SYNDICALISM
ADAM W. KIRKALDV
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ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
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ECONOMICS
SYNDICALISM
ADAM W. KIRKALDY
M.A., B.LiTT., OXFORD
M.CoM., BIRMINGHAM
Professor of Finance in the University of
Birmingham
Cambridge :
at the University Press
1914
With the exception of the coat of arms at
the foot, the design on the title p>ige is a
reproi!::ctlon of one useil bv the earliest known
Cambridge printer, J'>hn Siberch, 1521
THE Industrial World is passing through a stage of
acute unrest. The situation has not developed
suddenly, nor was it unexpected by those who
know what has been going on quietly for some years
past.
Pamphlets and leaflets dealing with industrial
questions, wages, employment, profits, the wrongs
of the workers, the oppression of the employers,
have been written by men having a grievance against
societjr, or in some cases by clever men eager to lead
their readers astray, and to do so of set purpose.
These publications have had a wide circulation
among the working classes. Many of them are
written in an interesting form, and contain half-truths
speciously dressed up to resemble facts. They have
gradually worked their way, until having for the
most part been left uncontradictcd, hundreds of
working men have accepted their teachings as proved.
And now the seed having been sown, the reaping of
the whirlwind has commenced.
The object of this little book is to draw attention
to some points of special interest at the present
moment. It is bv no means too late for the back-
viii ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
hone of the industrial army to adopt an attitude on
economic questions which will make for evolution
and progress instead of revolution and disaster. The
chief mischief is wrought by ignorance, or by a par-
tial consideration of the natural laws which regulate
the industrial sphere. The economists of the early
nineteenth century made the mistake of concen-
trating too much on the production of wealth.
Then arose theorist.^ \vho showed the economist his
error, and it was made plain, that not only how
to produce wealth to the best advantage and in
the greatest amount should be studied, but how
wealth when produced should lie distributed among
the factors co-operating in its production. Un-
happily extremists have Fallen into the error of
concentrating their attention on the question of dis-
tribution : and this has led to what is called the
en' cfinn>/ jiolici/. Some leaders ignore the fact that-
labour of all grades is paid out of what it produces,
not out of some existing fund. Rising prices are
due' to a great extent to the fact that with higher
wages and shorter hours there is a smaller output per
unit, to some extent caused either directly or in-
directly bv this policy. Under such circumstances
higher wage--; cannot benefit the working man.
\\ha1 i^ needed at the present moment is that all
rank-- in the industrial army ^hould be equally well
versed in the economic iaws \\liich regulate, noi onlv
PREFACE
XI
the production of ivealth, but also its distribution and
its consumption. Until this comes about society
will continue to grope in the dark, and there will be
not only unrest, but the possibility of worse things.
It is a most hopeful sign that the more serious
sections of the working classes are striving after a
real knowledge of economic laws and their working.
I would take this opportunity to thank Mr W. J.
Davis, President of the Trade Union Congress, for
his ready permission to print the speeches of the
French and German Delegates at the Manchester
meeting. These speeches speak for themselves.
May the time never come when English working
men as a body shall accept the opinion that the
advancement of their interests depends on a warfare
between wage-earners on the one hand and the
employing-class and the State on the other ! The
acceptance of such teaching can only lead to one
result disaster.
A. W. K.
1914.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE ... . vii
CHAP
I. ( NCONSMOUS AND SEMI-CoNSCIOUS ECONOMISTS . . 1
II. THE EFFECT OK NATIONALITY ON ECONOMIC THOUGHT
AND PRACTICE ... ... 17
III. TIIK ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIALISM IN
ENGLAND .... . . 33
IV. EAHLY CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 54
V. INTKRNATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM . . 71
VI. SOCIALISM TO-DAY AND ITS RIVAL SYNDICALISM , !>~
APPENDICES
A. THK ADDRKSS OF TIIK FKENCJII DKLKGATK AT THK
THADK I.\NION CONGRESS, MANCHESTER l!)lo . }].">
B. THE ADDRKSS OF TIIK GKRMAN DKLK<;ATE . . 12-")
( . '-'.'AGES AND i'lucEs I'Kini 1H.")0 .... 133
I). DIAGRAM SHOWING THE THEORY OF PROFITS IN A
STAPLE INDUSTRY ... . . l.Sf>
INDEX . l:}-
BOOKS TO CONSULT
SM Ainm CI.AY. Syndicalism and Labour. John Murray.
London. liili'. I-.
Lui is LKVINK. IMi. I). The Labour Movement in France. (A
Study in Revolutionary Syndicalism.) Columbia I Hiver-
Mty. I'.tlL'. .f !..')(
.'. KAM-AY MA- DONAI ,n. M.l*. Syndicali-ui. (A Critical Kx-
aniination. ) Constahlc A" ( o London. Is.
1'iui.ii' S.\o\M>i:.\ . M.I'. The Living' \\aye. FI odder A"
Stoujrliton. London. Is.
1'nn.ii' SNOUDKN, M.I'. Socialism and Syndicalism. Collins.
London. I-.
THK MINKH>' NKXT STKT. (Issued liy the Unofficial Reform
Cnmtnittep. ) Robert Davies tt Co. Tonypandy. lull'.
CHAPTER I
UNCONSCIOUS AND SEMI-CONSCIOUS ECONOMISTS
To understand the present economic situation, the
outcome of which appears to so many people to
have resolved itself into an alternative, either
socialism or syndicalism, it is necessary to have at
least a bowing acquaintance with the development
of economic theory and practice from the earliest
days. These have really developed as man himself
has progressed.
During the period which is known as ancient
history, the economist was unconscious ; during
that period which is roughly termed the Middle
Ages, he may be called semi-conscious. It was not
until about the middle of the seventeenth century
that thinking man became conscious that there was
a science of economics, and began to make efforts
towards unravelling its laws, and understanding its
tendencies.
i
2 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
In this country two great economic events mark
the time \vhen the conscious economist appeared
upon the scene. At that time England was engaged
in wresting from Holland the supremacy in foreign
trade and shipping, which the Dutch had taken from
the Portuguese. During the time that Amsterdam
was the economic centre of the trading community,
the great Bank had been founded which had proved
of enormous benefit to both local and international
business. From the experience of this Bank im-
portant lessons as to banking and currency had
been learned indeed, it may be said that this
great institution, although its organisation was by
no means perfect, marks an epoch in commercial
history namely, the inauguration of modern bank-
ing. As the Knglish began to compete successfully
\\ith the Dutch for foreign trade, and London began
to take the place of Amsterdam as the great com-
mercial centre, there were vague suggestions that a
Bank of London should be founded. But until
William Paterson propounded his scheme' for the
establishment of a Bank oi England, the suggestions
failed to take form. Eor tluvr years niter its
promulgation Paierson's scheme remained almost
unheeded, but in 1G ( .)4, mainly owing to the exigencies
of the political situation, the Bank of England was
founded. Two years later a recoinage was carried
through in England, and round these two events a
ECONOMISTS 3
very interesting controversy raged, which gave rise
to the writing of a considerable number of pamphlets
and books, in some of which it is quite evident the
writers were beginning to get glimmerings of economic
truth. At any rate it is safe to say that about this
time there was a definite attempt in England to
formulate a science of economics.
But since both existing customs and prejudices
prove that the unconscious or semi-conscious theories
of ages long past continue to have an influence over
the material world, centuries after their raison
d'ltre has ceased, it is not only interesting but
necessary, in order to get a real understanding of
present-day thought, to trace down, even though it
only be possible to do so somewhat skctchily, some
of the main thoughts connected with economic
theory and practice from ancient days.
Roughly speaking, there have been four great
stages in human development.
I. The Hunting Stage. Primitive man was a
hunter. There were some wild fruits doubtless, but
man's food and clothing would consist for the most
part of the results of the chase. It must have been
a very hard life, for until he devised them, man had
no weapons wherewith to hunt and kill the animals
he required for food. But the economic situation
was a very simple one. There being no private
property in land, there was no rent ; and as capita!
4 ECONOMICS AXD SYNDICALISM
onlv existed in a very rudimentary form, no question
would arise as 10 what interest should he paid. .\>,.
houever. man progressed, he furnished himself, as
\\c know, with rude tools and weapons, the begin-
ning-' of eapital, and doubtless he would use surplus
skins and surplus tlesh for exchange purposes. There
even may have been, as time progressed, a rough
and ready kind of currency, but taken as a whole,
the economic situation was simple, and as such it
has had but little eilect on succeeding generations.
11. T/t<> I'dxtonil ^tntjc.. As time went on man
developed new resource's : he found it possible to
domesticate certain animals ; he would capture the
younir. or take care of the weakly or slightly injured,
and tind that in some instances they were tameable.
At any rate, we know that from the hunting stage
man entered upon what is called the pastoral
stage, and at this juncture he became a shepherd.
enjoying a far higher state of existence. Thus the
pastoral stage 1 is the second great stage in human
development. Here the economic situation de-
veloped somewhat, but on the- whole it remained
simple. Either slavery or service was instituted,
and there mav have been, and doubtless was, a
wages question. There was land ownership on a
small scale, if only for burial purposes, as one may
learn from the history of the Patriarchs in the
Book of (ienesi>. The Hocks and herds which
ECONOMISTS 5
these nomad shepherds collected were personal
property, but pasturage was sought by wandering
about from district to district, and there was but
little thought of permanent settlement.
III. The Agricultural Stage. Progress continued
and eventually settlement began to take place, and
mankind passed from the pastoral to the agricultural
stage. In this the economic situation developed in
many new and interesting directions. In order
to practise the arts of agriculture, it was necessary
that settlement, including land ownership, or at
least security of tenure, should be practised, and so
we find man clearing the land and producing new
and improved crops, carrying on side by side, each
assisting the other, pastoral and agricultural pur-
suits ; a very healthy and a very interesting stage
of existence, which apparently mankind was loath
to leave.
But progress, although perhaps imperceptible to
the man on the spot, continued working in the
village communities, which gradually developed in
connection with agriculture. In these, moreover,
separation of employments was found to give
advantages so great, that as time went on each
little village had its own wheelwright, carpenter,
smith, and other separate tradesmen. The market
for which these men worked was known and well-
defined ; it consisted of the requirements of the
6 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
little, soli-contained community in the midst of
which the lot of these artificers was thrown.
IV. The ( '(niii<rci<tl and Industrial titnge. As
centuries passed, these communities developed,
and their needs increased : the simple food, clothing.
housing, and amusements of early days no longer
sufliced. With imp.oved methods of agriculture,
and improved tools for manufacturing articles
required by an agricultural community, the men
practising separate employments increased their
output, with the result that they sought a wider
market. In other words, the agricultural stage
reached its highest point, and a new era opened
out before the progressive man. This is known as
the commercial and industrial sta-jv. This stage
has continued down to the present time, though it
too has been subject to development since the com-
paratively simple beginnings made in the agricul-
tural village or small town. There was a great
advance when what is known as the (Juild System
began to be practised. This system had. in its
day. a very great and widespread iniluence on
mankind. But it tended, as a system, to become
petrified and inelastic, and with szTouing ideas
concerning liberty, man became dissatisfied, and
refused to be bound by archaic (Juild Law. For-
tunately this (Juild Law only ran within certain
limits, and so the- progressive man went beyond
ECONOMISTS 7
these limits and commenced manufacturing and
trading 011 a new system. Thus the Guild System
gave place to the Domestic System. So long as
tools were simple, and raw material was only required
in comparatively small quantities, cottage industries
could be practised with advantage, and the factor
could go round collecting what had been manu-
factured in this comparatively retail wa}'. The
Domestic System had much to commend it. The
worker on the whole lived a reasonable and happy
existence ; but with invention and discovery, the
limits of the market were still further widened, and
with international demand, the Domestic System
was unable satisfactorily to cope. With the inven-
tion of the steam engine and a number of rapidly
working machines, the output of a given district
could be enormously increased. But at this juncture
another phenomenon emerged. With simple tools
and a small demand, a scattered population could
produce the several commodities required by the
market. But for the successful application of
steam po\ver it became necessary that as many
machines as possible should be run by one engine.
Hence the invention of the steam engine brought
about what is known as the Industrial Revolution,
and the Industrial Revolution brought into existence
the manufacturing town with its teeming population,
and the many attendant problems.
8 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
Now this very sketchily and very roughly traces
out centuries of growth : hut the sketch is perhaps
sufficient for the immediate purpose. Throughout
all these stages there had heen progress, as has been
shown, and this progress was always due to some
long-headed man or group of men. These men,
desiring an enlargement of their life, and keenly
anxious to make the most of their opportunities,
had the effect of improving and broadening life
for the whole of their fellows. These long-headed
men were really economists. Jn the early stages of
existence they were so unconsciously ; they gradu-
ally became semi-conscious of economic possibilities.
until with the developments that came at the end
of the seventeenth century, full consciousness began
to dawn.
It is of interest to realise that all these stages,
which have been briefly described, exist to-day
contemporaneously and can be studied from actual
life. In North America and other parts of the
world, some men are still in the hunting stau'e. In
Asia and Africa, the shepherd can still be seen
following his calling in much the same way as
Abraham. Isaac, and Jacob. Primitive agriculture 1
is still practised in various parts of the world, whilst
incipient industries and the beginnings of commerce
can be studied in more than one country.
Man has progressed through all the stages that
ECONOMISTS 9
have been mentioned, and in each stage there can
be traced both an economic theory and an eco-
nomic practice. There have been laws and customs
which not only regulated the society of the day,
but many of them have continued to influence man-
kind down to the present time. It will be of interest
to take one or two instances of old-world theories
and practices which have very materially affected
subsequent history.
India, Palestine, and Greece all furnish in-
stances of ancient economic theory and practice which
have had momentous effects on the economic his-
tory of the world. Money was considered to have
peculiar powers inherent in it, and as in ancient days
borrowers were usually people who were in some
trouble, more or less temporary, it was considered
that to take interest or usury for the use of a
money loan was taking advantage of a poor man's
necessity. And further than this, Aristotle de-
finite!}* taught that, the precious metals being sterile
substances, to pay interest on a money loan was
unnatural ; that whilst there was natural increase
in the case of the use of an orchard, or a herd of
cattle, or a flock of sheep, for a given period (an
increase which could be divided between the owner
and the borrower), there was no special increase in
the case of a loan of metal. In the Vedas, the
Brahman was onlv allowed to take interest from a
10 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
wicked person. The teaching of Moses upon this
subject contains a very important modification
which is not found elsewhere ; for while lie would
not permit a Jew to exact usury from a brother
Jew. he was careful to add that this law should
not apply to any business relations between Jew
and Gentile. This exception has indeed had great
consequences. When during the Middle Ages the
Church, in pursuit of the grandest possible ideal,
attempted to set up on earth a true Kingdom of
God. the Canon Law was gradually promulgated
with the object of regulating the conduct of man-
kind both in the spiritual and the material sphere.
This Law contains an economic theory, and on the
subject of payment of interest on money loans, the
reverend authors of the Law apparently forgot their
Old Testament and remembered Aristotle, for they
altogether prohibited the payment or exaction of
usury for a money loan. Hence, when trade and
commerce began to develop, the commercial com-
munity in Europe found itself sadly hampered by
this provision of the Canon Law. Fortunately,
however, by. on the one hand, making use of fictions.
and on the other, taking advantage of the prophetic
foresight of Moses, the difficulty was circumvented,
for whilst the Jews were prevented from following
a number of trades and professions, there was one
occupation which their Law and the Canon Law
ECONOMISTS 1 1
left open to them. The Jew, for a, time, was the
only man who legally and morally could exact
interest on a money loan, and so he became the
great banker and financier of the world. The ex-
ceedingly useful and foreseeing modification allowed
by Moses in an otherwise stringent and drastic
law has thus had the greatest possible consequences
on the financial and commercial history of the
world right down to the present moment.
Again, ancient politics were to a great extent
based on slavery. It is true that bond service has
passed away, but the effects of the teaching and
practice of these early days has continued to exert
its influence to the present moment. Trade and
business, manufacture and commerce, were looked
upon as unworthy occupations for a man of citizen
rank. The citizen might be an agriculturist, an
administrator, or a soldier, but he must not soil his
fingers with trade, and so these occupations, looked
upon with scorn by the citizens, were exercised by
the servile class. It is needless to say that this
class, deprived of the possibility of broadening their
outlook and humanising their intellects with culture
and education, developed qualities which tended to
increase still further the scorn with which the
citizen regarded them. Labour was degraded, the
producers were cut off from intellectual pursuits
and excluded from public life, and this for centuries
12 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
militated against industrial progress. As a direct
result of old-world conditions, the Canon Law
definitely stated that trade will lead to fraud, and
that the only la \\ful occupations for the Christian
man are agriculture or its simple attendant handi-
crafts. To make a long story short, the effect of
tliis old teaching and practice still lingers, and is
seen to-day in the class feeling which exists, though
happily not so strongly as it did. between the pro-
fessional man. the soldier, the administrator, and
the tradesman.
As mankind developed ne\\ and higher activities
the State emerged, and \\ith the evolution of man.
living in an organised and regulated community,
the economic position becomes increasingly interest-
ing. Ancient writers have a great deal to say
about the circumstances which led to the foundation
of the State, and from their works much can be
learnt that helps one to picture the condition of
society in these early organised communities, and
as to the old-world conception of the duties and
responsibilities of the citi/.en. For instance. Plato
tells us that the State arises out of the needs of
mankind, that no man is self-suilicing. for all of us
have 1 many wants. That having all these wants,
and many people being necessary to supply them,
the various individuals required for these many
purposes gather themselves together as helpers or
ECONOMISTS 13
partners. This body of people is called a State.
The individual members of which it is composed,
exchange with each other one gives, another
receives and the result is that these mutual ex-
changes confer a mutual benefit.
Thus the origin of the State is attributed to want
of self-sufficiency on the part of the individual,
together with advantages accruing from a separation
of occupations, rendered possible by the establish-
ment of a satisfactory system of exchange. This
marks a very important advance indeed in economics,
for the acknowledgment of the advantages con-
nected with the separation of employments fore-
shadows the advantages which have accrued to
mankind from the modern teaching and practice
connected with division of labour, and although
ancient philosophers never advanced to this point,
they had, in grasping the advantages of separation
of employments, travelled a long way along the
road of economic science. Aristotle puts the
matter somewhat differently, but practically means
the same thing : av9pwrro$ c/>v<rei TTO\ITIKOV 0)0^
Man is essentially a social animal ; he loves
company, and cannot attain to his highest in a
solitary condition. The origin of the State is the
family. For, as Aristotle puts it, man and woman
cannot exist independently, and the association
naturally formed for the supply of everyday wants,
14 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
forms a household, whose members eat of one store.
Then as the number of families increases, there
arises the separation of occupations to which re-
ference has just been made. This opens up possi-
bilities for many uses and abuses of the economic
position. For a time man may rest content with
working to supply the daily needs of himself and
those dependent on him, but a time comes when,
while some men may go on doing this, and so practise
what Arii-totle calls CCOHOIHI'CX. another and more
pushing set of men will begin to strive after accumula-
tions of wealth. 'Flic former is natural, the latter
unnatural. Everything has a use and a misuse.
To use a thing rightly is natural and proper, but
to abuse it is unnatural. Thus Aristotle calls this
unnatural use of wealth ( 'hrematistics. Economies
and (hrematistics have something in common, at
least there is an overlapping of their spheres. For
included in the sphere of economics or household
management come the production of those things
needful for the due development of life, and the
rules guiding their consumption. Moreo\e! 1 . ;is man
is no longer a self-sufficing unit, exchange of simple
superlluiiies in order to obtain a fuller life is lawful.
But both the barter, or exchange and production
of the necessaries of life, fall also within the sphere
of chrematistics. or unnatural economics, for by
increasinu the amount of barter which supplies
ECONOMISTS 15
things needed for a fuller, yet still lawful style of
life, one begins to practise money- making, and
allied to this are efforts at an increased and un-
healthy production of goods for the mere purpose
of accumulating wealth. Hence, says Aristotle,
while simple barter for one's needs is lawful, retail
trading becomes more and more unnatural, because
men continue to exchange after they have enough.
Returning for a moment to the question of ex-
pedient and inexpedient occupations, we learn that
agriculture and pastoral pursuits are natural, whilst
those connected with exchange and commerce are
unnatural. Even here there is an overlapping in
the natural and unnatural spheres, because mining
and forestry may be included in either or both.
This part of the subject should be noted, because
one of the reasons why Aristotle takes up this
attitude on the subject of trade is so frequently
overlooked ; the Canon Lawyers evidently passed
it by unnoticed. For Aristotle taught that in the
best government, where the citizens are all virtuous
and happy, none of them should be permitted to
exercise am* low mechanical employment or traffic,
for these are ignoble and destructive of virtue.
At this point the ({notation usually stops, but by
reading on it will be seen that Aristotle had good
reasons for his dictum ; for he goes on to say that
those destined for public office should not even be
ir> ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
husbandmen, for leisure is necessary in order that
the eiti/en may improve in virtue, and fulfil his
duty to the State. Here both directly and in-
directly is taught a great and much-needed lesson
to modern democracy. Not only is there a justifica-
tion for a reduction of working hours so that the
citizen may have the leisure that is necessary if he
is to grow in virtue, but if the vote is to be used
intelligently and rightly, if the enfranchised portions
of the community are to exercise their duties as
citizens rightly, they must have a due limitation of
the working day. This teaching does not give any
support to the idler or the loafer. The citizen must
work while he works, but neither the work, nor the
hours occupied by the work, should be so exhaust-
ing, or so long, as to stunt a man's individuality and
render him an unintelligent citizen.
The powerful influence exercised by the theories
and practices of the ancient world on succeeding
generations is recognised by every careful reader of
history. In the following chapter will be traced
out the course of events as Kurope became Chris-
tianised and as the commercial stage was entered
upon and passed through its various developments.
CHAPTER II
THE EFFECT OF NATIONALITY ON ECONOMIC THOUGHT
AND PRACTICE
IN the last chapter reference has been made to the
teaching of the Mediaeval Church on the subject of
usury, and the rightful occupations for Christian
people. The Corpus of Canon Law is well worthy
of study, for that part of it which more especially
affects this subject namely, the regulations framed
for the economic sphere is of exceeding interest.
To mention but a few points, the Church Lawyers
held that community of goods, whereby the primary
needs of all may be supplied, is theoretically right.
The primitive disciples had not only taught but
had practised this. Subsequent history, however,
had seen the re-introduction of the system of private
property, society was once again securely established
on this practice, and naturally the question was
raised could it be said that Christianity had been
subverted in this particular ? Here the Church
legist borrowed a most convenient method of pro-
cedure from the juris-consult. Theoretically the
hard and fast lines of the Roman Law could not be
either changed or relaxed even in the slightest
18 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
degree. But (he lawyer was espial to the occasion.
If facts are loo strong, invent a iietion. And as the
Civil Law had been subject to amendment and
modernisation by means of fictions, so now the
definite practices of the early Church, which had
become difficult, if not impossible, to enforce in a
semi-heathen community. Mere softened down by
means of fictions. Community of goods is theo-
retically right, but the institution of piivate property
is a necessity owing to man's jail. The exacting
of usurv on loans of money was absolutely forbidden,
as was also the exaction of a price fixed by the
haggling of the market. The seller, it was laid
down, must sell at juxiutn ju'ctiuni, and not at what
might be a momentarily fictitious value fixed by
supply and dfinaud. The poor and needy must be
relieved ; this was no matter of mere choice and
philanthropy, but a legal debt debituni lc<j<de.
The man who, in his business or other avocations,
practised the unnatural economics, was called an
avaricious man : nor was there any shade of differ-
ence between the devotee of chrematistics and the
devotee of idols. An avaricious man. said the
Church, is an idolater.
.From these few dicta it will be realised that the
ideal was high and noble, perhaps in its entirety
one of the noblest ever set up in this world : but.
whilst it might have been practised under more
ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND PRACTICE 19
primitive conditions with advantage, when applied
to Europe at the moment when commercial develop-
ments were becoming more and more practical
politics, such teaching, especially when enforced
by an authority which wielded power, not only in
this world, but in that to come, threatened to prove
an impassable obstacle in the road of progress.
Clerics did not realise that the world had not only
changed, but was refusing to remain unprogressive.
Theories and regulations which met the needs of
the hunter and the shepherd were out of date.
The infant mankind was growing up, and to attempt
to keep the limbs of the stalwart and developing
youth cramped within swaddling clothes would
create a situation of disaster, either by repressing
natural growth, or by causing the infant garments
to burst. Nor is this lesson one that can be dis-
regarded at the present moment. Each generation
has its needs, and has to make its own way along
the road of progress. To enjoy to the full the
possibilities belonging to its epoch, whilst not in a
revolutionary spirit disregarding all that is old, nor
abolishing every Jaw or custom handed down by
preceding generations, it behoves it to realise its
powers, its privileges, and its responsibilities. Thus
the great aim should always be so to modify old
laws and customs as to bring them into conformity
with modern needs. The greatest lesson taught by
i>o ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
liistory to the statesman, the lawyer, and the social
reformer alike, is that in order to progress natur-
ally and that is synonymous with saying, in order
that humanity may enjoy to the full the possi-
bilities of the moment there must he evolution, not
revolution. The evolution must be natural, pro-
gressive, and healthy, because when this natural
evolution is working, society advances with the
times, but anything that tends to clog or obstruct
a natural evolution inevitably decreases the pace,
whilst blind revolutionary measures merelv .serve
to put hack the clock altogether.
One of the first lessons ihat ha- i<> be learned in
political or social science, is thai there has been
throughout the ages co/ih/m/i//. 'I his must be
realised in all its bearings if progress is to be main-
tained. The natural sequences should be loliowed.
and so far as it is possible tor human statesmanship
to grasp the great lessons of the past, they should
be applied to the needs of the proem, in order that
the future mav not be prejudiced, and human pro-
gress stultified bv a break in evolution, \\inch can
on.lv icsemble the shunting <>i a.n express train on
to a siding.
In iheearlv .Middle .\<j;es Rome symbolised t'miv.
both ecclesiastical and political. The spiiiiual
descendant ol St IVier. as ilishop of Koine, u as
looked up; MI as the representative ol (Jod upon
ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND PRACTICE 21
earth, and the Vicar of Christ. He was the Head
of the Church, and as such ruled not only the souls
of the faithful, but had a power, somewhat difficult
for us to realise now, over all human concerns.
Standing by the side of the Pope, but a step lower,
came the Holy Roman Emperor, the secular head
of society. Theoretically the Emperor was in the
temporal sphere supreme. Beneath these two im-
posing figures society \vas divided up horizontally.
Pope and Emperor each supreme in his proper
sphere, then came the great officers in Church and
State, Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Kings, Dukes,
Earls, and so on down to clergy and laymen, the
latter commencing with the lesser nobility and
ending with the serf. There was hardly a trace of
nationality. Europe had become cosmopolitan :
but the seeds of disintegration were there, and were
as time went on being sown more and more widely.
The early Norman kings of England struck a chord
which was to reverberate throughout the Continent
when once the sun of progress began to quicken the
good seed. On his accession, William the Conqueror
only admitted with qualifications, the papal claims to
jurisdiction over the English Church, nor was he a
servile vassal of either his nominal feudal overlord,
the King of Eraiu'e, or the Emperor, \\hose paper
titles entitled him to a subservience almost equal
to that accorded to the Deity Jiimseii. The weak
22 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
spot in this organisation was that there were only
two positions of the first rank one in the Church
and one in the State. With a feudal system breed-
ing men of virile action and independent thought, it
was not to be expected that only two positions of
splendour would be sufficient. Human ambition
is a powerful impulse, and it proved sufficient to
break down the system which in theory was well
iitted for the right governance of the world in
both the spiritual and material spheres. Ambitious
men may be content with such a system if they be
Pope or Emperor, but there being mo'e ambitious
men than available positions, schisms arose in the
Church, as a result of which two or more individuals
claimed to be the representative of St Peter, and
called upon the faithful for their allegiance : whilst
the Imperial position became a mere title to which
Europe paid but scant attention.
Among these various and contending forces a
great movement gradually took form, and with
what has been called the iirH<uxx<tii<-c. there was not
only a rebirth of learning and liberty, but from the
point of view now under consideration, something
far more momentous. With tin- Ji^nai-^ancf came
a rearrangement of society, for Nationality was the
greatest outcome of this rebirth. Europe became
divided ii| into constituent pails, and t-aeh of these
bound together by ties of race-, speech, or tradition.
ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND PRACTICE 23
became a. nation. In other words, the horizontal
division of society proved to have been too artificial,
and henceforward a vertical division, resulting
from nationality, vitalised Europe with an esprit
engendering a competition between State and
State which, while entailing much that is regrettable,
has powerfully affected the world for good. The
attempts of recent years once again to make Europe
cosmopolitan, the internationalisation of Socialism
by Karl Marx and his followers, do not make for
progress, for if successful they would tend to repro-
duce in the highest spheres, the petrifaction and
lethargy which a healthier spirit fought against
and conquered centuries ago. It may be conceded
that conflicts of armies are a relic of barbarism, and
should belong to past histoiy, but twentieth century
civilisation can only be quickened and be effective
and progressive under the stimulus of a rivalry in
the more peaceful spheres of science, invention,
commerce, and industry. In these, individual,
personal, and national characteristics have played,
and continue to play, a healthy role, and are the
mainspring of the clock of progress. But it may
be asked how did the ideals of nationality affect
economic thought and practice ? To answer this
question a short excursion must be made into the
domain of history in order to show how the earliest
economic policy, definitely pursued and developed
24 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
of set purpose by Government, originated. This
policy is known as the Mercantile System, or Policy
of Power. Its commencement is not altogether
easy to trace, but it reached its highest develop-
ment under Cromwell. Its inception was very
largely due to a growing conception of nationality,
and the ambition of some of our kings to increase
alike their importance and their realm by carrying
on a spirited foreign policy.
"When the Anglo-Saxons conquered this country,
and Britain became England, the kings, whether
of the Heptarchy or following them, the kings of
a united England, were expected to live of their
own. This oirn consisted of the Royal Demesne,
lands set apart for the king, into which the spare
land of the community became absorbed. Early
English kings were great landowners, but their
estates were hardly private property, for their
revenues were expected to be sufficient to carry
on the work of government and support the royal
dignity.
The Northmen invasions, however, led to an im-
portant modification in this simple system. Weak
kings commenced a system of bribing the North-
men either to go or to keep away. These bribes
were mainly paid in money or valuables, and to
raise the necessary sums taxes were levied. The
history of taxation in this country is full of interest.
ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND PRACTICE 25
for some of our most highly prized liberties were
won by means of bargaining between people and
Government. Had the revenue of the Royal
Demesne continued to be sufficient to meet the
needs of the Government, in all human probability
our monarchy would have been autocratic, and
our liberties very considerably circumscribed.
As the nation progressed, however, it was no
longer possible for a king to live of his own, and
the necessity for levying money taxes increased.
This tendency was subject to a remarkable develop-
ment under some of our most notable kings. Henry
II., Edward I., and Edward III. all required large
amounts of additional revenue to enable them to
follow their ambitions. In very early days experi-
ence had taught the difficulty of exacting money
from the agricultural interest, but as towns and
cities began to flourish, the Government discovered
that there was a fund of wealth being created by
traders and manufacturers from which the sinews
of war could be extracted. Hence it became an
important aim of the Government to foster trade
and manufactures, not because these pursuits were
loved for their own sakes. but because by means
of them a very valuable taxable fund might be built
up. From this evolved the Mercantile System
which became the economic policy of Western
Europe from the break up of the mediaeval system.
-><> ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
There are some points of resemblance between the
Mercantile System and State Socialism. Both
have as a common ideal the State organised on an
industrial and commercial basis. It is in their
ultimate aims that they differ : for while the
Mercantilist strove after national self-sufficiency,
the aim of the State Socialist is that, by means of
State ownership of all the means and factors of
production, every child born into the community
may have a level chance in life.
The Mercantile System, in its most developed
form, imposed upon this country a corpus of legisla-
tion whose object was the building up of a great
and wealthy State. This included the Navigation
Laws, the first of which dates from the reign of
Richard II.. whilst the final form was due to the
genius of Cromwell. These laws had as their
definite object the creation of a great mercantile
marine. .Another great feature of the policy was
the Corn Laws, whose object it was to protect and
help farmers, so that England might be independent
of supplies of grain from abroad : there were also
the Statutes of Apprentices, and the Poor Law
framed to regulate the labour force, and to deal
with the problem of poverty.
(ireat men evolved a great policy under which
a great empire and a jrreat commerce were suc-
cessfully founded. Smaller men carried the policy
ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND PRACTICE 27
to excess ; they did not realise that a scaffolding
may be necessary for the construction of a building,
but that it would be mere folly to keep the scaffold-
ing in place after the building has been com-
pleted. The Mercantile System became petrified
and inelastic ; its supporters looked upon it as a
permanent part of the constitution, which must not
be modified in any particular. The great aim of
Government, they said, was to foster a favourable
balance of trade ; to this end exports must exceed
imports in value, so that the balance might be
received in gold. This created a very interesting
situation which, but for the good sense of leading
men, might have entailed commercial and political
decaj'. Fortunately, however, at the moment when
the policy appeared to be most solidly established,
men with large views, and a more than ordinary
foresight, began to question its permanent utility,
and to fathom some of the delusions dear to
its advocates. Men like Sir William Petty and
Sir Dudley North not only realised that the old
system was getting outworn, that the building
having been built the scaffolding should be removed,
but the}' began to formulate a new policy to meet
the changed conditions of the economic sphere.
Their theories arc the beginning of those doctrines
of natural liberty which were perfected a century
later by Adam Smith. The steps by which these
28 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
new doctrines evolved may be briefly stated.
Originating in England, they found their way to
France and led to furl her speculations. The new
theories brought about the formation of a new
school of economic thinkers, known as the Physio-
crats. These men. inspired by the old Roman
conception of Jus Xalnrti'. declared that there is
a Law of Nature, a beneficial code which has been
established by Nature herself, and this furnishes
mankind with the standard to which all human
policies ought to conform. The sound conclusions
of Petty and North as time went on became em-
broidered with a great amount of fancy work. The
swin<r of the pendulum, so far as these theorists
were concerned, was complete. Undoubtedly, many
of their doctrines were largely a product of the
time. The unfortunate state of atVairs existing in
France during the latter half of the eighteenth
century, lent colour to somewhat fantastic specula-
tions whieh contained both a political and an
economic th"ory. On the subject of labour, they
held that onlv labour employed in agriculture
or the extractive industries is productive. Thus
labour employed iu manufactures or transport \\as
classed as unproductive, together with I hat of the
profess! oil a I man and the merchant. To judge of
the annual increa.se of national wealth, it was held
bv them to be but necessa; \ to calculate the value
ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND PRACTICE 29
of the products of field, forest, water, and mine,
and deduct the cost of their production. This
gives the produit net, and is the sole measure of the
increase of national wealth. It was indeed conceded
by them that manufactures, commerce, and the
liberal professions may be useful, but they are un-
productive and sterile, drawing their gains from the
superfluous products of agriculture, and the number
of people employed in them should therefore be
reduced to a minimum. These teachings were a
necessary protest against the worst fallacies of the
Mercantilists. Indeed, in spite of anomalies, the
world to-day owes much to the Physiocrats. They
had appeared upon the scene at a time when highly
artificial regulations were threatening to strangle
both commerce and industry. This was the more
important, since owing to discovery and invention,
trade and business were ripe for considerable ex-
pansion. The Physiocrats had a favourite motto,
Laissez /(tire, laissez fxtsser. by which they meant,
keep your hands off and allow trade to develop along
its own lines. Absolute freedom of trade was held
to be the surest way to progress, both national and
world-wide. For by freeing trade from all possible
restrictions, llie smallest possible deduction for
commercial services would be made from the
l>roduit net ; customs-duties, octroi, expenses of
Government, and other restrictive regulations, all
30 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
in the end caused leakages from the one great fund.
The great interest of the Physiocrat position now is
that the best elements of the system were absorbed by
a very remarkable man. and were by him transmuted
into pure metal. Adam Smith had early in lite
set himself a great task the revision of the whole
range of philosophy. Me did not succeed in accom-
plishing all that he had planned, but after a long
sojourn in France, during which lie discussed economic
theories with the leading Physiocrats, he set to
work to produce a givai work on wealth and its
phenomena. In th<- year 177*>. he- published "An
Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the \Vealth
of Nations." This was speedily recognised as one
of the most remarkable books ever written, and
Adam Smith was acclaimed as the founder of a new
Science. Th'- moment when this book appeared is
marked by some momentous events as one of the
great epoch-making periods in history. For that
same year the American Colonies declared their
Independence and Democracy was born : and only
a few months earlier .lames \Vatt had perfected
his steam engine, \\hich was distined to etlect so
many changes in industries and manufactures, arid
bring about that great social event known as the
Industrial Revolution.
It is not too much to say that Adam Smith's
book ha i as powerful an effect on modernising trade
ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND PRACTICE 31
and industry as the steam engine, for it showed
the necessity for adopting a different attitude to
economic questions, and became the inspiration of
a series of statesmen from Pitt to Gladstone, who
by their policy smoothed the way and made progress
possible. Indeed, but for this new spirit infused
into the statesman and legislator by Adam Smith,
the new developments would have been sorely
hampered.
The theories of Political Economy had been made
concrete and simplified by Adam Smith, but the
subject was neither limited nor completed by the
Wealth of Nations. Other thinkers published their
conclusions. Ricardo, indeed, was ambitious of
rewriting the Wealth of Nations. He succeeded in
opening up new avenues for speculation by con-
structing an economic man a useful hypothesis,
and a necessary step in the development of the
subject. This economic man, however, has been the
cause of a great deal of misconception and mistrust.
Malthus, too. writing at the time when causes
and effects in the industrial world were difficult to
determine with certainty, by taking a too restricted
view of the situation, and by keeping his attention
closely fixed upon contemporary hardships, evolved
his law of population and laid the foundations of a
theory of wages. This, with Ricardo 's theory, gained
for Political Economy the title of the dismal science.
32 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
It is unnecessary here to go in detail into either the
theories or the errors of these and other early
economic writers. The important point is to realise
that an entirely new economic situation had arisen
owing to the application of steam power to manu-
factures. A new set of problems the like of which
mankind had never previously faced, yet vitally
affecting the well-being and the future of the nation,
presented themselves and demanded immediate at-
tention. Neither statesman nor reformer, employer
nor employed, had cither a precedent to which
to refer, or a standard to which appeal might bo
made. For some decades there was a period of
tragedy caused by the fact that, whether with or
without good intentions, people were ignorantly
groping in the dark. Experience had to be bought,
and in this case it was bought at the cost of much
suffering, injury to the race, and even death. Un-
happily many of the worst sufferers were helpless
little children, and women. This forms the darkest
chapter in industrial history, and usually its causes
and the lessons which may be learned from them
art' ignored, it is of the utmost moment to those
who desire to know the truth about present social
conditions to study very carefully the period of the
early days of industrialism, for unless this be done,
misconceptions \\ill be 11 mi voidable.
CHAPTER III
THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIALISM
IN ENGLAND
SOCIALISM is essentially a modern movement. It
originated in the developments which took place
in connection with the great changes wrought by
the Industrial Revolution ; thus to really under-
stand Socialism as preached in England to-day, a
knowledge of English industrial history is necessary.
The great revolution caused by the application of
steam power and labour-saving machinery to manu-
factures, very completely transformed the condi-
tions and circumstances of living for the great mass
of the nation. Up till that time the population of
this country had been comparatively small ; but
the opening up of new markets, and the extension
of the world's trade, coming just at the time when
new processes of production made it possible to
supply a large and growing demand, caused popula-
tion to increase by leaps and bounds. Thus began
to arise a new social situation ; a small population,
for the most part sparsely scattered over the country,
gave place to a comparatively large and ever-
growing population, not scattered over the country
n 33
34 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
but concentrated in towns. These towns were to
a great extent new, having been called into being
by the changed industrial conditions. They had
neither tradition nor precedent to rely upon. Their
growth had been haphazard ; factories and mills sur-
rounded by the dwellings of the workers were irregu-
larly piled together. At first perhaps this had arisen
for convenience' sake, but the final result was that
most distressful feature of the modern world, the
industrial town of the mid-nineteenth century with
ill-paved, irregular streets, large numbers of back-to-
back houses, producing in due time all those problems
social, municipal, physical and ethical connected
with the slum. In a sentence in place of a small
population living mainly under rural conditions,
there arose a dense town population centred in a
comparatively few localities.
The Industrial Revolution led to the production
of commodities of all kinds in greatly increased
quantities. What had been the comforts or even
the luxuries of the \\ealthy now came within reach
of those who were comparatively poor ; indeed,
one of the great changes effected by the revolution
Avas that henceforward the manufacturer was to fix
his attention more and more on the production of
those goods which would command the greatest
sale. .In other words, it was the needs of the masses
which were to be catered for rather than, as had
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 35
hitherto been the rule, the demands of the wealthy.
In no instance perhaps is this great change so clearly
seen as in the shipping industry. The Indiaman of
the eighteenth century had brought to England
silks, jewels, perfumes and the hundred and one
things necessary for the luxurious life. During the
nineteenth century shipping became more and more
the means of making the conditions of life for the
people more comfortable ; the great object of inter-
national commerce being to ensure for the masses
food-stuffs and clotiiing, good, plentiful, cheap, and
of a standard never before within their reach.
At the same time, too, economic thought and
practice began to take a new direction. Theorists
began to consider the newly developing organisation
of industry. The master-craftsman had developed
into the capitalist employer, the journeyman had
become the hand. These and other novelties had
become part and parcel of the new order of society,
and after a few decades, it was confidently assumed
that the new state of affairs had come to stay. A
too restricted view of an}' situation invariably
results in drawing a false conclusion ; it \vas so in
this case. None of the economists, with the pos-
sible exception of J. S. Mill, either went behind or
questioned Capitalism. Nor was it until great
abuses in connection with factory and slum had
grown into glaring evils that anyone thought, or
:m EcoxoMirs .\xn SYNDICALISM
indeed dared, to question the new economic
conditions.
It is at this point that teachings, feeble ai first,
but growing in strength and volume, began to make
their appearance these teachings are the beginning
of modern Socialism, (rradually a school of re-
formers arose which was anti-capitalistic, advocating
sweeping economic reforms, criticising the existing
ideas as to private property and competition this
school was Socialist.
It is well worth while pausing for a moment before
considering these new theories, to gain some further
idea as to how the new social evils had arisen. Is it
conceivable that a group of evil-intentioned men
devised the factory system, thought out a policy
for sweating labour of all descriptions, of buying
cheap and selling dear with the deliberate intention
of depressing the condition of the worker, and by
these means raising themselves to positions of
wealth and importance ( Had any group of men
been so far-seeing, had they been able to lay plans
so far ahead, and with so great a measure of success,
one would almost have to confess that they deserved
their reward. But this was by no means the case.
Throughout the business world, in connection with
manufacture's, the labour force, markets, and bank-
ing, everything was revolutionised. Xo one knew
exactly what was happening the whole industrial
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 37
world, for a considerable time, was blindly groping
in the dark. There was practically no previous
experience to go upon, no precedents whence
guidance might be sought. Take the banking
sphere, for instance. Here at fairly regular inter-
vals for a number of decades, pressures leading
on to crises and even disaster became the rule.
It seemed to be a law of nature that the business
world must pass through a cycle culminating with a
Black Friday. Subsequent history has considerably
modified this view. Want of knowledge and
lack of experience led bankers, when times of diffi-
culty were threatening, to begin calling in their
advances, and to tighten up their purse-strings ;
they must safeguard themselves whatever might
happen to the rest of the community. Thus, just
to mention a few dates in last century, in 1825, 1833,
1845 to 1847, 1850, 1800 there were commercial
crises. Each of these, however, taught a lesson,
from which experience of the greatest moment was
painfully gathered. The banking interest now
knows how to face an incipient crisis, with the result
that for many years past such phenomena have
been robbed of their worst terrors.
Similar lessons, mutatis mutandis, have been
learnt, or are being learnt in all spheres of industry
and commerce, with far-reaching results to the com-
munity ; but the ardent social reformer is very apt
38 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
to ignore these significant facts. It should be
noted, too, that both law and custom had evolved
to suit other and simpler circumstances ; it took
well-nigh half a century to get even the foundations
laid of a system of law suitable to these changed
conditions.
When one reads history and realises how long it
took to evolve a satisfactory system of Parliament
or Justice, both of which were beginning to shape
themselves in Norman and Plantagenet times,
though a really satisfactory system in each case
only resulted after 1(588, it must be conceded that
though there are many anomalies still existing in the
industrial sphere, though there is much to be re-
gretted in social conditions, yet if one compares
the state of affairs in 1813 with that of 15)13 there is
much of which to be proud. Many difficult problems
have been fathomed, and the capitalist system (to
accept a phrase which has become current) has
shown a remarkable elasticity, and the capability
of progressing on right lines. There has been a
very real evolution in the besl sense of the word.
Moreover, this is in accordance with the best tradi-
tions of our race. It is indeed a great and striking
fad that in little more than a century we have
realised most of the difficulties and problems con-
nected with the vast revolution wrought by the
invention oi steam- a revolution prolonged by a
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 39
series of inventions, greater than the whole previous
history of man ^ can show. The English race has
boldly faced this difficult situation, and on the whole
has faced it wisely. A system has been built up
containing elements which warrant our facing the
future full of hope. A great deal has been success-
fully accomplished in a comparatively short time,
but what is of even greater moment, the system
established with so much travail gives promise of
accomplishing }*et greater things. Evolution, the
great secret of English success in so many spheres,
is working, and promises to go on working, in this
sphere too.
The thought naturally arises, do the critics of our
industrial system really grasp the intricacies of the
mechanism of modern commerce ?
Modern Socialism, then, may be said to have
originated owing to conditions resulting from the
Industrial Revolution. The impossibility of fore-
seeing where certain forces, if left uncontrolled
and subject to ignorant chance alone, would lead,
brought about a condition of affairs among certain
sections of the working classes which can only be
called appalling. It should be pointed out that a
great deal of the trouble and misery both of the past
century, and even of that now existing, has been
caused by an ignorance of economic laws ; especi-
ally is this the case in relation to population. The
40 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
law of population as stated by Maltluis was perhaps
rather too sweeping and definite ; but it should be
remembered that he lived at a time when it seemed
as though a certain system would be permanent.
What he enunciated was in the main true enough ;
it was his successors who, developing his theory
on wrong lines, preached an impossible doctrine.
The law as he stated it was to the effect that popula-
tion will increase up to the means of subsistence.
And he tried to prove that while population can
increase in geometrical ratio, the means of subsistence
the food supply can only increase in arithmetical
ratio. This being the case, an equilibrium must be
maintained, and this may be done either by natural
or by artificial checks ; the best check is to set and
maintain a high standard of comfort. Malthus
was perhaps rather too definite, but the working
of the law can be easily traced in certain sections of
the community. The statistics of slum populations
show this. Under slum conditions arc found the
highest birth rates. It is true that the highest death
rates are found there too. but the net increase is also
greater than in the comparatively well-oil' classes.
The point is of interest because it bears on various
questions, such as that of fixing a minimum wage
for sweated workers. So long as these people
exemplify the law. and. whilst having a very low
standard of comfort, tend to increase up to the
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 41
means of subsistence, the effect of fixing a minimum
wage would merely be to intensify the trouble.
With this class of people the first requisite is to
implant a real desire for a higher standard of living
this once done, a minimum wage would be bene-
ficial ; otherwise its utility must be very doubtful.
There must first come the desire for better condi-
tions, then the possibility of enjoying them ; it
is to a great extent true to say that the indi-
vidual makes the slum, i.e. the worst side of slum
life.
The situation created by the Industrial Revolu-
tion would need much time to describe fully, but
from one or two extracts from the speeches and
writings of the period a sufficiently good impression
can be gained. In the year 1840 Lord John Russell
informed the House of Commons that the people
of the British Isles were in a worse condition than
the negroes in the West Indies. Dr Arnold wrote
to Thomas Car] vie that the state of society in
England was never yet paralleled in history.
Richard Cobden during the Anti-Corn Law Cam-
paign was able to tell stories of people reduced to
living on stewed nettles and the meat taken from
decayed carcases. Emigration on a large scale was
going on, and these emigrants left our shores sullen
and angry, nursing a feeling of the bitterest hatred
against the old country. The mass of the people
42 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
began to look on the Reform Act as a failure.
Nor had efforts to improve industrial conditions,
whether of a peaceable nature or those accompanied
by physical force, resulted in anything satisfactory
to the workers. Commissions were appointed to
examine into the condition of England ; but the
outcome was nil, for their only practical suggestions
were that riot and possible revolt should be subject
to drastic repression. Lord Melbourne denounced
the criminal character of Trade- Unions and seriously
advocated their suppression.
In 1834 there had been a radical revision of the
Poor Law. but so far as the masses could see, the
only tangible result was the cutting off of doles,
and the rigorous enforcement of the r>'yiwe of the
Workhouse. Then came revelations concerning the
factories the employment during brutally long
hours of women, and even little children, together
with a mass of evidence of a very horrible state of
affairs. Frederick Engels. the co-worker with Karl
Marx, revealed to continental Europe the state of
things existing in England. (Jreat indeed was the
surprise to hear that in the workshop of the world,
where wealth was being accumulated in hitherto
undreamed-of amounts, the conditions of life for the
great mass of the working classes we're intolerable
and unspeakable. It is a sad picture to look back
upon, but it is worth doing if only to grasp an idea
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 43
of the great change that has come over industrial
life and its conditions.
As the new state of affairs developed, and the
wage-earners grew in number, the divergence between
their interests and some of the doctrines and theories
of the economists became more and more distinct.
Nor was it long before, from amongst the middle
classes, a new type of thought began to make its
appearance. The labouring population was appar-
ently so environed by the new system that self-help
on right lines was not to be expected. In their
efforts to free themselves from the ever-tightening
grip of untrammelled competition, which was now
the accepted policy of those in authority, they began
to adopt measures whose only result could be the
deepening of the misery of their lot. With un-
educated fervour the doctrine of physical force and
revolutionary excess was preached and to some
extent practised. This it was that inspired men
like Robert Owen and Frederick Denison Maurice
in England, St Simon and Fourier in France, in the
face of a misinformed and unsympathetic public
opinion, to take up the cause of the workers. Self-
help being impossible, it behoved tho.se enjoying
superior advantages of \vealih and education to
lead and inspire the helpless workers and endeavour
to put their efforts towards the bettering of their
material and social position on sounder economic
44 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
and constitutional lines. The masses if saved at all
must be saved by the middle class. This created
an extremely interesting situation, to understand
which, a sketch of the careers of these self-appointed
leaders is necessary.
Robert Owen was born of comparatively poor
parents at Xewtown, Montgomery, in the year 1771.
From his earliest years it was evident that his was
no ordinary personality. Before he was seven years
old lie had absorbed all the knowledge that the local
schoolmaster could provide, and himself acted as
teacher in the school. At the age of nine he left
school and spent a year in London ; thence he
joined a draper at Stamford, named M'Guffog,
and with him thoroughly learned to judge woven
materials, a knowledge which was to stand him in
good stead during his business life. Before leaving
home some well-intentioned religious ladies had
lent Owen some books on religion. These books,
unfortunately, were not really religious, but were
concerned witJi religious disputes. The reading of
them had a disastrous effect, for the young boy
began to distrust Christianity which, while professing
to be a religion of peace and goodwill, could lead
to such dissensions. Unhappily, too. Mr M'Guifog
and his wife had disputations on religious doctrines,
and these decided Owen finally to break away from
accepted traditions. It was undoubtedly a great
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 45
misfortune, because from what one can gather of
Owen's character, there were all the possibilities of
a strongly religious man there. From Stamford,
Owen returned to London to get further experience
in the drapery trade, and about the year 1788 he
went to Manchester. He arrived in the great textile
town at the psychological moment. After a short
experience of working on his own account, at the
age of nineteen he applied for the post of manager
at a mill employing five hundred hands. He was
the youngest applicant for the position and asked
for the biggest salary, but so impressed was Mr
Drinkwater, the owner of the mill, with Owen's
personality, that he was appointed. With this
managership came out for the first time the rule
that was to be the guiding principle of Owen's life.
All the mills were being equipped with the newly-
invented machinery, and of this the mill- owners
took the greatest care. But between them and
their workpeople the sole bond was what CarMe
has tersely described as the " cash nexus." So long
as the agreed wage was paid, there all responsibility
ceased. Owen at once declared that his policy
would be to take as great care of the living machinery
as of the inanimate. His management was extra-
ordinarily successful, and Mr Drinkwater before the
end of the first year had decided to take him into
partnership at the end of three years. There was
40 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
some opposition to this from Mr Drinkwater's son-
in-law, and Owen at once severed his connection with
the firm. He had no difficulty in finding a niche. His
ability was now well known, and he prepared to
start in business on his own account in partnership
with some Manchester friends. In order to equip
the Chorlton Twist Mill with new and up-to-date
machinery Owen had to visit Glasgow, and there
met his fate in the person of Miss Dale, daughter of
the proprietor of the New Lanark Mills. In order
to get an introduction to Mr Dale, Owen offered to
buy his mills, and succeeded both in doing so and
in marrying Miss Dale. For some four and twenty
years from January the 1st, 1800, Owen's chief interest
was at New Lanark. Here he developed his theory
and practice as to the right relations which should
exist between employer and employed. The Scot
workpeople were at first very suspicious of the strange
Welshman, but eventually Owen completely won
their confidence. In the year 181:2. during a shortage
of cotton, many mills. New Lanark amongst others,
had to close down for some weeks. No work, no
pay. was the general rule. Not so. however, \\ith
Owen. Throughout the weeks when the \\orks
were closed down. Owen's operatives regularlv
received full pay. at a cost of something like tTOOO !
In another direction, too. Owen wrought a great
improvement in the conditions of living for his
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 47
workpeople. He found that they were victims of
the small shop, that credit and an inferior quality of
goods cost these folk dear, and that the purchasing
power of their wages was seriously diminished.
To remedy this Owen cleared a floor in the mill,
installed a competent salesman, and laid in a stock
of the ordinary goods consumed by workpeople.
He bought the best quality goods in wholesale
quantities, and was able to supply them at prices
very little more than he paid. Here AVC have the
beginning of distributive co-operation, the model
copied shortly after by the Rochdale Pioneers.
Moreover, Owen began to develop his theories as to
improving the living machinery for his works. He
opened what he called an " Institution for the Forma-
tion of Character." Here the children of his work-
people began their life training at the earliest possible
age. Little toddlers of two years old entered this
Institution : trie beginning this of the Infant School.
Owen's educational methods are still of value, and
some of them might be copied with advantage. In
spite of his open-handedness or perhaps in conse-
quence of it Owen is credited with having netted
no less than 360,000 in a little over twenty years.
He was one of the most successful mill-owners of the
day, and his model establishment, with its arrange-
ments for the betterment of the workers, became
one of the show-places of Europe. During the last
48 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
thirty years of his long life he lived to lie nearly
eighty-eight Owen gave himself up to furthering
co-operation, and many social-betterment schemes.
These latter ended in failure and disappointment,
but the great lesson of Owen 'a life can never be
forgotten, lie, first, under the new conditions
resulting from the Industrial Revolution, realised,
taught, and practi-ed the right relation between
employer and employed.
The other English name mentioned, that of
F. I). Maurice, belongs to a generation later than
Owen. Maurice wa the son of an Unitarian minister
and was born in the year 1805, a couple of months
before the victory of Trafalgar impressed the world
that England had definitely and successfully adopted
a policy of evolution as against one of revolution.
Maurice was carefully educated, mainly by his father,
and became a scholar in the true sense of the word.
Although the family was outwardly harmonious, as
a result of religious discussion, a system of written
disputation was kept up. These disputes led to
important consequences. First Mrs Maurice became
a stern Calvinist, firmly believing in a small body
of the elect and a great mass of lost, and unfortun-
ately for her own peace of mind she numbered
herself among the latter. One daughter became a
Baptist, another an Anglican. Thus, as might be
expected, at a comparatively early age young
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 49
Maurice felt unable to accept his father's religious
convictions. However, when he went up to Cam-
bridge at the age of eighteen he was still a Non-
conformist. His career at the University was
distinguished, and he might have taken a brilliant
degree, followed by a Fellowship of his College,
but he shrank from signing the Thirty-nine Articles
apparently to ensure self -advancement, so went
down without taking his degree. For some time
he worked as a journalist with John Sterling in
London. Then, finally, deciding to join the English
Church, although now twenty-five years old, he
entered Exeter College, Oxford, and again worked
for a degree. On graduating he also took Orders,
and accepted a curacy near Leamington. In the
year 1836 he went to London as Chaplain to Guy's
Hospital. It is very difficult to picture the state
of working-class feeling during those eventful years
between 1836 and 1848. As the months passed by
a feeling of great uneasiness was experienced all
over Europe, and gradually a tide of revolution,
surging over the continent, found its way into
England. Thrones were tottering, and for a time
it seemed as though the Republican form of govern-
ment would be almost generally adopted. Maurice
for one had no doubts as to the best form of govern-
ment for England. Tense as were his feelings, and
deep as were his sympathies with the workers, he
50 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
mistrusted revolution. Nay more, he had con-
victions in favour of the monarchy. Nor did he
hesitate to voice his views. He boldly declared
that although individual kings might be discredited,
kingship was not. In (State affairs he was a Con-
servative of the best type. A strong government
was the first necessity, but as to how the community
living under that strong government should be
organised, he took a widely different view from
those agreeing \\ith him as to monarchy. It was
the duty of the rotate to safeguard the interests of
the individual citizen and protect his property,
but what was needed at this time of national crisis
was that citizens should Avork harmoniously to-
gether hi association, instead of being ranged in two
camps separated by a rivalry \\hosc mainspring was
cut-throat competition. This attitude was the main
plank of the Christian Socialist movement, led by
.Maurice. Hughes, and Kingsley. and influenced them
in both their educational work, which resulted in
the foundation of the Working .Men's College, and
their policy for national well-being, which led them
to champion the cause of co-operation.
For a considerable time, however, it looked as
though a policy of force would prevail, and the year
1x48 in England, as abroad, was a time of tumult.
It is unnecessary to repeat the well-known story.
London was spared the sight of riot and bloodshed.
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 51
Great preparations on both sides were made for the
presentation of the monster petition to Parliament,
on April the tenth. A large force of special con-
stables, amongst whom was Maurice, was sworn in to
keep the peace. The day, like so many in England,
was dismally wet, the Chartists' riot fizzled out, and
the petition went quietly to Westminster in a cab.
Failure for revolution true ; but on that same
day Maurice, Kingsley and a fe\v kindred spirits
met, and as a result of that meeting the Christian
Socialists concreted their organisation, and began
definitely to make their views known publicly.
Next day London was placarded with addresses to
the Working Men of England, telling them that they
had friends, unknown personally, it was true, but
" who love you because you are their brothers,
who fear God and therefore dare not neglect you,
His children." These placards were followed by
the publication of a small periodical called Politics
for the People, sold at one penny a number. This
little paper had a circulation of about two thousand
copies, and although only seventeen parts were
issued, the theories and feelings of the editors were
strongly and effective]}' voiced. Maurice began
strongly to denounce the selfishness and cruelty of
unrestricted competition in industries. li Competi-
tion," he declared, '"is put forth as a la\v of the
Universe. That is a lie. . . . The payment of wages
52 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
under this competitive s^-stem has ceased to be a
righteous mode of expressing the true relation
between employer and employed. ... It is no old
condition we are contending with, but an accursed
new one. the. product of a hateful, devilish theory
which must be fought witli to the death." It can
easily be imagined the outcry that such a declaration
caused in certain quarters. l>ut Maurice held on
his course : he was no idle declaimer. nor did he
advocate an impossible utopia. His watchword
was " association " a policy based on association
would bring hope and salvation to the workers, not
only so far as material well-being was concerned, but
intellectually and educationally it would be the safest
and surest road to the highest culture.
It must, however, be carefully noted that these
associations advocated by Maurice were not to be
organised and nursed by the State. The workers
were called upon to organise themselves, to take
their fate boldly in both their hands and go forward.
It was the function of the State to sec that they had
fair play, and to prevent abuses. The Co-operative
Producing Associations brought into being by the
mutual working and class sympathy of the workers
themselves would, if successful, result in the elimina-
tion of the excessive profits of dead capital, and the
ferocity of the competitive struggle would be lessened.
Maurice's dream was that from small beginnings
(SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 53
the Associations both for the production and dis-
tribution of goods, and the education of the masses,
might become universal.
It was thus that modern socialism commenced in
England, under leaders like Robert Owen, one of
the most successful business men of his time, and
Frederick Denison Maurice, a clergyman of the
English Church, holding strong views as to monarchy,
but advocating associations among working people
for both their intellectual and material well-being.
It is true that these two men did not see eye to eye
on many subjects, especially on religion ; but,
under somewhat different forms, they preached and
practised a very similar doctrine.
CHAPTER IV
EARLY CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM
WHILST events were occurring in England as just
narrated, tinder different conditions somewhat
similar developments were taking place in France.
Xew thoughts by a neM- school of theorists speculating
on economic subjects were destined to have far-
reaching results. The criticisms of these men on
the situation as it affected the working classes in
France, originated in the after-effects of the French
Revolution, in combination with the new industrial
conditions resulting from the introduction of the
factory system. Men like St Simon and Fourier were
anti-capitalist that is to say. they were Socialists ;
and. like Owen and Maurice, seeing the want of
capability among the masses to create among them-
selves efficient leaders. saw the necessity for bringing
aid to them from members of the superior classes.
It was but natural that the wisest and best of
the community should endeavour to regenerate 1
society, and this must be done by educating the
masses to live under an ideal system. But whilst
being socialists they were not revolutionaries, they
preached no class warfare. What had to be done
54
EARLY CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 55
was that the masses should be raised, not that
those who were better oft' should be depressed,
Here again we have a middle-class movement.
Claude Henri, Comte de St Simon, was born
in the year 1760, and claimed descent from
Cha.rlemagne. An ambitious man, and withal vain,
as may be realised by the order he gave his valet
as to awakening him each morning : " Arise,
Monsieur le Comte, you have great things to do
to-day." He tells how his great ancestor appeared
to him in a vision and urged him to devote his life
to philosophy, promising him that his successes
in that sphere should be as epoch-making as his
own had been in arms and statecraft. He was
undoubtedly a man of broad views, and held that
so far as the present organisation of society was
concerned, what was required was amendment, not
revolution. As to private propert} 7 , if it consisted
of investments worthy of compensation, it was
rightful. As to the relations that should subsist
between capital and labour, harmony, not strife,
should be the aim the fight should be between the
industrious and the idle. Society ought to be so
organised that all its members must work. Indeed,
it may be said that one of the greatest, if not the
greatest, contribution made by St Simon to the
subject was the necessity of work by all. The
central teaching of his system was that the labour
50 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
of the entire community should be so directed that
the physical and moral condition of all its members
would benefit. To this end the nation should be
organised on an industrial basis. But as the people
were not yet lit to govern in the industrial sphere,
this duty must be entrusted to scientific experts,
industrial chiefs. Government proper would be
limited to other spheres and to giving the heads of
the industrial associations a free hand. Let this
system but once be instituted and " mankind would
cease exploiting one another, and mutually turn
to exploit the earth.'" Although St Simon did not
actually attack private property, his followers did.
Taking up his teaching as to the necessity for all
to work, they declared that there mast be no idle
class ; the idle capitalist living an on unearned
income must have no place in the new society.
Such a man is a parasite, an exploiter of the worker.
Here socialist teaching is becoming very modern.
In criticising the existing system, it was declared
that capitalist employers as owners of the instru-
ments of production are able to dictate their own
terms to the workers. Nor is this all, for, thanks
to the system of inheritance, the instruments of
production are handed on from father to son. even
though the son may be incapable. This too must
be ended, and the community must own all capital.
Here again the teaching is remarkably modern.
EARLY CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 57
Francois Marie Charles Fourier was born in the
3 T ear 1772. His father was a prosperous draper at
Besan9on. By nature young Fourier Avas a student ;
however, bowing to circumstances, he went into
business, and once there, worked well and success-
fully. At a very early age he began giving attention
to commercial abuses and the petty tricks of trade.
It is related how, as a small boy of five years old, he
was severely punished for making some too truthful
observation concerning some of his father's stock !
And when a young man of twenty-seven he was
roused to anger at having to destroy a quantity of
rice which had become unfit for human consumption
owing to its having been " held for a rise " during a
time when many people were suffering from starva-
tion. His experience led him to the conclusion that
the existing system of society was fundamentally
wrong, and he set himself to work to think out what
the new system should be. Like Robert Owen he
advocated a system of association, but his associa-
tions must be limited in membership. Eighteen
hundred members, he decided, was the ideal number.
Such a community could be self-supporting and
could reduce the numbers required for protection
to a minimum ; thus the great majority would be
producers. Much has been borrowed from Fourier
by modern socialist writers, e.g.
" All labour may be pleasant ; it is only over-
58 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
work that is unpleasant, and that should be un-
necessary."
" Change of occupation is good no man ought
to devote long consecutive hours to one piece of
work."
" Between the ages of eighteen and eight-and-
twenty a man ought to produce sufficient to enable
him to live henceforward a life of leisure."
Labour, said he. may be divided into three classes
necessary, useful, and agreeable. Necessary labour
deserves the highest reward, but those who choose
agreeable tasks deserve the lowest pay. Exertion
should be the measure of reward. He also gave
currency to the theory of a minimum wage for all.
With all his socialism he was not entirely orthodox.
There would, he thought, be a surplus after labour
had been paid, and he allowed that a third of this
surplus should go to capital, thereby showing that
he realised the necessity for providing some induce-
ment for thrift. Probably he foresaw that without
this reward, capital would not be accumulated.
In the year 184S the proletarian revolution broke
out in France, and after that time the lead in socialist
thought was taken by Germany. Socialism ceased
to be middle-class. It can hardly be said that there
was a definite break : the early socialism shaded
into the modem, and between the two. like a
EARLY CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 59
connecting link, comes Louis Blanc. Born in 1811
at Madrid, the son of King Joseph's Inspector-
General of Finance, Blanc enjoyed the advantage
of a good education and became a tutor and journal-
ist. Turning his attention to writing, he published
a book, L 'Organisation du Travail, and this made
him very popular with the French working classes.
This book preaches the brotherhood of man and the
need that every individual born into the world
should have the chance to develop his character
and intellect to their fullest capacity. For his work
a man should be paid not according to the quantity
produced, but should receive sufficient for his wants,
that is, he should be able to cultivate any tastes
and talents with which nature had endowed him.
No sj'stem should be considered successful unless
every member had his needs supplied. Thus the
great point of Blanc's teaching is the right of every
individual to a chance for fully developing his indi-
viduality, and that he shall have the needs of that
individuality supplied. This he considers is not
possible under a competitive regime. He is as fierce
on the subject of competition, as then practised,
as was Maurice. He calls it a murderous warfare.
The plan for his workshops was worked out on these
lines, and as it was clearly impossible that the
workers could establish such workshops themselves,
it was the duty of the State to step in ; but the
no ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
Stale should he limited, so fur ;is management of
the workshops was eoneerned. to appointing the
Directors for the first year. Once established, the
workers must enjoy the privilege of electing their
own Directors. Louis Blanc's originality consists
in his having been the first to insist on the necessity
of the State taking an active share in the organisation
of the work of production. Of his workshops as
established in France it is probably true to say that
they never had a real trial, perhaps it was not
intended that they should ; but under even the most
propitious circumstances they must have failed.
The dictum that al! men should produce according
to their faculties, and consume according to their
needs, may look well on paper ; but Blanc, like
many a social reformer since his time, forgot that
very insistent entity human nature. All men are
willing to consume according to their needs, and,
when that is the rt'yhtie under which they live,
their needs have an insistent way of growing. How
many men are willing to work according to their
faculties when motive is reduced to a minimum '(
Looking back over the work of these early
Socialists, while their theories sound Utopian and
their writings are tinged with sentimentalism, it
cannot be denied that they did influence economics
for good both in the theoretical and practical spheres.
The whole question of the distribution of wealth, a
EARLY CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 61
subject far too scantily treated, was brought into
prominence, and its issues were made urgent. They
also drew public attention to the possible abuses
connected with the institution of private property
and the right of inheritance subjects hitherto
unquestioned. Tn refusing to accept private pro-
perty as a fixed, unchangeable fact they fell into
error. Had they demanded limitation in place of
abolition, they would have been working along
sounder lines. Indeed, they would have anticipated
the practical policy which has been developing
with success in this country since 1894.
Interest in the development of socialist theories
during the second half of the nineteenth century
shifts over to Germany. Here a school of thought
originated and developed, which, although owing
much to English and French predecessors, and
developing their theories on new lines, turned
definitely from the classes to the masses. In a word,
socialism became proletarian, and its leaders began
to pride themselves on having broken away from
the Utopian ideals of their neighbours, and on having
entered on a path of " Scientific Realism." Fore-
most, at any rate in point of time, among these new
reformers come Roclbertus and Lassalle.
Johann Karl Rodbertus was born in the year
1805, and was the son of a Professor at the University
of Greifswald. He studied law at Gottingen and
62 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
Berlin, and as a comparatively young man settled
quietly on an estate in Pomerania in order to give
his attention to economics. Here he elaborated two
main ideas a labour theory of productivity, and a
belief that labour was receiving a decreasing share of
what it was producing. Hence one important part of
his work was a criticism of distribution from which
he goes on to consider a phenomenon unnoticed
before the Industrial Revolution, but now recurring
with almost cyclical regularity commercial crises.
Rodbcrtus adopts, but exaggerates, a theory
originally enunciated by Ricardo as to the part
played by labour in production, by declaring that
labour produces all \\ealth; and he is careful to
make his readers understand that by labour he
means manual labour only. He allows that organ-
ising ability and brains count for something, but
such things arc a free gift of nature to the individual
possessing them : this being so the share of produc-
tion due to them is small, and their reward should
not be great. As to Jus dictum that the manual
labourer who creates all wealth is being cheated
out of an inereasinglv lai'ire proportion of what he
makes, although then* \\as possibly some colour
for such a statement half a century ago. such a
position in the li^ht of reliable statistics is no longer
tenable. 1 Rodbertus tells us that there are three
EARLY CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 63
claimants to the wealth annually produced the
rent of land, the interest of capital, and the wages
of labour. Of these the t\vo first exist because
labour produces a surplus over and above what is
necessary for the subsistence of the worker. The
institution of private property places the wealthy
in a position of advantage which enables them to
seize this surplus for their own use. As a result of
this the masses, gaining but a bare subsistence, are
unable to develop their higher natures, and this
is a great detriment to the well-being of the com-
munity. Whether his argument was right or wrong,
his conclusion arrested the attention of professed
economists, who began to see the necessity for
giving very much greater attention to the; subject
of distribution i.e. the consideration of rent,
interest, profits and wages, and especially the tAvo
last. That industrialism should result in there
being a large class of ill-paid labour, tending to
intensify the problems connected with poverty and
misery, led him to declare that the economist should
no longer be content with ignoring this distressing
fact ; and that, if economics is a science, the problem
of poverty should be as carefully investigated as
the problem of wealth. In theorising on the subject
of commercial crises Kodbertus tries to slum that
with a decreasing wage share the workers' power
of purchasing commodities decreases ; thu.s pro-
G4 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
duction tends to become greater than consumption.
Manufacturers finding the demand for their goods
lessening begin to decrease their output, there is a
shrinkage in employment, and the workers are really
in the grip of a vicious circle, bad leading to worse.
This may account for bad times and unem-
ployment, but it does not account for recurring
good times, and a prosperity which is not confined
to one class of the community. If the workers'
share was always diminishing, and their purchasing
power always decreasing, then 1 would be no recur-
rence of good times. The theory does not coincide
with the facts.
What is his remedy '. Me advocates nothing
startling or revolutionary. Indeed, he concludes
that it will take about live centuries to evolve a
system satisfactory to all interests. The poverty
of mankind, and the commercial crisis which does
so much to intensify it. can only be eliminated by
wealth becoming the property of the community.
To show how the evolution he hopes for will work,
he tells of three great stages in economic develop-
ment. In the first stage there was slavery, ownership
of human beings that was in the Ancient World.
Then comes the stage in which slavery is abolished,
but whilst man is nominally free', land and capital
are subject to private ownership, the result being
that whoever wishes to manufacture goods must
EARLY CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 65
pay rent for the use of land, and interest for the
use of capital such is the condition of affairs at
the present day. In the future a new era will appear,
during which land and capital will cease to be subject
to individual ownership ; they will belong to the
user for the benefit of the community. Kodbertus
calls this the Christian-Social Era.
Realising that benefits coming some centuries
hence have only an academic value to the man in
the street, Rodbertus laid down the lines of a policy
for immediate practice, as calculated to smooth the
way towards better things. The condition of the
worker should at once be improved by regulation ;
hours should be limited, the amount of work per
man should be regulated, a minimum wage should
be fixed, as also should prices. Robert Owen in
his Labour Exchanges had made use of a labour
currency, i.e. a paper money based not on bullion
but on hours of work. Rodbertus suggested a
similar expedient, declaring that the adoption of
this polic} r in its entirety would be calculated to
shorten the time before stage three would dawn.
Ferdinand Lassalle was born twenty years after
Rodbertus, and unfortunately a foolish quarrel led
to a duel which cut short an interesting life at the
age of thirty-nine. He was the son of a prosperous
merchant, but preferred a University career to going
into his father's business, He studied philosophy
06 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
and philology at the Universities of Berlin and
Breslau, and during his student years he imbibed
democratic republican ideas which as years passed
grcu" in intensity, and resulted in the foundation of
the Social Democratic Party in Germany.
The English Economists, developing Adam Smith's
teaching on the subject of wages, had built up a
hideous doctrine known as the Iron Law of Wages.
As Lassalle accepted this theory and attacked
capitalism from that standpoint, it is worth while
knowing at any rate a little about it.
Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nf (lions points
out that originally the worker received the whole
result of his work ; but as society progressed, rent
emerged in connection with land, and improved
cultivation required increasing amounts of capital.
Hence rent and then interest had to receive a share
of what was produced. The share of the worker
came to be fixed by two things firstly, the funds
available for his employment, and secondly, the
density of population. Eventually wages reached a
point at which they sufficed to maintain the popula-
tion, and were equal to the means of subsistence.
Ricardo followed the same line of thought, but in
place of means of subsistence suggested a new phrase,
standard <>j liriinj. He declared that wages would
conform to the motion which the workers themselves
had formed of the standard of life thev would lead.
EARLY CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 67
for that notion would determine the increase of
population. Malthus, theorising on the same subject,
declared that it was impossible to improve the con-
dition of the poor man by means of money, and
so enable him to live better than he did before,
without depressing the condition of others in the
same class. He thus assumes that a certain fixed
amount of the total food produce of a country will
go to the working class, and that the total food
produce is a fixed amount, so that any increased
demand means increase in price, without leading
to an increase in supply. These assumptions, it
ma}' be noted in passing, may have been true at
the time when Malthus wrote, but fortunately
those times were exceptional, and so the theory
requires modification. However, the subject did
not remain undeveloped : both James Mill and his
son, John Stuart Mill, carried the theory further ; in-
deed, the younger Mill gave the final form to the Iron-
Law, which may be briefly summed up as follows :
(i) Industry is limited by capital, but does not
always come up to that limit, the increase of
capital gives increased employment to labour
without assignable bounds.
(ii) It is not all capital which constitutes the wages
fund of a country, but only that part of it
which is destined for the direct purchase
of labour.
OS ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
Thus wages depend mainly on the supply
and demand of labour, or on the proportion
between population and capital. With these
limitations of the terms, wages not only de-
pend on the relative amounts of eapital and
population, but cannot under the rule of
competition be affected by anything else.
Wages cannot rise but. by an increase of
the aggregate funds employed in hiring
labourers, or a diminution of the number
of the competitors for hire.
I Fere we have a doctrine full of despair for the
working classes, for if it were true, efforts successfully
made to improve one class of workers would result
in depressing some other class. Ft is hardly to be
wondered at that Political I'.conomy was disliked
and called the dixtnul wiener. Happily economists
have retraced their steps, and enunciated a far more
wholesome doctrine, at once full of hope for the
workers, and in consonance with the facts. Wages
are not fixed by dividing some definite amount of
capital bv the number of workers : the wages fund
of a country is only limited by production itself,
for wa^es are paid out of the result of production,
and only for convenience' sake out of existing
wealth. The working classes then can raise their
standard of living, and can demand a greater share
of what is produced, without being haunted by the
EARLY CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 69
thought that increased wages must necessarily be
gained at the expense of their fellows : production
itself is the limit, so that a well-organised labour
force, with adequate economic knowledge at its
command, can successfully take measures to improve
the condition of labour as a whole.
This digression was necessary in order to make
clear, however sketchily, a very important point.
Returning now to Lassalle, he accepted the Wages
Fund theory in all its brutality, and declared that
such being the position under the capitalist regime,
labour is in a hopeless position. The obvious, and
only remedy, said Lie, is to abolish capitalism and
reorganise society on a basis of co-operative associa-
tion, with the State to supply the necessary credit.
Lassalle makes a critical analysis of capitalism
and sums up its essentials. First comes division
of labour, then production is organised to cater for
a world market, thirdly competition is the main
motive force, then one favoured clans, the capitalists,
own the instruments of production by means of
which they exploit the wage-earner to whom they
pay as wages a bare subsistence and retain a large
surplus for themselves. Thus a dead instrument
has depressed the condition of the living agent.
In formulating the new doctrine of conjunctur,
Lassalle attacked industrialism from a new stand-
point. There are a series of circumstances or
70 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
conditions that may favour the fortunate individual,
nor are these due to any effort on his part. Nation-
ality, birth, fortunate circumstances generally, bring
fortune to certain individuals, whilst others through
no fault of their own experience the reverse. Thus
to a great extent the individual cannot control his
own destiny. Chance in large measure steps in,
and this makes it necessary that the control should
be in the hands of Society. Moreover, the larger
issues, such as wars and crises, are uncontrollable
by the individual. Thus the important events
which make or mar nations, being not of individual
but of social origin, it is for the community to take
the lead.
Much of the teaching of Lassalle is so full of inter-
esting surprises that his early death is a cause of
great regret. Had he lived to work out his theories
more fully and revise them in the light of a ripe
experience, there might have been a rich mine of
thought, useful to the social reformer and the
economist, and perhaps of benefit to the whole
community.
CHAPTER V
INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM
SOCIALISM had developed considerably between the
days of Robert Owen and Lassalle. Self-dependent
associations of working men, organised in a free
State, unassisted by the State, but working under
a system of law giving them free pla}~, had been the
dream of the first socialists, then active assistance
by the State had been demanded, and this demand
had developed into State Socialism. But socialism
still remained a matter of association, and it con-
tinued to be national. This position, however, was
not to be final. The next advance was to be an
attempt to make it international and cosmopolitan ;
moreover, peaceful methods were to give place to
revolution. The new leader, Karl Marx, was a
very remarkable man and had a very remarkable
history. He was born at Treves in the year 1818.
His father was a lawyer, and hoped that his son
would follow in his footsteps. At the Universities
of Berlin and Bonn the younger Marx studied law,
but, in the process, became interested in history
and philosophy. At first he dreamed of an academic
career, but in the early forties journalism claimed
71
72 ECONOMICS AM) SYNDICALISM
him. and he became Editor of the K/icnix'i (I'azettc.
During tliis editorship lie became aware of certain
deficiencies in his intellectual equipment, and so
decided to study economics at Paris. He married,
and settled in Paris in the year IS43. Owing to
his advanced opinions he \vas expelled from France
two years later and went to Brussels. While there
he showed his wit and power as a controversialist
by attacking Prudhon's Philo^ojthie de In Mi. sere,
in a book which he entitled Ln Ml^rc. dc In I'/iilo-
$oj)hi( ! During this time too he coni])osed a
manifesto for the ( 'ommunist League : and naturally
durum the IS4S period lie was very bu>y. In the
year 184!) he settled in London, and it was in London
that he died in the year ISS.'J. A man of great
industry, he worked untiringly in the Library at
the British .Museum, where he acquired what was
probably an imiijue kno\\ le<l<_ r e of the literature of
Economics, and of the history and development of
modern Europe. In the year lsti4. as a result of
the Industrial Exhibition held two years earlier,
the International \Vorkini: Men's Association was
founded. There had been a previous attempt at
the same sort of tiling, which had under the influence
ol Marx developed into the Communist League.
The IM-\V association was originally intended to be
a. means for furthering the genuine interests of the
workers ot all countries. It \\as. houever. captured
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM 73
by the Socialists, who, finding themselves strong
enough, quarrelled with a group of members who
were tinged \vith anarchist proclivities. These
anarchists were expelled from the International,
and the Socialists hoped that they would be able
under the leadership of Marx to advance their policy
and influence unimpeded. Howsver, after the failure
of the Commune in Paris in the year 1871, the
International languished and died. The final policy
of the International is interesting, as it was the
policy of Marx. This policy was outlined in the
most important congress of the association, held at
Brussels in the year .1808. There it \vas declared
that mines, land, and the means of communication
ought to be the property of the State, which would
hand them over to associations of working men to
be worked for the common good ; further, that
through co-operative societies and the organisation
of mutual credit alone could the workers own the
instruments of production ; that labour produced
all wealth, and therefore ought to enjoy its full
reward without any reduction for rent, interest, or
profit. It is perhaps only fair to add that at a
congress held at Basle a year later, a proposition
condemning the right of inheritance was defeated.
In the year 1804, on the death of Lassalle, Marx
had obtained control of the Social Democratic move-
ment in Glermanv. and had redoubled his efforts at
74 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
agitation. His influence with the dissatisfied elements
of labour throughout the world was immense, and
probably is greater now than ever it was in his life-
time, although some of his doctrines have lost some-
what of their original force. His great work. Das
Kapital, has been called the Socialist's Bible, whilst
recently the Syndicalists would appear to have
drawn a good deal of inspiration from his teachings.
Under Marx, from an ethical point of view,
Socialism degenerated, becoming a pure materialism.
One authority has said of it : " In passing into its
latest or German stage. Socialism gained intellectu-
ally, but lost morally."
With a cynicism that was characteristic. Marx
accepted and developed what is known as the
Economic explanation of history. This theory
contains some truth undoubtedly, and is of consider-
able interest : it may indeed in some cases serve as a
useful antidote to the chivalry, blood and glory
school of historical writing : but extremists have
carried it so far that it would, if accepted, deprive
history not only of all romance but of all nobleness.
Every movement towards truth and right, every
attempt to withstand oppression or succour the
\\eak. would be attributed to motives of self-interest.
Pounds, shillings and pence would be looked for as
the basis of the motive force impelling men along
the road of progress. Extremists go so far as to
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM 75
declare that Mahomet did not win converts so
much by his religions zeal or even military prowess,
but because at a time when it became possible to
develop trade, and the Christian Church held that
trade would lead to fraud, the Koran taught that
trade is approved by Allah, and the faithful may,
without any spiritual disadvantage, take part in
commerce. Or again, the Crusades were not fought
really to re-take the Holy Places from the Saracen,
but because the road-ends at the Levant by which
the merchandise of the East entered Europe were in
the hands of the infidel, who thereby made a huge
profit at the expense of the European consumer.
Even the Reformation is not so much a religious
movement as one which under the cloak of religion
was really organised by the shopkeeping nations to
enable them to break away from the economic
restrictions of the Canon Law. Such interpretations
make human history a poor thing : all nobleness, all
self-sacrifice, all the higher motives of life are sacri-
ficed to an all-consuming desire for the questionable
advantages of an increasing material wealth. The
earlier Socialists had held that man is innately good,
that amid much that may be regretted there is a real
nobleness to which appeal can be made. Marx
and his school deny this, declaring that all great
changes can be traced to methods of production and
exchange ; that purely material forces dominate
7(> ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
And determine the acts of communities and the
social arrangements of nations. Applying such
arguments to modern life. Marx has little difficulty
in deciding that the worker is at the mercy of the
wealthy, that capital exploits labour and makes
unjust profits thereby.
As to Marx's economic doctrines it is of interest
to examine what he has to say on the subject of
Capital. Value, and Surplus Value : on all these his
views are incomplete, not to say unsound. Mis main
error consists in ignoring some of the main factors
of the economic position.
As to Capital, lie tells us that "Money, the final
product of the circulation of commodities, is the
first form of Capital." Is lie juggling with terms
or is he ignorant of the elements of Economics I
Economics was a subject with a well-defined vocabu-
lary before Marx began to speculate ; and in using
economic terms he should ha\e used them in the
ordinarily accepted sense. The Kconomist in defin-
ing Capital teaches thai Capital is wealth used in
production. This definition tells us at once that
there must have been Capital in the world long
before money was employed. The first implement
that man devised to help him to work to better
advantage was the origin of Capital. Capital can
exist apart from money, although under modern
conditions for convenience sake Capital is mostly
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM 77
spoken of in terms of money. Capital, which to
Marx is a vampire sucking the blood of labour,
is really the factor in production to which we owe
the possibility of relieving work of the greater part
of its hardships. Capital viewed aright is the
friend which has eased the burden ot mankind
and made life more bearable. It is capital that
brings an eight-hour day within the bounds of
practical politics. Marx's error is that he fails to
differentiate between the right use and the abuse
of a great instrument. A poison abused by an
ignorant or wicked person may cause agony and
death. The very same poison used by a skilful
doctor may not only relieve pain but be a great
blessing. To condemn capital wholesale, because
in some instances through ignorance or through
wrong-doing it may have caused hardship and
misery, is to ignore the broad lessons of history.
Moreover, riot only does Marx fail to understand
what capital is, and ignore its true function, he
also fails to realise the importance of the user of
capital, and the fact that the use of capital is not
restricted to any one man or one class. In all this
he continues to mislead the present-day Socialist.
The working-man agitator talks airily about taking
over the instruments of production ; the Syndicalist
urges each group of workers to take possession of
the industry with which it is connected and retain
7S ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
the whole product for itself. Everything that is
produced is said to be the work of the manual
worker : the organiser is a parasite who sucks
the life-blood of the worker. For this is the con-
ception of the position, and is the explanation of
the class war that is so recklessly preached.
Really capital is an instrument in production, and
in common with all instruments must have a user.
It cannot set itself in motion. There is. moreover,
a great danger connected with capital. It owes its
existence to thrift and abstinence (it is a common
socialist gibe to retort " the abstinence of the
millionaire ! ") without thrift and abstinence this
instrument would never have existed. When a
man makes use of capital in business he runs a great
risk, because capital can only be used by consuming
it. Thus, unless the user produces, firstly, an
equal amount to replace what he has destroyed, and
then a further quantity to pay the lender for his
thrift, and himself for his risk. the community sutlers
because the capital available for industry has been
decreased in amount. As a matter of fact the man
who can successfully make- use of capital is skilful
above the average. The brain power may or may
not be of a very high order, but it is comparatively
rare. -Many people can be trained to use success-
fully the ordinary tools and instruments of daily
life, and even thouirh they be bunglers the instru-
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM 79
ments are not necessarily destroyed ; they can
generally be used again. But Capital once used is
lost, and must be replaced a miscalculation, an
error in judgment, a want of skill on the part of the
user, and the Capital utilised, having been consumed
in the using, is lost. This is the explanation of high
profits for successful business men, high salaries
for skilful organisers a fact conveniently ignored
by Marx and his followers. 1 High profits and high
salaries are not necessarily made at the expense of
the wage-earner ; indeed, in many instances, as is
well known, it is by the best organised business
firms, making the best profits, that the highest
wages are paid and the most regular emploj'ment
is given. Not onry do these theorisers ignore
the importance of the " Captain of Industry," but
they ignore the fact that the use of capital is not
restricted to one favoured class of the community.
The Capitalist Class, to accept the Socialist
expression, enjoys no law of entail. Compare the
history of commercial families with that of those
connected with land. The general experience in
business is that a firm, on the average, ceasets to
exist with the third generation. Our industrial
history, since the introduction of steam, tells with
almost wearying repetition of the appearance and
success of the self-made man. The explanation is
1 C/. Appendix, p. 13,"),
SO ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
that the ability to organise work and use capital to
advantage is no hereditary characteristic. And in
a country like England, ability, like murder, " will
out." Let a man but once show his integrity, and his
ability to organise, and he has but little difficulty
to find supporters. It may be difficult to make the
initial advance, but the man of grit is not deterred
by difficulties, as is proved by the biographies of
our leading manufacturers and commercial men.
Not only, however, does one find Marx to be
unsatisfactory in his teaching on the subject of
Capital and the Capitalist, but he is equally unsound
when he treats of Value. He tells us that " Leaving
out of consideration the utilities of commodities,
they have all one common property. They are all
the product of human labour : not of any particular
kind of human labour, but of human labour in the
abstract. The value of a commodity is the amount
of abstract human labour embodied in it." And
he adds that the more value there is in a commodity
the more labour there is embodied in it. Tn other
words, the cause and basis of value is labour.
Although there is a partial truth here, it is stated
absolutely, without modification, and as stated
the theory will not bear criticism. The Economist
says that value is caused by utility together with
limitation in quantity. That is to say. that where
ti commodil v is useful and to the extent that its
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM 81
quantity is limited, it Avill have value. This defini-
tion will bear all tests. The theory that value is
caused by labour will not. For instance, a man
picks up a nugget of gold weighing half a pound.
Is the labour entailed in stooping down and picking
up that nugget worth about twenty- three pounds ?
And yet that is what the fortunate finder will be
able to sell the nugget for. Again, if labour is the
cause of value, when a commodity has once been
made its value will not be subject to alteration.
A man makes a chair, and, when finished, the chair
is worth, say, two pounds. If the labour embodied
in that chair is really the cause of its value, the
chair will always be worth the two pounds, no more
and no less, because you cannot add to or take
from the labour which has been expended. And
yet furniture emporiums have " sales at great re-
ductions " \ To show the absurdity of the theory it
has been wittily asked, " If labour is the sole cause
of value, what is the cause of the value of labour
itself ? " The theory will not bear criticism.
It is, however, on the subject of surplus value
the great contribution made by Marx to economic
thought- that- the greatest fallacies concerning the
relation between capital and labour have been built
up. According to this theory, the capitalist buys
from the worker the use value of a day's labour for
its exchange value or cost. The difference between
82 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
these two is the tuirpliis value which tlie wicked
capitalist retains, and by means of which he waxes
fat. A popular explanation of this theory is given
in a little pamphlet written by Mr ). Bruce
Glasicr, entitled. How Millionaires ore Made. This
pamphlet, price one penny, is to be found on sale
at most socialist meetings and bookstalls. The
story embodies the working of the surplus value
\lnonj. The story is interesting because it not only
contains the theory but its refutation ! Il is worth
while, therefore, giving the story in outline. John
and James were two brothers. They had been well
brought up, and then put to the engineering trade,
one as a blacksmith, the other as a turner and
fitter. .Both were intelligent, but neither showed
any symptoms of unusual ability or genius. They
worked fairly hard, and laid IH( n honest, and ex-
ceedingly thrifty. But they did not grow rich.
Their wages were thirty shillings a week, and it was
only by exercising the greatest care lhat they could
save li\e shillings a week. To become millionaires
at this rale they calculated would require SO. DIM)
years, and yet some men had made several millions
in a do/en years or so ! It could not be by saving
that working men became millionaires. They
continued their calculations, and found that, at
thirty shillings a week, a \\orking man in thirty
years, that is rather longer than the ordinary working
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM 83
life, would only receive 2340 very far short of a
million. The question was for a long time considered
by these young men. and at length light dawned.
" No man ever became rich in this world so long as
he was content to be a working man merely." He
must get hold of other men's labour, become an
employer, a capitalist, if he wishes to become rich.
If anyone wishes to be a rich man he must hasten
out of the " position of being a mere honest work-
man, as he would hasten out of a house infected
with cholera or smallpox." Then John and flames
decided to become rich if they could. Their savings
had mounted up to twenty pounds each. Just as
they came to this decision there was a great demand
in their neighbourhood for iron construction work.
The brothers therefore rented a shed and got in
some simple tools and tittings by a wise expenditure
of their forty pounds. They then approached one
of the contractors who was very busy, and offered
to do some part of his contract at a cheap rate if
he would supply tho materials. The bargain was
struck, the brothers left their old employment and
started in business. They worked hard, and they
worked long hours, and now they found that, as
their own masters, the longer and harder they worked
the more money they made. A mouth finished
their first contract, and they found that after allow-
ing for all outlay on material, wear and tear of tools
S4 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
and rent,, they had cleared fifty shillings a week as
wages. Or if they allowed ten shillings each for
overtime, they had made u, -profit off their own
labour of ten shillings a week each. The brilliant
idea then occurred to them. If we can make ten
shillings a week profit on our own labour, why not
make it on the labour of other men too ! They
therefore arranged to take a larger contract, and per-
suaded several of their former fellow-workers to work
for them. On the completion of the contract their
expectations were fulfilled : they had made a profit
of ten shillings a week on each man employed. They
rubbed their hands gleefully. ..." We have found
the way at last."
The story continues until boih brothers had
prospered and become wealthy men. One got into
Parliament, and so on. The whole thing accom-
plished by exploiting labour, by taking possession
of the surplus value created by the worker. Is
tins the real or only explanation ? Surely not:
the whole explanation is forced and coloured to suit
the doctrine. The story is true enough, and can
be easily duplicated many times over by turning to
the "History of our successful manufacturers. What
are i he real causes of the success of .John and .lames '.
The story tells us that neither of these men
showed any symptoms of unusual ability or genius ;
but surelv as their little historv unfolds itself this.
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM 85
statement is contradicted. They begin by thinking
out how people become rich ; they exercise thrift
and save twenty pounds each ; they seize the
psychological moment for making use of their sav-
ings ; they note the effects of their first attempt
at contract work and lay plans for extending their
business. Just these few points show that John
and James were not merely ordinary working folk.
They were far-seeing, capable young fellows upon
whom the experience of daily life was not thrown
away. But their success was due to something
more than their own labour. The Economist tells
us that the origin of capital is abstinence and
thrift, and here we see this dictum exemplified in a
very practical way. The Economist also tells us
that there are three factors in production namely,
land, labour, and capital. Here again we have an
illuminating illustration of the truth of their asser-
tion. John and James by thrift save a little capital
of forty pounds ; by means of this the}' rent a piece
of land with a shed on it ; on the land they employ
first of all their own labour, and when tlie} r begin
to prosper they employ other men's labour. Could
one wish for a better illustration of the truth of the
teachings of economics ? In a sentence, the experi-
ence of John and James has been and will be the
experience of many a steady, industrious man who
has practised thrift and has a genius for organisation.
8(> ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
Without their capital, and without their organising
power, these young fellows would have accomplished
nothing out of the ordinary. With organising
capacity alone they might have been able to show
their ability to organise a busmess successfully, and
then to have borrowed sufficient capital with which
to start in business. The theory of surplus value
as made use of by Marx and his followers is sheer
moonshine. What Marx calls surplus value is the
wages of the skilful business man : as there are grades
in the skilfulness of labour, or in the fertility of land,
so there are grades in the skill of the men who lead
the business world : and the most skilful organ-
iser can make the greatest profits, or can earn the
highest salary, if he accepts a position as manager
to a company or a trust. Socialists will never carry
on practical business concerns if they continue to
ignore the importance of the functions of the
organiser of industry and his worth io the com-
munity. Thus one finds that Karl Marx when
theorising on capital, value, and surplus value is
unsound : yet it is on these foundations that he
builds up his indictment against the existing organ-
isation of industry, which he calls capitalism. No
one is infallible, and there is of course the possibility
that Marx's judgments may be correct, but is it
thinkable thai a sound eonr-lusioTi can b<- drrvwn
from such unsound premisses ?
CHAPTER VI
SOCIALISM TO-DAY AND ITS RIVAL SYNDICALISM
HAVING now outlined the origin and development
of Socialism down to the time of Karl Marx, the
question arises, what is Socialism to-day ? what are
its present aims and teachings 'I To answer this
question adequately would require a good deal of
space, but an examination of some of the literature
circulated by Socialists among the working classes
in this country is at the present time of considerable
interest. Thus, having collected a number of these
booklets and pamphlets, I propose to quote and
criticise some of their doctrines and statements.
One pamphlet written by Mr Robert Blatchford
is entitled What is this Socialism? At the be-
ginning the author explains that " this is not a
defence of Socialism : it is an explanation of Social-
ism. There is not room in this pamphlet to prove
that Socialism is just and practical and desirable.
The object here is to explain what Socialism is
and is not. A great deal of the hostility to Socialism
arises from misunderstanding as to what Socialism
is. This misunderstanding is due to the misrepre-
sentation of Socialism by its opponents." Mr
87
88 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
Blatchford then proceeds to say what Socialism is
not. " Socialism is not a scheme for seizing the
property of the rich, and sharing it out among
the poor. Plans for a national ' dividing up ' arc
not Socialism : they are nonsense. ' Dividing up '
means individual ownership : Socialism means
collective ownership."" Then having explained how
the people of Manchester own their tramway system,
he continues, ; ' To : divide up ' the tramway system
would be anti-Socialism. Socialism is the opposite
of v dividing up.' Socialism is collective ownership.
That the people of England should collectively own
England and all that is in England, as the citizens
of Manchester own the trams ; that is Socialism."
And again. " Socialism is not a plan to despoil the
rich : it is a plan to stop the rich from despoiling the
poor. Socialism is not a thief ; it is a policeman.''
Jn the next section Mr Blatchford deals with
\Vtmt tiocialisw Is.'' " Socialism is a system of
national co-operation. It is based upon the principle
of co-operation as opposed to the principle of com-
petition. It is based upon the principle of collec-
tivism as opposed to the principle of individualism.
It is union as against disunion, order as against
anarchy. It means each for all and all for each,
as against the present cruel and wasteful system of
' Every man for himself and the devil take the
hindmost.' ' He goes on to quote some definitions
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 89
of Socialism from dictionaries and the Encyclo-
pedia Britannica, and tells us that three of the
most popular . . . English books on Socialism
are, The Fabian Essays, Merrie England, and
Britain for the British. He quotes from the Fabian
Essays, " Socialism is the common holding of the
means of production and exchange, and the holding
of them for the equal benefit of all."
Merrie England says :
" Socialists do not propose by a single Act of
Parliament nor by a sudden revolution to put all
men on an equality and compel them to remain
so. Socialism is not a wild dream of a happy land,
where the apples will drop off the trees into our
open mouths, the fish come out of the rivers and
fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out
ready-made suits of velvet with gold buttons without
the trouble of coaling the engine. Neither is it
a dream of a nation of stained glass angels, who
always love their neighbour better than themselves,
and who never need to work unless they wish.
" Socialism is a scientific scheme of national
organisation, entirely wise, just, practical. It is a
kind of national co-operation. Its programme con-
sists, essentially, of one demand, that the land and
all other instruments of production and exchange
shall be the common property of the nation, and shall
be used and managed by the nation for the nation."
1>0 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
Britain for the British says :
'' Here in plain words is the principle or root idea
on which all Socialists agree :
" That the country and all the machinery of
production in the country shall belong to the whole
people (the nation) and shall be used by the people
for the people. This is the principle of collective
or national ownership, and co-operation or national
use or control.
Socialism may be summed up in one line, in four
words, as really meaning ' i>ritain for the British.' '
A page further on Mr Blatchford continues :
" Under Socialism all the work of the nation would
be organised ... so that no one need be out of
work, and so that no useless work need be done. . . .
At } tresent the work is not organised, except, in the
Post Office and in the various works of the Corpora-
tions." This travesty of facts requires no criticism.
Later on we read : " We have in England thousands
of acres of good land lying idle because it does not
pay to till it ; and at the same time we have
thousands of labourers out of work who would be
only too glad to till it." How many of our unem-
ployed could make a living out of even our most
fertile land ( It would be cruel kindness to transport
starving dock labourers and mock them by saying,
" There is the land, make your living out of it." To
cultivate the land requires training and knowledge.
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 91
To read Mr Blatchford one would imagine that the
kindly ground merely needs to be scratched by a man,
be he never so ignorant, and food will at once appear.
Can you argue that because the Government 1 is
responsible for the Post Office, and because some
municipalities have their own gas, water and electric
lighting departments, that therefore the community
can construct its own ships, make its own clothes,
prepare its own food and build its own houses,
better under Socialism than is done at present ?
Government and municipal enterprise at present has
the tax-payer and the rate-payer behind it. When
this source of credit and revenue has disappeared
how r are all these enterprises to be financed ? But
as to this more anon.
Towards the end of the pamphlet Mr Blatchford
assures the reader that " Socialism would begin by
making sure that there should not be a single un-
taught, unloved, hungry child in the kingdom ; that
there should be no such thing as poverty, lack of
employment, ignorance, preventable disease, starva-
tion and despair, within the borders of the British
Islands. Socialism would provide work, education,
food, clothing, shelter, clean and pure air and water
1 The present unrest in the Pot Office (1913), and the unjnsti-
iial'le strike of mi'mcipal employees at Leeds, have conic as a rude
shock to those. \vho Velicved in State and municipal enterprise as the
best means for allaying the unrest in the Lal-ovir \Voild.
92 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
for all." And a little further on : " Socialism would
abolish all that misery, and suffering, and wrong."
Yes ! what a pretty picture have we here of the
Earthly Paradise. Could we believe in the possi-
bility of Socialisjn or any other "' ism " doing one-
tenth part of what is so glowingly painted, one would
be willing to sacrifice even life itself to assist in
its attainment. Throughout the reading one sym-
pathises deeply with the aim. but sober common-
sense tells one that it is easier to say that the State
is going to do all these things for the benefit of all.
than it is to frame a practical policy for earning
them into effect. In none of these pamphlets is
there a satisfactory account of how all is to be
accomplished. The question inevitably occurs, here
we have writers glibly saying that the State is going
to organise and carry on the everyday work of the
community arc these men themselves competent
to aid in the work { Could any one of them
undertake successfully even the superintendence of
one big manufactory or shipbuilding yard '? \Yhat
system of cost account ing. what methods of store-
keeping, what organisation to prevent the thousand
and one leakages that can take place in a big manu-
facturing business would they adopt I Organisation
does not grow spontaneously. Most of our big firms
have 1 ;<' -n developed from small beginnings, the
svstem has been evolved under careful management.
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 93
Yet it is airily declared that the community can do
everything for itself, from building a battleship to
growing its ownfood supply, and that apparently with-
out any special knowledge or training for the work.
Another little pamphlet, called Is Socialism
Possible ? by Mr Eldred Hallas, after treating of
Hiich subjects as present conditions, the artisan,
the capitalist, State employment and others, asks
the question : How can it be done ? After showing
what invention has done for modern civilisation,
he concludes that the State ownership and control
of new inventions is the readiest and fairest way to
Socialism. Beginning with thai, the next steps are
the nationalisation of canals, railways, mines and
minerals, then the land ; eventually the State
obtains complete ownership. When that has been
accomplished. '' Each district would have its comple-
ment of doctors, nurses, dentists, domestic servants,
expert gardeners, window cleaners and other
officials who would be in the pay of the State.
Until there is universal disarmament England will
require to keep a small but efficient standing army,
and in addition thereto, at least one half of the
adult males should be trained to the science of war.
Home Rule should be given to all our possessions
beyond the sea as soon as it is believed the people
arc strong find wise enouyk io look after themselves.*
1 The italics are not in the original.
<)4 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
England l>y this time would be producing the bulk
of her food *>//;/>/// ; indeed, (til her oint irhcat, 1 and
with no food supply from, or possessions beyond the
seas to protect, the navy could be reduced almost
to vanishing point. . . . The hitherto wealthy man
would be found a position, as far as possible, accord-
ing to his tastes and capacity, and his increased
usefulness would in no way minimise the real
pleasures of his life. Indeed, they would be enhanced
by the change. Travel and every other form of
recreation would be possible to all. for every human
being would be a member of the aristocracy of the
world. There will be beauty and love and laughter.
There will be health and contentment and peace.
The shadows of poverty and strife will vanish before
the glowing sunlight of the (iolden Age. the Socialism
of to-morrow."
One rubs one's eyes, one thinks of human nature
at its best, and at its worst : one compares reality
with the dream, and wishes that it could be true.
The practical <|iiestion confronts one. How and when
is all this to be accomplished ' Rodbertus did
speak of five centuries as beini: necessarv before <i
much less ambition;', dream could be realised.
Present-day writers apparently expert the bigger
vi>ion to appear within th< 1 lifetime of the present
generation. .Moreover, all this is to be elt'ected by
1 1 lie italics arc not in the original.
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 95
the simple process of the State taking possession
of all the instruments of production and b}^ nation-
alising the land and means of communication.
England is to grow all her foodstuffs, her shipping
is to be scrapped, and yet travel is to be free and
open to all : our colonies and dependencies are to
be cut adrift, willy-nilly, as soon as the}' are wise
enough to govern themselves ! The idle rich man
is to be given an occupation according to his ability
and is guaranteed happiness ! There appear to be
a good many contradictions, and in giving up so
many of our skilled industries should we not
suffer irreparable loss ? Can we put all our naval
architects and skilled shipbuilders on the land to
grow wheat, and expect them, like the ex-idle rich
man. to be happy '.
Let us try to be serious. The State is going to
take over all existing accumulations of capital this
is the great secret. But until \vc alter the present
basis of society this would be a very drastic step, even
though the owners of the capital were compensated.
Moreover, it is necessary to remember what capital
is, and how it functions. Capital is wealth used in
producing more wealth ; it is an instrument, and a
very delicate one, because it is consumed in the using ;
it must be replaced and added to or progress will
cease. No arrangements are made for any of these
contingencies in the proposals of Socialism. The
96 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
proposals are kindly and -well meant, but utterly
impracticable. Moreover, one gets confused, for
while some Socialist writers rely upon the State to
do everything, others foretell the end of the State !
This phase began with Frederick Engels. the co-
worker with Marx, but it is also quite modern, for
in another booklet, in which is printed a paper
entitled " Socialism a paper read before the Albany
Press Club," by Mr W. S. M'Clure, the Socialist
Labour Press, while publishing the paper, prefix
an explanatory note which is enlightening, not to
say amusing.
" On one point the difference is marked and must
not be overlooked. Mr M'Clure in several passages
seems to suggest that the new socidy will have its
affairs directed by a redeemed State, which, though
elected in much the same way as at present, will
have been washed in the cleansing waters of the
revolution and made whiter than snow. This is
not the position of the Socialist Labour Party.
It is inconceivable that the State, an engine brought
into existence solely for the purpose of maintaining
the domination of a ruling class (slave-owning,
feudal, or bourgeois) will be either useful or necessary
in a. society in which classes have ceased to exist.
Everything points to the fact that the administration
of the material resources of society will be directed,
uot through elected rulers, but by the workers them-
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM <>7
.selves acting through delegates appointed for the
purpose. The Industrial Union, which seeks to
unite the workers as a class to do battle against
capitalism, will, when capitalism is overthrown,
supply an effective mechanism for the direction and
control of the new Republic without the need for
perpetuating any State Bogey, purified or otherwise.''
This prefatory note would appear to be a modified,
or perhaps one should say developed, Socialism, a
sort of half-way house on the road to Syndicalism.
The present aim of Socialism, from the few quota-
tions given, is to reconstruct society entirely in the
interests of all sections of the community. This is
a great and worthy aim ; nay more, at a time when
so many people are living with no ideal before them,
Socialists win our admiration by coming forward
with a great ideal. Their criticism of existing
conditions, the misery and hopelessness of the sub-
merged tenth, the overlapping of effort, the waste
of energy in many directions, the luxury and idle-
ness of a favoured few, these things ought to be
made known, and the injury to society proclaimed.
That there are abuses, even great ones, in the present
system must with shame be admitted, but the
socialist critics show no power of discrimination
all the well-to-do are parasites, there is no good to
be found in any Captain of Industry, or organiser
of business all the poor are martyrs, all the rich
98 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
are blood-suckers. The luxury and waste of the
middle and upper classes are noted, and one has to
confess that such waste does go on. lint is waste
and extravagance restricted to these classes ? Is
it not a fact that it is a failing which pervades
even- rank in this country ? At a recent meeting
where the minimum wage question was discussed,
a Socialist pleaded for an increased average wage
for every worker of five shillings a week, at a cost of
one hundred million pounds a year. In answer to
a question he admitted that, the annual drink bill
of the working classes in this country is just the
sum named. No one except a rabid teetotaller
would urge that all wage-earners should give up the
use of alcohol entirely ; but think for one moment
what the real cost of excessive drinking is to the
workers. Begin with half or one-third the total
outlay, then add lost time on bhick Mondays and
Tuesdays, and when to that is added the cost of illness
and crime connected with the excess a really big
bill begins to mount up : and yet that does not sum
up the waste and extravagance of the workers.
Those who have studied the question declare that
the loss in connection with betting and gambling is
greater than that connected with drink. One does
not wish to imply that the workers should have no
recreations, but simply to point out that waste
and extravagance are not restricted to the nominally
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 99
wealthy. On all hands there is urgent need for
reform, many abuses require checking or removing
altogether. As to this, one is in agreement with the
Socialist ; it is when remedies are proposed that a
divergence of views becomes apparent. We are
asked to go back on all the teachings of history,
and on all our traditions ; the work of those who
built up our position in trade and empire is to stand
condemned. One is asked to agree to a revolution-
ary reversal of policy and practice. Think for a
moment of the magnitude of the proposal. No
nation has ever cut itself away from its past
without suffering incalculable loss. Consider
secondly what the consequences of even a partial
failure would be consequences which would be
felt in the first instance, and fall most heavily on
the very classes of the community it is hoped to
raise and benefit. Then pause and decide whether
a policy based on misconception and error is likely
to be successful. So long as the Socialist refuses
to pay attention to natural laws ; so long as he
flouts the real origin, function and use of capital,
whilst he disparages the services of the man who can
successfully organise business enterprise ; so long
as he remains ignorant of the real cause of value, it
must be impossible to accept his theories for social
and national amelioration. The pity of it is that
such earnest men should stultify themselves. For
loo ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
the workers are showing that they will not bo
content to remain in ignorance of economic laws
and history, nor can there be much doubt but that
the hope for the future lies in the effort that the
workers are making to get real knowledge. The
great root cause of all the difficulties connected with
the present situation has been, and is, ignorance.
With a right knowledge -of economic forces and
economic laws, with a wise spirit of compromise
rightly used in the interests of all. and with a desire
for harmony and not strife, we may expect improve-
ment in the real health and wealth of the community.
SYNDICALISM
During the past two years a new development
in labour organisation and tactics in the United
Kingdom has been much discussed. In the April
of 1012 an article in The Times newspaper said :
" The existence of a strong Syndicalist movement
can no longer be denied. ... Its rapid development
lias taken everyone by surprise, including both
the older Trade Unionists . . . and the Socialists
who have dominated them. Even careful observers,
who have made some study of Syndicalism abroad,
were unprepared." Mr Ramsay Macdonald, more
recently, in his booklet on Syndicalism, assures us
v ' that all that is happening in England at present is
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 101
that Trade Unionism as an active force is reviving
and that industrial action is being resorted to with,
perhaps, the over-enthusiasm which always follows
upon a period of over-neglect." And again, " S} T ndi-
calism in England is negligible, both as a school of
thought and as an organisation for action."
In September 1912 the Trade Union Congress
for the first time debated Syndicalism, and its
supporters were hopelessly beaten on a division by
1,693,000 votes to 48,000. Yet that comparatively
meagre number includes some very active, not to say
able, leaders, and it is clearly right to know some-
thing about the movement, especially as Dr Arthur
Shadwell tells us that " the efforts made by Labour
politicians and Socialists to prove that it (Syndicalism)
is negligible show that they do not think so. When
men really think a thing negligible they neglect it."
The word Syndicalism is new to the English
language. The ordinary dictionaries do not contain
it, the nearest word Syndicate is described as an
association carrying out a financial operation,
which clearly is not an explanation of Sj'ndicalism.
The new word comes from France, and there has a
special meaning, for it denotes the policy of the
Confederation Generale du Travail, whose object is
to destroy, by force if necessary, the existing organ-
isation of industry, and transfer industrial capital
from its present owners to Syndicalists, the Syndical-
102 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
ists being the revolutionary Trade Unions. The
whole history of the movement in France has been
collected by Dr Louis Irvine, and has been pub-
lished by Columbia University under the title of
The .Labour Movement in France A Study in Re-
volutionary Syndicalism. Briefly, the object of the
Syndicalists is to be accomplished by means of a
policy beginning with the irritation strike, to obtain
shorter hours and more wages, the employment of
sabotage, (injuring employers by bad work, damage
to machinery and so on), leading on to the general
strike, as its great and final weapon.
It is possible that the inspiration for such a policy-
originally came from the secession of the Plebs in
Roman history. A century ago ]\Iirabeau spoke of
the great power of a united proletariat. .But it was
not until 1868, at a Labour Congress at Brussels,
already referred to as making public the policy of
Karl Marx, that it was declared that if production
were stopped for a time society could not exist,
and it is only necessary for producers to cease from
work in order to make government impossible.
To understand the present labour situation it is
necessary to have some idea of the relationship
between employer and employed during the past
century how that relationship stood, how it has
developed, and how it stands now. Although it js
impossible to do this fully here, it is possible, bv
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 103
means of an outline sketch, to make the position
sufficiently clear for the immediate purpose. The
connection between capital and labour at, or just
after, the industrial revolution was tersely described
by Carry le as a cash nexus. A man agreed to work
so many hours a week for so much money. When
the service had been rendered and the money paid
all obligation ceased ; the employer felt no further
responsibility, the conditions of living for the
worker were no concern of his. Under the existing
system of competition he had to buy in the cheapest
market and sell in the dearest ; the cheaper he
purchased the labour necessary for his industry the
better would he be able to compete. Here we have
a simple wage system governed by supply and
demand but below the surface such a system
entailed, in many instances, much injustice, misery
and suffering. Superficially the worker had the
advantage of being free from all responsibility as
to how the factory should be organised and managed
he surrendered his share of what was produced
for an agreed wage paid at conveniently short
intervals. But things are seldom so simple as they
appear on the surface. The individual workman
working for his daily bread, with wife and children
depending on his earning power, was in a position
of disadvantage when bargaining with a compara-
tively wealth}' manufacturer. Individual bargaining
104 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
placed great power and special advantages in the
hands of the ordinary employer. Hence efforts
were early made to effect a modification of the wish
iic-xux and individual bargaining ; this opened a
second chapter in the relations between employer
and employed. Workmen's combinations came into
existence, and with the dawn of collective bargaining,
even though the kl Union " was small <ind its sphere
restricted, labour was more on an equality for
purposes of bargaining with the employer than it
had been : the average employer and the local
Union Avere very much on a par in this respect.
The conflict of interests emerged in the first period
and continued in the second, the possibility of
friction and class warfare could be foreseen by
those taking far-sighted vie\vs. Hence about this
time began attempts to bring about an identification
of interests between employer and employed; this
was the work of Robert Owen and the early Co-
operators. A good system of co-operation would
lead to harmonious working between all the factors
in production. The employers on their side at this
time, partly to wean the men from the Unions and
partly to enlist the interest of the best men in their
work, commenced in a tentative way giving bonuses
for extra- work or skill. This marks the beginning
of the bonus system, which has bad both irood and
bad effects.
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 105
A third chapter in the story opens with the
application of the Limited Liability principle to
business. This gave the employers a new advantage
over the men, and was answered by Unions in the
same trade associating, and we get Associated Unions
such as the A.S.E. These associations might be
stronger than the average Limited Company ; thus
the employers began developing the bonus system
with profit-sharing so as to strengthen the identifica-
tion of interests and weaken the unionist position.
So far as co-operation was concerned it was found
that it succeeded as a distributing agent, but failed
when applied to production. The reason for this
was twofold. Co-operators had succeeded in getting
legal protection for their organisations, but the Act
of Parliament which did this the Industrial
Provident and Partnership Act (1851) led to the
demand for the possibility of the Capitalist trading
under limited liability conditions. In essence this
is another form of co-operation, but it had the
advantage of experience to guide it ; for instance,
while those responsible for its organisation knew
the value of the good manager or organiser, the
earh' co-operators made the fatal mistake of think-
ing that no man is worth more than about five
pounds a week, with the result that the best brains
have usually been at the disposal of the capitalist
employer. The next stage found the employer
100 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
in the stronger position, for Limited Liability trading
was discovered to possess many advantages. To
this the men answered by attempting to federate
their Unions, a policy in which they had consider-
able success. Then as friction and unrest grew,
conciliation boards for settling wages and conditions
of work were advocated, and collective bargaining
was put on a more satisfactory footing. Profit-
sharing as a harmoniser developed, in some cases,
into a new system called Co-Partnership, and this
was found to work well in cases where employment
was fairly regular, such as gas works, textile and
boot factories. Such industries have worked suc-
cessfully under this policy, and it has been suggested
as a remedy for railway troubles, and as suitable
for municipal trading departments.
Finally, the latest chapter of .Industrial History,
the present, time, gives us a situation full at the
same time of great possibilities for good and of
great dangers. Here we have the tendency for all
employers of labour to be ranged together against
an increasingly powerful organisation of all labour,
with the possibility of the sympathetic strike and
the whole programme of syndicalism as the- last
word of labour, pitted against a federation of capital
in which the tendency is for all employers to take
their place. Hence a situation full of danger,
full of complications, thanks to the intricate working
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 107
of the modern community, but happily full of hope
for the betterment of all. For given wisdom and
moderation, a right statesmanship at the psycho-
logical moment, and we may evolve just that policy
which will mean harmony and contentment in the
industrial world, so far as such things are possible
in this imperfect stage of existence. The complexity
of the situation ; the interdependence of the many
factors ; and the realisation that it is the future of
the nation itself which is at stake, has led to Parlia-
mentary interference in trade disputes ; to increased
activity on the part of the Board of Trade ; and
the feverish haste of the Press to make known
every possible view or policy on the labour question.
The simple issue is between class war and industrial
harmony between continual and wasting friction,
and identification of interests leading to increased
productive power, and a possibly higher standard
of living for the great mass of our population.
With this facing us, it is interesting to know
what Syndicalism, so urgently advocated by some
ardent spirits, means. One writer on the subject
assures us that class war is the basis of Syndicalism ;
if that be so it stands self-condemned. Its advocates
declare that society is divided into two great classes
the exploiters and the exploited. Syndicalism is
to end this, for under it the Avorkers who produce
all the wealth arc to have the full enjoyment of all
108 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
that they produce. The State, says the Syndicalist,
even though it became the employer could not eiTcet
this, hut it can he done through the Trade Union.
Syndicalists say that the worker cannot he free until
he controls the means of production. In this they
hear company with Socialists, but the two parties
differ in their ultimate object. Socialists wish to
dethrone capitalism, and to organise society on a
new basis, giving to all members of the community
a level chance. This may be Utopian, but it is not
anti-social. The policy of socialism contains much
that can be admired by all. and their aim the
raising of humanity is one of the grandest possible.
Syndicalists only nominally decry capitalism. Their
real object is to put themselves, or the workers, in
what they consider the favoured position of the
owners of capital. Thus they wish to sei/e the
whole means of production for the benefit of manual
labour and that only, to the detriment of all other
sections of the community. Mr Tom 31 aim asks :
" Who is to control industry '. The industrial
syndicalist declares that to run industry through
Parliament, i.e. by State machinery, will be even
more mischievous to the working cla^s than the
existing method, for it will assuredly mean that
the capitalist class will, through (Government
departments, exercise over the natural forces, and
over the workers, a domination even more ri<rid
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 109
than is the case to-day. And the Syndicalist also
declares that in the near future the industrially
organised workers -will themselves undertake the
entire responsibility of running the industries in
the interests of all who work, and are entitled to
enjoy the results of Labour." If this policy was to
be carried out legitimately, that is, by organised
labour employing its resources in organising factories,
and collieries, and other producing businesses with
their own capital and at their own risk ; if a new
and better organised system of manufacture was
to replace that which is said to be oppressive and
outworn, then all honour to the suggestion. But
this is not how the change is to come about. Men
who have exercised no thrift, who have taken
neither responsibilities nor risks, are to take posses-
sion of what others have built up ; and it is assumed
that under this new and untried management the
industries of the country are to progress as prosper-
ously as heretofore, but that manual labour is to enjoy
the whole produce. A more impudent proposal has
seldom or never been put forward seriously.
How Syndicalists will try to accomplish their aim
is revealed in The Miners' Next Step, a pamphlet
outlining the policy published during the trouble in
South \Yales in the year 1912. The following
extracts from this pamphlet show the main aims
and objects :
IK) ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
" Policy.
" i. The old policy of identity of interest between
employers and ourselves be abolished and a policy
of open hostility installed.
" x. Lodges should as far as possible discard the
old method of coining out on strike for any little
minor grievance, and adopt the more scientific
weapon of the irritation strike by simply remain-
ing at work, reducing their output, and so contrive
by their general conduct to make the colliery un-
productive.
Wi xiii. That a continual agitation be carried on
in favour of increasing the minimum wage and
shortening the hours of work until we have extracted
the whole of the employers' profits.
" xiv. That our objective be to build up an
organisation that will ultimately take over the
mining industry, and carry it on in the interests
of the workers."
" The 6',sc of the Irritation Strike.
" Pending the publication of a pamphlet which
will deal in a comprehensive and orderly way with
different methods and ways of striking, the following
brief explanation must suffice: The irritation strike
depends for its successful adoption on the men
holding clearly the point of view that their interests
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 111
and the employers' are necessarily hostile. Further,
that the employer is vulnerable only in one place
his profits ! Therefore, if the men wish to bring
effective pressure to bear, they must use methods
which tend to reduce profits. One way of doing
this is to decrease production while continuing at
work. Quite a number of instances where this
method has been successfully adopted in South
Wales could be adduced. The following will serve
as an example :
" At a certain colliery some years ago the manage-
ment desired to introduce the use of screens for
checking small coal. The men, who were paid
through and through for coal-getting, e.g. for large
and small coal in gross, objected, as they saw in this
the thin end of the wedge of a move to reduce their
earnings. The management persisted, and the
men, instead of coming out on strike, reduced their
output by half. Instead of sending four trams of
coal from a stall, two only were filled, and so on. The
management thus saw its output cut in half, while
its running expenses remained the same. A few
da}'s' experience of a profitable industry turned
into a losing one ended in the men winning hands
down."
Here, then, is the policy in all its nakedness, and
in all its impudence a policy which the sterling
good sense of the Trade Union Congress emphatically
lli> ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
condemned in September I!H2. But it has its adher-
ents and its leaders, and already there have been
attempts to make a practical trial of it : although
its success could have but one result the material .
moral and political ruin of this country.
Happily there is a better way. The improvement
of the condition of labour and of the mass of the
nation can be obtained is being obtained by a
healthier and wiser policy. The labour force of a
country is in its essence one and indivisible : it
includes all those engaged in the work of production,
from the man whose brain organises, to the boy
whose hand fetches and carries. This is the first
point that Socialists and Syndicalists should realise.
In that labour force there are elements of varying
capacity and worth a second point to realise.
It is clearly unjust that men of all capacities should
receive an equal award : as unjust as that a man
of inferior capacity should hold a superior position.
In the harmoniously working community of the
future (to whose advent one confidently looks) each
man would rise to that position he was qualified by
nature, character, and his own efforts to occupy.
This would be a system of justice. It would also
recognise the spheres and rights of the factors in
production. Land, apart from questions of owner-
ship, would receive the rent to which its position
or fertility entitled it. Capital that i s - the \\ealth
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 113
devoted to industrial purposes: accumulated by
thrift and abstinence, would be available for the
labour force, which would pay the rightful in-
terest for its use. Without this, wealth will not be
accumulated and the community will suffer.
To put it shortly, the system under which industry
has hitherto worked has been, and is, defective ; its
comparatively recent origin, its lack of precedents, or
experience to go back upon, have led to many mistakes
being made but that on the whole the system was
sound is proved by its capability for improvement ;
it is elastic, and it is progressive. Its defects have
been noted and remedies have been tried with success.
Its very successes have caused an impatience for
greater progress and a quicker pace towards per-
fection. The introduction of class warfare and
irritation can only prevent progress and slow down
the pace. An ignorance of economic laws or a
foolish opposition to their working has the same
effect. This is the lesson that the working classes
to their honour are learning ; the}* can see hope,
and they realise that a bright future depends on
steady evolution rather than on stormy revolution.
A broad outlook, a knowledge of history, a compari-
son of the condition of labour to-day with that of a
century or even of half a century ago, strengthens this
feeling. A knowledge of the advantage of working
for a skilful rather than an incompetent organiser
114 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
impresses its own lesson, and proves the value of
the organiser's skill. Acquaintance with Economics.
teaching a knowledge of the truth about wages,
profits, interest, and rent, is giving a growing number
of people a hopeful future for which to strive. The
hopeless days of the Iron Law of Wages are over,
and it is becoming increasingly evident to the mass
of the population that thrift, not waste ; good organi-
sation, not revolutionary chatter; harmony, not
friction ; a freedom to rise to the position to which
a man's abilities entitle him, not the seizing of the
instruments of production, arc 1 the essentials for
the material well-being of every Englishman, and
the continuance of our Empire.
APPENDIX A
Trade Unions Congress, Manchester, 1913
FRENCH DELEGATE'S ADDRESS
(Printed ly permission. )
M. JOTJHAUX said : Comrades, In bringing you
the fraternal greetings of the French working classes
who are grouped in the General Confederation of
French Workers, allow me first of all to join with
you in expressing our deepest sympathy in respect
of the misfortune which has happened to the English
proletariat through the events which have taken
place in Dublin.
In England, as in France and Germany, it is
always the proletariat which pays with its liberty
and its blood for any advances and conquests which
have been brought about.
The repression of the working classes b} T Capital
is an international factor, and the fight of the
working classes against this oppression likewise should
be an international one.
I rejoice to see the international bonds of solidarity,
of mutual interest becoming stronger day by day,
bringing the different movements and endeavours
of the workers' associations up to one level and to
one combined purpose. This is a sure sign that
116 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
" race-hatred " and the " barriers " of nationality
nre fast disappearing in the ranks of the workers,
making place for a sentiment of International
Brotherhood which, in its development, will prove
the real reason for the disappearance of wars, which
always have been, and always must be. fraught
with dire consequences to the future of the inter-
national proletariat.
War, whatever the causes may be which produce
it, for the working classes has always been, and will
be, an occasion for sorrow and misery. A war always
is a set-back to the progress of civilisation. For
this reason, then, we should not hesitate to make
a stand against it. To combat the possibility of
future wars all available means ought to be con-
sidered as serving the purpose well if they will
prevent the horrors and sufferings of future wars.
The General Federation of French Workers has
never failed to smooth out any international com-
plications which have arisen. Let us recall the
serious tension which existed in the year I'.too
between the English and the French nations ; that
between France and Germany in lt>] I ; the Balkan
War in 1!)12 ; and lastly the campaign which we
have waged in France against th<' reintroduction
of the three years of military service.
The Government has revenged itself by inflicting
heavy terms of imprisonment upon those of our
APPENDIX A 117
members who have been recognised as ardent
advocates of anti-militarism. It is not, however,
by such repression that the work of our Trade
Unions will be turned aside, for to us they represent
not only the fulfilment of our corporate desires,
but a mission more largely humane to realise the
liberty of Labour by the suppression of the official
and employer classes.
The immediate results are of the greatest import-
ance to us, as they will show how to procure for
the worker an increased liberty and better conditions.
They will instil in the hearts of the workers the desire
for a larger share of this world's goods, and will
constitute that stimulus which is required to incite
the workers to act in unison to secure for them
their proper share of the general welfare.
We desire that the Trade Unionist should be a
progressive factor in our social status ; he has been
trained that, even if he be a passive factor to-
day, he becomes an active factor to-morrow, and
our endeavours are directed towards developing in
him the principles of direct action, which is a char-
acteristic of our form of industrial disputes.
We are of opinion that only through their own
personal efforts and endeavours will the workers
be able to bring about any improvements.
Only by the development and use of their strength
which their occupation affords them can they
118 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
realise their hopes. They should never surrender
their weapons.
Direct action is opposed to the renunciation of
personal effort characterised by permanent delegation
by which the power of the determining value and
creative force for all progress and conquests is
consigned to a small number.
It is for the worker to retain for himself the
mastery of the hour when his personal effort, blended
in the general effort of his fellow- workers or his
class, will become effective. It is the expression, so
to speak, and confirmation of history history which
tells us that real progress has been deliberately
realised by persistent preliminary work, of mis-
sionary enterprise, and organisation. Direct action
condemns the indolence and indifference common in
every individual, to whatever class he may belong.
Every one of them, as a fact, accustoms himself only
too easily to leave the actual effort to others, or to
a power outside his o\\ n volition : it is opposed to
the comfortable state in which he looks to immobilise
himself, to Providence for the realisation of his
desires and wishes.
Many workers rely upon more active and bolder
comrades, whose cares and efforts are centred in
obtaining for these self-same colleagues of the
workshop better wages and conditions, while the
farmer, the merchant, the industrial magnate expect
APPENDIX A 11'.)
from the State such measure of protection as will
secure them peace and success in their enterprises.
This is on the part of every one of them a sign of
barren incompetence, a proof of want of courage,
and a lack of initiative.
Any class of persons incapable of acting on their
own behalf, or for those around them, fully deserves
to fail.
All the virtue of direct action is contained in this,
that it proves to be a reaction against our usual
practices, and shows us once more the exception
the exception that proves the rule. That exception
we discover in the upheavals of history, where, to
all appearances, the laborious care of preparation is
succeeded by some sudden, and, it may be, abortive
revolution. We find it too in the immense changes
brought about by a wave of passion. But these
passions and this agitation too soon extinguished,
often amid disorganisation and incoherence, are
responsible for the set-backs and disappointments
\vhich mark our tardy progress.
Thanks to the centralisation by which it can
organise and co-ordinate these fleeting outbreaks
of passion and discontent, Syndicalism is able to
substitute conscious and continuous action.
Without doubt the worker in his task of organisa-
tion, and his struggle to secure those rights which
properly belong to his class, is moved by divers
1:20 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
aspirations ; his action sometimes is wanting in
singleness of aim and the spirit of continuity ; it
lacks logic ; not infrequently it reaches a state when
between its practice and its theory there is a great
gulf fixed. Often he is forced by circumstances to
listen to dictates remote from the pretensions of
his declared policy of autonomy and independence.
His daily practice reveals little rectitude, and to all
appearances the general tendency of direct action
(that is known as Syndicalism) bears in itself the
seeds of its own dissolution, and that the people
must recognise the necessity for that permanent
delegation of functions and power of reform repre-
sented by the modern State.
To appreciate this more fully, we must not fail
to make due allowance for the influential power
wielded by the institutions of Government and the
employing classes. The force of such influences
cannot be shaken oil' in a day, and the task is even
one of greater difficulty to the working class, bruised
and o] (pressed as it is by the pressure- that is placed
upon it. Syndicalism, if it compromises with the
enemy, fails to recognise the legitimacy of the force
which it holds in check. It is. in its essence, the
negation of the employers' right. It is. for us.
equally the negation of the central authority, as it
is that of all organised compression and repression.
Between the employer class and the State, on the
APPENDIX A 121
one hand, and the wage-earners on the other, there
is a state of war of perpetual skirmishes and
" guerilla " engagements, and on every occasion of
conflict the stronger, for the time being, is the victor,
while the weaker is overborne in the struggle. So
long as victory is for the stronger the workers must
see to it that strength shall be theirs. Till that end
is achieved the proletariat must alternately impose
its will and submit to compromise, which, in most
cases, will never assume the form of a definite
treaty.
This power which must be secured can only be
acquired by the accumulation of fragmentary
forces, developed, strengthened, centralized by the
exercise of mind and character ; by the training of
organisations in action, and perfected by the practice
of self-reliance. The weapons of the working
classes are as man}' as they are various. They can
be applied in manifold and diverse directions, but
the}' require, for their efficient handling, rapidity
of action and ever-ready initiative. It is in their
application that the groups can demonstrate their
originality, based on technical skill and the psy-
chology of their profession ; their perspicacity and
their vigour.
The economic conditions pertaining at the
moment will decide the form and nature of the
conflict ; whether the shock will be slight or violent
122 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
will depend on the strength of the opposing forces
and the cohesive qualities of the members of the
Union. Nevertheless, in spite of these differences,
it will be direct fiction, so long as the interested
parties resort only to the power of their class, and
to their own will to decide for peace or for Mar, and
to determine what attitude shall be taken up by
their members.
Agitation, strikes, " sabotage," boycott these
are the weapons in the hands of the workers : even
the forms themselves of direct action. With each,
as with all, it is the worker alone who decides for
himself. So, too, it is by the means at his disposal,
by his function, and his role that he decides the
nature of his activities and his method of fighting.
To declare a strike, the most courageous and far-
seeing members must secure the consent of all the
rest. All must be ready for the sustained and con-
sidered effort required of each. Success depends
upon the will-power and resistance of each individual
strike. The result shows the amount of pressure
brought to bear on the opposing forces by the
combatants.
Sabotage demands from its authors an individual
effort, a considered act calculated to exercise an
influence on subsequent events closely allied to
the matter in hand.
The .Boycott supposes that among the working
APPENDIX A 123
class there exists a firm determination to apply
pressure that shall deflect its members from their
accustomed habits.
An agitation of public opinion can only be created
by the personal efforts of a number of people, and
the result is measured by the sum of their personal
activity. In every case it is the worker rousing
himself to action, driven by instinct, guided by
reason, strengthened by organisation, fortified by
numerous examples, carried along by the wave,
strong in the recollection of former victories.
Success belongs to the boldest and most tenacious,
and direct action proceeds from boldness and tenacity.
As it is the synonym for the struggle, it exposes
every one to cuts and bruises, but it is the mani-
festation of an ever-alert will power, and the
constant protest of a working class perpetually in
motion.
A conflict thus engaged upon borrows from the
combatants the means to success ; it can repose
only upon themselves, and it is an action directly
exercised on the opposing forces. It exalts them
by developing their personal valour, by the educa-
tion of their will, so that we may say even that it
transforms them .
The adversaries of the working classes do not
under-estimate the value of direct action. They
know that the day on which it becomes the sole
1:24 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
principle of the movement, their omnipotence, their
reign will be over, for on that day the workers will
no longer resemble a flock, of which the directing
and possessing classes are the shepherds.
Then there will be a class of Morkers assuring its
own happiness, no longer expectant of the State
as an embodiment of Providence, nor of that other
' fc Providence " the employer class.
Happiness is not, however, a gift. It is to be won,
to be achieved by direct action. P>y this method
the '' Confederation Generale " of France has
obtained for the workers of the Republic both social
and corporate benefits. To-day, in a nation of
enthusiastic and ardent temperaments, more than
000,000 rebels are enrolled under its banner against
the existing order of things. Opposed to these are
ranged but eight organisations of workers, to whom
direct aci ion is unacceptable. This infinitesimal
minority apart, it is the method which impels the
great mass of our workers. It lias welded them into
unity ; it has created in them a common ink-rest
and a common aspiration which has united and
coalesced the men [for] the final combat the
General Strike of Expropriation, which will replace
in the hands of the workers the instruments of
production.
Then, and then only, will the international
workers be able to live in harmony in a society
APPENDIX B 125
from whence militarism and the exploitation of
man by man has been driven out.
Long live the International Union of Workers !
APPENDIX B
Trade Unions Congress, Manchester, 1913
GERMAN DELEGATE'S ADDRESS
(Printed by permission.)
MR CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FELLOW
WORKERS, The German Trade Unions have gladly
accepted the kind and fraternal invitation tendered
to them by your Parliamentary Committee, and they
have instructed me to convey to you their hearty
thanks for the invitation, and best wishes for your
organisation. They gladly accepted your invitation,
not merely because they desire their delegates to
transmit the German workers' brotherly greetings
to our fellow-workers in the British Trade Union
movement, but chiefly because they feel our presence
here at the British Parliament of Labour will
demonstrate the fact that in their thoughts and
aims the Germans and British workers are one.
Neither languages nor political boundaries shall
keep us divided. In spite of all those whose personal
interests are in the direction of fomenting strife
12G ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
between the labouring classes of our two lands,
who would even commit the crime of instigating
war, we are here to-day to loudly proclaim our
mutual, our common interests, which demand our
brotherly co-operation if we want to successfully
combat modern Capitalism. Our fight in all lands
is directed against organised capital, which is all
the better able to exploit the workers the less they
are united, and which is constantly at work in the
interests of the upper classes to keep us in the
dangers of war. We are happy to know, however,
that the working men of this country want peace,
and you may rest assured that the German workers,
too, are out for peace, and I am convinced that war
will be an impossible thing as soon as the toiling
classes of our respective countries are unanimous
on this matter.
You certainly do not expect us to give a definite
opinion on what we have seen and learned, which
is a great deal, whilst in your midst. We shall
instead, with your worthy chairman's permission,
give a brief sketch of our own movement. We do
not want you to think that by quoting these details
we wish to play the schoolmaster, but \ve believe
that it will interest you to have an insight into
our own methods and ideas. It is scarcely twenty
rears since our fellow-unionists, full of astonishment
and admiration for vour industrial movement,
APPENDIX B 127
almost gave up hopes of ever being able to build
up as powerful and efficient a movement as they
witnessed in your country. By the way, conditions
as they existed at that time did not permit of us
entertaining any such hopes. Trade Unions had
been started as early as 1865, Trade Unions which
recognised the principle of the class-war. In 1878,
however, the so-called Anti-Socialist law was passed
which entirely did away with our organisations for
the time being. This law was enforced in the most
brutal manner possible up to 1890, but we had, in
the meantime, commenced to reorganise, more or
less secret!}', some of our trade societies. How-
ever, there was no uniformity of any kind at that
period, and a great number of merely local unions,
or societies covering individual small trades, were
brought into being.
Immediately after the downfall of that infamous
law, we set to work earnestly and systematically
for the purpose of building up a strong and united
movement. I think, Mr Chairman, I am not ex-
aggerating if I say that we have made the impossible
possible, and that to-day we are in no way behind
the great trade union movement of the United
Kingdom, especially if we take into consideration
the industrial development of our respective
countries.
In 1801, after the repeal of the Anti-Socialist law,
128 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
we started with a total membership of 277,659,
distributed over 62 national and independent loeal
unions. The total funds of this much too large
number of unions scarcely reached the amount of
22,000. At the end of last year (1912) we had
declined to 47 national unions, and there was no
" localistic " union worth mentioning, while our
affiliated membership had gone up to 2,559,000,
including 222,300 female members. These unions
report an annual income of 4,012,000, and their
funds amount to 4,040,01 MI.
Within a comparatively brief space of time we
have thus succeeded in concentrating our movement,
amalgamating tlio different trades into closely-
centralised national unions, and thereby making
them more powerful and effective. It would be a
great mistake to believe that all this had been
achieved without much opposition on the part of
the Government or the employing class. Let me
quote a fe\v comparative figures : In 1890 our
unions spent 52,000 on strikes and lock-outs,
while in 1912 6.34.000 won- spent for the same
purpose. Tn 1910 this item amounted to t9S(.0()0.
The figures just quoted are those covering the
so-called General Commission of German Trade
Unions, the bona-fide national centre of our industrial
movement. Unfortunately, however, some of the
German workers have allowed themselves to be led
APPENDIX B 129
astray by rival unions by the Liberal and Christian
or Clerical Trade Societies.
The daily life and struggles of their unions had
soon taught the German worker that Socialism
the collective ownership of all means of production
and distribution presents the only final solution
of our social problems, and that, consequently, the
Social Democratic Party must be their mouthpiece
in the political field. The Liberal Party, as well as
the Centre or political party of the Catholic Church,
have, on the other hand, organised their separate
unions, to be used for their various political purposes.
These unions, fortunately, have never reached the
importance and power they desired. The Liberal,
or Hirsch-Duncker, Unions numbered 109,000 mem-
bers at the beginning of this year, and 344,600
members were organised in the Christian Unions,
while the total membership of all three groups
amounted to 3,256,000.
These figures only relate to industrial workers ;
they do not include about 800,000 clerks, shop-
assistants, and similar employees who arc organ-
ised in benefit societies. These societies cannot be
classed with trade unions of any tendency for they
refuse to recognise the strike as a last resource in
case of a dispute otherwise we would number more
than four millions of organised workers in Germany.
Many millions of agricultural workers are un-
i
130 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
organised at the present moment. Recognising the
necessity of organising these workers as well, we
have recently started to do for them what has been
done for many other trades. Three years ago we
appointed five permanent officers for the new
National Union of Agricultural Workers, and they
were the first members of this Union which to-day
lias more than 20.000 paying members. This has
been possible in spite of the fact that our agricultural
workers have been held in semi-slavery for hundreds
of years, and that they, even to-day, are subject
to the most reactionary laws and regulations. The
National Centre of German Trade Unions, of which
Mr I^egien is the president, spends about 5000 a
year on behalf of the Agricultural Workers' Union
and on behalf of a National Union of Domestic
Servants, which has been established in the same
\vay. The latter union now has about 0000
members.
The class-conscious workers organised in our
unions fight for democracy on the political, or
Socialism on the industrial field. They are. there-
fore, bitterly opposed by the Government and its
many allies. Indeed. I believe there is no country
\\ here antagonism between organised Labour and
tin* Government is keener than it is in Germany.
\Ve never uo to see members of the Government
;ind thev never come to us. although out of 3 ( J7
APPENDIX B 131
members of Parliament we have 111 Social-Demo-
crats, and out of a total vote of 11 millions cast at
the last General Election we polled more than four
millions and a quarter for the party of Labour.
Our opponents are still too strong for us, mainly
because the Liberals of our country have no desire
to help to overthrow the absolute rule of the Con-
servatives or Feudalists ; the}' are themselves too
much afraid of the workers.
We are, all the same, full of hope for the future.
We sincerely trust that the International Labour
movement will finally triumph over all its opponents
and obstacles. We have to-day an international
combination of trade unions which embraces eigh-
teen countries and seven and a half millions trade
union members, including your General Federation
of Trade Unions. Our international co-operation is
being developed and improved year by year, teaching
the workers of all lands the necessity of getting
acquainted with each other, of learning from each
other, and of fighting for the same objects and aims.
Want of time, unfortunately, prevents me telling
you about many other aspects of our Labour move-
ment. Every union has its weekly paper delivered
free to all its members. The unions of all cities
of any importance have their own Labour Temples,
attached to which are hostelries for our travelling
members, legal advice offices for the workers, the
i*
132 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
latter in charge of men from the rank and file whom
we trained at our own school. For other trade
union officer*, old and young, we have a separate
school. Our political party has 90 daily papers,
printed in 62 printing establishments owned by the
Party, and in almost every case the building where
the printing plant is put up is also owned by
the Party. Our trade union papers have a circula-
tion of about three million copies per week, and our
Socialist dailies alone have more than 1 .;">()(), 000
regular subscribers. P>y the way, we believe a
worker to be little better than a blackleg if he sup-
ports the Capitalist Press instead of subscribing to
the paper belonging to his own class. There are
more than 7000 Socialist City and Town Councillors
in Germany, and our iniluence is thus felt in all
parts of public life. The Co-operative movement,
too, is developing very rapidly.
We have, after many experiences of all sorts,
learned to combine m the three fields of Labour's
struggle in the trade unions, in our own political
party, and in the Co-operative movement. These
three movements to-day work hand in hand, and
German Labour presents a united front to its
opponents. \Ve sincerely hope the same unity of
purpose and action \\ill soon be brought about
among the \vorkers of all lands. With this end
in view we have much pleasure in inviting your
APPENDIX C 133
Congress to send representatives to our next triennial
Trade Unions Congress, which assembles in June
next year. We have handed an official invitation
to our friend Bowerman, the secretary of your
Parliamentary Committee. A better mutual under-
standing among the working classes of our countries,
a permanent and close co-operation of our organisa-
tions, I trust, Mr Chairman, will do much in assuring
peace among our great nations, and materially assist
us to build up an irresistible organisation of Labour.
We again thank you heartily for your invitation
and truly British hospitality, and hope to be able
to receive your delegates in our midst at the next
German Trade Unions Congress.
APPENDIX C
TABLE OF FIGURES FROM " THE CASE FOR THE
LABOUR PARTY : A HANDBOOK OF FACTS AND
FIGURES FOR WORKERS," PAGE 58
WAGES
" By use of Index numbers the Board of Trade
have compiled a return showing the course of Wages
and Prices of the necessaries of life since 1850.
134 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
Fixing the rate of wages and average wholesale
prices for that year at 100, Wages and Priees for
subsequent years are set out in percentage of those
prevailing in that year.
Yuir.
1850 .
1 855 .
1 800 .
1805 .
1870 .
1 875 .
1SSO .
1 885 .
1800 .
1 805 .
1000 .
1005 .
1000 .
1007 .
Xot(.'.- -The Table ends at 1007. Since then
Waijc* showed a decrease of one in 1008. and of the
same amount in lOO'.i; during 1010 and 1011 there
was a slight rise of about one-half.
/V/VY-.S went up two and a half between 1007 and
1008. then remained fairly stationary during 1000 ;
in 1010 they rose about one and a half, since when
thev have tended to fall.
Wat/c
Price*.
If
100
131-2
1 10
2
28'
127
5
31-2
134
1
24-7
Id
4 ]
24-7
148
8 ]
14-3
140
4
03-5
101
3
03-5
150
2
80-5
178
7
07-4
173
3
03-5
175
7 J
oo-o
181
7
03-0 "
APPENDIX D
135
APPENDIX D
DIAGRAM SHOWING THE THEORY or PROFITS
IN A STAPLE INDUSTRY
A
B
\IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL
D
E
G
EXPLANATION :
Block A indicates the selling price.
Blocks B to G indicate manufacturers of varying
degrees of efficiency : the shaded portions
mark profits, the unshaded portions mark the
cost of production selling price being made
up of cost of production plus profit. (Note. The
selling price must be at the same rate for all
136 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
quantities of a staple commodity sold in the
same market.)
Block B indicates what occurs in the case of the least
efficient manufacturer : small amount of profit,
great cost of production.
Block G indicates low cost of production, com-
paratively high profit made by the most efficient
manufacturer this high profit being possible
owing to the inefficiency of B.
If you could restrict the industry to manufacturers
of the highest efficiency (say 'Blocks F and G in the
diagram) the cost to the buyer might be reduced
to the white space in Block E i.e. in this instance
would be diminished by nearly one-third. Moreover,
if other things remained constant, the greater output
required of manufacturers of the F and G class would
enable them to manufacture more cheaply the ex-
perience in modern business being, the greater the
output, the less the cost.
Note. Generally speaking, it is the employers
of the B class who are sweaters, and employ people
under inferior conditions. The employers of G
class have well-organised, well-equipped factories,
and know the advantage of treating their workpeople
well.
INDEX
Agricultural Stage, the 5
Amsterdam, a trading Centre, 2
Amsterdam, the Bank of, 2
Aristotle on Chrematistics, 14
Aristotle on Economics, 14
Aristotle on necessity of leisure,
15, 10
Aristotle on necessity of leisure,
lesson to modern democracy,
16
Aristotle on payment of interest,
9, 10
Aristotle on the origin of the
State, 13
Arnold, Dr, on evil effects of the
Industrial Revolution, 41
Bargaining, Individual and Col-
lective, 103-106
Betting and Gambling, cost of,
to labour, 98
Black Monday, cost of ,to Labour,
98
Blanc, Louis (1811-1882), 59-01
Blanc, Louis, link between
Middle-Class Socialism and
State Socialism, 59
Blanc's Workshops, 59, 60
Blatchford, Robert, 87-93
Blatcht'ord's Mcrric Eiiyland, 87-
90
rtritainjor tlic /iriti-sh, 90
Canon Law, attempt to set up
Kingdom of God on Earth, 10
Canon Law, teaching as to in-
terest, 10
Capitalism, 35
Capitalism, Elasticity of, 38,
Chrematistics, 14
Class warfare, basis of Syndi-
calism, 107, 120-121
Cobden, Richard, on effects of
Industrial Revolution, 41
Commercial and Industrial Stage,
the, 6
Conjunctur, 69-70
Continuity in Social and Eco-
nomic Development, 20
Co-operation legalised by the
Industrial and Provident
Partnership Act, 1851, 105
Domestic System, the, 7
Economic interpretation of
history, 74-76
Economic Man, the, 31
Economic Theories of India,
Palestine, and Greece, 9
Economic Theory of the Canon
Law, 10, 17, 18
Economics, Aristotle on, 14
Economist, semi-conscious, 1, 8
Economist, the conscious, 1, 2, 8
Economist, unconscious, 1, 8
Economists, divergence between
their early doctrines and the
interests of the wage-earners,
43
138 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
Employers and Employed,
development in relations bc-
t wet li. 102- KMi
Kngels, F., foretells the end of the.
State, ilti
Extravagance not confined to the
middle and np[>cr elasses, 98
Federation of Employers, 1()6
Federation of Trade Unions,
in,"), K.it)
Fourier, Anti-Capitalist, 53
Fourier, FrangoLs Marie Charles
(1772-1S37), 43, 57-58
France, Commencement of
Socialism in, .14
France, Revolution in 1S48, 54
French Delegate at Trade Unions
Congress, 1913, speech of, 115
German Delegate at Trade Unions
Congress, 1913, sjteech of, 125
Germany and Proletarian
Socialism, 01
Guild Law,
Guild System, the,
Hallas, Eldred, /> Socialism
Po.^tbh, '. 93
Holland, Struggle with England,
o
Hunting Stage, the, 3
Industrial and Provident Part-
nership Act, the, legalised Co-
o|X>ration and led on to Lim-
ited Liability, 1<5
Industrial Revolution, the, 7,
33-34. 39-42
lnt^rnnti:>n<il, Th< . 72-73
Iron Law of wanes, 00-09. 114
Issue now i> between (.'lass War
and Industrial Harmony, 1<I7
.lew t he only man who could
legally charge interest on
money loans, 1 1
,/ it* \<itur(r, and the Physio-
crats, 28
Labour. Theory of the Physio-
crats, 28
Lassalle accepts the Iron l,aw
of wages, hence position of
Labour is hoj>eless, 09
Lassalle Ferdinand (1825-1804),
05-70
Lassalle founds Social Demo-
cratic Party, 06
Jx-eds Strike ('l 913-1914), 91 note
Levine, l)r Louis, Tin L/iboiir
Muni/it ht in Frnnre, 1(12
Limited Liability Policy, 105
Malthus (1700-1834), Pojnilation
and Wages, 31, 40
Mann, Tom, " Who is to control
Industry '.' " 108
Marx, Karl (1818-1883), 71-80
Marx, Karl, Doctrines examined,
76-86
Marx, Karl. International
Socialism, 23, 71
Marx, Karl, on Surplus Value, 81-
80
Maurice, F. D. (180.1-1872), 48-53
Maurice takes up the cause of
the Workers, 43
M'Clure, W. S., Social i.on, 90
Mercantile System, or Poliev of
Power, 24-27
Miners' Xext Step. the. lii'.i- 1 1 1
Mirabeau, the Great Power ol a
United Proletariate, I'i2
Money, 9
Moses, economic teaching of,
10-11
INDEX
139
North, Sir Dudley (1044-1690),
27-28
Owen, Robert (1771-1858), 44-48
Owen, Robert, takes up the cause
of the Workers, 43
Pastoral Stage, the, 4
Paterson, William (1058-1719), 2
Petty, Sir William (1023-1087),
27-28
Physiocrats, 28-30
Physiocrats and Jus Naturae, 28
Physiocrats and Produit Net, 29
Plato, origin of the State, 12
Post Office Unrest (1913), 91
note
Produit Net, 29
Renaissance, the, and Nation-
ality, 22
Ricardo, David (1772-1823),
wished to re-write the Wealth
of Nations, 31
Rodbertus, Johann Karl (1805-
1875), 01-05
Rodbertus allows that organising
ability counts, but being a free
gift of nature, its reward should
be small, 02
Rodbertus exaggerates Ricardo's
theory of labour and value, 02
Rodbertus, Three Great Stages of
Economic Development, 04-65
Sabotage, 102. 122
St Simon, Claude Henri, C'ointc
de (1700-1825), 43, 55-50
St Simon, Anti-Capitalist, 53
St Simon, great contribution,
the need for all to work, 55
Slavery, basis of ancient politics,
11
Slavery, effects of this to-day, 12
Smith,' Adam (1723-1790), 27,
30-31
Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 30
Socialism a modern movement,
33
Socialisin Possible ? /., 93
Socialism, present-day, 87-100
Socialism, rise of, 30, 39
Socialism, rise of, in France, 53
Socialist Ideals high, but the
policy to attain them faulty, 90
Socialists, early mistake was in
demanding abolition of private
property instead of limitation,
61
Socialists, the early, did influence
economic thought for good, GO
Standard of living, necessity for
raising, 41
State, to end, 90
Strikes, irritation, 102, 110, 122
Strikes, sympathetic, 106
Surplus Value, 81-86
Syndicalism, 100-114
Syndicalism a new word, 101
Syndicalism and its policy, 107-
112
Syndicalism an impudent pro-
posal, 109
Syndicalism, Class War its basis,
"107
Syndicalism, Dr Arthur Shadwell
on, 101
Syndicalism, history of the
movement of, Dr Louis
Levine, 102
Syndicalism, Ramsay Macclonald
"on, 100
Syndicalism, the policy of the
Confederation Cienerale du
Travail, 101
Syndicalism, The Tiincv on, 100
140 ECONOMICS AND SYNDICALISM
Trade Cycle-. :>7
Trad.- t'iiinns. |nj. 1 ur>
Trade rnions Cnimros, l'.il:i;
s|H-eehes nt" FiTtichaiul(5ennan \\'a^es Ktnul Themy. liT-OH
llelou :le-, 1 1 ,~>. 1 2"> \VilliaTll tlie ( 'i -11 () lUTor and
Kuro|>e,i ii I "nit y. l! 1
I'nity in Church and Mite. '2^- U'orUiiiii Men's College. LoiKlon.
21 founded l>v F. I). Mauriee, 50
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