather that brotherhood is
to be practised by the workers in ceasing to
agitate for the basic conditions of a decent life.
Not much of this emancipation is being made
in love. It has largely come by the clever use of
force, and what it brings will be like the gains of
war for territory— areas soaked with human
tears, breeding-places of fresh dissension. The
eternal questions will beat in again after the new
order is established. Is a living wage the final
answer to the homerL'kness of the human spirit?
Does a materialistic conception of life satisfy the
longing of the heart? Are the claims of beauty
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met by unifonn rows of neat little dwellings and
by sanitary factories? Have we really crossed
the great divide and arrived finally in the sun-
shine? One doubts it. The life of the spirit is
not so «isily satisfied. But as in the present war
of arms political difl'erences are buried, art and
poetry forgotten, and all the national will focused
on this one thing to do, so in this greater struggle
the vast complexities of life are overlooked for
the sake of a working program of action and
a sharp summary. Happiness and morality,
beauty and religion, are left to take care of them-
selves.
It is not from brotherly love that an increased
cooperation between the directors and the workers
IS being established, but because without cooper-
ation the production of wealth is lessened, capital
IS dimmished, and wages are decreased. That
cooperation is not secured by telling the laborer
to "be good." to remember the nation, and to for-
get his wage. The capitalist of the past has been
indifferent to the welfare of his workers. He
has had his mind on individual profit, not on
national wealth. If he acts in the future as he
has m the past, extracting an immediate high
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LABOR
profit at the expense of the worker, and therefore
of the national wealth, the control wUl be taken
from him, and will pass over automatically into
the hands of the democracy. It rests with the
capitalists themselves whether they and their sys-
tem wiU survive or whether their fmiction wiU be
taken over by the industrial group and the state.
Capital and labor are a permanent institution;
but the capitalist, unlike the laborer, is by no
means an indispensable unit in the institution.
If the capitalist wiU handle himself in relation to
his employees as the French officer does in rela-
tion to his men, he can postpone his extinction
mdefinitely. If he develops a democracy of spirit
and attitude, taking less profits and paying
higher wages, exercising leadership by intelli-
gence and sympathy, and permitting labor a voice
in working conditions, he will remain in partial
control of a diminished reahn for the immediate
future at least. As fast as he fails he wiU be
ousted.
Discipline and responsibility are the essentials
for the new life just beginning, and they rest with
equal weight on employer and employee. They
are two words which had become unpopular in
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our recent philosophy of life, because the qual-
ities themselves were out of favor. But the war
has revealed their ancient worth under the cake of
modernism.
The faults of the English, as I see them, are an
ahnost incorrigible mental torpidness, which is
slow to see a new situation and obstinate to move
even when seeing it; a deep-rooted belief in the
class system; an unconscious arrogance; and a
suppression of th6 emotional life. As the result
of these limitations in insight and sympathy, the
English race has been backward in the betterment
of its own people. It has overworked and under-
paid its own sons and daughters till a portion of
its population rots in foul slums.
A silent, slow-moving, but determined will, a
constancy of purpose, a standard of conduct,
often faUen short of, but rather consistently
aimed at, are, I think, the saving characteristics
of English character. By reason of these virtues,
—and they are supreme virtues,— when the Eng-
lish race starts to right a wrong, it goes through
with the work to the end. It has now set itself
to give justice to its workers. The social move-
40
LABOR
ment is more surely on its way in England than
in any other country of Europe.
Human history has moved in cycles, and war
has often marked the cesura. The French
Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the inven-
tion of machinery altered the face of the world
and refashioned its inner life. We are to-day
in the presence of an industrial revolution as vast
as that of a century ago. We in America shall be
wise if we, like Engknd, practise preparedness
not only ui the obvious surface requirements of
dreadnoughts and citizen armies, but in the pro-
found modifications of the social structure and
consciousness.
-•!
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THE DISCOVERY
Any one who looks forward to a peace on earth
following the war of the trenches is going to be
present at a surprise-party. The workers are
gathering themselves for a mi^ty eflfort which
will make the French railway strike and the Eng-
lish mine and transport strikes look like an after-
noon tea. The issue wiU be precipitated when
the Grovemment and the employers fail to restore
41
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the old trade-union rules and regulations. They
cannot restore them because the conditions have
changed in the last two years. New automatic
machinery and the entrance of male and female
semi-skilled workers have made it impossible to
restore the old system, which was adapted to the
old conditions. Let me quote from a careful
investigation made by experts:
Many of the men who return from the trenches to
the great muniticm and shipbuilding centers are, within
a few weeks of their return, among those who exhibit
most actively their discontent with present conditions.
Among those who have fought in Flanders or who
have been employed in making shells at home, there are
many who look forward to a great social upheaval
foUowing the war. It is the testimony of responsible
observers on the spot that some of our greatest in-
dustrial centers are even now in a state of incipient
revolt. To a very large number of the men now in
the ranks, the fight against Germany is a fight against
•Trussianism," and the spirit of Prussianism represents
to them only an extreme example of that to which
they object in the industrial and social institutions of
their own country. They regard the present struggle
as closely connected with the campaign against capital-
ist and class-domination at home.
Unfortunately some of the results of the war itself,
4S
LABOR
such as the Munitions Acts and the Compulsion Acts,
have intensified this identification of external and in-
ternal "enemies." We are not discussing the necessity
of these measures. The point is that the working of
these acts and the tribunals created under them has
given rise to an amovuit of deep and widespread re-
sentment which is the more dangerous because it is
largely inarticulate. It is particularly dangerous be-
cause it tends to discredit in general working class
opinion that section of labor which looks to the im-
provement of industrial conditions by negotiation or by
legislative action, and to strengthen the hands of the
party which preaches doctrines of wrecking and ap-
propriation.
The war has not put an end to industrial unrest.
Every one of the old causes of dispute remains, and
others of a more serious nature have been added in
the course of the war. The very moderation and un-
selfishness shown by the responsible leaders of organ-
ized labor are looked upon by important sections of
their foUowing as a betrayal of the cause and by some
employers as a Uctical opportunity.
What is the answer? No half-way solution,
no artificial "faked" restoration, no "brotherhood
of the trenches," no turning of the attention of
labor to "higher things" by a national mission,
will suffice to meet the imperious demands of five
43
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these impositions of the oligarchy in control of
them. They have limited the output by "«,inir
gently" with the work. They have limitel the
number of apprentices. They have practised
sabotage and caUed strikes. They had no other
weapons. The result of these protective devices
has been to lessen the volume of production, to
give capital a smaller return on its investment,
and to cut down wages. The pohcy has been
bad for employer and employee.
It is not altogether the control which capital
and management exercise over the mechanism of
production which creates industrial unrest. It
IS m part the control over labor. Absence of
knowledge is the cause of some of the misunder-
standmg. The workers understand nothing of
overhead charges, depreciation of plant, the risks
of capital. They know nothing of the policy
comiected with buying and selbng. The em-
ployers know nothing of the effect of a new
process on the nervous system of the worker.
They know nothing of the fatigue from overwork
ormonotony. They make no study of a standard
of Imng. They go blindly ahead, as if men and
machmery aUke were tools to be manipulated.
46
h.
LABOR
That an aim of industry should be a good life for
the worker is an idea which would sound strangely
in their ears.
What is needed between employer and worker
is a pooling of knowledge, a frank exchange of
the point of view, and a compromise in manage-
ment. The way out is through democratic con-
trol over the conditions of work. The worker
must be consulted when new machinery is
installed. The effect of it must be studied in
relation to monotony, fatigue, and danger. The
profits from its introduction must be equitably
divided between the employer and the worker.
The consultation must not be a form of words.
It must be a consultation where the voice of the
worker is of equal authority with that of the exec-
utive management. The worker must be in a
position to control the conditions of his putting
forth of labor power. The new conditions,
created by the new machine with its special proc-
esses, must be such that the balance of justice,
established under the old conditions, is not dis-
turbed by the alteration. The belief that every
change, such as "scientific management," in-
stituted by the employer, has enabled him to pick
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up slack and take a tighter cinch-grip on labor,
has led labor to resist labor-saving devices and
modern methods of speeding-up. The employer
has been partly defeated whenever he has played
a "lone hand." And labor, in defeating him, has
lessened the volume of production from which
higher wages are derived.*
jCoMlder the analysis Sir Hugh BeU ha, recently made of hi.
^Hni" fL''° " r^ ''•""'* ''""'" '" September. ,916
from his own coal and iron mine, and Umestone quarries. I„ e^^
TCludtag profit. The turnover oo a steel business in this country
a^ut equdU the capiUl invested. If his profit amounts toT^r
cent, of which 3 per cent at least must go back Into the businell
o maintain the works, he thinks himself iS^ky. and Se^J^rlT
left m,«t cover Interest on his capital as weU as the profi^forTu"
enterprise and risk. The remaining 15 to 20 per cent a«l to
^ "X r .r • ""^^^ '"^*' - - '-^ p- °--^
"Out of what fund." as Sir Hugh Bell asks. -Is he to pay a 10
per cent. Increase in wages?- If he paid W per cent! SL he
would have no profit at all and could not con^nue tli Z2^.
^li^T "'«*'' *^"'' "^ ""'^ «^ '«» -'*'". by greater
efficiency m management or greater production per man There
where capital secures a greater return, there are others%vhe,e tte
nTZ.t'X.'""' *i" '"''""^ '^ '~-y'"^- «"* except ^n 2!
^r Tlr. ?? "»k"' "" ''"'• "'"PP'"'^ '«^' «' -»«?. monopoly
r«. P'*f"^f*''*'' ♦>•* P'«^t«« given by Sir Hugh Bell is mo^
less applicable to industry in general
.lter°tJ!^T°,'!l!!^'i'° legfaktion. and no economic theory can
i.„ I ^ . ^^ '"^"''*'*"' ^""'♦"'"' •'"* -" adjustmentTnd a
gain can be made by a new release of productive energy on th^
48
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LABOR
What is the way out? Surely it is this: in-
stall the new machinery, establish scientific man-
agement, but explain the process, adjust the
wage-scale, debate the problems of fatigue,
monotony, and danger, safeguard the standard
of living, study the new conditions, and work out
an agreement between employer and workers.
Already there is a rapprochement between the
larger groups. In the crisis of 1915, Mr. Ten-
nant summoned the labor leaders to organize the
forces of labor. The employers and the Govern-
ment were helpless unless aided by the workers
themselves. On that day, February 8, 1915, the
principle of democratic control in industry was
established in the modem state, never to be
receded from. This system of joint committees
had indeed long existed in the leading trades,
where employers and union leaders met to settle
disputes. But the white flag of truce was over
the conference, while, outside, the battle raged.
But Mr. Tennant by his bold measure raised the
joint committee to the level of continuous medi-
ation and consultation. These joint boards will
part of the management and the men, by consultation between
labor aiid capltsl, and by hard inteUectual effort put on each detail
of both the industrial process and the industrial relationship.
49
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be Uie method by which the Government, the
employer, and the worker wUI discuss the break-
down during war-time of the trade-umon rules,
and the substitute to be given in place of an
"npossible restoration. The joint board is part
of the machinery for reconstruction. The accept-
ance of ,t is an acceptance of the principle of
democratic control.
That is the centralized and "parhamentarv"
side of the matter. But it deals with only half
„ r ?'.. '^^' ''^'' ^^^ " ^°^«^ government
m the mdividual factory. No system of cen-
trahzatmn can ever so extend itself as to deal
adequately with the de'licate various human mate-
rial m the single factory. And for this a solution
has been struck out. It is that of workshop
comicls. where the men sit in equal power with
the management. It has been tried in a few
places. It has worked exceUently. There is one
factoiy where no decision in several years has
been appealed from. Disputes have died away.
We shaU hear much of "workshop comicils" in
the next five years. The experiment offers the
one sane, peaceable way out of a struggle that
umiegotiated." will throw industry into chaos. '
50
•-rs^ef^. ,.;^_,
LAfiOR
Let U8 consider in detail what the workshop
council will do. It will deal with the admission
of unskilled workers into the factory, with piece-
work prices, shop discipline, suspension and dis-
missal, welfare, organization, and production,
"time" rules, consideration of complaints, meth-
ods of increasing efficiency, discussion of hours of
work, and the necessity of periods of overtime,
supervision of eating-halls, organization of rec-
reation. The council wiU represent a depart-
ment, and will send one representative for every
fifty workers, for instance. Thus a department
with 250 workmen will send five representatives.
Sitting with the council in equal numbers will be
the manager of the department and his assistants.
For a large factory the departmental councils
wiU meet and elect a "works council"— twenty-
five workers and twenty-five managers and assist-
ants,— who will consider matters touching the
works as a whole. On questions such as fixing
day wages and the level that governs piece wages,
the employer will continue to deal direct with the'
trade-unions, but the piece rates themselves wiU
be arranged by the workshop councils.
This is all experimental and tentative. It may
51
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break down under bitterness or trickery. It may
be manipulated by clever men. Chesterton, who
IS a hearty medievalist, desiring general peasant
proprietorsliip, calls the scheme of "a certain
proletarian representation in the employer's
council" "the man-trap of the management."
He says that "the first few labor representatives
filtered cautiously into the 'management' wiU be
beaten at the game. That is why they wiU be
allowed to play at it"
Perhaps, but the idea is in line with democratic
prmaple. It is being worked at by the best
mmds m England, and it offers the one peaceable
way out of a strife that grows more intense evenr
month. '
The situation is this: labor is going to
demand higher wages. To obtain them, labor
must produce more goods, and the employer must
improve his methods, install new machinery, and
consult the worker. Some employers will meet
the situation with superlatively good management
-a management that will wefcome the worker
to a share in control, and will increase production
and wages without financial loss. Some em-
ployers WiU make decreased profits, some will go
H
LABOR
to the waU, and some wiU fight the new condi-
tions. If wisdom prevails on both sides, a new
constitution of industry will be achieved.
DEMOCBATIC CONTEOL
In this age, when psychology is taking over
new reahns of fact every year, it is increasingly
difficult to use a phrase abo"t society whicV is
accurate in describing the insti..ctive life of forty-
five million persons. Yet one must have a vocab-
ulary in order to talk. The phrase "democratic
control" appears throughout this book. By the
principle of democratic control I mean the appli-
cation to the institutions of property and the
state of the sum of the desires and impulses of the
persons composing the modem nation-state.
Those detires and impulses are often thought
about and definitely expressed in a reasoned pro-
gram of action, as in the gradually developing
"will to war" of the British people. Often they
are held only in the subconscious mind, exploding
through from time to time in blind action. But
the desires and impulses of the mass people have
io-day a power in shaping legislation, controlling
administration, adapting environment, andestab-
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lishing new social relationships, which, through
lack of organization, they did not possess in
earlier periods. Suppression, thwarting, sub-
mission are not acceptable to the people of a
modem nation, and they have determined to live
a more creative life.
"Democratic control" is a convenient phrase
for describing what is taking place in society,
which we express concretely by using the terms
"labor movement," "woman movement," "wel-
fare work," "British commonwealth," "rights of
little nations." An increasing number of people
are seeing what they want and are getting it.
An increasing number of women are desiring a
living wage and the vote, and they are organizing
their thought and will to obtain them. An
mcreasing number of manual workers are wishing
to control the conditions of their working life, and
they are acting together in order to win that
status. The dominions are growing restive under
an imperial policy conducted by England alone,
and they are preparing to take a hand in the
shapmg of that policy. These are instances of
democratic control-the application to govem-
M
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LABOR
mcnt and contract of the sum of the desires and
impulses of millions of persons.
Oitt modem social movement, which is seekini?
to achieve the orgamzed state under democratic
control, operates through private ownership and
individualism (property), cooperation, state con-
trol (socialism), and occupational association
(syndicalism). The socialistic state has greatlv
extended its function in the present war. Non-
local association, or syndicalism, is increasing its
strength through wo. kshop councils, joint boards,
and the various organizations of common occupa-
tion, trade-muons, "industrial workers." gilds.
Cooperation for production is powerful in Ire-
hmd. and cooperation for distribution has had a
long and successful history in England. Prop-
erty-the idea of the "smaU owner." the "peasant
proprietor." one's right to one's "very own." is
still intrenched. Any dogmatism on the claims
of one of these against the others must to-day be
rejected as not fitting the facts. Any prophecy
as to which wiU contribute most decisively to
Hie future organization of society is gratuitous.
Each overlaps upon the others, but aU are
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expressions of the impulse toward freedom, and
the social movement is the resultant.
Particular tendencies in the social movement
cannot be exclusively identified with particukr
psychological dispositions. Dr. Graham Wallas
writes to me:
The extension of democratic control is of course
dependent on knowledge, or imagination, as well as im-
pulse. More exactly, impulse in the modem world has
to be stimulatetl rather by our ideas of what we can-
not see or hear than by our direct sensations. The
Railway Men's Union is growing stronger because in-
dividual railwaymen are gettmg a more definite con-
ception of the capital- and statemachine instead of a
vague acqjiescence in a social order felt to be irr sisti-
ble (or, rather, not felt to be resistible) ; because they
have a conception of improving their position neither
by individual industry nor by state action, but by syn-
dical action; because they have learnt by experience
that improvement can be brou|^t about by lyndical
action.
There is not half enough concentrated thinking
being done. The Labor party in its hitest con-
ference displayed as much hot feeling over m-
finitesimal details as the protagonists in an Irish
election, and it dissolved without any large
S6
LABOR
^^ The .peaker-. Confe«»ce on El«.
to«l lUrom. ".pproved" of the principle of
wom« .uifrage, but f«led U, incluj^ . ^
toobt«n.t«th.r.«,l„,i„^. NosynthetiX
of reconstruction i, „y«here in ^t. WW
mU happen i, that the pre»„e of n^ity ^n
force refom«. biU by bill. det«l by det«L Thi,
«^ted for ,hr.pnel. ft „e™ that e.A
ff^oup m the community will fight like . I„„e wolf
^ b»e. It „ po«ible th« the engine^;^
7*^ for .nrtMMe, which will come out on ton
«d un,k.lled men to fight their own battH f«l-
product.™, .re principle, ertablid^d only by
combmed effort. ' ^
E«* cUsa division in the immunity is ,„lki„g
T.« "^ *"•' '"'«»'"8 l"" • do«n pet
f.Il.cje. The employer stiU believe. th.t S»
wetf«e. He rtUl beheve, in hi.,ez.f.i„, "i^.
mutable Uw, of ™pply ^ j.^^ .. ,
detennm,™... „ g„„^g ^^^ multitudinou,
W
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currents of human history. He still believes that
there is only a certain fixed amount of work and
money to be ladled out, a pool unfed by expand-
ing production. He still believes in limiting the
number of workers and circumscribing the areas
and methods of production. He still distrusts
the intellect as an instrument for establishing
justice.
But the principle of democratic control f drees
its own way irresistibly through the storm of
words and conflicting purposes. If only one man
in Engknd apprehended it, it would have |o
prevail, for it leads out of chaos. It abolishes
ignorance and poverty. It releases the good-will
which lies hidden and obstructed in our nature.
It promises equality, and peiiiaps some day. will
bring in beauty to a troubled and unlovely world.
Ail >
THE PIONEEES
England is becoming an industrial democracy,
but the talk is all of speeding up production and
making a better machine of the worker. The
solutions of reconstruction necessitate; a consider-
ation of new automatic machines and subdivisions
of repetitive processes. There is talk of a still
fi8
LABOR
hotter war of competition than in the old dreary
factory days. All these discussions of the British
Association and "The Round Table" and the
Fabians and the government reports lean in the
dh-ection of Americanizing and Germanizing
Enghuid. When you have made a good work-
man m that sense, you have n't made a good man
at all. You have made a sharpened tool of pro-
duction or a narrow, concentrated huckster. I
feel in aU this program something ahen to the
English nature. Half the fine virtues of a
hberal life lie outside such competitive mdustrial
requirements.
Once the question of **wages and hours" is
settled, and that is only a detaU of management
which will be settled, we reach the heart of the
problem. Can the curse be removed from
machmery? Can joy be put into work? What
of the jobs that are monotonous? Will they
lessen in number?
The instant that joy enters into work the
problems of overtime and fatigue disappear.
Ehisticity of spirit gives a swift recovery. Free-
dom to choose one's work, the right to arrange
one's working conditions, skill in doing the task,
59
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pride in the product— these are the elements that
result in "joy in work," are they not? What
promise does the future give us that this quality
of joy will enter into the work of the masses ? An
eight-hour day and a minimum wage of forty
shillings a week do not help us here at all. Will
the increasing control of working conditions by
the workers themselves remove this curse of
monotony, the grind of the machines on the
human spirit? Will the fact of control alter the
effect of the work, so that automatically it will
pass from a condition of slavery to a condition of
freedom ? Will the worker, in exercising his will
on the terms and conditions of his employment,
find a full release for his powers, with the result-
ing sense of self-expression and its accompani-
ment of joy?
Or will the increasing control of working condi-
tions by the workers result in a fundamental
remodeling of the nature of the work itself? If
so, in what forms will that change show itself?
For instance, the happier. I conununities of the
past were surely settled agricultural communities.
Will the workers in part return to the land,
rendered more fertile by modem methods of
I) '
LABOR
intensive agriculture? WiU there be an era of
noble building like that of the twelfth century?
Will the modem democracy find it worth while
to create beauty?
Then there remains the use of leisure. Are we
to learn an art of living? Will creative activities
be honored? Nothing is more striking in the
hist hundred years than the fact that the poet and
the saint "do not count." They have lost control
over the channels of power. The artist in any
of the great forms has little influence to-day. It
is easy to reply, "Let the great artist come, and
we wiU listen"; but to produce great persons, the
heart of the people must be turned that way.
We are not quiet enough or responsive enough to
form and nourish such growths. Not only are
the masters of modern industry materialistic, but
the workers are materialistic. The trade-union
program, the socialist platform, the reforms of
the social experts—all these center about matters
of physical well-being and industrial efficiency.
What has aU this to do with outlook on life, the
knowledge of true values, an understanding of the
meaning and end of existence? Outlook on life
is determined by the use of leisure— by the
61
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pictures one sees, the music one hears, the books
one reads, the talk one shares, the games one
plays. The only education an adult receives,
apart from that of the working^ay. with its
repetitive processes for most employees, is in the
recreation of his leisure hours. School ends for
most of the human race at fourteen years of age.
The lives of modem workers are dark with drudg-
ery for the working shift and spattered with
cheap surface sensation in the hours of release.
Fatigue and excitement march together through
our city streets.
These are the two great questions of our time:
Can the nature of work be ennobled ? Can spir-
itual values be restored to modem life? For
fifteen years these questions of what use shall be
made of life under a tme industrial democracy
have seemed to me the most important, the least
discussed questions of our day. Now that in-
dustrial democracy is arriving in England. I have
put these questions to the leaders of public opin-
ion. I have talked with Lloyd-George, experts
of the Home Office, of the work councils, with
John Bums, Seebohm Rowntree, Snowden, But-
ton. MacDonald. Mallon, every type of mind in
6i
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LABOR
the indu.tri.1 struggle. No one person i, resp™,-
sible for the conclmiom which I give, but they
«em to me . just sumnwry of the best English
opmion. "Hiuui
WiU ij,duslry shde over into .„ wd-fashioned
bahmee between agriculture and factory labor?
Can the curse be removed from machineor. ,0 that
the worker w,U find in his day's work some of the
M
111
LABOR
The^tion, of .ln««t .U our ««.! p^w.^
7^ "T'**"" '"*"^ » P«tche. in part.
Sweden mother, .nd Belgium, third. Itneed^
now expert, to pool the« «,l„tion. into . pro-
^ and apply it whoIe«le. TransporuL
«Hi hou,u,g be at the he,^ of the problem of en-
ZZT T"'^*'«'-'k«'ive,,.ndinwh"
Z 1 '"""*'•*.««»• "«»'"»'»« the omdition.
«»t ^rround him outride hi, working hour.
^Therrn.""" " ""^- •"•* ^^ -"»
For two year, prior to the outbreak of war .
committee had been .itting to conrider land and
hou,mg „f„,„, and y^ ^^^^ ^ ^^^
far-reaehmg propoMk Th.« proposal, were
bemg very seriouriy con,idered by the Goyem-
ment. It » probable that a bill covering many
beheve that the« reform. wiU come to the f™t
« soon „ the war i, over. One of the« me.,.
"«« deab with compubo,y town-pIam,i„g. In-
•tead of bmMing f.™n thirty to forty hoL, to
«» acre, only thirteen will be aUowed. Thi,
69
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means that every workman's house will have its
decent privacy, its bit of garden. Another pro-
posal is for a system of general transportation by
means of light railways. Belgium has had about
one hundred miles of light railways for every
three and a half miles in England. This gives a
network of cheap transportation covering the en-
tire area around the great industrial centers. I
used to ride into Ghent from Zele, from Melle,
from every one of the smaller towns outside the
city. Wherever I have stayed in Belgium,
whether at Fumes, Dixmude, La Panne, Nicu-
port, or Ostend, the whole country-side was
woven with tiny steam railways, carrying pas-
sengers for a few sous. This system gives easy
transportation for the worker from his home in
the suburb to his lathe in the factory. It means
that he can live on a little land and, with his fam-
ily, carry on light gardening, reducing his cost
of living, with an occasional sale in the market.
The combination of the two measures, — town-
planning and cheap transportation, — applied to
England, will end the slum by draining it dry,
and by substituting a village community in pleas-
ant surroundings. It means a gradual, but, in
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the end, complete, remaking of the environment
for the workers. And an environmental change
so vast will recreate the physical life of the na-
tion.
These measures are nothing but simple primi-
tive justice. They are merely animal rights.
They do not deal with the basic spiritual needs
of the community. Having wof his emancipa-
tion from poverty and the serf c ditions of in-
dustry, the worker must face the intellectual bar-
rcnness of his life. Through no fault of his own
he is poorly fitted for the role he is now caUed on
to play. He is uneducated, unimaginative, un-
equipped to create the values in life which an
mdustrial democracy will require in order to sur-
Vive the dreary hours of monotonous machine
work, however shortened and however highly
paid, and the increased hours of leisure. FaU-
ing a solution for his overplus of vitality and for
the unemployment of his higher faculties, he wiU
be thrown back on rebellion as release for his un-
f unctioning energy.
The supreme need of English labor is wise
leadership. That leadership will not allow this
new energy, released by better wages and short-
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ened hours, to spend itself in ftrife and rebellion.
The tragedy of the labor movement has been that
its leaders have often been sucked up by the Gov-
ernment, becoming official investigators, parli-
amentarians, conmiittee-men. Or the skilled in-
telligent worker has passed over into the ranks
of the employer. The succession of lost leaders
has quenched the enthusiasm of the mass of the
people, lessened their power of vision, and made
them cynical of lifting themselves to a full, free
life. If the shoulders of the people are used by
their most il representatives only to be climbed
upon into p. sitions of individual prestige, the
people themselves will be little bettered by gen-
erating men power. The labor leader must
find hi« career inside his class. He must forego
the easy advantages of a thousand-pound gov-
ernment salary. There are few wise leaders to-
day inside the ranks of the workers.
As the result, the immediately practical next
steps in the social revolution are clearly seen, but
the creative readjustment that will make Eng-
land into a free, liberal community is not seen.
The worker is about to share control of his work-
ing conditions with the "management." His
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LABOR
hours will be shortened, his wages will be in-
crcased.--thc increase has ah-eady reached about
one third of the industrial population.~he will
have a voice in workshop conditions, his physical
environment in his leisure hours will be amelior-
ated. His house will be situated in a decent com-
munity, with space around it for flowers and home
gnrdening. Vocational training will be given to
his children. This will come by a series of ex-
penmental measures, beginning with part-time
employment in industry for those between the
ages of fourteen and eighteen.
But a greater reconstruction than all this
journeyman's work is needed. If the workers
are able to develop leaders and to retain them,
that leadership wiU concern itself in part with
the cultural life of the people. There is no great
future for labor except through education. The
American fiUn. the public house, the ha'penny
newspaper, and professional foot-ball are not
sufficient of themselves to make a new world. If
English labor contents itself with gains in the
mechanic and physical conditions of life, the form
of solution WiU crystallize into its own kind of
neo-Toryism. The same meaningless matcrial-
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ism will continue to sterilize and wither the minds
of men. Now the minds of officials and experts,
workers and employers, are malleable, now the
national consciousness has been melted into hot
and fluid form. Now is the time to shape and
fuse that molten mass.
"We are going around to-day with a different
brain under our cap from the brain we carried
three years ago," a leading official of the Amal-
gamated Society of Engineers said to me.
This is true of him and his fellow-workers, true
of the politicians, and true of the employers.
Before that brain cools to a new case-bound
orthodoxy it must come to grips with larger prin-
ciples of social reconstruction than any it has
been dealing with in trade-union regulaticms.
There is no discharge in this war. We need a
new community, eager and unsatisfied, aiming
after a nobility of life of whidi the modem world
has had no vision. Let labor look to its task.
Time presses. In five years England will have
cooled down, and the impulse of the war, throw-
ing old values into the furnace, will have spent it-
self. Men will reproduce the old world, with its
barrenness of materialism, its hunt after cheap
74
LABOR
amusementa. its immense mediocrity, its spiritual
deadness. its nervous restlessness, its suppres-
sions of vitality, and its explosions of rebellion,
the same old round of dirty little intrigue, be-
cause there wUl be no great purpose to which life
li directed, no creative dream of the people.
And in command of the community wUl be the
Mme old gang of clever politicians feeding out
materialistic catchwords of "Peace and prosper-
ity." the adroit editors ministering to sensation
as a substitute for creative activity. If the work-
ers dodge and postpone this fundamental point
m their emancipation, they will give us a world
httle better than the Victorian mess. They wiU
give us something very like a prosperous Ameri-
can industrial city such as Detroit. The privi-
leged class, with its neat formute of restricted
education and established church, has long lost
Its control of the community. The brief reign
of the captains of industry, contributing no ideas
on ethics and social relationship, ended in August
of 1914. Now comes the worker. Let him bet-
ter the management of life. Patient, kindly
slow, very loyal to tht man and the cause in which
he believes, the English worker is the greatest
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democratic force in the world. For our own sal-
vation we must call on him to use his brain. He
allowed the first industrial revolution to swing in
on top of him in its meanest and most sordid
form. Now that he takes control of the second
industrial revolution, he must not try to compress
humanity into narrower terms than those which
the innumerable varieties of the human spirit have
always demanded. The masters of industry
tried this» and wrecked their world.
Into the forefront of their immediate program
of action the workers must put the demand for
an abolition of child labor and for the creation of
a general, full-time elementary schooling up to
the age of sixteen years. There must be sec-
ondary and continuation schools for all promis-
ing pupils up to the age of eighteen. There must
be a larger number of universities, and a democ-
ratization of all the universities. The best men
among the workers must be as thoroughly
equipped in modem science, economics, and so-
ciology as the governing class used to be in the
humanities. The hope of an enh'ghtened democ-
racy lies in the general extension of state educa-
tion and in the expansion of individual initiative
76
LABOR
in such experiments for adults as the Workers'
Educational Association.
But the workers must insist that the education
shall not be limited to vocational training, to
science of research and application, to the impart-
ing of facts. Education must give an interpre-
tation of life. It must construct and impart a
system of ethics fitted to our time. A living
wage is no answer to such a tangle as that of sex ;
it is no answer to the concerns of empire and the
treatment of the colored races. These are ethical
matters, demanding hard thinking and new in-
terpretations of old values. There are a dozen
problems clamoring for an answer, and on no one
of them is there an adequate body of recorded
facts, with the tendencies deduced from them.
Apparently, everything is to be solved by plung-
ing boldly into activity and letting results come.
What one feels the absence of in the labor move-
ment is fundamental brain-work. Here are new
processes being developed, new areas opened, a
revolutionary shifting of the directive control of
the modem world from the little historic group
of captains to the vast army of the people them-
selves; and yet there is no realization that so
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mighty a transfer of forces calls for a philosophy
and ethics of its own. If the workers fail us in
this, the patient old-time spirit will brush aside
their little artificial structure like an empty shell
and begin building again.
The whole range of moral problems has been
left out of the reckoning. Changed conditions
have resulted in an entire alteration of human re-
lationship; but no one has stated the new ethics
that will give guidance to the plain man's de-
sire for a free, human, liberal life and for an an-
swer to the meaning of life. The cry of Dosto-
yevsky still lifts itself in our night: "Surely I
haven't suffered simply that I, my crimes, and
my sufferings may manure the soil of the future
harmony for somebody else. I want to be there
when every one suddenly understands what it has
all been for. All the religions of the world are
built on this longing, and I am a believer."
What interpretation of modem life have we
had? Not one. Frederick Taylor tells us to
bind every thrust of the hand, every throb of the
bram, into an iron scheme of regularity; Tolstoy
teUs us to jump out of the system altogether.
But neither they nor our other literary and scien-
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LABOR
tific prophets have faced all th^ f.^
""d thought their way th"l T T'''
Neither pea«„.t .ysL^Zt HZ ''■
««e„e„t wiH put «reat„e. inLX" fv L^t'
n»e.y„„t„,eve^^„„,^„^^ J-JM
live. We cannot hope for any savinp word ZZ
tt.e clever .a„ip„„.„„ ^ ^, th"™ 'Z^
it win dZ^r-an.olr^^'^r'n""''^ ""''•''"■'
,•« I. J- „ «"iong us. It will not utter itself
« h»d.eraft con»,„„ities or on the lonelyf^
Modem essayists write retrospeetivelv of fh.
faT r "^ ? '^^^ °f cental darkness. Buf
Jtsed It'I°'"r °' ^ ^*^"*^ ^^'^^ « ^"^^^ -
seX :,f I r ^''°'' *^"^^^ *^" *e pos-
session of vital and effectual men, and is foLd
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alike in Cromwell and Walt Whitman. It is as
inevitably the sanction of wholesome living as joy
is the accompaniment and sanction of the crea-
tive impulse in love and art. It is not a blind
belief in what is not true. Faith is the expres-
sion of a belief in life. The last century has been
faithless not because it was dynamic and enlight-
ened, but because it was darkened and weary.
Democracy, with all its striving, has produced
thus far only three men of genius, Mazzini,
Lincohi, and Walt Whitman, and one of them
said:
Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith.
Is it a dream?
Nay, but the lack of it the dream,
And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream,
And all the world a dream.
We modems have side-stepped these funda-
mental questions of a spiritual basis for existence
because they troubled our surface life. Mean-
while we heaped up the immeasurable inner forces
of unanswered desires, unexpended spiritual vi-
tality, and frustrated impulses until they finally
came roaring through and overswept Europe.
There was a time when reUgion answered this
80
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LABOR
Th.. "'*"««' of a part of the community
mjf ror a laith which does not offend men'c
:l"? and doe, not preach auhm^:: InT™
o«^ 1 . "''^^P"^Ie of measuremenf
and «,ay«s. has ceased to exist for the ^H
the people. Thi. nU ^i- • O'
tion.K. I- °""''8«»" Penalties and sanc-
hons have been midermined by m«iem thou«h
^ yet to develop any strmgent system of ethics
Of ,ts o™ any «^e of „,.tionship which is bind
^ng. In labor a class war in sev . ,«->j- i
pression, were the ext^nf If "^^^ '"^■
,,« * xJ / ^"* °^ present-day vision
up to the hour of the war T?«,
L , ^'™'°P'»^''* '•» "'together in the direc-
^on of a materiahstic conception of life, by w.
the sole method of progress, efficiency as the end
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of being, science as answering all the needs of
the human consciousness, and scientifically di-
rected force as the final master of human aflFairs.
It is not that the young or the poor go wrong,
but that we aU go wrong in our commercial civi-
lization. We all live for sensation, for a visible
standard of success in terms of sense-pleasures.
To make life easy, to escape the old perils and
hardships, the old disciplines and responsibilities,
has become the chief aim of the modem commu-
nity.
England must make imperious demands of the
new democracy. We refuse to rest satisfied with
their improved housing, easier transportation,
better working conditions. These are only the
means to worthy living. They do not deal with
the business of living itself. If the workers of
England can create a community that "looks
good," the example will be irresistible, and civ-
ilization will respond to it in every nation. It is
only in the creation of such communities, where
the life of peace is a thing of joy, that we can
look for the end of wars. But in their community
they must find a place for the life of the spirit,
for faith, for the finer values of nationality, for
LABOR
Because mrt.at,ve in the old industrial serfdom
only bound them the tighter to the manaStT
ttey have practised "ca canny." But wh»"hey
^econt^Uaihu. in initiative wai cut the t.;'
^t and sp.nal nerve of their productivity, their
prosperity, .nd final weU-being. ThJC a«
ealled on for a wholly other set of qualitij than
those which they have developed .^^r the
stresses of wage conflict. Every' situatfeT nlw
dem^ds . different reaction from the one Z
2obL "" T "'™"°"' '^'^ ""tomatie
maehm^ every ,h„rtened process, eveiy device
of 0^7 muscuh. force that will cuUhe co^
of produchon. ,s working for their benefit. But
than the workshop. It must wreak itself on the
eommumty. and devise a wisdom of life, fulfil
ft fid ^ ""^'""^ " '^»* y««» tUl
It Jound Its answer in world war
Unquestionably in the last fifty years the labor
fenses of prmlege projected, often uncon«aously.
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by organized religion and class education, has
made a drive against the life of the mind and
the life of the spirit. Itself a vititl movement,
fighting for freedom and justice, it has included
among its enemies forces which are themselves
the very source of freedom and justice. It has
done this because these forces had created insti-
tutions, such as the established church and the
great universities, which had lagged in the move-
ment toward contini^ing emancipation. But la-
bor cannot carry on a war with intelligence and
spirituality without in the end being burned up
by their fine violet ray. No philosophy of in-
come will survive against the higher demands of
the human spirit. Labor must be willing to
work with these victorious forces, not against
them. In scorning the free play of intellect m
the reahns of art and pure research, and in scorn-
ing the efforts of the spirit to find an interpre-
tation of life leading to spiritual peace, the labor
movement has hardened and strengthened the
very materiah'sm which is its own worst enemy.
If labor holds that it is too busy with its imme-
diate emancipation to trouble with "theoretical
considerations," it will be in the position of an
84
LABOR
army which allows itself to be outflanked a
surrounded becaus*. if ;» . oui«anked and
at tho * '^ concentrated on a drive
"e„t is itself l^gety «.e p™duct „, tw ttT
one outlet into the futu« is its '^'^ ^
v«,ebes, hke a plant. It must distrust its own
orthodo^ «,d status quo, its own accepted Z
"rtceTofTi'" '"^"'' ■' " -^"^ a-^
mdustry. Only so wiU it muiifest « prineiole
of y.tal,ty charged with unfailing i^^'
F«II»« short in this, it will betray itlelf .fo^"
a su.gle unrelated, short-lived impulse, c^t^
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itself in one more limited institution, which will
become its tomb. The worker must not only
tolerate radical interpretative thinking outside
his own ranks; he must welcome it among his fel-
lows. The initiative of his leisure hours must
lead out into regions of which he has been shy
and suspicious. He must develop his own teach-
ers and prophets and artists. The men of
Ghent had already done a little of this inside their
cooperative community. The English worker
must be as glad of his sculptor and his poet as he
is of his labor leader. By the creative use of his
leisure he will justify his control over the com-
ing age. In place of smart revues and senti-
mental plays perhaps he will give us drama, which
has been an unused literary form for three cen-
turies, worthy of revival.
For one hundred years the world has been si-
lent on the meaning of life. The masters were
busy with their new devices to squeeze profits,
and the workers were too heavy with their toil
to think at all. But by these unseen moral com-
pulsions, by the values we create, every free act
of our life is governed. Everything we say and
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do i, ,hol through with the color «,d ««ent of
our conception of life. ^* "'
If Jife i. "playing jje game," what i, the game
»d Jrt»t ..e the rule,? If ,i,e consist, inCk
wTn/"" '■' "■* ««^ -« «« making and
»I»t » the method of the making? in,""'
noble,« oblige, who are the ^hte, and what i, the
nature of their obligation' o«"»ti,the
bee?;S"'t" r""- '" '"'"«• ""^ '«^"
tern,,' Wh » ■" '^ "' " "odem
The «.ppre»ion of the hmnan spirit, the «,ul.
ori^iha:*"'" °' ^P""*' ''-•'". ""d -m-
^ "^^.f "PPW ,oience, it, emphasis on rej^-
^ and .te mecham^a, detail. How faintly the
We of mdurtry has taken hold of the human
foree ttat broke through with the war. The na-
t.on, had been gathering steam for several Z-
erahon, tUl they blew t.,e lid off. AH tl« ttee
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that the hands were busy in repetitive processes
the secret subconscious mind was generating its
own forces. Suddenly men saw a release from
modem life, an escape from the machine, and s
substitute for the materialistic conception of ex-
istence, and seven nations went out with faith in
their hearts. The workers themselves were
among the first to go not because they were
herded and conscripted, but because adventure
and change and faith had returned to a very flat
world. There came an ahnost universal exulta-
tion that at last there was something in which to
believe, something impersonal and vast on which
the primal forces of emotion could discharge
themselves. The old industrial order received
its sentence then; but unless the new industrial
democracy wi-3 for us a creative peace, it, too,
is doomed. It must give us an interpretation of
life which commends itself to our nobler faculties
and not alone tc our body needs, or men will again
turn themselves to killing in order to escape the
greensickness of materialistic peace.
88
LAfiOR
BEAHONABLE 8ATIMACTI0N
" »» >t.thor of that dl.tin«u^,^Vl'''l*'"°*"»'>«il scholar.
the Worker.' Eductlonal a" «oJr. J,^ h T "' "* P'onioter. of
toe RecowtructJon Comn,ltino; S^" R m 5"^ ^^^ * •»""»«' «"
^ .nd hi. group believe 1. rl^ulrUMyTil^ Govermnent Wh.t
tendency 1„ the «kJ,| moren.ent.nH 1? J"™*'' *^ "^'e^^on of
•Wy be enacted Into jL ^'1.' ** ***" °' *''''' «>""' will prob-
.ftcment of hl. view, on the Jro'lIerof^^Cpii^^^^ "" ""•
Aiy own view about the camnui^ r ^
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Ruskin and Morris were in many respects fool-
ish medievalists, but I always think that in their
insistence that the work itself, not wages or
ownership or anything else, was the central prob-
lem, they were in the true English tradition. I
think the future historian of the English work-
ing-class moven-ynt will regard it as a calamity
that they never really converted the trade-union
movement to take theh* ideas seriously and make
them practical. Instead, the trade-unionists
were gradually led astray (as Morris was, too)
by the invasion of Marxian ideas from Germany,
which has put the whole labor movement in a
false position for a generation; for it has made
the most independent section of the most indi-
Tidualistic people in the world profess the creed
of Socialism without knowing what it is, with the
odd result that th. Independent Labor party,
which introduced Socialism into the labor move-
ment in the late eighties, is now engaged in the
far more congenial task of combating state
supremacy.
However, this is all a digression to explain
why I think the time is ripe for a new orientation
90
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LABOR
he re. thing „e must dm at The craft JL
joy m ,ts pu« f„™ i, ,„,. ,„j ^^ ™» »
tude and self-discipline Th^ ii-„ i- u
race of artists Th. ^''^ ^"S''* "" not a
I artists. They are a race of practical
M. sociable, industrious people wiCJ
^»^.l average of abihty. Such people do not
"bte satisfaction out of theu- daily work and «..
SOC.1 .tmosphe.. iu „^,^ ^^ ^^t'Sap
tte chief natural source of that satis^^^t
That IS why I believe that all these expedients rf
^«:rrLV::''°-'^ — touch
Th^ is another point, which I think is very
8«dm« the choice of employment. I believe
tt^< without any other ch«,ges at all. you
yd simply put all mispU.«l square pegs toto
enormous amount to increase "satisfactioJ!!!
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This is a problem of keeping the working-class
child at school long enough to be able to discover
its special bent, and then providing skilled voca-
tional guidance. A lot of work has been done on
these lines by Thomdike, Bloomfield, and others
in the United States, and we could do vastly more
here.
I think monotony should be met by regular ar-
rangements for varying the job. There is a vast
amount of experiment to be done on these lines.
I expect you would find that the East-Enders
who go hopping in Kent work all the better for
it afterward.
Leisure, of course, is being dealt with by the
Workers' Educational Association, but I think
we are only at the beginning of the communal
provision of leisure and of real education for the
^ adult citizen. This is one of the main functions
of a university in a modem community, and its
buildings ought to be systematically used for
such purposes in vacation time. In fact, the ed-
ucational plant, like the factory plant, ought
never to be idle.
This brings me to the poet and the artist. I
have thought a good deal about their absence, be-
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LABOR
cause I have the example of Athens constantly
in my mmd. I think the main reasons are two •
(1) That the modern world is too noisy and
confused We need absolutely to cultivate quiet.
The telephone, for instance, is a devil's invention
for heavmg up delicate growths of thought by
the roots. Most of our possible modern poets
are journalists; that is, they never keep their
poetry in till it is mature. This is speciaUy true
in the Umted States, which is a land overflowing
with imagination and creative feeling, which
hardly ever materiahzes in enduring literary
lorms. '
(2) We lose a huge amount of our artistic and
poetic material by our neglect of education in
adolescence. The reasons why modem town
hf e has not produced its Robert Burns is that the
modem mdustrial system crushes men's sph-it in
adolescence and drives them to drink or worse
from which they emerge, if at all, incapable of the'
biggest work.
I don't think we can ever hope to reform our
social system without the artist's help, because
only the artists can give our industrial workers a
standard. Democracy in industry is all very
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well up to a point, but masons and bricklayers
are no more qualified to design a house than
navvies are to decide on how a bridge is to be
built. The bridge will tumble and the house will
be ugly. This is the fallacy of the arts and
crafts movement, which seems to assume that
hard work, creative energy, and j jy can produce
beauty. But beauty has laws as sure as the laws
of dynamics, and only a combination of natural
ndowment and hard thinking can discover them.
The artist is before all things a scholar. To be a
painter or an architect is to be at school and to
have a school, as the Italians knew. But schol-
ars are rare. Let us find those we have, and
honor them and listen to them; but do not let us
flatter the workman by telling him he is equally
competent to make then* decisions, or that he can
experience the same creative and reflective joy.
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CHAPTER III
WOMEN
EMANCIPATION
To-day women are facing the same hard
fight for political recognition and industrial
status that men faced one hundred years ago.
They are taxed without being represented; they
are worked without being properly paid. No
phrase sums up the measure of their desires, for
the desire to be free is larger than any policy, and
creates its program in action. And with each
gain the desire grows greater and more definite,
and extends the program commensurate with its
own sense of life. At no moment and at no
point can it be codified, because it is under way.
And this desire, propelling the woman's move-
ment, is only one projection of a deep and po-
tent instinct that is operating through men and
women, through nations and classes. Already it
has set Europe on fire. It may yet sweep the
world. This impulse of creative force has
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weUed up from the depths of life and gone out in
many directions. As nationality, it has stirred
France and Poland and Croatia. It has seethed
through the colonies and turned the empire into
the British Commonwealth. It has touched the
labor movement into a revolutionary force. I
saw the drive at Ypres. I circled Verdun and
heard those guns. I have seen three hundred
thousand men massed in a small area, and the
regiments of relief swinging up the dusty road.
But I hear other marching feet than those, and
I know that this war is a little thing compared
with what the silent millions are soon to be doing
to this old earth. The hammers of their recon-
struction ,vill make louder thunder than any of
Picardy. The world is struggling to set itself
free, and there has been no such stirring in a
century. This movement toward freedom may
be shackled and turned to base uses, like the
forces liberated by the French Revolution; but
the vigor and contagion of the movement are as
yet beyond the control of any authority, and may
achieve a great reconstruction before they die
away.
This creative impulse the women of to-day
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»h«e with the miners of South Wales and the
poets and pe.«.nts of Ireland. The "woman
question" has been segregated as if it were a
unique and m^elated problem which could be
handled m a water-tight compartment. The
purpose of the woman's movement, both trade-
umon and suffrage, is to integrate the "woman
question" with the general movement toward
democratic control. The charge has been made
that women Uck the capacity for organization,
that they do not possess the mitive and instinc
tive cohesion that finds expression in trade-
umons. The answer of their leaders is that ah-
«nce of organization is a characteristic of un-
stalled, lU-paid, and casual labor, whether that
hbor IS male or femde. Where women have
been admitted to skiUed trades, as in the cotton
mdustry, they have formed powerful miions and
kept s^ep with the men. Failure to organize is
not a failure of sex. It is a matter of trainmg.
opport.^ty, and wages. As fast as skilled
trades are thrown open, as fast as men's trade-
umons mibolt the door, as fast as a living wage
IS paid, women respond with the same qualities
of cohesion, the same faculty of organization, the
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same understanding of the principle of demo-
cratic controj, that men have revealed.
But to be granted this chance to display capac-
ity for self-government in industry the vote is
net^ssary. The vote is necessary because wages
tend to slide down when the worker is impotent
politically. The woman worker is unable to
brmg pressure on employers and the Govern-
ment to enforce her demands. As an instance,
the leaders point to the underpayment which has
been given for over two years to many thousands
of women in government-controlled establish-
ments. Even in a period of high wages, women
workers in large numbers have been existing on
a weekly return of three or four dollars. A liv-
ir'r wage is five dollars a week, and even that is
severely low at the present prices. Granting the
difference in cost of living between America and
England, which is ceasing to be a wide differ-
ence, the recent decision of Massachusetts for a
minimum wage of $8.50 a week for the woman
gives a better standard of living than the British
Government minimum of a pound a week. To
obtain such a minimum in the sweated industries
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WOMEN
the women «y they require the vote ., a meth«l
Of bringing pressure on the Government
But they also «,y they must have the vote in
order to win the full eodpe^tion of the men's
trade-unKins. Actually, male Ubor will make a
■„!vir ™ "" ""'''"™« ™""y "ho will
mevitably beat down the wage-seale. But to
make the men see the desirability of ineluding
women m the fight for the high standard of Uv!
ing, the women must come with political power
m their hands. Without the vote, the men re-
«.rd them as a multitude of claimants, doubling
Uie cost of org«,izati„n, doubhng the number of
t1"sf of tt " T" "' ""^' '* " *" the in-
terest of the male trade-miions to welcome
women workers even if they remain unenfran-
^d. It «.» their interest because, if women
ZZT^H :' '*'''• """'*'«""* ""o^gHnized,
they will be used to scab the labor markel The
»» s tr^Je-uni^is wiU be swamped by this new
labor supply, unprotected and competing for
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jobs. To save reconstruction from such mis-
takes, the women wish the vote so that they will
be permitted to join male labor in the common
fight. The reconstruction which is under way
much of it the blind operation of natural forces'
some of it the careful program of industrial
thmkers, will be incomplete if women are omitted
from the trade-unions' councils and the par-
liamentary committees.
Great Britain and Germany were the two
nations of the modern world where the male mind
was in full control of the channels of influence
before the war. That woman's fields of activity
were church, children, and kitchen was believed
m England as in Prussia. The average man
thought woman a slightly inferior creature, polit-
ically incompetent, industriaUy incapable, men-
tally ill endowed. Unconsciously, he has wished
to keep her in the ranks of an unrepresented,
exploited, and casual-labor class. It has re-
quired an immense force of concentrated will
a wide-spread organization, and a constantly
exerted pressure of what Mr. Lloyd-George caUs
"strident nagging" for woman to win the power-
ful, but now very delicately balanced, position
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•"rause it is able to enforce it. „i v ^'
•nd economic power t^ ™.' '' '~"""'
unconscious, or mL- f „""'•?'*" *"''
tfce person 4 cCZ' °""""''™' *»™Pt «»
cmtfe o„J, 1 ?"««»« « measure of demo-
Fawoett. Zv^Z^'Ct^''^''"-
Mrs Phil,„ « / "• Pe™!*"- Beeves,
BUcr^rf ! "" *''"''»~' CJementin.
fonners. basing their proLam nf v
in^ive invest^,,, ^-™J^--°n
«nfl Tr " ^«*'"« '"^^OP condition,
and bad-home conditions. It is conLr^!7 -^
woman as an industrial worker .„drr^„r
n !.« . pmgran. of refom. that deab S
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woman in each of her two capacities. It is fight-
ing to free the narrow* suppressed middle-class
woman, to give her a good life of self-expression.
It is fitting to enable high-powered, well-
educated women to count in the life of the com-
munity, to win for them fuller representation at
the universities, a larger measure of influence in
civil service and in government committees con-
cerned with industrial conditions and community
welfare. Suffrage and trade-unions are two of
the instruments with which to achieve status
through organization.
In a matter so vast and various as the woman's
movement any positive statement of aim and
direction is likely to be disputed. It would be
knpossible that the leaders should be committed
to one single reform or set of measures. Each
group apprehends a special need with intensity.
What to get and how to get it are not seen single-
eyed by these groups with the calm concentration
of Tammany Hall. The catalogue of their
names shows the variety of their activities:
Women's Ijabor League, the National Fed-
eration of Women Workers, the Women's
Trade-Union League, Women's Industrial
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Council, Women's Cooperative Guild, the Wom-
en's Municipal Party. Catholic Women's League,
and many more. And of suffrage societies there
are the National Union of Women's Suffrage
Societies, the Women's Social and Political
Umon, the Conservative and Unionist Women's
Franchise Association, the Women's Liberal
Federation (and Forward Suffrage Union), the
Catholic Women's Suffra^ «: ociety. the Worn-
ens Freedom League, the .National Industrial
and Professional Women's Suffrage Society, the
New Union, the New Constitutional Society,
the League of the Society of Friends, the
People's Suffrage Federation, the Actresses'
Franchise League, the Society of Women Grad-
uates, the Women Writers' Suffrage League
the Younger Suffragists, the London Graduates*
Umon for Women's Suffrage, the Gymnastic
Teachers' Suffrage Society, the Artists' League,
the Suffrage Atelier, and many other organiza-
tions. In what follows I give only a massing
together of personal impressions from talks with
many women interested in the forward move-
ment. I think that every one would ratify some
part of the program. Probably none would
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authorize the full program as embodying her own
activity and desire. What I thmk the woman's
movement of Great Britain is aiming at in their
fight for status, which will be mainly waged
through the instruments of trade-unions and
suffrage, includes:
(1) Economic independence. To understand
this, we have got to clear our talk of popular
phrases. One of the portmanteau phrases of our
day is that of "women going into industry."
Women always were in industry till recently.
Idle and unoccupied women were the exception
in the older England. The Victorian Age in
terms of human welfare was in this respect a
reactionary age. The old-time industry of
women was of course home industry. When
most of the productive employments were lifted
out of the home, women remained in the home,
throwing a dead-weight on the productivity
of the nation that it never before had to
carry. The woman had always been a pro-
ducer of clothing and food, and had shared
the burden of requirements demanded by the
household. Suddenly the man was left stand-
ing alone, with the weight of a wife and chil-
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WOMEN
dren, sister and aunt, on his single powers of
production. That very recent institution, the
man-supported family, is a failure. It is a fail-
ure because the individual man alone cannot buy
the food, the lodging, and the clothing which
make the physical basis of a good life. Slum-
dwellmg, under-nourishment, and disease are the
proof that the man has failed to carry the burden
of several human beings on his single pair of
shoulders. The immense nmnbers of mmiarried
men (over three million), the restriction of the
birth-rate, are further proofs of the breakdown
of that modern and bad institution, the man-
supported family. The present well-being of
hundreds of thousands of working-men's homes is
due to the fact that one and two and even three
women are now wage-earners who before "helped
around the house." It is not alone that the wage
to the individual man has gone up for perhaps
one third of the working population; it is that
multitudes of women are earning money to-day
who before were unemployed. I found in the
Du Cros factory, for instance, that the majority
of the women were the wives and relatives of the
men workers who had gone to war. In the old
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days no one said, "A woman's proper place is the
home," meaning by the home a retreat stripped of
productive industry. The home meant a place
of manufacture, where the woman shared with the
man the burden of production.
The problem of the future is this: now that her
work is at a geographical distance from her home,
has she the vitality to carry on her activity at two
widely separated points? It was simple to turn
from the milking in the shed to the baby in the
kitchen ; but it is an unsolved problem how to rear
a family in a side street and tend a lathe in the
Woolwich Arsenal. War work for women has
sharpened this problem. It is still an open ques-
tion whether the excellent wage made by the
young mother has been a sufficient offset to the
fact of her absence from home. I have had testi-
mony that the children under five years of age,
left in the hands of relatives or friends, are better
cared for because of the increased family budget.
I have also had testimony that the actual care of
the yoimg child is not as good as when the mother
is at home. With overtime and war strain, all
former investigations would go to show that the
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WOMEN
pressure of the last two and a half year, on the
org«,.am of the woman will prove a perJne*
d-a^ to the future of the race. The hTuIg
whe« large number, have been shoveled togrthef
far from home is admittedly bad. The L«
fc^am journeys and the lack of moral oversight for
«>e younger women are also admittedly bad.
^«e « an ^mense amount of spade work to be
done before we know even the factors in the
woman question. We must study the full cu^e
of the woman's hfe, her adolescence, the chanimur
curve of wifehood and motherhood, the „S
re.ct.ons in relation to function. We havIZ^
generalising on the "nature of woman"^ente
h.™ on^y the slightest psychological basis. It i^
u»pos«b e to formulate a policy or even a pro-
«^am before we have a multitude of record^
observafons. I„ ph.ce of these we are tre^^
^iarge and noisy claims and vehement denlb
Wo.^en en masse have done their best by go.t
a ead and acting; but social students ha'vf :^^
done the,r best, because they have joined the
movement and swelled the volume of voil
mstead of extracting the data.
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To return to the list of aims in the woman's
movement. I think that women believe that
better status will be obtained by
(2) Increased sociability. It is not alone for
the economic reason that woman enters the indus-
trial world in increasing numbers and, as in this
war, joyfully exchanges the home and domestic
service for the life of the factory. Industry is
sociable. Its organization, the various contacts of
relationship, answer a craving in her nature as in
the man's. Life has become an increasingly
friendly thing dbwn the ages, and the lonely
servant or housewife misses a fulfihnent which
even the underpaid shop girl finds. That the
shop girl fails of values which the working-man's
wife possesses is equally true. It is for the
future to include both sets of values in the one
life. In our overstress of economic determinism
we are apt to forget that people do things because
they wish to, as well as because they have to. So
in all the maladjustments of women in industry
we must remember that they are enjoying the
conditions that surmund the new work— the asso-
ciations, the sociabihty— better than they enjoyed
the isolated, unproductive home. To overstate
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the injustice and suffering of the industrial
Situation shows a lack of perspective on human
history. Comfort and well-being, the margin of
leisure, the elements of happiness, are greater for
the mass people than at any other period. A
sullenness and despair have gone from the earth.
The curse is being remov--' Women are
ah-eady sharing in this bettermenc, and they have
recently elected the industrial world as a field of
activity not because the factory process or the
department-store dfetail offers in itself a worthier
work than the caVe of children, but in part
because the conditions surrounding the industrial
world are freer and friendlier than the household
conditions. There is an atmosphere of change
and growth and sociability in paid work, and a
freedom of hours when the work is done. There
IS probably smaU answer to many needs of
woman's nature in clerical routine or mechanical
process work in factory, office, and store. It is
doubtless as sorry a thwarting of full self-ex-
pression for her as it is for the man. But she
finds a partial answer to her needs, a partial ex-
pression, in the act of going out to a work of
definitely assigned hours, of money payment, of
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set periods of freedom and recreation, of associa-
tion with a group of fellow-workers, and Ihe
wider opportunity for social intercourse on self-
respecting terms with men.
And so we come to what I believe is implicit
in the movement toward industrial work for
women. I am sure that one reason why they do
not care to remain half occupied in their own
homes, and why the best of them scorn domestic
service, is that they wish:
(8) A freedom of choice in selecting the mate
—a freedom which was imperfectly granted to
the woman in the restricted domestic area where
she formerly passed her life. She has rejected
the old policy of passive waiting while she played
the role of dutiful daughter and older sister, cul-
minating in the grayness of unselected "old
maid," the aunt and nurse of other people's chil-
dren. To obtain this freedom of choice she has
stepped out into the wider arena of the industrial
world. Between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-five she is often not a determined worker
in this field. She puts her spending money into
attractive clothes and "a good time" as an in-
vestment in aiding her to select a mate.
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WOMEN
(4) An equality in the home. As a waire-
m the household. She becomes one of the two
heads of the household, and ceases to be the un-
paid housekeeper.
is ti* L";"!; l^' '"P''* "'""« <" her nature
« to be Wed The old-time home did not fuUy
meet th« need, because love is based on equality,
and she was not an equal.
(6) InteUectual and spiritual recognition.
She w,*es her mentality, the quahties of her be-
mg. to be understood by the man she loves and
to be used ,n the life of the commumty. She has
»pac.t,es for municipal housekeeping, for wel-
fare Ieg,sh.t.on, for civfl service, which wiU en-
rich the state.
(7) A community motherhood. A maioritv
of w^en will find self-expression in the Lme^
but there wJI always be large numbers who will
turn to the outer world to express then, mother-
mg .nstmct. They will expre«, it by nursing
scho^l-teaching, reform movements^ welfl^'
work, and in the humanizing of industry.
(8) Career impulse. Increasing numbers of
women find the same fultoess of life in certain
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forms of modern work that men find. They are
developing directive capacity, accuracy, a mas-
tery over large groups of facts and a power of
generalization.
Finally, we come to the most fundamental of
all the claims made by women. They wish:
(9) Birth-control. The modem woman
wishes a final voice in the decision as to the num-
ber of her ofl'spring. She refuses to place her-
self at the disposal of the man, to be used as he
sees fit. Many feminists will angrily deny that
this is a tendency of the woman's movement.
Probably no leader will state openly that this
tendency exists among modem women. But the
vital statistics of the various countries establish
the fact, and Great Britain, apart from the low-
est elements of the population, has for forty years
revealed a faUing birth-rate. One can exempt
many persons and many groups from the im-
plication that they have furthered this tendency,
and stiU be weU inside what the facts show in
stating that a powerful portion of the woman's
movement, while not openly advocating birth-
control, have nevertheless practised it, and that
the emancipation of women is proceeding to the
11«
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•ceompaniment of , falling birth-rate. The un-
Tnihngness here to state the belief on whieh one
^ .s probably the last relic of the shame of ,e.
wh.ch English and Americ«,s share in equal
measure. ^
The rektionship of worker to master has
P«sed through sUvery. serfdom, and the wa~!
nexus up to free labor. The rehtionship of
women „d man has had no such sharp stages,
« by a time division. But woman 1^
been, variously and sometimes in the single rela-
bonship, the instrument of household se4e. the
mstrument of pleasure, «,d the instrumen of
race procreation. ^ none of these relationships,
as houn, squaw, or mother in Israel, has she been
ae free agent. Her position has been assigned
her by m«.. The code of ethics governing her
conduct has been created by what man thinks
.bout her, and what he decrees she ought to be
and to produce. He has assigned the limits, the
conditions «,d the kind of her activity. As she
steps out into freedom, and. in particJar, strik
a balance between her function as worker and
ct^e,, and her function of motherhood, she pre-
sents the community with this far-reaching prob-
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lem of birth-control. In what is one of the few
great books of this century, "Why Men Fight."
I read:
Very large numbers of women, when they are suiR-
ciently free to think for themselves, do not desire to
have children, or at most desire one child in order not
to miss the experience which a child brings. There
are women who are intelligent and active-minded who
resent the slavery to the body which is involved in hav-
ing children. There are ambitious women, who desire
a career which leaves no time for children. There are
women who love pleasure and gaiety, and women who
love the admiration of men; such women will at least
postpone child-bearing until their youth is past. All
these classes of women are rapidly becoming more nu-
merous, and it may be safely assumed that their num-
bers will continue to increase for many years to come.
It is too soon to judge with any confidence as to the
effects of women's freedom upon private life and upon
the life of the nation. But I think it is not too soon
to see that it will be profoundly different from the
effect expected by the pioneers of the women's move-
ment. Men have invented, and women in the past have
often accepted, a theory that women are the guardians
of the race, that their life centers in motherhood, that
all their instincts and desires are directed, consciously
or unconsciously, to this end. Tolstoy's Natacha
Illustrates this theory: she is charming, gay, liable to
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p.».ion. until .he i, ^.rrfed; then ,he become, merely
« virtuous mother wifl,««* •«=«^ouie. merely
•ult ha. tI* . X ""^ •"*"**' "'*• Thi. re-
m,t ed that .t ,. very de.irable from the point of view
of the nation, whatever we may think of it i^ rera
" Probably common among women who are phv.icalJv
vigorous and not highly civilized n„f • ^7"*=*"^
France and England ft ZT' • '°""*"''' "''^^
Mnr„ J '='°«'»nd It 18 becoming increasingly rare
" .c,r r™/"" "■°*'""'°°- ™-'w^^^.'
■ !..« . bologicl .d™t,^; gr.du.Ily , r.ce
"II grow up .hieh .ill be inperviou.Io .U the .Lul
-.. . p..o,i ::.::■.;;' ^,^i"^ -r ""--^
side th» 1, J "'^^ "*^ "° interests out-
h.ve v.i„l7 r r '*" °' "'"™"°' domiD.tion
l>«ve v«„lj, „n,e„ lo .chieve, i, likely („ be ihe «n.l
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to enter upon a wider sphere than that to which the
jealouay of men confined them in the pwt.
On the other hand, in a recent talk which I
had with Havelock EUis he expressed himself r
wholly m favor of the birth-control movement.
He believes it will tend to do away with war and
poverty. He spoke with approval of the pub-
hcity campaign carried on in America by Mrs.
Sanger, and he showed me a copy of a little maga-
zme of birth control, issued in Cleveland. Ohio
In his Irtest book, "Essays in War-Time," he
writes:
It used to be thought that small families were im-
moral. We now 'oegin to see that it was the large iam-
ilies of old which were immoral. Quality rather than
quantity is the racial ideal now set before us
He speaks of the evil Russian factory condition, a.
the natural and inevitable result of a high birth-rate
in an era of expanding industrialism. Here is the
goal of unrestricted reproduction, the same among men
as among herrings. This is the ideal of those persons,
whether they know it or not, who in their criminal rash-
ness would dare to arrest that faU in the birth-rate
which IS now beginning to spread its beneficent influ-
ence in every civilized land."
He sees birth-control as a natural process, with
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rtctow. To ™pr„ve the environment is to
check rep^duction," «, ,h.t bi,th-e„ntro 1^
. "«• i hose who desire . high bhth-n^te
-de,™,, whether they know it of not. thet
^ot poverty. ,gnor«„e, ,nd wretched™,™."
AU tlu, concern, jhe nation within it«lf. With
the heart of the problem, the next chapter deal.
Were confronted here by the most LiCt
tendency in modern civihzation. A, yTC^
T"y " -•* »"»ec or with rhetori^ Z^s
Mosaic morahty or . c.ll„„, cymcism ; bu, .p.!
t^nt study there is little. The modern womj^
bon of Ubor, and mUon rules. «k1 .u ,he rest,
-but no other p«,blem so ,e«,:hing. so funi^
race, the nation, and the world.
Like every other living and growing thing
the wonian's movement will continue to pLkT
and we shall catch up with it only to ^T^ has'
«-ung out far ahead and over a wider s^
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THE FEMINISTS OF THE WAE OFFICE AND
ADMIRALTY
The War Office and the Admiralty are prov-
ing themselves in this war daring innovators of
radicalism. They wiU be ranked in the futm-e
alongside of the syndicalists and the state social-
ists as initiators of a new social order. They have
accepted the "new morality" of the most advanced
school of Ellen Key. and have enacted it into
legislation. What they have done is to concede
the claims of "sex agitators" and grant an en-
dowment for maternity to the women of Great
Britain. They have not paused at orthodox
motherhood, sanctioned by court and church, but
in their impetuous feminism they have legitimized
unions without the benefit of clergy, and are car-
ing for unmarried wives and mothers. They
have made the advanced program of the woman's
movement their own, and have swaUowed whole
the scouts, cavalry fringe, and lonely outposts
of sex radicalism. The British people had
largely confined the woman's question to a suf-
frage and trade-union movement, a political
movement. They had fought shy of the sex iw-
118
Pications (mate n t,, i
^ 'o„^ been LI? Brt"™!! """''"'
the audacious pio„ee^rf«! ' °"' ■"'" ''""'^
opened the f.i o^iT^'' "'^ '"''y ^-^^
--a„dtin.idX:::;hiirt*«'.«
«nd HaveCt Hl"?!,'™'^'"^ "^ 'f kitchener
>atH>™tio„.'lSi« /-''f » denial CO,.
« powerful dynami 'r ^ ^""^ *"' P™ved
'-'««e„dth~::^rrir'~'- "
the new British o«™ ' ^ '* ^'^^ ^'eated
ennn«de!tti~,;r,=''""'"'^' -"-^o-
-nore equahty it «„„ f "«*' '* '' '"' toP. the
But nXng it Irr """"« "^ "°»"'Pts.
oW orderl to e ; " " "*^'"'- °f the
Into what fresh fieldTtn^f"' ,• ' ""'*^""^-
officers and sea-lf:^; :y'S- the staff-
eominif months no observe, *i, ""* ^^
predict. TOserver mU now date
Eleanor Rathbone the f.o^ x
Of Liverpool, says of ^L ^nt "" """^'^^
feminists: '°'^**'y «°d naval
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In the system of separation allowances they have
been conducting what is, in effect, the greatest experi
ment that the world has ever seen in the State endow-
ment of maternity. At the outbreak of the present
war separation allowances were promised, first to the
wives and children, and afterwards, in succession, to
all other classes of dependents of both soldiers and
sailors. The scale is sufficient at least to place the
large majority of dependents of soldiers and sailors in
as good or better a position financially than that which
they occupied before the war. The separation allow-
ance is the possession of the wife and not of the hus-
band, and cannot be drawn by him even with her con-
sent. Thus, the allowance has, in fact (whatever the
intention of the Government may have been), two char-
acteristics which we should expect to find in a sys-
tem of State endowment of maternity, viz.: it is a
statutory payment to a woman in respect of her func-
tions as wife and mother, and it is proportionate in
amount to the number of her children.
What really matters is not that the greater part of
the upper, middle, and upper working-classes restrict
their families, but that the strata below them, includ-
ing the whole slum population, practise no such re-
striction. They multiply quite freely, and public
health authorities combine witl» private benevolence to
do just enough to keep the babies so bom alive, but
not enough to make them healthy. Hence, we are, as
a nation, recruiting the national stock in increasing
120
,'-»-:M. ^- ^. -^.^.^-.^Jl^^-, 1#.-*X&„.J
WOMEJV
.«tog .nd cutiou. p J„,° 'r ''°°' '*"' '«■
«■•' it give. .„ tt, 3^'J°'; :'■<■ "^ P"oti- it, «d
• better chance of kl^^TL^"^ "' '"^ ''"iiie.
•ver l«d before. ^ °"^ten«,ce lh«, they have
BO back .o thcv o7.uj:";";el'!;^^ "-^ •"■«• '»
<»»» been implanted !n ,1, . dwcoalent" will
«t«.. a„d .:. ".rieir. a"°.httd'° "^ ''•^'-
~":e:rj.r"- ""--"-
"■<•« .t™g„, /pot Me7a: rh*"" *" "'• '™
tugenic «iva„Uge, 1,..^™^ '' b-mamtaria. .„d
bav. grasped ^^ ^^Zr^l'^: ^ "-" ">
bearing ,„d „.„•„- ,. ." """■ 'bat the work of
l-tion of .„ ZcZ*n "hT*'"""'™ " «" «-
«.' to the e.i.tr:;xt .: "■;: "■'"'■"-'^ --
«"«.ged i„ th« occupation h«e tol rT" L'" '"
•o have their children until ,vl "^ ™'"t«.ned, and
;b»...ve,. The„oi;"ir;^";i.-"hrt'°'"''
irom somewhere. "** *° come
TheseseparationalIowancesaretIi.fi
ous attempt made by the Gov * ''"■
oy tfte Government to deal
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with the question of popuktion, the most funda-
mental question which the nation faces. If half
a million of the young men are killed or hope-
lessly incapacitated by this war, the resources of
the country are diminished beyond repair unless
a method of replenishment is instituted. Our
past method of allowing the slum population to
multiply, and forcing our better-class workers to
restrict their families, is national suicide. Eng-
lish thought is abnost silent on this question of
whence the next, generation is to come when the
number of the fathers is lessened. There is a
buzz of talk on tillage, cattle-raising, fertility of
soil, but of how to get the human product there is
little said. Bertrand Russell says:
It seems unquestionable that if our economic system
and our moral standards remain unchanged, there will
be, in the next two or three generations, a rapid change
for the worse in the character of the population in
all civilized countries, and an actual diminution of
numbers in the most civilized.
There is reason to fear in the future three bad re-
sults: first, an absolute decline in the numbers of
English, French, and Germans; secondly, as a conse-
quence of this decline, their subjugation by less civil-
ized races and the extiaction of their tradition ; thirdly,
19»
WOMEN
. revive „, ,h«r „u„b<,„ „„ . „„^^
c.v.l.«i.„„, .,.„ ge.er..io„. „, selection „, .L .h.
of the b.rth.r.te must be somehow .topped.
e J."t 1!™ '' °°'' "'•'* 'PP'"'' '° «■« "hole West-
rn c.,d...,o„. There i, „„ difficulty in discovering .
theorefcl soluUon. but there is great difficulty in ^'
he eft tT Z ."'°'" ' '■""''"" '" P-«-. bec.^»e
he effects to be feared .re not immediate, .„d the sub-
i L'T- °''°" ""* ^^'' '" ""' '" "« l-obil of
yg the,r reason. If a rational solution is ever
Idol2^ "! r' ""* " °" ''•"• "^ Germany,
adopted a ral,onal means of dealing with the matter
It would acquire an enonnoas advantage over ether
sute, unless they did Ukewise. After the^Iar it is pt-
on tl lr:^T """'"•" '"• «*-' "•<- ■"^■
rivjr TW ^ , ''™' °' "'" ■" international
ma^ry. Th« mofve, unlike reason and humanity, i.
perhaps strong enough to overcome men's objection, to
a scientific treatment of the birth-rate.
Havelock Ellis suggests the extension of birth-
TT\ 'r*"! '"""^ "*"*"*' » ""« population,
80 that the Ignorant and diseased and feeble-
minded will not breed out of proportion to the
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rest of the community. But birth-control alone,
even when generally applied inside a nation in-
stead of being applied as now only to the intel-
ligent and wholesome elements, does not meet the
international situation, which is one where the
militaristic and autocratic nations, like Germany,
Russia, and Japan, go on multiplying, and so al-
tering the balance of power. Two wars have re-
vealed that a stable population, like the French,
no matter what its national well-being and its
courage, is not in itself powerful enough to resist
the invasion of a military nation superior in num-
bers. A generally applied birth-control does not
meet the actual situation of an ever-expanding
Slav race, with the yellow races in the near back-
ground and the early future in world arrange-
ments. We cannot rely on an eternal world
peace to permit us to reduce the populations of
the democracies.
If England becomes a nation of a permanent,
balanced, static civilization of forty million per-
sons, that gives the future to prolific races, and
the liberal democratic experiment is doomed. In
America we are going this way blindly. Our
old stock is practising birth restriction and is pass-
WOMEx
f«>m souths™ and southeastern F '^'^"'^
process is working t„ «. ""J^^ '"'* «•«
^"iea. andit islLt.''''"*°'' "^ '"^ *
>»«* exerc, Jh^' ;';, j^ «>"'"" o^ ou, life is
nations we sha/hm "''"""' «^"-
trom Puritan New P„ ? ^'""' "' ""^''"rt
South as Dublintlfff . r' "'^ *^''™''-
.Migration is ttet Xa^T f-^-te.
-vesje.;w„^Tr;"ir:T's*r-
whether thoLltr::?™ "^ '"°*-' -'
provided for. AUo L .? ^'''*'" "« -'"
«on are derivatt a" " 7 ^ "' """*"'"
"d numerous child popular L "'"^
death-rate by eood „nu T Lowermg the
f-«ing birth-ralC'l'" '""■'" "^^°'«
And say„g, .-Let „„„^^
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work in the factories and professions and be
mothers at the same time" does not meet the
fact that the factory and the home are separate
places.
"More and better children" is obviously the
only solution for a Western democracy in a world
where neighboring nations are not under demo-
cratic control. So we are forced back to some
such answer as that of the feminist movement,
led by the War Office and the Admiralty. Do
not penalize by poverty the woman who gives
sons and daughters to the state; endow mother-
hood. Population is a community and state con-
cern. A nationalized motherhood is of more im-
portance than nationalized railways. The mili-
tary authorities have blazed the way by a reck-
less disregard of laissez-faire and conventional
morality. They have laid down the principle of
state guardianship for the profession of mother-
hood. It now rests with the common sense of
England — a common sense reinforced by the in-
stinct of self-preservation — to refuse to permit
the great experiment of the War Office and the
Admiralty to die away.
U6
WOMEN
BOWING THEM OUT
Ttey wm 1^ -^ '"•' ''"''"' down-stair,
process of accelerating theTL^r? ' ^'"'
«i«ad.v under way Th *""■ ^'"^ "
on the franchise ts ^t^Z^ w^I ~"""''""
evasion of woman » "'^ "*"''• ^'«' « careful
UedwrnSetftSZ"'"'^"'^
- etaing majority. ^, Z7 XZt°7
members came to voic" in rt. f **
«We to speak for "71.^ °"*°'" "'«' ""«
>"" "ervi^K Witt th! ^ """^ "•'""^^ "^ «■«
claim rit^^uT"- ^"■^'^ had the first
'''^chcon:y:^„r^-;^j'^.adition
«- should be maintained. ^^1;*?^ "^ '
euion in their absence would h. • ' ''*"
The man «t .1. T ""J"'' *o them."
time in ZLl^ 'Ti " """« ""'^«' —
then the ghostly projection of him
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is yanked back to elderly gatherings in London
to protest against alterations in the ancient way
of doing things.
So woman's fight for recognition reaches its
third campaign. In the days before the war
there was a dead-weight of opposition, made up
of ignorance, distrust of change, and sex scorn.
Then came the need of woman's help in five hun-
dred processes of industry, in medicine, and
organization. If girls made shells, steered de-
livery-wagons, cpnducted hospitals, served on the
police force, managed business, and adjusted in-
dustrial disputes, there was little cogency in say-
ing that women could not do man's work. As
one of the women who helped to puU England
through said : "Before the war women were only
the mothers of men. Now they had risen to the
dizzy heights of the makers of machine-guns."
The tide was with them, and every wind that blew
filled their sails.
Now comes the third and bitterest phase of the
long fight. "Thank you kindly, but it is time for
you to go." Bad years are ahead for the women
of England. But let no one worry unduly.
They have come to stay, and they will obtain the
lis
WOMEN
vote. During the transition period, when the
shell factories are becoming industrial plants,
when the returning soldiers will have first call on
the jobs, when the men's trade-unions are making
up their minds whether women are their aUies or
their enemies, and when Parliament is deciding
whether its ancient, solitary reign will be mo-
lasted by these energetic new-comers, the female
semi-skilled workers will have a severe experi-
ence. The unskilled workers will have the same
sordid experience they have always had. This
period of transition may extend through several
years. Gradually the creation of new indus-
tries, making use of the new automatic machinery
introduced under war pressure, will again offer
jobs to the demobUized women. Winning the
suffrage, women will have the power to enforce
their demands for proper payment, and as voters
they will suddenly become welcome additions to
the male trade-unions, and together they will con-
tinue the fight for a high standard of living for
both men and women.
About eight hundred thousand women have
recently entered industry, transport, commerce,
government employment, and agriculture Five
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hundred thousand of these are busy in munition-
making. This increase came from five classes:
first, more than one hundred thousand came from
domestic servants; second, from the ranks of out-
door workers and small employers; third, from
women remaining in industry after marriage and
to a later age, and girls fresh from school; fourth,
married women, widows, former dependents,
returning to employment; fifth, middle-class
women, society women, entering industry and
commerce. i
Many of these women will return to the home
at the close of the war, but a large percentage
have come to stay. All these have replaced the
man in semi-skiUed and unskilled work, one
woman for one man. This is direct substitution.
Indirect substitution is found when woman takes
the place of an unskiUed or a semi-skUled man
who in turn takes the place of a fully skilled man.
Group substitution is when a group of women
takes the place of a smaUer group of men, and
substitution by rearrangement when women, plus
automatic machinery, do work previously requir-
ing skilled workers. The introduction of women
ISO
WOMEN
by these methods of substitution is virtually gen-
era! throughout the trades.
In mechanical engineering, in "controUed"
firms, the money wages received on piece-work
are far above those earned by women before the
^ar. Ten dollars a week is rather common, and
mstanees of thirteen dollar a week day-rates are
known. By a series of orders a minimum wage
of a pound a week for forty-eight hours has
gradually been established.
In the cotton trade, boot-and-shoe industry,
bleachmg and dyeing, woolen and worsted, china
and earthenware industries, and tailoring, wages
have been much bettered during the war.
The same care in substitution has not been
made m agriculture, in biscuit and bread, rubber
works confectionery and sweets. The woman's
wage here has tended to increase during the war
but probably not to equal the man's rate
Summing up, the substitution of women for
men has increased the money wage for women.
In trades with definite agreements the women's
i^es approximate the men's. Where there has
been no agreement, the women's wage has been
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better than before the war. but is still far too low.
Of women in women's work, in the fuse and
powder trades, as the result of arbitration, a gain
has been made. In electrical engineering and
telephone work, except for certain cases, the rate
has changed but little. Why has woman won a
decided advance in mechanical engineering and
not in electrical engineering? The answer is that
she is organized in mechanical engineering.
Skilled groups of women workers in the power-
machine trade have won real advances. In sugar
confectionery, tailoring, and shirt-making a fair
advance has been made. But aU three trades are
closely related to war work. Where the woman's
trade organization has been strong she has ob-
tained a decided rise in wages, whether she has
been doing women's work or substitution work
in men's jobs. But the bulk of women's indus-
tries have not kept step with the increased cost of
living, nor has substitution for men necessarily
obtained the man's full rate. Munition-workers
have obtained a fair minimum promised them by
the Government exactly in so far as their organ-
izations have enforced the promise.
It is clear, then, that it is possible at any time
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to obtain . decided advance in women's wa«s in
be obt«ned when, and not until when, thetod
women h^velre'^'"^"""^"-""-'"
^^So^'^Str^"'^""'"''"'"^*'-
"eiore. What has been done with it? If
^ gone into mill. f„r tfe children, meat for a
few meals a week instead of once a ; "k W ;!
*e rooms, a cle«> blouse for the little^, I"'"
toe-show for all the children It b. ?
""^vings. IthaspurctTeds^isr;'"*"
P-ious of all things' M^S^^^^''^,
«nd a sense of well-being. TotZ^T^
the life of manv nf tk ""^ ™e »"» tmie m
been obli^T """"" ""y '""'« ""t
°fen obhged to go under-nourished a Hm-
Pmched. a little chilly, dressed in a 'b It
»tMnps them of the lower class Th! k
off the faded shawl, the d^ bETr
"fc-^.tr.wh.va^bootswIJht^;''*:-
«.em have r»t!^f"« "T ^ *•■•« «ome of
m tare rented a p,.no for the home. «,d now
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have a bit of fun and music in crowded rooms ? I
have a friend who has oversight of some thou-
sands of these workers. He told me of a girl
who bought three suits of silk underwear at
thirty-seven shillings a suit. It is nice to feel
well-dressed from the skin out, when all the days
• of one's youth one has been in the uniform of the
poor.
But he told me another thing. When one of
the workers died of consumption, he sold 228
tickets at sixpence, a shUling, and half a crown
each among the other workers for the widow and
two children. Every week has its benefit
for some family of the shop. Every week, with
an open hand, the workers pay out their money
for concert or theatrical entertainment to make a
fund for people in trouble. For hundreds of
thousands of these women the years of war have
brought the first free spending money they
have ever known, and there is something appeal-
ing, if we knew it, in the history of every shilling
they have spent.
The war has introduced grave dangers to the
health of women by night work; overtime; hot
atmospheric conditions such as occur in certain
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«»« «nd the daneers of « . "" P"«-
*he women lie flat nr. *u n ^ * ^ °"*' and
Ic institution to ZZl "^ "^ '^^ P''^
^^sa, sanitation an,? « T; *° ®**«*>^"h clean-
'-«t the old work „„T °"^' remember
'"e s«ne extZ^t ^ t^^ " T" *° «- *»
"isp^babiethat" Iom:ClT ^ ''"•
oessed forever Com™ ^^ *"^«» have
«d faney "weetrz^m^r ■'"'"■'^^•
«««« suek up one raZ^tZ "" " ^'
"omen. He house that klr,! ^. ''""'"•»
«nt» will keep ten i}^ •? '^'^four serv-
"*>'• With one. ^S :2 "d""" ""^ "-^ -•«
to go but forward *^'"' '■»■ "omen
CoSrCr:^^;:^^- ^0 one know.
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swift conversion to the trades of peace. The
great steel firms anticipate an undiminished de-
mand for their produce. What made shells will
be turned into railway supplies, for instance.
Already they have orders that guarantee the^m-
mediate future — orders from Great Britain and
Russia. They state that they will continue the
women at work and will at the same time fit in
the men. But such a report is unusual.
There are men's trade-unions, as in the in-
stance of the transport-workers, who stood by the
job until the women received the same rate of
pay that they possessed. One or two other
men*s unions have promised to make the same
fight after the war for the women. But these
instances of rendering the work of reconstruction
easy are unique, and the women must probably
make their own fight, unaided by the Govern-
ment, by the men's trade-unions, and by the em-
ployers. Unorganized and unenfranchised, they
will be the center of unrest and suffering, a run-
ning sore in industry, imperiling the standard of
living established by the men's organizations,
scabbing wages, and weakening the trade-union
movement. With votes and wide-spread unions,
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t^Z'^ '"~°» « "W element in the emanci-
What women f«» at the end of the war i, the
d.«>, mto whieh they fell at the beginning of the
war, when over a million and a half of em-
ployed women were thrown out of work or placed
Lf^^MI T- ^'"' ""^ """»« "f P"- the
semi-skJled women wiU be demobiIi«d from the
mumtiona factories and dumped upon the Ubor
market. At the same time two and a half mil-
lion men WiU leave war trades and flood the labor
market And the army wiU be demobilized.
Muchofthenew machinery createdfor war needs
W.U be a™Uable for the industries of pe«»; but
the penod of tr««ition will be long, because the
mt^V w ^.""^"^''^ *° *■" "'^ «q"-ments,
markets for the pr«luct developed, «.d capital
found. It may be two years, it may be five
years, before what has been a sheU factory be-
«.mes an engineering plant, turning out an equal
volume of production. During the time in which
the busmess ,s finding itself the women worker,
are gomg to be the last chss in the labor market
1^ Tf r* '^*^ "''' ''^«'' «mi-skilled.
and m«k,Iled worke« returning from the army,
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the men munition-workers, the partly wounded
soldiers, will have prior consideration. They
will be safeguarded by a carefully wrought
scheme of demobilization, by a properly adjusted
unemployment insurance, by a pension system.
It rests with the women, by agitation and pres-
sure, to establish for themselves a standard of
living, and to hold fast to the undoubted immense
gains they have made during the war.
The task is probably not one primarily of
creating work. The rebuilding of Belgium and
northern France, the deterioration of plant in
Great Britain, the closer industrial association of
England with her colonies, the needs of Russia
—all these give promise of a stimukted market
for British products. The task is one of organ-
ization, devising a machinery for connecting the
worker with the job, safeguarding unemploy-
ment, and maintaining the standard of living.
The new minister of labor Is arranging to breathe
h'fe into the sleepy institution of labor exchanges,
and to add eight hundred to the number. The
Government has offered the extension of com-
pulsory unemployment insurance. This meets
only the needs of some of the war workers and
140
WOMEN
meets those needs only in part. Seven shillings
a week amounts to poor relief, and does not re-
construct the industrial situation of the total
group.
Certain of the women leaders have suggested
a wide-spread unemployment insurance which
sha 1 preserve the standard of living; an analysis
of the market as to where workers will be re-
quired, with the distribution of such informa-
tion through trade-unions and employment ex-
Changes; and a supply of blank forms to be filled
up by the workers desiring future employment;
due notice of dismissal to be given by "con-
trolled establishments, and return railway fares
to be paid to those workers who have come fn m
a distance; and the use of government factories
for a continuing national work. Further, they
have suggested a system of training in new trades
for women displaced from work. Such is the im-
mediate program.
But back of it hes a deeper need. The sug-
gestion has been made for a minimum wage.
This could well be made part of the general pol-
icy, which was already beginning to be formu-
lated before the war for a minimum wage in agri-
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culture and the underpaid men's trades. Ex-
perts had agreed before the war that the primary
condition to be met was that, with the least pos-
sible delay, all workers of normal ability should
receive as an absolute minimum a reasonable liv-
ing wage. By this is meant a wage which will
enable an adult man to maintain a family of nor-
mal size in a state of physical efficiency, and
which will allow a margin for recreation. With
the prices of July, 1914, this was twenty-seven
shillings a week, aUowing five shillings for rent.
With present prices this has become thirty-six
shillings. But to establish a minimum of thirty-
six shillings a week at one stroke is impracticable ;
so the present demand is for a minimum of thirty
shillings. The minimum suggested for a woman
was sixteen shillings before the war. It is now a
pound a week (the rate gradually established by
the Government in munition factories). Some
of the experts ruled out the suggestion that a
woman should be paid as a minimum enough to
maintain a family. They argued that minimum
wages should be arranged with a view to normal
conditions, and though there are many excep-
tions, the normal condition is for man to main-
14«
WOMEN
tain a family and for a woman not to do so
This conterition wiU of course be disputed by
many feminists on the showing of the facts. But
what is clear in the matter is that there is a rapidly
increasing tendency toward a minimum wage,
and that a minimum-wage act must include
women.
Other measures of reconstruction are being
pressed by the leaders of working-women. In-
vestigation is needed as to what employments
are hurtful to a woman's organism. Reform
of the factory laws is included in the changes
that are now seen to be required. The eight-
hour day must be enforced. President Wilson
by his decision in the railway strike has enforced
a principle to which the trade-unions all over the
world must respond. Women officials are re-
quired in greatly increased numbers to safeguard
the position of women in industry. Not only
must the number of women factory inspectors be
mcreased, but it may prove to be necessary that
members of the new profession of welfare work-
ers in factories shall be appointed by the state
rather than paid for by the employer, and the new
labor ministry must have among its under-secre-
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taries a representation of women. The trade-
unions must grant admission to women in return
for monetary contributions, and the women must
have a measure of control of the machinery of the
union. The children who by means of a specicl
certificate have leaked into industrj- must be re-
turned to school. This at one sweep would re-
lieve the labor market of one hundred and eighty
thousand persons in industry and agriculture.
It is probable that all these reforms are dependent
on the winning of the suffrage.
DISOHOANIZATION
The chaos out of which woman's work is
slowly emerging wiU be revealed by a modem
instance better than by tons of generalization.
I have asked a young woman of exceUeat middle-
class family, now financially pinched, to make a
chart of her recent life-history. Better than any
"wail" it shows the cul-de-sac of the old "genteel"
occupations. It explains why she has turned to
clerical work in the War Office, paying a salary
of twenty-seven shiUings a week. It shows why
she will not return to the old job after the war.
Like a few hundred thousand other women, she
144
•-*-:«-»*— ♦.*•»— 1
WOMEN
ha. entered organized life detennined to stay.
Employers, the state, and trade-unions must
reckon with her. Her chapter of dreary episode
.8 foUowed by a chapter in sharp contrast on the
pohcewomen. who have inserted organization
into a muddled community. The two chapters
together are the concrete demonstration of the
economic and social distm-bance which has pre-
cipitated women into the central activities of the
community.
My friend's position was that of "lady help,"
the kind of work which is "woman's work," and
has the approval of anti-feminists and other re-
actionary theorists. I have preserved her ar-
rangement and phrasing.
l-l
ii-
ly
14ff
I
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
COMPANION HELP IN BOARDING-HOUSE AT
ST. LEONARDS
*90 (1100) salary a year.
1 shillings weekly laundry.
Tips, gbves, flowers, or sweets.
eaO AM.
TiOO
9.O0
lOKW
Rise.
Dust dining-room and drawtog-foom, water and wash
aU plants, arrange flower-vases and put out aU des-
sert, make servants' and own bed, tidy own bedroom.
Pour out aU coffee and tea and cocoa, help with serv-
ing breakfast
Make aU single beds, help maid with double ones
(about twenty-two bedrooms, two bouses adjoining).
Dust all bedrooms, superintend maid with aU up-
stairs work and turning out of rooms, give out all
linen, see to sorting same.
Mend all torn linen. Interview guests for rooms.
IM F.H. Help serve lunch, give out and check att beer and
stout sold.
S.-00 tm 4.-0a Free to go out or rest.
19i00
4M
5:90
6d0
7i00
lliOO
Cut up aU cakes for tea. and hand round tea with
maid in drawlng-rooa.
Mending.
Time allowed myself to dumge for dinner.
Serve soup, vegetables, and sweets.
Entertain In drawing-room, singing and accompanying
songs, arrange card-tables, talk to gentlemen In
smoldng-room.
Put out aU llgfata la both bouses, then allowed to bo
tobed. "
146
WOMEN
LADY
HELP AT RECTORY, WITH SIX IN FAMILY
AND NO SERVANT
£18 (•BO) talaiy a year.
1 shlUinc^ Uondrjr weekly.
8^ A.M.
6x30
9M
lOKW
11. -00
ISiOO u.
13:90 r.if.
IdO
2tl5
3i45
«K)0
TiOO
8. -00
9i00
9d0
Rise.
Clean big kitchen range, clean two sitting-room grates,
■weep two big roonu. and dust
Cook breakfast (hot), lay cloth, serve, dear away.
Make beds with Udy, empty toilets, sweep and dust
four bedrooms.
CmV .d prepare hot lunch, wash aU TegetaUes, just
dug out of garden, clean windows Inside which
needed doing. cIch . sUver and brass In sitting-rooms,
clean door-step every other day.
Tidy up kitchen before lunch, wash over kitchen with
mop, also sculleiy (stone flows), wash hearth.
Lay lunch and serve.
Gear lunch away and wash up, lady helping to dry np.
Time aUowed to Udy op snd have rest.
Get tea for four, clear away, and wash np.
Bathe and put little bqy to bed, get supper for same
and his little brother.
Prepare hot supper for four.
Serve supper, clear awqr, and wash vp.
Put hot bottles In four bedrooms.
Finished work; could go to bed if I liked.
1
i
t
l¥t
Hi-
i
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INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
LADY HELP AT HOUSE. WHERE NO SERVANT IS KEPT
Five In f«nUy, p.™,u. one little girl of five. twin, ten week. old.
in delicate health.
£ia (HO) Mlaiy . year.
800 A.H. Rise.
700
8:30
9. -00
lOrfX)
M^^e and take up early tea to bedroom. dr«. UtUe
Sweep dinlng.rooin, dust, and lay cloth.
Loak after twin, through breakfast, have mine a. be.t
could, also attend little girl
Help both twins get ready. n»ke beds, dust and nreen
four bedrpo^s. empty toUets. tidTbathroor uTS
three children out, babies in prai (peramST*)
I9m r.u. Br^g^chlldren hon.e. nuke botUe.. Uy luncheon on
Look after three children at lunch.
Take three childri out. have enUre charge of three.
"iXt '^""' "^ ""^ ""* "" *"* ^
Put babies and littie girl to bed, give them bottle..
Get supper and lay doth, clear away and waA un.
«^«^to babie. the rest of the evel^Uf tiS
Could go to bed. Had one twin In my room all nirirt.
^i:^Vll' '"^ ""'• bottlS^very ^ Z^
«>««««> the nigbti h^ dept verj hMj.
SiOO
4. -00
6.-00
7.-00
lliOO
148
WOMEN
NO SERVANTS
900 A.U. Rise.
900
£» (1100) salary « year.
brertifast, Ught copper on Mondays, and fill same.
Ser%'e breakfast
Clear breakfast and wash up.
Take children out to do shopping.
>«- .... S^ l^h. V d.U^ *„ .„,. ,.., „^_ „^ _^
8:90
9:30
10:00
11:00
sao
too
7d0
900
Tbne .nowed to tidy and wash myself.
Get tem dear away .„d wash np. ironing to be done.
Take chUdren for walk, get their supper.
Cook supper, Uy doth, «m1 wash up.
Work flnisbed. go to bed.
i
It
^4
^ i
■J
if
149
%
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
LADY HELP AT HOTEL IN LONDON
£96 (9190) Miarjr , year.
1 ahiUing, laundiy weekly.
7i00 A.U. Rlae
7dO
10;SO
Dust dining-room, drmwlngwrooin and hdl, lee to
flower.va.eg, help maid car^- up aU breakfasts from
basement to dlnlnj^room, raiylng in number, clear in
between, and keep Ubles quite tidy and freshly laid.
Go up-stalrs with maid, make aU beds by myself, flU
jugs, tidy batiroom, dust and sweep ten bedrooms.
1«:90 ,M. Tidy for lunch, help maid lay Imicheon doth, carry up
some trays. ' *^
laOr.u. Walt on guests at lunch.
atOO Clear away lunch and wash silver, knives, and glass.
Mend torn linen, answer front door-bell, shopping.
Lay and get tea, usuaUy two meals of tea at different
times, then mend linen until sU o'clock.
Help maid lay dinner-doth.
Bring each separate course from kitchen npnitairs. wait
on guests In dlnfaig-room.
Wash up silver, kt ves. and ^ass.
Plnlaiiedi go home.
sao
4i00
900
too
8i00
8iiS
IM
WOMEN
LADY HELP AT LADIES' HOSTEL FOR WAR WORKERS.
DAILY COOK KEPT
£l» (•«)) Mlaiy a year.
«Ma.u. Rise.
6i30
7dO
ffdO
^'1?', *~ .!I!!l "'"'' "^^ """^"K *»•• ^y break-
b"tter *^* "^ '°"'" P***" "' '""'* "<*
First breakfast for seven.
R^ have breakfast, serve and wdt on every one,
hand cups round.
Empjy dl toilets, flll all jugs in fifteen bedrooms,
cubicles mostly, sweep and dust bedrooms, sweep
•tain (four flighto). ^^ *^
1300 St. Lay luncbeon-cktths.
1M9.U. Serve luncheon and wait on twenty people.
»ao Clear away luncheon.
Wash up silver, ^ass, and knives.
Time aOowed for rest and to tidy mysdf.
Get tea for seven people.
Wash up tea-things.
SiOO
4«0
6(00
Lay ch>th for twenty for evening meal; meal larti tiU
r.u.
»iOO Wash up.
lOiOO Ck> to bed.
•ii
161
INSroE THE BRITISH ISLES
LADY WAITRESS AT AR»IY PAY OFFICERS' MESS
Ten shillings Ml.iy . week. Had to p.y four shUllnp a week for
bednxnn out of it| only to work from Monday to Friday.
•KX) A.M. Help the cook prepare aU puddings, rub bread-crumbs,
chop suet, etc, peel aU vegeUbles, three or four dlf.
ferent sorts.
nao Put up several big hospital tables, arrange all chairs,
etc, carry down everything for cloth from kitchen
down a yard, with no protection from rain or snow,
to a hall let for the purpose.
1H)0 »j|. Cariy down aU courses for hot lunch, clear away every-
thing, baok again to kitchen, wait on oiBcers at lunch.
SiOO Sweep haU and cloak-room, remove everything from
hall, take down Ubles. sweep kitchen and passage,
help cook with all the washing up.
6i00 Usually finished { pay breaks.
16f
WOMEN
TEMPORARY HELP AT A LODGING-HOUSK at
BRIGHTOX. WHERE MAm IS S
Seren shilling, sixpence (|1.80) weekly .„d tip^
•«30 A.M. Rise.
"~ "^'ut' Z ""'' *" '"' "^' P~P'«' •»» -ter to c-rrr
^^t;.'!^'"^ bredcfwl.. make beds with l.dy. empty .11
toilets, sweep ,„d dust seven or eight bJjooZ "^
9i00
SrflO
S4A
9KX)
lOHW
Wash up silver, knives, and glass.
Time allowed to wash and Udy.
10*0 Finished, go to bed.
Seven shilling and sixpence, and "flnid^d, » to h«l» »i-
Woimm's Movement is in thow wonb. ^^' r> to bed -the
9M
7M
'
I
ii tti
lif
m
158
IXSIDE THE BRITISH ISI.ES
fl
England's policewomen
Long before the war the women had proved
their case, but the door remained bolted. It was
the war that broke down the door, and let a rush
of women through into industries and profes-
sions. In a few months they altered the con-
sciousness of England and won their spiritual
freedom. The vote, industrial equality, control
of their Ufe, will inevitably follow. There are
five hundred thousand of thtm making shells.
An entire military hospital has been placed in
their control and under their exclusive manage-
ment—doctors, surgeons, orderlies, messengers,
superintendents. That was done by the War Of-
fice, which has never been a rash or radical innova-
tor in Enghmd. The War Oflice is now issuing
requests for women doctors. It finds them as
steady in emergency, as delicate in nice manip-
ulation, as their brothers. The old cant about
physiological barriers has been broken down by
the pressure of a million casualties. Women are
driving heavy trucks, running elevators and
trams, even managing places of business, includ-
ing a bank.
154
. I».WM. <|« , i. y .
B« «k-«» *^
WOMEN
Aa yet it is in large part the same miUions of
women who were earning wages before the war
that have taken possession of the new activities.
Probably not more than five hundred thousand
women have stepped over from idleness into the
day's work. But half a million is a large in-
crease, and that half-million are only the van-
guard of the army that wiU be conscripted by
England's need of every adult for increased pro-
duction. The significance of the change does not
lie as yet in the number of previously unem-
ployed women who have entered wage-earning
occupations. The significance lies in the new
professions and the processes of industry which
they have taken over. It Ues in the work once
closed to them, which is now opened for aU time.
A measure of freedom has been won that never
existed before. Their right to play a part in the
industrial and professional world had been chal-
lenged. Their presence in the modem economic
world had been resented. Inside of two years
woman has ceased to be a question, and has
become an accepted fact.
It is a mistake to think that the hundreds of
thousands of women who are helping to carry on
10f
m
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ll'i
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
industry while the young men fight were or-
ganized and engineered by new-comers, that a
spontaneous uprising took place. The women
who led the new movement into hospitak, muni-
tions, the tram-cars, and the poUce were the
seasoned executive women who had long been
successful wage-ea^-ning workers in nursing and
school teaching, women who had long fought for
social reform in labor conditions, housing, and
the care of children. The amazing alteration
in the economic position of women in England is
not the work of amateurs. It is the sudden
ripening of an immensely laborious, painfully
slow growth.
Opponents of the woman's movement have
watched with a keen eye for a disintegration of
the home resulting from the entrance of numbers
of "home" women into munition factories. Neg-
lected children, shoddily dressed and poorly fed,
were what they feared to find. The showing has'
been aU the other way. The reports from Wool-
wich, for instance, show that the school-children
are better nourished and better clothed than in
the days when the mother was a hack in the homt
over a wash-tub. A wage to a mother of £2.10
106
WOMEN
has not wrecked the British lower^lass house-
hold, but has improved it.
Radicals have played the same part in the
woman's movement that they have played in the
labor movement. It is not that the mass agrees
with them or likr them or follows them; but
they have clarified and given a coherence to
vague subconscious desires of an inarticulate
community. They have presented a sharply
etched program to a blind urge. Their program
is:
Votes for women.
Economic equality.
An open field in the industrial world.
Those clear-cut demands give 'k-&mimB^- jms^c^hb
WOMEN
the house in a dirty and diseased condition were
taken care of by the policewomen and handed
over to the inspector. Before the picket could
enter, the woman escaped by means of a trap-
door which connected with three other houses.
These peace patrols have dug themselves into
the community. One of them is a probation
officer. The p iiee use her to interview women
who ure bein "summoned." There was an
entire city street in a row, like one of our before-
the-war Southern vendettas. Half the street
had summoned the other half to court. The
policewoman marched the whole street back home,
and settled the case out of court.
A constant protective watch is kept over the
lives of children. From time to time reports
have reached the policewomen of yowig children
of school age working excessive hours di^g the
school week. It was decided to approach the
head-masters of several schools who welcomed
help m the matter and promised detailed reports
In one district they found twenty-four paper-
boys with hours varying from 7% to 25 per school
week. The beginning hour in the morning seems
to be from 6 to 6:80 a. m., so that the majority
16A
: n
11
E-^}^a'^^-.f
• ' ---*.!V«.^,
'•'J^lxT'
' IS-"'-'.**-
"■» iH^r':'!S^»i'a?3f=i.
i!
!•: ^
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
of these children will be working without proper
attention to food and habits. Many may go to
school without any regular breakfast. Of these,
two are eight years old, one getting up at six
o'clock, the other at 6 :80 a. m. ; one of them work-
ing 12% hours, the other 7% hours.
Twenty-two boys take milk around. Their
ages vary from 8 to 18, their hours from 7H to
12H per school week, beginning work from 4:80
to 6 o'clock A. M. One boy of 8 works 20 hours
a week beginnihg at 4:80 a. m. Two boys, 18,
ouse-boys, work 7% hours. Two boys work in
. al-yards; one is 18 and works 19 hours per
stfiool week, beginning at 8 a. m.; the other boy,
a^d 11, helps his father, and works 5 hours per
ti»iOol week.
The question of child-labor presents itself as
one of the root probkms of the hour for local as
well as for national authorities. The police-
women see some of the results of boy fatigue and
malnutrition in the listless, uninterested young
people standing and loitering about, ready to
follow after any new excitement.
There are towns where no by-laws exist reg-
ulating the employment of children under
166
WOMEX
fourteen. The question has been before the
education authorities for many years, and the
enforcing of certain drafted by-laws is likely to
remain in Hatm quo owing to war conditions.
Employers prefer children to elderly labor, and
many parents regard their offspring as financial
assets. The work of these women guardians will
result in a better protection of child life, because
they have exposed the evil conditions. The
policewoman is an official mother. She does not
use physical violence. She Ulks with the boys
about gambling and smoking and thieving. She
warns the girls. There are no fixed posts.
Often she covers an area of two and a half miles,
as in the borough of Paddington.
War has let loose the high spirits of boys, and
some of them, with the added stimulus of Amer-
ican films, have taken to the life of pirates.
London streets are a tumbling sea of adventure,
where grocers' carts are the helpless frigates to
be manned and pillaged. The new women
"oops" pull the boys off the carts, and advise them
to let the tea and jam travel on unmolested.
This strange excitement of war touches the
imagination tUl it sees placid planets as the prod-
167
L^
Wi
^rnitekis^iK-^
■^m^ime'^
itp
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
uct of Grennan chemists. During one of the
recent Zeppelin raids on the east coast, police-
women working in the town were instructed by
the authorities to patrol the streets and do their
best to prevent panic or crowds collecting. On
coming upon a knot of excited people at a street
comer the policewomen assured them that there
was no further danger, as the Zeppelins had left
and that every one could return home in safety.
Some soldiers remonstrated, and said it was cruel
to ask the women to take their children home.
They pointed to a light in the sky, which they
declared to be a bomb dropping. The women
wept and begged not to be sent home. The
policewomen calmed them, explaining that what
the soldiers saw was no bomb, but the pUnet
Venus rising in the sky, and persuaded the crowd
to disperse quietly and the parents to take their
tired children home.
All this soothing, daring work results from
stiff training. These women go through two
months of instruction in drill, first aid, special
legal acts relating to women and children, and
the procedure and rules of evidence in police
courts. They arc shown how to stand, to walk,
1«8
■wm*^»'^ =^'^.
WOMEN
«d attain dignity of carriage, for a .louchy
wonumc«Tic8 no authority. They are Uught to
talk clearly and avoid mumbling, so that their
e^dence wiU convince the court. They are told
off to bring in reports on a tour of the streets:
Come back and teU what you have seen." This
develops accuracy and power of observation.
P^troUmg m the public parks calls for patience
to endure the monotony of long, watchful wait-
mg. keen insight to detect undesirable dtiiens
who will endanger children at play, psychological
•kill m knowing the menUl criminal, who works
by stealth and loathes publicity.
Street work demands knowledge of the social
features of the district, what to do with diseased
and sick persons, where to send drunks. The
•uthonty must be broad-minded, using a warning
word mstead of arrest wnere the offense is petty
Oversight in factories requires an officer type
ofwoman who will keep the women smart and
good tempered, who will deal justly with grum-
blcs. and never bear a personal grievance.
The policewoman is different from the rescue-
worker, the "missionary." and the social worker.
She It a practical executive who can not long
169
I
• '"' *■ -"■*'^a-j -«»t - ,« / _■
i
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
delay with the one case, for there liet on her beat
a mile of streets with a dozen other cases. She
must show self-control and the willingness to
hand over the problem to other agencies. Where
her function ceases, there the mission of the social
worker begins. In the ranks are nurses, medical
women, school-teachers, women frcxn govern-
ment service, sanitary inspectors. Several ma-
trons of infirmaries and hospitals are making
good head officers because they are accustomed to
leadership. The ages of policewomen run from
twenty-five to forty-five. Between thirty and
forty is the best age, because the woman is self-
reliant, has conquered her hysterias, and is in
full command of her powers. These women
have succeeded because they have known how to
avoid interference with the province of the men
police. They have practised a division of work.
There was a city where a particular wooded lane
had been a hanging-out place for fourteen years.
Constables and the bishop had been powerless to
alter conditions. Four policewomen walked the
length of it, spoke to thirty-six couples, waited
with backs turned till they had accepted the sug-
gestion, and cleaned the place up.
170
• WOMEN
"Which of you is the mother of the baby in the
pink cap who has been left outside in the rain for
twenty minutes?" asked a pohcewoman of a
group drinking in a public house. The mother
h*d to come, because the opinion of the other
guests was with the officer.
Two girls were reported by the police author-
itict to the policewomen as missing, one of them
for fifteen weeks and the other for over five, and
were suspected of living in some fields near a
large camp. The policewomen on bicycles
searched for them for two days, and finally dis-
covered them in a filthy and starving condition
and took them back to their parents. They have
since applied to the policewomen to put them
in touch with a home which deals with aucb
cases.
England is a mixed democracy much Uke ours,
with fine elements and ignoble elements. But
these dear-eyed women of the pohcc force, like
the nurses and welfare secretaries, gave me an
assurance that an immense, unUpped resource is
there to renew life after the wreckage of these
years.
War has discovered them. Peace must con-
171
.
h
t .?
IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)
//
//
^
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i\
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I <
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
cratic. But ub6 that method for ten or twelve or even
fifteen years untU the political tradition of self-gov-
ernment had become fixed and Ulster is reassured.
For the Irish question, we need a psychological solu-
tion, because in the years of dissension the people have
tied their souls into knots. I am sure the Ulster men
would not use the power of veto against national in-
terests for the period they were given it.
Sir Edward Carson has said that what Ulster
feared was not bad law-making. **What we do fear
is oppressive administration." They fear that public
offices will be packed with friends of the party in power,
that the policy of "to the victors belong the spoils"
will be practised. It is necessary to reassure Ulster
that all public posts would be removed from jobbery,
and that merit should have its open chance of win-
ning promotion. The way to do this is to make all
government positions, all posts paid for out of public
moneys, whether under boards of guardians or county
councils, part of a national civil service, so that job-
bery on account of religion or politics would be im-
possible. Along these lines of concession and balance
of power I do not regard the special Ulster problem
as insoluble.
England should make the Irish question a national
question with herself, not a party question. When-
ever war is on, a coalition government is formed. So
it should be in dealing with Ireland. Ireland should
S0«
%
IRELAND
be treated by a coalition of forces in England, con-
sidering its Irish polity as a national question. If
Ireland were so dealt with, the opposition of Ulster to
settlement would lessen.
The present method of splitting Ireland and mis-
governing it has led to a reduction of its populate- h-
one-half in seventy years. That is bad for ireu.^
and it ; bad for England, because Ireland's exiles in
other countries develop bad feeling against England.
There are only two ways to deal with Ireland, either
complete union, with absolute equality, or else com-
plete Irish control of purely Irish affairs. The Home
Rule bill as passed would not settle the question, be-
cause it does not grant to Ireland th^ fixing of taxa-
tion and the trade policy. Whoever has financial and
economic control of a people fixes the character of the
civilization of that people. There is no British reason
for passing a Home Rule biU unless to settle the ques-
tion. Either England must control Ireland by making
Irish people into English people in sentiment and cul-
ture, or else she must grant to Ireland the status of a
dominion. England must retain control of mUitary,
naval, and foreign policy. Lei Ireland send repre-
sentatives not to the British Parliament, but to the
new imperial pariiament, which is certain to be formed
after the war. Let her pay her contribution to im-
perial defense prepared by assessors appointed for
that purpose by Great Britain and the dominions.
S0»
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!':•
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
What we should aim at is a kind of Sinn Fein impe-
rialism, a complete control of internal affairs and a
participation in the empire's polity.
The feeling for complete independence had gradu-
ally been dying down to a romantic feeling such as
Scotchmen feel for Prince Charlie. Then came the
Ulster and Nationalist Volunteers, the recruiting cam-
paign, the rebellion, the executions, martial law, and
the old feeling rose up again. It has become an in-
tolerable nuisance not to have these political questions
settled. I think myself too much importance is at-
tached to the location of government, and I have my-
self more hope in voluntary economic and cultural
movements than in acts of Parliament. But with the
present political unrest, there is no fixed policy in the
economic life of Ireland. Business men wish a fixed
policy. They wish to have more certitude in business
matters. If Ireland was contented, it could turn to
the problems of internal government. We have over
two thousand national teachers paid less than thirty
' pounds a year. The money has been put on the con-
stabulary, which is over-manned. A government has
its choice of leaving people ignorant and spending
money on a police force to keep them in order or of
educating them and cutting down the constabulary.
England plumped for the police. No country can gov-
ern another country properly, and never has any
country done so. Countries can unite with another in
S04
tl
IRELAND
a federation, but no country can rule another. You
see the attempt made by Germans and Russians in
Poland. But it can only succeed by exterminating the
people governed. The plantations in Ireland were an
attempt at that.
In the last one hundred years Ireland lost the power
to speak Gaelic. Only 600,000 of her people speak
the language to-day. And yet Gaelic literature con-
tains the dreams and soul of the Irish people for two
thousand years. It is one of the oldest and most beau-
tiful literatures in Europe. That lost race memory is
a loss in the dignity and spirituality of their life.
Imagine the Greeks without Homer. So it has been
of late with the Irish in the loss of their national lit-
erature—legends and poetry. The Irish do not read
English literature nor have they accepted English cul-
ture. That ancient literature of theirs ran like an
underground river for the last century till it came well-
ing up again in Standish O'Grady. Stephens, Yeats,
and Synge. There is a reshaping of legendary tales,
and Anglo-Irish literature will be powerfuUy affected.
Gaelic schools have sprung up. O'Grady and Synge
knew Gaelic. Padraic Colum knows it. Stephens can
read it. MacDonagh and Pearse knew it. The Celtic
spirit of Ireland is emerging in the poems and tales
of modem Anglo-Celtic literature which are as accept-
able to Ulster as to the rest of Ireland.
A. E.'s solution, then, is to clear the political
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question by coilcession and guaranty, to forget it,
and to get down to business — ^the business being
cooperation. Is this the dream of Ireland's most
glorious dreamer, or is there salvation that way?
I left Mr. Russell, and stepped down-stairs in
Plunkett House to the executive offices of the
cooperative movement.
"While the gun-running was on," said one of
the cooperative organizers to me, "our move-
ment was including both parties in the fight.
Carson's men were arming themselves, and the
Volunteers were arming against them. But
both sets were working together in our society.
Each had their guns buried with which to shoot
the other, but they were busy in one creamery,
working in harmony, and pooling their economic
life. They differ politically, but their interests
are one."
poveety: the heal ibish question
The real Irish question is poverty. Agricul-
tural labor receives less than three dollars a week.
The tenant and owner and laborer, whai av-
eraged up, receive only $8.50 a week. Even the
brief and dubious money gains of war-time are
St06
IRELAXD
not an oflfset for depreciated "plant," and the
stock of cattle and equipment of agricultural
utensils are steadily depreciating in these days of
an increased export trade. The slums of Irish
cities are among the worst in Europe. Dublin
is known as the "one-room city," because over
sixty thousand of her people are congested.
Industrial labor is underpaid. Preferential
through rates on the raiboads have given Irish
markets to English producers. Many of the
farms are too small for economic working, and
what there is of them is not good enough soil
Much of the best tillage remains in the hands of
the landlords, and is used for grazing instead of
for the production of crops. The hope of Ire-
land lies in trade-unionism, education, and coop-
eration. Ireland's real problem is to increase
production and distribute prosperity.
I found Ireland stimulated by the report that
Henry Ford was planning a factory in Cork.
He w-s said to have taken an option on a race-
course, to plan the diversion of the river, and to
guarantee a minimum wage of twenty-one shil-
lings to his workers. The story ran that he had
visited his mother's birthplace in Cork, and out
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of the personal tie grew his plan to revive the
industrial life of Ireland. If the very rumor has
given cheer to an underpaid population, how
much new hope will flow in if Irish-Americans,
whose hearts bleed for Ireland, will invest some
of their money in Irish agricultui'e and industry!
A few million dollars invested where their heart
is will relieve a pressure on Ireland, which to-day
is resulting in bad housing, under-nourishment,
overwork, and an undue proportion of pauperism.
The real Irish question is not solved by political
wrangling and chronically jangled nerves inside
the island, or by hot temper at long distance.
The Irish- Americans who have planted the tradi-
tion of Ireland's ^vrongs in the United States
are two generations out of date. If they would
get into touch with young Ireland, they would
find they were chewing over stale grievances
which the march of thought has long passed by.
They are as much out of date as Marxian so-
cialists. The present campaign is based on
concrete issues, requiring a record of facts, and
organization. American money is not needed
for nationalistic propaganda. It is needed for
agricultural and industrial development. Our
£08
IRELAND
rich Irish-Americans can do an immense service
to Ireland. They can aid to set her free, but not
by parliamentary debates, speech-making cam-
paigns, and pitiful, abortive rebellions. They
can set her free by standing security for land
improvement, better housing, the purchase of
machinery and fertilizer plants.
Had the Irish question been settled (by the
Irish question I must insist that I mean not the
comic-opera politics of gun-running, but the
agricultural and industrial redemption of Ire-
land) , this war would have been an easier task for
England. The submarine blockade would have
been a minor factor. Ireland's natural market
is England. England is on an industrial basis,
and needs the food-stuff of an agricultural coun-
try like Ireland. Every mistake England has
made in the long past in Ireland has cost her
severely in money and lives in this war. A
unified, economically prosperous Ireland could
have fed England, and left her free to raise her
army and make munitions, and the submarine
would have been powerless to touch one shipload
of produce plying across the Irish Channel. As
it is, England has had to buy her supplies from
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several nations, and the long sea-haul has been
over open waters where the submarine has sunk
an ever-growing number of food-ships. By
postponing the settlement of Ireland's sUtus as
an autonomous nation inside the British com-
monwealth, England has lessened her own food-
supply and lengthened the war. As long aa
Ireland is politically in a fever, she refuses to
settle down to her real job of mastering the con-
ditions of her own life, which will be determined
by better land and more land, better methods of
cropping, fertilizers, machinery, labor supply,
organization for producing and selling, and rail-
road facilities. There would be little value in
writing one more contentious article on Ireland.
So with the charges of a national incompetency
and inefficiency, which those who deny self-
government to Ireland allege as the ground for
their denial. They find this incapacity due to
three defects in Irish character: laziness, a tend-
ency to dissension, and a tendency to grafting.
They say that the Irishman is not a confirmed
worker, that he loves to wrangle, and that he
favors his friends at the expense of his com-
munity when he is in political office. The Irish
no
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IRELAND
wply, "the penal laws, the ascendancy system, the
union with its anti-Irish 'National * schools, its
•West Briton* ideals, martial law, these are the
causes of that national incompetency of ours."
One remembers in this connection the famous
pasfuge of Graham Wallas in "The Great
Society" on the rights of little nations:
Athens during the last quarter of the fifth century
«. c. was not well governed; and if the British Empire
had then existed, and if Athens had been brought within
it, the administration of the city would undoubtedly
have been improved in some important respects. But
one dota not like to imagine the effect on the intellec-
tual output of the fifth century b. c. if even the best
of Mr. Rudyard Kipling»8 public-school subalterns had
lUlked daily through the agora, snubbing, as he passed,
that intolerable bounder Euripides, or clearing out of
his way the probably seditious group that were gath-
ered round Socrates.
The time for argument on what Matthew
Arnold called "barren logomachies" is past. Ire-
land will soon receive her independence in the
British commonwealth. The time for action has
come, and that action must proceed out of Irish-
men in productive agriculture, efficient industry,
and clean and tolerant government.
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IRELAND
It would not raise the price of ;.n /thing tU
farmer has to sell, or increase the piotluc^ of an
acre of his land." "The long war over the land,
which resulted in the transference of the land
from landlord to cultivator, has advanced us part
of the way, but the land acts offered no complete
solution. We were assured by hot enthusiasts
of the magic of proprietorship, but Ireland has
not tilled a single acre more since the land acts
were passed. The welfare of Ireland depends
mainly upon the welfare of the Irish farmer."
So it is worth considering his case in detail. A
clear statement of it is given by A. E., who is
one of the three men at the head of the cooperative
movement. He says:
The small farmer is the typical Irish countryman.
The average area of an Irish farm is twenty-five acres
or thereabouts. We can imagine to ourselves an Irish
farmer with twenty-five acres to till, lord of a herd
of four or five cows, a drift of sheep, a litter of pigs,
perhaps a mare and foal: call him Patrick Malony and
accept him as symbol of his class. ... He is fruitful
enough. There is no race suicide in Ireland. His
agriculture is largely traditional. His butter, his
eggs, his cattle, horses, pigs, and sheep are sold to
leal dealers. He might be described almost as the
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primitive economic caveman, the darkness of his cave
unillumined by any ray of general principles. . . .
The culture of the Gaelic poets and story-tellers, while
not often actually remembered, still lingers like a fra-
grance about his mind. We ponder over Patrick, his
race, and his country, brooding whether there is the
seed of a Pericles in Patrick's loins. Could we carve an
Attica out of Ireland?
Before Patrick can become the father of a Pericles,
before Ireland can become an Attica, Patrick must be
led out of his economic cave. . . . Our poets sang of
a united Ireland, but the unity they sang of was only
a metaphor. It mainly meant separation from an-
other country. Individualism, fanatically centering
itself on its family and family interests, interfered on
public boards to do jobs in the interests of its kith
and kin. The cooperative movement connects with liv-
ing links the home, the center of Patrick's being, to
the nation, the circumference of his being. ... I be-
lieve the fading hold the heavens have over the world
is due to the neglect of the economic basis of spiritual
life. The cooperative movement alone of all move-
ments in Ireland has aspired to make an economic soli-
darity in Ireland.
The social and economic service of coopera-
tion is this: it enables farmers to own and
use modem machinery, to buy feeding material,
manures, and seeds, and to construct fertilizer
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IRELAND
pUnts .t W eo,t. sUnCrd quaMty, ^d on l„ge
^™ It ffves control over m..K.b,.„d,Wty
miprovM the transportation facilities for produce
It sdb to advantage through its own .^Ts
mtead of through a long ci«uit of middl^n
It «.ves a system for borrowing money at a lower
mt^rest and for a longer term. It p„i a. ZZ
.IrifT "1 1" " """^"'«' ""O »ter-
a^on of Ideas, leading to close, hard economic
th«*mg, mvention and discovery, and a wX
sp:^ mtellectual fertilization. I„ „ne pUee
where a creamery was nearly started, the coflper-
ators report, the whole scheme was destroyed by
*e «mouncement of a leader of public opinion
that every pound of butter must be made on
National principles or not at aU." But the
work of uncoiling ancient griev«,ce from co„!
ai wUL You will see in a single village the
cooperafve societies supplying seeds, m^ures,
and m«:hmery to the farmers, establishing
«ed,ls, marketmg egg, gathered by the women
runnmg a station to improve the breed of poul-
tiy, conducting a knitting industo', and selling
grocenes and provisions.
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There comes a limit of saturation, and coop-
eration has probably sucked up as many peasants
as its present capacity admits. That capacity
must be increased if cooperation is to increase
in the next twenty years at the rate of the last
twenty. More and better land, now held by
landlords for grazing, must be freed for tillage.
The existent railways must provide better facili-
ties for farmers. A system of spur railways to
mine-pit heads and of light railways through
neglected districts must be established. The
village of BelmuUet in western Mayo is forty-
six miles from a raih-oad. There are anthracite
seams a few miles out from Dublin. Seven miles
of light railway, at a cost of $1,250,000, would
connect the mine with its market, and reduce the
cost of that coal from forty-three or forty-five
shillings to twenty-five shillings. One of the
young Irish leaders says, "Any extensive work-
mg of Irish coal or copper is contingent on the
assent of the vast British mining interest to Irish
competition." The creation of machinery and
fertilizer must be undertaken on a larger scale.
In short, production must be increased by the
application of capital. Can that capital be
S16
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found ? Will i, be by Irish parii^entary „a„,
by t.sh taxation. „r by f„„ig„ i„ve Jeror
^tt the cooperators themselves be willing to lay
a -de a percentage of their profit for the purple
of extending the movement tiU it has efcd
.11 Ireland? A solution must be found for a
movement either grows or dies.
The present situation is abnormal. The
t.ma^ value of Irish exports to Great Bri^t
wli B f °T. '"" '■""''""* «-"«- dollars-
h™ fed H ^ '"" '^' "^^8^'' "•»"' one
hundred and forty milhons. A elear Mi„ .„
m-y Of sixty milhon dollars has flowe^Tn :
Imh farmers. Fish, butter, and eggs have at
o.he:rr;hi:-:o:fdtve'rentr'' "-
jn^ish agriculture were devel.pX~:Z
Ireland sends live stock and the produce of
hve stock to Great Britain Sh. j i^
m,,«™ u """"Win. She sends sheep and
mutton, bacon, ham, live pigs, poultry, butter
.nd eggs Next to the production of ii;e st<^k'
the marketing of butler U th. r„ ,. •
industrv Th. f """," ^^ """St important
maustry. The farmer has received increased
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prices to account for most of this gain, but the
production also has been somewhat increased.
Some of this extra money has gone for increased
cost of production, feeding stuffs, and fertilizer.
The rest of the money has been banked.
"The last two years are the most phenomenal
in Ireland's history," says the department of
agriculture, and they tell me that "the farmer
has come off in a gold coach" during these war
months. Plunkett House, headquarters of the
cooperators, tells me that there is undoubtedly
more money return, but that the farmer's live-
stock has been sold, and must be replaced, and
that his plant has deteriorated, so that he is n't
any better off in productive wealth. Such a
thing as agreement on any matter in Ireland is
not obtainable in the present atmosphere of pas-
sion. It is probable that the law of gravitation
violates the Sinn Fein principle of self-help, and
that the ethics of the gospel are under suspicion
in four counties of Ulster. "What too many
people in Ireland mistake for thoughts are feel-
ings. Passion has become dominant in our pol-
itics." But in the end Ireland must be ruled not
by rhetoric, but by "first-class thinking on the
218
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IRELAXD
fife of the countryman. The gemus of rural hfe
has not yet appeared."
The Irish situation is the heritage of landlord-
"«n. usury, famine, land legislation, grazing, emi-
^.t,on. When these had operated, Man^™
reduced m popuUtion, and the good land wa, l"
out ,n vast grazing tracts, and the poorer land
«e called congested districts. The congested-
districts board exists fni- «,- _ -
«,„. "" purpose of cutting
tho« areas up into holdings, enlarging existing
hoWmgs td, they ^^ . ••payingZ.ositio^"
2 ** of uneconomic, making r«.ds, and creat-
mg new holdings. This is a long job, and will
consume many years before completion. It re-
qu.r« both time and money, and there is a short-
age of money, as the British Govenunent has shut
down on the extension of financial help
"Counties like Meath, with the richest hmd in
Ireland are under grass and virtuaUy destitute
*he total cultivated area of Ireland is 2,400,-
MO acres. In pasture and grazed mount«n
land there remain 12,300,000 acres. Livestock
219
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is to crop production as four is to three. There
were 500,000 acres in wheat in 1851. In 1914
there were 86,000, a decicase of 92% per cent.
The total decrease in tillage has been seventy per
cent. Eleven per cent, of Ireland is now arable
land, and sixty-four per cent, hay and pasture.
Eleven per cent, of France is hay and pasture,
and fifty-two per cent, arable land.
The land acts are permissive, not compulsory,
and the landlord can refuse to sell. He does so
refuse, and continues to hold the land for graz-
ing. Compulsory purchase was proposed in a
bill, but the landlords' convention rejected the
bill, and the British Government was unwilling
to press a contentious measure.
While I was in Ireland the Earl of Meath had
his estate agent write in reply to a request that
he allow his uncultivated land to be parceled out
for the production of food:
His lordship is in sympathy with the general idea
that more land should, during the war, be brought under
cultivation for the production of food. Lord Meath
has not a large quantity of land in Bray, and he would
be glad to know if others, who may httve more, have
been approached by your society and, if not, why this
920
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IRELAND
h" not t^ don.. Ho co„.ider. th., th. .„pp,y „,
m.lk ,n . p„p„,o„, dWrict like Br.j, i. . „„, „ " '
. . Pnce. Fo, the,e re.s„„, Lorf M„th c.„„o. ."
■"' "'y '» «««u:, "eleven
months' lease" is as noisome in Ireland as the in-
junction in America. As there is an immediate
market for cattle, the smaU farmers bid against
one another for grazing land. They cannot af-
ford to wait for the slower greater market for
gram which would be theirs if they boycotted the
^aang hinds till the owners sold them for tillage
JVothmg short of a mandatory state policy wiU
cure this primary cause of Irish poverty.
Every statement of an economic situation re-
qmi^es careful qualification. Ireland has made a
steady gain since the ebb-tide of the 1850's. Her
deposits and cash balances in joint-stock banks,
post-office and trustee savings-banks, were re-
IRELAND
=«% *»0,000^ „ ^^^, $I«,000,000 in
stocks two ye.rs ago. The business of the mil-
waysneariy doubled in thirty years, though much
of this money went into EngUsh hands, and the
raUway system is imperfect «,d unmufled. In
Wl her emigration was 71,000; in 19U, 20.-
000. No picture of degeneration fits the facts.
But the reconstructive legislation «,d state
grants and credit system have brought Ireland
only half-way. A bolder, more drastic program
must now be adopted if she is to overcome pov-
erty and become the productive country which
« her true destiny. Machinery and fertilizer
must be purchased on a far Urger scale, the Und
must be opened up, a better system of cropping
^!T^ '"' agricultural plant must be es!
tabhshed, housing must be bettered. Faith in
her future is what Irehmd needs from her friends,
and money as the expression of that faith. The
labor, and trade-muonists of Ireland have faced
this situation, and their conference stated:
W. d»,.rf that rtq>. be takB, iimnediatdy to brin,
under cultivation larie area. „» «.. „ • . r*
... . , , "«" *■*•" "' tne grazing landi —
by d^t labor on «i atenriv. scale uadcr Uie Dq»H.
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CHAPTER V
SOCIAL STUDIES
WHAT OF ENGLAND?
To feel the spirit of a nation at war is one thing
and an easy thing. You can not help being
caught into the current of their will and purpose
But to convey that spirit to your busy friends
three thousand miles away is a much harder thmg
I have been going around from man to man in
England, trying to get just that phrase and sum-
mary which would make the British response
clear to our people. Each one of these men, who
has been good enough to pause in his war work
to help me, has given a flash of the island spirit.
Lord Northcliffe said to me:
"No one will accuse me of failing to criticize
the mistakes of the British army in the early
months. But I want you to know that to-day
we have the finest fighting-machine in the world
It has taken time to buUd it, but now we have it.
Tell your people that."
S28
SOCIAL STUDIES
Viscount Bryce said to me:
"The British people are unanimous as they
have never been before."
The poh'ee commissioner of Scotland Yard, in
charge of the secret service, said to me:
"Have you noticed in talking with the pacifists
how discouraged they seem? They have no sense
of a growing movement. They are disheartened
because the great mass of the British people are
not supporting them." Then he turned to his
telephone and gave instructions to call wj Ports-
mouth and find out the time of arrival of the
hospital-ship. His wounded son was due home
from France.
G. K. Chesterton said to me:
"Democracy is on the march." His brother is
a private in the ranks.
Lloyd-George talked with me of the welfare
work carried on for the ministry of munitions by
Seebohm Rowntree, who has turned from his own
factories of six thousand workers to care for the
health of a million government employees.
"Here," said Lloyd-George, "is the greatest
attempt ever made by a government to surround
the lives of the workers with safeguards for their
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health and weU-being. And it was the making
of munitions that brought us to it. It was war
and sheUs. It is always true that humanity has
to descend into heU in order to rise again the
third day. It is only through heU that it can
achieve its resurrection."
But not all these distinguished men together
have quite revealed the central flame, and then
suddenly it was shown to me by a girl. She is a
wage-earner in London, and every day on her
way to her office she passes Fishmongers' Hall
by London Bridge. This ancient place has been
converted into a military hospital. To the house
surgeon she wrote this letter:
Dear Sir, I am taking the liberty to write to you
to ask if it is true that often a soldier's wound could
be the easier and the better healed were there plenty
ofskin available to graft on to the wound? I have
been told that many wounds are badly healed because
the doctors cannot get skin. If this is so, I would con-
sider ,t an honor to be aUowed to put myself at your
disposal at any time in order that my skin might be
taken to graft on to a wound; I am prepared to give
as much as would be practicable to take from me.
This is no impulsive movement on my part. I am
obliged to come to town each day to earn my own liv-
SSO
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SOCIAL STUDIES
ing, and am therefore debarred from working for the
oldiers as other girls of .,. own age are doing I hat
two brothers fighting, and for their sakes I e^, "
nu^std something. I an, writing to ,our hospita
U3e for n,y services I shaU be obliged if jon wiU kindly
inform me where I could go. ^
VHY THEY WILL WIN
England is at war en masse, and the proof
of It IS not that she has raised an army. Any
country can raise an army if it has to. The proof
of It ,s that she has changed a cherished habit.
That means a spiritual change. It is a lot harder
to break up a habit than it is to fight an enemy.
The fact that two million persons are saving
money to give to the Govermnent for carrying on
the war ,s the clearest single proof that the Eng-
ish nation is at war. By temperament the Eng-
iish are a colonizing, adventurous people. That
means they are an open-handed people, to whom
the careful ways of thrift are distasteful. Then
too, they are a race of individualists, doing what
they Lke with their own-a race to whom collec-
tive effort is a bore. But they violated their in-
stmct m order to win this war. For the English
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were free spenders, and it revealed more devo-
tion in them to raise two hundred million dollars
in individual subscriptions than it did to raise
five million men in recruiting.
One has to show the English eflFort in these
broken bits and flashes rather than by any one
overmastering display. That is because Eng-
land is a tangled, self-willed democracy, of a vast
variety of purpose. But when England began
to alter its life, to sacrifice what was precious and
ancient, then it became clear that she had com-
mitted herself beyond recall, that she was moving
to an end beyond defeat.
The appeal for war savings was a general ap-
peal made to all classes of the country. It put
money into the hands of the Government with
which to wage war. That money is spent for
production by the nation instead of being spent
for consumption by the individual person. The
terms of the arrangement gave to the "saver"
security, an excellent rate of interest, and the op-
portunity of withdrawal at any time. This use
of money frees labor from "luxury" work to nec-
essary work. The man grooves a big gun in-
stead of pulling candy. The woman makes
Sd2
i^ .'.»-< *^<
SOCIAL STUDIES
sheUs instead of fancy waists. This release of
labor concentrates the national effort on the work
of victory instead of leaving the workers dis-
persed among parasitic trades.
The heart of the war-savings scheme is this:
you buy a "war-savings certificate" for fifteen
shillings and sixpence. In five years the Gov-
ernment wiU give you a pound for it. Less than
four dollars has become five dollars. Of course
the worker cannot make an investment of fifteen
shillings and sixpence at one time. So he joins
an association in his school, factory, store, or
club, and subscribes his penny or sixpence each
week. These associations are like our fraternal
organizations. They appeal to the social sense
of the group. There are other forms of war sav-
ing, such as exchequer bonds, but this system of
certificate is the popultx way. It is cooperative
investment.
If the person does not belong to an associa-
tion, he receives a war-savings card, with thirtv-
one spaces on it, each for a sixpenny stamp.
He buys the stamps at the post-oflice as often aa
he can. When the card is full, he hands it in,
and receives a certificate, worth fifteen shillings
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
and sixpence, and good for a pound at the end of
five years.
Such speakers as Lennox Gihnour of the na-
tional war-savings committee go around the coun-
try addressing men and women in factories, and
boys and girls in schools. This is one of the
stories used by Mr. Gihnour in his campaign:
"I met in a railway carriage a man who had
just returned from the front. He was a mem-
ber of the Army Service Corps, and I got into
conversation with him. In the course of our talk
he said:
" 'I am one of those chaps that always like to
prove what I sey. Would you mind looking at
my pay-book.'
"This in support of some assertion he had
made. I replied that I should be delighted, and
I looked at his pay-book. The last entry was
three hundred francs, which he had drawn for his
holiday; and immediately in front of that there
was an entry, 'War-savings certificates £lO is.
6d.,* which is the price of thirteen war-savings
certificates.
"I said, 'I see you have some of these war-sav-
ings certificates.'
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Yes, and I am going to get some more.'
'How did you get these?'
Well,' he said, 'we get them in the squad-
" 'Did any other chaps get them?'
" 'Oh, yes, they did.'
'I said, 'How did your squadron do?'
" 'Well.' he said, 'my squadron— it was given
out on parade that it was the backbone of the
whole lot.'
" 'What,' I asked, 'does that mean?'
"*Well,' he said, 'I will tell you. There are
five squadrons in our base camp, and mine did
the best of the lot.'
" 'What did it do?'
" 'There are.' he said, 'a hundred and fifty men
m a squadron, and we contributed .£2289.'
" 'What,' I asked, 'did the other four squad-
rons do?'
•'He laughed. 'They did £200 among them.'
Well,' I said, 'there is always an explanation
for everything. Why did your squadron do so
well, and why did the other squadrons do so
poorly?'
" 'You see,' he replied, 'our major was keen,
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and he spoke to every one of us and told us what
we ought to do.'
"I asked, 'And the other majors, what did thev
dor
" 'They handed out the leaflets.* "
That is the secret of the success which has at-
tended this evangelistic campaign. It is the per-
sonal appeal, friend speaking to friend. And
the motive for giving is rendered in the head-
lines of the pamphlets, and posters: "Save for
England." "Save for your country."
In North Nibley, one of the smallest villages
in Gloucestershire, the inhabitants subscribed
eighty dollars in a fortnight.
Wigstan Magna, in Leicestershire, is in the cen-
ter of the hosiery and boot-making district. One
of the factories has between three hundred and
four hundred operatives. That factory pur-
chased two hundred certificates in one week.
Yarmouth has fifty associations and four thou-
sand members, and has subscribed ten thousand
doUars. This city lies on the east coast, where
the Zeppelins have stimulated the civilian con-
sciousness.
It was out from Grimsby where the fishing-
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Wlers have been lost by mines and submarines.
The answer of Grimsby was made by seventy-
three war-savings associations. In one week
4600 certificates were purchased.
At an East End factory in London 128 girls
jomed the savings crusade in a single week.
Only two girls are not members. In three
months the girls saved over $230. They did it
by chipping in their threepenny and sixpenny
bit each week.
Norwich paid into the post-office $75,000 in six
weeks.
The boot and shoe operatives of Northampton
are subscribing five thousand dollars a week.
Keithley, in Yorkshire, is the heart of the
woolen trade. It makes uniforms for the Rus-
sian army. It saves five thousand dollars a week
an average of six shillings and eightpence for
every inhabitant.
The domestic servants of Gillingham in Kent
have united in a war-savings association. This
reminds me of the touching gift of ten shillings
which I once received from an English house-
maid for ambulance work in Belgium. Let no
one doubt the spirit in which this money of hum-
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We persons is given. It is given because a lit-
tle nation was crushed, and because their broth-
ers and lovers are fighting to free that little na-
tion. Xo high-blown dreams of empire, no lust
for territory, no desire for power and wealth, are
in these obscure gifts. They are conscience-
money to Belgium. They are the pitiful earn-
ings of a democracy passed over to a suflFerinir
people. *
In Plymouth, with its docking and shipping
trade, eighteen thousand persons began to save
in one week.
At Preston, in Lancashh-e. $100,000 was
turned over to the Govermnent by the workers
m the period of four months.
There is an elementary school for 850 boys
near Newcastle. The boys brought in four thou-
sand dollars from their families in eight weeks,
and then kept up the average of five hundred dol-
lars a week.
In Battersea one of the school-boys brourfit in
he sum of five hundred dollars m penmes col-
lected among the three hundred boys and their
workmg families in ten months.
The thing that irritates us about England is
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the same thing that offends us at home. Here
JM no well^iled autocracy that runs on a smgle
track to a visible goal Instead of that clean
smooth, organized, docile affair, it is a democracy,'
with an immensely rich variety of life sprawling
•U over the place. The air is full of voices, be-
cause everj' one is aUowed to speak. If you
don't like it, remember what it is that you don't
like: ,t IS a free people, choosing to make its own
mii»tekes. living its own life, and just now out on
the war-path to chase some trespassers off the
premises. Doubtless, if the critics were running
the performance, they would give a more unified
and polished proceeding. But no group of per-
sons are running this war. The people are run-
nmg It. So, instead of losing strength as the
pressure increases, they gather force and mo-
mentum with each mistake. They teach them-
selves by failure. The wiU of the great Gennan
general staff can be snapped by defeat, because
the staff is a handful of men. But the wUl of
45,000,000 people can not be broken, because it
IS the will of these school-boys and working-girls
of domestic servants and munition-workers, of a
democracy whose sense of pity and justice has
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been touched. The mistake in estimating the
English effort is to measure it at any given time,
because it is a continuaUy growing effort. It is
like a gathering of waters from mountain streams
and the drift of hills and from inexhaustible
rams. The confluence keeps widening and deep-
ening from a thousand tributaries. The pool
can be emptied, and soon it is not only filled again,
but is larger than before.
The English are a "sentimental nation." I
quote a distinguished English officer when I say
that. Captain Basil Williams. It is true. They
are as sentimental as Americans. An appeal to
cold reason, to personal aggrandizement, to a
ramy day, or to a shadowy future, does not more
them in the slightest. But something that con-
cerns the welfare of helpless children or of per-
sons whom they love releases all that is best in
the EngUsh race. I know this, because I worked
in a Red Cross London office in the early weeks
of the war, and I found that the smallest appeal
to the English public for help in clothing BeU
gians brought in a large response-a response, in
fact, so overwheUning that it stuffed the office
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rooms with supplies. PersonaUy I have never
dealt with a public that is so swiftly generous.
When the fuU facts of Belgian relief are made
public, it will be found that it is the EngUsh who
have fed them and sheltered them, raised the
greater part of the money, widened and adjusted
their own home life in order to absorb an army of
refugees, and steadily continued to provide funds
without spurts and without fatigue. > better
proof of this racial sentiment and kindliness can
be had than by studying a few of the fifty-four
million posters and leaflets of recruiting, and the
hundreds of thousand publications for war sav-
ing. The appeal is rarely to self-mterest. The
appeal is to the heart, to the great objects of the
war, the ideal of liberty, the cause of freedom.
This national saving is not being done by ob-
scure, hard-working Enghshmen and English-
women to make their own old age cozy. It is
being done to free Belgium and strengthen de-
mocracy. If the evangelists who have gone
about Britain preaching war savings had spoken
to a commercial motive, they would have whistled
in vain.
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dragons' teeth
England is developing a set of problems at
lightning speed that will require a generation to
uncoil. I can only indicate them. It would fill
another volume even to state them in detail.
The first attempt to treat comprehensively the
new machinery and buildings created by war
needs has been made by the annual "Engineering
Supplement" of "The Times." What is to be
done with this new plant? has been the question
asked by many, and answered by none. Mr.
Hodge, the mimster of labor, states that seventy-
five million doUars of new capital has been ex-
pended in the extension of plant in the iron and
steel trade. He estimates that by the end of the
war the sum will be one hundred and fifty mil-
lions. He says: "i don't care whether it is by
tariffs, by prohibition, by bounty, or any other
method, the plant in our country must be util-
ized." Private plants, numbering four thousand
seven hundred, have greatly expanded. There
are over ninety-five new national factories. The
"Engineering Supplement" quotes one firm as
prophesying "a reduction in the proportion of
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three machines to one available for future use."
A firm of marine engineers says that sixty
per cent, of the new machines will have to be
scrapped, because the tools are over-driven and
worn out. But even these estimates leave from
twenty.five to forty per cent, of the new ma-
chinery available, and this is an enormous ex-
pansion in productive capacity. Thus in one
year armament firms introduced twenty-five hun-
dred new machine tools. The large majority of
engineering firms agree that these works, with
their new machinery, will be used for the inten-
sive manufacture of standardized articles. The
iwsembling of parts at these central plants has es-
tablished manufacturing practice in the use of
gages, and created the conditions for standard
and interchangeable manufacture. As one firm
writes:
"In small tools— twist drills and milling cut-
ters—we believe that by standardization and
judicious publicity we may fiU a large portion of
the business held formerly by Germany and the
United States."
One hunared thousand gages have been made
in the technical institutes in the last eighteen
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months. The ,jrage standardizes the engineering
industry, and enables it to produce on a vast scale
a great variety of manufactured articles. Stand-
ardization is essential to low-cost manufacture
and large output, and the establishment of stand-
ard IS dependent on the accuracy of gages, de-
fining specified dimensions of absolute magni-
tude, and limiting permissible variation.
A professional engineer writes:
Our locomoiivec differ onlj in relatively small de-
tails, excepting valve-gears. The main sizes of cylin-
ders, piston-rods, connecting-rods, side-rods, crank
axlos differ only very slightly in the same class of en-
gines Hundreds of various forms of l«-in
x20-in. horizontal engh.og exist, differing only in a
very small degree in the actual detaU. that count in
actual wear and tear and the life of the engine. Could
not aU these detaUs be agreed and standardized? If
a few more usual type, of engines-marine, steam
rollers, etc—were standardized, quite a number of o.r
present munition factories could be engaged in manu-
facturing connecting-rods and side-rod, only, other,
the cyhnders and pistons, others the valve-gears, etc.;
and m busy areas, without much carting, whole en-
gine, could thus be assembled in special shops dealing
with special engine, to the great gain of our home,
colonial, and foreign cu.tomers. A similar course i.
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demanded very specially for electrical machinery, fit-
tings, and telephones.
The munition factories could further be used to
great advantage in fostering and nursing the British
production of agricultural machinery, at present sadly
behindhand, and manufacturing it as standard repeti-
tion work. They would also be suitable for making
improved machine tools, as well as mining tools, such as
rock-drills, etc.; and standard ships would be greatly
improved if fitted not only with the standard engines
already mentioned, but also standard winches, pumps,
steering-gear, refrigerating-apparatus, etc.
The output in the engineering trade can be
increased at least twenty-five per cent, even with
the machinery that existed before the war, and
with the new machinery that percentage wiU go
considerably hi^er.
Inevitably standardization leads to oiganiza-
tion and the creation of combines or trusts.
Motor-car makers suggest the use of the great
new plants for the purpose of producing cheap
cars to compete with those of American make.
Akeady efforts are being made to bring about a
combination of British makers.
But it is not alone in the engineering trades
that trusts are likely to be formed. Already
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capital is concentrating in other industries.
Lord Rhondda purchased a group of Welsh col-
lieries, and the "Welsh Outlook" reports:
Lord Rhondda now controls over S% millions of cap-
ital [pounds, not dollars], pays iVi millions in wages
every year, and is virtually the dictator of the eco-
nomic destiny of a quarter of a milUon miners. Ru-
mors are also current that Lord Rhondda is extending
his control over the press cf Wales.
To control such vast, irresponsible economic
power as his will be the task of Parliament; but
here we meet with a new war-created problem.
During the war Parliament has largely lost its
control over government, which is administered
to-day by a temporary group of kwyers, finan-
ciers, and imperialists, surrounded by a larger
group of permanent expert officials. And this
group in turn is enlarged by a small army of vol-
unteer social workers. Not only do these hidden
experts administer government, but they create
new legislation. As a government investigator
reports:
The change in the mode of industrial legislation
may be summed up as a tendency to move from the
politician towards the expert.
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Even before the war men were saying- "The
political machine of U>-day presupposes that pop-
ular opmion shall have no initiative. Officialdom
ZL7' •* ^^ '""P^"^ of the remaining social
This is a tendency in the direction of beau-
reaucracy. and the value of it rests in the intel-
ligence and character of these inner manipulators
and their responsiveness to public need. A par-
liamentary committee sits on its biU of recom-
mendations, like a hen on its nest, and rises with
a cacUe. Sometimes the product, when hatched.
IS as distressing and unexpected as a duck's egg
m the poultry farm. I suspect that the recon-
struction committee and the franchise committee
are gomg to find that their sober, weU-rounded
draft of recommendations wUl develop startling
methods of locomotion. The law itself, hatched
m the pmacy of committee-rooms. sallies out with
a special dynamic of its own.
We have lost all surprise that our correspondence
should be pawed over before we see it. our house, in-
vaded by competent or incompetent authorities and
their representatives, our religion regulated or otherwise
catechised.
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So says one of the "Cambridge Magaane"
group, who have retained their sanity in a war
which temporarily unhinged H. G. Wells and
Arnold Bennett, and lifted Austin Harrison,
St. Loe Strachey, Leo Maxse, Gwynne, Horatio
Bottomley, Robert Blatchford, and Northcliffe
into leadership of public opinion. To these crea-
tors of constructive thought, "out to beat the
Boches," such a question as "Who shall guard the
guardians?" is academic in " a world of blood and
iron, controlled by men who do not take what
they would call a Sunday-school view," as the
realist editor of the "Spectator" writes.
But Parliament was at least an honest attempt
to give the people a check on the behavior of the
men in power. And now this inside clique has
taken away Parliament, and no one knows where
they have secreted it. When it has been discov-
ered and restored, it will have still other problems
with which to Trrestle.
How are the three thousand million pounds
of national debt to be paid for? Indirect taxa-
tion means high prices on food and doming, a
high cost of living. Taxation of income, death
duties, conscription of profits, is "class legisla-
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tioa" The only a«I way out here i, of cou«e
P.y. h« debt, by ,u««»ful work not lUone Z
m Wtmg the market, but n,.i„Iy by provid^
mg It with commodities.
L Will" : "^^ '"' P""""'- ^-^l-nd
» Wkmg of conung over on the good old Me-
Kmley AmencM b«i,. The «,eient battle-
^ie.^^fo.eedhyjre;^'^:^.--^:
»»«• of Ubor. are finding the «,urce of aU eco-
nom„ weakness in free tr^le. A convenient, one-
phrase «unm«y solution of a complex matter i.
•Iways appreciated by men who don't enjoy the
P~ce,s of orgam«i„g thought This i, no »d.
dm cMversion for. portion of the Tories. Dis-
~eh held that "the ultimate «m of the Free
"»rael^ to see our national prosperity upheld
^by a skUfuI agriculture and by anT:^^
commerce.
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That "alike" to be effective would require some
of the same magic which Joshua used on the set-
ting sun, for England is an industrial coun-
try. But Disraeli and many of the later Tory
protectionists acted from long-held conviction.
Whereas there is a touch of extempore when Mr.
Hodge, the new minister of labor, intoxicated by
his association with peers of the realm, cries out
in Pisgah vision that England is done with free
trade. At least it wil^ pay him to study the
happy industrial proletariat in Fall River, Law-
rence, and our other protected cities before he
turns to tariff reform as the sole salvation of a
country that requires immense quantities of raw
material.
This is the danger which England faces, that
her leaders will run after panaceas of protection,
business government, scientific management, in-
stead of dealing with what is the heart of each one
of her problems — human relationship.
CHANOil
At the Labor party conference in Manchester
in the first month of 1017 one of the leaders said:
If the soldier wu worth two pounds a week when he
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SOCIAL STUDIES
w« destroying things, was he not worth two pounds
when he was producing? A country which can find
mUhons of "quid." to feed the cannon's mouth can
find miUions to feed the worker's mouth.
The Other day I was sitting at luncheon with
the mayor of one of the great English cities. He
said to me:
Never again wDl there be the cry of "No money to
spend." A thousand million for war, and you haggle
over twenty millions for education? Give us educa-
tion. Continue the high wages. Don't knock off the
war bonuses. Make them permanent. Pay unskilled
labor a minimum of thirty shUlings, and later raise it
to two pounds. We don't need to worry about the
"killed trade-unionists. Let them fight for their three
and four pounds. There wiU be no trouble after the
war. Labor will obtain its demands. Wages can't be
lowered. The workers won't let them.
That is one of the new ideas brought into Eng-
lish life by the war: there must be a better use
of money and a wider distribution of it than in
the past. This idea wiU be applied, for instance,
to the care of motherhood and child welfare. At
the maternity centers one has now the spectacle
of the state keeping the mother and child alive,
but under-nourished. If the state is to intervene
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at all, it must do so vigorously. Otherwise the
cost of intervention, which is paid for by taxa-
tion, fails to result in a sturdy race, paying back
the subsidy by production. There is a phrase in
golf about following through the stroke. It ad-
mirably expresses the thoroughness that is needed
in social reform.
That imperial and foreign policy concerns the
individual worker, and can make him prosperous
or uncomfortable, is another idea which the war
has brought to the British mind. Imperial pol-
icy, which by its very nature is democratic, is it-
self a foreign policy. When you shovel together
free nations, which are a belt around the world,
you have necessarily established a series of con-
tacts with backward races, subject peoples, and
imperfect democracies. The domestic policy
must be influenced by the foreign policy. As an
instance, one of the first matters to be taken up
by the British imperial conference will be that
of Ireland. The recoil of this on foreign policy
will be powerful. It will clear the air for an
Anglo-American understanding. Great Britaiii,
in accepting the idea of a British commonwealth.
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hta in reality extended the principle of demo-
cr«t,c control to foreign policy. This means a
e-sening of secret diplomacy. It is a coherent,
thoughtful, and determined effort to put into ex-
ecution the excellent desires which The Hague
Conference stimulated, but did not make effec-
tive. One of the duties of a modem nation is
to mduce its citizens to exercise the responsibili-
ties which they in reality possess, but do not care
to acknowledge. It has required a preliminary
course of education to accustom the British
dominions to the idea that they were concerned
with foreign policy. By groups of informal con-
ferenoe. by much excellent pamphleteering in
The Round Table." by all sorts of books, articles.
«id talks from Cromer. Milner. Lionel Curtis.
P. H. Kerr. Ray Lankester. and Woolf. the re-
ipoasibUities of the British state have been em-
phasized. The pressure of the war has served
to accelerate a tendency of thought that was al-
ready m operation. In fact, none of these ideas
IS really new. All have been famiUar to thinkers
for a number of years, but there is never any
large number of thinkers loose on this planet at
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any one moment. So it takes time for thought
to shake down among the people, and finally to
reach an application in government.
As these ideas spread, the British public is be-
ginning to keep a close tab on its leaders. It in-
sists that they be representative, and when they
take 8 side-track, the democracy cuts loose and
leaves them lonely. The war has given us three
instances of this in Hughes of Australia, John
Redmond, and Mrs. Pankhurst. Mr. Hughes
was elected premier of Australia to represent a
democratic community in terms of social legisla-
tion and administration. He sailed to England,
became inoculated with the belief that he was a
war-lord, advocated at the Paris conference a
trade boycott, which would have isolated Eng-
land from the markets of the world more effectu-
ally than a shoal of submarines, and finally, fed
by flattery, swelled to the role of dictator and
declared for conscription. His home people
voted him down, some of his cabinet resigned, and
to-day he is a minority premier. "Stick to your
last" is the meaning of the swift troundng which
the Australian democracy gave him.
John Redmond is head of the Irish National-
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ists, but he no longer represents young Ireland
And the reason is that, in a burst of parliamen-
tary fervor, he pledged Ireland to the cause of
theAlhes. That was not for him to do. He
was sent to Westminster to push through Home
Kule, not to cooperate with Downing Street in
foreign policy. The Irish people refused to be
picked up in his right hand and set down in the
trenches.
When war broke out Mrs. Pankhurst dropped
her militant campaign and went out recruiting.
Ever since then she has watched the Balkan de-
velopments, pounded Lord Grey, urged a fight
to a fimsh. She not only dropped her militant
campaign; she dropped the woman question.
Jihe no longer foUows social legislation, the
woman's wage, hours of over-time. But she was
a leader precisely because of the woman question ;
so her following has dropped away, and she is no
longer ranked by the women reformers as one of
the general staff. Thus the organ of the women
trade-unionists, "The Woman Worker," writes
a "message that might have come" from Mrs
Pankhurst:
"I desire to inform members of the Federation
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that in my view their duty should be to march in
as many processions, create as much disturbance,
and take as many collections as possible." And
there is a more deadly home-thrust than that.
Her own daughter, Sylvia Pankhurst, has gone
on with the work of social reform for women, and
to-day has a strong following. There is another
reason why Mrs. Pankhurst has lost her follow-
ing, and this is that her following have under-
gone a psychological change; but of that I will
speak later. What concerns me here is that Mrs.
Pankhurst abandoned the woman's movement for
the national cause, and that in doing this she lost
OMitrol of her part of the woman's movement.
I am not engaged here in debating the ques-
tion whether Mr. Hughes was not correct in urg-
ing conscription, whether Mr. Redmond was not
far-sighted in pledging Ireland, and whether
Mrs. Pankhurst was not patriotic in subordinat-
ing women workers to soldiers. I am only say-
ing that they did not represent their constituency,
and in taking the new tack they lost their follow-
ing. What the democracy is learning to say to
its leaders is, "Represent us or get out." I don't
see in these manifestations of the popular wish
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any new idea, but I do see a swifter and more
sensitive application of the principle of demo-
cratic control. Leaders remain leaders only as
long as they are channels for the collective will.
Another change I feel in English life is an
emotional chan^^. It is the disappearance of the
hysteria that was caused by suppression. I don't
refer to the orgiastic elements in the English
nature that are revealed at the comer public
house and on Bank holiday. The.se are the peri-
odic explosions of the natural man. It was in-
evitable that Enghind should have created the
Salvation Army and indulged in Mafeking
Night. The normal Englishman is a free, noisy
CTeature. who talks by the hour, interrupts pub-
lic meetings, and lives as a human being should.
Any one who does n't know that has never spent
evenings in country mns, and has never traveled
in a third-cUss compartment. The English
worker is a sociable person. Nor am I referring
to the upper class, which has spread its govern-
ors, explorers, and sportsmen over the earth, and
whose women ride to hounds, drive ambulances
under the guns, and speed up the suffrage cam-
paign.
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I am speaking of the English middle class, the
forlomest middle class known to me. France
and America have nothing like it. The suppres-
sion of emotional life in the women — the creation
of the pose of "good form," the severely reticent
lady, neither heard nor even seen in public — has
resulted in a rather wide-spread hysteria in that
one stratum of the community, the middle-class
layer. These women are desirous to be true to
type, to do nothing that is not correct, and the
result has been a prim and regulated life, full of
negations, with the instinctive impulses and de-
sires of a free, creative life left out of the reckon-
ing. Nature punishes this suppression with
nervous maladies. One London specialist told
me he knew of several himdred such cases.
This hysteria was shown in manifestations
of the militant suffrage movement. I am not
speaking of the leaders. Mrs. Pankhurst is a
very charming woman, of determined will and
well-balanced mentality, who adopted a program
of action because she believed she was forced to
it by the demands of the situation. Mrs. "Gen-
eral" Drumninnd is the most delightful humorist,
with the exception of Chesterton, whom I have
^'MM.^r^-Jt'^.:.
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SOCIAL STUDIES
ever met. She is luminously sane. My wife and
1 spent three days with her at Havre, and she
held us through the evenings till midnight with
her reminiscences of carrying a hansom-cab into
the House of Commons, floatmg in a tug down
the Thames past Parliament, and addressing the
statesmen on the Embankment, who had ' , sit
and listen because they were chained to heir
afternoon tea. Another time she was in the gal-
lery of a crowded public hall and, in trying to go
out, became entangled in the pedals of the organ,
and sent out wailing notes. Miss Kenney is a
modest, earnest young woman of clear, idealistic
purpose. This handful of leaders who manipu-
lated the Women's Social and Political Union
are expressing themselves. But the movement
attracted an element in the middle class which is
in spiritual bondage, and some of these showed
signs of hysteria in their response. The bitter-
ness of tone in the books of certain EngUsh
women writers is another indication of suffer-
ing.
To all such victims of suppressed vitality, lead-
ing to anxiety, melancholy, and hysteria, the war
has come as a release, for it has given them cxcit-
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ing occupation. They have entered industry,
commerce, government employment. They have
nursed soldiers, cooked at canteens, and become
a part of the great communal life flowing past
them.
These minor changes of idea and attitude and
emotional response are all a part of the great
change which has come over England. Life is
no longer a monopoly possession of the upper
classes, of the male sex, of the mother country, of
the Westminster Parliam *nt, of the captains of
industry. Life is not a mer to be postponed
to the hereafter and the cL. r invisible. It is the
product here and now i)f one's will and energy,
fed by impulse, and shape by thought. One-
self is the person concerned, and the happiest so-
ciety in which to feel at home is a democracy of
equals.
1*
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A BATCH OF PAPERS
Instead of being ponderous and exhaustive,
and writing this like a sociological report, I shall
tell what I like and dislike about British journal-
ism, and we shall get along faster than by the
heavy-footed way. I like Chesterton's paper,
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SOCIAL STUDIES
"The New Witness," since G. K. C. has taken it
over. Others that write his style annoy me. as
an echo m the auditorium amioys an audience
who want to hear the speaker himself. I like
"The New Witness" because GUbert K. Chester-
ton seems to me the best thing England has pro-
duced since Dickens. I like the things he be-
^eves in. and I hate sociological experts and pro-
hibitionists and Uhlan officers, which are the
thmgs he hates. I feel in him that a very honest
man is speaking, so I am glad of his views even
when I differ with him. He is a useful correc-
tive on public opinion, too. He dislikes the ser-
vile state, by which he means the coming orderly,
regimented Utopia, scientifically managed by
Sidney Webb. That is the kind of talk we need,
because aU of us in social work (and who is n't a
social worker to-day?) are forever hunting and
hairymg the poor, itemizing their food-supply.
shadmg off just the proportion of caloric differ-
ence between starvation and under-nourishment.
And when we catch the line where the poor sat-
isfy us that they can puU through, we are going
to impale them with a minimum wage. I like
his mipudence to Northcliff .. because Northdiffe
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it a dangerous sort of man in a modern democ-
racy. He is dangerous because he does so much
good; but I wiU get around to him in a moment.
As a journalist Chesterton gets only about a
quarter of himself into action. But even a quar-
ter of Chesterton is good measure. He leaves
out all his overtones, the lilting verse and jolly
stories and incomparable essays, those flashes of
good criticism and exultation. He works very
hard at his journalism. That is why he does n't
do it so well as his careless things, which give him
fun. But for all that there is no other editorial
page in England or the United States written
with the snap, wit, and honest humanity of his
paragraphs. I hope he won't blunt himself by
overwork. It would be an international loss if
that sane, jolly mind is bent to routine. Eng-
land has need of him. There is something cosmic
about English plans of reconstruction, something
of the weary load of destiny about their imperial
commonwealth. It is a pleasant thing to be able
to remind ourselves that the same race that pro-
duced Curzon and Milner and Carson, heavy
men, with a sense of predestined seriousness,
after all produced Chesterton.
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SOCIAL STUDIES
I have to jump the Imh Sea in order to find
Mything so much in earnest and gay as the "New
Witness" in these months of management by one
who teUs me that he is "the world's worst editor."
I thmk the independent spirited little Irish week-
hesa« admirable. They sass the censor and the
ord heutenant and the Castle. I met some of
the editors, poor men and honest, editing and
wntmg papers in which they believe. They
seemed to me worth all the sleek, timid
JVew York crowd put together. They speak
their heart out, then take the galley proof
around to the censor, and he slashes out
seditious" paragraphs, and they publish about
h« f their heartful. I have seen these carved-up
galleys and the pleading, warning, threatening
letters cf the censor. These journalists are
pretty much everything in their shop-editor and
contributor and proof-reader and office boy-be-
cause their papers are often one-man concerns.
A man believes something hard, and being Irish,
he has the knack of stetement, so he publishes a
paper. One of them told us he had a weekly
circulation of 10.000; another had 6000. These
weeklies have literary quality. One of them.
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"New Ireland/' is stuffed full of good things by
A. E., James Stephens, Katharine Tynan, and
the rest of that gifted group. There is some-
thing pathetic about the editors I am speaking
of ; I met several of them. I don't mean pitiable,
because you don't pity men who are better than
you arc. But there seemed something hopeless
about the success of their efforts within any span
of time that would concern them at all. I sup-
pose it is just an extension of the feeling that we
have about any clean, unrewarded effort in this
present world of ours where men of the sort of
these Irish editors, with fine hopes about human-
ity in their heart, go lean and tired to their grave.
Some of them are ak-eady in prison, and more of
them will be there before the Irish question is well
settled.
Coming back to England, one has to have "The
Nation." It is much like our own "New Repub-
lic." But what is a discovery in "The New Re-
public" becomes a formula in "The Nation."
"The New Republic" is cock-sure, omniscient,
and "I'm not arguing with you; I'm telling
you," because its background is scanty, and it has
the freshness of a virgin mind. "The Nation" is
•6*
SOCIAL STUDIES
•11 background, mid ao is a little weary. It has
the slightly fatigued mind of one who has lived
• lifetime with the noble aspirations of our Mter-
cl«. radicals, and needs a change, but won't take
It. I have read "The Nation" since 1908, and I
never felt this ennui so much as during these war
months. Like many other radicals, it was
caught between the Zeppelins and the submarines
without a program. It had nothing to say. and
Mid It. Latterly it has had a rebirth. Bertrand
Russell published a fascinating book a few
months ago. called "Why Men Fight." I have
been watching that book seep out through
the pores of "The Nation" ever since. "The
xXation" makes me tired because its sincerity
« stale; but. for aU that, it is one of the best
weeklies in England, and it comes closer to
mterpreting the viUl thought of England, the
currents of tendency, than any paper known to
me. Only I wish it were not so languid in teU-
mg about vital thought. It is of course well writ-
toi. a quahty it shares with forty other papers.
That gift of a good working style is rather wide-
spread. It comes of having a literary tradition
and a weU-read university crowd. There must
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I speak as the editor of a journal which enjoys a
circulation and wields an influence unique in newspaper
history; and as one who, for good or evil, has gained
the ear and the confidence of a sufficient section of the
British public to make or unmake Ministers.
Stated with true British restraint, that is a
minimum appraisal of the place Bottomley holds
in public esteem. In the same issue Lloyd-
George leams he is not to be broken at the first
kick-off. "So long as he does this— but not a
day longer— he may rely, for what it may be
worth, upon my unqualified and disinterested
support." I heard a British colonel say the
other day that Bottomley should have been in the
cabinet. He writes a picture-post-card style,
like that of Arthur Brisbane, which is spotted
with battle-cries and catch-phrases such as "a
business Government," "Germany's Death-rat-
tle." He is really funny in a way that "Punch"
would like to be. He has a genuine pity for the
lot of the poor, and I think in that, and not in
his raw conceit and vulgarity and barrenness of
ideas, lies the secret of his hold on a portion of
the people. When it comes to the downright
spade-work of reconstruction, where briglit
268
SOCIAL STUDIES
phrases are not a substitute for hard thinking. I
foresee a sharp tussle for mastery between the
Bottomley type of mind and the reaj leaders of
i^ngland. Surely the real leaders are men like
Seebohm Rowntree, Zimmern, Lionel Curtis,
and Prothero, who put fundamental brain-work
on the mdustrial and imperial problems. Mean-
while I read "John Bull." and so does England.
There is no wrench in passing from Bottomley
to Lord Northcliffe. Both are "practical men."
who want things done now. Northcliffe is a big
^nial man. carrying a sense of immediate power'
He suggested io me a cross between a district
leader and a captain of industry. He will do any-
thing for you personally, like a Tammany boss.
It gives him a sense of his own power, and it ex-
presses a genuine human liking in his make-up.
He cuts across lots to get into action. He writes
well, talks well, and has a hard horse sense
that has served England in the present crisis.
Whether he will continue to be of value will de-
pend on his ability to broaden his vision of the
mdustrial struggle. He has the arrogance of
men who make swift decisions, and who are in the
position to carry them out. He has a sharpened
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sense of reality, but it is a materialistic sense.
Whether he will help the new world after the war
is a question that is troubling aU who have
watched his astonishing career and realize his
force. There is a danger of England too hastUy
reshaping its ideals. Because it has been slow
and unorganized it is turning to American and
Prussian methods. But it will be a loss if it lets
in the whole materialistic philosophy of results,
success, and efficency. And just here is the
damage of a man like NorthcliflFe, because he is
a sort of Prussian superman, who is death on
slackness, but blind to any meaning that can't be
caught inside of three dimensions. There was a
restraint in English journalism before his time.
I noticed the other day that he published in his
"Daily Mail" a cartoon of Raemaekers, and used
an underline which made it seem that Raemaek-
ers had drawn his picture in order to throw scorn
on Viscount Grey. Actually the caption had
been faked in the office to serve the political ends
of the paper. That is dirty journalism, as dirty
as America's Yellow Press. I am not trying to
offer wise conclusions in this chapter. I am only
recording impressions after many years of daily
StlO
SOCIAL STUDIES
re^g to the EngUsh pr«. So I leave North-
cliffe w,lh no fo.mul.ted opinion. I see valuable
thmg m the m«, which I feel to be ruthless and
™. It seems to me un-English, or Tel
am all »™„g about the temperateness and kindli-
less of English character.
'■The Manchester Gu«^ian" i., „„« of the
best newspapers in Enghnd. To praise its edi-
torials ,ts dramatic reviews, its baUnce of news.
Its judicial, and yet spirited, attitude to custom
and diange, is what President Hadley tersely
calk a work of supererogation." It is as good
r •" T «™ °' '"^ ^P"^'" Republil,"
^he K«>sas City Star." .„d "The DaHa,
"The Westminster Gazette" has a delightful
t^- f P'^™t "here they turn English
™«es mto decasyllabic Latin, develop the ca-
p.b.ht.es of words whose initial letter is ^ and
^.te tmy es«.ys on "How to Enter an Omnibus."
A. G. Gardner writes poUtical studies and
<*«™cter sketches in his "Daily News" that re-
mnd an American of Colonel Watterson's best
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I have grown very weary of J. L. Garvin in
the Sunday "Observer." He has felt the neces-
sity of "putting a punch" into it every week till he
writes portentously of "tanks," which should be
left for Chesterton, and of the map of Europe,
which is the vested interest of Hilaire BeUoc.
The best writers of Great Britain sprinkle
themselves about on the editorial pages in a way
that makes the breakfast paper a voyage of dis-
covery. The "New Statesman," the "New
Age," and the "Cambridge Magazine," with its
amazing digest of foreign opinion, are quite ir-
replaceable because no other periodicals fulfill
their function. I used to read the "Spectator,"
till Strachey's militancy in several fields grew
wearisome.
The individualistic penny weeklies and month-
lies are unfailingly bright. It seems strange to
me that we have nothing of the sort in America.
The suffrage papers; the one-man aflFairs, like
George Lansburj^'s "Herald" and Sorollea*s
"Everyman"; "The British Weekly," with its ex-
cellent literary letter by Robertson Nicoll; "The
Christian Commonwealth," with its analysis of
labor conditions and of advanced Nonconformist
«72
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SOCIAL STUDIES
thought-aU combine to give the in.pre,«o„ „f a
«lf-comc,oua public opinion fed «,d reuewed by
the free play of the individualistic mind
Of the heavier reviews, "The Fortnightly,"
Nine eenth Century" .nd "The Contempora^"
»e valuable for obtaining that sweep of fnterl
harfly a glmpse m our popuUr magazines.
Table. Men hke Lionel Curti, Kerr and
A. E. Zimmera are working here at the prin-
ciples of reconstruction for industry and the
emp-re It is solid, close-wrought work, wres-
thng at the problems of the modem world with
an absence of theory and rhetoric. No other
smgle pubhcation has had the influence of "The
««und Table" in directing British public opinion^
TheRoundTable"help«,toprep.,ethe^und
for the chmges which c«ne through with the war.
They and the Fabian group and the Workers"
Educational Association and the workers them-
selves have between them sprung the most dra-
matic revolution in one hundred years, and it is
stUl only m it, faint begimiingi
Somebody is going to teU me that my Ust is n't
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complete, and that I have omitted the most
weighty, the most significant paper on the isknd.
But this is not a catalogue, and it is not a guide to
self-help. It is merely the record of the likes of
one man who reads for pleasure. So let them
bring forward their "Chamber's," "Hibbert
Journal," "Quarterly Review," and "The Edin-
burgh," "Truth," "Comhill," and "The New
Age."
■\\
FBEE SPEECH
One of our most prominent American social
workers returned home the other day from a
foreign tour. She was quoted as saying that she
had found liberty suppressed everjrwhere. A mo-
ment later in the interview it appeared that her
experience in England consisted in cutting across
the island and jumping aboard her boat at Liver-
pool. That lets her out. If she had remained
in England she would have found that liberty is a
lively possession there just now. I have never
before seen the "subject" act with so much
initiative and I have never heard him express
himself so vigorously. Mr, Bertrand Russell
receives an excellent free advertisement from
«74
SOCIAL STUDIES
to state them m one of the best books writ-
ten m recent years. "Why Men Fight." The
book IS widely advertised and favorably reviewed
In a tune of incalculable strain half a dozen
conscientious objectors are dealt with unjustly
and shamefuUy while some thousands are dealt
with honorably. And conscientious objectors
are only two per cent, of the total number
of clamiants for exemption. These others are
in reserved trades." they are the "sole sup-
port of a family, they have built up an indi-
vidual business. And of all these cases, only
four per cent, of the decisions have been appealed
agamst. Conscientious objectors would never
have been heard from if Parliament had not
created their status. There are no conscientious
objectors in Germany; there is the shooting-
squad. It is only in a free country that liberty
can "raise a rough house." England is a free
country. There are plenty of criticisms that lie
agamst her for mental sloth, for mistaken foreign
pohcy. for unconscious and deep pride; but aman
IS still free to carry out his policy and speak his
mmd. The perfect proof is this: in the year
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1915 she had 698 labor strike*. At once the
vigilant critic of England wiU say. "The laboring
man is not patriotic" Let me first point out
that this is an exactly opposite charge from the
charge that he has lost his personal liberty.
Secondly, it is untrue. He is patriotic, but he
feels no loyalty toward the profit-makers. The
striking miners were accused of holding up coal
from the navy and endangering the battle-ship
fleet. But they showed figures to a friend of
mine which proved the exact point to which they
could proceed with their strike without lessening
the source of supply for the navy. The worker
is enough of a man to die for his country or work
for it till he drops; but he does not care to be
exploited by profiteers under the gUb phrases of
national service. The labor situation to-day is
the proof that England is free.
But England has no publicity sense. She ad-
vertises all her blunders and crimes, and goes
silent when she does well. The failure of Loos is
publicly proclaimed. The Admiralty competes
with the War Oflice in giving bac impressions of
great things done. England allows freedom of
speech in Hyde Park, in "The Herald," "Com-
876
SOCIAL STUDIES
nion Sen«." "The Ubor Leader." "The N-
tion." "Forward." She allow, ii t„ n
M.^naM.Phi«pS„owdtp:Ii^^
y«.. Lowe, Dioki,«o„, Lambury, Syl,U S
hum. and . hund^d other voice7«.d o,^! t
But when ri,e restrict, one ».„ from the m J.
*" '^PP*^ ■" ""d encroached on the liberty of
cml courte have upheld the rights of the perm
En!^^! r ^ ^"^^ P~™» «"»• But aU that
Engird ,p«.ks of i, the Defense of the Reahn
Ac^. .f . b«d of grim officers were yanking
*|™«gl.ng c,vd,.ns into penal servitude. When
EngUnd has . choice offering that w«Ud win
between the attraction and the neutrj public
To any one that miderstand, Enghmd this is
agreeable, because it is all . part of her mudd^ng
^.taess. Hands off her ancient liberS,?
«.d the hands are stiU off. But to an outsider
the dm of pcrcmiial, lively protest seems like the
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wail of lost souls, a race sold to slavery. It has
given a wrong impression to America, where it
is not yet fully realized that the wealth of Eng-
land and the industrial work of England are the
sources of strength for the Alhed cause, and that
the Somme offensive is only the gentle prelude
to the music that will tune up in Picardy this
spring. And yet the Somme offensive sucked up
the German forces from both fronts, let Italy
and Russia smash ahead, and enabled France to
shake the army corps from Verdun. The big
guns and the shells of England's four thousand
seven hundred controlled shops are the decisive
factors of this war. A set of rather cocky
German officers were led recently through the
square miles of preparedness that lie back of
the English lines. Their expression altered as
the massed, detailed abundance of the blow that
gathers there was unfolded before their trained
eyes. Home was never like this.
Now, whOe it is a pity to puzzle us who are
Americans, there is no seiious harm in it. But
the real demerit of putting the worst foot for-
ward is that it misleads the enemy into thinking
there is n't a big kick coming from the best foot
1878
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SOCIAL STUDIES
in the background. I am a peace-loving mm
«d » the inte^^ta of the Ge™,an pca^^tTd'
cl«k I w„h that Germany could have a picture of
the E„gi^ ,ff„rt which is only in the first arc
of ,ts ascending curve. The Govermnent would
then withdraw its troops on aU fronts, cede Al-
sace-Lorraine, sign indemnities, and thank their
tnbal de.ty for the easy terms of peace. The
whole English effort is the spectacle of a democ-
racy on the march. It is accompanied by grum-
bles and mistakes, and is as haphazard «, affair
as om- first two years of Civil War; but back
of tte wasted motion is an inexhaustible
strength.
The key of the whole performance is set by the
™ ""y »■"» ""vy- No one has caught the
«sent..l note of the British fighting men. Mr.
Kiphng has a harsh and brutal way of rendering
the aff«r. Because he is a man of genius, he
creates h« effect, he leaves his impression; but his
"not an mterpretation of the spirit of these men.
Mr. Noyes has cast the drama on sea «,d land
m M, heroic Elizabethan key, but a modem
demomcy does not phy up to his setting. It
goes about things in its own way. tight-lipped in
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suffering, and good-humored in bad weather.
The War Office ought to turn some one loose
among the million in Picardy who would really
capture the extraordinary ensemble. O. Henry
would have been the man for this job.
There has long been a slang phrase for a man
who was going out for an evening of pleasure in
the West End of London. When he wished to
say that he was planning a jolly supper party and
an evening at a music hall, he summed it up by
saying he was "going west." The men at the
front who tell of the death of a comrade say, "He
has gone west."
The British Tommy throws a lugubrious exag-
geration of shrapnel and flies and trench-mud
into his songs, fills his chorus with expressions of
a desire to go home, and sticks it at the Somme.
As G. K. Chesterton said to me:
"The English people have never found their
full expression in religion or poetry. It is in
humor where the English nature comes through."
The popular Tommy attitude toward trench-
life is that of "grousing," and no one has inter-
preted this so well as one of the men at the front.
Captain Bruce Baimsfather. He gives no mock
S80
SOCIAL STUDIES
heroics about the glory „f ^t^^ ^
pamphlets by the hundred thousand "I,^
recruiting material. *^
But England knows that if she quenched free
speech she would lose the war Sh. m
thf «.», k . *"* would lose
tte war because she would be destroying the
of^hngs by spattering them baek with a jest
his„,„^ , Englishman must speak
h« mmd openly, register his "kick" against dis
comforts, and be "agin' th,. „»*""'*''-
With ti,.» 1 ^^ ™ Government."
W^ that dearance he settles down to steady
2 No one knows what would happen if the
nabon were thoroughly muzzled. The attlnl
h.3 never befo« been made. It has lien 2
only m part in this war. •
THE EIGHT OP AsyujM
A couple of critics of these chapters on social
change have said that I am too buoyant in ^.
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ing a painful process. The reconstruction is not
going to be as easy as all that, they say. Un-
skilled labor is going to have the fight of its life.
Women face a bitter two or three years. The
forces of reaction have been strengthened by
three years of militarism. The trade-unions
have been shot to pieces by the concessions they
have made under the munitions acts. The gains
which cost them three generations to achieve have
all been swept away and will never be restored.
A large portion of the ^nu ss has been nothing but
the official organ for doctored news. Many
hundreds of men are in jail because "Christianity
has become punishable by ten years' penal serv-
itude under the Military Service Act" (which is
a pungent reference to conscientious objectors).
I have given a wrong impression if the reader
thinks that the principle of democratic control is
being established without a severe fight; but *he
point is that it is being established. Whfc._ j
has only a short time and limited space at dis-
posal, it is hard to render a social change without
either writing wordy surface generalizations or
else getting messed up with details. Perhaps the
simplest way of making clear that it has cost
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suffertog to win this freedom, .„d yet that the
victory, s bemg „„„, fa to consider one appiiea-
t.on of demoeratie eontrol in these years of stress.
I choose the "right of asylum" to prove my
point that England stiU champions freedom. It
» « fan. choice, because the right of asylum
rocked m the balance and nearly went under T
was violently assailed by the Scotland Yard
pol.ee and the Govermnent itself, but the Eng-
li* people rallied and saved it. The hounding
of Kuss,an political refugees in London, which
has gone on under cover of "military necessity,"
probably mjured the English cause more severely
u> America in the early days than any other
officd blun_der of the war. The news was
spread broadcast among our social workers
Jj'. T""'^ ^"^^ ^ 8'^^° her hos-
pitahty to exUes from other hmds who had fled
from iyramiy. To her in time of persecution
have ^me the Huguenots, Louis Kossuth, Maz-
^m^Karl Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Kropotkin,
Kussian refugees. As one of the peers in the
House of Lords said:
It h.. b«n our boart for ca,tari« that thU eouB-
ass
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try is a hospitable refuge for those who flee from other
lands. At the time of the Massacre of St. Bartholo-
mew in 1572 and of the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes in 1686, we were the refuge for the Huguenots.
Victor Hugo came to Jersey to escape from the des-
potism of Napoleon III. Those who have sought a
refuge here have been subject to the common law,
answerable for their actions, but not for their opinions.
Under cover of the war the Scotland Yard
police began to harass the Russian refugees in
London. They attacked the Russian Seamen's
Union. The Russian Seamen's Union exists to
fight the conditions under which the Russian
sailors work. It exposed "the beating of the
men, then* confinement m cages, their being put
in chains, deprived of food, heavj^ . les, flogging."
It concerned itself with the conditions of the
ships and the low wages. By the Russian com-
bination law the right to organize was denied to
Russian seamen, so their union had to locate its
center of activity in a foreign country, and chose
Belgium. It was driven out from Antwerp in
October of 1914 by the advance of the German
army. It crossed to London. On December
20, 1915, the police of Scotland Yard raided the
office of the union, and seized the documents, in-
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eluding . list of persons in Russia with whom the
un.n corresponded. At the sa»e time the^oL
r«.ded and h.s manuscripts and letters for ten
years back were confiscated. So heavy and far-
«.chmg was the hand of authority that when the
umon appealed to the National Sailors and Fire-
men s U„,„„ „f g^^,^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^
•t.t-athery, wrote:
you must not forgat y„„ .„ . ,
e|*n country ..though ,„„ beloug to onf:, „ r :,, t
but we have go. to look after the interest of our eou .'
ry at present, and do not want any unpleasantnes. at
w-! can be calJed before the autborities for doin, thino.
we can do with freedom in normj tin,es. * *^
A little group of English people saw that the
~ "«ht of asylnm was about to be abolished
So they made their appeal to the British trade-
umons. In "The Railway Review," "The York
.^re Fa^o^ Times." "The Amalgamated So-
«ety of Engmeers Journal," and "The Cotton
Factory Times" they saw to it that articles of
protest appeared.
But the police were determined that free
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speech should not prevaU. A labor conference
was to be held in London on January 6, 1916,
and a leaflet had been prepared, setting out the
facts of the attack on the Russian refugees, and
called an "Open Letter to Trade Unionists."
Accordingly, on January 5, the police raided the
headquarters of the "Russian Political Prisoners*
and Exiles' Relief Committee," at 96 Lexham
Gardens, Kensington, London. They seized
one thousand copies of a financial report, con-
taining the seditious information that the Wool-
wich trades council had given six pounds to the
Russian committee, that the National Union of
Railwaymen of Bletchley had given fourteen
shillings, that the Independent Labor party of
Tantobie had contributed eleven shillings and
eightpence. Exhilarated by their success, the
police proceeded to commandeer the reprints in
leaflet form of the articles that had appeared in
"The Railway Review," "The Yorkshire Fac-
tory Times," and "The Amalgamated Society of
Engineers Journal." Nor did they overlook a
thousand copies of the "Open Letter to Trade
Unionists," which were to have been distributed
on the next day.
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SOCIAL STUDIES
The home secretary, Mr. Herbert Samuel, said
to the House of Commons on July li, 1916:
"Russians of military age settling in this coun-
try will, unless they prefer to return for military
service in Russia, be required to enlist in the
British army. The details of the scheme are now
being worked out."
They were. The police set to work iUegally
and without due authority and said to the Rus-
sian refugees:
"You have to go back to Russia. Here is your
ticket; you are to be at Euston Station on such
and such a day."
Charles Sarno had come from Russia three
}ears previously. An order was served upon
him; he was to be deported to Russia. The
order was challenged. When it came to argu-
ment the representatives of the crown abandoned
«ie case. Immediately on leaving the court,
Samo was again arrested, and told that he
was to be put on board a ship bound for Rus-
sia.
It was announced in the House of Lords that
no invitation or request whatever had come from
the Russian Government for England to take
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this action. It was a purely spontaneous and
gratuitous act on the part of the British Home
Office. The home secretary stated it was quite
false that he had ever ordered any man to go to
Russia, and he said that there would be no de-
portations. Finally, Lord Sheffield, on July 27,
1916, made a well-reasoned speech to the House
of Lords in which he defended the right of
asylum, lashed the Government and the police,
and etched the eminent Jewish home secretary,
Mr. Herbert Samuel, in unforgettable terms.
He said:
"If I were a Jew or had a drop of Jewish blood
in my veins, I would sooner cut my hand oflF than
say to one of these men, 'If you do not enlist in
the British army, you, being a Polish Jew, shall
go back, not where you like, to any part of the
world, but to Poland or to Russia.* "
Earl Russell stood side by side with Lord
Sheffield in defying the Government policy, and
once again, as on more occasions than one in
British history, the lords saved the liberty of the
individual men from the encroachments of the
Government and the indifference of the Com-
mons. The English people had no wish, of
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course, for this tyranny. They had no knowl-
edge of it. Graham Wallas has warned us
against the modem conception of the "Psychology
of the Crowd." He has warned us against seeing
populations as individually thoughtful and tem-
perate and collectively blind and ferocious. It
is the fallacy of our generation to believe that
whole peoples go insane in a wild swirl, and do
this thing and wish that thing by imitation and
suggestion and sympathy. Of course political
movements are in fact carried out "by men con-
scious and thoughtful, though necessarily ill in-
formed," and these movements seem to the slack
observer, fed on our popular sociologists, "to be
due to the blind and unconscious impulses of
masses 'incapable both of reflection and reason-
ing.' " It is so with the right of asylum and the
suppression of the Russians. The English peo-
ple have not gone war-mad. They have not
risen up to overthrow the principles of freedom
and justice for which they have in the main long
contended.
But under cover of the war, when the attention
of millions of the inhabitants was strained on
another matter, a little group of militarists, pol-
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iticians, and policemen have tried to carry out a
reactionary program. It is familiar to all stu-
dents of the institution of police that it is the
tendency of their practice at times of strain to
"take away a man's character by administrative
decree on secret police information." It is not
that they fail to act honestly on the best of their
"information and belief"; it is that the secret and
one-sided examination, followed by peremptory
action, is not a perfect method for establishing
truth. "Spy," "crook," "anarchist," and "per-
vert" are words for them that do duty in place of
public legal procedure.
The attempts to harass Russian refugees have
been fewer and feebler since Lord Sheffield spoke.
In November ^he British authorities removed
four Russians from a Danish ship, but their case
was tried in open court. And in a case tried on
the same day, January 11 of this year, concern-
ing a French political refugee, the lord chief-
justice laid down the British law for all such
cases, and restored the ancient tradition of the
nation. He said:
"Parliament had not given the home secretary
power to make an order which would forcibly
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remove a man from this country to another
country to which he did not wish to go."
English justice refused to be muzzled by con-
scription, munitions acts, military service acts,
and the Defense of the Reahn Act. So ended
the second chapter of this record. Chapter one
showed certain English authorities as stupid as
the poUce of Chicago and New York during
"anarchist" flurries. Chapter two revealed the
English people as alert in the defense of freedom
as m the days before the war. The right of
asylum had been reaffirmed.
Then came chapter three, with the entrance
of the new British Government. The new Gov-
ernment represents the triumph of the executive
over the Parliamentary legislative division of
authority. Mr. Bonar Law announced on Feb-
ruary 27 to the House of Commons that Russians
in England must enlist as British soldiers or be
deported to Russia. On the same day at the
Old-Street Police Court the Magistrate said to
David Cohen, a Russian:
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We do not want you here if you are not going to do
your duty. If you succeed in proving that you are of
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Russian nationality, I shall do my best to g«t you sent
back.
On March 7, 1 attended a debate in the House
of Lords, where Lord Sheffield pointed out that
the home of an Englishwoman had been raided
while she was held in prison with no charge made
against her, and in her absence papers were con-
fiscated. These papers were pamphlets in de-
fense of the right of asylum. Lord Sheffield
then cited the case of a Russian refugee in Lon-
don who wished to return to the United States,
where he had taken out his first naturalization
papers. The letter of the Home Office was pro-
duced in evidence, and this letter refused the Rus-
sian's request.
The Secretary of State for War, the Earl of
Derby, replied for t^e Government. He said
that one of the seized pamphlets, entitled "The
Right of Asylum," was of such a character as to
make it unfit for circulation at this time. Very
skilfully he created an "atmosphere" about that
pamphlet, so that the listener felt that it was
treasonable and seditious. But I possess a copy
of that pamphlet, and it is not unfit for circula-
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tion m . free country. It is » appe., fc^ l„„.
don R«ss,«.s not to be ^t back. It i,-si„,p,y
The "noble Earl" went on to refer to one of
wTf of Russians as suspicious, and there-
fore a fan- field for official investigation. He
Tu "t"" "" ^'^'^'-^ » official pohV
v*.eh would place those suspicious persons i the
ftriuy.
The Lord Chancellor spoke next. Lord Fin-
ely, the present Lord Chancellor, is always worth
b^g. because he is naive. It was he who in
« debate on admitting women as solicitors, said:
women? I do not beUeve th.t the active practice of a
..mother, .„d ,n attending to their families. I regret
ttat there are man, .„™n ,ho do no. ha.e an opp^:^!
tunilj- of marriage in th!> country. Prob.hlv i„ *•
oppc^tunitie, .a, be found for then, ill^p ";r„;
:^f."^Lr ""' -" '-"- «" ■"»^- <"
In the present debate on the right of Asylum,
he was equally delightful when he said that the
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Russian political refugees owed a duty to their
nation, Russia.
Lord Sheffield was snowed under by these
vigorous reactionaries, and the old man hobbled
away on two canes. But for all that, he had
made it clear that an ancient right was being re-
moved by executive decree, instead of by con-
stitutional methods. If the British people wish
to abolish the right of asylum, they should be per-
mitted to do so by Act of Parliament.
No nation, with all its yoimg men in the field,
will tolerate the presence of non-combatant aliens,
filling the jobs vacated by the citizen army. The
Mayor of Bethnal Green said recently.
Men have to sacrifice their little businesses or their
small factories to serve at the front, and neighbors of
foreign parentage step into their places and reap the
reward.
Two other mayors of East London, represen-
tatives of the borough councils, local tribunals,
and of the London County Council, supported his
statement and passed a resolution calling on
Parliament to remedy the evil. The alien must
be willing to defend the nation in which he makes
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SOCIAL STUDIES
his residence or else leave for some other land
not under war-pressure. But he should receive
the right to select his destination. To force him
to return to a country which would imprison hhn,
« as m.just as it is for him to claim protection in
a country which he is unwilling t defend.
PUBLIC OPINION
En^and would have been one more quiet,
comfortable power of the second rank but for its
northern and western counties. Its recent his-
tory would have been the history of HoUand if
It had not been for the storehouse of coal and iron
m the mdustrial provinces. It was out of them
and out of the people bred there, that she has'
derived her vast strength in meeting the new
world created by the industrial revolution that
came m one century ago on the invention of
machinery. Those northern and western parts
of Great Britain have won the fight of democ-
racy^ and established the principle of democratic
control. What we used to mean by England
was southern England. It was Oxford, Cam-
brid^, and London. The genius and the vital-
ity of the kingdom were gathered there, and the
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radiations went out from those centers to make
the impress of what the world knew as English
influence.
Imperceptibly the change has come. The
governing class has ceased to govern. The type
of Englishman who was bom to rule is left with-
out a job. Power and virtue have departed
from the old order. The Oxford and Cambridge
hierarchy exist in a vacuum. Patriarchal Eng-
land, reared in the humanities, impervious to
modem ideas, indi£Perent to alien points of view,
unconsciously arrogant, heavily stupid, kindly,
cultivated, and honorable, was unfitted to the
modem world of quick thinking, swift action,
sympathetic cooperation. It is dying in our
sight. In the first weeks of war the shell of that
little England collapsed; the organism itself had
long since weakened. In its place has arisen a
far more formidable, far more democratic state,
the British conmionwealth.
As fast as power shifts a psychological change
takes place. The English nature and charai^er
are visibly altering. A swifter order of men are
in control. The men of power show Celtic char-
acteristics. Under the touch of the new influ-
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»ce. which is industrial and democratic, there
.» a brightening and quickening. The old inartic
ulateness passes. The race grows talkative. It
responds to excitement.
Public opinion, as it reverberates in London, is
no longer the public opinion of Great Britain.
K IS not the publi opinion of the ComwaU
n>.ners. of the South Wales miners, of the indus-
tml centers of LIvctk-oI, Birmingham, Man-
diester, and Glasgow. It is not the public
opmion of Montreal, and Sydney. London and
the south of England do not speak for the com-
monwealth. "The M«,chester Guardhm" un-
derstands the sentiment of Glasgow and Mont-
real, but the London "Morning Post" does
not.
When Lloyd-George struck out his brilliant
suggeshon for Ireland-a suggestion which will
bring the solution of a question seven hundred
years old-he spoke the requiem of the Endand
known to us in memoirs, novels, and letters; the
England of our college literary course, of the his-
toric tradition, the caste system, the landed gen-
try, the noble lady, the faithful servitor, the hack-
ney coachman, the genial vicar, and the Oxford
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don. He proposed that the matter of Ireland be
handed over to the imperial conference, the con-
gress of the five democracies. England's time
had gone. She could n't solve the ancient wrong,
but the new commonwealth could solve it. Take
it away from the tired kingdom, and give it to
the young democracy. Government is no longer
an aflFair of historic tradition. It is a very trou-
blesome matter of digging out the facts, and ap-
plying them to brand-new and rapidly changing
conditions. It requires qualities of swift decision
and execution. Industrial working-class Eng-
land takes over the Government, assumes control
of life, and side by side with radical Scotland and
Wales and Australia and Canada creates the new
state. With the passing of Little England, the
"literary" Englishman whom we have known
passes, the courtly and simple nobleman, the
charming litterateur, the "scholar and gentle-
man," and there comes in his stead a democratic
person, open to ideas, willing to learn, and very
willing to work out in partnership the problems
of democratic control.
There are clever men who are attempting to
capture this newer England and to manipulate
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SOCIAL STUDIES
its public opinion. They discern certain of the
creative elements in the change, organization,
efficiency, business methods, government by ex-
perts. Two such men are Horatio Bottomley and
Lord Northclitfe. Through "John Bull." "The
Times." "The Daily Mail." and other publications
they wield a wide influence. Bottomley and
Northch-ffe are of the familiar type of American
company promoter. They are a mixture of the
politician and the financier. They have a tough
niasculine geniality, a shrewd common sense, and
what is called "an miderstanding of human
nature, which means a knack of playing on the
a)arser impulses and motives of the democracy.
Essentially they are bad leaders, because they
don t believe in the best qualities of the masses
of men whom they are leading. They see that
average human nature is easily flattered, is loaded
to the gunwale with prejudices, and that it can
be manipulated by phrases promising action.
Excitement, change, the sense of "something
domg. are pleasurable to the average man A
newspaper program which "makes and unmakes"
mmisters. creates heroes and villains, wrecks and
reconstructs, gives a continuous performance of
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moving pictures to its readers. In the flicker of
the film ideas and true political policy lose their
sovereignty. By making use of the new forces of
democracy, such men as the modem popular
journalists may have it in their power a little to
misdirect them. This failure of sane public
opinion to register itself is ahnost inevitable in a
society where the millionaire proprietor is able to
conduct a chain of newspapers which reflect his
own mind, and which misrepresent his readers in
certain matters by giving them what they want
in the general news of the world, in pictures, and
admirable special articles, and in hammering
through a program of reconstruction, much of
which is sound and responsive to the needs of the
community.
I am trying to untangle what seems to me the
silent and real opinion of the nation from the
voices that fiU the air. Any one would be sin-
gul^ly inept who pretended to interpret with
any finality the public opinion of a people.
What I give is merely the product of contacts
with a few thousand British. The experience is
all necessarily incomplete and superficial. This
is offered merely as what I have seen and heard.
800
SOCIAL STUDIES
It is a coUection of little fragments of public
opinion.
The stuff talked in certain London centers is
misleading and mischievous and sometimes wil-
fully malicious. It is the bitter cry of persons
who have lost their influence. There are little
groups of elderly men and women in London who
inflame themselves with hate of the German
people. They speak of them as a nation of
beasts, outside the human race. This is very
unrepresentative of English public opinion,
which has made the clear distinction in its mind
between the doped, duped German people and
the band of predatory assassins who are in con-
trol of them.
Again, on Ireland, I can quote an English
oflicer, whom I heard say on his return from
Dublin:
"Remove the Nationalist politicians from
Westminster. Suppress the Irish newspapers.
Then give them cor jcription. They wiU yield."
He and "The Morning Post" represent that
minute fraction of "die haxds" who feel the tide
floating them down the beach and try to dig their
heels into the sand. The will of the British
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people is for a settlement of the Irish question.
There is no hatred of Ireland among the masses
of the community. The desire of the average
Englishman is to be let alone and to let other
people alone.
It is always necessary to find out whether a
statement of opinion represents the mass con-
sciousness or whether it is spoken from personal
bitterness and class interest. I can quote Leo
Maxse, who writes in his "National Review,"
"There is nothing in common between the stand-
point of the civilized part of Europe and the
United States." But I am quoting a shriU and
lonely voice. The mass of people in England
are as unaware of America as the middle West is
unaware of England. They are not scornful or
antagonistic. They are indifferent with the large
indifference of ignorance. In the part of the
English community who are aware of the United
States as the "big show." to quote a Broad Street
cotton broker, there is little resentment and much
good-will. The "Tommy," the farmer, the shop-
keeper, when he meets the individual American,
has the tolerance of his kind for all alien folk that
come from some other country than his own.
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They aU seem a little strange to him. but they are
all right." He includes the American with the
Australian and the Welshman.
Public opinion, then, is not really concerned at
all with exterminating German clerks, oppress-
uig Irish peasants, amioying American business
men It is not "out" to govern the world or rule
backward races."
What are its concerns?
Its main concern at the moment is to go through
with a bad job to the end. to win a victory in order
to have a lasting peace. Englishmen hate war.
and they were first astonished, then irritated,
and finally angry that any nation should let loose
a hideous slaughter into a fairly peaceable world.
They were slow to believe German methods of
fnghtfuhess. In the early months I could get a
hearmg, but little credence, for the atrocities I
had witnessed. A good-natured skepticism was
the response. But once thoroughly in a nasty
busmess, they are now determined to see it
through. They will hang on. It is hard for
them to pry loose when they have taken hold.
When their clutch has automatically clicked and
got set, there seems to be no device in the machin-
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'Hvhich their own impulse
toward freedom has created. Pubhc opinion
to-day is constantly in the attitude of a man who
has his desires answered before he has stated
them. The democratic state is moving faster
than the individual citizen, and he is mentally con-
fused. The moving finger writes, and public
opinion will have to find its place in the appendix
to the Book of Acts, recording the establishment
of democratic control during the Great War.
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WHERE THE LANE TURNS
A letter has come to me from a friend. He
is a charming writer, feUow of a Cambridge
coUege. He objects to my smnmary dismissal
of the older England as recorded in the preceding
chapter. He says:
"If ever there was a typical Oxford man, with
an Oxford cast of thought in the direct Oxford
tradition, it is H. A. L. Fisher, the new minister
of education. The new ministry of labor, being
forced to get a permanent head capable of deal-
ing with the problems they are up against, does
not get a trade-union leader, but an Eton-Balliol
scholar and fellow of All Souls. I am afraid, as
a narrow-minded pedant, I am convinced that
brains are what always tell in the long run, and
I don't think commerce or "life" or the newer
universities are yet the equal of the old univer-
sities in producing and training brain. More-
over, Oxford and Cambridge are not "south of
England," as you suggest. Their geographical
position has nothing to do with then- nature.
They are the oldest and most independent repub-
lics in E gland and totally ex-territorial, like the
city of Was! gton."
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Of course he is exactly right, and I believe we
are both right. Now is the meeting of the old
and new, and even a profound modification of
structure will include vestigial traces. Every
summary statement concerning so complex a
thmg as the modern community must wait for
venfication on psychological records which have
not yet been made. "Crowd psychology" is still
in the hands of hasty generalizers and pseudo-
scientists, who write of the "herd instinct." So
It IS with this book. It is a personal impression,
and It paints in broad colors. A. E. Zimmem of
the reconstruction committee, H. N. Spalding of
the welfare department of the ministry of muni-
tions, and Dr. Fisher, the minister of education
have all cautioned me against over-emphasizing
the speed of change in so stable a community as
the British nation and against making too logical
and inteUectualistic an analysis of British char-
acter. The Briton is a sociable, humorsome
fellow who moves slowly and is not logical in his
ways, but proceeds along the lines of his own
individualistic psychology in contact with his own
peculiar and ancient environment.
But a reconstruction is under way. A peace-
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SOCIAL STUDIES
back to grass. Industrial cities and massed pop-
Illations came in. And that new control of the
enviromnent altered the other aspect of govern-
ment-the relationship of man to man. Indus-
trial organization created new alinements of
party, interest, and class. The governing* class
began to flutter in a world not reahzed. like the
thm-voiced shades about Ulysses. But the mass
of the people, to whom the power passed, have
not yet found their leaders.
Two civilizations are coexistent here. One is
a very ancient and noble civilization. The other
IS new and chaotic, caught in the process of
becoming. The ancient civilization was sure of
Itself, possessing a tradition and code of action
The new is too busy to develop a technic of life or
manner. It does n't know where it is going, but
It IS on the way. The effect is that of electric
lightmg in Warwick Castle or a trolley-car to
Stonehenge. Everywhere in Great Britain one
feels the modem thrusting through the rich soil
and surface cake of what is older than the life of
man. "The Popular Magazine" and "The Top
Notch" are widely read in Ireland. In the little
Hampshire village of Emsworth bright, new
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jerry-built bungalows rise close to the huddle of
centuries-old fishermen's cotta|-s, and motor-
cars flash past thatched roofs under the great
spire of Chichester and come to rest in a ren-
ovated moss-grown inn. Peasants touch their
hats as you pass and call you "sir," and the girl
conductor of the omnibus is sometimes as curt
and scornful as a Chicago expressman. In the
Devon hamlet of Lewdown the farm women with
whom we lived continue to make clotted cream as
their likes made it when John Ridd climbed to his
courting, but eagerly borrow my London paper
every evening after the chores are done. The
church is still firmly established, but the congre-
gation waits for the afternoon service, and the
afternoon service is held in the cinema house.
The kmg is a very gallant and modest gentleman,
but he does not possess the power of Arthur Hen-
derson or the influence of H. W. Massingham.
Still stands the House of Lords, but the lords of
power are Devonport, Rhondda, and Northcliffe
business lords. The telephone and tram-car
stretch their wires through lanes where the
cavaliers rode, and there is an excellent tele-
graph service in the village in which Baring
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SOCIAL STUDIES
Gould is writing the legends of his country-
side.
The new-comers are not taking the Kingdom
by violence. They do not tear down the old.
No, they take the heart out of it, and let it wither
like a plant stung by the frost. The wreckers
will never march through England armed with
condemnation writs and blasting-powder. But
gradually the light railways spread their threads,
while "The Daily Mail" scatters its modernism to
millions. It is possible by careful selection to
convince oneself that the former things have not
passed away. It is true that they linger, but
new forces are in command, and England of the
poets is an old-age pensioner in the house of her
daughters of the British commonwealth. They
make war in vain who fight against these things.
Raw energy is in the saddle, and the galled jade
must gallop to new spurs.
THE NEW WAY
Liberalism has ceased to be a political theory
and has become a program of reconstruction,
planning reform by intensive intellectual effort.
After the Napoleonic wars a period of deadness
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set in. and gradually middle-class liberalism, bar-
ren of ideas, assumed control. It did not come
to grips with its world, because it did not have the
proper method. But in recent years the way to
study human society has been discovered. A
group of university men began to put their
thought on the organization of human life. The
working-class party sprang up. There has never
existed so wide a division between the inteUectuals
and the workers in England as in America. The
English workers have neVer swallowed whole the
Marxian analysis. They have preferred step by
step reform to the spreading of a theory.
As the result of much patient piece-meal work,
based on "the accumulation and analysis of eco-
nomic knowledge," a whole new body of legisla-
tion was incorporated into English life, beginning
with the year 1906. That process continues.
The principles of this reconstruction are derived
from the conception that a community must work
hard with its mind in order to organize a good so-
ciety. Untrammeled by dogma, the practical
English intelligence, both of the working-class
brain and of the intellectuals, has set about re-
shaping its institutions of property and state.
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SOCIAL STUDIES
The Fabian Society and "The Round Table"
group have aided in the work of collecting facts
and sharpening the analysis. There have been
brilliant scouts like Wells and Shaw. But back
of them, and providing them with the equipment
for their sorties, are the hard workers with a
genius for taking pains, like the Webbs, Seebohm
Rowntree, and Bruno Lasker. "The develop-
ment of more delicate logical methods and the
accumulation of recorded observations are now
making deliberate thought about mankind less in-
exact and misleading than at any other point in
history."
Lately, many persons have been thinking with
the lash on them. .How to stop the Zeppelins,
make shells, and overcome the damage of war—
these questions are being dealt with at high
speed. The community is becoming aware of
itself; it is devising an imperial economy, which
correlates industry to national needs and includes
the family budget in its process of thought. The
easy generalizations of political exiles and closet-
philosophers have been displaced by fact-inves-
tigations and analysis from the records. Laissez-
faire, the economic man, economic determinism,
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and the other substitutes for hard work, no longer
content the community which wishes to find itself.
Patiently and gropingly, a synthesis for the new
society is being formed.
Ahnost unobserved, a hterature is forming
around the social movement. It is a literature
where the pressure of thought has been so intense
and controlled that it has wrought for itself a
special style. I feel sure that if Professor Saints-
bury were to extend his anthology of "English
Prose Rythms," he would include paragraphs
from Bertrand Russell, A. E., Edward Carpen-
ter, Lowes Dickinson, Havelock Ellis, and Gra-
ham WaUas. They carry a tone and accent, giv-
ing pleasure to the inward ear. These men write
a clear and precise English, which travels easily
and without fatigue, and often rises to beauty on
its own momentum of thought. They seem to
have lifted the technic of style to a new level;
perhaps no higher than that of several earlier
periods, but different. They have introduced a
fresh cadence into the prose music of the last four
centuries. There is an absence of premeditated
eloquence, of overstatement, of the wind of words.
There has come a realization that the limit of lan-
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guage in one direction had been reached with
"multitudinous seas" and "purple riot," and that
the prose writers who pushed along that track of
the poets reached a point of strain in De Quincey
and Landor beyond which laughter lurked. The
inevitable reaction gave us the clear, cold drear-
iness of Herbert Spencer and the suppression
and aridity of Arnold.
But these modern prose writers, interpreting
the new social order, have taken a fresh trail.
And I do not doubt they have abolished the
purple patch as effectually as they have avoided
the anemia of thwarted imp'ilse. Their meaning
is more exactly expressed than in the pages of
men who used loosely and cheaply "God,"
"nature," "happiness," and "society." But the
pains of a scientific precision have not silenced
the music. There is none of the jumbled ter-
minology of our troubled "sociologists" and psy-
chologists. These men have lifted their scholar-
ship into simplicity. It is perhaps only an
interesting chance that two of them are math-
ematicians, but it is profoundly significant that
all of them are students of human s. jiety, not in
the old literary way of projecting Utopias, but
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through the process of hard thinking on the facts
of life.
"In the end it is the psychological question of
fact which wiU have to settle the ethical question
of conduct."
It is no longer enough for us that a passage in
a book shall be "well written," as the famous and
uninteUigent pages of Lecky on prostitution.
Writing that concerns itself with society, if it is
to win a response from us, must be grounded on
observation of the facts. It must bring a sci-
entific method to bear on "the vast and constantly
growing accumulation of recorded observations."
Surely in these choice writers of the reconstruc-
tion we have that quality which the democracy, if
it is wise, will cherish. We have that natural
aristocracy, that sovereignty of the best, which
alone is able to set a standard for the mass-peo-
ple.
THE NEW AMESICANI8M
Around «0,000,000 happy firesides the fathers of
America will gather this night with their unbroken
family circle, with their children upon their knees and
their wives by their side, happy and prosperous. Con-
trast this with the fathers, husbands and brothers of
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the Old World, dying in the ditches. . . . Who is it
that would have our President exchange with the blood-
bespattered monarchs of the Old World? ... He is
the world teacher, his class is made up of kings, kaisers,
czars, prmces, and potentates.— .SCTiator OUie James,
Permanent Chairman of the Democratic National Con-
vention.
With the causes and the objects of this war we are
not concerned.— IToorfroa Wilton, President of the
United States.
The superb assurance of Captain Hans Rose,
coupled with his inimitable ability, shown when he
brought the U-63 into Newport, Rhode Island, paid
and received visits of courtesy, handed to an American
newspaper man a letter for Ambassador von Bems-
torff, dived and was away on a mission of destruction
within three hours, carries with it a wholesome savor
of knightly conduct that goes home to the moral center
of every American.— "TA^ Evening Gazette," Cedar
Rapids, Iowa.
I write this article as the result of conver-
sations and correspondence with a wide group of
Americans and English and French, made up of
politicians, economists, historians, psychologists,
and literary men. I find in thoughtful men
to-day both in America and Europe a challenge
of certain tendencies in our national thought. I
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believe that challenge to be well grounded. A
great mass of talk and letters suddenly came to
focus one day in what one man, a distinguished
scholar, expressed to me. So in what foUows I
have taken the lines and phrases of his thought.
But what he stated is only the clear expression
of what many are saying and feeling.
We have failed to teach our true American
tradition to new-comers, but certain of our
newspapers and of our popular voices have been
busy in creating a legend of Americanism which
contains an element of falsity. We have dis-
played a self-complacency in our proclamation
of freedom, a readiness to assume that it was our
monopoly, and that no other nation understood
so fully what it meant or had done such service
for it. This has led to a lack of sympathy with
other nations that have achieved freedom or are
aspiring after it or are helping to strengthen and
extend it. This attitude has been reflected in
our school histories. The establishment of Amer-
ican independence is represented in these school-
books, in newspaper writing, in popular speeches,
as a protest against tyranny, a breaking-away
from Old- World chains. But this is not how
SOCIAL STUDIES
scientific historians of the modern school see that
event. Despite her grave mistakes then, Eng-
land had endowed our States, as she has endowed
every settlement of European stock which she
has planted, with the institutions of self-govern-
ment, from which sprang our desire for a wider
freedom. Despite the many mistakes she has
made since, she has carried freedom and justice
to new populations, and has been an unwearied
breeder of free nations. Our popular concep-
tion of our Revolution, our self-complacency in
our proclamation of freedom as an Americ n
monopoly, have kept us out of an organic rela-
tion with the whole world of civihzation. We
have failed in recent years to feel that this world
is one, and the cause of freedom a single cause,
to whose fortunes no free society can be indif-
ferent or neutral. That breach is a tragedy, per-
haps one of the greatest tragedies m history. It
has been a bad thing for civilization, because it
has weakened the defense of freedom by alienat-
ing its strongest advocates from one another, and
persuading one of them to stand aloof from its
struggles. It has been a bad thing for America,
by leading her to imagine that she is not as other
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nations are, and that the working out of the great
issues of civilization in Europe had no interest
for her.
This falsity in the popukr view of the Euro-
pean situation has cut us oflF from sympathy with
other peoples who have loved freedom not less
sincerely. We have continually misunderstood
England, the tyrant state which America had
defied. We have had the curious spectacle of a
friendship between the two nations that was al-
most whoUy one-sided. England has repeatedly
helped and supported us; we have not really be-
lieved that England stood, in the main, for free-
dom and justice. And what is true of our atti-
tude toward England is true in varying degree
of our attitude toward the other "old strugglers"
of Europe. We have not believed it was our
duty to give support to Belgium, to the French,
or to the Italians in the struggle for the enlarge-
ment of liberty.
When the autocrats of the Holy Alliance were,
as Canning put it. "aspiring to bind Europe in
chams," they crushed the movement toward free-
dom in Italy and Spain, and then purposed to
crush it also in Spanish America. Canning, in
8«4
SOCIAL STUDIES
the name of Great Britain, defied them, recog-
nized the independence of the Spanish colonies,
and made it plain that the British fleet would re-
sist any attempt to send armies to South Amer-
ica. He approached our Government with the
suggestion that the United States should take
their stand by the side of Great Brit.-'in. Presi-
dent Monroe's message was the result. That
was the promise that America was going to make
freedom her concern even outside of her own
bounds. It was not a proclamation of suzer-
ainty over the double continent. Monroe's mes-
sage and the fear of the British fleet kept Euro-
pean armies out of South America. It is the
British fleet which has in recent years saved the
Monroe Doctrine from challenge. But our pop-
ular conception has turned the Monroe Doctrine
into an assertion of American self-containedness
and indifference to Europe.
Again, in the Spanish- American War we made
the cause of freedom outside our bounds our own
cause. But having done this, we came to regard
it as only an American question. There was
nothing which the Spaniards did in Cuba com-
parable with what the Germans have done in Bel-
826
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out over polar ice, splashing through swamps,
and rolling through the seven seas.
But these men are a tiny fraction of the com-
munity,_"n,en of Biddeford in Devon,"_and
then. Idea of England as a good place to see once
a year or once in three years is n't the national-
ity of the mass. The nationality of the mass of
people lies deep, and in quiet days they hardly
know they have it. There is a lot of sUent pride
m the navy and sea-power, and the "Britannia
rule the waves" line probably comes as near to
Mymg something as a popukr song usually does.
But of a dramatization of the "Ishmd-Queen"
there is none in the popular mind. The uncon-
scious pride is enormous. You feel it in the ah-
ject loneliness of an Englishman off British soU
I have had very intimate English friends in New
York, and there was always a kind of "lost"
quality about their personality. They were
ioyal to the pkce that gave them bread, but they
waited for the return with a long and touching
patience. It was my fortune to see them re-
turned, and catch the sigh of relief which the first
years of the home-coming called out. Every
sunple UtUe thing seemed good to these men, and
SS4
SOCIAL STUDIES
they would point out to me the wide commons of
Wimbledon and the small, friendly locomotives
of the suburban railway. An Englishman has to
suffer before he knows he has a country.
It is suffering which the war has brought, the
sense that something precious and intimate is im-
periled. The Englishman likes the customs of
his country and his own way of carrying on.
Very slowly he learned that something was going
to intrude and destroy that private wilfrMess,
that right of the individual man not only u> his
life, which is a little thing, but to his own peculiar
way of living it, which is an important thing.
His sense of possession of individual liberty is
stronger than his property sense. Gradually the
impression came upon him that there was a hub-
bub across the channel, and that the noise was
growing louder, that if he did n't do somethmg
there would be no end to it. His peace and quiet
would be gone, and he would have to live by some
one else's rules. As a young Englishwoman
said to me: "We don't want strangers to step
in and impose on us their manner of life. We
don't want to be speeded up."
But still we have failed to reach the basis of
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the instinctive nationality in an EngUshman. I
think it lies in the feelings grouped around his
locality and his set of friends, the values that are
closely familiar. One hears a man from Ber-
nardsville. New Jersey, boast about Niagara
Falls and the Rocky Mountains as if they were
landscape features of his back yard; but an Eng-
lishman, if he talks at all, wiU speak of the fields
he has hunted across, and the pleasant turn of the
hills that are in sight from his windows.
I was glad to get it on good authority that I
was right about this local patriotism. Captain
Basil Williams has made a careful study of the
organization of the British army. It is the func-
tion of his department to do so. He told me the
nature of the appeal by which the millions of men
were recruited. It was n't a vague, noisy crusade
of advertising posters and general patriotism.
It was directly aimed at where the men lived and
their feeling of comradeship. The regiments
were recruited by counties. (A few regiments
came from more than one county.) The unit
of recruiting is the battalion of one thousand
men. In the original standing army, and in the
new armies, the basis of the system is the regi-
386
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SOCIAL STUDIES
mental local idea. Devonshire means something
to a Lewdown man that Columbia County, New
York, does not mean to a Hudson man. The
Devon man and his people have shot rabbits and
ruled the sea from that village in that county
for several centuries.
When the war began and ktrge numbers of
recruits poured in, the old regimental system was
maintained, and every new battalion was affil-
iated to some old regiment. The first new units
were the special reserves, a battalion or two for
each regiment, corresponding to the old militia.
Then there came battalions of territorials, cor-
responding to the old volunteers. These terri-
torials would be chosen from the smaller country
districts. Then followed the service battalions.
It was difficult at first to obtain equipment
and housing. So municipalities organized bat-
talions in their own locality, and handed them
over when the army was ready for them. Men
said they would like to go with their neighbors
and pals. Clerks, sportsmen, foot-ball players,
men with the same interest in life, chummed to-
gether. War was a strange, new job, leaving
the individual man lonely, and he wished to face
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it with friends. These "pal" battalions were
still attached to the original regiment.
In both the service and pals battalions Kitch-
ener wished reserves. So each battalion added
to Its one thousand men five hundred more men,
making a reserve battalion. Thus there resulted
a reserve battalion of service battalions, and a
reserve battalion of pals battalions.
There is no unit of numbers for a regiment,
which can have two thousand men or twenty thou-
sand. One regiment has twenty-six battalions,
but the expanding numbers are glued together
by the comradeship of long association in the
pursuits of peace anu by the sense of locality.
The first two armies, Kl and K2, were new
service battahons from every regiment of the
British army. The old army was thus dupli-
cated by the first two new armies. The third
new army, K8, was raised where recruiting was
best, largely in the northern and western por-
tions. K4 and K5 were made up of pals battal-
ions. Of course all the other arms of service
medical staff, engineers, artiUery, were raised
locally, and were represented in these units.
And this appeal to local patriotism has been the
888
SOCIAL STUDIES
method of increasing an army of five hundred
thousand to five million.
Every regiment has ancient rights and priv-
ileges and points of local pride. The Honour-
able Artillery Company has the right to march
through London with fixed bayonets, and the
men exercise the right. At the entrance of the
city they halt, unbuckle the bayonet, and thrust
it into place. This ancestral quality to an army
unit gives an esprit de corps that the men inherit,
and a tradition which touches them to quickened
service. It is a survival of the old linked bat-
talion system, which provided that there should
be two regular battalions, one normally abroad,
and one in England. Overseas service and
peace had combined to create the system. It
gave an expeditionary force to guard India and
South Africa. The old feeling was entirely
regimental. Lately there has been an extension
of the scale of feeling corresponding to the vast
area of the war itself, and the division has become
more important than ever before, and develops
a self-consciousness of its own. This extension
of feeling and organization keeps step with the
new organized state, which is replacing the
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tiny village republics of local self-government.
But local pride is still the tap-root of English
nationality, and I shall not forget the inhabitants
of Stratford as they gathered around the public
notices that recorded the performances of the
"Warwick^hires." In the early days of the war
the German chanted "Deutschland." but the
Tommy sang of Leicester Square. Just now
"Blighty" is the word. Soon it will be some
other phrase, but always it will teU of a httle
place, a city street or a eountry lane.
-4»
840
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CHAPTER VI
LLOYD-GEORGE
I HAVE recently come from a long talk with
Mr. Uloyd-George. What he convinced me of
was that he miderstands and cares for our coun-
try. Frankly, I had doubted this. I was left
subdued by his militant interview on "Hands
Oflf," which was harsh and necessary, but which
did not bind Downing Street, London, to First
Avenue. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. For two years I
had wished that an EngUsh statesman would lift
dear of his business with the enemy and give a
word for neutral public opinion. Lloyd-George
talked and Ustened for an hour and three quar-
ters on the one subject of the middle West of
America. He understands the people. He
knows that the pubUc policy of the nation is de-
termined there. He knows that our democratic
experiment is being decided by the prairie States.
He quoted a remark of Henry Ford not with
amusement or scorn, but as significant By that
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he revealed that he knows more about the real
America than half the editors of Eastern news-
papers.
He understands America with the same sym-
pathy which Lincoln showed for the Lancashire
cotton operatives in his famous letter to them.
Lloyd-George has the same desire for a frank
presentation of facts that Henry Ward Beecher
revealed in his appeals to the British public in the
industrial cities. What he wishes is that our
people should hold the same sympathy with the
struggle of the European democracies that the
working-classes of England learned to feel for
our Civil War struggle, after Lincoln and
Beecher had made clear to them that we were
fighting for human liberty. Mr. Lloyd-George
does not regard the war as a dog-fi^t or as a
sporting proposition. He sees it as an incalcu-
lable tragedy. With his Celtic imagination he
lives in a profourd sense of the pity and the waste
of it. He has as little hate and bitterness as the
soldiers of England and France with whom I
have lived at the front.
He has a habit of informal breakfast at a sunny
little flat about ten minutes away from Downing
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LLOYD-GEORGE
Street. Here two or three of his friends meet
him. He comes in well rested, and decides points
of policy and' indulges in reminiscence, amusing
and poetic. And all his talk has a lightness of
touch. The guests of this morning were Mr.
Davies, the war secretary; Seebohm Rowntree,
the manufacturer and social worker, whose books
on the study of poverty are as well known in
America as in England; and H. N. Spalding.
Mr. Rowntree and Mr. Spalding are conducting
the department of welfare work in the ministry
of munitions.
"Are you giving them welfare?" he asked Mr.
Rowntree. "Here," he said, turning to me, "is
the greatest attempt ever made by a government
to surround the lives of the workers with safe-
guards for their safety and health and well-
being."
"What Americans and English need more than
any one thing else is a smoking-room acquaint-
ance, where they exchange their views informally
and get to know the man."
It is this smoking-room intimacy that Mr.
Lloyd-George gives to all whom he meets. He
is not afraid of being himself. He is as daring
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in his comments on men and things as Mr. Roose-
velt, as charming as the late William James. He
is used to being loved. The lines about the eyes
reveal a man who works his purpose by geniality
in a flow of fun and charm and sympathy. The
political battles of twenty years Lave left less iia-
pression on his spirit than the victories he has
won as peace-maker and harmonizer. He re-
ferred to two editors who have recently been at-
tacking him. He said:
"I don't mind their criticizing me. I can take
blows and I can give them. But they are mak-
ing it hard for us to get together after the war.
We don't want differences when we come to the
work of reconstruction."
He ends a talk by being more completely the
master of your thought than you are yourself.
He states it clearly and beautifully, and reduces
it to a program of action.
"To understand your people or any people,"
he said, "it is necessary for one to pass inside the
temple."
He practises what Sainte-Beuve preached,
that to know a religion you must be a worshiper
inside the church. So week by week Sainte-
844
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LLOYD-GEORGE
Beuve became a mystic and a pagan and an
epicurean as he served up the soul of the writer
whom he was interpreting. This is the high gift
which Lloyd-George possesses. He can step up
to the very altar of a man's most secret bt^hef.
This is the gift which has made him the one
Briton who is perfectly understood in France.
He spoke only a couple of sentences inside the
citadel of Verdun, but they revealed to France
that be knew what that symbol meant to them.
For in his best moments he becomes something
other than the grim fighter, and the adroit pol-
itician who uses all the tricks of the game. Sud-
denly for his hearers, and unexpectedly to him-
self, he lifts by an exquisite imagination to the
place of insight, and becomes the voice of ob-
scure people, and understands men he has never
met. If he talks with a slangy person, he dis-
charges himself in vivid, staccato phrases. The
nature and direction of his rebound are deter-
mined by the substance that he encounters. He
was bom to react. He has a mind that kindles,
and a style that rises very lightly and gracefully
into poetic beauty. There has been no such pas-
sage of prose produced by the war as that para-
846
i
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
graph of his on "little nmtioiu" at the beginning
of the fight.
A breezy young officer of the flying service
once told me the shameful secret of Lloyd-
George. It was that the war minister went
around obtaining advice from experts, that
he really didn't know all about it by him-
self.
Earlier in the war a prominent banker told me
that the then chancellor of the exdiequer was
not the financial authority which the multitude
thought him, that he held consultations wilh lead-
ing bankers, that, in fact, the chancellor had con-
sulted with his own firm.
Lloyd-George is the leader of a democracy be-
cause he chums with experts, and swings to the
currents of the collective will. His personality
contains the virtues and the perils of the democ-
racy itself. For it, too, may some day establish
a bureaucracy of experts that could be the
tightest little oligarchy of history, and it, too,
may yet swing to tides that are ebbing. It is
not often that one sees a community incarnating
itself in a single man. But the British democracy
has its incarnation in Lloyd-George, responsive
84o
^*J-- •'-=«>=--«, 'iWrt •■.■--a.=s«
m.. ml ii
LLOYD-GEORGE
to vast subconscious forces, and turning to
specialists for aid in crises.
He faces the most difficult years of his life,
and he knows it. A man of his temperament can
conduct a great war. AH that was needed was
the inspirational quality to rouse his people, the
energy to set them at work, the creative imagina-
tion to see the war in its extent, its duration, its
requirements. None of these tests has over-
taxed his powers, for they all lay inside the area
of his competence. But when peace comes,
there is no longer one straight road to a clear
goal. All the forces of reaction will coalesce.
All the bad counselors will make a cloud of wit-
ness about him. All the paths to immediate
power will lie in "playing safe." If he remains
true to himself, he will be cursed with a vehem-
ence which will make his early years seem a sweet
season of delight. There will be no easy vic-
tories. All will be tiumoil and bitterness, for
we are at the beginning of the greatest fight of
the ages — the fight of the democracies inside
themselves. We had our little Lloyd-Greorge in
America, a well known former district-attorney
of New York. He had the same transcendent
847
^ j
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
charm. But the wrong crowd got him, not by
illicit means. They whe
largest sea-coast resort, and how he told n of
returning a Grcrman lad to his home-country a* «er
the war broke out. There is a kindliness in the
race. Many times I have been irritated by some-
thing pig-headed and unconsciously arrogant in
the people, the quality which Havelock Ellis
describes when he says, "It is the temper of a
vigorous, independent, opinionated, free-spoken,
yet sometimes suspicious people among whom
every individual feels in himself the impulse to
rule." It springs from the tradition of a govern-
ing class, and I once heard one of the most famous
men in Europe tell how a certain English noble-
man always made him feel: "You belong to a
race which we once ruled. Really, we ought to
be ruling you now." Then there comes to me ihe
intimate talk I recently had with a librarian.
863
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INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
"For five generations my family has been in
the public service," he said, "and I could not be
happy elsewhere. I receive five hundred pounds
a year. Recently, a business house offered me
nine hundred pounds, with the promise of promo-
tion. But I could not be happy in other work.
We do not want money, primarily, so long as
there is security, and enough for a decent living,
and a pension, perhaps, at the end of it all.
What can money offer compared with public
strvice?"
That is the secret of v^ %t is best in English
life: the finest men in pui c service, a level of
conduct, clean administ-'atiin and government.
The democracy must never wer that standard.
For the opportunity of i* eeting the moving
spirits of the reconstruction, the leaders of labor,
welfare work, the woman's movement, cabinet
ministers, writers, officials, I owe grateful thanks
to H. N. Spalding, Seebohm Rowntree, and
Geoffrey Butler. They were tireless in effecting
new connections for me, unaware that they them-
selves were among the most valuable of the group
whom I met. And from the many talks I have
-LVl-flL
VALE
seemed to verify what I have long believed — ^that
the British people are a great democratic force
in the world. I believe that in accomplished
reform they are a generation ahead of the United
States, and that they see more clearly than we the
immense responsibilities which the principle of
democratic control creates.
I am convinced that our own future is bound
up with that of England, that together with Eng-
land and France we can face the world with
security, and gradually and painfully make the
democratic principle prevail. I am convinced
that, divided, both England and America will be
fatally weakened, and that the future will be
poorer because of the split. What is needed is
interpretation of each country to the other, lead-
^,ing to intellectual understanding, and finally to
good-wilL For that common understanding I
consider it of importance that England shall con-
quer a certain arrogance, a certain unwillingness
to accept us as grown-up, and that she shall clear
the Irish situation. For that common under-
standing I consider it of equal importance that
America should cease her policy of aloofness, and
855
..^S«Kr.^<\.V
INSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
overcome the self-complacency which believes that
our country alone is the land of freedom and
justice and the champion of democracy. Then,
together, in humility, we can achieve greatness,
and extend the principle of democratic control
866
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APPENDIX
IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT
la an outline of the new imperial commonwealth to which
Lord Milner haa given hia approval the functions of tlie im-
perial parliament are auggeated:
The flnt of tbeM is the support and maintenance of the navy
and naval establlshmenU and forttflcations througlKNit the empire.
The second U the control of the expeditknarjr army and the niaip-
t«iance of a skeleton millUiy est«bli«hmcnt for the empire by which
the natlonal-servke militias that must certainly follow this war
could be gunned, mobiliaed, and directed in an bnperial crisis.
The third is the imperial contnri of the food-supply and of the
tanperial resources of raw material. The fourth is imperial transit,
posts, money, sUndards, ports, and seaways. The ftfth is the com-
mon imperial trade policy. The sixth Is the supreme direcUon of
education, not with any power of prohibition, but with unlimited
powers of endowment, to maintain the comnMm laofcuage and the
supply of hifher education universally throughout the empire.
The seventh is the maintenance of the supreme court of the empire.
The eighth Is the control of foreign p<»licy and the continuation
of the Imperial trusteeship over the non-represented dependencies.
THE LABOR COLLEGE
The modem British radical is a man in conunand of the
figures in hia induatry. Hia wage demand is not a blank
cheek drawn againat the full productive power of industry.
It is an exact atatement of the aoMunt of cash which the
employer haa joat put into his own pocket. This type of
worker is perfectly willing to hold a conference on the basis
of a abov-down of fKts. This mental clarity ia not tme
857
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APPENDIX
:ii
of the BUM of labor, but it ia true of the advanced gronpa.
Education bai been at work and baa given them an intel-
lectual baaia for their deairea. Thoae deairea, ezpreaaed in
the form of demanda, arc leaa noiay and more deadly than
the old daaa-conacioua battle-criea. There ia an atmoaphere
of amokeleaa powder to the ayndicalist movement in the
handa of the minera, railwaymen, and engineera.
An admirable atudy of thia intellectual ferment in the
South Walea coal-fields haa been recently made by a spe-
cial correspondent of "The Timea." He abowa bow the
minera, when they tackle Lord Rhondda and the other
barona of the collieriea, figure out coats from statiatica, and
challenge their management to a Joint audit In describ-
ing the careful preparation whkb these men hvrt received,
he says:
What In It that makes South Wales the faidustrtal storm-center
of Great Britain and why Is it a fruitful ground for food agita-
tion and peace propaganda? The answer li> simple. Subject a
fiery and educated people to a soulless, dehumanlaed, eaoMaerelal
machine for the extractloa of gold out of labor, and yon will
Inevitably breed a seething discontent whkfa must somewhere find
tts outlet.
Their flcriness Is sufldently known, but the Celtic temperameat
alone does not explain their violence of action. To it Is added a
degree of education which would astonish some of their absentee
employers. There are scores of men working in the Welsh pits who
could pass an examination in Iltsen or Shaw or Swinburne, or
could lioid their own In an argument on economics or politics with
the average memiier of Parliament. Tliey owe their training, not
to the state or to the municipalities, but to the educational
facilities provided by the Independent I^ibor Party and other
organisations. In the current number of the "Merthyr Pioneer,"
which may be regarded as the organ of the Independent Labor
Party movement in South Wales, appears a column and a half
articie, one of a series, on industrial history, dealing with the
earliest wrftten records of British history from the point of view
858
APPENDIX
work, which be.r on the .ubj«t For yean p^t fre. evoUni
cjM^ n economic^ tadurtril hi.torjr. .ml „„yi., .object, h.4
b«n held Jn I L. P. branch-rooo. in the various mining center^
•mdmany of the younger member, have t.lirn full «lv.nUge of
H^l" !!r "If.'.*^""**™" moreroent which hu it. center In
C^^t!^ r n ""-"^ °" '»•*"'> '•J' P-*t •"«'enU of the
wi; «».hi, f:. ™' ."»"♦»"«'. «t "-y He remembered.
wue.Ubli.hed M the retult of dimti.f.ctioii with the cur-
J^r^Jp^r.";:' -":•'• "^""^ *"«" "*'«"•» " — »'^'-
ferred to Earl. Court. London, and thence it ha. .pread the doc
trhie of ela» war far a«l wide. Recently It came under the
joint control of the South Wale, Miner.' Federation and the
ITt Ilf"/.! "^?^»- "^ •P^'W 'ffort. are now being
r^. .^ .'*• *"'' ""»"««»«»» tW« district, chiefly by lee'
T»M J^**"^"*"** """*"**• ""^ ««P*«tlTe «x.|etie.' room..
A third educational agency 1. an organiMUon called the Pleb.
League, which atou. at the education of the woricer, by mean, of
cla«« fa. ««iology. lndu.trUl hi.tory. Marxian ecomHnlc^ and »
Zt «.!/«. '•""'''^ "' y"""* "*"*" •»»*«'»» tW« teaching,
bu m«,y of them are Mnt by their lodge, to the Central Labor
college^ London, and come back to preach what they hare learned
-m^nly a. a gospel of open ho.tlUty to the employer, and con-
•Unt agiUtten for the complete extractkm of their proflU.
The Centr.1 Ubor CoUege, deMribed •bove, is .n inati-
toUon in the weat of London, one of the heads of which
has been Mrs. Bridges Adams. Mrs. Aduns is an intern.-
Uonal Socialist, who has made a lifelong study of education.
She and others founded Bebel House in London, which
was to be one of the headquarters of the international so-
cUlist movement. Then came the war, and Bebel House
was used by the refugee Russians as a headquarters. The
police raided it during one of their stupid official campaigns
against Russian political refugees. Mrs. Adams has waged
a continuous and at last a successful fight against the Eng-
lish oiEcial betrayal of the right of .sylum. I give a full
859
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acconnt of the matter in the chapter entitled "The Right of
Asylum." The point is of interest here as showing how
various expressions of radicalism interlock. The woman
who has helped the miners of South Wales to fashion the
weapons of their powerful syndicalist movement is the per-
son who has defended an ancient English liberty.
Mrs. Adams believes that little trust can be put in labor
leaders. They grow official, tame and compromising, and
lose responsiveness to the aspirations of the mass of the
people. She believes that only by diffused intelligence
will the labor movement prosper, and not through individual
men becoming under secretaries, pension minister, and min-
ister of labor. And this distrust of labor leaders she ex-
tends to university movements for "the education of the
workers." She fears that they will make the social move-
ment "upper class," and the education itself a desiccated,
carefully edited non-explosive brand. So Mrs. Adams and
others have conducted the Central Labor College as an in-
stitution growing out of the people themselves rather than
something given them from above. Step by step with the
growth of her institution and other democratic agencies of
education the Welsh miners have raised their standard of
living and strengthened their position in the community,
till to-day they are a force so formidable that the Gov-
ernment capitulated on their latest threat to strike, and
enforced a wage increase. They are probably the most
radical labor group in Great Britain.
LAND
The Duke of Sutherland has decided to sell his Shrop-
shire seat, Lilleshall, an estate of 7500 acres.
In a letter to the tenants the Duke writes :
I have hoped against hope that I might not be forced to part
360
APPENDIX
8i«te mainly of^« i^I^ ° 1?^^°"* ^'^ patrimony con-
briluv rH!"" '''^Tl ""^^^ «°°^ «f°"" -J»-h -"
W f .. ''"^' ^ ^°°^ ""P'''«" t° bring man and
knd ogether wa« about to end in remedial !egislat"n
Now these reforms have been postponed till peace corned
But legislation will be introduced after the close of the wa"
o bruig labor back to the land, and to bring the land blck
from grass The famous "New Doomsday" inquiry showed
:":,;s:frcrrr ^-^ --' ^"' "-"
upon tl« land system and the wo^I^s o^ A?^ ZTl"""^' """"^
years o, rule b/the BrL^Z^^Z^^J,""' '' *"° ""^'^
and W*f ^" ""?'• °^ ^''^ agricultural land of England
and Wales « worked by tenants and not by owners. "Se
S6 oXl""' "*^"* °' ^°«^*"'* -'^ Wales is .^nt
$650,000,000 a year. The land is under-cultivated.
The Govermnent appointed The Land Inquiry Committee
to find out why. Their report was brought S o^^TZ
r t^tr ^ ^"- ''' "-- ^^ •^-"-
The Committee found that one reason of nnder-cultiva-
t.on « the insecurity of tenure of the farmer. T^rgTw.
to qmt, or a higher rent, has led to this inaecurity of the
S61
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APPENDIX
^ i.'
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I
r>
I
small holder. This insecurity of tenure prevents the tenant
from making improvements. He deserves compensation for
increased fertility due to continuous good farming. In-
stead, he often is shackled with a higher rent for his own
improvements, and under the present system of taxation
these improvements are rated and therefore penalized.
Another reason is labor. Bad farming and low wages
together have driven many of the best men to the towns.
Those who remain as laborers are underpaid.
A large amount of land is withheld from its best use for
the purpose of sport, and a considerable amount more is
under-cultivated and in some cases under-rented owing to
game preservation. This land, instead of providing food
for the people, provides sport and delicacies for the few.
Between 1881 and 1901, the number of game-keepers in-
creased from 12,633 to 16,677, while during the same pe-
riod there was a large decline in the rural population.
There are instances of agricultural land, formerly rated at
20 shillings or more an acre, turned into plantation, and
then rated at one shilling an acre, including the sporting
right. In such cases the law has put a premium upon mis-
using the land. Reforms are necessary in taxation and
rating of this land used for sport.
Other reasons for under-cultivation follow: Land lies
waste. The farmer can not obtain adequate capital nor
facile credit. Better transit by light railways, waterways,
etc., is needed. Cooperation is still imperfectly practised.
Scientific education is required. Much of the land must be
split into small holdings. Too much land is in pasture in-
stead of tillage. Even in dairy fanning, "more cows could
be maintained, and, if they are properly managed, more
profit obtained, on an arable farm than on a grass farm."
The "Nation" has reduced the total area in England and
362
APPENDIX
W.le, ™der crop, .„d g,„. ,„ ,|,^ ,
Clover .nd roUlion grasses, H .crcs .r.Me.
SmaU holdings are one of the remedies Pn.,Uoi,
any abstract joy of ownership, but almost universally for
X : CeT'. *'; "*^^'-^«°" °^ -"-'•^P- So th rem-
edy proposed IS to create security of tenure Mth., fi,
peasant proprietorship. It shou J be sarthat the/e "^
wide difference of public opinion on this point of smalt
rented holding yersus peasant proprietorship. The "m
that tV "*r '' '''' ^-••.'->?
k
APPENDIX
• fcrelation that ire had such a supply, and while the Oennant
were paring, for UtUe lots. £300 a ton for lucfa oU, we are buyinc
It for the Government at £38 a ton.
In the Pacific Ocean, bordering on British Columbia; In the
mouth of the St Uwrence, and the waters around Newfound-
land and Labrador, apart from our own home waters-under an
Empire monopoly (though we must have the consent of the
dominions In thU matter), we could become the purveyors of fl.sh
In all forms, almost to the whole world. Already Newfoundland
was sending on an average 300,000 torn of cod to the Mediter-
ranean and neutral countries. There was p-actically no limit to
the quantity, and the Grand Trunk Pacific had already offered
refrlgeraOng plant to bring fish from Prince Rupert Island to
Liverpool at a penny a ton, which would be reduced to three
farthings or a halfpenny on big Government contracts being en-
tered into. This development could take place Immediately. The
necessary shipbuUdlng and equipment must take time, but after
the war-lf the Government aUowed it-the whole of the vessela
now used In the North Sea for mine sweeping and other purposes
would form the nucleus of an Empire fishing fleet. The quantity
of fish consumed in this country was 600,000 tons a year, which
was equal to one-fortieth of the total food consumed per head
of the population, and the scheme might Incieaae the fish supply
to at least four times that quantity.
It will take ten years to develop the ideas the committee wish
to carry out It must be apparent to every one that no private
individual could accomplish such a great work In the way that
an Empire Council could do. There was the objection that It
would be SoclaUstIc for the State to carry on such a business; but
the committee would begin where vested Interests were the least
in force-except as regarded the fishermen engaged In the business
-and that was In the bed of the ocean. All on board the fishing
vessels, from the captain to the lowest man, should parttoipate in
the proceeds of the catches. If the State secured a penny a
pound, which was £9 Gs. a ton. It would be quite possible to make
a gross profit in 10 years of £36,000,000, out of which the sinking
fund for the development charges must be met. It would be for
the State to regulate the prices in every town in the coimtrv,
and the State should have the control of the home flsherfcs as
welL
S68
I APPENDIX
thouwnd doll.„ m bringing two hundred .ere, of eocoa-
o ten thousand dollar. .„ .ere in .bout ten year.. So it
r.L *h"" 'T"""'' '°"''*' "' ''"^"""^ '°' ^^' ^t«t« to de-
.b vV™' "."V"^""' '"'"*"»' °' P.Im-land,, whieh prob-
ably amount to sever.l million acres.
WHO DOES THE WORK.»
.il'' ♦ Tl"°" ''"! •*"" °"" "''^'*' ""^ h.. it been pos-
sible to take out four million men and still c.rrv on the
productive industries of Great Britain?
The clearest shortest answer to this has been given by
Sir Leo Chioaza Money: ^
ln^,Iia«I* "'" '"""'"'"* '*'*• " - '''«"«• Produced more tb.n
tr.di?otlt"f,^" Jl *^*!" *"««»l«««on of production in some
iraaes, notably the engineering trades.
(3) Large amounts of new capital have been applied bv the
Oovernment to many important industries ^
JJJ M.nv *^' ^^ " '*°"'^*' "' restrictions upon output.
^^) Many women have talcen up productive work for Tflrst
^ ^P, H!*" •»» '^n » great contraction of the vast amount of
ma e labor normaUy employed upon non-productive and un" on" Jc
work, in some cases the unnecessary work has disappear^ aul
Cen'o'^ir " "'^ '^'^ *'^'" "P '-' ^ "- ^"-»d "y
He goes on to say:
Before the war a very large proportion of our male workers
we e engag.^ ,„ non-productive work. All our minerquarri"
M IT^P ,I^T, '"""°"''- Therefore it was true that OF OUR
MALE POPULATION AGED EIGHTEEN YEARS AND
S69
^1
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I'i ft
i/ri
APPENDIX
OVER ONLY ABOUT ONE IN THREE WAS ENGAGED
DIRECTLY IN PRODUCING INDUSTRIAL WEALTH,
What were alJ the rest doing? Distribution, education. Govern-
ment aervice, coinnierre, etc., nre all ImportHnt. but can It lie
pOMlble that two out of three malei*— to sajr nothing of feowle*
—were needed to carry lliein on, as compared witli only one in
three devoted to producinR things P Most certainly the devotion of
io large a proportion of males to non-productive tasks was not only
unnecessary, but a sifrn and a portent of Industrial decadence.
Tlie talcing of men from non-productive employments has en-
abled women very easily to inalie substitution in many cases,
A won an worlcs the lift which before the war was worked by an
able-bodied man. doing work which no able-bodied man should ever
do. The laundry van, which before the war was driven by an
able-bodied man, is now driven by a girl. You go to the bank and
•ee capable young women dealing with the books and papers which
yesterday were supposed to demand the services of stalwart youn*
men, ' *
At the insurance offices, which before the war employed a great
army of young men, girls And no difficulty In accomplishing the
work. At the offices of the National Health Insurance Com-
missioners the work Is being done by girls quite as well as by
the battalion or so of men who recently were thought to be needed
for it. In tens of thousands of commercial. Government, and
local government offices female labor is doing what the other year
was thought to be men's work.
The idea, therefore, that because a man was a petty clerk, or
a shop assistant, or a Uft-man, or a driver, or a door-opener,
or a 'out, or a commission agent, or something of that sort, before
the war, he must necessarily go back to his old job, while the
womai who has taken his job Is to return to her old work. Is
entirely mistaken.
Organise our power supply; reform .lur railway system; set to
work on a decent canal system; determine production in the
metal trades and the chemical trades; enlarge our wheat area
definitely and compulsorily. Do these things, and there will be
such a call for labor in connection with them, and In connection
with other useful employments arising from them, that in peace as
in war, we shall find that the difficulty Is not to find jobs for tlie
men, but to find men for the jobs.
870
APPENDIX
THE CHURCH
of Eng^^tncl, believing th«t "tlie brotherhood of Z
ChTl. *l . .^'"'•"" C.lhedr.1, belonging to the
Church of England, to preach in the City TeSpfe pulpit
report,? """"'*'* ''" '•"""> ^'' >«'^' "The Ti»«"
to preach In th^ city /Jpie ^''j.^T j'ij""""i "'*"'"°"
^n^;t:X -^. -£^- ^- ;iS- -
..on o, Ch.ch o^rrTaV^X" ^ SC ^.n^-
COMPULSORY DEMOCRACY
eff^rin'frL:::/^"'^ "'^ ^'^--^ — «- ^^
those conunoditie^tLt we cTex;^;; Z ll Tl" *° '^''"' '*
•broad other munitions of w.^ Tyou dl^^v """ '"' '"^
national energies into wron«. rh.„„ T ., ^ 5""" "penditure
ing It with a successful peac^ """^ ^"^ *" ""*' '""J-
Let us transpose that into it, equivalent for normal life.
All we can do ft the wolf>M «* n.
nappy -nd healthy P^^onTZ''! ^rL^Ttn 1''^''''
to work at productive InHna.i-. '^"aine life, men and women
commodities th^^e can e^l^^ T Z^ T"*^" *" ^°''' »* t^ose
other products flth^"cr^:S:^;;f H T'"' "'^ *^'*" ""^ •"-""
If. by your expenditure on 1 , , "' «»«'n«ble satisfaction.
Of cJpfta,rrn*p*ruct ve Z; '"rdi'''^ ^*'"' '"''^*™'"*
into wron, channefs. .y so U^^^^ -"e^'l^rrtir^;^^
371
APPENDIX
which we depend for establishing a high standard of living for
the community, and so finishing the labor war and ending it with
a successful peace. *
The principle of organization and conccntraUon, backed
by compulsion, in the interests of the community has for
the first time in English history been widely applied.
Once applied, it becomes permanent, and is subject to ex-
tension. The compulsion has been used to force men to go
and die. It has been used to make them work at certain
jobs at a fixed rate of pay and to give up other jobs. But
it has not been used, except in "controlled" firms and in a
lumted way, to take control of profits, and it has not been
used to force capital to invest in one enterprise and not in
another. A man's life is not his own, his power of work
IS not his own; but his money, if he is wealthv, is his own.
He can invest it in making absinthe; he can lend it to
an exploiter of African labor; he .an create an anti-so-
cial industry with it. One needs oaly to state it for ita
absurdity to be seen. Capital will be increasingly governed
as labor is already governed. When political democracy
was formed, it was inevitable that industrial democracy
would result, however tardily. So it is with any partial ap-
phcaUonof principle. Once it begins to operate, it grad-
ually extends itself over the full area of its function. The
principle of compulsion, applied to the life and labor of men
will a little later reach property, that last sacred strong-
hold of privilege. ' *
These changes are more searching than the direct changes
by death and wastage of the war, but it is the war that has
hastened them. "The success of this revolution was chiefly
due to the wisdom of those who allowed it to develop grad-
naUy and almost imperceptibly from existing insUtutions."
87«
' %'mfi.fu^,^:^ *• *. t^ -fc* * rf
APPENDIX
COOPERATION, SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM
eefCL'T''"; " '*" °'** '•""" °' '-'=''«'^«d profit.
.«m ir»K . ""^ °^ organizing industry. Individual,
ism, with Its instinct for prooertv will nf -, «"viauai
powe,W „,.e.,„t ,0..^ ,t. pHv..e ,.„t::J:^ ^^p!
'rty, and th.t property, n.,te.d of beioi held to . f--
l"d., -m be widely di,Wb„W. The JL,.l „f'p^!
..WMd proprielorrtip to l„l.,rf u «, to.t.J ^.
5ptzr.st=;vre;ir
That lueans precisely that associations of producers (trX
fTirtrrti^"^ TT r-"^ -" *^« -^^^-
on "The n f. °""'"*^ *^'» »«^"««« in the chapter
The Lh T?- '' " *'^ '"^"""^ ^y syndicalism
The other solution is the control of industry by associa-
ion, of consumers. Those associations are volv^Z ^^
wnTrrT'h"'' r^?"^' '' ^" ^*-*« "^ -^'^p"
isr TWe '^l '"'^"""" ^•y cooperation and social-
on Ja ", "° **f "'"'' ^ P'^'^'P** ''«t^««» coopera-
tion and socialism, but there is a sharply marked dlfflt
ence m the area of application. "^
a«l'*7 "*^*''"' '''''*'''' ''^ association of producers or by
nl* ^ «ynd'cali8t will exploit the consumer by high
pnc s and over-emphasis on the social value of hi, own
particular trade. The cooperator and ,Ute .ociaUst ^11
373
i
APPENDIX
exploit the worker in order to get products at a low price,
and state socialism builds a powerful bureaucracy of expert
officials, who form an oligarchy inside the democracy. The
ineradicable instinct for property will temper both move-
ments, and Parliament will remain one of the direct ex-
pressions of the people's wish between these contending
forces, and will continue to act as a corrective of modem
government, which is government by cabinet and committee,
leaning increasingly toward state socialism. In short, ao
one movement or tendency fully expresses democracy,
which must use each in carefully controlled degree. The
method of that control is the problem of the future. The
cabinet and the bureaucracy have meanwhile grown strong,
and Parliament has weakened. In the future no one tend-
ency inside the social movement is likely to be the Aaron's
rod and swallow up the contending tendencies, though so-
cialists, syndicalists, and cooperators make the same whole-
hearted claims for their pet solution that advocates of big
business, free trade, and empire development make. Out
of all these powerful "pushes" will come a resultant, a
collision into harmony, whicti will be the new order, the
reconstructed community, the organized state under demo-
cratic control.
A figure will make this clear. In the warfare in France
and Flanders there is a series of separate spaces that can
be made untenable for the enemy. There are the differing
zones of shrapnel and of infantry fire and a space between
them, and that space belongs to the machine-gun. There
is a similar division of effective function in the attack on
the capitalistic system. There is an area that the municipal
and governmental control of industry does not reach, and a
portion (not the whole) of that area is reached by the co-
operative movement. There is a further area reached by
874
* - »;JfA:.T»» V *-«( *,^ *^4itfm .
APPENDIX
Ion. Jelh^X '""•*' """^'^ ""^ '«"
11I1.I trade of ih. m ' ■"'""' "■'«°' »' «■= •»-
In itsoH nothu,, ^ tbT^Z^.,, ' rP"'"»° "off".
P-oU.„ or ^\J: TZ °J„; J«' •"■""on „, tt.
o.rr4ir„^:jr.^?:^?;:r^
state socialism. The state " f * "^ '^''^''^^l""' «g«inst
WiU the „,„p, be orde"d out Sn t tl™ "'Z'""'
*o ^...ticr ru-r.:i;XTeU oT
tod. p.5.«„„g . ,j„.^j » .m ^Tto t
ro:nf=s::rroe4'.::LT'"^''''-
do«.oo«c.. And .^sri;'r„xr::^s°v„'
-one ..p,..^„„ „. ^ ^ ^^^ ^ :^ZZ^
What has cooperation in Great BriUin ,?««- *»
enty years of experience? It has esteXr ."1 '""
^ at the present U„e «ftet^ dLt ^ Ttt r C^^h
three million members, controllinir sales to t^V i' .
'°" -^'^ "««o„ do„„, . ,i:':z ri-td,'
375
Il
.*■.'■♦
1
J <
■r i!
APPENDIX
to the value of seventy miUion dollars a year. The re-
search committee summarises the service of cooperation. I(
has afforded in manufacturing and in wholesale and reUil
trading an alternative of working-class origin to the capi-
talist system. Manual workers have proved themselves
capable of administering it under democratic control. It
has steadily grown for seventy years. It has kept down
retail prices, distributed millions of dollars as dividend on
purchases, money that would have gone to the capitalist
class. By cooperation the manual workers are receiving a
training in the administration of self-governing industrial
republics. CooperaUon within its own area has done away
with that specialized brain power known as directive con-
trol, which consists in cunning for the defeat of rivals
under cutting, nibbling at wages, adulteration, cornering
the market, promotion, stock-exchange gambling. A ten-
dency in cooperation, as in socialism, is to put administra-
tion into the hands of salaried officials. Thus the English
Cooperative Wholesale Society has twenty-one thousand
paH employees, directed by a salaried committe of thirty-
two members.
The business of cooperation is not likely to go far be-
yond the articles consumed by that portion of the wage-
earning rJ-ss enjoying fairly regulai employment and
wages, . - r with the "black-coated proletariat '-clerks,
petty officials, and the like. The submerged tenth are un-
able to avaa themselves of cooperation, and the one-eighth
or one-tenth of the population known as the middle and
upper classes do not care to avail themselves of it. But it
is those other classes, from unskilled laborer to minor pro-
fessionals, with incomes from $250 to $2000 a year, who
are increasing in numbers and importance, and who are
entering into control of the new social order. Cooperation
376
i 1
i i
»■ *■■
•■■-•» 1 1. . .•»••* * .
«. *• tin.M.'kf.^^.
*■* -»*-3
APPENDIX
ture for foreim cf^nJ.^ 1 *""*" P''* «' »«°"f«c.
li^e the Po^tlef a:f tLlt^^^^^ "t ^""^^ ^'^"''^"'
d-y-by-day consumers do nor^^.'^'"' ^ ^'"■'='' *''«
of ««i«inistration, or „ winch ??!*"*' " """*"« «""
" «quired. AccoXly tu ;fl"T'^^' «°^"--'
tion will remain outside he rl^I, "''"""''^ P"'^"'-
«tion. Cooperation r not Lu °^''°°P"«t-« organi-
system for arajorit;:f:irwX^- U ''' T*"-'
tive for a minority. workers. It is an alterna-
What has socialism done? TKo =
the Fabian Research Committee L th"?'^ "" ^^^" ''^
Government has alreadHlr "*' 'P'^« «^ ^»'5.
jrrown its police potrlL'TnTha^^t:^^^^^ ^'^"^ -*-
^on of public services-housekeeoL "° -dministra-
How are we to know the^!ff ^ ? * """"""^ s<^«J«-
and capitalist enterprise. Jr^^''^"" ^^
tration in a given den!;hn. *'? "^ ^''^*^" «'J'»>°«-
whether any e«ess ff "^1 T *""* "" " «°«"«««c is
- to the pXVtL':its::;orTL^^^^^^^ «"-
owner or shareholders, but to p«b^ ! °^ '"^ P"'''«*'=
- century ago government cle^d itseTr^. ''°"" ***
then government has entered many fields ""^
877
APPENDIX
•n expenditure of a thousand million dollars a year. This
largest of all industries in its three functions is passing in-
creasingly throughout the civilised world into governmental
organization. Thus the inland conveyance of letters by
private enterprise is to-day left to countries like Abyssinia,
Afghanistan, and Arabia.
The construction and maintenance of roads is virtually
nowhere a service of private capitalism. The United
Kingdom is now spending yearly nearly one hundred mil-
lion dollars on thoroughfares, with approximately 100,000
men constantly employed.
Local authorities in Great Britain in 1913 were operat-
ing 171 tramways as against one in 1881. In 1918 the
municipal capital in tramways was $275,000,000.
In waterways, embanking, lighting, watching, ports, the
docks and quays are nearly everywhere provided and
maintained by government. The capital outlay in Great
Britain is over five hundred million dollars.
Of the total railway mileage of the world, just about
half is owned and worked entirely by government enter-
prise. The railways of Great Britain- have been in the
hands of private capital, but during the war the Government
has coiitr lied them, and there is a powerful movement to-
ward nationalizing them. This movement resulted a few
weeks ago in nationalizing the railways of Ireland.
In public health and sanitary work we see in local-govern-
ment water undertakings of Great Britain twenty thousand
men employed, and a thousand million dollars administered
in premises, plant, and machinery.
The removal of house refuse, city drainage, and street
sweeping are increasingly governmental services.
Public baths, public laundries, and swimming-pools repre-
378
'.,-ar^^i>»%«.». wv;.
'•i».-»» i*> ■
APPENDIX
Sute medical service is steadUy spreading: doctoring for
the destitute, governmental insurance systems, public med-
r, T'u! "^ "diversities, hospitals, asylmns, schools, pris-
Z; r ?fP"^^°^' workhouses, anny, navy, poUce,
post-office. Nurses, chemists, and doctors are rapX be-
coming the officers of the community. Where already per-
haps one hundred thousand of them are in public instttu-
Uons and government departments the rest wlU shorUy be.
In land improvement, there are already over three hun-
dred local commissioners of sewers, spending about two and
a half million dollars a year. Several million dollars a
year are spent in India in new irrigation canals, in improv-
ing the network of water-channels, in banking river chan-
nels. At this moment Ireland requires an expenditure of
. few mdhon dollars to drain her bogs, set her river-levels,
and establish an irrigation system.
Public education, recreation, parks, libraries, music,
dances, piers, museums, art galleries, government books and
other prmted matter, are all employing men and women
and absorbing capital. The printing bill of the British
Oovemment alone is over five million dollars a year.
Banking facilities are passing under governmental con-
trol. Metallic coinage and the issue of paper money are
state services. British post-office savings-bank deposits and
trustee savings-bank deposits amount to twelve hundred
and fifty million dollars. The British Government lends
money to land-owners, local authorities, public-utility socie-
ties for agricultural improvements, drainage, and housing,
and to the householder wishing to purchase his own home
In the purchase and sale of securities for customers the post-
879
til
If
APPENDIX
W i
n
in«ter.g«ner.l of Gre.t Britain doe, « busine.. of mfllion.
. year. In 1915 the British Government took under ita
wntrol the Inveatment of capiUl. In 1914 the Bank of
England, as the agent of the British Government, pur-
cha«d over five hundred million dollars of bUls of ex-
change.
In light, heat, and power the same tendency toward state
«.d municipal ownership is at work. Over three hundred
capital ,s two hundred and twenty-five million dollars. The
WMnes town council claimed four years ago that at from
sixteen to twenty-four cents per thousand cubic feet it was
supplying gas, with a profit, cheaper than any other gas
plant, governmental or capitalist, in the world. Nearly
three hundred cities and towm in Great Britain are now
supplied with light, heat, and power by the municipal elec
trical department, representing an investment of two hun-
dred and fifty million doUars, annual gross receipts of over
twenty millions, and employing abo- twenty thousand per-
Government has gone in for housing, building farm-
laborers cottages in Ireland, municipal lodging-houses in
Great Britain, tenement blocks in London and Liverpool,
and developing suburbs. As I show in the report of H.e
Land Inquiry committee, there is beginning a vast ex-
tension of governmental rural cottage building, which will
provide 120,000 new dwellings, or ten per cent, of the pres-
ent number. ^
S*^^'"^ °' ^T^ I"*"" " ^°'^'* """-' • f •<* of
240,000 square miles, administered by the Government of
India for the public benefit, producing a net revenue of ten
million dolUrs a year. English municipalities are begin-
ning to afforest their water-catchment areas.
380
U,
APPENDIX
The largest fanner in the United Kingdom is the Irish
Government, where the congested district* board ha, S3,000
rent.p.ytag ten«,t. and an average of . quarter of a mil-
prXT' "" '** -d^i-i-traUon for stock and sale of
The mines in the United Kingdom have been under pri-
vate ownership But the Government recently took over
W? :: '° ^""' '^"^"' -"«* ^'^'^ » P-bably the
first step ,n the nationalization of most of the fields. Ire-
land s prosperity will leap up if her coal-deposit, are freed,
lliere are many government enterprises in manufactur-
ing industry, producing the articles required for public use,
tastead purchasing them to the profit of private^oncerns:
The municpahty with its tramway service, erects its own
works and car-sheds, generates its electricity, builds and
olBce gets the bulk of its mail-sacks made by the prison de-
partment.
At this writing the British Government is considering tak-
ing over the manufacture and sale of liquor, which will
make ,t one of the greatest shopkeepers in the world.
it L" T T "! T. """""^ °^ '^' "«*=««''^ committee,
it IS theoretic to debate about the principle of socialism
re««, private capitalism. The tendency toward public
ownership ,s under full swing, and no phrases can stop it!
LtsTaC rVs^ ^'" - ^^"^^"^ '- ''' -^--
In these days, the Colonial Office has more the attributes of -n
XTThenTL'"' """'""^r"^ ^''"'*^"' *"-" those"oTe „:
-Tfi ? 7 J ""' ""*'""*' °' Government I am a coal
and tin miner in Nigeria, a gold miner in Guiana. I seek tto^r
in one colony, oil and nuts in another, cocoa in , tw-Tji
rtsTivrii""' "^^ '"'''^ -*"' to^-l"arrm7nT
jects of my daily care. ... My days and nights are spent in Z
881
1'^
I
m
it
APPENDIX
•tudy of medicine, in the details of raUw.y construction, with
dwire that the smallest >um of money may lay the Urgest numh<
of mUea of track In the fewest possible days.
Six years ago the census showed in government employ ii
England and Wales 788,530 persons, 290,500 in state de
partments and 588,951 under local authorities. It is rea
sonable to estimate that in Uie United Kingdom over on<
nuUion are now In public employment, one-sixth of al
gainfully employed persons. The Socialist or Labor parties
can not fully claim this government action as the result oj
their propaganda. The bulk of this socialist enterprise has
been initiated and carried out by persons of the aristocratic
or propertied classes; by business men and experts, and
middle-class rasidents. Men like Joseph Chamberlain
were not "out" to introduce the cooperative commonwealth,
though unconsciously they have hastened its coming. The
reasons that have directly led to this spread of socialism
show that the consideration in the creators of the policy
was the interest of the community as a whole and the in-
terest of the citizens as consumers. The test of the policy
is not by theory, but by practice and experience.
In four great fields both socialism and cooperation are
as yet largely leaving the field to private capital. Those
fields are: the special service of the idk rich, much of in-
ternational trade and its finance, the unorganized portion
of the shipping industry, and a large part of agriculture
and fishing. And yet even in agriculture the coming leg-
islation is leaning heavily toward what is virtually state con-
trol; and in fishing the Empire Resources Development com-
mittee are putting through a program which is socialistic.
State and municipal ownership and management now
administer in the United Kingdom seventy-five hundred
million dollars of capital. The capital thus administered
S82
APPENDIX
and the volume of business thus done is probably « hundred
2nl "f S'"' 'iu''"* °' «^''«P«""<"'. •«! is increasing with
gi-nt strides. This state .nd n.unicip.1 socialism is most
-uccessful in communication and transport, land hnprove-
»ent sanitation, and public health service, education and
recreation, extraction of coal and other minerals, banking
and insurance, manufacture and distribution of certain
commodities and the construction and preparation of arti-
cles required in the public service.
. J^p *"*"P'jf " °f cooperation and of state and municipal
»oc ahsm hardly ever compete with one «.other bec.-^
their spheres are distinct. The Cooperative Society ^.
duces and dutributes mainly ordinary household supplies.
Soc.al.sm has devoted itself to commodities and service, un-
smted to cooperation. This division of function will un-
doubtedly long continue.
The more a government engages in industrial functions as
contrasted w.th functions merely of police and national
defense, the more essentially democratic does its administra-
tion tend to become. But as yet, parallel with what we
have seen in cooperation, the humbler grades of emploveea
in state and municipal service have as little influence on the
management of their department and are as much governed
from above as if they were in capitalist employment.
On the other hand, in comparison with joint-stock cap-
italism, government management of industry means ulti-
mately a large number of independent employers and an
increase in local control. And this because in practice there
IS a rapid growth of municipal enterprises, with a multipli-
caHon of separate employers. Whereas in capitalist enter-
prise there is the supremacy of the national trust and
combine, such as Lord Rhondda's in South Wales, over pri-
vate industry, thus lessening the number of employers.
883
u
'f'lii »
APPENDIX
- Tlie exten.ion of .ute .nd munlcip.1 m.n.gtment I. r.p-
•ervlce. .l«.dy governinenUUy «imlnl.tered in one pUce
L'Th '" ^'""'"^ ''""«''* »"'»*' P"""^ .dnitaUtr.-
Mon, the .ggrcgate volume of sUte and municipal .ocUlLm
will be lncre.«.d probably five- or ,ix-fold. Such an » .-
creaae, without adding a .ingle fre.h industry or «:rvlce to
hose already successfully nationalised or municipalised
in one country or another, will probably bring into the
rvlce of national and local government an actual majority
of the adult population. With cooperation developing along
« own lines, the combihation of soc.lism and coSpiratlon
wl 1 mean th.t probabiy three-fourths of all the worid's Z
of collective enterprise: certain branches of agriculture,
.rt. Invention, new markets, new individual enterprise.
The futuw organisation of industry and the state will there-
fore include more than one form of control. There is need
to secure for person, employed in cooperation, in govern-
ment enterprise, and in private enterprise some realVontrol
over their own working lives. With that method of control
I have dealt in the chapter on "The Discovery." There is
need, also to secure for the users and consumers of par-
ticular products and services some real power of influencing
their production otherwise than by Parliament and the
town council.
Such are the conclusions of the research committee, which
I have reproduced largely in their owa words. Out of it
.11 emerges the outline of the coming England, of social-
ism, cooperation, syndicalism, big business, private property
384
APPENDIX
WORKSHOP COUNCILS
o™mee before the w.r came. Que.tlon. of hour., piece
r.te.. .ml dlacipHne were de.lt with. The dispute. <^r^d
production iBc,e.«d, .«| higher w.ge. nJpT '
WORKERS' CONTROL
count i!..Iier .nd Si. .h.rd Garton .re the trustee. h.«
«..de a creful invest^.tion of industrial conciio?.
return, among those who «h.hu ?* ^^" ' '*'^ ***"" «' t^*''
pre«n oondfttoT Amo^ th """^ '^"j^'y "*" ^l^ontent with
or who tmy^b^nJ^nZ ^""^ .*'"' ''*"' '«*"«*•* '" F'-"ders
many .Tloo^toZfd'^J" -f "g .h,,,, ,, ^^^^ ^^^ ^^
««.. Of o„^at rZ. "» rT"'"""^ »»»«-"» on the spot that
iucip,ent"vorTo a veT^^^^^^^^^^^ T? "'"^ '" « «^-t«^ «'
rank^ t)w. fl^Kf . . . ^^ *" number of Ihc men now In the
example of that to whi^K *Z '*?"**"'* *«» t**"" only an extreme
1« ll« mor. d«.«™„ LtS ""•' *,*'P'™' '««»:m™t which
P~ch„ *„.««. ...^^^J':^^;,^^"" P.H, .i*h
38fi
li
fl!
M
H i
■■ I
APPENDIX
The war has not put an end to industrial unrest. Every one
of the old causes of dispute remains, and others of a more
serious nature have been added in the course of the war The
very moderation and unselfishness shown by the responsible lead-
ers of Organized Labor are looked upon by important sections
of their following as a betrayal of the cause and by some employers
as a tactical opportunity.
The employers know nothing of the effect of a new
process on the nervous system of the worker. They know
nothing of the fatigue from overwork or monotony. They
make no study of a standard of living. They go blindly
ahead, as if men and machinery, alike, were tools to be
manipulated. That an aim of industry should be a good
life for the worker is in idea which would sound strangely
in the ears. The workers understand nothing of overhead
charges, depreciation of plant, the risks of capital. They
know nothing of the policy connected with buying and
selling.
Consider the analysis Sir Hugh BeU has recently made
of his own costs, as given in the "Round Table" for Sep-
tember, 1916:
His firm makes steel, the raw materials for which are produced
from his own coal and iron mines and limestone quarries. In
every ton of steel made 70 to 75 per cent, of the cost goes as the
wages of labor. There remains 2S to 30 per cent, for all other
outgoings, including profit The turnover on a steel busmess in
this country about equals the capital Invested. If this profit
amounts to 10 per cent., of which 3 per cent, at least must go
back into the business to maintain the works, he thinks himself
lucky, and the 7 per cent, left must cover interest on his capital
as weU as the profits for his enterprise and risk. The remaining
15 to 20 per cent, goes to cover rates and taxes, raUway freights
and so forth, part of which again goes to labor.
Out of what fund, as Sir Hugh Bell asks. Is he to pay a 10 per
cent increase in wages? If he paid 10 per cent more, he would
have no profit at ail and could not continue the business. The
increase in wages, then, can only come from within, by greater
386
APPENDIX
efficiency In management or greater production per man. There
are, no doubt, many businesses whicii liave some monopoly value,
where capital secures a greater return; there are others where
the return is less and the business Is decaying. But except when
abnormal conditions arise, as with shipping now, or when a
monopoly or a patent exists, the picture given by Sir Hugh Bell
is more or less applicable to Industry in general.
No paper resolution, no legislation, and uo economic the-
ory can alter the facts of the industrial situation. But an
adjustment and a gain can be made by a new release of
productive energy on the part of the management and the
men, by consultation between labor and capital, and by
hard intellectual effort put on each detail of both the in-
dustrial process and the industrial relationship.
Labor is going to demand higher wages. To obtain them,
labor must produce more goods, and the employer must
Improve his methods, instal new machinery, and consult the
worker. Some employers will meet the situation with su-
perlatively good management— a management that will wel-
come the worker to a share in control, and will increase pro-
duction and wages without financial loss. Some employers
will make decreased profits, some will go to the wall, and
some will fight the new conditions. If wisdom prevails on
both sides, a new constitution of industry will be achieved.
AUDITING WAGES AND PROFITS
The whole wage question will become increasingly a mat-
ter for expert accounUnts. This will mean a joint audit of
costs, presented by management and men, and determined
by the state. In the South Wales coal-field the figures as
presented by the federation executive, after the cost of
standard labor and stores and other costs of production have
been deducted, show:
887
y
I
I I
APPENDIX
Period Wnn..
Kron, April. 1910, to June, im erT. . ^''^''
"July. 1915. to June^ Z././.S ^^' ""'^ "'"
Qnarter ended June 30, 1916 h^m
34.05
w o succession oi wage uicreases.
THE TIE VOTE
The present proposals for workers' control through work-
th^r«n ^^%T''"''' «t«°g •« couneU members with
the managers of the industry, wiU become partners insreld
ners at first. The extent of their control will be L.r
m^ned by their ability a«l their self^onsciluTpower^r:
HOUSING
In the city of Stanley, England, "overcrowding is found
to exist m 50 per cent, of the houses. It can hardlvT
doubted that the existence of overcrowding on so seWo^
. scale s one of the chief factors which gives "4 to such
169 per one thousand births." So .ays the auLiUtlve
888
Profitt
.... 9.67
....34.05
APPENDIX
favestigation "Livelihood .nd Poverty-A Study of Work-
•And it goes on to report:
ton^r^rj^:^:;^^^^^^^^^^ "-e a* war.„,.
ampton. were living in n^^^y bll; t'h ""''*'?"' '* '''"*''-
the liousehoid were so low S r'""' *''«^ ^^K** <>< > head of
three chUdren ZlZ '7 Ireat IStf T "'''^ ** '"""^ "'
our inquiries is not inteLiTtenl uT ^''"^'^ '''*^"''='' ^^
due to exceptional* Sr„rr«Tjar;err^^^^^^^^
dustnes of tlie towns concerned Of all thi I J
poverty w^eh have been brought ['J;: ^^cTror TlZ
workers ^ T^T^'^ ''" "'" *'''' ^««^^ "^ t"*^ --* p" ^
ea™ ilTtt;'rshiri;'7nT"*- rv: "^"''"^ '' p*' -"*•
than one quarter! nd i^'^.o out of7v"A '" °' ""= *""'"' ""'^
of the arlnlf moll . '^^ *°""**' """"e than one-thlrd
oMhe adult male workers were earning less than 24 shillings per
Sixty years ago, the population of England and Wales
was evenly divided between town and Country dw^e«
Now four out of every five persons are living in the towns
and only one o„t of five in the country. Turing to ruraj
conditions, as described in the investigation "How the La-
borer Lives, we find:
Seventy per cent, of the agricultural workers in England and
Wales are paid laborers, having „o direct financial interest in t^
Jamili!! %l'T ""•""' "'"*'' ^^'^'"' *" '"^™»'"« ^ their
families. This is a serious fact, for probably in no other V»
ropean county is there so high a proportion of'^a^icuUur^ work"
ers who are "divorced from the soU " In ion? tK- . ,
of ordinary agricultural laborer.t' Vn^ T *""^ ""^"K"*
y gncuuurai laborers m England averaged 17 shiUtoKs
889
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APPENDIX
6 pence. It n,«y be taken as an established fact that a family
of five persons whose total income does not exceed 20 shilling 6
erty line." If we now turn to the actual wages of ordinary al
rkultural laborers we find that with five exceptions. Sr;vTraT
The r. '" "''^, ™""^ "' '^"«'""*' ""'^ ^^'«'- "'- below 5^
s^nce Ilio *"' -gncultural laborers have actually diminished
It^P^M^'w' *'^'u"" " """"""* *" "-"«^ ^hat this means.
It means that from the point of view of judicious expenditure
the be aU and end ail of life should be physical efficSncy V
means that people have no right to keep in touch ^ithZgrelr
world outside the village by so much as taking in a weekly news
paper It means that a wise mother, when shf is tempted to buy
t^ flm.r ? T""y^''^ "' «'heap oranges, will devote the penny
to flour instead. It means that the temptation to take the shortest
railway journey should be strongly resisted. It seems that toy
and dolls and picture books, even of the cheapest quaUty. shoufd
triuH Hrr'""'i *'"* "'""^"^^ '"^^^ ^ practicau; tdi
inguishable from other days. It means that every natural long-
tog for pleasure or variety should be Ignored or set aside. It
stifle? Z"^ ' t "'! ^'"""'* '°"''' '^'''' »' -t-no^Phere. tha
sUfles and hems in the laborer's soul as in too many cas^ his
cottage does his body. ^ ""
The motto of one of the villagers is given: "We don't
live, we linger." And yet, with these appalling conditions
of primary poverty in city and country, it is true that "there
has been an enormous improvement in the conditions of the
industrial population in Britain during the last sixty or
seventy years. There is a residuum of the population liv-
ing on the • argin of subsistence, whose lot could not have
been much worse in 1830 than it is now. It is possible that
the size of this residumn is as large, or even larger, now
than seventy years ago, but it bears a smaller proportion
to the total population."
390
APPENDIX
LIGHT RAILWAYS
Belgium has 22.8 miles of liaht railw-^ f
square miles of territory. Greatiri tat^Ts r^^JT T
to every loo square miles. That is Zi I ""'''
one-half times as many miles of lli!' f ^'"" ^"^ '' ''"'^
to her total area as G- " f r ':''''' '° P'^P-"""
inore agriculturists, but it means th f" "'""' ".°* ""'^
workers ean and do live on th.)!, ■ ""'^ industrial
of cities. Twenty tir "'^' ""'^"'^ °^ " "'« »J'«°s
» Belgium are etl'^'^" ''"*: "' *'' '^"P"'' P"^°"«
the whrp;'L:StrraUnd' ^ f ^" ^^"^ °^
urban communes "EvIrJ^h °°'^ ** P" *^«°*- '°
ginm one hear of trac s omL" ^"''^^ *^-«^ Bel-
agriculture or commerce bvn^ ''Tf "P *° P'°^*«»''«
TheextraordinaTrvdopiutT *^' ''«'* """*--•'
extent due tc Jse f^i urL/trr " " *° "° '"""
in bulk and in small ^m^Ls Tth'7T\1 P"'""
system of light railwa'ys has been Ide ^teetht R ''''
tree « "Land and Labor-Lessons from Betum '^T
summarizes a detailed consideration as foTlowlf "'
In comparison witli her si«» n«i»j i.
system of niain and light raX'^^fr 1 '^ °'°^* «*««l-e
u>ost all her main raUwavt Z„^ 'T^' *" ""* '^°'J^- Al-
flnanclng her light ra;iwa7^:^J,7;;j^^^^^^^^ she is
"c property at the end of a TeS „Ct 7 '"" '^°'°'' ?"»>-
appreciable cost to the publirru "e Th^"" °' T"' """""^ "^^
that light railways cannot do Ze ihan jutroavt ^ ""^'^
will never show so hi«h a retnm ,.,, . , ^ ^ *^'' '^"J'' and
ists to choose them if pretenceTo^r h" I" ^"'"'^'^ ^"P""'-
If economically managL. however C ' k '"-«^«tae„ts.
without loss, and they are o7Ine' n'h. .^ "■" Poetically
country districts and deveL^L at JuU ' '"'"^ '" °P^"'"« "P
- that small holding, ..r^^^^^ ^-^ ;;^-
391
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APPENDIX
such means of chop and rapid transport as light railways afford,
Canals, wliicb are almost aU naUonal property in Belgium, are
looked upon as hlgii roads, and the State is satisfied if the very low
charges made for their use cover, or almost cover, the cost of
upkeep. The very low rates charged for the transport of goods
both on railways and canals are a great benefit to industry as
weU as agriculture, and the extraordlnaiy cheapness of the work-
men's tickets upon the raUways has economic effects of a far-
reaching character-«nong others it facilitates decentralisation
of population and Industries, and thus largely destroys the
monopoly of landowners in towns.
CHURCH ATTENDANCE
In the midweek of November, 1916, this advertisement
appeared in the "Guatdian":
The LIVING of Catherston Leweston, near Charmouth, Dorset,
is VACANT. The adult inhabitants of the parish are 82, the
full value of the living £74; value last year £67 17s. Healthy,
southern locality, near the sea. No rectory-house.
A few years ago, the "Daily News" made a census of
London churches. At that time the number* of City
Churches connected with the Established Church was 45.
The attendances at all these churches on Sunday morning
was 4,634. At St. Alban's, there were IS persons present,
of whom six were children. St. Mildred's had 14. In the
morning, St Alphege had 37, of whom 21 were children.
In the evening, 37 came, but one child was unable to come,
and an additional woman attended, and saved the average.
Of the total 45 churches, eight had attendances of over
100 in the morning.
In one Noncomformist Congregational Church, the City
Temple, there were S,4«8 persons in the congregation, as
compared to 4,634 persons in all the 45 churches of the
Established Church. It is doubtful if the community will
permanently carry that burden of expense for a venerable
state institution.
392
APPENDIX
MONEY OH EDUCATION
The labor exchanges are constantly thrown a«rain.t h„
man Droblema n^^ * ^l . <'"rown against nn-
WOMEN IN INDUSTRY
the? for tt^'"*'^^" °'^'"'^ °"^^ 'J--*--- Are
tfiey for instance, willing to undergo a lonir industrial
tr-mmg from which they will be graduated skiufd wooers
One investigator states that in dressmaking materials they
Ustes llT™ 't""'' °""" ^'""^"^^ ^"^ *° their
^arto^n/ k1 ""J" °''"P^ *^" ^^^'^^ P<»'«°°« i» this de-
rr " sTud;."^ *'^^ '-^^ ^"^'^ '' '' *^--^- by a
Miss Proud in her book on "Welfare Work" reports:
Jn^Zi^i\^^f:ZJl'" """?" *" '"^ ^^"^ »-Wnes which
If they remain untrained, they remain unskilled, and can
not reeeive the wages of sWled labor. Are they ^ form ^
great new proletarian mass of unskilled labor, with low
393
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APPENDIX
wages, while men workers direct them and receive a high
wage ? Will such a division, growing ever sharper, answ
the woman's craving for equality, which is one of the mi
impulses of the woman's movement? Will a system of wa
slavery, with men eternally in the position of boss, foi
man, and superintendent, seem a fuller life than the hom
Factory inspectors and employers state that the girl i
to the age of twenty-five often has her mind only half <
her work and the other half on her prospects of marriaf
The evening is to her the most valuable part of the di
because she then becomes a social being. In a large ai
exceptionally he<hful factory the women left at abo
twenty-five years of age.
"Their evenings," said the manager, "have ceased to
matters of first-rate importance to them, and they do n
mind entering domestic service."
Miss Proud summarizes this sort of report, of whi
there v. ere many:
The suggestion is that women, as a rule, do not give themseh
unreservedly to tlieir work until they no longer anticipate givi
themselves In their offspring.
Psychological facts like these leave us with few of t
old-time catcli phrases such as "Equal pay for equal work
WOMEN AND POPULATION
Adelyne More in her excellent pamphlet "Fecundit; ve
sus Civilization" has Cvyllected extracts from a wide rea
ing of recent discussions on Birth Control. She quotes frt
Frau Stritt, president of the Woman Suffrage Union
Germany, who occupies a position in the German suffra
movement similar to that held by Mrs. Fawcett in En
land. Frau Stritt writes:
394
APPENDIX
their conclusion ti,e real /Zrl^ "'** '" *"'"'' ""'"«'» «"
Thus In a certain LlVZ^l """' "^ '** «'"'»'"• ^"^W.o,.
.. *A. woman queln '" ""°" ''"""°" '^ *° *- "^^^''^J
and Frau Stritt quotes from Dr. Rutgers-
«on Dotii for military and industrial success " s«v, V...
rnann: food for powder and food for fac^s tL f ."
Adeljne More sees the two problems.
w":;r:s*rS.rre^„Lrt^°"" t ™"«»
(ed.l™i„dri ,„d t^ dL«»d ' "P""!""" V the
She quotes from Alfred Naquet •
we.«. .„ --.^i°;^;,?ore.rrprt";;.:
S95
APPENDIX
dread which wLttve ^El^HLr ^7 '" ^'^ ""^"
perwn.1 experience is concern^ J, - *'. ^^'' "^ '" " "
sure is one of the m.nv ! i . *™'''"» '''*»''• "nd I '«
rate. Now. if f Jo^ed^^ xJX'li "* *'^ '""'"^ '"'*
generally lc„own amongst ^omen it 1..M 7 ""' *" ^*""'
abrogate the flr.t curse^ .ndT^eLr^ir'^l^T '"' *'
powering dread. ™"eve ineir minds of an over
Sidney Webb wrote, . few years ago:
This restriction would f*n/i ♦,»
classes, of which we LT-n . ""P"**" ''""*° ^^^^
. ° ^® '"^« «n instance in the Athenian r.t„
*vereadin The Greek Commonwealth":
Women tended to become crvstalH««1 inf« »_
-the household matron underThe tS ' S ^u '?'"*' *^'
other male protector and fL . ^ J^ ' * '"'''""«^ «" «<"»«
^ept him for o.asiona7„r«s ^e l^^^'Z'Z^Z''^ ^"
396
"*-'*-.-r^3fM
APPENDIX
"companion." It was "rLnln. .. '** *'" '^''*" " «
theyo'un,Athe;;„„Tnco3":,tC.:;: rtrr'r '^'"^' '^'"'™
aCjru r :; rr.~ -^^^^^ — -
from whJch tZ natlvT "^ '" "" ^"''^"•^ "' ''^'^ P^t'e^
of pleasure" sav.nl*:. ^""'^ companions for the sake
which tire is no ,,„???''• ""''*'"'' » ^J*-" distinction in
Tho,.rh f*!r ^ r "' ^"'•'''«"s of our houses."
~5,ri~Sr-r"™.."."=:
the memoi oJ Athln, i '^* "" "" '"''"''^"' '"*"'• ""^ ««ved
to cte.Th7r """ * ''P^'^^'' "' '^'^^h " «^ "«* possible
Anstophanes in his Lysistrata. "Athens witnessed the ri/e
of a movement for the emancipation of woman." Euripides
did not avail, because organizing social thought had not
arrived at the solution. To-day the effort is renewed to
ff' mnif ""'7 .^ *''' '"""^ """^ '^""P^- dispositions
of millions of individual women. War and the strife
of labor and capital are surface ripples compared with
the mimense instinctive forces let loose bv this effort
Governments and trade-unions wiU be broken if they op-
S97
l'!^^'^'i"*i
ftffitiAitii
(>•■]
APPEXDIX
't,-
CLOTHES
At the meeting of abareholdeis of the tu St^t w
hou-e Co.pa«, . «t pro/It for U.e ylmoT^^'^
W" announced. In I014 th.. «,„«» J *3i5,00
ch..n..„, ,„ ^pu.nCij'^rp^ ,.;vrrw ^^
draper}- coinp.nr, „|d Ui.» ■■«,.. »hoIeMl
."Pl". re,„ireo»„u .h » .heT; JL .7 "" •'"°' "
firnis. Messrs. J. F & H R„l» * ,, f"" °» '««
-ora . .. pro« r, i5.*t2;;:„r.tt:X"e'
""• P^'talj. Me-m. Hunter, B.rr & Co ofGU,
cr]r reH rvr', '^ "- '•^^'
£i9iKa . ""„ " * ^o- w»e figure for last year was
Ai2,J58 against ^10.380 in 1013 Tl,j« .-. th t- x^
was A4»,i88. Messrs. AUiston & Co. have tam^A
. loss of ^M06 in 1918 into a profit of £l 1,156 last /e^r
Balancing this increased expenditure we h«v.
housands of cases, of which mTs. P m^', Reeveshas oT
lected examples such as the following:
S98
APPENDIX
women an .U buying a pi«„o or gramophone") aoDean. to h!
Z '.-T.r-.rrrsir' '"•'4 ■'" - -
cosU h*- ini/ J^ '""»''«" «' » sWlUng ay, pence for it. Her coal
TRADE LNIOAS AND VOTES rOil WOMEN
If the recommendations of the Speaker's Franchise Con-
number nearly 11 miUjon out of . manhood of ,21/0 mil-
suffrage question, and, instead of a unanimous finding, they
have passed on the onus of giving women the vote to Pa.^
principle, and present a "proposal" which will give the
suffrage to six million women out of U miUion. In short.
hey have s.de-stepped," and left "Lloyd George's munf-
IT C w ° "'r^ '""^ "-*•""" *° "'" ^''^ -^e if they
can. The Woman s Movement in Great Britain will con-
tinue to be in part political, not because it does not value
the human implications of woman's position in the modern
world, but because it believes the franchise is necessary in
order to achieve those higher values. The insistence on
Votes for Women ' has wrongly seemed to some continen-
399
fe-pa.^^
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APPENDIX
no/f t'Lf '"^"^""^ catch-phra.se of women who had
not plumbed the meaning of feminism
IndustriaUy working women face the same situation as
^it,ca% The fight for a decent standard of hWng i
only in us beginning. There are only 74,000 factories and
workshops out of 277,000 in the United Kingdom under
regulations or Special Rules. At Barking, a fiL, engaged
in the manufacture of India rubber goods, was empS
000 women. Soon after the outbreak of war the fiZ
ZedTr ^"'T ^ ''^ Warping shed^uld be eL
ployed .f they signed this agreement: "We, the under-
signed, agree to work without a Trade Union." The man-
to a Trade Union." Eighty of the women belonging to tS
7oZ7t?,''TJ "'""'^ *° ''«^ *^« paper.'^Th ma!
jority of them found work elsewhere
Certain trade unions have opened their membership to
women-the Dockers' Union in the Transport Workers'
Federation, some of the unions in the Federation of Fur-
-hing Trades the National Union of Railwayman, a^d
wn.t7 . , ^\^"e^'^ movement of women into men's
work has taken place-has not made up its mind, anHas
miprovased a Speaker's Conference compromise in which
Workers, by arrangement with the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers. About 40,000 women have been so organLd
out of 500,000 women munition makers. The wTk ng
w mans pi is either the sweat shop or trade-untn"
d4ute's-,tly:r ^'" '-' ^°"« ""^^^-^ ^ -«« -^^ -atus
.:^^^:xtrri;;^rr:^:-wo..enis
400
APPF,.VDIX
radeship all their privileges i.e insecure.
And that line of separation is equally a convention be-
tween men and women.
"The Woman Worker," the organ of the woman's trade
union movement, states:
the^tlnTn? "^ "', "^"'"^ ""'^ '^•'" ""^ t*""^ «'«' have had
the help, not merely of their own orsanizations. but of the great
men's unions. The Government protection of wages has C
given^ not in proportion to the needs of the worker!^ or to tS
usefulness, but solely in proportion to the strength of the de-
And it instances Newcastle, where there are 6,000 women
trade-union members, and the award given in the case of
Messrs. Armstrong Whitworth's is superior to others, the
time rate being fixed at 5 pence an hour, with special rates
for gagers, examiners, and danger zone workers.
So, in the next five years, women must win over Govern-
ment, the men's trade unions, and the employers.
IRISH RAILWAYS
Irish railways were investigated a few years ago by the
British Government. Their commissioners found that the
Irish railway problem is the restriction of agriculture, in-
dustry and trade in Ireland, because internal and export
transit rates are on a higher scale than the rates charged
for conveyance of commodities which compete with Irish
products in Irish and British markets. The decadence of
Irish industries has been accelerated by the establishment
of low through rates from British manufacturers to Irish
villages, rates which have been much lower in scale than
the local rates frou Irish cities to Irish villages. The
British-controlled Irish railways favored the British manu-
401
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MM**
APPENDIX
!l !
facturer at the expense of the local Irish manufacture:
hat Zuhtr ^ '"•' ''' "^"^^ -' ^--^ ^"^-'^«
But not only have through import rates into Ireland fo
many years been relatively lower than the Irish interna
rates, but also through rates from abroad to British porti
and interior centers have been on a lower scale than the
export rates from Ireland. As the result of this, not onl,
has Irish commercial industry been strangled, but Irish
-^.culture has been crippled. Even Irelfnd's one bis
agricultural industry, livestock, expanded only about 16
per cent in twenty years, and the cattle trade employs
comparatively little labor. In eggs, Russia has beenU-
L fiV w"f ^^n'*''"'* ^"^''°'^- 0° November 14,
1916, T. W. RusseU, vice-president of the Department of
Agriculture Stat, i publicly that by far the largest pro-
portion of the damage done in transit to exported ^gs Lk
place after the eggs had left Ireland.
Winter dairying would be stimulated by proper railwav
wJuld te " ^°f ^""^ *° ^^^^^^"^ f-Co^gne there
would be prompt action. But Danish butter came into
t7e I Tk°.V'' ^'""P*' '=^°*"^ °^ '"^^ I™h butter
trade Irish butter is not to be had throughout the year in
q^ntity enough for home consumption, though climate and
agreultural conditions of Ireland are more favorable for
wm^er dairying than those of Denmark. Better methods of
prc^uc ion and a reduction of railway rates, encouraging
farmers to go in for --^inter dairying, are both needed.
The classification of Irish goods, each with its own rate,
Stat 3 to? / ' 'T'^ ""' ^"^ ^'^P"-"- ^--en
stated to the Railway Commission that "the influence exer-
cised over Irish railways by English companies is a bad
influence, a growing influence, and likely to grow further "
402
APPENDIX
The Managing Director of the City of DubUn Steam
jacket Company asserted that the London and North
Western Railway Company practicaUy controls the Irish
wT/hT: ""^ '^"' * '°"P""y ^^^ ^'' °^°' *•>«» <=°»Peting
w,th that railway company across the Channel, is virtually
powerless, as whatever rates it agrees to, his company hL
to agree to the same. f / "«
Just as Ireland has been importing food when she could
produee .t so she has been making large imports in coal
when she has extensive coal fields. Here, as in agriculture,
raUway facihties are needed. The required additional cap-
tal for openmg certain of them up will be forthcoming when
the requisite railway communication is provided. This is
true of the Castlecomer and the Arigna coal fields. Four
miles of raUway will release the Arigna mines
Of the field at Coalisland, E. St. John Lyburn, economic
geologist and mineral expert to the Department, said:
ai.r;LTl5*^!°„''H""."'^ rS' ^''"^ " ^'"^ '«' *"«! holes.
JTno .K . developed for JJMOO.OOO or $2,000,000. There
fa no otl«.r counfo- but this where the trial would not have b^n
made before now. There are about 60 million tons of cod, ^3
that can be multiplied by ten or one hundred, as the de^te
are revealed by the scaling of the trial holes. ^
In this one instance, it is capital rather than railway
facihties that are required. But at Wolf Hill, and for most
of Ireland, the primary need is railway facility. Capital
will follow opportunity. The condition of low rates and
special faciliUes in raUway transport is a traffic large in
volume, regular in transmission, and presented to the car-
riers in a form convenient to handle. This means regu-
larity of supply, a volume of consignments, good packing
of produce, cooperation among producers. The low Con-
tinentel rates, which have helped to capture the British
403
I.
i*-^-*iik t'fft. *%*«^__ ._,„
-^ ^^^wacrCP**y*,^^-%ry-^^^.^^.^^i,jp,_^^^ t^gf
-I !^
t* ■
'J
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APPENDIX
to state ownership of lines ^°^"°°>ent subsidy an<
ov^ti^tL^-t!^^^:^:::/---, e^et.^^
announced. A broad state p licy n'tSa^"A\'"^"
seeds, machinery and a unified and Llji^' ^"*''"'"'
-m bring prosperity to Ireland /nl't""'^ "''""^
sidv carries with if fJ» * Government sub-
land h«,elf ,iU LlTe^ ^^'^ '" ""' """' ''^
the time has come for - « J . ^ ° *'*•*<" ««««>
IRISH AGRICULTURE
$18,500,000. ^x",wo,00O, wheat flour
culLrsfr"' --P-ident of the Department of Agri-
time is bringing food 7,ZT' Go'^^nment at the present
doing this at iLTi 'r every quarter of the globe.*^ It is
whilf there areTverS ZLZ J' "' '""'' '"'''■ ^'"' ^^^ "«
he tilled with pwat to r ^ """ '" ''^'''"*' *'"'•'' "'ght
the State. ^ *** '"™*' """^ '»°»«se advantage to
404
ht
»*-«<•"■<,» »V .». ^,,J
■*-',. ^..». „^
-^-•j ',-A.-*j!if !^. *.^.
**s^ .t'ia*^TR!^i»
APPENDIX
vJvu ^'^P"*"*^"* °f Agriculture states that there is every
hkebhood that next season the supply of superphosphaS
will not equal the demand. This will prevent the manuring
of grass lands. Some thousands of tons of sulphate of cop-
per was exported, not for military purposes. "It was taken
from Irish agriculture," says the "Freeman's Journal," "at
• time of its sorest need and sold to protect agriculture in
other countries. Hence there was only a limited supply
theTlTght"" "**""' '" *^" '°"°*'^ *° '*'" '^^ ravages of
it was sold to France and Italy for spraying grapes.
Sure nf ^'K^"'* "' ^°^"^'' '^^' « the cause of the
faUure of more than one-fourth of the Irish potato crop thi!
Mr. fiunciman, speaking of the United Kingdom, said:
nut It/" V' l!"''"^ '"/^ "°t °nly because many horses have been
of the big agricultural implement makers.
Irish agriculture has been crippled at the very crisis when
food IS necessary for Great Britain to v^in the war. Sup-
plies of seed, fertilizer, imported food-stuffs, and agricul-
tural and dairy machinery, are shortened when they ought
to be greatly extended. *
An important study of Irish agriculture has recently been
made by an expert whom I know, who signs himself "Agri-
cola. I am not at liberty to publish his name. One of
the high officials of the British Government in Ireland
recommended these articles to me as giving a just picture
of conditions. I summarize the conclusions in what fol-
lows.
Irish agriculture is backward because three-fifths of the
405
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• .■^,*<«^c..«V%?J*A.'-c
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APPENDIX
land « held by one-sixth of the landholders under ter
restricting or prohibiting tillage. Four-fifths of aU t
IIZ "Vi °" '^^ '"™' '" '^'^ »' f°' food to li
stock and only one-fifth is sold either as human food,
food for «on-«gr.cultural live stock, or as raw material f
also be deducted the one-seventh which farmers and the
s^t' r,. '""^"« P''^"*^* " one-seventh crops a,
six-sevenths Ine stock and produce for live stock. The)
"room then for extension of the croo area of Irelan
wh.cu would both benefit the live stock production and i
crease com food for the population. Care must be take
m increasing tillage not to let cows run dry for want o
sufficient food. But care can be taken to s'afe^ard H
stock and yet to release the acreage of Ireland f^r tillag^
Over sixty-four per cent, of the land of Ireland is i,
grass or crops.
At every stage in his history the Irish agriculturaUst has b«.,
since the days of CromweU and the Stuarts.
atrfn".' "•^*'"»«f, "f »'=* «' *he Irish farmer has continued
strong against alien legislation.
Ireland, and the wholesale evictions that cleared thousands of
acres were the beginning of the gracing ranches that Ir^ tl^Suse
of contention in our own day. "*"
anJfV .^°r^"'' ""'* Sixty-seven thousand three hundred
and thirty-five acres of wheat were lost to the plow.
losI'^f^wftJ'^.?"*™".'' "°"''^ •'^ '^^" to ^ote that the
loss of this food ,n th,s crisis In his country's historv is due to
The decrease in the area of all com crops since Sir Robert Peel's
406
ili
f-.-.K"* «.■»»,»<,
****"*'4ft**f* •(t*'^!^. i,«»^. ^ ., « » ^ » ^ I
APPENDIX
Plantation ''rheme was ata^^A i
i"i.g.i..«ii„„r,.'r^ s°!f •'°"°,'' "'"'"" ■""
land now h., „„w ,Tj . * '° "'"""8 '» '«' '«"
Ml. Of King', Comty Th.™. I. L^ • ^*"'' 1^'
" ««« bo^ ... *.i.S rbtd^S '^IT^-
rigation would be possible and th. • ^' "'
peat conid be used CyXnvtrt^ ZT TJ"' °'
production of power. ^*° '^""*"^' ^" the
TRUSTS
Lord Milner writes:
The future belongs to bi«-sc.,e business or to such sn^er
407
'i
»-**i» •»->■-»♦ -
■-f*'«»:^:*-»<*jf.;^tJVft^
■: ', I,
fti i
APPENDIX
iJ
bustaesses as can learn to work together and to pool their
aources or cerUln objects-the fuU use of sclenC r«e.
e^ouVt^atur *'""-^"^'' ^"^^^^-"^ ^^y - ^-^-
But large-scale production alone does not solve the lal
difficulty. Our mining combines in the West and Pei
sylvania, our steel combine in the East, our interstate-r.
way combines have not softened the labor conflict. T
pomts of view are common in discussing big combin,
One IS to fight them as tyrannical and to try to break th,
up into compeUng units; the other is to swaUow th.
whole. Nether satisfies. Is the large unit necessarily t
most efficient? Is there no limit to its size.> If in tl
given case, it is the most efficient, what shall be the meth.
of democratic control .> These are questions more ferti
than ethical questions of the "good trusts," and theoretic
questions as to whether Mr. Rockefeller is the middlema
between mdividualism and socialism. A powerful group <
men are urging the syndication of industry in EnglL.
They approve of "the large scale" for business. Doubtles,
they will be successful. But when they have achieved i
they will be faced by the same pwblems that America no
wrestles with.
THE DECAY OF PARLIAMENT
Sidney Low in "The Fortnightly Review" says that Par
liament has ceased to be a government-making organ, anc
that government in the future will continue to be carried or
by great administrative commissions appointed by the cab-
inet, directly responsible to it, and removed from the direct
control of Parliament.
The democratic machinery of the nineteenth century has
broken down. A new machinery is being slowly con-
408
1^*
t*^
'■■* V*»v
■--«34j*^,»^^^__,
^^f^9*,^ ^r«L^,
APPENDIX
"P . b^, of T. »l„d J T"' ^""" """ '■•" «"«»
tralization of nowpr nn/l ^^ ^i • js'vcs cen-
The fe, e.„ get Zltaln^T '' °"u"' ™P»"»Mfty-
«ve men, with ,7> T j «">■-"»!»>> gorerimeM of
eU wtl f " ""' °'"* ""'"'" •" -"'-< «■» W-r Co„„.
"..ere'Lr:;r::'po;L;rr:„r '" -^ -
409
I-
I
"'^4h£» t
»*'*^-'^*-<%^ K*t^ iC^ -■^-^fc"
«"#A^«"if^fc ;*-^ **g» ■-
.1 ,t'
APPENDIX
•ponslbility and weakenei executive power. But th
machinery is outworn and is sure to bo scrapped. It w
constructed on the theory that the .state is made up of ci
*ens who can conduct their corporate life through rcpj
scntatives. That theory is an over-simplification of go
emment.
To sum up present tendencies, the executive is rapid
defining itself and constry?ting its machinery. It is tern
ing toward the organized states directed by a few powerf
executives, surrounded by administrative departments. :
has outpaced the legislature, which is drifting impotei
on the tide of state socialism, devised by expert officia
and enacted by the handful of five men in control of go^
ernment. This new legislation was demanded by the con
munity not through its Parliamentary representatives, bi
by the new channels of trade-unions and government d(
partmrnts (military, naval, munitions, board of trade, horn
oflSce, and local government board).
But not only has the legislature been outpaced. Demo
cratic control over these executives and experts has failei
to keep step with the rapid growth in their power. Th
community has not yet devised checks upon them. Repre
senteUves in Parliament, elected from geographical locali
ties, are now seen to be only one of the needed effectiv(
controls. The citizen is not only and essentially a residen
in an area called Battersea who elects a Battersea man t(
safeguard Battersea interests. The citizen is also a pro
ducer and a consumer, and he wishes those functions safe
guarded in government. The citizen as consumer is gradu
ally establishing cooperation and local and national owner
ship. As a producer he strengthens whatever trade-unior
he belongs to (whether as doctor, business man, barrister,
teacher, railwayman, or locomotive engineer) and is slowlyj
410
«^«<-^ft^,V .
'^^-JS
APPENDIX
D^^rllirr"^^ •='*-^'"'''"«^ '-«'' district, .„d national
parliament, in hw profession and industry. Through work-
colr""!' ^"'"* '^"*'"' '"'"^' «"^ "-««"•' -""»"tion
commutees l.e .s asserting a control on government. Al-
ready ,t .s unquestioned that the demands of such a union
th«. the demands of members of Parliament. To coor-
dinate these parallel and conflicting claims will be the com-
ing task of government. The result will be a remodeled
British Constitution. The present total eclipse of Parlia-
ment .s more complete than it will be after the war. Some
of Parliament s former power will return to it. A resultant
will be estabhshed between the various pressures of pro-
ducers and consumers, between syndicalism and cooperation
and state and municipal socialism.
TARIFF REFORM
inl^X 'f '*/•" 'T ^ °"'^" ^° ^'"* ^"t^'n to thrust
Into the forefront of politics minor fractional parts of re-
called The Elements of Reconstruction" says:
There is a danger-and nowadays it is the great danger-of be-
canning just as b,l„dly superstitious about a fa riff (as^a Jt tt
Undred superstition of Free Trad,). A tariff is perhaps a neces-
sary part of any national economic scheme, but it is not in iSf
an economic scheme. A tariff varies in public value wfth tte
economic constitution of the State it protects. The counTiy wm
modity " '"°*""'' *""" '" '~'''"^^' °' '" ""^~'--
CHILD WELFARE
Sir George Newman, chief medical offic of the board of
education, states:
chUdren of school age is in existence, although all that ought to
411
9 Hi ' ^K^ m -i ^ i"*^"*, "fi- »U ,'
i i-
I
M
n.'
i ' ^
APPENDIX
be got from it N not yet being ol>t«lned. But the machinery f
dealing wltli children between one year and five yeart of a|
has yet to be built
BACKWARD RACES
The wfiole question of undeveloped countries and bad
ward races has never been thouglit through by our peopl
We are lazy-minded on the causes of the war, and cheria
a vague pacifism, as if the instinct of nationality and tli
lust for territory and new markets were non-existent.
A. E. Zimmern writes:
It may still l>c argued that the question Is not Have the rivilitr
powers annexed Iji.ge empires? but Ought they to have done »t
Was such an extcnsum of govertmiental authority justlflable c
Inevitable? Kngllshmen in the nineteenth century, like Amerlcar
In the twentiet'i, were slow to admit that It was; Just as th
exponents of laissez-faire were slow to admit the necessity fo
State interference with private industry at home. But in bot
cases they have been driven to accept it by the inexorable logic o
facts. What other solution of the problem. Indeed, is possible?
He then quotes another authority on the impossibility o
standing aside and letting adventurers and exploiters en
ter, and on the need of backward peoples having contac
with the outside world, and receiving protection from op
pression and corruption. This is a "duty" of the grea
powers — "a still better name would be the great responsi
bilities."
The late Lord Cromer, in defending his rule in Egypt
once said:
What, gentlemen, has there been no moral advancement? Ii
the country any longer governed, as was formerly the case, ex
cluslvely by the use of the whip? Is not forced labor a thing ol
the past? Has not the accursed institution of slavery practlcall)
ceased to exist? Is it not a fact that every Individual in th«
country, from the highest to the lowest, is now equal in the eye?
of the law; tliat thrift has been encouraged, and that the mosi
418
*- fr,-
APPENDIX
hiimble member of -society c.n re.p the fruit, of his own Ubor
and Indu, rjr, that Justice Im no longer bought .nd wld, th.t
every one 1» free-^r^rhaps some would think too free-to express
hfa opinion,,, th.t King Backsheesh has been dethroned from high
places and now only lingers In the purlieus and byways of the
administration, th.t the /ertilWng water of the Nile is distributed
Impartially to prince and peasant alike, that the sick man can be
tended to a well-equipped hospital, that the criminal and the
unatic are no longer treated as wild iH-asts, that even the lot of
Ik" "11}^ ?r*"°" **"" ""' ''"■"P'^'' **•" '-y*^ °' ^^ reformer, that
the solidarity of Interests iMstween the governors and the governed
has been recognlwd In theory and In practice, that every act of
the Administration, even if at times mistaken-for no one Is In-
fallible-bears the mark of honesty of purpose and an earnest de-
sire to secure the well-being of the population, and further, that
the funds, very much reduced in amount, which are now taken
from the pockets of the taxpayers, instead of being, for the most
part, spent on useless palaces and other objects. In which they
were in no degree interested, are devoted to purposes which are
Of real benefit to the country;. If all these, and many other, points
to which I could allude, do not constitute some moral advance-
ment, then, of a truth, I do not know what the word morality Im-
plies.
Let as criticize as much as we like the arrogance of
tone in this and in the English belief in general that
they are born to govern. But what do we oiTer in place
of their imperfect administration? Are we willing to take
on our share of the job of internationalizing these plague-
spots, or are we going to turn them over to the people who
live there? Which people? To the Mahdi and Khalifa
who rise on a wave of religious hysteria and cause the death
of over five mUlion Egyptians in the space of fourteen
years? To the particular tribe with the sharpest sword?
To the most corrupt, and therefore most powerful, native
ijrince who will use machine-guns on the "aliens" in the next
province because they honor the prophet instead of the all-
highest Lord Buddha? Is laissez-faire satisfactory? Ac-
413
(-■^ft^m.jj^i* n ■
-■^ •»• '■ *,* fr. •,.\-
•* ^ *,.
!i
i ,
,.^1
^}
APPENDIX
tually there are only three "futures" for fh. j ,
countries: anarchv with fl,/ i ^ undevelope
HORATIO BOTTOMLEY
The value of Horatio Bottomley as a 1p-^„ • *•
Thu 1, h.. contribation to child welfare: •"""»""•
EDUCATIOW
*««.. «» cX.»r'^"rt°;::::."" "-- --^ -^^^
This is his knightly militant note:
du^° te%?r„*:r;aTce7 rs -r •^^-'^ ^™- "'t^ *»>»
murders shocked dWlLuon are fll' ''*' '"^" *^^ ^•""«"<«
men who reeled with dr^ when t "" "^IT "' "•«^'' " "«=
chliaren done to death by t ^^bs o;tJ:^Ze^^,r °"' "^"-^
O^e of his contributors has a word for backward races-
to bear the burden of^^r'we."* ^^''^^ """^ *° '^'P
Hun to his knees-^IyTot t^L S ""! "'" ^'^ "'^^ «>«
soldiers to help to ram th. Z^ /' '"" **'° "^°» "'<>'«»
many of the^forS rlc« a^d iT? °'Z''^*"'^ "^^ ' •»«-
are right, why ask the BTlUsStoxplr? In^*".' " *' '"""
*i > , -.-
•» *
( '
H;
I
m4 :
APPENDIX
Ownvim:
I beg to observe that this U not the case Thotl"*? I'' ""'
«sun,ed the Utle. I am the holder of T' At 1 ti T'
father's death in February Iggi „„ .' * ' ^* *•«= **"« of m:
notice in "The TtaS" -S „^' ^ ""*'''' published an obltuarj
Maurice Fita Gib^; ^^tl^^'hlteT.f:""* *"** "^ '*"'-
successor in the title ^"'«*'* '"*' *^"t » *«« bh
stated clearly that I hold the m! * f.^u, "^"'^ **"°*«^' «"<*
Jn descent from the saW Domin nil ^^''"" ^"^«''*' "^^-^ ^ith
the first White Kn,»htMau,S.K?^'* ""*^ *'*'' '" ^'^^'^^ from
or Gibbon. ^^itiT::^;^^ z^^'^v^^^^^
ShtranTK;^H"e^T" - th/^^S^^o'T C^ ^S
the Ltie Of HaSin'^HUl ,n?^ "^ ^°''^*-^« ^«*« '«"-
Br^Jrh'TJs; " riX'^li^G ";^ ^"•^^ ^^" "- »- *»•«
the White Knight. ^ °"'*'7' ^'^^ «*-*" ««t I am
I^CAL PATRIOTISM
The English We of locality is often overlooked by for-
d^fnot «i" ^E^IJL^r.TLT ^'^ ^"••^ '"^^
hia ««/.«J -^n I. ^" , • "' * Frenchman pa means
416
1
t' H =' e? i» . fcatjfc>j^!to*ifc«fe'j»A:-.^-fc
'j/,*» -,»* *«*4: *■ V » ...
^'^**t.
APPENDIX
by tourists h„t nt»w.™ic 7 . ' P'*««^*«d 'rom desecration
THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH
the British Commonwealth, He says-
expansion than any o^Z Z^iJ^^'misZ'IZZ^ S7nlZ
reC^:„^"tb"''" r !:•« -«" ^^ -«'-:titiessi;t^
in f i!r u"" ^"''*«l««'n«y he coloni«HJ Australasia. His Dlace
Wi t^r^xtot 11""*;^'''-"^"'"''^ --« "- establish" "
With the exception of temperate South America and parts of the
western seaboard of that continent, our race has coLi^^^
Jl the regions of the new world in which it is pSsl^e for a
European race to flourish. In the coming future nJ^rrpXle
Trl'Sd^r"""'^ ^° ^'''''^'^' or infommand of ^ur^^i^
St!;«'^%*"'' Australasia may follow the example of the United
in the Established Church, has visioned the same future
417
! !,
' i:
:(
I!
! i
APPENDIX
WHAT TO READ
formyreade/STo/ Z °°" important of thes
my reader who cares to make a study
Bertrand RusseU's "PrinclDlea nf «««• i n
tion" rnnKij.i, J . » '^'uicipies of Social Reconstroc-
tion (published m America as "Why Men Fi-hf •^ ^^
i.ro;pr.-s:irr.~-""~
voiume '"p3™'' Ti' ^ "''' "*°""'^ Table" «.d in the
offiT^ M f ' "°"*""' " "'^^"^ »«>y"» of what the post-
office would be under democratic control. ^
has kifdlv"^'' *'" '*"!*"^ '^ ^^'^ ^««°°*» G«fld. League,
nas kindly drawn up for me a li«f «* .-* *-^»8"c,
era' control Tl.- i- /• , . * °* references on work-
control. The list includes "Labor in War Time" by
418
%
APPENDIX
G. D. H. Cole; the publications of the National Guilds
League on "National GuUds," "The Guild Idea," "Towards
a Miners' Guild"; "National Guilds," edited by A R
Orage; "The World of Labor" by Cole; "The CoJ Trade"'
by H S. Jevons; "Experiments in Industrial Organization"
by Cadbury; "Trade as a Science" by McBean; "Coopera-
t..'e ProducUon and Profit Sharing," an investigaUon by
the committee of the Fabian Research Department
The investigation by the section of economic science and
statistics of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science has been published under the title of "Labor
Finance and the War." '
The pamphlet "Great Britain After the War" by Sidney
Webb and Arnold Freeman is a short and valuable sum-
mary.
The Garton Foundation has issued a book on the "In-
dustrial Situation after the War" which analyzes the revo-
lutionary unrest and suggests remedies. Mr. Balfour is
one of the trustees of this foundation.
The investigations of Seebohm Rowntree are already
classics for social workers. His studies of York, of agri-
cultural labor, of land, of Belgium, are widely known. It
wiU be found that his recommendations will be influential
in the reconstruction.
"The Times" has had four series of articles of high im-
portance. One series has been republished in a pamphlet
called "The Elements of Reconstruction," with an intro-
duction by Viscount Milner. A second series was on the
resources of the empire, written by Wilson Fox, and led to
the formation of the Empire Resources Development Com-
mittee. A third was on the South Wales miners, and was
instrumental in leading the Government to take over the
mines. A fourth was on the industrial situation after the
419
£ J
■1
\ I
APPENDIX
war, and is a powerful sUtement for workers' control I
w written by Sidney Webh .~i j control, i
pamphlet foL ^ ' "^ " °°" «P«Wi«hed i,
MiM Proud', book on "Women and Welfare Work," with
-n in roduction by Lloyd-George, ia a careful compilaul^
.^wlTr""T *" *"* "*•*"- °^ ""« British worke
mre u. m/7. '""' *"** t'-de-uniona, and the atate.
1.- of f^ '''^'P"**'*- ^ *^e »-"'> but a valuable
woI!r " '"^°'^°**«Jy °othi»g comprehensive on the
woman s movement in it. preaeat development The Z
ar« th.. ^°°^\"; Engineering" .re valuable for the
are. they cover. Files of the "Woman Worker," the organ
of the Women. Trade Union Movement, cover many sZ
a^d si " °'"*'^ ^ ^"^^^ t° 8*^« coherence
l^tanlfvt"^" ""^''"^'- "^^-^- ^ «-^
An excellent English statement of the Irish situation is
ahrthii. . 2 •"** economic, with hi. own admfa!
able rhythm in his volume, "The National Being- W
ers in the Irish Cooperative Movement. No book exists to
itLTd *tt f M^t'^ °' *^ ~«p"*«- "--«^ ^
ircland. It should be written.
daf 1"S "f ^"*"^« "^ *»>« yo™« men of Ireland to-
it^d" /"T 7f? """"^ of «,ch weeklie, as the "New
i1jr«soU .^?'*'""'""""'"'y- Nowhere else
whilT. i°^t u"^'" " "P""'°° «' th« idealism
which is penetrating the younger elements of the naUon
420
APPENDIX
oJ^^' t"\"" ■ ^'^ "' "^"^ P°»»llc.tion, of comment
we^^ comsponding to Bryce's "America Common-
421
.«...•., ^,
- i
I
ti':
^Kl
s..'ac?*»«#j^<
li? v ' "olution of Angl»-
liKta problem by, 19S-204;
quoted on tenant farmers in
Ireland, iis, 3U, 364. Set
^ George RiuselL
"A Nation Once Again": pa-
trtotlc IrUh song, quoted.
In*.
"A Study of Working Class
Households in NortJiampton,
Stanley and Reading":
quoted on bousing of worlc-
Ingmen, 384, 38«.
Adams, Mrs. Bridges, S6S, 346.
Afforestation, SS.
Agricultural communities: past
success of, 60 tt $tq.
Allen, Miss, 149,
"Amalgamated Society of Engi-
neers Journal," 285, 286.
America. English emigration
to. 31; wages of women in,
»0{ birth-amtrol movement
ta, H6{ attitude of, toward
birth restriction, 124 tt ,tq •
national thought fa, 317-326'.
ott United States.
A°£'t/I^"' type of, 329, 330.
Anitchkto, Dfanitri, 285.
Antin, Mary, 325.
Aristophanes: quoted on eman-
cipation of woman, 393.
Arnold, Matthew, 211.
Art: atUtude of modern democ-
ney toward, 61 tt ttq.
INDEX
Artists' League, 103.
Asqulth, Mr., 36.
"Atheneura," 266.
Atldnson, Miss, :01.
Australia, 4, 9.
^9»
tl™.^*''"' ^P*^ Broce: on
the lommy" attitude toward
trench flghtfag, 280, 281.
fialcunin, 283.
^J'""'' Mr.: type of mtad of.
«^^quoted on democracy, 367,
Beatty, 3.
Belgium: fa relation to social
P^AIems, 69 tt ttq.; S
Bell, Sir Hugh: analysis by, of
wage problem, quotation, 48,
49. foot-note, on cost of pro-
ductlon of steel, 382.
Belloc, Hilaire, 272.
Bibliography of reconstruction
Bigland, Alfred: quoted on em-
pire resources, 363, 364.
Birth-control: problem of, 112
«t *«q.; movement fa Amer-
^«; English opfaion on.
' tX^r'* "'• '^^'^
Black, Clementine, 101
Blatchford, Robert, 348.
Bloomfleld, 92.
INDEX
"Tory" type of
Bonar Law:
mind of, 8.
Bosanquet, Mr»^ 101.
Bottomley, Horatio, editor
"John Bull"* 248, 267-;»69,
996; quoted on education, 410;
attitude toward deatli, 410.
Bridges, Robert, 272.
Brisbane, Artliur, 208.
British Association: report of,
cited on modern automatic
machinery, JJ, 59.
British Commonwealth: plan
and purpose of new, 4 et leq.;
Influence of war on, 6 tt *»q.,
96, 2i2, 243; relation of south
of England to, 292, 293; IjotA
Mllner quoted on, 353; Arch-
dall Reid on, 412, 413. 8«»
England, Ireland.
British Empire: unification
into one state, 7 tt »eq.
"BriUsh Weekly," 272.
Bryce, Viscount: quoted
English war spirit, 229.
Bums, Robert, 93.
Butler, Geoffrey: quoted
class system, 27, 350.
Button, 62.
of
on
on
Cabinet: cause of changes In
British, 7 et $eq.; predictions
as to shifts in, 9.
Cambridge: influence of, on
class system, r?8.
"Cambridge Magaslne," 240.
Canada, 4.
Canning, 321.
Carels Frires, 380.
Carpenter, Edward, 63; quoted
on English people, 183, 184,
314.
Carson, Sir Edward: 8; quoted
on Ulster's attitude, 202.
263.
424
Cathery, E.: quoted cm right
asylum, 285.
Catholic Women's League, 109
"Chamber's," 974.
Chamberlain, Joseph, 378.
Chesterton, Cecil, 960, 261.
Chesterton. Gilbert K.: remai
of, on writing books, 6!
quoted on the democrat
movement, 229, 258; effect o
on public opinion, 260^262; o
the "Tommy" attitude towar
war, -280.
Child labor, 144, 166 tt leq.
Child welfare: Sir George Scm
man quoted on, 407.
Chllders, Erskine: cited on th
new social order in Ireland
177.
Children: withdrawal of, fror
industry, 144.
"Christian Commonwealth,'
British periodical, 272.
Church: "brotherhood of trench
es" tried in, 366, 367.
Class system, 26 «t $«q.
Clergy: influence of Church of
England on socialism, 99 et
Mq.
Clifford, Dr., 3U.
Clothes: women's Increased ex-
penditure on, since entering
industrial field, 393-395.
Cohan, George, 267.
Collet, Clara, 101.
Colonies: attitude of, toward
present status, 4.
Combines. 8»« Trusts.
Common people: awakening of,
13. S«» alto Workmen.
"Common Sense." 274.
Commonwealth: genesis of the
British, 4 «t ttq.; effcu-t of
war on, 6 tt ttq. Stt British
Commonwealth.
:-r-t»,afcr^.*.^^*
Compaaloii help, w««; and
ConaoUy, isa.
effect of war on, « ,« „,.
•Contemporary Review." 273
Cooperation: .tudy of, In Eae-
land, 368-380. ^^
CoflperatJve communities: Influ-
ence of, 99 «t $tq.
C«|«peratlve socialism: tendency
todperatlve Society, 379
Coflperatlve societies: in Ire-
land. 213 «( „y. "^
"CornhUl Magatlne," 274.
Cotton Factory Times," 283.
Croatia, 96.
Cromer, Lord, 243, 329; quoted
^^T"' ■dvancement of
Eg^^under BHtlsh rule,
Croom, Sir John HalUday:
quoted on birth-control, 39|,
Cuba, aaa.
Curtis, Lionel, 253. 269, 273
mind of, 8, U, 262, 329.
INDEX
"'JSjy MaU- (London): 270.
..iC^.' " ' fi^oUA on labor. 41 1
"DaUy News" (London): 271 ."
census by, of church attend-
ance, 388.
"Dallas News," 971.
Devenport, Lord, 311.
n I'^i*'"' '^'"" secretary, 339.
Davis, TT,omas: author of^ong
A Nation Once Airain"
quoted, 192 ^ '
Davray, .Monsieur, 41 o
Dawaon, Miss Damer, isfl. quo-
4S6
t*tlon from speech by. on po.
licewomen, 161-163.
Debt, post-bellum problem of
naOonal, 248, 249
Democracy, England's influence
on. 3 et $,q.; effect of. on k-
nor. 5; influence of present
war on, 65 meaning of, 9, as
■ producer of leaders, 10 ,t
of Industrial, M*<„^.;E
Hsh work„,a„ „,,i„,prlng of.
74, 76, three great sons of.
80, demands of England on
n«w. 82 «« M(,.; war run by
f . ^9. 252, attitude of. Z-
ward leaders, 254 »t ,eq •
compulsory, 367, 368.
Democratic control: explana-
tion of. 43 H ,eq.; Dr.
Graham WaUas quoted on,
Denmaric: relation of, to social
problems, 69 ,<' *° '^'■'
Desborough, Selbome. 863.
Despard. Mrs.. 101.
Detroit: a model Industrial city,
DIcicens. Charles. 261.
Dickinson. Lowes. 277. 314
Disraeli. Benjamin: quoted on
tariff. 249. 250, 329.
Dixroude, 70.
Domestic policy, attitude of
colonies toward England's, 4.
^n.l37 '*'"''**' ^"^^ *'^«-t
Donnington Hall, 278
DostoyV^,,.. '''"'*«'■- '-
Dreyfus trial, 176,
^7^rfi ^"- ^^"^ Gen-
eral): Lloyd-George and. 20,
if»; comparison of. with
Chesterton, a58, m.
\
U'
tm
} ':
INDEX
DuWtai coogMted popuUtion
of, aOT.
Du Croii women in the, factorv,
104. "
Dunraren, Lord, S6S.
Dmutay, ISO.
"Edinburgh Revlear," 9T4.
Education t tyitenu of, in Engw
land, 305 et mq.
"Ekmenti of Reconstruction,"
pamphlet: quoted, 407.
Ellli, Havelockt quotation from
"Euayt In War Time," by,
116, 119. \U, 314, quoted on
Engllah arrogance, 349.
Empire resources, 831, 93i.
England I influence of, on de-
mocracy, 3 »t »tq.; extension
of power of, 4 «t itq.; tend-
ency of, toward coiiperatlve
■ocialism, 1<; solution of labor
problem in, 18 »t t«q.; privi-
leged classes la, M et $tq.;
penalty to, if industrial de-
mocracy fail, 35 «t ttq., 58,
49; influence of, upon Russia,
64, effect upon, of cheap
transportation for workmen,
70, 71} the supreme need of
England, 71-73, demands of
new democracy on England,
83, Zhnmem's views on Indus-
trial Germanisation of, 89-
94, champion of freedom and
Justice, 183, spirit of, at war,
288 «( $tq.; why, will win
present war, 931 «( $»q.; tem-
perament of people of, 231,
9S9, attitude of, toward tariff
on McKinley basis, 249; heart
of social problem of, 250, de-
mand of, for representation,
954 «t i»q.; emotional change
In, Wl «| *«g.; qoestion of lib-
erty in, 974 •< ,»q.: 4ttitu4
of, toward free speech, 9T<
«1| "right of asylum" gran
ed by, aSi-iWi, patrlarcfai
compared with modem, 99
»Sj passtag of Little, 99S
Wfl; public opinion in, o
peace, 999-SOl, systems c
education In. 305 tt »«q.; cc
existent civilisations in, 309
31!^, study of cooperation ii
368-380.
English: "a sentimental naUon.
340.
EngUsh Coaperatlve Wholesale
Society, 379.
"EngUsh Prose Rhymes." an
thology, by Professor Georg<
Salntsbury, 314.
Englishmen : individuality of
16: faults of, 40, 41: national-
ity of, 399-^36.
Esher, Viscount, 381.
"Essays in War Time": quota-
tion from, by Havelock Ellis,
lie. 119, 194, 314.
"Eugenics Review," 419.
Euripides: quoted on woman's
emancipation, 393.
Europe: impossibility of united
commonwealths of, 6, demo-
cratic forces in, 80, effect on,
woman's flght for political
recognition, 95 «( §tq.
"Evening Gawtte." Cedar Rap-
ids, Iowa: opinion of, of Cap-
tain Hans Rose, 317.
"Everyman," 272.
Exports: Irish, to Great BriUhi
in I9I6, 917.
Research Committee,
426
Fabian
373.
Fabian Society, 313,
INDEX
Factoriett Joint boards In, 40 j
effect of war on, iii-Jii.
Fall Klvrr, iAO.
Fawcett, Mm., 101, 390.
"Fecundity versui CIvliliatlon,"
by Adelyne More: quotatloni
from, 390-^3.
Female. S00 Woman.
Femlnljta of the War Office and
Admiralty, 118 et itq.
Fisher, H. A. L., mlnUter of
education, 303, 304.
FIta-Glbbon, PhlUp John, let-
ter from, 411.
Ford, Henry, a07, 337.
Foreign policy 1 atUtude of col-
onies toward England's, 4 ,t
#sg.
"Fortnightly Review," 273.
"Forward," 874.
France: the privileged classes
In, M, an, 96, 176; nationaUty
in, 396.
FrankUn, Benjamte, 323.
Free Speech: attitude of Enjr-
l«id toward, 274-281.
*^^o *'***" ™«'«e" quoted on,
»»9, 950.
"Freeman's Journal": quotation
from, (m agriculture, 400.
French communards, 283.
French railway strike, 41.
French reactionaries, 14. '
French Revolution, 41, 96.
Fumes, 70.
Gaelic t effect of study of, 182.
Galsworthy, 272.
Gardiner, A. G, 271.
Garton, Sir Richard, 381.
Garton Foundation: result of
Investigation of, quoted, 381.
Garvhi, J. L., 272.
"e«>CT*I, The" (Mrs. Drum-
m
mond): 148; comparlaoa with
Chesterton, 248, 249.
Germany: attitude of, toward
woman, 100, 243 < IgtMrance
of, as to England's resources.
278, 279.
Ghent, 70, 86.
GiUingham: domestics' war-sav-
^ higs assurlatlon of, 237.
Gilmour, I.ennox: campaign
story told by, 234-'i36.
Giovanltti, 189.
Girl; letter of, reveaUng true
war spirit of England, 230.
231. -0.1
Gould, Baring, 311.
Great BriUin: changes hi gov-
ernment leadership of, 3 •(
**q.; effect of war on rela-
tions between, and colonies, 7
•t ttq., 100, 242; northern and
western, to flgiit for democ-
racy, 291 «t *eq.; public opin-
ion hi, 291-302; study of ay-
operation to, 363-380; Uriff
reform to, 407. S«« also Eng-
land. ^
"Great Society, The," by Gra-
ham Wallas: passage from, on
rights of small nations, 211.
"Greeic Commonwealth, The":
quoted on professional
women, 292, 29a
Gregory, Lady, 180.
Grey, Viscount, 270, 363.
Grimsby: relation of, to war-
Mvtogs, 237.
Gwynne, 14,248.
Gymnastic ichers' Suffrace
SoOtty, lOS. ^
Hague Conference: stimulus of,
to British commonwealth,
Haig, Sir Daaglu, 3.
INDEX
i '-
Haroonrt, Lewlst qnoted on
pnblk ownership^ 377.
'Harrtaon, Anatin, M8.
Hay, John, 383.
Henderson, Arthur, 311.
Henry, O, «79.
Henson, Dean, 367.
"Herald" (London), i7».
"Hibbert Journal," 374.
Hodge, Mr., Minister of Labor:
quoted on war's effect on new
plants, ««; on free trade, 250.
Holy Alliance, 391.
Home Ofke, 6:2.
Home Rule: new Irish attitude
toward, 181, 183, 193-«7. pai-
Mm*
Honuey, 160.
Hours: influence of long, on so-
cial movement, 8A.
Housing, 23, 69, 70, 384-386.
"How the Laborer Lives": quo-
tation from, on rural condi-
tions, 385, 386.
Howells, William Dean, 272.
Hughes, Mr, premier of Aus-
tralia, M4.
Huguenots, 283.
Hysteria: growth of, among
English middle class, 258 et
ttq.
Independent Labor party, 90.
India, 4, 5.
Industrialism, 67 at »»q. /?«•
oito Workmen.
Inge, Dean: quoted on "lndui>-
trial celibacy," 392; on future
of British Commonwealth,
413.
International relatkms: prob-
lem of, 11.
Ireland: pioneer woric of, in
peasant proprietorship, 22;
nationalism In, 173 »t ttq.;
force of tradition in, 175, 176;
industrial acUvities of, 179;
attitude of the man in the
street toward, 189, 190; total
cultivated area and propor-
tionate productiveness of,
219, 220; uncultivated land hi,
219-225; how, must be ruled,
219, 220; financial gain of,
■toce the 50's, 229 •( itq., 252.
Irish agriculture, 400-403.
Irish Agricultural Organisation
Society, 179.
Irish- Americans, 208.
Irish newspapers: independence
of, 263, 264.
Irish people: changed attitude
of, toward Redmond, 255.
Irish players, 180.
Irish question: 173 et $tq.; real,
poverty, 206; a stumbling-
block to England's conduct of
present war, 209 et $»q.; Eng-
lish pubUc oplnkm on. 297-
299. I- — .
Irish railways t 397-400; British
government control of, 399.
Irish rebellion, 173-227, piuiim.
James, Senator Ollfc: quoted on
America's attitude toward
present war, 317.
James, Professor William, 340.
Jameson, Sir Starr, 383.
"John BnlT: 267, 295; extracts
from, 410.
Joint committees: settlement
by, of trade disputes, 49 •(
»«q.
Journalism: studies in British,
*60-274 ; effect of war on. 263-
267.
KI: 334.
K^: 334.
K3: 334.
4S8
INDEX
K4: 3S5.
K5: S3A.
-Kansas City Star," 271.
Keithley ; war savings of, 237.
Kenney, Miss, 359.
Kerr, P. H, 253.
Key, Ellen, 118.
Kipling, Rudyard, 248, 273, 279.
363. *
Kitchener, I^rd, 384.
Kropotlcin, 283.
La Panm *').
Lalwr: et of democracy on,
problem, 5; elfect of war on,
14 et teq.; shell-mak ig as
light on problem of, 18; ef-
fect of peace on, quotation,
43, 43; future of, 73 tt teq.
Labor College, 353-362.
"Labor Leader," 274.
Lady helps salary and duties of,
147, 148, 150; at ladies' hostel
for war worlcers, 161 ; at army
pay officers' mess, 152; at
lodging-house, 153.
Lancaster, Ray, 253.
"Land and Labor— Lessons
from Belgium," by Seebohm
Rowntree: quotation from,
387.
Land Courts: advocacy of, 360.
Land Inquiry Committee, 357-
360.
Landlordism, 212 •( t»q.
Lansbury, George, 272.
Laslier, Bruno, 313.
Law, Sidney; quoted on decay
of Parliament, 404.
Lerdersi cause of change in, of
government, 5; requirements
of, in a democracy, 9 •< i»q.;
England's iwed of wise, 71 «(
Mf>« ot the woman move-
4i9
ruent, 101 tt teq.; demand for
representative, 254 «( t«q.
i^«gue of the Society of
Friends, 103.
Lee, Robert E., 190.
Leisure: the problem of, 61 tt
ttq., 68.
Lever, Sir William, 364.
Life: rules for "playing the
game" of, 86 et teq.
LhKoIn, Abraham: product of
democracy, 80, 323.
Literature: effect of social
movement on, 314 et teq.
Lloyd-Ueorge: 3; attitude to-
ward drinJi, 18; and suiTra-
gettes, 20, 25, 62, 100, 185;
opinion of, on spirit of Eng-
land, 229, 230; Bottomley on,
268, 293; study of, 337-345;
quoted on editors, 340.
London Graduates' Union for
Women's Salfrage, lOS.
Lutitania, 322, 324. "
Lybum, E. St Jabat quoted on
coal fields of Ireland, 399.
MacArthur, Mary, 101.
MacDonald, Ramsay, 62, 277.
MacNeiU, Professor: quoted on
partition question, 194-196.
Machinery: modem automatic,
^t 59; problem of new. 243-
245.
Mafeicing Night, 257.
Maine, 322.
Mallon, J. J.t 62; quoted on
trade-unions, 397.
"Manchester Guardian," 271
293. '
Man-supported family: passing
of the, 105. f^-^e
Marine engines, 17.
Mame, 176.
INDEX
f!
Marx, Karl: influence of, on
English labor, 90, 983.
Massachusetts I minimu m wage
of women in, 98.
Masslngham, H. W, 311.
Maurttamia: 0ft.
Maxse, Leo: US; quoted on
United States, 998.
Maasini, genius of democracy,
80, 988.
Meath, Earl oft on uncultivated
land in Ireland, 290, 991.
MeUe, 70.
Milner: type of political mind
of, 8, 953, 969, 966, 399;
quoted on trusts, 403. ,
Ministry: meaning of changes in
British, 7 *t $«q.
Money, Sir Leo Chioua; quoted
on effect of war on work, 364,
366,
Monroe, James, 393.
Monroe Doctrine, 391 tt itq.
Montreal, 993.
Moore, George, ISO.
More, Adelyne: on birth-con-
trol, 300, 391.
"Morning Post" (London), 966.
ms.998.
Morris, WnUam, 68, 67, 68, 90.
Monnteagk, 188.
Muir, Professor Ramsay:
quoted on Irish tradition, 174,
176.
Munition factories: future uses
of, 9ii, 944.
Munitions: relation of, to labor
problem, 18i women and, 90
•I t*f.
sional Women's Suffrage So-
ciety, 108.
National Mission of Repentance
and Hope, 30.
"National Review," 998.
National Sailo.-s' and Firemen's
Union, 984.
Natiraality, 396-336.
Nelson, Horatio, 3.
"New Age," 974.
New ConsUtutional Society,
103.
"New Ireland": editors of, 964.
"New Republic": 984.
"New Statesman," 974.
New Union, 103.
"New Witness," 960-963.
New Zealand, 4,
Newborou^ Lieutenant I-ord:
extract from will of, 419.
Newman, Sir George: quoted on
child welfare, 407.
Nicoll, Robertson, 979,
Nienport, 70.
North Nibky: war fund raised
in, 986.
Northampton: war subscripUnan, Katharine, 180, 964.
U-BS, 317, 394.
Ulster (The Siwnese TwUi),
199-906. '
United States: fai reUtion to
enduring literature, 93, 943.
S9» .America.
Verdun: 176, 978;
George at, 341.
Lkyd-
4S8
Wagss: influence of, on social
movement, 95: key to prob-
lem of, 49; effect of hl^r,
on workmen, 68; relaUve, of
women in England and Amer-
ica, 08 tt ttq.; post-beUum
problem of, 949 tt ttq.; la-
bor's demand for higher, 383,
384.
Wallas, Professor Graham:
opinion of, on democratte
control, 56; quotation from
"The Great Society," by, on
the rigfate of little nations,
ail; quoted on Walter Lipp-
man, 266, 989, 314.
War: influence of, on plan of
British Commonwealth, 6;
tendency of, to fertilise radi-
cal Meas, 14; effect of, on
trade untons, 17; effect of,
on England's middle dasa,
S3; social problem created
by, 998-359.
War conference: hifluence of, on
imperial constitution. 4 •( tta.
War Council, 405.
War savings, 999 tt ttq.
War work: women and, IOC
Waterways: plan for, 93.
Wason, WIUlam,97t.
INDEX
Wattenon, CokMiel, itll.
Webt^ Sidney t 13, Ml; quoted
on birth-control, SM.
Webb. Mn. Sidney, 101.
Welfsre: work, US tt nq.; ef-
fect of, deputment of gor-
emment on relation between
employer and employed, 68.
"Welfare Work," |^ Ml«
Proud i quoted on women in
Industry, 389, 300.
Welldon, Dean: wiidom of, as
a leader, 99.
Wellington, Duke of, 3.
Welb,H.G., 13, 948, 979,313.
"Webb Outk)ok"i quoted on
Lord Rbondda'g dictatorship,
"Westmfauter Gaaette," 9T1.
Wharton, Edith, 979.
Whitman, Walt: quoted on de-
mocracy, 80.
"Why Men Fight," by Bertrand
RusieUt quoUtion from, on
birth-control, 114-116, 965.
974. '
Wlgrtan Magna: record of, on
war-MThigi certificates, 936.
Williams, Captahi BasU: quoted
on English people, 940, 339.
Wilson, President Woodrow:
l*St quoted on present war,
317.
Woman questkm: solutkm of,
1», a0| full expositkm of, 97-
173, ausn.
"Woman Worker": organ of
women trade-unionists, quot-
ed, 9U, 256.
Women: serrlces of, bi natknal
taidustries, 90 •( ttq.; emanci-
pation of, 95 •( $gq.; suifrage
•odeties of, 103; war work
and, 10«{ future of, in Eng-
^ 198 0t i0q.; Seebohm
nowntree's work hi behalf
of, 135; post-bellum prospect
for, faa; in industry, 389,
S90; population and, 300lJ93;
increased expenditure of, for
ckithes, 393-395.
Women polke serrfee, 159.
Woolf, 953.
Workers' control, 381-384.
Workers' Educational Associa-
tion, 77.
Workmen: effect of war on
efflciency of, 16 »t itq.; wUhes
of, 44, 45; attitude of, toward
modem macUnery, 66; ef-
fect of leisure on, 68; condi-
tion of, after hours, 69, 70;
»l*«on of, 75 ,t „q.; attl-
t«le of English, toward pa-
triotism, 975 *( *tq.; prodnc-
tiTe power of, durhir war.
365, 366.
Workshop councils: meaninjr
of, 50 0t ttq., 380.
Yarmouth: ZeppeUns at, incen-
Uve to war snbacriptkm, 936.
Teats, 180.
"Yorkshire Factory Times,"
985, 986.
Young England: voke of, on
solutkm of Irish questkin.
qootation, 186-191.
Younger Suffragists, 108.
Ypres, 96.
Zek, 70.
Zbnmem, A. E.t riews of, on
pioneers of social reform, 89
«t t$q., 969, 973, 304; quoted
on natkmallty, 388; cited on
backward races, 407, 408.
484
eebohm
behalf
roipect
r, 389,
of, for
(9.
4.
uocia-
»r on
wishes
award
I ef-
randi-
». 70;
attl-
d pa-
odoc-
war,
uiing
icen-
DM,"
I OD
tion.
1
on
»ted
^V
^