ill 
 
 &1T 
 
 H n I mil H n I i I In Hii I ill I i
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 '1
 
 '^H'* 
 
 THE LABOUR DAY. 
 
 Protection and Free Trade 
 
 From the Workman^s 
 Point of View* 
 
 M. MALTMAN BAERIE. 
 
 £onaon : 
 
 George 'Vickers, 172 Strand, W.C. 
 1905.
 
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 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. i^lvLi 
 
 ^ r^HE major portion of the matter contained in 
 
 ^ these pages formed a paper which was read 
 I- 
 *^ before the Aberdeen Trades Council fifteen years ago 
 
 ^ and afterwards printed and pubHshed by that body. 
 
 Of 
 
 3 Other portions appeared at different times in the 
 
 2 " Nineteenth Century " and other reviews, and are 
 
 za reproduced here with the express permission of the 
 
 o editors of these pubhcations. The remainder is frcsli 
 
 UJ 
 
 o 
 
 matter, written in relation to the present tariff 
 
 -^_ reform campaign, and is now published for the 
 
 ^ first time. 
 
 " Springfield," 
 
 South Norwood, 
 
 March, 190.5 
 
 /% t\>^^ ^ r\ ^
 
 THE LABOUR DAY. 
 
 -♦^^- 
 
 HMONGST men of all schools and all parties there is 
 general agreement that the question of the condition 
 of the people is one of the most important that can 
 occnpy the thoughts or engage the attention of man- 
 kind. It is true, of course, that the words " condition " and 
 "people" mean different things to different minds. The theo- 
 logian, when he speaks of the " condition " of liis flock, is thinking 
 of their spiritual state. To the physician the " condition " of his 
 patient relates solely to the health of mind and body ; while, 
 to the political economist, the woi-ds " condition of the people " 
 mean their material possessions, economic circumstances, and general 
 surroundings. The comparative importance of these three con- 
 ditions is the subject of much controversy. If one has not 
 health of mind and body, all other possessions are of but little 
 value. Yet it is not to be forgotten that poverty is often the 
 cause, and always an aggravation, of mental and physical suffering. 
 Again, it was said by One of old, who spake as never man spake, 
 " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
 his own soul ? " Nothing, truly ; yet, as in the case of ill health, 
 so, also, in the case of sin, it is not to be forgotten that poverty 
 is often the cause. Both for myself and for all mankind do I most 
 ardently desire perfect health alike of soul, of mind, and of body. 
 But, with all reverence and humility, I hold that the possession 
 of material wealth, in sufficient abundance to supply all our 
 physical wants, is a great aid to the possession of these blessings. 
 Indeed, I go further and say that it is an almost indispensable 
 necessary. I am not speaking of great riches— for these, in turn, 
 also tempt to vice — but of a competency as defined above. Nor 
 do I say that poverty and bodily health, or poverty and moral 
 excellence, are absolutely incompatible. I only say that they are 
 very difficult and very rare combinations; and that competency 
 and bodily health, competency and virtue, are much easier and
 
 b The Labour Day. 
 
 more frequently to be found together. I do not anticipate that 
 many people will dissent from these conclusions. They are, in 
 fact, evident to every observant mind. But if anyone is in doubt 
 he will tiud them amply confirmed by official and unquestioned 
 statistics. The official returns from our prisons show that 
 almost the whole of their inmates come from the poorer section 
 of the community. The test of education, although not conclusive, 
 is a fixirly true one. Not many wealthy men or women are quite 
 uneducated, and the proportion of illiterates in our prisons is so 
 great as almost to pass belief. It is quite true that outside, in the 
 general community, the poorer section is much more numerous 
 than the well-to-do, and that therefore it would be only natural 
 that their numbers inside the prisons should also be greater. But 
 the proportions are not the same in both places. Out of every ten 
 men one passes in the street, at least one is in affluent circum- 
 stances. Out of every thousand inmates of our prisons, at least 
 nine hundred and ninety have come from the poorer class. These 
 figures are, I think, conclusive evidence that poverty and crime, so 
 frequently found together, stand in large measure in the relation of 
 cause and effect. I am aware, of course, of the counter argument 
 that poverty is, in many cases, not the cause, but the result, of 
 crime ; and there is undoubtedly a great deal of truth in it. In 
 many, many cases poverty is the result, and not the cause, of crime. 
 That is undeniable. But, making the fullest possible allowance 
 for all these cases, it is certain that they form but a small 
 percentage of the whole, and that the vast majority are of the 
 opposite kind. This the education test proves conclusively. In 
 the cases where poverty is not the inciting cause the criminal 
 usually belongs to the well-to-do classes; these classes are almost 
 all educated ; and the prison returns tell us how very few of these 
 are within the walls. It may be said that the poor commit many 
 sins and crimes not due to their poverty, such for example, as 
 spring from drunkenness and animal passion. But that argument, 
 upon e.xamination, is found not to go very far; for we cannot help 
 remembering that drunkenness is itself very often an indirect 
 result of poverty and miserable surroundings, and that wealth and 
 education usually refine the titste and give to their possessor such 
 a measure of self-respect and power of self-restraint as urge and 
 enable him to control his mere animal propensities. Wherefore it
 
 The Labour Day. 7 
 
 seems, to me at any rate, after considering the question from every 
 point of view, that poverty is the great enemy ; and for that 
 reason, as well as because 1 am neither physician nor theologian, I 
 shall, in these pages, discuss the question of the condition of the 
 people from the material or economic standpoint only. 
 
 We have seen that, in speaking of the condition of the people, 
 the word "condition" has different meanings in different minds. It 
 is the same with the word '' people." Technically, of course, the 
 people of a country are the whole of its inhabitants, from its highest 
 ruler to its lowest pauper, criminal, or slave. But that is not, as 
 we all know, the sense in which the word is ordinarily used. It is 
 ordinarily used, in this country, at least, to denote more particularly 
 the poorer, or working, sections of the community, at times including 
 the middle class or, at least, a portion thereof Rarely, if ever, is it 
 used in its strict and proper sense, namely, as comprising the whole 
 population. In practice, it is recognised that the nation is divided 
 into three great social classes, the upper, the middle, and the lower ; 
 the line that divides the first from the second and third being 
 " birth " or " descent " ; the gulf that separates the third from the 
 two others being its poverty. It is the last-named, the working 
 class, that alone requires help or needs consideration ; the other 
 two, the middle and upper classes, can take care of themselves. 
 Wherefore it results that, when we say that the question of the 
 condition of the people is one of the most important that can 
 occupy our thoughts, we mean, by "the condition of the people," 
 the economic condition of the working class. 
 
 Let us now consider what is this condition, this economic con- 
 dition of the working class, that demands and deserves our atten- 
 tion. It is, admittedly, a condition of hardship, of privations, of 
 life-long suffering. At the top, no doubt, thei-e are many men of 
 the working class, men of exceptional ability and character, who 
 earn what are called good wages and Vvho are blessed with continu- 
 ous good health which enables them to keep constantly employed, 
 and whose lives, therefore, are tolerably comfortable. But these, 
 after all, are very few, in comparison with the vast bulk of their 
 fellows who have neither their health nor their ability, and whose 
 lives are a wear}^ round of exhausting daily toil and a prolonged 
 struggle for existence. The long and laborious task, the scanty 
 and inferior food, the wretched and insanitary homes, the insuffi-
 
 8 The Labour Day. 
 
 cient clothing, the corroding anxieties — any one of these would 
 suffice to poison life ; combined they reduce their victims to a con- 
 dition of living death. They starve and stunt the body, enfeeble 
 the mind, and enshroud the childho(jd of the workers in an atmos- 
 phere of pollution which is doubtless responsible for many after- 
 lives of crime and degradation. The misery of the workers is 
 indeed very great and very real, although the fact is often loudly 
 denied by many of the wealthy and well-to-do. Rut one simple 
 test proves the insincerity of these denials. What wealthy or well- 
 to-do man ever voluntarily divests himself of his possessions and 
 descends into the ranks of the workers 1 Not one. On the con- 
 trary, when that wealth is taken from its possessors by misfortune, 
 as sometimes happens, how often do we see the dispossessed com- 
 mitting suicide rather than face the dreadful horrors of poverty. 
 
 Such then is the condition of the worker. How is that con- 
 dition to be amended 1 To answer that question we must first 
 ascertain why the worker is in that condition, what is the cause of 
 his economic subjection. The cause lies ujDon the surft\ce : it is 
 competition, the competition of his fellow- worker. The supply of 
 labour power on sale in the world labour market is in excess 
 of the demand. Therefore, a portion of the labour remains un- 
 employed, and the portion that is employed is paid only a 
 subsistence wage. The excess supply lowers the market value 
 of the remainder to the bare necessaries of life, to the equivalent 
 of those commodities necessary to enable the laboui'er to perform 
 his task. The effectiveness, the intrinsic value, of the labour 
 power of the individual woi'ker offered for sale in the world market 
 is different in different places ; the natives of India and China, 
 for example, being less active and energetic than the inhabitants 
 of Northern Eux'ope and the United States of America. So, also, 
 differs the cost of subsistence in these regions, that of the Asian 
 being from one-fourth to one-tenth of that of the skilled workman 
 of London and New York. The latter, living in the midst of great 
 riches, riches that he has himself produced, has struggled up 
 to a standard of living that requires, as necessaries, commodities 
 which are undreamt-of luxuries to his Asiatic brother. ^'or are 
 the disparities between continents only. In different parts of 
 Europe itself there are differences both in tlie labour power of the 
 individual worker and in his standard of livintr, althoufih these
 
 The Labour Day. 9 
 
 differences are uot so great as those between the average P]uropean 
 and the average Asian. And now comes the crucial point, the 
 point that vitally concerns the more favourably conditioned 
 worker, the workman who is in possession of the higher standard 
 of living. The lower-conditioned workers, both Asiatic and 
 European, although now working in the lower-waged markets of 
 the world, are capable of becoming workers in the higher-waged 
 markets. Their work may, at first, be less effective, man for man, 
 than the work of the present workers in these markets, but it may, 
 even at first, serve the employers' pui'pose ; it will certainly 
 become sufl&ciently effective for all practical purposes in time ; and 
 it will, even from the beginning and for a long time afterwards, 
 be so much cheaper than the labour it will displace that it will 
 pay the employers well to employ it. The Chinamen whom 
 Mr. Alfred Lyttelton is importing into South Africa may not at 
 first be so efficient miners as white men would be, but they will 
 become efficient in time, and they are so much cheaper that the 
 mine-owners can afford to pay all the expense of their importation 
 from China, to pay them a wage six times as much as they had 
 at home, and still clear a large excess profit on the transaction, 
 a profit, that is to say, largely in excess of the profit they would 
 have made had they employed white labour. And this importa- 
 tion of Chinese labour into South Africa, it should be remembered, 
 is no new departure : it is only the continuation and expansion 
 of things ah-eady done by both political parties in Britain. Who 
 shall say where the flood will stop 1 South Africa may be regarded 
 as the half-way house from China to this country : what security 
 have the British workers that the voyage will always end there ? 
 What claim to be provided with cheap labour have the mine 
 owners of the Rand that is not possessed by the mine-owners of 
 Scotland and England ? Already some of the coal-mines of 
 Scotland are, I understand, full of diseased and sweated foreigners : 
 how long \\\\\ it be before their numbers are recruited by shiploads 
 of Mr. Lyttelton's Chinamen, completing a voyage already half 
 accomplished 1 This is the future that the British workman has to 
 look forward to, this is the flood by which he will be submerged 
 if he takes no measures to arrest it. 
 
 The competition to which the British worker is at present 
 .subject, to which his present economic condition is due, and which 
 
 c 2
 
 10 The Labour Day. 
 
 must be destroyed if that condition is to be amended, confronts 
 him in two separate forms : firstly, in the form of the labour of 
 his fellows, native and alien-born, in the home labour market ; 
 and, secondly, in the form of finished or part-made articles, the 
 product of foreign labour. Dealing, first, with the second form of 
 the evil, imported articles, it is evident that the only effective 
 remedy is, not their taxation, but their absolute exclusion. The 
 British workman does not desire merely that the British consumer 
 shall pay more for his foreign-produced commodities. That 
 would benefit the British workman only indirectly and almost 
 inappreciably by the slight increase it would effect in the market 
 value of similar commodities produced by himself. What he 
 desires is that the British consumer shall purchase his products 
 and no others, and that object can only be secured by the absolute 
 exclusion of all foreign products — products that we can ourselves 
 produce — from the British home market. From one cause 
 and another — the chief cause being, general!}', his own standard of 
 living, a standard requiring higher wages than those paid to tlie 
 producer of these commodities — the British workman cannot 
 compete successfully against these foreign productions even in his 
 own home market. Their exclusion from that market is, therefore, 
 necessary in the interest of the British workman. I say the 
 British workman cannot compete : I do not say the British 
 merchant or employer. These, the merchant and employer, are 
 but agents, middle-men, buyers and sellers of commodities (in- 
 cluding labour), and their interests ai-e not at all bound up with 
 the interests of either those from whom they buy or those to 
 whom they sell. In fact they may, and often do, make enormous 
 fortunes out of the poverties of their respective clients. There- 
 fore, I say that it is the British workman who cannot compete 
 successfully against the cheaply-produced foreign articles, that 
 he cannot compete against them unless he is willing to lower his 
 standard of life, and that the only remedy is exclusion. It is not 
 difhcult to see the enormous gain that the exclusion of foreign 
 products would be to the native producer, for it would enable him 
 to obtain for his products their full intrinsic value from the 
 consumer of the products, a value much greater than that now 
 obtainable in the presence of cheap foreign competition. To the 
 consumer— -the non-producing consumer — the exclusion of foreign
 
 The Labour Day. 11 
 
 products would, of course, be correspondingly disadvantageous, for 
 he would have to pay the difference to the native producer of the 
 commodities he consumed. This point, as well as the means by 
 which the whole of the gain achieved shall be secured to the 
 actual workers^ is fully dealt vs^ith in succeeding pages. 
 
 The other form in which the British workman encounters the 
 evil — competition — namely, the labour of his fellows in the labour 
 market, must be dealt with by the double methods of exclusion 
 and division. I do not advocate the expulsion of such foreign 
 workmen as are already in this country, although such a course 
 might well be defended. But I do advocate the instant and 
 absolute stoppage of the in-coming flood of destitute aliens that 
 is pouring into this country to the economic injury of the native 
 workers. And, the flood stopped, I advocate the immediate 
 enactment by Parliament of a shortened labour day, so shortened 
 and regulated that the work of the country would be divided 
 equally amongst the woi'kers of the country and the equal labour 
 of every worker be necessary for the satisfaction of the wants of 
 the community. 
 
 All proposals of economic reform, wherever, whenever, and 
 however suggested, are invariably resisted from one quarter or 
 another. And the reason is not far to seek. There never was an 
 economic injustice but that someone profited by it ; and what more 
 natural than that those who profit by it shall resist any attempt 
 to end it 1 Therefore it is that, dreadful as are the suff'erings of 
 the mass of the workers under the present system and present 
 economic conditions, voices are heard defending that system and 
 those conditions, and contending for their continuance. See, say 
 these voices, how the country has prospered under them ! If you 
 interfere with them, if you alter them or attempt to alter them, 
 that prosperity will be destroyed and the country will be ruined ! 
 Well, it is quite true that the country, taken as a whole, has 
 prospered during the prevalence of the present system and the 
 present conditions ; but that prosperity has not been equally 
 divided. It has come mostly to the middle class ; and the work- 
 ing class, whose labour has been the chief factor in its production, 
 have not received their just portion. Moreover, it is quite possible 
 that, under another system and other conditions, the country 
 might have been equally prosperous, with this material difference,
 
 12 The Labour Day. 
 
 that the bulk of the prosperity would have come to its true 
 creators, the working class, instead of to the niiddle class, its 
 mere exploiters. The greatness and prosperity of one's country is 
 a legitimate subject of pride and object of ambition, provided 
 always that the prosperity is justly divided amongst its real 
 producers and the greatness shared equally by the whole people. 
 But if the greatness and prosperity are to be mainly appropriated 
 by the idle and employing classes, to the practical exclusion of 
 the working class, then the greatness and prosperity can have no 
 charm for that class, and it is only natural that it should 
 determine to alter the system and conditions under which such 
 results are possible. The reforming workman who would go forward 
 is not, however, less a patriot than is the reactionary aristoci'at who 
 would go back to his grandfather's time, or the stagnant bourgeois 
 who is well satisfied with things as they are. The only difference 
 between him and them is that he wishes his class to obtain 
 a little more than they now possess of the prosperity of that 
 country of which they are all so proud. Surely that is not an 
 unreasonable desire, nor one which should lack the sympathy and 
 support of every man interested in the question of the condition of 
 the people. 
 
 In considering this question, it will be advantageous to 
 remember that many efforts have already been made in this 
 direction, and that they have all failed. Generation after genera- 
 tion has possessed its philanthropists ; large-hearted, justice- 
 loving men who, each in his own day and own way, tried to 
 lighten the burdens of the oppressed toiler. Some of these 
 efibrts were not altogether fruitless. Here and there, to some 
 extent and for some time, some slight mitigation of the work- 
 men's hardships was effected ; but they all fiiiled to achieve the 
 great task of complete economic emancipation, and the workers 
 remain to-day, as in the past centuries, the slaves of the other 
 sections of the community. In the earlier times they were bond- 
 slaves ; today they are wage-slaves. The change is only in 
 name, their slavery to day being as absolute and abject as it ever 
 was. The failure of all these efforts, well-meant and courageously 
 prosecuted, was due, in my opinion, to the simple fact that they 
 did not attack the disease at the root, but dealt only with its 
 syjiiptums. There was once an attack made on the true line,
 
 The Labour Day 13 
 
 Lord Ashley's Factory Acts, and it consequently achieved a 
 measure of success greater than all the others, and effected a 
 change whose blessings a portion of the workers still enjoy. 
 Lord Ashley's motive in pleading for shorter hours for factory 
 workers was purely humanitarian. He had no arri^re pensee as to 
 economic results, and legislated only for the women and children. 
 But he builded better than he knew, and his Acts may yet form 
 the foundation stone of the economic freedom of the British 
 working class, fur it is to the shortening of the hours of labour, 
 the legislative restrictions of the labour day, accompanied, of 
 course, by protection against underpaid foreign labour and foreign 
 products, that the worker must look for his social and economic 
 emancipation. 
 
 The question of the compulsory limitation of the hours of 
 labour has not recently been so prominently before the public as 
 it was some years ago. Various causes have contributed to this 
 end. For one thing, the leaders of the different factions of the 
 working class, the men who championed the Eight Hours Move- 
 ment at that time, have, unfortunately, fallen out amongst 
 themselves, devoting to mutual destruction energies that might 
 have carried the movement far towards a successful issue. For 
 another, external politics, more dramatic and exciting than home 
 affairs, have lately almost monopolized public attention. And, 
 for a third, it must be owned the workers themselves, who, their 
 friends thought, had at last grasped the one plan which alone can 
 free them from their economic bondage, the workers themselves 
 have become lukewarm on the subject and appear, for the 
 moment, to be either indifferent or hopeless about their own 
 condition. Now and then they indulge in sectional strikes, in 
 different trades, at different times, in different places, and for 
 different objects. But almost all these spasmodic efforts have a 
 strange air of unreality about them, as if even their jjromoters 
 had no heart for them and were more than half-prepared for the 
 defeat which was their invariable result. The workers have, in 
 fact, at the present time, no definite head, no capable leaders. 
 They are a flock of sheep, with any number of bell-wethers, but 
 not one shepherd. And the bells of the bell-wethers only guide 
 them to the shearing sheJ, where they are duly shorn. It may, 
 however, be reasonably assumed that this state of things will not
 
 14 The Lahmir Day. 
 
 last. Sooner or later a leader will certainly arise, and a policy 
 be put forward, which shall, to some extent at least, unite the 
 workers and re-kindle their enthusiasm. And the basis of that 
 policy must, in the nature of the case^ be Protection and the 
 compulsory limitation of the labour day, for all other proposals 
 for the permanent improvement of the economic condition of the 
 working class will be found, in time, to be either useless or worse 
 than useless. 
 
 The demand for a shorter labour day is due, in large measure, 
 to the teachings of Karl Marx and to the active, practical exertions 
 of his British disciples. For many years past, in Continental 
 Europe, Marx has been recognized as the one and only true 
 economist, and, latterly, his doctrines have taken root also in 
 Britain, Australia, and America, in all of which countries the 
 short hours movement is, for the most part, organised and 
 directed by his followers. Marx founded the " International," 
 and created the German Social Democratic Part}'. These were 
 great achievements, but they sink into insignificance beside the 
 movement for the shortening of the labour day which his disciples 
 are conducting in every quarter of the civilised globe. The dis- 
 tinction of Marx's teaching is its legality. He was a revolutionist, 
 uo doubt, but he was also a philosopher. He knew that changes 
 made by violence are often unmade by the same means, whereas 
 changes made by law are usually accepted and maintained. Hence 
 he inclined more to the ballot-box than to the barricade, and hence 
 also his followers' present desire for a legislative limitation of the 
 labour day, rather than a series of violent and anarchic struggles. 
 
 The demand for the legislative restriction of the hours of labour 
 rests on three main propositions : First, that the present economic 
 condition of the workers is unjust; second, that that condition, 
 being unjust, ought to be remedied ; and, third, that the legisla- 
 tive restriction of the hours of labour is not only the best, but that, 
 accompanied by protection against unfair foreign competition, is 
 the only practicable and effective means by which that condition 
 can be satisfactorily and permanently remedied. The first and 
 .second of these propositions are, of course, self-evident, but inas- 
 much as they are (practically) denied by many, it may be as well 
 to go formally through the proofs. 
 
 The first proposition — that the present economic condition of
 
 The Labour Day. 15 
 
 the workers is unjust — is proved by two facts, namely, that, under 
 that condition, the workers liave (a) more than their proportionate 
 share of the work of the nation to perform ; and (})) less than their 
 proportionate share of the wealth of the nation to enjoy. Firstly, 
 as to work. The fact itself is, of course, well known and undis- 
 puted ; but, inasmuch as the extent of the inequality is not so well 
 known, it may be useful to examine the point with some closeness. 
 The number of adult males in the United Kingdom may be 
 said to be at present about 9,000,000. Of these, not less than 
 1,000,000 live in voluntary and wealthy idleness; rather more 
 than another 1,000,000, including paupers, criminals^ and vagrants, 
 at the other end of the scale, in more or less enforced idleness and 
 consequent want ; leaving the whole of the work of the nation to 
 be done — so far as it is done by its adult male population — by the 
 remaining 7,000,000. Of these 7,000,000, at least another 
 1,000,000 may be put down as {«) working employers and (6) 
 independent workers, that is. men working for and by themselves. 
 This leaves, finally, about 6,000,000 of wage-receiving workers, by 
 whom nearly all the work of the nation is undoubtedly performed.* 
 The average hours of labour for each of these wage-receivers is at 
 present about twelve per day, Saturdays included, making seventy- 
 two hours per week. This includes week-day overtime, but is 
 altogether exclusive of Sunday labour. The average hours of 
 labour of the 1,000,000 working employers and men working for 
 themselves, aboye referred to, may be taken to be at least equal to 
 those of the wage-receiving workmen ; so that we have a total of 
 7,000,000 adult male workers, of different classes, working oit an 
 average twelve hours every working day, seventy-two hours every 
 week. Now, if the 2,000,000 adult male idlers above-mentioned, 
 the voluntarily and involuntarily unemployed, were to take their 
 proportionate shai-e of the nation's work, the same amount of 
 work that is now performed by the 7,000,000 working 12 hours 
 per day and 72 hours per week, would then be performed by 
 9,000,000 working 91 hours per day or 56 hours per week. There- 
 fore, 2f hours per day, or 16 hours per week, is the excess above 
 
 ♦These figures, while substantially accurate, are, of course, really 
 approximations ; the actual numbers fluctuating from time to time with 
 the inflow and outflow of the labour market and the alternations of rising 
 and falling trade. That is understood.
 
 16 The Labovr Day. 
 
 his just share which the average worker now performs. Thus I 
 prove my first point as to the present unequal division of habour. 
 
 Next, as to the unequal division of wealth. The total annual 
 income of the United Kingdom may be said to be at present at 
 least £2,000,000,000 sterling. Some official estimates, issued 
 many years ago, indicated an annual inconie, at that time, of about 
 £1,500,000,000; and, making allowance for subsequent normal 
 increase and for interested concealments of wealth (a material 
 item), £2,000,000,000 may be taken as inside the present actual 
 amount. Now, all this £2,000,000,000 is not, of course, the pro- 
 duct of wage-receiving adult male labour. Part of it is the 
 product of (a) the labour of women and children, of (6) the labour 
 of the independent workmen who work for themselves, of (c) the 
 labour of the employers who are also workers, and of (f/) foreign 
 investments. These numerous separate sources of income must 
 all be recognised and their due proportions allotted to them. 
 They must not be either forgotten or ignored. But it is the adult 
 male wage-receiver and his position that constitute the main 
 problem ; the solution of it will involve the solution of the others ; 
 therefore it is on its solution that all our present arguments are 
 concentrated. 
 
 Let us, then, deduct for these other sources of income, say, 
 ^500,000,000, a fourth of the whole, a most liberal allowance. 
 We have still £1,500,000,000 left as the result of the labour of 
 our 6,000,000 w'age-receiving adult male workers. And when we 
 divide that sum equally amongst these workers we find the amount 
 to be exactly £250 per man per annum, or about £4 16s. 8d. per 
 week. But what is the actual average wage received by these 
 workers ? Four pounds sixteen siiillings and eightpence per week? 
 We all know tliat it is net that. It is, at the present time, about 
 25s. per week, or £65 per annum. The average for England is 
 about 27s. per week, for Scotland about 23s. 6d., and for Ireland 
 about 18s., the gross average being, as stated, about 25s. Ten 
 years ago, the gross average was oidy 23s. But during the past 
 decade wages have steadily risen in many industries, the aggregate 
 rise yielding, as nearly as can be ascertained, an average, spread 
 over all industries, of 2s. per man per week. This is, of course, a 
 net result, the decreases being set against the increases, and 
 a total balance struck. 'I'hese figures then, reveal the startling
 
 The Labour Day. 17 
 
 fact that, out of a total annual income of £2,000,000,000, of which 
 they themselves produce at least three-fourths, the 6,000,000 
 wage-earning workers receive only £390,000,000, or £65 each ; 
 whereas the 2,000,000 non-producing consumers, working em- 
 ployers, etc., take £1,610,000,000, or £805 each. 
 
 It has been stated by some who are not conversant with the 
 subject that the foregoing figures, notably the estimate of national 
 income, are exaggerated. Very well. Let us suppose for the sake 
 of argument, that they are exaggerated ; that the national income 
 is not £2,000,000,000, but only the £1,500,000,000 generally 
 accepted, and that, of that latter sum, only £1,000,000,000, two- 
 thirds of the whole, is due to the labour of the 6,000,000 workers. 
 Suppose, further, that the average wage is not 25s., but, say, 278., 
 an enormous concession. What then ? Why, even with all these 
 points allowed, the result still is that, in return for his wage of 
 27s., each of the aforesaid 6,000,000 workmen produces value 
 worth £3 -is. Id. Let the objector take which set of figures he 
 prefers. Both prove the worker to be robbed of the fruits of his 
 labour ; the difference between them is only a difference of degree. 
 In the presence of these facts it is evident that the wealth of the 
 country, as well as its labour, is most unequally and unjustly 
 divided. 
 
 Having, then, proved that the workers have at present more 
 than their proportionate share of the work to perform, and less 
 than their just share of the wealth to enjoy, it follows that their 
 present economic condition is unjust. 
 
 But although the condition is admittedly unjust, there are 
 those who still deny that that condition can, or ought to, be 
 changed, and who resist and obstruct all attempts to alter it by 
 shortening the hours of labour. An increase of wages now and 
 then they would not mind, but to all suggestions of a shorter 
 labour day they are resolutely hostile. They know that the 
 advance in wages given to-day can be recalled to-morrow or the 
 day aftei-, but that a shorter labour day would give the workers 
 the command of the labour market, and that, once established, 
 it could not be so easily withdrawn. These objectors are of two 
 classes : first, those who object to a shorter labour day, however 
 achieved ; and, second, those who object— or, at least, profess to 
 object — only to its legal enforcement. I will examine the various 
 
 D 2
 
 18 The Labour Day. 
 
 objections of both classes in their order, and endeavour to answer 
 them all. It may be said, What about wages 1 Do they not 
 require attention and revision 1 The answer is that, if the hours of 
 iabour are shortened nntil there is no surplus in the labour market, 
 not an idle man in the country, the law of supply and demand will 
 itself adjust wages without any legislation, securing for the worker 
 a wage that will be equal to the full value of his labour. At 
 present there are in this country seven workmen to every si.x jobs ; 
 and, as tlie seventh man, the man who has been left out, is only 
 too ready and willing to supplant any of the others for such 
 return as will keep him from death by starvation, the employer 
 has no difficulty in retaining the services of these others at a bare 
 subsistence wage. He would pay them even less than that — and, 
 in fact, in many cases does so — but for the reflection that he re- 
 qiiires their continuous service and wishes that service to be of an 
 efficient character, and realises that that service cannot be both 
 continuous and efficient unless the man who has to render it 
 receives at least a subsistence wage. In many cases, as I have 
 •said, less than a subsistence w^age is paid ; but that is, as a 
 rule, for unskilled services, which anyone can perform, which need 
 not be continuous, and which can easily be obtained, when required, 
 from the constantly overflowing surplus in the labour mai'ket. 
 Less than a subsistence wage is also paid to thousands and thou- 
 sands of young women who are employed in what are called the 
 genteel occupations, and whose employers — many of them public 
 men of saintly reputation — expect them to eke out their scanty 
 weekly pittance by earnings in a connection that cannot be named. 
 But, as a rule, taking all classes of workers, a subsistence wage is 
 paid. When the labour day is shortened and the six jobs have 
 become seven, or perhaps eight, all this will be changed. The 
 services of the seventh man will then be very urgently required, 
 and, freed from their mutual cut-throat competition, the seven men 
 will be in a position to induce their employer— compel him, if 
 necessary — to pay them, not a subsistence wage, but the full value 
 of their labour, whatever that may be. There will be no necessity 
 to pass an Act of Parliament respecting wages ; these will adjust 
 themselves. Society, having need of the services of labour to 
 minister to its daily wants, and having the means thereto, will 
 pay the price necessary to obtain those services ; and that price
 
 The Labour Day. 19- 
 
 will be determined automatically by the inexorable law of supply 
 and demand, and will be found to correspond with the full value 
 of the labour rendered. Shorten the labour day to the point 
 indicated, and all the other economic evils that surround the 
 worker will vanish of themselves. 
 
 The first objection advanced by the first of the above-named 
 classes is that any attempt to shorten the labour day in this country 
 must fail, because the workers are themselves opposed to it. The 
 workmen, these opponents assert, are well satisfied with the 
 present system, and wish to be left free to work for as many hours 
 as they like and as much overtime as they can get. The answer to 
 that is that, even if the assertion were true, it would not, as we 
 shall see presently, make the plea a valid one ; but that, as a matter 
 of fact, it is not true. It is, on the contrary, the fact that the 
 vast majority of British workmen are intensely dissatisfied with the 
 present system, and ardently desire its alteration. But there are 
 amongst workmen, as amongst other classes, men of limited intelli- 
 gence and sluggish disposition. And some of these men, not 
 understanding the question and fearing that short hours must mean^ 
 short wages, shrink from what they regard as a doubtful if not 
 dangerous experiment. They ax-e aware, in a vague way, that 
 their condition is not what it ought to be, but they do not see 
 how it is to be improved. They feel, moreover, quite truly, that 
 their condition, bad as it is, is better than that of many of 
 their fellows (the unemployed), and they fear that, like the 
 dog in the fable, they will lose the bone in clutching at the 
 shadow. And they are inclined rather to endure the ills they 
 have than fly to others they know not of. These men, however, 
 are but a small minority of the workers, a minority, moreover, that 
 is rapidly diminishing. As this is a point about which there is much 
 dispute, it may be as well to mention one or two facts bearing on it. 
 The working men of the United Kingdom are, in round numbers,, 
 close upon 7,000,000. Of these, about 1,500,000, one fifth of the 
 whole, are members of trade unions. With regard to these trade 
 unionists, we have some data to guide ns to their opinions. So 
 long ago as 1888 a plebiscite was taken by the trade unions of the 
 country on the two questions (a) "Are you in favour of an eight 
 hours' limit of the day's work — total 48 hours per week ?" and (6) 
 " Are you in favour of Pai'liament enforcing an eight hours day
 
 20 The Labour Day. 
 
 by ]aw % " The replies were (a) Yes, 22,720 ; No, 4097. (i) Yes, 
 17,267; No, 3819. This seems pretty decisive, showing that the 
 workers are not only in favour of the shortening of the labour day, 
 but are also in favour of its enforcement by the strong arm of the 
 law. And I may add, as confirmation of these decisions, that a 
 resolution in favour of a " Legal Eight Hours Day " has been a 
 standing item in the programme of every Trade Union Congress 
 for so.tjie years past, that it is always adopted with ever- 
 increasing majorities, in later years unanimously. So that, as 
 far as the organized workers of the country are concerned, it is not 
 possible to contend that they are opposed to the legal shortening 
 of the labour day. With regard to the 5,500,000 non-unionists it 
 is safe to assume that a majority of them are in favour of a 
 compulsory reduction of the hours of labour, seeing that they are 
 mostly the unskilled workers, one portion of whom work ex- 
 cessively long hours, while another portion starve for want of 
 work altogether. But, as I said before, even if a majority of the 
 workers were opposed to the shortening of the labour day, that 
 would not be a conclusive argument against it. It is, of course, 
 always desirable to have the consent to any scheme of all the 
 parties whom that scheme will affect. It is always desirable, but it 
 is not always necessary. The first question is, Is the scheme just % 
 The second, Is it expedient ? And when, as in the present case, it 
 is both just and expedient, there is no room for further argument ; 
 the reform must be carried out forthwith, even although it is 
 opposed by one or more of the parties that will be affected by it. 
 If reformers were never to carry out any reforms until they had 
 the assent of all who were to be benefited by them, they would 
 never carry out any reforms at all. But there is an additional 
 reason why the consent of the present workers to the shortening 
 of the labour day is not absolutely necessary, and that is that they 
 are not the parties principally concerned, not tiie persons whom 
 the measure will principally affect. The persons whom it will 
 principally affect, and on whose behalf, primarilij, it is demanded, 
 are tlie present unemployed. These a shortened labour day will 
 benefit immensely and immediately, by finding them employment. 
 That is its first and greatest object. The present workers it will 
 also benefit by shortening their working day and increasing their 
 wages. That is its second und lesser object. I do not belittle
 
 The Labour Day. 21 
 
 this second object — far, very far, from it. It is great, very great. 
 But it is not so great, nor anything like so urgent as the former — 
 upon which, in fact, it is contingent, and without which it can 
 never come to pass at all. 
 
 But it is obvious that, if a law was passed limiting the length 
 of the labour day in Britain, and thereby increasing the cost of 
 all British produced commodities, there would be a rush of 
 cheaper foreign-produced commodities to cut out the British 
 products, and the result would be that there would be no market 
 at all, either at home or abroad, for either the goods of the British 
 merchant or the labour of the British workman. It would, there- 
 fore, of course, be necessary to enact legislation preventing any such 
 injustice. Having shortened the labour day for British workmen 
 and British manufacturers to eight or nine hours, it would 
 obviously be most unjust to admit to British markets foreign 
 labour and produce on a different footing. To compel the British 
 manufacturer to stop his machinery at the end of a daily eight 
 hours' run, while we admitted to our markets foreign goods 
 produced by a ten or twelve hours day, would be so preposterously 
 absurd as to expose us to a roar of European laughter. The 
 suggestion is, in fact, too ridiculous for serious discussion. Nobody 
 proposes — at all events I do not propose — the shortening of the 
 labour day unless and until ive can secure along with it the 
 exclusion of all foreign labour that we can ourselves Tperform, 
 and of all foreign products that we can ourselves produce. To 
 shorten the labour day while permitting the stream of destitute 
 aliens to flow into the British labour market would be obviously 
 futile : to shorten the labour day without at the same time 
 excluding foreign products would be to commit national suicide. 
 The three remedies are mutually and equally indispensable. 
 
 But, it will be said, this is Protection. Of course it is. Why 
 not 1 Why should we not adopt Protection ? The whole of the 
 civilised world, including the younger and more progressive nations, 
 has adopted it. Are we the only wise people on the earth, and 
 will wisdom die with us 1 And why, of all men, should the workers 
 of a highly civilised country like ours hesitate to adopt it 1 The 
 alternative to Protection is the unlimited competition of not only 
 European but Asiatic labour, the hundreds of millions of Indians 
 and Chinamen, whose standard of living is much lower than that
 
 22 The Labour Day. 
 
 of the British workman, and whose competition would infallibly 
 destroy the British standard and bring it down towards their own. 
 Are Englishmen and Scotsmen willing to accept that alternative 
 rather than adopt Protection 1 I hardly think so. The middle- 
 class supporters of the Manchester school of economics may for a 
 season succeed in maintaining the present abundant supply of 
 cheap labour by frightening the more impressionable and less in- 
 telligent portion of the British workmen with ghost stories of the 
 evils of Protection in their grandmothers' time. But it will be 
 only for a season. By-and-by the scales will fall from the e^'es of 
 the dupes, the real facts of the question will be jDcrceived, and the 
 Cobdenish delusions of the past finally discai'ded. 
 
 For what is Protection, this })olicy which the w^orkers are com- 
 manded to abjure ? and what is Free Trade, which they are entreated 
 to retain ? What is Free Trade 1 It is free exchange. But we have 
 not got it. We have free imports, with slight exceptions, and taxed 
 exports, with slight exceptions, and all the other nations and our 
 own Colonies have, practically, protection. Free exchange, the 
 absence of all obstacles to commercial intercourse is, no doubt, 
 the ideal method of exchange from the consumer's point of view ; 
 for by it he would obtain his commodities at prices lower than 
 would otherwise be possible. But, with a surplus in the general 
 labour market, free trade is fatal to the producer. If the French 
 silk manufacturer and the British coal-owner agreed to exchange 
 their wares without the intervention of the customs officer, the 
 ■esnlt would of course be a saving of expense, tantamount to a 
 reduction in the cost, the natural price, of these commodities. 
 But who would be benefited by that, by the non-intervention of 
 the customs officer 1 Not the sellers of the articles on either 
 .side, for the competition of their fellows would prevent them 
 adding an imaginary duty to the cost; and certainly not the 
 actual producers, the French silk weaver and the I5ritish collier, 
 if there was, as now, a surplus in their respective hibuur markets, 
 keeping their wages down to the subsistence point. The only 
 persons who would l)enefit Ijy the non-intervention of tlie customs 
 officer would he the idle consumers of the two commodities on 
 both sides of the Channel. These would obtain their commodities 
 at a price lower by the amount of the customs officer's salary and 
 expenses : that is the wh<jlc story of Free Trade.
 
 The Labour Day. '23 
 
 What, on the other hand, is Protection 1 It is a system by 
 which nations set up barriers at their ports and frontiers against 
 the trade of other nations. The barriers take the form of duties, 
 or taxes, levied on such trade, and are erected for two separate 
 and distinct objects. In some cases the tax is levied for the sake 
 of revenue only ; in others for the purpose of wholly or partially 
 excluding from the country commodities which the country can, 
 and wishes, to produce for itself The effect of this tax, or 
 customs duty, is, of course, to increase the market price of the com- 
 modities so taxed, and Protection is therefore as obnoxious to the 
 idle consumer as Free Trade is acceptable. Again, it is true that 
 the natural cost is not the price at which the commodity is always 
 offered, some nations giving their exporters a bounty on some 
 particular exports in order to prevent rival nations from establish- 
 ing or preserving that particular industry. But, speaking gener- 
 ally, the consumer pays either the customs duties or their 
 equivalent ; the equivalent taking the foi'm of higher prices — 
 higher, that is, than he would have to pay if the duty did not 
 exist. So it is quite clear that Free Trade is the ideal system of 
 exchange so far as the consumer is concerned. 
 
 To the merchant who buys and sells, the manufacturer who 
 produces and sells, the carrier and dealer, Free Trade is likewise 
 preferable to Protection, being more conducive to the expansion of 
 commerce. And to the manufacturer it is desirable that the 
 Free Trade shall be universal, that he shall not be handicapped 
 in the race by having markets closed against him that are open to 
 his rivals. And if he cannot have general Free Trade, he would 
 prefer, with all its waste and restrictions, general Protection. 
 Whichever it is to be, he asks that it shall be equal all round, a 
 fair field and no favour, so that every man shall obtain such results 
 as his skill and energy deserve. 
 
 But to the worker, Free Trade is, and must be, most disadvanta- 
 geous ; for, under it, the product of his labour is subject to the 
 competition of the whole world. And to the worker in highly 
 civilised and prosperous communities like Great Britain, our own 
 great Colonies and the United States of America, Free Trade is, or 
 would be, specially disadvantageous, for the competition of the 
 poorer and less civilised races of the earth would tend inevitably to 
 lower his standard of living down to theirs. This fact is clearly 
 
 E
 
 24 The Labour Day. 
 
 recognised on all hands. In South Africa at the present moment 
 the importation of cheap Asiatic labour is hotly resented by the 
 white workers there. The importation of Asiatic labour to work 
 the gold mines of South Africa will infallibly lower the standard of 
 living of the white workers, but it will be Free Trade. The 
 exclusion of that labour would help to preserve that standard, but it 
 would be rank Protection. A "white Australia" is the watchword 
 of the workers in that country, and the organised Labour party there 
 are resolute on the subject. But it is a flagrant violation of Free 
 Trade and the very incarnation of Protection. At home, amongst 
 ourselves, we see the fact recognised every day. In every trade 
 union in the country the skilled workers object to their work being 
 done by the unskilled. The bricklayer will not allow his labourer 
 to lay a brick, and in other trades similar restrictions prevail. This 
 action, of which I entirely approve, is not adopted in any spirit of 
 hostility to the unskilled workman, but simply to prevent the fall 
 in wages which would inevitably ensue, and which, after a time, 
 would reach the labourer as well as the skilled workman. But to 
 permit the labourer to do skilled work would be Free Trade, and to 
 deny him that permission is rank Protection ; yet the permission is 
 refused in every trade union in the three kingdoms. In a word, 
 trade unionism is Protection, as every candid and intelligent thinker 
 must acknowledge. 
 
 There is one argument that is frequently put forward by the 
 opponents of Protection which I may, perhaps, conveniently answer 
 at this point. It is to the effect that Protection would be par- 
 ticularly hurtful to the workers, in that it would increase the price 
 of their commodities without correspondingly increasing their 
 wages. The answer is that, while the first part of that statement 
 is undoubtedly true, the second is entii-ely false. The price of the 
 workers' commodities would most certainly be increased, and the 
 wages of the workers would just as certainly be correspondingly 
 increased also. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, however ardently 
 the employing classes might desire to make it so. For the worker 
 at present receives only a subsistence wage, and he must continue 
 to receive that subsistence wage, if he is to continue a worker, 
 whatever the cost of the commodities necessary to his subsistence 
 may be. 
 
 That the average wage of the free worker in modern industrial
 
 The Labour Day. 25 
 
 society is, and must be, based on the cost of subsistence is gener- 
 ally recognised by all economists. Marx's demonstration of the 
 fact is perhaps the most perfect, but Adam Smith and others are 
 not less emphatic. "The value of labour power," says Marx, 
 " resolves itself into the value of a definite quantity of the means 
 of subsistence. The minimum limit of the value of labour power 
 is determined by the value of the commodities without which the 
 labourer cannot renew his vital energy, of those means of subsis- 
 tence that are physically indispensable." Marx quotes, with ap- 
 proval, Sir Wm. Petty, who says, " the value of his (the labourer's) 
 average daily wages is determined by what he requires so as to 
 live, labour, and generate." " The labourer," continues Marx, 
 " supplies himself with necessaries in order to maintain his labour 
 power, just as coal and water are supplied to the steam engine, and 
 oil to the wheel. The fact that the labourer consumes his means 
 of subsistence for his own purposes, and not to please his employer, 
 has no bearing on the matter. The consumption of food by a beast 
 of burden is none the less a necessary factor in the process of pro- 
 duction because the beast enjoys what he eats." " The wages of 
 labour," says Adam Smith, '^ are everywhere regulated partly by 
 demand and partly by the average price of the necessary articles 
 of subsistence." " The habits and requirements of the labourer," 
 says John Stuart Mill, " determine his real wages." " The price 
 of labour," says Ricardo, " is determined by the price of the com- 
 modities necessary for the support of the labourei-." To these 
 authoritative pronouncements I would add that the subsistence 
 standard that governs each worker's wage is not even his own 
 standard, but is that of the unemployed man standing idle in the 
 labour market ready to take his place. For example, if I were to 
 fight for and obtain employment as a dock labourer, the foreman 
 would not pay me a wage based on my subsistence standard, but 
 would pay me a wage on the subsistence standard of the average 
 docker whose position I occupied. 
 
 There is another argument sometimes advanced against the 
 theory of a subsistence wage which may be answered here. Men 
 who have risen from the ranks of the workers, who have saved money, 
 and themselves become capitalists, point to their own case as 
 conclusive evidence against it. But the argument will not hold. 
 There are several reasons, any one of which is sufficient to account
 
 26 The Labour Day. 
 
 for that result. The nuin who has risen may have possessed 
 exceptional powers of mind or body. In that case his labour 
 passed into a higher category, a category in which the subsistence 
 standard of the workers was higher than that he originally was 
 used to, and which, therefore, left him a margin to save. Or, in 
 the second place, he may have been exceptionally industrious, 
 Avorking after the average man had left off; or exceptionally 
 abstemious, denying himself things which the average man 
 considers necessaries ; or exceptionally healthy or exceptionally 
 free from family or other dependents. The wages of labour are 
 necessarily based on the ascertained requirements of the average 
 workman, who will drink and smoke and marry and beget children; 
 and that is why there is a raai'gin for the teetotaler, the non- 
 smoker, the bachelor, and the miser. 
 
 This law of the subsistence wage, emphatically laid down by 
 the great Free Trade economist, Adam Smith, is strangely over- 
 looked by his professed disciples ; and when Mr. Chamberlain says 
 that higher wages will accompany the increased price of food and 
 other commodities necessary to the workers, his statement is 
 jeered at as a self-evident absurdity. " I want to know," cried one 
 of the newest of the Labour members of Parliament at a public 
 meeting the other day, '• how paying more for his food will benefit 
 the working man " ; and the ignorant jibe is to be found in almost 
 every Free Trade harangue. Some go even further, and declare, 
 not only that wages will not rise with the increase in the \mce 
 of commodities, but that they will fall, both relatively and 
 absolutely. Let me, to these, again quote Adam Smith : 
 
 As the wage.s of labour are everywhere regulated partly by demand for 
 it, and partly by the average price of the nece.ssary articles of subsistence, 
 whatever raises this average price must necessarily raise those wages, so 
 that the labourer may still be able to purchase that quantity of those 
 necessary articles which he requires. A tax upon those articles of sub- 
 sistence necessarily raises their price. Such a tax must therefore occasion 
 a rise in the wages of labour proportionate to this rise of price. The 
 labourer, though he may pay the tax out of his hand, cannot, for any 
 considerable time at least, be properly said even to advance it. It must 
 always in the long run be advanced to him by his immediate employer in 
 the advanced rate of wages. Taxes upon necessaries, so far as they affect 
 the labouring poor, are linally paid partly by landlords in the diminished 
 rent of their lands, and partly by rich consumers, whether landlords or
 
 The Labour Day. 27 
 
 others, in the advanced price of manufactured goods. The middling and 
 superior ranks of people, if they understood their own interest, ought 
 always to oppose all taxes upon the necessaries of life as well as all direct 
 taxes upon wages of labour, for the final payment of both one and the 
 other falls altogether upon themselves. 
 
 And Stuart Mill, iu his Political Economy, says, " A tax on 
 necessaries is equivalent to a tax on profits." The opponents 
 of Protection pretend to be political economists and loudly 
 protest that their opposition is based upon the 'principles of 
 that science, and is maintained in the interests of the working 
 class. Well, here are the formal pronouncements of the re- 
 cognised exponents, the veritable high priests, of Free Trade 
 doctrine, and these declare unanimously that taxes on food — the 
 feature of Protection specially selected for denunciation by Liberal 
 politicans — are not borne by the workers at all, but are borne by 
 the iipper and middle classes. 
 
 The adoption of the policy I advocate — Protection jdus a 
 limited labour day — would, of course, involve the abandonment of 
 much, if not all, of our export trade. That goes without saying. 
 Even at present our products, handicapped by the cheaper labour 
 and protective tariffs of other countries, find difficult sale in foreign 
 markets. Under the conditions that I propose, with the wages of 
 the producers immensely increased, these products could not, 
 except in rare cases and particular articles, enter the foreign 
 market at all. It follows, also, that whatever there may be, 
 either in the form of profit or in the form of prestige, 
 accruing to us from our export trade, that that profit and that 
 prestige must be definitely relinquished. That great fact 
 must be clearly recognised. All the stock exhortations ad- 
 dressed to the workers, by the politicians on both sides, to apply 
 themselves to technical education and to cultivate habits of greater 
 thrift and industrial efiiciency, are only so many ignorant or 
 conscious insults. Why should the worker trouble to make 
 himself a more profitable instrument or victim of exploitation ? 
 And if he did try, so as to enable his masters to retain the foreign 
 trade, what chance is there that he would succeed? Is not 
 technical education open to the foreign workman as well as to him, 
 and is not that foreign workman already thrifty to the point of priva- 
 tion ? And as to opening up "fresh markets" — another will-o'-the-
 
 28 The Labour Day. 
 
 wisp held up to him by trading politicians — where is a market to be 
 found into which, thanks to our Free Trade policy, we shall not be 
 followed, and out of which we shall not be hunted, by the cheaper 
 products of our Continental rivals? The workers of all countries 
 are but pawns in this game, played one against the other. And, as 
 we have seen, the British worker, even if he continued to submit 
 himself to sacrifice, could not, with our Free Trade system, win the 
 game for his masters. If that system were abolished and he 
 consented to lower his standard of living to that of his foreign 
 fellow, he might win the game for his masters : without these the 
 task is impossible. It is clear then, that, even if it were possible — 
 which it is not — for this country to increase or even to retain its 
 present export trade, the task would require the continued sacrifice 
 of the British worker as a pawn in the game, a proceeding obviously 
 incompatible with any improvement in his economic condition, or 
 even with its maintenance at its present level. 
 
 If it were necessary to offer any consolation to the British 
 workman for the loss of our export trade, it would be found, 
 ample and overflowing, in the recovery, for ourselves, of the 
 whole of our home market. This recovery would, of course, 
 immediately follow the exclusion of foreign products, and the 
 market thus recovered would be found much larger and much more 
 profitable than that for which it had been exchanged. That it 
 would be found, even at first, much larger, is proved by the 
 admitted fact that our imports are much greater than our exports ; 
 that we buy from the foreigner about twice what we sell to him. 
 I know, of course, that the so-called free traders contest the 
 fact, asserting that, as goods are paid for only with goods, therefore 
 we must send more goods than are recorded, although, they admit, 
 they cannot show them. A little learning is a dangerous thing, 
 and often causes its possessors to betray an ignorance that is any- 
 thing but little. The astounding blunder of these " free trade " 
 dogmatists owes its origin to the fiict that they have only looked 
 at present phenomena ; they have not looked at anything beyond 
 the day in which they happen to live. It is quite true, as they 
 say, that goods are paid for only by goods, but it is not true that 
 the goods are simultaneously exchanged. This is where they have 
 blundered. The excess goods that we are now receiving from 
 foreign countries — that is to say, the excess over the goods we are
 
 The Labour Day. 29 
 
 now sending — are paid for by goods now being produced in these 
 foreign countries, which goods are paid for by the interest on 
 investments in the trade of these countries, and which investments 
 were pxirchased by goods exported from this country to these 
 countries in the time of our grandfathers, many yearf ago, when 
 Great Britain was the workshop of the world and her exports 
 exceeded her imports in the same ratio as her imports now exceed 
 her exports. In other words, our grandfathers, many years ago, 
 paid for these excess goods that we are now consuming. We, 
 ourselves, are not paying for them and never will pay for them 
 in any shape or form. 
 
 Again it is said that a great portion of the difference between 
 the amounts of our imports and exports is accounted for in the 
 cost of carriage both ways. That is quite true. A pound's 
 worth of goods on board a British ship in a British port is 
 worth a guinea at the port of debarkation at the other side of the 
 world. And the guinea's worth of goods that is bought with 
 it and despatched home is worth 22s. when it reaches its 
 destination. And thus, while the actual values are the same, the 
 record shows a difference of 2s. : exports, 2Us. ; imports, 22s. All 
 that is quite true and self-evident, but, at most, the amount thus 
 accounted for is but a fraction of the difference between the 
 amounts of our imports and exports. And when our opponents pro- 
 ceed to claim consideration for "the great industry of British 
 shipping," we must remember that the so-called British shipping 
 is not British at all, but is, in fact, substantially foreign. The 
 ships themselves are, it is true, mostly built in England, but the 
 shareholders in the shipbuilding company are often foreigners, the 
 metals of which the ships are made are imported from abroad, the 
 shipyards are full of cheap foreign labour, the crews are often 
 foreigners to a man, as are also the buyers and sellers of the 
 cargoes. The " great industry of British shipping " has not much 
 claim on the consideration of the British workman. 
 
 In exchanging the foreign market for his own home market; or, 
 rather, for that portion of his home market now taken by the 
 foreigner, the British workman will make a good bargain for him- 
 self. He will give up a market doing a trade roundly estimated at 
 £300,000,000, and enter into possession of one doing a trade of 
 £600,000,000. Nor is this all. The trade he relinquishes is pre-
 
 30 The Lahonr Day, 
 
 carious and subject to competition so keen that profits are very small ; 
 the trade he resumes is not only secure from competition, but is 
 double the size and capable of great expansion. How great that ex- 
 pansion will be it is impossible to foretell ; but when we remember 
 Sir Henry Caiupbell-Bannerman's 13,000,000 now on the verge of 
 hunger, and think of the commodities that they require (and that 
 they will purchase when they find well-paid employment), we can see 
 that the expansion will be very great indeed. The enormous increase 
 in our home trade which would immediately follow the enrichment 
 of our own working class cannot, as I say, be foretold with exact- 
 ness : it can only be conjectured ; but it would be a very moderate 
 estimate indeed to put it at three or four times as much as our 
 present export trade altogether. In the satisfaction of this in- 
 creased demand, British manufacturers and merchants would find 
 ample compensation for any loss of foreign trade that they might 
 experience, and British workmen find increased and more profitable 
 demand for their laboiu-. 
 
 A great question now arises. What about the Empire ? Is 
 preferential trade with our Colonies necessary for the consolidation 
 of the Empire, and how can that preferential trade be carried out 
 if we exclude all foreign products ? I answer that I believe, as 
 firmly as does Mr. Chamberlain, that preferential trade with our 
 Colonies is necessary for the consolidation of our Empire, and that 
 I will show how that trade can be fully carried out under the policy 
 that I advocate in these pages. In advocating the exclusion 
 of foreign products, I always add the words, " that we can 
 ourselves produce." This is a great qualification, and leaves the 
 door wide open for Colonial preference. There are many things, 
 such as wines, tea, cotton, tobacco, etc., that we require but cannot 
 ourselves produce, while there are others, such as corn, that we 
 cannot at present produce in sufficient quantity to supply our 
 needs. These we must buy in whole or in part from somebody, 
 and I advise that they be bought, as far as possible, from our 
 Colonial Ijrothers and not from the foreigner. Of course there 
 may be some of these things, or portions of them, that our Colonies 
 cannot supply, cotton and corn for example. In which cases we 
 must also, of course, buy them from the foreigner, as we do at 
 ])resent, under Free Trade conditions and as cheaply as may be. 
 In return fur the preference given them, tlic (Jolonies, I am
 
 The Labour Day. 31 
 
 certain, wduld make corresponding concessions, admitting at a 
 tariff much lower than that imposed upon the foreigner, such 
 goods as we sent them in exchange. That they would do so is 
 proved by the fact that they have already made such concessions 
 in our favour although we have made none in theirs. I do not say, 
 I do not imagine for a moment, that they will stop or delay, for 
 our sakes, the development of their own industries. That they will 
 not do; that it would be unreasonable to expect them to do; 
 that they do not ask us, on our side, to do. All that they ask, 
 all that I propose, is that each party should, as far as possible, 
 supply its own wants aud buy its deficiencies from each other — 
 as far as they can supply them — instead of from the common 
 enemy, the foreigner. That such an arrangement would be 
 mutually advantageous cannot be denied ; that it would help to 
 w^eld the Empire together is self-evident ; aud that it could be 
 ■easily and amicably arrived at is ouly questioned by those who 
 are, in their hearts, opposed to its realisation. 
 
 There is the. question of the alien immigrant, the foreign work- 
 man. His exclusion, his total exclusion, from the British labour 
 market is essential to the economic emancipation of the British 
 worker, but the British workman himself is veiy reluctant to 
 exclude him. Amongst the working men of this country, especially 
 amongst those of them who are " advanced " politicians, there is 
 much sympathy for the working men of other lands. This sympathy 
 is aroused chiefly by the political hardsliips endured by these 
 workers of other lands, but it covers the economic question also. 
 The British workman's first conception of his foreign brother is a 
 political refugee, and when that brother begins to assume the form 
 of an economic competitor, the British workman, iu many cases, 
 still clings to his fraternal ideal, and refuses to recognise hard 
 facts. He is quite willing, nay, desirous, to improve his own 
 economic condition and the economic condition of his fellow- 
 countrymen, but he insists on eff'ecting the economic emancipation 
 of the workers of all lands at one aud the same time, and looks 
 coldly, sometimes hostilely, on measures of a merely national 
 scope. This sentiment is very creditable to the British workman's 
 heart, if not to his head, and I, for one, will not disparage it. 
 I yield to no man in devotion to the cosmopoliten idea. I was 
 ii member, thirty years ago, of the governij3g;_,l(Qd^the, .Gjsneral 
 
 V. 
 
 .. iJEC.1920 
 
 o,
 
 32 The Labour Day. 
 
 Council, of the International Working Men's Association, and 
 fortune can never bestow on me an honour that I shall more 
 highly prize. But T have learned since then that the economic 
 emancipation of the whole of the workers of the world cannot be 
 achieved at one and the same time ; that the task must be 
 accomplished in sections, nation by nation, on the principle of 
 water-tight compartments. One nation first must be made water- 
 proof, then another and another, until all are included. It can 
 only be done by legislation : strikes and barricades are not 
 practical politics, and as it can only be done by legislation, it can 
 only be done in countries like ours, where the workers can 
 dominate the legislature. The British workers can decree an 
 eight hours labour day, hut only for their own country. They 
 can only legislate for themselves ; they cannot touch the labour 
 mai'kets of Germany, France, Holland, and Belgium. The workers 
 of these countries must, in turn, legislate for themselves. By all 
 means let the workers of all countries help each other, if they 
 can and as far as they can, in securing the control of the 
 legislature, each in their own country. But, at the same time, 
 let it be recognised that the legislative method is the only 
 method, and then it will be seen that each country must legislate 
 for itself separately, and that the legislation must take the form 
 of the exclusion of all external labour. Otherwise, the labour 
 market of each country would be flooded with the surplus labour 
 of other countries, and the capitalists of all countries enabled to 
 retain their hold upon the Avorkers of all countries. 
 
 In this matter of alien immigration no country in Europe is so 
 seriously injured as our own. The Briton of to-day is like unto a 
 man born to a goodly estate, but whose rich preserves are rifled by 
 trespassing strangers and whose fruitful fields are ravaged by wild 
 vermin. His country is the envy of the world, and all men flock to- 
 it. Its temperate climate, its ordered laws, its settled institutions, 
 its guarded liberty, make Britain the desired of nations. Nowhere 
 else on the surface of the globe does the light of life burn so 
 steadily ; nowhere is man so safe or property so secure. 
 
 These facts, even if they stood alone, would suffice to explain 
 the steady flow to our shores of many of the inhabitants of Conti- 
 nental nations. They would appeal powerfully to the wealthier 
 and more high-spirited natives of these countries, and cause them
 
 The Labour Day. 3S 
 
 to seek in Britain the liberty and security denied them in their 
 own land. But these wealthier immigrants are comparatively few 
 in number — the merest handful— when contrasted with the great 
 multitude of their poorer fellow-countrymen who also flock to 
 Britain ; and the reasons which explain the presence in our midst 
 of the wealthy foreigner — namely, that Britain is a safe and 
 pleasant place in which to enjoy wealth — do not account for the 
 presence of the foreign starveling who has no wealth to enjoy. 
 What, then, is the attraction that draws the starving foreigner ta 
 our shores 1 Simply this, that, while Britain is undoubtedly a place 
 where riches can be safely and pleasantly enjoyed, it is also a 
 place where riches can be acquired. The very fact that great 
 numbers of wealthy men gather there is in itself a guarantee that 
 much labour of some kind will be in demand, and those who are 
 willing to perform that labour for the lowest reward, and under the 
 meanest conditions, are assured of a subsistence at least. Beyond 
 this circumstance of the presence of wealthy residents there is the 
 great fact that Britain is still, to a large extent, the workshop and 
 market of the world, where work comes to be done and where, 
 consequently, rewards are to be obtained ; and the poverty-stricken 
 natives of Continental countries, hearing of this wonderful labour 
 market and its boundless possibilities, sell everything they have 
 and beg, borrow, or steal, if haply they can thereby raise their 
 passage money to Britain. 
 
 Now, I do not pretend for a moment to say that the pauper 
 alien is an absolute and unmixed evil. That would be foolishness. 
 If the pauper alien were an absolute and unmixed evil, he would 
 not be tolerated for forty-eight hours. As a matter of fact, he is an 
 absolute and unmixed evil to one section of the community only,, 
 the working class. To the other sections of the community, the 
 capitalists, the employers of labour, the middle-men, and the idle 
 non-producing consumers, he is a positive advantage. This is the 
 reason why all efforts to stop the influx of pauper aliens into this 
 country is resisted by these last-named classes. The whole com- 
 munity is, in economic matters, divided into two sections, and two 
 sections only — namely, (a) the producing consumers and {h) the 
 non-producing consumers. For the sake of convenience and 
 brevity we are in the habit of calling section (a) producers and 
 section (h) consumers, although both are, of course, consumers.
 
 34: The Labour Day. 
 
 These names are used for the purpose of distinction only, and are 
 not intended, as is sometimes alleged, to conceal or slur over the 
 fact that producers are also consumers. Furthermore, it is 
 certainly not denied that others besides those generally spoken of 
 as the " working class " must be included amongst the producers. 
 The captain of an Atlantic liner is as much entitled to be called a 
 working-man as the oldest hand or newest apprentice on board his 
 ship. The secretary of a railway company often works harder 
 every day than many of the men to whom he pays weekly wages, 
 and his work is quite as necessary. All, in fact, high or low, who 
 do useful work are, in the economic (although possibly not in the 
 literal) sense, producers. It is only those who do no useful work 
 that are described as consumers. Finally there are many men 
 who, in the language of the theatre, double the parts — that is to 
 say, they are both producers and consumers, in the economic sense, 
 at one and the same time. Thus, the owner of a business may 
 work in that business as manager, book-keeper, traveller, what not. 
 In his capacity of worker, even although the business is his own, he 
 is a producer; but in his capacity of employer, the receiver of 
 profit from the labour of others, he is a consumer. These are 
 distinctions that must be clearly recognised and constantly remem- 
 bered, if the reader would understand this deep yet simple 
 question. 
 
 Now, the material interests of these two sections of the com- 
 munity, the producers and the consumers, are naturally and 
 inevitably antagonistic to each other. It is to the interest of the 
 consumer that the commodities he wants to buy shall be cheap ; 
 it is to the interest of the producer that the commodity he wants 
 to sell shall be dear. It is true that it would be to the immediate 
 interest of each individual producer to have all commodities other 
 (hail (hat he himse/f produces cheap. Thus, the baker would like 
 flour to be cheap and loaves dear ; the miller would like loaves to 
 be cheap and flour dear. The shoemaker would like leather to be 
 cheap and boots dear ; the tanner would like boots to be cheap and 
 leather dear. And baker, miller, tanner, and shoemaker would all 
 unite in wishing every commodity except bread, flour, leather, and 
 boots to be as cheap as possible. But a little reflection will show 
 the baker, the miller, the tanner, and the shoemaker tliut their 
 wish — apart fnim its chiM like selfishness —is impossible of per-
 
 Th!e Labour Day. 35 
 
 •manent realisation ; for if any particular industries, four or forty 
 or four hundred, were exceptionally remunerated, the workers in 
 the other industries would immediately flock towards these ex- 
 ceptionally remunerated industries, and the inequality between 
 them and all other industries would soon be levelled down and 
 obliterated. All the workers are, in fact, economically chained 
 together. They must, as a class, stand together or fall together. 
 They cannot, in the general struggle, separate themselves one 
 trade from another. And so, being true in each trade, it is true in 
 all that it is to the interest of the producer that all commodities 
 shall be dear. This is so self-evident that one would naturally 
 expect everyone to agree with it. But, absurd as it may seem^ it is 
 the case that there are some persons who, while admitting that it 
 is to the interest of the idle non-producing consumers that com- 
 modities should be cheap, obstinately deny that it is to the interest 
 of the producers that commodities should be dear. A very short 
 and simple demonstration should put these unreasoning objectors 
 to silence. Thus, if it is to the interest of the consumer that com- 
 modities should be cheap (as these objectors themselves admit), it 
 follows that it will be to the detriment, or loss, of the consumer 
 if commodities be made dear. Why % Because he will have to pay 
 more for his daily necessary commodities ? Exactly. Agreed. 
 But where goes the excess thus paid I It does not disappear in 
 the bowels of the earth ; it does not disperse in vapour. Where, 
 then, does it go % It must find its way, directly or indirectly, into 
 the pockets of the producers, for there is no third party in the 
 community — all are either producers or consumers. It is evident, 
 therefore, not only that it is to the interest of the consumers that 
 commodities shall be cheap, and to the interest of the producers 
 that commodities shall be dear, but also that the measure of the 
 consumer's loss is the measure of the producer's gain and vice versd, 
 as the case may be. 
 
 And it is here that the pauper alien enters and plays his part. 
 The British workman has a certain standard of living' — -Heaven 
 knows, not a very high one ! — and he denuirs to getting under it. 
 He knows that the highest wage he asks will leave a wide margin 
 between that wage and the intrinsic value of his labour ; and he 
 asks Society and his employer, although not perhaps in the text 
 of Scripture, not to muzzle the ox that treads out the corn. But
 
 36 The Labour Day. 
 
 Society and tho employer do not conduct business on these lines. 
 The Word of God is right enough in church on Sundays, and even 
 on week-days its precepts may be applied to one's cattle; but in the 
 market-place, and when dealing with mankind, the only law known 
 to man is the law of supply and demand. And here stands the 
 pauper alien, free from any notions about standards of living — of 
 decent food, of adequate clothing, of a second room — ready and 
 eager to do the work required, and to do it for less than half the 
 wage asked by the Englishman and Scotsman. Is it any wonder 
 that, under all the circumstances, Society and the employer en- 
 gage the pauper alien and let the Scotsman and Englishman go % 
 Rather should we not call them incomprehensible fools if they did 
 anything else % 
 
 It may be said that Society and the employer, by importing 
 and using these destitute foreigners, are laying the foundations of 
 the ruin of the British people, of the destruction of Britain's 
 supremacy amongst the nations, and even of Britain as a great 
 Power. But what is that to them ? Their horizon is bounded by 
 their own individual interests and the probable term of their own 
 individual lives, and if the system will last out their time that is 
 all they care about. After them the deluge. Everyone for himself 
 and the Devil take the hindmost. Well, it is no use calling names. 
 Society and the employer will only smile at our denunciations and 
 go to the play (and church on Sunday) as usual. And as for the 
 pauper alien himself, the poor wretch, vile and odious as he may 
 be, is more to be pitied than blamed. He is the creature of the 
 circumstances by which he is sm-rounded, and, in some cases at 
 least, it is probable that it is his poverty and not his will that 
 consents to his crime. It is easy, as Becky Sharp said, to be 
 virtuous on ten thousand a year ; but if some of us were in the 
 pauper alien's position we should possibly do as he does, for life 
 is very sweet, even to a starving man. What is wanted is not 
 words, but actions ; actions that will make it impossible for the 
 foreigner to undersell the British workman, and that will remove 
 from Society and the employer the temptation of making the 
 purchase. 
 
 Although, as we have seen, it is the workers who are the Urst 
 and greatest sufferers by the invasion of the starving foreigner, it 
 must not be forgotten that there are certain very important rela-
 
 The Labour Day. 37 
 
 tions in which that starving foreigner is also a source of evil to the 
 general community and an element of danger to the State itself 
 There is, for example, the question of the public health — health of 
 body and health of mind. And it is admitted — the matter is not 
 a subject of controversy at all — that the destitute foreign immi- 
 grant is, as a rule, diseased in both mind and body. There may 
 be a few partial exceptions to the rule — in the case, for example, 
 of children or very young persons — but the rule itself holds good. 
 And here one really might stop and claim that the argument was 
 completed ; for if it is admitted, as it is admitted, that these poor 
 wretches are diseased, surely it is the duty of the authorities to 
 exclude them from the community. By what logic can we recon- 
 cile the shutting out of diseased food and the admission of diseased 
 immigrants, the destruction of our own diseased cattle and the 
 importation of diseased foreigners 1 Is it the number of legs that 
 makes the difference ? It would almost seem so ; for on no other 
 hypothesis can one explain why diseased bipeds are freely admitted 
 to all the intercourse of British industrial and social life, while 
 quadrupeds much less diseased are consigned to a grave of quick- 
 lime. Nor must our well-to-do classes imagine themselves secure 
 from the disease-infection imparted by the pauper aliens. It is quite 
 true that these unhappy creatures arrive first in the East-end of 
 London, and that, for the most part, they remain there. But the 
 occupations to which they attach themselves are chiefly tailoring 
 and shoemaking, the products of which are, one might say, speci- 
 ally adapted for the communication of disease from the maker to 
 the user. I am myself not much of a Royalist, and do not regard 
 the life of a pnnce as necessarily more valuable than the life of a 
 pauper. But the majority of my countrymen, especially those 
 blessed with wealth and station, hold a contrai-y view, and it is to 
 them that I address this argument, and remind them of the story 
 that is told of the late Duke of Clarence having contracted his 
 fatal illness through wearing a disease-infected garment, a garment 
 that had, the night before it was sent home, been used to cover a 
 child in the last stage of typhoid fever. It is not often that the 
 punishment of our indifference to the welfare of our less fortunate 
 fellow-creatures is brought home to us so dramatically as in the 
 death of Prince Albert Victor, but that it does reach us, one way 
 or another, even in this life, cannot be doubted. Self-protection, 
 
 407404
 
 38 The Labour Day. 
 
 therefore, if nothinu- else, should impel us to exclude from our 
 community such radiating centres of loathsome and dangerous 
 diseases as these unhappy pauper aliens are proved to be. 
 
 There is another relation in which the destitute foreigner proves 
 himself a most objectionable character, and that is his relation to 
 the State. Besides being a physical plague-spot, the destitute 
 foreigner is usually a bad citizen, a breaker or evader of the law, a 
 sedition-monger, and, in the last resort, an open enemy of this 
 country. These traits of character have their roots in the fact that 
 he is a foreigner and that he is destitute. Our laws are, I frankly 
 admit, made chiefly for the protection of property. It is no wonder, 
 therefore, that they are not beloved by those who have no property 
 to protect, and who, moreover, believe, rightly or wrongly, as do 
 most of these destitute foreigners, that it is propertied and law -pro- 
 tected Society that is chiefly responsible for their destitute condition. 
 Their alien blood must also be taken into account, and the fact 
 recognised that it would be contrary to human nature if these men, 
 Germans or Russians, or whatever they may be, did not, when in- 
 ternational questions arose, take sides with their native land and 
 against Great l>ritain. Blood is thicker than water, even with 
 pauper aliens. Nor is the danger an imaginary one, for inter- 
 national questions are constantly arising and the anti-British 
 sentiment of the foreigners amongst us is not the least of the 
 difficulties with which tlie responsible British statesmen of the 
 day have to grapple. 
 
 But great as are all the evils brought upon the State and the 
 general community by the pauper alien, they are as nothing when 
 compared with the ruin that he inflicts upon the British working 
 class. The pauper alien is imported direct into the British labour 
 market, into the weakest and most vulnerable spot in that market 
 — namely, in the East-end of London. And there is no room for 
 doubt as to what his action will be wlien he gets there. His 
 absolute destitution leaves him no choice but to sell his labour at 
 once, and lo sell it for whatever it will bring. His feelings may be 
 of the finest and his reluctance to undersell his fellow-workmen 
 may be extreme, but his poverty compels him to accept, to 
 thankfully accept, whatever is ottered him. He is not a free 
 agent: his urgent necessities control the situation. What follows? 
 Simply this, that he is engaged, at less tliaii half the wage, to do
 
 The Labour Day. 39. 
 
 work which has hitherto been done by Scotsman and Englishman, 
 and that the Scotsman and Englisliraan are notified that, after 
 Saturday next, their services will not be required. That is all. 
 There is no fault found with the Briton, nor with his work. The 
 work, in fact, is acknowledged to be the best that can be got. 
 But the competition in prices is keen, the labour of the pauper 
 alien is cheaper than the Briton's, and therefore the Briton must 
 go and the pauper alien take his place. That is all. 
 
 With the loss of his employment, the last stage of the British 
 workman's struggle for life usually begins. At first he tries to get 
 employment elsewhere, but finds every avenue closed. Especially 
 is this the case if he has the misfortune to have reached middle 
 life.* Presentlj', to keep the wolf from the door, the little 
 household gods begin to go, one after another, with ever- 
 quickening pace. Then the wife's and children's clothing, 
 then the man's, and, finally, the landlord's patience being 
 exhausted, it is the street, the workhouse, the prison, or the 
 river. That this is a true picture of what is taking place in 
 hundreds of cases in the East-end of London every day — yesterday, 
 to-day, and to-morrow — will not be denied by anyone conversant 
 with the life of the poor. Eead the speeches of the shoemakers' 
 delegates at recent Trade-Union Congresses, men who are staunch 
 recognised Radicals in politics and cosmopolitan in their working- 
 class sympathies. These speeches lay bare the terrible results to 
 London workmen of pauper-alien immigration, and Congress itself, 
 by large and repeated majorities, majorities of delegates present 
 and majorities of men represented,, passes resolutions calling for 
 the legal and immediate prohibition of that immigration. These 
 resolutions of successive Trade-Union Congresses lift the question 
 out of the sphere of Party politics and place it on the high ground 
 of national and working-class well-being. 
 
 It is clear, then, that the importation of destitute foreigners 
 into this country is fraught with ruin to our working classes, with 
 injury to the health of the community, and with danger to the 
 State. And, these things being proved, it follows naturally that 
 preventive legislation in respect of them is the immediate duty of 
 
 * A millionaire Liberal M.P., himself an alien, who has made his millions 
 out of the labour of British workmen, recently announced his intention to 
 reject all applicants for work who were over 30 years of age.
 
 40 The Labour Day. 
 
 the Government. The preventive legislation need only be of the 
 simplest character, raaking two requirements and two requirenijents 
 only — namely, a clean bill of health and such moderate means on 
 the part of the immigrant as would save him from the necessity of 
 underselling his British fellow-workman. Of course, care would 
 have to be taken to exempt jjolitical refugees from the operation of 
 the measure, but that goes without saying. 
 
 The opponents of a shorter labour day next declare that the 
 proposed remedy would be ineffective, inasmuch as, even if an 
 Eight Hours Day were established to-morrow, and the surplus 
 labour in the market thereby absorbed, in a few years' time, in 
 consequence of increase of population and of improved productive 
 appliances, the evil would have returned as great as ever. 
 
 The answer to that is, of course, that the labour day must be 
 shortened or lengthened from time to time, keeping strict pace with 
 tJae increase or decrease of the numbers of the workers, the increase 
 or decrease of improved productive appliances, and the increase or 
 decrease of the effective demand of the market. The law of the 
 labour day would, like the Budget or Army Estimates, naturally 
 come before the legislature annually, and it would be the simple 
 duty of Parliament to shorten or lengthen the labour day in 
 accordance with the returns of the day relating to the labour 
 market, in the same way that it increases or diminishes the 
 estimates for the coming year in accordance with estimated 
 expenditure. If there was a 10 per cent, deficiency of labour, the 
 legislature wuuld decree a 10 per cent, extension of the labour day. 
 And if there was a 10 per cent, superfluity of labour, then it would 
 decree a 10 per cent, shortening of the labour day. How the 
 deficiency or superfluity had been brought about would be 
 immaterial. Whether from increase or decrease of the numbers of 
 the workers, the increase or decrease of productive appliances, 
 increase or decrease of effective demand — these would not aftect 
 the question. The only point to be considered would be the fact 
 of a deficiency or superfluity (as the case might be) of labour in 
 the market, and the only task to adjust the supply to the demand. 
 
 It may be said that this compulsory absorption of the surplus 
 in the labour market would operate injuriously against labour- 
 saving inventions, inasmuch as they would then be much less 
 valuable, commercially, than they are at present. But that is a
 
 Th ft Labour Day. 41 
 
 mistake. At present, labour-saving inventions are w«^«-8aving 
 inventions, and it is this latter quality that gives them their 
 present immense commercial value. At present, a new machine — 
 like, for example, the Linotype — that will enable ten men to do the 
 work that now requires twenty, is worth ten men's wages, and will 
 continue to be worth ten men's wages, as long as it lasts. It is 
 therefore well worth buying. The employer buys it from the 
 inventor, puts it into use, discharges the ten men, and putting 
 what would have been their wages into his pocket (deducting the 
 cost of the machine), soon amasses a fortune, while his discharged 
 workmen find their way to the workhouse or the cemetery. That 
 is what happens now, and that is what (excepting the fate of the 
 workers) would substantially happen, even if the labour day were 
 shortened. The invention of the Linotype machine, while 
 absolutely revolutionising economic conditions in the composing- 
 department of the printing trade, would have only an infinitesimal 
 effect on the general industries of the country, of which not one in 
 a hundred would have, in any year, a similar invention to record. 
 The result would be that, in the event of the labour day being 
 further shortened, to absorb the men thrown out of employment by 
 the invention of the Linotype and other machines, only a very 
 small proportion of that burden, probably not 1 per cent., would 
 fall on the composing branch of the printing trade. It is therefore 
 evident that the commercial value of the invention would be 
 practically as great as ever. It would still fetch as high a price to 
 its author, and would still fill its purchaser's pocket with saved 
 wages. But both its cost and its advantages would then be shared 
 by all industries instead of, as at present, only the particular 
 industry to which it applies. 
 
 All the others being disposed of, we now come to the finai 
 objection, which takes the three-fold form that, in the first place, a 
 law which would increase the price of commodities and thereby the 
 cost of living, would be unjust to the great class of consumers; 
 that, in the second place, those consumers, in some cases could 
 not, in others would not, continue to consume as much as 
 formerly ; and that, in the third place, this diminution of con- 
 sumption would injuriously aff'ect the produce market, leaving the 
 manufacturer and merchant short of trade and the workman short 
 of employment.
 
 42 The Labour Day. 
 
 This — the interest of the consumer — is the great argument of 
 Cubden Club economists, and is generally held to be conclusive. 
 The nation, it is urged, is made up of different sections, classes, 
 and occupations, each having its own sectional and separate 
 interest. But all are consumers, and, the whole being greater 
 than the p.art, the interests of the consumers, as consumers, must 
 be preferred before all others. The proposition is, on its face, 
 unimpeachable ; but a little examination into the heart of the 
 question shows that it rests on a complete fallacy. The fallacy is 
 the assumption that all consumers are equally interested in con- 
 sumers' interests. As a matter of fact, all consumers are not 
 equally intei'ested in consumers' interests. The consumers form 
 two great divisions : firstly, those who are consumers only, and, 
 secondly, those who are })roducers also. The members of the first 
 of these divisions are naturally averse to any proposal — such as 
 the shortening of the labour day — that will increase wages and 
 thereby raise the price of produce. As non-producers (and there- 
 fore non-wage-receivers), they will have no share in the increased 
 wages that will cause the price to rise, while, as consumers, they 
 will have to pay the increased price. Obviously it is to their 
 interest that prices should be kept down as low as possible. 
 That is self-evident. ]^)ut it does not therefore follow that prices 
 ouyht to be so kept down. There are other jDarties to the 
 transaction, and justice must be done between them. These 
 other parties are the producers, and justice requires that the 
 price the consumer shall pay to the producer shall be the 
 whole value of the product. This is only just, nor can it be said 
 to bear harshly on the idle consumer. If the idle consumer is 
 Vjlessed with such a measure of wealth as enables him, by 
 successive disbursements from his hoard, to buy the labour, or the 
 produce of the labour, of others, even at its full value, without 
 liiiuself labouring, then happy is he amongst men, and the least he 
 can do is to be silent and content. And if his wealth falls short of 
 the amount necessary to enable him to live entirely idle, and he 
 must needs do some little work to make up the deficiency, still is 
 he blessed above the great mass of his fellow-creatures whose only 
 wealth is the labour of their hands from day to day. 
 
 So much for the consumer who is a consumer only and not a 
 producer. As to the c)thcr consumer, he who is also a producer
 
 The Labour Day. 43 
 
 and Avhom I therefore describe as a producing consumer, his case 
 is wholly different. And here I would point out a fact which is 
 strangely overlooked by most economists, but which is the very 
 root of the whole matter. The argument has been already partly 
 expounded, but I will repeat and amplify it. It is as follows : — 
 The consumer who is also, a producer has two capacities — that of a 
 producer, and that of a consumer. These capacities are not only 
 distinct and separate : they are essentially antagonistic to each 
 other. They are antagonistic to each other because it is to their 
 possessor's interest as a producer that the prices of products shall 
 be high, so as to afford him high wages ; while, as a consumer, it is 
 to his interest that prices shall be low, so as to enable him to 
 obtain his commodities for a small outlay of those wages. This 
 fact, this junction in one person of mutually antagonistic and 
 unequal interests, is, I repeat^ the very root of the whole matter ; 
 and the incapacity to perceive it is the cause of the confusion as to 
 the relative importance of producers' and consumers' interests that 
 so generally prevails. Confronted with this problem, this conflict 
 of interests in his own exchequer, it becomes necessary for the 
 producer to ascertain which set of interests are most important 
 to him, in order that he may promote them in preference to 
 the others. The common view put forward by all Cobden Club 
 writers is that the consumers' interests are all-paramount. But 
 this is an error, so far as the producer is concerned. His interests 
 as a producer greatly outweigh his interests as a consumer, as can 
 be readily demonstrated. 
 
 I have already pointed out that the great bulk of the commodi- 
 ties, the prices of which would be raised by the establishment of a 
 shorter labour day, are not consumed by the workers at all, but by 
 the non-producing consumers. Of course, I am speaking here of 
 values — the proper method of measurement — not mere quantities. 
 The fact is proved thus : — If Ave suppose that the wage-receiving 
 workers spent the whole of their income, saving nothing, that 
 would be, as shown earlier, only £390,000,000 annually. That, 
 therefore, is the outside measure of their present possible consump- 
 tion. If the other classes did the same, that is, spent the whole of 
 their income, their consumption would be £1,610,000,000, that 
 being the amount of their income, as shown on the same page. 
 But, giving these other classes the benefit of the assumption that
 
 44 The Labour Day. 
 
 thev so.ve one-fourth of their income — a large concession— they still 
 stand debited with an annual consumption of the value of over 
 £1,200,000,000, or three-fourths of the whole. And, that being 
 so, it is evident that the burden of increased prices would be borne 
 to the extent of three-fourths by the non-producing classes, the 
 working class bearing one-fourth only. The result, therefore, 
 would be that while the worker would receive, in his wages, the 
 whole of the increase of the prices of commodities, he would pa}', 
 in buying his commodities, one-fourth of that amount back again, 
 leaving him a net balance to the good of three-fourths of the total 
 increase. The demonstration is complete and there is no escape 
 from its conclusions. But let us simplify it by an easy 
 illustration. A workman, say a baker, is in receipt of a 
 weekly wage of 25s. This, as we have previously seen, is 
 the present average wage of the adult male worker through- 
 out the three kingdoms. And the amount of value this 
 baker produces for this 25s. is, as we have also seen, 
 £4 IGs. Sd. Now let us suppose that this £4 16s. 8d. takes 
 the form of 193 quartern loaves, value sixjDcnce each, which 
 the baker turns out each week. We have already assumed 
 that the baker spends tlie whole of his wages every week, saving 
 nothing, and, for convenience of illustration, let us put all 
 his commodities in the form of the loaves he himself produces. It 
 gives us this result: — 193 loaves, value sixpence each, total 
 value £4 16s. Gd., produced for a wage of 25s., with which 25s. the 
 baker buys back for his own sustenance, 50 loaves. Now comes 
 the change. 
 
 By the shortening of the labour day and the consequent scarcity 
 of labour, the baker is able, we will suppose, to obtain an increase 
 in his wage of 100 per cent., bringing it uj) to 50s. per week. And 
 in order to cover this increase in the cost of production, amounting 
 to 25s. on 193 loaves, the master baker puts l^d. on each 6d. loaf, 
 thus raising its price to 7^d. and the total increase on' the 193 
 loaves to 24s. Hd., or lOid. less than the increase in the workman's 
 wage. Now, what is the result ? Tlie result, so far as the work- 
 man is concerned, is that he now, buying the same commodities as 
 before, has to pay 31s. 3d. for his 50 loaves instead of 25s. as pre- 
 viously, but that, on the other hand, he receives 25s. more as wages, 
 leaving him a net weekly balance to tlie good of IBs. 9d. The
 
 The Labour Day. 45 
 
 demonstration, as I said before, is complete, and there is no escape 
 from its conclusions.* 
 
 With regard to the statement that, if the labour day were 
 shortened and the prices of commodities raised, some consumers 
 could not, and others would not, consume as much as formerly, and 
 that, therefore, there would be so much less trade for our merchants 
 and so much less employment for our workmen — the answer is that 
 the statement is both true and false. It is true in its first part and 
 false in its second. There undoubtedly would be some consumers 
 — idle consumers — who would not, after the shortening of the 
 labour day, consume as much as formerly. That is, in fact, one 
 of the objects of the proposed change. It is not intended that 
 those idle consumers shall continue to consume as much as formerly. 
 It is intended that they shall consume less and work more. And 
 it is undoubtedly contemplated, by shortening the labour day to 
 the point that there will be no unemployed workmen in the labour 
 market, that the stage will ultimately be reached when the idle 
 consumer will have ceased to be and all consumers will be workers. 
 Of course, it is not expected that that stage will be reached to- 
 morrow, nor the day after, for many of the idle consumers are 
 possessed of so much realised and realisable wealth that they will 
 be able to go on for a considerable time paying out portions of that 
 wealth in return for the labour they require. But that process will 
 come to an end in time, and, when the end does come, the whilom 
 idle consumer, having spent his last guinea on last night's supper 
 with " Tottie," of the Mashers' Music Hall, will have to take off his 
 coat and begin to earn his living. And, as to the second part of 
 the statement — about less trade and less employment — the point 
 fails, for the diminution in trade and employment caused by the 
 reduction in the expenditure of the idle consumers would be out- 
 weighed and compensated for several times over by the increase in 
 the expenditure of the newly-enriched workers. The net result 
 would be that the total trade of the country would be greater than 
 ever, but with these two important differences : first, that the 
 trade would be more in necessaries and less in luxuries; and, 
 second, that the spending and enjoying would be more amongst the 
 
 *The baker in the foregoing illustration is, of course, the representative, 
 in general, of all the workers, and his loaves the representatives of all 
 labour and commodities. That is understood.
 
 4G The Labour Day. 
 
 workers and less amougst the idlers than heretofore. That would 
 be all. 
 
 We now come to a differeut group of objectors, objectors who 
 may be called alternativists, inasmuch as they agree that something 
 should be done to ameliorate the present miserable condition of our 
 working class, but advocate the adoption of other remedies rather 
 than the shorter labour day. These alternativists may be divided 
 into two classes, those who sincerely believe in the effectiveness of 
 the alternatives they recommend, and those who advance those 
 alternatives, knowing well their insufficiency, but for the purpose 
 of obstructing and retarding any improvement or change from the 
 present system. Let us examine these alternatives. 
 
 One is co-operation. There are two varieties of this article. 
 One i)rofcsses to admit the workers (as distinguished from the 
 shareholders) to some share in tiie advantage of the system. The 
 other makes no such pretence, but shamelessly appropriates the 
 unpaid wages of its workers (called shareholders' pi'ofits) just as 
 the most ordinary and least benevolent individual capitalists do. 
 The latter kind we may dismiss at once. It does not pretend to 
 solve the labour problem. And as for the former kind, although it 
 undoubtedly benefits those workers who are within its favoured 
 sphere, it can never reach the whole of the people. The very poor 
 and destitute, must always, in the very nature of the case, 
 remain outside its operations. They cannot take up shares, 
 for they have no money. Therefore they would not draw 
 any dividend. On the contrary, their labour would be 
 laid under tribute to provide dividends for their wealthier 
 fellow-workers, and for some who were not workers at all. If a 
 co-operative system were established in which all the profits were 
 equally divided among all the workers, and into which a poor man 
 could enter with the same advantages as a rich man, then there 
 would l)e no need for a law to shorten the hours of labour. But 
 there is no such system in existence — nor, indeed, proposed, so 
 that it is clear tiiat we shall not find in co-operation an effective 
 remedy for the economic slavery of the working class. 
 
 'J'hen we have the new device of " profit-sharing " put forward ; 
 but this is only a plan of the more astute emi)loyers to attach the 
 workers more securely to tiieir present employment and the present 
 system. It is, in fact, simply an insurance against strikes. The
 
 The Labour Day. 47 
 
 workman does not receive his "profit " with his weekly wage, but 
 has it credited to him in liis eniployer's books or bank, and if he 
 strikes or leaves, it is, for the most part, forfeit. Arrangements, it 
 is true, are made by which the workman is to receive his profit, or 
 a portion of it, at remote periods and with wide intervals ; but, as 
 a matter of fact, the bulk of it for the most time lies in the hands 
 of the employer. The profit-sharing system is very profitable to the 
 employer who adopts it, for the foolish workman, fancying that his 
 fortune is as good as made, works himself to death's door to build 
 up the establishment, returning in labour ten times the value of 
 the profit put to his credit in the establishment's books. Such a 
 system is an aggravation, instead of an amelioration, of the 
 wretched condition of the workers. Its effect is to add to the 
 labour in the unemployed labour market, instead of diminishing it; 
 for as every worker under the profit-sharing system does more work 
 than he otherwise would, it follows that there is less left for his 
 fellow-workmen. 
 
 Another alternative that is sometimes suggested is State and 
 municipal workshops and farms. How the simple circumstance that 
 the State or municipality, and not a private individual, is the em- 
 ployer, is to effect an economic revolution is not explained. If the 
 scheme of State or municipal workshops and farms is to be effective, 
 it must be comprehensive, that is to say, it must offer employment to 
 every unemployed man in the country. If it does that, it will find 
 in the ranks of its workpeople many men who cannot work and 
 many men who will not work. What is it to do with these 1 If it 
 retains them, who is to bear the burden of their maintenance 1 
 The farmers and manufacturers with whose industries they com- 
 pete, or the "workmen in individualist employ whose wages their 
 competition will lower ? If, on the other hand, it discharges them, 
 the central purpose of the scheme is defeated and the whole thing 
 falls to the ground again. The plan is obviously hopeless from 
 every point of view ; from the point of view of justice no less tiian 
 from that of practicability, and it is strange indeed to find its 
 advocates still advancing it in the face of innumerable experiments, 
 every one of which was a complete and admitted failure. 
 
 Another remedy that is persistently put forward by the 
 younger type of reformers is Land Law Keform. Some of tiiese 
 propose to take the land of the country from its present owners
 
 48 The Labour Day. 
 
 and vest it in the State ; others to tax the land up to its full 
 l>resent value. The former are again sub-divided into some who 
 would compensate the present owners, some who would take it 
 without compensation, and some who, adopting a middle course, 
 would allow the present owners to I'etain it during their own lives 
 and the lives of their children, but make the State the heir of the 
 second generation. Without stopping to discuss either of these 
 three plans, beyond saying that the first would be both useless and 
 extravagant and the second impossible, I would onlj' ask how either 
 or all of them could possibly absorb the surplus in the labour 
 market ? If the present owners were to-morrow to make a present 
 of their lands to the State, what could the State do with them ? 
 Build houses on them 1 There are already more houses than there 
 are tenants who can pay for them. Grow crops and rear cattle ? 
 The crops and cattle markets are already glutted with foreign 
 produce with which English-grown produce cannot successfully 
 compete. And if houses are to be built for which there are no 
 paying tenants, and crops to be raised fur which there is no 
 effective market, where is the advantage, and who is to stand the 
 loss 1 The proposal is our old friend. State farms and workshops, 
 over again. As for the taxers, the Single Taxers, as they call 
 themselves, their proposal is even more absurd. Why wealth in 
 the form of land should be taxed, and not in others, is not easy to 
 understand from the economist point of view. The explanation is, 
 however, possibly to be found in the fact that the owners of the 
 land are, as a class. Conservatives in politics, whereas the Single 
 Taxers are Radicals to a man. But economic difficulties cannot be 
 solved by political prejudices, and it is quite evident that the 
 taxation of land, liglit or heavy, can have no possil)le influence, 
 under present tariff' conditions, on the surplus in the laboiu- 
 market, and the surplus in the labour market is the crux of the 
 whole matter. 
 
 Aucjther remedy that is extensively advocated is emigration. 
 Now, it may be at once conceded that, given proper conditions as 
 to climate, occupation, age, and means, emigration is, from the 
 point of view of the political economist, one of the least objection- 
 able of the alternative remedies proposed. But it has the fatal 
 defect of being unacceptable to the workers, who will not willingly 
 adopt it, and who cannot, of course, be compelled to do so. And
 
 The Labour Day. 49 
 
 that fact, by itself, puts the proposal out of court. So strong, 
 indeed, is the workman's repugnance to this " remedy," that he 
 instinctively looks upon any one who recommends it as his 
 enemy and the enemy of his class. " Why," he asks, " if there 
 are too many of us in this little island, should I be the one to 
 leave it ? I cultivate the soil and raise the food stuffs ; I rear the 
 dwellings and weave the clothing. Who is more necessary to the 
 community, that he should stay and I should go 1 " There is no 
 answer to that question. If there is to be an expatriation of any 
 portion of the community, both common-sense and equity suggest 
 that it shall be that portion which contributes least, not that which 
 contributes most, to the necessities of the whole. But more 
 material than even the foregoing considerations is the obvious fact 
 that any quantity of emigration of Scotsmen and Englishmen from 
 their native shores would not solve the problem of a surplus in 
 the labour market ; for, as fast as they went, their places would 
 be filled twice over hy Russians and Germans ready and eager 
 to do the Briton's work at half his wages. By emigrating the 
 Briton may, or may not, better his position as an individual ; but, 
 as long as British ports are flood-gates for the wholesale admission 
 of destitute foreigners, his departure from his native land can have 
 no influence one way or another on the surplus in its labour 
 market. There is one result, certainly, that follows on the 
 Briton's emigration and on his place being taken by the destitute 
 foreigner, and that is great deterioration in the quality of the work 
 done and consequent damage to the reputation of so-called British- 
 made goods in both our home and foreign markets. Britain 
 already suff'ers heavily in consequence of this injury to her good 
 name, and will suff'er still more in the years that are ahead of us. 
 But her statesmen and men of affairs are either blind to its cause 
 or have not the courage to adopt the necessaiy remedy. Tliey see 
 the evil plainly enough, deplore the rapidity with which it is 
 spreading, and prate fatuously about the necessity for " technical 
 education " for our working men. Some of them, no doubt, de- 
 liberately prefer and welcome the era of shoddy. It will fill their 
 purse and last their time. And, after that, their country and 
 their countrymen can go to the devil. Some day, and that, I 
 think, soon, the British workmen will themselves take up this 
 question of leaving their native land to make room for blackleg
 
 50 The Labour Day. 
 
 foreigners. But, until they do, they must put up with all the 
 hardships and injustice of the present system, for I do not see any 
 man among our rulers possessed of the wisdom and courage neces- 
 sary to grapple effectively with the evil. 
 
 There is another alternative sometimes suggested — Malthus- 
 ianism ; but the advocates of that peculiar nostrum require b\it 
 little notice. They are a decaying group, whose utterances attract 
 less and less attention as the real points of the labour question 
 become better understood. That their "remedy" is an unnatui-al 
 one is no defect in their eyes, but rather a recommendation. 
 They are above — or below — nature, and plume themselves on the 
 detachment. To do them justice, it must be owned that their 
 practice corresponds with their precepts, but whether voluntarily 
 or not, only themselves can say. However, be that as it may, the 
 answer to them is that their " remedy" is not only unnatural but 
 impossible, and, that being the case, it need not be further 
 discussed. A state of society in which all the children were 
 slain — a sort of magnified and continuous Massacre of the 
 Innocents — is conceivable ; although it is not difficult to forecast 
 the time when such a society would come to an end. But a state 
 of society in which no children shall be born, or only the children 
 of the wealthier members of the community, is an inconceivable 
 monstrosity, the advocates of which are protected only from one's 
 hostility by one's contempt. And, finally, as with the plea for 
 emigration, what is the use of limiting our own population if the 
 populations of other and larger countries are to come in and fill 
 our places 1 
 
 The last of the alternative remedies is thrift, or temperance. 
 But it is evident, in the first place, that this remedy, like co-opera- 
 tion, can only Ije very partial in the extent to which it can be 
 applied, and that it is therefore quite ineffective for the purpose in 
 view. One worker mdij, it is true, by dint of sacrifices and self- 
 denials on his own part, and by hardships and privations on the 
 part of those near and dear to him, lift himself, after years of 
 suffering, above the level of his fellow-workers and out of the 
 slough of poverty. But what follows ? He has attained to that 
 position by his own sufferings and exertions and by the sufferings 
 and exertions of his wife and children. I will not stop to discuss 
 the morality of that proceeding, although, undoubtedly, its methods
 
 The Laho^ir Dai/. 51 
 
 will not always bear strict examination, and sometimes the victims 
 do not survive the ordeal. But how does our risen workman main- 
 tain himself in his new position ? Still by his own sacrifices and 
 exertions ] Not at all. On the contraiy ; he himself becomes an 
 employer of labour, employing, probably enough, some of those 
 old fellow-workers of his from whose side he has risen, and 
 extracting from their labour profits that enable him to live, and 
 live well, without doing any work himself. What better is the 
 general condition of the working-class, what mitigation of their 
 misery is there, through this man's thrift 1 Obviously none at all. 
 He has lifted himself up, it is true, but he has left his fellows 
 down. In fact, he has aggravated their conditions, for he has 
 created, in his own person, another employer of labour who has 
 to be kept out of the profits extracted from their toil. 
 
 At this point it may be convenient to take note of a suggestion 
 that is sometimes made to the effect that, if a shorter labour day 
 is decreed by Parliament it should not be made universal and com- 
 pulsory, but optional in its operation. That is to say, that any 
 trade, or any district may by its votes decide whether it shall be 
 included in, or exempted from, the operation of the new law. A 
 little examination of the question shows that this proposal is en- 
 tirely inadmissable. First, on the ground of its injustice, and, 
 second, on the ground of the disturbance and chaos it would 
 involve in the industries of the country. To subject one district 
 to the operation of the law while leaving another exempt would 
 obviously be most unfair to the employers in the included district, 
 and probably ensure their ruin. Working a shorter day, yet pay- 
 ing the full wages (for that is the essence of the proposal), they 
 could not put their goods on the market at the same price as their 
 rivals — in, probably, an adjoining town — whose workmen were still 
 working the longer day. Then another thing would happen. The 
 employer in the included district would close his factory in that 
 district and open one in the exempted district. And thus every 
 included district would in time become deserted, all the work 
 would be done in the exempted districts, and the law practically 
 nullified. So much for the districts. As to trades, the incongrui- 
 ties that would be involved if these were allowed to claim exemp- 
 tion would be even greater than in the case of districts. Suppose, 
 for example, the blacksmith was an eight hour man and the ham-
 
 52 The Labour Day. 
 
 inerinan was a ten liour man, or vice versa, what is the one to do 
 when the other leaves off work for the day 1 There is, also, the 
 bricklayer and his labourer, the plumber and his " mate," the 'bus 
 driver and the 'bus couductor, and a score of other conjoint occu- 
 pations in which the co-operation of one workman is essential to 
 the employment of another. Nor is this all, for there are different 
 societies of one trade, as, for example, the Amalgamated Carpenters 
 and the General Union of Carpentei'S ; the Amalgamated Railway 
 Servants and the Railway "Workers' Union. It is absolutely certain 
 that some of these societies would differ from others in their decision, 
 in which case it would be obviously impossible for any work in 
 which the members of both were employed to be carried on. The 
 whole suggestion, whether in regard to trades or to districts, is, in 
 fact, so transparently unjust and impracticable that one can only 
 conclude that those who put it forward either do not understand 
 the alphabet of the question, or are, at heart, opposed altogether 
 to a legally-enforced shorter labour day. 
 
 The various schemes we have now considered — Co-operation, 
 Profit-sharing, State and Municipal Farms and Workshops, Land 
 Law Reform, Emigration, Malthusianism, and Thrift — may be said 
 to exhaust the list of proposals seriously put forward as alter- 
 natives to a shortening of the labour day. But there still remain 
 to be disposed of those objectors who declare their willingness, and, 
 in some cases, even desire, to see the labour day shortened, on 
 condition that the change is not effected by legal enactment. It 
 is not easy to understand intelligent men taking up this position. 
 They admit that the shortening of the labour day is a matter of 
 the very greatest consequence to the workers, yet they haggle over 
 the mere question of method, and declare tliat if their method — 
 the Trade Union method — is not adopted, they will resist the 
 whole project altogethei*. Many of them know perfectly well that 
 the method they insist upon is utterly ineffective, and that the 
 method they oppose is the only one that can succeed. They 
 know that there is a huge surplus of unemployed labour in the 
 labour market, to be drawn upon by employers when strikes occur, 
 rendering absolutely futile all the attempts of the unions to effect 
 the object in view. They know, moreover, that the arm of the 
 law is necessary for the protection of the workers (even when 
 these are grown men and members of Trade Societies) against the
 
 The Labour Day. 53 
 
 cupidity of their employers, and show their recognition of that fact 
 by their warm support of Parliamentary decrees forbidding the 
 payment of wages in kind (the Truck Act), specifying the limits 
 and conditions of compensation (Workmen's Compensation Act) 
 which employers shall pay to their workmen in case of accidents, 
 etc., etc. The real truth seems to be that these objectors to legis- 
 lative action are not honest. This opinion was held and was 
 publicly expressed by one of the workmen's Parliamentary 
 representatives, the late ]\rr. Benjamin Pickard. If they were 
 honest in their professions of friendship towai'ds a shorter labour 
 day, they woiild adopt for its attainment that legal method which 
 they deem necessary for the adjustment of other and less im- 
 portant matters of dispute between the same parties. The fact 
 that they do not adopt that method, but, on the contrary^ 
 stubbornly oppose it^ justifies the conclusion that their professed 
 friendship is not sincere, but is merely a cloak for a hostility 
 which they dare not openly avow. 
 
 It is, of course, possible that some of these objectors are 
 not dishonest, but only stupid. This would, indeed, appear to 
 be the fact in certain cases, judging by the arguments these 
 gentlemen themselves put forward. One of these, a leading 
 Radical member of Pai'liament, bases his hostility to legis- 
 lative interference with the hours of labour on the ground 
 that the change ought to be brought about by the action of 
 the Trades Unions ; and then the same gentleman goes on to 
 declare that a reduction of the hours of labour must be resisted, 
 inasmuch as it would ruin the country's trade and destroy its 
 industries ! Now, one would think that it must be clear, even to a 
 Radical member of Parliament, that the two positions here assumed 
 are mutually inconsistent, and that, to put it mildly, they ought 
 not to be taken up at one and the same time by one and the same 
 individual. If an eight hours or nine hours day, enforced by law, 
 will ruin trade, will not a similar day, enforced by Trades Union 
 action do the same? One would think so. Yet the gentleman 
 referred to is not without his admirers, and his " arguments " 
 against the Eight Hours Bill are always vigorously applauded by 
 the employers of labour on both sides of the House of Commons. 
 The average employer of labour is just as illogical and incousistent 
 as his Parliamentary champion. He, also, resists and denounces
 
 54 The Labour Day. 
 
 au Eight Hours Bill as " grandmotherly legislation," sympathizes 
 with the workman's desire for more leisure, but declares that the 
 object ought to be effected by the action of the men's Trade 
 Societies, " which are well able to defend the interests and pro- 
 mote the welfare of their members." Then, when these Trade 
 Societies, using the only weapon they have got, strike in favour of 
 shorter hours, the employer has no language strong enough to 
 describe the iniquity and folly of their proceedings, and straight- 
 way rakes the Elnglish gutters and the foreign labour market for 
 " blacklegs " to take the places and do the work of the strikei-s ! 
 What shall we say of such objectors ? 
 
 There are others who must be judged more leniently — old 
 Trade Union leaders and officials, men who have spent their lives 
 in the cause of labour, who do not undez'staud the new economic 
 doctrine, and who cling with an honest infatuation to a belief in 
 the potency of their old organizations. It is nothing to them that 
 these organizations have all these years failed to effectively remedy 
 the condition of the workers, leaving them to-day as completely the 
 victims of an overflowing labour market as they were when they 
 first started their operations. They pride themselves on the 
 success they achieved in the Nine Hours movement, but do not 
 see that the very fact of the labour market remaining, nevertheless, 
 glutted as ever from then to now is conclusive evidence of the 
 impotence of the Trade Union method. It is possible, of course, 
 that some of these Trade Union leaders, touched with the disease 
 of Anarchism, may fancy that, some fine day, the position may be 
 carried by physical force, by the strong right arm of the picket. 
 That would be the wildest of delusions. In the event of any 
 attempt of that kind the whole community would rise against the 
 unions ; the civil authority would stretch out its arm for the pro- 
 tection of the " blacklegs," and if that arm was not long enough 
 or strong enough, the military power would come out to its 
 support. The issue would not be doubtful. The unionists would 
 Ije ground to powder, and Trades Unionism and the interests of 
 labour would receive a blow from which they would not recover 
 for two or three generation.s. 
 
 Having shown that the legislative regulation of the labour day 
 is an absolute necessity for the workers, I will now proceed, very 
 briefly, to show that it will be advantageous also to honest and
 
 The Labour Day. 65 
 
 honourable employers. This may sound strange doctrine, but it is 
 quite true. Everybody will admit, employers of labour as well as 
 others, that although it is impossible that Trade Unions can ever 
 succeed in establishing universally such a shorter labour day as 
 would quite absorb the surplus in the labour market, yet it is 
 certain that they will continue, however ineffectually, their efforts 
 in that direction. In some trades in certain districts an eight 
 hours day has already been attained, and the battle will no doubt 
 be extended and continued. Now, it is inevitable that if the exten- 
 sion of the sphere of the eight hours day is forced by Trade Union 
 action, it will not only entail much suffering, for the time being, 
 upon the workers, but that it will also bring ruin upon numerous 
 individual employers of labour. That is inevitable. The particu- 
 lar industries assailed may themselves survive the attack, and the 
 bulk of the employers may be even better circumstanced after it 
 than they were before. But that some employers, as well as some 
 workmen, will fall in the struggle, never to rise again, is as certain 
 as anything can be. Now^ the employers are not ignorant of this 
 fact. They are, on the contrary, keenly alive to it. And it is 
 this knowledge and the fears that it inspires that impel these 
 employers to resist all demands for shorter hours of labour. So it 
 comes to pass that when such demand is made by a Trade Union, 
 the employer answers that he cannot afford to pay the additional 
 wages that the shortening of the hours of labour would involve. 
 And the answer is perfectly true. The position of an employer of 
 labour is like that of Germany in Europe : he has an enemy on 
 each of his frontiers. In front of him is the produce market, into 
 which he can only enter with produce at least equal in value and 
 cheapness to the produce of his rivals ; behind him is the labour 
 market, from which he must draw supplies of labour at least equal 
 in value and cheapness to those of his rivals. Failure in any one of 
 these points means his destruction ; and, inasmuch as the payment 
 of a higher rate of wages to his workmen, ivhile his rivals continued 
 to pay the lower, would involve that failure, the employer very 
 naturally sets his face against the demand for a shorter labour 
 day. In this apprehension as to the result of a shorter labour 
 day the employer is both right and wrong. It all depends on 
 how the change is effected. If it is effected spasmodically and 
 piecemeal, as it is now being attempted by the Trade Unions,
 
 56 The Labour Day. 
 
 the employer's apprehensions are well founded and almost 
 certain to be realised. If it is his fate to be the first to be 
 attacked by the unions, he will find himself assailed and 
 harassed, while his rival, occupying, possibly, adjoining premises, 
 remains untouched ; and, while he is engaged in a life or death 
 struggle "with his assailants, his rival will carry off the trade 
 and he will be ruined. All that is quite clear. But if, on 
 the contrary, the change is effected tiniversallt/ and simultaneously, 
 the employer's difficulties vanish — or, rather, they do not arise. For 
 all his rivals are placed in the same position that he is placed in. 
 They will have to work the same shortened houi's that he works, 
 and pay the same increased wages that he pays, and therefore they 
 will not be able to rob him of his share of the market. That, also, 
 is quite clear ; and we see that the employer's interests are not 
 really opposed to the shortening of the labour day, but only to the 
 spasmodic and partial method adopted by the Trade Unions for 
 effecting the change ; and that, if he can be made sure that ike 
 change shall he universal and simultaneous, his objections at once 
 and entirely disappear. But he must be made quite sure. No 
 mere hopes or expectations will, or ought to, satisfy him. He 
 must be made absolutely sure. And what guarantee can we give 
 to the employer ? How shall we make him sure that the change 
 in the labour day shall be made simultaneous and universal 1 
 The only guarantee the employer can accept in this matter is the 
 security of the law, and the security of the law can only be given 
 if the change is decreed and enforced by law. So that it is clear 
 that, in the interests of the employers themselves, as w'ell as in 
 the interests of the workers, employed and unemployed, the legis- 
 lative shortening of the labour day has become an absolute necessity. 
 The argument is now complete. I submit that I have con- 
 clusively proved my three main propositions, namely : first, that 
 the present economic condition of the workers is unjust; 
 second, that that condition, being unjust, ought to be remedied ; 
 and, third, that the legislative restriction of the hours of 
 labour is not only tiie best, but the only practicable and 
 effective, means by which that condition can be satisfactorily 
 and i>ennanently remedied. We have examined all the objections 
 to a shorter labour day, and have seen that they cannot be 
 maintained. We have examined also all the alternative remedies
 
 The Labour Day. 57 
 
 proposed, and found them either insufficient or impracticable. 
 And we have looked forward to the results of a shorter labour day, 
 and find that, while they will be immensely beneficial to the great 
 masses of the people, they will entail hardship upon none — the 
 wealthy, idle consumer, upon whom alone will fall the cost of 
 the change, being well able to afford it. It is, of course, not 
 to be expected that so great a change will be effected without 
 a struggle. The wealthy, idle consumer, although well able to 
 afford the draft it will make upon his hoard, will resist it with all 
 the powers he can command. And when we remember that, for 
 the most part, the daily and weekly press is in his hands, and the 
 average member of Parliament either his dependent or his 
 nominee, we must acknowledge that he has many and powerful 
 voices in his service. 
 
 A final word. It may be said, if the workers cannot, by means 
 of their unions, obtain a limitation of the labour day, how can 
 they hope to obtain it by any other 1 The answer is very simple. 
 In the one case they have the whole community outside their own 
 ranks combined against them. In the other, the community is 
 divided into two almost equal parts (political parties), each intent 
 on its own interests and most anxious for the support and assis- 
 tance of the workers in the furtherance of these interests. Neither 
 of these parties, it is true, will help the workers to a shorter labour 
 day, if it can avoid it ; but either of them will certainly do so if 
 that is the price of the support and assistance aforesaid. Of 
 course, if the support and assistance are always given to the same 
 party, as is the practice of the Liberal Labour leaders, and always 
 without any equivalent (other than personal) being exacted, then 
 no equivalent will ever be given. But, if one may judge by 
 certain signs of the times, that practice does not commend itself 
 to the bulk of the workers, and it is possible that it may be 
 summarily stopped at an early date, and another practice, more 
 calculated to benefit these workers, adopted in its stead. It 
 would, indeed, be a pity if it were otherwise, for the opportunity 
 is a great one, not possessed in its completeness by the workers 
 of any other country in the world at any time in the world's 
 history. For these two great political parties of ours. Conserva- 
 tives and Liberals, are so immersed in their mutual rivalries and 
 so equally matched that they will give practically any terms to
 
 58 The Lahoxir Bay. 
 
 allies. This is the opportunity of the workers, an opportunity 
 they never had befoi-e, and an opportunity which, by some 
 change in the Constitution at pi'esent unforeseen, may pass from 
 their grasp never to return. They have votes, and their votes can 
 restore the Liberal party to place and power or doom them to per- 
 petual opposition. Their votes can establish Mr. Balfour and his 
 friends in office for the remainder of their lives or plant Sir Henry 
 Carapbell-Bannerman and Mr. Lloyd-Geoi'ge on the front Ministerial 
 benches of the House of Commons. Is there any doubt, can there 
 be any doubt, what the result would be if the workers were to 
 decide, once for all, that ou/y such Parliamentary candidates as 
 pledged themselves to an eight hours labour day, irrespective of all 
 other questions, would receive their support? There can be no 
 doubt. Not less than 90 per cent, of the Liberals and 70 per cent, 
 of the Conservatives would instantly swallow the pledge. There 
 would be no more strikes, with their concomitants of misery and 
 suffering to the workers ; no more civil war, with unionist and non- 
 unionist workmen killing each other for the chance of a bare 
 existence ; no more disturbances of trade, local or national, with 
 consequent ruin to honest employers of labour. Everything would 
 be adjusted quietly, constitutionally, and in order. The machinery 
 is all ready, waiting to be put in motion. 
 
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