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 Towards a New World 
 
 Being the Reconstruction Programme 
 of the British Labor Party; together 
 with an Introductory Article by Mr. 
 Arthur Henderson, the Leader of the 
 Party, and a Manifesto to the Labor 
 Movement from the English Fellow- 
 ship of Reconciliation 
 
 // 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. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Wyoming, New York: W. R. Browne 
 
 Price Twenty Cents
 
 "A very remarkable thing is happening in America. Liberals and 
 radicals of all shades and degrees of opinion are finding a common 
 ground, and see before them a common road leading to that new 
 social order of which we have dreamed and toward which we have 
 striven so long without hope of arriving at our destination in this 
 generation or the next. That common ground is the program of 
 the British Labor Party. It has electrified liberal America as the 
 speeches of President Wilson have electrified liberal Europe. And 
 if liberal Europe looks to Wilson today as a Moses, we in turn look 
 to the British Labor Party's program as the Ten Commandments. 
 Yet the strength of them is that they are not commandments, 
 nor dogmas, nor final things, but a successful attempt to strike 
 at the roots without attempting the impossible, and to be con- 
 structive without being trivial and merely ameliorative. It is that 
 thing for which we have waited so long, a program practicable 
 enough for today and tomorrow, yet radical enough to bring our 
 ultimate destination within view." THE PUBLIC (New York). 
 
 "The Report on Reconstruction of the British Labor Party is 
 probably the most mature and carefully formulated programme 
 ever put forth by a responsible political party. It is the result of 
 an exhaustive criticism of the whole English experience in social 
 legislation during the past four generations. It is the result of a 
 careful discrimination between what the state can and must do in 
 order to bring about social improvement and what the contribu- 
 tion must be of the workers themselves. It is the result of an 
 adjustment between many opinions and interests, whose conflicts 
 in the past have impaired the unity and hampered the growth of 
 the British labor movement. It is, consequently, at once an his- 
 torical, a scientific and a political document which, although it 
 was worded by a sub-committee, was written as a result of the 
 sufferings, the struggles, the experiments, the failures, the suc- 
 cesses, the aspirations and the thinking of the British wage-earn- 
 ing class during its four generations of conscious development. . . 
 If the American people are too limited or too blind to admit a 
 programme of this kind into serious political discussion, they will 
 only provoke and even justify a far more drastic and dangerous 
 kind of agitation. The social reconstruction proposed in this 
 programme is not put forth by some little group of social reform- 
 ers or of anti-social revolutionists. It is proposed as the platform 
 for one of the most powerful parties in Great Britain a party 
 which will contest almost every constituency in the coming general 
 election and which, unless it is opposed by a coalition, may elect 
 a majority to the House of Commons." 
 
 THE NEW REPUBLIC (New York).
 
 Towards a New World 
 
 Being the Reconstruction Programme 
 of the British Labor Party; together 
 with an Introductory Article by Mr. 
 Arthur Henderson, the Leader of the 
 Party, and a Manifesto to the Labor 
 Movement from the English Fellow- 
 ship of Reconciliation 
 
 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. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Wyoming, New York: W. R. Browne
 
 Down came the storm! In ruin fell 
 The outworn world we knew. 
 
 It passed, that elemental swell! 
 Again appeared the blue. 
 
 The sun shone in the new-wash 'd sky- 
 And what from heaven saw he? 
 
 Blocks of the past, like icebergs high, 
 Float in a rolling sea. 
 
 He melts the icebergs of the past, 
 A green, new earth appears. 
 
 Millions, whose life in ice lay fast, 
 Have thoughts and smiles and tears. 
 
 The world's great order dawns in sheen 
 
 After long darkness rude, 
 Divinelier imaged, clearer seen, 
 
 With happier zeal pursued.
 
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 STACK 
 ANNEX 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 L 
 
 REBUILDING THE SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 BY ARTHUR HENDERSON 
 LEADER OF THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 
 
 WHEN victory in the sense of the collapse of 
 the military power in the Central Empires 
 is at last achieved, we shall be confronted with 
 the task of translating military success into its political, 
 economic, and social equivalents in this country and every 
 other. It will not be a democratic victory if it results 
 merely in the restoration of the capitalistic regime which 
 the war has discredited and destroyed. Victory for the 
 people means something more than the continuance of the 
 old system of production for the profit of a small owning 
 class, on the basis of wage-slavery for the producing classes. 
 The hard, cruel, competitive system of production must 
 be replaced by a system of co-operation under which the 
 status of the workers will be revolutionized, and in which 
 the squalor and poverty, the economic insecurity and social 
 miseries of the past will have no place. This is the' great 
 task before the statesmen and politicians of the future. 
 
 Then we must remember that the coming period of 
 reconstruction, even more than the remaining period of 
 the war, will impose upon the leaders of all the civilized 
 States new and searching tests of character and intellect. 
 As we draw nearer to the end of the war we begin to see 
 
 [3]
 
 more clearly the magnitude of the problems that peace 
 will bring. So vast, intricate, and fundamental have been 
 the changes wrought during the last three and a half 
 years that we are sometimes tempted to think the will and 
 intelligence of men will be unequal to the task of dealing 
 with them. 
 
 Still more may we fear sometimes that the problems 
 of reconstruction will be handled by men too impatient 
 to think things through, too tired and cynical to respond 
 to the glowing faith in a finer future for the world which 
 now inspires the multitudes of common people who have 
 striven so heroically and suffered so patiently during the 
 war. For national leadership to fall into the hands of 
 such men in the great new days upon which we shall pres- 
 ently enter would be a disaster almost as great as the war 
 itself. 
 
 If there could be anything worse than an empiric in 
 control of State policy when peace comes, it would be the 
 influence of a cynic upon the splendid enthusiasm and 
 revolutionary ardor of democracy, newly awakened to a 
 consciousness of its power and eager to build a better future 
 for mankind. 
 
 The outstanding fact of world politics at the present 
 time and when peace comes this fact will be made more 
 clear is that a great tide of revolutionary feeling is rising 
 in every country. Everywhere the peoples are becoming 
 conscious of power. They are beginning to sit in judg- 
 ment upon their rulers. They are beginning to ask ques- 
 tions about the policies that have brought the world to the 
 edge of secular ruin. 
 
 In this war the people have shown themselves capable 
 of heroic sacrifices and resolute endurance because they 
 love liberty and desire peace. The hope that the issue of 
 
 [41
 
 this war will be an increase of freedom, not only for 
 themselves, but for those who have lived under the yoke 
 of alien tyrannies, has sustained the people throughout 
 these years of war. It has caused them to pour out the 
 blood ' of their best and bravest, to surrender hard-won 
 liberties, to toil unremittingly in factory, field, and mine, 
 to spend without stint the material wealth accumulated 
 through years of peace and prosperity. 
 
 But the people will not choose to entrust their destinies 
 at the Peace Conference to statesmen who have not per- 
 ceived the moral significance of the struggle, and who are 
 not prepared to make a people's peace. We want to re- 
 place the material force of arms by the moral force of right 
 in the governance of the world. For that great task of 
 the immediate future we want national leaders who are 
 not only responsive to the inspirations and impulses of 
 democracy, but who are qualified to guide the mighty 
 energies of democracy in the task of building up the new 
 social order. 
 
 Never before have the people been confronted with 
 problems of greater magnitude, international and national, 
 economic and political, social and personal ; but never have 
 they had so good an opportunity of taking hold of these 
 problems for themselves. The policies and programmes 
 of the orthodox parties have little relevance to the new 
 situation. Political parties bound by tradition, saturated 
 with class prejudice, out of touch with the living move- 
 ments of thought and feeling among the people, cannot 
 easily adapt themselves to the changed conditions, the new 
 demands, the enlarged ideals to which the war has given 
 rise. 
 
 The party of the future, upon which the chief tasks of 
 reconstruction will devolve, will be the one which derives 
 
 [5]
 
 directly from the people themselves, and has been made 
 the organ of the people's will, the voice of all the people 
 of both sexes and all classes who work by hand or brain. 
 
 Through such a party, led by democratically chosen 
 leaders who have proved their fidelity to principle and 
 their faith in the people's cause, the best spirits of our 
 time will be able to work as they have never been able to 
 work in the orthodox parties of the past. Nothing but 
 disunity and divided counsels in the democratic movement 
 can wreck the promise of the future. For every man and 
 woman who believes in democracy and who desires to see 
 a new birth of freedom there is a place in the people's 
 movement and a well-defined work to do. 
 
 In a wider sense than has hitherto been understood, the 
 politics of the future will be human politics, and the dom- 
 inating party will be the party of the common people, and 
 of democracy. This is certain. The people will have it 
 so, for the people are weary of wars. They have borne 
 too long the inequalities and injustices inherent in an eco- 
 nomic system based on competition instead of co-operation. 
 
 They are coming together in a more powerfully organ- 
 ized movement to achieve a new freedom, and to establish 
 on this earth, drenched with men's blood, torn with men's 
 struggles, wet with human tears, a fairer ideal of life; 
 an ideal dominated not by any spirit of revenge or hatred, 
 expressing itself in economic and financial boycott, but in 
 love, brotherhood, and peace. 
 
 (From "The Methodist Times," London) 
 
 [6]
 
 THE RECONSTRUCTION PROGRAMME 
 
 OF THE 
 
 BRITISH LABOR PARTY 
 
 IT BEHOOVES the Labor party, in formulating its own 
 programme for reconstruction after the war, and in 
 criticizing the various preparations and plans that are 
 being made by the present government, to look at the prob- 
 lem as a whole. We have to make clear what it is that 
 we wish to construct. It is important to emphasize the 
 fact that, whatever may be the case with regard to other 
 political parties, our detailed practical proposals proceed 
 from definitely held principles. 
 
 THE END OF A CIVILIZATION 
 
 We need to beware of patchwork. The view of the 
 Labor party is that what has to be reconstructed after the 
 war is not this or that government department, or this or 
 that piece of social machinery ; but, so far as Britain is con- 
 cerned, society itself. The individual worker, or for that 
 matter the individual statesman, immersed in daily routine 
 like the individual soldier in a battle easily fails to 
 understand the magnitude and far-reaching importance of 
 what is taking place around him. How does it fit together 
 as a whole? How does it look from a distance? Count 
 Okuma, one of the oldest, most experienced, and ablest of 
 the statesmen of Japan, watching the present conflict from 
 
 [7]
 
 the other side of the globe, declares it to be nothing less 
 than the death of European civilization. Just as in the 
 past the civilization of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, 
 and the great Roman empire have been successively de- 
 stroyed, so, in the judgment of this detached observer, the 
 civilization of all Europe is even now receiving its death 
 blow. We of the Labor party can so far agree in this 
 estimate as to recognize, in the present world catastrophe, 
 if not the death, in Europe, of civilization itself, at any 
 rate the culmination and collapse of a distinctive industrial 
 civilization, which the workers will not seek to reconstruct. 
 At such times of crisis it is easier to slip into ruin than to 
 progress into higher forms of organization. That is the 
 problem as it presents itself to the Labor party. 
 
 What this war is consuming is not merely the security, 
 the homes, the livelihood and the lives of millions of inno- 
 cent families, and an enormous proportion of all the accu- 
 mulated wealth of the world, but also the very basis of the 
 peculiar social order in which it has arisen. The indi- 
 vidualist system of capitalist production, based on the pri- 
 vate ownership and competitive administration of land and 
 capital, with its reckless "p r fi tee ring" and wage-slavery; 
 with its glorification of the unhampered struggle for the 
 means of life and its hypocritical pretense of the "survival 
 of the fittest"; with the monstrous inequality of circum- 
 stances which it produces and the degradation and brutal- 
 ization, both moral and spiritual, resulting therefrom, may, 
 we hope, indeed have received a death blow. With it must 
 go the political system and ideas in which it naturally 
 found expression. We of the Labor party, whether in 
 opposition or in due time called upon to form an admin- 
 istration, will certainly lend no hand to its revival. On 
 the contrary, we shall do our utmost to see that it is buried 
 
 [8]
 
 with the millions whom it has done to death. If we in 
 Britain are to escape from the decay of civilization itself, 
 which the Japanese statesman foresees, we must ensure 
 that what is presently to be built up is a new social order, 
 based not on fighting but on fraternity; not on the com- 
 petitive struggle for the means of bare life, but on a 
 deliberately planned co-operation in production and distri- 
 bution for the benefit of all who participate by hand or by 
 brain ; not on the utmost possible inequality of riches, but 
 on a systematic approach towards a healthy equality of 
 material circumstances for every person born into the 
 world ; not on an enforced dominion over subject nations, 
 subject races, subject colonies, subject classes, or a subject 
 sex, but, in industry as well as in government, on that 
 equal freedom, that general consciousness of consent, and 
 that widest possible participation in power, both economic 
 and political, which is characteristic of democracy. We 
 do not, of course, pretend that it is possible, even after 
 the drastic clearing away that is now going on, to build 
 society anew in a year or two of feverish "reconstruction." 
 What the Labor party intends to satisfy itself about is that 
 each brick that it helps to lay shall go to erect the structure 
 that it intends, and no other. 
 
 THE PILLARS OF THE HOUSE 
 
 We need not here recapitulate, one by one, the different 
 items in the Labor party's programme, which successive 
 party conferences have adopted. These proposals, some of 
 them in various publications worked out in practical detail, 
 are often carelessly derided as impracticable, even by the 
 politicians who steal them piecemeal from us ! The mem- 
 bers of the Labor party, themselves actually working by 
 
 [9]
 
 hand or by brain, in close contact with the facts, have per- 
 haps at all times a more accurate appreciation of what is 
 practicable, in industry as in politics, than those who 
 depend solely on academic instruction or are biased by 
 great possessions. But today no man dares to say that 
 anything is impracticable. The war, which has scared 
 the old political parties right out of their dogmas, has 
 taught every statesman and every government official, to 
 his enduring surprise, how very much more can be done 
 along the lines that we have laid down than he had ever 
 before thought possible. What we now promulgate as our 
 policy, whether for opposition or for office, is not merely 
 this or that specific reform, but a deliberately thought out, 
 systematic, and comprehensive plan for that immediate 
 social rebuilding which any ministry, whether or not it 
 desires to grapple with the problem, will be driven to 
 undertake. The four pillars of the house that we propose 
 to erect, resting upon the common foundation of the 
 democratic control of society in all its activities, may be 
 termed : 
 
 (a) The Universal Enforcement of the National Mini- 
 mum; 
 
 (b) The Democratic Control of Industry; 
 
 (c) The Revolution in National Finance; and 
 (</) The Surplus Wealth for the Common Good. 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL ENFORCEMENT OF A NATIONAL 
 MINIMUM 
 
 The first principle of the Labor party in significant 
 contrast with those of the capitalist system, whether 
 expressed by the Liberal or by the Conservative party 
 is the securing to every member of the community, in good 
 
 [to]
 
 times and bad alike (and not only to the strong and able, 
 the well born or the fortunate), of all the requisites of 
 healthy life and worthy citizenship. This is in no sense a 
 "class" proposal. Such an amount of social protection of 
 the individual, however poor and lowly, from birth to 
 death, is, as the economist now knows, as indispensable 
 to fruitful cooperation as it is to successful combination; 
 and it affords the only complete safeguard against that 
 insidious degradation of the standard of life which is the 
 worst economic and social calamity to which any com- 
 munity can be subjected. We are members one of another. 
 No man liveth to himself alone. If any, even the 
 humblest, is made to suffer, the whole community and 
 every one of us, whether or not we recognize the fact, is 
 thereby injured. Generation after generation this has been 
 the corner-stone of the faith of Labor. It will be the 
 guiding principle of any Labor government. 
 
 The Legislative Regulation of Employment 
 
 Thus it is that the Labor party today stands for the 
 universal application of the policy of the national mini- 
 mum, to which (as embodied in the successive elaborations 
 of the Factory, Mines, Railways, Shops, Merchant Ship- 
 ping, and Truck acts, the Public Health, Housing, and 
 Education acts, and the Minimum Wage act, all of them 
 aiming at the enforcement of at least the prescribed mini- 
 mum of leisure, health, education, and subsistence) the 
 spokesmen of Labor have already gained the support of 
 the enlightened statesmen and economists of the world. 
 All these laws purporting to protect against extreme 
 degradation of the standard of life need considerable im- 
 provement and extension, whilst their administration
 
 leaves much to be desired. For instance, the Workmen's 
 Compensation act fails shamefully, not merely to secure 
 proper provision for all the victims of accident and indus- 
 trial disease, but what is much more important, does not 
 succeed in preventing their continual increase. The 
 amendment and consolidation of the Factory and Work- 
 shops acts, with their extension to all employed persons, 
 is long overdue, and it will be the policy of Labor greatly 
 to strengthen the staff of inspectors, especially by the addi- 
 tion of more men and women of actual experience of the 
 workshop and the mine. The Coal Mines (Minimum 
 Wage) act must certainly be maintained in force, and 
 suitably amended, so as both to ensure greater uniformity 
 of conditions among the several districts, and to make the 
 district minimum in all cases an effective reality. The 
 same policy will, in the interests of the agricultural labor- 
 ers, dictate the perpetuation of the Legal Wage clauses of 
 the new Corn law just passed for a term of five years, 
 and the prompt amendment of any defects that may be 
 revealed in their working. And, in view of the fact that 
 many millions of wage-earners, notably women and the 
 less skilled workmen in various occupations, are unable by 
 combination to obtain wages adequate for decent mainten- 
 ance in health, the Labor party intends to see to it that 
 the Trade Boards act is suitably amended and made to 
 apply to all industrial employments in which any consid- 
 erable number of those employed obtain less than thirty 
 shillings per week. This minimum of not less than thirty 
 shillings per week (which will need revision according to 
 the level of prices) ought to be the very lowest statutory 
 base line for the least skilled adult workers, men or women, 
 in any occupation, in all parts of the United Kingdom.
 
 The Organization of Demobilization 
 
 But the coming industrial dislocation, which will in- 
 evitably follow the discharge from war service of half of 
 all the working population, imposes new obligations upon 
 the community. The demobilization and discharge of the 
 eight million wage-earners now being paid from public 
 funds, either for service with the colors or in munition 
 work and other war trades, will bring to the whole wage- 
 earning class grave peril of unemployment, reduction of 
 wages, and a lasting degradation of the standard of life, 
 which can be prevented only by deliberate national organ- 
 ization. The Labor party has repeatedly called upon 
 the present government to formulate its plan, and to make 
 in advance all arrangements necessary for coping with so 
 unparalleled a dislocation. The policy to which the Labor 
 party commits itself is unhesitating and uncompromising. 
 It is plain that regard should be had, in stopping govern- 
 ment orders, reducing the staff of the national factories, 
 and demobilizing the army, to the actual state of employ- 
 ment in particular industries and in different districts, so 
 as both to release first the kinds of labor most urgently 
 required for the revival of peace production, and to pre- 
 vent any congestion of the market. It is no less impera- 
 tive that suitable provision against being turned suddenly 
 adrift without resources should be made, not only for the 
 soldiers, but also for the three million operatives in muni- 
 tion work and other war trades, who will be discharged 
 long before most of the army can be disbanded. On this 
 important point, which is the most urgent of all, the pres- 
 ent government has, we believe, down to the present hour, 
 formulated no plan, and come to no decision, and neither 
 the Liberal nor the Conservative party has apparently 
 
 [13]
 
 deemed the matter worthy of agitation. Any government 
 which should allow the discharged soldier or munition 
 worker to fall into the clutches of charity or the Poor law 
 would have to be instantly driven from office by an out- 
 burst of popular indignation. What every one of them 
 will look for is a situation in accordance with his capacity. 
 
 Securing Employment for All 
 
 The Labor party insists as no other political party 
 has thought fit to do that the obligation to find suitable 
 employment in productive work for all these men and 
 women rests upon the government for the time being. The 
 work of re-settling the disbanded soldiers and discharged 
 munition workers into new situations is a national obliga- 
 tion ; and the Labor party emphatically protests against 
 its being regarded as a matter for private charity. It 
 strongly objects to this public duty being handed over 
 either to committees of philanthropists or benevolent 
 societies, or to any of the military or recruiting au- 
 thorities. The policy of the Labor party in this matter 
 is to make the utmost use of the trade unions, and, equally 
 for the brainworkers, of the various professional associa- 
 tions. In view of the fact that, in any trade, the best 
 organization for placing men in situations is a national 
 trade union having local branches throughout the kingdom, 
 every soldier should be allowed, if he chooses, to have a 
 duplicate of his industrial discharge notice sent, one month 
 before the date fixed for his discharge, to the secretary of 
 the trade union to which he belongs or wishes to belong. 
 Apart from this use of the trade union (and a correspond- 
 ing use of the professional association) the government 
 must, of course, avail itself of some such public machinery 
 
 ['4]
 
 as that of the employment exchanges ; but before the exist- 
 ing exchanges (which will need to be greatly extended) 
 can receive the cooperation and support of the organized 
 Labor movement, without which their operations can 
 never be fully successful, it is imperative that they should 
 be drastically reformed, on the lines laid down in the 
 Demobilization Report of the "Labor After the War" 
 Joint Committee; and, in particular, that each exchange 
 should be placed under the supervision and control of a 
 joint committee of employers and trade unionists in equal 
 numbers. 
 
 The responsibility of the government, for the time being, 
 in the grave industrial crisis that demobilization will pro- 
 duce, goes, however, far beyond the eight million men and 
 women whom the various departments will suddenly dis- 
 charge from their own service. The effect of this peremp- 
 tory discharge on all the other workers has also to be 
 taken into account. To the Labor party it will seem the 
 supreme concern of the government of the day to see to it 
 that there shall be, as a result of the gigantic "General 
 Post" which it will itself have deliberately set going, no- 
 where any degradation of the standard of life. The gov- 
 ernment has pledged itself to restore the trade union con- 
 ditions and "pre-war practices" of the workshop, which 
 the trade unions patriotically gave up at the direct request 
 of the government itself; and this solemn pledge must 
 be fulfilled, of course, in the spirit as well as in the letter. 
 The Labor party, moreover, holds it to be the duty of the 
 government of the day to take all necessary steps to pre- 
 vent the standard rates of wages, in any trade or occupa- 
 tion whatsoever, from suffering any reduction, relatively 
 to the contemporary cost of living. Unfortunately, the 
 present government, like the Liberal and Conservative
 
 parties, so far refuses to speak on this important matter 
 with any clear voice. We claim that it should be a cardi- 
 nal point of government policy to make it plain to every 
 capitalist employer that any attempt to reduce the cus- 
 tomary rates of wages when peace comes, or to take ad- 
 vantage of the dislocation of demobilization to worsen the 
 conditions of employment in any grade whatsoever, will 
 certainly lead to embittered industrial strife, which will 
 be in the highest degree detrimental to the national inter- 
 ests; and that the government of the day will not hesitate 
 to take all necessary steps to avert such a calamity. In the 
 great impending crisis the government of the day should 
 not only, as the greatest employer of both brainworkers 
 and manual workers, set a good example in this respect, 
 but should also actively seek to influence private employ- 
 ers by proclaiming in advance that it will not itself attempt 
 to lower the standard rates of conditions in public employ- 
 ment; by announcing that it will insist on the most rigor- 
 ous observance of the fair wages clause in all public con- 
 tracts, and by explicitly recommending every local author- 
 ity to adopt the same policy. 
 
 But nothing is more dangerous to the standard of life, 
 or so destructive of those minimum conditions of healthy 
 existence, which must in the interests of the community 
 be assured to every worker, than any widespread or con- 
 tinued unemployment. It has always been a fundamental 
 principle of the Labor party (a point on which, significant- 
 ly enough, it has not been followed by either of the other 
 political parties) that, in a modern industrial community, 
 it is one of the foremost obligations of the government to 
 find, for every willing worker, whether by hand or by 
 brain, productive work at standard rates. 
 
 It is accordingly the duty of the government to adopt 
 [16]
 
 a policy of deliberately and systematically preventing the 
 occurrence of unemployment, instead of, as heretofore, 
 letting unemployment occur, and then seeking, vainly and 
 expensively, to relieve the unemployed. It is now known 
 that the government can, if it chooses, arrange the public 
 works and the orders of national departments and local 
 authorities in such a way as to maintain the aggregate de- 
 mand for labor in the whole kingdom (including that of 
 capitalist employers) approximately at a uniform level 
 from year to year ; and it is therefore a primary obligation 
 of the government to prevent any considerable or wide- 
 spread fluctuations in the total numbers employed in times 
 of good or bad trade. But this is not all. In order to pre- 
 pare for the possibility of there being any unemployment, 
 either in the course of demobilization or in the first years 
 of peace, it is essential that the government should make 
 all necessary preparations for putting instantly in hand, 
 directly or through the local authorities, such urgently 
 needed public works as (a) the rehousing of the popula- 
 tion alike in rural districts, mining villages, and town 
 slums, to the extent, possibly, of a million new cottages 
 and an outlay of three hundred millions sterling; (b) the 
 immediate making good of the shortage of schools, training 
 colleges, technical colleges, etc., and the engagement of 
 the necessary additional teaching, clerical, and administra- 
 tive staffs; (c) new roads; (d) light railways; (e) the 
 unification and reorganization of the railway and canal 
 system; (/) afforestation; (g} the reclamation of land; 
 (A) the development and better equipment of our ports 
 and harbors; (*) the opening up of access to land by coop- 
 erative small holdings and in other practicable ways. 
 Moreover, in order to relieve any pressure of an over- 
 stocked labor market, the opportunity should be taken, if 
 
 [17]
 
 unemployment should threaten to become widespread, (a) 
 immediately to raise the school-leaving age to sixteen; (b) 
 greatly to increase the number of scholarships and burs- 
 aries for secondary and higher education; and (c) sub- 
 stantially to shorten the hours of labor of all young per- 
 sons, even to a greater extent than the eight hours per 
 week contemplated in the new Education bill, in order to 
 enable them to attend technical and other classes in the 
 daytime. Finally, wherever practicable, the hours of 
 adult labor should be reduced to not more than forty- 
 eight per week, without reduction of the standard rates of 
 wages. There can be no economic or other justification 
 for keeping any man or women to work for long hours, 
 or at overtime, whilst others are unemployed. 
 
 Social Insurance Against Unemployment 
 
 In so far as the government fails to prevent unemploy- 
 ment whenever it finds it impossible to discover for any 
 willing worker, man or woman, a suitable situation at the 
 standard rate the Labor party holds that the government 
 must, in the interest of the community as a whole, pro- 
 vide him or her with adequate maintenance, either with 
 such arrangements for honorable employment or with 
 such useful training as may be found practicable, according 
 to age, health and previous occupation. In many ways the 
 best form of provision for those who must be unemployed, 
 because the industrial organization of the community so 
 far breaks down as to be temporarily unable to set them to 
 work, is the Out of Work Benefit afforded by a well ad- 
 ministered trade union. This is a special tax on the trade 
 unionists themselves which they have voluntarily under- 
 taken, but towards which they have a right to claim a 
 public subvention a subvention which was actually 
 
 [18!
 
 granted by Parliament (though only to the extent of a 
 couple of shillings or so per week) under Part II of the 
 Insurance act. 
 
 The arbitrary withdrawal by the government in 1915 
 of this statutory right of the trade unions was one of the 
 least excusable of the war economies ; and the Labor party 
 must insist on the resumption of this subvention immedi- 
 ately the war ceases, and on its increase to at least half the 
 amount spent in Out of Work Benefit. The extension of 
 state unemployment insurance to other occupations may 
 afford a convenient method of providing for such of the 
 unemployed, especially in the case of badly paid women 
 workers and the less skilled men, whom it is difficult to 
 organize in trade unions. But the weekly rate of the state 
 unemployment benefit needs, in these days of high prices, 
 to be considerably raised ; whilst no industry ought to be 
 compulsorily brought within its scope against the declared 
 will of the workers concerned, and especially of their trade 
 unions. In the twentieth century there must be no ques- 
 tion of driving the unemployed to anything so obsolete 
 and discredited as either private charity, with its haphazard 
 and ill considered doles, or the Poor law, with the futili- 
 ties and barbarities of its "Stone Yard," or its "Able- 
 Bodied Test Workhouse." Only on the basis of a uni- 
 versal application of the Policy of the National Minimum, 
 affording complete security against destitution, in sick- 
 ness and health, in good times and bad alike, to every mem- 
 ber of the community can any worthy social order be built 
 up. 
 
 THE DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 
 
 The universal application of the policy of the national 
 minimum is, of course, only the first of the pillars of the
 
 house that the Labor party intends to see built. What 
 marks off this party most distinctly from any of the other 
 political parties is its demand for the full and genuine 
 adoption of the principle of democracy. The first condi- 
 tion of democracy is effective personal freedom. This has 
 suffered so many encroachments during the war that it is 
 necessary to state with clearness that the complete removal 
 of all the war-time restrictions on freedom of speech, free- 
 dom of publication, freedom of the press, freedom of travel, 
 and freedom of choice of place of residence and kind of 
 employment must take place the day after peace is de- 
 dared. The Labor party declares emphatically against 
 any continuance of the Military Service acts a moment 
 longer than the imperative requirements of the war excuse. 
 But individual freedom is of little use without complete 
 political rights. The Labor party sees its repeated de- 
 mands largely conceded in the present Representation of 
 the People act, but not yet wholly satisfied. The party 
 stands, as heretofore, for complete adult suffrage, with not 
 more than a three months' residential qualification, for 
 effective provision for absent electors to vote, for absolute- 
 ly equal rights for both sexes, for the same freedom to 
 exercise civic rights for the "common soldier" as for the 
 officer, for shorter Parliaments, for the complete abolition 
 of the House of Lords, and for a most strenuous opposi- 
 tion to any new Second Chamber, whether elected or not, 
 having in it any element of heredity or privilege, or of the 
 control of the House of Commons by any party or class. 
 But unlike the Conservative and Liberal parties, the Labor 
 party insists on democracy in industry as well as in gov- 
 ernment. It demands the progressive elimination from 
 the control of industry of the private capitalist, individual 
 or joint-stock; and the setting free of all who work, 
 
 [*o]
 
 whether by hand or by brain, for the service of the com- 
 munity, and of the community only. And the Labor 
 party refuses absolutely to believe that the British people 
 will permanently tolerate any reconstruction or perpetua- 
 tion of the disorganization, waste, and inefficiency involved 
 in the abandonment of British industry to a jostling 
 crowd of separate private employers, with their minds bent, 
 not on the service of the community, but by the very law 
 of their being only on the utmost possible profiteering. 
 What the nation needs is undoubtedly a great bound on- 
 ward in its aggregate productivity. But this cannot be 
 secured merely by pressing the manual workers to more 
 strenuous toil, or even by encouraging the "Captains of 
 Industry" to a less wasteful organization of their several 
 enterprises on a profit-making basis. What the Labor 
 party looks to is a genuinely scientific reorganization of 
 the nation's industry, no longer deflected by individual 
 profiteering, on the basis of the common ownership of the 
 means of production, the equitable sharing of the proceeds 
 among all who participate in any capacity and only among 
 these, and the adoption, in particular services and occupa- 
 tions, of those systems and methods of administration and 
 control that may be found, in practice, best to promote the 
 public interest. 
 
 Immediate Nationalization 
 
 The Labor party stands not merely for the principle 
 of the common ownership of the nation's land, to be ap- 
 plied as suitable opportunities occur, but also, specifically, 
 for the immediate nationalization of railways, mines, and 
 the production of electrical power. We hold that the 
 very foundation of any successful reorganization of British 
 industry must necessarily be found in the provision of the
 
 utmost facilities for transport and communication, the 
 production of power at the cheapest possible rate, and 
 the most economical supply of both electrical energy and 
 coal to every corner of the kingdom. Hence the Labor 
 party stands, unhesitatingly, for the national ownership 
 and administration of the railways and canals, and their 
 union, along with harbors and roads, and the posts and 
 telegraphs not to say also the great lines of steamers 
 which could at once be owned, if not immediately directly 
 managed in detail, by the government in a united na- 
 tional service of communication and transport; to be 
 worked, unhampered by capitalist, private, or purely local 
 interests (and with a steadily increasing participation pi 
 the organized workers in the management, both central 
 and local), exclusively for the common good. If any gov- 
 ernment should be so misguided as to propose, when peace 
 comes, to hand the railways back to the shareholders, or 
 should show itself so spendthrift of the nation's property 
 as to give these shareholders any enlarged franchise by 
 presenting them with the economies of unification or the 
 profits of increased railway rates, or so extravagant as to 
 bestow public funds on the re-equipment of privately 
 owned lines all of which things are now being privately 
 intrigued for by the railway interests, the Labor party 
 will offer any such project the most strenuous opposition. 
 The railways and canals, like the roads, must henceforth 
 belong to the public. 
 
 In the production of electricity, for cheap power, light, 
 and heating, this country has so far failed, because of ham- 
 pering private interests, to take advantage of science. Even 
 in the largest cities we still "peddle" our electricity on a 
 contemptibly small scale. What is called for immediately 
 after the war is the erection of a score of gigantic "super- 
 
 [**]
 
 power stations," which could generate, at incredibly cheap 
 rates, enough electricity for the use of every industrial 
 establishment and every private household in Great 
 Britain; the present municipal and joint-stock electrical 
 plants being universally linked up and used for local dis- 
 tribution. This is inevitably the future of electricity. It 
 is plain that so great and so powerful an enterprise, affect- 
 ing every industrial enterprise and, eventually, every house- 
 hold, must not be allowed to pass into the hands of private 
 capitalists. They are already pressing the government for 
 the concession, and neither the Liberal nor the Conserva- 
 tive party has yet made up its mind to a refusal of such a 
 new endowment of profiteering in what will presently be 
 the life blood of modern productive industry. The Labor 
 party demands that the production of electricity on the 
 necessary gigantic scale shall be made from the start (with 
 suitable arrangements for municipal cooperation in local 
 distribution) a national enterprise, to be worked exclu- 
 sively with the object of supplying the whole kingdom with 
 the cheapest possible power, light, and heat. 
 
 But with railways and the generation of electricity in 
 the hands of the public, it would be criminal folly to leave 
 to the present one thousand five hundred colliery com- 
 panies the power of "holding up" the coal supply. These 
 are now all working under public control, on terms that 
 virtually afford to their shareholders a statutory guarantee 
 of their swollen incomes. The Labor party demands the 
 immediate nationalization of mines, the extraction of coal 
 and iron being worked as a public service (with a steadily 
 increasing participation in the management, both central 
 and local, of the various grades of persons employed ) ; and 
 the whole business of the retail distribution of household 
 coal being undertaken, as a local public service, by the
 
 elected municipal or county councils. And there is no rea- 
 son why coal should fluctuate in price any more than rail- 
 way fares, or why the consumer should be made to pay 
 more in winter than in summer, or in one town than an- 
 other. What the Labor party would aim at is, for house- 
 hold coal of standard quality, a fixed and uniform price 
 for the whole kingdom, payable by rich and poor alike, 
 as unalterable as the penny postage stamp. 
 
 But the sphere of immediate nationalization is not re- 
 stricted to these great industries. We shall never succeed 
 in putting the gigantic system of health insurance on a 
 proper footing, or secure a clear field for the beneficent 
 work of the Friendly Societies, or gain a free hand for 
 the necessary development of the urgently called for Min- 
 istry of Health and the Local Public Health Service, 
 until the nation expropriates the profit-making industrial 
 insurance companies, which now so tyrannously exploit the 
 people with their wasteful house-to-house industrial life 
 assurance. Only by such an expropriation of life assurance 
 companies can we secure the universal provision, free from 
 the burdensome toll of weekly pence, of the indispensable 
 funeral benefit. Nor is it in any sense a "class" measure. 
 Only by the assumption by a state department of the whole 
 business of life assurance can the millions of policy-holders 
 of all classes be completely protected against the possibly 
 calamitous results of the depreciation of securities and sus- 
 pension of bonuses which the war is causing. Only by this 
 means can the great staff of insurance agents find their 
 proper place as civil servants, with equitable conditions of 
 employment, compensation for any disturbance, and secur- 
 ity of tenure, in a nationally organized public service for 
 the discharge of the steadily increasing functions of the 
 government in vital statistics and social insurance.
 
 In quite another sphere the Labor party sees the key to 
 temperance reform in taking the entire manufacture and 
 retailing of alcoholic drink out of the hands of those who 
 find profit in promoting the utmost possible consumption. 
 This is essentially a case in which the people, as a whole, 
 must deal with the licensing question in accordance with 
 local opinion. For this purpose, localities should have 
 conferred upon them facilities (a) to prohibit the sale of 
 liquor within their boundaries; () to reduce the number 
 of licenses and regulate the conditions under which they 
 may be held; and (c) if a locality decides that licenses are 
 to be granted, to determine whether such licenses shall be 
 under private or any form of public control. 
 
 Other main industries, especially those now becoming 
 monopolized, should be nationalized as opportunity offers. 
 Moreover, the Labor party holds that the municipalities 
 should not confine their activities to the necessarily costly 
 services of education, sanitation, and police ; nor yet rest 
 content with acquiring control of the local water, gas, elec- 
 tricity, and tramways ; but that every facility should be af- 
 forded to them to acquire (easily, quickly, and cheaply) 
 all the land they require, and to extend their enterprises in 
 housing and town planning, parks, and public libraries, 
 the provision of music and the organization of recreation ; 
 and also to undertake, besides the retailing of coal, other 
 services of common utility, particularly the local supply of 
 milk, wherever this is not already fully organized by a 
 cooperative society. 
 
 Control of Capitalist Industry 
 
 Meanwhile, however, we ought not to throw away the 
 valuable experience now gained by the government in its 
 assumption of the importation of wheat, wool, metals, and 
 
 [51
 
 other commodities, and in its control of the shipping, 
 woolen, leather, clothing, boot and shoe, milling, baking, 
 butchering, and other industries. The Labor party holds 
 that, whatever may have been the shortcomings of this gov- 
 ernment importation and control, it has demonstrably pre- 
 vented a lot of "profiteering." Nor can it end immediate- 
 ly on the declaration of peace. The people will be ex- 
 tremely foolish if they ever allow their indispensable in- 
 dustries to slip back into the unfettered control of private 
 capitalists, who are, actually at the instance of the govern- 
 ment itself, now rapidly combining, trade by trade, into 
 monopolist trusts, which may presently become as ruthless 
 in their extortion as the worst American examples. Stand- 
 ing as it does for the democratic control of industry, the 
 Labor party would think twice before it sanctioned any 
 abandonment of the present profitable centralization of 
 purchase of raw material; of the present carefully organ- 
 ized "rationing," by joint committees of the trades con- 
 cerned, of the several establishments with the materials 
 they require; of the present elaborate system of "costing" 
 and public audit of manufacturers' accounts, so as to stop 
 the waste heretofore caused by the mechanical inefficiency 
 of the more backward firms; of the present salutary pub- 
 licity of manufacturing processes and expenses thereby en- 
 sured; and, on the information thus obtained (in order 
 never again to revert to the old-time profiteering) of the 
 present rigid fixing, for standardized products, of maxi- 
 mum prices at the factory, at the warehouse of the whole- 
 sale trader, and in the retail shop. This question of the 
 retail prices of household commodities is emphatically the 
 most practical of all political issues to the woman elector. 
 The male politicians have too long neglected the griev- 
 ances of the small household, which is the prey of every
 
 profiteering combination ; and neither the Liberal nor the 
 Conservative party promises, in this respect, any amend- 
 ment. This, too, is in no sense a "class" measure. It is, 
 so the Labor party holds, just as much the function of 
 government, and just as necessary a part of the democratic 
 regulation of industry, to safeguard the interests of the 
 community as a whole, and those of all grades and sections 
 of private consumers, in the matter of prices, as it is, 
 by the Factory and Trade Boards acts, to protect the 
 rights of the wage-earning producers in the matter of 
 wages, hours of labor, and sanitation. 
 
 A REVOLUTION IN NATIONAL FINANCE 
 
 In taxation, also, the interests of the professional and 
 house-keeping classes are at one with those of the manual 
 workers. Too long has our national finance been regu- 
 lated, contrary to the teaching of political economy, ac- 
 cording to the wishes of the possessing classes and the 
 profits of the financiers. The colossal expenditure in- 
 volved in the present war (of which, against the protest 
 of the Labor party, only a quarter has been raised by 
 taxation, whilst three-quarters have been borrowed at 
 onerous rates of interest, to be a burden on the nation's 
 future) brings things to a crisis. When peace comes, 
 capital will be needed for all sorts of social enterprises, 
 and the resources of government will necessarily have to 
 be vastly greater than they were before the war. Mean- 
 while innumerable new private fortunes are being heaped 
 up by those who have taken advantage of the nation's needs; 
 and the one-tenth of the population which owns nine- 
 tenths of the riches of the United Kingdom, far from being 
 made poorer, will find itself, in the aggregate, as a result 
 
 1*7]
 
 of the war, drawing in rent and interest and dividends a 
 larger nominal income than ever before. Such a position 
 demands a revolution in national finance. How are we 
 to discharge a public debt that may well reach the almost 
 incredible figure of seven thousand million pounds ster- 
 ling, and at the same time raise an annual revenue which, 
 for local as well as central government, must probably 
 reach one thousand millions a year? It is over this prob- 
 lem of taxation that the various political parties will be 
 found to be most sharply divided. 
 
 The Labor party stands for such a system of taxation 
 as will yield all the necessary revenue to the government 
 without encroaching on the prescribed national minimum 
 standard of life of any family whatsoever, without ham- 
 pering production or discouraging any useful personal 
 effort, and with the nearest possible approximation to 
 equality of sacrifice. We definitely repudiate all pro- 
 posals for a protective tariff, in whatever specious guise 
 they may be cloaked, as a device for burdening the con- 
 sumer with unnecessarily enhanced prices, to the profit of 
 the capitalist employer or landed proprietor, who avowed- 
 ly expects his profit or rent to be increased thereby. We 
 shall strenuously oppose any taxation, of whatever kind, 
 which would increase the price of food or of any other 
 necessary of life. We hold that indirect taxation on com- 
 modities, whether by customs or excise, should be strictly 
 limited to luxuries, and concentrated principally on those 
 of which it is socially desirable that the consumption should 
 be actually discouraged. We are at one with the manu- 
 facturer, the farmer, and the trader in objecting to taxes 
 interfering with production or commerce, or hampering 
 transport and communications. In all these matters once 
 more in contrast with the other political parties, and by no 
 
 [*f]
 
 means in the interests of the wage-earners alone the 
 Labor party demands that the very definite teachings of 
 economic science should no longer be disregarded as they 
 have been in the past. 
 
 For the raising of the greater part of the revenue now 
 required, the Labor party looks to the direct taxation of the 
 incomes above the necessary cost of family maintenance; 
 and, for the requisite effort to pay off the national debt, to 
 the direct taxation of private fortunes both during life and 
 at death. The income tax and super-tax ought at once to 
 be thoroughly reformed in assessment and collection, in 
 abatements and allowances and in graduation and differ- 
 entiation, so as to levy the required total sum in such a 
 way as to make the real sacrifice of all the tax-payers as 
 nearly as possible equal. This would involve assessment 
 by families instead of by individual persons, so that the 
 'burden is alleviated in proportion to the number of persons 
 to be maintained. It would involve the raising of the 
 present unduly low minimum income assessable to the tax, 
 and the lightening of the present unfair burden on the 
 great mass of professional and small trading classes by a 
 new scale of graduation, rising from a penny in the pound 
 on the smallest assessable income up to sixteen or even 
 nineteen shillings in the pounds on the highest income of 
 the millionaires. It would involve bringing into assess- 
 ment the numerous windfalls of profit that now escape, 
 and a further differentiation between essentially different 
 kinds of income. The excess profits tax might well be 
 retained in an appropriate form ; whilst, so long as mining 
 royalties exist, the mineral rights duty ought to be in- 
 creased. The steadily rising unearned increment of urban 
 and mineral land ought, by an appropriate direct taxation 
 of land values, to be wholly brought into the public ex- 
 
 1*9]
 
 chequer. At the same time, for the service and redemption 
 of the national debt, the death duties ought to be regradu- 
 ated, much more strictly collected, and greatly increased. 
 In this matter we need, in fact, completely to reverse our 
 point of view, and to rearrange the whole taxation of in- 
 heritance from the standpoint of asking what is the maxi- 
 mum amount that any rich man should be permitted at 
 death to divert, by his will, from the national exchequer, 
 which should normally be the heir to all private riches in 
 excess of a quite moderate amount by way of family pro- 
 vision. But all this will not suffice. It will be impera- 
 tive at the earliest possible moment to free the nation from 
 at any rate the greater part of its new load of interest- 
 bearing debt for loans which ought to have been levied 
 as taxation ; and the Labor party stands for a special cap- 
 ital levy to pay off, if not the whole, a very substantial 
 part of the entire national debt a capital levy chargeable' 
 like the death duties on all property, but (in order to 
 secure approximate equality of sacrifice) with exemption 
 of the smallest savings, and for the rest at rates very steeply 
 graduated, so as to take only a small contribution from the 
 little people and a very much larger percentage from the 
 millionaires. 
 
 Over this issue of how the financial burden of the war 
 is to be borne, and how the necessary revenue is to be 
 raised, the greatest political battles will be fought. In thfe 
 matter the Labor party claims the support of four-fifths 
 of the whole nation, for the interests of the clerk, the 
 teacher, the doctor, the minister of religion, the average 
 retail shopkeeper and trader, and all the mass of those liv- 
 ing on small incomes are identical with those of the artisan. 
 The landlords, the financial magnates, the possessors of 
 great fortunes will not, as a class, willingly forego the 
 
 [30]
 
 relative immunity that they have hitherto enjoyed. The 
 present unfair subjection of the cooperative society to an 
 excess profits tax on the "profits" which it has never made 
 specially dangerous as "the thin end of the wedge" of 
 penal taxation of this laudable form of democratic enter- 
 prise will not be abandoned without a struggle. Every 
 possible effort will be made to juggle with the taxes, so 
 as to place upon the shoulders of the mass of laboring folk 
 and upon the struggling households of the professional 
 men and small traders (as was done after every previous 
 war) whether by customs or excise duties, by industrial 
 monopolies, by unnecessarily high rates of postage and 
 railway fares, or by a thousand and one other ingenious 
 devices an unfair share of the national burden. Against 
 these efforts the Labor party will take the firmest stand. 
 
 THE SURPLUS FOR THE COMMON GOOD 
 
 In the disposal of the surplus above the standard of 
 life, society has hitherto gone as far wrong as in its neglect 
 to secure the necessary basis of any genuine industrial 
 efficiency or decent social order. We have allowed the 
 riches of our mines, the rental value of the lands superior 
 to the margin of cultivation, the extra profits of the for- 
 tunate capitalists, even the material outcome of scientific 
 discoveries which ought by now to have made this 
 Britain of ours immune from class poverty or from any 
 widespread destitution to be absorbed by individual pro- 
 prietors and then devoted very largely to the senseless 
 luxury of an idle rich class. Against this misappropriation 
 of the wealth of the community, the Labor party speak- 
 ing in the interests not of the wage-earners alone, but of 
 every grade and section of producers by hand or by brain,
 
 not to mention also those of the generations that are to 
 succeed us, and of the permanent welfare of the com- 
 munity emphatically protests. One main pillar of the 
 house that the Labor party intends to build is the future 
 appropriation of the surplus, not to the enlargement of 
 any individual fortune, but to the common good. It is 
 from this constantly arising surplus (to be secured, on the 
 one hand, by nationalization and municipalization and, 
 on the other, by the steeply graduated taxation of private 
 income and riches) that will have to be found the new 
 capital which the community day by day needs for the 
 perpetual improvement and increase of its various enter- 
 prises, for which we shall decline to be dependent on the 
 usury-exacting financiers. It is from the same source that 
 has to be defrayed the public provision for the sick and 
 infirm of all kinds (including that for maternity and in- 
 fancy) which is still so scandalously insufficient; for the 
 aged and those prematurely incapacitated by accident or 
 disease, now in many ways so imperfectly cared for; for 
 the education alike of children, of adolescents, and of 
 adults, in which the Labor party demands a genuine equal- 
 ity of opportunity, overcoming all differences of material 
 circumstances ; and for the organization of public improve- 
 ments of all kinds, including the brightening of the lives 
 of those now condemned to almost ceaseless toil, and a 
 great development of the means of recreation. From the 
 same source must come the greatly increased public pro- 
 vision that the Labor party will insist on being made for 
 scientific investigation and original research, in every 
 branch of knowledge, not to say also for the promotion 
 of music, literature, and fine art, which have been under 
 capitalism so greatly neglected, and upon which, so the 
 Labor party holds, any real development of civilization
 
 fundamentally depends. Society, like the individual, does 
 not live by bread alone does not exist only for perpetual 
 wealth production. It is in the proposal for this appro- 
 priation of every surplus for the common godd in the 
 vision of its resolute use for the building up of the com- 
 munity as a whole instead of for the magnification of indi- 
 vidual fortunes that the Labor party, as the party of the 
 producers by hand or by brain, most distinctively marks it- 
 self off from the older political parties, standing, as these 
 do, essentially for the maintenance, unimpaired, of the per- 
 petual private mortgage upon the annual product of the 
 nation that is involved in the individual ownership of land 
 and capital. 
 
 THE STREET OF TOMORROW 
 
 The house which the Labor party intends to build, the 
 four pillars of which have now been described, does not 
 stand alone in the world. Where will it be in the street 
 of tomorrow? If we repudiate, on the one hand, the 
 imperialism that seeks to dominate other races or to impose 
 our own will on other parts of the British empire, so we 
 disclaim equally any conception of a selfish and insular 
 "non-interventionism," unregarding of our special obliga- 
 tions to our fellow-citizens overseas, of the corporate duties 
 of one nation to another, of the moral claims upon us of 
 the non-adult races, and of our own indebtedness to the 
 world of which we are part. We look for an ever-increas- 
 ing intercourse, a constantly developing exchange of com- 
 modities, a continually expanding friendly co-operation 
 among all the peoples of the world. With regard to that 
 great commonwealth of all races, all colors, all religions, 
 and all degrees of civilization, that we call the British 
 
 [33]
 
 empire, the Labor party stands for its maintenance and 
 its progressive development on the lines of local autonomy 
 and "Home Rule All Round"; the fullest respect for the 
 rights of each people, whatever its color, to all the demo- 
 cratic self-government of which it is capable, and to the 
 proceeds of its own toil upon the resources of its own terri- 
 torial home; and the closest possible co-operation among 
 all the various members of what has become essentially 
 not an empire in the old sense, but a Britannic alliance. 
 
 We desire to maintain the most intimate relations with 
 the Labor parties overseas. Like them, we have no sym- 
 pathy with the projects of "Imperial Federation," in so 
 far as these imply the subjection to a common imperial 
 legislature wielding coercive power (including dangerous 
 facilities for coercive imperial taxation and for enforced 
 military service), either of the existing self-governing 
 Dominions, whose autonomy would be thereby invaded, 
 or of the United Kingdom, whose freedom of democratic 
 self-development would be thereby hampered, or of India 
 and the colonial dependencies, which would thereby run 
 the risk of being further exploited for the benefit of a 
 "White Empire." We do not intend, by any such "Im- 
 perial Senate," either to bring the plutocracy of Canada 
 and South Africa to the aid of the British aristocracy, or 
 to enable the landlords and financiers of the mother coun- 
 try to unite in controlling the growing popular democracies 
 overseas. The autonomy of each self-governing part of 
 the empire must be intact. 
 
 What we look for, besides a constant progress in demo- 
 cratic self-government of every part of the Britannic alli- 
 ance, and especially in India, is a continuous participation 
 of the ministers of the Dominions, of India, and event- 
 ually of other dependencies (perhaps by means of their 
 
 [34]
 
 own ministers specially resident in London for this pur- 
 pose) in the most confidential deliberations of the Cabinet, 
 so far as foreign policy and imperial affairs are concerned ; 
 and the annual assembly of an Imperial Council, repre- 
 senting all constituents of the Britannic alliance and all 
 parties in their 1 local legislatures, which should discuss all 
 matters of common interest, but only in order to make 
 recommendations for the simultaneous consideration of 
 the various autonomous local legislatures of what should 
 increasingly take the constitutional form of an alliance of 
 free nations. And we carry the idea further. As regards 
 our relations to foreign countries, we disavow and dis- 
 claim any desire or intention to dispossess or to impoverish 
 any other state or nation. We seek no increase of territory. 
 We disclaim all idea of "economic war." We ourselves 
 object to all protective customs tariffs; but we hold that 
 each nation must be left free to do what it thinks best for 
 its own economic development, without thought of in- 
 juring others. We believe that nations are in no way 
 damaged by each other's economic prosperity or commer- 
 cial progress; but, on the contrary, that they are actually 
 themselves mutually enriched thereby. We would there- 
 fore put an end to the old entanglements and mystifica- 
 tions of secret diplomacy and the formation of leagues 
 against leagues. We stand for the immediate establish- 
 ment, actually as a part of the treaty of peace with which 
 the present war will end, of a universal league or society 
 of nations, a supernational authority, with an interna- 
 tional high court to try all justiciable issues between na- 
 tions, an international legislature to enact such common 
 laws as can be mutually agreed upon, and an international 
 council of mediation to endeavor to settle without ultimate 
 conflict even those disputes which are not justiciable. We 
 
 [35]
 
 would have all the nations of the world most solemnly 
 undertake and promise to make common cause against any 
 one of them that broke away from this fundamental agree- 
 ment. The world has suffered too much from war for 
 the Labor party to have any other policy than that of last- 
 ing peace. 
 
 MORE LIGHT BUT ALSO MORE WARMTH ! 
 
 The Labor party is far from assuming that it possesses 
 a key to open all locks, or that any policy which it can 
 formulate will solve all the problems that beset us. But 
 we deem it important to ourselves as well as to those who 
 may, on the one hand, wish to join the party, or, on the 
 other, to take up arms against it, to make quite clear and 
 definite our aim and purpose. The Labor party wants 
 that aim and purpose, as set forth in the preceding pages, 
 with all its might. It calls for more warmth in politics, 
 for much less apathetic acquiescence in the miseries that 
 exist, for none of the cynicism that saps the life of leisure. 
 On the other hand, the Labor party has no belief in any 
 of the problems of the world being solved by good will 
 alone. Good will without knowledge is warmth without 
 light. Especially in all the complexities of politics, in the 
 still undeveloped science of society, the Labor party stands 
 for increased study, for the scientific investigation of each 
 succeeding problem, for the deliberate organization of re- 
 search, and for a much more rapid dissemination among 
 the whole people of all the science that exists. And it is 
 perhaps specially the Labor party that has the duty of 
 placing this advancement of science in the forefront of its 
 political programme. What the Labor party stands for 
 in all fields of life is, essentially, democratic co-operation ; 
 
 [36]
 
 and co-operation involves a common purpose which can be 
 agreed to, a common plan which can be explained and dis- 
 cussed, and such a measure of success in the adaptation of 
 means to ends as will ensure a common satisfaction. An 
 autocratic sultan may govern without science if his whim 
 is law. A plutocratic party may choose to ignore science, 
 if it is heedless whether its pretended solutions of social 
 problems that may win political triumphs ultimately suc- 
 ceed or fail. But no Labor party can hope to maintain 
 its position unless its proposals are, in fact, the outcome of 
 the best political science of its time, or to fulfil its purpose 
 unless that science is continually wresting new fields from 
 human ignorance. Hence, although the purpose of the 
 Labor party must, by the law of its being, remain for all 
 time unchanged, its policy and its programme will, we 
 hope, undergo a perpetual development, as knowledge 
 grows and as new phases of the social problem present 
 themselves, in a continually finer adjustment of our meas- 
 ures to our ends. If law is the mother of freedom, science, 
 to the Labor party, must be the parent of law. 
 
 37]
 
 MANIFESTO TO THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 FROM THE ENGLISH FELLOWSHIP 
 
 OF RECONCILIATION 
 
 The Fellowship has been formed to bind together men 
 and women who believe that the spirit of strife, whether 
 national, personal, or economic, can only be conquered by 
 a practical belief that Love, as shown forth in Jesus Christ, 
 is the only true basis for Society. 
 
 THE war and its problems have brought to us a fresh 
 realization of the need for reconstructing our social 
 and industrial world from within by the Spirit of 
 Jesus Christ. Led as we have been to emphasize the 
 sacredness of personality, we have been compelled to apply 
 that principle to all spheres of life. 
 
 We see that, under the present system, property is more 
 regarded than human life, profits are considered of more 
 importance than the welfare of men and women. 
 
 We see that behind this war there is another, less appap 
 ent but more permanent, the war that goes on within 
 each nation in its industrial life, which is especially mani- 
 fested between those possessed of the power that capital 
 gives, and those whose lack of property renders them sub- 
 ject to that power. We stand for co-operation in com- 
 merce and industry in place of competition. 
 
 By this we do not mean that we would here and there 
 restrain the power of the privileged to exploit others. 
 
 [38]
 
 Merely to correct the more evident abuses of the present 
 system would not satisfy us. The whole structure of 
 society needs refashioning upon a different basis. The 
 teaching of Jesus Christ leads us to the belief that no 
 modification of the competitive system will remove its 
 evils : it must be abolished. 
 
 The problems that need solving in the spirit of that 
 teaching are more particularly: 
 
 1. The Economic Relations of Nations. Neither Protec- 
 
 tion nor Free Trade, as commonly understood, satis- 
 fies our ideal. We desire the organization of inter- 
 national commerce in the interests of all. 
 
 2. The Relationship of Men and Women. Love, as 
 
 taught by Christ, must express itself in comradeship, 
 and this lifts the relationship of men and women out 
 of the region of comparison. The arbitrary distinc- 
 tions drawn by which men and women are assigned 
 wholly separate tasks must, therefore, be abolished, 
 and replaced by freedom for each to choose the sphere 
 in which to serve the community. On such basis alone 
 can true companionship stand. 
 
 3. The Relationship of Employer and Employee. These 
 
 are not permanent forms of human relationship. We 
 apply in industrial sense the injunction : "Call no man 
 master; all ye are brethren." We do, of course, de- 
 sire a better understanding between the members of 
 these two classes. But we cannot be finally satisfied 
 until, as classes whose economic interests are bound 
 to clash, they are abolished, and all are masters of 
 their own lives, and all are servants of the community. 
 
 4. The Relationship of Producer and Consumer. While 
 
 Trade Unions have done a great work in their efforts 
 to improve conditions of labor, it must be remembered 
 that they represent sectional interests. In any scheme 
 of reconstruction we must seek to co-ordinate all such 
 interests, remembering that every producer is also a 
 consumer, and, more than that, a citizen. 
 
 [39]
 
 There are certain ideals of labor revolutionary it m.ay 
 be, but so is Christianity implicit in the foregoing, which 
 we recognize as fundamentally Christian. They may be 
 summed up in the following three points : 
 
 1. The recognition of the value of every human being as 
 
 an individual personality, entitled not only to the 
 necessaries of physical life, but to an education which 
 will secure him fullest mental and spiritual develop- 
 ment. 
 
 2. The reconstruction of industry upon such a basis that 
 
 a man may have the opportunity for choice of work, 
 and a share in the direction of that work, and may 
 feel that, in the performance, he is not merely provid- 
 ing for his own needs, but is making a contribution 
 to the community in which he lives of the things 
 which have a real value for it. 
 
 3. The production of commodities for use and not for 
 
 .profit, and the release of men from the toil involved 
 in the manufacture of superfluities. 
 
 In fellowship with labor we are resolved to strive for 
 these ideals. 
 
 The Commonwealth, in which each shall work for the 
 good of all, and all shall unite for the good of each, is, we 
 believe, no mere human scheme, but the purpose of God 
 Himself. We are conscious that such an ideal can only 
 be attained if a spiritual revolution is wrought in men, and 
 their outlook towards their fellow-men is wholly changed. 
 
 But we are confident that, however great the difficulties, 
 God's purpose must eventually triumph. 
 
 [40]
 
 "The recent Report on Reconstruction prepared by a sub-com- 
 mittee of the British Labor Party is the most comprehensive 
 scheme of economic change yet formulated by a responsible 
 political party. . . Of even greater significance than the practical 
 details of the programme is its spirit. . . We are here face to face 
 with a new type of political philosophy, a type which rests upon a 
 definite view of the ends of life and a vision of life as a whole. . . 
 We are witnessing the emergence of a full-blooded humanism into 
 political theory and practice. Beneath this report, which is in its 
 spirit and hope an embodiment of the idealism of the British labor 
 movement, there lies a clear sense that every man has and is an 
 end in himself, and that he can achieve that end only in a social 
 setting which he must share in creating. Its view is that man and 
 the community achieve their distinctive ends in each other. The 
 great soul and the great society will arrive together. The historical 
 significance of this document appears to be that it presages a new 
 stage in the development of the democratic ideal. Perhaps it is 
 the beginning of the long-delayed economic sequel of the achieve- 
 ment of the French Revolution, in which case it may very well 
 turn out to be the Magna Charta of the new democracy." 
 
 THE NATION (New York) 
 
 " The British Labor Party's report on Reconstruction is obviously 
 the work of economic thinkers of rare vision and ability and it may 
 well rank among historical documents of the highest class. . . It 
 is impossible not to feel that we are here dealing with a new thing 
 in the literature of politics ; and we believe that the future historian 
 will put his finger upon this paper as the point at which a new 
 idea of the first magnitude made effectual entrance into political 
 theory and practice. So constant is the pressure of this idea that 
 it breaks out here and there through the discussion of concrete 
 economic measures in swift gleams of corroborating light. . . . 
 Every period of political history is governed by some master idea; 
 liberty, empire, individual rights, and so forth. The note of the 
 coming period is already announced in the broad and generous 
 humanism which this document reveals as the characteristic im- 
 pulse of the British Labor Movement. In this report, British labor 
 appears to assume definite leadership in the creation of the 
 political and economic framework of the new world." 
 
 THE WORLD TOMORROW (New York)
 
 THINKING people everywhere agree that 
 the document reprinted in this pamphlet 
 marks an epoch in human affairs. Here 
 for the first time we have a clear-cut, detailed, 
 inclusive, practicable programme of social recon- 
 struction, sanctioned by millions of the world's 
 most intelligent workers, out of whose daily 
 needs and hopes and experiences it has grown. 
 It is a programme which, in its general outlines, 
 is of universal application. And if the world is 
 to be made not merely safe for democracy but 
 decent for humanity this programme must some- 
 how be realized. By far the most important 
 thing to be done at present toward realizing it is 
 to give this document the widest possible circu- 
 lation. You, the present reader, can help in this 
 great work by distributing copies among your 
 friends, and persuading them to distribute copies 
 also. Interest the clubs and organizations to 
 which you belong in sending out copies to their 
 members. Only by the 
 widest possible publicity, 
 -only by bringing this 
 epoch-making paper to 
 the direct attention of 
 every thoughtful man and 
 woman in the country, 
 can the social pressure 
 necessary to carry through 
 such a programme be 
 created. Will you help? 
 
 Additional copies of this 
 pamphlet may be secured 
 of the publisher at the fol- 
 lowing prices : Single 
 copies, 20 cents each; 10 
 copies, $1.75; 25 copies, 
 $3.75; 50 copies, $7; 100 
 copies, $12.50. Further 
 reductions on quantities 
 of more than 100 copies 
 will be promptly quoted 
 upon request. Address: 
 w. R. BROWNE 
 
 WYOMING, NEW YORK 
 
 UNIV. OF CAUF. LIBRARY. LOS
 
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