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 1 1 
 
 1 2 3 
 
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 S 
 
 6 
 
-'^^'■Sk;. 
 
 RT IND 
 
 SOCIALISM: 
 
 by William '-Morris, 
 
 " A-ut-hor (y^- " V /^e harthly 
 
 With PiirnHel Passages from Fr^ets 
 and Philosophers, 
 
 Oum Privilegio Auctoris. 
 
 ^i^.^' 
 
 Imprinted Uix 
 E. E. M. and W. l>. 8. 
 
 Sold l>v W. RisiiVK9vl85, 
 
 Fleet St., I.wdo», 12;C.: 
 
 and bv HfiYWOoiw; 
 London and Mhoeheater. 
 
PUBL rSJlERS' NO TE 
 
 A few Lar^e pap^r Cop its have teen pidkd \ 
 on hand-made Dutch paper ^ ':nd fuay be obtained 
 —pest free i/- ^^ach—from the PuNish'n^ Qffke^ 
 29, Queen Street, Peek 
 
.>.i»;i^ifj}5a?.% ■- 
 
 - nnTyi* 
 
 JOTS' 
 
 m 
 
 XS. 
 
 71> 
 
 %: 
 
 /; pulkd 
 obtained 
 
 ii^MfaMMMi 
 
 Reprint Number VII. 
 
 rt and Socialism 
 
 \e Aims and Ideals 
 
 nglish Socialists 
 
And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing 
 cities, fiercer than their furnace blast, is all in very deed 
 for this,— that we manufacture everything there except 
 men ; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine 
 sugar, and shape pottery ; but to brighten, to strengthen, 
 to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into 
 our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which 
 that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way : 
 not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to 
 show them their misery, and to preach to them, if we do 
 nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be 
 m t only by a right understandings on the part of all 
 classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, rais- 
 ing them, and making them happy ; by a determined sac- 
 rifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is 
 to be got only by the degradation of the workmen ; and by 
 equally determined demand for the products and results of 
 healthy and ennobling labour. 
 
 JOHK RUSKIN : 
 Stones of Venice, II, ch. 6. 
 
 
 X 
 
 ] 
 
 2 
 I 
 t 
 
 ^ 
 
 ».'■ 
 
Htt anb Socialism: a 
 
 Lecture delivered [January 
 23rd, 1884] before the Sec- 
 ular Society of Leicester, 
 by William Morris, 
 author of '' The Earthly 
 Paradisel' etc. 
 
 And Watchman: What of the Nightf 
 
 Cum Privilegio Auctoris. 
 
 Imprinted for 
 
 E. E. M. and W. L. S. 
 
 Anno 1884. 
 
 Sold by W. Reeves, 185, 
 Fleet St., London, E.G. ; 
 
 and by Heywoods, 
 London and Manchester. 
 
;«MMriMMMM* 
 
 ' «.— 
 
 
 \ 
 
 The World is too much with us ; late and soon^ 
 Getting and spending, we lay 7vaste our poivers ; 
 Little tue see in Nature that is ours ; 
 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon I 
 
 This Sea that bares her bosom to the vioon, 
 The winds that will be howling at all hours 
 And are up-gather'' d noiv like sleeping Jloiuers, 
 For this, for eve7y thing, ive ar^ out of tune ; 
 
 It moves us not. — Great God! Td rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outzvorn, — 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 Have glimpses :hat zvould make me less forlorn ; 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from ike sea ; 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 
 
 Wordsworth : 
 
 Sonnet xxxiii. 
 
 
 U 
 
 ll 
 
 44 
 
 \ 
 
 m 
 

 ART 
 
 and 
 
 SOCIALISM. 
 
 ^^Y friends, I want you to look into 
 the relation of Art to Commerce, 
 using the latter word to express 
 what is generally meant by it; 
 . namely, that system of competition 
 
 m the market which is indeed the only form 
 
 which 
 
 M If 
 
mmmm 
 
 V 
 
 . (6) 
 
 which most people now-a-days suppose that 
 Commerce can take. 
 
 Now whereas there have been times in the 
 world's history when Art held the supremacy 
 over Commerce; when Art was a good deal, and 
 Commerce, as we understand the word, was a 
 very little ; so now on the contrary it will be 
 admitted by all, I fancy, that Commerce has be- 
 come of very great importa..ce and Art of very 
 little. 
 
 I say this will be generally admitted, but dif- 
 ferent persons will hold very different opinions 
 not only as to whether this is well or ill, but 
 even as to what it really means when we say 
 that Commerce has become of supreme impor- 
 tance and that Art has sunk into an unimportant 
 ma'iter. 
 
 Allow me to give you my opinion of the 
 meaning of it : which will lead me on to ask you 
 
 to 
 
 .. 
 
 
I 
 
 (7) 
 
 to consider what remedies should be applied 
 for curing the evils that exist in the relations 
 between Art and Commerce. 
 
 Now to speak plainly it seems to me that the 
 supreniacy of Commerce (as we understand the 
 word) is an evil, and a very serious one ; and I 
 should call it an unmixed evil— but for the 
 strange continuity of life which runs through 
 all historical events, and by means of which the 
 very evils of such and such a period tend to 
 abolish themselves. 
 
 For to my mind it means this : that the world 
 of modern civilisation in its haste to gain a very 
 inequitably divided material prosperity has en- 
 tirely suppressed popular Art; or in other words 
 that the greater part of the people have no share 
 in Art-7-which as things now are must be kept in 
 the hands of a few rich or well-to-do people, who 
 we may fairly say need it less and not more than 
 the laborious workers. 
 
 Nor 
 
 f 
 
 ' i 
 i ) 
 
 
(8) 
 
 Nor is that all the evil, nor the worst of it ; 
 for the caiseof this famine of A^|. >«,thatjhils 
 neoDle work throughout the civilised world as 
 Lbotusty as evefthey did, they have los-m 
 osing an Art which was done by and for the 
 ° ' ie_the natural solace of that labour , a 
 Se whkh they once had, and always should 
 have! The opportunity of expressing ttor own 
 1 u^rn fr^ -v^Pir fellows by means of that very 
 ato\f C-ans of thit d^lly work which nature 
 or long custom, a second nature, does indeed 
 renuire of them, out without meanmg that it 
 should be an unrewarded and repulsive burden. 
 
 But through a strange blindness and error in 
 tothS tver did ; but I should have ».d tha. 
 
 i< 
 
1 
 
 i 
 
 <9) 
 
 they work more laboriously. 
 
 The wonderful machines which in the hands 
 of just and foreseeing men would have been 
 used to minimize repulsive labour and to give 
 pleasure — or in other words added life — to the 
 human race, have been so used on the contrary 
 that they have driven all men into mere frantic 
 haste and hurry, thereby destroying pleasure, 
 that is life, on a)l hands : they have instead of 
 lightening the labour of the workmen, intensified 
 it, and thereby added more weariness yet to 
 the burden which the poor have to carry. 
 
 Nor can it be pleaded for the system of modern 
 civilisation that the mere material or bodily gains 
 of it balance the loss of pleasure which it has 
 brought upon the world ; for as I hinted before 
 those gains have been so unfairly divided that the 
 contrast between rich and poor has been fearfully 
 intensified, so that in all civiHsed countries, but 
 most of all in England, the terrible spectacle is ex- 
 hibited 
 
 i 
 
ifSH ';|ji?jff * "■.fdti'if^'J^--' -Aft r i>^^_^*f 
 
 »p 
 
 11 
 
 (lo) 
 
 hibited of two peoples, living street by street, 
 and door by door-people of the same blood, 
 the same tongue, and at least nominally livmg 
 under the same laws— but yet one civibsed and 
 the other uncivilised. 
 
 All this I say is the result of the system that 
 has trampled down Art, and exalted Commerce 
 into a sacred religion; and it would seem is ready, 
 with the ghastly stupidity which is its principal 
 characteristic, to mock the Roman satirist for 
 his noble warning by taking it in inverse meaning, 
 and now bids us all " for the sake of life to 
 destroy the reasons for living." 
 
 And now in the teeth of this stupid tyranny 
 I put forward a claim on behalf of labour 
 enslaved by Commerce, which I know no think- 
 ing man can deny is reasonable, but which if 
 acted on would involve such a change as would 
 defeat Commer-e ; that is, would put Association 
 instead of Competition, Social order mstead of 
 
 Individualist 
 
 i 
 
i 
 
 % 
 
 ( " )■ 
 
 Individualist anarchy. 
 
 Yet I have looked at this claim by the light 
 of history and my own conscience, and it seems 
 to me so looked at to be a most just claim, and 
 that resistance to it means nothing short of a 
 denial of the hope of civilisation. 
 
 This then is the claim : — 
 
 // is right and necessary that all men should 
 have woi'k to do which shall he worth doings and 
 be of itself pleasant to do ; and ivhich should be 
 done under such conditions as would make it 
 neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious. 
 
 Turn that claim about as I may, think of it 
 as long as I can, I cannot find that it is an 
 exorbitant claim ; yet again I say if Society 
 would or could admit it, the face of the world 
 would be changed; discontent and strife and 
 dishonesty would be ended. To feel that we 
 were doing work useful to others and pleasant to 
 
 ourselves, 
 
 t 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
^ .^^.^AMNiMMMMM 
 
 
 (12) 
 
 ourselves, and that such work and its due reward 
 could not fail us ! What serious harm could 
 happen to us then? And the price to be paid for 
 so making the world happy is Revolution : 
 Socialism instead of Laissez faire. 
 
 How can we of the middle classes help to 
 bring such a state of things about ; a state ot 
 things as nearly as possible the reverse of the 
 present state of things ? 
 
 The reverse ; no less than that. For first, 
 The work must be worth doing: think what a 
 change that would make in the world ! I tell 
 you I feel dazed at the thought of the immensity 
 of work which is undergone for the making of 
 useless things. 
 
 It would be an instructive day's work for 
 any one of us who is strong enough to walk 
 through two or three of the principal streets 
 of London on a week-day, and take accurate 
 
 note 
 
(13) 
 
 
 
 note of everything in the shop windows which 
 is embarrassing or superfluous to the daily 
 life of a serious man. Nay, the most of 
 these things no one, serious or unserious, wants 
 at all ; only a foolish habit makes even the 
 hghtest-minded of us suppose that he wants 
 them, and to many people even of those who 
 buy them they are obvious encumbrances to 
 real work, thought and pleasure. But I beg you 
 to think of the enormous mass of men who are 
 occupied with this miserable trumpery, from the 
 engineers who have had to make the machines 
 for making them, down to the hapless clerks 
 who sit day-long year after year in the horrible 
 dens wherein the wholesale exchange of them 
 is transacted, and the shopmen, who not daring 
 to call their souls their own, retail them amidst 
 numberless insults which they must not resent, 
 to the idle public which doesn't want them but 
 buys them to be bored by them and sick to 
 death of them. 
 
 I am 
 
\6^^ 
 
 (14) 
 
 I am talking of the merely useless things; 
 but there are other matters not merely useless, 
 but actively destructive and poisonous which 
 command a good price in the market; for 
 instance, adulterated food and drink. Vast 
 is the number of slaves whom conipetitive 
 Commerce employs in turning out infamies 
 such as these. But quite apart from them there 
 is an enormous mass of labour which is just 
 merely wasted ; many thousands of men and 
 women making nothing with terrible and inhu- 
 man toil which deadens the soul and shortens 
 mere animal life itself. 
 
 All these are the slaves of what is called luxury, 
 which in the modern sense of the word com- 
 prises a mass of sham wealth, the invention of 
 competitive Commerce, and enslaves not only 
 the poor people who are compelled to work at 
 its production, but also the foolish and not over 
 happy people who buy it to harass themselves 
 with its encumbrance. 
 
 Now 
 
(^5) 
 
 Now if we are to have popular Art, or indeed 
 Art of any kind, we must at once and for all be 
 done with this luxury ; it is the supplanter, the 
 changeling of Art ; so much so that by those 
 who know of nothing better it has even been 
 taken for Art, the divine solace of human 
 labour, the romance of each day's hard practice 
 of the difficult art of living. 
 
 But I say Art cannot live beside it, nor self- 
 respect in any class of life. Effeminacy and 
 brutalit'^ are its companions on the right hand 
 and the left. This, first of all, we of the well-to- 
 do classes must get rid of if we are serious m 
 desiring the new birth of Art: and if not 
 then corruption is digging a terrible pit of 
 perdition for society, from which indeed the 
 new birth may come, but surely from amidst of 
 terror, violence and misery. 
 
 Indeed if it were but ridding ourselves, the 
 well-to-do people, of this mountain of rubbish, 
 
 that 
 
,s'! 
 
 
 r U ' I 
 
 (i6) 
 
 that would be something worth doing: things 
 which everybody knows are of no use ; the very 
 capitalists know well that there is no genuine 
 healthy demand for them, and they are compelled 
 to foist them off on the public by stirring up a 
 strange feverish desire for petty excitement, the 
 outward token of which is known by the conven- 
 tional name of fashion — a strange monster born 
 of the vacancy of the lives of rich people, and 
 the eagerness of competitive Commerce to make 
 the most of the huge crowd of workmen whom 
 it breeds as unregarded instruments for what is 
 called the making of money. 
 
 Do not think it a little matter to resist this 
 monster of folly ; to think for yourselves what 
 you yourselves really desire, will not only make 
 men and women of you so far, but may also set 
 you thinking of the due desires of other people, 
 since you will soon find when you get to know a 
 work of Art, that slavish work is w;/desirable. 
 
 And 
 
(17) 
 
 And here furthermore is at least a little sign 
 whereby to distinguish between a rag of fashion 
 and a work of Art : whereas the toys of fashion 
 when the first gloss is worn off them do become 
 obviously worthless even to the frivolous— a 
 work of Art, be it never so humble, is long 
 lived: we never tire of it; as long as a scrap 
 hangs together it is valuable and instructive to 
 each new generation. All works of Art m short 
 have the property of becoming venerable amidst 
 decay : and reason good, for from the first there 
 was a soul in them, the thought of man, which 
 will be visible in them so long as the body exists 
 in which they were implanted. 
 
 And that last sentence brings me to consider- 
 ing the other side of the necessity for labour 
 only occupying itself in making goods that are 
 worth making. Hitherto we have been thinking 
 of it only from the user's point of view ; even so 
 looked at it was surely important enough ; yet 
 from the other side--as to the producer— it is 
 far more mportant still. 
 
.a^. 
 
 (i8) 
 For I say again that in buying these things 
 
 '• 'Tis the lives of men you buy ! " 
 Will you from mere folly and thoughtlessness 
 make yourselves partakers of the guilt of those 
 who compel their fellow men to labour uselessly? 
 
 For when I said it was necessary for all things 
 made to be worth making, I set up that claim 
 chiefly on behalf of Labour; since the waste of 
 making useless things grieves the workman 
 doubly. As part of the public he is forced into 
 buying them, and the more part of his miserable 
 wages are squeezed out of him by an universal 
 kind of truck system ; as one of the producers 
 he is forced into making them, and so into 
 losing the very foundations of that pleasure in 
 daily work which I claim as his birthright; 
 he is compelled to labour joylessly at making 
 the poison which the truck system compels 
 him to buy. So that the huge mass of men who 
 are compelled by folly and greed to make 
 harmful and useless things are sacrificed to 
 
 Society 
 
 '- '■"--y 'iSilrT 1 
 
(19) 
 
 Society. I say that this would be terrible and 
 unendurable even though they were sacrificed 
 to the good of Society— if that were possible ; 
 but if they are sacrificed not for the welfare of 
 Society but for its whims, to add to its degrada- 
 tion, what do luxury and fashion look like then ? 
 On one side ruinous and wearisome waste 
 leading through corruption to corruption on to 
 complete cynicism at last, and the disintegration 
 of all Society ; and on the other side implacable 
 oppression destructive of all pleasure and hope 
 in life, and leading— whitherward ? 
 
 Here then is one thing for us of the middle- 
 classes to do before we can clear the ground for 
 the new birth of Art, before we can clear our 
 own consciences of the guilt of enslaving men 
 by their labour. One thing ; and if we could do 
 it perhaps that one thing would be enough, and 
 all other healthy changes would follow it : but 
 can we do it? Can we escape from the 
 corruption of Society which threatens us ? Can 
 the middle-classes regenerate themselves ? 
 
 At 
 
(20) 
 
 At first sight one would say that a body of 
 people so powerful, who have built up 'the 
 gigantic edifice of modern Commerce, whose 
 science, invention and energy have subdued the 
 forces of nature to serve their every-day purposes, 
 and who guide the organization that keeps these 
 natural powers in subjection in a way almost 
 miraculous ; at first sight one would say surely 
 such a mighty mass of wealthy men could do 
 anything they please. 
 
 And yet I doubt it : their own creation, the 
 Commerce they are so proud of, has become 
 their master; and all we of the well-to-do 
 classes— some of us with triumphant glee, some 
 with dull satisfaction, and some with sadness of 
 heart— are compelled to admit not that Com- 
 merce was made for man, but that man was 
 made for Commerce. 
 
 On all sides we are forced to admit it. There 
 are of the English middle-class to-d:y, ioi 
 
 instance. 
 
 ">^1 
 
 'i . t» »i >#»™ 
 
dy of 
 pfthe 
 whose 
 id the 
 poses, 
 ; these 
 ilmost 
 surely 
 lid do 
 
 m, the 
 ecome 
 l-to-do 
 , some 
 less of 
 Com- 
 m was 
 
 There 
 
 3y, 101 
 
 istance, 
 
 (21) 
 
 instance, men of the highest ^spi'^^tl^"^^'?;^;^^ 
 Art and of the strongest will ; men who are 
 mo^t deei^y convinced of the necess.ty to c.v.l- 
 Son of^'urrounding men's hves with beau y 
 and many lesser men, thousands for what 1 
 know rTfined and cultivated, follow them and 
 pa^e thdr opinions : but both the leaders and 
 The led are incapable of saving so much as half 
 a dozen commons from the grasp of mexorabk 
 
 Commerce: they are as helpl^^^/" ',f ' re 
 their culture and their genius as if they were 
 us tso many over-worked shoemakers : less 
 luckv than King Midas, our green fields 
 and clear waters, nay the very air we breathe 
 are turned not to gold (wl"ch might plea e 
 some of us for an hour may be) but to dirt, 
 Tnd to speak plainly we know fuU wej th^ 
 iinHer the present gospel of Capital notuniy 
 2rei-oLpe ofWg it, but fat thing 
 grow worse year by year, day by day Let "s 
 iat and drink, for to-morrow we die-chokea 
 
 by filth. Qj 
 
 >'l 
 
111 ' 
 
 u 
 
 i i 
 
 I 
 
 ! 
 j 
 
 (22) 
 
 Or let me give you a direct example of the 
 slavery to competitive Commerce, in wliich we 
 hapless folk of the middle classes live. I have 
 exhorted you to the putting away of luxury, to 
 the stripping yourselves of useless encumbrances, 
 to the simplification of life, and I believe that 
 there are not a few of you that heartily agree 
 with me on that point. Well, I have long thought 
 that one of the most revolting circumstances 
 that cling to our present class-system, is the re- 
 lation between us, of the well-to-do, and our do- 
 mestic servants : we and our servants live together 
 under one roof, but are little better than strang- 
 ers to each other, in spite of the good nature 
 and good feeling that often exists on both sides : 
 nay strangers is a mild word ; though we are of 
 the same blood, bound by the same laws, we 
 live together like people of different tribes. Now 
 think how this works on the job of getting through 
 the ordinary day's work of a household, and 
 whether our lives can be simplified while such a 
 system lasts. To go no further, you who are 
 
 house- 
 
 le 
 
 L.iiu£^e£ 
 
 i 
 
(23) 
 
 housekeepers know full well (as I myself do, 
 s°nce I have learned the useful art of cooking a 
 dinner) how it would simplify the day's work, if 
 the chief meals could be eaten m common; 
 f there had not got to be double meals one 
 upstairs, another down stairs. And again 
 surely we of this educational century, cannot 
 be ignorant of what an education it would be 
 for L less refined members of a household 
 to meet on common easy terms the more refined 
 once a day, at least ; to note the elegant manners 
 o? well-bred ladies, to give and take in talk with 
 learned and travelled men, with men of action 
 and imagination : believe me that would beat 
 elementary education. 
 
 Furthermore this matter ckr.ves close to our 
 subject of Art : for note, as a token of this stu- 
 pidity of onr sham civilisation, what foolish rabbit 
 varrens our well-to-do houses are obliged to be 
 instead of being planned in the rational anuent 
 way which was used from the time of Homer to 
 
 past 
 
 
 i 
 
rv i 
 
 f'\ ' 
 
 i . 
 
 ( 24 ) 
 
 past the time of Chaucer, a big hall, to wit, with 
 a few chambers tacked on to it for sleeping or 
 sulking m. No wonder our houses are cramped 
 and ignoble when the lives lived in them are 
 cramped and ignoble also. 
 
 Well, and why don't we who have thought of 
 this, as I am sure many of us have, change this 
 mean and shabby custom, simplifying our lives 
 thereby and educating our friends ^ to whose toil 
 we owe so many comforts ? Why do not you — 
 and I — set about doing this to-morrow ? 
 
 Because we cannot: because our servants 
 wouldn't have it, knowing, as we know, thac 
 both parties would be made miserable by it. 
 
 The civiHsation of the nineteenth century 
 forbids us to share the refinement of a household 
 among its members ! 
 
 So you see, if we middle-class people belong 
 
 to 
 
 w 
 
 % 
 
 .iA 
 
 
1 
 
 (25) 
 
 to a powerful folk, and in good sooth we do, 
 we aKt playing a part played in many - J 
 of the world's history: we are great but hapless , 
 we are important dignified people, but bored to 
 death ; we have bought our power at price of 
 our liberty and our pleasure. 
 
 So I sav in answer to the question Can we put 
 luxury froL us and live simple and dec- -s? 
 Yes, when we are free from the slavery ot 
 CapitaUst-Commerce ; but not before. 
 
 Surely there are some of you who long to be 
 free who have been educated and refined, and 
 had Vour perceptions of beauty and order quick- 
 ened only that they might be shocked and 
 rnde/at every fu.n, byjie ^^ fo 
 OTZ d^rir ty it that though you are 
 
 -Ltto ^^^ r^v^of n'Tove of 
 
 Tr! thit is to say of the true pleasure of We, 
 
 ' has 
 
r4 
 
 if 
 
 1 
 
 (26) 
 
 has brought you to this, that you must throw 
 in your lot with that of the wage-slave of 
 competitive Commerce ; you and he must help 
 each other and have one hope in common, or 
 you at any rate will live and die hopeless and 
 unhelped. You who long to be set free from 
 the oppression of the money grubbers, hope for 
 the day when you will be cotnpelled to be free ! 
 
 Meanwhile if otherwise that oppression has 
 left us scarce any work to do worth doing, one 
 thing at least is left us to strive for, the raising 
 of the standard of life where it is lowest, where 
 it is low : that will put a spoke in the wheel of 
 the triumphant car of competitive Commerce. 
 
 Nor can I conceive of anything more likely to 
 raise the standard of life than the convincing 
 some thousands of those who live by labour, of 
 the necessity of their supporting the second part 
 of the claim I have made for Labour ; namely 
 That their work should be of itself pleasant to do. 
 
 If 
 
 I 
 
(27) 
 
 If we could but convince them that such a strange 
 evolution in Labour as th- woul^d be o^^^mfinUe 
 benefit not to them only, bu to a^^^ "^f" '^"^ 
 that it is so right and natural that for the reveise 
 o be the case! that most men's work shouM be 
 Irievous to them, is a mere monstrosity of these 
 fa ter days, which must in the long run bring rum 
 and confusion on the Society that allows it-If 
 we could but convince them, then mdeed there 
 would be chance of the phrase Art of the Feopie 
 being something more than a mere word. 
 
 At first sight, indeed, it would seem impossible 
 to make men born under the present system of 
 Commerce understand that labour may be a blec 
 sing to them : not in the sense m which he 
 ptose is sometimes preached co them by *ose 
 whose labour is light and easily evaded ^ not as 
 a necessary task laid by nature on tbe poor tor 
 the benefit of the rich ; not as an opiate to dull 
 hdr'sense of right and wrong to -ake f^ ^^, 
 down quietly under their burdens to the end ot 
 
 time, 
 
(28) 
 
 time, blessing the squire and his relations : all 
 this they could understand our saying to them 
 easily enough, and sometimes would listen to it 
 I fear with at least a show of complacency — if they 
 thought there were anything to be made out of 
 us thereby. But the true doctrine that labour 
 should be a real tangible blessing in itself to the 
 working man, a pleasure even as sleep and strong 
 drink are to him now : this one might think it 
 hard indeed for him to understand, so different 
 as it is to anything which he has found labour 
 to be. 
 
 Nevertheless though most men's work is only 
 borne as a necessary evil like sickness, my exper- 
 ience as far as it goes is, that whether it be from 
 a certain sacredness in handiwork which does 
 cleave to it even under the worst circumstances, 
 or whether it be that the poor man who is driven 
 by necessity to deal with things which are terribly 
 real, when he thinks at all on such matters, thinks 
 less conventionally than the rich j whatever it 
 
 may 
 
 m 
 m 
 ol 
 
 S€ 
 
 fr 
 si 
 f( 
 a 
 ri 
 s 
 
 am 
 
 m 
 
IS : all 
 them 
 n to it 
 -if they 
 out of 
 labour 
 to the 
 strong 
 link it 
 fferent 
 labour 
 
 is only 
 exper- 
 ►e from 
 h does 
 tances, 
 driven 
 terribly 
 , thinks 
 tever it 
 
 may 
 
 (29) 
 
 rhetir^'Sour to pleasure in t^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 self than the rich or wel -to-do ""^n does Apart 
 from any trivial words of my own, I ^aje bee'i 
 • Ja tr. find for instance, such a nearly 
 STtoward Jol^^^^^^ among working-class 
 l^fi ences thiy can see the prophet m him 
 Ser than thi fantastic rhetorician, as more 
 superfine audiences do. 
 
 That is a good omen, I think, for the educa- 
 SHtrr^nSr^etuseTf^^^ 
 
 Tuf oCh^peTat^L^t^" tie point of thinking 
 Zt what h^pe glimmers on the -il 10- °^^^^^^ 
 slaves of Comn.erce|SSO-^^^^^^ 
 
 """vf. '^^ ^rwh ch ts onl^y the moon that 
 Sgglet?' Le'tt cS to i^ind that there yet 
 ^ ^^ remam 
 
(30) 
 
 remain monuments in the world which show us 
 that all human labour was not always a grief 
 and a burden to men. Let us think of the 
 mighty and lovely architecture, for instance, of 
 mediaeval Europe: of the buildings raised 
 before Commerce had put the coping stone on 
 the edifice of tyranny by the discovery that 
 fancy, imagination, sentiment, the joy of creation 
 and the hope of fair fame are marketable articles 
 too precious to be allowed to men who have 
 not the money to buy them, to mere handicrafts- 
 men and day labourers. Let us remember 
 there was a time when men had pleasure in 
 their daily work, but yet as to other matters 
 hoped for light and freedom even as they do 
 now: their dim hope grew brighter, and they 
 watched its seeming fulfilment drawing nearer 
 and nearer, and gazed so eagerly on it that they 
 did not note how the ever watchful foe, oppres- 
 sion, had changed his shape and was stealing 
 from them what they had already gained in the 
 days when the light of their new hope was but 
 
 a 
 
DW US 
 
 grief 
 f the 
 ce, of 
 raised 
 le on 
 J that 
 nation 
 rticles 
 
 have 
 crafts- 
 smber 
 ire in 
 latters 
 ey do 
 [ they 
 nearer 
 ,t they 
 ppres- 
 ;ealing 
 in the 
 as but 
 
 a 
 
 (31) 
 
 a feeble glimmer : so they lost the old gain, and 
 for lack of it the new gain was changed and 
 spoiled for them into somethmg not much better 
 than loss. 
 
 Betwixt the days in which we now live and 
 the end of the middle ages, Europe has gamed 
 freedom of thought, increase of knowledge and 
 huge talent for dealing with the material force 
 of ^nature; comparative political reedom withal 
 and respect for the lives of avdised men, and 
 other gains that go with these things : neverthe- 
 less I say deliberately that if the P-s^nt sta e 
 of Society is to endure, she has bought these 
 gains at too high a price m the loss ot^^^^ 
 pleasure in daily work which once did certainly 
 solace the mass of men for their fears and op- 
 pressions : the death of Art was too high a pr ce 
 to pay for the material prosperity of the middle 
 classes. 
 
 Grievous indeed it was, that we could not 
 
 keep 
 
 y\ 
 
/ft 
 
 I 
 
 ■^i"'^ 
 
 
 ] 
 
 II 
 
 (30 
 
 keep both our hands full, that we were forced 
 to spill from one while we gathered with the 
 other : yet to my mind it is more grievous still 
 to be unconscious of the loss ; or being dimly 
 conscious of it to have to force ourselves to 
 forget it and to cry out that all is well. 
 
 For, though all is not well, I know that men's 
 natures are not so changed in three centuries 
 that we can say to all the thousands of years 
 which went before them ; You were wrong to 
 cherish Art, and now we have found out that 
 all men need is food and raiment and shelter, 
 with a smattering of knowledge of the material 
 fashion of the universe. Creation is no longer 
 a need of man's soul, his right hand may forget 
 its cunning, and he be none the worse for it. 
 
 Three hundred years, a day in the lapse of 
 ages, has not changed man's nature thus utterly, 
 be sure of that : one day we shall win back Art, 
 that is to say the pleasure of life ; win back Art 
 
 again 
 
 
(33) 
 
 again to our daily labour. Where is the hope 
 then, you may say ; Show it us. 
 
 There lies the hope, where hope of old de- 
 ceived us. We gave up Art for what we thought 
 was light and freedom, but it was less than light 
 and freedom which we bought : the light showed 
 many things to those of the well-to-do who cared 
 to look for them : the freedom left the well-to-do 
 free enough if they cared to use their freedom ; 
 but these were few at the best : to the most of 
 men the light showed them that they need look 
 for hope no more, and the freedom left the most 
 of men free— to take at a wretched wage what 
 slave's work lay nearest to them or starve. 
 
 There is our hope, I say. If the bargain had 
 been really fair, complete all round, then were 
 there nought else to do but to bury Art, and 
 forget the beauty of life : but now the cause of 
 Art has something else to appeal to; no less 
 than the hope of the people for the happy life 
 
 which 
 
iff 
 
 (34) 
 
 which has not yet been granted to them. There 
 is our hope : the cause of Art is the cause of 
 the people. 
 
 Think of a piece of history, and so hope I 
 Time was when the rule of Rome held the whole 
 world of civilisation in its poisonous embrace. 
 To all men — even the best, as you may see 
 in the very gospels — that rule seemed doomed 
 to last for ever : nor to those who dwelt under 
 it was there any world worth thinking of beyond 
 it : but the days passed and though none saw a 
 shadow of the coming change, it came none the 
 less, like a thief in the night, and the Bar- 
 darians, the world which lay outside the rule 
 of Rome, were upon her ; and men blind with 
 terror lamented the change and deemed the 
 world undone by the Fury of the North. But 
 even that fury bore with it things long strange 
 to Rome, which once had been the food its 
 glory fed on : hatred of lies, scorn of riches, 
 contempt of death, faith in the fair fame won 
 
 by 
 
 jl^ 
 
 iv 
 
 mMIw 
 
 * jtL.aiUu 
 
1 
 
 by 
 
 (35) 
 
 by steadfast endurance, honourable love of 
 women— all these things the Northern Fury bore 
 with it, as the mountain torrent bears the gold ; 
 and so Rome fell and Europe rose, and the 
 hope of the world was born again. 
 
 To those that have hearts to understand, this 
 tale of the past is a parable of the days to come ; 
 of the change in store for us hidden m the 
 breast of the Barbarism of civilization— the 
 Proletariat: and we of the middle class, the 
 strength of the mighty but monstrous system of 
 competitive Commerce, it behoves us to clear 
 our souls of greed and cowardice and to face 
 the change which is now once more on the 
 road ; to see the good and the hope it bears 
 with it amidst all its threats of violence, amidst 
 all its ugliness, which was not born of itself but 
 of that which it is doomed to destroy. 
 
 I Now once more I will say that we well-to-do 
 people, those of us who love Art, not as a toy, 
 
 but 
 
 mm 
 
 BBpfe- 
 
I I 
 
 (36) 
 
 but as a thing necessary to the life of man, as a 
 token of his freedom and happiness, have for 
 our best work the raising of the standard of life 
 among the people ; or in other words establishing 
 the claim I made for Labour — which I will now 
 put in a different form, that we may try to see 
 what chiefly hinders us from making that claim 
 good and what are the enemies to be attacked. 
 
 Thus then I put the claim again : — 
 
 Nothing should be made by man's labour which 
 is not worth making; or which must be made by 
 labour degrading to the makers. 
 
 Simpleas that proposition is, and obviously right 
 as I am sure it must seem to you, you will find, 
 when you come to consider the matter, that it is 
 a direct challenge to the death to the present 
 system of labour in civilised countries. That 
 system, which I have called competitive Com- 
 merce, is distinctly a system of war ; that is of 
 
 waste 
 
 # 
 
 ^ 
 
 
n, as a 
 ve for 
 of life 
 lishing 
 11 now 
 to see 
 claim 
 eked. 
 
 which 
 2de by 
 
 y right 
 1 find, 
 It it is 
 resent 
 That 
 Com- 
 : is of 
 
 waste 
 
 (37) 
 
 waste and destruction : or you may call it 
 gambling if you will, the point of it being that 
 under it whatever a man gains he gains at the 
 expense of some other man's loss. Such a 
 system does not and cannot heed whether the 
 matters it makes are worth making ; it does not 
 and cannot heed whether those ivho make them 
 are degraded by their work : it heeds one thing 
 and only one, namely what it calls making a 
 profit ; which word has got to be used so con- 
 ventionally what I must explain to you what it 
 really means, to wit the plunder of the weak by 
 the strong ! Now I say of this system, that it is 
 of its very nature destructive of Art, that is 
 to say of the happiness of life. Whatever 
 consideration is shown for the life of the people 
 in these days, whatever is done which is worth 
 doing, is done in spite of the system and in the 
 teeth of its maxims ; and most true it is that we 
 do, all of us, tacitly at least, admit that it is 
 opposed to all the highest aspirations of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Do 
 
 miifmmimmmwimmii 
 
m 
 
 4^' 
 
 lii 
 
 if 
 
 *>> 
 
 (38) 
 
 Do we not know, for instance, how those men 
 of genius work who are the salt of the earthy 
 without whom the corruption of society would 
 long ago have become unendurable? The poet, 
 the artist, the man of science, is it not true that 
 in their fresh and glorious days, when they are in 
 the heyday of their faith and enthusiasm, they 
 are thwarted at every turn by Commercial War, 
 with its sneering question ' Will it pay ? ' Is it 
 not true that when they begin to win worldly 
 success, when they become comparatively rich, 
 in spite of ourselves they seem to us tainted by 
 the contact with the commercial world ? 
 
 Need I speak of great schemes that hang 
 about neglected ; of things most necessary to be 
 done, and so confessed by all men, that no one 
 can seriously set a hand to because of the lack 
 of money ; while if it be a question of creating 
 or stimulating some foolish whim in the public 
 mind, the satisfaction of which will breed a 
 profit, the money will come in by the ton. Nay, 
 
 you 
 
 m i 
 
 mm 
 
36 men 
 earthy 
 would 
 e poet, 
 ue that 
 f are in 
 1, they 
 il War, 
 ' Is it 
 tvorldly 
 ly rich, 
 ited by 
 
 t hang 
 y to be 
 Qo one 
 le lack 
 reating 
 public 
 reed a 
 . Nay, 
 
 you 
 
 
 (39) 
 
 you know what an old story it is of the wars 
 bred by Commerce in search of new markets, 
 which not even the most peaceable of statesmen 
 can resist ; an old story and still it seems for ever 
 new, and now become a kind of grim joke, at 
 which I would rather not laugh if I could help 
 it, but am even forced to laugh from a soul laden 
 with anger. 
 
 And all that mastery over the powers of 
 nature which the last hundred years or less has 
 given us: what has it done for us under this 
 system ? In the opinion of John Stuart Mill, 
 it was doubtful if all the mechanical inven- 
 tions of modern times have done anything 
 to lighten the toil of labour : be sure there is 
 no doubt that they were not made for that 
 end, but to ' make a profit' Those almost 
 miraculous machines — which if orderly fore- 
 thought had dealt with them might even now 
 be speedily extinguishing all irksome and 
 unintelligent labour, leaving us free to raise the 
 
 standard 
 
 * ( 
 
\i iil: 
 
 /■; 
 
 (40) 
 
 standard of skill of hand and energy of mind 
 in our workmen, and to produce afresh that 
 loveliness and order which only the hand of 
 man guided by his soul can produce— what have 
 they done for us now? Those machines of 
 which the civilized world is so proud, has it any 
 right to be proud of the tise they have been put 
 to by Commercial war and waste ? 
 
 I do not think exultation can have a place 
 here : Commercial war has made a profit of 
 these wonders ; that is to say it has by their 
 means bred for itself millions of unhappy 
 workers, unintelligent machines as far as their 
 daily work goes, in order to get cheap labour, 
 to keep up its exciting but deadly game for ever. 
 Indeed that labour would have been cheap 
 enough— cheap to the Commercial war generals, 
 and deadly dear to the rest of us— but for the 
 seeds of freedom which valiant men of old have 
 sowed amongst us to spring up in our own day 
 into Chartism and Trades Unionism and Social- 
 ism 
 
 1! 
 
 c 
 
 I 
 
 ' 
 
 r 
 
 ■t^s, 
 
 'vV 
 
 ۥ 
 
1 
 
 mind 
 1 that 
 ind of 
 t have 
 les of 
 it any 
 en put 
 
 place 
 3fit of 
 ' their 
 happy 
 > their 
 abour, 
 r ever. 
 
 cheap 
 nerals, 
 or the 
 i have 
 ^n day 
 Social- 
 ism 
 
 (41) 
 
 ism, for the defence of order and a decent life. 
 Terrible would have been our slavery, and not 
 of the working classes alone, but for these 
 germs of the change which must be. 
 
 Even as it is, by the reckless aggregation of 
 machine-workers and their adjoints in the great 
 cities and the manufacturing districts, it has kept 
 down life amongst us, and keeps it down to a 
 miserably low standard ; so low that any stand- 
 point for improvement is hard to think of even. 
 By the means of speedy communication which 
 it has created, and which should have raised the 
 standard of life by spreading intelligence from 
 town to country, and widely creating modest 
 centres of freedom of thought and habits of 
 culture — by the means of the railways and the 
 like it has gathered to itself fresh recruits for 
 the reserve army of competing lack-alls on which 
 its gambling gains so much depend, stripping 
 the country side of its population, and extm- 
 guishing all reasonable hope and life in the 
 
 lesser 
 
 Wfi 
 
'^ 
 
 i . 
 
 
 
 
 
 L. 
 
 
 1^ 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 1 
 
 p 
 
 
 v\ 
 
 ■ ■ ;- 
 
 \; 
 
 
 i 
 
 1 ' I 
 
 1 
 
 ■f ' 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 \ 
 
 
 1 . 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 ? 
 
 
 t 
 
 
 I • 
 
 
 ■- 
 
 
 
 
 } 
 
 ,1. 
 
 i 
 
 - 1 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 (42) 
 
 lesser towns. 
 
 Nor can I, an artist, think ko least of the 
 outward effects which betoken tms rule of the 
 wretched anarchy of Commercial war. Think of 
 the spreading sore of London swallowing up 
 with its loathsomeness field and wood and 
 heath without mercy and without hope, mocking 
 our feeble efforts to deal even with its minor 
 evils of smoke-laden sky and befouled river: 
 the black horror and reckless squalor of our 
 manufacturing districts, so dreadful to the 
 senses which are unused to them that it is 
 ominous for the future of the race that any man 
 can live among it in tolerable cheerfulness : nay 
 in the open country itself the thrusting aside by 
 miserable jerry-built brick and slate of the solid 
 grey dwellings that are still scattered about, fit 
 emblems in their cheery but beautiful simplicity 
 of the yeomen of the English field, whose des- 
 truction at the hands of yet young Commercial 
 war was lamented so touchingly by the high- 
 minded 
 
 > 
 
 ^41- 
 
of the 
 of the 
 hink of 
 ing up 
 d and 
 ocking 
 minor 
 river : 
 of our 
 to the 
 t it is 
 ly man 
 s : nay 
 side by 
 e solid 
 lOut, fit 
 ipHcity 
 >e des- 
 nercial 
 i high- 
 
 ninded 
 
 I 
 
 
 ( 43 ) 
 
 minded More and the valiant Latimer. Every- 
 where in short the change from old to new 
 involving one certainty, whatever else may be 
 doubtful, a worsening of the aspect of the 
 country. 
 
 This is the condition of England : of England 
 the country of order, peace and stability, the 
 land of common sense and practicality; the 
 country to which all eyes are turned of those 
 whose hope is for the continuence and perfection 
 of modern progress. There are countries in 
 Europe whose aspect is not so ruined outwardly, 
 though they may have less of material prosperity, 
 less wide-spread middle-class wealth to balance 
 the squalor and disgrace I have mentioned : but 
 if they are members of the great Commercial 
 whole, through the same mill they have got to 
 go, unless something should happen to turn aside 
 the triumphant march of War Commercial before 
 it reaches the end. 
 
 That 
 
iif 
 
 ; 
 
 
 
 1' 
 
 
 1; 
 
 feV' 
 
 (44) 
 
 That is what three centuries of Commerce 
 have brought that hope to which sprung up when 
 feudalism began to fall to pieces. What can 
 give us the day-spring of a new hope ? What, 
 save general revolt against the tyranny of Com- 
 mercial War? The palliatives over which many 
 worthy people are busying themselves now are 
 useless : because they are but unorganised partial 
 revolts against a vast wide-spreading grasping 
 organisation which will, with the unconsious in- 
 stinct of a plant, meet every attempt at better- 
 ing the condition of the people with an attack 
 on a fresh side ; new machines, new markets, 
 wholesale emigration, the revival of grovelling 
 superstitions, preachments of thrift to lack-alls, 
 of temperance to the wretched ; such things as 
 these will baffle at every turn all partial revolts 
 against the monster we of the middle-classes 
 have created for our own undoing. 
 
 I will speak quite plainly on this matter, 
 though I must say an ugly word in the end if I 
 
 am 
 
 
 f 
 
 •dft 
 
 ^"fm^mmmmm 
 
■•t**"- 
 
 mmerce 
 ip when 
 tiat can 
 
 What, 
 )f Com- 
 h many 
 low are 
 I partial 
 rasping 
 ious in- 
 better- 
 
 attack 
 larkets, 
 )velling 
 .ck-alls, 
 lings as 
 revolts 
 -classes 
 
 matter, 
 ndif I 
 
 am 
 
 f> 
 
 f 
 
 \ 
 
 ( 45 ) 
 
 am to say what I think. The one thing to be 
 done is to set people far and wide to think it 
 possible to raise the standard of life. If you think 
 of it, you will see clearly that this means stirring 
 up general discontent. 
 
 And now to illustrate that I turn back to my 
 blended claim for Art and Labour, that I may 
 deal with the third clause in it : here is the claim 
 again : — 
 
 It is right and necessary that all men should 
 have work to do : 
 
 First, Work 7iwrth doing: 
 
 Second, Work of itself pleasant to do : 
 
 Third, Work done under such conditions as 
 would make it neither over wearisome nor over 
 anxious. 
 
 With the first and second clauses, which are 
 very nearly related to each other, I have tried to 
 deal already. They are as it were the soul of the 
 
 claim 
 
 J 
 
mim 
 
 •yfm^agmmm 
 
 
 / 
 
 I 
 
 (46) 
 
 claim for proper labour ; the third clause is the 
 body without which that soul cannot exist. I 
 will extend it in this way, which will indeed 
 partly carry us over ground already covered : — 
 
 JVo one who is ivilling to work should ever fear 
 want of stick employment as would earn for him 
 all due necessaries of mind and body. 
 
 All due necessaries— what are the due neces- 
 saries for a good citizen ? 
 
 First, honourable andfittijtg work : which would 
 involve giving him a chance of gaining capacity 
 for his work by due education ; also, as the work 
 must be worth doing and pleasant to do, it wall be 
 found necessary to this end that his position be 
 so assured to him that he cannot be compelled 
 to do useless work, or work in which he cannot 
 take pleasure. 
 
 The second necessity is decency of s?/rroundings: 
 
 including 
 
 1 
 
 
(47) 
 
 including (a) good lodging ; (b) ample space ; 
 (c) general order and beauty. That is (a) our 
 houses must be well built, clean and healthy ; (d) 
 there must be abundant garden space in our 
 towns, and our towns must not eat up the fields 
 and natural features of the country; nay I 
 demand even that there be left waste places and 
 wilds in it, or romance and poetry— that is Art- 
 will die out amongst us. (c) Order and beauty 
 means, that not only our houses must be stoutly 
 and properly built, but also that they be orna- 
 mented duly : that the fields be not only left for 
 cultivation, but also that they be not spoilt by it 
 any more than a garden is spoilt : no one for 
 instance to be allowed to cut down, for mere 
 profit, trees whose loss would spoil a landscape : 
 neither on any pretext should people be allowed 
 to darken the daylight with smoke, to befoul 
 rivers, or to degrade any spot of earth with 
 squalid litter and brutal wasteful disorder. 
 
 The third necessity is leisure. You will under- 
 stand 
 
mmm 
 
 i 1 ' 
 
 \ m 
 
 nil 
 
 tfji^ i 
 
 (48) 
 
 stand that in using that word I imply first that all 
 men must work for some portion of the day, and 
 secondly that they have a positive right to claim 
 a respite from that work : the leisure they have a 
 right to claim, must be ample enough to allow 
 them full rest of mind and body : a man must 
 have time for serious individual thought, for imag- 
 ination—for dreaming even — or the race of men 
 will inevitably worsen. Even of the honourable 
 and fitting work of which I have been speaking, 
 which is a whole heaven asunder from the forced 
 work of the Capitalist system, a man must not 
 be asked to give more than his fair share ; or 
 men will become unequally developed, and there 
 will still be a rotten place in Society. 
 
 Here then I ha/e given you the conditions 
 under which work worth doing, and undegrading 
 to do, can be done : under no other conditions 
 can it be done : if the general work of the world 
 is not worth doing and undegrading to do it 
 is a mockery to talk of civilisation. 
 
 Well 
 
 HIJ ! WI|!l 
 
(49) 
 
 Well then can these conditions be oJDtained 
 under the present gospel of Capital, which has 
 for its motto ' The devil take the hindmost ' ? 
 
 Let us look at our claim again in other words :— 
 
 In a properly ordered state of Society euery 
 man willing to work should be ensured— 
 Y'usi— Honourable and fitting work ; 
 Second—^ healthy and beautiful house ; 
 ^\\\x^— Full leisure for rest of mind and body. 
 
 Now I don't suppose that anybody here will 
 deny that it would be desirable that this clami 
 should be satisfied : but what I want you all to 
 think is that it is necessary that it be satisfied ; 
 that unless we try our utmost to satisfy it, we are 
 but part and parcel of a society founded on rob- 
 bery and injustice, condemmed by the laws of 
 the universe to destroy itself by its own efforts 
 to exist for ever. Furthermore, I want you to 
 think that as on the one hand it is possible to 
 
 .atisfy 
 
 -ssjBSW* 
 

 (5o) 
 
 satisfy this claim, so on the other hand it is im- 
 possible to satisfy it under the present plutocra- 
 tic system, which will forbid us even any serious 
 attempt to satisfy it : the beginnings of Social 
 -Keyolution must be the foundations of the re- 
 building of the Art of the People, that is to say 
 of the Pleasure of Life. ^ 
 
 .u T^u^^^ "^^^ "^^^^^ ^^^^"- ^^ we not kno7if 
 that the greater part of men in civilised societies 
 are dirty, ignorant, brutal— or at best, anxious 
 about the next week's subsistence— that they 
 are in short poor? And we know, when we think 
 of It, that this is unfair. 
 
 It is an old story of men who have become 
 rich by dishonest and tyrannical means, spending 
 in terror of the future their ill-gotten gain! 
 liberally and in charity as 'tis called : nor are 
 
 l^.r""^!^^ •?'^^'^'^ ^ ^" ^^^^ ^^^ t^les 'tis thought 
 that the devil gets them after all. An old story 
 -but I say ' Be te fabula '-of thee is the story 
 
 told: 
 
 rm 
 
 Mm 
 
(so 
 
 told : thou art the man ! 
 
 I say that we of the rich and well-to-do 
 classes are daily doing in likewise : unconsciously, 
 or half consciously it may be, we gather wealth 
 by trading on the hard necessity of our fellows, 
 and then we give driblets of it away to those of 
 them who in one way or other cry out loudest 
 to us. Our poor laws, our hospitals, our charit- 
 ies, organized and unorganized, are but tubs 
 thrown to the whale : black mail paid to lame- 
 foot justice, that she may not hobble after us 
 too fast. 
 
 When will the time come when honest and 
 clear-seeing men will grow sick of all this chaos 
 of waste, this robbing of Peter to pay Paul, 
 which is the essence of Commercial war ? When 
 shall we band together to replace the system 
 whose motto is ' The devil lake the hindmost ' 
 with a system whose motto shall be really and 
 without qualification 'One for all and all for one.' 
 
 Who 
 
I ! 
 
 it ' 
 
 ■f I 
 
 \ 
 
 (S2) 
 
 that we now living may see the beginning of 
 that end which shall extinguish luxuTand 
 
 contentedly a simple and happy life. ^ 
 
 That is a long sentence to describe the state 
 
 atour.^^hf f ,v"" "^^'^^y^" '° '^^'P to bring 
 about . the abolition of slavery is a shorter onl 
 
 and means the same thing: You mav be 
 tempted to think the end not worth striving 
 for on one hand; or on the other to supmse 
 each one of you, that it is so far ahead^that 
 nothing serious can be done towards it in 
 our own time, and that you may as well there- 
 fore sit quiet and do nothing : let me reS 
 you how only the other day in the life-tTme of 
 the youngest of us many thousand men of our 
 own kindred gave their lives on the battle-fidd 
 o bring to a happy ending a mere episode n 
 the struggle for the abolition of slavery -they 
 
 are 
 
 ' .-.jikMam.- 
 
(S3) 
 
 are blessed and happy, for the opportunity came 
 to them, and they seized it and did their best, 
 and the world is the wealthier for it : and if 
 such an opportunity is offered to us shall we 
 thrust it from us that we may sit still in ease of 
 body, in doubt, in disease of soul ? These are 
 the days of combat : who can doubt that as he 
 hears all round him the sounds that betoken 
 discontent and hope and fear in high and low, 
 the sounds of awakening courage and awakening 
 conscience? These, I say, are the days of 
 combat, when there is no external peace possible 
 to an honest man ; but when for that very reason 
 the internal peace of a good conscience founded 
 on settled convictions is the easier to win, since 
 action for the cause is offered us. 
 
 Or, will you say that here in this quiet, constitu- 
 tionally governed country of England there is no 
 opportunity for action offered to us : if we were 
 in gagged Germany, in gagged Austria, in Russia 
 where a word or two might land us in Siberia or 
 
 the 
 
I 
 
 (54) 
 
 the prison of the fortress of Peter and Paul- 
 why then, indeed — 
 
 Ah ! my friends, it is but a poor tribute to 
 offer on the tombs of the martyrs of liberty 
 this refusal to take the torch from their dyinff 
 hands ! Is it not of Goethe it is told, that on 
 heanng one say he was going to America to 
 begm life again, he replied, ' Here is America 
 or nowhere ! ' So for my part I say, ' Here is 
 Russia, or nowhere.' 
 
 To say the governing classes in England are 
 not afraid of freedom of speech, therefore let us 
 abstain from speaking freely, is a strange para- 
 dox to me. Let us on the contrary press in 
 through the breach which valiant men have 
 made for us : if we hang back we make their 
 labours, their sufferings, their deaths of no 
 account. 
 
 Believe me we shall be shown that it is all 
 
 or 
 
(ss) 
 
 or nothing : or will anyone here tell me that a 
 Russian moujik is in a worse case than a 
 sweating tailor's wage -slave? Do not let us 
 deceive ourselves, the class of victims exists 
 here as in Russia. There are fewer of them ? 
 May be — then are they of themselves more help- 
 less, and so have more need of our help. 
 
 And how can we of the middle-classes, we 
 the capitalists, and our hangers-on, help them ? 
 By renouncing our class, and on all occasions 
 when antagonism rises up between the classes 
 casting in our lot with the victims : with those 
 who are condemmed at the best to lack of edu- 
 cation, refinement, leisure, pleasure and renown ; 
 and at the worst to a life lower than that of the 
 most brutal of savages — in order that the system 
 of competitive Commerce may endure. 
 
 There is no other way : and this way I tell you 
 plainly, will in the long run give us plentiful oc- 
 casion for self-sacrifice without going to Russia. 
 
 '^3mm 
 
 Bij/9" 
 
[S ' ^ 
 
 ( 56 ) 
 
 I feel sure that in this assembly there are some 
 who are steeped in discontent with the miserable 
 anarchy of the century of Commerce : to them I 
 offer a means of renouncing their class by 
 supporting a Socialist propaganda in joining 
 the Democratic Federation, which I have the 
 honour of representing before you, and which I 
 believe is the only body in this country which puts 
 forward constructive Socialism as its program. 
 
 This to my mind is opportunity enough for 
 those of us who are discontented with the present 
 state of things and long for an opportunity 
 of renunciation ; and it is very certain that in 
 accepting the opportunity you will have at once 
 to undergo some of the inconveniences of 
 martyrdom, though without gaining its dignity at 
 present. You will at least be mocked and 
 laughed at by those whose mockery is a token 
 of honour to an honest man; but you will, I 
 don't doubt it, be looked on coldly by many ex- 
 cellent people, not a// of whom will be quite 
 
 stupid 
 
 -ftp 
 

 (57) 
 
 Stupid. You will run the risk of losing position, 
 reputation, money, friends even : losses which 
 are certainly pin pricks to the serious martyrdom 
 I have spoken of; but which none the less do 
 try the stuff a man is made of — all the more as 
 he can escape them with little other reproach of 
 cowardice than that which his own conscience 
 cries out at him. 
 
 Nor can I assure you that you will for ever 
 escape scot-free from the attacks of open tyranny. 
 It is true that at present Capitalist Society only 
 looks on Socialism in England with dry grins. 
 But remember that the body of people who 
 have for instance ruined India, starved and 
 gagged Ireland, and tortured Egypt, have capa- 
 cities in them — some ominous signs of which 
 they have lately shown— for openly playing the 
 tyrants' game nearer home. 
 
 So on all sides I can offer you a position 
 which involves sacrifice ; a position which will 
 
 give 
 
 FW^wT^"' 
 
w 
 
 f! * 
 
 I ii: 
 
 h \i 
 
 1*1 
 
 Light, light, and light 1 to break and nfelt in sunder 
 
 All cloudb and chains that in one bondage bind 
 Eyes, han-ls, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder, 
 
 And sleelr fierce fraud with hidden knife behind ; 
 There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder, 
 
 Nor are the links not malleable that wind 
 Bound the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder ; 
 The hands are mighty, were the head not blind. 
 Priest is the staff of king, 
 And chains and clouds one thing. 
 And fettered flesh with devastated mind. 
 Open thy soul to see. 
 Slave I and thy feet are free ; 
 Thy bonds and thy belief are one in kind, 
 And of thy fears thine irons wrought 
 Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own thought. 
 
 A. C. Swinburne : 
 
 Songs before Sunrise. 
 
;<«iitil>ii 
 
 "Watchman: What of the night?" 
 
 igbt. 
 
 rise. 
 
 Let Fate or Insufficiency provide 
 Mean ends for men who what they a^'e would be: 
 Penn'd in their narrow day, no change they see 
 Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride. 
 Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide : 
 A7td whether earth's gytat oppring, by decree, 
 Must rot if they abjure rapacity, 
 Not argu7nent but effort shall decide. 
 
 They nuffiber many heads in that hard flock : 
 
 Trim swordsmen they push forth : yet try thy steel. 
 
 Thou, fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel 
 
 Tht strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew 
 
 A chasm sheer into the barrier rock 
 
 And bring the army of the faithful through. 
 
 George Meredith: 
 Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth. 
 
 We grow less worthy as the years roll by ; 
 Our common life is an incarnate tvrong. 
 
 IV$ 
 
 \ 
 
r 
 
 i ! .. ? 
 
 
 
 K. 
 
 m:[ 
 
 (62) 
 
 We fight zvhere victory is to the strongs 
 III is our goody and loio alone is high. 
 Gold is our god^ arid whoso hath can buy 
 The land, the lives, the honour of the throng ; 
 No ancient pride doth to our age belong ; 
 Aimless we live, and therefore hopeless die. 
 
 Come, rich-robed Mistress, hid so lo)ig a while! 
 
 We look /of thee stern-visaged, as is fneet ; 
 
 For well we know thy service will be pain 
 
 Till we h avt m iich renounced. Then thou luilt smile, 
 
 And in thy smile a stately life and siveet 
 
 Will rise, and Labour bringing Beauty in its train. 
 
 Henry Norman : 
 
 Art Journal : March, 1883. 
 
 The condition of England, on which many pamphlets 
 are now in the course of publication, and many thoughts 
 unpublished are going on in every reflective head, is justly 
 regarded as one of the most ominous, and withal one of 
 the strangest, ever seen in this world. England is full of 
 wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want 
 in every kind ; yet England is dying of inanition. With 
 unabated bounty the land of England blooms and grows ; 
 waving with yellow harvest ; thick-studded with work- 
 shops, 
 
(63) 
 
 shoes iiKlustrial implements, with f.ftecn millions of 
 woTers understood to he the strongest, the cunnmges 
 nnd the willingest our Earth ever had ; these men are here; 
 the ''rk thefhave done, the fruit they h=^;'^/'--'^l'«« 'j 
 here abundant, exuberant on every hand of us : and 
 b'huld! some baleful fiat as of Enchantuient has gone 
 forth saying, " Toueh it not, ye workers, ye master- 
 wK yeVuaster-idlers ; none of V^n c^r^UMdyUJ^o 
 nZ ot 'you shall be the better for >t ; th-.« enchanted 
 fruit !" On t\ie poor workers such fiat falls first, in its 
 rudest shape ; but on the rich master-workers too it falls , 
 neither can he rich master-idlers, nor any richest or 
 hShest man escape, but all are l^.ke to be brought low 
 wi^h it, and madi 'poor' enough, in the money sense or 
 
 a far fataler one. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle: 
 
 Past and Present : Book I. 
 
 1 
 
 The place where the great city stands is ml the place of 
 stretched whai^es, docks, manufactures, deposits of 
 
 produce, ^ ^^ .» . 
 
 Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of miu rowers, or the 
 
 anchor-lifter's of the departing. 
 Nor the place of the tallest and costliest builUnos, or shops 
 
 selling goods from the rest of the earth, ^^^^ 
 
 % 
 
 |l 
 
It hi 
 
 (64) 
 
 Mr the place oj the best libraries, and schools^nor the place 
 
 where money is plenticst^ 
 Nor the place of the most numerous population. 
 
 Where the city stands ivith the brawniest breed of orators 
 
 and bards ; 
 Where the city stands that is beloved by these, and loves 
 
 them in return^ and understands them; 
 J^^iere no monuments exist to heroes but in tht common 
 T'"""^^ 7vords a ud deeds ; 
 
 Whei^e thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its placeT 
 Where the men and ivomen think lightly of the laws ; 
 Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases ; 
 Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending 
 
 audacity of elected persons ; - ■ 
 
 Where fierce 7uen and 7vomen pour forth, as the sea to the 
 
 whistle of death pours its sweeping and unripped 
 
 waves. 
 
 T ' f 
 
 Where the city of the faithf idlest friends stands ; 
 Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands ; 
 Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands ; 
 
 Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands, 
 
 Thei'e the great city stands. 
 
 Walt Whitman : 
 
 Chants Democratic. 
 
(65) 
 
 Reader, did you ever hear of 'Constituted Anarchy'? 
 Anarchy ; the choking, sweltering, deadly and killing 
 rule of No-rule ; the consecration of cupidity, and bray- 
 ing folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the 
 affairs of men ? Slop-shirts attainable three-halfpence 
 cheaper, by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls? 
 Authentic Chaos come up into this sunny Cosmos 
 again ; and all men singing Gloria in excelsts to it...... ... 
 
 That so, for one thing, this blessed exchange of slop- 
 shirts for the soul of women may transact itselt in a 
 peaceable manner !-I, for my part, do profess myself 
 in eternal opposition to this, and discern well that uni- 
 versal Ruin has us in the wind, unless we can get out ot 
 it My friend Crabbe, in a late number of his Inter- 
 mitient Radiator, pertinently enough exclaims : 
 
 'When shall we have done with all this of Biitish 
 Liberty, Voluntary Principle, Dangers of Centralisa- 
 tion, and the like? It is really getting too bad. For 
 British Liberty, it seems, the people cannot be taught to 
 read. British Liberty, shuddering to interfere with the 
 rights of capital, takes six or eight millions of money 
 annually to feed the idle labourer whom it dare not 
 employ: For British Liberty we live over poisonous 
 cesspools, gully-drains, and detestable abominations ; and 
 omnipotent London cannot sweep the dirt out of itself. 
 British Liberty produces— what? Floods of Hansara 
 Debates every year, and apparently little else at present. 
 If these are the results of British Liberty, I, lor one, 
 
 move 
 
(66) 
 
 move we should lay it on the shelf a 
 for something other and farther. 
 British Liberty hundreds of years 
 growing, on the strength of it, one 
 populations the Sun, among his great 
 ities, looks down upon at present.' 
 
 little, and look-out 
 We have achieved 
 ago ; and are fast 
 of the most absurd 
 Museum of Absurd- 
 
 Thomas Carlyle : 
 Latter-day Pam„phlets : No. I. 
 
 The economist sees around him but one vast field of 
 carnage and with the coldness of the statistician he 
 counts the slam as on the evening after a great battle. 
 Judge by these figures. The mean mortality among the 
 well-to-do IS, at the utmost, one in sixty. Now the pop- 
 Illation of Europe being a third of a thousand millions, 
 the average deaths, according to the rate of mortality 
 among the fortunate, should not exceed five millions. 
 1 hey are three times five millions ! What have we done 
 With these ten million human beings killed before their 
 
 T"^ .u ^^ ^ ^'■"^ ^^^^ "^^ ^^^^ ^"ties, one towards 
 the other, are we not responsible for the servitude, the 
 cold, the hunger, the miseries of every sort, which doom 
 the unfortunate to untimely deaths ? Race of Cain- 
 what have we done with our brothers ? 
 
 Elisee Reclus : 
 Contemporary Review : May, 1884. 
 
 mmi 
 
(67) 
 
 O ye numberlessy 
 Whom foul oppression's ruffian gluttony 
 Drives from life' s plenteous feast I O thou poor ivretch 
 Who nursed tn darkness and made wild by wanty 
 Roamest for prey y yea thy unnatural hand 
 Dost lift to deeds of blood! pale-eyed form , 
 The victim of seduction^ doomed to know 
 Polluted nights and days of blasphemy ; 
 Who in loathed orgies with lewd wassailers 
 Must gaily laugh, while thy remember ec ' home 
 Gnaws like a viper at thy secret heart I 
 aged woman ! ye who weekly catch 
 The morsel tossed by law forced charity , 
 And die so slowly, that none call it murdei^ ! 
 O loathly suppliants ! ye, that unreceived 
 Totter heaH-broken from the closing gates 
 Of the full Lazar-hoHse: or, gazing, stand 
 Sick with despair ! O ye to gloiy's field 
 Forced or emnared, who, as ye gasp in death, 
 Bleed with nno wounds beneath the vulture's beak ! 
 O thou poor widow, who in dreams dost view 
 Thy husband's matighd cor^e, and Jrom short doze 
 Start' St with a shriek ; or in thy half -thatched cot 
 Waked by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold 
 Coiu'r'si o'er thy screaming baby ! Rest awhile. 
 Children of wretchedness. More groans must rise, 
 
 More 
 
t 
 
 ( 68 ) 
 
 More blood must stream, or ere your wrongs be full 
 Yet is the day of retribution nigh : 
 
 S. T. Coleridge : 
 
 Religious Musings. 
 
 It- 
 
 A civilized nation in modern Europe consists, >" b'oad 
 terms of (i) a mass of half-taught discontented, and 
 moTtly pennites populace, calling itself the People ; of (2) 
 a thing which calls itself a government-meaning an 
 apparatus for collecting and spending money ; and (3) a 
 small number of capitalists, many of them rogues,^ and 
 most of them stupid persons, who have no idea ot any 
 Xiect of human existence other than money-making 
 Swing, or champagne-bibbing. A certain cjiiantity of 
 literary men, saying anything they can be Paid to ^^^ ' 
 of clergymen, saying anything ttiey l^^^e.^een taught to 
 say ; of natural philosophers, saying anything that comes 
 nto their heads ; and of nobility, saying nothing at all 
 combine in disguising the action, and Perfecting the 
 disorganisation, of the mass ; but with respect to prac 
 deal teiness, the civilized nation consists broadly of 
 mob, money-collecting machine, and capitalist. 
 
 Now, when the civilized mob wants to spend money 
 
 for 
 
(69) 
 
 ^-„_. fireworks, iU^" 
 
 ^fitless or mischievous Pf P^^^_,e to place, or 
 
 ioi any P^^rftlprdriving about from Pf 9^ '^Jney-col- 
 
 that, through the ^onej rf j^^. ever The a 
 
 *\tperds thf^o^^y' rnf nlwtttdl or any- 
 "-^4 TSrt S^'«^"^ou for the njovnent. 
 thing else it .^f^'y.collecting machine oc 
 
 . ^ .„ the mills to the 
 The robust rural Saxon^SS^Manch^^^^^^^^ 
 ^tln the w^'t"Cs?iders and "f^^^fjlk^e »an. 
 
 and presently, m a change oi sacrificed 
 
f 
 
 ( 70 ) 
 
 sacrificed like ant-hills, when the fashion of shoe-strinra 
 supersedes buckles, when cotton takes the place of linen 
 
 S'it"„i . '•• • Then again come in new calamities 
 
 Eng and ,s aghast at the disclosure of her fraud in the 
 
 fn tr'^" °7T''' °^ ''™g^' «"<' of almost every fabric 
 m her mills and shops ; finding that milk will not nourish 
 nor sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfv, nor pepper bUe the 
 
 S' Thfs' to ' "' H- '" '^J" '^"Sland ^llTfalsf and 
 torged. 1 his too is the reaction of machinery, but of the 
 larger machinery of com merce. 'Tis not, I supr ose want 
 o probity, so much as the tyranny of ti;de, which n^ces 
 sitates a perpetual competition of undei^andingrand 
 that again a perpetual deterioration of fabric. 
 
 R. W. Emerson : 
 English Traits. (Wealth.) 
 
 You yourself, when you see a child run ovpr or , 
 woman starving of hunger, or a blind man wanUng to 
 cross a street, are you not ready with your help-the heln 
 ll/°" ^^v,*^' r ?^ r"' P"^^« ? Multiply these by mil! 
 
 William Black : 
 Sunrise, a Story of these Times 
 
 ■w— 
 
 PES 
 
(70 
 
 I wander through each chartered street. 
 
 Near where the chartered Thames doth Jim, 
 
 And mark in every face 1 7neet, 
 Marks of weakness, marks of woe. 
 
 * 
 
 In every cry of every man, 
 
 In every infant's cry of fear. 
 In every voice, in ruery ban. 
 
 The mind-forg'd manacles I hear. 
 
 How the chimney-sweeper's cry. 
 
 Every blackening church appals ; 
 And the hapless soldier's sigh. 
 
 Runs in blood doivn palace zvalls. 
 
 But most through midnight streets, I hear. 
 
 How the youthful harlot's curse 
 Blasts the new-born infant's tear. 
 
 And blights with plagues the marriage hearse. 
 
 William Blake : 
 
 Songs of Experience. 
 
 Cnurap-e ' my brother or my sister ! 
 
 %Z] Zerty is to be subserved, whatever occurs ;^^^ 
 
 i 
 
w 
 
 \ 
 : I 
 
 I] 
 
 I 
 
 (72) 
 
 77/^/ is nothing that is quelled by one or two failures^ or 
 
 any 7tumber of failures. 
 Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by 
 
 any unjaithfulness. 
 Or the show of the tushes oj power, soldiers ^ cannon, penal 
 
 statutes. 
 What we believe in waits latent forever through all the 
 
 continents, and all the islands and archipelagoes of 
 
 the sea, 
 
 WJiat we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in 
 calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows 
 no discouragement. 
 
 Waiting patiently, waiting its time. 
 
 Walt Whitman : 
 
 Chants Democratic. 
 
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