INDUSTRIAL 
 DAY-DREAMS 
 
 STUDIES IN INDUSTRIAL 
 ETHICS AND ECONOMICS

 
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 INDUSTRIAL 
 DAY-DREAMS
 
 INDUSTRIAL 
 DAY. DREAMS 
 
 STUDIES IN INDUSTRIAL 
 ETHICS AND ECONOMICS 
 
 SAMUEL E. KEEBLE 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 ROBERT CULLEY 
 
 2 CASTLE STREET, CITY ROAD, AND 26 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 
 

 
 PRINTED BV 
 
 HAZELL,' WATSON AND VINEY, LD., 
 
 LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
 
 
 I 
 
 DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 TO THE MEMORY 
 OF MY 
 TWO DECEASED BROTHERS 
 
 ROBERT KEEBLE 
 
 AND THE 
 
 REV. GEORGE T. KEEBLE 
 
 BOTH WORKMEN THAT NEEDED NOT TO BE ASHAMED 
 
 1156820
 
 PREFACE 
 
 No one has a deeper sense of the inadequacy of 
 the present book as even a slight contribution to the 
 direct solution of vexed social problems, than has the 
 author. His only hope is that it may have some 
 little indirect influence in stirring up those who have 
 more ability and knowledge than he has, but who 
 perhaps have not devoted much time to the considera- 
 tion of social questions. The appeal here made is 
 to those whose interests are mainly religious. In 
 many religious circles still there seems to be hardly 
 any idea of the intimate connexion existing between 
 religion and the industrial life of society. Much of 
 the prevailing apathy and indifference would vanish 
 at once if it were reahzed that their circles intersect. 
 Earnest workers in the religious sphere are often so 
 fully occupied that they lack the most elementary 
 knowledge of the true nature of the problems involved 
 or of the remedies suggested. It is hoped that some 
 such workers will find here an introduction — for this 
 is all it can offer— to the general subject of industrial 
 ethics and economics. 
 
 It is urgently necessary that the Christian Church as 
 a whole should address herself to the social problem.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It will never be rightly solved apart from Christianity. 
 Very much of the solution depends, not merely upon 
 the possession of the Christian temper — though that 
 is of vital importance — but upon the direct application 
 of the ethical standards of Christianity as tests, and of 
 Christian principles as guides, to these problems as 
 such. It ill becomes the Christian Church to be 
 dragged unvviUingly at the heels of new ethical move- 
 ments, which arise without the Church because Christ 
 has been unable to inspire new ideals from within. 
 The Christian Church ought to be in the van, and 
 not in the rear, of all such movements. 
 
 A laggard attitude reacts upon the Church herself, 
 creating revulsion and alienation amongst some of the 
 noblest men and women of the land. The Christian 
 Church will never prosper as she ought until she 
 emulates the Hebrew prophets in their attitude towards 
 the social evils of their time. Those prophets held a 
 position in Jewish society analogous to that held to- 
 day by the Christian Church in Christendom — the 
 position, namely, of organized and recognized teacher 
 and conscience ; and right nobly and fearlessly did 
 they discharge their functions. But if the voice of 
 the Christian Church is stifled or muffled, if her words 
 are vacillating or vague, or if they are irrelevant to 
 the present crisis and need, then that Church will 
 betray both her trust and her Lord, and this civilization 
 will disappear as others have done. 
 
 The author writes at least to clear his own con-
 
 PREFACE 
 
 science; but if in that process he should be able 
 to win any ear hitherto heedless, he will be more than 
 repaid for his trouble. Especially would he be thankful 
 to influence the young. It is a rather ominous sign 
 that sometimes the young, even when religiously earnest, 
 are found to be more indifferent to social questions 
 than their seniors — more wrapped up in a narrow 
 Christian Individualism. This is sad, for the young 
 men, at least, should see visions, when the old men 
 dream dreams. One reason for this is a defective 
 conception of Christianity — of its ethics and its scope ; 
 and this argues a fault, not only in the young them- 
 selves, but also in all the teachers of Christianity — 
 parents, pastors, and masters. 
 
 The title, Industrial Day-dreams, is meant to in- 
 dicate the idealistic nature of the contents. Socialistic 
 programmes are mostly ideal, never likely to be realized 
 as they stand, but nevertheless profoundly important 
 in that they originate feelings and forces which will 
 finally bring about a more satisfactory condition of 
 things — a nearer approximation to that ever-elusive 
 social perfection after which social idealists aspire. 
 
 The critical part of the book does not profess to 
 cover all the ground, and is not likely, in what it does 
 cover, to win every one's approval. To some it will 
 seem too general and mild, and to others too undis- 
 criminating and censorious. To those who may think 
 it too severe towards Individualism, and too lenient 
 towards Socialism, it may suffice to reply that there
 
 PREFACE 
 
 is no need to be over-careful in either matter. 
 Socialistic schemes are being continually subjected to 
 searching and unsympathetic criticism, in the interest 
 frequently of laissez-faire — of a policy of masterly 
 inactivity. It is a much more necessary thing to be 
 tender towards social ideals and ideahsts, and critical 
 of this not best-of-all-possible industrial worlds The 
 present system, with its huge and horrid defects, is 
 strongly entrenched in the habits, customs, and pre- 
 judices of Englishmen — proverbially slow to change. 
 The evils in it are not only hoary, but tough, and 
 not likely soon to yield to a better order or to a 
 better time. It is expedient, therefore, to be blind to 
 weak points in Socialistic paper-constitutions (especially 
 as there is no danger of their escaping exposure), and 
 to devote energy to criticizing that which is hostile to 
 the ultimate well-being of human society in the system 
 which is in possession ; and the more so as these are 
 wellnigh invulnerable from the power of vested interests, 
 hereditary prejudices, and hereditary ignorance. 
 
 As to the method adopted, the first two chapters 
 indicate the writer's point of view. The historical part 
 consists of three chapters upon German Socialism, four 
 upon English Socialism, two upon French Socialism, 
 and one upon that international possession. State 
 Socialism. The critical part is threefold : a criticism 
 of Socialism, a criticism of Political Economy, and a 
 criticism of the Modern Industrial System, all from 
 the Christian and ethical point of view.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 A few repetitions may be found in these pages. 
 If so, they will be due either to the necessity for 
 looking at the same facts from a different angle, or 
 from the fact that some of the pages have been 
 delivered, as the footnotes indicate, as addresses to 
 different audiences, and the repetitions were necessary 
 to lucidity. 
 
 Finally, the author returns thanks to the editors of 
 the Methodist Times, Great Thoughts, and the Preachers^ 
 Magazine, for permission to reprint those pages which 
 have already appeared in their several periodicals. 
 
 Sheffield, 
 
 January, 1896.
 
 PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 
 
 At the request of the members of the Union for 
 Social Service, and of many others, the author has 
 consented to repubhsh the following book, which has 
 long been out of print. He is more than ever conscious 
 of its inadequacy, but it seems to many still to have a 
 note and a place of its own. Despite the very different 
 condition of the book-market on social questions 
 to-day in comparison with its state at the date of the 
 issue of the original edition, nothing quite like it has 
 yet appeared to guide elementary students of these 
 subjects. It is thought that it may especially carry 
 the readers of The Citizen of To-morrow a stage or 
 two further on their journey. 
 
 The book has been revised, annotated, and corrected, 
 and the historical section brought up to date. The 
 author hopes that this little work, which, when it first 
 appeared, was the first on its subject from a Christian 
 and a Methodist source, and seemed then to be 
 premature, may continue to serve the great cause 
 of Christian social reform. 
 
 Manchester, 
 June 30, 1907.
 
 -«
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 THE PRELUDE 
 
 CHAPTER P GE 
 
 I. THE EDUCATION OF THE SOCIAL SYMPATHIES . . 5 
 II. SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY I3 
 
 PART II 
 
 HISTORICAL 
 
 I. GERMAN SOCIALISM 2g 
 
 II. FERDINAND LASSALLE 39 
 
 III. KARL mark's ' CAPITAL ' 4g 
 
 IV. ENGLISH SOCIALISM 6/ 
 
 V. ROBERT OWEN k 11 
 
 VI. CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 89 
 
 VII. CHARLES KINGSLEY lOI 
 
 VIII. FRENCH SOCIALISM Ill 
 
 IX. PROUDHON 123 
 
 X. STATE SOCIALISM 1 33 
 
 XV 

 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PART III 
 
 CRITICAL 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE CHRISTIAN CRITICISM OF SOCIALISM . .143 
 
 II, THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE . . . .155 
 
 III. ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST. . . . I7I 
 
 IV. THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF POLITICAL ECONOMY . 1 87 
 V, THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND . . . I95 
 
 VI. INDUSTRIAL COMPETITION AND SCIENCE . . . 209 
 
 VII. THE MODERN INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM . . . . 2I9 
 
 VIII. THE LIVING WAGE 237 
 
 IX. THE LABOUR WAR 265 
 
 X. THE CLAIMS OF MANUAL LABOUR .... 277 
 
 XI. THE FUNCTION OF FRIENDLY SOCIETIES . . . 289 
 
 XII. DRINK AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION . , , . 305
 
 PART I 
 THE PRELUDE
 
 I 
 
 THE EDUCATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SOCIAL SYMPATHIES
 
 I 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE SOCIAL 
 SYMPATHIES 
 
 Evil is wrought by want of thought, 
 As well as want of heart. 
 
 Hood. 
 
 The great question of the twentieth century is the 
 Social Question. Young Christians especially should 
 study it, for in their hands, humanly speaking, lies the 
 future of the Christian Church. According to their 
 interest in it will be the influence of that Church upon 
 the working classes of this country, especially upon the 
 non-worshipping section — an all too large section — of 
 those classes. 
 
 The need of the present and of the immediate future 
 is a wise sympathy with the people, with the ' dim com- 
 mon populations.' It is easy enough to contract disdain 
 for them — to cultivate a feeling of repulsion at their 
 vices, their coarseness, and their ignorance. But such 
 feelings are akin to those of the Latin poet who cried, 
 ' I hate the vulgar crowd ! ' and are simply heathenish in 
 their arrogance and unbrotherliness. The people must 
 be viewed with the eye of Christ, who, looking upon their 
 physical and moral maladies and miseries, had compassion 
 
 5
 
 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 upon them because they were as sheep having no shep- 
 herd. Christ saw that the degraded poor were mainly 
 a ' manufactured article ' — the product partly of social 
 neglect, social selfishness, and social greed. 
 
 Had not the common people, as a body, been for long 
 ages overworked, under-fed, under-clothed, under-paid, 
 under-educated, they would not be as rough, as vulgar, 
 as brutal, and as ignorant, as so many of them are to-day. 
 Christians must learn to do with the poor what Christ 
 did — idealize them. They must view them in God — as 
 redeemed, body and soul ; as filled with latent possibili- 
 ties, and sure of a glorious future. Nothing can be done 
 for the people save by loving the people, and no one can 
 love the people with the requisite depth, wisdom, and 
 endurance who does not view them with eyes anointed 
 by Christ. 
 
 The problem for Christians is how rightly to care for 
 the whole man ; how to be perfectly alive at once to the 
 material and to the spiritual side of man ; how to be true 
 to both, neglectful of neither. This problem can be 
 solved only by an intense and patient study of the life 
 of Jesus Christ. In that life is seen maintained the 
 most perfect balance between man social and man 
 spiritual, man material and man moral — between atten- 
 tion to the wants of the lower and the wants of the 
 higher nature. To the Master, indeed, these are one, 
 or, rather, all is spiritual, and the care of the body is but 
 a disguised (and not always disguised) care for the soul 
 — for the real self. 
 
 The secret of success, then, in approaching the con- 
 dition-of-the-people question, is the possession of a true, 
 deep love of the people, and this is best attained by 
 learning of Christ. His attitude towards them must be 
 
 6
 
 THE SOCIAL SYMPATHIES 
 
 ours if we would gain their ear — if we would successfully 
 call to us the labouring and heavy-laden. ' Learn of Me, 
 for I am meek and lowly of heart.' 
 
 But, social sympathies gained, they need to be informed, 
 discriminating, educated. They are apt, especially with 
 the young, to be vague, sentimental, unpractical. Mere 
 social ardour and chivalry may lead the uninformed into 
 many quixotic enterprises, and, in tilting against the wind- 
 mills of solid fact, such may be much beaten, battered, 
 and discouraged. The Christian social enthusiast, there- 
 fore, should walk warily, acquainted with the danger of 
 his quest. 
 
 The moral and spiritual education of the social sym- 
 pathies is to be gained in the sanctuary, at the feet of 
 Jesus ; their intellectual education, in the study. Nothing 
 will better at once educate and inspire the social student 
 than a careful study of the social and industrial history of 
 England. Nor ought any Christian to interfere in labour 
 questions, either by word or deed, who has not had some 
 practical industrial and business experience and read some 
 political economy. Moreover, inasmuch as all Churches 
 and all Governments — witness the latter in Germany and 
 France — will have to reckon with Socialism, the study of 
 Socialism proper should not be omitted.^ 
 
 Social sympathies the young Christian must have if he 
 would do his Master's work now and in the approaching 
 century. He should beware, above all things else, of 
 religious individualism, of a narrow and un-Christlike 
 type of piety, which can only concern itself with a limited 
 range of Christian duties and doctrines, and is blind to 
 the social sins, social sorrows, and social needs of the 
 
 ' A brief list of books, suitable for beginners, is given at the end 
 of this chapter. 
 
 7
 
 THE EDUCATION OF 
 
 age. He should educate those sympathies, once gained ; 
 educate them morally, by reading his Bible, by keeping 
 the company of the Old Testament prophets and the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and by prayer ; educate them intellec- 
 tually, by the impartial study of social, industrial, and 
 economic facts. He should develop them by helping 
 the people, by mingling with and gaining knowledge of 
 them. He will thus be equipped as a citizen and as 
 a Christian to play his part in saving modern society, on 
 the one hand from greedy self-seekers, and on the other 
 from wild and ignorant enthusiasts. He will help to 
 solve the social problem, and begin the new England 
 * wherein dwelleth righteousness.'
 
 THE SOCIAL SYMPATHIES 
 
 LIST OF BOOKS 
 
 The Industrial History of England. H. de B. Gibbins. 
 
 (Methuen, 2s. bd.) 
 Six Centuries of Work and Wages. Thorold Rogers. 
 
 (Sonnenschein, los. 6d.) 
 
 History of Political Econotny in England. L. L. Price. 
 
 (Methuen, 2s. 6d.) 
 
 History of Political Economy. J. K. Ingram. (A. & C. Black, 
 6.r.) 
 
 Primer of Political Economy. Jevons. (Macmillan, is,') 
 Ecotiomics of Industry. A. and M. P. Marshall. (Macmillan, 
 
 is. ed.) 
 Principles of Economics. A. Marshall. (Macmillan, iSi-.) 
 The Principles of Political Economy. J. S. Mill. (Bell, 3^. 6.^.) 
 The Labour Movement. Hobhouse. (Fisher Unwin, u.) 
 The Evolution of Modern Capitalism. Hobson. (Walter 
 
 Scott, 3^. 6^.) 
 
 Past and Present. Carlyle. (Chapman & Hall, 15.) 
 
 Unto this Last. Ruskin. (Allen, is.') 
 
 The History of Socialism. Kirkup. (A. & C. Black, 75. ()d.) 
 
 Contemporary Socialism. Rae. (Sonnenschein, ^s. 6d.) 
 
 Tools and the Man. Washington Gladden. (J. Clarke, 35. 6d.) 
 
 Socialism. Flint. (Isbister, lOs. 6d.) 
 
 The Citizen of To-Morrow. Ed. S. E. Keeble, 1906. (C. H. 
 
 Kelly, -IS.) 
 
 (For further guidance see The A. B.C. Annotated Bibliography, 
 by the writer, published for the Wesleyan Methodist Union for 
 Social Service, 1907. C. H. Kelly, is.')
 
 II 
 
 SOCIAL 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 II
 
 II 
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY! 
 
 The social failure of Christianity is not the fault of Christianity, 
 but of us Christians, who have been selfishly individualistic. — 
 H. Price Hughes. 
 
 'Social Christianity' is the title of a volume of 
 sermons and addresses on social questions by the Rev. 
 Hugh Price Hughes. As a title and a phrase, it is to 
 be preferred before ' Christian Socialism.' The latter 
 makes the Church's social work but a species of the 
 genus Socialism — at least, so far as words go — whereas 
 the former regards it as but one aspect of Christian 
 service. ' Social Christianity,' whatever other objections 
 it may be open to, professes subordination to no 
 debatable theory; it simply claims to be an effort 
 to apply Christianity to problems which Socialism has 
 neither created nor cured, and as such it is to be judged. 
 If any of its remedies should happen to coincide with 
 those of Socialism, that will be no reason for calling 
 it Socialism, but rather for regarding Socialism as in 
 those points Christian. 
 
 It is not proposed to review in detail Mr, Price 
 Hughes' interesting and stimulating book ; but as the 
 
 ' Read before the Leeds Methodist Ministers' Association and 
 the Leeds Nonconformist Ministers' Association June 1889. 
 
 13
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 first book on the subject emanating from the Wesleyan 
 Church, and the Hterary sign of a new rehgious era, 
 it suggests the consideration of the general subject of 
 Social Christianity. There is no need to set forth in 
 detail the social questions of the time ; they are only too 
 sadly familiar. AVho has not brooded o,ver,^nd felt 
 baffled by, some of those problems with which Mr. Price 
 Hughes so trenchantly deals ? The troubled relations 
 of Capital and Labour : their mutual and insensate 
 hostility ; the small share of the fruit of his labour 
 gained by the labourer ; the inordinate share often gained 
 by the capitalist ; the condition of the criminal, un- 
 employed, and lower labouring classes; the congestion 
 of the poorer parts of our great cities ; the separation of 
 populations into East and West Ends, poverty hard 
 by luxury, and, worse still, poverty ' hard by hate ' ; the 
 condition of the dwellings of the poor : the overcrowding 
 and insanitation ; the sweating system ; the prevalence 
 of drinking habits, of gambling and impurity ; the aliena- 
 tion of the people from the Churches, — these are the 
 problems and evils which have long afflicted humane 
 imaginations, and still confront us. 
 
 Now, the question for Christians is. What is to be the 
 attitude of the Christian Church towards them ? Is she 
 to adopt any special attitude at all, or is she to leave 
 them to legislators, economists, and social reformers, 
 continuing only in her work of converting individual 
 sinners and edifying individual saints ? Is she to leave 
 social questions severely alone ? 
 
 Mr. Price Hughes demands a special attitude, main- 
 taining that the Christian Church has been ' too selfishly 
 individuaUstic,' to the great injury of modern society. 
 Many others, both ministers and laymen, deny the need 
 
 14
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 for any special attitude or method, maintaining that the 
 sufificient, indeed, the only true, method is that of 
 devoting exclusive attention to the spiritual conversion 
 of individuals — refusing to give to industrial and social 
 questions, as such, any attention at all. 
 
 The Scriptures, say these, know nothing of any other 
 method, and only in this way did the early Church deal 
 with the social evils of its time — slavery, for instance, 
 being never directly attacked, but undermined and 
 destroyed by changing the individual. 
 
 These oft-repeated statements need a little attention ; 
 and, first, i s not the practice of giving special attentio n 
 to social questions, of dealing with general social evils, 
 to be found in the Scriptures? A most cursory glance 
 reveals that it is, and that it is to be found m bot h 
 Testaments. In the Old Testament, th e social method 
 positively preponderate s. The whole of it is a record of 
 God's deahngs with a nation as such, rather than with 
 the individuals of that nation. Moses presents the con- 
 structive social method) and the prophets the destrucTTve 
 or critic al — the one avoiding or preventing social evils, 
 and the others d e noun cing and dest roying them . In th e 
 New Testament, while the individual method predom i- 
 nates, the social method is far from being absent. Our 
 Lord deals with, and condemns, Jerusalem and Caper- 
 naum as cities, and the Pharisees and Sadducees as 
 classes. St. Paul writes his letters mostly to Christian 
 communities, not individuals, and St. John warns the 
 seven Churches of Asia. 
 
 Our Lord and His apo stles then dealt, not only with 
 evil in the individual, but als o with evil generally, as 
 existing in definite forms in societies, classes, and 
 Churche s. The social method is, therefore, plainly set 
 
 15
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 forth in the New Testament. But even if it were not, 
 that would not close the question. If the Spirit of 
 the living Christ guides His Church, new methods will 
 arise, of which the apostolic and early Church never 
 dreamt — new methods to meet the needs of ever- 
 changing human society. 
 
 ' But what of the attitude of the early Church towards 
 slavery ? It was never denounced as such ; it was dealt 
 with indirectly, by the individual method.' The reply to 
 this oft-repeated objection is manifold. Abstract right 
 demanded that Christianity should have declared 
 definitely against slavery, yet it did not. Why ? First, 
 because, as the history of the Church reveals, God 
 works by human means, and the early Christians re- 
 ceived slavery as a matter of course, being unable to 
 conceive society apart from it ; they did not yet under- 
 stand to what extent the truth was to make men free. 
 Second, had they desired to abolish slavery, they were 
 powerless. A despised, persecuted, numerically small, 
 and socially insignificant party in the State, they were in 
 no position immediately to overturn society and relay 
 its foundations, or even to root out at once widespread 
 evils. They could only deal with them by the slow, 
 and not always sure, method of the reform of the 
 individual. That this method is not always sure may be 
 seen in the fact that the birth and growth of Christianity 
 did not suffice to save the Roman Empire. The work 
 of converting individuals was too slow a process — there 
 were too few righteous men to save the State. When, 
 at the last, the Christian Emperors began to deal with 
 slavery and other social evils, by the social method 
 of special action, their drastic reforms came too late — 
 moral cancer had reached the vitals of Roman society. 
 
 i6
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 The individual method failed to save the old Roman 
 Empire, and the social method was applied too late. 
 In addition to all this, the first Christians, in their 
 exultant other-worldliness and their constant expectation 
 of Christ's coming again in their lifetime, would have 
 been indifferent to the evils of slavery even had they 
 realized them. With that Second Coming ever before 
 them, and their new and vivid hope of the advent of 
 'the kingdom of heaven,' they manifested a really 
 sublime indifference to human ills of every kind, except 
 in the way of temporary amelioration. The very same 
 ideas to-day lead some Christians calmly to tolerate 
 preventable evils as unimportant, penal, or disciplinary. 
 
 The early Church's attitude towards slavery, then, 
 can form no precedent for the Christian Church of 
 to-day. As a matter of fact, its method failed ; for, 
 although it greatly modified it, in one or other form 
 slavery has existed right up to the present day. The 
 Christian Church is now in a very different position. 
 In the presence of social evils of many kinds, and 
 especially of the virtual slavery of multitudes of the 
 industrial population, the duty of the Christian Church 
 should surely be clear. Placed in the midst of a society 
 which is named after Christ — Christendom — which 
 historically owes, not only its civilization, but probably 
 its very existence to the Church, that Church naturally 
 has, when she chooses to exert it, a powerful moral 
 and political influence. Understanding, better than the 
 early Church could do, the full import of the great 
 Christian principles of the Fatherhood of God and 
 the Brotherhood of Man, the Church of to-day is 
 criminal if she acts solely according to the precedent 
 of her former feeble and socially-helpless self. Whilst 
 
 B 17
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 she may long for some of the innocence and enthusiasm 
 and ethical purity of those first ages, yet she cannot 
 despise the wisdom which succeeding ages have brought 
 her. 
 
 It is a common contention, as against Social Chris- 
 tianity, that society is simply a gathering of individuals, 
 and that to save society you have nothing to do but to 
 save the individuals. It does not dawn upon some 
 Christian men's minds that many individuals never can 
 be saved until society itself is ; that, after all, there 
 is a social conscience as well as an individual one. 
 Schleiermacher, Comte, Herbert Spencer, and many 
 other philosophers and sociologists, have familiarized 
 most thinking men with the conception that society is 
 a living organism, having a life of its own, different from 
 and in addition to that of the individuals who compose 
 it ; that it resembles an organic compound more than 
 a mechanical mixture. Christians who read the New 
 Testament teaching concerning the Church — that it is a 
 corporate body, of which individual Christians are the 
 members and Christ the Head, that it is quickened into 
 a living whole by that Head — ought not to be the last to 
 rise to the conception of human society as something 
 more than a mere conglomeration of individuals. To 
 them, the solidarity of the human race and the posses- 
 sion by human societies of a common consciousness and 
 a common conscience ought not to be thought a thing 
 incredible. The Church has a vivid consciousness of 
 itself as a real though mysterious entity, and Christians 
 devote much thought to the Church as such, not deeming 
 it enough to deal only with the individual members. 
 Surely, then, the Church should occupy herself with the 
 salvation of society as such. Christians talk much of 
 
 i8
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ' the world,' which they oppose to ' the Church ' as 
 another mystical but real entity. Surely they ought 
 to concern themselves as much with human society 
 as a whole as they do with 'the world' and 'the 
 Church ' as wholes. 
 
 A very practical and plausible objection to Social 
 Christianity is that it diverts the Church from purely 
 spiritual work; that, by engrossing her in secularities 
 it both dissipates her energies and lowers her tone. It 
 is urged that the Christian Church has enough, and more 
 than enough, to do, in a materialistic age, to keep alive 
 in men a sense of God and things invisible and eternal, 
 without wearing and wasting herself in advocating and 
 working social reforms. She will serve society best, it is 
 said, by preserving her ' other-worldliness ' despite the 
 sneers of those who, by their very sneers, evince their 
 need of her ministries. This is a forcible objection. 
 There is a danger of the Church to-day endeavouring 
 too much, and trying too ambitiously to make the best 
 of both worlds, the material and the spiritual. The 
 danger is real that the Church, by becoming a sort of 
 ' universal provider ' for the people, may also become 
 materialized, or, so to speak, Marthaized, and neglect 
 the needful sitting at the Master's feet. It would indeed 
 be a calamity to this generation if the Christian Church 
 failed to bear her witness to things eternal and invisible. 
 The ideal undoubtedly is that the Church should confine 
 herself to fostering the spiritual life of men, instructing 
 and quickening the conscience, declaring social duties, 
 and pointing out social perils and evils, leaving it to 
 Christian individuals and to Christian societies to establish 
 and work, on neutral ground, and upon business prin- 
 ciples, the different social organizations and movements 
 
 19
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 needed for the people. The work would be more effec- 
 tively done, inasmuch as the Church's efforts often fail to 
 reach those who most need them, because they suspect an 
 intention to proselytize or to sermonize. The Church 
 would then be left free for the work of supplying the 
 necessary instruction and motive power, and would be 
 saved from the danger of becoming 'careful and troubled 
 about many things.' 
 
 But at present much of this work is pioneer work, and 
 must be done by the Christian Church, or left undone. 
 The existence of moral and spiritual peril is no reason 
 for shrinking from a plain duty. Let it but be made 
 clear that it is a duty, and then the Church must guard 
 her spirituality the more jealously, bracing herself up 
 for the increased demand made upon her, strong in the 
 strength which her Lord supplies. Such social work, 
 undertaken as object-lessons to the community, may 
 really enhance her spirituality, by casting her more upon 
 God in faith and prayer ; and her serviceableness, by 
 increasing her social value to the community. The 
 multiplication of relationships always increases moral 
 peril, but it also increases moral possibility. The Church 
 must become social without becoming secularized, and 
 then she will win the reward of becoming much more 
 highly developed, more highly moralized, and more 
 socially efficient. 
 
 The greatest justification of Social Christianity is the 
 fact that social questions are at bottom moral ques- 
 tions, and, therefore, well within the Church's province. 
 Political economy itself is now perceived to be not only 
 a science, but also a branch of ethics. Such economists 
 as Bagehot, Jevons, Cairnes, Thornton, Ingram, Cliffe- 
 Leslie, Walker, Bowen, Roscher, Wagner, Schaffie, 
 
 20
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Brentano, Baernreither, and Gneist, agree that an 
 ethical element enters largely into all these questions. 
 There is need thus to cite scientific authorities ; those 
 whose business it is to study ethical and religious 
 questions ought to be sufificient authorities upon such a 
 subject, but their judgement upon the presence or absence 
 of the ethical element in these matters is frequently 
 discounted as interested. 
 
 Mr. Frederic Harrison has gone so far as to say that 
 economic sci ence has done its best and its worst with 
 social problems, and that nowlrioral teachers must step 
 in. If this be so — and it demonstrably is — the Christian 
 Church cannot remain silent ; if she did, the very stones 
 would cry out against her. The hopelessness and misery 
 of the masses, so far as they are caused by a commercial 
 and industrial system of fierce competition, should occupy 
 the attention, not only of statesmen and economists, but 
 also of the Church, in order that competition may at 
 least become fairer and more equal, less grasping and 
 selfish. It is hers, by all consent, to deal with the 
 drinking habits, the immorality and impurity, and the 
 thriftlessness of the people ; therefore it is also hers to 
 deal with the cause of those evils, whether it be innate 
 viciousness or, as it sometimes is, the grasping selfish- 
 ness of large capitalists and shareholders, who keep 
 down especially unskilled labour, and largely induce 
 its recklessness, misery, and vice. 
 
 These problems are the particular business of the 
 Christian Church, and should not be left to amateur 
 and irresponsible moralists. They are not to be solved 
 by the quixotic, though chivalrous, labours of a few 
 isolated individuals or societies. A new public con- 
 science needs forming, and this, as it is the business 
 
 21
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of, so only can it be accomplished by, the labours of 
 the whole Christian Church, through her teachers, 
 preachers, and writers. 
 
 Mr. Price Hughes affirms that the working men of 
 modern Europe are alienated from the Church, if not 
 from Christianity. Why'.is this ? In Catholic countries, 
 like France and Italy, they are alienated because the 
 Church rather hindered than helped them in obtaining 
 their political and social liberties. That they are not 
 alienated in Catholic Ireland is due to the fact that the 
 Catholic Church there, rightly or wrongly, has identified 
 herself with the cause of the people. The emancipation 
 of the individual, which took place religiously at the 
 Reformation, and politically at the French Revolution, 
 largely alienated the people from the Roman CathoUc 
 Church in the countries concerned. The Protestant 
 Churches of Germany and England afterwards lost the 
 people by their lack of sympathy with them, shown in 
 suffering the exercise of individual liberty by the strong 
 to proceed to such lengths that it became anti-social. 
 
 In England it culminated in a great industrial system, 
 concerning which the German economist Baernreither 
 declares that between 1832 and 1848 'the modern 
 history of the West records, perhaps, no greater 
 plundering of man by man than that which was then 
 committed against a large portion of the English working 
 class.' That exploitation of the working classes of 
 England, which, alas ! did not first begin then, was 
 suffered to proceed without a protest from, and probably 
 without even the consciousness of, the Christian Church. 
 F. D. Maurice, Kingsley, and a few others, laboured 
 almost alone and almost too late. 
 
 Then came in the era of Free Trade, which led
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 amongst other less doubtful things, to almost unlimited 
 competition ; buying in the cheapest market and selling 
 in the dearest became a sacred principle even when flesh 
 and blood in the form of human labour were bought and 
 sold. This largely neutralized the benefits of Free Trade 
 to the working classes, until skilled labour protected 
 itself by association, with little or no countenance from 
 the Christian Church, as such, and less elsewhere. 
 Unskilled labour is still at the mercy of a selfish and 
 relentless competition. What wonder, then, that the 
 people are alienated from the Churches, which, despite 
 their Founder, their creed, and their own past, have been 
 controlled in the main by landowners, capitalists, and 
 employers of labour ! What wonder when new move- 
 ments for social reform have arisen, that they have been 
 in form, and often in spirit, either anti-Christian or 
 non-Christian ! 
 
 The only hopeful sign is that the Christian Churches 
 of Europe, both Catholic and Protestant, are becoming 
 conscious of their past errors, and are beginning to 
 arouse themselves. The cause of their awakening 
 indeed — the political uprising of the people in their own 
 economic and social interest — reflects no great credit 
 upon those Churches. 
 
 But something must be done. Europe, after a 
 thousand years of Christianity, is in a most unsatisfactory 
 state. As Mr. Frederic Harrison has truly said, 
 Christianity has not been hitherto a success as the 
 morality of nations. He affirms that Christianity does 
 nothing effectually to stop international jealousies or 
 promote the brotherhood of nations, to reduce the 
 number of men in arms or check the warlike spirit, to 
 diminish the social warfare of classes and the selfishness 
 
 23
 
 SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of wealth. The truth of the sad indictment must be 
 admitted. Where Mr. Harrison errs is not here ; not in 
 his historical narrative, but in his historical deductions. 
 He regards the defect as inherent in Christianity — that it 
 is incapable of becoming the morality of nations and 
 classes — whereas the defect is not inherent in Christianity ; 
 the defect is in the Churches, for the treasure is in 
 earthen vessels. But the one hopeful sign of the times, 
 and the promise of a falsification of all Positivist prognos- 
 tications of the decline and fall of Christianity, is the 
 growing consciousness amongst the Churches of their 
 fault and defect, and their endeavours to amend. 
 
 24
 
 PART II 
 
 HISTORICAL 
 
 25
 
 I 
 
 GERMAN 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 27
 
 GERMAN SOCIALISM 
 
 More than once it has been said to me in the factory, in so many 
 words, What Jesus Christ has been in the past, Bebel and 
 Liebknecht will be in the future. — Pastor Gohre. 
 
 The Germans have been slower in their development 
 than most of the great nations of Europe, but they have 
 long since made up for the lateness of their arrival upon 
 the scene. Since the sixteenth century they have been 
 in the front rank, both in thought and action. To 
 German thinkers and German scholars we owe much of 
 our modern progress in every department of human 
 thought — in theology, in philosophy, in history, and in 
 science. To Germans, also, we owe much in the great 
 modern movement towards the completion of human 
 emancipation, viz. in the movement for economic 
 emancipation. As the Germans, in the sixteenth 
 century, inaugurated the era of Individualism by their 
 Protestantism, so, in the nineteenth century, they have 
 inaugurated the era of Association by their Socialism. 
 They originated neither of these eras, but they have 
 practically inaugurated both. 
 
 John Wychf, Hus of Bohemia, and Jerome of 
 Prague, all preceded Martin Luther, but it was under 
 
 29
 
 GERMAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Luther that the Reformation became an irresistible 
 historical movement for the moral, mental, and finally 
 political emancipation of the individual. Socialism did 
 not originate with the Germans — they were too late in 
 their industrial development for that — it originated in 
 England and France ; but under German influence 
 Sociahsm has for the first time assumed scientific form 
 as an elaborate economic theory, and attained world-wide 
 notoriety and influence. As Germany profoundly 
 modified the Europe of the past by its Protestantism 
 of the sixteenth century, its philosophy of the eighteenth, 
 its science and its militarism of the nineteenth, so, by its 
 Socialism, will it modify the Europe of the future — the 
 Europe of the twentieth century. It is therefore well 
 worth while to study German Socialism. 
 
 The theory of German Socialism is now well knov/n, 
 having become international property. That theory in 
 brief is, that modern Capitalism, which is a comparatively 
 recent development of the great industrial movement, 
 by means of the wages system and the * free ' labour 
 market, aided also by the presence there of a surplus 
 army of labour — the unemployed — manages, by the 
 appropriation of ' surplus value,' to deprive the workers 
 of the product of their labours. From this comes all 
 our woe — the double-headed hydra of bloated Capitalism 
 and bleached Proletarianism, an increasingly rich army 
 of capitalists on the one 'side, and an increasingly 
 wretched army of workers on the other. But, according 
 to the German Socialists, deliverance hes in the very 
 success of Capitalism — by giving it rope enough it will 
 hang itself. It will so mass in its own hands the instru- 
 ments of production and distribution — land, machinery, 
 railways, &c., that the expropriated community — dis- 
 
 3°
 
 GERMAN SOCIALISM 
 
 ciplined, educated, and drilled by Capitalism itself — will 
 finally rise, in some countries peacefully, in others 
 violently, and ' expropriate the expropriators,' or, in 
 other words, put the community in possession of the 
 land and the remaining instruments of production and 
 distribution. Private property in these will then be no 
 more, and production will be undertaken by the people 
 for the people — no longer by the workers for the 
 capitalists. The legal, religious, and political emancipa- 
 tion of the labourer will then be completed by his 
 economic emancipation ; until then his moral and political 
 ' freedom ' is more in fancy than in fact, is more a bane 
 than a boon. This is the theory of German SociaUsm. 
 
 The German father of this theory was Rodbertus, a 
 Prussian landowner and lawyer, born in 1805. Rodbertus 
 was well versed in orthodox political economy ; he ac- 
 cepted Adam Smith's doctrine of labour as the source of 
 value, and Ricardo's iron law of wages — doctrines which, 
 consciously or unconsciously, had been formulated in 
 the interests of Capital ; these he reiterated, in a work 
 published in 1842, in the interests of Labour, and there 
 elaborated his theory of scientific Socialism. Rodbertus 
 brought to his study and his theory a vast amount of 
 legal and economic knowledge, and also, as a landowner 
 and agriculturist, much practical experience. Although 
 his theory was revolutionary, he himself was not a revo- 
 lutionist. He deprecated the union of Socialism with 
 politics. He was intensely loyal both to the constitution 
 and the monarchy. He desired to see the Prussian 
 king a social reformer. He was for peaceful and gradual 
 methods of reform, and calculated that it would take 
 five hundred years to realize his socialistic state. Rod- 
 bertus wrote before his time — his economic theories 
 
 31
 
 GERMAN SOCIALISM 
 
 were almost still-born ; indeed, their merits have been 
 but recently recognized. For long they showed no signs 
 of life, until some twenty years later, two men of genius 
 arose in Germany, who began to expound the same 
 ideas more practically and more powerfully ; these were 
 Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl Marx. In the speeches 
 and writings of these great men the same economic 
 ideas reappeared, Lassalle emphasizing the small share of 
 the product which goes to the labourer through the sup- 
 posed operation of the iron law of wages, whereby wages 
 are kept down to a mere subsistence-point, and Marx 
 emphasizing the large share which goes to the capitalist, 
 by his supposed appropriation of surplus value. In 
 other words, Lassalle based his criticism of the industrial 
 system upon Ricardo's wages doctrine, and Marx based 
 his upon Adam Smith's labour doctrine. Lassalle and 
 Marx have recently been charged with ' exploiting ' 
 Rodbertus and robbing him of his ' surplus value.' But, 
 while both were undoubtedly familiar with the writings 
 of Rodbertus, they both greatly enriched and advanced 
 the theory of scientific Socialism, and practically it owed 
 everything to them. Lassalle and Karl Marx were men 
 of genius and learning ; scholars of German thorough- 
 ness, steeped in philosophical and economic lore ; both 
 were masterly economic critics and brilliant men of 
 action. Justice is only being tardily done to that pioneer 
 thinker, Pvodbertus, but there is no need to depreciate 
 the services of Lassalle and Marx in the cause of modern 
 Socialism. These can never be exaggerated. 
 
 Lassalle was born in 1825, and died in a duel in 1864 ; 
 
 but his short, brilliant, reckless, and romantic life sufficed 
 
 for him to originate the Social-Democratic Party amongst 
 
 the working men of Germany — a party which now counts 
 
 32
 
 GERMAN SOCIALISM 
 
 three millions and a quarter votes in the German Empire, 
 and its forty-three members of the Reichstag. Lassalle 
 was as brilliant an agitator and organizer as he was a 
 thinker, critic, and orator. He it was who first made 
 theoretic Socialism in Germany practical, by bringing it 
 into the pohtical sphere as an organized political party. 
 He accomplished this by his masterly criticisms of the 
 prevailing industrial system and the orthodox economy 
 before audiences of working men in Leipsic and other 
 places. Lassalle came into contact at this time with 
 Bismarck, who, impressed by Lassalle's personality, argu- 
 ments, and influence, began, not long after his death, the 
 era of State Socialism in Germany. Hence Lassalle may 
 be said to have formed the Social-Democratic Party, and 
 to have indirectly established that State Socialism which, 
 under Bismarck and the present German Emperor, has 
 secured to the German workman an advanced Factory 
 Act, an insurance on his life, compensation for accident, 
 a pension for his old age, the organization of employ- 
 ment, and other undreamt-of privileges. 
 
 Karl Marx's contributions to German Sociahsm are, if 
 possible, even more important than Lassalle's. He it 
 was who gave it its standard economic work, and who 
 founded International Socialism. Born at Treves in 
 1816, he took part in the Revolution of 1848, and then 
 became a life-long exile, living in England nearly thirty 
 years. Here he studied its advanced industrial system, 
 and gave expression to his views in the economic treatise 
 entitled Capital. It is called ' the working man's Bible,' 
 though we fear very few working men — even Germans — 
 ever read it. This great work is a most masterly criticism 
 of Capitalism in the light of SociaUstic theories and 
 assumptions ; it is more destructive than constructive, 
 c 33
 
 GERMAN SOCIALISM 
 
 tracing the rise and progress of Capitalism as a great 
 historic movement, sure to arise and equally sure to 
 perish. It is a wonderful book, full of genuine learning, 
 passion, and love of the people, however much marred by 
 materialistic philosophy, Hegelian jargon, and economic 
 errors. The Marxian or international school of Socialism 
 is now in the ascendant in Germany. Lassalle was essen- 
 tially national, and after his death the Social-Democratic 
 Party became disorganized, through the contentions of 
 the two sections — the section which was for keeping 
 Socialism national, and the section which was for making 
 it international. Finally, the latter — the Marxian — pre- 
 vailed, and the party was united for years, under the 
 leadership of the workman Bebel, the journalist Lieb- 
 knecht, and the capitalist and ex-employer Singer, in 
 North Germany, and Auer and Grillenburger in South 
 Germany, and also Vollmar, Kautsky and Bernstein. 
 The motto of German Socialism to-day is, ' Proletarians 
 of all nations, unite ! ' 
 
 Lassalle and Marx have not only been the means of 
 forming a great political party in the German Empire 
 pledged to Socialism, of indirectly creating State Socialism, 
 and of establishing the once-dreaded International, and 
 so making German Socialism the creed of a large portion 
 of the workmen of Europe, and even of America and 
 England, but they have, with Rodbertus, been the 
 means of revolutionizing political economy. These 
 great Socialists riddled the orthodox science with their 
 criticisms, and have forced it to reconsider and modify 
 or abandon many of its positions. They have shown 
 that as industrialism is an historical movement, and 
 therefore subject to the law of development, political 
 economy can never be final in its doctrines — at least, 
 34
 
 GERMAN SOCIALISM 
 
 save in a very abstract way ; in otiier words, it must 
 be progressive. They have thus taught political econo- 
 mists to be historical. But they have done more than 
 this : they have taught them to be human and ethical. 
 This they have done by criticizing and expounding the 
 science from the standpoint of the labourer, and not 
 merely from that of wealth ; by restating it in the interests 
 of the human being, the chief factor in it, and that in a 
 spirit of passionate sympathy with the workman. The 
 effect of this has been seen in the German universities, 
 in the rise there of a new school of political economy — 
 the Katheder Socialists, or Socialists of the Chair, the 
 chief ornaments of which have been Professors Roscher, 
 Wagner, and Schaffle. This school, whilst not Socialist 
 in theory, is at once historical, ethical, and humane in 
 its economic investigations and laws, and has been the 
 'guide, philosopher, and friend' of the State Socialism 
 of Prince Bismarck and his Imperial masters. 
 
 35
 
 II 
 
 FERDINAND 
 LASSALLE 
 
 37
 
 II 
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 
 
 To have as many needs as possible, but to satisfy them in a 
 respectable way, is the virtue of the present economic age. 
 — Lassalle. 
 
 The figure of Ferdinand Lassalle is the most fasci- 
 nating and romantic in the whole history of Socialism. 
 The fact that he caught the artistic eye of George 
 Meredith, who depicted him in the Tragic Comedians, is 
 sufficient proof of this. But his career is interesting not 
 only because of its romance, but also because of its 
 importance, and deserves more extended attention. 
 
 In these days of modern Jew-baiting, or anti- 
 Semiticism, the services of Jews to the science of 
 economics should not be forgotten. The Jews have not 
 only been the money-lenders, usurers, and financiers of 
 mediaeval and modern Europe, but in Ricardo, whose 
 father was a Jew, they have given us one of the founders 
 of the science of political economy ; and in Lassalle and 
 Karl Marx, both of Jewish parentage, they have given us 
 the two great critics of that science and the founders of a 
 new economic movement, the far-reaching influences of 
 which cannot yet be foretold. 
 
 Lassalle was born at Breslau, in Germany, in 1825. 
 39
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 
 
 Although greatly the junior of Rodbertus, and even of 
 Marx, he was the first to run his career — a career both 
 epoch-making and brilliant. 
 
 The son of a well-to-do tradesman, he studied at the 
 Universities of Breslau and Berlin. His favourite 
 subjects there were philology and philosophy, but he 
 displayed great precociousness in every branch of 
 learning. He was of striking and handsome presence, 
 of charming manners and brilliant conversational powers, 
 and withal a dandy in his dress. He soon became a 
 favourite both in the haunts of men and in the boudoirs 
 of women : of the men because of his wide knowledge, 
 virile intellect, and keen debating powers ; of women 
 because of his gallantry and personal and social charm. 
 Both Heine and Bismarck have borne testimony to 
 Lassalle's remarkable ability. Heine, who met him in 
 Paris in 1846, wrote of him as 'a young man of most 
 remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough 
 erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest 
 penetration which I have ever known, and with the 
 richest gifts of exposition, he combines an energy of will 
 and a capacity for action which astonishes me.' The 
 bitter-tongued Heine seldom spoke in such high praise 
 of any contemporary. When Lassalle's brilliant, meteor- 
 like career flared to its close, Heine, in a Hebrew mood, 
 crowned his praise by declaring him ' the Messiah of the 
 nineteenth century.' Bismarck, speaking in the Reichs- 
 tag, in 1878, of some interviews Lassalle had had with 
 him, exclaimed that ' he was one of the most intellectual 
 and gifted men with whom I ever had intercourse.' 
 
 Lassalle's public career both opens and closes chival- 
 rously — he both appears and disappears as the champion 
 of women. When twenty-one, he met in the drawing- 
 40
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 
 
 rooms of Breslau the interesting and unfortunate 
 Countess Hatzfeldt. She was the victim of the unfaith- 
 fulness and brutahty of her husband, a rich German 
 count, from whom she was separated, and who now 
 sought to reduce her to beggary and to rob her of her 
 children. Her wrongs aroused Lassalle's sympathy ; 
 he resolved to become her champion. With character- 
 istic ardour and ability he mastered the necessary legal 
 knowledge, and, after pursuing the count with lawsuits 
 for eight years and through thirty-six tribunals, he finally 
 brought the villain to his knees, and wrung from him for 
 the countess the charge of her children and a large 
 fortune. This romantic incident, however, cast an air 
 of moral suspicion over his reputation. Society refused 
 to believe that the affection of this brilliant youth 
 for the handsome countess of forty was purely Platonic, 
 especially when it became known that he had accepted 
 from her an annuity of some ;^6oo or ;^7oo. 
 
 But whatever damage was thus done at the outset 
 of his career to his moral reputation, this legal experience 
 stood Lassalle in good stead in his many subsequent 
 prosecutions. So much so that he rather rejoiced in 
 them, and made the prison-dock his forum. These legal 
 struggles also developed his talents, and made him at 
 a very early age one of the most brilliant debaters, 
 expositors, and orators in Germany. In the midst of 
 the Hatzfeldt lawsuit the revolution of 1848 broke out. 
 Into this Lassalle at once threw himself, on the 
 Republican side, and, for some illegal act at Dilsseldorf, 
 suffered six months' imprisonment. 
 
 At the conclusion of the Hatzfeldt case in 1856, he 
 wrote and published a philos'ophic book on Ileraclitiis, 
 from an Hegelian standpoint, for Lassalle belonged to 
 
 41
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 
 
 the young Hegelian School, the Left — that school which 
 interpreted Hegel in a naturalistic, humanistic, material- 
 istic way. This book at once gained him a high place 
 in learned circles, as did also another book, published in 
 1 86 1, on the philosophy of law, entitled The System of 
 Acquired Rights. This latter book was the result of his 
 legal studies, and has received too little attention, for 
 had Lassalle lived longer there is no doubt that the 
 principles there laid down would have become prominent 
 in his policy. The constitutional struggle, which began 
 in 1862, when Bismarck became the minister of 
 William I, brought Lassalle into the field of politics 
 and began his Socialistic career. He had long given 
 attention to economics, and was quite prepared with 
 his theories — theories both new and startling to the 
 general German public, but which he had obtained and 
 thoroughly assimilated from Rodbertus and Marx, and 
 the French and English Socialists and economists. 
 He was already an adept in economic science, and an 
 economic critic of the first order. After one or two 
 skirmishes over questions of the hour, Lassalle opened 
 the Socialistic era in Germany by a lecture given in the 
 spring of 1862 before an artisans' association in Berlin, 
 in which he dealt in a philosophic and historical way 
 with the development of the State and society since the 
 French Revolution. He arrived at the conclusion that, 
 as the French Revolution of 1789 had inaugurated the 
 era of the third estate — the bourgeoisie — so the revolution 
 of 1848 had begun the era of the fourth estate — that 
 of the common people, of humanity in general. The 
 lecture was afterwards published, under the title of The 
 IVorhnen's Programme. 
 He was prosecuted for these utterances, the copies of 
 42
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 
 
 his lecture confiscated, and he himself fined ; but his 
 brilliant defence in court greatly increased his popularity. 
 The heads of the German working classes perceived that 
 a new leader had arisen, and the Leipsic Workmen's 
 Association invited him to state his views to them. 
 This he did in the spring of 1863 ^^ his famous 
 Open Letter. This was followed by a congress of 
 workmen's associations at Frankfort-on-Main, where 
 1,300 delegates assembled, and Lassalle advocated his 
 Socialistic views — now so familiar, then so new and 
 strange — against those of the Progressist Party which 
 had till that hour held the allegiance of the German 
 workers. Lassalle won a great victory — all save forty 
 voting for his programme. From that hour Lassalle 
 became a great agitator, journeying over Germany 
 addressing workmen and forming associations. The 
 battle waged hottest between Lassalle and Schulze- 
 Delitzsch — an earnest politician and friend of the people, 
 whose programme was ' Self-help by means of Co- 
 operative Societies and People's Banks.' Lassalle 
 attacked this movement with great energy ; the odds 
 seemed all against him — the whole Progressist Party, the 
 rank and file of the workmen, and the powers that be — 
 but Lassalle won ; not at first, but finally. At first he 
 seemed defeated, but finally, as all men know, the 
 German working classes discarded Co-operation as a 
 remedy for their grievances, and took up Socialism. 
 Lassalle's great contention was that the working classes 
 suffered as producers, not as consumers, and that any 
 movement which was to really help them must put them 
 in possession of the product or the means of production. 
 This Socialism proposed to do. As a counteractive to 
 Schulze-Delitzsch's co-operative societies, Lassalle urged 
 43
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 
 
 the formation of State workshops, in which the workers 
 were to do productive work, the necessary capital being 
 found by the State. These were no doubt suggested 
 to Lassalle by Louis Blanc. Between the ateliers 
 nationaux of the latter and the productive associations 
 of the former there is no practical difference. The 
 means Lassalle advocated for the attainment of this end 
 was universal suffrage. He was unable to secure the 
 co-operation of the veteran Rodbertus in his political 
 venture, but, with a true instinct, Lassalle felt that mere 
 economic abstractions would not attract the working 
 classes — the proposals of Socialism must be something 
 concrete and definite. He proposed a political cam- 
 paign, with ' Productive Associations and Universal 
 Suffrage ' as battle-cry, and entered upon it. This was 
 a brilliant success. Lassalle was hailed by the working 
 men of Germany as a deliverer, and his journeys to and 
 fro were like royal progresses. The towns he visited 
 were en fete. His views took firm and quick hold of the 
 German working men — that labour is the source of 
 value ; that, by the iron law of wages, whereby the 
 workman only receives a subsistence wage, the major 
 part of the product is filched from him ; that Capitalism 
 is an historic category to be superseded by Socialism — 
 the possession by the community of the means of 
 production and distribution. 
 
 But the labour through which Lassalle went in 
 organizing the working classes, with their slowness (to 
 his eyes) and their divisions, the hostility of the 
 Government and of the middle and upper classes, and 
 the many prosecutions which this involved, all told upon 
 his constitution, and at last, after two years' incessant 
 agitation, in July 1864, worn out in mind and body, 
 
 44
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 
 
 Lassalle retreated to Switzerland to recuperate. Here 
 he met, at Rigi-Kaltbad, Helene von Donniges, a young 
 lady engaged to Count von Racowitz. He became 
 enamoured of her, and stole her affections from the 
 young count. Her parents interfered, removed her, 
 and finally persuaded her to renounce Lassalle and be 
 reconciled to Racowitz. Lassalle had all through played 
 an unworthy part in exercising his great personal 
 attractions upon a young and engaged girl ; he now 
 added to his folly by challenging Racowitz to a duel — 
 he, the democrat who, when challenged to a duel in 
 1848 by a political enemy, declined on the ground that 
 it was 'barbaric' He insisted on the duel. It was 
 fought with pistols on the morning of August 28, 1864, 
 near Geneva. Racowitz got his shot away first, and 
 mortally wounded Lassalle, who lingered two days in 
 agony, and died with his hand in that of the Countess 
 Hatzfeldt. 
 
 Thus ignominiously died Lassalle, the inaugurator of 
 a new era, the first to bring Socialism within the political 
 arena, the first State Socialist, the man who converted 
 Bismarck to State Socialism, who converted Bishop von 
 Ketteler, and thus won to the new movement, in a 
 modified way, the German Government and the Roman 
 Catholic Church. Thus ended the career, at the early 
 age of thirty-nine, of that great economic critic who 
 riddled the orthodox economists with his criticisms, and 
 indirectly brought into being the Socialism of the Chair, 
 and who founded the great Social-Democratic Party in 
 Germany, which is now such a vast and threatening 
 power. Most truly descriptive of him is Bernhard 
 Becker's epitaph : ' Here lies Ferdinand Lassalle, 
 thinker and fighter.' The ' Messiah of the nineteenth 
 45
 
 FERDINAND LASSALLE 
 
 century' Heine named him, and such the German 
 working classes regard him. August 31 is kept as his 
 death-day with great solemnity and celebration. Some, 
 indeed, positively refuse to believe in his death, but 
 await in hope his return from retirement, to the dismay 
 of the enemies of the working classes, and the final 
 triumph of Socialism. 
 
 46
 
 Ill 
 
 KARL MARX'S 
 ' CAPITAL ' 
 
 47
 
 Ill 
 
 KARL MARX'S ' CAPITAL '^ 
 
 The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The ex- 
 propriators are expropriated. — Marx. 
 
 Nothing angers the Socialist so much as the frequency 
 with which his name is claimed by others. It is the 
 commonest occurrence for a minister, or a politician, after 
 advocating some mild measure of social amelioration, to 
 perorate grandiloquently thus : ' If this is Sociahsm — 
 then I am a Socialist ! ' All sorts and conditions of 
 men, from Social sentimentalists to State interven- 
 tionalists, take to themselves this title, without the least 
 right to it. The well-meaning ' Christian Socialist,' 
 who chafes at the tyranny of Capital and champions 
 Labour ; who exhorts the employer to be just and 
 pitiful, and invokes State aid when he will be neither 
 the one nor the other — he has nothing of the Socialist 
 about him but the name. That sagacious politician the 
 State Socialist, who, discovering the social trend of 
 democratic politics, casts a sop to Cerberus in the way 
 of State insurance and pensions — he again, to the 
 scientific Socialist, is nothing but a fraud, 
 
 ' Read before the Chester Nonconformist Ministers' Association, 
 June 1893. 
 
 D 49
 
 KARL MARX'S * CAPITAL* 
 
 Socialism is a great economic theory, critical and 
 constructive, elaborated by men who, whatever their 
 prejudices and sympathies, were men of economic genius. 
 Socialism proper, therefore, is neither a tendency nor a 
 sentiment, but a clearly defined and logically formulated 
 theory — a fit subject for the careful consideration of 
 economists and men of inteUigence. 
 
 The Jewish race which has given us our great financiers 
 — those modern Shylocks who, with Jacob-like instincts, 
 have taught barren money to breed — has given us not 
 only the bane, but also the antidote, viz. the Socialists. 
 There is a social Nemesis in this which satisfies the 
 mind. Although German Jews by birth, intellectually 
 both Lassalle and Marx were the products of the French 
 Revolution and of Hegel's philosophy. They became 
 the founders of ' the International,' and of European 
 Socialism. 
 
 Lassalle was an economic free-lance, brilliant and 
 versatile — the antipodes of the steady and systematic 
 Marx. Lassalle had hours of insight and gleams of 
 genius. He flashed like a meteor through the economic 
 sky, quickly disappearing from view ; not, however, until 
 he had disturbed the whole economic atmosphere of 
 Germany. His economic criticisms, by the admissions 
 of the learned ' Socialists of the Chair,' completely 
 changed the character of German economic science. 
 
 Karl Marx lived a refugee in England for thirty years. 
 He died in Paris in 1883, aged sixty-five. When in this 
 country Marx made a profound study of the English 
 industrial system, and in 1867 published, in Germany, 
 his Das Capital, a critical analysis of capitalistic pro- 
 duction. It is a great and epoch-making work, which 
 has only recently been reckoned with by the economic 
 SO
 
 KARL MARX'S 'CAPITAL* 
 
 world. It is characteristically German in its terminology 
 and tone — heavy, cumbrous, technical, and philosophical. 
 It is therefore abstruse, and both exhaustive and ex- 
 hausting. There is, as the Germans would say, much 
 * mind-stuff ' in it. 
 
 But, whatever its difficulties, it has leavened the 
 masses of Germany. The proof of this may be seen in 
 the mighty and disconcerting Socialist vote now existing 
 in the German Empire. 
 
 That Socialism was predestined to make some way 
 even in England was evident to those who knew that 
 Karl Marx's Capital was a criticism of the modern 
 industrial system as expounded by English economists and 
 exemplified in English industrial society. That it was so 
 was due, not to the chance that Marx was a political 
 exile in England, a ' chiel amang us takin' notes,' but to 
 the fact that the science of political economy was born in 
 England, and that here industry and commerce were 
 more highly developed and organized than anywhere 
 else. A scientific student, such as Marx, must begin in 
 England. Hence his criticisms and theories, if of any 
 value, although published in Germany, were destined, 
 sooner or later, to be heard of in England. They have 
 been heard of in England, and very much of the Socialist 
 literature with which we are now deluged is nothing but 
 a doling out or rechauffe of Karl Marx's Capital. 
 
 Capital is, indeed, the very charter of Labour. It is 
 a mine of theories, arguments, criticisms, and facts — a 
 very arsenal of arms for the workman. Though repellent 
 in form and technical in phrase, it is now constantly 
 reproduced and popularized by practised literary hands. 
 All that is here attempted is, not a detailed analysis or 
 criticism of Marx's Capital^ but simply a brief and 
 
 51
 
 KARL MARX^S 'CAPITAL* 
 
 popular summary of his doctrines, in order that those 
 who have neither leisure nor inclination to read the 
 ponderous tome may have some accurate idea of the 
 main trend of that remarkable work. 
 
 Marx takes the findings of the great orthodox economist 
 Ricardo, and bases his work upon them. It is the 
 irony of economic history that so capitalistic an 
 economist as Ricardo should have been made to play 
 so revolutionary a part in it. His famous economic laws 
 have been put to uses that he little dreamt of, and have 
 been made the subject of deductions which, famous 
 deducer as he himself was, would have horrified him. 
 Henry George deduced from the Ricardian law of rent the 
 iniquity of private property in land. Lassalle deduced 
 from the Ricardian ' iron ' law of wages, and Marx from 
 the Ricardian law of value, the iniquity of private 
 property at all — or at least in any of the instruments of 
 production and distribution. 
 
 Karl Marx's first and fundamental doctrine in Capital 
 is, that it is labour which constitutes or creates exchange- 
 value. He asserts that a commodity is nothing but con- 
 gealed labour, or, to quote him, ' a mere homogeneous 
 congelation of undifferentiated human labour.' It is 
 only fair to Marx to point out, in view of many criticisms 
 which have been passed upon this phrase, that by labour 
 as the source of value he means labour under certain 
 necessary social conditions. He is not so simple as to 
 say, as some very reputable critics assume, that it is any 
 labour, skilled or unskilled, quick or slow, useful or not, 
 which constitutes the exchange-value of products. Marx 
 is very careful to declare that value-creating labour must 
 be — to use his own phrases — both ' socially useful ' and 
 ' socially necessary ' labour. ' The exchange-value of a 
 52
 
 KARL MARX'S 'CAPITAL' 
 
 commodity,' Marx says, ' is to be measured by the 
 amount of socially necessary labour put into it. The 
 labour-time socially necessary is that required to produce 
 an article under the normal conditions of production, 
 and with the average degree of skill and intensity pre- 
 valent at the time.' In another place Marx declares that 
 'if a thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it — 
 the labour does not count as labour, and therefore 
 creates no value.' Nothing can be more explicit than 
 this, or than the following words : ' The labour spent 
 upon them ' (commodities) ' counts effectually only in 
 so far as it is spent in a form that is useful for others.' 
 Hence it is unfair to represent Marx as teaching that 
 labour of any sort creates value. Marx's labour-doctrine 
 of value, then, is that it is labour which is socially useful 
 and socially necessary, which creates value in exchange. 
 But, having seen this much, it is marvellous that he did 
 not see also that social demand must therefore be an 
 integral element in value. 
 
 He next proceeds to define and establish his law of 
 surplus value. Marx's great indictment against the 
 modern system of capitalistic production is that it is 
 a scientific system of robbery — the robbery of the weak 
 by the strong, of the poor by the rich — and that it 
 proceeds by the appropriation of what he calls ' surplus 
 value.' The wage-worker, Marx says, not only repro- 
 duces the value of his wages, but produces more value 
 besides. This surplus value is either all kept by the 
 capitalist or shared with the landlord and manager in 
 the three historic forms of interest, rent, and profit. 
 
 In order to accomplish this financial feat, the capitalist 
 needs something beside constant capital — i.e. the means 
 of production : money, raw material, machinery, &c. 
 53
 
 KARL MARX'S 'CAPITAL* 
 
 These only reproduce themselves in the form of 
 exchange-values, and there can be no gain in the 
 exchange of equivalents ; only what is put in can come 
 out. The capitalist needs another kind of capital — 
 variable capital. He needs something which has the 
 unique faculty of being able to do more than merely 
 reproduce itself This he finds in labour-power — 
 labour-power for sale in the market in the person of 
 the so-called ' free ' labourer, and under the protecting 
 aegis of the wages system. By this means the capitalist 
 secures the services of the labourer for the whole working- 
 day for the mere wages of subsistence — wages sufficient, 
 that is, for the support of the labourer and his family, or, 
 to put it in the abstract, sufficient for the support and 
 reproduction of labour-power. The capitalist is, there- 
 fore, legally able to make a profit upon the transaction, 
 'obtaining several hours' labour per diem for nothing. 
 This device the capitalists, aided by the economists, 
 have steadily worked up into a system, and, being in 
 possession of wealth, education. Parliament, and power, 
 have had very little trouble in perfecting it. As the 
 result, we have the ' free ' labourer standing in the 
 market divorced from the land and from all the instru- 
 ments of production. He stands there offering for sale 
 his only commodity, viz. his labour-power. He cannot 
 sell himself — that is not legal, it is not moral — he lives 
 in the era of freedom. He now has the privilege of 
 selling his power to labour under the enlightened 
 regime of 'free contract' and 'free competition,' in 
 which he is so far free that he must either sell his 
 labour-power to a capitalist, who gives him the market- 
 wage, which, be it remembered, is only the wages of 
 subsistence — subsistence measured sometimes by a high, 
 54
 
 KARL MARX'S 'CAPITAL' 
 
 more often a low, standard of civilization — or else starve. 
 The labourer can reproduce the value of his wages, say, 
 with five hours' labour, but he is obliged to contract — to 
 * freely ' contract — to work twelve or ten hours for the 
 capitalist, so that the value created by him in the re- 
 maining seven or five hours is taken by the said capitalist. 
 Marx calculates that the labourer is deprived, upon the 
 average, of three-fifths of the product of his labour under 
 the capitalist system of industry. * Profit consists of 
 labour put into material for which the labourer has 
 not been paid.' Profit is appropriated surplus labour — 
 crystallized unpaid labour. No wonder, then, says Marx, 
 that the capitalists cry out for ' freedom of contract ' and 
 'a free labour-market.' 'Licence they mean when they 
 cry liberty ! ' 
 
 The genesis of the ' free ' labourer and his perpetuation 
 and increase lead Marx into a long historical study, and 
 finally to another of his great doctrines. 
 
 In a terrible narrative, based on past history and the 
 unimpeachable testimony of modern Blue-books, Marx 
 shows how it came to pass that the labourer, landless 
 and tooUess, stands to-day too often idle in the market- 
 place, with nothing to sell but his labour-power — that 
 product of human intelligence, feeling, and will. The 
 divorce of the labourer from the land took place soon 
 after the break-up of feudalism, by the system of rack- 
 renting, land-enclosures, and dispossessions of commonal 
 rights. Through these injustices, perpetrated particu- 
 larly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the 
 labourers were cast upon the towns. The consequent 
 congestion of the towns with landless men, accompanied 
 by political causes, broke down in the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries the guild system of industry, and 
 55
 
 KARL MARX'S 'CAPITAL* 
 
 completed the ruin of the English working classes by 
 obliterating the mediaeval artisan. The beginning of 
 the sixteenth century saw, through geographical dis- 
 covery and through conquest, the beginnings of a world- 
 embracing commerce and a world-embracing market — 
 in a word, the rise of Capitalism — a new thing in the 
 economic history of man. The seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries saw the growth and the decline 
 of domestic industry — the system of home handicrafts. 
 During those centuries, though landless, the workman 
 gradually gained the instruments of production, and 
 united in his own person capitalist and labourer. This, 
 however, was only temporary. With the utilization of 
 water-power, and still more with the invention of steam- 
 power, came the transition from the small to the large 
 industry. The invention of machinery, and the per- 
 fecting of the factory system, completed the dispossession 
 of the labourer from the instruments of production. He 
 now becomes the ' free ' labourer — left in the forlorn 
 condition before mentioned, with only his labour-power 
 for sale to the highest, or, more correctly, to the lowest, 
 bidder — left to the tender mercies of the law of supply 
 and demand and the profitmonger. 
 
 At this point emerges the third leading doctrine of 
 Karl Marx — his law of surplus population. 
 
 The preceding dispossessions — to call them by a polite 
 name — of the labourer from his land and from his instru- 
 ments of production not only provided capitalist pro- 
 duction with the ' free ' labourer, without whom profit is 
 impossible, but they did something more. The con- 
 gestions of the towns by the influx of the agricultural 
 refugees expelled from the land ; the displacement of 
 men by?machinery ; the dislocations, depressions, crises, 
 56
 
 KARL MARX'S 'CAPITAL* 
 
 changes and fluctuations of the modern productive 
 system, and many other things, helped on the forma- 
 tion of a great surplus population, euphoniously called 
 an industrial army of reserve. The unemployed, always 
 clamouring at the gate of Capital for bread, are, in Marx's 
 opinion, an inevitable, a logical result of the capitalist 
 system — necessary, indeed, to its success. Without this 
 competition between labourers, wages could not be kept 
 at a profitable level ; the competition between capitalists 
 for trade is keen enough, without increasing it by adding 
 competition between them for labour. Labour must be 
 abundant, and, fortunately for the capitaHst if not for 
 the workman, by the above causes it becomes abundant. 
 The competition which results between the super- 
 abundant labourers for work keeps wages down in the 
 interest of surplus value and profits. History records, 
 in letters of blood and fire, the success of Capital in 
 securing low wages and long hours. Without the army 
 of the unemployed it would not pay the capitalist to 
 starve and overwork the labourer. A slave must be 
 well fed, and not overworked — so too must a horse — 
 otherwise they will die, and be costly to replace. But 
 with the ' free ' labourer, the ' army of reserve ' being 
 in the rear, starvation and overwork not only do not 
 matter, but are positively profitable ! The ' free ' labourers 
 may die off like flies under the rise and progress of 
 CapitaUsm, but there is a surplus supply of them, and 
 all is well. There are plenty more clamouring at the 
 gate to be let in and fed; human beings are, in this 
 system, a drug in the market. That they breed and 
 multiply hke rabbits in their misery is a disadvantage 
 only to themselves, as kind Mr. Clergyman Malthus once 
 told them. 
 
 57
 
 KARL MARX*S * CAPITAL* 
 
 Moneybags, that man of business and Bethels, con- 
 sidered Rev. Mr. Malthus's doctrines very profane, and 
 quite contrary to Scripture, not to mention the fact that 
 they were contrary to Moneybags' own commercial 
 interests. A decline in the population would certainly 
 have diminished his chances of extracting as much 
 surplus value from the 'free' labourer. He therefore 
 the more heartily banned this pernicious and unscriptural 
 doctrine, and was shocked to think that a Christian 
 clergyman, of all men, should have put these dangerous 
 and immoral notions into the heads of the working 
 classes — fortunately, they showed too much good sense 
 to embrace them ! Such, mildly expressed, is Marx's 
 bitter irony in the matter of Malthus. 
 
 The progress of the system of capitalistic production, 
 when left to itself, to its own laws and evolution, produced 
 results so terrible at the end of the last and the beginning 
 of this century that the cold records of even the Parlia- 
 mentary Blue-books are appalling and cheek-blanching. 
 Never in the history of Christendom was such oppression 
 known, or such cruelty perpetrated. The community 
 slowly became scandalized, and sheer humanity forced 
 it to interfere with the natural workings of this brutal 
 system. Hence the historical wrestle with the capitaHsts 
 over the Factory Acts and other labour legislation. 
 
 But Capital evolves its own destruction. It has massed, 
 organized, and drilled the labourers until at last they 
 have obtained a sense of solidarity, and have begun to 
 combine in their own interests. Trade unions arise with 
 much difficulty, and slightly modify the situation ; but 
 they are quite unable to cope with the evils of the 
 labourer's lot in presence of the surplus population. 
 They try to deal with the evils of surplus population and 
 58
 
 KARL MARX'S * CAPITAL 
 
 surplus value; they endeavour to make certain trades 
 close corporations, they limit production, they demand 
 a standard wage, and they discourage speed and skill, to 
 the damage of their own ability and honour. But this 
 is, thinks Marx, an all too feeble endeavour to circum- 
 vent Capital by damaging the workman's producing 
 powers. Capitalist production grows, despite every 
 obstacle, until it becomes for ever impossible to put 
 back the clock of time and revert to older and more 
 primitive forms of production. Karl Marx predicted 
 forty years ago the rise of modern industrialism, with 
 its twenty-miUionaires, its vast companies, its colossal 
 organizations, its unions, its trusts, its syndicates. He 
 saw in them the beginning of the end, when great 
 organizations, controlling the necessaries of life or of 
 civilized existence, becoming the property of a few great 
 capitalists, would dominate and alarm mankind. Then 
 the majority, already drilled and organized by Capital 
 itself, would arise and begin the era of socialized produc- 
 tion — of production not by the many for the few, but by 
 the many for themselves. Then will come to pass the 
 'expropriation of the expropriators.' His own words 
 are : ' Along with the constantly diminishing number of 
 the magnates of Capital, who usurp and monopolize 
 all advantages of this process of transformation, grows 
 the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, 
 exploitation ; but with this, too, grows the revolt of the 
 working class — a class always increasing in numbers, 
 and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism 
 of the process of capitalist production itself. The 
 monopoly of Capital becomes a fetter upon the mode 
 of production, which has sprung up and flourished along 
 with it and under it. Centralization of the means of 
 59
 
 KARL MARX'S 'CAPITAL* 
 
 production and socialization of labour at last reach 
 a point where they become incompatible with their 
 capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. 
 The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The 
 expropriators are expropriated.' 
 
 It will be seen from the foregoing that, while Karl Marx 
 is mainly critical, he is also by implication constructive. 
 The great wrong evolves a great right — evil begets good. 
 The dispossession of the individual workman from 
 the land and the instruments of production lead to 
 an industrial system which at last makes possible the 
 resumption of both the land and the instruments of 
 production, not, indeed, by the individual, but by 
 the community. Henceforth there will be no private 
 property in these — the land, roads, railways, canals, 
 telegraphs, steamships, and all tools and machines, will 
 become public property, and will be worked by the 
 community for the community. 
 
 Society is to be based upon labour, not upon wealth — 
 upon honourable, healthful, universal labour. ' If any 
 man will not work, neither shall he eat.' That such an 
 ideal is reasonable is seen in the ease with which already, 
 in the presence of a disaffected labour-market, some 
 communities control and organize for public service, 
 railways, postal services, telegraphs, gas and water works, 
 tramways, the great war departments, and some branches 
 of production and distribution in connexion with refor- 
 matories, prisons, and workhouses. Karl Marx did not 
 speculate upon the means and details of this transition. 
 He is content to deal with principles and tendencies. 
 He regards industry as a vast development — indeed, was 
 the first economist to study industry historically, and to 
 apply to it the doctrine of evolution. The abolition of 
 60
 
 KARL MARX'S 'CAPITAL* 
 
 slavery and serfdom, according to Marx, released the 
 workman from legal dependence, the Reformation from 
 intellectual dependence, the French Revolution from 
 political dependence, and Socialism will perfect the work 
 by releasing him from economic dependence. 
 
 Karl Marx holds that the new era will be peacefully 
 and legally inaugurated in England, but not elsewhere. 
 He is not unwilling to invoke force ; evolution is quite 
 compatible with revolution, for evolution proceeds by 
 leaps and bounds at times, is marked by the sudden 
 introduction of new factors, and makes unexpectedly 
 new departures ; its law is progress by struggle and 
 the survival of the fittest. He anticipates that when the 
 hour is ripe, the force necessary in certain countries for 
 the majority to dispossess the minority will not be great. 
 No question of injustice arises with Marx over this 
 expropriation ; to him it will be but the execution of a 
 long-delayed act of justice to the workman. If asked, 
 * But these sheep — the hereditary capitalists — what have 
 they done?' he would say that involuntary vicarious sacri- 
 fice is the law of life, and their consolation must be that 
 they suffer for the good of society, as workmen, displaced 
 by machinery, have been supposed to do in the past. 
 It will, no doubt, be as much a comfort to one as to the 
 other ; but certainly it will be the fulfilment of the law 
 that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. 
 If asked whether such a social revolution would not 
 lower the standard of civilization, Marx would answer. 
 Very likely, but so did the barbarian conquest of the 
 Roman Empire. In that deluge literature, art, science, 
 culture, refinement, and religion, all perished ; but who 
 now regretted that ? Roman civilization has been replaced 
 by another and by a higher civilization. Some would 
 
 6i
 
 KARL MARX'S 'CAPITAL* 
 
 call the succeeding one Christian ; Marx calls it capita- 
 listic, and maintains that the Socialistic civilization which 
 is to succeed it, based as it will be upon justice and the 
 real brotherhood of man, will approximate more closely 
 to the ideal civilization than ever the capitalistic type 
 has done. 
 
 In reading Capital, while annoyed by the Hegelian 
 jargon and by the profanity which frequently mars it, as 
 well as at Marx's false logic and crude theorizings, the 
 reader cannot fail to be impressed by the new spirit which 
 he introduces into political economy. In his hands not 
 only does it become an historical science, which alone was 
 of great service to modern society, but it becomes a 
 humane science. Marx is rightly more concerned in his 
 economic studies with men than with money, and he 
 therefore regards political economy and production from 
 the standpoint of the labourer, and not from that of 
 wealth and profit. He does not deal with cold abstrac- 
 tions, but with living beings. He rightly holds that 
 political economy is a science in which money and 
 material values are quite inferior to men and morality. 
 With Marx political economy does not proceed upon 
 the cynical assumption that human nature is essentially 
 selfish, and that man is a mere * hand,' an attendant 
 upon a machine, a mere shuttlecock, bandied to and fro 
 in the interests of profit by the battledores of capital and 
 the law of supply and demand. 
 
 With Marx, political economy studies production and 
 exchange from the standpoint of justice, and not merely 
 from that of wealth. Hence, in his hands it is no longer 
 the ' dismal,' but the hopeful science, having for its 
 object production by all for all— justice, co-operation, 
 and material and moral prosperity, and therefore human 
 
 62
 
 KARL MARX'S 'CAPITAL* 
 
 happiness, following in its wake. Such an economy can 
 awaken enthusiasm, and in its main purposes deserves to 
 succeed. Such an economy, even though its theories 
 be chimerical and quixotic, and it be stuffed full of 
 economic heresies and fallacies, will evoke more pas- 
 sionate advocacy from young England than will the 
 colder and apparently more correct political economy 
 of the day, which ignores the human factor of its subject 
 in favour of the material factor. If Karl Marx has been 
 nothing else, he has been a great pioneer in the move- 
 ment for the emancipation of the masses of Europe from 
 economic slavery, and as such must be ever held in 
 honour by all humane-minded men. 
 
 63
 
 IV 
 
 ENGLISH 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 6S
 
 IV 
 ENGLISH SOCIALISM 
 
 At present she does not rule lier wealth. She is simply a good 
 England, but no divinity, or wise instructed soul. — Emerson. 
 
 A SCORE of years or more ago no such thing as English 
 SociaUsm existed or was supposed possible. What with 
 Factory Acts, Free Trade, Reform Bills, Free Speech, 
 and a Free Press, English industrial soil was deemed quite 
 too well tilled to produce any such noxious weed. But 
 although the very memory of it had died out, as a matter 
 of fact Socialism, both the thing and the name, originated 
 in England. As long ago as the seventeenth century 
 John Locke had, in his Treatise on Civil Govermnefit, 
 formulated the labour theory of value : ' It is labour, 
 indeed, that puts the difference of value on everything ' 
 (book ii., chap. iii.). Socialism returned to England 
 in the eighties from Germany ; but Karl Marx, who 
 formulated it afresh, lived long years in England, and, 
 as we have seen, based his famous analysis of Capitalism 
 upon English sources. 
 
 Long before Marx's day, Thomas Hodgkin had pro- 
 pounded pure Socialism in two anonymous pamphlets — 
 Labour Defetided against Capital {\Z2^) and The Natural 
 and Artificial Rights of Property Contrasted (1832). 
 
 67
 
 ENGLISH SOCIALISM 
 
 William Thompson, to whom Marx owed much, pub- 
 lished in 1822 or 1824 a purely Socialistic work, entitled 
 An Enguiry into the Principle of the Distribution of 
 Wealth. These English writers were half a century 
 before their time, as was also the first SociaHst, 
 Robert Owen. The Owenites were Socialists, and they 
 gave to Socialism its world-wide name. In The Poor 
 Man's Guardian (1835), Owen announced plainly the 
 famous doctrine of ' surplus value.' 
 
 The Owenites constantly declared that, while the 
 worker produces all the wealth, he is obliged to content 
 himself with the meagre share necessary to support his 
 existence, the surplus going to the capitalist. The word 
 ' Socialism ' was first used by the Owenites in the 
 discussion which arose in 1835 in connexion with 
 ' Owen's Association of all Classes of all Nations.' It 
 was adopted by the French writer Reybaud, and through 
 him gained currency on the Continent as the most 
 suitable name for the new world-movement. So that 
 while Socialism was unknown in England in the seventies, 
 it had nevertheless originated here in the twenties, if not 
 before. Its entire disappearance from England after the 
 thirties is due to several causes — to the collapse of 
 Owenism and Chartism, to the new Reform Bill of 1832, 
 which put the middle classes in power, and led to 
 legislation which, while it answered middle-class pur- 
 poses, ameliorated also the condition of the working 
 classes, viz. the Factory Acts and the Repeal of the 
 Corn Laws. 
 
 The Socialism which failed both here and in France, 
 
 mainly through the political triumph of the middle 
 
 classes, took root in Germany, and made rapid strides ; 
 
 it was reintroduced into England in a systematic form 
 
 68
 
 ENGLISH SOCIALISM 
 
 by those two Anglo-Germans, Karl Marx and Friedrich 
 Engels. Reintroduced in the late seventies, after the 
 Franco-German War and the collapse of the French 
 Commune and the International, it at first made but little 
 progress. The first Socialist organization was the Social 
 Democratic Federation, formed in 1884, which originally 
 counted amongst its members Messrs. Hyndman, John 
 Burns, William Morris, E. Aveling (a son-in-law of Marx), 
 and Belfort Bax. Then came, as the result of a split, 
 the short-lived Anarchist Socialist League, at the head 
 of which was William Morris, and finally, though of 
 independent origin, the Fabian Society. The first and 
 last, with the Independent Labour Party, the creation of 
 Keir Hardie and others, constitute now the three main 
 Socialist bodies in England, with their three orga.r\s, Justice, 
 The Clarion, and The Labour Leader. These bodies 
 agree entirely in views and theory, but differ strongly 
 on matters of policy, or, at least, have done so until very 
 recently. The establishment of the Labour Represen- 
 tation Committee, a joint committee of Trade Unionists 
 and of two of the three Socialist parties, for political 
 purposes, and their success at the General Election of 
 1906, have brought into existence a Parliamentary Labour 
 Party of some strength. The presence of that once 
 famous Socialist, John Burns, in the Liberal Cabinet 
 is most significant. All three Socialist societies are bent 
 upon the overthrow of the present capitalistic system, 
 and upon putting the producer in possession of the 
 means of production and distribution. The Social 
 Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour 
 Party are Marxian, and the Fabian Society Opportunist. 
 The Fabian Society condemns physical force, and is for 
 permeation and democratic constitutional means. The 
 69
 
 ENGLISH SOCIALISM 
 
 Social Democratic Federation has been bitterly hostile 
 to the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour 
 Party, 
 
 The Social Democrats come into collision with the 
 other parties over policy, and over Socialist political 
 economy. The Democrats svi^ear by Karl Marx, and 
 almost believe in the verbal inspiration of his Capital. 
 Mr. Hyndman is ready to meet all comers in defence even 
 of Marx's labour theory of value. The Fabians, on the 
 other hand, especially, are up-to-date in political economy, 
 and disavow many of Marx's premises based on Ricardian 
 economists, whilst accepting his conclusions. 
 
 The Social Democratic Federation and the Indepen- 
 dent Labour Party have been chiefly active amongst the 
 working classes, their more thoroughgoing and violent 
 programme naturally gaining the ear of disaffected work- 
 men sooner than the moderate, reasonable, and gradual 
 policy of the Fabians. Moreover, the Fabians were 
 educated, were not manual labourers, but sprang from 
 the middle classes, and were consequently viewed with 
 suspicion by the hand-workers. The Fabians were at 
 first most successful amongst the middle classes — their 
 own classes — and also, till the rise of the Independent 
 Labour Party, out-distanced the other Socialist bodies in 
 success amongst the working classes, and in influence 
 upon local and imperial politics. 
 
 The Fabian Society was formed in London in 1883, 
 and was the outcome of a drawing-room discussion upon 
 the condition of the people, due to the initiative of 
 Thomas Davidson, the translator of Rosmini, who was 
 passing through London on his way from America to 
 Italy. The discussion revealed two schools of thought 
 amongst those present — those who hoped for most from 
 
 70
 
 ENGLISH SOCIALISM 
 
 political and economic changes, and those who hoped 
 most from ethical changes. The latter and least 
 numerous school, led by Thomas Davidson, formed 
 themselves into the New Fellowship, an ethical society 
 which made little stir in the world, but had many very 
 high-minded members. Its organ was entitled Seed-time. 
 The more numerous school present at the above-named 
 discussion started the Fabian Society, which had for its 
 object the establishment of Socialism by political means. 
 The policy of the Fabian Society is indicated by its 
 name, and declared in the well-known Fabian Essays on 
 Socialism^ written by seven contributors, mostly under- 
 graduates. Dr. Flint, in his book on Socialism, tries to use 
 this name against the Fabian Society, apparently ignorant 
 of the fact that the name was deliberately chosen from 
 Roman history as indicative of the society's policy, after 
 the Roman Dictator Fabius Maximus, the Cunctator, 
 or ' Delayer,' whose policy is enshrined in these words 
 upon the Fabian tracts : ' For the right moment you 
 must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring 
 against Hannibal, though many censured his delays ; but 
 when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius 
 did, or your waiting will be in vain and fruitless.' 
 
 The Fabians were at first viewed with suspicion and 
 contempt by working-men Socialists ; they were ' gentle- 
 men ' Socialists, ' kid-glove ' Socialists, and their oppor- 
 tunist policy, their policy of 'permeation,' their readiness 
 to work in harmony with Liberals and Radicals, and 
 even Conservatives, when they were going their way, 
 their willingness to accept anything which led at all in 
 the direction of Collectivism, met with the most active 
 abhorrence of Social Democrats and Anarchists. They 
 were reviled as ' traitors ' and ' week-knees,' and what 
 
 71
 
 ENGLISH SOCIALISM 
 
 not. Nevertheless, the Fabians gained influence, and 
 gradually ceased to be mere drawing-room Socialists. 
 Numbering amongst themselves many clever, educated 
 men of the middle classes, they were able to expound 
 Socialism as it had not been expounded before in Eng- 
 land. The Fabian tracts, which now number 128, have 
 become famous, and have been largely influential in 
 forming the policy of the Progressive Party on the 
 London County Council, which has exerted such a wide 
 influence in London and the provinces upon municipal 
 government. 
 
 The capture first of the London Star, through the 
 influence of the Fabian Mr. Massingham, and then after- 
 wards for a season of the London Daily Chroftkle, vastly 
 increased their fame. Their Press influence, however, 
 was short-lived, and was superseded by that of Mr. R. 
 Blatchford, the author of Merrie England and the 
 notable editor of The Clarion, the chief organ of the 
 Socialist working classes. 
 
 Not a few representatives on the London County 
 Council, in Parliament, and on provincial county and 
 municipal councils, were once Fabians. Undoubtedly this 
 able and active society did more than any other body in 
 its early days to socialize both local and imperial politics. 
 The Fabians were never numerous; nevertheless, they 
 exerted an influence out of all proportion to their num- 
 bers. In 1885 they had 40 members, in 1895 some 
 700, and in 1906 about 1,000. The test of membership 
 in the Fabian Society is strict. A Fabian must be a 
 convinced and intelligent Socialist, able and ready to 
 defend and propagate his faith — and only such are 
 received. In a word, it is a society of active propa- 
 gandists. Mr. Sidney Webb was one of the original 
 
 72
 
 ENGLISH SOCIALISM 
 
 and leading Fabians — a very able economist, the chief 
 author of The Lo7idon Programme, a man of private 
 means, a graduate (LL.B.) of London University, and a 
 County Councillor. Mr. Webb is in the upper division 
 of the Civil Service, as are also Mr. Sydney Olivier (an 
 Oxford man) and Mr. J. F. Oakeshott, both Fabians. 
 Mr. Olivier has recently been appointed Governor of 
 Jamaica. The most brilliant Fabian is Mr. G. Bernard 
 Shaw, the now popular playwright, a musical and 
 dramatic critic, a great Ibsenite, and a most clever, 
 audacious, and dashing writer and speaker. Fabian tracts 
 owe much to him, especially on economic questions. 
 Other Fabians were Hubert Bland, journalist, Htterateur, 
 and critic ; Graham Wallas, an Oxonian ; the late William 
 Clarke, a Cambridge graduate ; the late Frank Podmore, 
 of the Society for Psychical Research ; the late Grant 
 Allen, Rev. Stopford Brooke, Walter Crane, H. S. Salt, 
 W. H. Uttley, H. W. Massingham, Dr. F. J. Furnivall, 
 Bishop Gore, Revs. Stuart Headlam, H. C. Shuttleworth, 
 and Mr. H. G. Wells. The first secretary of the society 
 was Mr. Edward R. Pease, of the well-known northern 
 Quaker family. When the Fabian Society was founded, 
 Mr. Pease was a stockbroker ; but deeming that calling 
 incompatible with Socialism, Mr. Pease left the Stock 
 Exchange and worked for weekly wages at the carpenter's 
 bench until the business of the Fabian Society demanded 
 his entire service and time. 
 
 The Fabians, being educated Socialists, have given 
 Socialism a reasonable aspect by their repudiation of the 
 doctrine of physical force, by their acceptance of the 
 Menger-Jevonian theory of value and their rejection of 
 Marx's labour theory of value, by their recognition of brain- 
 workers as well as hand-workers, and by their opportunist 
 
 73
 
 ENGLISH SOCIALISM 
 
 policy. In their hands Socialism is a comparatively 
 moderate and practicable thing. Fabian Socialism may 
 be said to be the characteristically English Socialism, 
 with its moderation, its spirit of compromise, its practical 
 nature, its freedom from abstractions and logical pedantry, 
 and, above all, its harmony with the methods of Demo- 
 cratic Constitutionalism ; and it has leavened all political 
 parties, Socialist and otherwise. This is the form — the 
 modified form — in which Socialism is likely to gain any 
 success in England. Even then, of course, the abolition 
 of private property in land, and in the instruments of 
 production and of distribution, the programme of the 
 Independent Labour Party and of the Labour members 
 of Parliament is a very ' large order,' especially for a 
 country which is what she is, for weal as well as woe, by 
 means of a vigorous and robust Individualism. 
 
 74
 
 V 
 
 ROBERT 
 OWEN 
 
 75
 
 V 
 ROBERT OWEN 
 
 'Tis the talent of our English nation 
 Still to be plotting some new reformation. 
 
 Dryden. 
 
 The end of the nineteenth century witnessed the 
 rescue of many memories from undeserved oblivion, and 
 chief amongst them is that of Robert Owen. Tardy 
 justice is now being paid to a prophet and pioneer who, 
 with all his mistakes, foresaw, foretold, and prepared for 
 the better day now dawning upon the people. Robert 
 Owen was the father of English Socialism — we might 
 almost say was the first Socialist in Europe. 
 
 Historic Socialism arose simultaneously in France and 
 England. In 1817 Robert Owen placed before a Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons a scheme for social 
 reorganization by means of Socialistic communities, and 
 in the very same year Saint-Simon propounded his 
 Socialist views in his treatise L'ltidusfrie. But, though 
 simultaneous, these actions were independent and dis- 
 connected. Saint-Simon's Socialism was somewhat senti- 
 mental and theoretic, a result of the French Revolution 
 and a deduction from the abstract principles of liberty, 
 equality, and fraternity. Robert Owen's, on the other 
 
 77
 
 ROBERT OWEN 
 
 hand, was practical, and arose from no abstract principles, 
 but directly from the heart and heat of the New Industry 
 itself. It was truer Socialism, inasmuch as it was of 
 industrial and not of political origin, the direct product 
 of the Industrial Revolution. 
 
 Wales gave us the first modern Socialist, for Robert 
 Owen was born in Newtown, Montgomery, in the year 
 1 77 1. He lived to the great age of eighty-seven, and 
 after roaming nearly all over the world, completed the 
 circle of his life by dying in Newtown in 1858, where, in 
 a dingy graveyard, ignored and neglected until recently, 
 he lies buried ; his fellow- townsmen once refusing per- 
 mission to erect either a drinking-fountain or a clock-tower 
 to his memory. Robert Owen's life may be divided into 
 two parts — an industrial and a theological, although these 
 were never entirely separated. Up to the age of fifty-eight 
 he was mainly busy with industrial problems, and then he 
 wore out the rest of his numerous days — Welshman-like 
 — in theological combat, first as secularist, and finally as 
 spiritualist. He was the son of a saddler and ironmonger 
 in poor circumstances. He had but little education, and 
 began life at ten as a draper's assistant, first in London, 
 then at Stamford, and back to London again in a shop 
 on old London Bridge, where he felt himself 'rich and 
 independent ' on ^25 a year with board and lodging. 
 But he presently bettered himself by going to St. Ann's 
 Square, Manchester, where he received ^^40. Here he 
 manifested great business skill, and, seeing his oppor- 
 tunity, at the age of eighteen went into business for 
 himself in the cotton-spinning trade, then taking its new 
 and modern form. When but nineteen he became 
 manager and partner in the Chorlton Twist Company, 
 where he had control of a cotton-mill with five hundred 
 78
 
 ROBERT OWEN 
 
 hands. He soon manifested great organizing ability and 
 much enterprise. His company became a leading firm, 
 and Owen used the first bags of Sea Island cotton ever 
 imported into this country from the Southern States. 
 In 1799, when twenty-eight, he married the daughter of 
 David Dale, whom he had met previously in Glasgow. 
 
 This began his connexion with the famous New 
 Lanark Mills. David Dale, in partnership with Richard 
 Arkwright, the inventor, had in 1784 founded these 
 cotton-mills near the Falls of Clyde in order to utilize 
 the water-power. Owen persuaded the Chorlton Twist 
 Company to purchase these mills for ;^6o,ooo, and he 
 himself in 1800 became manager and part owner. Here 
 Robert Owen soon showed that he had a soul above 
 money-making. The condition of the English workman 
 was at this juncture degraded in the extreme. With no 
 political rights — without even power to combine — he 
 was ill housed, ill fed, ill paid, all of which had very 
 serious physical and moral results. These evils — evils 
 aggravated by the rise of the factory system and the 
 invention of machinery — were keenly felt by Robert 
 Owen. He found the adults at New Lanark — some 
 1,500 — in a deplorably low, neglected, and vicious con- 
 dition. He at once improved their dwellings and 
 shortened their hours. The children — some 500 of 
 them — had been well treated by David Dale ; but Owen 
 did still more for them : he undertook their education. 
 At first he was distrusted by the workpeople, who 
 credited him only with an eye to profit-mongery in his 
 reforms ; but when hard times came in 1806, and most 
 mills were closed, Robert Owen ran his at a loss, and 
 paid ;^7,ooo in wages. This won for him the hearts of 
 the operatives. From that time Robert Owen began his 
 
 79
 
 ROBERT OWEN 
 
 wonderful and successful experiments in the organization 
 of industry, with a view to the happiness of the labourer. 
 These experiments became famous, and attracted the 
 attention of statesmen and social reformers in every land. 
 Owen became the hero of a decade and the friend of 
 royalty, great statesmen, and philanthropists. For the 
 adults at New Lanark, besides securing shorter hours of 
 labour and improved dwellings and sanitation, Owen 
 established shops or stores upon the co-operative 
 principle. For the children he established an infant 
 school — or, rather, ' an institution for the formation of 
 character ' — the nature of which can be guessed from 
 the fact that the tiniest infants were taught in the play- 
 ground ' never to injure their playmates, but to do all in 
 their power to make them happy.' In all this Owen was 
 a great pioneer — a pioneer of the Factory Acts, of Co- 
 operation and of Infant Schools, of Garden Cities, and 
 much besides. But while the public approved, his 
 partners did not — it did not seem to their mercenary 
 minds ' business ' ; so that when Owen began to build a 
 schoolroom, 90 feet by 40 feet, to be called the Institu- 
 tion, they objected, and stopped proceedings. With 
 building operations suspended, and half-reared walls, 
 Robert Owen turned his attention to the question of 
 getting rid of his covetous partners ; and finally Jeremy 
 Bentham and William Allen, the Quaker, bought them 
 out in conjunction with Owen, and formed a new 
 company on the express condition that Owen was to 
 work his will so long as the mills paid his partners 
 five per cent. The New Lanark Mills became more 
 successful and famous than ever. As he afterwards wrote 
 in T/ie Times (in 1834): 'For twenty-nine years we did 
 without the necessity for magistrates or lawyers, without 
 80
 
 ROBERT OWEN 
 
 a single legal punishment, without any known poor's rate, 
 without intemperance, and without religious animosities. 
 We reduced the hours of labour, well educated all the 
 children from infancy, improved the condition of the 
 adults, paid interest on capital, and cleared upwards of 
 ;^3oo,ooo profit.' This led to great results, both educa- 
 tionally and socially. Through Robert Owen, Lord 
 Brougham, James Mill, and Sir Charles Gray opened, in 
 1819, in Brewer's Green, Westminster, the first public 
 infant school in England. 
 
 Owen found, however, that mere local philanthropy 
 would not solve the economic question — that it involved 
 entire social reorganization. His reflections and experi- 
 ments led him to advocate Communism, or, as he termed 
 it, co-operation, ' unrestrained co-operation on the part 
 of all the members for every purpose of social life.' In 
 1 813, the year of the new partnership with Bentham and 
 Allen, Owen published his views in the form of a col- 
 lection of essays entitled, A New Vietv of Society ; or, 
 Essays on the Formation of Human Character. These 
 essays advocated a modified form of Communism, and 
 contained much wise and advanced teaching on educa- 
 tional and social questions ; but they revealed an 
 antagonism to religion which finally ruined Owen's pro- 
 spects as a social reformer, especially as he subsequently 
 took no pains to hide that antagonism. Never, however, 
 was a social propaganda more vigorously conducted. 
 Owen had amassed a large fortune, but he freely spent 
 it on his schemes and in advertising them to the whole 
 world. In 1816 Owen gave evidence before a Committee 
 of the House of Commons upon the condition of the 
 people, and his suggestions, which appeared in their 
 Report of 181 7, revealed his Socialistic ideas. He anti- 
 
 F 81
 
 ROBERT OWEN 
 
 cipated at the beginning of the New Industry all the 
 evils evolved in its subsequent development, and saw 
 especially that the machinery which was meant to bless 
 man would first curse him. In his Observations on the 
 Effects of the Manufacturing System (1817) he says: 
 ' Since the discovery of the enormous, the incalculable 
 power to supersede manual labour, to enable the human 
 race to create wealth by the aid of the sciences, it has 
 been a gross mistake of the political economists to make 
 humanity into slaves to science, instead of making, as 
 Nature intends, science to be the slave and the servant 
 of humanity. And this sacrificing of human beings with 
 such exquisite physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, and 
 practical organs, faculties, and powers, so wondrously 
 contained in each individual, to pins, needles, thread, 
 tape, &c., and to all such inanimate materials, exhibits 
 at once the most gross ignorance of the nature and true 
 value of humanity, and of the principles and practices 
 required to form a prosperous, rational, and happy state 
 of society, or the true existence of man upon earth.' 
 He even goes so far as to ask where the increased wealth 
 went which his 2,000 workpeople produced — wealth 
 which it would have taken 600,000 men to have pro- 
 duced a century before. He clearly saw that his people 
 benefited but little. Owen revolted then against the 
 subordination of man to machinery which he saw going 
 on around him. Nor was he satisfied with Malthus's 
 solution. He denied that over-population was any danger ; 
 he saw that the efficiency of the means of production would 
 increase in greater ratio than the population, and declared 
 that it was not by artificially limiting it that men could 
 escape from their woes, but ' by instituting rational social 
 arrangements and by securing a fair distribution of wealth.' 
 82
 
 ROBERT OWEN 
 
 This Owen thought could be secured by the multipH- 
 cation of communities similar to that of New Lanark — 
 conducted on Socialistic or Communistic principles. 
 These he thought might multiply, be federated, and 
 ultimately unite the whole world into one great happy 
 republic. So persuaded was he that he had found 
 a cure for all social woes that, his way blocked in 
 England, he started forth to found his new world. In 
 1825 he went to America and founded, in Indiana, New 
 Harmony, a model Commune, at vast expense to himself, 
 while his disciple, Abram Combe, set up another for him 
 at Orbiston, near Glasgow. Both were utter failures, as 
 were also two others started — the one at Balahine, in 
 county Clare, Ireland, in 1831, and the other atTytherly, 
 in Hampshire, in 1839. These experiments were the 
 financial ruin of Owen, who, with heroic self-sacrifice, 
 sank a whole fortune in them. In 1821 he published a 
 journal. The EcotW7mst, in which to advocate his cause. 
 The spirit in which he entered on his enterprise may be 
 gathered from the florid language of the first number : 
 ' I have had the boldness to take upon my shoulders 
 the burden of examining the whole affairs and circum- 
 stances of mankind. ... I summon to my aid all 
 the friends of humanity. If my feeble voice be at 
 first scarcely heard amid the noisy contentions of the 
 world, yet if it be joined by the full chorus of the 
 sons of truth, swelling into clarion shouts of countless 
 multitudes, and caught with joyous acclaim from nation 
 to nation, the harmonizing strains shall resound through- 
 out the globe.' On the title-page of his paper it 
 was declared to be ' a periodical paper, explanatory of 
 a new system of society and a plan of association for 
 improving the condition of the working classes, during 
 83
 
 ROBERT OWEN 
 
 their continuajice at their present employ tnent.' The italics 
 are ours. 
 
 But Owen mixed up with his SociaHsm a blatant and 
 aggressive Secularism and Determinism which, in a much 
 more intolerant day than this, was fatal to his prospects of 
 success. Friction began at New Lanark with his Quaker 
 partner, William Allen, and being now penniless, he was in 
 1828 forced to withdraw from the mills, the scene of all his 
 triumphs. Henceforth for thirty long wretched years he 
 was a social outcast, spurned by the very folk who once 
 feted him, his name becoming a synonym for theories 
 and views profane and immoral. Nothing daunted, 
 Owen carried on a most vigorous propaganda amongst 
 the working classes, and so successfully that the West- 
 minster Review (1839) stated that Robert Owen's 
 Secularism was the actual creed of a great portion of 
 them. Strange to say, however, his Socialism was still- 
 born. A few enthusiastic followers — the Owenites — 
 did start-labour leagues, but the fruit they produced was 
 political : they produced the Chartist agitation. In 1832 
 Owen established a Labour Exchange, where notes for 
 work done were to supersede money. In 1835 the 
 Owenites first gave the name ' Socialism ' to the new 
 movement, at meetings of ' the association of all classes 
 and of all nations.' These are links with the later 
 Socialism, which, however, owes nothing directly to 
 Owen. Owen's Socialism came too soon, not for the 
 need of the workman, but for his intelligence. It died 
 out completely even in Owen's lifetime. Owen finally 
 renounced Secularism for what one calls ' the comfortless 
 vagaries ' of spiritualism, due probably to the influence 
 of his well-known son Robert Dale Owen, the American 
 senator and spiritualist. In his declining years he retired 
 
 84
 
 ROBERT OWEN 
 
 to the obscurity of his Welsh birthplace, and there his 
 life ebbed out in extreme old age. 
 
 Owen was a great man. He was a noble pioneer of 
 magnificent ardour, courage, and self-sacrifice. But he 
 was too iconoclastic and over-confident. He understood 
 neither average human nature nor the laws of social 
 development, and he made the mistake of attacking the 
 accepted ideas of both religion and marriage. Where 
 he was wrong he was ofifensively wrong, and where he 
 was right he was premature, and therefore his movements 
 were foredoomed to failure. Like some robust perennial 
 plant, they died down quite out of sight, but left such 
 vigorous roots in English soil that after apparent death, 
 under new and favourable conditions, they revived and 
 brought forth abundant fruit in Education, in the Factory 
 Acts, in the Co-operative Movement, and in modern 
 Scientific and Municipal Socialism. 
 
 85
 
 VI 
 
 CHRISTIAN 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 87
 
 VI 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 During the last century the Christian religion has encountered 
 no deadlier foe than the philosophy which underlies the competitive 
 system. — Washington Gladden. 
 
 Christian Socialism is most obnoxious to the Socialist 
 proper. To him it is ' bastard ' Socialism — a misnomer 
 and a fraud ; he cannot away with it. This is singular, 
 inasmuch as both kinds of Socialism agree in their 
 diagnosis of the social disease. Both declare that 
 modern society is suffering from a bad industrial 
 system, based upon fundamental economic errors, and 
 ruled by an anti-social motive and spirit. They agree 
 that the labourer is at a disadvantage in the higgling of 
 the market, and is thereby defrauded of his full share 
 of the product ; that we are suffering not so much from 
 over-production as from underconsumption, and that 
 whether or not there be levelling-down, there must be 
 levelling-up. Both declare that political economy has, 
 by its science falsely so-called, made the depression of 
 labour a fine art, and that the sole possession of political 
 power by the employing class hitherto has assisted the 
 process. Both seek a more equitable distribution of the 
 products or profits of Labour and Capital, and both have 
 89
 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 one ultimate object — the elevation of the working classes 
 by putting them in full possession of the product of their 
 labours, and therefore of themselves. Nevertheless, the 
 stanch Socialist will have none of the Christian Socialist. 
 The former may, if he be a Fabian, use the Christian 
 Socialist for his purposes, but he does not believe in him ; 
 and if he be a Social Democrat, he regards him as a heathen 
 man and a publican, with whom he cannot company. 
 
 The reasons for this probably are that most Christian 
 Socialists do not see their way to accept the basis of 
 economic Socialism — that labour is the source of all 
 value — with its logical corollaries, that profit, rent, and 
 interest are therefore robberies ; nor are they prepared to 
 advocate the transfer to the State incontinently of a// the 
 instruments of production and distribution — land, mines, 
 machinery, tools, roads, railways, trams, ships, telegraphs, 
 and suchlike. They see great economic, administrative, 
 and moral difficulties in the way of this. They are not 
 convinced that society is fundamentally wrong, and needs 
 upturning and revolutionizing. They do not beheve it 
 to be essentially unjust, as do the Socialists, but that 
 injustice has arisen through greed, selfishness, and a 
 false political economy ; if these be eliminated, they 
 have hope of the present body politic. In addition to 
 this economic difference between Socialists and Christian 
 SociaUsts, there is also a moral and religious difference. 
 Socialism thre atens the family and the Church, and 
 through them morality and religion. Christian Sociahsm 
 cleaves close to both. This largely accounts for the an- 
 tipathy between the two, Socialism has been nothing 
 if not anti-religious, although perhaps the theory does 
 not necessitate this, and many Socialists are Christians ; 
 but Christian Socialism is nothing if not religious and 
 
 90
 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Christian. The former puts material readjustments in 
 the very forefront, the latter puts moral. The Socialist 
 expects most from material, the Christian Socialist most 
 from moral, changes. The latter is not indifferent to 
 material changes — it is part of his policy to demand 
 them — but he aims at the Christianization of industry, 
 and that not in the interests of Christianity, but in the 
 interests of humanity. The Socialist really suspects the 
 Christian Socialist of being a wolf in sheep's clothing, of 
 caring not so much for the people as for his sect or his 
 Church, and of engaging in the social struggle in order 
 to make religious capital out of it. He gives him credit 
 only for religious propagandism. The Christian Socialist 
 has to bear all this meekly, knowing that the Christian 
 Church has given only too much ground for this hostility 
 and suspicion. It has often neglected the social question, 
 and it has been over-engrossed in matters doctrinal and 
 ecclesiastical. As Professor Stuckenberg says : ' The 
 attitude of many Christians towards the Socialistic move- 
 ment is astounding. They place themselves among 
 those to whom Christ says, "Can ye not discern the 
 signs of the times ? " The attitude of the present 
 generation leaves little hope that the subject will be 
 mastered by the Church at large. But a new generation 
 is arising which realizes that the very existence of the 
 Church of to-day depends on its grappling with the social 
 problem.' 
 
 Now, it is in maintaining this that the Christian 
 Socialist makes unto himself another enemy, and that 
 one of his own household. He is an unhappy wight — • 
 he has to steer a dangerous course between the Scylla of 
 a materialistic Socialism and the Charybdis of an 
 individualistic Christianity, the dogs of hell barking 
 
 91
 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 from both. To forsake figures, he can please nobody. 
 He offends the SociaHst by not going far enough, and 
 the Christian Individualist by going too far — he is there- 
 fore eschewed by both. Against Christian Individualism, 
 which demands 'the simple gospel,' Christian Socia lism 
 maintains that the Christian gospel is twofold — individu al 
 and social — that the former never has been, and never 
 can be, neglected, but that the latter both has been ^d 
 is grossly neglected. The social gospel is as sacred and 
 as indispensable as the individual gospel — the two are 
 complementary, and the neglect of either always brings 
 i^s penalties^ lUi mipartial study ot the bcriptures 
 reveals the fact that in both Testaments the social 
 gospel is, if anythmg, the most promment, and that to 
 ignore the material and social life of men, and the moral 
 condition of classes, communities and states, is the most 
 utter unfaithfulness to the precepts and teachings of The 
 Word of God and the examples of priests, prophets, 
 apostles, evangelists, and The Lord Christ Himself. A 
 Christianity, * spiritual ' in the sense of not being ethical 
 and social, and ' other-worldly ' in the sense of not being 
 this-worldly, is really travestying the good gospel of God. 
 That gospel, contends Christian Socialism, is far fro m 
 being ' simple ' — it is profound and manifold — and is 
 bent upon saving, not only the individual, but also 
 society ; upon setting up in the earth the kingdom~ of 
 heaven. 
 
 Christian Socialism originated, like Socialism proper, 
 in England — indeed, was the outcome of the Owenite 
 and Chartist movements. After a fiery course it died 
 down, but only to spring up again, phoenix-like, from its 
 own ashes, a generation later. As with Sociahsm, so 
 with Christian Socialism : in the interval France and 
 92
 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Germany took up the running, so that Christian Socialism 
 in its latest phase flourished on the Continent before it 
 flourished here. 
 
 The early Christian Socialist movement was originated 
 and led by F, D. Maurice and his disciples — C. Kingsley, 
 T. Hughes, Ludlow, and others. Maurice had carefully 
 observed the social movements in France and England, 
 at a time when the Christian Church was fatally and 
 criminally indifferent to them. He studied Saint- 
 Simonism, Owenism, and Chartism when few Christian 
 ministers knew that such movements existed. He had 
 no sympathy whatever with the materialistic and fatalistic 
 theories which underlaid them, but he felt great indigna- 
 tion at the injustice and miseries of the working classes 
 which led to them. He had no faith in the nostrums of 
 * Socialism ' — a word new risen in his time, and with 
 which he was familiar — for the reconstruction of society, 
 but he saw, with the eye of a seer, the nature of the new 
 world-movements and the meaning of the earth-rumblings 
 beneath his feet. It meant the awakening of destructive 
 forces, the evil effects of which could only be averted by 
 a timely awakening of the Christian conscience, and 
 the timely setting of the social house in order. Maurice 
 at once championed all that he thought just, wise, and 
 remedial in the Socialistic and Chartist movements. To 
 him * combination ' in the form of trade-unionist and 
 co-operative societies contained ' more elements of real 
 power than all their schemes and systems for the recon- 
 struction of the universe.' He declared that ' the idea 
 of co-operation on which Owen dwells is one of wonder- 
 ful depth and importance.' 
 
 In conjunction with Kingsley, Hughes, and Ludlow, 
 he took up the cause of the working classes, and 
 
 93
 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 established societies for co-operative production, for the 
 better housing of the poor, for promoting better sanitation, 
 and for the education of the working man. The Christiafi 
 Socialist was started ' to diffuse the principles of co- 
 operation by the practical application of Christianity 
 to the purposes of trade and industry.' It, and many of 
 the schemes, however, had but a brief life. The sudden 
 collapse of the Chartist movement dealt early Christian 
 Socialism a fatal blow. It was associated with a dis- 
 credited movement, and regarded as a mere ebulUtion of 
 discontent and revolutionary sentiment upon the part of 
 Radical parsons, to be frowned upon by every respect- 
 able Christian. The result was that for a whole 
 generation the Christian conscience slept on the social 
 question, while the enemy briskly sowed tares — so much 
 so that when it awoke, a generation later, it found all the 
 old evils flourishing, and many others added, society in 
 a parlous condition, and the masses of the people 
 alienated from the Church and almost from Christianity. 
 While English Christianity slept, however, German 
 Christianity began to awaken. The Catholic Church in 
 Germany in 1863, at the time of the Socialist agitation 
 under Lassalle, at the suggestion of Dr. DoUinger, began 
 to consider the subject in the Catholic clubs. In 1864 
 Bishop Ketteler, of Mayence, through the personal in- 
 fluence of Lassalle, became convinced of the urgency 
 of the social question, and aroused the attention of 
 Catholic Germany by a remarkable pamphlet upon 
 The Labour Questio?i attd Christianity, in which he 
 at once sided with Labour against Capital. This did 
 not accomplish all that was expected, but in 1868 the 
 formation of Catholic Labourers' Associations, which 
 met every Sunday to discuss social questions, took root, 
 94
 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 and began a great Christian Socialist movement. Tiiis 
 was further consolidated by the organizing and literary 
 ability of Canon Moufang, who gave in his adhesion to 
 the movement in 187 1, and founded their paper, the 
 Katholik. The part played by the Catholic Church in 
 Germany on the social question has been so influential 
 and impressive during these last thirty-five years that the 
 Socialist vote is now considerably smaller in Cathohc 
 than in Protestant States. It was not until 1878 that the 
 Protestant Church in Germany forsook its Individualism 
 and embraced Social Christianity. At the instigation of 
 Herren Todt, Stocker, and Kogel in that year, a con- 
 ference was held, and a programme for social ameliorative 
 work was drawn up and adopted. Since then great pro- 
 gress has been made in the Protestant Church. Several 
 very important congresses have been held for the dis- 
 cussion of the relation of the Church to social questions, 
 and to devise practical steps. At the 1892 Congress 
 there were present such eminent men as Professors 
 Wagner, Weiss, Giercke, Miiller, and Harnack, and 
 Pastors Stocker, Bodelschwingh, and Naumann. The 
 zeal of Christian Socialists in Germany may be gathered 
 from the fact that a young pastor, Herr Paul Gohre, 
 worked for three months as an operative at a machine 
 factory in Chemnitz, in Saxony, that he might ascertain 
 the real attitude of the artisan class towards social and 
 religious questions, and he afterwards published a book 
 relating his experience. Led by a number of young 
 pastors, of whom Frederick Naumann was chief, Chris- 
 tian Socialism in Prussia became so aggressive that it 
 incurred the hostility of the young German Emperor. 
 
 Christian Socialism has also been taken up very earnestly 
 in France, both by the Catholic and the Protestant 
 95
 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Churches. Count de Mun was the eloquent founder of 
 the Catholic Christian Socialist movement, and has done 
 good work in organization and advocacy. Le Play also 
 has achieved much by the accumulation and study of 
 social facts. He is the father of the Charles Booth school 
 in England. Not only are Catholic workmen organized 
 and helped, but in the north of France there is a Catholic 
 Association of Employes of the North, the object of which 
 is to assist employers to become real captains of industry, 
 furthering the material and moral well-being of their 
 employes in a large, just, and liberal spirit. French 
 Protestants also have taken up Christian Socialism very 
 actively under Pastor Fallot, M. Charles Gide, and Charles 
 Secretan, and are already organized. The Congress of 
 Protestant Associations ' for the practical study of social 
 questions ' has now some seven hundred members. 
 
 Belgium also has produced most distinguished 
 Christian Socialists in the persons of Professors Huet, 
 E. de Lavelye, and C. Perin. The United States, too, 
 is well in advance in the same way. 
 
 Christian Socialism did not revive in England until 
 well on in the eighties. Arthur Toynbee died in 1883, 
 and his death was the life of the modern Christian 
 Socialist movement here. Since then it has advanced 
 by leaps and bounds : there is never a congress, con- 
 vocation, or union meeting of any of the Churches in 
 which the social question does not receive careful con- 
 sideration. The Press pours out books upon the subject : 
 the memory of the first Christian Socialists has been 
 graciously revived. The Christian Social Union of the 
 Established Church is an increasingly powerful organiza- 
 tion. Its head quarters are at Pusey House, Oxford ; its 
 organ, the Eco7iomic Review, is intended ' for the study 
 
 q6
 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 of duty in relation to social life,' and contains articles by 
 experts dealing with ' economic morals from the point of 
 view of Christian teaching ' ; its collected addresses, 
 Lombard Street in Lent and Good Citizenship, have had 
 a wide circulation. It also publishes two magazines, 
 The Commonwealth and Good-will. There are now 
 about seven hundred members, including such names as 
 those of Bishops Gore and Stubbs, Archdeacons Sinclair 
 and Furse, Canons Barnett, Scott Holland and Eyton, 
 and Father Adderley, and Revs. Wilfrid Richmond, 
 Carter, Marson, Dearmer, Fry, W. Cunningham, Frome 
 Wilkinson, and others. In addition to this, the Estab- 
 lished Church has Toynbee Hall, the University Settle- 
 ment in the East End, which is doing so good an 
 intellectual and social work, and is the pattern for 
 others of like nature. It has also its social wing of 
 the Church Army, under the Rev. W. Hunt, with night 
 shelters, labour homes, and registries. There are many 
 parish clergymen, too, who now add definitely social 
 work to their religious and philanthropic labours. The 
 Roman Catholic Church in England, under the leader- 
 ship of the late Cardinal Manning and his successor, 
 Cardinal Vaughan, emulated French, German, and 
 American Catholicism. Nor is Nonconformity behind 
 on the social question. Modern England and English 
 Christianity owe much to the bold and wise labours of 
 men like General Booth, H. Price Hughes, Dr. Horton, 
 and Dr. Clifford. The Congregationalists first raised the 
 ' bitter cry ' which led to so much heart-searching, and 
 finally resulted in the ' Darkest England ' Scheme of the 
 Salvation Army, the greatest of all practical Christian 
 Social movements. The Churches have established, too, 
 their own Labour Homes and Social Settlements, The 
 e 97
 
 CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 Congregationalists and the Wesleyans both have their 
 Settlements. The ' Forward Movement ' in Methodism 
 and in other religious bodies, with its great town missions 
 and Christian Social machinery like that of the Man- 
 chester and Salford Mission under the Rev. S. F. Collier, 
 is saturated with the spirit of Christian Socialism. Wher- 
 ever there are life and growth, there the old religious 
 Individualism is seen to be impossible. The Christian 
 Social Brotherhood has long been in existence under the 
 presidency of Dr. Clifford. The Wesleyan Methodist 
 Union for Social Service has now 1,500 members, and 
 has published The Citizen of To-morrow, of which 10,000 
 copies have been sold. The Presbyterians, Primitive 
 Methodists, and Unitarians have also Unions for Social 
 Service. All this we really owe to the devoted labours 
 of a few in the past. As the Spectator has wisely said : 
 ' The best men and women of this generation are reaping 
 what others sowed long ago, in a new grasp of the idea 
 that the kingdom of earth is the point of departure for 
 the kingdom of heaven. This age can bear better with 
 those who fiercely denounce a preaching of the kingdom 
 of heaven which has little to do with earth, because it 
 better knows the value of those who helped to connect 
 earthly work with divine love.' Christian Socialists loo k 
 forwar d to the time when every Christian Church will 
 be organized on Christian-Social lines, will put forth 
 both hands to redeem the whole man — body, soul, and 
 spirit — and will minister to man's material, intellectual, 
 and religious wants , Tn the name and spirit of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 98
 
 VII 
 
 CHARLES 
 KINGSLEY 
 
 99
 
 VII 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 His life was gentle ; and the elements 
 
 So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up 
 
 And say to all the world, ' This was a Man.' 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 We hear much of Charles Kingsley the noveUst, Charles 
 Kingslcy the poet, Charles Kingsley the canon, Charles 
 Kingsley the scientist, and not too much of him in any 
 one of those capacities, but we hear too little of Charles 
 Kingsley the Christian Socialist ; and yet perhaps, next 
 to his lovely songs and lyrics, this is his main title to 
 enduring fame. 
 
 For ten years before his death he was a waning 
 influence, and for ten years after a waning memory ; but 
 then both suddenly and rapidly revived — revived, indeed, 
 in an almost phenomenal manner. So much so that in 
 a year or two recently some millions of copies of the 
 sixpenny edition of his works have been sold. It is a 
 very gratifying fact ; for no more stirring and wholesome 
 literature can be possibly put into the hands of young 
 England than Charles Kingsley's novels. But how is 
 this resurrection of a waning reputation to be accounted 
 for ? Whence comes this posthumous popularity ? Some 
 say that it is due to the revelation made of his character 
 
 lOI
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 in Mrs. Kingsley's Life atid Letters. Certainly that 
 charming work is a permanent addition to the bio- 
 graphical literature of the land, and it did reveal to 
 Englishmen noble and gentle aspects of Kingsley's 
 character unknown to them, as well as qualities un- 
 suspected in him. By that delightful work his country- 
 men found that his private life accorded well with his 
 profession and his public life, and that he was a man 
 true to the core, and morally as well as intellectually 
 great. No doubt that is part of the reason why they 
 took him to their hearts again, but that is not the whole 
 account of the matter. Whence comes the popularity 
 of this Church canon, of this University scholar and 
 aristocrat, amongst the masses of the English people, 
 who to-day have hardly an ear for any one or anything 
 that is not economic and social ? The answer assuredly 
 is that the depth of his social sympathies and the fervour 
 of his Christian Socialism have at last met their reward. 
 Kingsley's hour is come as a Christian Socialist. He 
 would have rejoiced to see this day. In his own he 
 was as a voice crying in the wilderness, ' Repent ' ; and 
 he was largely unheard. All through the fifties, he was 
 perhaps the best abused man in England ; and although 
 he lived down the obloquy and became famous instead 
 of notorious, yet the numerous obituary notices of him 
 which appeared in the seventies became apologetic when 
 they reached the ardent period during which he carried 
 over the land the fiery cross of Christian Socialism. 
 Kingsley was in advance of his time on all social 
 questions ; in advance, that is, of his contemporaries, 
 not of the needs of his time. His eagle eye penetrated 
 into the heart of the industrial system of his day, and 
 saw its iniquity and corruption, and the appalling heritage 
 
 I02
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 of woe it possessed, and would hand down to generations 
 following. And — to his everlasting honour be this 
 written — he did his duty as a man and a Christian, in 
 trying to awaken his countrymen to the needs of the 
 hour. 
 
 Kingsley's sympathy with the people in their degrada- 
 tion and misery began, he tells us, when he was a boy 
 in Bristol. During the Bristol riots he saw houses 
 burning, and men wallowing in the gutter through drink ; 
 and these sights made his chivalrous nature feel that 
 nothing but real evils and grave injustice brought 
 working men to this. Says he, ' I became a Radical 
 on the spot ' — by this he meant a Christian Socialist. 
 
 Whilst at the University of Cambridge, the fulmina- 
 tions of Carlyle against the social and industrial evils of 
 the day still further fired his spirit, and when at last he 
 became, first curate and then Rector of Eversley, and 
 the Chartist agitation broke out, he flung himself into 
 the fray with ardour and with effect. His famous 
 declaration before the Chartists at a meeting at Ken- 
 nington, that he was 'a parson and a Chartist,' was the 
 beginning of strife. For a decade he was in deadly 
 grips with all the powers that be, and dealt with voice 
 and pen such swashing and resounding blows at pot- 
 bellied Mammon that old England yet resounds with 
 them. He was greatly influenced in this by one whom 
 he loved to call his ' Master,' and at whose feet he 
 devoutly sat in theology, ethics, and social economy, 
 viz. Frederick Denison Maurice. Maurice supplied 
 him with reasons, motives, methods, and inspiration. 
 Maurice was the founder of Christian Socialism in 
 England — Kingsley, its ardent knight-errant. Into the 
 Chartist strife they flung pell-mell, and poured forth 
 103
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 upon an astonished capitalist and so-called Christian 
 public tracts, bills, posters, and appeals on behalf of 
 the working men of England. Kingsley's fine literary 
 gifts were exercised in writing in Maurice's Christian 
 Socialist and in Politics for the People. In his Letters 
 to the Chartists over the signature of * Parson Lot ' he 
 championed the cause of justice for the people, admixing 
 it with wise and Christian counsel. Kingsley thought 
 the Chartists erred in expecting too much from political 
 and legislative reforms — he himself erred in expecting 
 too little. Said he : ' God will only reform society on 
 condition of our reforming every man his own self; 
 while the devil is quite ready to help us to mend the 
 laws and the Parliament, earth and heaven, without ever 
 starting such an impertinent and " personal " request as 
 that a man should mend himself.' 
 
 In the year 1848 the Chartist agitation fizzled un- 
 fortunately out on Kennington Common, and retarded 
 the working-class movement. It retarded also the 
 Christian Socialist movement, involving it in all the 
 ignominy and contempt which accompany even the 
 temporary failure of a just cause. When the righteous 
 oracle ceases to speak, then every dog barks, be he 
 mongrel or cur. Overwhelmed with reproaches and 
 rebukes, but undaunted, Kingsley retired to his country 
 charge and there took up his pen, and in the same 
 year published in the pages of Fraser's Magazine his 
 novel Yeast. This was a masterly and brilliant book, 
 dealing most realistically with the forlorn and degraded 
 condition of the English agricultural labourer. It created 
 a great sensation ; such a sentence as the following — 
 to-day a truism — seemed Hke red revolution : ' It did 
 strike him that the few might possibly be made for the 
 104
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 many, and not the many for the few, and that property 
 was made for man, and not man for property.' 
 
 Yeasf was succeeded by A/^on Locke. As the 
 former dealt with the social problem in rural districts, 
 this dealt with it in cities and towns, with equal if not 
 with greater skill and genius. The tailor-poet, with his 
 soul above stitches, the wrongs of the * sweated,' the 
 overcrowding, insanitation, and lack of education, good 
 clothes, and comforts upon the part of the labouring 
 poor, were all done dramatically into literature. The 
 book might be written for this hour, in as far, alas ! as it 
 points out evils which flourish still, but not in as far 
 as its remedial outlook is concerned. That is over- 
 individualistic, grandfatherly, and aristocratic ; but it is a 
 fine book. Here, too, Kingsley gave one of his noble 
 lyrics which is worth quoting : 
 
 Weep, weep, weep and weep, 
 
 For pauper, dolt, and slave ! 
 Hark ! from wasted moor and fen, 
 Feverous alley, stifling den, 
 Swells the wail of Saxon men, 
 
 Work — or the grave ! 
 
 Down, down, down and down. 
 
 With idler, knave, and tyrant ! 
 Why for sluggards cark and moil ? 
 He that will not live by toil 
 Has no right on English soil ! 
 
 God's Word's our warrant. 
 
 Up, up, up and up ! 
 
 Face your game and play it ! 
 The night is past, behold the sun ! 
 The idols fall, the lie is done ! 
 The Judge is set, the doom begun ! 
 Who shall stay it?'
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 Alton Locke created a great outcry against Kingsley 
 in 1849 ^'^d the succeeding years, especially on the part 
 of religious people and the religious press. He was not 
 only denounced for writing ' fiction ' (would God it were, 
 even now !), that was a damning sin in the eyes of many ; 
 but he was condemned for sowing seeds of bitterness and 
 discontent, for ' setting the poor against the rich,' ' class 
 against class,' and all the other time-honoured and 
 hypocritical middle-class pharisaisms which meet the 
 ear of every man who exposes social evils. Things 
 culminated in 185 1 — the Exhibition year — when Kingsley 
 preached in a London church on ' The Message of the 
 Church to Working Men.' During the course of his 
 sermon, he said : ' All systems of society which favour 
 the accumulation of capital in a few hands, which oust 
 the masses fromi the soil their forefathers possessed of 
 old, which reduce them to the level of serfs and day- 
 labourers living on wages and alms, which crush them 
 down with debt or in any wise degrade and enslave 
 them or deny them a permanent stake in the common- 
 wealth, are contrary to the kingdom of God which Jesus 
 proclaimed.' As soon as the sermon ended, the in- 
 cumbent arose in his place, and said that, while he 
 agreed with much that had been said, he must say that 
 much of it was dangerous and untrue. This unwonted 
 scene in a church created a great stir in London, and 
 Kingsley soon had the harpies of the Times and of 
 society upon him. He returned to Eversley discouraged 
 and depressed. He never lost his love for the people's 
 cause, and to the very end of his days devoted his 
 energies to co-operation, sanitation, and social reform ; 
 but from this time he ' tapered off,' he thundered less, 
 fulminated less, was less leonine in tone ; he felt less 
 106
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 able to continue Athanasius contra mundtim. His 
 activities in the more humdrum but very necessary role 
 of a co-operator never relaxed, but his bold attacks, 
 from the standpoints of a Christian Socialist, upon the 
 existing industrial system as such, quite ceased. On the 
 other hand, he never withdrew a word of what he had 
 written, or of what he had spoken in such trumpet 
 tones, and his seed bears fruit to-day. His own stirring, 
 lyrical lines are truer than ever : 
 
 The Day of the Lord is at hand, at hand ! 
 
 Its storm rolls up the sky : 
 The nations sleep starving on heaps of gold, 
 
 All dreamers toss and sigh ; 
 The night is darkest before the morn ; 
 When pain is sorest the child is born, 
 
 And the day of the Lord is at hand. 
 
 Gather you, gather you, angels of God — 
 
 Freedom, and mercy, and truth : 
 Come ! for the Earth is grown coward and old, 
 
 Come down and renew her youth ; 
 Wisdom, Self-sacrifice, Daring, and Love, 
 Haste to the battle-field, stoop from above : 
 
 The Day of the Lord is at hand. 
 
 107
 
 VIII 
 
 FRENCH 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 109
 
 VIII 
 FRENCH SOCIALISM 
 
 Liberty ! liberty ! in all things let us have justice, then we 
 hall have enough liberty. — ^Joubert. 
 
 To England and France belong the honour, if it 
 be an honour, of originating European Socialism. It 
 sprang up simultaneously in both countries in the first 
 quarter of this century. Although simultaneous, it was 
 of characteristically different origin in the two countries : 
 in England it had a practical, and in France a theoretical, 
 origin ; in our own country it was the outcome of events, 
 in France of ideas. Early French Socialism compared 
 favourably with early English Socialism in its superior 
 literary expression and logical formulation. The theories 
 of Saint-Simon and Fourier were brilliantly conceived 
 and advocated ; whether or not they lacked practica- 
 bility, they did not lack definiteness. With French 
 thoroughness and love of logic and system, society was 
 elaborately reconstructed on ideal principles — that is, 
 upon paper — for those early Socialists were unable to 
 get farther. All their dazzling designs and proposed 
 social systems were thoroughly Utopian. They con- 
 tained very much true criticism of the established social 
 order, criticism which is valid to this very hour ; but 
 III
 
 FRENCH SOCIALISM 
 
 they were utterly premature ; the world was nowhere 
 ready for such schemes, not even in revolutionary Paris, 
 where the frequent revolutions were of a political and 
 legal character — seldom, or never, of an industrial or 
 economic character. These schemes were based upon 
 a too optimistic theory of human nature ; it was credited 
 with a love of truth, a zeal for righteousness, a brotherly 
 love, and a capacity for rapid perfecting, which it was 
 far from possessing. 
 
 Saint-Simon was born at Paris in 1760. He came 
 of a noble family, and had for his tutor the great French 
 physiocrat D'Alembert, who helped, with Diderot and 
 others, to prepare the way for the French Revolution. 
 Saint-Simon imbibed early a passion for Hberty, but 
 took no active part in political struggles. At the age 
 of forty he began to review all his knowledge and judge- 
 ments, and, amongst other things, arrived at new and 
 definite ideas on industrial and social economy. In the 
 year 181 7, in L' Industrie, Saint-Simon first pubhshed 
 his Socialistic views. This work was followed up by 
 others in 1819, 1821, and 1823, until in 1825 — the year 
 of his death — appeared his most important work, the 
 Nouveau Christianisme. By these works he originated 
 French Socialism and much beside. In his latest works 
 he endeavoured to define ' essential Christianity ' in its 
 application to the social problem. Though rather vague 
 in his ideas, he was most suggestive and stimulating. 
 His views attracted little attention in his lifetime, and 
 he lived and died poverty-stricken, disappointed, and 
 neglected. But directly after his death a Saint-Simonian 
 School arose, headed by Bazard and Enfantin, who 
 developed and arranged his ideas into a system. 
 Enfantin soon caused a split in the camp, and finally 
 
 112
 
 FRENCH SOCIALISM 
 
 brought discredit and disbandment upon the school 
 by grossly immoral views upon the relations of the sexes. 
 Saint-Simon's influence, however, has been great, and 
 still counts for something. He is undeniably right in 
 declaring that ' the whole of society ought to strive 
 towards the amelioration of the moral and physical 
 existence of the poorest class ; society ought to organize 
 itself in the way best adapted for this end.' 
 
 Fourier was perhaps prior even to Saint-Simon in his 
 Socialistic views, but they gained no publicity until after 
 the death of Saint-Simon. Fourier's attention to the 
 industrial problem was aroused by being punished for 
 telling the truth about some goods in his father's drapery 
 shop, and also by witnessing the destruction of an 
 immense quantity of rice in order to maintain high prices 
 in the midst of scarcity. He was born at Besangon in 
 1772, and published his views in three works, written in 
 1808, 1822, and 1829. He elaborated a wonderful 
 scheme for reorganizing society in the form of a pha- 
 lanstery, or commune. Each phalanstery was to consist 
 of a phalange (from Greek phalanx^ battle-array) of 
 1,800 persons occupying a common residence, the 
 phalanstere, and enjoying the fruit of their labours 
 together. Industry and talent were to receive their 
 rewards, but a comfortable minimum was assured to 
 every member — ' a living wage.' The remainder was 
 divided into twelve shares, of which five went to labour, 
 four to capital, and three to talent. In distributing the 
 reward to labour, the present method was to be reversed, 
 i.e. necessary labour was to be best paid, useful labour 
 next, and pleasant labour worst paid. We can see from 
 this the origin of Ruskin and Bellamy's speculations on the 
 subject. The difference between the Socialism of Saint- 
 H 113
 
 FRENCH SOCIALISM 
 
 Simon and that of Fourier is very marked. Saint-Simon's 
 is based upon the principles of authority and centrahza- 
 tion ; Fourier's upon the principles of freedom and 
 decentralization. Saint-Simon would place the material 
 interests of society in the hands of industrial chiefs, and 
 their spiritual interests in the hands of men of science. 
 Fourier, however, was strongly for individual rights and 
 local self-government. 
 
 Socialism in France, up to 1848, occupied the 
 attention only of the few and the educated. It was not 
 until the Revolution of that year that it attracted the 
 attention of the working classes, and really entered upon 
 the stage of history. The chief agent in this was Louis 
 Blanc — who, born in Madrid in 181 1, settled down later 
 in Paris, and succeeded as a journahst. In 1840 he 
 published his Orga7iisation du Travail, in which he 
 demanded ' the democratic organization of the State as 
 preparatory to social reorganization.' Herein he formu- 
 lated his scheme of national workshops which were to 
 absorb the unemployed, and gradually to supersede 
 individual workshops, and lead to the State organization 
 of labour. The book, written in a brilliant and eloquent 
 style, caught the ear and won the heart of the French 
 workmen, with the result that when the Revolution took 
 place, and the Provisional Government was formed, it 
 was found necessary to include Louis Blanc in it, in order 
 that he might make his social experiments. But Louis 
 Blanc was a literary man, a journalist, and unfit for political 
 life and administration. The consequence was that he 
 became the tool and victim of designing colleagues, who 
 foreordained that the national workshops started in Paris 
 should fail. Their failure is to this day attributed to the 
 Utopian nature of Louis Blanc's ideas — whereas his ideas 
 114
 
 FRENCH SOCIALISM 
 
 were never Iput into practice. His plan was to admit to 
 the national workshops only those who gave guarantees of 
 character, and to put them to productive work, whereas 
 any idlers from the streets of Paris were admitted, and 
 they were put to unproductive work. This has been 
 established by a French Governmental inquiry. One 
 great effect of Blanc's ideas was that they attracted the 
 attention of Ferdinand Lassalle, who so completely made 
 them his own as to deny any indebtedness whatever to 
 Louis Blanc. 
 
 The names of all French Socialists have a very ill 
 odour, and none more than Proudhon's. Personally 
 Proudhon's life was upright, pure, and honourable, as, 
 indeed, also was Fourier's, despite his loose theories 
 concerning marriage. Proudhon is especially in ill 
 repute in English eyes because he made that atrocious 
 announcement that ' La propriete c'est le vol ' (Property 
 is robbery). In England, where 
 
 Proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws, 
 
 and where laws for the protection of ' proputty ' are much 
 sterner than those for the protection of persons, such a 
 statement sounds scandalous. Its sound is really worse 
 than its meaning. What Proudhon meant was that 
 property was a means of exploiting labour, that 'it 
 reaped without labour, consumed without producing, and 
 enjoyed without exertion,' and hence its accumulation 
 was not in the interest of society, and should be checked 
 by taxation, if not confiscation. This is really identical 
 with the doctrine of Karl Marx. Proudhon pubhshed 
 IVAai is Property! in 1840, and his great work, 
 Systeme des Contradictions konomiqiies in 1846. 
 He was elected to the Assembly in 1849, '^'^d gained 
 "5
 
 FRENCH SOCIALISM 
 
 great notoriety by his extreme views upon property, and 
 his contention that the end of government is ' anarchy ' 
 — by which he meant self-government. He suffered 
 many things for his views — abuse, poverty, imprisonment. 
 Proudhon expressed himself paradoxically, perhaps to 
 make men think ; certainly his bark was worse than his 
 bite. Proudhon did not expect the millennium at once; the 
 social changes, which he advocated on grounds of reason 
 and justice, he only expected to see slowly and gradually 
 realized as the characters and nature of men improved. 
 
 After the Revolution of 1848, and the failure of the 
 national workshops, Socialism lost its hold upon the 
 French people. In France as in England, political 
 changes had been turned by the bourgeoisie, or middle 
 classes, almost entirely to their own advantage. Sops 
 were cast to Cerberus which quietened him for a decade 
 or two, but the meal was enjoyed by the comfortable 
 classes. Some irreconcilables, however, remained in 
 France — the few fierce, fanatical, desperate Communists 
 of whom Louis Blanqui was a daring leader, and who 
 only died in 1881. Socialism, as an economic theory, 
 made no headway in France after 1848 until quite 
 recently. It is now ripening fast, however, in the usual 
 French hothouse way. Emile Eudes succeeded Blanqui 
 as leader of the Communists, the physical-force Socialists 
 and Anarchists, but died a few years back in the very act 
 of cursing the bourgeoisie. His successor was M. 
 Vaillant, deputy for Belville. Another eminent modern 
 French Socialist was Benoit Malon ; he was at first a 
 journeyman dyer, but he became a literary man and the 
 philosopher of the French Socialist party. He was a 
 member of the Commune, and returned to Paris from 
 exile when the amnesty was declared. From that time 
 116
 
 FRENCH SOCIALISM 
 
 he became a literary exponent of scientific and evolu 
 tionary Socialism, advocating to the day of his death the 
 realization of the Socialist ideal by legalization, not by 
 revolution but by evolution. This has given new life to 
 the Socialist party. The Socialists are not a united party 
 in France any more than elsewhere. There have been 
 several groups. There was the Blanquist or Revolu- 
 tionary group, the leader of which was M. Vaillant, whose 
 programme was the reconstitution of the Commune. M. 
 Millerand led another group, which aimed at combining 
 all the Socialist factions into one great group to act to- 
 gether in the Assembly under the leadership of M. Goblet. 
 M. Goblet, an ex-Minister, espoused Socialism under a 
 moderate form — a form somewhat of the Fabian order in 
 this country — opportunist, constitutional, permeative. 
 His accession to the Socialist party bore important fruit; 
 for under his leadership the Socialists were instrumental 
 in unseating the Government of M. Dupuy, thus gaining 
 the first constitutional victory of Socialism, and of 
 rendering several successive Governments very insecure 
 in their seats. They have also ihad much to do, 
 indirectly, with a remarkable manifesto of the Bourgeois 
 Government. The leader of an important group of 
 French Socialists is M. Jules Guesde. He leads, with 
 M. La Fargue, the son-in-law of Karl Marx, the Marxist 
 section of French Socialists, that section which contends 
 for Internationalism, and does not disdain financial help 
 from German Socialists, French though it be. But this 
 idealistic policy does not succeed well in France — Sedan 
 is still too recent. M. Guesde is a Collectivist of the 
 strictest type. His lean, lank figure, hollow chest and 
 voice, piercing black eyes, black hair and beard, and 
 slouched hat, make him, in appearance, a typical-looking 
 117
 
 FRENCH SOCIALISM 
 
 political fanatic. His programme is to capture the 
 French Chamber and secure as much Socialist legislation 
 as the country will bear. By 1898 he hoped to have a 
 majority in the Chamber, and by the same date the rural 
 districts converted to Socialism. A propaganda in the 
 agricultural districts went on, similar to the one long 
 carried on in the towns. But the French peasant pro- 
 prietors will take much persuading to relinquish private 
 ownership in land. They are still the greatest obstacle 
 toward realizing Socialism in France. This the leaders 
 feel, and hence the propaganda. 
 
 In 1899 all the French Socialist parties united in 
 face of the Dreyfus agitation and returned many deputies 
 to the Chamber. A split occurred in 1900, when 
 M, Millerand entered the Waldeck-Rousseau Govern- 
 ment as Minister of Commerce. The Guesdists, as 
 thorough-going Marxists, regarded this step as com- 
 promising the independence of Socialism. MM. 
 Jaures and Briand, leaders of the Opportunist wing of 
 French Socialism, defended the action and justified it 
 from its results in practical legislation. At first the 
 Guesdists, or Revolutionary Socialists, carried the day, 
 but the Possibilists, or Reformist Socialists, under the 
 eloquent leadership of M. Jaures, finally conquered, and 
 prevented M. Millerand's expulsion from the party. 
 They form now by far the larger Socialist group, and are 
 often called the Neo-Socialists. In 1902 the Socialists 
 together polled 805,000 votes and returned 48 deputies 
 to the Chamber. In 1906 they polled 1,120,000 votes, 
 and returned no less than 75 deputies. M. Vivian and 
 M. Briand, Possibilists, accepted office, the one as 
 Minister of Labour and the other as Minister of Educa- 
 tion, under M. Clemenceau, and they carry on the work 
 118
 
 FRENCH SOCIALISM 
 
 of industrial amelioration inaugurated by M. Millerand, 
 though not without difficulties caused by friends and 
 foes. In a celebrated debate with M. Jaures in the 
 Chamber in 1906, M. Clemenceau, the Premier, dis- 
 avowed theoretic Socialism, but espoused practical 
 Socialism in the form of the Eight-Hours' Day, a 
 Graduated Income Tax, and the restoration to the 
 nation of the great monopolies. The Possibilists are 
 divided into two groups : the Broussists, after M. Brousse, 
 representing a decentralized Collectivism, and the 
 AUemanist, after M. Jean AUemane, representing 
 centralized Collectivism. 
 
 With such an eager and politically fearless country 
 as France, and with the position already attained by 
 the Socialist party, some very startling and instructive 
 legislative and industrial experiments may be expected 
 before very long, which it will behove the other nations 
 of Europe carefully to watch. 
 
 119
 
 IX 
 PROUDHON 
 
 121
 
 IX 
 PROUDHON 
 
 The word ' anarchy,' precisely because it signifies without 
 government, will become equal to saying ' Natural Order, har- 
 mony of the needs and interests of all, complete liberty with 
 complete solidarity.' — Enrico Malatesta. 
 
 Proudhon represents the transition from Socialism 
 to Anarchy. One of the early French Socialists, his 
 teaching so impressed Michael Bakounin, the Russian, 
 who met him at Paris in 1847, that he at once embraced 
 it and gave it practical direction and energetic advocacy. 
 Bakounin was the founder of the Anarchist party, but 
 Proudhon was the father of the theory of Anarchism. 
 In the light of past events, both in England and on 
 the Continent, and with a desire to understand even 
 the most forbidding of social movements, it is proposed 
 here to consider more closely the springs of theoretical 
 Anarchism in Proudhon. No attempt will be made 
 to give a complete account of Anarchism, or even 
 a criticism of it, save in so far as they may be 
 involved in a brief account of Proudhon's life and 
 teaching. 
 
 A glance at the portrait of Proudhon prepares one 
 for an original thinker. It is the head of a powerful 
 123
 
 PROUDHON 
 
 intellectual personality. The face is strong yet tender, 
 its main expression coming from a noble brow and 
 piercing eyes. The fine head, set on broad shoulders, 
 is only marred by a certain careless, unkempt, disorderly 
 appearance, which probably betokens his peasant origin. 
 Proudhon was born at Besangon. Besangon, the capital 
 of the department of Doubs, on the confines of Switzer- 
 land, known now chiefly for its watch trade, is an ancient 
 and interesting city. Small though it be, it can boast 
 of being the birthplace, not only of Proudhon, but also 
 of Fourier, the Socialist, who was born there in 1772 ; 
 of Abel Remusat, the Chinese scholar, born there in 
 1788; and, most of all, of Victor Hugo, who was born 
 there in 1802. 
 
 Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born there in 1809, of 
 very poor parents. His father was a brewer's cooper, 
 and so poor that the lad Pierre was a cowherd when 
 he should have been at school. Some generous neigh- 
 bours, noticing the brightness of the boy, and his 
 pathetic efforts at self-education as he grew up, sent 
 him, at the age of sixteen, to the college of his native 
 town. From the first he was an educational success, 
 displaying great talent. He studied amidst many 
 pecuniary difficulties, and was obliged frequently to 
 borrow his school-books and copy out his lessons. He 
 is said to have reached home on one occasion, laden 
 with prizes, to find that there was no dinner for him. 
 
 When about nineteen, the distress of his family grew 
 so great that he left college and became a compositor, 
 and as such was noted for the most intelligent and 
 punctual discharge of his duty. Between the intervals 
 of work he continued his education with rare resolution. 
 As corrector of the Press he possessed many advantages 
 124
 
 PROUDHON 
 
 above the ordinary workman, and he made excellent 
 use of them. He had to read the proofs of religious 
 and ecclesiastical works, and thus acquired considerable 
 theological knowledge. He also taught himself Hebrew 
 in a similar way, and employed himself in comparing 
 that language with Greek, Latin, and French. In 1830 
 he was offered the editorship of a governmental or 
 ministerial journal, but declined it, preferring to retain 
 his intellectual independence. In 1838 he sent in to 
 the Academy of Besangon a competitive essay on the 
 general principles of grammar. It was worthless as a 
 philological treatise, but nevertheless displayed such 
 talent that the Academy awarded him a bursary, the 
 pension Siiard of 1,500 francs for three years, usually 
 bestowed upon young men of great promise. Had 
 they been able to foresee the results of this scholarship, 
 certainly it would never have been awarded to Proudhon. 
 With this money he travelled to Paris, and there met 
 with the Socialists, who greatly influenced him. In 
 1839 he wrote an essay On the Utility of keeping Sunday^ 
 which, despite its strangely orthodox title, contained the 
 germs of nearly all his later revolutionary sentiments — 
 and this a year after he had left Besangon ! But un- 
 doubtedly the ' iron had entered into his soul ' during 
 his youth and early manhood, and was now producing 
 its natural results. 
 
 In 1840, when Proudhon was thirty-one, he published 
 his first and most famous work, What is Property ? His 
 answer to his own question greatly scandalized his 
 patrons of Besangon : it was that 'property is robbery.' 
 In his axiomatic way, Proudhon declared that property 
 was simply the right of aubaine ; that as the goods of the 
 aubain, the non-naturalized stranger, fell to the Crown 
 125
 
 PROUDHON 
 
 when he died, so the property of the labourer — his value 
 or product — fell to the landowner or employer while 
 he (the labourer) was yet alive. There was some talk 
 of withdrawing his pension, but, to their honour be it 
 recorded, the Academy of Besangon permitted him to 
 hold it for the full period. 
 
 In 1842, upon the publication of a third attack upon 
 property, addressed nominally to the Fourierist M. 
 Considerant, he was arrested and tried at Besangon, 
 but — in that city so charitable to Proudhon — acquitted. 
 His most elaborate and ambitious work. The Philosophy 
 of Misery, was published in 1846. Here he works out 
 his doctrine of what he called 'Anarchy.' Proudhon 
 had tried to earn his living in his native town as a 
 small master printer, but without success ; his own 
 publications were too notorious and unconventional — if 
 not dangerous. He next became a manager of a printing 
 business in Lyons — always hospitable to advanced 
 strangers and thinkers. But in 1847 he was drawn 
 again to Paris, where he had become known through 
 his writings. He arrived there at a critical moment 
 in the Revolutionary movement. In 1848 the Revo- 
 lution broke out, and in it Proudhon was a prominent 
 figure. He was elected by the Seine Department a 
 member of the Assembly, but was unable to gain much 
 hearing there, his opinions being so paradoxical and 
 extreme. The Revolution of 1848 was made in the 
 interests of, or was controlled by, the middle classes, 
 who therefore made it their business either to ignore 
 or, if that were impossible, to circumvent extremists and 
 democrats like Proudhon and Louis Blanc. Proudhon's 
 proposal in the Assembly to confiscate or appropriate 
 one-third of all rent and interest for the State was, of 
 126
 
 PROUDHON 
 
 course, rejected. He then turned to journalism, and 
 in several different newspapers gave bitter vent to his 
 wrath and his remedies. Amongst other things, Proudhon 
 started a bank, which was to give the workmen gratuitous 
 credit, and so pave the way for a better time. It was 
 a scheme something like that of agricultural banks, now 
 a great success in many Continental countries, but in 
 Proudhon's hands it was a failure. He invited a loan 
 of five million francs, and had only seventeen thousand 
 offered. 
 
 Proudhon always expressed himself in the most violent 
 and threatening language, language not meant to be 
 taken literally. With him society was to be instantly 
 destroyed, if it did not accept his ideas. He presented 
 his pistol — his theories — at its head, crying, like a stage- 
 highwayman : ' Your money or your life ! ' Yet he 
 constantly ridiculed the Socialists of hisi day for thinking 
 that society could be soon and suddenly reformed ; this, 
 he said, in his usual intemperate style, ' was the most 
 accursed lie that could be offered to mankind.' So 
 violent and threatening was his language in advocating 
 his theories that, in 1849, he was sentenced to three 
 years' imprisonment. This was in his absence, for he 
 had, upon tidings of danger, fled to Geneva. A few 
 months of expatriation, however, were enough for him, 
 and he returned, surrendered, and underwent his full 
 term of imprisonment, being incarcerated in the prison 
 of St. Pelagic, Paris. 
 
 Whilst there the romance of his life took place. He 
 was permitted to go through the ceremony of marriage 
 with a young working woman with whom he was ena- 
 moured, he himself being then of the mature age of 
 forty. 
 
 127
 
 PROUDHON 
 
 When his times, his comrades, and his theories are 
 considered, Proudhon appears to have been an unusually 
 noble man. He was an affectionate husband, a true 
 friend, and upright in all his private dealings. He 
 did not indulge in feelings of hatred or bitterness 
 towards individuals ; he reserved such for society as 
 a whole. He was strongly opposed to the Socialism 
 of Saint-Simon and Fourier, not only on account of 
 its Utopianism, but also on account of its immorality. 
 
 Pure in his own life and principles, he detested their 
 horrid theories, and, indeed, in one case, practice of 
 ' free love.' Proudhon may be said to have retained 
 the primitive austere morality of the sober French 
 peasantry, which in this respect offers a great contrast 
 to the salacious Parisians. 
 
 Proudhon quarrelled with French Socialism, not only 
 over its immorality and its impracticability, but also over 
 its Collectivism. To Socialists the State was everything ; 
 to Proudhon, nothing. Socialists were for the utmost 
 centralization ; Proudhon, for the utmost decentralization. 
 He was against authority in every form : law, the police, 
 the administration of Governments (imperial or local), 
 the army, the navy, all were to him marks of social 
 imperfection and instruments of tyranny. The free 
 individual needed none of these things ; he ought to 
 be, and should be, a law to himself; all external laws 
 were unnecessary. His favourite axiom was that the 
 goal of progress was Anarchy. By this he meant, not 
 social disorder and confusion, but freedom from govern- 
 ment — in the literal and not the popular sense of the 
 Greek-derived word 'Anarchy.' In all this he simply 
 declared what Herbert Spencer calls ' the goal of 
 Absolute Ethics,' that the individual man finally will 
 
 128
 
 PROUDHON 
 
 become so highly moralized and self-controlled that 
 he will need no external laws. But relative ethics 
 demand not a little control and governmental authority 
 over those — and they form, perhaps, the majority of 
 society — who are but moral and intellectual children. 
 However, Proudhon and the Socialists quarrelled over 
 this point ; and the same point was at issue afterwards be- 
 tween Bakounin the decentralizing Anarchist, the disciple 
 of Proudhon, and Karl Marx the centralizing Socialist. 
 
 Proudhon had no particular constructive programme ; 
 he did not believe one could at that time be formed. 
 He simply, in an ardent, perfervid, and violent manner, 
 advocated a few leading ideas — now the tenets of the 
 Anarchist party — that ' property is robbery,' that service 
 pays service — an exact and literal equivalent should be 
 rendered for all work done — that the ideal for society 
 is Anarchy, the freedom of individuals from all external 
 government. 
 
 During his term of imprisonment he wrote several 
 works, and was liberated in 1852. He remained quiet 
 under the Second Empire until 1858, and then the 
 fire burned in his bones again, and he wrote against 
 Church and State with his old violence. For this he 
 was prosecuted, and sentenced to three years' imprison- 
 ment. This time he fled to Brussels, where he remained 
 some time, occupying himself with writing. In i860 he 
 was amnestied, and returned to France. His health 
 being broken, he remained in obscurity, and died at 
 Passy, near Paris, January 19, 1865. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, in his unfinished monograph upon 
 
 Proudhon, declares that he was an original thinker, 
 
 an attractive personality, a man with a kind heart, and 
 
 of pure life and motive. It is the more sad to think 
 
 I 129
 
 PROUDHON 
 
 that such a man, through lack of caution, of historic 
 knowledge, and, above all, of the effect of wild and 
 whirling words upon undisciplined and evil natures, 
 should have started in human society forces which 
 threaten much more to retard than to advance human 
 freedom. 
 
 130
 
 X 
 
 STATE 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 131
 
 X 
 
 STATE SOCIALISM 
 
 If the State will show a little more Christian solicitude for the 
 working man, then I believe that the gentlemen of the Wyden 
 [Social Democratic] programme will sound their bird-call in vain. — 
 Bismarck. 
 
 When the late Sir William Harcourt jauntily said, ' We 
 are all Socialists now,' he showed how little he really 
 knew of Socialism. If he had said, ' We are all State 
 Socialists now,' he would have been much nearer the 
 truth. State Socialism is a very different thing from 
 scientific Socialism. State SociaHsm is quite compatible 
 with the existence of private property and of a capitalistic 
 system of industry, with competition and the existence of 
 privileged and governing classes. The State Socialist, as 
 such, has no idea of revolutionizing modern society. He 
 does not seek, as does the Socialist proper, to withdraw 
 from private ownership all the instruments of production 
 and distribution. He has no such object. 
 
 It is because of this that the Social Democrats, both 
 in England and Germany, treat State Socialism with 
 hostility and contempt. Witness, for instance, the un- 
 popularity, amongst English Social Democrats, of the 
 Fabian Society, which accepts State Socialism as an ally. 
 133
 
 STATE SOCIALISM 
 
 Witness also the attacks by German Socialists upon 
 the State Socialism of Bismarck and the German 
 Emperors. Bebel and the late W. Liebknecht have 
 both declared that its purpose in Germany is to buttress 
 up Monarchy and Imperialism by offering the German 
 working classes small reforms. Hence, despite Factory 
 Acts, Accident, Sickness, and Old-Age Insurance 
 Acts, the Socialist leaders in Germany have, so far, 
 been successful in maintaining the strength of Social 
 Democracy. 
 
 But while State Socialism is to be distinguished from 
 Economic Socialism, it is, on the other hand, to be 
 equally distinguished from State Individualism. In fact, 
 State Socialism is an eclectic thing — a system inter- 
 mediate between both, and one which tries to preserve 
 the merits of both, differing from State Individualism in 
 that it abandons for ever the principle of laisser-faire. 
 State Socialism does not admit the reign of free com- 
 petition in industry ; it believes in restraining the strong 
 from injustice, and in affording State protection to the 
 industrially weak. It would broaden the function of the 
 State, so as to make it not merely passive — the mere 
 preserver of order and the protector of property — but 
 active, the maker of peace and prosperity, by fostering 
 and developing good citizenship. State Socialism is the 
 revival of old conceptions of the relation of the State to 
 the individual, in a Christianized form, having a due 
 regard to the existence of those rights of the individual 
 which the old conceptions ignored. 
 
 State Socialism was adopted as a policy in a bhnd, 
 
 experimental, and therefore most characteristic way in 
 
 England when the first Factory Acts were passed ; and 
 
 has been pursued, in a halting, tentative manner, but 
 
 134 
 
 J
 
 STATE SOCIALISM 
 
 with increasing frequency, ever since. ^ It is in Germany 
 that State Socialism has been raised to the dignity of a 
 scientific theory. It has been shown that the founder of 
 the Social Democratic party in Germany — Ferdinand 
 Lassalle — was also, though quite unconsciously, the 
 originator of State Socialism. A national, as distin- 
 guished from an international Socialist, Lassalle's demands 
 for national workshops as a stepping-stone to a socialized 
 State, and his keen and learned criticism of the orthodox 
 political economy, impressed both German professors of 
 political economy and German statesmen, especially Prince 
 Bismarck. After an interview with Lassalle — during which 
 he was very much taken with that brilliant personality 
 and with his theories, as he once confessed in the Reichstag 
 — Bismarck set to work to elaborate the policy of State 
 Socialism. In doing this, both Bismarck and the Emperors 
 have been greatly aided by the Katheder Socialists, or 
 Socialists of the Chair, as the economists who repudiate 
 ' Manchesterianism,' or ' Smithiasmus ' (English orthodox 
 political economy), are called. Professors Roscher, 
 Wagner, Schmoller, and Schafflie have propounded a 
 new system of political economy, or, rather, imported 
 a new spirit into the old economy. They maintain that 
 there is no finality in political economy ; that it is but a 
 deduction from industrial methods, which vary with the 
 changing and advancing ethical standards of humanity. 
 Henceforth it must be studied historically, it must be 
 recognized that industry is a constant evolution. More- 
 over, the ethical factor, so far from being eliminated 
 altogether, must be made supreme. The idea, for 
 instance, ' of regarding labour-power as a commodity, 
 
 ' See Law and Public Opinion in England in the Nineteenth 
 Century. Professor A. V. Dicey. (Macniillan.) 
 
 135
 
 STATE SOCIALISM 
 
 and wages as its price,' is, according to Professor 
 Wagner, ' not only un-Christian, but is inhuman in the 
 worst sense of the word.' The State is to be the active 
 factor in inaugurating a better system of production, 
 whereby there must be less irregularity in its course, 
 profits must be shared more equitably, wealth dis- 
 tributed more evenly, and the conditions of labour, and 
 the habits and prospects of the labourers, indefinitely 
 improved. The administrative powers of the State are 
 to be directed towards securing the moral, intellectual, 
 sanitary, economic, and social advancement of the people. 
 State Socialism is the ' gas-and-water ' Socialism — the 
 practical, piecemeal Municipal Socialism which grows 
 increasingly familiar in England. 
 
 There will, indeed, be a great difference between 
 German and English State Socialism. In England the 
 power of self-government is much more highly developed. 
 State Socialism here, therefore, will be less centralized 
 and bureaucratic than in Germany — more local, parochial, 
 and municipal. Government in Germany is largely 
 absolute, paternal, almost grandmotherly. It must not 
 be forgotten, however, that the Emperor of Germany 
 has ventured upon schemes before which the English 
 have hesitated, although the State in England is, to 
 some extent, the people, and representative government 
 is largely a reality. This latter fact ought to make the 
 English step surer, not more hesitating, in the direction 
 of State Socialism. For in prosecuting such measures 
 as the State oversight of industrial pursuits, the State 
 control of necessary commodities like land, coal, and 
 minerals, or the State ownership of railways, it would not 
 be, as in Germany, government from above, but govern- 
 ment of the people by the people ; in a word, self-govern- 
 136
 
 STATE SOCIALISM 
 
 ment — a self-government which, so far from being the foe 
 of a healthy, well-developed Individualism, will serve both 
 to foster and evoke it. 
 
 That this State Socialism is commending itself, not 
 only to the working classes, who might naturally be 
 expected to look upon it with favour, but also to middle- 
 class statesmen and economists, may be seen on every 
 hand. The leaders of the Progressive Party on the 
 London County Council, in their early period, may be 
 taken as types of the modern Municipal Socialist. The 
 following passage from Mr. Henry Sidgwick's Priticiples 
 of Political Economy proves that State and Municipal 
 Socialism is not likely to be found contrary to economic 
 science by even the representatives of the orthodox 
 school. In his chapter on ' Economic Distribution,' 
 Mr. Sidgwick says : ' As I have tried to show in an 
 earlier part of this book, there are many departments 
 in which both abstract theory and induction from ex- 
 perience combine to show very serious defects in the 
 existing competitive organization of industry from the 
 point of view of production no less than from that of 
 distribution. I see no reason to regard laisser-faire as 
 a political ideal from either point of view ; and it seems 
 to me quite possible that a very considerable extension 
 of the industrial functions of government might be in 
 every respect advantageous, without supposing any 
 Utopian degree of moral or political improvement in 
 human society.' 
 
 137
 
 PART III 
 CRITICAL 
 
 139
 
 I 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 CRITICISM OF 
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 141
 
 I 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CRITICISM OF 
 SOCIALISM 1 
 
 Socialism must wait the development of the Social Man. 
 
 Washington Gladden. 
 
 What has Christianity to say to the demands of 
 scientific Socialism ? The answer to this question will 
 determine the attitude of many Christians towards 
 Socialism, and of many Socialists towards Christianity. 
 
 It will not avail Christians to say that Christianity is 
 not dependent upon any form of human society, that its 
 kingdom is not of this world, and that it can exist alike 
 under the shadow of pagan Imperialism, of barbaric 
 Feudalism, of greedy Capitalism, and of materialistic 
 Socialism — that these exterior things are indifferent to it. 
 There is enough truth in this to deceive many Christians 
 into a mistaken apathy towards the new-world move- 
 ment, and to dull many Christian consciences into the 
 acceptance of economic evils which hinder the coming 
 of Christ's kingdom. Christianity can exist under any 
 form of government or human society, but never for an 
 hour in its whole history has it failed to operate, silently 
 
 ' Read before the Sheffield United Methodist Ministers' Fraternal, 
 October 1895. 
 
 143
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CRITICISM 
 
 perhaps, but steadily, against those forms which were 
 imperfect or un-ideal. When the Christian Church has 
 failed to do this, the Spirit of Christ has operated through 
 other agencies. It is not a question of what Christianity 
 can exist under ; it is a question of what it can flourish 
 under ; and, without dispute, it is exceedingly hard for it 
 to flourish under a form of society like the present. 
 
 Whatever Socialism is, or is not, it is a study of 
 political economy and of industry from the standpoint 
 of the human factor, not from that of the material factor ; 
 from the standpoint of the workman, not from that of 
 the capitalist ; of the weak, not the strong, human factor 
 in it ; from that of the poor man, not from that of the 
 rich. Christianity, therefore, should approach it sym- 
 pathetically, wishing it all success in its theorizings and 
 reconstructions. With its motive and its aim— the 
 bettering of the social conditions of the multitudes, and, 
 with that, their intellectual, moral, and spiritual condition 
 also — Christianity must, in the very nature of things, be 
 in the most hearty sympathy.^ 
 
 It is often said that Christians, as such, have nothing 
 to do with economic Socialism ; that it is a scheme for 
 the reorganization of society, which must be dealt with 
 by the economist and the sociologist ; that it may be 
 very well meant, but, nevertheless, very ill calculated to 
 remedy the ills which it is not alone in deploring, and 
 that its merits can only be decided upon by experts in 
 such matters. This is another specious argument for 
 lulling the Christian conscience to sleep ; and it comes 
 very gratefully to comfortably circumstanced Christians, 
 and to those who conceive of Christianity as a religion 
 purely or mainly introspective and other-worldly. But, 
 ' See the writer's Christianity and Socialism, (F. Griffiths, dd. net.) 
 144
 
 OF SOCIALISM 
 
 inasmuch as Socialism is the only complete theory of 
 economic reconstruction in the field, and inasmuch as 
 the present social system is, in many of its aspects, 
 notoriously anti-Christian, and inasmuch also, as Social- 
 ism is full of moral implications, and may vitally affect 
 the history of Christianity itself, it is surely impossible 
 for Christians, as such, to maintain an attitude towards it 
 of benevolent or hostile indifference. 
 
 This being so, it is worth while — abundantly worth 
 while — to take a general view of Socialism, in the light 
 of Christianity, as a theory of economic and social 
 reconstruction. 
 
 There are three things about modern Socialism, at the 
 very outset, to which Christians must take exception . 
 The first is the Socialist appeal to ph ysical force, for 
 such an appeal exists in certain Socialist quarters. Christ 
 frowned on all appeals to force for the purpose of 
 spreading truth, despite His own action in the Temple ; 
 Tolstoi's expositions of Christ's teachings have surely 
 made that clear, if the Quakers did not before him. 
 His followers, then, must frown upon all appeals to 
 force. In the degree in which, in the sad past, the 
 Church herself has appealed to force, in that degree she 
 has been un-Christian. -The appeal to force is neces- 
 sarily irrational and immoral ; it cannot, moreover, in 
 the long run, further any cause. To abolish private 
 property, summarily and by force, would be at once 
 unrighteous, irrational, and impolitic, and would plunge 
 society into worse evils than those from which it would 
 deliver it. Many Socialists, indeed, chiefly in England 
 and France, are for evolution, and protest against war 
 altogether ; but the ' thoroughs ' — and those intimately 
 acquainted with Socialists know that these constitute a 
 
 K 145
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CRITICISM 
 
 fair number of them, and include the leaders of a section 
 even in England — the ' thoroughs ' are for revolution and 
 the appeal to arms ; of course, only when the hour is 
 ripe. This appeal to force is not a necessity of Socialism ; 
 its programme may be realized peacefully, but that, save 
 in England, is not thought likely. Rodbertus put its 
 realization five hundred years off, but those active and 
 naturally impatient Socialists who wish to see its reign 
 at least begun in their times are for the speedy appUcation 
 of force. With all such, Christians at once part com- 
 pany. Moral suasion, argument, prayer, and the use of 
 constitutional and legislative means, are the only methods 
 Christians dare use in the spread of truth and in re- 
 organizing society. Force is to them, first of all, wrong, 
 and, secondly, ineffective as a means of social recon- 
 struction. 
 
 Then the attitude of some Socialists towards the 
 family must be denounced . Christians can never support 
 those who extend the doctrine of all things in common — 
 to wives. They have been engaged in too long a 
 struggle with human animalism and impurity to submit 
 to see some of their best work undone. Here, again, 
 many Socialists will repudiate any such notions; but 
 as long as leading Socialists, like Herr Bebel, Karl 
 Pearson, and Belfort Bax, continue to advocate such 
 doctrines, and numbers of the rank and file of Socialism 
 are found embracing them, Christians must have an 
 understanding. This understanding is the more neces- 
 sary, as throughout the whole history of Socialism, from 
 Owen, Saint-Simon, and Fourier, to Bebel and Bax, the 
 same teaching has more or less tainted it. There is 
 undoubtedly quite enough that is un-ideal in the relations 
 of the sexes under our present laws; but the Christian 
 146
 
 OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ideal of true, pure, human love between man and woman 
 and lifelong monogamy is not responsible for any of 
 them. ' Free love,' or unions and separations at will, 
 and, as a necessary corollary, State support of m^'thers 
 and State nurseries for children, mean the reign of 
 animal passion and vice, the degradation of woman, and 
 the abolition of family life. Socialists will have to drop 
 all such so-called ' social philosophy ' like hot coals if 
 they wish to win the Christian ear. The decline in the 
 birth-rate is not to be met that way. The animal in- 
 stincts of men need restraint, not encouragement, and 
 the Christian ideal of the family is necessary to the very 
 existence of civilized communities. 
 
 The Christian who studies some Socialist writers grows 
 concerned, not only at the prospect of violent revolution, 
 and at the threatened fate of the family, but also at the 
 fate of religion under Socialism ; for those who hav e 
 i nfluence with Socialists clamour for the destruction o f 
 three things as obstacles in the way of realizing Socialism 
 — the State, the Family, and the Church. 
 
 Socialism is professedly a theory for this world ; this 
 is its boast, yet it strangely thinks that this involves 
 antagonism to religion ; whereas, if there is anything 
 needed for this world, it is religion. Unfortunately, the 
 founders of economic SociaUsm were avowed and aggres- 
 sive atheists and agnostics, and so are many of its 
 modern leaders. Mr. R. Blatchford, of the Clarion, is 
 a sample. Now, if one thing is certain, it is that Christ 
 approves of no theory of civil life which rules out religion, 
 which either ignores it or denies its vaUdity. To the 
 Lord Jesus, and therefore to Christians, religion is more 
 real than all things else beside. If the inauguration of 
 Socialism meant the secularization of mankind and its 
 147
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CRITICISM 
 
 materialization, the stifling of its spiritual life and in- 
 stincts, then, to speak moderately, whatever temporal 
 comfort it might bring, to Christians it would be dear 
 at the price. They will rather endure the ills they have, 
 than fly to others that they know not of. A theory 
 which threatens morality and religion threatens also the 
 very existence of society. It will be said by some that 
 these dreadful consequences are not at all involved in 
 the theory of Socialism. They may not be necessarily 
 and logically, and many modern English Socialists, like 
 Keir Hardie, are Christians ; but the theory sprang from 
 the noxious soil of Materialism, and is still identified 
 in the minds of many militant Socialists with MateriaUsm. 
 There is no doubt at all about this in Germany, and 
 little doubt about it in England. Socialism, being an 
 international movement, wiirprofess the same principles 
 in every land. 
 
 If Socialists will shake themselves free from the idea 
 of appealing to physical force, from their hostiUty to the 
 family and to religion. Christians will look much more 
 favourably upon them. 
 
 But it is easy to object to Sociahsm. Many Christians 
 content themselves with that, and so lay themselves open 
 to the retort that the only world in which they are 
 interested is the other world, and that the sooner they 
 betake themselves thither the better for humanity. 
 Nevertheless, Christianity proper never has been, and 
 never can be, indifferent to this present life, and that 
 simply because it believes in another life, to which this 
 life is essentially related. Therefore, Christians must 
 seek for the good in Socialism as well as the evil, and 
 strive to assimilate it. Now, as Dr. Flint says, 'There 
 is nothing ethically valuable in Socialism which is not
 
 OF SOCIALISM 
 
 contained in Christianity. All its moral truths are 
 Christian truths.' But some may still think that it 
 has in it nothing ethically valuable, despite the enumera- 
 tion of ethical values given at the outset. It will be 
 wise, therefore, to pursue the subject a little further, 
 from the Christian and ethical, as distinguished from 
 the economic, standpoint. 
 
 To begin with. Socialism is a great cry for justice, 
 whether articulate or not — for individual and for social 
 justice. Surely the Christian should join the Soci alist 
 i n his demand for justice — though the heaven, or, 
 what is more likely, though the earth falls ! It is no 
 doubt a fallacy to affirm that labour is the source of 
 all value ; yet it is undeniable that the labour element 
 in production is very much undervalued, and that, under 
 our present system, whereby nearly half the national 
 income goes to but one-ninth, and that not the labouring 
 part, of the nation, the labourer does not obtain his fair 
 share of the products of industry. He may be better 
 off than he was fifty years ago — which is, after all, saying 
 very little ; he no doubt would be better off if he drank 
 less intoxicating drink and gambled less — but still he 
 does not obtain his fai r share of the product, and 
 Christian justice demands that he should, whatever he 
 does with it That the labourerTs treated with injustice 
 i s no mere Socialist assertion, but an industrial, economic , 
 and political fact . The labourer is at a vast disadvantage 
 in economic bargaining, and is also the victim of a 
 defective and often immoral system of production and 
 distribution. The Sociahst doctrine of surplus value, 
 despite the assertions of hostile critics, does not depend, 
 although Marx made it to depend, upon a mistaken 
 labour-doctrine of value. The existence of Fabian 
 149
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CRITICISM 
 
 Socialism demonstrates that. It is an economic fact 
 
 that the workman is deprived of his fair share of the 
 
 product — a fact admitted by the new English economists. 
 
 Socialism is a theory of economic reconstruction which 
 
 proposes to remedy this injustice, and, whether successful 
 
 or not, should be regarded with sympathy, not hostility, 
 
 by Christians, even though it may threaten the vested 
 
 interests of the few. The need of England at this 
 
 hour is such a measure of social change as will secure 
 
 justice to the toilers of the land. 
 
 Christians must sympathize also with the Socialist cry 
 
 for equality. Not, of course, for literal equality, levelling 
 
 either up or down to an unnatural and undesira ble 
 
 u niformity. Socialism makes no such foolish demand, 
 
 although critics, who ought to know better, are always 
 
 attributing such a demand to it. The knocking down 
 
 of this man of straw occupies no small part of the time 
 
 of the critics of SociaUsm. Socialism would reorganize 
 
 society upon a basis of equality in labour — that all should 
 
 labour, either with hands or brain, preferably with both, 
 
 and all enjoy the fruits of their labours. At presen t 
 
 society is organ ized upon the basis of wealth and priva te 
 
 property. Socialists would make it impossible for there 
 
 to be any social drones, either above or beneath. There 
 
 should be, further, according to Socialism, an equality of 
 
 opportunity, each having an equal chance of cultivating 
 
 and developing his faculties ; and also equaHty before 
 
 the law, both in its making and its administration. These 
 
 are just and Christian demand s, and any form of society 
 
 which delivers us from one largely based on wealth, with 
 
 its cruel and unjust unequalities in these particular 
 
 respects, must be welcome to Christians. It is a 
 
 Christian declaration that if any will not work neither 
 _
 
 OF SOCIALISM 
 
 shall he eat. The Socialist's desire to make every con- 
 sumer a producer also, and so be no burden upon, but 
 rather a helper of, human society, is pre-eminently 
 Christian. The difficulties of organizing and administer- 
 ing such a society surely do not surpass either the wit or 
 the capacity of man — nay, it is certain that what man 
 ought to do, that he finally can do. 
 
 The other great cry of Socialism is for brotherliood — 
 the most Christian of cries. There can be no real brother- 
 hood in a society, perhaps not based upon, yet really 
 working upon, the lines of selfish competition ; every da y 
 demonstrates that afresh. There was often more possi- 
 bility of brotherhood in the days of slavery and serfdom, 
 when the master and man were not put into competition, 
 than in times when their interests are artificially made 
 to conflict. Where men live as rivals and enemies — the 
 strong oppressing the weak, the wise taking advantage of 
 the ignorant, one man using another simply as a means 
 to his own selfish ends, one or a few men treating whole 
 companies of their brother men as ' hands,' not living 
 beings — the realization of brotherhood is impossible. 
 Christians must not only desire, but work for, the re- 
 construction of a form of society in which such evils 
 are inherent. Industrial comp etition must be super- 
 seded by industrial c o-operation. The only competitio n 
 permissible between brothers, at least upon a large scale, 
 is how to serve society best, not each other worst. The 
 secret of the true deveIopmeht~bf the mdividual is love 
 and service, not dislike and rivalry. Neither the interests 
 of the individual nor the interests of society can be 
 secured by every man looking solely upon his own 
 things, despite all the economists in the world ; this 
 may be orthodox political economy, but it is atrociously 
 
 151
 
 CHRISTIAN CRITICISM OF SOCIALISM 
 
 heterodox Christianity. The Socialist who demands 
 brotherhood in industry is far nearer the mind of Chri st 
 than the economist who clamours for ' free 'competition . 
 
 Professor Flint says that Socialism succeeds to the 
 extent it does by the very lowness of its ideal ; that it 
 is all commonplace, definite, easy of comprehension, 
 its standard merely one of material comfort. This is 
 a strange judgement. Socialism really makes immens e 
 demands upon human nature — greater demands than 
 it will ever rise to unassisted by the religion of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. So far from realizing its programme 
 apart from religion, the Socialists should make friends 
 with Christianity at once. The social man is to b e 
 evolved — a man unselfish, public-spirited, conscientious, 
 incorruptible, industrious, high-minded, and refined i n 
 tastes and pleasures. The evolution of this man is 
 possible only to religion ; there will never be any 
 socialized production and distribution until there are 
 at least latent in society the germs of the social man. 
 
 Some modification or adaptation of Socialism is a 
 necessity to the higher life of the community, and if 
 Socialism will only eliminate all morally obnoxious 
 features, as well as all economic fallacies, from its 
 programme, Christianity will clasp hands with it ; for 
 a purified Socialism is simply an industrially applied 
 Christianity. 
 
 152
 
 II 
 
 THE LABOUR 
 
 THEORY OF 
 
 VALUE 
 
 153
 
 II 
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE ^ 
 
 Value comes not out of the workshop where goods come 
 into existence, but out of the wants which those goods will satisfy. — 
 Bohm-Bawerk. 
 
 There is no economic subject upon which the working 
 men of England ought to try more to have clear ideas 
 than the subject of value. This is no merely speculative 
 question ; for in every market-place men stand up and 
 say that the wealth of this country is created by labour, 
 and ought to be in the possession of the labourers. The 
 fundamental principle of all Karl Marx's reasoning is 
 that labour is the sole source of value. Now, if that 
 be granted or proved, the social question is, at any rate 
 intellectually, at an end. All that remains to be done is 
 to see that labour has its rights, which are the possession 
 of all things valuable ; for if labour is the sole source of 
 value, then the stump -orators are logical — everything 
 of value belongs to the labourers. All who are not 
 producers or necessary to production exist only on 
 sufferance, and are a tax on industry. 
 
 The labour doctrine of value was taken by Marx from 
 
 ' Read before the Fabian Society of Socialists, Chester, June 3, 
 1893- 
 
 155
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 Adam Smith and Ricardo, the founders of the science of 
 political economy, and especially from the latter. Well 
 might Marx speak of it from his point of view in the 
 following language : ' The recent scientific discovery that 
 the products of labour, so far as they are values, are but 
 material expressions of human labour spent in their pro- 
 duction, marks indeed an epoch in the history of the 
 human race.' 
 
 Ricardo's language seems definite enough, as the 
 following quotation will show : ' Gold is fifteen times 
 dearer than silver, not because there is a greater demand 
 for it, nor because the supply of silver is fifteen times 
 greater than that of gold, but solely because fifteen times 
 the quantity of labour is necessary to procure a given 
 quantity of it.' Locke, Petty, and Adam Smith had 
 taught the same doctrine before, incredible though it 
 may seem. 
 
 It is now maintained that Ricardo was misunderstood. 
 Ricardo was a financier, who looked at economic sub- 
 jects from the standpoint of the City man. He always 
 addressed his arguments to an imaginary audience of 
 experts. He was a master of abstract argument, a 
 logical thinker of great originality ; he was obscure in 
 expression, and not only obscure, but greatly condensed. 
 His style was singularly difficult, and his doctrines the 
 barest abstractions. Ricardo always took it for granted 
 that the imaginary audience of experts he addressed 
 would make all those common-sense allowances and 
 qualifications in his doctrines which he himself did not 
 stay to make. 
 
 But writing when he did, at the moment when we in 
 England needed a science of political economy, his 
 doctrines were seized upon with avidity by lJ:iose who 
 156
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 were not experts, and applied to real life in the crudest 
 manner. It became an accepted doctrine that labour 
 was the sole source of value and wealth, and was 
 diligently applied in the interests of those who wished 
 to free labour from all mediaeval restrictions ; it was 
 used to create free trade in labour — an event which 
 meant slavery for the labourer and fortune for the 
 capitalist. Some modern economists of note declare 
 that Ricardo never meant that labour was the only 
 source of value. Professor Marshall, in his Principles 
 of Economics, says that ' it would have been better 
 if Ricardo had occasionally repeated the statement that 
 the value of two commodities are to be regarded as 
 in the long run proportionate to the amount of labour 
 required for making them, only on the condition that 
 other things are equal ; that is, that the labour employed 
 in the two cases is equally skilled, and therefore equally 
 highly paid ; that it is assisted by proportionate amounts 
 of capital, account being taken of the period of its 
 investment ; and that the rates of profit are equal.' 
 These qualifications Ricardo left his readers to make, 
 and they seldom made them. Professor Bohm-Bawerk 
 goes further than Professor Marshall. He says that 
 ' Ricardo so narrows the sphere within which it [the 
 labour doctrine of value] is valid, and surrounds it with 
 such important exceptions that it is scarcely justifiable 
 to assert that he has represented labour as the universal 
 and exclusive principle of value. Ricardo begins his 
 Principles with the express assertion that the exchange 
 value of goods has its origin in two sources — in their 
 scarcity and in the labour their production cost. Even 
 in the latter case he admits that exchange value is 
 not determined exclusively by labour ; that time also — 
 157
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 the time elapsing between the advancing of the labour 
 and the realizing of the finished product — has a con- 
 siderable influence on it.' So that Marx's doctrine, 
 and that of Social Democrats generally, would seem to 
 be based upon an incomplete understanding of Ricardo. 
 
 The main point, of course, is not whether Ricardo 
 taught this doctrine — although it was undeniably rife 
 at the time Rodbertus, Lassalle, and Marx wrote, and, 
 after doing yeoman service for capital, was, to the 
 consternation and chagrin of the capitalists, turned 
 suddenly and daringly by these Socialists into an argu- 
 ment for labour — but whether it be true or false. 
 
 If it be true, then capital and property are robbery, 
 and the doctrine of surplus value has a foundation both 
 in logic and fact. If it be false, Socialism will have 
 to moderate its claims and make less sweeping demands. 
 
 There is little doubt, however, that the labour theory 
 of value, especially as defined by Marx, has been torn 
 to shreds by English and Continental economists, especi- 
 ally by the latter. The subject is too technical to be 
 pursued closely here, but reference may be made to 
 the treatment of it by the Austrian economist, Professor 
 Bohm-Bawerk. He says that 'they [the Socialists] 
 could find no argument for it in the nature of things, 
 for that showed no necessary connexion whatever 
 between value and labour, neither in experience nor 
 in authority.' Neither Adam Smith nor Ricardo 
 attempted to prove this doctrine, and of Karl Marx's 
 attempt to prove it, Bohm-Bawerk says that ' scarcely 
 anywhere else were to be found together so great a 
 number of the worst fallacies, wanton, unproved asser- 
 tions, self-contradictions, and blindness to facts.' 
 
 Any one who has carefully perused Bohm-Bawerk's 
 158
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 examination of the Socialist theory of value, in his 
 Capital and Interest^ and other works, will admit that, 
 so far as this theory is concerned, the Marxian Socialists 
 have not much ground left upon which to stand. 
 
 It is important to remember that value does not arise 
 from the process of production at all. There are three 
 factors in production — land, labour, and capital. No 
 one of these can create value, yet in the history of 
 pohtical economy the power of creating value has most 
 confidently been ascribed to each of the three in turn. 
 But, as Bohm-Bawerk remarks, ' value is not produced, 
 and cannot be produced. What is produced is never 
 anything but forms, shapes of material, combinations of 
 material ; therefore things, goods. These goods can, 
 of course, be goods of value, but they do not bring 
 value with them ready-made, as something inherent 
 which accompanies production.' So, again, ' the privilege 
 of creating value belongs as little to human labour as 
 to any other factor (of production). Labour, like Capital, 
 creates goods, and goods only.' Of course, without 
 goods there could be no value, but there might be — 
 indeed, there often are — goods which not only have 
 no exchange value, but are without even use-value. 
 The production of goods themselves is not the result 
 of land, labour, or capital alone, but of the three in 
 co-operation. 
 
 Value arises from the wants of consumers, not from 
 the labours of producers. Products have value only 
 in so far as they have social utility. As before pointed 
 out, Marx perceived this, but strangely failed to see 
 that it has a vital bearing upon the nature of value. 
 Bohm-Bawerk says that 'products always receive value 
 first from outside, from the wants and satisfactions of 
 159
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 the economic world. Value grows, not out of the 
 past of goods, but out of their future. It comes not 
 out of the workshop, where goods come into existence, 
 but out of the wants which those goods satisfy.' The 
 doctrine propounded by Bohm-Bawerk might be called 
 the utility theory of value, and is the one now generally 
 accepted. It is not his own creation, but was formu- 
 lated, simultaneously, but independently, in England by 
 Professor Stanley Jevons, and in Austria by Professor 
 Menger. It seems to account for the facts more com- 
 pletely than any other. 
 
 The economic fact which has given rise to the labour 
 theory of value is the coincidence which sometimes 
 exists between exchange-value and the cost of production. 
 
 In 1884 Mr. P. H. Wicksteed wrote in Today that 
 'a coincidence exists between the exchange-value of 
 ordinary manufactured goods and the amount of labour 
 contained.' From this he maintained that labour was at 
 least the standard or measure of value for such articles. 
 His Socialist colleagues in England refused to see in 
 this suspicious ' coincidence ' anything save the relation 
 of cause and effect, and additional support for the labour 
 doctrine of value. But, as Bohm-Bawerk points out, 
 this coincidence is deceptive. ' So long as the costs 
 themselves are in harmony with the usefulness or scarcity 
 of the goods, so long do they remain in harmony with 
 their value and appear to regulate it.' In reality it is 
 not the cost of production which regulates the value 
 of goods, but the value of them which regulates the 
 cost of their production. The labour doctrine of value 
 simply reverses the true order of things. 
 
 Labour, indeed, affects value when it affects supply ; 
 prices rise and fall according as supply falls and rises. 
 160
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 As Professor Jevons says, 'The labour spent upon 
 producing a commodity does not affect the value of a 
 commodity unless it alters the quantity of it.' Perhaps, 
 also, the quality of it. But even here the value comes 
 not from labour, but from the wants or satisfactions of 
 the consuming community. 
 
 Whilst it is true that there is a coincidence between 
 the value of many articles and the cost of their pro- 
 duction, the exceptions are too numerous for any such 
 doctrine as the labour doctrine of value to be based 
 upon it. Labour does not give scarce goods their value — 
 rare pictures, rare editions, old coins, and such objects 
 of desire. Perhaps the hackneyed ' wine ' illustration 
 best exposes the fallacy of this doctrine. The value of 
 wine when first put down into a wine-cellar is very much 
 less than its value, say, twelve or twenty years later, at 
 least to wine-drinkers or wine-connoisseurs. If labour 
 is the sole source of value, then labour must be the 
 secret of this increase of value. But no labour has been 
 expended upon it ; the wine has lain still in the cellar 
 untouched and unvisited, yet increased exchange-value 
 has accrued each year. Therefore the labour doctrine 
 of value is wrong, for here is a typical instance of value 
 which labour could by no possibility affect. The same 
 holds true of timber ; labour cannot possibly have 
 anything to do with the difference in exchange-value 
 between an oak-tree one year old and the same tree a 
 hundred years old. A nugget of gold found at once, 
 without any labour, by a fortunate prospector, could not 
 derive its value, despite Ricardo, from any labour in 
 connexion with it, for there has been none ; nor from 
 the labour usually needed to extract gold from the rocks, 
 for gold is easier to ' produce ' than coal or lead, and yet 
 L i6i
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 it is much more valuable. Labour cannot account for 
 the value of the goods produced by skilled labour. Karl 
 Marx tried to prove that skilled labour was only common 
 labour multiplied, but signally failed in his enterprise. 
 A sculptor, an engineer, and a dock labourer may work 
 the same number of hours per day, and with equal 
 diligence, and relatively equal ability ; but the value of 
 their respective products — which, according to the labour 
 theory of value, should be equal — will be found to be 
 very different. Bohm-Bawerk affirms that 'the only 
 goods left to the action of the law (that the labour costs 
 are the measure of value) are those goods which can be 
 produced at will, without any limitations, and which at the 
 same time require nothing but unskilled labour for their 
 production, and even these fluctuate in their value.' 
 
 Bohm-Bawerk declares that, ' shut up in his labour 
 theory, Marx, like Rodbertus, fails to grasp the idea 
 that time also has an influence on value. Marx repeats 
 the mistake of Rodbertus, claiming now, in the name of 
 justice, the value of the finished product as it will be 
 then.' Bohm-Bawerk makes this plain by a very con- 
 vincing illustration, that of a steam-engine, which costs 
 five years of labour, and when completed realizes the 
 price of ^550. 
 
 Suppose that five different mechanics made five separate 
 parts of the engine, and contributed a year's work each, 
 in due succession, until the engine was completed, what 
 would be the just share of each partner in the con- 
 struction ? Certainly not ;^iio each — not by dividing 
 the ;^55o into five equal parts. The first man would 
 have to wait four years before he could obtain his 
 financial share, whereas the last man would not have to 
 wait at all. ' To find labourers ready to take the pre- 
 162
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 paratory stages, then, the labourers of the final stages 
 would be compelled to grant their colleagues who 
 prepared the work a larger share in the final value of the 
 product as compensation for the postponement.' The 
 following would be the fair shares : The first man (who 
 waits four years), ;^i2o; the second (three years), 
 £iiS ', the third (two years), ;,^iio; the fourth (one 
 year), ^105 ; the fifth (none), ;^ioo; in all, ;^55o. 
 
 Now, suppose that the mechanics cannot wait, but 
 contract with a middleman to pay them at once, he 
 becoming the owner of the steam-engine, which would 
 have the value of ;^55o to him when made. How 
 much ought he in justice to pay them each ? When 
 they work on their own account, it has been seen to be 
 just to pay the man who has not to wait at all for his 
 money the sum of ;^ioo for his year's labour. The middle- 
 man will be just, then, in doing what they themselves 
 would do ; he therefore pays them each ^.^loo, i.e. he 
 pays in all to five men ^500 ; but the engine when sold 
 brings him in 3^^550 ! He therefore makes a profit of 
 ;^5o on the transaction. This is a perfectly just profit ; 
 there has been no exploitation of labour ; the surplus- 
 value has not been stolen by the capitalist from labour ; 
 indeed, he has served their interests and risked, or 
 at least locked-up, his capital, as well as waited for years 
 for reimbursement. Whence, then, comes the enhanced 
 value of the engine ? It comes, not from labour, but 
 from time, from the wants of consumers, whereby the 
 present value of future goods is less than that of present 
 goods. This excellent illustration answers the double 
 purpose of showing that value does not arise from 
 labour, and that surplus-value taken by the capitalist is 
 not necessarily an exploitation of labour. The labourer 
 163
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 has evidently no right to the whole value of the product ; 
 he has a right to his share of it, for he has only a share 
 in it. How to determine that share, and whether he 
 usually receives his share, are both grave and difficult 
 questions, beside the present point. 
 
 It will clear the air somewhat, then, when all parties, 
 especially the workmen, realize that, as Bohm-Bawerk 
 says, the rise of surplus-value ' is a law which owes 
 its existence, not to our political and social institutions, 
 but directly to the nature of man and the nature of 
 things.' 
 
 It remains to consider what effect this refutation of 
 the labour doctrine of value has upon economic 
 Socialism. Undoubtedly it is the chief corner-stone in 
 the economic structure of Marx, both in his own opinion 
 and in that of many of his principal critics. For instance. 
 Dr. SchafHe says that on this account Marx's Socialism 
 ' is quite incapable of solving the problem of production 
 with collective capital which it propounds, on any really 
 sound economic basis. As long as Socialism has not 
 something quite other than this, and more positive, to 
 offer, it has no chance.' By more ' positive ' Dr. Schaffle 
 must mean more scientific or certain, for Socialists do 
 not suffer from any lack of positiveness. Dr. Schafile 
 says in another place that ' the bare labour-cost value, 
 as it has been formulated up to now, invests the whole 
 economy of Socialism for the present with the character 
 of a Utopia.' It can be easily understood, however, 
 that the doctrine is too valuable for the purposes of 
 agitation to be soon given up. Hence many Marxian 
 Socialists still adhere to the labour doctrine of value. 
 Some do it, doubtless, in their ignorance, but others 
 despite criticism. Amongst the latter we have Mr. 
 164
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 Hyndman, who is prepared to meet all comers in 
 defence of this doctrine. 
 
 But all Socialists are not so foolish as to kick against 
 the pricks ; the Fabian Socialists, being mainly middle- 
 class Socialists and educated men, have long since (a 
 score of years since) discarded Marx's theory of 
 value in favour of the utility theory of value. They hold 
 that Socialism is not dependent upon any value theory, 
 and in this are supported by independent economists 
 like Professor William Smart, who says : ' Bohm-Bawerk's 
 refutation of the exploitation theory is not a refutation 
 of Socialism, but of a certain false economic doctrine 
 assumed by a great social economist as a negative basis 
 for that social, industrial, and political reconstruction of 
 things called Socialism.' Dr. Schaffle and Dr. Flint 
 want to nail the Socialists down to Marx's labour theory 
 of value, and then, by exploding it, maintain that they 
 have exploded Socialism. But Socialism is not so easily 
 got rid of. Years ago a letter appeared in the Daily 
 Chrofiicle signed by seven Socialists, including Dr. 
 Aveling, Belfort Bax, William Morris, and H. M. 
 Hyndman, avowing their allegiance to Marx's theory of 
 value, but it evoked a letter from Mr. Bernard Shaw 
 disavowing it in the name of the Fabian SociaUsts. In 
 that letter Mr. Shaw made several statements which 
 show the folly of attempting to make the Socialist 
 movement stand or fall with the labour theory of value. 
 He said : ' The section in the Fabian Essays which deals 
 with the theory of value is pure Jevons, without a word of 
 Marx. The implication that the overwhelming majority 
 of English Socialists, attached or unattached, know the 
 difference between the two value theories in question, 
 or that as many as one per cent, of them are economic 
 165
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 experts to that extent, is a piece of bunkum. English 
 SociaHsm is quite abreast of the time in its economics, and 
 the general abandonment of the old capitalist theory that 
 commodities exchange according to the labour expended 
 in producing them, with its obvious corollary, laissez-faire^ 
 has left Socialism theoretically stronger than ever.' 
 
 The doctrine of surplus-value is quite independent of 
 the labour theory of value. Surplus-value is inevitable 
 in industry, Capitalistic or Socialistic ; without it there 
 could be no profit — and the question whether it is 
 appropriated at present to an unjust degree is one for 
 industrial historians, financial statisticians, economists, 
 and statesmen to decide. No weakness in Marx's theory 
 of value can impair the truth and importance of his 
 revelation — for revelation it was — of the innate ten- 
 dencies of the capitalistic system of industry to exploit 
 the labourer, or can retard materially the movement for 
 the socialization of production and distribution. That 
 movement is a necessary stage in the evolution of 
 industry, and, having now come into the consciousness 
 of mankind, will be accelerated by all the intellectual 
 and moral resources of humanity. So that the main 
 economic analysis of Marx still stands, despite the 
 breakdown in his theory of value. 
 
 The true theory of value is, perhaps, not yet formu- 
 lated. Professor Jevons announced his theory in these 
 words : ' Repeated reflection and inquiry have led me to 
 the somewhat novel opinion that value depends entirely 
 upon utility.' Professor Marshall declares that to be as 
 one-sided and misleading a statement as Ricardo's. 
 Nevertheless, Jevons' (and Menger's) theory holds the 
 field, viz. that exchange value is derived from social 
 demand, and decreases with supply, being determined 
 1 66
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 by the least useful part of the stock, or, in economic 
 language, by its ' final utility.* The truth about the law 
 of value (avoiding all technicalities) is, that it is deter- 
 mined by the law of supply and demand. The question 
 of supply involves labour as a necessary element in the 
 production of what may become values, and this makes 
 labour very important in relation to value. The question 
 of demand involves utility as a source of value, and this, 
 again, involves time as an element in value. This theory 
 of value, which makes surplus-value inevitable, is an 
 encouragement to hasten on, with all discretion, the 
 socialization of industry ; for it is a pure matter of social 
 expediency whether to permit the individual or the 
 community to reap the harvest of surplus-value which 
 grows from sowing, which is as much social as individual. 
 Every friend of the Labour movement must have often 
 wished that the labour doctrine of value were an 
 economic truth. It would greatly simplify the social 
 question, and make it easier to reconstruct society upon 
 just lines. However, truth is truth, and must be 
 accepted. But no change in value doctrines can 
 diminish the place and importance of labour in pro- 
 duction. It will ever stand the most important of the 
 three factors — greater than land and than capital, because 
 the only purely human element of the three. Whatever 
 becomes of the labour doctrine of value, it still remains 
 true that the labour factor in production — the chief 
 factor — has been grossly neglected. It has often been 
 defrauded of its rights. It has been denied, upon a vast 
 scale, because the labourer has been ignorant and 
 economically weak, its fair share of the product. But 
 a brighter day begins to dawn for Labour. The labourer 
 is becoming educated and organized, and able to speak 
 167
 
 THE LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE 
 
 himself with the enemy in the gate. He has champions 
 also amongst Christian ministers, statesmen, economists, 
 novelists, and other educated men, and is fast coming to 
 his own. He has friends even amongst the capitalists 
 themselves, and, as Mr. Benjamin Kidd has pointed out, 
 this is perhaps the most hopeful sign of all ; for when 
 there are searchings of heart in the very camp of the 
 enemy, victory is not distant.
 
 Ill 
 
 ON THE TAKING 
 OF INTEREST 
 
 T69
 
 Ill 
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 Shylock. He rails 
 
 On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift, 
 Which he calls interest. — Merchant of Venice, 
 
 Is it right to take interest ? ' What a preposterous 
 question ! ' some will say. ' Of course it is ; everybody 
 does it. Where should we be if we did not? Of what 
 use would be our stocks and shares, our banks and 
 bankers, and what would become of business, capital, 
 and the money market ? ' What, indeed ! Nevertheless, 
 the consciences of many are troubled about the matter ; 
 they have refrained from taking interest, and have, ad 
 iftterhfi, reverted to the old stocking. Nor are these 
 scrupulous ones as simple as they seem, for a very brief 
 study of the subject reveals the fact that our practice 
 of interest-taking, dividend-dividing, and rent-receiving 
 is, in Christendom, of comparatively modern origin, 
 and was not established without struggle and protest. 
 History repeats itself, and again in a time of economic 
 change and reconstruction re-arises this old-time ques- 
 tion : Is it right to take interest ? The question is grave 
 and fundamental ; it deals with a first principle of 
 modern economic life — 'in interest lies the crux of the 
 171
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 entire economic question ' ; but if the human conscience 
 condemn it, it must disappear, even though it involves 
 the entire economic reorganization of the community. 
 What is to be said for and against the taking of interest ? 
 It will be a shock to many to learn that in the Bible it 
 is forbidden. It is explicitly condemned in the Old 
 Testament, and implicitly in the New. ' Thou shalt not 
 give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy 
 victuals for increase ' (Lev. xxv. 37). ' Lord ! who shall 
 abide in Thy tabernacle, who shall dwell in Thy holy 
 hill ? . . . He that putteth not out his money to usury ' 
 (Ps. XV. I, 5). Jesus Christ says: 'Do good and lend, 
 hoping for nothing again.' Surely, if we are not to 
 expect back our principal, we must not demand interest. 
 The only place in the New Testament where interest 
 is directly mentioned is in the Parable of the Talents, 
 where it is neither approved nor disapproved, but merely 
 used by Christ for purposes of illustration. But some 
 man will say, ' The Bible does not condemn interest ; 
 it only condemns usury, or exorbitant interest.' If that 
 be so, then in the Parable of the Talents, where He 
 speaks of ' receiving His own with usury ^ our Lord 
 means excessive interest, and so contradicts both His 
 own words in the Sermon on the Mount and those of 
 the Old Testament. Such a man had better read his 
 Revised New Testament. The Greek word to/cos, there 
 rendered ' usury,' means simply ' interest.' The 
 Hebrew words marbith and neshek, rendered ' usury ' 
 in the above-quoted passages, mean any interest on 
 money or goods, moderate or excessive. Why, then, 
 render these Greek and Hebrew words for ' interest ' by 
 the word ' usury ' ? Because in Elizabethan English 
 ' usury ' simply meant what we mean by ' interest.' The 
 172
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 word, then, held its original Latin meaning — 'payment 
 for the use of money,' from tisiira, use. Any good 
 dictionary will reveal this fact. The word ' usury ' 
 frequently occurs in Elizabethan writers in the sense 
 of ' interest.' Lord Bacon writes : ' Since there must be 
 borrowing and lending, and men are so hard of heart 
 as they will not lend freely, iistiry must be permitted.' 
 William Harrison, in Holinshed's Chronicles, speaks of 
 ^ usury, a trade brought in by the Jews, now perfectly 
 practised almost by every Christian, and so commonly 
 that he is accompted a fool that doth lend his money y^^r 
 ?tothing.' In The Merchant of Venice ' interest ' and 
 ' usury ' are used interchangeably. Shylock complains of 
 Antonio that ' he lends out money gratis, and so brings 
 down the rate of usance ' ; that he calls his ' well-won 
 thrift' interest; that he is 'wont to call me usurer^; 
 that he lends money ' for a Christian courtesy.' So that 
 it is quite clear that the Elizabethan word ' usury ' meant 
 what the Greek and Hebrew words mean — viz. interest. 
 It is equally clear that the Bible condemns interest 
 in any form — not only excessive interest, or what we 
 term usury, but any interest at all. 
 
 It is as surprising to the confirmed believer in interest 
 as it is true that for the first fifteen! hundred years of her 
 history the Christian Church joined the Scriptures in 
 condemning interest ; it was under ban and bane 
 in early and mediaeval Christendom. Only during these 
 last three hundred years, since the rise of modern 
 commercialism, has the Church permitted interest as 
 morally lawful. The early Fathers all condemned it ; 
 the mediaeval theologians condemned it; Pope Alex- 
 ander III, in the Council of Lateran, prohibited the 
 taking of any interest for money. Dante puts the 
 173
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 interest-taker in hell, and discourses on the nature of 
 his sin. Many of the theologians of the Reformation 
 also condemned it. ' Usury,' says Mr. Lecky, ' accord- 
 ing to the unanimous teaching of the old theologians, 
 consisted of any interest that was exacted by the lender 
 from the borrower solely as the price of the loan ; those 
 who lent money at three per cent, were committing 
 usury quite as really as those who lent it at forty per 
 cent.' Right up to the Reformation the loan of money 
 upon interest was regarded by the Christian Church as 
 an illicit way of acquiring wealth — hence, partly, its 
 persecution of the Jews. After the Reformation a 
 division of opinion appeared, induced partly by the 
 emancipation of reason, and partly by the pressure of 
 economical and commercial development. Melanchthon 
 and others supported the ancient doctrine of the 
 Church ; Calvin and others the lawfulness of moderate 
 interest. Bishop Jewel, one of the fathers of English 
 Protestantism, was the last English divine to condemn it. 
 Mr. Lecky, in his Rationalism in Europe, says that the 
 early Church simply adopted * all the pagan notions of 
 the iniquity of money-lending.' This is hardly a correct 
 account. The Church was against interest, both because 
 the genius of Christianity was against mere money- 
 making and because the Scriptures were against it. 
 These latter they interpreted upon Hteral, unhistorical 
 principles, and therefore, in simple consistency, could do 
 no other than condemn interest. However, it is quite 
 true that, looking about for arguments with which to 
 sustain the authority of the Church and the decrees of 
 Councils, the Canonists found an ally in Aristotle. 
 
 Aristotle, in the first book of the Politics, had con- 
 demned interest (tokos) on the ground that it had not its 
 174
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 origin in nature, but amongst ourselves. Hence it had 
 received the name of produce (from tiktoj, I beget). 
 ' Interest is merely money born of money.' Aristotle 
 had maintained that money was naturally sterile, and 
 that interest was detestable and illegitimate, because 
 it made ' barren money breed money.' The Schoolmen, 
 who were great Aristotelians, seized upon this argument 
 with avidity, and urged it in support of the Church. 
 Dante reveals the influence of Aristotle's argument when, 
 in the Inferno (Canto xi.), he condemns interest on the 
 ground that what is produced neither by nature nor art 
 is immoral, and expresc^y refers his readers to the 
 ' Stagirite.' There are traces, also, of this argument in 
 Shakespeare. In The Merchant of Venice he makes 
 Shylock refer to Jacob's manipulation of Laban's flock 
 in his own favour as a worthy precedent for himself. 
 
 Ant. Was this inserted to make interest good ? 
 
 Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams ? 
 Shy. I cannot tell : I make it breed as fast. 
 
 Mr. Lecky calls this 'breeding' argument an 'absurdity 
 of Aristotle,' and says ' it is a curious illustration of the 
 longevity of a sophism when expressed in a terse form, 
 and sheltered by a great name,' and goes on to remark 
 that Bentham was the first to explode it. Here he is 
 wrong, for if it has ever been exploded it was exploded 
 three hundred and fifty years before Jeremy Bentham, and 
 that by John Calvin, who held ' that it is undoubted that 
 money does not produce money ; but with money land 
 is bought, which produces more than the returns for the 
 labour applied to it, and which gives a surplus income to 
 the proprietor after all expenses for wages and other 
 things have been met. Objects with which things can 
 175
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 be bought producing income by themselves can certainly 
 be considered as bringing income themselves.' This 
 remorseless logic — which, however, plays into the hand 
 of Socialist objectors to interest — must have told in its 
 time, for slowly the voice of the Church was silenced, 
 and the practice of taking interest grew with the growth 
 of commerce and capitalism, becoming universal and 
 unquestioned until this day. 
 
 One of the most interesting things in connexion with 
 this subject is the part the Jews take in it. First they 
 give us, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the earliest con- 
 demnation of it ; then, in the course of centuries, they 
 appear, contrary to both the letter and the spirit of their 
 law, as the money-lenders and financiers of Europe — 
 of mediaeval Europe in the Jewries of Seville, Florence, 
 Venice, and London ; of modern Europe in the banks 
 of the Rothschilds. Now, as if in penance for the 
 violation of their law, and to repair the harm done to the 
 people of Europe, appear two men of Jewish descent, 
 Lassalle and Karl Marx, the fathers of modern Socialism, 
 to condemn, and deliver us from, the tyranny of capital 
 and interest. So far from admitting Mr. Lecky's 
 venturesome statement that Aristotle had committed 
 an absurdity in maintaining that money is sterile, Karl 
 Marx, in Capital, contends that it is a proof of the 
 insight and humanity of Aristotle, and that it is entirely 
 true. The Marxian school also maintains that money 
 is barren and cannot breed, and that the children it calls 
 its own are not its own, but are those of Labour. In other 
 words, interest is wrung from the labouring poor. This, 
 of course, proceeds upon the theory that all value is due 
 to labour, and that therefore the profits out of which the 
 employer pays interest are due to the appropriation by 
 176
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 the employer of the surplus value produced by the 
 labourers. So that even when money is invested in 
 a successful company, or lent to the well-to-do, who 
 apparently can well afford to pay interest, that interest or 
 dividend is really, however complex the process, stolen or 
 exploited from the poor. Hence such passages as the fol- 
 lowing in the Fabian Essays on Socialis77i : 'The livelihood 
 of the typical capitaUst is obtained without any contribution 
 of his or her activity, in the form of a pension called rent, 
 interest, or dividend, guaranteed by law out of the wealth 
 produced from day to day by the activities of the pro- 
 letariat.' And again : * The perpetual toll of rent and 
 interest deprives the workers of the wealth which their 
 activities produce.' In all this the Socialists find an 
 ally in Ruskin. 
 
 In Fors Clavigera ; or. Letters to the Workmen and 
 Labourers of Great Britain, Mr. Ruskin roundly con- 
 demned interest. To him it was unjust, uneconomical, 
 un-Christian. Unfortunately, he deprived his words of 
 weight, and aroused both the mirth and wrath of the 
 profane, by naively admitting that nevertheless he him- 
 self received interest upon his own investments. The 
 grounds upon which he objects to interest were never 
 more forcibly put by him than in a letter written 
 from Florence in 1874, and published in Igdrasil : 
 ' Interest is always either usury on loan or tax on 
 industry. I get interest either by lending or investing. 
 If I take interest on investment, I tax industry. . . . 
 To make money either by lending or taxing is a sin. 
 If people really ought to have money lent, do it gratis. 
 . . . Interest of money is, in a word, a tax by the idle on 
 the busy, and by the rogue on the honest. Not one 
 farthing of it is ever made by interest. Get that well 
 M 177
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 into your head. It is all taken by the idle rich out 
 of the pockets of the poor, or of the really active persons 
 in commerce.' This is delightful dogmatism ; it is the 
 essential teaching of the Socialists, and could not be 
 better expressed by the most extreme Marxian. 
 
 This, then, is a hasty and condensed historical resume 
 of the case against interest. It is evident that the list of 
 authorities is weighty. Against interest are the Bible, 
 the early and mediaeval Church, Aristotle, the Socialist 
 economists, and Ruskin. For interest we have, indeed, 
 the custom of commercialism and Christendom these 
 past three hundred years, the science of orthodox 
 political economy, and the wonderful growth of com- 
 merce and wealth, with the accompanying advance in 
 the productive and distributive powers of men, due to 
 the help and stimulus of the reigning system of capital 
 and interest. But that system has generated such vast 
 evils and such unjust inequalities that, led by the new 
 economists, many are faltering in their faith in the 
 interest system, and are regarding with new attention 
 the attitude of the Bible, the early Church, and Aristotle, 
 towards the subject. A new champion of interest has, 
 however, arisen. 
 
 Professor Bohm-Bawerk, the product of the Austrian 
 school of political economy which has made its own the 
 theory of value and its allied problems, has dealt with 
 the question of interest from an entirely new standpoint. 
 In his first work, entitled Capital and Interest, he 
 criticizes the chief theories of interest. These are 
 mainly five. 
 
 The ' Productivity Theory,' which attributes interest to 
 the productive power of capital, Bohm-Bawerk dismisses 
 as confusing quantity of product with value of product. 
 178
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 The problem of capital is a problem of surplus value, 
 and value does not come from the side of production, 
 but from the side of consumption. Capital is productive, 
 but interest is not its product. The ' Fructification 
 Theory,' that the gifts of nature are fruitful, and that 
 capital has, by exchange, the power of obtaining a 
 derivative fruitfulness, is condemned, as explaining by 
 something which is itself a part of the phenomenon 
 which we start to explain. The ' Use Theory,' that 
 interest is the price paid for the use of capital, the 
 theory most generally held, is found equally untenable. 
 It bases interest, which is an income obtained from all 
 kinds of capital, on an analogy drawn from one special 
 kind of capital, viz. durable goods. It is also based 
 upon the separation of the body and soul of capital — 
 which is a fiction. The * Abstinence Theory ' is also due 
 to a confusion of thought. Abstinence from immediate 
 consumption will account for the owner having a sum 
 to lend, but not for that sum growing three per cent, 
 larger in a year's time. The ' Labour Theory ' — that 
 of the Socialists, that interest is simply a gain from 
 exploited labour — is shown by Bdhm-Bawerk to be a 
 theory which could only arise on the negative basis 
 of the unsatisfactory accounts hitherto given, and on 
 the positive basis of a mistaken value theory, viz. that 
 labour alone is the source of value. When an income, 
 obtained without work and without risk, was claimed 
 as the reward of abstinence, and when all value was 
 ascribed to the action of material labourers, it was 
 inevitable that there should rise a reactionary theory 
 proving that interest was robbery. Having, with much 
 mastery and lucidity, and with most brilliant logical 
 fence, cleared his ground, Professor Bohm-Bawerk pro- 
 179
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 ceeds, in another volume, The Positive Theory of Capital 
 and Interest^ to state, defend, test, and apply in every 
 direction his own theory of interest. 
 
 This may be called the ' Time Theory.' Starting with 
 the theory of value, formulated by Jevons and Menger, 
 that value is determined by final or marginal utility, 
 Bohm-Bawerk affirms ' that present goods have a higher 
 subjective value, and thus a higher price, than future 
 goods of like kind and number ' ; hence arises an agio, 
 premium, or interest. Men's estimate of goods present 
 differs from their estimate of goods future ; time is not 
 indifferent to our valuation of what we want. Present 
 goods have an agio in future goods, and this agio is 
 interest. Interest is an addition necessarily made when 
 capital is replaced, if the capital now is to be equivalent 
 to the capital then. As the agio in foreign exchanges 
 only equalizes values for different places, so interest only 
 equalizes values for different times. This higher esti- 
 mate of goods present is natural and inevitable. It arises 
 from (i) differences in want and provision for want, as 
 in cases of immediate distress, or where the future is 
 secure; (2) the under-estiinate of the future, comvaon to 
 all men in different degrees, and that {a) from want of 
 imagination, {b) from defect of will, (r) from the uncer- 
 tainty of life ; (3) the technical superiority of present 
 goods. These three factors combine to give present 
 goods superior value, and thus to create interest. ' The 
 needy and the careless value present goods more 
 highly because they more urgently require them in the 
 present, or only think about the present ; the well-off 
 and the saving value them because they can accomplish 
 more with them in the future ; and thus, in the long run, 
 every one — whatever his economic position, and what- 
 180
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 ever his economic temperament— has some ground for 
 valuing present goods more highly than future. And, 
 further, it is easy to understand how much the emergence 
 of subjective differences in valuation must favour the 
 extension of these phenomena to the sphere of exchange 
 value and price.' This is the 'Time Theory' of interest 
 in brief — a theory new, indeed, yet so simple, so clear, 
 so obviously true, that, as with other discoveries, the 
 wonder is that it was not made before. 
 
 But Professor Bohm-Bawerk carries the war into the 
 enemy's country when he proceeds to show, with con- 
 vincing force, that not only is the labour theory of 
 interest wrong, but that, if ever the Socialist ideal is 
 realized — viz. the possession of the means of production 
 and distribution by the State — interest will still arise. 
 * Even here, as time does not stand still, futurej goods 
 becoming present ones, and bringing a surplus value 
 with them, the causes of interest would still be active. 
 Indeed, under Socialism, the State, which would buy on 
 a large scale the future good — labour — would exploit 
 the labourers, perhaps, to divide out the amount more 
 equitably, but still to divide it, as interest, not as wage. 
 . . . The fact that the owners of present commodities, 
 in exchanging them for future commodities, obtain an 
 agio, Socialism neither will nor can alter. Interest is 
 not an accidental " historico-legal " category, which makes 
 its appearance only in our individualist and capitalist 
 society, and will vanish with it ; but an economic cate- 
 gory which springs from elementary economic causes, 
 and therefore, without distinction of social organization 
 and legislation, makes its appearance wherever there is 
 an exchange between present and future goods.' 
 
 Bohm-Bawerk is not unmindful of the abuses con- 
 i8i
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 nected with interest. He admits that, while there is 
 nothing essentially unreasonable or unjust in interest, 
 it is, 'perhaps, to a greater extent than other human 
 institutions,' open to abuse. Labour, for instance, suffers 
 from its lack of present good. Capital can wait, Labour 
 cannot. In selling his future good — labour-power — the 
 labourer is at a double disadvantage ; he is compelled to 
 sell because of his need of present goods, and he is but 
 one of a vast number also competing for the present 
 good of the capitalist. Hence low wages forcibly ex- 
 ploited from the workers, and hence also direct usury. 
 * It is undeniable,' says Bohm-Bawerk, ' that, in the 
 exchange of present commodities against future, the 
 circumstances are of such a nature as to threaten 
 the poor with the exploitation of monopolists.' Bohm- 
 Bawerk would agree with Ruskin in that ' money is now 
 exactly what mountain promontories over public roads 
 were in olden time. The fortified millionaire can make 
 everybody who passes below pay toll to his millions, and 
 build another tower of his money-castle. . . . The poor 
 vagrants by the roadside suffer now quite as much from 
 the bag-baron as ever they did from the crag-baron.' 
 Dividend-receivers may, therefore, quite unconsciously, 
 be grinders of the poor. It is a disadvantage of the 
 present interest-system, from a moral point of view, that 
 it allows some to live without working, and permits that 
 condition to become hereditary. This is fraught with 
 great possibilities of evil. Yet another disadvantage is 
 that there is no ratio between gain and desert in the 
 recipients of interest. Admitting all these, and other 
 defects and abuses, Bohm-Bawerk says that it is they, 
 rather than it, which should be abolished, and that, even 
 if these evils are inseparable from interest, it is still most 
 182
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 probable, considering all the benefits and advantages of 
 interest, and the danger to any social system which 
 endeavoured entirely to repress it, that its evils are more 
 than counterbalanced by its good, and are less than those 
 which its absence would bring upon us. 
 
 This theory is calculated to stay the disintegration 
 which is going on in many sympathetic and earnest 
 minds, under the continual drip of Socialistic attacks 
 upon such a fundamental matter as the right to take 
 interest. 
 
 But what of the attitude of the Bible and the pre- 
 Reformation Church towards interest? To Socialist 
 thinkers, that condemnatory attitude is, of course, the 
 right one for all time, and with them the present attitude 
 of Christians towards interest is regarded as a proof of 
 decadence and surrender of principle, of disloyalty to 
 the Scriptures and Christ, of a desire to serve both God 
 and mammon, and of the truth of their favourite notion, 
 that the Church has become the mere courtesan of 
 Capital, the scarlet woman of the modern Babylon. If 
 modern Christians wish to add another hnk of sympathy 
 between themselves and Socialists, they have nothing to 
 do but to repudiate in this matter the Church of the 
 past three hundred years, to hark back to the Church 
 mediaeval and patristic, and to contend for the literal 
 application of Bible precepts to modern society. 
 
 On the other hand, if interest be economically inevit- 
 able — if it be just, reasonable, and right — the historical 
 Christian student need be under no difficulty as to the 
 hostility of the Bible and the ancient Church towards 
 interest. Mr, Lecky, with evident prejudice against the 
 Church, exults in the rise of interest despite its decrees, 
 and regards this, not as a proof of the victory of Capital 
 183
 
 ON THE TAKING OF INTEREST 
 
 over the Church, as the Socialists do, but as the victory 
 of civiHzation over Christianity, of rationahsm over 
 authority. But neither Mr. Lecky nor the Socialists are 
 right. The Church and Bible protests against interest 
 were needful for the times in which they were made. 
 They were times of primitive economic conditions and 
 of undeveloped industrialism, times in which interest 
 could only be exacted from the needy and distressed. 
 The possibility of interest in the modern extent of the 
 term had not yet arisen. Hence biblical prohibitions do 
 not avail for wholly changed social and economic con- 
 ditions ; otherwise, the whole Jewish polity would be a 
 pattern for us. Nevertheless, those prohibitions and pre- 
 cepts are of permanent value, for they assert principles 
 which, if observed, will safeguard both the individual 
 and society against the abuses to which interest, however 
 in itself right and necessary, is for ever liable. 
 
 184
 
 IV 
 
 THE 
 
 CHRISTIANIZATION OF 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 i8s
 
 IV 
 
 THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF POLITICAL 
 ECONOMY 
 
 The true political economy is the care and culture of men. 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 The revolt against political economy, as it left the 
 hands of Smith, Ricardo, and Mill — for it advanced 
 but little in those of Fawcett, Jevons, and Marshall — is 
 one of the most remarkable facts in the social movement 
 of the nineteenth century. That revolt stiffened and 
 deepened with time. Prejudiced professors and shallow 
 sciolists repeatedly and solemnly affirmed that time 
 would teach wisdom ; that ' the rules of arithmetic ' 
 could not be gainsaid, nor the laws of political economy 
 relegated to the planet Saturn with impunity ; that these 
 * laws,' which possessed the inevitability of the law of 
 gravitation, would yet avenge themselves. Nevertheless, 
 the revolt went on, and enough time has now expired for 
 the day of vengeance to be at hand ; yet there is no sign 
 of its appearance. The fact is, fAe revolt is founded on 
 righteousness, and therefore must prevail. 
 
 The orthodox economy — which, alas ! still rules the 
 business mind, although not, we hope, for long time 
 187
 
 THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF 
 
 now — was too abstract and absolute, too unhistorical 
 and unethical, to be true. With its insufficient defini- 
 tion of wealth ; with its abstract ' economic man ' ; with 
 its sole motive of self-interest, and its object of mere 
 profit or money-making ; with its doctrine of value, its 
 law of supply and demand, and its iron law of wages — 
 it was and is a science prematurely so called. As a 
 matter of history, it has canonized, almost legalized, 
 certainly given, a quasi-scientific sanction to some of 
 the worst passions of men — to the unutterable woe and 
 shame of the modern world. 
 
 One huge error of the reigning political economy is 
 that it has taken one particular period of industry — the 
 rise of the ' new industry ' — examined its methods and 
 operations, generalized them into laws with great skill 
 and acumen, and then issued them to an only too 
 credulous business world — to a business world whose 
 selfish interests they conserved — as the permanent un- 
 changeable laws of human industry. Orthodox economy 
 is very largely the result of the fallacy of broad generaliza- 
 tions based upon particular instances. Industrial systems 
 are never in one stay, but vary with the social, political, 
 intellectual, and moral conditions of huhianity. No one 
 period, therefore, can give the law for all periods. The 
 human factor bulks so largely in political economy that 
 it is evident that there can be no finality in the science, 
 and that therefore it is simple folly to talk of the 
 ' unchangeable ' laws of political econorny, especially 
 when over-rigid adherence to that economy has involved, 
 and is involving, society in the greatest social and moral 
 evils. 
 
 The historical nature of political economy has been 
 demonstrated by the great founders of Socialism, and
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 this has been accepted as a working principle by the 
 leading economists of Germany and Austria, of whom 
 the late William Roscher was one of the earUest and 
 ablest. 
 
 To Christian social reformers the head and front of 
 political economy's offence is, the audacious way in which 
 it has ignored the very first principles of Christianity. 
 To this hour it is maintained in the schools and the 
 public press that political economy and Christianity have 
 nothing to do with each other, that the one is ' science,' 
 and the other 'morals.' But the Christian economist 
 maintains that political economy is not a science like 
 astronomy— without any human factor save to allow for 
 the human equation in its calculations. Astronomy is 
 the science of the stars, geology that of the stones ; but 
 political economy is that of human industry, in which, 
 while it has its material factors — its goods and its 
 money — the supreme factor is the human being, who 
 is really its main object, and over whose life and happi- 
 ness it has almost supreme control. Pohtical economy 
 is largely a science of human relations. No such science 
 can help being moral ; it is immoral y^\\.Qx\ it is otherwise. 
 Political economy, then, is really a branch of ethics, as well 
 as of the wider science of sociology, and can only be safely 
 expounded as such. It must in future be approached 
 from the side of the human factor in it, and not, as 
 it hitherto has been, from the side of its material factor. 
 It must be recognized that every one of its laws, logically 
 pursued, conducts to some ethical principle. 
 
 At one time we heard nothing save that political 
 
 economy formulated the unchangeable laws of industry; 
 
 but now, as a result of criticism, we are being told that 
 
 it is the science, not of what men ought to be in their 
 
 l8q
 
 THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF 
 
 industrial relations, but of what they are ; that, whether 
 they ought to be or not, they are animated in business 
 by the motive of self-interest, and that political economy 
 simply deals with facts. The reply to this is, that by 
 making political economy a scientific and ordered state- 
 ment of the selfishness, greed, and materialization of 
 men, it really helps to perpetuate and give sanction to 
 those vices, and, as history testifies, leads even Christian 
 men to divorce Christian ethics from their own busi- 
 ness lives upon the pleas of 'science' and 'necessity.' 
 Political economy thus conceived really ministers to the 
 degradation of men. It is not in the interests of society 
 that the workings of even so-called ' enlightened ' self- 
 interest should be turned into a science. It is unsafe, 
 for such a science either produces or buttresses up a 
 most un-ideal system of human industry. No system 
 of industry which proceeds upon the principle of 
 unscrupulous competition, of treating human labour as 
 a mere commodity, and human beings as mere 'pawns' 
 in the game of making money, as mere means to a 
 selfish end \ of taking advantage of one man's poverty 
 and necessity, and of another man's ignorance ; which 
 sanctions the law of might, and not of right, and the 
 principle of the survival of the fittest for success in the 
 scramble for material wealth — no such system, nor any 
 ' science ' constructed out of it or creative of it, can by 
 any stretch of generosity be called Christian. 
 
 A Christian or moral economy is in process of evolu- 
 tion — any deviation from which will be stigmatized as 
 unscientific and anti-social — in which love is the ruling 
 motive of human industry, and not cold self-interest ; 
 in which wealth is re-defined as well-being ; labour is 
 re-dignified, and political economy re-stated in the 
 190
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 interests, not of material ' wealth,' but of labour. In 
 this new economy, demand will be Christianized, and 
 so will supply ; whilst the true law of exchange will be 
 Justice, and the true law of distribution, Love. In a 
 word, the coming poHtical economy will not be heathen, 
 but Christian. 
 
 .91
 
 THE LAW OF 
 SUPPLY AND DEMAND 
 
 193
 
 V 
 THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND 
 
 The new conscience says simply that a man shall never be so 
 much of a buyer or seller as to cease to be a brother, and that labour 
 shall not be made a marketable thing. — Henry D. Lloyd. 
 
 The law of supply and demand is the blessed word 
 ' Mesopotamia ' of political economy. It is invoked most 
 by those who understand it least. Social reformers — 
 especially those of the persuasion cleric — are hectored 
 continually in the name of this law, as if they were 
 all born geese. It is the bogey used to frighten the 
 naughty boys of Labour whenever they grow refractory, 
 and is brought out with added horrors — new horns, 
 teeth, and tail — on the occasion of every fresh industrial 
 dispute. This law, they are told, is as inevitable as the 
 law of gravitation, and it is futile for enthusiasts to think 
 of evading its force : 
 
 The further off we go, 
 The swing of justice deals the mightier blow. 
 
 One valiant defender of it declares that ' when the hurly- 
 burly's done, and the battle's lost and won, the hiring of 
 labour, like the exchange of commodities, will be set free 
 to be regulated by the heaven-ordained law of supply 
 and demand ' — which heaven forfend ! The superstitious 
 195
 
 THE LAW OF 
 
 worshippers of this law, when confronted with higher 
 social demands, assume an air of benevolence, and 
 declare that they should very much like to see the 
 ' living wage ' granted, or the conditions of the work- 
 man improved, but — up go the whites of their eyes — 
 they cannot ignore the ' rules of arithmetic' And 
 this sort of thing is done — excellently well done — by 
 ' superior ' persons, who know no more of what they are 
 talking about than the man in the moon. They could 
 not stand five minutes' examination in political economy, 
 but re-echo their parrot-cry either to preserve the status 
 quo, with which they have every reason to be contented, 
 or definitely to protect their own vested interests. The 
 invocation of the law of supply and demand is seldom 
 performed in the interests of truth — it is usually a species 
 of mental bullying. 
 
 Now, no man in his senses will deny that in the very 
 last result demand and supply have necessary connexion 
 with the exchange of commodities, and even with labour, 
 in as far as it may be called a commodity. But the law 
 in this sense is the barest abstraction, and to utter it 
 is to utter the emptiest of truisms. It is not with the 
 abstract law of supply and demand that social reformers 
 quarrel ; it is with its concrete historical forms, with the 
 existing laws of supply and demand. 
 
 The great general abstract law of supply and demand 
 is like the mystic Brahm of Hindu philosophy — the 
 Great Unknown — of whom or which little can be 
 affirmed, save that it exists. The particular concrete 
 laws of supply and demand are like the subordinate 
 Hindu deities, who represent the great Brahm, and 
 depose or succeed each other in endless efforts to 
 reconcile finite and infinite, or reach perfection. The 
 196
 
 SUPPLY AND DEMAND 
 
 laws of supply and demand in any given industrial age 
 or generation are but feeble approximations to, or faint 
 expressions of, this one great abstract necessary law. 
 
 Now, it is through failure to make this necessary 
 distinction that social obstructionists so greatly err in 
 their denunciations of social reformers. They attribute 
 to secondary, imperfect, and temporary laws of supply 
 and demand the attributes and excellences of the great 
 primary and perfect law, and fulminate accordingly. It 
 will clear the ground, then, at once to state that social 
 reformers are not occupied with the great Brahm of 
 supply and demand. They are in revolt against gods 
 that are no gods, against the existing laws of demand 
 and supply — they refuse to admit either their infallibility 
 or eternity. To them they are mere stages on the 
 journey towards the industrial ideal. 
 
 The law of supply and demand existing in any given 
 age or country is merely a generalization of industrial 
 customs in relation to exchange then or there prevalent. 
 These customs, both in relation to demand and in 
 relation to supply, may be ethically questionable or bad, 
 and socially doubtful or injurious ; but if they are the 
 customs of existing industrial life they can be formulated 
 into a law and made part of a science of local or 
 temporary economics. The root-fallacy of the modern 
 champions of ' supply and demand ' is that they argue, 
 as men are so prone to do, from the particular to the 
 general, and attribute to their own defective laws the 
 necessity and unchangeableness of the great Brahm 
 itself. 
 
 Now, so far from being ' immutable,' these laws have 
 never been in one stay at any period of industrial history. 
 They have been subject to constant modifications and 
 
 197
 
 THE LAW OF 
 
 interferences. Trade unions, trusts, syndicates, intended 
 to control supply or create demand, have always been a 
 deliberate, and often successful, interference with these 
 so-called ' unchangeable ' laws. These laws have, more- 
 over, been modified unconsciously by a thousand subtle 
 and unseen motives and forces, such as self, conscience, 
 circumstance, discoveries, inventions, and what not. To 
 assert that this is still the operation of the law of supply 
 and demand is to reduce the law to the mere truism 
 above mentioned, to surrender all that is contended for, 
 and to evacuate the law of all meaning. 
 
 That the law of supply and demand, as we know it, 
 cannot be the ideal one is proved by the fact that the 
 moment it is permitted to operate in the world of labour, 
 it brings in its wake oppression, injustice, misery, and 
 destitution. Applied to the world of man, it results in 
 the immoral practices of robbing the poor because he is 
 poor, of taking advantage of his necessities to obtain his 
 services at less than their true value, of treating human 
 beings as cotton and coals are treated — buying them, or, 
 what is the same thing, their powers of labour, in 
 the cheapest market, making them mere commodities, 
 governed in the purchase by merely material considera- 
 tions ; in a word, of using brother men simply as means 
 to selfish ends. A law of supply and demand which 
 results in these malpractices is self-condemned, is unfit 
 to govern any of the relations which exist between 
 human beings. 
 
 Professor Marshall, humanest of orthodox political 
 economists, states in the preface to The Economics of 
 Ifidustry that in the present science of political economy, 
 industrial man ' is supposed to be consulting his own 
 material advantage and that of his family to the com- 
 198
 
 SUPPLY AND DEMAND 
 
 parative neglect of the welfare of others. If every one 
 always found his greatest happiness in trying to do that 
 which was best for others, the world would have no 
 theory of normal values as it is described in this volume. 
 Some such communism as that which prevailed among 
 the early Christians would be the basis of economic 
 theory. But in this world as it is, the chief active 
 principle in business is the desire of each man to 
 promote the material interests of himself and his 
 family.' 
 
 Nothing can be plainer than the admission here that 
 the laws of supply and demand in vogue are the 
 laws of an industrial system which has for its main 
 motive self-interest. However, therefore, Christian men 
 can affirm that these laws are necessary and eternal 
 passes comprehension. They can understand neither 
 Christianity nor the laws of a true political economy. 
 
 As Ruskin long since declared, competition is the 
 law of death, and co-operation is the law of life. An 
 industrial society based on selfishness is seeking its 
 own ruin ; it is problematical whether such a system 
 is even good for production in the long run, but it is 
 demonstrably bad for either the lower or higher life of 
 humanity. 
 
 ' So far as I know,' says Ruskin, ' there is not in 
 history record of anything so disgraceful to the human 
 intellect as the modern idea that the commercial text, 
 " Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest," 
 represents, or under any available circumstances could 
 represent, an available principle of national economy. 
 It is the privilege of fishes, as it is of rats and wolves, 
 to live by the law of supply and demand, but the 
 distinction of humanity, to live by those of right.' 
 199
 
 THE LAW OF 
 
 Christianity declares that the law of the family is the 
 law of all human life — the law of service, not selfishness. 
 The principle of mere demand and supply, of the law of 
 the strongest, of the survival of the fittest, would not 
 work an hour in family life. But if Christ came to 
 teach anything, and if reason and God's Word have any 
 validity, then all we are brethren, the human race is 
 God's family, and mutual service is the only true law of 
 human or industrial society. 
 
 The present system, therefore, cannot be perfect and 
 eternal, but must be desperately imperfect and decidedly 
 temporary. Any laws which can be shown to be injurious 
 or unjust in their operation are thereby shown to be 
 man-made laws, and far from being 'heaven-ordained.' 
 Ruskin rightly maintains that the working of the laws of 
 supply and demand inevitably results in injustice, for if 
 two men compete for work, they underbid each other, 
 and the successful man is underpaid; if two masters 
 compete for one man, they overbid each other, and the 
 workman is overpaid. Only when supply and demand 
 are absolutely equal can justice be done ; but this, 
 under the present anarchical conditions, seldom happens, 
 practically never. The present law is simply that of 
 the strongest, and has no reference whatever to justice. 
 Under the present system justice is a mere by-product. 
 
 Mark the uncontrolled working of this law in the 
 labour market. It results in the depression and enslave- 
 ment of the labourer. He stands in the market-place, 
 landless, toolless, moneyless, over against the possessor 
 of all three. The article he has for sale is his labour- 
 power. That precious ' commodity ' is perishable and 
 vital — he cannot wait. He has the option of either 
 starving or submitting to the price offered, frequently 
 200
 
 SUPPLY AND DEMAND 
 
 insufficient for subsistence. Even if he belong to the 
 class of skilled labourers, and is protected by unionism, 
 he still has to risk his means of existence in any dispute, 
 and is handicapped by the competition of a huge surplus 
 army of labourers — the unemployed — which permanently 
 depresses his value. Whilst the labourer fights for 
 industrial justice with his life, the capitalist fights with 
 his gold, and — the weakest goes to the wall. This is 
 the operation of the present law of supply and demand. 
 To such a law a Christian people cannot much longer 
 submit. 
 
 Mr. L. T. Hobhouse, in his Labour Movement, while 
 admitting, as every economist must, that demand 
 ultimately governs supply, declares that under the 
 present system it uses very indirect and rough means 
 of so doing. He declares that competition, in adjusting 
 supply to demand, creates a vast amount of economic 
 friction, and that ' men's lives are the brake upon the 
 wheel.' This friction ' does not last for a time and then 
 cease, but is continually going on. It is the perennial 
 sore in the body politic ; the source of haggard anxiety, 
 beggary, and confusion. It all depends upon the non- 
 adjustment of supply to demand.' 
 
 Nor is this all. ' Supply will, indeed, slowly tend to 
 adjust itself to demand ; but, to say nothing of bloodshed 
 by the way, if the labourer's remuneration is below the 
 minimum necessary to a certain development in mind 
 and body, the tendency of free competition will not be 
 to raise him to a level with that minimum, but to 
 depress him further below it. I conclude, then, that 
 while it is of the last importance that the mass of workers 
 should have a sufficiency for health of mind and body, 
 there is no necessary tendency in the action of com- 
 
 20I
 
 THE LAW OF 
 
 petition to assign them such a sufficiency ; and I appeal 
 to common experience to decide whether it does assign 
 a sufficiency to half the workmen of the United Kingdom 
 to-day.' This is the weighty utterance of an Oxford 
 economist with a reputation to lose, and is approved of 
 in the preface by another man with a reputation to lose — 
 the Right Hon. R. B. Haldane, M.P. Ruskin's memorable 
 words are here to the point : ' In a community regulated 
 only by the laws of supply and demand, but protected 
 from open violence, the persons who become rich are, 
 generally speaking, industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, 
 prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive, 
 and ignorant. The persons who remain poor are, the 
 entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, 
 the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the 
 sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the 
 irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, 
 the open thief, and the entirely merciful, just, and godly 
 person.' Surely a law which operates so unequally and 
 so unethically is the last law to cry up as 'a law of 
 nature.' If it be, there is grave reason for regarding 
 God as indifferent to morality in the constitution of 
 nature. 
 
 As Ruskin again puts it : ' This robbing of the poor 
 because he is poor is the especially mercantile form of 
 theft, consisting in taking advantage of a man's necessities 
 in order to obtain his labour or property at a reduced 
 price.' It is one of the most pitiful things in this world 
 to hear men, blinded and misled by Mammon, extol 
 a law so unrighteous in its workings. Carlyle's words 
 are not yet out of date : ' The haggard despair of cotton- 
 factory and coal-mining operatives, Chandos farm- 
 labourers, in these days is painful to behold ; but not so 
 
 202
 
 SUPPLY AND DEMAND 
 
 painful hideous to the inner sense as the brutish profit- 
 and-loss philosophy and Hfe- theory which we hear 
 jangled on all hands of us — in senate house, sporting 
 club, leading articles, pulpits, and platforms.' It is, 
 indeed, high time that this talk about^ ' the heaven- 
 ordained laws ' of supply and demand should cease. In 
 view of their devastating influences, the social conscience 
 begins to cry out, ' Who made thee to rule over us ? ' 
 
 So far from being ' immutable,' then, these laws have 
 been constantly checked and changed. This we might 
 expect, for it is the prerogative of man to modify and 
 control even the laws of nature for his own pleasure and 
 advantage. The mighty law of gravitation, even — so 
 often used to point an economic moral and adorn an 
 economic tale — is tamed and harnessed by man for the 
 service of man, and only in an equally ultimate abstract 
 sense with the great law of supply and demand is it 
 ' free,' and man's master. The mightiest forces and facts 
 of nature bend to man's will and command ; and so 
 must the laws of demand and supply. This must be so, 
 even if we raise these temporary laws to the height of 
 laws of nature, instead of regarding them, as we ought, 
 as mere inductions and generalizations from a low 
 industrial era, the faulty and defective workings of the 
 great Brahm. 
 
 The object of social reformers, then, is to revolutionize 
 the law of supply and demand as now known ; to modify 
 and improve demand, to modify and improve supply, and 
 to modify and improve their expression ; to affect for 
 good the quality of production and of distribution, and 
 to elevate the methods of exchange. When this is done, 
 a new and a true law of demand and supply will reign 
 over us. Supply and demand are manipulated now, but 
 203
 
 THE LAW OF 
 
 mainly from motives of self-interest and gain, with little 
 respect to the character of either of them. 
 
 Demand — effective demand — upon the part of the 
 poor is at present insufificient and unhealthy ; and upon 
 the part of the rich, excessive and wasteful. The 
 expression of demand and the forthcoming of supply are 
 both also largely at the mercy of speculators and the 
 unscrupulous. When once we have a true and full 
 instead of a false and defective demand ; a true and full 
 instead of a false and defective supply; and an adequate 
 and equalized relation between demand and supply — 
 industrial society will flourish under the regime of the 
 real and beneficent law. Until this come to pass, no 
 wise man will be content with any inadequate law of 
 supply and demand. The righteous contention of the 
 hour is that the laws of supply and demand must not be 
 permitted to entirely regulate the industrial and com- 
 mercial relations of human beings. The social move- 
 ment of the day is for the vindication of the labourer's 
 humanity, and his resolute removal from the category of 
 things. The latter might be permitted under slavery, 
 but cannot be tolerated under Christianity, and under 
 the vaunted political and legal freedom of modern 
 civilization. Laws which will do for goods will not serve 
 for persons. Labour must not be treated as a mere 
 commodity — a commodity in the sense in which coal, 
 and cotton, and iron are commodities. It is sacrilege 
 and moral insanity ! It may be economically profitable 
 to the individual, but morahty, religion, and humanity 
 alike declare that the wages of labour must not be fixed 
 by competition, but, within certain limits, by the moral 
 sense of the community. This is the law of conscience 
 and of reason, and is, therefore, never likely to conflict 
 204
 
 SUPPLY AND DEMAND 
 
 with the true law of supply and demand, for all are from 
 God. So long as reason and conscience conflict with 
 any given law of supply and demand, we may know that 
 we are not in the presence of the great Brahm, but only 
 in the presence of an inferior deity whose corruptions 
 demand his deposition, or who has become to the 
 enlightened social conscience an utterly inadequate 
 substitute. 
 
 Our very economists and statesmen are beginning to 
 flout these ' infallible ' and ' heaven-ordained ' laws, and 
 are preparing to 'relegate them to the planet Saturn.' 
 An age of economic scepticism has come in, which 
 betokens, not the overthrow of political economy, but 
 its radical reform in the interests of the higher life of 
 the individual and of society. 
 
 The fact is, that the old order changeth, giving place 
 to new. One economic custom has corrupted the world. 
 The elimination of the moral factor from economics has 
 resulted — not intentionally, but really — in the deprecia- 
 tion of the quality of goods, in adulteration and scamped 
 work, but, worse than all, in the ' sweating,' oppression, 
 and economic robbery of human beings. 
 
 The ethical factor must be reinstated ; where it has 
 lain latent and unexpressed, it must be made patent and 
 prominent. Would that the wise words of James Anthony 
 Froude, spoken forty years since into the ears of an 
 inattentive world, had but been heeded ! The problem 
 of this hour would have been much less complex and 
 serious. Said he : ' Even the laws of political economy 
 itself cease to guide us when they touch moral govern- 
 ment. So long as labour is a chattel to be bought and 
 sold, so long, like other commodities, it follows the con- 
 dition of supply and demand. But if, for his misfortune, 
 205
 
 THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND 
 
 an employer considers that he stands in human relations 
 towards his workmen ; if he believes, rightly or wrongly, 
 that he is responsible for them ; that, in return for their 
 labour, he is bound to see that their children are decently 
 taught, and they and their families decently fed, and 
 clothed, and lodged ; that he ought to care for them in 
 sickness and old age, then political economy will no 
 longer direct him, and the relations between himself 
 and his dependents will have to be arranged on quite 
 different principles.' In other words, the political 
 economy of Froude's day conflicted with the impulses 
 of humane employers ; it could not direct them. But 
 the new political economy, ethicized economy, will 
 abundantly direct all such into paths of perfect indus- 
 trial justice, mercy, and peace, and therefore into paths 
 of industrial prosperity. If it cannot, then this world 
 indeed is out of joint, non-moral, or God-less, against 
 which Schopenhauer and all the pessimists have not 
 spoken one word too much. 
 
 206
 
 VI 
 
 INDUSTRIAL 
 
 COMPETITION AND 
 
 SCIENCE 
 
 ao7
 
 VI 
 
 INDUSTRIAL COMPETITION AND 
 SCIENCE 
 
 In brief, all this Mammon-Gospel of Supply-and-Demand, of 
 Competition, Laissez-faire, and Devil take the hindmost, begins to 
 be one of the shabbiest Gospels ever preached ; or altogether, the 
 shabbiest. — Carlyle. 
 
 Modern men grow sick of our competitive system of 
 industry, many tire of its tyranny, and many revolt from 
 its morals. Nevertheless, it has its supporters. These 
 are the successful and the scientific — the men who have 
 ' survived ' in the industrial struggle, and the men who 
 are dominated by a scientific theory. 
 
 The ' survivors ' who now enjoy the spoils of ' survival,' 
 and support the system because of their own past record 
 and their present vested interests, do not give a reasoned 
 defence of competition. The nearest approach they 
 make is when, with lordly hand-sweep, they bid us 
 circumspice — look around and see what great things 
 competition hath done. It has built up England's great 
 commerce, created her mighty cities and her mighty 
 merchants. But when the le^in and hungry onlooker, 
 who has not so ' survived,' asks what of the many poor, 
 of the slums, the unemployed, the half-employed, and 
 misemployed, of drink, lust, gambling, and the curses of 
 o 209
 
 INDUSTRIAL COMPETITION 
 
 civilization generally, the ' survivor ' hands him over to 
 his friend the scientist. 
 
 This man of rigour — the man ' who knows, you know ' 
 — at once proceeds to instruct him that competition is 
 the law of progress ; that progress proceeds by the 
 struggle for life and the survival of the fittest; that 
 this is a natural law, the operation of which has brought 
 nature to her present perfection, and that the struggle 
 against it on the part of the industrian (to use a con- 
 venient Americanism) is as wise as knocking his head 
 against a stone wall. If he be wise, he will no longer 
 perform this operation, but will, if he be not ' fit ' to 
 survive, submit to go under, proud in the consciousness 
 that the individual is sacrificed for the good of the 
 race. 
 
 So dogmatically has this law been laid down that even 
 the friends of the industrian are cowed by the Darwinian, 
 and proceed to torture themselves and others by endea- 
 vouring to show that industrial reform is compatible with 
 the iron law of competition. Mr. Benjamin Kidd, in 
 his brilliant book on Social Evolution, which in the 
 main makes for righteousness, was a victim to the ultra- 
 Darwinian. The best Mr. Kidd could see for society was 
 that the masses would be slowly placed upon an equality 
 with the classes in the race for life. The democratic 
 movement would result in an equality of opportunity — 
 all would start fair, and then the race would be to the 
 swiftest or the strongest. 
 
 Even this would not be attained by reason — reason, so 
 said Mr. Kidd, would move the classes to prevent even 
 this equality of opportunity ever becoming a fact — but a 
 blind moral and religious instinct would, despite reason, 
 work successfully to this end. So that, according to
 
 AND SCIENCE 
 
 Mr. Kidd, the success of the democratic movement will 
 only bring on a more colossal competition, in which the 
 fight will be fiercer than ever before, and the ' survivors ' 
 probably less numerous. For, given equality between 
 combatants, the end must surely be mutual extermina- 
 tion, after the time-honoured example of the Kilkenny 
 cats. 
 
 Henri Amiel said, thirty years ago, that Darwinism was 
 aristocratic in its doctrine of the survival of the fittest, 
 and the foe of the democratic movement. Certainly the 
 ' survivors ' and the ultra-Darwinians think so. 
 
 If this be the last word of science on the subject, then 
 it certainly is so. But that will be so much the worse 
 for ' science,' and not for democracy. The probabilities 
 are vastly greater that democracy will prevail in this 
 matter than that ' science ' will. But before that is 
 discussed it may be as well to ask, Has true science said 
 its last word ? Does it mean, does it dare affirm, that 
 competition is, now and always, the only and the 
 necessary law of progress in the worlds, both of nature 
 and man ? 
 
 Science has not by any means said its last word. In 
 fact, its most recent word is a confirmation of the moral 
 instinct of humanity, and of the teaching of the Christian 
 religion, that competition is not the sole law of life and 
 of progress. Mr. Kidd will have to admit that ' ir- 
 rational ' religious instinct is once more victorious over 
 reason, and victorious over his own reason in particular, 
 when he maintains that all that social evolution can do is 
 to hand the units of society over, with an equality of 
 opportunity, to the dragon of competition. These moral 
 and religious 'instincts,' which reason only slowly con- 
 firms, are far from being irrational, as Mr. Kidd affirmed, 
 
 211
 
 INDUSTRIAL COMPETITION 
 
 though they may be supernatural : they are the higher 
 and the divine reason which it is the glory of God to 
 conceal, and of the kings of men to find out. 
 
 However, scientific men have for some time been 
 slowly arriving at the conclusion that competition is not 
 the sole law of progress, even in nature. Professor 
 Patrick Geddes, biologist and sociologist, nearly twenty 
 years ago, drew attention to the importance of the 
 reproductive function as a leading factor in progress 
 and evolution. To Professor Geddes, this function 
 makes it impossible for scientists to say that competition 
 is the only law of progress. His words are : ' With the 
 evolution of sociality which arises from reproductive 
 aggregation in so many species, we see this subordinating 
 struggle and greatly facilitating not only the increase in 
 numbers of the species, but their higher specialization 
 as well. We escape from the conception that progress 
 depends primarily upon interned?ie struggle for existence — 
 i.e. the subordination of the species to the individual, 
 instead of primarily upon the subordination of the 
 individual to the maintenance of the species in sex, 
 offspring, and society. Thus our ethical difficulty at 
 length disappears, since the greater steps of advance in 
 the organic world compel us to interpret the general 
 scheme of evolution as a primarily materialized ethical 
 process underlying all appearance of a gladiator's show.' 
 
 The late Professor Huxley assured us that ' from the 
 point of view of the naturalist, the world is on about the 
 same level as a gladiator's show ; its governing principle 
 is intellectual, not moral.' This is Mr. Kidd's position 
 so far I as its dualism is concerned — only with him the 
 governing principle is moral, not intellectual — and these 
 two are in irreconcilable antagonism. But a dualistic
 
 AND SCIENCE 
 
 account of the world is an incredible and an impossible 
 one, and, as we see from Professor Geddes, the scientists 
 are moving away from Dr. Huxley's ultra-Darwinian 
 dualistic and individualistic position. 
 
 In the autumn of 1893 Sir James Crichton Browne 
 gave a remarkable address before the Shefifield School 
 of Medicine, in which he corroborated Professor Geddes' 
 view. Said Sir James : ' The moment we get beyond 
 the solitary cell, a simple organism which merely feeds 
 and grows and liberates superfluous parts of its substance 
 to start new organisms like itself, mutual obligation, or 
 what may be called a moral relation, is discernible. 
 Antagonism is converted into co-operation, and conflict 
 gives place to harmony. The higher we ascend in the 
 scale of being the more far-reaching and complicated 
 does co-operation become. Individualism is gradually 
 subordinated to collectivism ; the struggle for existence 
 becomes mainly the concern of the organism as a whole, 
 and is in a minor degree that of the unity of which it is 
 composed.' 
 
 So, again, in that remarkable but little-known book, 
 Mr. A. J. Bell's PV/iy does Man Exists we read that 
 competition ' is not the everlasting and unchangeable 
 condition of evolution. Even from the beginning there 
 was certainly present at least one unselfish element — the 
 unselfishness of parents in relation to their immature 
 offspring.' From this basis Mr. Bell goes on to explain 
 and justify, on scientific grounds, the rise and progress 
 of altruism, and to predict its final supremacy in the 
 kingdom of man. Such a thinker is hardly likely to admit 
 that the largest sphere of human activity is necessarily 
 given over to the play of selfishness. The late Professor 
 Henry Drummond, in his Ascent of Man, popularized the 
 213
 
 INDUSTRIAL COMPETITION 
 
 foregoing scientific facts. He set forth, in picturesque 
 and flamboyant style, the truth that ' the struggle for the 
 life of others ' is as essential a factor in evolution as 
 ' the struggle for life ' ; he emphasized the fact that not 
 only nutrition, but also reproduction, is a leading factor 
 in evolution. Prince Kropotkin, still later, in his Mutual 
 Aid, has produced scientific evidence from the higher 
 mammals to prove that co-operation is a greater factor in 
 progress than struggle. 
 
 The position, therefore, at which we arrive is, that it 
 is not true, even in nature, that natural selection or 
 indiscriminate competition is the law of progress. It 
 cannot, therefore, be the true law of human progress. 
 Even if it were the law of progress in nature, it would 
 not follow that it was the law of human progress. The 
 emergence of an intelligent and moral being like man 
 must make a vast difference. Human intelligence has 
 sufficed to lift man above competition in the animal 
 world, and human intelligence and morality will suffice 
 to lift him above hurtful competition in the human 
 world. The evolution in nature has been from in- 
 dividuality to sociality, so also will evolution be in 
 human society. 
 
 Competition, as the only law of industrial life, is 
 doomed — it is contrary both to the analogy of nature 
 and to the moral instincts of men. It is contrary also to 
 the teaching of the Christian religion, which, so far from 
 eliminating the weak or sending them to the wall, 
 cherishes and preserves them — which, moreover, con- 
 demns selfishness, and demands that men love their 
 neighbour as themselves. It is contrary, because 
 Christianity proclaims the brotherhood of men, declaring 
 that the law of the family racial, as well as of the family 
 214
 
 AND SCIENCE 
 
 domestic, is unselfishness and co-operation, the com- 
 petition of love and service. 
 
 The elimination of base and selfish competition will 
 not make for the destruction or deterioration of the 
 individual. This the present competition does, and its 
 elimination from the social system will make for his 
 protection and true development. The incentive to 
 exertion, when the principles of the Cross of Christ really 
 operate in the industrial sphere as a governing force, will 
 be, not selfishness but love, and all that love involves ; 
 and this motive-power will produce at one and the same 
 time a perfect individual and a perfect society. 
 
 "S
 
 VII 
 
 THE MODERN 
 INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 
 
 217
 
 VII 
 THE MODERN INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM ^ 
 
 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, Ijecause He hath 
 anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor ; He hath sent 
 Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the 
 captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them 
 that are bruised ; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. — 
 Luke iv. i8. 
 
 Labour Sunday is observed even more largely upon the 
 Continent than in this country. On the first Sunday in May 
 it is the growing custom of Labour organizations every- 
 where to hold Labour demonstrations. This movement 
 is only part of the great ferment with which all England 
 and all Europe are now alive. Literatures, legislatures, 
 councils, and clubs are all full of the social question. 
 The present labour movement is undeniably a move- 
 ment of the majority of the English people, and of the 
 poorer part of the population ; it is therefore especially 
 incumbent upon the Christian Church to give heed to it. 
 
 If the Christian Church and the Christian pulpit are 
 unconcerned and silent when the majority of Englishmen 
 are palpitating with hopes and fears and aspirations, and 
 especially when the poor are crying aloud for justice, 
 
 ' Delivered on Labour Sunday, 1893, before the Fabian 
 Socialists in John Street Wesleyan Chapel, Chester. 
 219
 
 THE MODERN 
 
 they well deserve the fate which will probably overtake 
 them. In the past the Church has been very prominent 
 in all the social revolutions of England — the Lollard 
 movement owed much to Wyclif and his poor priests, 
 and the Stuart tyranny was struck down by the Puritans. 
 The industrial revolution of the present age must not 
 find the Christian Church apathetic. That Church has 
 lost touch with the people in modern times through an 
 apathy induced by false or defective conceptions of 
 Christ's evangel. 
 
 With the life-deeds of Jesus Christ before her, the 
 Church has no right to ' spiritualize ' away His words 
 about the rich and the poor. Christ paid the greatest 
 attention to the bodily needs of men. He fed men, 
 cured their ailments, and cast in His lot with the needy 
 and forlorn. The history of the Christian Church testifies 
 that from the beginning up to modern times it has been 
 directly interested in the material well-being of the 
 people. That interest must not now cease because 
 modern society is engaged more in dealing with the 
 causes of poverty than with its symptoms. It is fre- 
 quently affirmed that this new movement of the working 
 classes is simply one for material improvements ; but if 
 it were so, that would be no reason for the Christian 
 Church holding aloof, especially when questions of 
 justice are involved. But this is a quite inadequate 
 account of that movement. The influence of environ- 
 ment upon character is proverbial — if the people have 
 their physical needs supplied, if their surroundings and 
 conditions of life and labour are humane and Christian, 
 these will directly affect their moral and religious con- 
 dition. Those whose condition is squalid and poverty- 
 stricken, not only on account of their idleness and love 
 
 220
 
 INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 
 
 of drink, but demonstrably from economic and social 
 causes, whose circumstances are tempting and de- 
 moralizing to the last degree, will undoubtedly rise in 
 the moral scale the moment their circumstances are 
 improved. To this work the Christian Church, in 
 common with all other agencies, should eagerly address 
 herself. The task of modifying or reforming modern 
 industry is of course a vast, complex, and delicate one, 
 but inasmuch as moral forces will have just as much 
 to do with its reform as economic and political, the 
 Church must play her part. 
 
 Many earnest Christians are appalled at the nature of 
 the task. They seem to think that any great change in 
 our present social system is quite impossible. They talk 
 as though it were in its nature unalterable and eternal, as 
 if it always had been with us and always would be. A 
 very brief study of English industrial history would soon 
 reveal to such timid minds that the present industrial 
 system is but a few centuries old ; beginning in the 
 sixteenth century, it rapidly completed itself in the 
 eighteenth and nineteenth by the invention of machinery, 
 the rise of the factory system, and the discovery and 
 application of steam-power. This being so, a system 
 which had a beginning may have an end. If it can 
 be changed for the worst — and no one denies that — 
 it can surely be changed also for the better. England 
 was not always under the aegis of Capitalism and Com- 
 petition, and things went very well then ; some of the 
 best work in every realm of life — of action, word, and 
 thought — was done in her pre-competition and pre- 
 industrial days. Let us not, therefore, be appalled at 
 the prospect of altering a form of human society which 
 is really of but a temporary nature. Brave men and true 
 
 221
 
 THE MODERN 
 
 Christians must face this Goliath of Gath in the name of 
 the Lord, must ask what there is in the modern industrial 
 system to which Christians ought to object, and, when 
 discovered, to object with no uncertain sound. The first 
 ground of objection for Christians is surely to be found 
 in this, that it is a too purely competitive system. 
 Business is done frequently upon the principle of the 
 survival of the fittest — to ' cut out ' one's neighbour 
 from his market and his livelihood. ' Competition ' is 
 the note of the system — competition between capitalist 
 and capitalist, between manufacturer and manufacturer, 
 between merchant and merchant, between employer and 
 employer, between tradesman and tradesman, between 
 employe and employe. With what result ? With certainly 
 the result of a vastly extended commerce and great 
 wealth in a few hands and an undoubted rise in the 
 standard of civilization for many of the workers of the 
 land ; but also with a steady and increasing depreciation 
 of the qualities of goods, an extension of adulteration 
 both of food products and materials, and, which is much 
 more serious, a steady debauching of the conscience of 
 the community and of the individual, with' the almost 
 necessary over-working and under-paying of labourers, 
 and their oppression in a diversity of ways. 
 
 A system based upon competition cannot have the 
 countenance of Christians as such. For Christianity is 
 a doctrine of human brotherhood and helpfulness, and 
 selfishness is its antipodes ; therefore a system which 
 unblushingly proceeds upon the principle of selfishness 
 must be contrary, as a system, to the teaching of Christ. 
 
 It is affirmed that there is competition in nature ; but 
 that is different from a competition developed by human 
 ingenuity, unscrupulous and destructive. As man has 
 
 222
 
 INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 
 
 already protected himself from the competition of the 
 animal world, so he must protect himself against that 
 of a semi-Christian and defectively moralized human 
 world. Some are contented with saying that com- 
 petition is limited. It is ; but it is limited largely by 
 force — the force of State control. It is true that motives 
 of compassion and justice and brotherliness sometimes, 
 in individual cases, modify it ; but these motives only 
 render such individuals less fitted to survive in a com- 
 petitive community — a fact which in itself is a great 
 indictment of the system, at least in Christian eyes. 
 
 Two things are quite clear — that Christ claims to 
 bring all life under His law, and that that law is love. 
 Therefore, a system of society and of industry which 
 compels men to treat each other as enemies and rivals, 
 which makes the success of one involve often loss to 
 another, which, therefore, makes brotherliness in business 
 wellnigh impossible — a mere quixotic ideal — is demon- 
 strably un-Christian. The only competition countenanced 
 by Christianity is the competition how best to serve each 
 other — a virtual, a disguised co-operation — a competition 
 which means no loss to one's brother men, but a gain. 
 
 The first objection, therefore, to the present industrial 
 system is that it is too exclusively competitive. The 
 second objection is like unto it — indeed, is derived from 
 it — viz. that it involves taking advantage of a poor man's 
 necessities. Economists and practical business men say 
 that the employment and remuneration of the labourer 
 must be governed by the law of supply and demand, just 
 as are the supply and price of any other commodity. 
 Therefore, when a crowd of workmen or clerks present 
 themselves for employment, it is good ' business ' to 
 take advantage of this glutted labour market, and pay 
 223
 
 THE MODERN 
 
 those employed the lowest wage they will accept. 
 These poor wretches, competing against each other 
 for work, accept a wage far less than the value of their 
 services — far less, often, than suffices to keep them and 
 their families in civilized, or even human, comfort. 
 From this application of the law of supply and demand 
 to human labour comes a deliberate taking advantage of 
 a poor man's necessities, comes the ' sweating ' system 
 and all its horrors, comes also the vast quantity of 
 underpaid labour. Well might the Bible tell us that 
 'the destruction of the poor man is his poverty.' 
 Christians must heed, not political economy, but the 
 Christian conscience and the Word of God, which say, 
 ' Rob not the poor because he is poor.' 
 
 So, again, in modern strikes. In these the workman 
 fights with his life and with the lives of his wife and 
 children ; the masters, however much they stand to 
 lose, do not stake the very bread of their children ; and 
 yet the settlement of such disputes often directly hinges 
 upon the length of time it will take to bring men, who 
 see their wives and children blanch and pine, to their 
 knees. Truly here again our industrial system commits 
 the sin of taking advantage of a poor man's necessities, 
 a sin against which the prophets of Israel fulminated, 
 but which ' Christian ' men of business defend as 
 ' economic necessity.' 
 
 The very Government of England, under political 
 pressure, is beginning to eschew a principle acted upon 
 by nearly nine out of ten Christian business men. Mr. 
 Campbell-Bannerman,^ speaking in his place as a member 
 of the Government in 1895, said, concerning the wages 
 
 ' Now the Rt. Hon. H. Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister 
 of England (1907). 
 
 224
 
 INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 
 
 of dockyard labourers, that ' not a very long time ago it 
 would have been regarded as a sufficient answer by the 
 House if he had said, " We get men enough for the 
 wages we offer." That was a fact to be kept in mind, 
 but it was no longer a complete answer. We have 
 ceased to believe in competition wages or starvation 
 wages.' The reason assigned was an ostentatiously 
 prudential and selfish one — not that it was wrong, 
 inhuman, un-Christian, immoral, but that it meant 
 'starvation work.^ So that, even in this forward step, 
 our industrial instincts are still so defective morally as to 
 defend a right action upon wrong grounds — upon the 
 ground of mere selfish convenience, and not upon the 
 true ground of the rights of the workman. 
 
 The unjust distribution of the wealth of this country 
 is a proof that advantage is taken of the necessities of 
 the poor. The national income of this country is about 
 ;^i, 350,000,000 ; 11,000,000 of the population, or less 
 than one-third, obtain ;!^85o,ooo,ooo of this sum.^ They 
 constitute the propertied and trading classes, and include 
 landowners, rent-receivers, interest-receivers, merchants, 
 manufacturers, tradesmen, and professional workers. The 
 remaining 26,000,000, or more than two-thirds of the 
 population, only receive ^,^5 00, 000,000. That is, one- 
 third of the population obtains two-thirds of the national 
 wealth ; and two-thirds of the nation, embracing the 
 great majority of the workers of the nation, receive but 
 one-third. This cannot be a just division, and is a 
 direct outcome of morally defective methods of industry 
 
 ' It is more unjust now. The income is more than^i, 710,000,000, 
 and ;[f830,ooo,ooo of it is received by 5,000,000 out of 43,000,000 
 of the population. See Riches and Poverty, by L. G. Chiozza 
 Money, M.P. 
 
 P 225
 
 THE MODERN 
 
 and business. The result of taking advantage of the 
 necessities of the poor is that the average income of 
 the fortunate 11,000,000 of the population is ;^3o5 per 
 adult man, whilst that of the unfortunate 26,000,000 is 
 but ;^77 per adult man. Out of every shilling earned in 
 England, fourpence goes to landlord and capitalist as 
 rent and interest, and the eightpence left is shared 
 between the manager and the wage-earner. The educated 
 workers number one-fifth of the total number of workers, 
 yet they obtain fourpence of this eightpence, leaving 
 to the uneducated workers, four-fifths of the whole body 
 of workers, the remaining fourpence. Here, again, 
 ' the destruction of the poor is his poverty.' The 
 consequences of this unequal division of the national 
 wealth are that four out of every five workers only 
 receive an annual average wage of ;j^35 per adult man, 
 that one-third of the wage-earners are either destitute or in 
 receipt of poor relief, that over 40 per cent, are per- 
 manent paupers, and that one in every five dies a 
 pauper's death in workhouse or hospital. Mr. Charles 
 Booth declares that the great mass of old-age pauperism 
 is due to undeserved poverty ; to declining wage-earning 
 power and inability to save out of a subsistence wage. 
 Hence, things are come to the pass that one in every 
 four of the community above sixty years of age is a 
 pauper, three out of every five above seventy, and 
 actually nine out of every ten above eighty. These are 
 simply scandalous figures, and a lurid indictment of our 
 present industrial system. Mr.^ Charles Booth tells us 
 that in London there are, out of five millions of people, 
 no less a number than 1,292,737 below or on the line 
 of poverty, Thirty per cent, of the population of London 
 ' Now the Rt. Hon. 
 326
 
 INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 
 
 do not earn more than a guinea per week per family.^ 
 And all this whilst human life is lengthened by sanitation, 
 men's wants are increased by education, and political 
 power is put into their hands. 
 
 Mr. Frederic Harrison says : ' To me, at least, it 
 would be enough to condemn modern society as hardly 
 an advance upon slavery or serfdom, if the permanent 
 condition of industry were to be that which we now 
 behold — that 90 per cent, of the actual producers of 
 wealth have no home that they can call their own beyond 
 the end of the week ; have no bit of soil or so much as a 
 room that belongs to them ; have nothing of value of 
 any kind except as much old furniture as will go on a 
 cart ; have the precarious chance of weekly wages which 
 barely suffice to keep them in health ; are housed for the 
 most part in places that no man thinks fit for his horse ; 
 are separated by so narrow a margin of destitution that a 
 month of bad trade, sickness, or unexpected loss brings 
 them face to face with hunger and pauperism. This is the 
 normal state of the average workman in town or country.' 
 These words were spoken at the Industrial Remuneration 
 Conference in 1886, by a leading Englishman, by one 
 who has been foremost in social questions for fifty years. 
 John Stuart Mill himself admitted this unjust distribution 
 of English wealth. In his Principles of Political 
 Ecotiomy he says : ' The deepest root of the evils and 
 iniquities which fill the industrial world is not com- 
 petition, but the subjection of Labour to Capital, and the 
 enormous share which the possessors of the instruments 
 of production are able to take from the produce.' 
 
 Beside the social injustice perpetrated by this in- 
 
 ' See also Poverty : A Study of Town Life (York). B. S. Rown- 
 tree. (Macmillan). 
 
 227
 
 THE MODERN 
 
 equality of wealth-division, we have the creation of a 
 class able to live in idleness and luxury. Now, it is 
 laid distinctly down in the New Testament that if, in 
 a Christian society, a man will not work, neither shall 
 he eat. Therefore a system which produces a class 
 of idlers, of consumers who are not all producers or 
 necessary to production, who do nothing for their living, 
 is a system self-condemned, however it may legalize the 
 status of such social parasites. Such men have no moral 
 right to eat. How dissolute such a class tends to become 
 our divorce and criminal courts, and the life of so-called 
 ' society,' only too frequently reveal. Economists unite 
 with moralists in deprecating the existence of such a 
 class, although the teachings of orthodox political 
 economy largely tend to foster it. J. S. Mill deplores 
 'the great social evil of a non-labouring class,' and 
 the late Professor Cairnes writes that ' it is important 
 on moral no less than on economic grounds to insist 
 upon this, that no public benefit of any kind arises from 
 the existence of an idle rich class.' Jesus Christ and the 
 New Testament writers speak plainly enough about the 
 evil of riches, and it would have been well if Christendom 
 had heeded this teaching. A system which compels the 
 many to die undeveloped that the few may live mis- 
 developed cannot be Christian, because it is neither just 
 nor brotherly.^ Kant, even in the name of philosophy, 
 afifirms that it is wrong to use man as a mere means to 
 one's own end. Much more must this be affirmed in the 
 name of Christianity. Yet this thing everywhere is done 
 almost without protest. Men use their brother men as so 
 many ' hands,' as so much of the stuff called * labour,' as 
 mere self-acting, wealth-producing machines. It matters 
 ' See No. 5, /okn Street, R. G. Whiteing. (Nelson). 
 228
 
 INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 
 
 not what are the conditions of their labour — witness 
 white-lead workers or nail-makers, and the contrast be- 
 tween the hours of labour and the general treatment of 
 the old bus and tram men compared with that of bus 
 and tram horses. It matters little to many employers 
 what are the social and moral and intellectual condition 
 of their employes; it is not 'business' to consider such 
 things. As Carlyle said, fifty years ago, the only con- 
 nexion between the master and his men, in a multitude of 
 cases where the present system is logical and thorough, 
 is a cash-nexus. There is no human relationship in the 
 whole sordid business, with the result that the capitalist 
 and employing class have reaped that which they have 
 sown — a ripe harvest of indifference to their interests, or 
 else of contempt and hatred for themselves. Social 
 reformers cannot ' set class against class ' — they are 
 already dead-set against each other. 
 
 It is high time, then, that Christian teachers pro- 
 claimed that Christian business men, at least, are 
 expected to respect the dignity of human nature in the 
 humblest of their servants, to remember that Christ died 
 for the day-labourer as well as for his master, and that if 
 they be Christians, even rough, unskilled labourers are 
 temples of the Holy Ghost and kings and priests unto 
 God, most precious in His sight. Capitalists must not 
 try to make God's children provide bricks without straw, 
 for if they do there is for them a fearful looking for 
 of fiery indignation and wrath. God is not dead, and 
 He will hear the cry of the oppressed. That such words 
 are not unnecessary any man who knows life and who 
 moves amongst men can testify. An iron-master recently 
 said to a social reformer, ' If you employed men on a 
 large scale, you would soon find that you ceased to look 
 229
 
 tHE MODERN 
 
 upon men as men. They become simply so much pro- 
 ducing power.' This is truth, but execrable truth, a 
 revelation of the nature of our present system. Of course 
 many large employers do not yield to this temptation. 
 But, as that social reformer said to the iron-master, ' If 
 the captains of industry can reduce ore to iron only 
 on the terms of reducing men to units of power, the 
 sooner the captains of industry are discharged, and 
 their places filled by the brothers of industry, the 
 better.' 
 
 Labour must cease to be a mere commodity ; such 
 a doctrine gives man a property in man, and brings 
 slavery in again by a back-door. The degradation of 
 the labourer, his vulgarity and vice, are partly to be laid 
 to the account of society. Much is said about his follies 
 and sins, but little about the industrial system which 
 helps to produce him. As Ruskin says in IJjito this 
 Last, ' If you examine into the history of rogues, you 
 will find that they are as truly manufactured articles as 
 anything else, and it is just because our system of political 
 economy gives so large a stimulus to that manufacture 
 that you may know it to be a false one.' ^ 
 
 There is, therefore, the greatest possible reason for 
 Christian thinkers to be dissatisfied with the prevaiHng 
 system of industry. It is based upon the principle of 
 competition, takes advantage of the poor man's necessities, 
 distributes its wealth with cruel inequality, creating the 
 very rich at one end of the social scale and the very 
 poor at the other; it proceeds upon the principle of 
 making men a mere means to personal advantage, and 
 thus results in all kinds of inhumanities. The present 
 industrial system sets up a false and anti-Christian ideal 
 ' II. 48, footnote. 
 230
 
 INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 
 
 of life. ' Business ' is the supreme thing, and comes 
 practically before every other interest. The material side 
 of life is foremost ; we have become what we were not 
 always — a nation of shop-keepers, manufacturers, traders, 
 and financiers. The true order of things has been reversed 
 by the ' New Industry ' ; material progress, which ought 
 to be ranked lowest, is now ranked highest ; the mill, the 
 bank, the factory, the store, are now the centre of town 
 and city hfe ; the school, the library, the church, are mere 
 accessories, things to amuse or discipline the human ant, 
 mole, or drudge. 
 
 An Englishman who had been long abroad in America, 
 acting as a pioneer in coal-mining, and had become 
 Americanized, recently remarked to a Christian minister : 
 ' We always build a church as soon's we can in Amer'ca. 
 First we sink the shaft, then we build huts, and then the 
 church. You see, stranger, it sort o' settles the work- 
 people, 'specially the women — seems kind o' home-like. 
 I alius says to my d'rectors, " Gentl'men, let's build a 
 church as soon's we can ; it's a payin' thing — a good 
 inves'men'." Yes, 'tis, stranger, a v'ry good inves'men', 
 'nd I alius do 't.' This man evidently thought himself 
 quite religious, and was unable to see the nature of his 
 attitude. This is a sample of the tendencies of an 
 industrial system which subordinates everything to 
 money-making, prostituting even religion to its service. 
 In pre-industrial days the towns clustered round the 
 church or cathedral ; now they are mere adjuncts to 
 the factory or pit, or, at best, the town hall. The 
 vanished architectural supremacy of the Church is a 
 sign of the renunciation of her code of morals and her 
 control in the market-place. 
 
 The theories of political economy which have domin- 
 231
 
 THE MODERN 
 
 ated, and still, to a large extent, dominate modern 
 industry, have been partly the reflection and partly 
 the secret of this gross materialism and selfishness. 
 They need the great revision which they are now most 
 unwillingly undergoing. They have circulated a limited 
 and therefore injurious definition of wealth, of work, of 
 the motives to both, and of the objects and ends of both. 
 Christians must unite in spreading nobler conceptions of 
 wealth and work, and in improving the conditions of both. 
 Mr. Ruskin's words are here strictly apposite : ' There is 
 no wealth but life — life, including all its powers of love, 
 of joy, of admiration. That country is richest which 
 nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy 
 human beings ; that man is richest who, having per- 
 fected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has 
 also the widest helpful influence, both personal and by 
 means of his possessions, over the lives of others. A 
 strange political economy ! the only one, nevertheless, 
 that ever was or ever can be, all political economy 
 founded on self-interest being but the fulfilment of that 
 which once brought schism into the policy of angels and 
 ruined the economy of heaven.' ^ 
 
 Some Christians may turn from these statements, 
 muttering ' Socialism.' If they be, then Socialism is 
 Christianity. But they are not Socialism. Socialism 
 is a definite economic theory which attempts to show 
 a way out of the present evil pass. As the only coherent 
 and complete theory in the field, even Socialism is worthy 
 of the serious consideration of Christian people. It is 
 astonishing what a bugbear a name becomes ; to utter 
 ' Socialism ' to most modern Christians is like crying ' Mad 
 dog ! ' to a crowd — panic seizes all. That panic is nearly 
 ' Unto This Last, iv. 1 56-7. 
 232
 
 INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 
 
 always due to ignorance or misconception. But the points 
 which have been adduced are points which prove that, 
 quite apart from ' Socialism,' industry is working on 
 heathen and non-Christian lines. Many Christians seem 
 to have forgotten what Christianity is, and what it 
 demands from both Christian individuals and Christian 
 society. As Canon Gore^ says : ' It is difficult to imagine 
 that a New Testament Christian could have doubted tTTa t 
 he had to carry his religion into all the affairs of life, 
 or could have been in the least surprised if his religio n 
 involved his being poorer than one o f his non-Christian 
 neighbours, who was not bound by the obligations o f 
 the Church. How, then, is it that we have reached a 
 condition of things when men can not only utter, as 
 multitudes of men always have done, the maxims of 
 worldliness and selfishness, but utter these maxims with- 
 out any sense that simply by giving expression to them 
 they are repudiating Christianity, as far as words go, as 
 really as if they were denying the Christian creed ? ' 
 
 In an address delivered as president of an Ethical 
 Society, Dr. Edward Caird, the present Master of Balliol 
 College, Oxford, said : ' There is nothing in this " new 
 Christianity " which is other than a re-statement in 
 modernized terms of the old Christianity. It is the 
 problem "how to raise the estate of man, and to raise 
 it organically " ; that is, not, as in ancient Greece, to 
 elevate a few at the expense of the rest, but to raise men 
 as a social body, in which none can be left behind with- 
 out injury to all the others. And under this conception 
 the greatest effort, of course, must be directed to the class 
 that is most numerous and most poor, as the class that is 
 in most danger of being left behind.' 
 
 ' Now the Bishop of Birmingham. 
 233
 
 THE MODERN INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 
 
 This is an accurate description of modern social Chris- 
 tianity. One comfort remains : If the priest and Levite 
 of the Christian temple, the minister and official layman of 
 the Christian Church, pass by Labour, lying on the road- 
 side wounded, robbed, and half dead, the good Samaritan 
 apart from the Church will care for, uplift, and cherish 
 him. It will be to the everlasting shame and ignominy 
 of the Church if in the present emergency her represen- 
 tatives pass by on the other side ; but Labour will not 
 perish, for the Heavenly Father has sent His Son, the 
 Good Samaritan, to care for him and to vindicate his 
 cause. Better things, however, will surely be forthcoming 
 from the Christian Church than such inconsistency and 
 cowardice. 
 
 234
 
 VIII 
 
 THE LIVING 
 WAGE 
 
 235
 
 VIII 
 THE LIVING Vn/'AGE 
 
 If every just man that now pines with want 
 Had but a moderate and beseeming share 
 Of that which lewdly pampered luxury 
 Now heaps upon some few with vast excess, 
 Nature's full blessings would be well dispensed 
 In unsuperfluous, even proportion, 
 And she nowith encumbered with her store ; 
 And then the Giver would be better thanked, 
 His praise due paid. — Milton's Comtis. 
 
 ' The living wage ' is a subject of the deepest interest 
 both to those who pay and to those who receive wages. 
 The late Pope, Leo XIII, who, to the great annoyance of 
 many, declared in favour of a ' living wage,' meant, by 
 the phrase, that wage which will suffice to keep a man and 
 his family in decent and frugal comfort. If His Holiness 
 could have secured such a wage for the poor Italian 
 peasant, who, overworked, underpaid, and overtaxed, 
 starved near the Vatican, he would have secured the 
 gratitude of his fellow-countrymen. To the half-starved 
 Italian the English artisan would seem a millionaire. The 
 late Alderman Fleming Williams once defined the living 
 wage to be that wage ' which will suffice to maintain the 
 average workman with the average family in an average 
 237
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 degree of comfort.' This definition is ingenious enough, 
 but it is useless for practical purposes ; this application 
 of the law of averages only results in giving us an abstract 
 workman — a mere idea — whereas society has to deal with 
 the real workman. The whole difficulty of the living- 
 wage question lies in the concrete. In this connexion 
 comes in the consideration that the wants of no two 
 workmen are alike, and the consequent impossibility of 
 any general law meeting the wants of both. The very 
 physical wants of workmen differ — those of a navvy, for 
 instance, being much greater than those of a machine- 
 minder. To meet this difficulty, it has been proposed 
 to amend the definition of the living wage, and say that 
 it is the wage which will suffice to maintain the workman 
 and his family in the state of material comfort and social 
 amenity common to the best of his class. This view is 
 defended by saying that it would obviate the necessity of 
 paying every man alike — a manifest injustice ; it would 
 secure to a man a wage sufficient to provide him with 
 the comforts and refinements of his own class. It is said 
 that the best men in any given class exhaust the economic 
 possibilities of that class, and that if men refused to 
 qualify for their wage they should sink to some lower 
 grade of labour. It is also held that it should be open 
 to employers to pay more, but not to pay less, their 
 privilege being, as Ruskin told them long ago, to refuse 
 to employ the workman who was not worth this ' living ' or 
 'class' wage. But this opens up many difficulties. Another 
 definition of the living wage is, that it must be sufficient 
 to maintain the workman and his family in a condition 
 of civilized and Christian comfort. The object of this 
 definition is to distinguish between a mere subsistence 
 wage and a civilized wage. Some are not content with 
 238
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 securing a subsistence wage for the lower grades of 
 labour, but are anxious to secure a 'civilization' wage 
 for all workers. Hence this last definition. From these 
 various definitions it may be seen what those who demand 
 the living wage are aiming at. 
 
 The grounds upon which the living, or civilized, wage 
 is advocated are various. It is, first of all, maintained 
 that the living wage is the demand of nature. The 
 claims of nature are for a subsistence wage, and if 
 less is paid or is forthcoming nature ordains that the 
 individual shall die. Moreover, nature (or God) pro- 
 vides man with the power, when he comes to maturity, 
 to provide himself and others with sustenance. Every 
 man comes into the world with one mouth and two 
 hands, a sign that he is able to earn more than enough 
 for his own personal wants. Nature unmarred also 
 affords opportunity for this. Given free access to the 
 land, every healthy human being could easily obtain 
 enough to keep both himself and others. The funda- 
 mental necessities of man are food, shelter, clothing, 
 and fuel. Thoreau tried the experiment of earning 
 these direct from nature. ' For more than five years 
 I maintained myself solely by the labour of my hands, 
 and I found that, by working six weeks in a year, I 
 could meet all the expenses of living. The whole 
 of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had 
 free and clear for study.' ^ For two years and two months 
 of that time Thoreau lived in the primaeval forest alone, 
 near Walden Pond. He says that the only thing for 
 which he was indebted to civilization was an axe, which 
 he borrowed, but which he returned sharper than when 
 lent. He is convinced, both by reason and experience, 
 ' fVa/den. (Walter Scott & Co), 
 239
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship, 
 but a pastime, if we will but live simply and wisely. ' It 
 is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the 
 sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.' 
 Certainly, if a delicate man like Thoreau, an educated 
 man and a writer, can thus not wring, but win from nature 
 a year's living in six weeks, it does seem possible for an 
 average mortal, healthy and strong, to amply provide 
 for himself and the ' average ' family well within the year. 
 The advocates of the living wage contend then, to start 
 with, that nature ordains a minimum wage for men, with- 
 out which they perish. This is her cost of living ; with 
 less than this she will not permit life to continue. She 
 also makes provision for men to obtain this necessary 
 minimum — this subsistence wage ; if they will work, 
 they may be sure of eating. This being so — famines, 
 pestilences, floods, barrenness, being exceptions to prove 
 the rule — civilized society interferes with nature, or the 
 purpose of God, when it fails both to ordain at least 
 a living wage, and to secure it to the honest toiler. 
 Further, if society raises the standard of living, makes it 
 practically compulsory for men to live in the enjoyment 
 of a certain minimum of civilized comfort and decency, 
 it has not finished its task unless it sees to it that men 
 are able to live up to this standard. Nature only asks 
 men to live, and she supports life. Society expects — 
 nay, necessitates — civilized life. It should therefore 
 make civilized life possible. If Society takes the place of 
 nature in one thing (creating a certain standard of living), 
 it must take it in all, and therefore guarantee to men the 
 possibility of earning at least a 'civilized' wage. In 
 addition to this, it is urged that art, after all, is but 
 nature, and therefore society, which has sought out 
 240
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 many other inventions, is inevitably driven by a natural 
 impulse to complete its task, and secure to its citizens 
 means whereby to live the civilized life. 
 
 When, however, we find that civilization takes the place 
 of nature, and yet renders it impossible for men to obtain 
 a living — a civilized living — then civilization becomes 
 a curse instead of a blessing.^ There must be a return 
 to nature, either by the way of reform or of revolution, 
 the former, of course, being most desirable. Those who 
 call for a living wage make their demand, not only in the 
 name of nature, but also of justice. They maintain 
 that the demands of civilization make it possible, given 
 right legislation, and still more, and antecedently, right 
 moralization, to give to every honest producer of useful 
 articles a living wage. They hold that the workman — 
 the skilled or unskilled workman— has the right to a fair 
 share of the product, and that that share cannot, in any 
 articles of real service to the community, be less than 
 a living wage. Judging by the profits of industry, by 
 the wealth of this country, and by the unequal distribu- 
 tion of that wealth, they are prepared to maintain that 
 the workman's wage should be more than a literally 
 ' living ' wage ; it should be a civilized wage. They 
 demand this, without holding the Socialist heresy that 
 labour is the sole creator of national wealth. Their 
 case seems to them established by the foregoing con- 
 siderations, and in no need of the sweeping and question- 
 able doctrine with which the Socialists burden their 
 cause. They also point out that modern society, by 
 every step it takes in increasing the wants of the working 
 classes, makes it more and more impossible that they 
 should be in any uncertainty as to at least a decent 
 ' See Cause and Cure of Civilization, E. Carpenter. (Sonnenschein.) 
 Q 241
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 maintenance, whatever be the nature of their work ; and 
 this, not at all as a matter of charity, but as a matter 
 of justice and of necessity. The final step in the 
 emancipation of the worker will begin to take place 
 so soon as he is assured, either by common consent and 
 practice or by legal enactment, that his daily work brings 
 him, in return, a civilized wage. 
 
 The words of the judicious Hooker upon this subject 
 will be of weight to most educated, and to all Christian, 
 Englishmen. In his Ecclesiastical Polity (Book I., 
 chap. X., sec. 2) occurs the following passage : 'All men 
 desire to lead in this world a happy life. That life is led 
 most happily wherein all virtue is exercised without 
 impediment or let. The apostle, in exhorting men to 
 contentment, although they have in this world no 
 more than very bare food and raiment, giveth us thereby 
 to understand that those are even the lowest of things 
 necessary. That if we should be stripped of all those 
 things without which we might possibly be, yet these 
 must be left ; that destitution in these is such an 
 impediment as, till it be removed, suffereth not the mind 
 of man to admit any other care. For this cause, first 
 God assigned Adam maintenance of life, and then 
 appointed him a law to observe. For this cause, after 
 men began to grow to a number, the first thing we 
 read they gave themselves unto was the tilling of the 
 earth and the feeding of cattle. Having by this means 
 whereon to live, the principal actions of their life after- 
 ward are noted by their exercise of religion. True it is, 
 that the kingdom of God must be the first thing in our 
 purposes and desires. But inasmuch as righteous life 
 presupposeth life ; inasmuch as to live virtuously it is 
 impossible except we live ; therefore the first impedi- 
 242
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 ment, which naturally we endeavour to remove, is penury 
 and want of things without which we cannot live. Unto 
 this life many implements are necessary ; more, if we 
 seek (as all men naturally do) such life as hath in it joy, 
 comfort, delight, and pleasure.' This deliverance of 
 Hooker's bears vitally upon the living-wage question, 
 and lifts up the discussion to a still higher level. 
 
 The advocates of the living wage claim that revealed 
 religion is in favour of it as well as natural religion. 
 They appeal not only to nature and reason, but also 
 to ' the law and the testimony.' Agur's words (Proverbs 
 XXX. 8), ' Give me neither poverty nor riches ; feed me 
 with food convenient for me ; lest I be full and deny Thee, 
 and say, Who is the Lord ? or lest I be poor and steal, 
 and take the name of my God in vain,' are taken to 
 sanction the living wage. A moderate competency is 
 here set forth as the desirable ideal of material life, either 
 extreme not being in the interests of morality and religion. 
 The community, therefore, which makes this possible for 
 all men is in harmony with the teachings of Holy Writ. 
 The same teaching is said to appear in the Lord's Prayer, 
 in the petition, ' Give us day by day bread for the 
 coming day,' a petition which, whatever wider reference 
 it may have, is one for a living wage. Our Lord here 
 teaches us to look up to our Heavenly Father for at least 
 that, and therefore any society which is in accordance 
 with the will of God will secure that to all honest, useful 
 workers. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount our 
 Lord may be said to teach men to trust God for at least 
 a living wage. ' Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye 
 have need of all these things ' ; and again, ' All these 
 things shall be added unto you.' Christ certainly did 
 not contemplate a form of human society in which, let a 
 243
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 man trust God never so much, he is, on account of 
 ' economic ' difficulties, the result of human error and 
 selfishness, in imminent danger of starving, despite his 
 willingness to work. The context of these sayings reveals 
 that a society which seeks first the kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness will secure for its members a living 
 wage. The words are addressed to the disciples as a body, 
 and teach that a christianized society will be a society in 
 which no good man needs to worry about securing his 
 daily bread. It will be accessible to him who works. 
 Much is made of the doctrine of Christian content- 
 ment by those who do not personally feel the pressure of 
 this question, and who dislike social agitation. Such 
 passages as St. Paul's, ' Having food and raiment, let us 
 be therewith content,' are continually quoted. But the 
 advocates of the living wage have no difficulty in pointing 
 out that even this passage presupposes, as, indeed, 
 Hooker declares in the above quotation, that we are not 
 to be content when we have not food and raiment. 
 There is nothing in it to make either Christian indivi- 
 duals. Christian churches, or Christian communities 
 contented when workers have not the necessaries of 
 existence, but, on the contrary, discontented. The 
 exhortation of John Baptist to the soldiers, ' Be content 
 with your wages,' is often quoted against the present 
 discontent, but it is not valid. The Roman soldier had 
 secured to him by law a living wage — his denarius, or a 
 penny a day. This was sure, and this was sufficient. 
 He had no rent to pay, no clothes to buy, no food even 
 to purchase, and had, withal, his denarius, his penny 
 a day, besides, doubtless, in those rude days plenty of 
 perquisites. This exhortation is therefore addressed to 
 men who had guaranteed to them a civilized wage — 
 244
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 something more even than a living wage. The inference 
 surely is that such a wage should be guaranteed to 
 modern men, and that they do right to be discontented 
 until it is somehow secured to them. St. Paul's before- 
 cited famous declaration that, ' If any will not work, 
 neither shall he eat,' has some bearing also upon the 
 living-wage question. In the light of this passage, no man, 
 in a christianized society, who does not in some true 
 sense work has a moral right to eat ; but it is a necessary 
 corollary, further, that in such a society every man who 
 does work has a moral right to eat, and has a just 
 grievance against society if he be prevented, by so-called 
 ' economic ' causes, from eating. It is recorded in the 
 Acts of the Apostles that when the Church was founded 
 on the Day of Pentecost the first Christian society found 
 it impossible to submit to any great material inequalities, 
 but those who were well-to-do ' sold their possessions 
 and goods, and parted to all men as every man had 
 need ' ; that is, secured, first of all, not equality, but 
 a living wage for every man, 'as every man had need.' 
 The experiment failed because of the covetous, lying, 
 and hypocritical ; but it was a true ideal, and a more 
 highly moralized and christianized human society is 
 beginning to turn again towards it. Every man must be 
 guaranteed his living wage. If it can be secured out of 
 surplus wealth in these richer times, there will be no 
 need for a voluntary surrender of means. If it cannot, 
 then such voluntary surrender amongst Christians is 
 again, sooner or later, inevitable, unless, which is much 
 to be deprecated, it be preceded by compulsory 
 surrender. 
 
 The Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard may be 
 cited as sanctioning the principle of a minimum wage. 
 245
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 The householder engages his first-hired men evidently 
 upon business principles, but agrees to pay even them 
 the living wage of the time — a penny a day, a denarius. 
 Major F. R. Conder, of the Palestine Exploration 
 Society, tells us that the Roman denarius was the 
 equivalent of the Hebrew zuza, or quarter-shekel. ' The 
 hire of a labourer or a workman, about the time of the 
 Christian era in Palestine, was equivalent to the price of 
 a quarter of a bushel of wheat. If we take 56^. a quarter 
 as an average wheat-price, we have a day's wage of 
 IS. gd., which is rather higher than the ordinary rate in 
 Wales. It is as high as the rate still prevailing for 
 the agricultural labourer in some country districts at the 
 present day.' In some further calculations Major Conder 
 shows that the Jewish oral law enacted ' that 7^. per 
 week was the lowest rate at which life was to be sup- 
 ported,' and that in a land where, on account of the 
 climate, food, fuel, clothing, and shelter are all so much 
 less expensive.' He goes on to remark that ' the law of 
 Moses not only was designed to secure, but absolutely 
 did ensure, to the entire nation of Israel a degree of 
 material comfort and frugal wealth, to which, as regarding 
 the case of the poorest of the population, rather than the 
 extreme wealth of the richest or the ordinary average 
 income of the masses of society, the world, in the course 
 of history, can afford no parallel.' This digression, 
 interesting in itself, is made to prove that the house- 
 holder in the parable began by paying a living wage. 
 At the end of the day he insists upon paying men who 
 worked but one hour at the same rate. Of course this 
 was more than justice — it was generosity. But it is 
 significant of the habits of Jewish society, which evi- 
 dently still hved industrially by the traditions of a time 
 246
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 when God only was their King. This householder 
 cannot find it in his heart to pay any man who has been 
 all the day ' idle ' (that is, without work through no fault 
 of his own) anything less than a living wage. That this 
 is in harmony with the traditions of his nation may 
 be gathered from the fact recorded by Josephus, that 
 the labourers in the repairs of the Temple received a 
 day's pay even if they only wrought for a single hour. 
 The householder in the parable pays his wages upon 
 moral principles — 'whatever is right.' Now, it is just 
 here that modern methods of wage-paying are defective. 
 They are defective upon the moral side. Wages are 
 determined by purely economic considerations. They 
 are fixed by competition, and are regulated by simple 
 reference to the law of supply and demand. If the 
 householder in the parable had gone forth and said 
 to the men standing idle in the market-place, ' Men, 
 there is but an hour left in which to work. I will give 
 you a farthing to work in my vineyard,' that would now 
 be considered very good business. But it was not then, 
 and it will not be somewhen. 
 
 A workman's wages are now determined, as has been 
 well said, ' not by his own life necessities, but by his 
 employer's business necessities ' — without reference, that 
 is, to his deserts or to his needs. That ultimately there 
 must be some reference to his needs was dimly felt 
 by economists when they formulated the ' iron law of 
 wages,' viz. that wages tend always to drop to the level 
 of subsistence, of which Lassalle made such unexpected 
 use. Even they never imagined that wages would tend 
 to fall below it ! But political economy improved upon 
 that by the law of supply and demand, so that when 
 supply permits of it (and human labour is now nearly 
 247
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 always a drug in the market) wages much below sub- 
 sistence level can be paid, and so cheap production can 
 be attained by a much reduced labour bill. Human 
 lives will be lost in the process, but more are to be had 
 for the asking, and ' political economy has nothing to do 
 with morals.' But society has, and God Almighty has ! 
 When the conscience of the one and the wrath of the 
 Other begin to awaken, some economists then begin to 
 discover that ' starvation wages mean starvation work,' 
 and business men begin sullenly to change their practices. 
 The business men are right ; starvation wages do not 
 always mean starvation work. Some kinds of work can 
 be as well done by half-starved men, or men in the early 
 processes of starvation, as by well-fed men, and those 
 business men whose only consideration is profit resent 
 being prevented by public opinion from using such 
 labour. As Mr. Kidd some tried to teach, there are 
 occasions when cold economic and rational considera- 
 tions are in direct opposition to moral and religious 
 considerations. The living-wage agitation is one of 
 them, and the contention of Christian and ethical 
 thinkers is that here, too, must the economic be sub- 
 ordinated to the moral and humane. No longer must 
 business men disregard the needs and the deserts of 
 men, and settle their wages by simply considering the 
 limits of possibility — how little it is possible to give. 
 These methods are immoral, and work woe to the 
 community, if weal to material production. 
 
 The advocates of the living wage contend that wages 
 should be a first charge upon production. In a truly 
 christianized community, wages will be considered before 
 profits. Prices at present are regulated by competition, 
 and wages by prices; in a word, prices govern wages. 
 248
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 The new demand — and yet a very old one — is that wages 
 should, to some very real extent, govern prices. The 
 public should be given to understand that, where human 
 labour is concerned, there is a limit to the reduction of 
 prices. That limit is not simply the ability to produce goods 
 at a profit, although that will be involved, but the payment 
 of a living wage to the workers concerned. The objections 
 to all this are, of course, numerous, and some of them are 
 worth notice. Others — those which evidently come from 
 threatened vested interests — can be well disregarded. 
 
 It is objected to this, that it is all economically impos- 
 sible. But that is mere assertion, and must be, from 
 the nature of the case. It is based upon the assumption 
 that political economy is a fixed science, whereas it is 
 not. As a matter of fact, we do not know what is 
 economically possible until we have experimented. 
 True, we must be very cautious in our experiments, 
 for human creatures' lives are at stake ; but we can 
 never decide otherwise. There is no high, a priori 
 way of settling such a question. If the conscience of 
 the community demands the establishment of a living 
 wage for the workers, that of itself is a probable argu- 
 ment for its possibility ; for whilst moral and economic 
 interests are often directly antagonistic, nevertheless what 
 is morally right is generally, sooner or later, economically 
 possible. Of course, it does not follow from this that 
 all that is economically possible is also morally right. 
 Doubtless there are economic limits to the payment of 
 wages, and they must be respected ; but those limits can 
 only be settled by experiment. 
 
 It is further contended that there are some industries 
 which suffer from extreme competition — from foreign 
 competition especially, with its cheap labour — which 
 249
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 could not be carried on if a living wage were enacted. 
 It is argued, sophistically enough, that this is a lament- 
 able fact, but a fact nevertheless, and that surely it is 
 better to have half a loaf than none at all. To this the 
 convincing reply is that half a loaf is not better than 
 none, looking at the question from a social standpoint ; 
 that it is better, on the whole, that such industries should 
 go. As Professor Cunningham, of King's College, who 
 has little sympathy with the demand for a living wage, 
 says : ' If certain trades cannot be maintained in this 
 country, except on terms which are permanently degrad- 
 ing to a section of the population, it is at least a question 
 whether they should be maintained at all.' ^ But if such 
 industries are discontinued, it is retorted, a host of 
 unemployed are then cast upon the market. If further, 
 in addition, a civilized, as distinguished from a living, 
 wage is enacted or becomes prevalent through the force 
 of public opinion or of trade organization, the numbers 
 of the employed will be still further reduced, and the 
 unemployed problem will become desperate. It might 
 appear so at first sight, but there are one or two things 
 to be remembered. The workers in employment would 
 be in a greatly improved position, and their standard of 
 living would quickly rise. If the work of education and 
 christianization proceeds as it ought, the prosperous 
 workers will make demands for all kinds of remunerative 
 articles ; their wants will become similar to those of the 
 present middle classes. By all consent, the masses suffer 
 from under-consumption in many directions, and, as 
 Mr. Gunton, the eminent American economist, has 
 shown in his Wealth and Progress, a rise in the standard 
 of living upon the part of the working classes is the 
 ' Lombard Street hi Lent, p, 80. 
 250
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 surest way to prosperity. The consequences of 'an 
 effective demand,' as the economists call a demand that 
 is able to justify itself, would be to stimulate production, 
 to create new trades, and to reabsorb the unemployed. 
 So far from deepening the unemployed problem, the 
 securing of a hving wage would greatly relieve it. Even 
 if it were impossible to secure a living wage to the 
 workers, it would be more heroic and just in a nation to 
 refuse to tolerate any longer vast and menacing inequalities 
 of income, and to demand that the general level shall be 
 lowered if it cannot be raised, so that those who have in- 
 sufficient may, by the brotherly action of those who have 
 more than enough, be at least better able to support life. 
 
 The agitation for the living wage is an extension of 
 the trade union movement. That movement has been 
 on the whole a successful one, and has resulted in 
 securing for several classes of workmen a hving wage, 
 and in not a few cases a civilized wage. The actions of 
 trade unionists, which irritate masters, and often make it 
 difficult for well-meaning employers to transact their 
 business in the face of foreign and home competition, 
 are all dictated by what is in the abstract a laudable 
 desire — the desire to secure for the workman a minimum 
 wage. Certainly, however much Trade Unionism has 
 hampered production, it would have gone hard with 
 skilled and even unskilled labour if the workers had not 
 been thus able to protect themselves. 
 
 The recent miners' strike or lock-out was another and 
 an express effort to obtain a living wage. It is still too 
 near to judge of the final success of the movement.^ 
 
 ' The coal strike of 1895, which secured a minimum wage for 
 the members of the Miners' Federation by an agreement which has 
 been renewed triennially ever since.
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 The coal-masters affirm still that the chief result has 
 been to put trade into the hands of coal-owners in other 
 districts and in other countries. The miners, who surely 
 are most interested in the success of the movement, 
 declare themselves satisfied with the result. One thing 
 was very clear — that English public opinion, in this as 
 in the dockers' strike, was in hearty sympathy with the 
 movement. 
 
 The advocates of the living wage have the courage of 
 their opinions — they quite agree with those who affirm 
 that if a few industries obtain such a desirable wage, it 
 will only result sooner or later in congesting those indus- 
 tries with labour and bringing wages down to the old 
 level. The only safe action, they maintain, is general 
 legislation, and they are prepared to produce schemes for 
 assuring every worker a living wage, schemes which are 
 to be made legal and compulsory. Two or three such 
 schemes have been made public. One is by an English- 
 man, Mr. Alfred Morris, and another is by an American, 
 Mr. William Howard. 
 
 Mr. Alfred Morris made his ideas public first of all in 
 a novel, which attracted the late W. E. Gladstone's atten- 
 tion, entitled A Minimum Wage. This was in 1 890. In 
 1893 he published a brochure entitled Civilization's 
 Missifig Link, in which he still further expounded his 
 theories and defended them against objectors. Mr. 
 Morris maintains that civilization must take the place of 
 nature, and provide men with the means whereby to live 
 — upon condition, of course, that they work for them. 
 He demands that society, by means of parliamentary 
 enactment, shall secure to the workman a minimum 
 civilized wage. His words are : ' The real remedy is 
 only to be found in following the example of Nature, 
 252
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 which has fixed a minimum amount upon which a human 
 being can exist in a crude fashion. Padiament must do 
 the same in proportion to civilized requirements. It 
 must decide, taking into consideration the cost of neces- 
 sities, and the wants created by education, habits of 
 cleanhness, clothing, food, and sanitary lodging, what is 
 the lowest amount upon which an adult, male or female, 
 can live. Having done so, it must pass a law that no 
 man or woman shall be employed under that sum, which 
 would be fixed for a certain number of hours, or at so 
 much per hour. In the case of piece-work this figure 
 is to form the minimum basis of calculations.' The 
 minimum is to be for single, not married, persons, the 
 married having to work longer hours, or in some other 
 way enhance the value of their labour. This seems very 
 hard upon the married, and likely to militate much 
 against Mr. Morris's scheme. When we come to the 
 question as to whence will come the means for paying 
 this legalized wage, Mr. Morris is in no difficulty, how- 
 ever much his readers may be. He says that ' all that 
 is proposed is that at whatever price an article is sold, 
 low or high, the worker shall have at least a civilized 
 portion of the profit. If there is not sufficient margin, 
 then the social problem is only to be solved by the State 
 reducing the standard of existence, instead of continually 
 raising it. But there is a margin; the luxury enjoyed 
 by some, and the full measure of comfort which is the 
 lot of others, demonstrate without a doubt that the 
 current prices of manufactures all over the world con- 
 tain a profit which will sustain all in civilized comfort. 
 To provide the workers with more, of course the non- 
 workers and the higher classes of labour must accept 
 less. We do not propose to add the worker's extra wage 
 253
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 to the cost of an article, but to take it out of profit.' 
 Mr. Morris thinks very little of the stock objections that 
 foreign competition is in the way of this, and that it will 
 drive capital out of the country. As to the former, he 
 does not intend to touch prices ; and as to the latter, 
 capital cannot emigrate if it would — the land, machinery, 
 &c., are fixtures, and these constitute the greater part 
 of capital. 
 
 It must be admitted that Mr. Morris's remedy is 
 heroic. His proposals are also rather vague and in- 
 definite. Mr. Howard, of Washington, makes much 
 more definite and interesting proposals. Mr. Howard's 
 scheme merits consideration, because it is the product of 
 thirty years' observation and thought. It further merits 
 consideration because it was brought before the United 
 States Senate in February 1894, by Senator Kyle, and 
 referred by the Senate to the Committee on Education 
 and Labour, and Mr. Howard's pamphlet was ordered to 
 be printed. Further than that, as a result of the Com- 
 mittee's deliberations, in December 1894, the Senate 
 passed a resolution submitted by Senator McPherson, 
 directing tliat committee ' to ascertain in every practic- 
 able way the availability and advisability of establishing 
 a national unit of value for labour, wherewith to auto- 
 matically regulate wages without the intervention of 
 either employer or employed, yet to the full satisfaction 
 of their respective requirements.' Proposals which meet 
 with such treatment from American statesmen, wedded 
 as they are to a sturdy industrial individualism, must be 
 worthy of English consideration. 
 
 After a number of general and excellent remarks upon 
 the need for a fixed and secured civilized wage for ' the 
 industrian,' as he neatly denominates the workman or 
 
 2.';4
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 employ^, Mr. Howard makes his suggestions for the 
 establishment of a national unit of value for labour. 
 The State, he points out, ' to facilitate business and to 
 preserve peace, has been obliged to establish national 
 units of value for money, weight, measure, and time. 
 Likewise, for the same imperative, beneficent purpose, 
 the State should establish a national unit of value for 
 labour, and thereby enable the industrian, without con- 
 sulting his employer, to always earn what his life-necessi- 
 ties demand ; and also enable the employer, without 
 consulting the industrian, to always pay only what his 
 true business necessities require.' No one would think 
 of depreciating the units of value above named, or of 
 diminishing the number of pence in a shilling, or of 
 ounces in a pound, or of inches in a yard, or of seconds 
 in a minute. Neither should any one have the right or 
 the power to depreciate the content of a ' wage.' Mr. 
 Howard proposes to determine a legal wage by adopting 
 the idea of the sliding scale for wages, according to 
 which wages vary with the selling price of the com- 
 modity produced. He suggests that a standard legal 
 wage be fixed by the price of flour. This is the com- 
 modity most consumed by the industrian, and is a guide 
 to the price of every other article of necessity, the prices 
 of which vary in proportion to those of flour. After an 
 inquiry extending over a quarter of a century, Mr. 
 Howard comes to the conclusion that ' he who performs 
 the least skilled manual work requires an amount of pay 
 equal to the cost of 60 lb. in bulk of good family flour 
 in the locality where his work is done.' 
 
 Mr. Howard demands that this should form the 
 national unit of value for labour, and that the State 
 should enact, under pains and penalties, that this should 
 255
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 be ' the lowest pay that could legally be given to an 
 adult for one day's least skilled manual work.' By this 
 method, he thinks, the difficulty of endeavouring to fix any 
 given sum as the legal wage may be avoided. This scheme 
 is therefore free from the defects of that of Mr. Morris. 
 The real value of Mr. Howard's legal wage would always 
 remain the same, although the nominal or money value 
 of it would fluctuate with the price of flour. The enact- 
 ment of this ' wage ' would in no way affect the different 
 scales of payment in the different trades or grades of 
 labour. If, for instance, an engineer's wage per day was 
 twice that of a docker, then, on Mr. Howard's scheme, 
 flour being a penny per pound, a docker would obtain 
 55-. a day (one ' wage,' or the cost of 60 lb. of flour), and 
 the engineer los. a day (two ' wages,' or the cost of 
 120 lb. of flour). In other words, the docker would 
 obtain 30^. a week for six days' work (hours to be fixed 
 by the usual means), and the engineer ;£^. It would, 
 of course, be the business of trade unions and of 
 Government to see that the rates of piece-work were 
 conformed to the standard of the legal ' wage.' 
 
 It will be seen that the assumption of Mr. Howard is 
 that the proportional relations existing between the 
 different grades of labour are constant ; in fact, he says 
 ' the relative standing of industrial pursuits alters very 
 slowly.' But there is a fear lest, under such a system as 
 this, the relative standings of industrial pursuits will alter 
 much more rapidly than they have ever before been 
 known to do. The danger will be that employers, 
 finding that they must pay labourers, porters, and others 
 305-. per week instead of iSs. per week, will endeavour 
 to reimburse themselves, not from their customers, as 
 Mr. Howard thinks they must, but from their more 
 256
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 highly salaried servants. To prevent this, it would 
 necessitate fixing by law the relative standings of in- 
 dustrial pursuits. But this would be almost impossible, 
 for these are largely artificial, and depend upon changes 
 in the social, intellectual, and moral conditions of society. 
 Few Governments would venture upon this task, and if 
 one did, it would meet with most strenuous opposition 
 from the higher grades of labour, unless a new spirit of 
 self-sacrifice came over society. In order to be abso- 
 lutely sure of securing to every worker a wage ' whereby 
 he may live comfortably in accordance with the grade of 
 civilization to which his work belongs,' Mr. Howard must 
 have either a legally fixed ' wage ' in pounds- of flour for 
 each grade of labour, or by Act of Parliament fix per- 
 manently the proportions between the grades of labour. 
 Mr. Howard claims for this proposal that it would take 
 away all competition between employers for cheap labour 
 and all possibility of labourers under-bidding each other. 
 Although the increased cost of production must come 
 from consumers, he thinks that competition will prevent 
 prices from rising too high. Further, the increased 
 wages will so far increase the consuming and purchasing 
 power of the people as to bring to an end ' bad trade ' — 
 a consummation devoutly desired. 
 
 The objection to Parliamentary interference with wages 
 upon the part of many is that it has been tried, and has 
 failed, and that hundreds of years ago. Certainly, Mr. 
 Howard's proposals are not absolutely new ; they can be 
 paralleled from English industrial history. As far back 
 as the reign of Edward HI the English Parliament tried 
 to fix a legal wage. In 1350, according to Thorold 
 Rogers, ' the money wages of all kinds of workmen, 
 servants in husbandry, and artisans were fixed at certain 
 R 257
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 rates, as long as wheat was under 6^. ?>d. a quarter. - 
 Mr. Howard will be told that this attempt, carried on 
 through centuries, finally failed. But it is worth while 
 asking whether the attempt did fail. If it failed, it was 
 because it was an attempt to fix a maximum, not a 
 minimum, wage — a wage above which no employer was 
 to pay, not one below which no employer was to 
 pay. That part of the movement did fail. But 
 the motives were very different from modern motives. 
 The motives were to prevent extortionate labour-charges 
 at a time of great scarcity, to prevent labour taking 
 advantage of society's necessities. The Acts also were 
 passed by the masters themselves in their own interests, 
 and then administered by them in their own interests. 
 The proposal to-day is to fix a minimum wage in order 
 that Capital may not take advantage of Labour's necessi- 
 ties, and the Acts will be made by the people themselves 
 through their own representatives, and carried out by 
 themselves in their own interests — interests which are 
 identical with the general interests of society. 
 
 But it must not be thought that the attempts to keep 
 down wages by legal means were failures ; they were 
 finally successful — only too successful. These are one 
 or two of the facts : In the first half of the seventeenth 
 century the price of wheat rose to s^^s. and more per 
 quarter, and wages were kept down to less than 6d. a 
 day. In 1795 the Berkshire magistrates decided that 
 when the 'gallon loaf cost 15., the labourer should 
 receive from the parish dd. a day for himself and 3^. a 
 day for each of his family, and for every rise of id. in 
 the price of a loaf he should receive an increase of 3^. 
 a week for himself and id. a week for each of his 
 ' The Economic Interpretation of History, ii. 27. 
 258
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 children. This legislation, of course, resulted in relieving 
 employers at the expense of the ratepayers, and at the 
 same time kept wages down to a starvation level. The 
 policy of those times, which resembled that of Mr. 
 Howard, only with the diametrically opposite purpose, 
 was quite successful. This is what Thorold Rogers says 
 about it : ' The English Statute-book contains many 
 atrocious Acts, most of them with hypocritical preambles. 
 The Act of Elizabeth (which enacted that wages were 
 to be fixed by Quarter Sessions assessments) is, in my 
 judgement, the most infamous of them all, for it was 
 levelled against every right of the poor to live, and 
 entirely in the interests of rent. The magistrates 
 duly met, and issued their schedule of wages. I have 
 discovered thirteen of them. They invariably prescribe 
 wages which I am sure, from the evidence of prices, 
 would not, even if the peasant had continuous employ- 
 ment, find bread for him and his household.' ^ Evidently, 
 then. Parliament, when it represented only landowners 
 and employers, succeeded in enacting and enforcing, 
 after a long struggle, a ' starvation ' wage. Why should 
 it not succeed, when it represents the employed, in 
 enacting and enforcing a ' living ' wage ? 
 
 There is so much misapprehension as to the results of 
 the experiments made by Parliament to regulate wages, 
 that it is worth while giving another quotation from 
 Thorold Rogers. In his Oxford lecture on Legislation 
 on Labour and its Effects, referring to the thirteen 
 assessments he had discovered, he says : ' I believe they 
 were discontinued during the eighteenth century, not 
 because the law was neglected, but because the assess- 
 ment had effectually done the work for which it was 
 ' The Ecotiomic Interpretation of History, xi, 241. 
 259
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 designed, the labourer's wages being now reduced to a 
 bare subsistence.' ^ This would have been securing the 
 living wage by Act of Parliament ; but it was not so good 
 as that, for, as Professor Rogers says afterwards, 'the 
 justices in Quarter Session took no note, as the Statute 
 instructed them, of " the cheapness or dearness of 
 provisions." Their object was to get labour at starvation 
 wages,' 2 and they succeeded in their object. These 
 precedents, therefore, tell for, and not against, State 
 legislation for ' a living wage,' and raise hopes that the 
 solution of this urgent problem is neither impossible 
 nor distant. That it is neither impossible nor distant 
 may now be seen by the experiments and experiences 
 of one or two British colonies and by the proposals 
 now before our own Parliament {1907). 
 
 In New Zealand, in 1896, the law for compulsory 
 arbitration came into operation, and led to the fixing 
 of a standard minimum wage for skilled labour, which 
 undergoes periodic revision. The Arbitration Act has 
 worked well in New Zealand for eleven years. In 
 Australia, the Victorian Wages Board was established in 
 1896, and amended in 1900 and 1903. It has undeniably 
 prevented sweating in many trades, and has secured a 
 minimum wage for unskilled workers. But it is alleged 
 that it has tended to reduce the wages of skilled labourers, 
 and the demand, in some quarters, is that a minimum 
 wage be now fixed for skilled labour also. Bills have 
 been introduced into the British Parliament for establish- 
 ing similar wages boards, upon which employer and 
 employed would be represented, for the purposes of 
 fixing a minimum wage for certain ' sweated ' trades, to 
 
 ' The Economic Interpretation of History, ii. 40. 
 ^ Ibid^ ii. 41. 
 
 260
 
 THE LIVING WAGE 
 
 be scheduled by the Home Secretary. The movement, 
 therefore, has got within the reahn of practical politics. 
 Militarism in France, Germany, and Japan has made 
 one thing possible — the determination upon a scientific 
 basis of the minimum diet necessary for efficiency. At 
 the British Association, in 1906, Dr. F. G. Hopkins 
 quoted the results of investigations by Professor Voit, 
 of Munich, and the confirmations by Professors Atwater 
 and Chittenden, of the United States, that for the 
 average body under average conditions the standard 
 for moderate work was 3,050 calories (heat-produc- 
 ing elements) and 118 grains of proteid (nitrogenous 
 substances). Civilization is then not far from discover- 
 ing the necessary elements, biological, physiological, 
 economic, and legislative, with which to forge its last 
 link for binding men together in one bundle of healthy 
 physical and mental life. 
 
 261
 
 IX 
 
 THE LABOUR 
 WAR 
 
 263
 
 IX 
 THE LABOUR WAR 
 
 Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just ; 
 And he but naked, though locked up in steel, 
 Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 A GREAT contrast exists between the condition of the 
 labour world at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 and at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century industry was domestic 
 and disorganized ; at the beginning of the twentieth 
 century it is concentrated in cities and organized, and 
 labour is drilled and disciplined into a huge army. Its 
 serried and orderly ranks and regiments may be seen in 
 works, factories, mills, railways, and houses of business. 
 Great credit is due to those wise captains of our industry 
 and commerce who throughout this century have mar- 
 shalled and manipulated these hosts. Great credit is 
 also due to the rank and file, who must have originally 
 possessed strong instincts of obedience and order to 
 have made such organization of industry possible. Those 
 knew how to command, these how to obey. 
 
 But what of the present spirit of this great army ? An 
 ideal army is loyal, obedient, enthusiastic, eager to 
 265
 
 THE LABOUR WAR 
 
 advance, ready to suffer hardship, devoted to its leaders. 
 Such certainly is not the spirit of the labour army of 
 to-day. Almost from the first there has been some 
 disaffection. From the days of the Chartists and Luddites 
 to the days of the Socialists, it has been inclined to murmur 
 and mutiny. The rebellious spirit has so increased 
 that right up to the end of the nineteenth century the 
 industrial community may be said to have been in a 
 constant state of civil war. It is important to investigate 
 the causes and consequences of this internecine strife. 
 
 The labour army is often called a ' mercenary army.' 
 It is accused of lack of interest in the cause of commerce ; 
 of lack of loyalty, of greed and selfishness, of brutality 
 and vice. These are certainly the characteristics of 
 mercenary military armies, such, for instance, as those 
 (Swiss and Scotch) which fought the battles of Europe in 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
 
 Whatever truth there is in the above charge — and he 
 would be bold who would deny that there is some truth 
 — it may easily be seen to arise out of the very nature of 
 a mercenary army. The army of labour, like all mercenary 
 military armies, is a hired army, organized upon the 
 wages system. The only nexus is a cash nexus. It has, 
 therefore, an arbitrary, and not a natural, interest in 
 industry, and this will account for much indifference and 
 discontent. It is, in common with all mercenary armies, 
 liable to dismissal and disbandment upon failure of funds, 
 or change of market, or caprice of master. What wonder, 
 then, that the soldiers of labour are ready to desert him 
 who pays them sixpence an hour in favour of him who 
 will pay them sevenpence ! 
 
 This is one of the prime causes of discontent in the 
 labour army. It audibly or silently objects to this 
 266
 
 THE LABOUR "WAR 
 
 mercenary principle of hiring, and it refuses to believe 
 that it passes the wit of man to reorganize labour upon 
 some other and better basis. This is why it looks so 
 kindly at times upon the wildest and most Utopian 
 schemes of social reform. It longs to eliminate from 
 life and labour the present precariousness. The British 
 regular army, drilled for battles of blood, has its system 
 of promotions and pensions, and, above all, its great 
 motive, ' King and country.' The labour army of to-day 
 is sullen and mutinous for lack of some similar motive, 
 some similar hope, and some similar certainty. The 
 labourers long to be delivered from suspense and uncer- 
 tainty as to the prospect of their children's bread, from 
 their constant liability to disbandment. They cry for 
 security of tenure, steadiness of employment. They 
 have no wish to prey upon the labour market or upon 
 society, as the disbanded military mercenaries used to 
 prey upon the cities and countries of Europe. They 
 wish to obtain bread neither by force nor by fraud ; 
 they cry not for charity, but for justice. Hence they 
 will fight for Socialism, or for any other system which 
 promises to save them from the ' mercenary ' principle. 
 
 The labour army aims at the overturn or the radical 
 modification of the present wages system. But this is 
 not the work of a day or a year, and in the meantime the 
 labour army has another cause of discontent and quarrel 
 — what may be called the share-of-the-spoils question. 
 Even a mercenary, wages-system, cash-nexus army expects 
 a fair share of the spoils. Mercenary rrjlitary armies, 
 whatever their wages, expected, when the battle was done 
 and won, a good share of the spoils of war and victory. 
 Their expectations were always realized ; they obtained 
 much more than their bare wages. The mercenary 
 267
 
 THE LABOUR WAR 
 
 industrial army, likewise, is not content with its wages of 
 subsistence, or even with wages regulated by a decent 
 standard of comfort. It demands a share of the profits 
 of industry, reckoned, not with any reference to its 
 subsistence wants, save in a protectory sense, but with 
 reference to the value of the product or of the net profits. 
 
 The captains of industry march off with too much 
 of the booty — far too much — and the labourers would 
 restrain them. In their sober moments the workers 
 recognize that, so far as profits are concerned, there are 
 three factors in production — labour, capital, and manage- 
 ment — and that each is alike necessary. But they 
 maintain that labour is systematically defrauded of its 
 full share by means of the wages system, or the farce 
 of a so-called ' free contract,' under which the labourer 
 is ' free ' either to work at an unjust wage or starve. 
 
 Carlyle's way of putting the case much commends 
 itself to the labourer when he reads it, as true to fact. 
 At the conquest of England, William the Conqueror 
 divided the spoils with his knights ; but that renowned 
 captain of industry, Plugson of St. Dolly Undershot, 
 when his battle is fought and won, 'pays off' his 
 army, and marches away with his ;^ioo,ooo or his 
 miUions.-^ 
 
 These are the general causes of the labour war of the 
 end of the century ; local conflicts were but species 
 of the same genus. Occasionally industriaUsm as a 
 whole closes up its hostile ranks, unites its forces of 
 Capital and Labour against the common enemy — 
 hunger, need, or ruin ; but it soon falls asunder again. 
 Mutual distrust is engendered by the above causes, 
 and strikes, lock-outs, and disputes innumerable are 
 ' Past and Present, book iii. chap. x. 
 268
 
 THE LABOUR WAR 
 
 destined to arise from them for yet many days, the 
 general question being one not of quick or easy solution. 
 
 But the Christian Church ought to be able at least to 
 ameliorate the conditions of the strife. It is hers to point 
 out that the battles of Capital and Labour are not usually 
 over abstract general principles ; they are over particular 
 concrete applications or illustrations of them. Hence it 
 should be a first rule for the parties to these special 
 industrial disputes to be sure that the local cause be a 
 just one. Some trades are by nature precarious, and it 
 would be folly to fight the battle of permanence with 
 employers in these. Some employers attempt to share 
 profits by systems of regular advance and promotion, 
 by bonuses, shares, and pensions. It would be unjust to 
 visit the sins of others, or of a system from which 
 they were trying themselves to escape, upon the heads of 
 such wise and humane employers. Labour should ever 
 be sure of a just and real grievance ; its attacks ought not 
 to be dictated by selfish and inconsiderate greed, or its 
 campaigns undertaken for frivolous reasons, nor should 
 it emulate its opponents, by making necessity — the 
 necessity of employers — its opportunity. Labour should 
 not grow arrogant, unjustly championing the cause of 
 individuals, when the offence is rank. It must beware, 
 in a word, lest it become a blind Samson, who, in his 
 eagerness to avenge himself upon the Philistines, over- 
 whelmed himself as well as his enemies in destruction. 
 Similar counsels are equally necessary for Capital, as 
 industrial history often distressingly reveals. 
 
 It should be a standing rule with both combatants 
 
 that war must be utterly unavoidable. The appeal to 
 
 force is always irrational and degrading ; before ever it is 
 
 resorted to, ' the resources of civilization ' should always 
 
 269
 
 THE LABOUR WAR 
 
 be exhausted. If justice can be secured in no other 
 way, if appeal to force be inevitable, as the very last and 
 only resort, then it should be entered upon in a civilized 
 spirit, with a due sense of the miseries of industrial strife to 
 both sides in the conflict, and to the community at large. 
 The great object-lessons which the Dock strike, the Coal 
 strike, and other famous strikes have presented, of the 
 way in which such conflicts involve the whole community 
 in misery and loss, as well as the industries concerned, 
 should give men everywhere pause before they lightly 
 enter upon industrial warfare. In ' striking,' Labour not 
 only ' strikes ' in self-defence and for justice, but it also 
 strikes down many of its own friends, and many innocents, 
 who will never rise again. In ' lock-outs,' Capital locks 
 out not only its men, but innocent women and children, 
 many of whom are finally, by this means, ' locked out ' 
 of the gate of life altogether, as in the memorable 
 Penrhyn business. There is need in the industrial 
 community for a more vivid realization of the horrors 
 and devastations of industrial war, and that upon both 
 sides. 
 
 Another very necessary rule of industrial warfare is that 
 the fight be fair. The late Lord Derby once defined the 
 duty of the State in relation to industrial disputes as that 
 of ' keeping the ring ' — in other words, of seeing that the 
 fight be fair. We have now a higher conception of 
 the office of the State in these matters. It is increasingly 
 felt that, in the interest of the State itself, it behoves her 
 to become, if possible, the peacemaker between Capital 
 and Labour ; but when she cannot do that, certainly it is 
 her duty, as the late Lord Derby asserted, to see that the 
 fight be fair. But it is still more the combatants' business 
 to see that the fight be fair. There are two kinds of fight- 
 270
 
 THE LABOUR WAR 
 
 ing : savage, and — not Christian — no fighting is Christian 
 — but savage and civilized. Industrial warfare should 
 ever be civilized warfare ; there should be no tomahawk- 
 ing, no scalping-knife methods. In a fight with Indians a 
 decade ago, some United States soldiers so far forgot them- 
 selves, in their fury at the fiendish cruelties of the Indians, 
 as to slay Indian women with babes at the breast. This 
 conduct justly extorted a cry of execration from the 
 civilized world. Industrialists in their fury — both 
 capitalists and labourers — are liable also to slay women 
 with infants at their breasts, but by the more cruel 
 method of slow starvation. 
 
 The methods of industrial warfare must be civilized, 
 not savage. The victories gained on either side must be 
 chivalrous victories, not, as they sometimes have been, 
 in the vindictive spirit afterwards shown towards the 
 vanquished, mere Choctaw triumphs — massacres, not 
 victories. The workers must strive to be true ' Knights 
 of Labour ' on the field of industrial battle. They must 
 refrain from unrighteous and illegal intimidation, from 
 violence and from all incitements thereto, from mis- 
 representation and defamation. Both sides should learn 
 to fight fair, like true Englishmen. Capitalists should 
 refrain from the above method also, and should refuse to 
 avail themselves of the political or civil powers — such as 
 Parliament, the law, the military, or the police — over which, 
 by virtue of their social position, they have control, to 
 aid them in their personal quarrels with Labour. This 
 meanness should be beneath the dignity of Christians and 
 gentlemen, of those who are the heirs of chivalry. It 
 ill becomes such also to use ' starving-out ' or Penrhyn 
 methods of industrial warfare, or vindictively to crush the 
 conquered. When Lord Suffolk, during the American 
 271
 
 THE LABOUR WAR 
 
 War of Independence, defended the employment of 
 savages in America by the British Government, on the 
 ground that ' it was perfectly allowable to use all the 
 means that God and nature had put into our hands,' 
 he evoked from Lord Chatham a burst of indignant and 
 eloquent remonstrance, which rang through England. 
 Very frequently a similar unscrupulosity, as un-English 
 and inhuman as it is hypocritical, is manifested in 
 industrial struggles to-day, and that not only in South 
 Africa or on the Congo. There is need to remember 
 that all is not fair in war. The employment of Pinkerton 
 gangs, on the one hand, or of ratteners and rioters on 
 the other, can never be sanctioned. 
 
 This may seem a mere counsel of perfection — another 
 day-dream — but that does not alter its truth or its ethical 
 necessity. Nor is this all. Such civilized laws of 
 industrial conflict would certainly ameliorate and 
 humanize the apparently inevitable conflict of Labour 
 and Capital under the present system ; but, after all, 
 they are merely laws for the ' present distress.' Industrial 
 war must, sooner or later, disappear, if Christianity is to 
 triumph in the industrial sphere. War is wholly un- 
 christian, military or industrial. The resort to force is 
 unbrotherly, contrary to love ; it is irrational, contrary to 
 reason ; brutal, contrary to humanity. It cannot deter- 
 mine the question of justice, it merely determines that of 
 strength. 
 
 In the main, the interests of Capital and Labour are 
 identical — certainly all their permanent interests are, if 
 their temporary interests are not, and therefore their strife 
 is suicidal as well as fratricidal. Wherever their interests 
 are not identical, the appeal should be made to reason, 
 discussion, and persuasion. Both sides should deliberately 
 272
 
 THE LABOUR WAR 
 
 and untiringly aim at the perfecting of methods of con- 
 sultation, conciliation, and arbitration, and should 
 carefully consider the question of the State enact- 
 ment of compulsory arbitration in disputes and also 
 the experiments in that matter in our colonies. To 
 remedy the natural grievances and injustices of Labour, 
 all parties in the State — the Christian Church pre- 
 eminently — should foster the movement for making 
 the labourer master of his product, by putting him in 
 possession of the means of production, whether by 
 systems of technical education, co-operative produc- 
 tion, industrial partnership, municipal Socialism, or by 
 other practicable methods. In the meantime, vast relief 
 would immediately come if both masters and men 
 became real Christians — servants of Christ on the week- 
 day, not on the Sundays only ; in business and at 
 work, as well as at church or at home — real, not nominal. 
 Christians. Enough would still remain to be done, 
 taxing all the best qualities of heart and brain ; but the 
 appearance, in numbers large enough to affect the policy 
 of the commercial and industrial world, of Christians who 
 were bent upon applying the principles of the Sermon on 
 the Mount most rigorously to their own financial and 
 industrial affairs, without mercy to their own selfishness 
 and class prejudice, would bring in at once a new 
 industrial era. If the men of the modern industrial world 
 would only welcome Jesus Christ into their camps, 
 mighty miseries would soon abate, and ' war would be 
 no more.' 
 
 273
 
 X 
 
 THE CLAIMS OF 
 MANUAL LABOUR 
 
 275
 
 X 
 
 THE CLAIMS OF MANUAL LABOUR 
 
 These hands ministered unto my necessities, and to them that 
 were with me. — St. Paul. 
 
 Much is heard in these times of the claims of manual 
 labour. In every market-place demands are made for it 
 which cannot be justified. We are continually told that 
 inasmuch as the wealth of England is the creation of the 
 manual labourers, that wealth ought to belong to the 
 labouring classes, and that the classes which possess 
 the major portion of it are guilty of stealing. 
 
 So they would be if the premise that all wealth is the 
 creation of manual labour were correct, but unfortunately 
 it is not. In fact, no more cruelly misleading statement 
 could possibly be made. That manual labour is a 
 necessary factor in production no sane man denies ; and 
 that manual labour has been, and is, hardly and unjustly 
 treated, few instructed and unprejudiced men doubt. 
 But to set up for it the claim that all wealth belongs to it 
 because it is the creator of it all, as do many Socialists, 
 must be due either to gross ignorance or wilful blindness. 
 
 This much-asseverated claim has very litde foundation 
 in fact.^ The wealth of England is not a vast hereditary 
 ' See pp. 155-168. 
 277
 
 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 hoard, the result of ages of human industry and saving, 
 but is of comparatively recent origin. It has been 
 obtained far more by the invention of machinery, the 
 application of modern science to industry and commerce, 
 and the organizing skill, enterprise, and sagacity of the 
 modern captains of industry ; in a word, far more by 
 intellectual than by manual labour. But for the play of 
 intellect upon commerce and industry, labour would have 
 still been drudging on like a blind and bound Samson. 
 As the late Lord Playfair once said correctly in the 
 Contemporary Review, the labour of quantity is continually 
 decreasing in value as a factor in production, and the 
 labour of quality increasing. Brain-labour is a more import- 
 ant factor in the production of wealth than hand-labour. 
 As muscular strength is of little value to an individual 
 without the intelligence to direct and apply it, so manual 
 labour is now of small worth to society in the absence of 
 the creating and directing intelligence. The labourers, 
 skilled artisans as they were, who built the great bascule 
 bridge across the Thames from the Tower, would have 
 made a poor show in the absence of Sir Horace Jones, 
 the architect, and Sir John Wolfe Wolfe-Barry, the 
 engineer. The claim of the manual labourers for a 
 larger share of the produce of modern industry is a just 
 one, and also their claim for more protection, for better 
 conditions of labour and life, and for more leisure ; but 
 their claim for all the wealth of England is about as 
 unfounded and as ridiculous as any claim could well be. 
 But the claims of the manual labouring class and the 
 claims of manual labour itself are two very different 
 things. These latter are not sufificiently regarded in 
 modern society. The increasing complexity of industrial 
 life tends to withdraw too many from a share in the 
 278
 
 MANUAL LABOUR 
 
 manual labour of the world, with the result of con- 
 stituting the manual labouring class almost into a helot 
 class, and of depriving men in multitudes of healthy 
 self-discipline. The possibility of living without working 
 at all, either manually or mentally, tends to create 
 amongst the propertied classes a set of dangerous 
 social parasites. The vastness of the work of distribution 
 has created also a class of brain-workers — middle-men, 
 managers, warehousemen, assistants, clerks, and others, 
 with their accompanying host of financiers, bankers, com- 
 pany-prom.oters, and stock-and-share-dealers, all of whom 
 are also divorced from regular manual toil. In addition 
 to these there are the professional classes, who also know 
 nothing of such labour. Within the world of labour itself 
 the transformation is proceeding — men are now graded 
 largely into machine-inventors, machine-makers, and 
 machine-minders. The machine industry thus divorces 
 whole classes from manual labour altogether, and masses 
 others into fetid, hideous, and deafening cities, work- 
 shops, and factories, creating communities which are 
 entirely artificial and unnatural. 
 
 This decay of manual labour is to be deplored both in 
 the interests of the individual and of society. It is a 
 natural, a divine discipline, not to be evaded without 
 incurring corresponding penalties. It is well worth 
 while asking what is lost by evading it, for the in- 
 ventive mind of modern man and the course of capital- 
 istic civilization are evidently tending still further to 
 eliminate the simplest, roughest, and most primitive 
 forms of labour from the life of man, relegating them 
 first to a helot class, and finally to machines. Man no 
 longer ploughs, sows, harrows, reaps, or weeds the soil — 
 machines do it ; and where machines do not do it, the 
 279
 
 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 work is left to the few, who work with unremitting and 
 degrading toil for a pittance, whilst the millions are 
 massed in teeming cities, leading an unhealthy and 
 artificial life. And in those very cities men are no 
 longer found providing for their wants with their own 
 skilled hands, but stand watching the machines make 
 their bread, their clothes, their boots, and their furniture. 
 They no longer spin and weave themselves : their 
 machines spin and weave for them. Science and in- 
 vention are steadily superseding the use of human 
 faculties and human limbs in many directions, and 
 radically changing the conditions of human existence. 
 We ought to consider whither we are tending. Doubt- 
 less ' there's a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew 
 them as we will,' but it is our prerogative not to be blind 
 to the meaning of changes, but to manipulate masterfully 
 those which threaten our moral and physical well-being. 
 
 Now, it is evident that all who are, whether willingly 
 or unwillingly, divorced from manual labour are so far 
 out of touch with some of the primal realities of human 
 existence. Manual labour is a discipline of mind, 
 muscle, and nerve which mankind can ill afford to 
 dispense with, and that because it is a natural discipline. 
 No artificial labours, play-labour, mimic-labour, can ever 
 take the place of natural human labour. The point is, 
 not that man has no right to use his intelligence to 
 lighten laborious toil or to increase his material comfort 
 and reasonable luxury, but that he has no right entirely 
 to remit, as he already does in so many classes of the 
 community, and promises to do in all, a vital natural 
 discipline. It seems to be certain that he will suffer 
 in mind, body, and estate — indeed, is already so doing. 
 
 Manual labour is really, as Emerson says, ' the study 
 280
 
 MANUAL LABOUR 
 
 of the external world.' Not only, therefore, do men lack 
 the physical and nervous advantages of manual labour, 
 but the mental advantages also. Whole masses of 
 modern men live all their lives in an artificial world ; 
 not once, to the day of their death, do they come into 
 real contact with primal physical verities, with external 
 nature. The manual toiler is brought into fellowship 
 with nature, in perhaps a dim, unconscious way, but 
 in a way far more real than the non-toiling classes, who 
 bring to nature only reflectiveness and sentimentality. 
 His contact with nature, as he pits his thews and 
 sinews against it, is close, vital, and natural ; theirs is 
 external and artificial. The difference is seen in the 
 effects upon character. Manual labour gives a strength 
 and simplicity to character, which no sentimental survey 
 of nature ever does. Poets and novelists, moralists and 
 artists, know this truth well, and go for all that is best, 
 simplest, most primal and vital in the physical, moral, 
 and mental nature of man, to the classes who are in daily 
 communion with nature in their work. As Emerson 
 says, ' Every man ought to stand in primary relations 
 with the work of the world, ought to do it himself, and 
 not suffer the accident of his having a purse in his 
 pocket, or his having been bred to some dishonourable 
 craft, to sever him from those duties — and for this 
 reason, that labour is God's education.' ^ 
 
 This being so, what is wanted is some wise revision of 
 human society which shall restore all men alike to that 
 which is a God-appointed discipline, and a God-appointed 
 means of a real knowledge of nature. This cannot be 
 accomplished by any Quixotic or Utopian individual 
 experiments — human society must move altogether, like 
 ' In Essays: Man the Reformer, p. 281. (Walter Scott & Co.) 
 281
 
 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 Wordsworth's cloud, if it move at all. The work for the 
 individual is to preach the ideal, to teach the truth, to 
 form public opinion. Society is already moving in a 
 healthier and wiser direction. In elementary education, 
 and in secondary also, it has long been felt that educa- 
 tion has been too entirely mental, with the result that 
 children are just beginning to receive manual and 
 technical training, are being put into possession of their 
 limbs, senses, and faculties, as well as of their memories. 
 They are being fitted to wrestle with matter, to fulfil a 
 primal necessity of human life, to receive a natural edu- 
 cation. But the movement cannot stop here. The 
 revision of education involves an accompanying re- 
 organization of social and industrial life. To send the 
 child forward into life with trained aptitudes for manual 
 labour, skilled or unskilled (to adopt an artificial distinc- 
 tion), and then for it to find no opportunity to gratify and 
 exercise those powers, is the height of irrationality, and 
 will be to invite social difficulty. Jewish education 
 demanded that every child should be taught a handicraft, 
 no matter of what station in life — hence we see Paul, as 
 an educated Jew, able in an emergency to earn his 
 living by the labour of his hands, and our Lord Himself 
 practising the trade of a carpenter. But the logical 
 result of such a system of education is that the adult 
 should be expected, and should have the opportunity, 
 of using his or her powers, and thus become at once 
 economically independent — a producer as well as a con- 
 sumer — obtain a necessary discipline, and enjoy the 
 fellowship which comes from wrestling with nature — 
 with the external world. Man, like Antaeus, will be 
 strongest when he has his feet firmly planted upon 
 Earth. Contact with her will infuse into him a native 
 282
 
 MANUAL LABOUR 
 
 strength which he cannot elsewhere obtain. Made 
 'independent' of physical toil, as it is called, lifted 
 above his native heath by artificial means, man becomes, 
 with all his artificial glamour and display, if not a moral 
 and physical weakling, at least a maimed mortal. 
 
 But if every man is to devote some portion of his time 
 to manual labour, will this not depreciate the quality of 
 the higher kinds of work? Will the preacher, the 
 teacher, the scientist, the artist, the poet, be able to 
 serve society as well? Will not their work suffer? 
 Their work may certainly lose something in fineness, in 
 elaboration, in subtlety, in cunning, but it will surely 
 gain much more than it loses, for it will gain in strength, 
 serenity, insight, reality, virility, truth to life. The 
 speaker, the thinker, the observer, and the fine crafts- 
 man, cannot but be the better for contact with nature 
 in the only real way — in the wrestle of work. Nor must 
 it be forgotten that these professional classes already 
 find physical exercise a necessity. The time taken in 
 physical exercises of a monotonous, or mechanical, or 
 unproductive order could be better employed in real 
 work. If the former are not found incompatible with a 
 high quality of mental work, neither would the latter be. 
 Emerson well says that ' no separation from labour can 
 be without some loss of power and of truth to the seer 
 himself. I doubt not the vices and faults of our Htera- 
 ture and philosophy, their too great fineness, effeminacy, 
 and melancholy, are attributable to the enervated and 
 sickly habits of the literary class. Better that the book 
 should not be quite so good, and the bookmaker abler 
 and better, and not himself often a ludicrous contrast to 
 all that he has written.' ^ These are words well worth 
 ' Man the Reformer, p. 282. 
 283
 
 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 pondering over in tliis physically ' unfit ' age, this period 
 of decadent literature, which is accompanied by such 
 prolific evils. Thoreau says : ' Steady labour with the 
 hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unques- 
 tionably the best method of sending palaver and senti- 
 mentality out of one's style, both in speaking and writing.' ^ 
 And in his Walderi he utters words of wisdom similar to 
 those of Emerson : ' The student who secures his coveted 
 leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any 
 labour necessary to man, obtains but an ignoble and 
 unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience 
 which alone makes leisure fruitful. " But," says one, 
 "you do not mean that students should go to work with 
 their hands instead of their heads ? " I do not mean 
 that exactly, but I mean something which he might 
 think a good deal like that. I mean that they should 
 not play life or study it merely, while the community 
 supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it 
 from beginning to end. How could youths better learn 
 to live than by at once trying the experiment of living ? ' 
 
 Another difficulty in the way of every man doing 
 justice to the claims of manual labour is that society 
 would thereby forfeit all the economical advantages of 
 the division of labour. This is supposed to be the 
 triumph of organized industry ; and it would certainly be 
 a return to a very primitive, if not a barbaric, condition 
 of things, if every man took upon himself to supply all 
 his own wants by his own labours. There are not 
 wanting those who in their reaction from the excessive 
 subdivision of labour, and the evils which have followed 
 in its train, have advocated even this backward step. 
 Bondareff, the Russian, quoted by Count Tolstoi, says 
 ' A Week on the Concord, p. 90. 
 284
 
 MANUAL LABOUR 
 
 that * sin proceeds solely from the evasion of the law : 
 " in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." The 
 first, chief, and most immutable duty of man is this 
 obligation to earn his bread by the labour of his hands, 
 understanding thereby all the heavy, coarse work which 
 must be undertaken to save him from dying of cold and 
 hunger, to obtain bread, and drink, and clothing, and 
 housing, and fuel. This law, which has hitherto been 
 accepted only of necessity, must be acknowledged as a 
 righteous law of life obligatory on all.' 
 
 Tolstoi himself declares that this law can only be 
 avoided by what he calls ' the cunning, fiendish doctrine 
 of division of labour.' He exhorts modern men thus : 
 ' Stand in line ! begin with your weak, unpractised hands 
 the first work that feeds the hungry and clothes the 
 naked — begin the " bread-labour," the struggle with 
 nature, and for the first time you will feel solid ground 
 under your feet ; you will feel at home, free and stead- 
 fast, and that you need go no further. You will 
 experience those real, unpoisoned joys which can be 
 found nowhere else — no, not behind doors and curtains.' 
 Society, for its sins, has had such John Baptists as 
 Tolstoi and Edward Carpenter sent to rebuke it. The 
 asceticism of these noble-minded men is, however, a 
 mere tonic, and not good for human nature's daily food. 
 Much more sane is the view of Emerson, who is glad 
 when such an example is set, for he says : ' When many 
 persons shall have done this, when the majority shall admit 
 the necessity of reform, abuses will be redressed, and 
 the way will be open again to the advantages which 
 arise from the division of labour.' This is certain, that 
 nothing but a revived sense of the dignity of labour — its 
 dignity, that is, as performed by jne, not another — will 
 285
 
 THE CLAIMS OF MANUAL LABOUR 
 
 save us from straying far from the assigned path of 
 social and spiritual well-being. 
 
 The immediate task, therefore, is to redeem labour 
 from the hereditary contempt into which it has fallen. 
 In communities based on slavery, it can easily be under- 
 stood that manual labour, undertaken only by slaves, 
 should be despised by freemen ; but it ought not to be 
 in Christendom, where the nature of man, elevated by 
 the Incarnation, dignifies the most menial toil, and 
 where the example of Christ Himself and that of His 
 first followers sanctifies for ever manual labour. Mediaeval 
 monks bravely tried by personal example to redeem it 
 from the contempt which came upon it in Christendom, 
 but military ages intervened, and cast scorn upon slow, 
 peaceful, and laborious methods of earning a living ; 
 and capitalistic ages succeeded them, with rapid means of 
 gaining wealth and rank, and taught men to despise 
 those who had need to toil manually ; and so it has come 
 to pass that it is now thought degrading for men to soil 
 their hands with actual work. Our colonists in Africa — 
 South and East and West — will not do it, and regard 
 the natives who do it as essentially inferior — a significantly 
 heathen attitude which the High Commissioner, Lord 
 Selborne, has recently rebuked at Johannesburg. But 
 more Christian conceptions must be entertained of 
 labour and labourers. So far from being despised for 
 their hard, rough, dirty work, they must be honoured — 
 nay, more, envied ! They perform a work which places 
 society under a deep obligation to them — the more lowly 
 and disagreeable the toil, the greater the obligation ; and 
 they are, after all, nearer to the heart of things, in closer 
 touch with the realities of life, for they ' worship at the 
 temple's inner shrine.' 
 
 286
 
 XI 
 
 THE FUNCTION 
 
 OF FRIENDLY 
 
 SOCIETIES 
 
 287
 
 XI 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF FRIENDLY 
 SOCIETIES 1 
 
 The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee ; nor, 
 again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. — St. Paul. 
 
 It is as true of human society in general as it is of that 
 particular portion of it, the Christian Church, that ' the 
 eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee ; 
 nor, again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you.' 
 No one portion of society is independent of the other 
 portions ; all are members one of another. It is ex- 
 tremely necessary for all parts of the body politic to 
 remember this, for occasionally both its upper and its 
 lower members endeavour in turn to dispense with each 
 other. ^ Now the hand exclaims, ' Out with the eye ! ' 
 and the feet, ' Off with the head ! ' And anon the eye 
 would dispense with the hand, and the head with the 
 feet. The sin of * the eye and the head ' is more frequent 
 and more to be expected than the sin of ' the hands and 
 the feet,' yet it is the more heinous, as a sin against light 
 and knowledge- 
 There is what may be called, in the highest sense of 
 
 ' Delivered before the Friendly Societies of Hunslet, Leeds, 
 June 1890. 
 
 T 289
 
 THE FUNCTION OF 
 
 the word, an ' aristocracy ' of the working classes, as 
 well as of the ' upper ' classes — viz. that portion which 
 gathers itself into friendly societies, trade-unions, and 
 co-operative societies. This section of the working 
 classes needs to develop an increasing sense of relation- 
 ship with and responsibility towards the lower working 
 classes. Such a deepening sense of relationship and 
 responsibility is necessary to the very existence of both. 
 
 Mr. ^ Charles Booth states that 35 per cent, of the 
 population of East London is below the line of poverty — 
 that is, worse than ' poor.' He analyzes that 35 per 
 cent, into classes, and finds that 1 1 per cent, are ' very 
 poor,' and I5 per cent, are semi-criminal ; these two 
 classes together number 110,000, out of a population of 
 800,000 working people. Mr. Booth declares that they 
 are the crux of the question of poverty in East London, 
 and therefore everywhere else. 
 
 It is of the first importance to the community at large, 
 and especially to the working classes immediately above 
 them, that these two classes should, if possible, be 
 improved out of existence. Mr. Booth has his own 
 plans for dealing with them — he would harry the semi- 
 criminal class out of existence by the police, and find 
 compulsory State employment for the 'very poor.' Into 
 these remedies there is no need here to enter ; but the 
 facts are very instructive. These utterly poverty-stricken, 
 crime-haunted classes exist in sufiiciently large propor- 
 tions in all the large towns and cities of England to 
 constitute, if not an imminent peril, yet a very grave 
 evil, not to be tolerated a day longer than necessary. 
 Their abolition, and the abolition (by improving them 
 out of existence) of the ' poor ' classes immediately above 
 ' Now ' Rt. Hon.' 
 290
 
 FRIENDLY SOCIETIES 
 
 them, is a question of the first importance to the working 
 classes earning regular wages and fairly comfortable. 
 To the middle and upper classes, these very poor are 
 not a direct and immediate peril — to them they are more 
 an object of compassionate interest than anything else ; 
 but to the comfortable working classes they are a constant 
 hindrance and a constant menace. 
 
 By their competition, their pressing needs, their lack 
 of combination, they lower wages ; by their thriftlessness, 
 poverty, vice, and crime, they raise both rates and taxes. 
 They thus damage the resources of the better working 
 classes at both ends ; they decrease their income and 
 increase their expenditure. Nor is this all : as long as 
 they continue to live in the close proximity they do, 
 their dirt and disease defile the dwellings and poison 
 the air of the given districts, whilst, at the same time, 
 their idle and vicious habits lower the moral tone of the 
 localities. Then, if the respectable working classes are 
 forced to remove, in order to escape the danger and 
 degradation of their presence, they are driven often into 
 social isolation, industrial inconvenience, and increased 
 expense, and these low classes are left to greater reck- 
 lessness and neglect. The higher working classes may 
 escape, by removal, from the moral and physical con- 
 tamination of their depraved and impoverished brethren, 
 but they cannot escape from the drain, direct or indirect, 
 upon their none-too-great resources. It is, therefore, of 
 great practical importance to them that these classes 
 should be raised in the moral and social scale. 
 
 Mere charity will not solve their problem ; if it would, 
 
 it would long ago have been solved, for the generosity 
 
 of the working classes towards the unfortunate and 
 
 needy amongst them is proverbial. But these dejected 
 
 291
 
 THE FUNCTION OF 
 
 and degraded classes can stand much poverty. Their 
 better-to-do neighbours might drain themselves dry, and 
 yet not satisfy their horse-leech propensity. A social 
 problem is half solved when once it is understood, and 
 therefore it is the business of those most concerned to 
 make the condition of these forlorn classes the subject 
 of deep, wise, and sympathetic study. 
 
 In the prosecution of this study, it is helpful to 
 remember that, as Mr. Charles Booth says, there are 
 three branches of the problem — there are questions of 
 employment, questions of circumstances, and questions 
 of habit, to be considered. These are perhaps difficult 
 to disentangle, for they act, and react, and involve each 
 other ; but it is a great aid to both thought and action 
 to remember them. There are the physical causes of 
 poverty — poverty caused by sickness, preventable disease, 
 insanitation, unhealthy dwellings, large families, &c. ; and 
 there are the social, or economic, causes of poverty — 
 poverty caused by lack of employment, vicissitude of 
 trade, new machinery, insufficient wages, lack of trade 
 organizations, defective intelligence, training and skill. 
 The most pressing economic need of the ' very poor ' is 
 organization of work and organization of leisure — some 
 means by which to defend themselves against unfair and 
 undue pressure, and some way of utilizing enforced 
 hours of leisure, as in technical training or literary 
 cultivation, so as to increase facility in changing em- 
 ployment, or, at least, prevent demoralization. These 
 depressed classes need to be helped to a threefold 
 insurance — an insurance against sickness, an insurance 
 against starvation, and an insurance against lack of 
 work. 
 
 Nor must the moral causes of poverty be overlooked. 
 292
 
 FRIENDLY SOCIETIES 
 
 No doubt physical and economic causes occupy a chief 
 place in this problem, but moral causes also largely enter 
 into it. Much of the poverty of the lower labouring 
 classes is self-caused — caused by sheer laziness, by drink, 
 gambling, and vicious living. There is as truly a 
 ' leisured class ' amongst the working classes as amongst 
 the upper classes — a class which will not work, yet loves 
 to eat ; which goes about seeking what and whom it 
 may devour, preying upon families and upon society, 
 upon women and children, and those who do work. It 
 is an absolute anomaly to count such amongst the zvork- 
 ing classes; such do not even belong to the ^ox\iless 
 classes, but to the idle classes. The moral condition of 
 such people must be improved, or else, so far as they 
 are concerned, all will be of no avail. 
 
 This can be best done by the respectable working 
 classes. The middle and upper classes may contribute 
 something from their education, leisure, and wealth, but 
 those who understand the position and social needs of 
 these unfortunates almost from experience, and at least 
 from near proximity, will have to do most of the work of 
 raising them ; they best can reach them, and adapt and 
 work the methods and machinery of reform. 
 
 Such a mission should make a manifold appeal to the 
 better working classes. It should appeal to their instinct 
 of self-preservation. It is to them a life-and-death matter. 
 If they would save themselves from demoralization and 
 destruction, if they would gain and retain for themselves, 
 their wives and children, an adequate income, sweeter 
 and more wholesome surroundings, and a purer moral 
 atmosphere, they must take up this task. It should 
 appeal also to their instinct of pity. The debased and 
 brutalized condition of these their brothers and sisters — 
 293
 
 THE FUNCTION OF 
 
 their poverty, squalor, and filth, their vice and immorality, 
 their low standards of life and conduct, and the way in 
 which they are exploited, ground down, and oppressed — 
 should appeal to their compassion. 
 
 Such a work, undertaken by the upper working classes 
 with earnestness and enthusiasm, would react upon them 
 as a noble self-discipline. Young working men would 
 then have no time for a wasteful and shameful amount of 
 recreation and amusement, for a wicked expenditure of 
 money in excessive football, cricket, cycling, and other 
 sports — in drinking, gambling, and impurity. It would 
 be their physical and moral salvation if they devoted 
 some of their leisure to investigating the causes of these 
 social evils and perils, by personal observation and study. 
 It would stimulate and develop their intellect and 
 sympathy. 
 
 When they came to deal practically with the moral 
 part of the problem, not the least benefit it would bring 
 would be a new sense of the value of the Christian 
 religion, of the unique power there is in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ to impart and maintain, both in themselves and in 
 those they try to reform, an adequate zeal for goodness, 
 purity, justice, and truth. They would discover that 
 the best moral and spiritual equipment for the devoted, 
 untiring, and successful service of man is personal 
 surrender of the will and heart to Jesus Christ. 
 
 There is another, though quite different, direction in 
 which there is need to cultivate between two portions of 
 modern society a mutual sense of responsibility, viz. 
 between the Christian Church and friendly societies. 
 The relationship between these is far closer than some 
 are inclined to think — it is an historic relationship. The 
 Christian Church itself was first taken cognisance of by 
 294
 
 FRIENDLY SOCIETIES 
 
 the Roman Empire as a friendly society. It was 
 registered as a burial club, when it was found that the 
 Christians were a brotherhood, providing for their own 
 sick, aged, and poor, and burying their own dead. But 
 interesting as this coincidence is, the connexion is still 
 more truly historical. The Christian Church is not 
 simply the mother friendly society in Europe, and that in 
 the most literal sense, but modern friendly societies, 
 which may be traced back to the mediaeval gilds, and 
 were mainly of ecclesiastical origin, may be said to be 
 the creation of the Christian Church. 
 
 The Christian Church during the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries, in order to protect burghers and 
 craftsmen in those lawless and coercive times, created 
 and supported the merchants' and crafts' gilds. They 
 were at once trade-unions, benefit societies, and social 
 clubs. Their bond of union was religious — each gild 
 had its patron saint, its religious rites, and its ecclesiastical 
 sanction and support. In time, some of these gilds 
 grew rich and powerful, and at last inefficient, until, at 
 the Reformation, Henry VI 11 and Edward VI, taking 
 advantage of their ecclesiastical origin, confiscated their 
 funds and properties. These funds and properties were 
 divided between the Crown and the nobility, to the last- 
 ing detriment of the English working classes and the 
 friendly society or trade-union movement. With the 
 exception of the London gilds, which were able to buy 
 themselves off, and continued to occupy a prominent 
 place in city Ufe, these gilds lingered on, poverty-stricken 
 and unknown, in obscure ways and places, until their 
 revival at the beginning of this century. 
 
 That revival shows again the close natural connexion 
 existing between the Christian Church and modern 
 295
 
 THE FUNCTION OF 
 
 friendly societies. In numbers of cases they were 
 revived by clergymen and ministers of religion, both in 
 town and country. Pitying the condition of the people, 
 these true pastors, together with wise and wealthy lay- 
 men, reorganized, subsidized, and managed some of 
 these old societies until such time as the working-men 
 members were able to manage them themselves. This is 
 the genesis of many of our modern friendly societies. 
 
 But if they owe something to the Church, it is equally 
 true that the Church owes not a little to friendly societies. 
 They have been valuable auxiharies in the great work of 
 moralizing the people. At first, the modern friendly 
 society did not seem likely to render much aid in elevating 
 the moral and mental condition of the working classes. 
 The lodges were held at public-houses, often of the least 
 reputable order, and the lodge-nights were merely 
 occasions for drinking and degrading companionships. 
 Not a few withdrew from them in early days upon that 
 very account. These lodge-nights were dreaded by 
 wives, mothers, and sisters, who declared that they lost 
 by them far more than they gained, both in money and 
 in domestic happiness. This, of course, is largely a thing 
 of the past. Friendly societies have proved themselves, 
 in many ways, a boon to the working classes. They 
 have attracted to themselves, finally, the very flower of 
 those classes, and are now of such magnitude that it has 
 long been seen to be necessary to their existence that 
 they should be conducted upon a good moral, as well as 
 upon a good financial, basis. The mottoes and rules of 
 these societies indicate this. The Oddfellows' motto is, 
 * Friendship, Love, and Truth,' and the Foresters', ' Bene- 
 volence, Unity, and Concord ' ; and the rules of the latter 
 declare that no one is admitted to membership 'who 
 296
 
 FRIENDLY SOCIETIES 
 
 bears a bad character, who leads a dissolute life, frequents 
 bad company, is guilty of habitual intoxication, or of 
 quarrelsome behaviour.' If these mottoes and rules are 
 more honoured in the observance than the breach, as 
 undoubtedly they are, they must materially assist in the 
 moral elevation of the working classes. Although these 
 societies naturally and wisely refuse to identify them- 
 selves with any religious denomination, they are leavened 
 with Christian feeling and principle. The Christian 
 Church cannot but regard them as helpers in the work 
 of the elevation of the people. The mental training and 
 stimulus given by their business meetings, their frequent 
 discussions, their habits of combination and organization, 
 are most valuable, and they directly encourage and 
 develop the virtues of forethought, self-reliance, self- 
 control, thrift, sobriety, industry, and brotherly kindness. 
 The Christian Church and modern society owe more 
 than they know to friendly societies. They have raised 
 a great class — the cream of the working classes of this 
 country — directly interested in law, order, progress, and 
 public and private morality. They have materially 
 helped, with trade unions and co-operative societies, to 
 solve the great problem of civilized existence for the 
 skilled labouring classes ; it only remains for them to do 
 the same for the unskilled labouring classes, and then 
 more than ever ' the eye and head ' — the Christian 
 Church — will be unable to say, even if she felt inclined, 
 to ' the hands and feet ' — the associated working classes 
 — ' I have no need of you.' 
 
 There is danger, on the other hand, that the associated 
 
 working classes should say to the Christian Church, 'We 
 
 have no need of you.' But the Christian Church is the 
 
 necessary complement to friendly societies. The working 
 
 297
 
 THE FUNCTION OF 
 
 men of England can make no greater mistake than to 
 look coldly upon religion and the Christian Church. 
 Morality, conscience, honour, and almost all the virtues, 
 are essential to the successful working of trade-unions 
 and friendly societies, as well as necessary in and for 
 themselves. But the more it is pondered over, the more 
 it will be seen that morality is neither self-originated 
 nor self-supporting. It needs a basis, it needs motives, 
 sanctions, supports, such as are given only in God and 
 religion. Without these no morality can last long. If 
 conscience and morality are essential to the well-being 
 and progress of the working classes, and if these involve 
 God and religion, then the Christian Church, as the 
 organ of religion, is an institution which they should 
 use, prize, and uphold. The Christian Church is indeed 
 the necessary complement to friendly societies. The 
 latter make provision for material wants, the former for 
 spiritual wants. 
 
 The danger of the working classes of to-day is that 
 in their just struggles for a fairer and larger share of the 
 things they so largely help to produce, and in the increase 
 of comfort which success in that struggle slowly but 
 surely brings to them, they should become materialized. 
 Their danger is, undue care for comfort. ' Thrift ' may 
 come to mean selfishness, injustice, grasping meanness, 
 stinginess, the exploitation of others, and many other 
 low and unworthy qualities. From all this the Christian 
 Church will save them because she emphasizes the 
 spiritual side of life. She stands as the witness in time 
 for spirituality and eternity ; her finger points to holiness, 
 heaven, and God. 'This earth,' she cries, ' is not man's 
 home; he soon is gone, and the place that knows him 
 now shall soon know him no more for ever.' ' The 
 298
 
 FRIENDLY SOCIETIES 
 
 kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteous- 
 ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' ' Man does 
 not live by bread alone, but by every word which 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' This is the 
 Church's message. A very common charge against her 
 is that she is ' other-worldly,' that she deceives the 
 common people by offering them a blank cheque pay- 
 able in heaven. No doubt at times the Church has 
 been too sublimely unconscious that earth is as real, 
 though not as lasting, as heaven, that man is body as 
 well as soul. But society can afford to forgive her ! 
 Better she should have sometimes forgotten that than 
 the other — which, alas ! she has not infrequently done, 
 to the loss of society — better for her to be too spiritual 
 than not spiritual enough. It is really the chief value 
 of the Church to society that she witnesses steadily to 
 the truth that ' the things which are seen are temporal, 
 and the things which are not seen are eternal,' and 
 society will do well to heed her testimony, for it is in 
 mortal peril of over-valuing material gains and advantages, 
 forgetting that these do not necessarily bring happiness, 
 and certainly not goodness. The working classes must 
 especially beware that they do not fall into the snare 
 of the enemy, as did the middle classes, which became 
 the stronghold of the sturdy British Philistine — that man 
 of low ideals and gross self-satisfaction, at whom the 
 working men have continually girded, but from whose 
 fate in the day of their struggle and success only religion 
 and culture will save them. 
 
 Friendly societies make material provision for the tem- 
 poral future ; the Christian Church provides spiritually 
 both for the present and for the eternal future. Friendly 
 societies invite good and necessary investment against 
 299
 
 THE FUNCTION OF 
 
 financial pressure and need ; but there is another class 
 of attendant evils against which they cannot insure a 
 man — those of the mind and spirit. There are worse 
 things than even pain and poverty. There is the 
 despondency which accompanies sickness, the anxious 
 forebodings, the sense of imperfection, unworthiness, and 
 sin, the heart-break and anguish of sorrowing dear ones 
 when death invades the home, the hard, lonely years 
 awaiting the widow and fatherless when the bread-winner 
 is struck down ! Is there any insurance against these ? 
 The Christian Church is the only friendly society which 
 insures men against undue sorrow, over-anxiety, the sense 
 of unforgiven sin, the horror of death, and the terrors 
 of the Day of Judgement ; which befriends the fatherless 
 and the widow with consolations which the world can 
 neither give nor take away. The Christian Church 
 invites men to complete the insurance of their lives. 
 The simple premium to be paid is self-surrender to 
 Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Working men who 
 are wise enough to insure themselves against the financial 
 demands of the future, should also be wise enough to 
 insure themselves against the moral and spiritual needs of 
 the present and the future. They should provide not only 
 for the outer, but also for the inner man. The members of 
 friendly societies, of all men, should make such provision. 
 They who have had forethought for the temporal future, 
 of all men, should provide for the eternal future. Having 
 so well anticipated the less, they should go on to 
 anticipate the greater. This can be done through Christ 
 and His Church. Every man will inevitably come upon 
 his lodge for the last time. His case will be visited and 
 reported upon, the sick-pay will come, and, alas ! will 
 go on ; the club doctor will look grave, and soon, with 
 300
 
 FRIENDLY SOCIETIES 
 
 loved ones weeping round the bed, the end will come, 
 and then in stately, slow procession the journey to the 
 long home will be taken. There is no adequate pre- 
 paration to be made for that great and inevitable day 
 apart from Christ and the Christian Church — the neces- 
 sary and most comfortable complement of the friendly 
 society. 
 
 301
 
 XII 
 
 DRINK AND THE 
 SOCIAL QUESTION 
 
 303
 
 XII 
 DRINK AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION 
 
 Either these poor are a race essentially different from ours, and 
 unredeemable (which, however often implied, I have heard none yet 
 openly say), or else, by such care as we ourselves received, we may 
 make them continent and sober as ourselves. — RusKlN. 
 
 The long-foretold Social Question is now full upon 
 society. The evidence of it is the socialization of 
 municipal and imperial politics. The Drink Question, 
 alas ! has been long upon society also, unsolved, and 
 apparently insoluble. What is the relation betvi^een 
 these two questions ? That is a matter much neglected, 
 and yet it is important to both questions that it be 
 carefully considered. The relation is really twofold and 
 reciprocal — there is the relation of the Social Question 
 to the Drink, and the relation of the Drink to the Social 
 Question. 
 
 First, then, drink in relation to social conditions. 
 Nothing is gained by making the Drink Question too 
 simple ; it is, in fact, a most complicated question. 
 Temperance reformers are in danger of forgetting this, 
 and advocating heroic remedies — remedies good and 
 great, but too high and too simple. They have failed 
 to realize the relation of social reform to drink reform 
 u 305
 
 DRINK AND THE 
 
 — that the one is often a necessary preliminary to the 
 other. 
 
 Studied in a broad and historic spirit, the Drink 
 Question appears to be partly and largely an effect as 
 well as a cause of both past and present social con- 
 ditions. There is no doubt that the nipping, eager, 
 wrathful cold of this Northern climate has predisposed 
 the Anglo-Saxon race to the use of fiery stimulants ; 
 but this predisposition has been hugely fostered by the 
 social and industrial condition of the masses of the 
 people for centuries. Time was when beer, with its 
 permanent possibilities of excess, was the staple drink 
 at the meals at which now universally tea and coffee 
 are drunk. The insufficient food, the exhausting labour, 
 and the degrading surroundings and habits of past 
 industrial generations, have also handed down to 
 present times hereditary alcoholic cravings. To realize 
 how transmissible these cravings are, there is nothing 
 to be done but to learn the pathology and physiology 
 of alcohol, to remember the drink-histories of some 
 families, or to read Ibsen's ghastly play — Ghosts. 
 
 This fierce craving, this latent hunger for alcohol, 
 is fostered by modern social and industrial conditions. 
 There is the over-crowding of our great cities, their 
 tenement houses, their slums, their insanitation, their 
 vitiated atmosphere, and their awful dreariness ! These 
 most certainly feed the drink passion. The late Lord 
 Shaftesbury said : ' I am sure that a great number of 
 people who are in that condition ' (debased by drink) 
 'have been made so by the condition of the houses 
 in which they live.' The Report of the Royal Com- 
 mission of 1880 declares that 'overcrowding lowers 
 the general standard ; the people get depressed and 
 306
 
 SOCIAL QUESTION 
 
 weary.' Add to this the long hours of labour, the 
 low and precarious wages of vast masses of wage- 
 earners, the monotony of their work and of their life, 
 with the consequent exhaustion, weariness, ignorance, 
 and brutality, and any one can see that the temptations 
 to repair to the drink-shop are very great. They be- 
 come almost irresistible when, in the absence of all 
 counter-attractions, the facilities for drinking are exces- 
 sive, when hard by their hovels flourish the palaces of 
 drink. Mr. H. M. Hyndman, the Socialist, says : ' When 
 I note that the public-houses are the only places where 
 workmen can conveniently meet their fellows, I wonder 
 that the very poor should be as temperate, as saving, 
 as contented, as they are. Misery leads to gin, as 
 well as gin to misery.' 
 
 The cure for intemperance is not as simple as it 
 seems, either to those who advocate merely total 
 abstinence, or to those who agitate only for the direct 
 veto. Total abstinence on any large and effectual scale, 
 and the condemnation of the drink traffic by the direct 
 veto of the people in the districts where that is most 
 needed, will be very difficult, if not impossible, to secure 
 in the presence of the above-named social evils. With 
 those excellent remedies, and that more doubtful pallia- 
 tive ' disinterested management,' must go hand-in-hand 
 social and industrial reform — the proper and wholesome 
 housing of the poor, reasonable hours and healthy habits 
 of labour, the redistribution of wealth, education, a wider 
 horizon, and higher ideals. Then, and not till then, 
 Cometh the end. 
 
 But here comes in the other sad reciprocal relation 
 of these so complex problems. By a strange paradox, 
 when men seek to secure the reforms by which they 
 307
 
 DRINK AND THE 
 
 would abolish the drink, their chief obstacle is the drink 
 itself. When needed social and industrial reforms are 
 urged upon legislators and landowners, capitalists and 
 employers, they are frequently refused on the ground that 
 the working classes would drink away their advantages. 
 
 Of course such an objection is not a valid one, for 
 even if working men would do as averred, that would 
 be their own business ; they have still a right to justice 
 and their own, and have as much right to resent an in- 
 quisitorial spirit as have the middle classes, who quickly 
 resent any criticisms of their social habits, especially 
 if they come from sources where those criticisms are 
 of pecuniary advantage to the critics. But undoubtedly 
 their drinking habits create a prejudice in many noble 
 minds against the working classes. Working men must 
 recognize that it is drink which hinders and postpones 
 needed social and industrial reforms. It will not do 
 to say that they will wrest from the upper classes their 
 rights — that they have the power ! This is true, they 
 have the power, but of what value will increased leisure, 
 wages, and social amenities be to them unless they 
 abandon their drinking habits and stay the drink plague ? 
 
 Those Socialists greatly mislead the working classes who 
 deprecate their becoming total abstainers, on the ground 
 that this will but give the employers a fresh power of re- 
 ducing wages, and who, moreover, state that to cease 
 spending will mean to damage production by reducing 
 consumption. For this advice is, first of all, immoral, and 
 then it is uneconomical. Both reasons should weigh with 
 Socialists — at any rate, they will with ordinary Englishmen. 
 Even were it true that employers would try to reduce 
 wages when they found the workman prospering because 
 he had given up drinking, it is utterly immoral to waste 
 308
 
 SOCIAL QUESTION 
 
 money required for necessaries in drink. As to dimin- 
 ishing consumption, to abstain from strong drink will 
 certainly diminish the consumption of strong drink, 
 and so damage that trade ; but it will increase general 
 consumption by leaving the workman free to spend 
 his money in more remunerative articles of consumption. 
 The cessation from the degrading habit of over-drinking 
 will also raise his standard of living, and so stimulate 
 production and improve the condition of the working 
 classes. In fact, this argument of some Socialists in 
 favour of continued drinking is another form of the 
 old economic fallacy of money spent in luxury. The 
 Socialists are very fond of demonstrating that money 
 spent on luxury by the rich is money wasted, and they 
 have all the economists on their side. But the excessive 
 expenditure of the working classes upon drink is but 
 another form of the same economic evil. It is a comfort 
 that all the leaders of the working classes do not take 
 this Socialist attitude. Many of them, chief among them 
 John Burns and Keir Hardie, are total abstainers, and 
 they, and men like J. Ramsay Macdonald, Arthur Hender- 
 son, Will Crooks, John Hodge, and others declare in no 
 measured language that drink, as well as gambling, is 
 a curse to the working-class movement. If the resources 
 already wasted in drink and gambling had been used by the 
 working classes for the amelioration of their own condition 
 and the strengthening of their own social and industrial 
 position, they would have been in a state of prosperity 
 to-day. With a vast decrease in rates and taxes, with 
 an increased demand for all sorts of labour, and their 
 deliverance from a large amount of self-caused misery, 
 poverty, vice, disease, and crime, their material as well 
 as their moral condition to-day would have been infinitely 
 309
 
 DRINK AND THE 
 
 better than it is. Tlie working classes could have indefi- 
 nitely strengthened their industrial and political power 
 in this country, despite every existing disadvantage, had 
 they but used the money wasted in drink and gambling 
 in the support and development of friendly and insurance 
 societies, of distributive and productive co-operation, 
 in the support of trade-unions and labour organiza- 
 tions. There might long ago have existed a strong, in- 
 telligent, well-educated, and influential Labour Party, 
 with; numerous and respected representatives in Parlia- 
 ment like that now at Westminster. Well might Mr. 
 W. R. Greg say, reviewing the third quarter of this 
 century, ' They ' (the working people of England) ' have 
 had a golden opportunity, such as is seldom offered to a 
 nation, of becoming respectable, comfortable, instructed, 
 and secure — a people with a balance at its bankers', 
 a people of capitalists instead of proletaires — and to 
 have not so much let it slip foolishly from them as flung 
 it recklessly away ' in drink, gambling, and improvidence. 
 It is, then, quite true that, while social conditions have 
 much to do with our drinking habits, we must not entirely 
 blame the social system. The disappearance or substantial 
 reduction of the Drink Bill, quite apart from any social 
 reforms, would at once vastly improve the material and 
 moral condition of the people. Its decrease to the extent 
 of some twenty-two millions in seven years is one of the 
 brightest signs of the times. Even in the most wretched 
 circumstances, drink can be no alleviation, but only an 
 intensification of personal and social misery. Despite 
 every temptation, working men should avoid the drink as 
 an enemy. Granted many unwarrantable temptations in 
 their social and industrial surroundings, nevertheless 
 after all, they are moral agents, and responsible for their 
 310
 
 SOCIAL QUESTION 
 
 actions. It is man's prerogative to overcome adverse 
 circumstances. The workman possesses will-power and 
 the grace of God ; he must therefore resist, however 
 great, the temptations to drink. Indeed, he can turn 
 these temptations to his own advantage. Tennyson's 
 ' Northern Cobbler ' had his enemy, gin, corked up in a 
 large bottle, and placed in the window — ever before 
 him. After many a sore struggle, he found in the ever- 
 present enemy a source, not of temptation, but of inspira- 
 tion, enthusiasm, and strength. So, in the presence of 
 continual organized and legalized temptations to drink, 
 English working men must rise up in their manhood, 
 and, with divine help, turn them from a source of 
 stumbling into one of inspiration and indignant strength. 
 Drink reform should occupy a very prominent place in 
 the workers' programme. It should begin with the 
 work of moral suasion and the protection of the young. 
 Earnest efforts should be put forth to secure wide-spread 
 habits of total abstinence, or, at least, the practice of the 
 severest moderation in the use of intoxicating drinks. 
 Then the movement should work up to the most desirable 
 end of reducing the number of legalized temptations 
 to drink and strictly controlling the drink-trade. The 
 working classes should demand such legislation as shall 
 prevent rich brewers, drink-lords, and dividend-hunters 
 from preying upon the labouring portion of the commu- 
 nity for their own financial advantage. They should 
 never rest until such selfish, wasteful, and anti-social 
 conduct is legally restrained. Until these things be 
 done, one of the gravest hindrances to social reform will 
 remain to block the way. 
 
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