THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY " ON me demandera si je suis prince ou legislateur, pour ^crire sur la politique. Je rdponds que non, et que c'est pour cela que j'ecris sur la politique. Si j'etais prince ou legislateur, je ne perdrais pas mon temps a dire ce qu'il faut faire ; je le ferais ou je me tairais." J.-J. ROUSSEAU. J p THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY BY FABIAN WARE LONDQN EDWARD ARNOLD 1912 \All rights reserved] PREFACE PAKIS, September 1912. MY DEAR * *, I had intended to ask you to allow me to dedicate this book to you; I have decided, however, to preface it with an open letter addressed to you anonymously, without your permission. Let me explain the reasons which have led me to spare you this request. Finding myself unexpectedly enjoying a spell of absolute intellectual independence, after twenty-five years or, to put it grandiloquently, a quarter of a century of unconscious intellectual submission, my thoughts naturally turned to the contemplation of the whole system of wage-earning stretching out into the past behind me. I had tested it, in complete economic dependence, from somewhere very near the bottom to the top, and had discovered it to be pretty consistently rotten throughout. My own employers had been not a few, many others I had known intimately in their work. Some of them are dead and some of them may yet be living; but of those whom I know still to be enjoying the earthly gains or losses of their domination, you stand out as the one who, more than any other, made the salariat to borrow a word which vi PREFACE the English language lacks human and bearable. For those who served you the theory in which every English- man is trained in his youth that devotion to his job is not only claimed from him by the traditions of his race, but is a first condition to his own happiness was not one of the illusions which the practice of life dispels. For you your job was your mistress, and was no step- mother to those who worked under you; you did not underrate their natural desire for the pleasure of personal advancement, but you taught them to regard their own success as dependent on and inseparably asso- ciated with the success of their job. They rose, as it were, on the work which they built up, you, the supreme architect, from your lofty outlook warning off those evil fellows, to be found in every field of honest labour, who would have taken advantage of their absorption in their daily task to climb up, unnoticed, on to the growing structures and supplant them. Employers such as you were, if one may believe any records of the past, commoner in the days when the saying " honesty is the best policy " first became current and was the guiding principle to England's greatness than in the times in which we now live. Or rather, to modify that statement in the light of a working acquaintance with the younger nations of the Empire, they are rarer in the old countries than in the new ; the complications which follow in the train of material prosperity, the consolidations of an advanced civilisation, and the compression of the struggle for existence within the fixed geographical limits imposed upon the growing PREFACE vii population of European nations seeming to leave no room for the play of human sentiments ; on the other hand, these sentiments are the motive force of society in youthful nations where the possibilities of the future appear as illimitable as the territories they occupy. Oppressed with the sense that a departure from her traditional treatment of her workers had set in in England, and, as it was a certain cause of the present labour unrest so it would surely prove a cause of national decline, what more natural than that I should wish to pay the author's conventional tribute to you when publishing the results of an independent inquiry into the present relations of employer and employed ? But while I was convinced that my subjective attitude was one of which you would approve, the conclusions which forced themselves upon me as I studied these questions in my old student's quarters in an atmosphere charged with the influences of one hundred and forty years of revolutions 'have often been so far removed from the current orthodox political views, that con- tinually when recording them I have said to myself : " I wonder if he would agree with that." (For so great is the authority gained by an employer possessing the human qualities of leadership over the minds of those who have at any time served him, that however great the distance which separates them from him, they will continue mentally to refer their judgments to his approval) For this reason, among others, I have decided not even to give the appearance of wishing to associate you, by dedicating this book to you, with the viii PREFACE views expressed in it ; I prefer to take entire and unshielded responsibility for them. It is clear from what has been said that I shall await your opinion of what I have written with con- siderable anxiety. No excuse need therefore be offered for explaining briefly to you that I have forsaken the path which I originally traced out for myself when starting on this inquiry. It is astonishing, when one is really intellectually independent, how rapidly what had appeared to be firmly rooted beliefs are discovered to be but an upper growth of prejudices which slip from beneath one's feet and leave one standing on first principles as old as mankind itself. The systems which politicians and the weavers of intellectual theories have built up for the governed and the workers are then often seen to be foreign to the thoughts and instincts of those for whom they have been devised. One perceives two chains of thought, as it were, on to either of which one may link oneself, if in such an inquiry it is necessary to form a contact with the past. On the one hand there is the logical, intellectual development of the theories of the governing; on the other, the illogical, instinctive gathering of force of the revolt of the governed. It is to the latter that one must attach oneself if one is to obtain an insight of any practical value into the tendencies of what is known as the social movement. This I have done, thus departing from my original intention, and in so doing, you will agree, have not chosen the easier task. To accept the theories or systems to which one's PREFACE ix prejudices make one incline, to endeavour to push them forward a stage by research and the sifting of statistics, is a pleasant and stimulating exercise which may be carried out in accordance with set rules. To plunge into the activities of human instinct, to attempt to gauge and foretell the action of the forces of intuition, which are urging the workers and the governed onward to an unknown destiny, is no less stimulating ; but here is no plain sailing one embarks on a storm- swept, unfathomed, and uncharted sea. Of one, the greatest, danger I have been conscious throughout my work, and by its avoidance my success must be measured. So constraining is the force of habit that, in such a task as I have set myself, the temptation is ever present to shift from the instinctive point of view of the workers, which should be constantly and consist- ently adopted, and to construct one's own intellectual theories, drifting into little backwaters away from the main stream. The highest praise which I may there- fore expect from the holders of orthodox political views, of whatever school, is their condemnation for having introduced no finality into a discussion of the workings of human instinct which, they are apt to forget, moves and lives in the infinite. But from the general reader I would ask for indulgent it may even be, patient consideration of the discussion throughout these pages of first principles in their application to the new social movement; for first principles are the controlling forces of revolutions. You will probably agree with the view that in x PREFACE France are the origins to be sought of many of the tendencies which I have discussed. I shall therefore offer no apology for having written the greater part of my book here, attracted in the first instance by my affection for that great country which has more than once befriended me, giving me opportunities I could not find in my own country, and to whom I owe debts which can never be repaid. One consequent disadvantage must, however, be admitted, and that is, that I have meanwhile been out of touch with English thought on social questions, not having read any of the books which have been written during the last twelve months by my fellow-countrymen on the development of Syndical- ism. The loss for me is fortunately not irreparable. In the interests of symmetry, which is the ideal of the intellect, and against which I have so often tilted in these pages believing it to be an inveterate enemy of human harmony I should no doubt have been well- advised to devote a few more months to this work, pointing and polishing it, and introducing more apparent sequence into the train of thought. The temptation has been great, but has been rejected for three reasons : first, because a logical and intellectual dress will not fit what is essentially illogical and instinctive in form, and secondly, because if there is anything new, or not commonly accepted in the conclusions arrived at they should be placed before English readers without delay. For a critical moment has been reached in the social movement ; the revolutionary forces which have taken the offensive are hesitating as to whether to press PREFACE xi forward in which case they will probably receive a severe check or to "reculer pour mieux sauter," to pause while they consolidate and organise. The former seems to be the tendency in France, the latter in England. But even if the second alternative be that which is adopted, it behoves anyone who has looked below the surface to warn his countrymen, at the outset of the period of apparent calm which would ensue, that no lasting reaction as some of them would blindly believe is taking place ; the governed are not discouraged by the very partial success which has attended their recent outbursts, they are merely profiting from the experience gained to prepare, with greater deliberation, a new onslaught. The pause would, however, offer a golden opportunity to those who place the interests of the nation before that of any class, and who desire to secure a national, rather than a class, solution of the difficulties that beset the modern state. The third dread alternative, which, it will be seen, has been always present to my mind a European war is brought daily further within the sphere of practical possibilities and emphasises the urgency of the problems with which I have attempted to deal. Yours ever, FABIAN WARE. NOTE. My thanks are due to many persons for the ungrudging assistance they have given me in my inquiry. To M. Philippe Millet and to M. Daniel Halevy I am peculiarly indebted for introductions enabling me to discuss the social movement with authorities holding various views. I have also to thank the Editor of The Nineteenth Century for permission to use in the chapter on Internationalism material which appeared in an article which I wrote this year for the September number of that Review. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE AWAKENING OF PUBLIC OPINION The failure of Representative Government National un- p * easiness The mistrust of intellect Revolution and patriotism Democracy and Christianity . . .1 CHAPTER II THE HUMAN AND THE NATURAL ORDER OF ASSOCIATION Individualism and collectivism Unity and freedom The intellect and the human order The return to instinct Equality Intellectual conception of the human order 21 CHAPTER III DEMOCRACY AND THE HUMAN ORDER France and the human order Democracy and national unity Aristocratic tendencies to internationalism Aristoc- racy and the human order Class war . . .47 CHAPTER IV INTERNATIONALISM Religious internationalism Aristocratic internationalism Proletarian internationalism Internationalism and patriotism The seeds of anti-militarism . . .58 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER V THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL UNITY The causes of discontent among the governed The French '* Revolution and national unity The economic and the human order Aristocracy and the economic order Collectivism and the economic order The rejection of the parliamentary solution . . . . .78 CHAPTER VI THE STRUGGLE FOR A PROLETARIAN STATE The education of the proletariat Intellect and instinct M. Bergson's influence Rousseau and national unity The teaching of the Commune and German influences Isolation of the working classes The growth of Trade Unions State collectivism A party and a programme " Capitalist-made laws " . . . . .99 CHAPTER VII THE BOURSES DU TRAVAIL Their origin Fernand Pelloutier Closing of the Paris Bourse Confederation ..... 131 CHAPTER VIII THE FOUNDATIONS OF SYNDICALISM Syndicalists and Marx The strength of local association as shown in the part played by the Bourses in the develop- ment of syndicalism Federation of Trade Unions Federation of the Bourses The principles of Union . 146 CHAPTER IX THE GENERAL STRIKE Democratic organisation and machinery of the Confederation Tactics and ideals of syndicalism Violence M. Briand and the general strike "Direct" action to replace " political " action of the state-collectivists . 166 CONTENTS xv CHAPTER X ANTI-MILITARISM AND ANTI-PATRIOTISM The teaching of the Commune "Capitalist wars" Use of PAGB the army for the suppression of strikes Lessons of the French Railway Strike of 1910 The sou du soldat The effects of expatriation ..... 190 CHAPTER XI "BLACKLEGS" Incompatibility of the " right to combine" and "free labour" The democratic argument The trade union state within the state The syndicalist attitude . . 204 CHAPTER XII THE UNION OF MANUAL AND INTELLECTUAL WORKERS Legality and illegality A question of degree A possible democratic majority Spread of syndicalism among government officials, teachers, etc. .... 226 CHAPTER XIII WHAT IS TO BE DONE? Conclusions ....... 247 APPENDICES 277 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY CHAPTEK I THE AWAKENING OF PUBLIC OPINION NOBODY who has watched public opinion closely during recent years can have omitted to observe the growing disappointment and impatience with the compromise with democracy called Eepresentative Government ; for it has failed to eradicate those fundamental evils in human society for which preceding forms of government were thought to be responsible. 1 As one looks back to-day 1 It is not the intention here to enter into the question of the causes of the admitted breakdown of parliamentary machinery in this country. Those who are interested in that subject may be recommended to read a book which has recently appeared, entitled An Analysis of the Systems of Government throughout the British Empire (Macmillan. 1912). The failure of Representative Government is not confined to this country, and its causes cannot be sought in any local technical defects ; and even if the remedy were to be found in a reconstruction of machinery, the time has passed for carrying it out save possibly under a long and capable dictatorship. For the people have learnt to distrust the system itself, and the machinery peculiar to it. 2 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY over the history of the last century there is something pathetic in the faith of those generations who hailed with an enthusiasm akin to religious fervour each succeeding extension of the parliamentary franchise, believing that it had exalted the humble and meek in the human brotherhood, had built another span of the bridge over the gulfs of inequality, and had let the light of liberty into the darkness of social captivity. Among Englishmen, a quarter of a century ago, or even within a shorter space of time, those of one's own acquaintances who would have ventured to deny that parliamentary institutions had made England in fact what she had always been in name, a nation of free men, might have been counted on the fingers of one hand ; public opinion was sleeping comfortably in the full assurance that Parliament, whichever party was in power, was the watchful guardian as well as the ultimate redresser of the known wrongs of the poor and the oppressed. Now a remarkable change has taken place. Its causes are numerous and widespread, but certain of them stand out more clearly defined than others in the memory of any one who has had daily to note its development ; indeed so repeatedly were they emphasised in the current literature of the time that they will doubt- less be selected as picturing the social conditions of the present time, by writers of a future age who desire proof of the superiority of that in which they live. First, some bitter winter frosts disclosed the fact that in London, circling nightly within the very shadow of the buildings in which Representative Government was REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT FAILS 3 housed, were thousands of starving unemployed and unemployables, halting now and again in the shelter of doorways and arches to be moved on in the name of public order, then trotting off in little packs, like hungry wolves, on their monotonous round of paved despair. Then came the public revelation of what had long been known to those who make such matters their concern and spend themselves unrequited in the national interest ; that the woman of Hood's hackneyed poem, who had made the present generation weep in its childhood for the wrongs of a generation that had passed, was still living in the midst of the workers of to-day. An exhibition in the heart of the richest quarter of the richest capital of the world, organised by a newspaper, moved even the most thoughtless to pity and indignation with its display of sweated misery, the inhuman foundation of many a trade and industry. Finally, even those who still clung to their belief in the common sense of the representative system and the justice which it claimed to secure for all, were startled by the great strike of the autumn of 1911, to be followed almost immediately by the national strike of miners in the spring of 1912. For many this was their first direct acquaintance with discontent become active, taking the remedy into its own hands. Some had only read and heard of strikes before, but these uprisings of the working man made their influence felt in the daily lives of all. At first inclined to resent the inconvenience which the railway strike caused them, the public soon began to seek for the reasons which led men to make 4 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY the sacrifices, run the risks and support the sufferings entailed in a national strike. They then had brought home to them the fact that it is possible for a man to work regularly so regularly that he might plod on for years without a single day's holiday and yet not earn a living wage. They heard of men living in towns, working full time, and earning 17s. a week, on which they were endeavouring to support families. They were told, on independent authority, that it is not possible for a man in this position, even by cutting down all other necessary expenditure to the lowest limit, to spare more than 12s. 6d. out of his 17s. for heat, lighting, and food, not to mention clothes, for the whole of his family. And then they heard that the minimum wage demanded by such men was 1 a week. To them the additional 2s. 6d., spread over seven days and divided among, say, two adults and three children, seemed extraordinarily little, and they were unable to under- stand how so small an increase could make decent living possible ; and their indignation was therefore great that there should be any companies or employers who refused to grant it. On the other hand, however, there were employers who replied with clear and satisfactory proof that this additional 2s. 6d., multiplied by fifty-two weeks and a large number of men, would turn their small margin of annual profit into an actual loss, and would result in the permanent closing of the undertakings concerned. And further, they stated that the men to whom they paid 17s. 6d. a week were worth no more, could obtain no more at any other work, and that that REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT FAILS 5 was their market value ; why should not the employer buy labour just as he buys raw material, in the cheapest market ? There was, as has been said, a small and devoted section of the public who had known for long that this state of affairs existed, but the public in general had not realised, could not be expected to realise, without such stern object-lessons as presented themselves, that there were in England, in a free country, roughly, three cate- gories of distress : unemployed and unemployables who were starving, employed working under the most heart- rending conditions and not earning enough to provide them with a meal a day, and men in great industries, which had always been regarded as national assets, being paid wages which kept them and their families ever trembling on the verge of starvation. The repre- sentatives of the public in Parliament, or the officials whom they appointed to administer their laws and watch over the details of national prosperity, must have known the facts ; why had they done nothing to remedy the evils ? Representative Government evidently was no government ; it would not take the initiative which is one of the primary functions of governing. It would only move under pressure, and then no further than it was obliged, to allay public resentment. How, and how far, it moved in dealing with the three cases mentioned is instructive. First, it adopted the time-honoured method for assuaging public uneasiness and for relieving itself of the responsibility for immediate action : it had already appointed a Royal Commission to inquire elaborately into the causes of poverty and unem- 6 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY ploy nieut and to suggest modifications of the Poor Law, and it demanded that its report should be awaited. But this did not satisfy the public when later they had realised the existing horrors of the sweating system ; they brought through the press and other channels such pressure of public opinion to bear upon Parliament, that it was com- pelled neither of the political parties venturing to protest to pass an Act providing in a tentative manner for the establishment of a minimum wage in the worst of the known sweated trades. Finally, in 1912 the miners took their own affairs into their own hands. Having declared a national strike, which as it developed brought more and more of the industries and activities of the nation to a standstill, they called upon the Labour Party in Parliament to take no action and to leave them to settle matters themselves directly with their employers. They swept aside Repre- sentative Government, from which experience had, they thought, taught them to expect neither the willingness nor the competence to satisfy their demands. Parliament, frightened by this ignoring of its dignity and exposure of the hollowness of its traditional prestige, welcomed the efforts of an energetic ministry which imposed its inter- vention with great skill on employers and employed, and hastily, it might almost be said in panic, carried a law regulating the mining industry similar in intention to that already in force for the sweated trades, that is to say, establishing the principle of a minimum wage. The public learnt two lessons from the events of these years. In the first place, the Mother of Parliaments NATIONAL UNEASINESS 7 seemed to them to have become decrepit ; it would only act in relation to even immediate needs under great pressure, either that of public opinion aroused, or of a revolt of a group of citizens; as a French observer crudely expressed it, you have to kick it to make it march. In the second place, Eepresentative Government, which in its final development was the result of a long and bitter struggle of the lower classes to conquer liberty and an equal share in the control of the State, was now regarded by these very classes, or at any rate by an important and increasing section of them, as an instru- ment useless for the redress of grievances. Bewildered, the public looked around for leaders, for men who would still dominate and direct Eepresentative Government, or who would even be prepared to govern autocratically, with dictatorial powers, as had happened before at times of national crisis. But mediocrity was entrenched in the high places, patriotism or genius were at a discount. The men whom the public believed in were shipped off to rule distant dependencies or, if they ventured on the risks which patriotism demands, were intrigued into obscurity at home. Is it to be wondered at that the prevailing note is one of pessimism ? Pessimism, however, takes various forms, the worst of which is the passive form which sees in the present unrest, forgetting that it is not confined to any one country, a symptom of the disintegration which has over- taken the nations and empires of the past. " The axe," it exclaims, " is laid unto the root of the tree ! " " If 8 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY Rome and Sparta perished, what State can hope to endure for ever ? " That kind of pessimism is to be met with in every branch of life ; it is the expression of a deceased egoism, of a temperament unfitted for collective action. But there is another form of pessimism which is militant and aggressive ; it has its source in the anxiety for the national welfare inseparable from that highest patriotism which gives all and asks for nothing in return. Such patriotism is sensitive to the last degree to the dangers which threaten the nation and Empire from within and without, impatient at opportunities missed, irritated by the negligence that allows curable ills to endure, strong in its denunciation of the selfishness of vested interests standing across the path of imperative reforms, attacking again and again, never satisfied with its successes, which fall far short of what seems to it to be the low-water mark of national security, often dis- heartened but never beaten. There is no reason to despair of a nation in which this form of pessimism is still a force that counts. Whether it inspires isolated indi- viduals to independent effort, or bands together those who are ready to face the questions of the moment in a disinterested spirit, it impels them to a fearless search for the causes of the present unrest and to a no less fearless advocacy of the remedies, however drastic and radical, which may restore the health of the body politic. The official statesmen in this country believe that we are living on the brink of war or internal revolution, and their minds swing between the contemplation of these NATIONAL UNEASINESS 9 alternative, or perhaps coincident, disasters. Academic students of social questions confine themselves for the most part to the analysis of phenomena and to the creation of scientific systems which do little more than provide formulae for the expression of discontent. Party politicians, many of whom honestly believe that Kepre- sentative Government is democracy and that the party game is essential to its proper working, seek in the rapidly succeeding national crises for indications of a popular policy. But to be able to approach these questions with im- partiality and understanding it is necessary to have personal experience of the system of wage-earning (the English language unfortunately supplies no common term for wages and salaries as the French salariat) from its lower to its highest grades. The merely academic view, whether that of the politician or the student, is unfitted to the occasion. And yet if one is in the system and of it, it is impossible, or at any rate extremely difficult, to take a detached and objective view of its guiding principles and tendencies ; it is still more difficult to resist the temptation to so choose one's words when writing of it that they will give no opening to the suspicious criticism of prejudice or class interest. Anyone who is, however, so situated as to possess something of the necessary experience and yet to be at the moment hi complete intellectual independence may, by entering into the thoughts and looking at things from the point of view of the working classes, by increasing his know- ledge and resisting the strongest of human desires to io THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY earn the immediate praise of his friends cut a path some way towards the truth. That the evils from which society is suffering at its foundations are serious, and intolerable to those who fall most directly under their influence, is obvious to all. Englishmen are as they ever were, and do not make sacrifices for nothing. It is not merely in the pursuit of some wild dream of a far-distant state of happiness that English working-men undergo the hardships of recurring strikes, or that men earning a barely living wage subscribe weekly without a murmur to enable their fellows in other trades, or in ill-used branches of the same trade, to fight their employers. To picture the spirit that moves them, be it socialism, syndicalism, or anarchism, as a dragon that " swindges the scaly horror of his folded tail," may be all very well for nursemaids wishing to frighten children, or for a party hard pressed at an election, but is not the means that an impartial inquiry will adopt when starting out to discover the forces moving working-men to deeds which in any other cause would be acclaimed as heroic. At the outset of such an inquiry certain general causes of universal unrest must be recognised. Man- kind is passing through a stage in its history for which the past offers no parallel and little guidance. The philosophers of the eighteenth century in their quest for the foundations of liberty appeared to be guiding humanity to a truer, if not a final, conception of society. But so formidable and so rapid, within a few generations, have been the achievements of man in his struggle with THE MISTRUST OF INTELLECT u matter, that, to those dazzled by them, much of the thought of an earlier age which knew nothing of these things has seemed inapplicable to this. Systems which great thinkers and the course of events had in the past erected upon generally accepted truths, have been under- mined by the rush of scientific discoveries ; speculation as to further achievements, which these discoveries appear to justify, has indeed led many to question the old fundamental truths themselves, and to ask if the human intellect may not ultimately bridge the chasm which separates the mortal from the immortal, the known from the unknown. But a state of suspended agnosticism cannot satisfy man ; the human mind can rarely free itself so as to be independent of boundaries and landmarks. It was necessary for the mass of men that new systems should spring up to replace the old. First, science, claiming predominance by reason of her material triumphs, and maintaining that she held the key to the absolute and the infinite, thrust philosophy aside, and built up her systems reposing on the intellect alone. Now philosophy is reasserting herself and using the discoveries of science to confirm the old foundations of belief, vastly broadened and strengthened. Man is learning, in the confusion of the rival systems, to mistrust the guidance of the intellect and that weathercock reason, and to rely more and more on his instinct. The belief that there is any finality in intellectual systems has been destroyed in these rapid changes. The inequality which was recognised as existing between the trained and un- 12 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY trained intelligence, the submissiveness which an inferior intellectual education ensured, have consequently tended to disappear. There has been a reversion or a revolu- tion to the spiritual equality of the Christian teaching, often, it is true, in dissociation from its altruism and its dependence on divine sanction. The barriers between governed and governing classes have in these new conditions lost their defensive value, but remain, like the fortifications of a previous age surrounding a modern town, to afford the ignorant a sense of security, inciting them to rash and hopeless resistance, seeming to offer some shelter against attack of however novel and destructive a kind. The restatement of equality, springing from the instinct which has remained constant and unchanged throughout the development of civilisation, is it the result of a passing phase or of a wave in an irresistible tide ? Those who believe that it is a recurrent phenomenon in the onward march of humanity, trace its inherent relationship to all attempts, and particularly to those which have characterised the last century and a quarter, to establish democracy as the normal form of human government. The failures of Representative Government which have now become so conspicuous are by them attributed to the diversion of democracy from its natural aims. Their thoughts turn to the people whose genius first imposed on Europe the democratic ideal ; it is in France that the answer to the question may, in their opinion, be sought with the greatest profit. Those, again, who welcome and those who disapprove REVOLUTION AND PATRIOTISM 13 of the social changes which have taken place in modern times agree that their origin is to be found in the French Eevolutions of 1789 and 1793. Englishmen who detest violence, and they are to be found in both these groups, admit that the peaceful means by which these changes were brought about in other countries, achieved their object at the cost of the suffering of France ; that the concessions made to the governed in those countries which escaped revolution were directly due to the effect on their governing classes produced by the violence of the French Eevolution. Recent events in Great Britain have led men to think that every advance towards liberty, in the sense implied by working-class aspirations, will in the future be made or attempted independently of Parliament, as in the case of the miners' strike. But every strike is a form of violence, and a national strike pressed to its logical conclusion would mean revolution. That at the same time re- volutionary tendencies are once more striving for the upper hand in France looks uncommonly as if the history of Europe were repeating itself. France is, at any rate, deserving of close attention at the moment by all who would understand the actual social movement in Great Britain or elsewhere. And, let it be said at once, those who believe that conditions of stability in this country would again enable it to weather a revolutionary gale that might sweep the French people before it, forget that the relative conditions of the two countries in this respect have undergone a fundamental change; for, while in I 4 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY France the peasantry have in the last hundred years established themselves as a conservative element, with their feet firmly planted in the land which they own, the population of these islands in increasingly over- whelming proportions is carried hither and thither by the ebb and flow of industrial demands, finding no permanent resting-place and possessing no rights of ownership in the land of their birth. If the revolu- tionary spirit is once more to pass over Europe, if France is again to initiate an effort to attain to true democracy by ruthlessly eradicating the tares which have sprung up in the crop which she sowed more than a century ago, England will no longer be the country which is best fitted to resist its impulse ; to many it would indeed seem that she also is gathering herself together for a leap into the unknown future to which revolutionary ideals beckon the oppressed. If that is so, everyone who places national interests before all others will ask, How is Great Britain to meet the external dangers which threaten her ? It is possible to imagine a revolution going on in these islands while an invincible fleet steamed round our coasts protecting them from foreign invasion, and even securing the trade routes on which depends, to an alarming extent, a con- stant supply of food for their inhabitants. In the great revolution nearly three hundred years ago, was not England left to settle her internal difficulties in her own way, losing little more than her share in the readjustment of national boundaries which took place meanwhile on the Continent ? Without entering into a consideration REVOLUTION AND PATRIOTISM 15 of the overwhelming odds against a similarly favourable conjunction of events at the present time, one difference will immediately occur to the most superficial observer. The existence of the United Kingdom to-day as a first- class Power is indissolubly bound up in the integrity of the British Empire. If Great Britain were paralysed at home her enemies would undoubtedly seize the oppor- tunity of acquiring possession of the oversea Dominions of the Crown ; her avowed enemy is indeed so hampered in her natural development by the need for territorial expansion that her action, in such a contingency would, so to speak, be automatically aggressive. In such circumstances would the bitterness of class hatred out- weigh the pride of race and the instinct of patriotism, or would internal strife cease before the threat of foreign invasion ? No satisfactory answer can be provided to this question by mere speculation or by any reference to sentiment which must necessarily be individually sub- jective. No certain answer can indeed be given at all ; the most that one can do is to draw what inferences one can from the attitude of other peoples when torn in different directions by like incompatible influences. It is again France which offers the nearest and most recent parallel to such a hypothetical situation. By 1868 her working classes were largely permeated by an inter- nationalism which was subversive of patriotism, and were probably as well organised as to-day for an attack on the governing classes. Then came war and the march of the enemy's troops across her frontiers. It 1 6 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY will probably never be known with any approximation to the truth how far foreign attack was encouraged by her internal divisions or to what extent the enemy's diplomacy was responsible for her civil dissensions ; but something may be learnt as to the strength of patriotism in all times from the tragic story of the Commune in 1871. To France one must turn to find the origins of revol- ution both in the near past and in the present ; it is the French who have furnished the largest number of martyrs to what they conceived to be the cause of liberty and democracy, for the most logical of races has in modern times been that which has suffered most severely for its ideals. The British have, however, generally been, and will probably continue to be, those who derive the greatest practical benefit from her example. But no one who desires to be prepared for the eventualities of the immediate future can afford to ignore the younger, more vigorous and growing British populations outside these islands, unless he belong to that small group of politicians who would willingly see England detach herself from the Empire, and incident- ally from the United Kingdom too, to work out her own perdition and sink to the degraded position of a nation kept by the great world-powers. The imperialist, on the other hand, is aware that overseas the British, to- gether with their fellow-subjects of other races, are boldly experimenting in various solutions of the problems of democracy, and that to-day there is no such likely field as the Dominions for the discovery of the means DEMOCRACY AND CHRISTIANITY 17 by which the present unrest may be turned to the best account for mankind. The British, with their "hundred religions and one sauce," have, in whatever portion of the globe they may be found, a native aptitude for referring all questions in the last resort to the teachings of Christianity, the numerous fine distinctions of doctrine which they draw making it necessary for them, in matters which do not trench on their religious individualism,to confine themselves in common to its fundamental ideals. These they sum up in a national conception of righteousness. In this they have an advantage over the French, who have fewer categories of religious belief and who, in the main, are either non-religious or submit to one doctrinal authority. For, when men begin to discuss democracy, when their thoughts dwell on liberty, and their instinct is at war with their reason, seeking a compromise between indi- vidualism and collectivism, first principles once more rise to the surface of the conventions and systems imposed by civilisation. And the instinct by which the individual determines first principles proceeds from and projects itself into the eternal ; so that no one, outside of those who have succeeded in stifling their instinct, can take a merely temporal view of human action or judge it by its effects within a limited period. That nation, therefore, is best fitted to put into practice new ideas particularly those transforming or modifying social conditions in such a way as to give them stable ex- pression, which is most nearly able to agree, in full individual freedom, on a common basis of religious belief. 1 8 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY Such are the forces moving at the present time among the working classes of Europe, that it is useless to attempt to understand the causes of unrest unless one is able to appreciate and sympathise with the ideals which are struggling against the oppression and tyranny of existing systems not only the systems which have the support of traditional authority, but also those devised by many socialists and working-class leaders to replace the old. It may safely be predicted that such systems, in so far as they are founded on narrow material and economic interests alone, will ultimately be rejected by Englishmen. But anyone who seeks in idealism the causes and remedy of discontent, can have little in common with those who regard any reversion to the practice of ideals as a retrograde movement and speak of " primitive " democracy or " primitive " Christianity as if they were states but a stage removed from savagery. Such persons turning a deaf ear to instinct, reject all idealism, and apply to every creed the test of practical life and pro- ceed to demonstrate its vulnerability as judged by natural standards. They will, for instance, take the fundamental teachings of Christianity and, having proved their worth- lessness for personal advancement in this world, assert that they have reduced them to an absurdity. In this process they will often isolate one doctrine from the whole ; to give one of many examples, they will attack the supreme test of Christianity, the forgiveness of one's enemies, and pronounce it folly ; they will say that to forgive an enemy who has done one wrong is, natural DEMOCRACY AND CHRISTIANITY 19 conditions being what they are, the surest way of re- suscitating or augmenting his enmity and of inciting him to further mischief. Their influence does much to increase the bitterness of what is known as the class war, encouraging a spirit of vindictiveness which militates against the reunion of classes the only alternative, whatever form it may take, to universal anarchy. With such persons it is useless to argue. Among the working-men there are, however, some who regard with suspicion all "intellectuals," and who hold to be disqualified from making any serious contribu- tion to thought on the social movement all idealists, whether clergy or laymen, who apply Christian truths to the hardships of their daily life without experience of conditions of work similar to theirs. The disqualification may be admitted. There are others who in their minds associate all religion with that form which they most commonly describe as an alliance of squire and parson ; they mistrust the creed of a Church which for centuries in England has, with notable exceptions, upheld with its influence the very social organisation from which they are endeavouring to emancipate themselves, and conse- quently they refuse the Churchman the right, which they themselves are exercising with regard to democracy, of taking his stand on first principles and throwing off all that is alien to the ideals of Christianity which has grown up around them as civilisation has developed. But there are signs that the Church and all religious organisations in this country are returning to a spiritual 20 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY advocacy of fundamental truths of which they had lost aight; they are discovering that the ideals of Christi- anity and of democracy neither to be realised in the human state, but both inspiring mankind to noble efforts have much in common, and that the divine teaching was adapted not only to the life of the individual as if in isolation, but to the human as distinct from the natural order of collective association. CHAPTEK II THE HUMAN AND THE NATURAL ORDER OF ASSOCIATION THE causes which have led men to associate are many and complicated. Some writers on politics have con- sidered it necessary to arrive at a clear understanding of these causes before entering upon the discussion of political systems, their merits and defects ; holding that it is in the first place essential to appreciate the needs which a political system must satisfy, and that such an appreciation depends on a knowledge of the causes which produced them. In so far as this view implies a re- cognition that politics embrace every branch of human life, in association, and does not merely relate to what are known as public, as distinct from private, activities, it has done much to direct thought along right lines. But the task which such writers set themselves is not so simple as those who are anxious to rival the achieve- ments of great thinkers in the material world sometimes imagine. For, while it may be possible to classify and analyse the natural causes which have led to association, the human transcends the natural and multiplies and complicates the natural causes, external to itself, by those which spring from its internal relations with the spiritual. Philosophy, it is true, has for centuries been 22 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY slowly winning its way to a complete conception of humanity in all its aspects, and may some day facilitate and even make possible this task ; but it has not yet given us any sure and definite ground on which we can take our stand when attempting to view these causes as a whole ; and political thought which starts out from a partial view of them, will inevitably sooner or later become embarrassed by the inconsistencies which it per- ceives in the theories it evolves, or be compelled to bend and compress its conclusions within limits which it is conscious are narrower than human boundaries. This method can, then, afford but little satisfaction to those in search of truth, least of all to those who are alive to the necessity of arriving as speedily as possible, under the pressure of critical events, at the nearest practical approximation to the truth. The causes can, on the other hand, be studied in their results. The forms of association which they have produced must necessarily contain traces of all the forces which have gone to mould them ; constantly changing and developing, they will be seen to be under all the influences that are impelling man towards his ultimate destiny. Nothing that is human will be wanting to this view ; each observer will see the whole if he does not wilfully contract his vision. Some will see deeper than others, perceiving tendencies that are not visible to all eyes ; no one will see all, but even the most superficial gaze will embrace the associations in their entirety. This is the method which it is proposed here in the main to follow. The search for the most perfect form of political INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM 23 association has attracted thinkers in all ages, but it has only occupied the minds of men in general at moments when a change in the existing form appears necessary and desirable, or is felt to be impending. Then the first principles of association are discussed with all the enthusiasm and vigour excited by new discoveries. Those who have derived the greatest, possibly an undue, amount of benefit from that form of association of which they are a part, will often energetically protest against any change whatever ; fearing a further and more radical application of the fundamental principles of association, they will denounce these principles themselves under the name of collectivism or some other designation, and declare themselves in favour of individualism. Others, less fortunate, who suffer under the burden of sacrifices imposed on them by the existing form of association, will, on their side, with equal emphasis, restate these very principles and demand their more consistent practice, and even their extension to branches of human activity which have hitherto been characterised by individual independence. Hence at the present time the two extreme rival schools of individualists and socialists, and the advocates of the more moderate inter- vening types of collectivism, such as to take examples from the economic sphere alone co-partnership and co-operation. But collectivism, to employ the term in its widest significance, 1 and individualism are not ideas which have 1 For the origin of the term Collectivism in its technical sense see pp. 119-120. 24 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY suddenly sprung up in the soil of present discontent ; they are as old as the first human movement towards association, that is to say, they are as old as man himself, they are inherent in humanity, and the struggle between them marks every step of human development. If we follow the individual through the main stages of his development, taking no account of the little cross- currents which whirl him hither and thither in bewilder- ing complexity, we see him in his infancy, first, born into a collective organism, unconsciously dependent on others and controlled by them. Then his individuality gathers force and begins to struggle towards freedom ; he passes through a stage of conscious dependence, lean- ing on others for support, consciously collective whenever the path presents difficulties which seem to him unsur- mountable, but becoming consciously individualist as he learns to conquer all obstacles for himself and marches along in growing independence. With increasing con- sciousness his individuality asserts itself as he approaches manhood, beating itself against all the restraints of col- lective life, until, having reached his full strength and achieved the maximum of freedom, the collective instinct in him triumphs and he surrenders his individual- ism to the family, accepting the restrictions of association. And last, as the shadow of the end falls on him, he grows consciously more and more individualist, knowing that the dark valley lies outside the bounds of human aid and that there he must walk alone. Collectivist, individualist, collectivist, individualist : such is the life of man. Throughout, each tendency INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM 25 struggles for supremacy ; and in the flower of his age they balance one another, producing that equilibrium which is perfection and which, because it is perfection, may not, until freed from the laws of nature, endure. At this stage, when his powers have reached their zenith, the individual is merged in the family, and all his matured strength, at its maximum, goes to fortify the fundamental organic unity of all human associations, the family, in which, at its highest point of development, collectivism and individualism counterbalance one another. The family, reproducing in its organic unity the life of the individual, having reached the stage of conscious individualism, in its turn surrenders its individualism and combines with other families to form wider organic unities, resulting ultimately in the nation. And so the nation, in mature consciousness of its individuality, seeks union with other nations, and the highest attainment of human collectivity which the world has yet seen is reached, the empire, in the modern meaning of the word. In the nation and the empire, as in the family, the struggle between collectivism and individualism is always going on, at some moment of highest achievement establishing equilibrium, until in their decline individual- ism triumphs and dissociation and disruption follow. Whether mankind will be capable of a step still further forward, and empires will unite in one great association coinciding with humanity, can only at present be a matter for speculation. But that way alone, it may 26 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY be noted in passing, lies the possible realisation of what is known as internationalism, an ideal which for centuries has possessed a powerful attraction for western Europe, with results which will be considered hereafter. It is thus seen that the rival tendencies, which are occupying so much attention to-day, have been at work throughout the whole history of human association. Let us now consider two of the conditions most essential, or at any rate indispensable, to the growth of a perfect form of political association, and which the past history of the gradual evolution of the existing forms shows to be also necessary to their duration. First, the perfect association would be one in which true unity was achieved. But it is indisputable that without affinity there can be no true unity. Science affords many simple illustrations of the natural and material aspect of this truth. But we cannot accept such proof as final for our purpose ; for, the laws of science, which deal with the natural and material parts of the universe, and deal with them separated from the whole, both as regards time and space, only apply partially to human affairs. And even that partial application is dangerous. Indeed so dangerous is it that the very use of scientific terms, or of terms which have been confiscated by science from the stock of general ideas, is apt to suggest misleading analogies and con- clusions to the mind that is not trained in their precise definitions and limitations. For instance, to speak of a nation as an organic unity, a term which has been employed, and will repeatedly recur in this argument, UNITY AND FREEDOM 27 immediately calls up before the ordinary mind the image of a complete self-contained physical being. Thus for the majority of people the argument would be reduced to a premature absurdity ; for to imagine two physical beings uniting organically to be merged in one indivisible being would seem ridiculous, and therefore it might be concluded that no two nations, whatever their affinity, can unite, absorbing one another, and that consequently any ideal of internationalism may be dismissed as chimerical. The fallacy and confusion in such a train of thought is obvious, but it inevitably results from an attempt to apply scientific laws, without a clear under- standing of their limitations, to human things, as will be seen, more especially, when the endeavour to establish society on a natural basis is discussed. Human illustra- tions must therefore be sought to prove the dependence of unity on affinity in the human order. Necessity, the pressure of outward circumstances, cannot alone produce true unity among men, as will be immediately admitted when the family and the nation are considered in this connection. There are some, speaking in the name of Science, who maintain, for instance, that the necessity for the continuation of the race is the force which alone combines individual units into the family. But this function can be fulfilled, within the national unity, without the resultant col- lectivity of the family, as many States have realised when, recognising, under a severe trial of their strength, the need for an increase in their populations, they have refused to impose any legal obligation on the father of 28 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY an illegitimate child. Again, to consider the pressure of external circumstances alone, under the necessity of ensuring their continuation, two nations will unite against a common enemy : but unless there is affinity between them they do not form an organic unity, one nation ; they establish a temporary alliance. Even when such an alliance is placed on a permanent footing, unity is not achieved ; the most striking example of which in our own times is afforded by Austria-Hungary, where the common head himself has to act in a dual capacity, ruling Austria with his right hand and Hungary with his left. Secondly, freedom is essential to the establishment of unity and to its duration when once established. In this argument, considering those to whom it is addressed, that principle might almost be laid down as a postulate ; it might have been assumed without discussion, for it ia an assumption always readily granted by Englishmen, possessing as they must those tendencies of thought which have played so large a part in the building up of the association of self-governing nations within the British Empire. But it is well to insist on the fact that it rests on a human and universal basis. As the individual, becoming conscious of his approach- ing end, tends to individualism, so as they pass out of the age of maturity, the family, and the nation, regarded as collective unities, lose their desire and capacity for collectivism. The family, apart from the process of dissociation by which associations similar in kind are multiplied, tends to break up into its individual units, UNITY AND FREEDOM 29 divorce becomes more frequent, and the family union is entered into with more and more reluctance. On the other hand, history abounds in stories of nations and empires which have dissolved into their component elements in the period of their decline, many of the parts which have broken off falling a prey to more vigorous organisms. Freedom retards this dissolution for the individual, the family, and the nation ; while control or restraint will accelerate the final plunge into the unknown. In the case of the individual this is recognised by human custom, and the aged are relieved of all possible obligations and restraint in the hope of prolonging their life. Of no less importance is the part played by freedom in allowing, within the organic unity, that continual readjustment of its component parts on which its vitality depends. The individuality of each, ever striving for self-expression, would shatter the whole if not allowed free play. In the family to-day, for instance, the demand of women for political emancipation is dangerous to unity only so long as it is refused expression. Again, freedom makes possible the union of individuals, within the family, in their different stages of collective capacity. But this will appear more plainly if the argument is transferred to the highest stage of collective association yet attained, of which the British Empire is the obvious illustration for the present purpose. Autonomy is the name which has been chosen to designate national freedom within this association. In the British Empire the national units differ considerably 30 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY in age, the United Kingdom, 1 reckoning in centuries, Canada in jubilees, Australia and New Zealand in decades, and South Africa in single years. They thus represent different stages of national development re- spectively, the youngest having only just emerged from a state of conscious dependence, others being in the full maturity of collective capacity, and the oldest already showing signs of the individualism of old age. 2 Were all submitted to a common control, endeavouring to regulate the development of each on identical lines, it would check the growth of the younger and hasten the end of the oldest. But the strength of the whole is yearly seen to be more dependent on the individual strength of each nation. Is not the desire and the hope frequently expressed in the United Kingdom that the oversea Dominions should become strong enough to help the weary Titan to bear the burden ? It is probably such practical considerations as this that have led the United Kingdom, on her side, to see that each can only reach its maximum strength in autonomous development. 1 The term Mother Country is, imperially speaking, inaccurate. For sentimental reasons it is to be hoped that it will long be retained by the British race scattered over the world. But the Empire in its development has recognised that there are people (e.g. the French of Canada and the Dutch of South Africa) who claim maternal descent from other nations. Hence the danger of attempting to establish one form of government for all, based on the belief that true unity exists within the association. 2 This is seen externally in her slowness to enter into closer organic unity with the other nations of the Empire, and internally in her loosening her grasp on the bonds of union among the component elements of the United Kingdom, as exemplified by the spirit in which a number of Englishmen approach the question of Home Rule for Ireland, preferring dissolution of the Union to the rectification of the wrongs for which an unchecked bureaucracy and a selfish legislature are responsible. UNITY AND FREEDOM 31 So long as each is autonomous and free to develop according to its own natural tendencies (and it must not be forgotten that each succeeding generation of nations, as of individuals, starts from a higher plane than its predecessor), the organic unit possesses vitality and a readjustment of the parts is continually taking place. Nay, more, the very continuation of the Empire hangs on this constant readjustment which, as the oldest declines among the nations of the world, would allow another of the component nations, in the order of seniority Canada, to take her place. The less closely, indeed, that an association approxi- mates to true unity, the more necessary is freedom to its duration. This is a consideration that must ever be before the mind when thinking on human associations ; for they rarely achieve true unity, but will be observed to be moving towards or departing from that goal in direct ratio to the strength of freedom with which the association is inspired. To take the British Empire again as a case in point. The non-British races included in its self-governing nations at first threw their weight on to the side of individualistic tendencies in the balance of association. But the autonomy in which they move has led them to believe that the exercise and develop- ment of these tendencies is dependent on the existence of the association itself. And so these very tendencies have been transformed, in the course of time and as the evolution of the whole proceeded, into forces deriving affinity from their common task and common interests, and therefore making for unity. Such unity, it is true, 32 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY may not resemble in all its features that which was foreseen by the builders of empire, but it is, nevertheless, one which may give permanence, unless autonomy be rashly impaired, to this greatest of human associations. Thus there is seen to be a human order of association in the evolution of mankind. As the individual becomes conscious of his individualism he merges in the family, as the family reaches maturity it merges in the nation, and similarly the nation merges in the Empire. Each stage reproduces the development of that which has produced it ; and by that interpenetration and interaction, under the influence of some force from the infinite incomprehensible to the human intelligence because it transcends it, but seized in momentary flashes by the instinct each succeeding stage, starting in the full strength of youth, passes something of its spirit of youth down into the older stages from which it has sprung. And so, in ascending collectivities the human race pro- gresses, the limit if limit there be being a united humanity. That, as has been said, is but a subject for speculation ; but that way alone lies the possible realisa- tion of internationalism. This human order it is seen can only proceed through freedom, and its unity depends on affinity, original or acquired. It is human, and it embraces all that is human : material and economic, spiritual and religious ; to discuss whether such development would be complete if anything that is human were eliminated, would be to discuss an order which is not human and therefore alien to man. Its different stages are clearly marked, the INTELLECT AND THE HUMAN ORDER 33 family, the nation, the empire, and it recognises no others except such as may intervene between these, the shadings off from one into the other. The devotion of the individual to each of these collec- tive units is essential to its welfare, and is the first of human virtues, because on it the progress of humanity depends. The egoism of the individual, the devotion to self, rises, through devotion to the family, to the greatest of all human virtues, patriotism. The higher the object of patriotism, the greater its demand on all that is human in the individual ; but for any one to pretend that he loves mankind collectively, while despising the patriotism of the nation and the empire, the only natural path to universal love, is to ask you to believe that he is not human but divine. The various stages which are most clearly marked in the human order represent nothing that is stationary or final ; the evolution of mankind proceeds through move- ment, interchange, and interaction, for which the under- standing has no language. Even the ever-changing relations of the individual to the family are beyond the grasp of the intelligence ; how then can it seize the un- ceasing movement of the more complicated relations of the family to the nation and of the nation to the empire ? There is, indeed, no geometrical figure by which this human collectivity of superimposed yet mutually embrac- ing units can be illustrated. Those who compare it to a pyramid some deriving satisfaction from the thought that it rests on a broad base, others from the hope that it stands, inverted, unstable on its apex are endeavour- 3 34 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY ing to take its measure within the limits of final dimen- sions. But these are not applicable ; for if we contem- plate it only in its ultimate stage of development, the empire, that appears to be larger than the base ; and if we look at it only in its beginnings, the families, they seem to be indefinitely increasing. In all its parts, in fact, it tends to the infinite. The intellect cannot grasp it. For the instinct it is sufficient that, in each of its stages, it is, in its perfect form, a unity composed of unities, united in affinity, each unity moving and grow- ing and transforming itself, as man himself, in the infinite. The intellect in grappling with these questions insists, however, on material images and definitions. Conscious- ness " cannot pass through matter without settling on it, without adapting itself to it : this adaptation is what we call intellectuality ; and the intellect, turning itself back toward active, that is to say free, consciousness, naturally makes it enter into the conceptual forms into which it is accustomed to see matter fit." 1 The intellect tries to picture to itself definite demarcations between the col- lectivities of the human order, and, when wearied and baffled in the search for truth, seeks a resting-place in geometric boundaries. Such it finds in the conception of horizontal planes of division between the individual, the family, and the superimposed collective unities, and of vertical divisions between individual and individual, family and family, and nation and nation. Thus will it 1 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, p. 285, English translation (Macmillan. 1011). THE RETURN TO INSTINCT 35 express the human order in an intellectual figure approxi- mating, as far as the powers of the intellect will allow, to the truth. But it will not yet be satisfied. Its powers will again fail when it is taxed to the utmost limit by efforts to conceive the individual moving and acting simultaneously in these ascending groups, and it will then tend to lead man to regard his responsibilities to each unity in separation from those which he owes to the others. A sense of graduation in respect of their claims upon him arises naturally in his mind. There are thus some who, incapable of grasping the whole, will apprehend their obligations to the empire to be greater than those to the nation, others who will place the claims of the family or even of the individual higher than the claims of nationality. Then ensues discordance instead of harmony, a waste of energy to human progress and a constant tendency to retrogression, or at least an unwillingness to forsake the safety of past achievements, and to advance experimentally and courageously towards the highest and ultimate form of human association. Each group has its partisans warring with those of the others : the anti-imperialist and the anti-nationalist, enemies and not friends of mankind, who retard the march towards freedom and that human brotherhood which they often announce, in all sincerity, to be the sacred cause inspiring them. Those on the other hand, who, as imperialists or nationalists, attempt to coerce the individual and the family, in the name of a higher form of association, and to submit them to a tyranny of the State, in what they believe to be the interests of the 36 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY empire or the nation, must in their turn be counted among the forces of reaction. Hope for the future, however, lies in the growing and spreading conviction that human destiny transcends the intellect, and that to comprehend the inextricable com- plication of innumerable forces which impels man onwards, even the most exalted and highly trained intelligence is helpless unless it summon the instinct to its aid. When to the guidance of the instinct so long discounted in the expectancy of the fulfilment of rash pledges made in the name, but without the authority, of science is allotted its due acknowledgment, it becomes possible for even the humble intelligence to conceive a unity of mutually dependent unities, to realise that the develop- ment to their highest capacity of the individualism of the individual, of the family, of the nation, and of the empire are interdependent, and that the undisturbed freedom of each part is the condition of the fullest free- dom of the whole. In such a conception the balance between individualism and collectivism is maintained, and the ideal of individual freedom is seen to be compatible with that of the most complete and lasting human association. The return to the ideals of instinct, on which this hope rests, is undoubtedly the most significant and far- reaching contribution of the present time to human progress. It has swept aside the barriers which pre- ceding ages had erected around separate groupings of mankind determined by laws deduced from Nature alone. It has even moved sedate philosophy to sublime THE RETURN TO INSTINCT 37 visions of liberty in unity: "All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge, able to beat down every resistance and clear the most for- midable obstacles, perhaps even death." 1 Instinct has recalled the intellect from its wild and hopeless onslaught on the spiritual forces making for human unity. We are, however, continually reminded that the influences of a former age, and also some of its most doughty representatives, are still with us, contending for what they would term the natural, as opposed to that which has here been defined as the human order. Ignoring the spiritual, they are satisfied with the data provided by the action of natural forces on mankind, and on them they base their conclusions. But if all that goes in concert, to produce human development need not be viewed in its complete harmony ; if once it is conceded that omissions are permissible and that yet one may claim to conceive the whole, where shall a halt be called ? By what standard may it be judged whether any selection from among the forces that are essential to, or at any rate active in promoting, human progress, is arbitrary or not ? An attempt to distinguish between the various forces can only result in a further falling away from a conception of the whole and in greater 1 Henri Bergson, op. tit. pp. 285-286. 38 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY confusion. The intelligence has, however, following the scientific methods, isolated the different forces which it recognises, and, having weighed them in its scales, has sought to determine their respective values. This has led to much contradiction and strife between rival schools. There are some, indeed, whose presence makes itself weightily felt to-day and who have done much to give its direction to the social movement, who would be the first to deride you if you ventured on an absurdity such, for instance, as that, in the natural world in which they have their being, food is more necessary than air to the maintenance of life and who yet will solemnly assure you that the economic interest overtops all others in things human. Their successes and fail- ures in their endeavours to dominate the political field will be dealt with in the proper place. Here, rejecting their methods of isolation, we may consider them as in- cluded in that class to which they belong by their insistence on the natural order. Such treatment of them has this advantage : that it exposes immediately the inconsistency underlying most, if not all, of their teaching ; for the natural order to which they appeal is one which knows not individual equality as between man and man, and yet that equality is assumed in, or is the goal of, most of their schemes of social amelioration. " Experience everywhere shows a pronounced inequality among men ; it shows this not only in the traditional social relationships, but also in the organisation of modern industry. More, however, than all social arrangements, EQUALITY 39 nature shows the greatest inequality amongst men ; and the actual relations of individuals in work and idleness, in love and hate, in independent thinking and blind subordination, shows it none the less. From the point of view of experience the idea of equality seems to be an empty phrase. If it is more than this, if we recognise in it the truth that we cannot afford to lose, then it implies the conviction that humanity has spiritual relations ; that each has a significance in a spiritual nature, and that there is a universal life present every- where which opposes the guilt and folly of the individual, and even in spite of himself gives him a value." 1 It is, indeed, idle to argue there is such a thing as individ- ual equality in the natural order ; in the spiritual alone is it to be found, and its origin is to be sought in the ideals of the instinct and in those religious systems which the instinct accepts. It is only when the spiritual and the natural are, within the human, brought into forcible contact that any recognition of equality imposes itself irresistibly on the minds of all. In the natural order, birth and death, the visible entry into this world and the exit thence, are perhaps the only points at which equality is univer- sally admitted. Bringing nothing into this world and taking nothing out, man proceeds from and dis- appears into the unknown which the spirit is ever striving to pierce and before which natural inequalities reduce themselves to insignificance. Who that has stood 1 Rudolf Eucken, Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, p. 362, English transla- tion (Black. 1912). 40 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY in the presence of the first helplessness of life or of its final passing has not felt that for the first time he has realised, under the influence of the spiritual eternity of the past and of the future, the equality of individuals in the unities of human association ? As it is the spiritual element in humanity which gives man his superiority in and over nature, so it is the spiritual element which enables him to rise above the inequalities ordained by nature. Civilisation, in so far as it has emanated from his spiritual needs, has drawn him farther and farther away from the primitive stage in which, but little removed from the animal state, like the animal he suffered or benefited from the inferi- ority which distinguished him from other individuals. Christianity, the religious system which has moulded the civilisation of to-day, recognises the principle of equality throughout the whole of human activities. In the divine teaching, from the renunciation of material riches to the intellectual abasement implied in the necessity to " become as little children," all that differentiates man from man in the natural order is reckoned of no account in the spiritual kingdom. But even among those who do not found their social creeds on natural laws alone, the influence of Christi- anity, compelling to the admission of human equality, has not been uniform in its effect. On the one hand, it has quickened the tendency of civilisation to remove or compensate for those inequalities on which the natural world thrives. To make good physical deficiencies, to fortify mental weakness, to reduce if not to abolish the EQUALITY 41 varied handicaps which nature attaches to the individual in his struggle for existence, have been among the avowed objects of civilisation, it may even be said that they have constituted its most freely admitted duty, in the Christian era. On the other hand, where the spiritual conception of humanity is most fully developed, with it has grown the conviction that the individual in his com- pleteness has no unequals, that it is rather the incom- pleteness of natural conditions themselves which allows to certain powers a supremacy and an arrogance which is alien to humanity, and which leaves out of play other powers possessed by the naturally inferior individual and fitting him to join, making him an essential part in, the complete human harmony. Thus, leaving aside for the moment those who acknow- ledge only the natural order, there are seen to be two main currents of idealism in the social movement, in so far as its tendencies are democratic that is to say, based in the last resort on the claim to individual equality. The one, failing, by preference or necessity, to free itself entirely from the impulsion of the natural order, chooses what seems to it the line of the least resistance, and endeavours to adapt the individual to that order and to remove his disabilities for the unequal struggle. The other, making a frontal attack on natural obstacles, attempts to transform the conditions themselves or at least to assimilate them to those which the instinct per- ceives to be in keeping with the ultimate destiny of a complete humanity. Of these two currents, the one represents a constant 42 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY compromise between the human or spiritual and the natural ; in the religious sphere it might be called con- stitutional Christianity. The other, which aims at transforming conditions rather than adapting the individual to those which exist, has always been regarded as revolutionary. Its apparition at any stage of history has been the signal for those whose interests are bound up in the civilisation of the moment to close their ranks and to oppose a determined front to its encroachments. The ruthless attempts to exterminate Christianity at its birth, the stubborn resistance against every endeavour to implant pure democracy in the soil of human government, are the most striking illustrations of a struggle which never ceases, however silent and inappreciable its expressions. The starting-point of that particular phase of this struggle in which we are now involved may, for all practical purposes, be fixed at the day, more than a century and a quarter ago, when Eousseau asked the question, and was outlawed for daring to answer it : " Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. . . . How has this change taken place ? " For hundreds and thousands of years the natural order, based on individual inequality, has, however, seemed to hold its own against revolutionary attacks, against every onslaught of the spiritual, whether in the close formation of religion or in the looser order of idealism. But its apparent triumph over Christianity was, at any rate as far as the Western world was affected, in reality but the prelude to its defeat. For, failing to EQUALITY 43 exterminate, it was compelled to absorb, the new force which ever since has worked in its midst, slowly eating into its heart, destroying its vital power, producing the constant compromise which has been noticed, and each successive stage of which has left the natural order weaker to resist the next revolutionary shock. But those who, as we have seen, acknowledged only the natural order cannot, without fatal inconsistency, avoid the conclusions to which the inequality of that order must lead. They cannot accept as sufficient the picture of the human order and its demarcations which the intellect has drawn for itself. They must conceive other divisions of mankind than those of the family, the nation, and the empire ; for them nature has separated men into various social classes originating in their natural inequalities. Their picture must be one in which there are horizontal planes dividing men into different classes, of which the chief and most clearly defined are those of the governed and governing. In such a picture, democracy, which they postulate when discussing the social movement in modern States, is seen to be without the basis of individual equality which can alone justify it as a system of government. We must therefore imagine one picture composed of the planes of division of both, presenting a criss-cross appearance, if we wish to understand the general con- fusion of minds and the complexity of the political prob- lems of the moment, so long as the intellect is allowed to dominate the instinct in the conception of the natural order or in the endeavour to conceive the human order. 44 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY Where the battle for social amelioration and liberty is one of intellect against intellect, it is evident that supreme importance will be attached to forms and appearances. Those to whose interest it is to maintain the existing social organisation will often rob their opponents of victory by occasional concessions of form only. For instance, while it is customary now on all sides to talk of liberty of conscience, equality in the eye of the law, and political equality (in the form of the parliamentary franchise) as if they were realities, these things are seen to be incompatible with the division of mankind into governed and governing classes introduced into the general intellectual presentation of human association. Much might be written, and is being written in various languages at the present time, on the uneasy attempts which have been made by many idealists and especially by constitutional Christianity, as we have termed it, to reconcile this existing social organisation with the spiritual revelations of the human order. Such attempts have generally been directed, both in ancient and modern times, to seeking its sanction in the model of all human association, the family. It has been argued that as man is the supreme and unchallenged head of the family so must there be a head to the State ; from this it is but a step, in the collective process, to a whole hierarchy of governors and ultimately to a governing class. But the supremacy of man in the family rests only on the inequalities of the natural order : allowance had not been made in this theory for the workings of the HUMAN BROTHERHOOD 45 spiritual element within the family itself, loosening natural restrictions, until to-day woman claims equality with man, and her equality has been admitted already in some States and in time will undoubtedly be recognised by all. And so it will be found that all theories de- signed to justify, by reference to the human, what is natural in the social organisation, will sooner or later be upset by a new conquest of the spiritual over the natural, the most extreme example of which is probably to be found in the abolition by the common consent of the civilised world of the division of mankind into freemen and, slaves. Less than a hundred years ago constitu- tional Christianity was uneasily defending even this vestige of the animal state. Having briefly traced the tendencies of the principal forces controlling human progress, we may now seek for some indication of the road which man is travelling. Admitting the ideal of what is somewhat unctuously called human brotherhood, of an ultimate association embracing all mankind, it is immediately apparent that there are two main opinions as to the means by which this may be attained. In the human order the unity of the family, the nation, and the empire may finally result in a universal unity. To imagine this process being changed by a uniting of the families of different nations, or of the nations of different empires, irrespective of affinity, would be to imagine a departure from the human order. For the vertical planes of division thus to disappear, the strength of nationality would have to be outbalanced by some stronger horizontal force of attrac- 46 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY tion. But this is precisely what those who acknowledge only the natural order declare to be taking place, and they maintain that such a force exists impelling man to internationalism. They contend that the horizontal division of mankind into two main classes, the governed and the governing, is common to all nations ; the social reformers among them claim that the grievances of the governed and the interests of the governing classes in all nations are respectively identical, and that in the inter- national union of those who are oppressed in opposition to that of their oppressors lies the only hope of human betterment. These views have gained such currency, they are to be met with in so many quarters at the present time, that they merit more attention than is sometimes accorded to them by those whose political vision is limited, through the force of habit, by the national horizon of the people among whom they live. The history of the international movement and of the struggle in Europe between the governed and governing classes in recent times offers the only available guidance in a consideration of these two irreconcilable opinions. CHAPTER III DEMOCRACY AND THE HUMAN ORDER THOSE who believe that great social changes can only be brought about by violence and upheaval will generally date the opening of a new phase from some extreme exercise of authority on the part of those in power seeking to coerce the minds of men and to stamp out even the utterance of thoughts subversive of the exist- ing social organisation. For such the present phase may be said to have started with the burning of the Contrat Social by the public executioner in Geneva, the native city of its author. For, in this gospel of the Eevolution, Rousseau inspired the world with one of those idealistic impulses which was to sweep men onwards in ceaseless efforts to emancipate themselves from the natural, as distinct from the human, order. From that day to this, every attempt of the governed at political reorganisation has had, consciously, as its object the ideal which he formulated for them in the Contrat Social : " To find a form of association which defends and protects with the whole of the common strength the person and the property of each associate, and in which each, uniting himself with all, obeys nevertheless himself alone and remains as free as before." 47 48 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY The persecution of the foremost champion of this ideal ensured its more rapid acceptance by those to whom it appealed, and it was quickly perceived by the governed to be incompatible with the domination of an hereditary aristocracy. Ignoring Rousseau's warnings, and confusing the actual exponents of the aristocratic form of government for the system itself, they held that form to be discredited and inherently unfavourable to their welfare ; so they declared for democracy on a property basis. Those to whom the French nation, and for that matter other nations too, had entrusted their spiritual guidance, being at the moment for the most part unworthy of their charge, the aristocratic governing classes were not led to see that there was a spiritual tendency in the uprising which ensued, that this might be satisfied by a common effort of all classes towards national unity, and that the clash of classes, from which one, the bourgeoisie, was to derive all immediate profit, might consequently be avoided. Had the hereditary aristocracy, placing patriotism first, joined hands with the lower classes in France to establish a real national unity and to prevent the supremacy of the bourgeoisie, the social movement might have taken a different and less violent course. Instead of this, they emigrated in con- siderable numbers to serve with the invading armies against their country, and their head, the King, seeking to join them, failed to escape from his own people, and was brought back ignominiously from Varennes. For so long indeed were the rest of Europe moved with sympathy for the sufferings of the aristocratic FRANCE AND THE HUMAN ORDER 49 classes in this struggle, that it is only comparatively recently that attention has been generally directed to its national aspects. Now that the events of 1789 and the following years are beginning to be seen in their proper perspective, it is clear that at the outset there was a genuine attempt to establish national unity on a basis of liberty, equality, and fraternity, to do away with the horizontal divisions of the natural order, and to return to the human order. But in the process the modern precedent for horizontal internationalism was created. As in all movements of the kind, those who were stirred to action were filled with the belief that they were working for the emancipation of the whole of humanity, and it only required international opposition to trans- form this belief into aggressive action ; France, having quarrelled with her aristocratic governing classes, found the aristocracies of Europe united in arms against her, and the necessary stimulus was supplied. There are, however, still those who assert that this Eevolution was a movement of the middle classes alone against the hereditary aristocracy, and that what is now known as the proletariat took no part on their own initiative in the uprising. Of these, some support this view by a reference to the failure of Robespierre, who, they claim with much evidence of historical fact long concealed, was the only true democrat of the Revolution. Others endeavour to establish their case by pointing to its results. Professor Sombart, for instance, says : " Even the most short-sighted observer must admit, on examining the Revolution of 1789, that it was a purely 4 50 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY middle- class movement, or, to be quite precise, an upper middle-class movement. These upper middle classes were struggling for the recognition of their rights, and for their emancipation from the privileges which the ruling classes of society claimed ; they were attempting to throw off the fetters by which a feudal power and an absolute monarchy held them bound. The demand of the movement was, indeed, for freedom and equality, but it was freedom and equality according to the conception of the upper middle classes. Look at the earliest social legislation of the new government in France, and you will see that it breathes anything but a friendly spirit to the people or to the workers. We see perfectly clearly at first sight that this legislation was not made by the masses for the masses, but that it was bourgeois in character from the first." l At first sight, possibly, but not if we look again a little deeper. This legislation will be briefly considered in another chapter; here it need only be shown that those who hold Professor Sombart's opinion overlook the fact that what France was striving to attain, under the inspiration of the revolutionary ideals, was national unity in which no class should dominate the others. That France failed in this and subsequent attempts does not prove that the original movement was a middle- class movement. That a new governing class, having its origin in the middle classes, on whom the restored Bourbons relied in the main for the half-hearted support 1 Socialism and the Social Movement, p. 132, English translation (Dent. 1909). DEMOCRACY AND NATIONAL UNITY 51 which was given them, ultimately secured for themselves many of the privileges which had been enjoyed by the hereditary aristocracy, is a fact which nobody would venture to dispute. That they thus re - established horizontal divisions of the natural order is proved by the repeated violent outbreaks of the revolutionary spirit which was never more determined to achieve its ideal than it is to-day. But to state, or even to suggest, that the working classes were not as whole-hearted as any other class in the attempt to return to the human order in 1789 and the following years, shows a want of appreciation of the ideals which have actuated the proletariat during the last century and a quarter. The older historians, who had never heard of the " proletariat " and who had little sympathy with what they would have regarded as demagogy, are much sounder in their judgment of this phase of the social movement than many of the modern writers who are undoubted authorities on other phases and who are sincerely in sympathy with what they believe to be working-class aspirations. But the events themselves of the Revolution, taking only those which are now beyond dispute, and the contemporary view of Europe, offer the most unanswer- able refutation of this modern view. After ten years of revolution and internal and external wars, France was reduced to a state of anarchy, bank- ruptcy, chaos, without an effective system of government in spite of the thousands of new laws with which she had attempted to create one. Then Napoleon came : on the ruins he erected his marvellous edifice of order. He was 52 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY accepted by France and overcame all his enemies to enjoy a brief spell of unsurpassed glory because he was regarded as the only power that could give her national unity. Throughout his career he is to be found always attentive to the needs of the working classes and relying on their support, until they poured into the gardens of the Tuileries to hail him on his return from Marengo and to give him, devenu le grand meneur de la masse ouvrUre, 1 at last the power to carry out his work of national re- construction. Napoleon retained the democratic founda- tions of the Eevolution, and the aristocracies of Europe remained combined against him. For sixteen years the world was dazzled by the victories of democracy at bay, and then hereditary aristocracy emerged apparently triumphant, but in reality fatally wounded, from the struggle. Napoleon, " the demon of Eevolution" as Alexander I. finally regarded him, was conquered, and, seeking the hospitality of England, was sent to St. Helena, the English Government of the day fearing, among other dangers, that if he resided in England " the Kioters might place him at their head." 2 After eight years of persecution in St. Helena, the English Government, with the consent of the aristocracies of Europe, buried him with military honours in a nameless grave, and democracy was believed to have been buried with him. 3 1 Comte Albert Vandal, L'Avtnement de Bonaparte, vol. ii. p. 443 (Nelson). 1 See Napoleon : The Last Phase, by Lord Rosebery, cbap. iv. 8 The English Minister who was responsible for the treatment of Napoleon in St. Helena had a worthy successor in ineptitude in the ARISTOCRACY AND INTERNATIONALISM 53 The general attitude of the governed on both sides in this struggle is summed up in the conversation which took place between the Austrian sentry on the east bank of the Ehine, near its source, and the French sentry on the west, at the moment when the dramatic and unex- pected return to Paris of Napoleon, who was believed to be still in Egypt, had electrified the French, making them delirious with hope : " Well, Frenchman, so your king has arrived ! " " We haven't any king, and don't want one ! " " But isn't Bonaparte your king ? " " No, he's our general." " Oh, well, you'll see him your king yet. Anyhow, he'll be a fine fellow if he brings us peace." 1 There the old order spoke to the new, the wisdom and experience of the past to the hope of the future, the proletariat of a vanishing age to the prole- tariat of the age to be. From those times onwards, the union of the aristo- cratic governing classes throughout Europe to crush the rising democracy of France was regarded by the governed of all nations as a precedent for their union on similar horizontal lines against their governors. How the attempt at the Congress of Vienna, after the overthrow of Napoleon, to establish some sort of international control by the governing classes ended in failure will be seen hereafter. For the moment it is only necessary to note that the example of an endeavour to forge an inter- Minister who, at a later date, when the French transferred the body to the banks of the Seine, allowed them also to transport the nameless tomb- stone which is now in the Invalides, a card attached to it bearing the words: "Ici-git . . . point de nom. Lamartine." 1 Comte Albert Vandal, op. cit. 54 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY nationalism out of class interests on horizontal lines, cutting across the human boundaries of patriotism, is held to have been set in the first instance by hereditary aristocracy, and is from time to time quoted with uneasy consciences in excuse of the antipatriotic boastings of a section of the governed to-day. The hereditary aristocracy, as has been said, emerged from this gigantic contest in apparent triumph. But they had learnt little from its lessons. Throughout Europe they had for centuries endeavoured, taking the family as the basis and relying on its hereditary instinct, to build up a human organic unity within the unity of the nation ; they continued to depend on the national unity and did not, except in the case of the French Eevolution, detach themselves from it to form an inde- pendent organism, but rather in their final developments in some nations became parasitical. So firmly was their system rooted that an organic unity of aristocratic governing classes within the nation continues to exist in many countries to-day. In Germany, in spite of the semblance of full democracy established by Bismarck when he introduced universal suffrage and voting by ballot in 1867, it still flourishes; it has only recently begun to show evidence of a serious decline having survived with astonishing vigour the blow dealt it eighty years ago by the Eeform Bill in Great Britain, where a system more closely akin to democracy, though on a narrower franchise than in Germany, is in force. In France alone has it been entirely swept away. The strength of the system is undoubtedly to be found 55 in its human tendencies. These old governing classes were in touch with the human order through the family. The hereditary principle linked them together in ever- increasing numbers. They built up a hierarchy of at least six degrees, each with its descendants to the third and fourth generation. They were also in touch with the human order in their possession of the land, the direct link with the productive forces of nature essential to human existence in the material world. Five hundred years ago in England the poor man's poet could think of no worse earthly fate for the Jews than this : l Your freedom shall be thraldom ; Your children shall be churls, Them shall ye never make lords of land to till it, But ye shall be barren men, ye shall live by usury, The life which our Lord God in all your laws forbade. To the aristocratic governing class in its zenith in Europe, trade and its extreme form, usury, was a thing inhuman, to be used, but to be despised. As it declined, however, before the onslaught of democracy, those who lived by trade and usury rose to stand shoulder to shoulder with it, or to replace it, creating a new govern- ing class of plutocracy. The old was in touch with the human order, its source of strength being the family and the land ; the new throve on the invention of machinery and mechanical processes of industry, things but partially human, the creation of the intellect, and as it gained in power and began in some countries entirely to supplant 1 The Triumph of Piers Plowman. Quoted from a Version for the Modern Reader by Arthur Burrell, M.A., p. 154 (Dent). 56 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY the old it showed traces of its origin ; under the name of capitalism it became inhuman, sans entrailles, as a Frenchman has said, which, translated into wholesome biblical English, may be rendered without bowels of mercy towards the classes which it domineered. From the old governing classes the new learnt how to rule ; very readily imitated their methods of horizontal international self-defence in defiance of patriotism ; in countries where they still survived, such as England, intermingled with them, and in the individual cases where hereditary aristocracy was untrue to its own class and played at plutocracy, a new type was created, the offspring of the two, half-caste, sometimes blending the bad qualities of each a thing which makes the honest working- class Christian shudder, for it is akin to his conception of the devil. And so to-day we find in all countries a new governing class, 1 in some existing side by side with the old, in France and the United States of America in 1 Werner Sorabart's classification of modern society is inapplicable to France and the United States, and certainly to England, where the great capitalists and the "feudal party" now form one group. His classi- fication is : 1. The nobility and gentry or feudal party, which corresponds roughly to the feudal aristocracy, and which in Germany is called the Junker party. These are the representatives of a feudal system of land tenure or, in other words, of a patriarchal manorial system. 2. The lower middle class, which I have characterised as the class of manual labourers in the broadest sense, stands for a system of industry organised on traditional lines and much like the guild system in the Middle Ages. 3. The bourgeoisie or middle class par excellence, which is the repre- sentative of the capitalist system ; and the opposite pole to it, the antithesis of the bourgeoisie. 4. The Proletariat. Werner Sombart, op. cit. p. 2. CLASS WAR 57 almost unchallenged supremacy, transgressing the human order of collective unities, joining horizontally throughout the nations, faced by the proletariat drawn up in corre- sponding formation, not to be outflanked. Thus there is class war threatening to replace national war, and a new development of the natural order known as the economic order. It would seem, then, at first sight that man in his endeavour to revert to the old order had but succeeded in effecting a change of masters, not for the better ; that the struggles and sufferings of France, the patriotic Eevolution, had but destroyed one governing class to push an inferior up to take its place in the name of democracy. But we shall find as we proceed that this is not so ; that Eepresentative Government which has resulted from the abortive attempt to achieve democracy only represents a stage, an experiment, a groping to find the human order towards which mankind has been given an overpowering impetus in the last century and a quarter. Let us first, then, look at some hard facts of history and see how horizontal internationalism has fared in its struggle with patriotism and the human order in the present phase of the social movement. CHAPTER IV INTERNATIONALISM No consideration of internationalism would be complete which omitted to note the failure of religious systems to break down the vertical divisions in the human order of the development of association throughout European civilisation. Indeed, this failure offers the only available precedent by which we may judge of the success likely to attend the efforts towards inter- nationalism of the exponents of new ideals, which have for their followers all the force of new religions replacing the old. The early missionaries of the Christian religion in obedience to the command at first confined " to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," but ultimately extended " to all nations " were internationalists, and the Eoman Catholic Church has so far been the most successful of all international organisations in the Western World. With a common ritual, a common language, a common standard of conduct and morals, and an internationalised clerical hierarchy, it was well equipped to overcome those differences in character and in interests which have grouped mankind in nations, rising and falling, ebbing and flowing in the struggle for the possession of the earth. Had these differences been artificial or fortuitous, RELIGIOUS INTERNATIONALISM 59 as is maintained by a school of thought which has existed in all ages and is not without its representatives to-day, they would surely have disappeared before so potent a force, and yet national interests persisted and dominated all others. In the Middle Ages the influence of the Church spread all over Europe, and yet nation warred against nation. It then sought to unite nations by giving a common objective to the warlike spirit, and the armies of Christendom marched again and again into Palestine to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the infidels. But nationality was not thus to be diverted or suppressed. Under the shadow of the sacred tomb itself it sowed discord among the armies of the different kingdoms, and their leaders returned to Europe, if they had the good fortune to escape their rivals lying in wait for them on the way, to declare war on one another. In the century following the Eeformation the Eoman Catholic faith was in danger, and its supporters might have been expected to sink even national differences in its defence. But on the contrary, the Roman Catholic nations of the Continent sought and welcomed the aid of Protestant armies in their wars against nations of their own religion. The great three- faced Cardinal in France, who warred against the Huguenots within his own borders to lay the foundations of a united nation, during the Thirty Years' War helped with troops and money the German Protestants in their struggle for religious liberty, perceiving clearly that a divided Germany made for the national aggrandisement of France. Everywhere the 60 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY so-called wars of religion had their national purpose, as the leading motive of those who directed them. As the ideal represented by the Eoman Catholic Church failed to produce internationalism, so have all other ideals hitherto found the task beyond their strength. In the eighteenth century the philosophers preached " the rights of man " to the oppressed among all peoples. France having formally accepted the new ideal, the armies of the Eevolution started out on their international mission to unite mankind in a democratic brotherhood. The aristocratic governments whom they attacked ultimately defeated them at Waterloo, having learnt from the disasters that befell their arms that the only way to avert the danger which threatened them was by an appeal to the patriotism of the peoples whom they governed. When aristocracy had vanquished Napoleon and, as it thought, crushed democracy, it had an uneasy feeling that the seed had been sown wide-cast by the French and that the accursed thing, the governed asking for equality in the government, might spring up again as it did with a vengeance, all over Europe thirty-three years later. So it endeavoured to render permanent its own horizontal internationalism, and met in congress for that purpose at Vienna, where it was lavishly entertained by the impoverished Austrian Government. Its object was to form a kind of European aristocratic trade union : emperors, kings, princes, kinglets, and princelets all were there ; Turkey alone was not invited. This Congress was the parent of, and may be, and is, quoted as the ARISTOCRATIC INTERNATIONALISM 61 precedent for every international congress on a class basis, socialist, trade-union, or syndicalist, that has met subsequently. The enemy ? There was only one except in the brief hundred days when France made one last despairing effort to free herself, and Napoleon a final outburst of genius and heroism to save himself from the imprisonment which he knew aristocracy was plotting at the Congress to inflict on him in spite of its pledges in solemn treaty 1 democracy, French ideas, the governed. But nationality asserted itself. Every power struggled to aggrandise itself (and Talleyrand, supreme in diplomacy, found no difficulty in forming an alliance between England, Austria, and France to resist, if necessary by force of arms, the territorial demands of Kussia and Prussia). Small nations with natural affinities sought to be united, but the big nations kept them asunder for the time being just as Eichelieu had kept the German states apart two centuries before. Aristocracy found itself too weak to overcome national instincts even among the representatives of aristocracy at the Congress ; just as nationality still triumphs at a socialist congress to-day. So it fell back upon religion one of the many instances of the misuse of Christianity for the oppression of the governed which explain the natural hostility which they so often show towards its teachings. 1 The Treaty of Fontainebleau between Napoleon on the one side, and Austria, Prussia, Russia, and England on the other, was not six months old when these powers ceased to recognise it. Trade Unions to-day can find many precedents for breaking their agreements with employers when they no longer suit their purpose. 62 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY The Emperor of Russia, Alexander I. (it will be remembered that his descendant initiated the Peace Conferences at The Hague at the end of this same century), persuaded Prussia and Austria to join him in founding the Holy Alliance in the name of " the very holy and indivisible Trinity." The three monarchs, guided by the "sublime truths taught by the eternal religion of God our Saviour," agreed to be " united by the bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity," and to give " aid and assistance to each other on all occasions and in all places, regarding themselves, in their relations to their subjects and to their armies, as fathers of families. . . . Considering themselves all as members of one great Christian nation, the three allied princes look upon themselves as delegates of, Providence called upon to govern three branches of the same family. . . . Their Majesties recommend, therefore, to their peoples, as the sole means of enjoying that peace which springs from a good conscience and is alone enduring, to fortify themselves each day in the principles and practice of those duties which the Divine Saviour has taught to men." All the sovereigns with the exception of the Prince Eegent of Great Britain, the Pope, and the Sultan, signed the document committing them to the Holy Alliance. 1 1 An admirable article on "The Peace Movement and the Holy Alliance " appeared in The Edinburgh Review of April 1912. The author discusses the question in connection with the Peace movement and not from the point of view here adopted. But one of his closing remarks throws some light on the present argument. In reference to a possible new League of Peace, he says: "The new Holy Alliance then, like the old, would find itself face to face with revolutionary forces, which it ARISTOCRATIC INTERNATIONALISM 63 The Congress temporarily recast the map of Europe, and from it resulted the Quadruple Alliance, of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, to which England for a short time gave her adherence. The Holy Alliance, initiated by Alexander I. in a sincere belief in his divine mission, was converted by Metternich, with the consent of the disillusioned Emperor, into an instrument of repression with which to put down by force every revolution of the governed which might be attempted. Great Britain, her Government, which had already begun to talk of French ideas as " internal eccentricities," harassed by an opposition which made use of the growing democratic feeling in that country against subservience to " a league of foreign despots," refused to sign the resulting Trophan Protocol of 1820, which contained among others this article : " States which have undergone a change of government due to revolution, the results of which threaten other States, ipso facto cease to be members of the European Alliance, and remain excluded from it until their situation gives guarantees for legal order and stability. If, owing to such alterations, immediate danger threatens other States, the Powers bind them- selves, by peaceful means, or if need be by arms, to bring back the guilty State into the bosom of the Great Alliance." Aristocratic internationalism had failed. France again in 1848 burst into a flame of democracy, and February would have to repress, except in the very improbable event of its being willing to conciliate them by conceding their extreme demands : the satisfaction of every nationalist aspiration, and the universal establishment of pure democracy under republican forms." 64 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY and March of that eventful year saw the system of Metternich overthrown and he himself compelled to join that strange assemblage of political exiles of all shades of opinion who found a shelter in England. In France a second Republic, not to be long-lived, was pro- claimed, notable for the inclusion in the Government of Louis Blanc, who regarded a republic as merely a resting-place on the road to socialistic revolution, and who sought to transform private property into public property by means of co-operation, an idea to be mis- interpreted in the fiasco of the National Workshops. It was not until the last half of the nineteenth century that the governed definitely and consciously began an organised attempt at internationalism on horizontal lines. Of that attempt we have not yet seen the end. In 1864 the principle was first formulated " that the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves." With these words opens the preamble to the " General Rules of the International Working Men's Association." The following is the preamble in full : l " CONSIDERING, " That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes them- selves ; that the struggle for the emancipa- tion of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, 1 The quotations given are from the "Official Edition, revised by the General Council," and printed for the General Council by Edward Truelove, 256 High Holborn. 1871. PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM 65 but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class-rule ; " That the economical subjection of the man of labour to the monopoliser of the means of labour, that is the sources of life, lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence ; " That the economical emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement ought to be sub- ordinate as a means ; " That all efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed from the want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labour in each country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working classes of different countries ; " That the emancipation of labour is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution on the concur- rence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced countries ; " That the present revival of the working classes in the most industrious countries of Europe, while it raises a new hope, gives solemn warn- ing against a relapse into the old errors, and calls for the immediate combination of the still disconnected movements ; 5 66 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY " FOR THESE REASONS " The International Working Men's Association has been founded. " IT DECLARES : "That all societies and individuals adhering to it will acknowledge truth, justice, and morality as the basis of their conduct towards each other and towards all men, without regard to colour, creed, or nationality ; " That it acknowledges no rights without duties, no duties without rights" Then follow the Rules and Administrative regulations. This Association, known throughout Europe under its abbreviated title, " The International," is now almost forgotten in England save for its connection with Karl Marx, but it is the direct ancestor of the most recent movement to combine the working-men on a class basis, in their struggle against Capital. One of the chief supporters of the syndicalist movement in France said recently that the central organisation of that movement was " the historical continuation " of The International ; l and Ferdinand Pelloutier, the founder of French syndicalism, said of this movement in 1895, that it was the final outcome " of the prophetic advice given to the Proletariat thirty years ago by The International." 2 But it is only with the international aspects of this Association that we are for the moment concerned. 1 E. Pouget : Le parti du travail, p. 16. 2 Fourth Congress of the Bournes du Travail. Compte rendu du cmu/rts (1895), p. 22. PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM 67 In 1847 Marx issued his manifesto closing with the appeal, which is now seen inscribed on banners in every labour procession in all countries, " Proletarians of all lands, unite ! " But it met with no response. A " League of the Just " had, it is true, been formed by German exiles in Paris in 1836, and, as the result of a congress held in London in 1847, was reorganised as " The Communist League " ; but it was dissolved in 1852. The atmosphere in the period which immediately followed 1848 was charged with internationalism ; Kossuth and Mazzini were the apostles of a revolutionary and political kind, based in apparent paradox on the individual rights of nations, which, breathing the fire of liberty, so inflamed the spirit of democracy that it is impossible to say, in any of its international outbursts, whether the interests of the working classes or some question of the freedom of an enthralled foreign people was its origin. The formation of The International itself, took place at a meeting held in London in 1864 to express sympathy with the Polish Insurrection. On the other hand, international scientific congresses, philanthropic congresses, such as led to the Geneva Convention, and above all the Universal Exhibitions which sprang into life at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century, all resulted from and intensified the international spirit. It was the Inter- national Exhibition in London in 1862 which paved the way for the creation of The International. The French Government had sent a deputation of eighty workmen 68 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY to the Hyde Park Exhibition of 185 1. 1 As this deputation consisted of men nominated by employers, the working-men of Paris raised 2473 francs to provide the expenses of fifteen independent representatives on their own account. In 1862, after considerable agitation, interference of the police, and final intervention of Napoleon in., 750 delegates, elected by the working-men themselves on a basis of universal suffrage, came to London. Seventy of these were present at a meeting of 500 working-men, at which the English, in their address of welcome, expressed the hope that some permanent means of international communication might be established among the working-men of all countries. Then came the Polish Insurrection, and the French working-men were represented at a meeting held in favour of the Poles in London, and finally six French delegates attended the meeting held at St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre, on 28th September 1864, at which The International was founded. Let it be noted in passing that it was said of this association that "the child born in the Paris workshops was put out to nurse in London." It is difficult to ascertain what was the material or numerical strength of " The International " ; but its influence was never questioned by the Governments of the day. 2 The French Government in 1866 arrested the English delegates as they were passing through France 1 The Government voted 50,000 francs, the Paris municipality 20,000, and the Paris Chamber of Commerce 10,000 francs. 2 "It was said to be rich and powerful. There would seem to be no doubt that its adherents numbered from seventy to eighty thousand in Paris in 1870." PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM 69 on their return from the Geneva Congress of The Inter- national and seized their papers, including the minutes of the Congress. The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Stanley, made representations to the French Government and the papers were finally returned to their owners. Bismarck no doubt took advantage of its existence for his own ends in his dealings with France. In 1869, just before the Franco-German War, strikes took place with exceptional frequency all over France : " according to the French police, these outbreaks were planned by The International, and it was even insinuated that Count Bismarck ' had known how to win the graces of this all- powerful association ' with a view to incapacitate France for attacking Prussia," writes one of its founders. 1 Napoleon m. in 1872, shortly before his death, had planned a " return from Elba " in imitation of his great predecessor, and had entered into negotiations with the Paris International. The outbreak in Paris from 18th March to 29th May, in which 30,000 communists lost their lives, was at the time attributed by many to The International. On the other hand, Jules Favre, a special object of hatred for the General Council with its head- quarters in London, who on 6th June 1871 "issued a circular to all the European powers, calling upon them to hunt down the International Working-Men's Associ- ation," 2 at first held the association entirely responsible for the Commune, but in his evidence before the Com- 1 Professor Beesley : The Contemporary Review, November 1870. 2 Letter of John Hales, Secretary to the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, in The Times of 13th June 1871. 70 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY mission of Inquiry instituted by the French Government said : " Socialist ideas and the action of The Inter- national in relation to the 18th of March, were like a little packet of gunpowder thrown into a fire ; the fire was burning, the little packet of gunpowder changed its aspect, but alone it would have had no effect." The work and organisation of this association will be referred to in a later chapter; here its purely inter- national tendencies only need be noted. These were not confined to propaganda or even to the Congresses which were held in Geneva in 1866, with sixty delegates, in Lausanne in 1867, in Brussels in 1868, with ninety-six delegates, in Basil in 1869, with eighty delegates in London in 1871, and at The Hague in 1872. It gave evidence of a more solid and material form of inter- nationalism. For instance, in 1870, shortly before the opening of the war, the Federal Council of The International in London recommended the British Amalgamated Society of Engineers to give financial assistance to the Paris ironmoulders who were then on strike. The proposal was laid before 299 branches of the Society ; 7045 members voted for granting a loan, and 557 against. The loan was therefore approved. This special instance has been selected because when the votes are analysed distinctive racial characteristics are found at work which excited some significant comment at the time. 1 Of the 557 members who voted against granting the loan, 234 were Scotch. The Edin- 1 Professor Beesley in the article quoted above. PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM 71 burgh branch declined to vote at all, stating that one " should look at home first." Leith inquired as to the security for the repayment of the loan. One of the Glasgow branches considered that when the loan was repaid, the members should decide by vote what should be done with the money. On the other hand, seven English branches suggested that the money should be given instead of being lent. The inference is justified that the national solidarity of the British Amalgamated Society of Engineers depended on a collective union of the natural order, as its qualification British implied, and would not have survived an exclusively economic test. The inquiry may be ex- tended further to see if signs can be discovered of dis- tinctive national characteristics threatening the solidarity of The International itself. One will suffice. In the Appendix to the Eules and Regulations of The International quoted above, the General Council gives among the reasons for issuing a new, authentic, and revised edition of the rules in English, French, and German, the following : "The Paris edition of the London Provisional Rules had been accepted as a true translation ; but the Paris Committee to which this translation is due, had not only introduced most important alterations in the preamble of the Rules which, on the interpellation of the General Council, were represented as changes unavoidable under the existing political state of France. From an insufficient acquaintance with the English language it had also misinterpreted some of the articles of the Rules." 72 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY What explanation the French offered when interpel- lated is not, as far as can be at present discovered, anywhere recorded. But it may be assumed that the causes of divergence were much the same as they are to-day. At the end of August 1909 an international conference was held in Paris under the auspices of the Confederation Generate du Travail, the syndicalist organ- isation. The committee of the C. G. T. (it is always referred to in this abbreviated form in France) in their report to their own Congress in the following year stated that the French representatives at this conference had found themselves in disagreement with their foreign comrades on many points. " Between the foreign trade unions and ours," they said, " great differences exist. We proceed in a spirit which is totally different to theirs." Before an effective international confederation can be formed " it is necessary that the foreign trade union organisms should become absolutely autonomous, like the French organism. In 1907 the general secretary of the C. G. T. himself had emphasised in glowing rhetoric the characteristics which distinguished the French from all other nationalities : " Le ge"nie de notre classe ouvriere franchise, avec son seus aign et supe'rieur, souverain, de 1'action, sa nervosite" ardente, tout ensemble primesautiere et re'fle'chir, la reflexion e*taut rapide, ramassant dans le bref raccourci d'un instantane" tous les elements d'un probleme, avec la surete* et la rapidite" de 1'intuitive qui, bien supe"rieure a 1'analyse, ne laisse pas la volonte* s'e"mousser dans les brumes d'une ratiocination infinie." Quoted in Weil, op. cit. p. 480. INTERNATIONALISM AND PATRIOTISM 73 The period of history covered by The International is peculiarly interesting, as it furnishes the only illustration from which any definite deductions may be drawn, of horizontal internationalism and the human order at grips, not in the Congress hall or the Parliament, but amidst those stern realities when patriotism is evoked in its sublimest expression and men have to make the supreme sacrifice for the ideals with which they are inspired. Which for the working men of France and Germany was the true faith in 1870, the new or the old, the interests of their country or of their class, patriotism or the union of the proletarians of all nations ? Let us see. On the eve of the war the Paris section of The Inter- national issued a protest and an appeal to their German comrades. A mass-meeting of working-men held in Brunswick, the headquarters of the German International, founded in 1869, sent the following reply: "With deep sorrow we are forced to undergo a defensive war J as an unavoidable evil ; but we call at the same time upon the whole German working class to render the recurrence of such an immense social misfortune impossible, by vindi- cating the power of the people themselves to decide on peace and war." There must have been a Bismarck among the working-men who drafted this reply. In a few brief months the French armies, badly led, badly armed, without organisation and without regular supplies, had been swept away by the invader and Paris was besieged. Not only had the French working-man gone out to meet the enemy on the battlefield, but war 1 The italics are not in the original. 74 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY with all its grim reality had entered his very home. The members of The International were carried away on the flood of patriotic sentiment which flowed from the hearts of two and a half million people facing misery and starvation with a sublime courage. " The war-fever," they called it afterwards, as if they had caught some noxious malady. But one of their leaders was among those who wanted to resist the Germans to the bitter end. " We must arm against the Prussians first," he wrote, "against the middle classes afterwarda" Another started a paper named La Patrie en danger, which called upon the Parisians to march out and attack the Prussians, and on all France to rise in arms for a last heroic effort. The Paris Committee itself, unable to support a daily or even a weekly paper, accepts the hospitality of the columns of La Lutte a outrance, a title sadly lacking in international sympathy. And, when the end came, the capitulard replaced for the time being the capitalist as an object of hatred for the working classes. In September 1870, the corresponding secretary for France on the General Council of The International, wrote from London that the working-men ought to leave la vermine bourgeoise to make peace with Prussia and think only of organising themselves ; a month later he recorded in bitterness of spirit that many of them were singing in chorus with the middle classes and thinking of nothing but their country. Then in the red fury of the Commune, when the proletarians and the bitter-enders those who could afford it having left the town immediately after the THE TRIUMPH OF PATRIOTISM 75 capitulation held Paris against the army of the govern- ing classes, the Committee of The International formally supported the short-lived Commune government ; seven- teen of its members took office in this government and endorsed manifestoes which embodied communist doctrines in a burning appeal to humiliated patriotism, and hatred of those who had surrendered France to the foreigner. Such was the triumph of patriotism ; but from the ashes of the conflagration of the Commune internationalism rose once more to threaten the human order, to hover in menace from that day to this over every effort of man- kind towards the realisation of its inevitable destiny. The army of the governing classes had beaten down the attempt of the proletariat to emancipate itself, there had been war, real material life-destroying war between the two horizontal divisions and war leaves a legacy of vengeance which must be paid in kind. The indomitable or, at the worst, the irrepressible Marx issued, with the endorsement of the General Council of The International in London, on 30th May 1871, an address to all members of the association on " The Civil War in France." The Quadruple Alliance and 1848 have not been forgotten by the working classes. The governing classes, whether aristocratic or middle class, will, they believe, always combine internationally against them. And so the suppression of the Commune is regarded as the combined work of the German and French governing classes. Paris was not "to be defended without arming its working class, organising them into an effective force, and training their ranks by the war itself. But Paris 76 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY armed was the revolution armed. A victory of Paris over the Prussian aggressor would have been a victory of the French workman over the French capitalist and his State parasites. In this conflict between national duty and class interest, the Government of National Defence did not hesitate one moment to turn into a Government of National Defection." The address then goes on to draw a picture of the endeavours of the French Government to persuade the German army to suppress the Commune : The " attempt of the slaveholders' conspiracy to put down Paris by getting the Prussians to occupy it, was frustrated by Bismarck's refusal." Then after discussing the peace negotiations between the French and German Govern- ments, it states that Bismarck agreed " to let loose, for the extermination of Paris, the captive Bonapartist army, and to lend them the direct assistance of Emperor William's troops." It concludes with a final summing up, which is the keynote of the histories which have been written, and are being written in increasing numbers and with growing skill, by the working classes themselves to replace the history of scholars, whom they regard as prejudiced in favour of the governing classes : " That after the most tremendous war of modern times, the conquering and the conquered hosts should fraternise for the common massacre of the proletariate this un- paralleled event does indicate, not, as Bismarck thinks, the final repression of a new society upheaving, but the crumbling into dust of bourgeois society. The highest heroic effort of which old society is still capable is THE SEEDS OF ANTI-MILITARISM 77 national war ; and this is now proved to be a mere govern- mental humbug, intended to defer the struggle of classes, and to be thrown aside as soon as that class struggle burst out into civil war. Class rule is no longer able to disguise itself in a national uniform ; the national Governments are one as against the proletariate ! . . . Our Association is ... nothing but the international bond between the most advanced working-men in the various countries of the civilised world. . . . The soil out of which it grows is modern society itself. It cannot be stamped out by any amount of carnage. To stamp it out, the Governments would have to stamp out the despotism of capital over labour the conditions of their own parasitical existence." The victims of the Commune are to be regarded as martyrs in the economic struggle which is yet to keep nations internally divided, and anti- militarism is to find a permanent place in the new dogma. CHAPTER V THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL UNITY To break down the natural division of mankind into governed and governing classes has been the ultimate and clearly perceived object during the last century and a quarter before the minds of all those who have given any thought to the reasons urging them to struggle and suffer, to make and demand sacrifices, to combine and agitate in the ceaseless restlessness and turbulence of the social movement. Former centuries had firmly estab- lished, had deeply rooted, this division in an entangle- ment of human customs ; had it not been for the philosophers of the eighteenth century and, above all, for incorrigible sons of the people, fellows like Jean- Jacques, it might have permanently superseded the human order. Not even yet is it safe to predict that this division is not strong enough to survive the attacks which are being made upon it. Is it not still regarded as human, in spite of revolutions, by those of the govern- ing classes who have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing? Has it not, in defiance of all spiritual teaching and influences, taught many of the governed to look upon themselves as something differing in kind from 78 THE CAUSES OF DISCONTENT 79 the governing classes, a view which has been emphasised by the governing classes, possibly in the folly with which the gods destroy, by making the access of talent from the lower classes to the upper increasingly more difficult, opening it in preference to wealth, thus aggravating the economic class war ? Looking back in the wisdom of experience, none but those who are blinded by their own interests in the mistakes of the past can deny that the present struggle might have been indefinitely postponed ; so little was required to keep the discontent of the governed within bounds, to prevent them from combining in formidable numbers ; they would have remained at least passive, unrebellious against their lot, if only they had enjoyed security of tenure and a living wage. If the great majority of wage-earners had always earned enough to keep their families from starvation, and had been sure of earning it as long as they worked well, no trade union would ever have been formed. To those who assert that such a state of assured minimum existence is a Utopian dream, the working-man answers to-day that the system which has sanctioned sweating, unemployment, and insecurity of tenure has allowed colossal fortunes to accumulate in the hands of a small number of individuals within his own knowledge, and that there must be a direct relation between the simultaneous indigence of the many and the surfeit of the few. " For the proletarist," says the Gotha programme of 1875, the profession of faith of the German Social Democrats, " and the sinking middle classes the small shopkeepers and the peasants 80 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY the new state of things means uncertainty of tenure, misery, oppression, slavery, humiliation, exploitation." That, it was said, was the language of the ignorant ; these things settled themselves by the law of supply and demand. Let us take an illustration of this law at work in England under conditions peculiarly favourable to its success, among those who are not ignorant, who refuse to join openly in the economic war, and will not give public utterance to their grievances. Some twenty years ago assistant masters in secondary schools in England formed themselves into an association with the object of obtaining security of tenure, a living wage, and, inci- dentally, old age pensions. They were liable to dismissal on the flimsiest pretext, and the average salary which they earned did not enable them to live healthily under the conditions required by the social status attaching to their position ; it certainly did not allow them to sup- port a wife, much less a wife and family. They had peculiar claims on the nation, being responsible for the training of the leaders in every department of national activity. These claims have been recognised in other countries ; Germany, indeed, has given them her first con- sideration, holding that to her secondary schoolmasters is mainly due her wonderful development in modern times. But in England their endeavours to obtain a living wage met with small success. They desired above all things to behave like gentlemen, and not to concentrate their energies on an economic demand ; so they did not form a trade union, a fact which enabled the law of supply and demand to work untrammelled. One strike, one pulling THE CAUSES OF DISCONTENT 81 up of Park railings, one breaking of shop-windows, and the public conscience would have been aroused. They preferred, however, to take any opportunity that offered itself for leaving the profession and seeking a living wage in other walks of life. So many of them, who were able to escape from the uncertainty and want of their chosen calling, regretfully turned to other branches of activity, so unpopular did the profession become among those from whom their ranks had been generally recruited, that the supply decreased. So the law of supply and demand came into operation. Their cost has gone up, and now at last they are in certain cases to be granted pensions. This means that they will still be bought in the cheapest market, though they are slightly dearer than they were before ; but they have not yet attained to a living wage. A descent may now be made lower in the social and intellectual scale, down into a very inferno of horror, misery, and disease, existing in England to-day, the fetid source of many a fortune the cheapest market. Here the law of supply and demand worked unchecked. Noth- ing controlled the wages paid by the bad employer in this sphere but the failure to discover an alternative source of cheaper labour, and the good employer was reduced to impotence by the competition of the bad. Even the power of bargaining was not possessed by the starving women on whom this system weighed with its awful pressure ; to such straits were they reduced that they had not the means, the will, or the physical strength to form themselves into associations which might give 6 82 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY them some strategic advantage in their struggle with the employer or the middle-woman who farmed out the work. Such was their martyrdom that it had been immortalised in literature side by side with other stories of unsurpassed human oppression, and the present generation had grown up believing that it was a thing of the past. Inquiries which were made some years ago, as the result of an awakening of the national conscience, revealed such practical applications of the law of supply and demand as this l : A woman, with two children to support, by taking home work was just able to maintain herself and them on the verge of starvation ; another woman, living in the same street, with five children, offered to do the same work for a shilling a week less ; her offer being the cheaper was of course accepted, and both families starved. So great was the public indignation at last aroused by the exposure of the wide-spread practice of sweating, that the nation swept aside the accepted economic theories, and by establishing Trade Boards to regulate wages in the worst of the sweated industries, or rather in those in which the experiment appeared to have the greatest chances of success created a precedent that has finally terminated the unchallenged tyranny of the most in- human of economic laws. But sweating still continues in other than the selected trades, and starvation wages are still paid in all Of the two evils, starvation wages and insecurity of tenure, the latter is the more degrading to man. It has 1 For typical instances of sweating, inoet of which are of very recent date, see Appendix IV. THE CAUSES OF DISCONTENT 83 been a deadly weapon in the hands of the governing classes whenever they have chosen to adopt the policy of divide and rule as a means of retaining their power. The fear that they may be dismissed from the position which they hold, and that their families may thus be reduced to starvation, has subverted the moral nature of the governed, of the employed, to use the term which expresses their relation to the governing class of capital. Who has not seen, even in what are called intellectual classes, all but the bravest under this fear become cowards, honest men intriguers, the sanctity of friendship violated, convictions seduced and talent debauched ? Happy is the man who has learnt to appreciate its dangers while he is yet young enough to retain his belief in human nature ; but lost would be that genera- tion which had to prepare its sons for the battle of life by initiating them in their youth into the evils which this system imposes. Who among the middle classes has experienced them and can throw a stone at the working classes for the jealousies and suspicions which divide them ? Insecurity of tenure, however, is not only a negative evil, an exception to be remedied ; it has conquered a whole domain of its own, worked at the roots of society, undermining the human order, until it has thrown up a system which is positive, normal, in the lowest ranks of the governed that which is known as casual labour. The casual labourer is a recognised factor, sanctioned by custom and encouraged for the convenience and greater profit of employers, in the economic world. He waits 84 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY about at the dock gates l or elsewhere on the chance of a job, not only because he is temporarily out of work (that class of man constitutes but a small percentage of the whole) but because he is a casual by profession. He has generally been reduced to this degrading way of earning a livelihood because he has a wife and family in the locality, and because he is affected by the many other causes which render the poor immobile, unable to travel farther afield to find permanent work. He has become demoralised and unaccustomed to work more than four days a week ; often unwilling to do so and let this be noted by the economists from a sense of charity and feelings of comradeship towards his fellow-casuals, fearing lest he should get more than his fair share of the jobs. Consider for one moment how far the casual is removed from the conditions of labour imposed on man in the conquest of nature, compare his lot with that of the husbandman, the natural unit in the economic system ; for the husbandman work is constant, the one enduring influence throughout his life, however variable the return ; for the industrial casual, even where the wage is a constant average, work is variable. The moral influence is inconstant, non-existent ; the economic influence alone remains. From the examples which have been selected from among things as they are to-day, the development of the economic sense among the governed may be 1 See on this question Unemployment, by W. H. Beveridge, and a close study of the question as affecting the London Docks by W. M. Langdon in the Toynbee Record of March and April 1912. THE CAUSES OF DISCONTENT 85 inferred. Starvation wages and insecurity of tenure have become a prevailing and paramount grievance among employed in all grades of the so-called social system, causing the economic interest, by the brute force of physical necessity, to dominate all ..others; in the lowest grade, indeed, all forces save the economic have been eliminated and there is an exclusively economic organism. Had one foretold this development fifty years ago in the heyday of laissez-faire, had one preached it in one of the many temples erected to the law of supply and demand, one would have been regarded, by the most charitable, as an able dialectitian reducing a theory to an absurdity by some subtle but discoverable fallacy. To-day it exists in hard and dangerous fact. Is it to be wondered at, are the governed to be blamed that many among them have listened too readily to those who have taught salvation through economic freedom ? One might as well censure ignorant persons, bowed down by overwhelming sorrows in their earthly life, who, believing in a material heaven concealed from human sight above the blue of a summer sky, listened hopefully to those who in the name of Science promised to take them there one day on the wings of aeroplanes. What must be the feelings of the working class who compare the results achieved in the new epoch with the hopes that attended its birth ! At the beginning of the struggle, in what may be termed the prehistoric times, before machinery, complicating endlessly the division of labour and the processes of production, had given 86 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY capital the influence it now possesses among the govern- ing classes, the economic grievance of the governed was simpler in its causes, its origin was seen directly in the violation of human laws. It therefore found expression through human channels ; the governed sought to obtain freedom within the nation, and outbreaks like the French Eevolution were, as has been seen, national movements. In this first outburst of freedom, which we have taken as the starting-point of the modern social movement in the attempt to establish a " body politic called by its members state, when it is passive ; sovereign, when it is active power ; in comparison with others of its kind," whose associates " take collectively the name of people, and, individually are called citizens, as participators in the sovereign authority, and subjects as submitted to the laws of the State," 1 it was sought to abolish anything that savoured of tyranny or that appeared to constitute a state within the State and threatened national unity. It is strange how modern writers, attached to the economic school, prefer to dwell only on the negative side of this national achievement, blaming it because it did not base itself on the natural and economic order, refusing it credit for, or not even perceiving its true motive in, passing a law such as that of 1791, designed to abolish the old Compagnonnages 2 or guilds with their tyranny and internal violence. Much less can they appreciate the law of three months later which declared 1 Central Social, Book I. chap. vi. 2 For the history and description of these guilds the authoritative work is Martin-Saint-Leon, Le compagnonnage, son histoire, ses contumes, ses reglements, ses rites, 1901 (2nd ed., 1909). THE REVOLUTION AND NATIONAL UNITY 87 unconstitutional, subversive of liberty and of the Declara- tion of the Eights of Man, the assemblies into which the workmen, freed from the Compagnonnages, had formed themselves, and the object of which was stated to be " to force contractors, the ci-devant masters, to raise the price of the day's work, to prevent workmen and those who employ them from coming to friendly arrangements between themselves, . . . making them submit to the rates for the day's work fixed by the assemblies and other regula- tions which they permit themselves to make. Violence even is employed to enforce these regulations ; workmen are compelled to leave their shops even when they are satisfied with the salary they receive." No, the nation was to be one and undivided, in liberty, equality, and fraternity, a Power that, when attacked by other Powers, would in its turn attack them, compelling them to throw over their aristocratic governments, setting out to bring them all back, by force or persuasion, to the human order from which they had wandered. A state based on equality, a power inspired by freedom, aristocracy replaced by democracy, trying to assimilate itself to Rousseau's ideals of government through associa- tion, finding in the Contrat Social the sanction for property, of the first occupier whose right can only be established " on the following conditions : first, that this land has no former occupant ; secondly, that one only occupies the quantity necessary for subsistence ; thirdly, that one takes possession of it, not by an empty cere- mony, but by work and cultivation" that was the national unity which Europe had to face, that was the 88 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY spiritual possession which the armies of the Revolution fought to defend. How they fought under the inspira- tion which it provided : let those who wonder why the French do not to-day consider money the first essential to a successful strike learn, how the Revolutionary armies made war and conquered without money. The peasant was freed from the tyranny under which he had laboured and starved, and his property in the land he cultivated was established, made inalienable, and its fruits secured to him by the Code of Napoleon. Here, indeed, was something with elements of the human order in it : a peasantry founded on the family and the land, the two human links with nature which had given the aristocracy their power. Here was a source of national strength. When, shortly after, the economic order burst upon France as upon other European countries, it dashed itself in vain against the peasantry, the despair of the capitalist, of the socialist, and of all the devotees of the economic creed, but the one sound economic factor in the nation when half a century later France had to pay her huge war indemnity to Germany. In other countries, however, where aristocracy still retained its power, fighting unconsciously the battle of plutocracy screened behind it, the French laws on peasant proprietary were laughed to scorn ; in England it was pre- dicted that in " fifty years the land of France would become a pauper warren." l Nevertheless the governed in England 1 Latid Reform, by the Right Hon. Jesse Collings, J.P., M.P., 1908, p. 190. Mr. Collings adds, in the same connection, "M'Culloch wrote: ' The law is radically bad, and bids fair in no lengthened period to reduce the agriculturists of France to a condition little, if at all, better than THE ECONOMIC AND THE HUMAN ORDER 89 agitated long and in vain for the creation of a similar system in their own country. Even prior to the Poor Law of 1834, modifying the old law of settlement, and removing the restrictions on the mobility of labour, the agricultural population has in England been driven or attracted to the towns and their industrial pursuits. But the governed were their own worst enemies. While the landlords steadily opposed the breaking up of large estates, the economic socialists saw in peasant proprietor- ship an entrenching of "individualism," in their per- version of the term, which would check the flow of recruits to their standard. Even the human instinct of the Trade Unions in their early days, throwing their weight on to the side of the advocates of peasant pro- prietorship, is attributed by the economists to the in- fluence of a malign individualism. Discussing the period 1875-1885, in their great work on Trade Unions, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb l say : " The prominent Trade Unionists had been converted, as we have already had occasion to point out, to the economic individualism which at this time dominated the Liberal party. A significant proof of this unconscious conversion is to be found in the unanimity with which a Trade Union Congress could repeatedly press for such ' reforms ' as peasant proprietorship, the purchase by the artisan of his own cottage, the establishment of ' self-governing workshops,' the multiplication of patents in the hands those of Ireland. ' " The final refutation of this prophecy was supplied by the recent creation of a peasant proprietary in Ireland. 1 The History of Trade Unionism, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. 90 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY of individual workmen, and other changes which would cut at the root of production. For whatever advantages there might be in turning the agricultural labourer into a tiny freeholder, it is obvious that under such a system no Agricultural Labourers Union could exist. However useful it may be to make the town artisan independent of a landlord, it has been proved beyond controversy that wage-earning owners of houses lose that perfect mobility which enables them, through their Trade Union, to boy- cott the bad employer or desert the low-paying district. And we can imagine the dismay with which the leaders of the Nine Hours Movement would have discovered that any considerable proportion of the engineering work at Newcastle was being done in workshops owned by artisans whose interests as capitalists or patentees conflicted with the common interests of all the workers." In 1888 the Trade Union Congress, we are told in this work, "after ten years' deliberation, definitely de- cided in favour of the principles of Land Nationalisation instead of peasant proprietorship. The Parliamentary Committee took no notice of the decision." Ultimately the Congress, permeated by the new socialistic faith, overcame the opposition of the committee and " The Land Question, on which a vigorous advocacy of the creation of small freeholders had been formerly main- tained, dwindled to a meaningless demand for undefined reform of the Land Laws, and finally disappeared alto- gether on the adoption by the Congress of the principle of nationalisation." State collectivism had momentarily triumphed ; it THE ECONOMIC AND THE HUMAN ORDER 91 had suppressed the one human element which had been retained by the working classes in association. National unity was for the time being a consummation acceptable to the British proletariat only in so far as it implied state ownership vested in a bureaucratic tyranny. But the triumph was to be short-lived, as we shall see later ; a formidable foe to state-collectivism was to rise up among its own children and to lead to its undoing. But even in France herself the human order to which she aspired, and which she endeavoured to impose on the rest of Europe, was not yet to be achieved. On the foundations of equality which she had laid, having their roots in property, was to arise the system of starvation wages and insecurity of tenure erected by the new governing classes. But as France taught the world the new faith, as she was the first to seize it, as she led Europe in the first volcanic attempt to return to the human order mankind ever since revolving through a succession of changes which have brought it nearer and nearer to the desired end so it is France which is now in the vanguard of the fight for liberty. How could it be otherwise ? A nation composed by nature of all European elements : the cold and calculating people of the north wedded to hot-blooded fiery sons reared among the monuments of the ancient empire of the south ; hardy children with their outlook on the illimitable west, who had watched the civilisations of three centuries pass on silent wings across the ocean to unknown con- quests, joined to that stalwart rearguard of the east, the irresistible barrier to barbarian incursion was there ever 92 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY such a nation ? Here was thought and sentiment, in- tellect and instinct, in irresistible combination, a force which must burst all fetters. Here could liberty, the plaything of the Middle Ages, find at last a resting-place and make her home the centre of intellectual freedom. France is to-day the only nation in the old world or the new where the wisdom of the past, the experience greater than that of all other peoples because acquired through failures more bitter, makes that freedom absolute, shielding it from licence. Through France was the spirit of democracy born again into the modern world. Democracy, as if loth not to bestow some of its favours on the nation which had hitherto striven most consistently for the attainment of liberty, adapted itself to English institutions, and sought to express the human order in terms of Representative Government, through which all should have an equal share in the legislative and executive power and in the control of the State. Thus did Parliamentarism become the vogue in Europe, varying in its precise form in different nations according to their respective national characteristics and stages of national development. In the result France has, for the last sixty years, been nearest to the realisation of democracy ; the United Kingdom, without universal suffrage and strong in traditional influences, has remained an oligarchy resting on a widely representative system ; while Germany, the most backward of the three, is still an autocracy in- geniously based on universal suffrage. The English Parliamentary system, it should be ARISTOCRACY AND ECONOMIC ORDER 93 remembered, had grown out of struggles which had taken place, in the first instance between the upper classes, relying on the support of the people, on the one hand and the Crown on the other, and, later, between the governed and the hereditary aristocracy. So that when the time came it was in no way adapted by its growth and origins to secure equality and liberty of associa- tion in face of the rising capitalist governing classes. On the contrary, the hereditary aristocracy itself had by bribery and corruption so vitiated the system that when, while it was trying to purge itself of these evils, Represent- ative Government, both in France and in England, was overtaken and fell an enfeebled prey to capitalism. And thus even to-day, so far are the people from choosing freely their parliamentary representatives, from among those most fitted to exercise the duties which the democratic system demands of them, that in England itself the law still allows the electorate to be bribed by parliamentary candidates, and the result of a general election is ad- mitted by the party organisers to depend as much on the superiority of party funds and party administration as on the national issues involved. 1 This perversion of democratic liberty has the sanction of direct succession 1 1200 is a moderate expenditure for a candidate at an election, apart from the money which he is expected to disburse annually in his constituency ; and impartial and searching inquiry would probably dis- close the fact that all that the law has succeeded in doing is to change the form of bribery, to make it less overt and on the whole to reduce it in amount. But we are not in principle very much advanced since the days before the Reform Bill of 1832, when the average price paid by a candi- date to the borough-monger was 5000 down and 1000 for each year he represented the constituency. 94 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY from the great days of the domination of the aristocratic governing classes. While therefore the history, which is to be written in the future from the proletarian point of view, will hold the hereditary aristocracy responsible for initiating the tend- ency to horizontal internationalism, it will also probably regard it as in large measure to blame for the economic direction which the social movement has taken. For, when the governed found that even representative government was to be controlled by the power of the purse, what hope could they entertain of obtaining through its means redress for the grievances under which they suffered ? We have seen how in England Parliament had entirely failed to safeguard the economic interests of the governed, that eighty years after the passing of the Eeform Bill, and sixty years after the suppression of Chartism, unparalleled poverty exists among certain classes of the people, and that, among the sweated, the conditions of payment by the employer are unequalled in iniquity, surpassing in degradation and oppression the ordinary terms of slavery. It took the governed long, however, to arrive at the conclusion that their emancipation was not to be won through Parliament. In 1838 the People's Charter demanded universal suffrage, abolition of property qualifications for members of Parliament, annual Parlia- ments, equal representation, payment of members of Parliament, and vote by ballot at elections. All six " points " were directed to the perfection of Parlia- mentarism. And even to-day the working classes COLLECTIVISM AND ECONOMIC ORDER 95 demand with a certain mechanical formality the points which have not yet been conceded. But with the ex- ception of the payment of members, which has recently been granted, which of the points that have been gained has not, in their opinion, been circumvented by the capitalist ? Has, for instance, the abolition of property qualifications for members of Parliament made it any easier in practice for a poor candidate to enter the legis- lature ? Has voting by ballot secured the independence of the voter ? In the early years of the nineteenth century in England the governed gave clear indications of the growth among them of an independent spirit of collectivism. Their human instincts led them to seek admission, as an active force, to the free exercise of national privileges. Had this desire been gratified it is probable, considering the national traditions, that the hereditary aristocracy might have been able to resist the encroachment of plutocracy, and that the equilibrium of classes the object of every thoughtful statesman from Burke onwards might have been maintained. But every obstacle ingenuity could devise was put in the way of the realisation of this desire. The collectivist instinct then turned from the human to the natural order, that which, class distinction being emphasised and embittered by the new governing classes, seemed fated to prevail, and which possessed a peculiar attraction for the partially trained intelligence of the governed. To them it appeared, that by accepting battle on the ground chosen by their opponents they might cut themselves the shortest path to the realisation of the 96 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY needs of the moment. The collectivist instinct of the working classes, the deciding voice of the governed, therefore focussed itself on attempts to wrest from the employers, by combining individual forces, improved economic conditions. During the days when the Chartist movement was at its height, strikes on a large scale, accompanied by violence, had broken out. The co-operative movement had started at Rochdale on a solid basis. The workers in the textile, iron, and coal trades, beaten in the strikes of 1842 and 1843, at first threw their weight on to the side of the Chartists ; but soon their economic aims became separated from their wider political aspirations and gave birth to Trade Unionism. In 1851 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers was founded. The proletariat and capitalism were henceforth each to endeav- our to form a state within the State. For long the aspirations represented in Great Britain by Trade Unionism on the one hand and Chartism on the other followed parallel lines ; but the economic interest triumphed as the realisation of the wider political aims appeared more and more hopeless in face of the opposi- tion of the governing classes. Writing on 25th June 1825, Francis Place said: "He knows nothing of the working people who can suppose that, when left at liberty to act for themselves without being driven into permanent associations by the pressure of the laws, they will continue to contribute money for distant and doubt- ful experiments, for uncertain and precarious benefits. If let alone combinations except now and then, and for THE REJECTION OF PARLIAMENT 97 particular purposes under peculiar circumstances will cease to exist." But the oppression was to continue, access to full national privileges was to be denied to the working classes, and, equipped with a sense of injustice and the complete economic creed provided by socialism, they set out to secure direct representation in Parliament. Again they were checked by the governing classes, to be finally diverted from this aim also by the refusal to allow Trade Union funds to be used for political purposes. At last, in the spring of 1912, the great Coal Strike broke out, and the Miners' Federation " appealed by resolution to the Labour Party in Parliament not to raise any question in the House of Commons connected with the strike." l Labour was, it appeared, bent on working out its own salvation without the intervention of Parliament. 2 "French ideas" had again triumphed. Seized by the practical British mind, given an expression in deeds characteristic of the British nationality formid- able owing to the genius for organisation inherent in the race, though lost to a declining governing class syndicalism made a sudden appearance on this side of the Channel. Is it a reversion to the human order or is it an extension of the narrow economic creed ? To arrive at any satisfactory conclusion the history of the 1 Mr. George Lansbury, M.P., in The Link, May 1912. 2 "Parliament is merely the organ of the existing Capitalist Class, and with the inevitable decay and passing away of that class as a class, Parliament itself must also wither and decay with it. . . . This, in fact, is already the condition of Parliament. It is an organism which, having fulfilled its mission in life, is now naturally withering and passing away before our eyes." The Syndicalist, May 1912. 7 98 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY development of the new idea in the land of its origin, whence it has been transplanted to grow and modify itself under different national conditions, must first be grasped in its underlying motives and more important movements. CHAPTEK VI THE STRUGGLE FOR A PROLETARIAN STATE THE ordinary conception of civilisation is most commonly expressed in terms of the domination of intellect over instinct. No one, it is true, who has attempted to explain precisely what the word conveys to him has lost sight of its origin in the idea of human association and collectivity. Of many definitions which have been given, that of Guizot is most frequently quoted : " Civilisa- tion, therefore, in its most general idea, is an improved condition of man, resulting from the establishment of social order in place of the individual independence and lawlessness of the savage or barbarous life. It may exist in various degrees : it is susceptible of continual progress." But with such great and pardonable pride do men dwell on this continual progress that it has become for them generally synonymous with civilisation itself ; and, in the age which is now drawing to a close, material achievements have been so marvellous, appear- ing to outshine all others, that it is small wonder that man should have been inclined to measure progress by them alone. They have come to think that, as the intellect is the weapon with which man has hewn himself a path through the obstacles of matter, as it has 99 ioo THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY given him his natural superiority in the animal world, so among men themselves those who hold the secret of intellectual strength will surely control those who have to trust to the guidance of their intuitions alone. The access to that secret the governing classes guarded tenaciously for centuries, he among the governed who happened on it being immediately enrolled in the fellow- ship and close community of the priesthood of learning who watched over the wells of knowledge. To the multitude, only such draughts were permitted as was deemed good for them ; education was denied to the many; the training of the intellect, even for those to whom it was allowed, was strictly regulated by academic discipline based on submission to authority. Attack after attack upon this system failed or was ruthlessly oppressed until the invention of printing or to be more precise, its practical application furnished the forces of liberty with an irresistible weapon, and produced the greatest revolution in the history of civilisation. The reduction of all knowledge to the printed word, the provision of a public and permanent record of the thoughts of men and of their achievements, bestowed on all classes the freedom of the intellect. No wonder that books were burnt outside city gates and that, when these violent methods were condemned by public opinion, an appeal was made to the faithful to read only within the limits of an Index sanctioned by authority. No wonder that the governing classes withheld as long as possible from the governed the ability to read, so that the generation, which is only now passing away, looked upon INTELLECT AND INSTINCT 101 the " three E's " as the end itself of education. But it is likewise no wonder that nothing will ever eradicate from the minds of the working classes the sense of wrong, which grew up under the stubborn and persistent refusal of the demand of the governed for education, particularly in a country such as England, where the Eeformation owed what popular support it received to its pretensions to over- throw spiritual and intellectual tyranny, to its claim to abolish all human intermediaries between God and man, and to its proclamation of the right and duty of the individual to search himself for spiritual truth in the Book of Books. The history of the suppression of schools at the Eeformation in England l is certainly a dark chapter in the records of the governing classes. It was not until political liberty was partially won in the nineteenth century that even the right to read can be said to have been secured by the governed. Had the Eeformation been only, or mainly, a spiritual movement it would undoubtedly have been accompanied by a great educa- tional revival, and national unity would to-day be nearer its realisation ; had common sense dictated political action eighty years ago, when an extended franchise dealt a severe blow to hereditary privilege, England would now possess a national system of education in which all would have been given equal opportunities for the training of the intelligence. As it is, as far as the proletariat is concerned, both in France and England, education bestows on them little more than the power to read as the link 1 This question is discussed in English Schools at the Eeformation, by Arthur F. Leach, 1896, a work based on much original research. 102 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY with or the introduction to the records of the intellectual conquests of the past. The governing classes have, as it were, reluctantly opened the gate into the field of knowledge, and let them wander loose, occasionally making desperate efforts to keep them to the beaten tracks or to head them off from the choicest pastures. There are some situations in which the effects of folly produce a picture blurred and confined beyond all comment or interpretation. Let us turn to a considera- tion of its wider aspects, and more particularly to some which are strangely ignored by politicians to-day. When at last the right to read was won by the governed, the process of printing and further develop- ments of the processes of mechanical record had, as has been said, revolutionised human relations. The rapid spread of knowledge through reading resulted in a general substituting for the spoken of the recorded word ; intellect had forged for itself a deadly instrument in its eternal struggle with instinct. No longer, for instance, can spoken rhetoric enjoy more than a momentary sway over the passions and sympathies of men ; the orator's words are caught as they fall from his lips, and can be read immediately afterwards by those who have heard them, and by millions who have not, in cold print, colourless, dehumanised. New channels of communication between man and man, between leader and led, have been created. The human standards of personal intercommunication, by which great men were distinguished from small, good men from bad, thus tend to drop out of currency ; the printing press may record INTELLECT AND INSTINCT 103 the speaker's words, the phonograph may even reproduce his voice and the cinematograph his gestures ; but science stops short on the brink of the gulf, which instinct alone may bridge by creating, in every assembly where man communicates personally with man, an atmosphere charged with an intangible and unrecordable sympathy. It is the gulf which separates the material from the human, the human from the eternal, and it has thus been widened in political relations. The records, dehumanised, accumulate. What the intellect has created the intellect alone can comprehend. It is possible, therefore, to understand why the govern- ing classes, in the earlier stages of the struggle, should have withheld as long as possible from the governed the opportunities for the training of the intelligence which they themselves enjoy ; but it is difficult to discover any excuse for their having withheld from the governed the training of the intelligence when once they were given access to these records. In France a network of technical education was thrown over the primary schools which prevented the governed from attaining to the full heights of intellectual development ; in England, ten years ago, in a moment of folly, the attempt of the governed to create secondary schools for themselves was diverted and replaced by facilities for the admission of their children, bearing a label of economic and social inferiority to the existing secondary schools. Germany alone, having rejected democratic institutions, has made an honest attempt to educate her working classes. The result might have been foreseen. The governed 104 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY have had to rely either on an untrained intellect or on their instinct for the formation of their judgments in the new atmosphere into which they have been introduced. Face to face with recorded intellectual systems touching social life, they have therefore accepted as true some in which the trained intelligence immediately perceives the fundamental error as in the case of that of Karl Marx and still more in that of Herbert Spencer 1 because the critical teaching of these systems appeals to their instinctive attitude towards the existing conventional and natural order. Judgments thus formed, in so far as they are partly the product of untrained intellect, have no stability and do not endure, as is seen in the diminishing influence of the writers selected as illustra- tions. On the other hand, when a thinker arises who has so great a command of words and of the order of words as to create, even in print, that atmosphere of sympathy which surrounds personal intercourse, if he preaches eternal truths, an ideal, the instinct alone of the governed is quicker to recognise him than the intellect of the governing. Such a man was Rousseau, or rather that part of him which found expression in the wonderful, untranslatable Contrat Social. These reflections naturally suggest themselves at a time when M. Bergson's influence has given a fresh impetus to the spontaneity of the French people, freeing 1 It is extraordinary how difficult it is to persuade intelligent people of the enormous influence exercised in England by the writings of Herbert Spencer. The critical side of his philosophy has undermined the religious faith of millions of English-speaking people ; its dogmatic effect is negligible. INTELLECT AND INSTINCT 105 them from the trammels of the German school of thought which had denationalised French philosophy. Moreover, they are necessitated by the fact that M. Bergson's authority has penetrated all classes of society in France, and has undoubtedly stimulated the attacks of the governed on the forces of convention. His influence on the working classes as a whole is certainly only of that vague and somewhat illogical kind which a great thinker, become famous, exercises over the minds of men when, among the thoughts he expresses, is found a tendency for which they are prepared. M. Bergson's philosophy for them consists in this, however his critics or he himself may object to the interpretation. The vague aspirations of the working classes the revolts of their minds against what they know to be, but often cannot demonstrate intellectually to be, the inherent injustice of the existing social organisation aspirations which rise but to fall broken-winged against the barriers of facts, statistics, systems, M. Bergson has sanctioned as the activities of instinct which alone form a link for the human mind between the eternity of the past and the eternity of the future. His authority has given them an invincible faith in their own convictions. They believe that they can now turn the flank of the govern- ing classes, hitherto entrenched in a position rendered impregnable and defended by the forces of intellect retained in their service. M. Bergson would be the first to disclaim any intention of playing the part of a modern Kousseau; a philosopher pure and simple, he has accepted the limits io6 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY imposed by the arbitrary division of intellectual labour in the age in which we live. As a specialist, his very language is not intelligible to the general public, and the interpreters who popularise his views can only present a partial application of them. It is merely a coincidence, as far as anything is a coincidence in the history of humanity, that he should have supplied a new sanction to the activities of instinct at a moment when the forces of instinct and intelligence, represented on the one side by the governed and on the other by the governing classes, have joined issue in that final struggle which, it is the hope of many, will result in the merging of the two in a complete humanity, marching on in full strength towards its ultimate destiny. Further, these reflections impose themselves on anyone who has plunged into the torrent of recorded French opinion, representing the most progressive thought, of different periods during the last hundred years, on questions regarding the relations of governing and governed. Whenever in this exhilarating but bewilder- ing experience one touches bottom, one finds one's feet on the ideals of the Contrat Social: whenever, swept along by the headstrong current, one clutches at a boulder, one finds that it is of the same stuff as Eousseau ; even in the quiet waters of reaction one perceives his thoughts deep down below the surface. It is only when a serious effort has been made to dam the stream that the waters have overflowed and sought another course. Then the governed exclaim that there is no redress for their grievances in a political solution and they straightway set to work in apparent paradox to erect a political organisation of their own, taking in- stinctively as their basis Eousseau's ideals of equality and liberty, his politics, embracing in association all that is human, satisfying the instinctive individualism and collectivism which are inherent in humanity. This they are once more doing, now that the political solution which was offered in the name of democracy has failed, attracted all the more strongly to the teaching of Eousseau because he warned and counselled them against the pitfalls democracy had prepared for the nation that endeavoured to practise it. 1 The ideals which Eousseau set before the governed have indeed made of the Contrat Social a political gospel, in which authority and stimulation have been sought by succeeding generations, and around which endless inter- pretations and commentaries have grown up, some pretending to original inspiration. The governed were stirred by these ideals to the great revolutionary effort to emancipate themselves ; they have turned to it, in 1 Contrat Social, Bk. III. chap. iv. Aristotle, it will be remem- bered, reduced democracy to an absurdity when he said: "For the best material of democracy is an agricultural population ; there is no difficulty in forming a democracy where the mass of the people live by agriculture or tending of cattle. Being poor, they have no leisure, and therefore do not often attend the assembly, and not having the necessaries of life they are always at work, and do not covet the property of others. Indeed, they find their employment pleasanter than the cares of govern- ment or office, where no great gains can be made out of them, for the many are more desirous of gain than of honour. A proof is that even the ancient tyrannies were patiently endured by them, as they still endure oligarchies, if they are allowed to work and are not deprived of their property ; for some of them grow quickly rich and the others are well enough off." Jowett's Translation of The Politics, vi. 4. io8 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY France, at any rate, whenever they have made a practical attempt to recast the government of the nation or to constitute themselves as a separate class, in defiance of his teaching, into an association within the human national association. A modern French historian 1 even goes so far as to say that the doctrine which was put into practice during the Commune was the absolute applica- tion of the thought of Rousseau, that it was the Swiss conception of the political organisation of societies, "pour molecule la commune etpour rtsultat la federation." 2 Then with all the facts and documents of the period before him he states that " to arrive at this result it was necessary, before anything else, to break national unity. . . . The formula of the party was finally summed up in these three terms : communal autonomy, federation, collectivism." That the authors of the Commune sought inspiration in the Contrat Social is beyond doubt ; but that Rousseau desired or suggested the destruction of national unity cannot be admitted by anyone who has penetrated the spirit underlying his teaching. 3 The Contrat Social, on the contrary, recognises, throughout, two extreme limits, which are instinctively accepted by mankind as, in a 1 Hanotaux, Histoire de la France Contemporaine, vol. L p. 157. 2 In a footnote to Book III. chapter xv. of the Contrat Social, Rousseau indicates clearly the confederation. 3 Lord Morley, who finds very little "positive worth" in the Contrat Social, says : Rousseau's " theory made the native land what it had been to the citizens of earlier date, a true centre of existence, round which all the interests of the community, all its pursuits, all its hopes, grouped themselves with entire singleness of convergence, just as religious faith is the centre of existence to a church. It was the virile and patriotic energy thus evoked which presently saved France from partition." Rousseau, by John Morley, vol. ii. p. 194. ROUSSEAU AND NATIONAL UNITY 109 sense, constant quantities, the family and the nation. They are the fixed units in the human order on which the mind can fasten ; this might be easily demonstrated by showing the confusion and chaos of thought which result from any argument which discounts them or admits their essential variability. The whole object of the Contrat Social is to inquire into the means by which the fundamental collective unity should be associated with the larger national unity. There is nothing which tends more to embitter class warfare or to encourage those who appeal to the merely destructive appetites of man than the ignoring of this essential fact. Unless it is grasped it is impossible to understand the aim of the social movement. The English mind, exercised as it is in the practice of autonomy within the imperial col- lectivity, will instinctively realise that autonomy and federation are not subversive of national unity, and it should not easily fall into the error of confusing the means with the end, the process with the achievement. It is because of this confusion that some people are unable to recognise any difference between the human and natural order, a distinction which will be seen to be of increasing importance as we proceed. M. Hanotaux's view was, of course, widely held at the time of the Commune itself, and it is significant that Marx should have taken pains to refute it at considerable length in the " Address of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association," to which reference has already been made. 1 It has been stated 1 See p. 66. no THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY that this refutation was but a diplomatic cloak to shield The International from the storm of popular indignation which burst upon it after the Commune. The general tenor of the address, its violent onslaught on the governing classes in France, certainly does not bear out this contention, however inconsistent Marx may have been in his attitude at the moment, stirred as he must have been to the depths of his feelings. He, Marx, says : "... this new Commune, which breaks the modern State power, has been mistaken for a reproduction of the mediaeval Communes, which first preceded, and afterwards became the substratum of, that very State power. The communal constitution has been mistaken for an attempt to break up into a federation of small States, as dreamt of by Montesquieu and the Girondins, that unity of great nations which, if originally brought about by political force, has now become a powerful coefficient of social production. The antagonism of the Commune against the State power has been mistaken for an exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against over-centralisation." In the last sentence Marx is no doubt defending the organisation of The International, and is preparing the way for the collectivist state of modern socialism. Even the necessary limitations of a contemporary view of history, however, can hardly excuse him when he says of the Commune : "Its secret was this. It was essentially a working-class government, the produce of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work GERMAN INFLUENCES in out the economical emancipation of Labour." But that was the lesson which, under his influence, survived and diverted minds for long from the French into the German stream of thought, from the human order of the Contrat Social, with its national unity, to the natural order of The Communist Manifesto and Das KapitaL Marx was always at deadly warfare with the inheritors of the traditions of the Contrat Social, and in this he is to-day faithfully followed by the state-collectivists. It was in fact the Eussian refugee Bakunin, to whom the tradition descended through his master Proudhon, who was ultimately to break up The International by opposing his ideas of federal communism to those of the central- ised collectivism of Marx. These two opposing currents are to be seen running henceforth side by side through the history of the social movement in France, and have recently entered upon a struggle for supremacy in Eogland. It is sometimes forgotten by those who talk of " French ideas " as something generally chimerical and always theoretical and unrealisable, that the French have never hesitated to put their ideas into practice. An almost uninterrupted succession of revolutions such intervals as there have been being used for revolutionary propaganda and preparation has given them an experi- ence in the practice of social change unequalled by any other people and envied by none. Each of these revolu- tions has, we contend, had as its object some part of the Contrat Social ; each was indeed at bottom an endeavour of the governed to establish a " form of association which 112 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY defends and protects with the whole of the common strength the person and the property of each associate, and in which each, uniting himself with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before." The Commune certainly did not lack practical qualities. Its origins were to be found in the National Guard of Paris and the citizen army, its supreme inspiration was patriot- ism. That it was confined to the poorer classes and thus, in the civil war which resulted, had the appearance of a class war, in which classes were distinguished econ- omically, was due to the accident that all who could afford to do so left Paris as soon as the siege was over. But the view of Marx was to become the accepted view of the proletariat, and until this day the death of the 30,000 renders la semaine sanglante an anniversary of martyrdom, and is to the working classes what St. Bartholomew was for long to the Protestants of Europe. Every year the graves of the martyrs are honoured : a solemn procession, shepherded by police, marches silently before the mur des ftdtrts in the cemetery of Pere La Chaise. Occasionally, in defiance of orders and at the risk of imprisonment, some old battle-cry is shouted as the remembrance of past heroism or the instinct of re- venge stirs the heart of a descendant or a surviving comrade of the fallen. But the most significant feature of this revolutionary rite is that on this day the working class is united, present differences are laid aside ; socialist and anarchist, state-collectivist, radical-socialist, and syndicalist, all unite to pay their tribute in common to those whom legend designates as the ancestors of the THE TEACHING OF THE COMMUNE 113 militant proletariat. Or is it that they are one only in their hatred of the bourgeoisie, of the class that reaped more than their due share of the fruits of the revolutions and turned even the national disasters of 1870 into an occasion for renewed enthralment of the working class ? Defeated in their instinctive attempt to save their country from the Prussians, and in their instinctive endeavour to seize the opportunity offered by the anni- hilation of the Second Empire to realise their own ideal of national association, the working classes in France were thrown back upon themselves and their economic in- terests. Events appeared to them to have sanctioned and confirmed the teaching of the International that " the emancipation of the working classes must be con- quered by the working classes themselves." Their conscious collectivity having been refused an outlet in national unity in the human order, the working classes were now finally led to believe that they must accept the conditions of contest imposed by the natural order, that their only hope of salvation lay in a collective class organisation of their own corresponding to the economic differentiation which, they were told, alone in practice in the hour of crisis when theories are swallowed up in the issues of life and death distinguish social friend from foe. The bloody suppression of the Commune was the culminating defeat of a chain of instinctive struggles to attain to the national association for which the pro- letariat had never ceased to sacrifice themselves since 1789 ; in the bitterness of a new and a sterner enforce- 8 M4 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY ment of the domination of the governing classes, they abandoned for the time being the guidance of their intuitions, and they followed those who called upon them to build up political systems in which their untrained intelligence was unable to perceive the radical fallacies. They were now to enter upon a long abortive attempt to capture Eepresentative Government an attempt which has resulted in the return to Parliament of a Unified Socialist Party in France, a Labour Party in England, and a Social Democratic Party in Germany and to learn by experience that Kousseau was right when he condemned root and branch government by deputies or representatives. 1 The attempt was to terminate some thirty years later in a general " disgust with politics." It has already been seen how in the early days of the Eevolution any movement of the working classes to combine against the common liberty were suppressed, 2 one of the fundamental principles of the Contrat Social being that any socidtt partielle within the State was destructive of the general will. For more than half a century public opinion was so strongly possessed by the ideal of national unity that the governing classes were able to resist any relaxation of the laws forbidding class association of the proletariat. The turning-point was 1 "So soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of citizens, and they prefer to serve with their purses than with their persons, the State is far on the way to ruin. When it is necessary to march to combat, they pay troops and remain at home : when it is necessary to go to the Council, they nominate deputies and remain at home. By means of idleness and money they succeed in obtaining soldiers to enslave their country and representatives to sell it. " Contrat Social, Bk. III. chap. xv. 2 See Appendix I. ISOLATION OF THE WORKING CLASSES 1 1 5 however reached in 1862. In this year, in a printing establishment in Paris, the men had been replaced by women at lower wages. A strike resulted and, under the old law of the Eevolution still in force, the strikers were arrested ; a similar incident took place in another print- ing establishment. Some of the strikers were condemned to imprisonment, the sentence was confirmed on appeal, but they were pardoned by the Emperor. The strike had been orderly and dignified, the grievance was patent and public opinion was aroused. The Government, already embarrassed by the unfailing regularity with which Napoleon in. pardoned strikers condemned to the penalties which the law imposed, and feeling that this system neither secured " the advantages of penal legisla- tion marked by severity, nor the honour and credit of liberal legislation," at last, in 1864, amended the law, and the principle both of combination and of strikes received legal recognition. 1 It was not, as will be seen, until twenty years later that Trade Unions were to be given a legal status. In the period between 1789 and the Commune the working classes had already been hammered by the govern- ing classes into a growing consciousness of their separate existence ; the collective instinct had developed strongly among them ; many more or less consecutive attempts had been made to replace the old compagnonnages, 2 with their quaint rites and devoirs, the infants de Maitre Jacques, Enfants du Pere Soubise, Enfants de Salomon 1 See Appendix I. 2 Martin-Saint-L^on, Le Compagnonnage (see p. 86). n6 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY by organisations more compatible with the solidarity which was being forced on them. As far back as 1839, Agricol Perdiguier, in his Livre du Compagnonnage, had impressed on his iellovi-compagnons the necessity of healing their internal divisions, of the most bitter and bloodthirsty kind, and of uniting ; it was only if they united, he told them, that they could be strong and re- spected, that misery would no longer dare to approach them, and that employers would be unable to replace them by other men if they did not do exactly as they were told ; by taking advantage of their divisions the masters played one set of compagnons against another and succeeded in reducing wages. This early pioneer sketched a complete scheme of Trade Union organisation, with a congress and general assembly. Several attempts were made to base such an organisation on the compag- nonnages. In 1849 there was created a Constitution Compagnonnique fraternelle et sociale. The three rites were to be united ; " For ever are banished from our customs disputes, battles, provocative songs, intestine wars, and slanderous and satirical poetry. Henceforth hatred, rivalries, and competition shall cease ; for ever- more are banished prejudices, ignorance, brutishness, and fanaticism : liberty, equality, fraternity, with all and for all, that is the fundamental law of the compagnons of all the devoirs reunited." But when put to the vote the Constitution was rejected by an overwhelming majority of the thirty-five societies of the compagnonnage. An alliance without organic unity was ultimately achieved in 1879, but the old rites and traditions were unable to THE GROWTH OF TRADE UNIONS 117 hold the new wine, and they ultimately fell apart and were forgotten before the rising force of the Trade Unions. It was not until 1884 that the compagnons realised what was happening ; then one of them warned his fellows : " We have an enemy who is going to become the more powerful. In all the large towns there exist trade-union associations whose extension will finally become so im- portant that it will no longer be possible for us to fight them." The collective instinct of the working class in isolation was to seek other channels, fighting for the right of combination in Trade Union, and Co-operative or Friendly Society, until, as we have seen, in 1868 the government of Napoleon in. was compelled to admit the right in principle. So strong was the spirit of association among the proletariat as the Second Empire drew near its end, that all political sections vied with one another to obtain its support. Even the Eoyalist Pretenders announced their approval of the principle of combination ; the Conite de Paris wrote comparing the crimes committed by dis- organised labour in Sheffield with the pacific conduct of the great English Trade Unions ; the Conite de Chambord, on the other hand, blamed the Kevolution for having suppressed the old corporations, and said that individualism had proved disastrous for the working classes, " who are miserable in spite of the benefits bestowed on them by Christian employers," what they required was " liberty of association wisely regulated." In the years immediately following the Commune, we find the same spirit of collective consciousness still active, 1 1 8 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY restrained by reactionary laws but not to be checked, instinctively patriotic, let it be noted, whenever the country or the republic is in danger, as was proved in 1877, when it quickly submitted to oppressive decrees and threw all its weight on to the side of the republicans at the elections, for not yet was the belief in the national ideals of the republican form of government stamped out. So determined, however, was the oppression that characterised this period, that even shrewd statesmen believed that the spirit of class collectivism had been killed. Thiers, the suppressor of the Commune and the restorer of a middle-class republic, stated in the famous manifesto which appeared a few days after his death : " Nobody speaks any more about socialism, and they do well. One could and had to speak of socialism when every day in France one discussed the rights of property, the rights of labour, progressive taxation, equality of salaries, free and unlimited credit. These words are at present forgotten among us." The exiled communists, on the other hand, blaming the working classes for attempting to obtain any concessions from the Govern- ment, wrote : " The communists recognise the utility of Trade Unions provided that they are the beginning of a fighting organisation, and not an end, a solution. . . . The French proletariat is not disarmed ; it knows that there can be neither conciliation nor truce with the bourgeoisie ; an abyss of blood and iniquity separates them. Force will decide." The Trade Union movement had, however, been forging ahead, owing much to the support of those who, like STATE COLLECTIVISM 119 M. Barberet who was later to lend his name to the methods of arbitration and conciliation were keenly in- terested in the welfare of the working classes, and believed that it was only necessary to organise labour to bring it, through arbitration, into peaceful relations with capital, and thus for ever put an end to strikes. Further, the Trade Unionists themselves, who were opposed to any restoration of the monarchy, seeing that the enemies of the republic were accusing them of leading the country into social anarchism, believed that the best way to defeat them was by adopting only peaceful tactics. But the working classes in giving their support to the republicans in 1876 and 1877 had been under the impression and possibly had been led to believe that a strong republican party would amnesty the imprisoned and exiled communists, and would grant full liberty of combination to the Trade Unions. In both hopes they were disappointed, not only was no amnesty for the communists proposed by the Government, but troops were sent to suppress strikes wherever necessary. Their thoughts still, in the remembrance of the bitterness of the defeat of their instinctive efforts at emancipation, directed to a political solution, the working classes were now prepared themselves to embark on the unknown waters of Eepresentative Government. As Israel went to the prophet and asked for a king, so they sent an emissary to Karl Marx to ask for a party. He supplied them with a " collectivist " programme. The term " collectivist " has been adopted by the inventors of several schemes of social regeneration. An 120 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY old Belgian Colonel, who devised a plan for rescuing Napoleon from St. Helena in a balloon with the not quite so far-fetched idea of making him the emancipator of mankind first applied it in France to a complete socialist system of his own. It was then used by Bakunin, the International enemy of Marx, to distinguish his faith from that of the orthodox communists. But finally the followers of Marx appropriated the term, giving in exchange to the disciples of Bakunin the title of anarchists, which with their blushing honours thick upon them, they at first wrote with a hyphen, an-archist, and later in italics, as if it were something extraneous to the context. Keference has already been made to the dispute, within the International, between Marx and Bakunin. This dispute, which was at bottom one between the German and French instinct, was to have far-reaching results, though it was to take some thirty years for the French spirit to find leaders and an organisation of its own nationality, and to free itself from the powerful intellectual influence of Marx. Briefly the dispute was this : the " collectivists " desired that the means of production should be the property of the State, the " anarchists " (or communists as they were still called) maintained that they should be the property of the Trade Unions and working-men's corporations. The "collectivists" naturally aimed at capturing the machinery of the existing state and, in consequence, advocated political action and the creation of a political labour party. The " communists " or COMMUNISM AND CENTRALISATION 121 " anarchists," for their part, believing such political ex- periments to be futile, favoured revolutionary action alone. The champions were, on the one side Marx and his brother-in-law Engels ; on the other, the Eussian exiles Bakunin and Kropotkin. Traced to its source, the difference was one between the democratic spirit of Rousseau and the centralising tendencies of Marx, " the venerable pontif who inspires the general council" of the International, as he was called by one of Bakunin's French fellow-exiles. The German Social Democratic party, formed by the union of the followers of Marx and Lassalle at the Gotha Congress of 1875, which enjoyed great prestige among the proletariat by its opposition to Bismarck, adopted the Marxist doctrine, and has remained until the present time faithful to the policy of state-collectivism. The followers of Bakunin and Kropotkin were recruited among the French and related races. At a Congress of Belgian workmen, held in Gand in 1877, the divergence of the two tendencies and the opposition of racial in- stincts was sharply denned by the attempt that was made to form one Belgian organisation through the union of the Flemish, who advocated political action, and the Walloons, who were revolutionaries. In a letter to Kropotkin, written at the time, the author of the history of the International summed up the causes of diverg- ence as follows : l " Have the Walloons any need of the Flemish ? The union with the Flemish, far from giving 1 L' Internationale. Documents et Souvenirs (1860-1878), par James Guillaume, vol. iv. p. 179. 1910. 122 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY life to the movement, will paralyse and pervert it. Be- sides, does one imagine that when the emancipation of labour is realised it will be within the framework of the actual Belgian political system, and that for that reason Flemish and Walloons should march in concert with the object of obtaining a majority in Parliament ? No ; emancipation will be the result of a revolution originating in Paris ; that revolution will be the signal for peoples, and fragments of peoples who have the revolutionary fire to rise : the French Swiss and the French Belgians ; as for the Flemish, they will act like the German Swiss : they will look on quietly while we fight." But at first state-collectivism triumphed in France. At the third Workman's Congress, held at Marseilles in 1879, the collectivists secured a majority of seventy-three as against twenty-seven votes ; a labour party was formed, the " F6d&ration du parti des travailleurs socialistes de France." The Federation consisted of six " regions," each with its own administration and congress, the annual congress of the Federation appointing an executive committee. Only a programme was needed. M. Jules Guesde, who was to become famous among French socialists, and who, in collaboration with M. Paul Lafargue, a son-in-law of Karl Marx, had led the movement to this successful issue, provided it. He crossed to London to consult Marx and Engels, and returned like Moses with the tables of the law. The preamble to the programme, which it is interesting to compare with that to the rules of the International, was as follows : A PARTY AND A PROGRAMME 123 " CONSIDERING " That the emancipation of the producing class is that of all beings, without distinction of sex or of race ; " That the producers cannot be free unless they are in possession of the means of production (land, factories, ships, banks, credit, etc.) ; " That there are only two forms in which the means of production can belong to them : 1st. The individual form, which never existed in general practice, and which is eliminated more and more by the progress of industry ; 2nd. The collective form, the material and intellectual elements of which are constituted by the actual development of capitalist society ; " CONSIDERING " That this collective appropriation can only result from the revolutionary action of the producing class or proletariat organised as a distinct political party ; " That such an organisation must be promoted by every means at the disposal of the proletariat, including universal suffrage, thus transformed from an instrument of trickery which it has been up to the present into an instrument of emancipation." The programme made the following immediate 124 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY demands : " On the political side, first and foremost the most complete liberty, suppression of the 'budget des cultes ' and confiscation of the property of the religious orders, suppression of the public debt, abolition of standing armies, and extension of the powers of com- mune ; " on the economic side, they included among other demands, one day of rest in seven, an eight hours day, a legal minimum wage fixed annually by a statistical commission, equality of wages for the two sexes, the intervention of working-men in all regulations of work- shops, the reversion of banks, railways, and mines to the State, the substitution of a progressive income tax in place of direct taxation, and the suppression of direct inheritance for all sums above 800 (20,000 francs). 1 At the Havre Congress of 1880 the moderate Trade Unionists and the positivists (the disciples of Auguste Comte, who held that progress could be achieved through moral reform alone and not through economic changes), alarmed by this programme, separated from the new party and held an independent congress. On the other hand the " anarchists " for the moment accepted the collectivist proposals, regarding them as a step towards their communist ideal, though they maintained that a collectivist State would be no less corrupt and oppressive than the hated bourgeois State. Before long their position was decided for them by their exclusion from the party. The return on 14th July 1880 of the expatriated communists, who had at last been amnestied, brought further confusion into the development of the new party, 1 Weil : Histoire du Mouvement Social en France, p. 233. INTERNAL DISSENSIONS 125 and added fuel to the quarrels of the rival groups. Coming back with all the prestige of their sufferings, their old beliefs hardened in exile and confirmed by the thought and experiences of their wanderings in foreign countries, the militant communists were little qualified to fit quietly into a new system which had grown up in their absence. The more extreme among them, true to their national instincts, believed with their leader Blanqui in the possibility of a union of the proletariat and the revolutionary section of the bourgeoisie ; they therefore formed a group of their own. 1 Inheritors, as we have seen, of the pure Kousseau tradition, they noticed with regret that the new party was preoccupied with plans " for separating the interests of the proletariat from those of the nation, which was equivalent to recognising as legitimate the similar pretention of the privileged classes to form themselves into a distinct class." Badly beaten at the elections of 1881, when it only obtained 50,000 votes in Paris and the provinces, the party became still more divided within itself. On the one hand a section, while adhering to the collectivism of Marx, objected to the all-embracing tactics of M. Guesde and earned for themselves the title of " Possibilists " ; 2 another section replaced the preamble of the party 1 This throws an interesting light on the social structure of the Commune, which Marx claimed to be solely working class. See pp. 77, 112, etc. 3 "I prefer," wrote M. Brousse, " to abandon the everything at the same time practised hitherto, and which generally ends in nothing at all, to break up the ideal objective into several serious stages, . . . rather than, as in the story of Blue-beard, to remain perched on all the towers of Utopia and never to see anything come which is concrete and palpable." 126 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY programme by that of the International 1 and the collectivism of Marx by the traditional French com- munism, which M. Guesde ridiculed as " federalism, to-day called communalism or autonomy, the latest form of ' bourgeoism.' " z In a struggle between two dominating personalities it is often difficult to distinguish the dividing principles from individual prejudices often expressed in terms of superficial and ephemeral questions of the moment ; it is only the greatest minds that are capable of absolute consistency. Particularly is this the case when one has to rely on the printed records of an oratorical contest, supplemented by trenchant newspaper articles. M. Guesde's rhetorical gifts, remarkable even for a French- man, coupled with a scientific method of expression, betraying the influence of German thought, do not lessen the difficulty of disentangling the fundamental divergence between his opinions and those of his adversaries from the polemical form in which they are clothed. In the quarrel which now ensued between M. Guesde and M. Brousse one is therefore inclined, on a first view of the points at issue, to consider them as immaterial and to attribute the differences entirely to personal antagonism. But the discussion certainly throws into relief certain important principles. 1 See p. 64. 2 It should be noted that the following appeared among the rules of the International: "Everybody who acknowledges and defends the principles of The International Working Men's Association is eligible to become a member. Every branch is responsible for the integrity of the members it admits." INTERNAL DISSENSIONS 127 The dispute as to tactics is one which exists among every group of men ; one principle did however emerge from the quarrel for future use when, a few years later, the strike had come to be recognised as the most serviceable instrument of social warfare. That principle was generally enunciated when M. Guesde claimed that the object of taking part in elections was not so much to gain seats as to train and educate the working classes. We shall find later the same argument applied mutatis mutandis to strikes. The discussion also shows the gradual growth in France, on the one side of the view that, in proportion as monopolies are established to the advantage of a privileged few, the interference of the State has become necessary and public services have thus been instituted ; that as a public service is perfected it becomes less and less costly, until the cost of administration becomes greater than the return, and so the service is made free, as in the case of street lighting, education, etc. ; and that as the final general development of this process would be communism, the establishment of public services, both State and municipal, is therefore to be encouraged in certain cases. On the other side, M. Guesde maintained that, while in the ultimate collectivist organisation public services would be universally established, the existing public services were inherently bad, bourgeois in their origin and attaching the working classes employed in them to the interests of the middle classes ; that they were not a natural growth, while large private enterprises, such as the Creuzot works and the Bon Marche shops, arose from a natural economic development, and might 128 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY fitly form the basis of a future socialist system. 1 But at bottom there is to be seen plainly in this contest the instinctive opposition of the French to German ideas, the opponents of M. Guesde finding justification for their acceptance of the collectivist doctrine by reading into the teaching of Marx their own French views, and claiming him as " the most learned doctrinaire of Utopian communism." That this ferment among the working classes repre- sented a serious growth in power is proved by the fact that the governing classes, while this struggle was going on, had determined that the State must intervene between capital and labour. The prevention of strikes, which had become alarming in their frequency, was the first object. In fact, if not in intention, this was certainly going to the root of the matter. The Government began by calling to its aid M. Barbaret, who was a sincere believer in arbitration and whose influence was great with the moderate Trades Unions owing to the many services he had rendered to them and to the cause of co-operation. As part of the general policy Trade Unions were given a legal status by the law of 21st March 1884. The Government were convinced that labour, once organ- ised and its corporate institutions legally recognised as being of public utility, would seek redress of its grievances by means of peaceful negotiations with capital. Liberty for all was the principle by which they were guided in framing their measure, but it was liberty looked at from the individual and not the collectivist point of view. 1 Maxima Leroy, Services publics et Socialisme, 1883. " CAPITALIST-MADE " LAWS 1 2 9 The inherited teaching of Gambetta was the dogmatic source of their inspiration, based as it was on the desire of uniting the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and on the necessity of solving one social problem at a time. The workmen, Gambetta had said in one of his last speeches, must give up all that was false and chimerical in their ambitions, those who possess must learn to tolerate freedom of combination in the fullest sense of the word ; social science " has one solution for each problem and not one general solution for all problems. It is in this sense that I say, that I repeat, that I shall continue to repeat, because it is the truth, that there is not a social question : there are a number of social questions." Liberty was therefore given by the new law to individuals to form themselves into recognised Trade Unions and, after a sharp struggle between the Upper and the Lower Chambers the Senate finally passing the law by a majority of seven only Trade Unions were authorised to " combine for the study and defence of their economic interests, industrial, commercial, and agri- cultural." l Immediately on the passing of the law everything possible was done by the Government to encourage the formation of trade unions under its provisions. But while the law of 1884 abolished article 416 of the Penal Code, articles 414 and 415 2 were left applic- able to Trade Unions, and one of the main grievances of the working classes was left untouched. The struggle entered upon a new but no less bitter phase. The Con- 1 See Appendix I. 8 See ibid. 9 130 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY gress of 1884 declared the law to be reactionary; for, while it brought Trade Unions, associations formed outside the law and daily becoming more powerful and dangerous to the capitalist classes, under the control of the State, while the liberty of coalition had been granted, individual liberty had also been respected and the enforcement of membership was still illegal for the unions. In this respect the Eadical Government of France had not gone beyond the Conservative Government of England in 1875, while on the other hand it had clipped the wings of the trade unions in giving them a clearly defined legal status. The struggle was to continue, but the way was prepared for an advance of the working classes. Consistent in their tactics, the most irreconcilable elements, always suspicious of and eager to evade " capitalist-made " laws, continued to form unions with- out registering themselves, as the law now demanded. The growth of association, outside of the association represented by the State, was to proceed, accelerated by the withdrawal of some of the powers of suppression formerly possessed by the State. The State itself, was now, however, to help forward this growth by one of the most extraordinary blunders in the defence of their own interests which has been made by the capitalist classes in their war with labour, one of the only instances of positive aid to the social movement from above, a blunder from which they have in vain sought to recover. CHAPTEE VII THE BOURSES DU TRAVAIL IT is not within the scope of the present work to discuss the many variations of political tactics discovered by those who have sought in parliamentarism the means to the emancipation of labour. Possibilists, Opportunists, Eeformers, Eevisionists or Ministerialists, the attitude of each is clearly defined towards the parties representing solely or in part the governing classes, varying from actual participation in a government at the one extreme to irreconcilable opposition within the parliamentary system at the other. Their differences disturb the peace at every labour congress, national or international. At Amsterdam, in August 1904, for instance, M. Jaures, the French socialist leader, undertook, with his fiery eloquence and satire, the defence, in opposition to M. Guesde of the alliance of expediency which had been entered into between socialist and radical groups in the French Chamber. He explained to his comrades of other nationalities, in excuse of this compromise, that France was a republic, and that consequently the sym- pathies of the government were more in accord with socialist aspirations than those of a government depend- ent on a military monarchy, such as that of Germany. 132 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY M. Guesde was, however, warmly supported by Herr Bebel, the leader of the German Social Democrats, who retorted by reminding the Frenchmen present that they owed the republic of which they were so proud to the German armies which had overthrown their second empire. Those who are experts in parliamentary tactics will undoubtedly find much interest and diversion in these differences, and will fully appreciate the tendencies which they represent. But here we are concerned with the struggle between the two main currents, the " political " and the revolutionary, the result of which will determine the immediate course of the social movement. At the International Socialist Congress held in Zurich in 1893, it was decided that only those should be ad- mitted to these congresses henceforth who subscribed to the principle of parliamentary action. Membership was therefore confined to the two following categories : " 1. Representatives of all bodies that are striving to replace the capitalist order of private ownership and private production by social ownership and socialised production, and that look upon participation in legislation and parliamentary activity as necessary means to achieve that end. " 2. All trade-union organisations which, although they may not themselves take part in the political struggle, yet realise the necessity for that struggle. Anarchists are thus excluded." The German Social Democrats have, for some forty years, controlled the " political " current, both by their achievements and by their undoubtedly superior intel- PARLIAMENTARISM OR DEMOCRACY 133 lectual training which they owe to the greater efficiency of the German educational system. Ever since 1867 German Social Democracy has led the way in the fight for "political" power; "in 1878, of the 438,231 socialist votes in all lands, 437,158 were cast in Germany and the rest in Denmark. Even in 1890 the German socialist votes were five-sixths of the entire socialist votes in aU countries, 1,427,298 out of 1,794,060. And to-day [1896] the votes registered for the German Social Democrats, 3,259,020, are certainly one-half of all the votes registered in favour of socialist candidates." l The influence which the weight of such success gave the Germans among the parliamentary socialists in all countries was irresistible, and achievements appearing so practical in their nature excited the envy of proletarian leaders throughout the world and stirred them to follow the German example and to adopt the German state- collectivist programme. France, as we have seen, was no exception, and there the German influence is clearly to be traced in the tendencies to parliamentarism and in the direct intervention of Marx in the drafting of French socialist programmes. But while the state-collectivist policy of capturing representative government was adopted by the leaders of the socialist party, there was always in France a strong minority in closer touch with the instincts of the working class, their faith rooted in the fundamental doctrines of Rousseau and the Revolution, and they 1 Sombart, op. cit. p. 169. By 1911 these votes had increased to 4,250,000. 134 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY protested, rebelled, and usually ended by seceding. Swept away by the excitement and vicissitudes, the rhetoric and " bluff," the hazards and intrigues of the political game, the leaders became more and more oblivious of the deep feeling which was moving the working classes. Like all who are sincere in their practical demands, or whose creed has its foundations in instinctive ideals, the proletariat regarded with indifference or indignation the adoption by the different sections in the legislature of tactics which seemed to them very little different from those employed by capitalists on the Stock Exchange. As they saw leader after leader vanish into the mists of parliamentarism, into the representative system which Eousseau had so scathingly condemned, the cardinal doctrine of Marx and the International came home to them with increasing force. Their interest turned more and more from " politics " to centre itself in the economic struggle waged by the Trade Unions ; to these associations they began to look to provide them with the machinery which representative government had failed, in spite of its origins, to create. The French Government itself was now to supply them with the part of that machinery which was still wanting to enable them to build up a democratic system of their own. As early as 1790 and again in 1845 proposals had been made to create Bourses du Travail l for the exchange of labour. In 1848 a Bill to this effect was presented to Parliament. Its introducer said: "Let your stock- jobbers walk about in a sumptuous palace, that doesn't 1 See Pelloutier, Histoire des Bourses du Travail, 1902. ORIGIN OF THE BOURSES 135 matter to me ; but give me a modest shelter, a meeting- place, for the working-men." In this Bill it was pro- vided that " in all communes with a population of 3000 and over, there shall be established inquiry offices for the proprietors and employers who desire to obtain labour." In 1875 the question was again mooted, but nothing was done. These proposals culminated, however, in the opening of a Bourse by the Municipal Council of Paris in 1 887, 1 and finally of a Bourse Centrale in the rue Chateau- d'Eau in 1892. In taking this step the authorities were actuated by the same motives as those which had inspired the authors of the law of 1884: it was a direct outcome of the policy of encouraging the development of Trade Unions in a spirit of freedom under government control, believing that conciliation would beget conciliation, and that the differences between labour and capital would be settled without recourse to the violent methods of strikes ; the provision of offices, and of rooms in which the different unions could hold meetings, in short, of a home, would, it was felt, round off and complete the policy of adminis- trative conciliation. The intention in establishing the Bourse was clearly stated : " The existence of Trade Unions will always be precarious, the burdens they impose will always keep the majority of workmen away from them. What they need, then, is premises and offices where every one can come without fear of having to make greater sacrifices of time and money than he can afford ; the free and permanent use of rooms for meetings will enable 1 By an interesting coincidence, in the rue Jean- Jacques- Rousseau. 136 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY workmen to discuss with greater maturity and precision the manifold questions connected with their industry and affecting their wages ; to guide and enlighten them they will have every means of information and correspondence, statistical data, an economic, industrial, and commercial library." Added to this there was the very real need for labour exchanges in the narrower and more practical sense as understood in the United Kingdom to-day. 1 The municipalities and the Government assisted the Bourses with subsidies, and in the case of Paris with the gift of a building, otherwise they were self-governing institutions supported by the workmen themselves. By 1892 there were already fourteen Bourses established in different towns in France ; seventy-one were authorita- tively represented at the Congress of the Confederation Ge"ne"rale du Travail in 1910. Centres of union, of a local character, were thus established for the Trade Unions. National union had been theoretically achieved by the creation of a National Federation of Trade Unions in 1886, but this Federation had been captured by the political collectivists and had failed in all the practical functions which it was estab- lished to perform. National union was now to be attempted by the Bourses, which provided an organisation instinctively French in its character, and peculiarly adapted to the localised and widely scattered nature of French industries. Among the men who were first to perceive and seize the opportunity now offered, history will undoubtedly assign the foremost place to 1 See W. H. Beveridge, op. cit. FERNAND PELLOUTIER 137 Fernand Pelloutier, one of the most striking and heroic figures in the labour movement of recent years. His personality and career are worthy of special attention. Pelloutier was descended from an old Protestant family that had wandered, to escape religious persecution, from Piedmont into France in the sixteenth century, into Germany in the seventeenth, and back into France to settle down in Nantes in the eighteenth. His grandfather was distinguished for his advanced liberal and republican opin- ions in the reign of Louis Philippe ; his great-uncle, on the other hand, was an ardent Catholic and legitimist who took part in the insurrection of 1832, and was arrested as an agent of the Duchesse de Berry in company with an ancestor of M. Clemeuceau, the French statesman of the present day. Fernand Pelloutier was born in Paris in 1867; in 1880 he was sent to a Catholic school in Saint-Nazaire. He developed early the symptoms of the painful and disfiguring form of tuberculosis from which he suffered throughout his short life. The discipline of the school seems to have been severe, and twice he tried to run away. Having been discovered collaborating with another boy in a violent diatribe against ecclesi- astics, his parents were requested to remove him from the school. In later life he expressed great admiration for the system of education under which he had been brought up. After a number of early literary ventures he threw himself eagerly into the election campaign of 1889 in support of M." Aristide Briand, then a "radical- revisionist candidate." After a year's rest in the country, 138 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY necessitated by the serious state of his health, he finally turned his back on his own class and devoted himself to the working-class movement, the centre of his activities being at first Saiut-Nazaire. In 1892 he was sent as delegate to a Congress where he moved and carried a resolution in favour of the principle of the general strike. The idea of the general strike had already been mooted, it should be noted, at various assemblies of working-men, and had been definitely formulated at a Congress at Bordeaux in 1888 in a resolution which terminated with the words : " The Congress declares : that the general strike alone, that is to say the complete cessation of all work, or Revolution, can carry working men onwards to their emancipation." A few days later, at the Marseilles Congress, M. Briand had popularised the idea in a speech which was to become famous. In 1893 Pelloutier settled in Paris; in 1894 he was present, as the delegate of the Federation of Bourses du Travail, at the National Congress of Trade Unions, and in 1895 he was appointed General Secretary of the Federation of Bourses du Travail of France and of the Colonies. He had now arrived at the height of his ambition : to be in a position in which his extraordinary powers of organisation could be brought to bear on the social struggle, and in which the experience which he had accumulated in various labour organisations could be put to practical use. Paid at first 1, then 2, and ultimately 4 a month for work which occupied him ten hours a day, to eke out a bare living he had, though overwhelmed with physical suffering, to undertake any FERN AND PELLOUTIER 139 odd literary jobs which he could find. His energy during the last six years of his life, during which he held this post, was stupendous. In addition to his arduous duties as secretary of the Federation he found time to write his history of the Bourses du Travail to collaborate with his brother in their Vie Ouvriere en France, to copy manuscripts and supply translations into English. Finally, under the pressure of poverty and distress, he asked for and obtained employment from the govern- ment Office du Travail, the work which he was given consisting in the preparation of an independent report and the collection of statistics with reference to strikes and Trade Unions, and the payment which he received amounting to 10 a month for a period of four months. His poverty, his fatal illness, and his heroism brought him no mercy from his fellows, and he had to fight the ordinary battle of life with all its petty intrigues and jealousies. His employment by the Government was made the pretext for an attack on him by his enemies, and he rose literally from his death-bed to defend himself at the Congress of the Federation of Bourses in 1900 against a plot which threatened to undo all his work. A careful study of the proceedings at this Congress throws much light on the vexed question of the treatment of their leaders by working-men. In this instance the working classes compare favourably with the governing classes under similar circumstances. Much that among the latter would be whispered in the vacancy of lobbies or the babel of drawing-rooms was, 140 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY it is true, blurted out with rough, if any, tact ; but the charges were made openly and, it is pleasing to note, somewhat shamefacedly, and they were openly with- drawn. There was a certain generous dignity in the words closing the discussion on the vote of congratulation and confidence which it was proposed, in reply to the attempted censure, to address to Pelloutier : " The Federal Secretary has made his statement ; we have to acknow- ledge that we are satisfied : that is the finest vote of confidence which we can tender him." Pelloutier died six months later. At the last moment he was carried, at his request, into his study, where he was surrounded by the books which he had collected one by one at the cost of the necessaries of life. Pelloutier, who possessed in a high degree the gift of creative organisation, saw more clearly than any of his fellows the possibilities for the social movement which were contained in a union of the different Bourses du Travail. A Federation of Bourses had been founded in 1892 by the " possibilists " to counteract the influence of the Federation of Trade Unions which was controlled by the political collectivists, and thus the instrument was ready to his hand. He also realised to the full the local advantages offered by the individual Bourse. In his history of the Bourses he explains fully what were his hopes and his policy for the new organisation ; he shows how these institutions would afford a common local meeting-ground for all labour organisations, would bring them into permanent relationship with one another, providing that mutual education of the working classes CLOSING OF THE PARIS BOURSE 141 the want of which had hitherto been the insuperable obstacle to the development and efficiency of their association; how the trade unions representing similar trades would be able to compare notes as to wages, hours of work, and the effects of an increase or decrease of either, and how, on the other hand, the unions repre- senting different trades would be able to meet and discuss their common social and economic interests, provide against the loss of effort resulting from independent and disunited action, and gradually discover and build up a common organisation. The governing classes having created the machinery of the new proletariat organisation now gave it additional vitality by attempting to stifle its activity. "When the Municipal Council of Paris was considering on 30th March 1892 the proposal to found a Bourse du Travail, the question arose as to what labour organisations should be admitted to its benefits. The law of 1884 was, it will be remembered, considered reactionary l by a con- siderable section of the working classes, and Trade Unions continued to be formed which did not conform to its requirements. The Preset de la Seine informed the Municipal Council, in the course of this discussion, that the Bourse would be open to Trade Unions ; as for the associations which were not legally constituted, the Procureur de la Ke"publique, whose duty it was to see 1 A decision given by the Minister of Finance on 23rd July 1884, in connection with a point arising out of the law, may be noted. He stated that the obligation of Trade Unions under the law to register themselves was imposed on them ' ' non dans leur int6ret propre, mais dans un int^ret de police ge'ne'rale." 142 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY that laws were observed, had not dissolved them, and so the matter did not concern him. Thus was this question shirked, the authorities proceeding open-eyed to the inevitable consequences. Needless to say, all unions, legal and illegal alike, took advantage of the facilities provided by the Paris Bourse. The Govern- ment began to be alarmed. Not the least important object of the law of 1884 had been to bring all Trade Unions under government control, 1 but here were non- conforming unions not only benefiting from state and municipal assistance but mingling in association with and corrupting the unions which had observed the law. Out of the 270 unions which had joined the Paris Bourse no fewer than 120 were non-conforming. On 2nd June 1893 the same Pre'fet de la Seine, M. Poubelle, issued a warning that all unions which, within a month from 5th June, had not conformed to the law would not be permitted to enjoy the benefits of the Bourse. The threat was understood, and the challenge accepted. At the anniversary celebration of the Bourse on 12th June, speeches were made defying the Government to interfere. On 5th June the trade union leaders assembled at their posts at the Bourse ready to meet the expected reply ; but nothing happened. The following day, however, troops sur- rounded the building, the officials of all labour organisa- tions, whether legally constituted or not, were expelled by the police, and the Bourse was closed. 2 It remained 1 See Appendix I., Law of 21st March 1884, Art. 4. 2 The inevitable touch of French humour is supplied by M. L4on de CONFEDERATION 143 closed until 1 905, when it was reopened by the Government of M. Le'on Bourgeois as a concession to the socialists. Events were to show that in thus closing the Bourse the Government had committed a serious blunder. The Congress of the Federation of Bourses, held a week later (the date had been advanced owing to the Govern- ment's action), said in its report : " The idea of the Bourses has done more to strengthen the trade-union movement than ten years of militant efforts, just as M. Dupuy [the Minister responsible] has done more by closing the Paris Bourse and attacking the unions than twenty years of propaganda." The effect on the working classes was profound, and the event marks a turning-point in the history of the social movement in France, possibly in the history of democracy throughout the world. Amid the excitement, the German and the French tendencies showed themselves clearly. The State col- lectivists through their leader, M. Guesde, proclaimed that the action of the police and the troops had " thrown the whole labour party into the political movement, that is to say into the true path of socialism, as they would henceforth be convinced that the only hope of Seilhac in his account of this incident (Les Congrts Ouvriers en France. Deuxi&me Serie). One of the labour leaders attempted to parley with the commissioner of police, and the following conversation took place : "We have legality and right on our side." "I don't care a rap about right and law ; I have definite orders, and I am carrying them out." "I know that commissioners, like all the police, only obey illegality. But, anyhow, may I leave some one to look after my safe ? " "There's no need. The Bourse will be guarded." " Yes, by the police, and knowing their ways we have good reason to fear that we shall be robbed." "Oh, for God's sake, shut up ! " " I am not acquainted with God." "Well, for the sake of anything you like then, shut up ! " 144 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY safety and emancipation for labour lay in the conquest of the government." The Congress of the Federation of Bourses, on the other hand, called upon all those who " fight for the social republic " to protest against the repressive measures of the Government by abstaining from any share in the national celebrations of 14th July, and thus " to show their contempt for a government which has not hesitated to let loose the police against the population of Paris " ; further, it passed a resolution in favour of the general strike, and decided to summon a joint national congress of both Bourses and Trade Unions. There followed directly the foundation of the Con- fe'de'ration GeWrale du Travail in 1895, and syndicalism became a recognised force. However imperfect, however small its beginnings, whatever trace of past errors it may have inherited, whatever vicissitudes it may yet have to encounter, in the opinion of those of the working classes who placed greater reliance on revolution than on " parliamentarism," practical shape had at last been given to the idea of an association of the governed, autonomous, local, and national, a proletarian state at war with the State of the governing classes, its ultimate aim clearly defined by Pelloutier : " The day (and it is not far off) when the proletariat has formed a gigantic association, in full consciousness of its interests and of the means by which their triumph may be assured, that day capital, misery, classes, hatred, will have ceased to exist. The social revolution will have been accomplished." Pelloutier before he died was to see the foundation laid of an CONFEDERATION 145 association which, fighting on what he believed to be the battleground selected by the governing classes, was to aim at the destruction of the economic basis of society, having as its instinctive ideal, which was to become an increasing force as the struggle progressed, a human association in which the economic element would no longer be allowed to predominate, from which indeed, in the narrower accepted meaning of the term economic, it would disappear altogether. 10 CHAPTEK VIII THE FOUNDATIONS OF SYNDICALISM THE International possessed three elements of weak- ness which were bound to result in its ultimate failure. In the first place, its tendencies were autocratic. 1 One of the conceptions of the aim of the organisa- tion was, says Professor Sombart, 2 " to make it a centre for the whole Labour movement, a place from which the proletarian organisations in each country should receive their orders, and to which they should look for encouragement : a centre for the entire direction of each local Labour movement. . . . Marx did not doubt for a moment that ... it would have to be his spirit which should influence it. But he was wise enough to see that for the present great caution would be necessary if the union of so many different tendencies were to be accomplished." Men who have once tasted freedom will not freely submit to that kind of autocracy. Marx gave the International a constitution the form of which was democratic enough, but, to use terms that will be understood by those who remember the discussions as to the Constitution to be granted to the Transvaal after the Boer War, it assumed a " representative " rather than a "responsible" form. Secondly, the International 1 See Appendix II. 2 Sombart, op. cit. p. 1 80. 146 SYNDICALISTS AND MARX 147 ignored national distinctions. To quote the same author, Marx " was clever enough ... to pay but little heed to what was accidental in national development, and to lay stress on what was typical and general in the life of society to-day." It was precisely what was " acci- dental " in national development that broke up the Association. Thirdly, Marx, probably because he spent all his life on the battlefield without ever bringing off a decisive action, regarded the enemy's material position, the actual ground on which the opposing forces were drawn up, as the thing itself in dispute, the aim of the whole campaign, the ultimate fruits of a possible victory. In other words, the economic organisation of society, the ground on which the governing classes were entrenched, he considered to be a natural and necessary human development, and he believed that it was only needful for the proletariat to get possession of it for the human form of association to be achieved. That would, in its main outlines, appear to be the teaching of Marx at any rate, it is how his teaching has been understood by the proletariat he addressed and still influences, 1 and that is all that really matters. It is interesting to note how the Confederation Ge"ne*rale du Travail has avoided these dangers. The syndicalists accept the economic battleground, they share the general conviction of the working classes 1 Marx is full of inconsistencies, his support of the Commune being the most conspicuous. Like most men of real ability, who are persecuted all their lives and cannot obtain a proper outlet for their talent, he often appears rather a "humbug " to those who are not prepared to make allow- ance for the conditions of exile and ostracism under which he worked. 148 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY that the governing classes have imposed an economic organisation on society, that capital is used for the oppression and enthraldom of the governed, that man- kind is to-day divided into two divisions, the employer and the employed, those who pay and those who are paid wages or salaries, or, as they themselves would express it, " those who produce nothing and possess all and those who possess nothing and produce all" The teaching of Marx, it is true, provides them with a useful armoury of weapons, but it is not their gospel : if they have any gospel it is, loth as the more intelligent among them may be to admit it, the Contrat Social. Of the doctrines of Marx, the theory of surplus value, that the real value of what is produced is the amount of labour furnished to produce it, that the workman is only paid for a part of his labour and that the surplus is retained by the capitalist, is for them only an expression, in more or less intelligible language, of one of the relations between the possessor and the producer, the governing and the governed ; the theories of concentration and socialisation, that the large capitalist absorbs the smaller capitalist, that the smaller capitalist swallows up the independent producer, and that thus the machinery of the future socialist state is being evolved by capital itself, they reject, not only because these theories have been falsified by events, but because syndicalism is in its essence opposed to the fundamental principle of a central- ised State just as it is opposed to the primary process of capitalism, the paying and being paid wages and salaries. But, above all, the Confederation differs from the Inter- EMPIRICISM 149 national in that it starts from the local unit in its organisation for economic warfare, and that it is self- contained in a national confederation so characteristically national in its every development and tendency that, as has been seen, l the impracticability of horizontal inter- nationalism was recognised at the outset instinctively without any attempt to attribute the failure to " acci- dental " causes. Let it be admitted generally, before studying this organisation, that syndicalism has no dogma 2 to the despair of its German opponents and critics who, con- sequently, can only classify it as anarchy. At present it is an ideal, and in that lies its strength and, in a sense, its weakness. It must therefore be approached, by any impartial student, with the knowledge that it is as much open to misinterpretation and misunderstanding as the Contrat Social itself, or any of the great religious ideals which rest upon instinctive faith and are not depend- ent upon dogmas whose only ultimate sanction can be found in the acceptance of the infallibility of authority, the refuge of bewildered intelligence. It is to its adherents what the Eevolution was to the armies of France a hundred years ago, an ideal for which men will make heroic sacrifices. It has been seen in action in England. Writing on the Miners' Strike of 1912, the secretary of the Confederation G^n^rale du Travail said : " Let it be 1 See p. 72. 2 Discussing dogma, Pelloutier wrote : " The corporative organisations laugh at theory, and their empiricism . . . is at least as good as all the systems which last just as long and are as correct as the forecasts of the almanack." 150 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY noted that it is England which, for the first time, has put into application with such vigour the theory of French syndicalism." l This being grasped, it is evident that it can only be understood by observing its development, the action which it has produced and the organisation which it has achieved within the association which it has built up for the realisation of the working-class instinct of collectivity. For reasons which will become apparent as we proceed it is with the Bourses du Travail that the study of the Confederation should begin. The Bourses bring together in a common local centre for common action the Trade Union and other labour organisations in the same town and district. Before the existence of the Bourses these organisations had been practically isolated and more or less independent of one another. The Bourses were primarily free labour exchanges, that is to say, they made no charge to those using them in distinction to those private institutions which throve on the poverty and distress of the unemployed : they provided a library and an inquiry office ; they collected and classified statistics on labour questions and afforded a meeting- place where the unionists of different trades could meet and discuss their interests and grievances. Under Pelloutier's organising genius the Bourses developed with extraordinary rapidity. The International had already recognised the importance of such things as the collec- tion of local statistics, but it had attempted to secure 1 L' Action Syndicaliste : Ses Af&hodes Ses Aspectes, by Le*on Jouhaux a leaflet published 25th April 1912. STRENGTH OF LOCAL ASSOCIATION 151 them by the exercise of autocratic authority dear to the soul of Marx. 1 Pelloutier, on the contrary, respected the complete autonomy of each Bourse, recognising that their vitality and growth depended on the most absolute liberty ; he nevertheless, by his personal influence, suc- ceeded in persuading them to appoint efficient secre- taries and lead them to perceive that not only was continuity of policy necessary, but that it could only be secured by retaining the services of the same secretary as long as possible. The stronger among the Bourses soon began to develop under his influence positive activities : they created or reorganised funds in aid of those seeking work ; they started technical and other educa- tional classes, and, becoming aggressive in their growing sense of power, they established strike and other funds of a militant order. Even the weakest ensured economy of effort and expenditure among the local trade unions ; in short, they secured for them the advantages of association, thus giving to the instinct of collectivity the opportunity for the realisation of a higher development of unity. To appreciate the spirit in which the Bourses set to work, it must be understood that many of the abler among the working men who joined them were firmly convinced that it had been proved by experience that there was nothing to be hoped for from arbitration or conciliation and the general policy of moderation which was called, after its chief exponent, " Barberetism " ; they had been led to believe that a Labour Party in Parliament 1 See Appendix II. 152 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY was unable to help them, that the utmost that could be expected from the effort of such a party was laws like that of 1884, which, in their opinion, had reduced rather than increased their liberties ; they maintained that, as was seen from the working of this law, employers would always be strong enough to circumvent the best of laws even if they did not succeed, with the enormous influence possessed by capital to coerce a government supported by capital, in inserting during its passage through Parliament clauses safeguarding their own interests. Above all, there was " the disgust with politics " and the party system. They therefore started out at last to put into practice in its strictest application the maxim of the International, " the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves." How rapidly the Bourses sprang up is shown by the following figures. In 1892 there were 14; in 1895 there were within the Federation 34, representing 606 Trade Unions; in 1896 there were 46, representing 862 Trade Unions. Then the Federal Committee suggested concentration, fearing confusion and overlapping from the rate at which Bourses were being established, and only 11 new Bourses were created in 1897. In 1898 there were 51, representing 947 Trade Unions; and in 1900 there were 57, representing 1065 Trade Unions, including nearly half the industrial trade unionists in France. In 1911 there were officially stated to be 144, representing 2487 Trade Unions with a membership of 557,476, out of a total of 4386 STRENGTH OF LOCAL ASSOCIATION 153 Trade Unions with a membership of 9Q3,3Q$. 1 The total grants made to them in 1911, both by municipali- ties and departments, amounted to no more than 407,686 francs. The total number of places filled through the Bourses (nine of them had furnished no returns of any kind to the Ministry) was in this same year 61,379. To consider briefly the general scope of their work. At the height of their new-born enthusiasm, when Pelloutier was secretary to the Federation, it may be thus briefly described. First in importance they placed their duties as labour exchanges, waging deadly war against the private exchanges, which they have not yet succeeded in suppressing. As early as 1895 it was estimated that the number of men for whom the Bourses found situations represented four-fifths of the offers of employment, and one-half of the demands for employ- ment ; the Marseilles Bourse, for instance, found places, one-half of them permanent, for 21,000 men. Next came the unemployment fund, the assistance given being no longer regarded as charity, but as " a debt of solid- arity," and as a means of securiDg the unemployed against the temptation of accepting offers of work at a wage below the Trade Union rate. Connected with this was the viaticum, or travelling benefit, assisting the man who had to travel about looking for work, in the organisation of which the Bourses were able to derive much assistance from the experience of the old compagnonnages ; here the 1 Annuaire des Syndicats Professionnels, issued by the Ministry of Labour. The figures naturally do not include the unions of employers or the mixed unions of employers and workmen, 154 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY advantages of federation were immediately seen, each Bourse being able to check the visit to its own district of the man receiving the benefit, it thus becoming possible to calculate the rate of allowance between Bourse and Bourse. 1 So good was their organisation of these two services that in 1900 they established, with the aid of a Government grant, a national statistical office and labour exchange which did much to relieve the un- employment consequent on the closing of the Paris Exhibition of that year. Among the other branches of their work was education, including libraries, varying from small libraries containing 400 volumes to that of the Paris Bourse with 2700, technical museums, intelli- gence departments, newspapers, educational courses and lectures, and propaganda. To the consideration of some of these we shall have reason to return. All these activities sprang, in the first instance, from the local requirements of the respective Bourse. That is a fact of prime significance in this new development Local association is the first stage through which the family passes on its way to the achievement national association, it offers the first wider grouping of human interests ; wherever its limits allow for personal communication between individuals, of daily intercourse often starting in childhood and extending through life, it provides all possible points of human contact, and promotes a cor- 1 Pelloutier, while always emphasising the principle that the Bonnes were associations for resistance, attached first importance to this practical side of their work, thus gradually diverting the revolutionary spirit from its natural negative tendencies. Pelloutier was essentially a man of action and construction. STRENGTH OF LOCAL ASSOCIATION 155 porate sense which is fed by the joys and sorrows, the successes and failures, of the individual in the exercise of all his human faculties, not merely in his struggle to obtain the material necessities of existence. Local associa- tion is thus a real and living thing for the individual ; while membership of a large and scattered national organisation without any intermediate local stage can never have the same reality for him. Neither can membership of a Trade Union, local or national, confined to the interests of one trade alone, appeal to the individual in all his human instincts. The Bourse, on the other hand, is the centre in which all the local Trade Unions meet, in which the local working classes are represented in all their varied capacities and activities theoretically on an economic basis if you will, but the insistence of the local environment, its human claims and limitations, reducing the economic interest to its proper relative worth. In short, the Bourse re- presents the complete organisation of a proletarian commune. Through local association the instinct of the worker soon leads him to the conception of national association. For instance, a strike occurs in a district in which another Bourse is situated, and the attempt is made to replace the men who are on strike by others from the district of the first Bourse ; or a man out of employment wanders off in search of work throughout the country ; in either case the need for national federation arises naturally in the minds of all members of the local association, its practical advantages become obvious. The common national interest is even more strongly realised if an endeavour is made in any district to import workmen at 156 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY lower wages from over the national border an endeavour which has been defeated whenever it has been made far more by the force of national solidarity than by any of the working-class efforts at internationalism. But national federation does not mean centralised federal control for those for whom it has grown out of the unity of the commune, and who have the liberty of Eousseau in their veins. Pelloutier's supreme achieve- ment was in establishing a federal system which embodied all the advantages of centralisation while leaving the most absolute freedom to the different parts. The organism which he developed was in touch with the human order, saved by its local origins from the limitations of the natural order, imposed, as the working classes believe, by the governing classes. Having thus briefly surveyed the activities and organ- isation of the Bourses, let us now glance at the Federations of Trade Unions which, together with that of the Bourses, was to form the Confederation Generate du Travail. In 1886, as has been stated, an attempt had been made, which did little more than point in the desired direction, to unite the Trade Unions scattered in isolation throughout the country, or divided by ignorance or jealousy of one another's trades. The unions in each commune, or " agglomeration " of several neighbouring communes, were invited to join together and form a local federal council. Every group of ten departments were to form a " regional " federal council, and finally each department was to nominate a delegate to a general federal council. An air of reality was given to this FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS 157 organisation by the proposal that each regional council should create a strike fund. But this federation was never taken seriously ; it was intended that it should be an adjunct to the party machinery of the political collec- tivists, and without any tangible links between the various localities it soon died a natural death. It had one redeeming feature in that it showed a tendency to base its organisation on local patriotism. Meanwhile the force of circumstances had led Trade Unions of the same trade to form national federations ; experience had taught them that thus alone could they hope to defeat the natural tendency to replace trade unionists, during a strike, by workmen of the same trade from other parts of the country. The federations were of two kinds, of Industrie and of metier, that is to say, of those " qui transforment une me*me matiere, quel que soit leur metier particulier, comme les federations du livre du bdtiment, des cuirs et peaux ; and of those qui prdparent un mme produit, comme celles des mfoaniciens, des peintres. Between 1900 and 1908 the number of these national federations rose from 18 to 66, a result in the main to be attributed to the activities of the Confederation Ge"nerale. The most powerful of these were that of the printing and allied trades known as La Federation du Livre, founded in 1881 after a three-months' strike in Paris had been defeated by the importation of men from other districts, and the Miners' Federation, founded in 1883. The National Union of Railwaymen started as a small group in 1890, and has now grown to large dimensions. To turn again to the Bourses du Travail. They had 158 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY also been formed into a national federation through the efforts of the Paris Bourse in 1892. Pelloutier became general secretary to this federation in 1895. The com- mittee which was responsible for its original organisation was elected by a congress to which each Bourse had sent one delegate. It was due to Pelloutier that this com- mittee was given a permanent abode in Paris, his contention being that they must centralise where their opponents were centralised, in the capital, an argument which was later to determine the capital of the Con- fe'de'ration Ge'ne'rale du Travail. No less important, in Pelloutier's view, was the argument he advanced for continuity of policy at the centre as in the localities, a continuity which could only be secured by the permanent residence of the committee in one centre, necessitating as it did, for practical reasons, the minimum of changes in the personnel of the committee. Further, it was feared, and the past experience of the abortive National Federa- tion of Trade Unions accounts for this fear, that if the committee changed its headquarters annually it would fall under the influence of political parties whose local organisations would determine its membership. In Pelloutier's day every semblance and accompaniment of bureaucracy was banished from the proceedings of the federal committee. This body had no office, its meetings were informal, a vote being taken on the rarest occasions, and a chairman was considered as derogatory to its dignity as a Speaker would be to that of the English House of Lords. The federal committee had no autocratic powers, and, at any rate in Pelloutier's time, it sought to possess none. FEDERATION OF THE BOURSES 159 Suggestions were made to the Bourses, questions sent up by them were answered, but without any instructions as to the course they should adopt. To take one example. The need arose for arriving at some common system, which would be adopted universally by the Bourses, for the control of travelling benefits granted to men in search of work. The federal committee set to work studying former systems, among them that which had grown up in the union of the old compagnonnages ; having produced a scheme, it submitted it to the next general congress, by which it was discussed. The congress referred it back to the committee to amend, with instruction to circularise it among all the Bourses for the individual approval of each. The great majority of the Bourses accepted it, some desired modifications, a few declared that they were too poor to be burdened with any travelling benefits at all. Neither the com- mittee nor the congress attempted to impose the scheme on all the Bourses by an enforcement of the will of the majority, the force of example alone being relied on to make it universal. In summing up the relations of the committee to the individual Bourses, Pelloutier said : "Never has any 'information or indication furnished by the committee or by the annual congress been con- sidered as binding; and it is without doubt to this freedom of inquiry and of choice, to this variety of methods, to this power left to each Bourse to adapt itself to its own surroundings, that is due the extra- ordinarily rapid development of these institutions." l 1 Pelloutier, Histoire des Bourses du Travail, p. 157. 160 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY Among some of those who, at the present moment, are the most active leaders of syndicalism in France, there is perhaps a tendency, not unnatural in an immediately succeeding generation, to underrate the debt which they owe to Pelloutier. But it is only necessary to live among the records of the Federation of Bourses, or to read Pelloutier's own history of these institutions a masterpiece of proletarian and militant literature to realise that " he was the soul (of the committee), and was the better able to make all the Bourses accept his influence because he respected their autonomy and abstained from any act of authority." l His generalship under those truly democratic conditions stamp him as a born leader of men. His intimate knowledge of those whom he desired to train to victory taught him that, as it was the novelty of the Bourses which furnished their chief attraction and aroused the invincible enthusiasm with which they were hailed, so their vitality and endurance, indeed their very existence as living organ- isms, depended on the stimulation of their members to increasing activity in the cause of an overmastering ideal. But he was not blind to the weakness as well as the strength of the national character of his countrymen. The French are a warlike race, and, given an ideal, they will fight for it with irresistible charges of heroism. But while no race has been more divinely endowed with the gift of discovering substantial and tangible comfort in glory, none is more apt to draw up a stern balance- sheet showing the material profit and loss after every 1 Weil, Histoire du mouvcment social en France, p. 350. IDEALS OF THE BOURSES 161 defeat. Their activities must therefore be directed into channels leading to practical achievement. As for the ideal, that was to be found in the origin of the Federation itself. The idea of federating the Bourse had first been enun- ciated by certain members of the Paris Bourse du Travail, who desired to create a force which might counteract the influence of the Federation of Trade Unions and of the politicians of the Parti Ouvrier whose tool it was. The Federation of Bourses therefore originated in a protest against the political ideal of the state-collectivists. At the Trade Union Congress of 1892, a resolution em- bodying the new ideal of a general strike was carried with enthusiasm ; the Parti Ouvrier, meeting in congress immediately afterwards, declared this new ideal Utopian. Finally, the Parti Ouvrier, their political organisation and their tactics disappeared from the trade-union stage, and the general strike and " direct action," excluding all mediation between employers and employed, was accepted by the Federation of Bourses as the cardinal principle of its policy. We shall return to this ideal later, but here let it be noted that, for the Federation of Bourses, the practical requirements themselves which had led to federation gave, at any rate by analogy, a practical complexion to the idea of the general strike. For the federal idea having grown, as has been shown, out of the practical need for common action and common services between separate Bourses each inspired as it was by the sense of association engendered by the union and sympathy of separate Trade Unions in the same ii 1 62 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY locality led by a natural process to the conception of sympathetic strikes, from which it is only a step to that of the general strike. By the general strike, when the time came, a complete social transformation was to be accomplished. All the activities of the Bourses were to be directed to this end ; their work was to prepare continually for the " great day " while meeting the practical requirements of the actual present. Thus, in dealing with the problem of unemploy- ment, the statistical department of each Bourse was to acquire information so that they would know precisely at any moment the number of unemployed, and the causes of unrest in every trade, the cost of maintenance of each individual, the number of trades and occupations in every district, the workers engaged in each of them, what they produced, and, on the other hand, what would be the total production necessary for feeding and maintaining the population throughout the whole district of each Bourse. Then, when the general strike took place, and revolution came, as it had already come in France, the proletariat would be ready. Everything this time would become social property ; not the individual property of the workers in each trade or occupation, for that would only lead to rivalry between collective corporations which would merely be another form of the old capitalist rivalries. The various unions would exchange their products directly with one another ; every Bourse would know the amounts produced and required in its own district. Each trade would have its union, would nominate a council for the purpose. Thus would the IDEALS OF THE CONFEDERATION 163 old form of government be replaced by a government of producers. Such, in briefest summary, were Pelloutier's ideas which were discussed at congresses and were accepted, and the steady and methodical development of the Bourses decided upon to put them into practice and arrive at the desired end. The federal committee carried them even further towards their logical conclusion. The revolution must abolish the whole present system of exchange with the capitalist institutions which depend on it. The future must provide a " voluntary and free association of producers." The direct exchange between these different associations would render unnecessary much of the present social machinery which would become useless, and thus leisure would be provided for intellectual development. Money would gradually be eliminated from among the forces of corruption. . . . Utopian dreams ! But as one is on the point of dismiss- ing them to the land of lost visions and abandoned hopes, one remembers that there have been revolutions in France before, that there is solid stuff in Frenchmen's dreams. ... If such an organisation of Bourses and Trade Unions had been alive, working, in 1793 . . . or in 1799 when Napoleon took over a bankrupt France, and with difficulty persuaded the bankers of Paris to lend him 120,000, or in 1871 at the time of the Commune. . . . If it were really trained and ready when the next revolution burst on France, not necessarily a revolution which it had produced itself the general strike, when all the workmen need only fold their arms to see the present 1 64 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY social structure totter aud fall but a revolution which was brought about iii some more precedented manner. . . . Who will venture to say that these are dreams that are never to take substantial form ? But to get back to the facts which led to the creation of the Confederation Ge'ne'rale du Travail. There were still in existence two independent Federations, for even after it had thrown over its political leaders or to be more accurate, had seen them shake its dust from off their feet the Federation of Trade Unions still continued to exist, and was not prepared to abandon its own organisation in favour of that of the Federation of Bourses. It had no programme and no organisation based on practical requirements, and was still influenced by its old habit of political action. The two Federations, both being composed mainly of Trade Unions, were to a very large extent a mere duplication of one another as far as the personality of their members was concerned. Symmetry seemed to demand the absorption of one by the other. But this was not to be, and what was lost to symmetry was probably a gain to practical fighting power, to the spirit of autonomy and to the ultimate consummation of a purely democratic constitution. Pelloutier, while refusing to subordinate his federation in any way to that of the Trade Unions, conceived a union of the two bodies springing from the common unit, the Trade Union. On the one side were unions of the same or similar trades, federated in a national council ; on the other, Trade Unions of every kind, grouped locally in the Bourses, forming a national federation of Bourses. IDEALS OF THE CONFEDERATION 165 The independence of each was to be respected, their union being represented by the committee and congresses of a general confederation, its strength being in its very looseness, in its defiance of every intellectual and logical principle which had hitherto been regarded as the elementary basis of association a thing to excite the academic mind to ridicule but to break new and possibly unexpectedly fruitful ground in the process of democratic evolution, a thing which has proved by its achievements that it must be taken seriously and is to-day taken seriously, viewed with open respect or ill-concealed uneasiness. The struggle between the two federations was long and often bitter. The Trade Unions Federation tried alter- nately to capture and to dispense with the Federation of Bourses, but the latter was always the stronger, all the vital force was on its side, for it was less far removed from the human order, and it had Pelloutier to fight for its independence as long as there was any life left in him. Even after his death when the advocates of logical symmetry, who have ruined many a cause, found the opposition to their schemes immeasurably weakened the reconstituted Conf6deration recognised in the main the principles for which he had so vigorously contended. CHAPTEK IX THE GENERAL STRIKE THE object of the Confederation Generate du Travail, as finally constituted in 1902, is stated in the first article of its statutes to be : l " First, the grouping of wage- earners for the defence of their moral, material, economic and professional interests ; Second, it groups apart from any political school all workers who are conscious of the struggle to be carried on for the disappearance of the system of wages and salaries, and of employers and employed. No person may make use of his title of Confederate or of any office of the Confederation in any political electoral document whatever." The Confederation consists of two autonomous sections, the section of Bourses and the section of Trade Union Federations. 2 Each of the Bourses and of the Federations is represented by a delegate in Paris. These delegates together constitute the Confederal Committee, which is divided into two sections each of which has its own bureau, consisting of a secretary, assistant secretary, 1 It is hardly necessary to observe that these statutes have no legal sanction, just as many of the Trade Unions included in the Confederation are not legally constituted. See Le"on de Seilhac, op. cit., pp. 309-10. 2 Including unions not affiliated to any Federation, the official statistics for 1910 showing 57 Federations and 3 National Unions. 166 DEMOCRATIC ORGANISATION 167 treasurer, assistant treasurer, and keeper of the archives. The ordinary meetings of the Confederal Committee are held every three months. The cabinet, to use a parlia- mentary analogy, is the Confederal Bureau, which is formed by the union of the bureaus of these two sections, to whom is added the secretary of each of their subordinate committees, a body of about seven members, which is permanent and has considerable executive powers. The Coufederal Committee appoints three permanent committees, a press committee to direct the official organ, an eight hours' day and general strike committee, and a finance committee, in each of which the two sections are equally represented. A National Congress is held every two years. 1 The Federation of Bourses holds a conference of its own immediately after the general congress. The secretary of the Trade Unions section has the title of secretary of the Confederation. It is not easy to arrive at a clear conception of the machinery of this organisation, much less to understand its working. It is not only that its very nature and the circumstances under which it has grown up forbid ex- clusive limitation and division into strictly defined compartments, nor even that the wording of its constitu- tion and regulations lack academic precision ; the great difficulty that confronts one in any inquiry is that, as soon as one begins to study it closely, it is realised that one is in the presence of the conditions of actual warfare. This is the army of the proletariat in the field, attempt- 1 The eleventh Congress was held in Toulouse, October 1910, the twelfth in Havre in September 1912. 1 68 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY ing by skilful strategy to multiply the effectiveness of the forces at its disposal, concealing its resources and real numerical strength from the enemy, receiving un- expected reinforcements to-day when spirits are inflamed by the ardour of battle, shrinking to an irreducible standing minimum to-morrow under the depression of defeat or in the over-confidence begotten of victory. It is only by placing oneself at the point of view of its leaders, and by entering into the thoughts and aims of the syndicalists, that one can hope to seize any correct appreciation of this powerful organisation of the governed born in their struggle to free themselves from the domination of the governing classes. Those who regard the Confederation as an association approximating to the human order will observe that it consists of two elements : the purely economic, represented by the Trade Union sections, and what may be called the communal-economic element represented by the section of Bourses. The first has been built up by the working classes under the intellectual guidance of those who have, in accordance with the teachings of the scientific age, sought to rescue them from dependence on their instinct, and to enable them to attack the entrench- ments of intelligence with the weapons and organisations of intelligence. The Trade Unions, federated in their exclusively economic capacities independently of the Bourses, have a tendency to attach too much importance to their intelligence and their financial resources, in both of which they are inferior to the employers, who have also formed federations and are increasing daily in organised DEMOCRATIC ORGANISATION 169 strength. They are not willing to risk, without con- siderable chances of success, the funds accumulated with so much difficulty and self-denial ; they hesitate to embark on a campaign unless the strategy which their intelligence can devise holds out reasonable expectation of victory. The second is composed of those who have learnt by bitter experience that this way lies certain defeat, that the intellectual equipment of the proletariat is not, and cannot within measurable time be, equivalent to that of the governing classes ; they, therefore, place reliance on their instinct and have learnt in so doing, in basing their organisation for defensive and offensive operations on the human unities, that the weakness of the capitalist supremacy consists in its very dependence on the intelligence alone. And so within the Confederation there is the old human rivalry between intellect and intelligence, a rivalry which, it is held, must not be suppressed but must be transformed into an harmonious alliance, a common union, if the highest expression of human power is to be attained. This union, arising from what at first sight would appear to be an unnecessary confusion and overlapping, is the greatest achievement of the Confederation as it exists to-day, and will continue to exist so long as the spirit of Pelloutier presides over its destinies. The individuals composing the membership of the two national federations are, generally speaking, identical, each trade union being merged locally in the Bourse and nationally in the federation of the union. The Confederal Committee is composed of representatives each 1 70 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY of whom is elected by his union individually, not by the Federation or the Bourse, the delegate thus joining the Committee in his dual capacity. 1 The more closely one studies this organisation the greater is the conviction that the working classes would, therefore, appear to have devised in France a fighting formation corresponding to their maximum strength in association. This strength cannot, it is obvious, be measured by any intellectual standards alone ; it does not consist merely in numbers or in financial resources, and the syndicalists, to the confusion and despair of many of their critics, attach undue importance to neither. The total membership of the Confederation is stated by its leaders to be about 600,000. This number roughly represents one-half of the working-class trade-unionists of France, irrespective of the peasantry, or about one-third of the whole. But the French trade-union population is probably more fluctuating in France than in any other country. Many stories are told of districts in which, before some act of oppression or unjust treatment of a few of their fellows, the whole working-class population, including the most conservative and law-abiding elements, have suddenly joined the ranks of the trade-unionists to a man, and marched daily behind red banners, singing revolutionary songs. But in peaceful times it shows a greater falling off than elsewhere : then there often 1 The principle of this form of union is emphasised by the equal voting power accorded to each trade union whatever its numerical strength, a system which has been much discussed at the Congresses, but which has been maintained. The arguments on both sides are given fully by M. L^on de Seilhac. Op. cit. TACTICS AND IDEALS 171 remain in the unions few beside those who are known as the conscients, those who are alive to the need of a deter- mined and consistent policy, and for whom the aim to be attained is an ever-present reality. Among these, always watchful and untiring, marked men in the eyes of the governing classes, are the officers and the non- commissioned officers, to adopt an analogy peculiarly applicable to a martial people trained in the discipline of compulsory military service. When danger again arises, or war with the employers threatens, the order is given and there is a rush to the standards. That the permanent effective is steadily increasing is regarded as satisfactory, not so much from a material point of view as that it is a symptom of the growth of the number of conscients, and of a strengthening of the moral determination of the working classes. As to its financial resources, the same consideration applies, with this characteristic addition. Capital, it is held, cannot be fought with capital, because, in the first place, capital breeds the evils of capitalism, and the greater the funds accumulated by the Trade Unions the greater their tendency to develop capitalistic instincts. Secondly, and perhaps this is the consideration that weighs most heavily with the syndicalists, the accumulation of large funds has always been proved by experience to cause greater hesitation in face of the ever-recurring risks demanded by a revolutionary policy. Further, it is evident that it would never be possible for the working classes to collect sufficient funds to equalise their chance in a fight against capital with its own 172 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY weapons. At the Congress of 1894 the Dijon Bourse demonstrated in cold figures how impossible the general strike would 'be if dependent on financial exigencies. Beckoning 6,000,000 working men and four individuals to a family, it would be necessary in a general strike, according to the Dijon statement, to maintain 24,000,000 souls, which at the rate of 1 franc a day each for 30 days the maximum probable duration of a general strike would mean an expenditure of 720,000,000 francs or 2 8,8 00,000^ And so, though the steady increase in members' contributions is regarded as a healthy sign, Pelloutier expressed a fundamental truth for Frenchmen when he said at the 1895 Congress of Bourses, "No doubt our Bourses are short of money ; but who knows whether, if we were rich, our ardour for social renovation would not be quenched, and whether, on the contrary, the excess of our miseries is not our best stimulant in the war that we have declared on those who exploit us." Again, one's common sense pulls one up, and one feels that there is no practical outcome to such wild, impossible dreams until one remembers that the armies of the Revolution won victories without money, that every Frenchman knows of their superb penury and treasures it as part of his inalienable claim to national glory. 1 With this calculation it is interesting to compare the figures published in The Times, from which it would appear that in the British Miners' Strike of March 1912, the funds at the disposal of the Miners' Unions at the outset amounted to 1,994,150, with a membership of 630,250 = 3, 3s. 3d. per head. They spent 1,205,900 = 1, 18s. 3d. per head, or Is. Id. per head (i.e. per family) for 35 days. TACTICS AND IDEALS 173 Did not Napoleon, when First Consul, send for the retiring War Minister and inquire into the question of the payment of the army ? " You pay the army. You can at least give us the statements of the soldiers' pay." " We don't pay it." " You feed the army ; give us the commissariat statement." "We don't feed it." "You clothe the army ; give us the statements of the clothing department." " We don't clothe it." l Why should not the proletarian army with the same revolutionary ideal as the soldiers of a hundred years ago also be willing to fight its battles without money and contrive to do so too. 2 But this ideal can only be kept alive by continual sacrifices. It was because it demanded constantly the greatest of all sacrifices from the soldiers of the Kevolu- tion that it burnt brightly in their hearts long after it had become flickering and dim for many of their fellow- countrymen. Hence one of the advantages over political action possessed by direct action and the strike. Just as a nation that is to survive must do its own fighting and not pay men to fight for it, so the class that means to win in the class-war cannot do so by paying deputies to do its legislation. It, too, must fight its own battles 1 L'Avenement de Bonaparte. Comte Albert Vandal. Vol. i. p. 415. Cf. Public Finance, by C. F. Bastable, p. 645. "The Napoleonic system of making war support itself was a crushing one for the nations subjected to its operation, and probably far heavier than a well-managed public debt would have been." 2 When first discussing the question with a Frenchman, I demonstrated the impossibility of a strike without money, to which he replied, "We have them all the same." " But what do you live on ? " "Less than in ordinary times, and credit." "What do you do with the children?" "We send them off into some other part of the country for friends to look after." 174 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY for liberty and make its endless sacrifices for the ideal of revolution now expressed in the conception of the general strike. And as the governed cannot fight the governing classes with their own weapon of capital, so, they have learnt from experience, they cannot look for victory in a contest of the forces of intelligence. Trained intelligence is to be found almost exclusively on the side of the governing, it is a possession which they have defended with the same vigour and obstinacy that they have displayed in the defence of every form of material property. That minimum of intellectual training which has been wrung from them by the working classes has proved itself but a poor and clumsy arm with which to strike a blow for liberty, and the more enlightened among the proletariat have thrown it aside and relied on the formidable tactics suggested by their instinct. The more short-sighted among them have, however, continued, in spite of repeated reverses, to build up with their half-trained intelligence systems which they blindly hope will overwhelm those which are opposed to them ; of such are the state- collectivists who are now disowned by the direct descendants of the revolutionaries who hesitated before no sacrifice, throughout five generations, in the cause of freedom. The strength of the syndicalist movement lies in this reliance on instinct ; wherever it has turned aside from the rough forest track to wander in the set and formal gardens of doctrine, it has sickened and drooped. The temptation is as old as the human race and will lie in TACTICS AND IDEALS 175 wait for it at every pause and breathing space. This is another reason why the more enlightened of the syndicalist leaders recognise the necessity for unremitting arduous action. For it is in action that instinct thrives, every strike that is fought strengthens it ; victory is pleasant, but even more invigorating is the sacrifice itself which is demanded ; the moment of tense emotion before the strike and its well-known hardships braces the faith and illuminates the ideal. Thus a succession of strikes is essential to the life of syndicalism. But there must be a practical objective to each strike if the fight is not to be waged by the " conscious " minorities alone, if the " staff" is to have an army behind it. And so some definite amelioration of the lot of the working-man is continually made the positive aim of these struggles ; an amelioration which leads to or is not inconsistent with the ultimate Utopia of the abolition of the paying and being paid wages and salaries. Generally some such object is chosen as that of la semaine anglaise, diminishing the hours of work and allowing leisure for the enjoyments and responsibilities of family life, or the establishment of a minimum wage, which represents, in theory, at any rate, a decrease of the profits of capitalism and an iron restriction on its expansion. Further, every strike, be it only a skirmish, helps to demoralise the employers, to destroy the modicum of security and stability without which capitalist speculation becomes a rout. At the same time each strike is a training for the great day of revolution when the general strike will come like a thief in the night. Skirmishes, 1 76 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY manoeuvres, pitched battles, whatever they may be they mean action, sacrifices, all that goes to make a cause living, irresistible. And every battle strengthens the ideal ; frequently recurring strikes, with their hardships and their sufferings, train the proletariat, uniting them indissolubly through the force of common action, prepare the new recruits to accept the idea of the general strike, while at the same time slowly bringing together and consolidating the organisation which will ultimately realise the ideal instinctively. And it is evident that the extent of each strike, the wider the area of in- terests which it defends and attacks, in short, the more closely it approximates to the general strike, the plainer appears the realisation of the supreme aspiration. The strike in one trade must, if possible, be made general throughout that trade ; the national federation of Trade Unions achieves that object with increasing frequency. Other trades must seize the occasion for simultaneous sympathetic strikes ; the railway men must come out at the same time as the transport men, and then it is only necessary for the miners to move under a common im- pulse, and there is the general strike in practice if not in perfect theoretical symmetry. The nation will be paralysed and that is all that is practically necessary. And so, constantly trained in action, when their minds are ready for the general strike, the general strike will come and the association will have been formed which is to replace existing society. It is evolution accom- panied as all natural creative evolution by violence, if it is only the pulling of M. Bergson's " trigger." VIOLENCE 177 It is difficult to persuade people to discuss any phase of violence calmly. The very conception of violence seems to disturb the equilibrium of the ordinary in- telligence, breaks, as it were, through the intellectual growth which shields human consciousness from the wear and tear of modern civilisation and leaves the animal fighting instinct bare. And yet it is necessary to take an impersonal and detached view of the ex- pressions of violence which are daily forced upon our attention in the present age if the social movement is to be understood. Man, in his modern intellectual sheath, so shrinks indeed from violence that he condemns un- heard any school of thought and any theory which in its practical conclusions leads to violent ends. As the Eoman civilisation, in its final development, revolted against the violence of extremists among the early Christians, so the European civilisation of to-day is repelled by the violence of the revolutionary democrat, the anarchist, or the suffragist. But a later generation may distinguish between the ideal of each of these modern movements and their extreme tactics, the means which those who are most devoted adopt for its realisation ; just as we to-day distinguish between Christianity and the iconoclastic tendencies of many of its primitive advocates. Nay, more, future generations may regard the civilisation of to-day with as warped and biased a judgment as succeed- ing generations have brought to bear on the paganism of Rome. It is well, therefore, to try and project the mind into the future and to look back, as it were, on the turmoil in which we live if the forces which create the 12 1 78 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY onward impulse are to be distinguished from the minor currents which ruffle its surface. From such a point of view it will be seen that the perversion of democracy which rules modern Europe gives to a majority and a fictitious majority at that the power to ignore and suppress its opponents. The system of legislation by means of paid representatives has placed in control of the State a body, both legis- lative and executive, which is out of harmony with the impulse of human progress. As a result of the first phenomenon, violence is employed to maintain the existing order ; as a result of the second, violence is necessary to produce any movement, or kind of reflex activity, of the legislative machinery. If the laws of the fictitious majority are transgressed the offender is subdued by violence, represented materially by the police, or, if the pressure of revolt passes certain limits, by the army, which is the embodiment of the most extreme form of violence, an instrument designed, and nominally maintained, to defend the nation against armed aggression. If, on the other hand, an alteration of the laws become necessary, often nothing but the loudest expressions of violence can be heard above the din of party warfare. Thus is established a vicious circle of violence. This, indeed, will not seem astonishing to future generations, for from the moment that the very essence of democracy, liberty, was made relative and not absolute, conditions favourable to violence were created, since violence is the explosion of the will freeing itself from the pressure which is exercised upon it. "MIGHT IS RIGHT r 179 Violence may express itself in a variety of ways. During the Commune, for instance, it took the extreme form of an attack on life itself ; it transgressed the divine commandment which marks the human limit of its legitimate activity. Now the ethical justification of violence has, in accordance with the letter of this commandment, always been sought in its confinement within clearly understood limits ; that is to say, the morality of violence is dependent on its degree. This is recognised, in the negative sense, by human laws which punish murder, for instance, more severely than assault. But public opinion, the ultimate human tribunal, has justified the most extreme form of violence when, as in the suppression of the Commune, it is exercised by a majority. The morality of public violence, that is to say of collective violence, is therefore not to be determined by the standard applied to individual conduct ; it is no longer a question of its degree, but of its success to achieve its object ; it is Rousseau's droit du plus fort which he proved to be illogical and, in its conclusions, " inexplicable nonsense." But it is a right which has become firmly established in the customs of perverted democracy, as was bound to happen where there was not absolute liberty. The fact has to be faced, says the syndicalist, and we must therefore make ourselves the strongest, if war is declared between the governing classes and the governed, a war of liberty ; but let us remember the lessons of the Commune, where the governed had resort to the extreme form of violence, measured their strength with the governing in a national 1 80 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY cause and were beaten. In the class war other forms of violence must be employed ; those in which the working-men excel must be discovered. Chief of these is the strike. Thus has the strike come to be regarded as the expression of violence natural to the working classes in the war which is ever going on, and must be fought to a finish, between capital and labour, and it corresponds in all its gradations to the different forms of actual warfare : a reconnaissance in force, a skirmish, or a pitched battle. 1 Before tracing the genesis and history of the idea of the general strike, other cognate but subordinate forms of violence adopted by the syndicalists should be noticed in passing. First there is the boycott, of Irish inven- tion, which has been used effectively in its native mode in labour disputes in England also. Refinements of this weapon have been discovered by the French. When, for example, a railway company dismissed two hundred porters whose duty it was to shut the doors of carriages, an order went forth that no " socialist " was to shut a carriage door when getting out of a train ; the two hundred porters were hastily reinstated. Then there is the " Ca-canny " of Scottish descent, included in the all- embracing sabotage. The ethics of "Ca-canny" have been explained as follows : 2 If you want to buy a hat that's worth 5 francs, you've got to pay 5 francs. But if you only want to 1 M. Georges Sorel's Reflexions sur la violence, an original and interest- ing work, is known to all students of syndicalism. 3 Leon de Seilkac, op. cit. p. 293. SABOTAGE 181 pay 4 francs, you will get one of inferior quality. If you want to buy 6 shirts at 2 francs each, you've got to pay 12 francs. If you only pay 10 francs, you will only get 5 shirts. If you want to buy a piece of beef which is worth 3 francs, you've got to pay 3 francs. If you only pay 2 francs you will get bad meat. " Now," says the workmen to the employer, " you urged labour as a commodity to be bought like bats, shirts, or meat. Very well, if you pay too little you will get inferior work or less quantity of work. 1 You haven't any right to depend on our charity." There is a trinitarian completeness in the theory which adds to the difficulty of circumventing it in practice. Both this and the wider application of sabotage are designed to baffle the law, and are carried to an extreme form, as in the interference with the working of machinery without causing any actual damage, by methods known to expert workmen. The idea of a general strike is not new, 2 one of the most successful instances of its realisation having taken place two thousand four hundred years ago, when the Plebs seceded to the sacred Mount near Eome. When a syndicalist was reminded recently of this fact, by one who wished to deprive the modern proletariat of all claims to originality, he retorted : " Yes, but don't fail to 1 The system has been found an effective substitute for a strike, e.g., on the Italian Railways when the passenger has had to hear the ticket clerk read through all the laws and regulations affecting the issue of tickets before giving him his ticket, and has then been fortunate if it has taken less than an hour to transfer his luggage from the cab to the train. 2 The idea is discussed frequently in modern literature. See, for instance, Lord Beaconsfield's Sybil, chap. viii. 1 82 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY observe that the Patricians likened themselves to the all-devouring helly." But nothing is to be gained by an academic discussion as to whether history is merely repeating itself, and whether the lesson of nature may have to be taught again. The conception of the general strike to-day follows naturally from that of federation among the working classes. The growth of the federal idea was a natural process in the development of association ; many causes contributed to its realisation by the working classes. There were those of a positive kind, the man in search of employment, for instance, wandering from the territory of one lodge of a compagnonnage, branch of a trade union or Bourse, into that of another ; there were also considerations of defence, the importation of " black- leg " labour from one district to another, and the union between employers enabling those who were fighting a strike in their own districts to get their orders carried out by other employers in a distant part of the country. But, as the consciousness of their strength emboldened the minds of the workmen, the offensive possibilities of union and federation became clear. The first marked development of the offensive sense showed itself in the sympathetic strike, men in an allied or entirely different trade taking action simultaneously, to the embarrassment of the whole class of employers. The transition from this achievement to the conception of the general strike was a short and normal one. The most famous exponent of the idea in France was M. Aristide Briand, who later, as Prime Minister, used DIRECT OR POLITICAL ACTION? 183 the intimate knowledge of the syndicalists, which he had learnt in their bosom, to suppress the nearest approach to a general strike which has yet been witnessed in that country. As has been stated, the principle was advocated by Pelloutier and adopted at the Marseilles Congress in 1892. The actual resolution, though it contains opinions which Pelloutier afterwards modified, is in the main an accurate expression of the views held to-day. It ran as follows : " CONSIDEKING " That the formidable social organisation at the disposal of the governing classes renders vain and powerless the friendly attempts at emancipation made by the social democracy during the last half century ; " That there exists between capital and the salariat an opposition of interests which actual legislation, pretending to be liberal, has not been able or has not wished to destroy ; " That after having made numerous useless appeals to those in power to obtain the right to existence, the socialist party has arrived at the certainty that a revolution alone can give it economic liberty and well-being in conformity with the most elementary principles of natural right ; " That the people have never derived any advan- tages from revolutions accomplished through bloodshed, which have benefited agitators and the middle classes alone; 1 84 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY " That, moreover, in face of the military force placed at the disposal of capital, an armed insurrection would only provide the governing classes with a new opportunity of drowning social demands in the blood of the working classes ; " That, among the pacific and legal means un- consciously granted to the labour party for the triumph of its legitimate aspirations, there is one that will hasten the economic trans- formation and assure, without danger of reaction, the success of the fourth estate ; " That this means is the universal and simultaneous suspension of the productive force, that is to say the general strike, which, even if limited to a comparatively restricted period, would without fail lead to the triumph of the demands formulated in the programme of the labour party ; . . ." It was at the Nantes Congress two years later that M. Briand made his notorious speech : " It is said to be Utopian and an idea with which to gull fools. It is a flag which shall lead to victory. It is maintained that it is not practicable when confined to a single country. But if the Belgian workmen had been better prepared it would certainly have been realised in Belgium. The idea of the general strike has modified the tendency of partial strikes, which have become less frequent, are more often successful and have now become often sympathetic strikes. The principle of the general strike DIRECT OR POLITICAL ACTION? 185 has destroyed egoism among the working-men. The strike is no longer regarded as a fight with an employer, but as a social weapon against the whole of capitalist society. The voting paper should be used, it may be replied. The day when those who govern find universal suffrage giving them trouble, they will suppress it, and will even shoot the working-men if need be. And, besides, the general strike does not prevent the use of universal suffrage. It is a weapon the more, that's all. ..." He then proceeded to argue that the Paris Exhibition in 1900 would offer a favourable opportunity for putting the idea into practice. The political collectivists were strong in their opposition to the resolution in favour of the principle of the general strike, the supreme expression of direct as distinct from political action. The resolution was, however, carried by a large majority, and the followers of M. Guesde formally withdrew from the Congress. " Direct action " was finally adopted as one of the watch- words of the syndicalists. It has been defined by one of their most energetic leaders as " the action of the working- men themselves, that is to say, action directly exercised by the interested party. It is the working-man who accomplishes the effect himself ; he exercises it personally on the powers who dominate him, to obtain from them the benefits demanded." It may or may not be ac- companied by violence ; its distinguishing political feature, the way in which it marks a new departure, is in its extension of the International doctrine so as to attempt to reconcile it with the teaching of Rousseau 1 86 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY with regard to deputies and representatives. 1 " The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves," is now interpreted in a literal sense which is certainly subversive of many of the doctrines with which the enunciation of that principle was associated. Marx and his followers believed that the shortest way to the emancipation of the working classes was for the working classes to capture the State and the existing legislative and executive mach- inery ; they threw themselves with zeal into the parliamentary struggle, and met with a success in it in direct proportion to their enthusiasm for the Marxian faith. In Germany, for instance, where the least adulterated form of Marxism flourishes, the Social Democrats have, we have seen, achieved remarkable electoral results. But the practical benefits wrung by labour members from a reluctant ministerial majority, roughly handled by them at the polling booths, have appeared with some justification insignificant to the working-men. In some cases, as for instance on the occasion of the general strike in Sweden in 1909, the parliamentary socialists have been held directly responsible for the victory of the State over the proletariat. Not only do the syndicalists believe that the seduction of the party atmosphere exercises a Circean spell over the labour representative in Parliament, but his taking part in the activities of the State at all is, to their minds, touching " the unclean thing," and moreover implies a recognition of the existing capitalist State which they are 1 See p. 133. DIRECT OR POLITICAL ACTION? 187 seeking to abolish. Further, the acceptance of any re- presentative system, and here they go back again to the teaching of the Contrat Social, demands a collective re- nunciation of the right to independent action, and the substitution of the authority of a few leaders and deputies for the general will. Direct action is, in short, incompatible with parliamentary representation, and the majority of its advocates are opposed to the establishment of any form of State collectivism as the ultimate organisation of society. Their sentiments are faithfully expressed in one of their most popular war songs : "Serfs mornes de la glebe, Serfs tristes des cites, Nous qui formons la plebe, La plebe, Debout, Les Revoltes ! Foin des lenteurs egales, La force est dans nos bras, Les actes sont des males, Des males, Les mots sont des castrats Arines de calme audace, Prets pour 1'assaut final, De la levee en masse, En masse, Donnons 1'ardent signal. Enfants, cueillez des roses Pour en orner nos fronts, Car on verra ces choses, Ces choses, Le jour oil nous voudrons." The strike, fought out between employers and em- 1 88 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY ployed without any kind of outside intervention, is the pitched battle of direct action. The general strike of any one trade throughout the nation is the inevitable corollary of the national federation of the trade unions representing that trade, and has been realised on several occasions ; the general strike of those employed in all trades and occupations throughout the nation that is to say, tJie general strike in the same way follows from the national confederation of the unions of all trades and occupations. At the Congress of 1894 the state-collectivists made their historical reply to the principle of direct action and the general strike, which has continually been reiterated since and is claimed by them to have been justified by subsequent events. Their main contentions were that the idea was impracticable, that it would frighten work- ing-men from joining the Trade Unions, that it would destroy all chance of winning over the peaceful and conservative peasantry, and that it was a crime to " split " the proletariat at a moment when they were on the eve of capturing the parliamentary system. At the Congress of 1896 the question of practicability was discussed in detail. On the one side it was argued that the relatively small number of members of the unions who paid any contributions proved that the working classes were want- ing in self-sacrifice and courage. On the other, it was contended that when the general strike broke out, the employers would be left defenceless at the mercy of the working-men, the 300,000 soldiers of the active army being scattered over the country more than occupied in DIRECT OR POLITICAL ACTION? 189 the protection of the railway lines and factories. 1 At the Congress of 1900 it was argued that the general strike was a mere cessation of work, the men merely folded their arms, and would therefore be legal. But on the other hand the employers might steal a march on the men by declaring a general lock-out, and in that case other methods might have to be adopted. The richer federations, such as that of the Allied Printing Trades (Le Livre), have, with the exception of that of the building trade, shown themselves opposed to violent action, and have formed a section within the Confederation against the idea of the general strike. The representative of the Livre stated at the Congress of 1901 that in his federation they had taken a referendum on the question, with the result that 1780 voted against the general strike and 589 in favour of it. It remains, nevertheless, the distinctive ideal of the syndicalists, and the great majority of them have faith in its ultimate achievement. 1 M. de Seilhac states in his work, already quoted, that the Government has its plans, calculated to a nicety, for meeting with success any such contingency. As to the Government's action in the railway strike of 1910, see p. 196 infra. CHAPTER X ANTI MILITARISM AND ANTI-PATRIOTISM THE Commune with it8 week of bloodshed when, as the working classes believe to-day, the governed fell into a trap set for them by Bismarck and the governing classes of France, opened a new phase of the war between the proletariat and the governing classes ; from that time onwards there has been an element of permanence in the struggle, hopes of ultimate concord have been over- shadowed by thoughts of vengeance, and the two classes have been divided by what has seemed an insuperable partition the mur des F6dr6s in the Paris cemetery. In the resolution in which the Marseilles Congress adopted the principle of the general strike there occur two paragraphs referring to this aspect of the class wai which have been discussed with unfailing regularity at succeeding congresses. They may be repeated here : "That the people have never derived any advan tage from revolutions accomplished through bloodshed, which have benefited agitators and the middle classes alone ; " That, moreover, in face of the military force placed at the disposal of capital, an armed insurrection would only provide the governing classes with a new opportunity of 190 WAR AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 191 drowning social demands in the blood of the working class." To appreciate the anti-patriotic and anti-militarist propaganda, spreading from France through Europe, it is essential therefore to keep the events of the Commune constantly before the mind. The most logical of the militant working-men are certainly anti-militarist in France. In England, where the working classes know little directly of military service, the question is approached from a narrower point of view. Anti-militarism springs from three different causes : first, the objection to war in itself, which, in a naturally fighting race, affects only a small intellectual minority who are negligible in the present consideration ; secondly, the belief that war is inimical to social progress; and thirdly, the use of the military forces of the nation either to replace workmen during a strike or to suppress any symptoms of collective physical violence. In support of the belief that war is inimical to social progress, the working classes in France point to the results of the war of 1870. Survivors of the Inter- national, who remember as if it were a thing of yesterday that war and the Commune which followed, relate how in the closing years of the Second Empire the working-men were on the eve of obtaining their emancipation ; some among them go so far as to say that in 1868 and 1869 they were nearer their goal, their organisation, it is said, had enrolled a larger number of adherents than the Confederation Generale du Travail or any other existing body has subsequently 192 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY attracted to its ranks; its aims were as militant, its tactics as vigorous, and its conception of the future state of society as Utopian as those which characterise the present movement. A few more years only seemed to be required to complete the work for which they had laboured ; seeing the Empire declining, they prayed that its final overthrow might be averted until they were ready to replace the State by some such political system as the syndicalist ideals point to to-day. Then came war, and the edifice which they had erected was hurled to the ground, their leaders shot or banished. Thus the conviction has become deep-seated that the governing classes, all powerful, watch the social tide rising, allow it to reach a certain point, and then let loose war, and all the passions that war begets and thrives on, to check its advance. That the condition of unrest and disturbance produced by internal social struggles may themselves create the atmosphere in which the war-clouds burst, that national divisions may so reduce the strength of a people that their rivals seize the opportunity to win by force of arms what they have failed to gain in peace, are not admitted by the proletarian leaders to be the prime causes of war. If that were so, they reply, why did Bismarck assist the French middle classes to crush the Commune ; national rivalry alone would have led him to encourage internal dissensions among the French, not to help to suppress them by the extermination of the most active and enlightened of the working classes ? And so they fear, and their fear is shared by many who argue from NATIONAL DEFENCE 193 different premisses, that to-day once more we are on the eve of war, and with the energy of panic the syndicalist leaders fling themselves on to the side of the pacificists. In short, they would argue that the maintenance of external peace is as essential to the successful outcome of the attack of labour on capital within a nation, as it was in the old days to the victory of the barons or the middle classes when engaged in civil war against the crown. How much more are they opposed to wars which seem to them to be merely wars of conquest carried on in the interest of capitalist undertakings, waged to establish capitalist domination in lands not yet opened up to European civilisation, and in which the working classes, who provide by far the largest number of the soldiers, will be called upon to sacrifice all they possess to obtain more favourable outlets for the hated system which oppresses them in their own country. It is when they offer resistance to wars of this kind that they arouse the maximum of unanimity among their followers. But to argue that in consequence the working classes will not fight to defend their country when attacked is to ignore the facts of history. Their attitude in France in face of a conquering foreign army has been discussed in a previous chapter, and the past abounds in records of heroic patriotism on their part in all countries. It is useless on such occasions for the more logical of their leaders to preach that " the working classes have no country," meaning that they possess no property or material share in their country ; the greatest refutation '3 194 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY of this and other economic dogmas, when applied by theorists to human affairs, is supplied by those them- selves on whose grievances they are based ; for they have proved by their deeds, and would again prove, that patriotism, the supreme virtue of the human order, will survive even the most successful attempts to suppress that order, and that attachment to the nation and land of his birth is as natural to the individual as devotion to the mother that bore him, and will compel him in the one case as in the other to instinctive sacrifices which the reason fails to explain and the intellect is incapable of measuring. Anti-patriotism is not the source of anti- militarism among the working classes. The belief that the governing classes had shown them- selves incompetent to conduct the war of 1870 was one of the minor causes of anti-militarism in France in the first years of national reconstruction, when the public sentiment towards those in control of the army was much what it is in England to-day when even a theatre manager will warn a dramatist that no audience will accept as serious any opinion associated with the name of the War Office. But in France the public at large have no longer any doubt of the ability of those in command of the military forces ; and yet the demand exists there as elsewhere for the democratic organisation of armies and the creation of " citizen armies." This points to the fundamental cause of anti-militarism. Whenever labour enters upon a struggle with capital, the army is in the last resort used for the defence of the existing social system. In the days of tortuous streets THE ARMY AND STRIKES 195 the Paris working classes were able with some faint hope of success to meet armed force by arms ; but as the government has methodically cut broad straight avenue after avenue through the heart of the town, the barricades have been laid bare to the attacks of modern artillery, and only those among the working classes who are yearning for martyrdom or the glory of leading a forlorn hope a glory ever before their eyes as they witness the annual celebrations in honour of the heroes of successive revolutions contemplate even in their most ardent dreams that form of violence as a serious means of resistance. They know from bitter experience that the guns, the rifles and the bayonets are always, as it were, waiting round the corner to be used in the service of the employers should the enthusiasm and irritation of a strike, the fever engendered by its hardships and its sufferings, lead to a momentary violent outburst, trans- gressing the strict limits within which this form of industrial struggle has been legalised. Then the soldiers, many of whom in a land of conscription are their own fellow-workers may even be, if troops from a distant part of the country are not available, their own sons and brothers are compelled, under the severest of military penalties, to fire upon them. But even outside the domain of physical violence, on occasions when a strike is conducted in accordance with law and in all countries, particularly in France, custom and repeated departures from strict legality are continually broadening the literal limitations of the law in this connec- tion the army, exceeding its functions as an instrument 196 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY for national defence or even for the suppression of in- ternal disorder, is adapted to the peaceful and legalised warfare which is waged between employers and employed. The soldiers are used to replace the workmen and to carry on those industries or services through the cessation of which, owing to a strike, the majority of the public are seriously inconvenienced ; and thus, at the moment when the working classes are beginning to exercise pressure most effectively on the forces of capitalism, and when public opinion either from impatience with the practical difficulties arising in daily life, or from the awakening of the collective conscience when its attention is forcibly concentrated on the grievances of the em- ployed is veering to their side, the tension is relieved and all the advantages which they have painfully gained are lost. Nay more, by a supreme irony they themselves provided in large measure the very force which is used to undermine their efforts and to rob them of victory. M. Briand, with the profound and intimate knowledge of the working classes which he had acquired in his earlier capacity as their " comrade," counsellor and rhetorician, has been able to transform the French army into an even more refined instrument for breaking strikes, and has given an incalculable impetus to anti- militarism in his own country. The failure of the great French railway strike of 1910 is attributed by the syndicalists, in the first place, to the substitution by the trade unions of political action for direct action. Direct action, it is argued, would have led the working men to deal directly with the great LESSONS OF THE RAILWAY STRIKE 197 financial houses or, to express their conviction more precisely, the one financial house and family which con- trolled the railways affected. The question of wages which, with the related reforms involved, was the point at issue, was one which directly concerned the capitalist employers and the employed alone. Had the working- men brought this home to the public, had they directed their attention to it by demonstrations in front of the houses of the capitalists concerned, or by other peaceful means, public opinion, they believe, would inevitably have recognised the justice of their claims. Instead of this the leaders of the men were, it is stated, led by the politicians and socialist members of parliament to rely on political action for a successful termination of the strike. The process by which the politician imposes himself has been described in this way. Ignorant for the most part of the political and economic organisations of their opponents, 1 the trade unionist leaders find them- selves suddenly faced in the midst of the strike by unforeseen difficulties, and the extremity to which they are reduced is the politician's opportunity for coming forward and offering his assistance and the support of the newspaper he commands. Before long he dominates the situation. At the best he is honest, and possibly though this is extremely rare his newspaper is not under the control of anonymous capitalist interests. Under these circumstances the worst that he does is to attempt to solve the question by political means that is to say, he makes use of the situation brought about by the 1 La Vie Ouvriere, 5 Noverabre 1910. 198 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY efforts of the working classes in the interest of his own or some allied party, and ends by thinking more of the advantages it offers for turning out the government than of the opportunities that are presented for attaining the aims of those whose confidence he has won. Thus the working man and his grievances become a pawn in the party game. In this instance the parliamentary socialists were allowed to take the matter in hand, and, dissuading the trade union leaders from direct action, they brought them into negociation with the Prime Minister, M. Briand: As a result the railwaymen who had struck found themselves ingeniously transformed from working men at variance with their employers, the directors of a private company, into employees in a service of public utility in revolt against public convenience, the State. " It is not a strike," exclaimed M. Briand, " it is a political insurrection." Soldiers occupied the stations and guarded the lines ; the leaders of the strikers were arrested ; orders were sent to the local prefects to imprison anyone carrying instructions from the strike committees, a state of affairs resembling in many ways the days of the Bastille and the notorious lettres de cachet. And then, the resistance not yet being broken, came the mobilisation order. Not only were their fellow-workmen serving in the army brought in military force against them, but the railway- men themselves received orders, constitutional only in time of war, transforming them into soldiers, in that capacity to perform their duties and to be placed at the "MIGHT IS RIGHT" 199 disposal of the railway companies. The military organisation of the country, commanding the support of the railwaymen in the cause of patriotism and national defence, was thus proved to them to be the most effective weapon, in the last resort the only weapon, with which their claims for the amelioration of their lot could be resisted. The syndicalists drew two deductions from the methods adopted by M. Briand's government. First, that, by acting unconstitutionally, the government had openly admitted that might was right. Here was the strongest possible argument in favour of their defence of the use of violence. " The strongest is never sufficiently strong to remain always master, unless he transforms his strength into right and obedience into duty." * On that principle the government had acted, leaving to their successors the inevitable consequences which Eousseau had foretold in a few terse logical sentences : " So soon as might is right, the effect changes with the cause: all might which overcomes existing might succeeds to its right. So soon as one can disobey with impunity, one can do so lawfully : and since the strongest is always right, the only matter of importance is that one should manage to be the strongest." The governing classes proclaim that might is right, said the syndicalists ; let us then become the strongest, remembering always that the legality of strikes was not acknowledged until, in the days of the Second Empire, the government had found itself powerless to suppress them. The government has 1 Contrat Social, Book i. chap. iii. 200 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY set the example of breaking the law. So be it ! We note the example and will follow it, and the more difficult and dangerous that overt means of carrying on the struggle are made, the more violent and widespread will become other means. Their second conclusion was that every possible secret means of undermining the military organisation must be energetically pursued. But before considering these means, one significant lesson taught by these few days' history must not be overlooked. The railwaymen in considerable numbers had refused to obey the mobilisa- tion order, and had done so with impunity, a fact which for obvious reasons was not made public by either party to the struggle at the time, but which is not forgotten by the working-man and causes much private anxiety to the more thoughtful among the governing classes. Has M. Briand created a precedent for similar indiscipline in the case of a war being declared which the working classes regard as a war on behalf of capitalist interests ? Has he supplied additional arguments to be used in support of the decisions of the syndicalist congresses when they proclaim that any declaration of war should be the signal for the commencement of the general strike ? l One thing is certain : that in the future, as long as there is any reason why the remem- brance of M. Briand's action should remain vivid in the minds of the working classes, no government will be able to embark on even a war of national defence with the firm assurance that it can rely on the active support 1 See Appendix III. ANTI-MILITARIST PROPAGANDA 201 of all the classes of the governed from whom the military forces of the nation are drawn. An anti-militarist propaganda among the soldiers has been carried on energetically through the Bourses du Travail. Many of the soldiers, before entering upon the period of compulsory military service, have been associ- ated with a trade union, and the federal organisations of the Bourses and of the trade unions make it easy for the revolutionary leaders to keep in touch with these men wherever they may be quartered. The Ministry of War has done its utmost to deter them from visiting the Bourses, 1 but the syndicalists exercise all their ingenuity to reach them by meetings, pamphlets, and personal conversations. At one of the Confederal Congresses a member related how during a strike he had obtained access to the dragoon barracks of the district and had had a talk with the men ; on another occasion he had given a lecture at which forty soldiers and a captain were present. Stories are told of acts of indiscipline, of the refusal of soldiers to obey their officers when ordered to arrest civilian trade unionists who had publicly advised them when on duty not to obey commands, and of similar incidents. That the propaganda has not been without effect is proved by the necessity for the recent law which deports, to serve in the African battalions, among others soldiers who have been found guilty of 1 One Minister of War (General Andre) issued a confidential circular to commanding officers instructing them to forbid soldiers to frequent the Bourses ; this circular was published in a syndicalist weekly paper and gave rise to a debate in Parliament. 202 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY anti-militarist propaganda, insults to the army, and similar misdemeanours. But the most significant and characteristic method of reaching " comrades " with their regiments is through the sou du soldat, a fund established by many of the trade unions from which, every quarter, five francs (cent sous) are sent to the various soldiers on its list, the great majority of whom are without any pocket-money for amusements, accompanied by a letter recalling the ties of comradeship and invariably concluding with the reminder, " Do not fire on us." The anti-militarist resolutions which are passed at succeeding congresses of the Confederation are couched in terms which are anti-patriotic as well as anti-militarist. In the most recent l is found the statement that geographical frontiers may be modified at the pleasure of " those in possession," and that therefore working-men only recognise the economic frontiers separating the two hostile classes, the working class and the capitalist class. " The Congress recalls the formula of the International : ' Working men have no country.' " Here is to be found the influence of the teaching of Marx and the International as to the significance of the Commune. Though this formula cannot be taken as representing the real feeling of the working classes at the present day, any more than it did in 1871, it would be idle to deny that the mere reiteration of a formula is not without its effect, if only in creating a habit of thought which will produce automatic action in a crisis. That Marx and his fellow- 1 See Appendix III. PATRIOTISM AND EXPATRIATION 203 exiles in London, expatriated by the governing classes of their own countries, should have conceived a theory which was the negation of patriotism was natural, and it must not be forgotten that Marx himself and some of his colleagues belonged to the cosmopolitan Jewish race. Expatriation has always been one of the greatest blunders of the governing classes ; the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the banishments following the Cornmune, to take only two examples, deprived France of thousands of skilled workmen, to the incalculable material benefit of rival nations ; x the casting out of independent thinkers, to find in foreign lands the home that is denied them in that of their birth, has strengthened that intellectual internationalism which seeks to destroy the patriotic instinct on which a nation depends for its existence and the human order of association for its ultimate consummation. Those, however, who believe that economic internationalism will ever replace patriotism should note how these exiles of the International almost invariably returned to suffer and struggle in their own countries as soon as the ban against them was raised. 1 It is asserted that ths United States owed much of her industrial prosperity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the exiled communists who found a home in America. CHAPTER XI " BLACKLEGS " THE natural order, the division of mankind within nations into two classes, the governing and the governed, employers and employed, is the existing order. That is a fact which is often ignored, and questions arising in the actual social movement are discussed as if the human order might be assumed ; that is why there is so much confusion, apparent contradiction, lack of definite principles and rapid, even panic-stricken, change of front among parliamentary legislators who are, generally unconsciously, endeavouring to reconcile incompatible conditions. These two classes are at war with one another, and will continue to be so until the one has been conquered or the other has surrendered its privileges ; treaties are made, to be broken as soon as either side feels itself strong enough to reopen active hostilities; truces are patched up when both are temporarily exhausted; the normal state is war. Yet national governments, when- ever they intervene, act as if peace were the normal state and occasional contests the exception. The parliaments in discussing critical situations, strikes and lockouts and any other incident in the struggle between labour and A STATE OF WAR 205 capital, apply considerations and legal arguments which have force only so long as the parties concerned are interested in the maintenance, or can be coerced into observing the necessity, of law and order as established by the State and its traditions. But one, if not both, of the parties suspects the State of being inimical to its interests and prejudiced in favour of the claims of the other. The working classes, indeed, consider the very traditions on which the State depends as but a chain of compromises with their own liberty. Having learnt to regard themselves in their collective capacity, they trace their descent directly from the class of slaves which existed in the early stages of all civilisa- tion, and which, by a succession of revolts against the State, loosened the fetters which confined them only to find in these last days that the bonds forged by capitalism were the most onerous of all. Democracy, they were told, was to give them an equal share in the State, to create one national and indivisible association in which the general will, the expression of individual liberty and equality merged in the collectivity, was to be supreme. But even in those countries where universal suffrage has been wrung from the governing classes the warnings of Eousseau have been ignored, and little but the form of government has been changed. The pro- letariat is still struggling for emancipation, and is at war with the State itself. The representative assemblies in the pseudo-democratic states consequently waste much time and energy attracting, it is true, less and less attention outside the 206 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY buildings in which they are housed on the superficial discussion of principles resting on mutually exclusive premisses. The politicians pursue their course, at one moment inactive through moral timidity, at the next urged on by the more diplomatic among the leaders of either employers or employed, who, as may be seen from their writings and speeches, rarely, with the exception of the syndicalist and undiplomatic advocates of direct action, venture on an assertion of fundamental truth which would lay bare the reactionary intentions on the one hand and the revolutionary tendencies on the other. The democratic faith of the governed remains, however, unimpaired, and it is only by reference to the true democratic theory that the incompatibility can be realised between the two much discussed principles, the freedom of combination and the freedom of labour, or, as they are sometimes called, the right to combine and the right to work. The right to combine, in the narrow sense given to it in the class war, is the right of a class to form itself into a democratic association within the nation, and thus, in the words of Eousseau, to become a " power " in relation to other classes. This right, in France at any rate, has been surrendered by the nation in full consciousness that it violated the human order, as is proved by the recorded reasons for its refusal in the early days of the Revolution when the inspiration of the Contrat Social was fresh in the minds of men. 1 But once the right had been established there resulted in 1 See p. 87. "THE RIGHT TO WORK" 207 theory, and indeed speedily arose in practice, two kinds of association within the nation, that of the employers and that of the employed, in opposition to one another, each with its general will, each with its democratic organisation conditioning the individual liberty of its members. For either of these independent " powers " to attempt to interfere with the individual liberty of the members of the other would be a cause of war between the two collectivities. To argue that there is any other authority with power over the members of either of these associations in the exercise of their individual liberty is to ignore the right of these associations to collective existence, a right which lias already been granted them by the State ; such authority could only be established if the State were to reclaim, as the national association, that part of its sovereignty which it has surrendered. 1 But such an act on the part of the State would imply the suppression of the existing associations and any further consideration of the two principles would therefore be unnecessary. The right to work, then, that is to say the liberty of the individual member of the one or the other of these associations to dispose freely of his own labour, can only be granted to him on terms decided by the general will of the association to which he belongs. This is the democratic principle on which Trade Unions take their stand. In the same way unions of employers, where they exist, exercise a similar authority over their individual i In France by the Law of 1884, aud in England by the Act of 1875 and the Osborne Judgment. 208 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY members as regards the terms on which they may buy and engage labour. In practice, however, the association of employed presents immediately points of weakness when tested by the democratic theory on which it rests ; for not only have the Trade Unions failed to bring within their organisation more than a very small minority of the employed having, as we shall see, for long limited the proletariat to manual workers but the great majority of the working classes themselves remain outside the association. Can it therefore claim to represent the general will of the governed, of the employed, or even of the working classes ? That the governed, if they ever awaken to full consciousness of the independent collectivity which has been forced upon them by the capitalist classes, will be capable of absorbing or destroying the other classes which seem to have reached the stage at which the powers of collectivity decline, and of forming a complete organism in the human order, would seem to be beyond dispute. But that one section of the governed, isolated as it must be from many of the elements essential to its natural development, can act as if it were the whole, or that the whole moving along one narrow economic line can hope to pass through the necessary stages of complete evolution, is obviously absurd ; in either case the organism thus formed would have failed in the process to gather some of the forces essential to its vitality and would be short-lived. This conditional stipulation must be laid down at the outset in any A STATE WITHIN THE STATE 209 discussion of this question. Tendencies which seem to prove that the narrower movement, at present occupying public attention, is in fact the beginning, the first symptoms of an awakening of the whole governed class, will be noted subsequently ; if, indeed, these tendencies were not apparent, it would be little better than a waste of time to devote serious attention to a growth of merely passing and ephemeral interest which could be easily suppressed or left to perish from its natural inanition. To consider the question as it presents itself at the moment. On the one hand, there are the democratic, self-contained associations of employed and of employers, the instruments of the general will of their members. Of these the Trade Unions are literally states within the State, self-sufficing, their adherents believing whether rightly or wrongly does not affect the immediate argument that the economic interest, to which all their actions are referred, is the foundation of all human interests. Their members therefore recognise this form of association more and more as the only channel for the expression of their general will. Starting in all modern countries with a belief in the democratic character of parliaments, the working classes particu- larly, as has been seen, those who have become " disgusted with politics " have increasingly come to regard it as a third association within the nation, representing the general will of those, whether of their own class or another, who remain outside their own association. This has been more markedly the case in England since 1909, when the highest court in the land 14 210 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY declared that it was illegal for Trade Unions to use any of their funds for the purpose of maintaining members of parliament, or for any other political object, thus discouraging their inclination to seek redress directly from the State for their grievances and incidentally strengthening incalculably the position of those who were urging on the working classes the superiority of direct over political action. To-day, then, there are within the nation three associations independent of one another, possibly in times of external danger uniting to form one human national association, at other times disunited ; two in permanent hostility to each other, the third sometimes sought in aid by one of the combatants, its interference more often resented by both. Parliament can therefore no longer claim sole representation of the general will of the nation as its democratic raison d'etre. But even if it be only one out of three associations, it is recognised by the Trade Unions as the voice of those of the working classes, among others, who are not numbered with their adherents, and they therefore regard it as an institution to be treated with respect and, if possible, conciliated. In England and in France, where they have learnt that it is not really the controller of the executive power, the more militant have ceased to rely on attempts to capture it through the ordinary political process. In Germany, on the other hand, where it is admittedly only a sort of ante-chamber to executive power, the working classes are united in their endeavours to obtain a majority in their parliament, THE DEMOCRATIC ARGUMENT 211 in the vain hope that by establishing fully representative parliamentarism with nominal power over the executive, they may attain to true democracy. The situation is complicated by the continued survival in France and in England of a number of state-collectivists who still believe that the road to paradise lies through a socialist- packed parliament ; they appeal to the fears of the working classes with the most effective argument that parliament controls the armed forces of the State, and to their hopes by persuading them that from parliament can be obtained concessions in the form of laws, strengthening the position of Trade Unions. The view of the syndicalists as to the incompetence, inherent in the system, of parliamentarism to settle disputes between employers and employed has been dealt with in a former chapter. Here the attempt has been made to describe the vague and confused ideas, natural to a stage of transition, which characterise working-class opinion in face of a renewed effort to revert to the human and democratic order. It is, how- ever, to that section which is every day obtaining a clearer perception of the role which it must play that attention must be directed if the real forces and tendencies at work are to be understood : to the Trade Unions, aiming at the absorption of the whole of the working classes in one democratic association on a class basis, pushing the right to combine to its practical logical conclusion and gradually undermining whatever justification parliament may to-day possess, as the voice of that majority of the people which calls itself public 212 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY opinion, to defend the right to work of the individual remaining outside the association of his class. To consider first the moral and sentimental aspect of the conflict between these two principles, the right to combine and the right to work, an aspect which is often the starting-point for the formation of the judgments of the British people. The collective tendency among the working classes has not only been recognised as natural and inevitable, but, if one inquires into the state of public opinion at times when the parliaments have made the most striking concessions to that tendency, has been regarded with sympathy. Had it not been so the Conservative Government in England in 1875 would not have ventured to remove restrictions on the powers of Trade Unions which Mr. Gladstone's preceding Govern- ment had steadfastly insisted should be retained, and the corresponding though very different French law of 1884 could never have been carried. In the most heated debates on questions affecting Trade Unions there is rarely, if ever, found an opponent of the liberty of the working classes bold enough to dispute their moral right to combine. The primary object of their combination is, avowedly, to obtain better wages and conditions of labour from the employers ; the more complete and the more efficiently organised the combination the greater its chance of attaining that object. That being so, all who endeavour to limit the extent of their combination, or to retard its development by encouraging the independence of those working-men who have not yet been seized by the collective spirit, "THE RIGHT TO COMBINE" 213 are taking sides with the employers against the employed. Should the State, or any political party in the State, adopt such an attitude, it is necessarily one of hostility to the interests of the working classes in their struggle against capital. "Blacklegs," "jaunes," "renards," "sarrazins," whatever they may be called, there will always be a number of men who, from ignorance, from weakness, and occasion- ally, being human, from a disposition to treachery, will hold aloof from a fight waged by their fellows, or will even actively assist their opponents. To pretend that any support which is given them by the State is dictated by sympathy with working-class interests would be as absurd as to assert, for instance, that in the closing stages of the South African War the assistance of the Boer National Scouts was accepted in the interests of the Boers themselves. These " hands-uppers," as they were named by their own countrymen, in remembrance of the physical attitude of surrender, wearied by the struggle and its sacrifices, and wishing to bring the war to a speedy conclusion, fought in considerable numbers on the side of the British against their own people. The analogy between them and the " blacklegs " is instructive, possessing, as all military illustrations, the sharp contrasts afforded by facts in supreme situations, where words are powerless to shade off the edges or to efface the lines of sharp demarcation. Indeed, if one admits the syndicalist contention that a state of war exists between the two classes of employers and employed, the analogy becomes, for some, an identity. 214 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY Tims, to command the trade unionists on strike not to attack the " blacklegs " who are fighting against them, would be as ridiculous as to have ordered the Boers not to fire on the " hand-uppers." Further interesting parallels may be drawn by those who, in picturing the analogy to themselves, instinctively see the State as one of the contending armies, its common interest with capital being to their minds obvious. Such are all, whether governing or governed, who maintain that the State, as at present constituted, is representative of capital, is indeed inherently and essentially capitalist. In all countries, however, there are a number of individuals who, rising above even their own material and economic interests, but without attaching themselves to any definite school of thought such as the Positivists or Christian Socialists, are capable of viewing the present social unrest from a higher and a moral standpoint, relying for sanction on their instinctive sense of justice. Such people, some of whom may be found even in the national parliaments, form a solid indestructible force, an element of permanence which may ultimately compel a com- promise between the existing State and the new associa- tions which are striving to sweep it away and replace it, and which may thus assure continuity rather than drastic revolution in human affairs. To such persons, in the analogy which has been chosen, the contending forces are employers and employed, and the State stands outside the conflict, in the position, that is to say, of the other world-powers at the time of the war in question, entitled to interfere only in so far as its own THE SLAVERY ANALOGY 215 peace or its own convenience is endangered ; then, and not until then, is it justified in intervening in the struggle a justification which, be it noted at the outset, for herein lies the key to the tactics of the militant Trade Unions, is only of theoretical value unless the State has the power to render its intervention effective. Admitting the intolerable servitude imposed on the mass of the working classes by capitalism, those whose instinctive sense of justice suffices them as a guide, appreciate their efforts to emancipate themselves. They realise that in every state of slavery the influence of custom is the hardest to overcome. " Every man born in slavery is born for slavery, nothing is more certain : slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire to extricate themselves from them. . . . Might made the first slaves, their cowardice has perpetuated them." 1 They scorn the sophistry, cloaking the crudest self- deception or hypocrisy, that those who are satisfied with the terms of their servitude have a right to continue in that condition ; they realise that the more enlightened, who have formed themselves into an association sanc- tioned by the State, are struggling and making sacrifices to conquer liberty for all of their class. To discuss the liberty of those who are not free to resist and even to impede the efforts of those who are fighting to set them free, is to play with words and to produce logical chaos profitable only to paid dialecticians and professional pleaders. In every struggle for freedom that kind of liberty has been invoked in the last resort by the class 1 Conlral Social, Book i. chap. ii. 216 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY attacked, and the conquerors have pardoned or ignored this ultimate subterfuge of desperate men ; but a last resort it is, a sure sign of failing strength and of the rapidly approaching end. The more enlightened, " the conscious," as the French say, among the working classes rely on the democratic right, which their association legalised by the State implies, to detach, by every means which those rights allow, those of their own class from that majority, often mistaken for public opinion, which gives the State its power. So long as their association remains democratic in spirit democratic, let it be repeated, in the original sense of the Ke volution its position is impregnable ; but if it begin to conform to that pseudo-democratic system, modern parliamentarism and its administrative adjuncts, into which the governing classes have diverted democracy, that other section of public opinion to which reference has been made, and which determines the intervention of the State, immediately perceives taking root in the new development the same fundamental injustice as that against which they are struggling. The state-collectivists among the working-class leaders, intelligently undemocratic, who are unable to see beyond parliamentarism as the future system a parliamentarism, be it of course admitted, in which the personnel is changed have done much to undermine the unassailable entrenchment of trade unionism. 1 In imitation of the 1 " Tttey (i.e. the leaders of the New Unionists) aimed not at supersed- ing existing social structures, but at capturing them all in the interests of the wage- earners." History of Trade Unionism, p. 404. EXECUTIVE OR GENERAL WILL 217 existing organisation of the State they have attached great importance to the creation of an efficient bureau- cracy, a civil service of the Trade Union world, in reality an autocratic executive resembling the Civil Service at work behind the bluster of national parliaments. Thus has arisen, particularly in England, the public spectacle at moments of crises of a division of opinion between the general will of a Trade Union association and the will of the executive, a tendency of the men, deplorable in the eyes of autocracy, less and less to follow their leaders ; conceived on the other hand by those who believe in ultimate liberty to be a very healthy sign, showing that the democratic spirit is alive beneath the surface ; a very effective spirit too, as was seen when it began to exert pressure among the miners in 1912, first being brought to bear on their leaders and then on the national parliament, compelling both to action, and the Prime Minister of the greatest of modern States to deep emotion. But when the leaders, the " civil service," having lost touch with the essential principles of association, endeavour to substitute their own dis- cipline for the general will, and a struggle is carried on half-heartedly by a minority of the effective forces, the State is not only given the opportunity, but is able to appeal to the true basis of democracy, for offering pro- tection, in accordance with its strength, to those who demand the right to work. On more than one occasion those who are on the side of justice have, in such a situation, had to stand aside and see trade unionism hoist with its own petard. Such incidents have, how- 218 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY ever, rarely been ineffective in their teachings, and have led to the purification of the democratic spirit. In France, where, as has been frequently suggested throughout this argument, the teaching of the Control Social is in men's blood, possessing as she does the well and source of modern democracy, the contest between the Trade Unions and the State, between the two associations, for the command of the general will of the working classes is more clearly marked and defined than elsewhere. The law of 1884 protects the blacklegs by articles 414 and 415 of the Penal Code. 1 The State, claiming to inherit the democracy of the Ke volu- tion, asserted boldly, until recently, that the right of one man who wished to work was equal to the right of all the others who wished to cease work. The enunciation of such a principle is of course diametrically opposed to that of association ; but the State itself claims in theory, and is believed by some, to be a democratic association and cannot be expected of its own free will to tolerate any rival within its own legitimate sphere. And so it clings tenaciously, with all the vitality which it still possesses, to every means of preventing the Trade Unions from exercising the powers emanating from the right of combination which has been surrendered to them. It takes its stand on the right to work of the individual, and punishes any attack on that right which comes under the two articles mentioned. The trade unionists, both those who wish to abolish the State and those who wish to capture it for the 1 See Appendix II. RIVAL ASSOCIATIONS 219 working classes, syndicalists, and state-collectivists, reply by a frontal attack on their opponents ; they refuse to allow their flank to be turned by a discussion of the conflicting principles of the right to combine and the right to work, and they maintain that the contest is in fact one between the irreconcilable interests of the association of the working classes and the association of capitalists and their dependents. From that emerges the principle that every workman who remains outside the Trade Union association is attacking the liberty of the work- ing classes. The logic of the conclusion is irresistible ; to refute it, it is necessary to deny that the object of combination is to secure better wages and better con- ditions of work, and to ignore the fact that even those who have not joined the Trade Unions benefit from every victory which is won. The "jaunes," said one of the more moderate of the working-men leaders, " are beings who exploit the sacrifices of the trade unionists and are the auxiliaries of the employers." The conception of class war which is thus enunciated, of a struggle between the working classes and the rest of the community (in France the bourgeoisie, in England and Germany the middle and upper classes) is not peculiar to the working classes alone ; it is to be found underlying the thoughts of public men and politicians, and colouring all their public utterances. There is never a debate on a law affecting the interests of the working classes in which the representatives of the governing classes in any country do not throw every principle of democracy to the winds and talk about the concessions 220 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY they are making to the working-men, the credit they expect for their benevolent action, and express the hope that their generosity will call forth a worthy response. Such an attitude postulates that the working classes are something apart within the State and not equal sharers in a democratic organisation ; it alone has driven many who hitherto hesitated to an acceptance of that view. But it is not a question of all the working-men, as free individuals, forming themselves into a democratic association ; only those who are " conscious " of their slavery and are struggling for their emancipation can claim the democratic rights of free men, the others who are still slaves, resigned to their servitude, willing to be treated as slaves by the employers, must be treated as slaves also by the Trade Unions ; their liberty to work is no liberty ; the working class is represented by the " conscious " alone, even if they be but a minority of the working-men. If the majority are not free, not worthy of association, they must be coerced. M. Jaures, whose political tendencies cause him to be regarded as an enemy of direct action, went to the root of the matter in a famous speech on the relation of trade unionists to blacklegs : " They are all captives," he said, " tied to the same chain, and the boldest can only make an attempt to escape, to free themselves, by trying to drag away with them the companions to whom they are chained and who resist their endeavours." Some of the trade unionists, however, reading their Contrat Social hastily, accepting the interpretation given MISCONCEPTION OF DEMOCRACY 221 to it by the enemies of freedom, take their stand on more doubtful ground, arguing that democracy suppresses minorities and " with universal suffrage and its political sovereignty, ends in cementing the economic slavery of the working classes." 1 But progress, as past history proves, " is the consequence of the revolutionary efforts of ' conscious ' minorities." 2 How their sufferings from centuries of perversion of the noblest faiths have led some of the weaker of the proletariat to misunderstand and mistrust these faiths themselves ! Eeligion, patriot- ism, democracy, ever before their eyes clothed in the meretricious tinsel in which they have been decked, who shall blame the weaker among the working classes if, blinded by the bitterness of poverty and oppression, they do not see the unchanging purity of the great ideals ? And so they conceive that they have finally broken with democracy from the day " when they recognised that democratic government, the object of their long- deferred hopes, was identical with and similar to all governments, in the sense that it modified in no way the relations between classes ; " 3 just as some of them, arguing in the same way, announce their emancipation from religion and patriotism and, without knowing it, start from their position of negative protest against the 1 E. Pouget, Les bases du syndicalisme. 2 A repetition of the teaching of Marx who, in The Communist Mani- festo, says: "All social movements hitherto have been carried out by minorities or to the profit of minorities." 8 Syndicalisme et Socialism*. Introduction by Hubert Lagardelle, p. 6. 222 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY falsity from which they have suffered to retrace with painful steps the path which has led away from the eternal truths of humanity. In their war with the State, which masquerades in the form of democracy, they are in fact but creating that free association which is democracy ; so long as they do not realise this, their arguments are merely destructive and self-contradictory. The " conscious " minority knows no laws but that of its own association, and thus among the working classes there is slowly being built up a law of the Trade Union as opposed to the law of the State. The conflict between the two is the phase into which the social struggle has now entered. To oblige all associations of working- men to submit to the law of the State is the object of all governments ; to evade these laws is the constant object of the trade unionists. But evasion, so long as the State has the power to enforce penalties, has its inconveniences, and is therefore only to be exercised where public opinion is likely to be sympathetic, or direct advantage is to be gained from the advertisement of punishment, a punishment inflicted by those who administer the law, representatives of a class, magistrates or juries, unsympathetic to the working classes. 1 While, therefore, they remain " non-political," the syndicalists are not so foolish as to ignore what is being done by the politicians. On the one hand they regard every effort to make or amend a law as a move 1 The growing dissatisfaction of the working classes with the jury system may be compared with the feeling of the capitalist and aristocratic classes as to the suitability of a jury as at present constituted to determine questions, e.g. of divorce. Neither class is judged by its peers. SYNDICALISTS AND THE LAW 223 of the hostile forces to be met and to be countered ; but on the other they are not blind to the advantage to their cause of every surrender of its powers by the State in face of their hostile criticism. But with marvellous consistency they adhere to the fundamental principle of direct as distinct from political action, and their criticism is always directed to demonstrating the essentially capitalistic tendencies of governments. Their tactics are exemplified in all their bearings by the decisions which the Confederal Committee recently announced as to the law of 1912 amending the work- men's pension law of 1900. They begin with the criticism that these laws are based on capitalist principles and capitalist speculation ; secondly, they contend that the amending law actually reduces the benefits of the old law ; and thirdly, they argue that the contribution of the State is ridiculous when compared with its military expenditure. 1 These tactics are obviously designed with the two-fold object of exposing the underlying error in the constitution 1 The following are the reasons given (Le Temps, 14th June 1912) for determined opposition to the measure : 1 Parce que versements, cartes et principe de la capitalisation e"tant maintenus, il considere qu'aucuue amelioration fondamentale n'a e'te" apporte"e a la loi qui, ainsi reste base"e sur la plus dangereuse speculation capitalists ; 2 Parce que le taux de la retraite, deja drisoire se trouve encore diminue" dans les proportions suivantes : la loi du 5 Avril 1910 accordait au retraite" un maximum de 393 fr. 87, tandis que les modifications fixeut ce maximum, pour ce meme retraite, a 297 fr. 44, soit une diminution du taux de la retraite de 96 fr. 48 ; 3 Parce que le versement de 1'Etat constitue un effort derisoire ; que chaque annee un milliard et demi est gaspille" pour des ceuvres de de- struction et de carnage. 224 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY of the State, and at the same time of arousing the sympathy of public opinion : and compelling the State to make further concessions, i.e. in this instance, a larger contribution. And incidentally it may be noted that the policy of making the State disgorge the accumulated wealth of the capitalists is deliberately pursued. Indeed, the Bourses du Travail, which, as has been shown, are the fount and origin of syndicalism, are granted and accept subsidies from the State and the municipalities in regard to certain of their activities, and they enjoy this advan- tage without, with the exception of the Paris Bourse, being controlled by any law or administrative regulations. 2 But behind these tactics or incidents of the war the Trade Unions, under syndicalist influences, are slowly building up a state of their own with the definite aim of finally replacing the old State. Negatively or positively, in England or in France, the State grants them increasing powers of association and legalises their facilities by peaceful pickets, forfeits or fines, to bring pressure to bear on those who remain outside or would leave their association. They are using the powers thus acquired to create their own laws, civil and criminal, recognising individual rights only in so far as the individual is a member of their new state ; they have their own police and 1 See p. 197, where the desire to appeal to public opinion by direct action is admitted. 2 It is difficult to imagine that the French Government will not soon make an attempt to bring the Bourses under the law. The subsidies granted are very small, but if the Government were to attempt to make them dependent on good behaviour, an interesting phase of the struggle would open which would determine the real strength and vitality of the Bourses. "THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LABOUR " 225 maintain their own public order ; in England recently the dockers even enrolled special constables in response to the attempt of the capitalists to form a body of special police to protect blacklegs against the strikers. The instinct which they follow in their revolt is leading them back to the idea of a human order starting with an order of their own, based on the general will of their class alone. The power of the individual employer or board of capitalists which has hitherto controlled them, divided in scattered groups, is every day growing less, is daily diminished by the disputes and discussions which take place, each one an admission of the independent rights of the employed. The sovereignty of the employer has been abolished, existing only where the employed are disunited and insecurity of tenure binds them paralysed with the fear of starvation. The sovereignty of the existing State, in which the working classes have been refused the recognition of their demo- cratic rights until it is too late to grant them, is little more than a name. It is already replaced in the minds of the working-men by an ideal, expressed by Pelloutier in the vague and baffling language which from time to time breaks the silence of instinct : " the only justifi- able sovereignty : that of labour." CHAPTER XII THE UNION OF MANUAL AND INTELLECTUAL WORKERS THE consent of the majority of the nation may not be essential to the accomplishment of any political change, as has been proved by the success of revolutions, civil wars, and coups d'ttat carried out by minorities ; but without it the reaction, which follows by a human law, is more disturbing, and the final loss in time and energy to the cause of progress is consequently greater. On the other hand, the larger the majority consenting, the more nearly it coincides with that approximation to human unanimity called public opinion, the more perma- nent is the impulse and direction given to future progress by an upheaval of the existing order. Were the new social movement, therefore, dependent solely on a small militant minority and likely to remain so, it would possess, as has been said, merely a passing and ephemeral interest, the romance of a revolt or despairing effort to shake off intolerable burdens, destroy- ing undoubtedly much in its outburst, but certain to be condemned finally by history, which is ever faithful to the most inhuman law of humanity, that nothing fails like failure. But there are signs that the movement has 226 LEGALITY AND ILLEGALITY 227 the support of many more than compose that section of the working classes which is immediately associated with its more conspicuous expressions, and that it is indirectly assisted by the diminishing respect for the State and its laws, of which evidence is seen on all hands. The decline of the power of the State and of the respect which would be its due as the representative of the general will is as strongly marked in Great Britain as elsewhere. And yet the British are said to be by nature a law-abiding race, their reverence for the decrees of the State and their pride in their native parliamentary institutions being deeply rooted and not easily shaken. To some, indeed, the laws of the State have still to-day the absolute force of divine laws, in spite of the fact that within a few short years, at several periods in the history of this country, the State has changed masters and a majority of the people have been found ready to approve, or at any rate to acquiesce in, enactments sub- versive of all that a majority had previously upheld. Of many extreme instances of this in past history, that which is most generally quoted by those whose thoughts dwell on revolution is the general honour which was shown to the remains of Cromwell when they were interred, and the general indifference, if not approval, which permitted the desecration of his grave two years later. Those doctrinaires who explain this particular change of opinion by reference to Cromwell's absolutism and his contempt for parliamentarism, and who point out that the party system which has now developed in representative government allows for the ebb and flow 228 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY of popular sentiment, while assuring the essential minimum of legislative continuity, only deal with the surface of the question. For those who hold these views, and deduce therefrom a natural and automatic appeasement of the present unrest, are blind to the fact that the Mother of Parliaments itself is rapidly losing credit with the people, and the laws which it makes and un- makes are exciting less and less interest among those whom they are intended to benefit. It would be idle to deny that the force of events is once more leading people, in yearly increasing numbers, to believe that law and crime are relative and not absolute terms ; that it may, for example, be as lawful to defy a tyrannical parlia- mentary majority in control of the State as to behead an autocratic king. Under the parliamentary system, which has been built up in the name of democracy, a majority governs the nation for a term of years ; having been assembled originally for the settlement of some specific difficulty, it remains supreme for its natural life to dictate the course of affairs even when they have ceased to have any relation to the question on which it was elected. Might thus becomes right ; the power of an arbitrary majority to impose its will on the general will is the principle on which modern representative government is founded. Even the instinctive distinctions between law and crime, those which have a divine origin, lose their absolute significance under such a system. In its simplest form this is expressed in the power wielded by this majority to make war, to modify or extend the laws THE QUESTION OF DEGREE 229 inflicting capital punishment, to shoot down strikers threatening violence, and in other ways to interpret the commandment against killing. The authority for such action is vested in an accidental majority. If a number of citizens, separately or in association, object to any interpretation of this commandment, if they resist its application, is their action legal or illegal, lawful or criminal ? To answer this question heads are counted. But the moment any numerical standard is applied to the measurement of the absolute, it is converted into the relative. The question of degree is immediately intro- duced into the difference between right and wrong. If, for instance, the majority is composed of half the citizens plus one, and the minority of half the citizens less one, is the criminality of the minority as great when it disobeys the will of the majority as that of a smaller minority or of a minority composed of a single individual ? The introduction of numerical considerations would naturally lead to some such answer to the question as this : that in the one instance the crime is not absolute crime, but fifty-one per cent, a crime, and in the other instance ninety-nine per cent, a crime. So will men logically argue in modern States where might is right, and where parliamentarism has resulted from the failure of the attempt to establish true democracy resting on the free consent of all citizens. In Great Britain, during the present decade, we have rapidly been approximating to a sort of equilibrium between law and crime ; passive resistance to Acts of Parliament has become dignified and imprisonment 230 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY honourable ; Ulster threatens civil war if the majority attempt to coerce her; the suppression of the revolts of women against their exclusion from what are con- ceived to be democratic privileges shock the public conscience ; the law is modified by the parliamentary majority itself in response to the violent demands of miners ; the press counsels defiance of the Insurance Act with impunity, while a punishment is inflicted on those responsible for a newspaper which incites to mutiny in disobedience to a law which had been in abeyance for one hundred years. Confusion touches the absurd when a trade union pleads in open Court in defence of its action, its privilege as an illegal association, and all the subtlety of the law is required to prove it legal. 1 And so the law, and the State which makes the law, falls more and more into disrepute, and every weakening of the existing order encourages and strengthens the attempt of the working classes to create a new order, to revert to the human order. Will the working classes succeed in obtaining the consent of a majority which would, judged by present standards, transform their illegality into legality. The consideration of that question will throw some light on the ultimate goal of the social movement, will show whether it will or will not result in greater political liberty. Were the answer to be found alone in either the economic distinction recognised by the working classes or in the vaguer class differentiation which they accept, the problem would be a simple one. But the issue is con- 1 See The Times, 3rd July 1912. DEMOCRATIC TYRANNIES 231 fused by the tendency of the working classes to limit their organisations to that particular section of the governed who have borne the brunt of the struggle, and who therefore show a very human disposition to object to sharing the spoils with those who at first held aloof or actively took sides against them. As far as two sections of the working classes are concerned, it is so obvious that they have no intention of promoting the cause of liberty, that nothing is to be gamed by an inquiry into their chances of obtaining the majority essential to the permanent success of the re- volution they propose. They fall under the categories which present only a passing and ephemeral interest. The state-collectivists on the one hand, those who are popularly known as socialists, merely aim at capturing the existing political machinery and so adapting the actual social structure as to replace the capitalist majority in the State by a working class majority. This would result in the substitution of one tyranny for another. On the other hand, some of the most powerful and wealthy of the trade unions, representing working- men producing the necessaries of life, are intent on securing, by the application of the fallacy that might is right, the best possible wages and conditions of labour for themselves at the cost of the weaker organisations. That again would result in as bad, if not a worse, social hierarchy than the present. The syndicalists, however, aim at the total abolition of the system of salaries and wages, the salariat. Their ideal is therefore claimed to be one which if realised would remove one of the greatest 232 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY obstacles to liberty. The answer to the question may therefore most profitably be sought in the development of syndicalism. It would appear at first sight that all the varying and multitudinous meanings given to the vague qualification " economic " may ultimately be reduced to a common expression in terms of wages and salaries. That being so, there would seem to be a common cause among all those who are suffering from the oppression of capitalism undoubtedly a majority in any modern State. To take only one class, already selected as an illustration, 1 schoolmasters. Surely the burden of capitalism weighs as heavily on them as on the working classes. They have, indeed, like the working classes, however different may be their tactics, formed themselves into associations for the redress of their grievances. But the working- men and the schoolmasters have both protested from time to time that there are differences of social status, in the narrower sense, between them which make common action impossible. The higher one ascends in the " social " hierarchy of schoolmasters the wider looks the gulf, and it has been brutally defined in England by the " Holmes Circular " recently issued by the Board of Education. If it really exists and cannot be bridged, then the sphere in which a possible majority may be recruited is definitely limited. Those who find consolation in this thought, and exert themselves to emphasise this division, overlook the concessions that the existing order has been compelled to make, for its own preservation, to the spirit of democracy 1 See p. 80. ASSOCIATION OF TEACHERS 233 during the last fifty years, and forget that a class of teachers has sprung up whose very mission is democratic and who for the most part are " socially " not far removed from the working class and are in daily contact with their children. They, indeed, may possibly bridge the gulf and, making common cause with the working class, drawn together in the first instance by a common economic grievance, may succeed in eradicating the " social " prejudices which are at present an endless and bitter source of friction. In England the elementary teachers have formed themselves into a formidable union, working along lines parallel to the labour movement and adopting the tactics of the less militant of the state-collectivist trade unions. They send their own members to Parliament, and exercise powerful influence over all candidates at elections. In France they have gone further, and there has been a movement among them in that country, contemporaneously with that among the working classes, in favour of direct action and of the tactics and principles of syndicalism. 1 That is a development which is likely to reproduce itself on this side of the Channel, and there are already signs that a similar spirit of revolt is at work among the English elementary teachers, aggravated by a not dissimilar recent despotism which even our advant- ages of local government have been able to do little to mitigate. 1 See Syndicate et Services Publics, by Maxime Leroy, and Les Institeurs et le Syndicalisme, by M. T. Lauriu (Eibliothdque du Afouvement Socialistc. VII.). 234 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY In 1854, the Government being alarmed by their independence and radical and anti-clerical tendencies, the elementary teachers in France were placed under the authority of the prefects, thus being brought more directly under central political control. They were thus made dependent on an administrative official who was subject to the fluctuations of representative govern- ment, who was the faithful interpreter of the will of the party in power, and on whose influence in his own local sphere a government in large measure relied for its success in elections. This point must be noted at the outset, as it will be found that underneath all the grievances of the teachers there runs constantly their resentment at being used as pawns in the game of political parties, to be shifted from point to point or to be swept off the board in the interests, whether of defence or attack, of the sovereignty of one or the other of the political groups. Anyone who realises the despair of the mass of the English elementary teachers when the politicans suddenly raise the so-called "religious diffi- culty " for the benefit of their own parliamentary tactics, can realise the position of the French teachers among whom political disturbances were chronic, with all their minor inconveniences, uncertainties and hardships. Their difficulties were aggravated by their official relation also with every local form of political and administrative intrigue. This is why the revolt of the teachers has continued in France after they had obtained the redress of their economic grievances. From 1900 onwards the radical INTELLECTUAL RECRUITS 235 and social-democratic political elements, which were leading the attack on clericalism and on all for which the anti-Dreyfusards were supposed to stand, needed the local assistance of the teachers. The laws of 1903 and 1905 therefore accorded them substantial increases of salaries, which are now admitted by representatives of the working classes to be " nearly what is fitting." One writer says that the teachers' salaries have been improved to an extent that is almost satisfactory, and which gives them, in addition to material independence, a greater moral independence. 1 And yet the revolt tends to increase rather than to diminish. Not only did the teacher, like other classes of the governed, suffer from exclusion from full participation in democracy, not only did he share the general " disgust with politics," but, together with other groups of officials, he was regarded by his ministerial chief as a kind of political eunuch, deprived of the enjoyment of the political rights natural to citizenship. So that, as the spirit of collectivity began to inspire the teachers to form themselves, as a class, into an association within the State, they began to discover that they were denied the privileges which had been granted to the working class. Briefly, what actually happened was this Having formed themselves into local associations named " amicales," z they took advantage of the educational 1 Laurin, op. cit. p. 18. 2 Associations similar in their methods and tactics to those created by various groups of secondary teachers in England. 236 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY congresses which were held on the occasion of the Paris Exhibitions of 1878 and 1889 to attempt to create some more formal kind of organisation. The Minister of Education forbade an attempt which was made in 1887 to form a national federation of teachers. He prohibited any development which would transform isolated deliberative and consultative congresses into a permanent organisation representing the autonomous tendency of a corporate body of teachers. And here a profitable digression may be made to remark that, as one follows the struggle for autonomy in its different expressions among various groups of mankind arriving at a consciousness of their collectivity, there is an almost wearying monotony in the inevitable repetition of the same phases of attack and defence between the governed and the governing. Even in the highest sphere one finds the governing adopting the same tactics and moved by the same fears and the same obstinacy. In the struggle between those vast collec- tivities the British Colonies and the Imperial Govern- ment, represented by the British Colonial Minister, events pursue the same course, following some iron law of humanity in its progress towards liberty, as in every lesser contest in which the same motives and inspiration are at work. Imperial congresses, assembled on the occasion of a great national celebration, sought, as the humbler French teachers, to give concrete and practical expression by permanent machinery to the autonomy which they were determined to achieve, and were met by the same official opposition based on identical argu- INTELLECTUAL RECRUITS 237 ments. Some day the history will be written of the stubborn fight waged by a retreating officialism before the advance of democracy and liberty. In 1900, however, the teachers took advantage of the political conditions referred to above, when the Govern- ment was fully occupied with the internal revolution raging around the Dreyfus affair, and they established a great national Federation of Amicales. Led by men actually participating or trained in the system of re- presentative government, the new Federation adopted the methods and procedure of parliamentarism. Words replaced deeds ; a cabinet of leaders established itself which brought into play all the well-known means of stifling action and of transforming energy into pious resolutions and congresses into banquets and amusements. As a result the " conscious minority " soon became active ; assistant teachers who had enrolled themselves in " sections of emancipation " exerted themselves with increasing success to give a trade union constitution to the Amicales, and began to gravitate towards the local Bourses du Travail. The Bourses, with their instinctive tendency to associ- ation based on the human order, were to form the link between, the common meeting ground for, manual and intellectual workers. At the Congress of the Bourses in 1902 a motion had been carried enunciating the principle that no workers, whether employed by private individuals or by the State, could be excluded from the sphere of trade union activity, and calling upon the Bourses " to accept the organisations of employees and workmen of the State as 238 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY well as the associations of teachers of the State, whose statutes will show clearly that the object of those associa- tions is the defence of the interests of those different corporations." In 1885 and 1902 the Courts had decided, on the other hand, that the rights of association accorded by the law of 1884 1 were "confined to those who, either as employers or as workmen or wage-earners, are engaged in industry, agriculture or commerce, to the exclusion of any other persons or any other professions." It was therefore the State and the governing classes who imposed a barrier between different classes of workers whom the Bourses, representing the governed in the most complete form of association yet achieved, desired to unite. By insisting on the distinction which the law had thus established the State was employing what it considered to be the most effective means of maintain- ing and popularising the division between the different classes of employed. For there are many among the trade unions, which as we have seen in relation to the Bourses represent the purely intellectual as opposed to the instinctive branch of the social movement, who regard what they call " intellectuals " as distinct from " manual " workers with suspicion. One of them has written : " The teachers have said, not without emphasis : we are workers. Not at all. They are not in any way workers in the sense in which the word is used in the syndicalist propaganda. Where are the products of 1 See Appendix I. SYNDICALISM AND CIVIL SERVANTS 239 their hands ? Where are the goods whose circulation would be assured by their work ? The teachers accomplish neither production nor exchange." To such materialism the instinct may be safely left to find the answer. But even intelligence alone might ask why, if this is so, the teachers should have any claim to payment of any sort a claim which has, moreover, been recognised in practice by the trade unionists who have all supported their struggle for better salaries and better conditions of work ? The suspicion of " intellectuals " harboured by many manual workers will, however, certainly disappear with the "social" distinction on which alone it is based. The question is as little worth arguing as the cause of the personal jealousies which ruffle the surface of every human flood of progress. The true tendencies on the part of the teachers and the governing appear plainly in the exchange of letters between the two parties in 1907, when M. Cle'menceau was Prime Minister. A Bill had been introduced by the Government to prohibit teachers and all Government officials from joining the Bourses du Travail and the Confederation G4n^rale du Travail, and inflicting severe penalties, including dismissal, on any individuals who should attempt to organise a strike. The teachers and Government officials thereupon addressed an open letter of protest to M. Cle'menceau, copies of which were publicly displayed on the walls in Paris and the pro- vincial towns. The Government immediately prosecuted one teacher and five postmen, considered to be the leaders of the Committee responsible for the letter. 240 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY Things now moved fast, and it was only eighteen days after the introduction of the Bill that the National Federation of Teachers formally joined the Confedera- tion. In the open letter to M. Chimenceau, and in the Manifesto published by the teachers in December 1905, their case is clearly stated. In his reply M. Cle"menceau gives a masterly summary, worthy of what will become an historic document, of the reasons justifying the State in attempting to suppress the revolt of the governed in its very citadel. We will give briefly the main arguments employed in these three important statements. The teachers on their side claim that, both from their origin and the simplicity of their lives, they belong to the people ; it is, moreover, the education of the children of the people with which they are entrusted. Teaching the children of the people by day, what more natural than that they should consort with their fathers in the evening at the Bourses du Travail ? They conceive that the reason for forbidding them to frequent the Bourses is because at these institutions the conditions of social organisation are discussed. But the syndicalist teachers are in full sympathy with the social reconstruction desired by the Bourses, and as workers they claim that it is not only their right but their duty to take an interest in these questions. They refuse to recognise the authority of the State, or of any Government, even of the republican form, to interfere with their professional liberty. They reject the principle that the Government can control their teaching; pressed to its logical con- THE REVOLT OF THE TEACHERS 241 elusion, that principle, they argue, would result in the absurdity that mathematical relations and the rules of grammar, as well as the facts of science and history, are determined by the fluctuations of electoral majorities. In the interests of their profession they demand corporate autonomy and the widest individual independence. They believe that they are acting in the true spirit of re- publican evolution in demanding that their corporate association should take the trade union form, which they consider to have been created, not only to defend the immediate interests of its members, but as the basis of the future autonomous organisations to which the State will entrust, under its own and their control, the pro- gressively socialised public services. Together with all civil servants, the teachers claim that they are not the delegates of the central power, or an integral part of the police system of the State, but workers who have entered into a contract with an employer, that employer being the State. Between them and their employer there is simply an exchange of services, nothing more. Otherwise they would be submitted to an intolerable tyranny, that of an employer who, over and above the privileges of an ordinary employer, possesses all the arbitrary powers of the State. It should be noticed in passing that public opinion has been almost unanimously on the side of the civil servants and teachers in this struggle, in so far as their protests were confined to the unnecessary routine, favouritism and political intrigues which do so much, in all countries where parliamentarism is in the dominant, 16 242 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY to render bureaucracy inefficient. Further, public opinion has entirely sympathised with their endeavour to bring themselves more directly into touch with the public and its needs. M. Clemenceau, limiting his reply more particularly to the claims of the teachers, points out in the first place that the proposed law would give them all that they required, but that their fundamental grievance is that it treats them as a distinct category of citizens, separated from their fellow-countrymen both as regards their relations and responsibilities to the State. He then proceeds to enumerate the benefits and responsi- bilities attaching to their position which it would neither be rational nor legitimate to assimilate to that of workers in private undertakings. Teachers and all civil servants, he maintains, form part of a hierarchy within which, for a limited number of hours of work, they receive salaries determined by the law ; he reminds them that they enjoy the advantages of regular advancement sheltered from economic fluctuations, of sick leave, free secondary education for their children, reduced railway fares, pensions, and other benefits. Then, defining the object of the law of 1884 1 as being to meet the case of wage- earners who are threatened by economic variations, thus ignoring all the main tendencies underlying the struggle which had necessitated that law, he contends that it cannot and ought not to apply to them, and that both logic and common sense are against the protests which they have formulated. M. Clemenceau likewise ignores 1 See Appendix I. THE CASE FOR THE GOVERNMENT 243 the whole spirit of the social movement which led to the creation of the Bourses du Travail when he insists on their purpose being that which was defined by the decree of 1905 regulating the Paris Bourse alone the work of labour exchanges in the strictest sense of the term as understood, for instance, in the United Kingdom at the present moment. He argues, therefore, that the teachers cannot claim the right of admission to them : " You escape from the law of supply and demand. It is not in your power to modify by private transaction, as in the case of the wage-earners in commerce and industry, a situation which is secured you by the law. Your place is not in the Bourses du Travail." In condemning their intention to join the Confederation Generale du Travail, he takes his stand on different ground, going to the root of the matter. The ideas of the Confederation Gen^rale are, he tells the teachers, of such a kind that they owe it to themselves, to their mission, to the republic and to their country, to combat them with all their energy. There is the most absolute incompatibility between their responsibilities and the propaganda advocating a general strike, class hatred, an ti -militarism and anti-patriotism. It is inadmissible that they should include among their desiderata the right of carrying on a campaign at the expense of the country for the destruction of the country itself. " France, at any rate, will refuse to hand over her children to you to allow you to experiment on them with the sabotage of young intelligences." Finally, 1 For the regulation of the Bourses by the law, see p. 224, Note 2. 244 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY M. Cl^menceau points out that the Trade Union teachers numbered only about 1000 out of 120,000, and ends with the warning : " It is my duty, nevertheless, to warn you of the danger into which hasty and ill-considered resolutions may lead you." It was not, however, until the autumn of 1912 that definite action was taken by the Government to attempt to check the steady spread of syndicalism among the teachers. Then an order of the Minister of Education to the teachers' trade unions, formed on the assumption, or rather the contention, that they had a right to take advantage of the law of 1884, calling upon them to dissolve, was defied. In their defiance the teachers were supported by the whole body of syndicalists, and the president of one of the teachers' unions was nominated chairman of the biennial congress of the Confederation Gdnerale which was held in September. 1 Whatever may be the immediate outcome of this contest the fact remains that a link has been formed, which will be strengthened rather than weakened by what are regarded as efforts of the governing classes to 1 The present position of the contending parties is shown by the following statement, from its Paris correspondent, which appeared in The Times of 23rd September 1912: "As the result of the Govern- ment's decision to punish the recalcitrant teachers, M. Chenebenoit, Juge d'Instruction, has been ordered to open proceedings against M. Chalopin, secretary of the Union of the Seine ' for infractions of Articles, 1,2, 3, 4, and 9 of the Law of March 21, 1884.' The net result of these Articles is that the exclusive objects of ' professional unions ' recognised by the Law are the study and defence of their economic, industrial, commercial, and agricultural interests. The penalties laid down for breaking the Articles mentioned are fines ranging from 16 f. to 200 f., together with the dissolu- tion of the Union." A DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY? 245 break it down, between the manual and intellectual sections into which the proletariat has hitherto been divided. It would indeed be more accurate to say, and herein lies the greater significance of the movement, that the proletariat has at last begun to expand its limits beyond the narrow economic restrictions which have confined it in the past, and that, starting from opposition to the economic control of capitalism, it is discovering that it has a common interest with all classes of the governed. It is thus becoming conscious of a wider aim, in the pursuance of which it can alone gather irresistible force : the emancipation of all wage-earners, whatever the nature of their work, and whatever the " social " differentiations which have distinguished them under the traditional organisation of society. The development of that consciousness will be watched with interest by all who search in the social movement for tendencies capable of practical achievement in social reorganisation ; for along that line an accumulation of force may be assured which will count seriously in any revolutionary action, even if it does not actually transform a militant minority into a democratic majority. Any approximation to that aim would certainly mark a corresponding lessening of the danger that a successful revolution might merely substitute a working class tyranny for the existing capitalist domination. Meanwhile syndicalism is spreading among the Govern- ment officials, the two strikes of the post office servants in 1909 having aroused the public to a sense of the progress of the new revolutionary spirit. Workmen and 246 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY sailors in the Government dockyards have given evidence of a similar revolt against the State in its capacity as employer, while clerks, waiters, the employees of theatres and representatives of almost every branch of commerce have joined the ranks of the syndicalist. Even agricul- ture has furnished recruits to the new movement. CHAPTEE XIII WHAT IS TO BE DONE? FRANCE is once more making a determined effort to throw off her governing classes and to realise the ideal of national unity ; what the result will be it is interest- ing, but not very profitable, to speculate. Will her governing classes, in the name of order, overthrow the republican form of government and seek safety in a dictatorship, as they have done twice already under somewhat similar circumstances 1 Or will her traditional enemy take advantage of her internal dissensions to challenge her again to a trial of strength, and in that case will her governing classes, considering war the lesser of evils, accept the challenge ? These questions suggest the lines along which speculation may be pursued. But too much reliance should not be placed on the prophecies of those who see in the international interests of capital an insuperable barrier to the outbreak of actual hostilities ; for, as the supremacy, and even the existence of the plutocratic classes, is more and more threatened, capital may see in war a chance desperate, it is true, but possibly the only chance of ensuring the continuance of its rule. It is at any rate significant that some of the wiser and more experienced heads among the French revolutionaries, 247 248 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY those who took an active part in the Commune and still retain their mental vigour, fear what they regard as an international conspiracy of the governing classes of Europe to suppress the proletariat just when it once more feels the realisation of its emancipation to be nearly within its grasp. It is indeed difficult to believe that some great upheaval of the kind is not imminent, and small consolation for those who would fain think other- wise is to be found in the European situation regarded from the conventional point of view of " foreign politics " ; never in the lifetime of the present generation has war been so freely discussed or prepared with such grim determination and the enemy of each nation indicated with such directness. That the present situation is peculiarly exhilarating is felt by every healthy mind that exercises itself in the thoughts which surround it. That it is also one which imposes responsibilities of more than usual gravity on all who are allowed, directly or indirectly, in large measure or in small, to influence the course of events, does not require emphasising ; it is discussed on all sides with serious faces and anxious questionings. But it cannot be too often insisted that it is the forces of instinct which have been let loose to destroy and construct, that whatever the future has in store will be their work and their conquest, and that those who bring to a considera- tion of the movement which is taking place but the accumulation of intellectual achievements, merely, as it were, perch themselves on a high hill from which they may watch but take no part in the struggle. CONCLUSIONS 249 In the interval of apparent prosperity between the last upheavals and the present threatenings, when op- position to the economic rule was silenced by the triumphant march of trade and commerce, the intellectuals fell upon the masses of material which strewed the path of progress, arranged them in scientific order, sorted, analysed, compared them, and pronounced on their historical value with the confidence and the dogmatism which their traditional methods required in their own defence. For a time the minds of men were thus diverted from the contemplation of results and from strenuous efforts to use the position gained as the base for new conquests, and were enticed to a general dawdling by the wayside of history, training themselves in one of the most seductive of all intellectual pastimes, the weighing of causes and the apportionment of credit to the giant architects of the liberties they enjoyed. Those like Eousseau, who by their genius had moved a continent to revolution, whose brilliant flashes, piercing the un- known, leaders in the succeeding generation had followed cheerfully to the guillotine, and half-starved, ill-clad soldiers to superhuman victories, suffered severely from this treatment. The chief desire, the sacred task of scholarship during this period, was to determine whether Eousseau was more original in his thoughts than Locke or Hobbes, whether he had contributed more that was new than his predecessors or contemporaries to the in- tellectual theory of politics ; the extent to which he had inspired deeds was regarded as little more than a by-product of his energies. His intelligence unhampered 250 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY by the training of the schools, his necessary limitations in the field of historical knowledge, his use of words outside their grammatical imprisonments, his ignoring of the arbitrary conventions imposed on dialectic to make the game playable, 1 his " want of abundant comparison with bodies of external fact," his failure "to seize the only useful lessons " which the " analogy of the body politic to the body natural " might have taught him, and " which might have been serviceably translated into the dialect of political science, and might have bestowed on his conception of political society more of the conception of reality," 2 all shocked the priesthood of intellect and called forth their most trenchant weapons for dissection and exposure. And then suddenly it was discovered that an advance-guard of instinct was making a new attack on the political interests which had meanwhile been busily entrenching themselves ; once more men began to hasten down the path of progress shouting the old battle- cries, leaving behind those constrained by the habits of a vanishing generation to their theoretical researches. 1 " Je m'appliquai aussi a la logique, qui m'apprit a raisonner beaucoup. J'aimois taut la dispute, que j'arretois les passants, connus on inconnus, pour leur proposer des arguments. Je m'adressois quelquefois a des figures hibernoises qui ne demandoient pas mieux, et il falloit alors nous voir disputer ! Quelles gestes ! quelles grimaces ! quelles contorsions ! Nos yeux Violent pleins de fureur, et nos bouches e"cumantes ; on nous devoit plutot prendre pour des possedes que pour des philosophes " (Gil Bias, ok. i. oh. i.). 2 Rousseau, John Morley, vol. ii. ch. iii. The same great intellect, all of whose writings one handles with respect, dismisses Rousseau's "Con- siderations on the Government of Poland," a masterly treatise to lesser minds, as " written with a good deal of vigour of expression, but contains nothing that needs further discussion." CONCLUSIONS 251 Throughout Europe French ideas are again pointing the way to revolution, and idealism is in the ascendant ; those who will not recognise that fact, or who dispute its practical value for political construction, must stand aside until the fight is over. Those, on the other hand, who, while unable to claim a proletarian status, are fully cognisant of the breaking away from the existing social organisation and perceive the concentration of hitherto scattered forces on the creation of a new organic unity, ask themselves what is to be done. Before venturing to find an answer to that question it is wise to have a clear idea of certain general features and common tendencies, which characterise all sections of the prole- tariat whether actuated by the syndicalist or other ideals. 1 As will have been seen from former chapters, many causes have combined to create a consciousness of solid- arity among the working classes. So long as the social organisation was rendered elastic by at least the intention to allow a constant passage from one class to the other, and that certain fundamental human elements exercised their influence among the governing classes, there was little danger of class solidification within the divisions of the natural order. But as the governing class became more and more penetrated by those who substituted economic for human interests, and who counted intellectual per- formance as all, and instinctive aspiration as naught, the 1 Among the numerous books in the French language on this question which repay a careful study, perhaps the most thoughtful is Essais sur le Afouvement Ouvrier en France, by Daniel Halevy. Le Proletariat Inter- national, by K. Broda and Jul. Deutsch, has supplied many well-weighed opinions which have been accepted in these pages. 252 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY working classes were thrown back upon their own distinct interests and their own resources. Even the natural order was bound sooner or later to revolt against the confusion which relegated some of the ablest and most intelligent of men to such positions as they were able to attain within the activities of what was regarded as an inferior class, and from which they were allowed no outlet. There was something obviously unnatural in a system which found men, with the ability possessed by many of the trade-union secretaries and political leaders, perform- ing with unsurpassed efficiency tasks as complicated as those allotted to the controllers of great industries, or of Government departments earning salaries at least ten times as large. The inevitable result might have been foreseen. The very real sense of inferiority which had for so long restrained the working classes, disappeared before their practical achievements in the class unity and self- dependence which was imposed on them. Defects which tradition held to be inherent in the national character were discovered to be non-existent in the proletariat ; in England, for instance, the want of organising ability, the belief that by the risky process of " muddling through " could the British race alone hope to arrive at a desired end, appeared, in face of the marvellous feats of organisa- tion accomplished in a succession of strikes, culminating in the miners' strike of 1912, to be but an excuse for the incompetence of the governing classes. The proletariat thus developed in the exercise of its collective strength, a belief not only in its equality with other classes, but in CONCLUSIONS 253 its actual superiority over them, judged by traditional standards, by those which determine the greatness or the degradation, the rise or the decline of nations. A pride of class replaced the sense of class inferiority. Why, the working class began to ask itself, should it not become the nation ? As class consciousness had grown in class isolation, the working-man had begun to regard himself as the basis of society. Nous attisons le feu dans les fours et les forges, Tout le jour et toute la nuit. Aux metiers a tisser, aux presses on nous trouve Montant la garde de la paix. Nous arrachons au sol, parmi 1'air me'phitique Des mines, le fer, le charbon ; Et les e"pis dores, et les moissons fe*condes C'est a nous que vous le devez. " C'est a nous que vous le devez," that is the economic reply of the proletariat to the economic oppression of the capitalist classes, the modern rendering of " When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then your gentleman ? " But no remedy for the present discontent, no path towards the realisation of the ideals which at bottom are impelling the working classes to collective conquests, will be discovered so long as we rest contented with the superficial view that in economic causes alone is to be found the source of working-class solidarity. It has been attempted to show throughout this work that the collec- tive instinct is inherent in mankind, ever contending against individualism, sometimes dominating it, at other times in its turn forced into the background, at some highest point of development equilibrium being established. 254 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY Class consciousness is therefore, regarded in its relation to evolution in the human order, but the stunted, diverted collectivism of the working classes seeking expression in the human collectivity of national unity. The spirit of association which is moving among them is thus seen to be a positive force which no power can suppress and which no readjustment of natural conditions, economic or other, may lull to rest. What is human in its aspirations may certainly be temporarily dulled and blunted by the habit of apparent defeat, or of victory falling infinitely short of its aim ; but it is always there, latent, ready to spring into activity when touched by human appeal. The more carefully one studies the attitude of the prole- tariat of any nation in great crises, the stronger becomes this belief which one must accept as a cardinal principle of faith in mankind, not to be abandoned. The habit of defeat which has been acquired in the economic struggle is the key to the nature and peculiar character of this consciousness and pride of class. In battle after battle the workers have found the opposing armies invariably composed of the same persons ; in every strike they have been accustomed to see, on the first signal of contest, the forces of plutocracy, too often reinforced by the hereditary aristocracy, drawn up in solid formation against them. As the fight proceeds, as the suffering and the hardships which it entails for them and their families become more acute, they find the incidence of hunger and want falling with a deadly pressure upon all members of their class and almost insignificant, if at all appreciable, in its effects on other classes. If the CONCLUSIONS 255 struggle is momentarily transferred from the stern reality of the homes to the more or less academic atmosphere of Parliament, either the antagonism of class or the patronage of sympathy, often contending in mimic war- fare, emphasises the divergence of class interests. These struggles, repeated incessantly, growing in extent and intensity, ending so often in the defeat of the proletariat, or, in what is worse, an apparent victory which is found to be sterile when the terms of peace are tested in practice, lead the proletariat to look upon itself as the Ishmael among social classes. With this consciousness is at the same time borne in upon the mind of the working-man a sense of the unequalness of the combat, of the injustice of the social organisation which relieves his opponents of all the pains of battle. Thus hatred of his oppressors becomes a dominant passion in his life. How much is this increased by the constant thought that even the advantage which his opponents enjoy and which fill his soul with bitterness " c'est a nous que vous le devez," by the ever-present half-formed resolve to pull down in blind agony the whole structure in common ruin : " we are the producers, if our arms fall idle by our sides, your riches cease to accumulate and you also starve." Class hatred is naturally engendered by the inhuman conditions which have produced class consciousness. This hatred has undoubtedly been accentuated by the increasing evidence of wealth, and by the widening gulf between the riches of the rich and the poverty of the poor. " While the wealth of the rich has trebled," says Mr. Vandervelde, " the poverty of the poor has only been 256 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY halved " in the general upward tendency of recent years. The vulgarity in the tastes of plutocracy, the pleasure which they take in exciting the envy of the less well-to-do by the public display of their riches advertising their luxurious mode of living in the newspapers on the same terms as a tradesman advertises his wares creates a far more unfavourable impression among the poor than the more refined and aesthetic use of wealth which dis- tinguished the governing classes of a former age. " C'est a nous que vous le devez." During that period of the past century when the working classes believed that salvation was to be won through Representative Government, their pride of class was stimulated by the constant references of politicians to their numerical strength in those countries where a wide parliamentary franchise had been bestowed. How often have not the working-men been told : " You are the masters." This, coupled with the sense of superior efficiency, led to a growing desire among the proletariat for class domination, which appeared to them to be the natural means of satisfying all the feelings, vindictive or ambitious, by which they were stirred. The experience of co-operative enterprises within their own class taught them, however, some rude lessons. They learnt that their own fellows, once placed in positions where the traditional industrial organisation was observed, even under a co-operative system, were unable to divest them- selves of the customs of centuries, that the natural order of master and servant was enforced by habit, and that liberty was often no nearer than before. From many CONCLUSIONS 257 such experiences they acquired the dread lest the domina- tion of their own class should result in nothing more than the re-establishment of oppression with a wider and more indestructible sanction. The ideal of no oppression least of all the oppression of a socialist bureaucracy, of which they have had a taste in recent experiments in local government of no classes, of an association of free men without masters of which syndicalism is one ex- pression has thus entered into the thoughts of the proletariat. It exercises an influence over their minds all the greater because it is based on the results of practical experiments on their own initiative and is no mere vague aspiration still in the clouds of theory. Closely allied to class hatred is the growing indigna- tion which one meets on all sides among the working classes, and which their own press fans daily into a flame, with what they believe to be the deceptions practised on them in the names of religion and of history. With the increase of knowledge which even the minimum of compulsory elementary education has ensured, the unreliability and one-sidedness of the records on which history is founded was bound to be speedily exposed, had its authority not already been undermined by authority itself. Sixty years ago, for instance, Lord Beacousfield, in one of his most widely read novels, had said : " The written history of our country for the last ten reigns has been a mere phantasina, giving to the origin and con- sequence of public transactions a character and colour in every respect dissimilar to their natural form and hue. In this mighty mystery all thoughts and things have 258 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY assumed an aspect and title contrary to their real quality and style ; Oligarchy has been called Liberty ; an exclu- sive Priesthood has been christened a National Church ; Sovereignty has been the title of something that has had no dominion ; while absolute power has been wielded by those who profess themselves the servants of the People." Such opinions are not published by the governing classes with impunity, and while a far more impartial exposi- tion of the democratic tendencies of European history has marked the scholarship of the last twenty-five years, the proletariat partly because their suspicions are not lightly allayed, partly from a desire, now that they have the power, to paint the governing classes as black as they themselves have been pictured are now publishing their own versions of historical truth. No less important is the fact that they are creating their own records, to serve as foundations for the histories of the future. There is a growing literature of working-class autobiog- raphy and descriptive writings of working-class life written from their point of view, romances many of them, in which heroes are not sought in other social spheres, without their chivalrous prince or benevolent beauty, but which tell subjectively of the sufferings of the poor, and are filled with dreams, not of rescue from a down- trodden class, but of the triumphant uplifting of the mass of workers united in a common comradeship : "Une joie ici-bas est d'autant plus profonde Quelle est plus large ; un jour je le crois doit venir Ou nul ne pourra seul ni jouir ni souffler, Ou tout se melera, plaisirs, peines, pensees, Oil chantera dans 1'ame un eternel e"cho." CONCLUSIONS 259 That the new histories will be as wide of the mark on the one side as the old were on the other is deplorable, but the loss which both represent for ultimate truth is as nothing beside the harm which has been done by the discovery of the fallibility and of the prejudice of authority. The scepticism which it has engendered renders insecure and uncertain the foundations of all traditional belief, and the temporary advantages which a new dynasty or a governing class insured by a mis- representation of their predecessors or their opponents, has to be paid for to-day by a mistrust on the part of an increasing section of the working classes of the motives underlying every achievement on which national greatness has been slowly built up. But those who jump to the conclusion that what is applicable to historical belief in this connection applies equally to the attitude of the working classes towards religion, are making a comparison between two things which are different in kind and not merely in degree. To say that because democracy had been misrepresented by history, the proletariat had lost their faith in that form of government, would be as true as to say that they discard the Christian religion because it had been mis- represented for centuries by those of its spiritual ex- ponents who sought to make the best of both worlds. That some of the more shallow-minded among the working classes imagine a sequence where there is none, and fall a prey to the enemies of all spiritual truth and this was certainly a phase which naturally resulted from the supremacy of the economists is unfortunately not 260 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY to bo denied ; but, with the renaissance of the instinct, the vast mass of them, at any rate those who have for three centuries obtained direct and individual access to the origins of the Christian faith, are not so easily misled. 1 So that, although little positive assistance may be 1 The transition stage is simply and truthfully described in the follow- ing words by one who, brought up a Catholic, describes her views as "quite adverse to religion": "Although very little was written about religion in the Social Democrat newspapers, I had become free from all religious ideas. It had not happened all at once, but had come about gradually. I no longer believed in a God nor a future life, but the thought still came to me again and again that there might be a possibility of the truth of it. On the same day on which I had endeavoured to prove to my fellow-workers that the creation of the world in six days was only a fairy tale, that there could not be an Omnipotent God, because, if there were, so many men would not have to suffer such hardships in their lives on the evening of that day I folded my hands as I lay in bed and raised my eyes to the image of the Madonna, and I again invol- untarily thought: 'Still it may perhaps be true.' I had told no one that such doubts troubled me. But I made use of the descriptions of Siberia and the horrible events in the fortress of St. Petersburg which became known, and which I read about in my paper, to prove to my companions that there could be no God directing the lives of men." Autobiography of a Working Woman, by Adelheir Poff. English trans- lation. Fisher Unwin, 1912. With this it is interesting to compare the opinion of a German miner : ' ' I can assure you that what made me lose faith in a personal God was entirely the contradictions in the Bible combined with the qualities which are attributed to a divine being, and which have no connection with reality. It is not necessary to have read scientific books in order to deny the existence of God. As a proof of this I will quote you a sentence from my diary (it is true that I wrote this later) : ' Even if we knew nothing of the natural evolution of the world and all that it contains, we should none the less be forced to realise in noting the inequalities and injustices of the social and economic order, that no wise and omniscient supernatural being intervenes in our actions, either to assist or restrain them, but that all depends for us on the arbitrariness or caprices, the power or influence of individuals.' Doubtless that which completely demolished my faith in a personal God was reading Force and Matter, by Buchner, and Life and Science, by Dodel." Letter of the miner Hugo Teuchut to Levenstein, quoted in Aus der Tiefe, p. 94. CONCLUSIONS 261 derived from the teaching of history in any attempt to guide the present generation in the solution of the pressing problems which the proletariat have taken into their own hands (the balance, as any calculation will prove, would show rather a negative result), a faithful adherence to the Christian doctrines will still be found a positive asset in this task. Let us also, to arrive at any practical conclusion, eliminate from among the forces which are said to be influencing the poletariat, those which are often painted in lurid colours as destructive of family life and the marriage tie. It is true that there is much in economic conditions which militates against the ideal conception of the home ; miners' eight-hours Acts, with their resultant three shifts, and other State regulations have done their best to disturb that common repose which is essential to the growth of what is most human in the fundamental unity of human association. But those who know the work- ing classes best have noticed how such material restric- tions, weighing on spiritual freedom, have but served to stimulate the moral aspirations of family life, and to raise the ideal of the home to a position which it did not occupy when it was naturally realisable by all ; it is indeed only necessary to read the propaganda directed to the attainment of reduced hours of labour and greater leisure for workers, to learn that the pleasures of family life are the highest inducement that can be held out to the working classes to stir them to efforts in such a cause. That academic opponents of socialism should point to free love as a logical outcome of the socialist 262 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY creed, is as natural as that the critics of every form of communism, from Christianity downwards, should employ the same argument. But it is only in those nations where the loosening of the ties of marriage in all classes is a result of the general weakening of collectivism, spreading through all unities of association, one of many symptoms of decline, that the ideals of family life have ceased to be a dominating influence among the working classes. The attitude of the proletariat in general towards Representative Government is more complicated and infinitely more difficult to determina First, let it be noted that there is no sign among the working-men of a falling off of interest in parliamentary, municipal, or other elections. Attempts which have been made in France to persuade them to express their disapproval of the existing political organisation, by abstaining from taking any part in elections, have signally failed. In England the fighting instinct of the mass of the people, which is provided with no outlet through any system of universal military training, seems to find peculiar satisfac- tion in the contests of rival political parties, 1 and it is certain that, for many minds, the fight itself at election time offers greater attractions than the principles involved, often outweighing a sense of the hollo wness of the whole business. And no doubt in all countries, at so great a cost has the vote been won, that it has all the value of 1 This attitude is discussed with great insight into the working-class mind in chaps, xiv. and xv. of Seems So, by Stephen Reynolds, and Bob andTomWoolley(Macmillan. 1911). CONCLUSIONS 263 a hardly earned prize, and that its exercise has much of the sanctity of ritual. Not to vote would seem to many of the working classes a betrayal of those who, even if mis- taken, had in the past made great sacrifices for their class. But it is only when we go deeper than con- ventional party politics that we can judge of the real feelings of the proletariat with regard to Eepresentative Government ; it is in their attempts to obtain direct representation of their interests in Parliament that their opinion as to the worth of the system may be sought with greatest profit. And here one's thoughts naturally turn to Germany, where the success of the Social Democrats has been so striking and, in its outward appearance, the results of their endeavours to create a Labour Party so greatly superior to these obtained elsewhere. But the more closely one scrutinises the composition of that very numer- ous section of the German electorate which casts its votes in favour of the programme of the Social Democrats, the more one's doubts increase as to whether this party can claim to represent the proletariat alone, or could depend on the support of a majority of the nation if, being in power, it were to set about giving effect to a purely proletarian policy. For, in the first place, it must be remembered, state-collectivism, which is the avowed policy of the Social Democrats, does not meet with that opposition from a people that is accustomed to be ruled by a bureaucracy and Germany, speaking generally, has for years possessed probably the most efficient bureaucracy that the world has ever seen which it encounters among those to whom the idea of bureaucracy is in 264 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY itself repellent ; so that one of the underlying principles of the social democratic programme would obtain the support of many in Germany who would, in England or in France, find in it sufficient reason for throwing all their weight against the success of that party. On the other hand, many voters who are not socialists, or even working-men, support the Social Democrats, as they regard them as the only party with the desire and the power of transforming the system of Representative Government without responsibility, granted to Germany on a basis of universal suffrage, into one resembling more closely that which obtains in more modern countries. It is therefore rather in France and in England that the votes given in favour of labour representation and labour policy may be taken at their face value. In these countries much disappointment is expressed that the results have fallen so far short of the expecta- tions with which Labour parties were formed. The want of success, which is even more marked in England than in France, is due in part to the sectional rather than national character of the policies advocated by these parties, the national instinct, still strong among the working classes and enforced by their habit to vote for one or other of the traditional parties, leading them to prefer a policy which responds to some apparent national need. It is also due, as we have seen in former chapters, to a positive disapproval, on the part of many working- men, of the state-collectivist tendencies in the Labour parties' programmes. Again, the failure to obtain a majority in Parliament has damped enthusiasm, and led the CONCLUSIONS 265 working classes to feel that such a consummation of their hopes is beyond the bounds of possibility ; this path to their goal therefore seems to them blocked by insur- mountable obstacles. The representatives themselves whom they have succeeded in returning to Parliament, have not afforded them comfort in their discourage- ment by recounting the difficulties with which they are faced in Parliament itself, finding themselves reduced to a state not far removed from impotence by the com- plicated procedure in which parliamentarism has en- trenched itself. In England, just when, under this discouragement, the working classes were beginning to rely more on strikes and other means than on parlia- mentary representation as likely to lead to the realisation of their hopes, came the decision of the courts that Trade Unions that is to say, the associations into which those of the working classes who were struggling with a definite object had formed themselves could not lawfully use their funds for the payment of members or undertake any political action whatever. The coincidence was unfortunate. Is it to be wondered at that what is known as direct action appeared to the proletariat to be the only means promising any practical results com- mensurate with the sacrifices it was prepared to make ? Those who ask " what is to be done ? " are naturally those who desire to avoid violent revolution ; for revolu- tionaries do things, they do not ask questions. Anti- revolutionaries may, however, be divided into two classes : those on the one hand who are opposed to any change and wish to maintain the existing State ; and 011 266 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY the other, those who recognise change as desirable, or at any rate as inevitable, but are anxious that it should be brought about with as little violence or destruction as possible. The first class do not interest us here ; they may be left in their backwater of the stream of progress, to be ultimately flooded out, stubbornly refusing to adapt their ancient arks to the requirements of the age. But, recognising that society is in a stage of transition a fact that is plain to any who have eyes to see and ears to hear to exert oneself to the utmost to do away with or to lessen causes of friction that may produce an outbreak of violence, to promote such measures as may smooth the path for long-needed reforms, is a task worthy of the highest patriotism. There is a tendency, following the French example, for the'proletariat to expand as a class until it includes within each nation all those who have a common interest, in that they are the receivers of wages and salaries as distin- guished from the employers, an economic grouping cor- responding to the natural distinction of master and servant. To meet the attack of this class the plutocracy, developing a class consciousness, has tended to organise itself and seek safety in horizontal internationalism. This is a danger which everyone who values the human order in other words, everyone who takes a pride in the progress of mankind through human associations must strive to avert. The present trend of events therefore makes an appeal of a very pressing nature to the instinct of patriotism. However dead that instinct may be among the plutocracy, the English hereditary aristocracy CONCLUSIONS 267 have for the last hundred years furnished many proofs that it still commands from them supreme sacrifice, ever since they first hesitatingly accepted and then rejected the internationalism of the Holy Alliance " of foreign despots." Are they now prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to save themselves and their country from the annihilation which threatens them ? Those who have carefully observed their uneasiness in face of the action of their plutocratic allies, during the strikes of the past eighteen months, cannot be without hope that they will seize the opportunity possibly the last which is now given them. The great sacrifice that is demanded of them is not one which promises immediate glory, it has not any of the dazzling attractions of heroism on the battlefield; it is in its essence that which has been ordained for all those with great possessions who would win spiritual conquests. The people must be given access to the land. "What the hereditary aristo- cracy, dominating a conservative government, did for the people of Ireland, they must do for the people of Great Britain. That they have made the sacrifice in the one case increases the responsibility and makes it easier for them to do it in the other. If the question is argued from the lowest motives, the landed aristocracy are but a millstone round the neck of any political party, so long as their enemies among the middle classes can for their own party ends make common cause with the proletariat in a factitious demand for the " land for the people." On the other hand, it has been demonstrated by recent legislation that no party, in which those claiming directly 268 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY to represent the proletariat are inspired by the doctrines of state-collectivism, has any intention of giving the land to the people ; they mean to acquire it for the State. The reform must therefore be initiated by those who, filled themselves with the human instincts which form a link between men and the land, are alone capable of appreci- ating the strength of a network of peasant proprietorship, covering the country, to withstand the encroachments of the economic order based on industrial needs. That is the first step which must be taken if there is to be established, not a dam against the onrush of proletarian aspirations, as it is sometimes foolishly de- scribed, but a human bulwark to resist the replacement of the existing natural order by one that is even less human. For only those who are paralysed by the danger that threatens them can fail to see that what is at stake, in the contest in which society is now engaged, is far more than the domination of any one class ; it is liberty itself, which will be swallowed up in the tyranny of state-collectivism unless every assistance is given to the working classes to achieve their emancipation through the human order. Those who are chiefly instrumental in carrying out this reform, all who make common cause with the heredi- tary aristocracy in this work, will be impelled by the same patriotic motives which actuate them to further measures for the reconstruction of national unity and to the ultimate realisation of that imperial unity which has ever been an ideal present to their minds. Freedom and self-government will be accepted by them as guiding principles in any policy which is designed to meet the CONCLUSIONS 269 crisis in which this kingdom is now plunged. Freedom of association will by them be viewed as essential to the salvation of the working classes. In this, their most strenuous opponents will be the bureaucracy, the highest product of that intellectual system which is the inveterate enemy of the instinct. Selected from among the most brilliant representatives of academic training, the English bureaucracy has, from a sincere belief in its undoubted intellectual superiority, resisted every instinctive move- ment towards freedom and autonomy. It has always fired the last shot for the retention of autocratic powers by the Mother Country in its government of the Colonies ; it has interpreted Acts of Parliament bestowing powers of local government within the nation so as to retain the maximum of control in its own hands. The spirit of democracy is something entirely alien to its nature and subversive of all that gives it its strength, its efficiency and its unequalled devotion. It will not willingly sur- render any of its powers to the proletariat, and yet its resistance must be overcome if the working classes are not to be driven into regarding state-collectivism, in which they will supply the personnel of a new bureaucracy, as the lesser of two evils. Self-government of the Labour Exchanges so soon as their organisation, which is being so admirably planned, has been completed is necessary to supplement the inevitable conquest of absolute freedom of association by the Trade Unions ; thus, as in France, may a human element be introduced into what would otherwise be an exclusively economic organisation. 270 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY Will the necessary reform be the work of any one political party or combination of parties ? In answer to that question, first let it be noted that the opportunity offered by the conference immediately consequent on King Edward's death was lost, and is not likely to recur, of forming a combination of parties competent to deal with these vital issues. But the final answer depends on the duration of the system of representative government. Politics in the narrow party sense are falling into increasing disrepute, parliamentarism is rapidly becoming discredited ; the debates of the House of Commons excite less and less interest among the readers of daily news- papers and the general public, as they appear to be less and less closely in touch with the actuality of national life. At a critical moment, as we have seen, the working classes were discouraged from seeking direct representa- tion in the legislature and the contemporaneous advent of syndicalism and direct action suggested to their minds a substitute for representative government. But if parlia- mentarism is doomed and the future has some more democratic form of government in store, it may yet ensure itself a further period of supremacy by extensions of the franchise ; by satisfying the consistent demand of the political proletariat for universal manhood suffrage and by recognising the claim, already admitted in theory, of women to equal political rights. By such means might the shocks of sudden change at any rate be trans- formed into a process of gradual transition. If, however, Parliament is to continue to be the nominal director of the national destiny, a party which perceives the most CONCLUSIONS 271 clearly that human interests are above economic and natural interests, and national and imperial needs superior to class exigencies, will surely be that which can best tide us over the present discontent with its threatenings of revolution and violence. But it is from the direct clash of economic interests, in the incidents of the war that the employed have declared on employers, that the greatest danger of a violent revolutionary outbreak is to be feared. A dozen hypotheses can be conjured up in which a strike, similar to those through which the country has recently passed, would develop into a formidable civil disturbance and tax the forces of the State to the utmost to suppress. A stubborn and recalcitrant employer, who turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of the Government and drove starving strikers to desperation, an encounter with the police engaged in protecting blacklegs, in which the working men were successful and broke the spell which is the real strength of the forces of law and order, or a refusal of troops to fire on a riotous mob of workers, as the syndicalists have advised them, these are some of the most ordinary which occur to every mind that has dwelt on the possibilities with which every late situation of tension has been pregnant. An attempt of any great body of workmen, forming a geographical community, to follow the threatened example of Ulster, to set up a divisional government and, seizing the machinery of pro- duction, to work it for their own benefit, would seem more far-fetched had it not been freely discussed in connection with at least one recent strike. But, apart from such 272 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY vague possibilities, it is beyond dispute that the spreading circles of disturbance, covering with greater frequency the" entire nation, bringing all members of one national trade union into a common effort and drawing others into simultaneous and sympathetic action, point to the possible realisation of a concerted national movement of the discontented or oppressed. The very defeats of widespread and repeated strikes conducted by peaceful means, so far from checking the determination to redress deeply-felt disabilities, rather serve to embitter the relations of governed and governing, and to turn the thoughts of the working classes to more effective means of securing their ends. In this connection it may be admitted without discussion that the violent suppression of strikes, sometimes counselled by those who are unable to count the ultimate cost, is a sure means of inciting to revolution unless such suppression is to be followed out to its logical conclusion, and even the semblance of democracy enjoyed by the people of this country replaced by some form of autocratic government or dictatorship. How much more is the use of the army for this purpose to be deplored, particularly at a time when every patriot is convinced that the consent of the electorate to a far more widely spread system of military service is essential to national security, and becomes every day more essential as we approximate more closely to the inexorable limits of naval expansion. It is owing to such considera- tions as these that there is to-day a general hope or ex- pectation that in conciliation or arbitration may be found a way out of the vicious circle of the economic order. CONCLUSIONS 273 Those who put their trust in arbitration or conciliation are sometimes prone to forget that there are two parties to a dispute ; and it has been attempted to show throughout this work that, in the disputes with which it deals, one party has grown to believe that the interests of the two are incompatible. The one party is indis- solubly attached to the existing social organisation ; the abolition of this organisation would imply its own dis- appearance. The other has set out to overthrow this organisation. The one favours arbitration or conciliation because they imply a recognition of its fundamental claims, and at most a modification of the organisation to meet the pressure of new conditions ; the other be- cause by these means may concessions be wrung from the employers which may gradually undermine a position too strong to be captured at the first assault. It is therefore difficult to understand why any intelligent people place reliance on arbitration or conciliation as permanent means of settlement for industrial unrest. Not the least disadvantage of so doing is that it causes them to overlook the incalculable merit undoubtedly possessed by these two means in relation to all that is most immediately dangerous in the situation in which the nation is entangled. For the present purpose arbitration alone need be considered, conciliation only being possible where the dispute is not associated with a conception of class war in the minds of either party. Again, of the two forms of arbitration, that which is known as compulsory may here be ignored, for, compulsion implying enforcement, 18 274 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY we shall not escape from the vicious circle if we contem- plate it as a means of avoiding revolution. There thus remains that form of arbitration to which both parties voluntarily submit. In this it is evident that every- thing depends in the last resort on the personality of the arbitrator. When a nation has a man at its dis- posal capable of serving its interests in such a capacity, in whose judgments it has confidence, it is impossible to exaggerate the extent to which the dangers of revolution may be obviated through a calm and orderly transition from the existing organisation to some new state which is as yet concealed in the uncertainties and mysteries of the future. But the usefulness of such a man depends on the conditions under which the nation views the question which he has to decide. In the first place, it must admit that the stage through which it is passing is, beyond all doubt, one of inevitable transition, and that his task is solely to remove all causes of friction and not to bolster up the existing organisation or to devise another to replace it. The nation must side with him, and not with either of the contending parties. His task, transition from the old order being admitted, will be in the main to arrange for such concessions by the old as will satisfy the instincts pointing to the new, without violent wrestings or sudden dislocations. But if he is to be condemned because he has agreed to any, or to too large or too few, concessions, his position would become untenable unless he be prepared to seize dictatorial powers. The nation that is worthy to be served by such a CONCLUSIONS 275 person will most assuredly lead mankind to the discovery of the next step in the development of the human order of association. For without having resort to a dictator with supreme powers to suspend the constitution the only remedy in cases of extreme national danger con- ceivable in a democratic State to those who thought on politics in an earlier age it will have reconciled personal rule with the democratic instinct. The arbitrator will in a crisis represent in his person the democratic conscience aroused by a clash of interests threatening to obstruct the flow of liberty. He will not suspend the constitution or " silence all the laws," l but he will be as far above the turbulence of party politics and parlia- mentary discussion as the dictator was superior to the wrangling of factions in the panic of national defeat. He may save the nation from revolution. While we have thus arrived at no cut and dried scheme, no tabulated regulations, for the arbitrary settlement of the internal dissensions of this or other European nations, while the movement which we have endeavoured to trace leads further and further away from the practical pro- grammes of political parties, we have, on the other hand, reached no conclusion which points to causes for panic or despair. Bather would it appear that there is reason for hope, and above all for patriotic pride. Great Britain, which has been privileged above all nations to reap the fruits of liberty in the past, would seem once more to have the responsibility laid upon her of so ordering her own affairs that the whole world should benefit. Again 1 Control Social, Book iv. chap. vi. 276 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY she is to profit from the sufferings of France, this time in sympathy and friendship with her ancient enemy. In the achievement of the highest form of human association Great Britain is without a rival, and the reward of Empire is now at last being reaped in the assistance of the daughter nations ; an assistance which is not only to be given in the confirmation and defence of imperial interests, but also in the reconstruction of national unity on the democratic basis which has hitherto eluded mankind. But in this new task which is imposed upon her she will owe her success or her failure not to any one class but to the people, in whom are included, in an ever-growing unity, all classes which have in the past contributed to her greatness. The gravity of the responsibilities thus incurred needs no emphasising ; they will be accepted calmly by a race which has brought so large a portion of the earth within its rule. The impulse which has always urged the British to push forward further and further into the unknown to material conquests, had as its spiritual support a sense of justice and of righteousness. Pat- riotism was founded on both, and has ever striven to restore the balance when the material has outweighed the human. So long as that patriotism is the controlling force, dominating all classes, the supreme instinct in the hour of crisis, no renunciation and no sacrifice will be thought too great in the cause of unity. APPENDICES APPENDIX I THE right of combination was admitted by the decree of August 21, 1790, granting to all citizens " le droit de s'assembler paisiblement et de former entre eux des socie'tie's libres," it was forbidden by the Le Chapelier law of June 14-17, 1791, which provided that "si contre les principes de la liberte* et de la constitution, des citoyens attache's aux memes professions, arts et metiers, prenaient des deliberations, faisaient entre eux des conventions tendant a refuser de concert ou a n'accorder qu'a un prix ddtermine le secours de leur industrie et de leurs travaux, les dites deliberations accompagne'es ou non de serment seraient declarees inconstitutionnelles et attentatoires a la libertd et a la Declaration des droits de 1'homme." This was confirmed by the law of 22 germinal an XI and by Articles 414, 415 and 416 of the Code pe"nal (1810). These articles were replaced in 1864 by the following: "Art. 414. Sera puni d'un emprisonnement de six jours a trois ans, et d'une amende a 16 a 3,000 francs, ou de 1'une de ces deux peines settlement, quiconque, a 1'aide de violences, voies de fait, menaces ou manoeuvre frauduleuses, aura amene ou maintenu, tente" d'amener ou de maintenir une cessation concertee de travail, dans le but de forcer la hausse ou la baisse des salaires, ou de porter atteinte au libre exercice de 1'industrie et du travail. "Art. 415. Lorsque les faits punis par 1'article precedent 277 278 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY auront < : U' commis par suite d'un plan concerte, lea coupables pourront etre mis, par 1'arret ou le jugement, sous la surveillance do la haute police pendant deux ans au nn ii i is et cinq ans au plus. "Art. 416. Seront punis d'un emprisonnement de six jours a trois mois et d'une amende de 16 a 200 francs, ou de 1'une de ces deux peines seulements, tous ouvriers, patrons et entrepreneurs d'ouvrage qui, a 1'aide d'amendes, defenses, proscriptions, interdictions prononc^es par suite d'un plan concerto 1 , auront porte* atteinte au libre exercice de 1'industrie ou du travail." The right of combination admitted by these articles was limited by Art. 291 of the Code pe"nal and Art. 1 and 2 of the law of April 10, 1834, which withheld the right of holding meetings and required government authorisation for associations of more than 20 persons. The right of combining on the same terms as masters was, however, accorded by a ministerial decree of March 31, 1868. Art. 416 was abolished by the law of March 21, 1884, of which the following are the principal clauses : " Art. 2. Les syndicate ou associations professionals, meme de plus de vingt personnes exercant la meme profession, des metiers similaires, ou des professions connexes concourant a Pe'tablissement de produits determines, pourront se constituer librement sans 1'autorisation du Gouvernement. "Art. 3. Les syndicats professionals ont exclusivement pour objet 1'etude et la defense des interets e"conomiques, industriels, commerciaux et agricoles. "Art. 4. Les fondateurs de tout syndicat professional devront d^poser les statuts et les noms de ceux qui, a un titre quelconque, seront charges de 1'administration ou de la direction. Les membres de tout syndicat professionnel charges de l'administration ou de la direction de ce syndicat devront etre franfais, et, jouir de leurs droits civils. APPENDIX II 279 "Art. 5. Les syndicats professionnels regulierement con- stitue"s, d'apres les prescriptions de la pr^sente loi, pourront librement se concerter pour I'e'tude et la defense de leurs interets ^conomiques, industriels, commerciaux et agricoles. "Art. 7. Tout membre d'un syndicat professionnel peut se retirer a tout instant de 1'association, nonobstant toute clause contraire, mais sans prejudice du droit pour le syndicat de r^clamer la cotisation de 1'ann^e courante. . . ." APPENDIX II ADMINISTRATIVE Regulations of The International regarding general Statistics of Labour : 1. The General Council is to enforce Article 6 of the Rules relating to general statistics of the working class, and the Resolution of the Geneva Congress, 1866, on the same subject. 2. Every local branch is bound to appoint a special Committee of Statistics, so as to be always ready, within the limit of its means, to answer any question which may be put to it by the Federal Council or Committee or its country or by the General Council. It is recommended to all branches to remunerate the secretaries of the Committees of Statistics, considering the general benefit the working class will derive from their labour. 3. On the first of August of each year the Federal Councils or Committees will transmit the materials collected in their respective countries to the General Council, 280 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY which, in its turn, is to elaborate them into a general report, to be laid before the Congresses or Conferences annually held in the month of September. 4. Trades' Unions and International branches refusing to give the information required shall be reported to the General Council, which will take action thereupon. 5. The Resolutions of the German Congress, 1866, alluded to in Article 1 of this division, are the following : One great International combination of efforts will be a statistical inquiry into the situation of the working classes of all civilised countries to be instituted by the working classes themselves. To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known. By initiating so great a work, the working-men will prove their ability to take their own fate into their own hands. The Congress therefore proposes that in each locality where branches of our Association exist, the work be immediately commenced, and evidence collected on the different points specified in the subjoined scheme of inquiry; the Congress invites the working-men of Europe and the United States of America to co-operate in gathering the elements of the statistics of the working class; reports and evidence to be forwarded to the General Council. The General Council shall elaborate them into a report, adding the evidence as an appendix. This report, together with its appendix, shall be laid before the next Annual Congress, and, after having received its sanction, be printed at the expense of the Association. General scheme of inquiry, which may of course be modified by each locality. 1. Industry, name of. 2. Age and sex of the employed. 3. Number of the employed. 4. Salaries and wages : (a) apprentices ; (b) wages by the day or piece work ; scale paid by middle men. Weekly, yearly average. 5. (a) APPENDIX III 281 Hours of work in factories, (b) The hours of work with small employers and in home work, if the busi- ness be carried on in those different modes, (c) Night- work and day-work. 6. Meal-times and treatment. 7. Sort of workshop and work ; overcrowding, defect- ive ventilation, want of sunlight, use of gaslight, cleanliness, etc. etc. 8. Effect of employment upon the physical condition. 9. Moral condition. Education. 10. State of trade : whether season trade, or more or less uniformly distributed over the year ; whether greatly fluctuating ; whether exposed to foreign competition ; whether destined principally for home or foreign consumption, etc. APPENDIX III ANTI-MILITARIST resolution of the Toulouse Congress of the C. G. T. (1910) : Le Congres de Toulouse, confirmant les decisions de Marseille et d' Amiens ; Considerant que I'arme'e tend de plus en plus a remplacer a 1'usine, aux champs, a 1'atelier, le travailleur en greve quand elle n'a pas pour role que de fusilier comme a Narbonne, Raon-1'Etape et Villeneuve-Saint-Georges ; Considerant que 1'exercice du droit de greve ne sera qu'une duperie tant que les soldats accepteront de se substituer a la main-d'oeuvre civile et consentiront a massacrer les travailleurs, le Congres, se tenant sur le terrain pure- ment e'conomique, prdconise 1'instruction des jeunes pour que du jour ou ils auront revetu la livre'e militaire ils soient bien convaincus qu'ils n'en restent pas moins membres de la famille ouvriere et que dans les conflits 282 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY entre le capital et le travail, i 1 - ont pour devoir de ne pas fa ire usage de leurs armes contre leurs freres les travailleurs ; Charge le Comite* confederal de prendre toutes les dispositions n^cessaires pour organiser me'thodiquement et d'une facon continue cette propagande dans le sens indiqm'- par 1'ordre du jour Pericat. En consequence, les Syndicats sont engages a constituer une caisse du sou du soldat; il decide que les syndicats devront dresser une liste des membrea du regiment avec toutes les indications utiles ; le double de cette liste devra etre envoye" au secretaire de la section des Bourses, a la C. G. T. Le secretaire de cette section devra a son tour dresser une liste des soldats syndiqu&s, par centre ou region, et adresser cette liste aux Bourses ou Unions des Syndicats interessds. Les soldats sont invite's frequenter les Bourses du Travail. Les secretaires de Bourse auront a viser les cartes confeder- ales des soldats. Les organisations confederees ont pour devoir d'intensifier la propagande par organisations, reunions, par brochures, journaux, papillons et tous les autres moyens. Considerant que les frontieres geographiques sont modifiables au gre des possedants, les travailleurs ne reconnaissent que les frontieres economiques separant les deux classes ennemies : la classe ouvriere et la classe capitaliste. Le Congres rappelle la formule de 1'internationale : " Les travailleurs n'ont pas de patrie ! " Qu'en consequence, toute guerre n'est qu'un attentat contre la classe ouvriere, qu'elle est un ruoyen sanglant et terrible de diversion ii ses revendications. Le Congres declare qu'il faut, au point de vue international, faire 1'instruction des travailleurs, arm qu'en cas de guerre entre puissances les travailleurs repondent a la declaration de guerre par une declaration de greve generale revolutionnaire. APPENDIX IV 283 APPENDIX IV THE following authenticated cases of sweating, typical of workers of different ages and circumstances and in different trades, have kindly been furnished by Mr. J. J. Mallon, Secretary of the National Anti-Sweating League. CASE No. 1. Widow with three children dependent on her. Makes and lines knicker trousers at 9d. a dozen, finding her own cotton. Can make and finish three dozen in nineteen hours, which, after 3d. has been paid for cotton, leaves her with 2s., about l^d. an hour. In order to earn enough to keep her family this woman works very excessive hours, and in some cases as many as nineteen or twenty a day. CASE No. 2. Woman, six children, invalid husband. Finishes knicker-bockers. Paid Is. per dozen, out of which she has to pay ld. per dozen for cotton and gimp. Helped by her husband, she can make one dozen in seven hours. CASE No. 3. Brush drawing. Woman aged sixty-four, but vigorous. Engaged in brush drawing that is, drawing the bristles into the brush back and securing them there with wire. Paid 6 Jd. per thousand holes. The woman works four hours to fill a thousand holes. This worker has been at the trade since she was a little girl and is a very skilful operative. CASE No. 4. Woman and daughter make underclothes. " White petticoats with over flounce and two rows lace insertion, two bands and deep lace at bottom, gauged 284 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY and laid on skirt which is hommed at bottom, finished with band, taps, etc.," Is. 5d. a dozen. This worker, though quick and experienced, cannot make a petticoat in less than fifty-five minutes. She therefore is paid slightly more than Id. an hour. She has to provide her own machine and cotton. CASE No. 5. Woman with four children dependent on her, makes boys' nailed boots. She receives Is. 9d. for half a dozen pairs, out of which she has an outlay for rivets, etc., amounting to about 6d. This woman will work fourteen or fifteen hours a day in order to earn 10s. a week. She is most desperately industrious, and years of hard work have worn her almost to the bone. CASE No. 6. Woman, with invalid husband and con- sumptive son, makes the uppers of ladies' boots. Receives Is. 3d. per dozen pairs out of which she has to pay for thread and sundries 4d. per dozen pairs. The work done is varied and considerable, including the putting of the parts of the " upper " together, the insertion of linings, the making of buttonholes and the attaching of buttons. She will make a dozen pairs of uppers in about nine hours. This is a particularly moving case : the woman having first experienced some years ago the breakdown of her husband, and within the last year that of her son just when he had begun to earn good wages as a cutter in a tailoring factory. To these may be added three extracts from daily newspapers, the first from the London Star of January 1912, the second from the issue of April 26, 1909, of the same journal, and the third from the Daily News. During a Lambeth inquest yesterday on a three-months-old baby, the mother, Mrs. Clara Palmer, Lollard Street, Lambeth, APPENDIX IV 285 said she was a machine " layer-on," and earned 8s. 6d. a week, working from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Coroner (Mr. Troutbeck) : Is that true? Yes, Is. 5d. a day. It is incredible. That is not 2d. an hour. It was stated that the child appeared to have been very well cared for. The coroner said he had no idea that such low wages were paid to women. It was dreadful to hear that a mother had to work such hours up to a short time before the child was born. The jury returned a verdict of Natural Death. A widow's struggle to exist on the pittance obtained by making Government clothing was narrated at the Westminster Court, when a respectably dressed woman of 56, Elizabeth O'Brien, living in a back room at Southwark, was charged with attempting to take her life. On the late night of Saturday week the defendant threw herself into the river from the south side of Lambeth Bridge. It was high tide at the time, and she was rescued unconscious by Sergt. Ludman, of the Thames Police, who from their galley heard the splash. When she had recovered she said that her husband had been dead nine months, and that working hard since at making police trousers and Territorials' uniforms she could not earn enough to keep herself in food and pay 2s. 6d. a week rent. The court missionary, Mr. Barnett, said defendant, a most respectable woman, had been living with her sister, practically herself an invalid. For the last six months defendant had been working at a clothing contractors in Bond Street, Vauxhall, as a tailoress. The hours of employment were 10 a day from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m. with intervals for meals. All this poor woman could earn by continuous work was something less than a shilling a day. Inquiry had been made from the employer, whose fore- woman admitted that as a rather slow worker Mrs. O'Brien had 286 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY only earned two, three, or four shillings a week six shillings at most if she made full time. The rate of pay, Mr. Barnett added, was 3|d. "for basting and finishing " police trousers nearly four hours' needlework. A farthing a pair was paid for putting foot-straps on cavalry overalls, but the women on this hard work had to use an awl, and it took at least half an hour. The price for the handwork to make right out Territorial riding breeches was 8d. The woman could not possibly make two pairs in a day. Mr. Horace Smith : It is obvious that it means starvation unless she is helped. The missionary added that the son of the defendant, who was in the Dragoon Guards, had sent her 2s. a week out of his pay- " Keep a good heart," said the magistrate sympathetically, as he discharged the accused. " We will see what we can do to help you." Tearfully the defendant said she thanked everyone for the kindness extended to her. A story of the struggles of the poor in the East-end was told to the Stepney Coroner yesterday, during an inquest on the infant of Florence Knight, whose husband deserted her twelve months ago. The woman, who had a thin haggard face, though only young, said she tried to support herself by washing and charring work, but she never earned more than 7s. a week. Witness's mother looked after the child, but she was herself hard up. About three weeks ago deceased had a fall. Eliza Hales, mother of the previous witness, whose appear- ance also showed signs of poverty, said she had worked at trouser finishing. A Juror: Does that pay well? I have heard something about it. Witness : I get twopence a pair. (Sensation.) I have often APPENDIX IV 287 worked until four o'clock in the morning to get a crust of bread. Witness mentioned the firm for whom she worked, and said it was English. The Foreman of the Jury : Splendid ; and this is in our fine country. Please note that this is English sweating. The Coroner : Was the work brought to you ? Witness : No sir, I had to go and fetch it and take it home again. Then, of course, the deceased was left alone ? Yes ; but I always hurried home to see to it. The doctor said that death was due to brain disease conse- quent on middle ear disease, accelerated by want of cleanliness and neglect. The mother (re-called) said that when she took the deceased to the doctor's she gave him the last sixpence she had, and went without her tea. The Coroner : No doubt you have had a terrible struggle, but you could have got the parish doctor. The Mother : I should have lost my work if I had stopped away from my place. A Juror : Where is the man that brought the mother into such a condition ? I suppose he goes scot-free, whilst his wife and children starve. If she went into the workhouse he might be found and brought to book. The jury returned a verdict of " Death from natural causes," and declined to express any further opinion. This case, typical of the treatment which the most helpless of the sweated workers have to bear, was investigated by a representative of the National Anti-Sweating League, who found that the trousers worker laboured very often from day- break until no longer able to see the garment upon which she was engaged, and that she earned 5s. a week. When food was lacking she sustained herself entirely upon weak tea, which she sometimes drank to the extent of fourteen cups a day. At night her covering was the trousers which were being finished. With much plying the needle the worker's hand had become 288 THE WORKER AND HIS COUNTRY misshapen. As the result of the publication of the particulars of her case she had lost her employment, and her fear was that before she could regain work the hand would lose such little elasticity as it still possessed, and would stiffen and set in its crooked condition. Printed by MORRISON Si QIBB LIMITED, Edinburgh SELECTIONS FROM MR. EDWARD ARNOLD'S LIST OF NEW AND RECENT BOOKS NEW 6/- NOVELS The Encounter. B y ANNE DOUGLAS SEDG. WICK, Author of " Tante? Franklin Kane," etc. Second Impression. is the author's first long novel since her great success, " Xante," _ which was published nearly three years ago ; she is one of the few leading writers who do not attempt to exhaust their talent by over- production. At the same time it is noticeable that her literary develop- ment progresses in striking fashion, each fresh work marking a distinct advance this new novel perhaps even more than those which have preceded it. The author has the gift, shared with Mr. Henry James, of dramatically interpreting an idea. In " Tante " the idea was displayed in the amazing vanity and selfishness of a great woman musician whose real character is unfolded with relentless skill. The theme of her new novel is the reaction in the mind of a girl of powerful brain and strong character of the ideas of three " intellectuals " who display great diversity of mind and temperament. They all fall in love with her and make their advances at first through the medium of the various intellectual wares they have to offer. The action of the tale shows how these have to be thrown overboard, with the consequences, enabling the author to give the most extraordinarily subtle and penetrating analysis of character we have had from her, as well as an exceedingly clever presentment of certain phases of modern thought. There is an excellent foil to the intellectual element in the shape of a charming American lady, whose apparently simple remarks have the effect of getting much nearer the truth than all the theories of the philosophers. LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W. 2 MR. EDWARD ARNOLD'S NEW AND RECENT BOOKS NEW 6/- FICTION The Wise Virgins. By LEONARD WOOLF. " *~rHE WISE VIRGINS " is a story by the author of " The Village in the Jungle," but, whereas the latter dealt with a jungle village in Ceylon, the scene of his new novel is laid in London. The story is concerned with two very different sides of London life, a circle of highly sophisticated, intellectual and artistic people, and an unsophisticated suburban family. Between the two moves a young artist who carries the " modern " ideas of the intellectuals into the un intellectual heart of a suburban young lady. Love helps the young lady to believe implicitly and to act upon what to the intellectual were merely words and opinions. The tragedy or the comedy that results is unfolded in some vivid pictures and character drawing. The Hole of the Pit. By ADRIAN ROSS (Arthur R. Ropes). A LTHOUGH Adrian Ross is widely known as a prolific and successful \_ writer of light lyrics for the stage, he has also done much literary and historical work as Arthur R. Ropes, late Fellow of King's College, Cam- bridge. In " The Hole of the Pit " he has written a tale of supernatural terror, set in the times of the Great Rebellion, and appropriately dedicated to Dr. M. R. James, Provost of King's, the author of two famous volumes of weird ghost stories. The City of Under. By EPELTNE RTND. MISS RYND is the author of " Mrs. Green," but her new story is in quite a different vein from that popular work. It is, in fact, rather difficult to assign it to any definite category of fiction. The story is neither a fairy- story, nor an allegory, nor a modern story, nor a grown-up's story, nor a children's story ; and yet it is all of them put together. Many of us can appreciate what this concourse of qualities means, and know that well done it provides delightful literary fare. That Miss Rynd has done it well is firmly claimed. An idea of the underlying motive of the book may be gleaned from the following passage in the introduction : " Only one thing is certain move out on your road, and before you have gone half a mile you will find the whole world thronging along it with you the world of the long-ago past and the world of the changing future faces unknown to you, forces unguessed by you, chances undreamed of moving and meeting and passing beside you and carrying you on every step of your road. But leave things be in this black world and sit on the doorsteps of Down Street with old Mother Letitlie all your days and there, without a dream or a friend, you will end them. LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W. MR. EDWARD ARNOLD'S NEW AND RECENT BOOKS 3 NEW 6/- FICTION Aliens. B y WILLIAM MCFEE, Author of An Ocean Tramp" A WILD and lurid prologue introduces some of the "aliens," an artist and his wife, and a journalist who lives with them, English residents in New Jersey, present by chance at the wreck and burning up of an aeroplane near New York. These three looking out on the world with kindly humorous inquisitive eyes become interested in a neighbour, Mrs. Carville, obviously an Italian with two small children named Giuseppe Mazzini and Benvenuto Cellini. Is there a Mr. Carville? Who and what and where is he ? But there is no mystery about him, and when at length the journalist meets him, he turns out to be merely a captain in the merchant service, unobtrusive, respectable, and outwardly commonplace. The journalist wants to know why the children have such unusual names. He pays them several visits before the question is answered, for the answer is the story of his life. And as his sympathetic hearers (and commentators) are held by it, so, we venture to think, will the reader be. The interest lies partly in the gradual self-revelation, half- unconscious, half-deliberate, of the narrator, and his shrewd comments on many aspects of the "genteel civilization" which moulded his early career, and which he does not love ; partly in the story itself. Drama and unity are supplied by his younger brother, his antithesis in every respect, whose sinister influence dominates him from his youth onwards, till the brother meets an appropriate fate in the burning aeroplane. And throughout there is present the romance of the sea. To all admirers of Joseph Conrad we confidently commend this book. The Recoiling Force. ByA.M.CHAMPNErs, Author of Bride Elect: 1 Lockett's Lea. By SIBELL PANSITTART. r T^HIS novel by a new writer deals in an original and interesting manner J_ with the problems of heredity. Barbara Lynn. B y EMILY JENKINSON, Author of " Silverwool" and The Soul of Unrest." Daily Chronicle. ' ' This is a delightful and fascinating story, a domestic romance of absorbing interest. ' ' Punch. " Miss Jenkinson's previous story showed that she had a rare sympathy with nature and a still rarer gift of expressing it. ' Barbara Lynn ' does much to strengthen that impression. It is an unusually imaginative novel, which has confirmed me in my previous impression that Miss Emily Jenkinson is a writer upon whom to keep the appreciative eye. ' ' LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W. 4 MR. EDWARD ARNOLD'S NEW AND RECENT BOOKS New Book by Captain Harry Graham. The Complete Sportsman. By HARRT GRAHAM, Author of "The Perfect Gentleman," "Ruthless Rhymes," etc. Illustrated by LEWIS BAUMER. 6*. ALMOST every branch of sport is lightly touched upon, and the author's genial good-humoured chaff delights without ever offending. BY THE SAME AUTHOR Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes. Wtth Illustrations by the Hon. G. GATHORNE-HARDT. Crown $>vo., oblong. 2s. 6d. net. Familiar Faces, with 16 illustrations b y GEORGE MORROW. Medium 8vo. 31. 6d. net. Misrepresentative Women, and Other Verses. With Illustrations. Fcap. \to. 5*. net. The Perfect Gentleman, illustrated by LEWIS BAUMER. 2s. 6d. net. The Muse in Motley. With 24 Illustrations by LEWIS BAUMER. Fcap. tfo. 3*. 6d. net. The Promenade Ticket. A Lay Record of Concerts. By A. H. SIDGWICK, Author of Walking Essays." 3*. 6d. net. npHIS book is an imaginary record of the experiences of a group of ordinary people, not being experts or critics, at the Promenade Concerts. It is in the form of a diary, each day's record being written by one of the five characters. These five treat each other's views and much of the staple concert music with complete frankness and occasional irreverence, and write without any formality either of style or content. The book can be appreciated without any technical knowledge of music, and is emphatically addressed to the amateur rather than the professional . It deals particularly with the familiar and standard works, and contains full-length sketches of some of the most familiar. It can be safely recom- mended to any amateur who likes comparing his experiences with others', and to any professional who likes to feel his superiority over amateurs. LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W. MR. EDWARD ARNOLD'S NEW AND RECENT BOOKS 5 NOTABLE BOOKS OF REMINISCENCES Recollections of Bar and Bench. By the Right Hon. DISCOUNT ALfERSTONE, G.C.M.G., Lord Chief Justice of England from 1900 to 1912. With Portrait in Photogravure and Illustrations from Sketches by the late SIR FRANK LOCK WOOD. One Vol. I2s. 6d. net. announcement of a volume containing the autobiographical J_ reminiscences of the Lord Chief Justice of England may well arouse the greatest possible interest. Within the last fifty years there has been no more popular figure in the social, legal, and sporting world than that of ' ' Dicky Webster, ' ' as Lord Alverstone was once so familiarly called, who now tells the story of his life in these absorbingly interesting pages. Days of My Years. By sir MELVILLE MACNAGHTEN, formerly chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, Scotland Yard. . Containing the inner history of the most famous crimes during the last thirty years. One vol. I2s. 6d. net. book is one, indeed, that should prove of quite extraordinary _ interest to all classes of readers, whether they desire information as to our methods of criminal investigation or justly seek for excitement in the recollections of a super-detective. Pages from an Unwritten Diary. By Sir CHARLES 7ILLIERS STANFORD, the well-known Musical Composer. With Portraits and Illustrations. One vol. I2s. 6d. net. A DELIGHTFUL volume full of Irish humour and great musical value. Although the chief interest of the book, as is natural, centres in its musical contents, it is by no means confined to them : the Bar, the Church, and the scientific and medical professions in Ireland have pro- vided the author with much interesting and humorous material. Student life in Cambridge in the seventies has given him the opportunity of making thumb nail sketches of many eminent men, and his reminiscences of leading musicians whom he personally knew Brahms, Joachim, Kiel, von Biilow, Reinecke, and many more are of much interest to music- lovers. Friends and Memories. By MAUDE VALERIE WHITE. One vol. \2s. bd. net. A THOROUGHLY amusing volume of feminine recollections. The author, who is well-known for her charming songs, has an immense stock of good stories and a racy and entertaining style. LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W. 6 MR. EDWARD ARNOLD'S NEW AND RECENT BOOKS Seventy Years of Irish Life. By w. R. LE FANU. A new edition of this classic book, which, first published in 1893, continues to have a regular sale. Popular edition. Paper covers, is. net ; cloth y 2s. net. Bill : A Bushman. Edited by CHARLES H. s. MATTHEWS, Author of "A Parson in the Australian Bush." Illustrated. 3*. 6d. net. BILL, a genuine bushman, and his Editor first met some years ago on board a White Star Liner, when the former was returning from the South African War and the latter going out to help to found a Bush Brother- hood in New South Wales. They struck up a warm friendship at once in Bill's language they were "mates from the jump." The Editor returned to England after five years in the Bush. Some six years later Bill worked his passage home in a German boat to Hamburg, from which place he ran over to give his old mate, who had settled down in a Sussex Rectory, a call, and promised to write out the story of his adventurous life. This book is the result. The Wood People and Others. By MAUD D. HAPILAND. Illustrated by HARRY ROUNTREE. THOSE who would adventure into the wild places of our Islands and gain a more intimate acquaintance with the denizens, both indigenous and migratory, cannot do so in a pleasanter way than under the guidance of Miss Haviland. The sketches contained in "The Wood People " describe in story form episodes in the life-history of various birds and beasts, and reveal on the part of the author not only an exact know- ledge of natural history, but also a sympathetic understanding of the feelings and motives of animals. At the same time she leaves the animals as they are, and does not try to endow them with "super" animal or semi-human qualities. Ye Sundial Book. By T. GEOFFRET w. HENSLOW, M.A. With 400 Illustrations. Royal Svo. Handsomely bound^ I Of. 6d. net. MR. HENSLOW'S handsome book is mainly made up of representa- tions of more than 400 sundials, charmingly drawn in black and white by Miss D. Hartley, for which he has written verses. All the sun- dials that figure in the work are dials that actually exist, for the most part in this country, with a few American and Continental ones. LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W. MR. EDWARD ARNOLD'S NEW AND RECENT BOOKS ? Hill Birds of Scotland. By SETON GORDON, Author of " The Charm of the Hills" etc. Illustrated from the Author's Photographs. I2s. 6d. net. MR. GORDON is recognized as one of the highest authorities on the birds of the hills ; and he has made a life-study of them and their ways. He has spent all hours of the day and night at all seasons of the year watching the habits of these birds. A great deal of the information given in this book is quite new and original. Poultry Husbandry. By EDWARD BROWN, F.L.S.y President of the International Association of Poultry Instructors and Investigators. Fully Illustrated. Demy Svo. 8s. 6d. net. A THOROUGHLY up-to-date standard text-book on its subject. In it will be found a vast amount of new material, and special attention has been given to future developments, whether on extensive or intensive lines. Utility Poultry-Keeping. By ELLEN c. DA7IES. With Illustrations. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. net. The Horse : Its Origin and Development. Combined with Stable Practice. By Colonel R. F. MET SET- THOMPSON. Illustrated. 155. net. Times. "Contains the ultimate word of Western ' horse- sense ' on training, breeding, and veterinary science." A Manual of Toy DogS. How to Breed, Rear, and Feed Them. By Mrs. LESLIE WILLIAMS. Fully Illustrated. 2s. net. The Sport of Shooting. B y OWEN JONES. With Illustrations. lOs. 6d. net. A Gamekeeper's Notebook. By OWEN JONES and MARCUS WOODWARD. With Photogravure Illustrations, js. 6d. net. The Corinthian Yachtsman's Handbook. By FRANCIS B. COOKE. With numerous Illustrations. Demy Svo. IGJ. 6d. net. LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W. 6 MR. EDWARD ARNOLD'S NEW AND RECENT BOOKS FOR THE GARDENER Gardens : Their Form and Design. By the VISCOUNTESS WOLSELEY. fully Illustrated by Miss M. G. CAMPION and the Author. One vol. 12s. 6tl. net. nr*HIS volume, which is beautifully got up and illustrated, deals with JL form and line in the garden, a subject comparatively new in England. The garden lover is led through gardens old and new, public and private, from the large domain of a " stately home " to the miniature surroundings of a cottage residence, and though the book is eminently instructive, the reader never feels that he is being educated. It suggests simple, inexpen- sive means the outcome of practical knowledge and experience for achieving charming results in gardens of all sizes. Adventures Among Wild Flowers. By JOHN TREVENA. Illustrated, -js. 6d. net. r "T*HIS popular novelist appears in a new role, as the author of a J. delightful volume, in which he describes his personal adventures in search of Alpine and other flowers, and incidentally gives much valuable information about their habits and culture. My Rock Garden B y REGINALD FARRER. Illustrated. Js. 6d. net. Alpines and Bog Plants. By REGINALD FARRER. With Illustrations. >js. 6d. net. A Book about RoseS. By the late Very Rev. S. RETNOLDS HOLE, Dean of Rochester. With Coloured Plates. 3*. 6d. Memories of the Months. By the Right Hon. Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart. Five Volumes. With Photogravure Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo. Each Js. 6d. LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W- Date Due OCT 4 1962 OCT 1 1962 Library Bureau Cat. No. 1137