THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE RED LIGHT. 
 
 A COMMENTARY 
 
 ON 
 
 Mr. J. H. Thomas's ^^ When Labour Rules. 
 
 99 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST E. WILLIAMS. 
 
 THE FREEDOM ASSOCIATION, 
 AMBERLEY HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, 
 LONDON, W.C.2.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CO 
 
 L- 
 
 so 
 
 II. 
 III. 
 
 
 IV.- 
 
 .. 
 
 V.- 
 
 .^aw 
 
 VI. 
 
 CD 
 
 VII.- 
 
 OVIIL- 
 
 
 IX.- 
 
 
 X.- 
 XI.- 
 
 32 
 
 XII.- 
 
 -Introductory ... 
 
 -The Quest of Perfection 
 
 -Revolution 
 
 -Force 
 
 -Nationalization 
 
 -Drink 
 
 -Bleeding the Capitalist 
 
 -Baiting for the Middle Classes ... 
 
 -Co-partnership ... 
 
 -Finance (including Protection) 
 
 -Ireland, India, Women, and Oddments 
 
 -Should L.^bour Rule ? 
 
 PAGE 
 
 5 
 9 
 13 
 19 
 25 
 34 
 48 
 
 57 
 64 
 
 74 
 85 
 98 
 
 387'976 
 
 A 2
 
 THE RED LIGHT. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The leaders of the Labour party are looking forward 
 to control of the Government of this country. 
 During the war one or two of them were taken into 
 the Government, but the party now aims at something 
 much more ambitious than modest participation of 
 that sort : it proposes to take complete control of 
 the governmental machine. One of its leaders, the 
 Rt. Hon. J. H. Thomas, M.P., regards the fulfiment of 
 that ambition as so near that he has produced a book — 
 " When Labour Rules " — in which he sketches out the 
 policy which a Labour Party Government will pursue 
 when it seizes the reins. At least, one may suppose 
 that such is the purpose of publication at this time ; 
 though probably another motive, consistent with the 
 former, is to be found in a desire to take up the 
 challenge of a Coalition statesman as to Labour's 
 unfitness to govern, and to show, by the elaboration 
 of a policy, that there are Labour leaders who are fully 
 competent to discharge the responsibility. 
 
 As a leader of eminence in his party, and one accus- 
 tomed to write his views for public perusal, it is 
 natural, and not unfitting, that Mr. J. H. Thomas, 
 M.P., should have undertaken the task. But from 
 the standpoint of the public desirous of learning the
 
 mind and methods and purpose of the Labour party 
 the choice is not altogether a happy one. Mr. J. H. 
 Thomas has two voices — an extremist and a moderate 
 voice. Usually the moderate voice is heard, but 
 there are bewildering quick changes. It is the moderate 
 voice which breathes through his book ; but is it, 
 I won't say the real, but the permanent voice ? There 
 is in the decoration of the volume a funny little symbol 
 of what I mean. The contents of the book are for the 
 most part couched in terms of studied moderation, 
 but the loose cover which enwraps it blazons forth a 
 red flag. There you have Mr. Thomas. 
 
 If the book runs into a further edition, the publishers 
 might consider, perhaps, a slightly more appropriate 
 decoration than a red flag. Why not a red light ? 
 The author represents the railwaymen's union. A 
 red light is the chosen token of danger on the railway. 
 So, of course, in the daylight, is a red flag ; and perhaps 
 Mr. Thomas and his publishers had this symbolism 
 in view, after all, rather than the red flag of revolu- 
 tionary socialism. But the red flag has two signi- 
 fications, and so is ambiguous. Perhaps, however, 
 there was a happy thought of combining the two ideas. 
 But the public will be well advised to draw out the 
 simile, and see in this book a warning to check indis- 
 criminate sympathy with " Labour." 
 
 What, I think, Mr. Thomas really meant for his 
 emblem was the railwaymen's green flag — the assurance 
 that the road is clear, and that we may go ahead full 
 speed in safety. For it is a leading tnotif of his book 
 that no one need be afraid of adopting the Labour 
 programme — that the red of the flag is not the red of 
 gore, but the genial radiance of universal benevolence. 
 In that regard the book itself is dangerous, and needs 
 
 6
 
 a red light to be turned upon it, to warn the unwary 
 reader. 
 
 For there is much in the position advanced by Mr. 
 Thomas with which every right-thinking man must 
 sympathize. We all want to see poverty diminished 
 (although Mr. Thomas appears to find it difficult 
 to admit this) ; we all want to see freedom and justice 
 reign in this country and throughout the world ; 
 we all want to see general prosperity increase ; we 
 all want to see happiness widespread, culture improved 
 and character strengthened. And because Mr. Thomas 
 and his friends come before us confidently announcing 
 political panaceas for achieving these ends, and be- 
 cause Mr. Thomas himself does so in less flaming and 
 extreme language than has been common with his 
 socialist colleagues, and because this programme is 
 uttered at a time when political voices generally 
 are speaking in disappointingly uncertain tones, there 
 is a danger that many members of the public will give 
 an over-ready credence to doctrines where closer 
 examination would disclose grounds for scepticism. 
 Hence the ensuing criticism and commentary. 
 
 But in advance of that criticism let this be added : 
 not only does one sympathize to a substantial extent 
 with the fundamental motive of Mr. Thomas's policy 
 — the betterment of the human lot — but that sym- 
 pathy must extend to numerous specific statements 
 in his book. Some of his declamation against the 
 existing order is a cynical exposition of class selfishness ; 
 some of it has a meretricious sound ; but some passages 
 ring true, and I hope that my readers will not regard 
 the ensuing pages of criticism as embracing in universal 
 hostility everything which Mr. Thomas has advanced 
 in his book.
 
 One other preliminary explanation. Mr. Thomas's 
 book is discursive, disjointed and scrappy to a degree. 
 A chapter — an all too short chapter — on " Women " 
 is sandwiched between a chapter on " The Responsi- 
 bilities of Municipalities " and another called " The 
 League of Peoples," A chapter on " Education " 
 begins with a discussion of strikes, and later wanders 
 off into a disquisition on the democratic control 
 of industry. And so forth. But a commentary is 
 necessarily more scrappy than the work commented 
 on, and in these circumstances lies my apology for 
 the scrappiness of the following pages. 
 
 \g;^;4il.!CAL-^
 
 II. 
 
 THE QUEST OF PERFECTION. 
 
 Religion to-day is openly relegated to a minor place ; 
 yet the religious instinct in the human heart is as 
 persistent as the beating of the heart itself. The 
 quest of perfection is always a pre-occupation of men. 
 To-day, as the inheritance of a century's materialistic 
 thought, many are bereft of the proper outlet for those 
 instincts, and the impulse has found a way out in 
 other directions, and among these directions Socialism 
 is notable. " Never mind tM life after death ; let 
 us have Paradise now. Don't worry over the hard 
 task of individual perfection ; let us have perfection 
 in our social arrangements." So runs the new gospel. 
 And the socialist apostle exhorts his fellows to plunge 
 into a form of communal life which will abolish the 
 moral and material evils of our present existence 
 We are all to abandon the ordinary mainsprings of 
 activity — personal and family interest, and labour 
 whole-heartedly for the common good. In fact, we 
 must do so, if Socialism is to be a success ; the system 
 cannot work otherwise. To those who think what 
 human nature is, the assumption upon which they are 
 asked to gamble is a big one ; but it is the fundamental 
 and essential condition of the socialist doctrine. It 
 is pertinent, therefore, to cite a most pregnant
 
 admission wliich Mr. Thomas himself makes in his first 
 chapter, in whicli he discusses " The England of 
 To-morrow." He writes : — 
 
 " It may safely be assumed, however, that whatever 
 progress to-morrow may be able to look back upon it will 
 find human nature still very much what it is to-day ; 
 there will still be jealousies and bickerings and disputes 
 and discontent — above all there will be discontent, and 
 were this not to be I, for one, would have but httle hope 
 of the future ; but the discontent of to-morrow will differ 
 fundamentally from the discontent of the past, inasmuch 
 as it will not be based on a sense of injustice and will not 
 be received in a spirit of hostility " (p. lo). 
 
 It is a characteristic of Mr. Thomas's dialectic to 
 get out of a tight argumentative place by the simple 
 expedient of asserting what it is necessary for his point 
 that his readers should believe. It is not a convincing 
 method of argument. It is not convincing in the 
 present instance. Having made a most damaging 
 admission — one which cuts away the basis of a 
 socialistic superstructure — Mr. Thomas tries to modify 
 the effect of the admission by asserting that the dis- 
 content which will prevail in the socialistic future 
 will have no basis in a sense of injustice, and will not 
 be received in a spirit of hostility. If the discontent — 
 not to mention the " jealousies and bickerings and 
 disputes " — are not to be based on some sense of 
 injustice, what on earth is to be their origin ? And if 
 their purposeless discontent is to be received in a 
 friendly spirit, one can only say that such a reception 
 will differ from what experience leads us to expect. 
 In revolutionary Russia they call discontent counter- 
 revolution, and punish it with death. The valuable 
 part of the above citation is the opening, not the inept 
 conclusion. 
 
 10
 
 But let us do full justice to Mr. Thomas's attempt to 
 palliate his own admission. He goes on to declare that 
 though " the holiday-maker will still have the weather 
 to grumble about," and the dyspeptic his breakfast, 
 &c. (a little unworthily feeble, this sort of thing), 
 
 " . . . no man will have occasion to protest 
 against the conditions under which he is expected to Hve ; 
 no man will be able to state that someone else is living on 
 his sweated labour ; and no man will be able to proclaim 
 that he lacks the opportunity to improve his lot if he 
 wishes to do so " (p. ii). 
 
 These indeed are bold assertions. In the subse- 
 quent development of his policy, Mr. Thomas proposes 
 such enormous increases in the death duties as would 
 prevent young men of twenty living on their deceased 
 fathers' fortunes. A man sometimes leaves other 
 dependants besides a young man of twenty. Will 
 not the conditions under which some of these dependants 
 will have to live, when the family fortune has been 
 despoiled after the death of its head, occasion some 
 protest ? Again, is Mr. Thomas quite sure that a 
 miner, for instance, in the socialistic community will 
 never state that someone else is living on his sweated 
 labour, when he contemplates, say, the comfortable 
 officials who will come round to inspect the mines ? 
 And assuredly it is trifling with the subject to declare 
 that no man will be able to proclaim that he lacks the 
 opportunity to improve his lot if he wishes to do so ; 
 for there will be hard and easy, agreeable and dis- 
 agreeable work to be done in the best organized 
 socialistic community, And will not every doer of the 
 hard and disagreeable work wish to change his lot 
 for the other kind ? — but they can't all have the 
 opportunity. 
 
 II
 
 Therefore let us rest in Mr. Thomas's admission that, 
 when the revolution has worked its will upon us, 
 and our existing social order has been scrapped, and 
 England has been converted into a paradise under 
 Labour rule, " jealousies and bickerings and disputes 
 and discontent " will still mar our paradisaical state — 
 because our dreams of perfection will not have come 
 true, and the quest will still be before us. Mr. Thomas 
 will say that we shall be nearer the end of the quest 
 when his programme is realized. Others of us think 
 we shall be no nearer, and conceivably, at any rate, 
 may be farther off. 
 
 12
 
 III. 
 
 REVOLUTION. 
 
 So perfection is to be obtained by way of revolution. 
 Mr. Thomas means " revolution " — let there be no 
 mistake about that. Mr. Thomas is quite frank. The 
 Labour Party's programme is not a programme of 
 improvement of the existing order, it is a proposal 
 to subvert the existing order ; and Mr. Thomas, with 
 all his desire to be moderate and conciliatory, admits 
 as much. And the words in which he makes the formal 
 admission also contain a truth so well worth heeding, 
 but so generally obscured in the public mind, that I 
 cannot do better than transcribe his valuable words. 
 He writes : — 
 
 " What is a revolution ? I maintain that it is not 
 necessarily a violent and bloody revolt ; an orgy of out- 
 rage and assassination ; an affair of red caps and barri- 
 cades. A revolution may be perfectly bloodless and 
 peaceful, and I maintain that we are in the midst of such 
 a revolution at the present moment " (p. 12). 
 
 There may be exaggeration in the claim that we are 
 in the midst of the revolution now. I should rather 
 put it that the revolution has started, and that, if it 
 proceeds, its beginning will be dated earlier than 1921 ; 
 but the present stage is so early that, if it were per- 
 manently checked now, historians would not chronicle 
 a revolution at all. But it has begun, and Mr. Thomas 
 is right to emphasize the fact. 
 
 13
 
 Unfortunately, Mr. Thomas, though he asks the 
 question What is a revolution ? as though he is about 
 to answer it, fails to give any succinct definition, though 
 he does give a negative definition. A revolution, as he 
 rightly reminds us, is not to be confused with the 
 sensational events which sometimes accompany its 
 inauguration. What is it, then ? A revolution is 
 the destruction of an existing social order, and it must 
 be accomplished by conscious and fairly rapid changes, 
 and not be simply the unconscious outcome of genera- 
 tions of slow development. That, I think, is a short, 
 but sufficiently complete, definition of a revolution. 
 The full achievement of a revolution may be spread 
 over a fairly long period of time — say, as much as 
 twenty years — without depriving the changes involved 
 of their revolutionary characteristic ; and if it is a 
 wide-embracing social and economic, as contrasted 
 with a merely political or dynastic, revolution it 
 cannot be fully effected within a day or a month. 
 Whether blood and barricades accompany the revolu- 
 tion depends upon the circumstances, such as the 
 strength and temper of the revolutionaries and their 
 opponents, the presence or absence of inflamed hatred, 
 the extremist or moderate character of the immediate 
 ends sought, and other like circumstances. (The 
 existence of a wide parliamentary franchise, is, of course, 
 an important factor making against violence ; just as a 
 general strike, instead of a general election, is a factor 
 almost certainly involving violence.) But the point 
 to bear in mind is that bloodshed and the like are not 
 the revolution itself, but only possible accompaniments 
 of its inauguration. 
 
 It is important to lay stress upon this because there 
 are so many in the public of this country to-day — 
 
 14
 
 perhaps the great majority — who confuse revolution 
 and violence ; and, because they see no imminent sign 
 of the latter, blissfully assume that the former is a 
 mere bogey. And thus they remain quiescent while 
 the first battles of revolution are being fought and won, 
 and the strategic positions are being occupied under 
 their noses, making ultimate resistance the harder. 
 I question Mr. Thomas's sagacity in pointing this out 
 just now. I should have thought it would have been 
 wiser from his point of view to have waited until more 
 preliminary positions of vantage had been occupied 
 before telling the public that it is useless to attempt 
 further opposition, because the advance has already 
 gone too far. However, let us be grateful that he has 
 chosen to give us the reminder now. 
 
 Less is to be said for his example of the revolutionary 
 progress already made. He quotes but one instance, 
 and that is a misquotation and one serious enough to 
 be worth notice for other reasons. His example is a 
 passage in the report of the Court of Enquiry on the 
 conditions of dock labour — a passage in which the 
 report states that " the true and substantial case 
 presented by the dockers was based upon a broad appeal 
 for a better standard of living," and that " the Court 
 did not discourage this view ; on the contrary, it 
 approved of it, and it is fair to the Port Authorities and 
 employers to say that its soundness was not questioned." 
 Mr. Thomas comments upon this paragraph by saying 
 that it is — 
 
 '' . . . one of the many evidences of this peaceful 
 revolution which would have created a storm forty, 
 twenty, even ten years ago" (p. 12). 
 
 That sympathy with a better standard of living for 
 the working man was not so active and widespread 
 
 15
 
 before the war as it is to-day may be admitted ; but 
 to say that there was such a complete lack of sympathy 
 with it that the utterance of the sentiment would have 
 created a storm even ten years ago, is so gross an 
 exaggeration as to amount to a grotesque and un- 
 charitable perversion of the truth. There were hard 
 and unsympathetic men in the old days, as there are 
 now, and always will be, in every grade of life ; but 
 there were many then, among employers and among 
 their class and educated people generally, who strove 
 anxiously and in various ways to better the conditions 
 of life of the poor — though doubtless they were less 
 reckless of the economic possibilities involved in high 
 and ever-increasing wages, accompanied by shorter 
 hours and lowered output, than is fashionable at the 
 moment. But Mr. Thomas is so anxious that 
 " Labour " shall " rule " that he will give no credit 
 for the amelioration of the workers' lot during the past 
 century to those to whom it belongs. He recites, for 
 example (on p. 37), examples of the factory legisla- 
 tion of the nineteenth century, without a word of 
 thanks to its authors, which decency demands in view 
 of his general charges of soulless greed against the 
 wealthy and governing classes. Instead, at a later 
 stage of his recital of this ameliorative legislation, he 
 calls cynical attention to the fact that these recent 
 acts " synchronize in a remarkable manner with the 
 growing political power of the people " (p. 39). It is 
 of baleful significance that a Labour leader can imagine 
 only oppression by those in power ; can see only fear in 
 any effort to better the lot of another class. 
 
 To return to the revolution. Mr. Thomas's instance 
 of present-day sympathy with the improvement of the 
 manual workers' standard of living is not an apt 
 
 16
 
 instance of the commencement of the revolution ; 
 much better can be quoted. I have always dated the 
 revolution from the occasion during the war when Mr, 
 Asquith, then Prime Minister, called together trade 
 union leaders, discussed the position of the war with 
 them, and gave them inforrfation which he had not 
 given to Parliament and was withholding from the 
 general public. That action virtually sanctioned the 
 existence of a sort of unofficial and rival parliament, 
 unknown to the Constitution, contrary to the first 
 principles of the Constitution, and representing a 
 section of the nation only. It will, of course, be replied 
 that this is quite a wrong way of regarding the incident, 
 which in no wise differed from the calling together in 
 conference with the Government of any other body of 
 experts or representatives ; but I find it difficult to 
 agree. I see in it rather the forerunner of the pre- 
 posterous Council of Action of last summer ; and in 
 this body, at any rate, we have an undoubted beginning 
 of revolution. Happily the quick, unaided triumph 
 of Poland, to prevent help to which was the purpose of 
 the Council, allayed an ugly situation, and caused the 
 public quickly to forget the existence of the Council 
 of Action ; but its unchecked formation will have to 
 occupy a place in the history of the revolution, if such 
 a history has ever to be written. It is still, I believe, 
 in being, and may therefore at any time arise again as 
 a portent, and a fact to be grappled with ; and it is 
 rather matter for wonder that Mr. Thomas — a leading 
 member of it — did not call attention to it as an example 
 of the revolution in progress. 
 
 In the economic field many examples may be found. 
 A generation ago — and much more recently — the great 
 industries of this country were controlled by the men 
 
 17 B
 
 who had provided the capital, and owned them. This 
 cannot be said to-day in regard to those two great 
 industries — coal-mining and railway transport. How 
 we should have rubbed our eyes a dozen years ago if 
 in a railway strike such as that of 1919, or a coal strike 
 such as that of 1920, the companies concerned had been 
 practically left out of the dispute, and the matter had 
 been settled between the workmen and the Govern- 
 ment as the parties interested ! And the outcome of 
 each of those disputes has been the further displacement 
 of the owners, and the realization in large measure of 
 Mr. Thomas's oft-repeated claim for a " democratic 
 control of industry " by giving a direct and official 
 voice in the management to representatives of the wages 
 staff or their unions. 
 
 The revolution has indeed begun. Great, seemingly 
 impersonal, forces aie at work, changing the old order; 
 but to a large extent it lies in the hands of the people 
 of this country to say whether the revolution shall go 
 farther, or how much farther. And, though contempla- 
 tion of the fact that it has begun may have the effect 
 upon fatalistic natures of producing supine acquiescence 
 in the apparently inevitable, and may spur on to more 
 vigorous exertions those who want the revolution, yet 
 steady contemplation of the position should neverthe- 
 less be encouraged, so that the nation may not drift 
 unknowingly into the revolution, or be jockeyed into 
 it because they do not realize whither they are being 
 led. 
 
 18
 
 IV. 
 
 FORCE. 
 
 But though Mr. Thomas prefers to contemplate a 
 revolution achieved under the anaesthetic of the ballot- 
 box rather than through the painful violence of public 
 disorder — though he sees himself more easily in a 
 Downing Street armchair than astride a barricade — 
 his devotion to democratic politics does not stay him 
 from pointing out another way. Those who follow 
 his career will recall that a characteristic method of 
 his propaganda is to make our flesh creep with dreadful 
 utterances of what will happen if the country pursues 
 a policy opposed to his own. For instance, when 
 military service was introduced during the late war, 
 Mr. Thomas predicted awful happenings. They didn't 
 happen — but that is sometimes the way with Mr. 
 Thomas's predictions. 
 
 So in his book Mr. Thomas, changing his narrative 
 voice (he is giving a sketch of recent legislation) into 
 the hollow and horror-compelling tone with which we 
 are familiar, treats us to the following : — 
 
 " Twenty-one years ago a General Federation of 
 Trade Unions was established with the object of com- 
 bining the various separate unions into one army capable 
 of concerted action, and possessing a gigantic central fund 
 which would be at the service of any individual union 
 fighting to maintain its existence or to improve its con- 
 dition. . . . The strength which Labour gains by 
 uniting its forces in federations is obvious ; but a still 
 
 19 
 
 B 2
 
 further advance in securing the solidarity of the workers 
 has been made by the formation of what is known as 
 the Triple Alliance, composed of miners', railwaymen's 
 and transport workers' confederations. The existence of 
 such a colossal organization as this makes possible a 
 national strike by which the whole life of the country 
 would be brought to a standstill. This is not a weapon 
 which Labour would lightly use— as was demonstrated by 
 the Trades Union Congress which negatived a proposal 
 for direct action — but the power to use it as a last resource 
 is an invaluable lever in compelling every effort being 
 made towards the settlement of disputes " (p. 42). 
 
 Poor democracy ! Where stands the rule of the 
 majority now ? Cannot Mr. Thomas see that in this 
 passage he is denying the first principle of democracy — 
 rule by the whole people, or, failing unanimity, by a 
 majority of the people, and not by a section in a 
 minority, but which happens to have the power 
 to force its will upon the rest ? That is the essence 
 of democracy, and Mr. Thomas laughs at it. " The 
 ballot-box and the majority vote, by all means, so 
 long as we win at the ballot-box ; but we will bludgeon 
 the nation if it doesn't give us all we want." Sections 
 of the people will demand this, that and the other from 
 the rest, and they will hold a big stick behind their 
 backs while proffering the request. A refusal to comply 
 and the big stick will be brought out and brandished. 
 " We Labour leaders will soon teach you, the general 
 public, to thwart us. Give us what we demand, or 
 we will bring the whole life of the country to a stand- 
 still ! " — and what that means in the way of general 
 misery, and may mean in the way of bloodshed, Mr. 
 Thomas has himself been busy in warning us of late. 
 Thus is the reign of reason and the realization of the 
 popular will to be inaugurated — that beatific State 
 which is to be erected when Labour rules : the " new, 
 
 20
 
 more healthy, more beautiful and more enduring 
 structure." 
 
 Of course, it is the negation of democracy ; it is akin 
 to — it is a form of — the " dictatorship of the prole- 
 tariat," with which Lenin and his satellites are 
 oppressing the Russian people. 
 
 It is not much to the purpose for Mr. Thomas to say 
 that " this is not a weapon which Labour would lightly 
 use." Did not his Council of Action contemplate its 
 use last summer, because they disagreed with a par- 
 ticular development of the country's foreign policy } 
 Did not a formal order for its use go forth from Mr. 
 Thomas's own office during the recent coal strike — an 
 order launched so lightly that even the miners' leaders 
 were displeased, for it was promulgated at a time when 
 its effect was almost to destroy pending peace negotia- 
 tions ? The weapon was lightly and wantonly used ; 
 and, judging from contemporary reports, no one was 
 better aware of the fact than Mr. Thomas himself. 
 
 But even if the weapon were carefully kept in reserve, 
 for use only " as a last resource," would that justify 
 its existence ? It is to be in the trade union armoury, 
 a permanent threat to the public — a weapon of dire 
 offence which will be inexorably used against the public, 
 when demands and ordinary threats and action have 
 failed. "If we can't convince you, then, though we 
 are a minority, we will, as a last resource, compel you 
 by the use of a power which our privileged position 
 has enabled us to forge ; you will then have to give 
 in to us, or the alternative will be ruin and tragedy." 
 Again, whatever name may' be applied to it — and some 
 unpleasant names could justifiably be used — that is 
 not democracy. Ii is not the realization of the popular 
 will, but a brutal challenge to it. 
 
 21
 
 The enunciation of this threat is followed a few lines 
 later by the assertion that — 
 
 " Not only is Labour fit to govern, but the needs of 
 the country demand that it shall govern " (p. 44). 
 
 And nothing more surely discounts both these ques- 
 tionable assertions than this cynical unfolding of 
 Labour's policy of brute force. Brandishers of the 
 threat of a universal strike against the mass of their 
 fellow-countrymen have not the essential qualities of 
 statesmen, and the needs of the country could surely 
 be better supplied by a different type of governor. 
 
 Men who devise plans for holding the country to 
 ransom in order to enforce compliance with the demands 
 of their section of the community are not likely to 
 forget their sectionalism when they rule at Downing 
 Street. Apprehension as to how they will behave in 
 this regard is so obvious that Mr. Thomas is impelled 
 to deal with it. He does it in a paragraph at the end 
 of a chapter devoted to a diatribe against the House 
 of Lords — a diatribe launched on the ground that a 
 peer " may be entirely lacking in all training," and 
 may be " utterly selfish." He chronicles his failure 
 " to discover any evidence of an aristocracy of brains " 
 in the Upper House, and announces the coming " dis- 
 bandment of the Peers." It is after this that he 
 somewhat inconsequently delivers himself of the fol- 
 lowing retort to the suggestion that Labour leaders 
 would carry their trade union tickets to Downing 
 Street : — 
 
 " The possible relationship between a Labour Cabinet 
 and trade unionism is a source of great perturbation to 
 many people, who frequently urge that the Cabinet 
 Ministers would be mere delegates from their unions. 
 Nothing could be more grotesque than this theory, and 
 
 22
 
 no Cabinet which put it into practice could exist a session 
 — indeed, the position would be so Gilbertian that it is 
 difficult to conceive anyone seriously picturing a Minister 
 holding high office and making important decisions 
 affecting the welfare of the whole nation, with one eye on 
 the particular interests of a particular union all the time. 
 It is a fundamental law that the Government is re- 
 sponsible to the country as a whole, and not to one parti- 
 cular section of it ; that no section of the people is so 
 important as the people as a whole. Labour recognizes 
 this law and, I am persuaded, will be more disposed to 
 live up to it than some of the Governments of the past 
 who have devoted most of their time and energy to the 
 safeguarding of vested interests, altogether ignoring the 
 rights of the great mass of the people " (pp. 49-50). 
 
 I have quoted this passage in full in order that the 
 reader may get all the satisfaction with which Mr. 
 Thomas is able to supply him in disproof of the fear 
 that Labour leaders enthroned in power would govern 
 in the interests of their class. I fear the reader's 
 satisfaction will nevertheless be small — unless he be 
 one of those trustful souls who take c ..sertion for proof. 
 For note, there is no attempt whatever to advance 
 reasons for supposing that the Labour leopard in office 
 would shed his spots, and turn from selfish sectionalism 
 to impartial regard for all sections just at the moment 
 when ability to gratify the former has been gained. 
 Nothing, that is, beyond a general assertion that 
 " Labour recognizes " its obligation to forget its own 
 narrow interests — and then a tu quoque against other 
 Governments ; and it is not conducive to faith in a 
 man's innocence when he falls back on the retort, 
 " You're another," Mr. Thomas should really have 
 made an effort to treat this serious apprehension and 
 criticism more adequately. His friends preach the 
 " class war " ; the policy which he outlines in his book 
 
 23
 
 is a policy for benefiting Labour, Labour, Labour, on 
 every page. Some very cogent considerations need 
 to be brought forward to allay the fears of the average 
 citizen regarding the piu'pose to which Labour, when 
 ruling, would direct its power. 
 
 24
 
 V. 
 
 NATIONALIZATION. 
 
 " When Labour Rules " is a book of over 200 pages ; 
 only eight of those pages are devoted to a chaptei on 
 Nationalization. This is rather surprising, and very- 
 disappointing. Nationalization is the chief item in the 
 programme of the Labour party. It is the " Socializa- 
 tion of the Means of Production, Distribution and 
 Exchange "(to quote the stock socialist formula) which 
 distinguishes our new political saviours from all others. 
 Wage-slavery is to be abolished by eliminating the 
 capitalist, taking industries out of his ownership and 
 control, and vesting them in the State. This is not 
 only the root of Socialism, it is the entire tree ; and 
 the policy has been formally adopted by the Labour 
 Party. " It is," says Mr. Thomas, " one of the chief 
 planks in the Labour platform " (p. 53). As a matter of 
 proportion, therefore, a large amount of his exposition 
 of the coming era should have been devoted to the 
 subject. 
 
 One ought to add — and it is another instance of the 
 careless construction of Mr. Thomas's book — that he 
 does in fact drop remarks on the subject of Nationali- 
 zation elsewhere than in the chapter so entitled. In 
 his opening chapter, for instance, he tells us that a 
 " feature of the England of to-morrow will be the 
 
 25
 
 national ownership of railways, mines, canals, har- 
 bours and roads," to which he adds " the great lines 
 of steamers " (p. 15). Then he demands public owner- 
 ship for the " generation of electricity " (p. 16). Then 
 "profit-making industrial insurance companies . . . 
 will also have to be expropriated " (p. 16). Also, there 
 is to be a " change in the ownership of the liquor 
 traffic " (p. 17) ; and later a whole substantial chapter, 
 twice the length of that on Nationalization, is devoted 
 to the expropriation of this particular trade. Also 
 " land " must be " under the absolute direction of the 
 State " (p. 53). Also there is a chapter devoted to 
 municipalities, in which there are numerous suggestions, 
 for the most part thrown out casually, for the parish- 
 pump form of socialization : we are to have municipal 
 banks ; and Mr. Thomas thinks " that, in addition to 
 gas and electricity, milk should be in the hands of the 
 municipalities — also bread " (p. 170) ; then, inciden- 
 tally, " coal," and (in parentheses) " why not boots ? " 
 (p. 178). And we must have a State medical service 
 (p. 78). 
 
 This is the sort of book which badly needs an index, 
 and hasn't got one ; and it is only by much patient 
 turning of pages backwards and forwards that one can 
 find out what Mr. Thomas does propose to expropriate. 
 Apparently not everything (Mr. Thomas is of those 
 who mistake compromise for statesmanship) ; for he 
 tells us that " it will not be the policy of the Labour 
 Government to nationalize houses" (p. 75). Mr. Thomas 
 lacks clarity in dealing with this last-named matter, 
 but, so far as his meaning can be deciphered, he proposes 
 municipal house-building. Yet he " would not cut out 
 private building " ; he would, however, " curtail the 
 power of the speculative builder " ; and " something 
 
 26
 
 must be said here of the benefit of a working-man 
 owning his house " (p. 75). Cross-currents seem to 
 be at work in Mr. Thomas's mind ; or perliaps he 
 hasn't thought out the question, for he adds, " I am 
 not entering here into question of detail. We are out 
 for principles, for sweeping alterations " (p. 76). That 
 is the worst of these new statesmen : there is so much 
 more " sweeping alterations " than detail about their 
 proposals. 
 
 But to get back to the chapter on Nationalization. 
 There we find that even of the eight brief pages allotted 
 to it, less than half are concerned with the subject, the 
 rest being chatty discursions upon Protection and other 
 topics. It is really extraordinary, and it is very signi- 
 ficant, that this immense subject, which involves a 
 complete revolution in social and economic and poli- 
 tical life, but which is " one of the chief planks in the 
 Labour platform," should be handled in this meagre 
 fashion. Mr. Thomas set out to tell us what will 
 happen " when Labour rules." We know that what is 
 called Nationalization is the outstanding policy of 
 Labour rule ; we know that it involves a complete 
 revolution — and Mr. Thomas has practically nothing 
 to say about it ! One has heard the phrase " Hamlet, 
 with the Prince of Denmark left out " ; never was 
 there a better example than this which Mr. Thomas 
 has furnished. Why has he thus abandoned his chief 
 topic ? — it will be asked. The most likely explanation is 
 that he fails to envisage the subject. He cannot realize 
 how it will be done, or what it will look like when it is 
 done ; or he cannot, when he begins to grasp it in 
 detail, make it look sufficiently attractive to a hesi- 
 tating or sceptical public. It is too complicated for 
 his powers of exposition, or its demerits are too patent 
 
 27
 
 to be explained away by his powers of persuasion. It 
 may be that the complexities and the demerits have 
 oppressed his own mind ; and of this there is strong 
 indication in the casual and sometimes hesitating way 
 in which he proposes this, that, and the other industry 
 for subjection to the expropriating process. He even 
 admits — apostasizing to that extent from the old, 
 orthodox Social Democratic doctrine — that some in- 
 dustries will have to remain outside the net of State 
 acquisition, as when he speaks of private commercial 
 undertakings benefitting from nationalized transport 
 (P- 57)' 3.nd suggests a discussion as to what is to be 
 done with the " trades outside the essentials which the 
 Government under Labour will control " (p. 58). 
 Such admissions are a healthy sign, in a way ; they 
 indicate an advance towards sanity among Socialists, 
 but the public should be slow to form optimistic con- 
 clusions, favourable to Labour rule, therefrom. The 
 constant and logically inevitable growth of State 
 bureaucracies during the war is an example so recent 
 as to be fresh in our minds — an example of the law 
 that when the State begins to acquire it finds it almost 
 impossible to stop. Mr. Thomas may have vague 
 ideas — they assuredly are vague — of leaving some scope 
 for private enterprise ; but when once his Labour 
 Government gets embarked upon the acquisition of 
 industries (some of them selected in haphazard fashion) 
 it will find it difficult to stop, even if it has any desire 
 to stop. 
 
 But surely, the reader will exclaim, Mr. Thomas has 
 something to say by way of commending to us this 
 chief plank in his platform ? Yes, he does introduce 
 one or two phrases of commendation. They may be 
 summed up in the following paragraph : — 
 
 28
 
 " It [Nationalization] will decrease the cost of the 
 commodity to everj^one, it will leave allowance for a 
 system of wages in advance of those appertaining to-day, 
 and even then a margin which will go into the national 
 exchequer and thus relieve taxation " (p. 55). 
 
 This, of course, is pure assertion, and valueless with- 
 out considerations in support of it. Mr. Thomas does 
 not produce one such consideration ! Yet his Nationali- 
 zation chapter should have been full of them. No 
 wonder it is thin ! 
 
 Let us examine the assertion for a moment. It is 
 a three-fold promise. We are promised, when an in- 
 dustry is expropriated by the State, (i) a lower price of 
 the commodity ; (2) higher wages to the workers ; (3) 
 a contribution to the national exchequer out of the 
 remaining profits. So a State industry will have to be 
 much more profitable than the same industry under 
 private enterprise. 
 
 We cannot better test the likelihood of this triple 
 benefit than by going to Mr. Thomas's own industry, 
 and one which he puts in the forefront of those marked 
 down for Nationalization, and it is remarkable that he 
 did not cite it in support of his claim. The railway 
 system of this country is one of the most efficient, if 
 not the most efficient, in the world. Its operation has 
 always been clogged by multifarious Government 
 interference, but still it is in the main an exampde of 
 private enterprise. 
 
 Suppose it to be acquired by the State. Unless the 
 shareholders are to be robbed, compensation will have 
 to be awarded them on a basis of interest payments, 
 roughly equivalent to the present dividends. Where, 
 then, is the large amount of extra money to come from 
 in order to provide — in order to begin to provide on 
 
 29
 
 any appreciable scale — higher wages, lower rates and 
 fares, and profits for the national exchequer ? By 
 more efficient working ? But the railways are already 
 markedly efficient — not perfect, but nothing on earth 
 is ; and there is not the smallest ground for suggesting 
 that the Government could provide better administra- 
 tors and officials than those with which the companies 
 have already provided themselves. By effecting econo- 
 mies ? But what are the available economies ? 
 Economy in wages is ruled out. A poorer service 
 might be suggested, but then the public suffers. The 
 elimination of competition is usually relied upon ; 
 but that, again, would injure the public through a 
 poorer service ; the public gains by competition, 
 which is the breath of life of enterprise and industry. 
 Experts can point to possible economies here and 
 there, and those who are not experts essay the same 
 task, not always with the success which is based on 
 knowledge ; but are not the companies always devis- 
 ing economies in their own interests ? And is there 
 the smallest ground for supposing that bureaucratic 
 management would be more active in the same quest ? 
 There is only one way by which the State could get 
 more money out of the railways than is at present 
 obtained, and that is by stealing them — expropriating 
 the present proprietors without compensation. And 
 now listen to this : — 
 
 " The man whose money has been put into the mine 
 will have similar objections [to handing it over for the 
 good of the community], and even though he be bought 
 out, he knows very well that he will, under Labour 
 government, at all events, find himself heavily taxed, 
 possibly by a capital levy " (pp. 55-56). 
 
 and to this : — 
 
 30
 
 " Suppose I own one hundred thousand pounds, and 
 am told that out of that I must pay twenty-five thousand 
 pounds as a levy from my fortune. What the State does 
 is to take twenty-five thousand pounds of War stock that 
 I hold and cancel it. It is only tearing up a few scraps 
 of paper, after all, because, of course, the whole debt is 
 one of paper " (p. 151). 
 
 Now the railway shareholder may see how the State 
 could get more out of his undertaking than the com- 
 pany gets, wherewith to reduce rates and fares, increase 
 wages, and replenish the national exchequer. The 
 compensation scrip to be awarded as purchase-money 
 will be a scrap of paper (of genuine German make), 
 and the process will be to hand out scrip with one hand, 
 and a demand for its return, as capital levy, with the 
 other. Mr. Thomas may not have been particularly 
 contemplating this form of larceny by a trick when he 
 wrote his threefold promise, but the above quotations 
 make it clear that such robbery is part of the general 
 policy, and it is equally clear that by such means only 
 can any effect be given to the promise — though it is 
 doubtful if it would be even then. 
 
 Mr. Thomas makes an effort to deal with the objec- 
 tion to nationalized industry that under it production 
 and efficiency will decline. He calls it a cynical objec- 
 tion, and it passes his understanding " that it should 
 so generally be believed in." But all he has to say by 
 way of destroying this belief is : — 
 
 " Have these men forgotten the straining patriotism 
 that set every muscle and brain in this country working 
 at its best the moment the war came ? I don't want to 
 write heroics upon a subject that is really one of economics, 
 in order to refute the libel that there are not men and 
 women in England who will work for the common good, 
 not with the mere hope of great rewards (though these 
 will be sufficient and good), but to serve their fellows " 
 (P- 56). 
 
 31
 
 Patriotic service under the special stress of the great 
 war peril is one thing, daily work is another ; and the 
 comparison does not help. What we want to know, 
 and what Mr. Thomas does not tell us, is the ground 
 for assuming that men will work hard at their jobs 
 when they are all State servants, protected from losing 
 their jobs, but without hope of reward for effective 
 work. As nationalization spreads its net over the 
 economic life of the country that condition of employ- 
 ment will gradually, but inevitably, tend to become 
 the normal condition, and wealth-production, as well 
 as freedom, will correspondingly suffer. 
 
 Nationalization does promote inefficiency. That is 
 the view not of theorists, but of men who know the 
 facts. Mr. Thomas and his friends would do well to 
 ponder the words of Dr. Bell, the inventor of the 
 telephone. An interviewer asked him what he thought 
 of the British telephone system ; and he shrugged his 
 shoulders, and replied : — 
 
 " I do not want to say too much about it. 1 think 
 you do very well, but you do not compare well with the 
 United States, and I think recent history in the United 
 States reveals the cause. We had the best system of 
 telephony in the world before the war in the United 
 States. Then we came into the war ; the telephone was 
 taken out of the hands of private companies and- run by 
 the Government. Immediately the efficiency of the ser- 
 vice fell. Now the control has been returned to the 
 companies, and I hope the efficiency will improve. The 
 decrease in efficiency because of Government ownership 
 is found elsewhere. I visited Australia some years ago, 
 and the telephone system, which was in the hands of the 
 Government, could not be compared to ours in America. 
 I am afraid that the comparatively low state of efficiency 
 in this country must be attributed to Government 
 ownership." [The Times, 25th November, 1920.) 
 
 32
 
 And there is nothing special in the telephone in- 
 dustry. As Sir Robert Home, speaking with the 
 knowledge of the President of the Board of Trade, has 
 said : — 
 
 " He could not think of anything so paralysing to 
 trade as the hand of the Government upon it. He was 
 perfectly certain that the carrying on of business and 
 industry was a matter far beyond the capability of any 
 Government department." (The Times, 29th November, 
 1920.) 
 
 To sum up : Mr. Thomas not only fails to answer 
 the objections to nationalization, not only fails to offer 
 any proof of his assertions regarding the alleged benefits 
 of nationalization, but he leaves us in the dark as to the 
 extent to which he proposes that nationalization is to 
 be carried, as well as upon what principles industries 
 will be selected for nationalization or exempted there- 
 from, or how nationalized businesses are to be worked. 
 It is all left vague, wobbly and nebulous. And this is 
 " one of the chief planks in the Labour platform," and 
 one that will revolutionize social life more than any 
 other. And this is a considered outline and exposition 
 of the Labour platform. And Mr. Thomas asks us to 
 believe that Labour is fit to govern !
 
 VI. 
 DRINK. 
 
 Though Mr. Thomas has Httle to say of nationahzation 
 in general, and practically nothing at all to say con- 
 cerning the nationalization of, for example, his own 
 industry in particular, he has yet a whole chapter, 
 and a rather substantial one, devoted to one trade 
 which he proposes to nationalize — viz., the trade in 
 fermented beverages. One might assume from the 
 curious prominence given to this particular industry 
 that the Labour Party had its socialization more 
 deeply at heart than that of any other trade. But 
 it is not so ; the explanation is merely that Mr. 
 Thomas is interested (as chairman, I think) in some 
 committee for forwarding State acquisition of the 
 liquor trade, and that he thinks it an easy subject 
 for his pen — easier, apparently, than the acquisition 
 of railways. Mr. Thomas having, therefore, rather 
 gone out of his way to give disproportionate space to 
 this particular department of Labour rule, it was at 
 least to have been expected of him that he would have 
 written with the accuracy of wide knowledge. The 
 attainment falls short of the expectation. 
 
 It is impossible to gather from the chapter how much 
 of the group of industries known as " the Trade " 
 Mr. Thomas has marked down for expropriation ; 
 whether all, or which, of them — breweries, distilleries, 
 
 34
 
 public-houses, restaurants, grocers' licences, hotels, 
 &c. — are to be included. That would be to descend 
 into the " detail " which Mr. Thomas always waves 
 airily aside. He prefers a comprehensive phrase — 
 " Mr. Bung " — a new and sprightly witticism which 
 appeals so strongly to the right hon. gentleman's 
 sense of humour that he repeats it several times. Its 
 iteration should prepare the brewery shareholder for 
 a somewhat unsympathetic reception when Mr. 
 Thomas begins to grapple with the question from 
 Downing Street. We can see Mr. Thomas smacking 
 his lips with a menacing relish in his " Mr. Bung must 
 
 go." 
 
 One asks, why Mr. Bung in particular ? Why 
 not Mr. Nibs, the cocoa manufacturer, or Mr. Pins, 
 the emporium draper ? Why should they be left, 
 at any rate, for the general judgment, when the last 
 remaining capitalists will be rounded up for con- 
 signment to perdition, while poor Mr. Bung the brewer 
 is to be visited with a particular and early judgment ? 
 Can it be that Mr. Thomas is a teetotaller, and has 
 developed that unfortunate sect's venom against 
 " the Trade " ? But Mr. Thomas is writing about 
 what Labour will do when it is enthroned in Govern- 
 ment — and Labour surely contains others than himself 
 and his teetotal friends, Messrs. Snowden and Hender- 
 son. Will beer be the particular aversion of the 
 others ? 
 
 " Oh, no," answers Mr. Thomas, " I don't mean 
 that, for my chapter on the Trade opens with the 
 following confession of unbelief : — I do not believe 
 Prohibition is practicable at present." And, he adds : 
 " I am looking at the drink problem from a practical 
 point of view " (p. 98). Let us try to follow his 
 
 35 C2
 
 excellent example. And we begin by agreeing with 
 him that — 
 
 " As practical men we must look to some policy which 
 will be acceptable to the people as a whole " (p. 98). 
 
 But then he goes on — oh ! so inconsequently : 
 
 " But national control of the liquor trade — yes \ 
 That will be part of our legislation, undoubtedly." 
 
 Mr. Thomas assumes too readily that State breweries 
 and municipal public-houses will be acceptable to the 
 people as a whole. I don't think the people as a whole 
 do want Government ale, purveyed by State or muni- 
 cipal officials with lofty disinterestedness ; it sounds 
 too much like a post office to fit in with the geniality 
 one associates with liquid refreshment. But Mr. 
 Thomas evidently thinks that the people as a whole 
 will be ready to drink bureaucratic beer for the com- 
 pensating delight of getting rid of Mr. Bung. 
 
 Now, why should Mr. Bung be (if he be) such a special 
 object of animadversion ? Not because (outside 
 abstaining ranks) he makes beer ; the people as a 
 whole like beer. It is because he makes money ; and 
 Mr, Thomas, at any rate, cannot forgive him for that. 
 But Mr. Bung is not alone in this matter. Those 
 philanthropists Mr. Nibs and Mr. Pins have also been 
 known to fall victims to the same evil habit whenever 
 the chance came their way. It is whispered even that 
 Labour leaders get the best prices for their valuable 
 contributions to the press. 
 
 And though it is true that brewers have made money, 
 it is also true that some of them failed egregiously to 
 do so in the days before the war. It is also true that 
 a large part of the capital in the industry is owned by 
 worthy folk in the form of debentures and preference 
 
 36
 
 shares, bearing most moderate rates of interest (not 
 always paid). 
 
 But brewery companies made money during the 
 war. Mr. Thomas becomes almost lyrical on this 
 subject. Let us reproduce one or two of his passages : — 
 
 " No one will forget the sort of stuff that the brewers 
 put out during those years of war. [Apparently Mr. 
 Thomas is not a teetotaller after all ; or how does he 
 know ?] It was appalling. The quality went down — 
 and down. The price went up. It was a sudden era to 
 the brewer. Before the war the amount taken by the 
 purveyors of drink in the nation was ;^ 166,700,000, and 
 in 1918 it had jumped to ^259,300,000. And yet only 
 about half the pre-war quantity was being drunk in the 
 1918 year. . . . 
 
 " But why on earth should these restrictions have 
 resulted in such swollen profits to the trade ? They 
 should have made no single penny extra. Ihey worked 
 less. They sold poorer stuff. But one knows of public- 
 house after public-house which reaped a rich harvest, 
 and one reads ot brewery after brewery whose profits have 
 skied like a shell " (pp. loo-ioi). 
 
 Well, well ! " The quality went down — and down." 
 As a beer-drinker's lament this may be pardoned ; but, 
 seeing that the only respect in which the quality went 
 down was in the decline of gravity, and therewith 
 of alcoholic strength, making it even less intoxicating 
 than before, the complaint comes oddly from a " tem- 
 perance" enthusiast. Fie, Mr. Thomas ! And why did 
 not Mr. Thomas tell his readers what made the quality 
 of beer go down and down ? He must know very well 
 that the Government kicked it down and down — first 
 by the Output of Beer (Restriction) Act, 1916, which 
 reduced the pre-war output of 36,000,000 standardbarrels 
 to 26,000,000 standard barrels; then by Food Controllers' 
 
 37 
 
 887976
 
 Orders, still further reducing the permitted output 
 to 10,000,000 standard barrels per annum. The only 
 way to produce a sufficient quantity of liquid to satisfy 
 the most urgent part of the popular demand was to 
 water down the standard barrel so as to produce 
 more bulk barrels. And the Government enforced 
 this necessary adulteration by ordering that beer should 
 be brewed at an average not exceeding 1,030 degrees 
 of gravity (in that pampered country, Ireland, 1,045 
 degrees were allowed). The standard gravity is 
 1,055 degrees, i.e., 55 parts of solid matter to 1,000 
 of water, and the enforced reduction to an average 
 of 1,030 degrees made of beer a thin and miserable 
 liquor which was a mere ghost of its former self. 
 But it was the Government which did it. 
 
 Then, says Mr. Thomas, accompanying this decline 
 in quality, " the price went up." It did. Mr. 
 Thomas's way of illustrating the increase is not, 
 however, quite that of the fairminded statistician. 
 He compares the total so-called drink bill of 
 £166,700,000 in 1913 with the £259,300,000 in 1918, 
 on only about half the pre-war production. He omits 
 to state that a considerable part of the difference 
 represents taxation imposed by the Government for 
 running the war. The beer duty was raised from ys. gd. 
 to 25s. a barrel, and then, in 1918 to 50s., and in 
 1920 to lOOs. The duty on spirits was raised from 
 14s. gd. a gallon to 31s. 5^. — in 1920 further raised 
 to £3 12s. 6d. The cost of materials also became much 
 greater. Further, the Government itself fixed prices. 
 It ordained maximum prices of 4^. and 5d. a pint for 
 the lower gravities, which represented the great bulk 
 of the consumption. And so with spirits. For a long 
 period it stopped the manufacture of spirits for 
 
 38
 
 consumption, prohibited the release from bond of more 
 than half the previous quantity, and fixed maximum 
 prices, such as los. 6d. for a bottle of whisky, since 
 raised to 12s. 6d. And, of course, as in the case of 
 all other commodities with " controlled " prices, the 
 maximum was the actual price. 
 
 This last named fact raises another consideration 
 which Mr. Thomas finds it convenient to omit. 
 Brewers and distillers and publicans were not the only 
 people who got higher prices for their goods under 
 war conditions. Everybody who had anything to 
 sell did the same ; even the impeccable wage- 
 earning class sold their labour for higher rates. How, 
 then, does Mr. Thomas justify his accusation that in 
 the War the trade " failed to play the game " ? (p. 
 102). And why does he raise his eyes in innocent and 
 shocked surprise, and ask, " Why on earth should 
 these restrictions have resulted in such swollen profits 
 to the trade ? " It is, in the circumstances, a silly 
 or a disingenuous question. The object of the attack 
 is clear. Mr. Thomas wants the State to expropriate 
 the trade. He realizes that at first — whatever sub- 
 sequent jugglery is to be performed with the " scraps 
 of paper " — something that will more or less resemble 
 a fair price must be offered, yet that big figures will 
 mean public loss and public disgust with the project ; 
 and Mr. Thomas is therefore much concerned over the 
 present prosperity of the trade, and is anxious that, 
 in settling the price, only pre-war figures — or to be 
 more correct, early-war figures — should be regarded. 
 So he goes off into severe condemnation. Thus : — 
 
 " It is not right that taking fifteen firms the profits 
 during two years expanded from /2, 59 1,060 to ;^4,i64,048 
 — over a million and a half " (p. 102). 
 
 39
 
 In other words by 60 per cent. And will Mr. Thomas 
 tell us how many other manufacturing businesses 
 had a 60 per cent, increase in their profits, owing to 
 war conditions ? And what was the percentage increase 
 in wages which working men were enabled, by the same 
 war conditions, to screw out of their employers and 
 the public ? If Mr. Thomas replies that wages were 
 increased by some 200 per cent, owing to the lower value 
 of money, will he not make the same allowance to 
 the manufacturers of the national beverage ? And 
 if not, why not ? 
 
 Mr. Thomas is so much concerned lest brewery 
 companies should be bought out on the present value 
 of their properties, as estimated by the Stock Exchange, 
 that he goes into figures — to the detriment of his 
 reputation for either fairness or knowledge. This is 
 the scientific and statistical manner in which he handles 
 the topic : — 
 
 " Oh, 3'es, Mr. Bung did very well out of the war. 
 Glance at the values of his shares. Here are actual 
 quotations on the Stock Exchange : — 
 
 A 
 B 
 C 
 D 
 
 Undoubtedly these carefully selected figures are 
 impressive, until examined. It would be better if 
 Mr. Thomas had given the names of the companies thus 
 pilloried, as that would have enabled us to examine 
 more closely into the circumstances. But " C " 
 cannot be disguised ; it is obviously Guinness 's. And 
 we are told to contemplate in horror the jump in these 
 
 40 
 
 1915- 
 
 I9I7. 
 
 I9I9. 
 
 2 
 
 25i 
 
 86 
 
 I^i 
 
 91 
 
 185 
 
 2i3i 
 
 307i 
 
 39ii 
 
 10 
 
 85 
 
 169 " 
 
 
 (pp- 
 
 104-105)
 
 shares from 213 in 1915! to 391I in 1919. . But why 
 makei9i5 — a year of acute depression — the datum line? 
 Go back to 1902. Guinness' s average price in that 
 year was 572 — far higher than in 1919. Let us pursue 
 this train of thought with a little table of my own 
 — not unfairly selected, because we take the ordinary 
 shares of the first six companies for which I have 
 been able to obtain quotations over an extended 
 period, and not unfairly selected as to the datum 
 line year, for in 1903 the big brewery boom was past, 
 and the security of licences was still in jeopardy 
 from the Sharp v. Wakefield decision. Here is our 
 table : — 
 
 Prices of Ordinary Shares. 
 
 Ashby 's Staines Brewery Co 
 Dartford Brewery Co. 
 Daniell & Sons 
 Farnham United 
 Hancock (Wm.) & Co. Def 
 Hodgson's Kingston Brewery 
 Co 
 
 1903. 
 
 1915- 
 
 1919. 
 
 1920. 
 
 April. 
 
 May. 
 
 May. 
 
 August 
 27th. 
 
 • 13 
 
 3 
 
 7^ 
 
 7 
 
 . 7i 
 
 2i 
 
 3l 
 
 3i 
 
 . 4l 
 
 m 
 
 5i 
 
 5i 
 
 . 161 
 
 5l 
 
 7i 
 
 7i 
 
 II 
 
 8 
 
 Hi 
 
 Hi 
 
 loi 4i 
 
 5i 
 
 5i 
 
 Will Mr. Thomas still say that 1915 — a year of such 
 extraordinary depression — is a fair year to take for 
 illustration of the value of brewery shares ? 
 
 So much for Mr. Thomas's war-time brewery finance. 
 But he is not content with reducing the value of 
 properties to pre-war levels. He wants to show that 
 even these were the results of wrong-doing. So he 
 
 41
 
 writes, in the course of what purports to be an 
 historical outHne : — 
 
 " The ' Trade ' called its henchmen in Parliament 
 together, and the scheme of making the licences into free- 
 holds was conceived and passed. Think how this im- 
 proved the value of the properties. It made them sound 
 again " (p. loo). 
 
 This is a travesty of the facts. An accurate presenta- 
 tion of them would be shortly as follows. The licences 
 of public-houses had been treated by everyone con- 
 cerned (including the State) as property of a permanent 
 character. Then in 1891 the House of Lords, in the 
 case of Sharp v. Wakefield, decided that the renewal 
 of licences was in the discretion of magistrates, where- 
 upon licensing benches began to exercise the power of 
 refusing renewal, and owners of licensed premises 
 found their property, which had often changed hands 
 several times at prices based upon permanence, 
 destroyed. An Act of Parliament was therefore passed 
 in 1904, enacting that licences should continue to be 
 renewed as matter of course (save for certain specified 
 grounds, such as misbehaviour), or, if they were not 
 renewed, that compensation should be paid, such com- 
 pensation to come out of a fund raised by a forced 
 levy on the trade itself. At the cost of this tax — by 
 the payment of this compulsory insurance premium — 
 therefore, the threatened security was restored to the 
 owners of licensed property. That is all. That is the 
 story which Mr. Thomas twists out of semblance to 
 the truth in the above quotation. 
 
 So the trade is to be expropriated. Mr. Thomas does 
 not in this chapter repeat the three-fold promise of 
 benefit from Nationalization — cheaper commodities, 
 plus high wages, plus profits for the national exchequer, 
 
 42
 
 Presumably these benefits will accrue whatever the 
 particular industry nationalized ; but the bait of 
 cheaper beer, better wages for barmen, and " drink " 
 profits for the State, is not specifically dangled before 
 the reader's eye ; it might look injudicious. Instead, 
 we are offered Temperance as an inducement. And 
 as proof of the reality of this benefit we are referred 
 to the alleged results of the State control instituted 
 by that popular war institution, the Liquor Control 
 Board. " It is doubtful," begins Mr. Thomas, " if 
 the public are cognisant of what was accomplished." 
 I should say that the public, outside the ranks of 
 Mr. Thomas's teetotal friends, is keenly cognisant 
 of what was accomplished in the way of irritating and 
 insulting restrictions upon the liberty of grown men. 
 But let us quote what Mr. Thomas has to tell the 
 public : — 
 
 " In 1913, throughout England and Wales, the weekly- 
 average of convictions was 3,482. During the first six 
 months of 19 18 that appalling average had fallen to 615. 
 Truly a tremendous reform. Eighty per cent ! Cases of 
 delirium tremens dropped from 511 in 1913 to 99 in 1917. 
 Death from alcoholism from 18,831 to 580. In the matter 
 of attempted suicides, of the suffocation of infants, and 
 in other respects where trouble could be definitely traced 
 to the effects of drink, there were similar improvements. 
 The effects can be traced all through our public health. 
 It is not only that drunkenness fell over eighty per cent., 
 but a similar fall was registered in crime " (p. 106). 
 
 One hesitates to dash the cold water of criticism 
 upon this rhapsody. But, in view of the purpose of the 
 rhapsody, it is desirable to make one or two comments. 
 For instance, the weekly average of drunkenness con- 
 victions in 1913, though regrettable, is surely not 
 " appalling " ; 3,500 is a tiny proportion of 40,000,000. 
 
 43
 
 If it could be said of other and graver sins than drunken- 
 ness that the number of sins committed bore the same 
 ratio to the population we should have earned the title 
 of being an island of saints. 
 
 And of course it was in itself a very satisfactory 
 change when the weekly average of convictions fell 
 in 1918 to 615. But one has to reflect that some 
 5,000,000 men were out of the country or under 
 military discipline in the country, otherwise the figure 
 would have been substantially higher. One has 
 further to remember that drinks had become very 
 much less intoxicating, very much more expensive, 
 very much scarcer. This again, must have had a 
 most marked effect upon the amount of drunkenness. 
 Also the depleted police force had more important work 
 in hand than the piloting of " drunks " to the station ; 
 and the Specials never took kindly to that job. 
 
 And when Mr. Thomas declares that a " similar fall " 
 (of over 80 per cent.) " was registered in crime," he 
 makes a statement which (to use his own favourite 
 adjective) is " appalling " in its inaccuracy. Notwith- 
 standing the splendid fashion in which the criminal 
 classes " joined up " at the beginning of the war, and 
 the extent to which they were joined up at a later 
 period, the number of serious indictable offences reported 
 to the police only declined, according to the Criminal 
 Statistics, from 97,933 in 1913 to 87,762 in 1918. 
 That isn't over 80 per cent. My arithmetic makes it 
 about 10 per cent. Mr. Thomas says he " could go 
 on endlessly quoting authorities to prove the efficacy 
 of the new regulations " ; it is to be hoped they would 
 be better than this example. 
 
 And, when reading Mr. Thomas's rhapsody over our 
 millennial state of virtue during the war, one cannot 
 
 44
 
 avoid a recollection of another kind — the frightful 
 increase in marital infidelity and general impurity. 
 But that, Mr. Thomas will reply, had nothing to do 
 with liquor control. Had the blessings he enumerates 
 much more to do with it ? 
 
 The real question is. Does the great mass of the 
 sober population of this country want to be bound in 
 permanence in the absurdly tight leading-strings of 
 the war-control period, which, to judge from Mr. 
 Thomas's argument, will be one of the accompanying 
 blessings of a nationalized liquor trade ? 
 
 It is a little odd that this professional fulminator 
 against the employer class should resort to the em- 
 ployers for evidence of the benefit to the workers of 
 draconian control. But he does so. " The testimony 
 of these employers is, therefore, particularly valuable," 
 he says (p. 109). And he quotes one or two of them. 
 The " therefore " relates to the criticism that the 
 Control Board's Orders promoted industrial unrest, to 
 which one would have thought a Labour leader out 
 for revolution would not have particularly objected. 
 But that criticism is not to be quashed by the opinions 
 of a few employers. The testimony of one of the 
 Industrial Unrest Commissioners may also be quoted. 
 Judge Parry summed up his experiences as a Com- 
 missioner in his True Temperance Monograph on 
 " Drink and Industrial Unrest " in these words : — 
 
 " In the summer of 1917, eight commissions were 
 sent out into the country to make a hghtning effort to 
 enquire into the immediate causes of industrial unrest. 
 The chief cause, at the moment, was the unfair distribu- 
 tion of the available food supply ; but, apart from this» 
 the two main sources of trouble seemed to arise from the 
 self-sufficiency of bureaucracy and the insufficiency of beer. 
 An intelligent administration would have remembered 
 
 45
 
 that the public-house is the working men's only club, 
 and that to meet there on occasion and discuss the 
 eccentricities of centralised government was to the tired 
 worker a pleasant relaxation leading to forgiveness and 
 tolerance of the powers that be. On the other hand, to 
 listen in. a dry state at a street corner to revolutionary 
 interpretations of the antiquated manners and customs 
 of departmentalism was bound to stir up that social unrest 
 that precedes red ruin and the breaking up of laws. 
 Bureaucracy in the absence of the anaesthetic of vodka 
 seems to have been the moving cause of Bolshevism in 
 Russia." 
 
 Mr. Thomas has another inducement to support 
 State purchase besides the perpetuation of rigid 
 control, and one which is much more attractive. He 
 writes : — 
 
 " In the State public-house of the future there will 
 be facilities for more than standing-room at a bar where 
 one can buy beer. The public-house should be a 
 place where a man can take his family, where they can 
 sit together and talk and eat as well as drink, where there 
 is light and not stuffiness and unhealthy conditions^ 
 where the place may be open to the world on the lines of 
 the cafes in France " (p. 112). 
 
 But that attractive picture has no necessary and 
 exclusive connection with the State public-house of 
 the future. It is equally, even more, appropriate to 
 the public-house of the future if it remains in private 
 hands. Some of us have been preaching the improved 
 public-house for a dozen years past, and now there is 
 arising a general demand for it ; and it may be assumed 
 that if the State ran public-houses the bureaucrats in 
 charge would try to comply with this demand. But 
 would they do it any better, or any more thoroughly, 
 than the present owners of public-houses ? Enterprise, 
 experiment, competition — these are the ingredients in 
 
 46
 
 the development of the new types of pubhc-houses ; 
 and they are just the ingredients Ukely to be absent — 
 one of them certain to be absent — from bureaucratic 
 management. " Support State Purchase and the 
 Improved PubHc House " is the main plank in the 
 State purchaser's platform ; but it is based on a fal- 
 lacy. Let public-houses remain in the hands of their 
 present owners, and let the State give them freedom 
 and encouragement to work out the desired trans- 
 formation, is an infinitely better motto, 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on Mr. Thomas's Drink 
 chapter, but the space is not really disproportionate, 
 for that chapter reveals many of the defects of the 
 book. It is the only chapter attempting to discuss in 
 any detail the nationalization of one of the many 
 industries which Mr. Thomas proposes that the State 
 should expropriate ; and even here it will be noted 
 there is nothing to indicate the extent or method of 
 the proposed transfer, the cost or its financial prospects 
 — really, only a jumble of rhetoric, prejudice and 
 uninformed statements. Has " Labour " any more 
 precise or statesmanlike views concerning its other 
 proposals for nationalizing industries ? 
 
 47
 
 VII. 
 
 BLEEDING THE CAPITALIST. 
 
 Unlike some of his comrades, Mr. Thomas, when he 
 gets to grips with his subject, has to admit that the 
 detested capitaUst must still remain when Labour 
 rules — for a time, at any rate ; it would hardly be a 
 long time, if the capitalist were subjected to the treat- 
 ment which Mr. Thomas proposes for him. Not all 
 industries are to be nationalized forthwith ; so the 
 capitalist is to be invited to continue his operations in 
 the remainder. 
 
 Mr. Thomas talks in almost a learned way — at least 
 some of his readers may suppose so — concerning finan- 
 cial operations, but he has yet to learn that capital is 
 a shy bird. New countries which want to prosper and 
 progress do their utmost to attract this bird, and 
 progress and prosper in proportion to their success. 
 Mr. Thomas has another method. His is to " shoo " 
 the bird with threats and objurgations and despoil 
 him of his feathers. 
 
 Dropping metaphor, let us gather one or two of 
 Mr. Thomas's proposals, as they are scattered about 
 his pages. First of all, the income tax is to be increased. 
 This is clear from the statement that 
 
 " There will, when Labour comes into power, I hope, 
 be only one tax— income-tax. We stand absolutely for 
 the entire abolition of all indirect taxation " (p. 151). 
 
 One wonders what the rate in the £ will be when 
 to the present 6s. (and super-tax) is added what will 
 
 48
 
 be required to yield the hundreds of milUons which are 
 obtained yearly from Customs and Excise — bearing in 
 mind, too, the new items of expenditure which the 
 Labour Government will invent. The difficulty will 
 be to find the income when the tax has been deducted. 
 Does Mr. Thomas seriously think that men will save, 
 and embark their money in industrial undertakings, 
 when pretty well the whole of the income they antici- 
 pate is to be taken from them in income-tax ? Or 
 does he think they will have any money to embark ? 
 Where does Mr. Thomas think that the capital for 
 new ventures comes from, except from the money 
 which people save from their incomes ? And he 
 proposes they shall have nothing to save ! 
 
 But Mr. Thomas is not content with the encourage- 
 ment of capital by sweating its income to the uttermost 
 farthing. He is going to have the capital as well. 
 
 " Death duties would remain — very much so! 
 
 We shall increase the death duties enormously " (pp. 
 
 152-153)- 
 Most of us imagined that the death duties — running 
 up, as they do, to 40 per cent, of the value of the 
 estate — were already about as stiff as they could be. 
 But Mr. Thomas apparently wants the entire estate, 
 for he writes that there is nothing to be said for " wealth 
 being made the medium of preventing " sons " giving 
 the nation the benefit of their brains " (p. 153). 
 
 Another advantage in robbing a dead man is that 
 " one effect, no doubt, will be to make men hoard their 
 money less and use it more " (p. 153). The first part 
 of this sentence enshrines one of the few really accurate 
 statements which adorn Mr. Thomas's pages ; the 
 second part is nonsense of a kind of which even " When 
 Labour Rules " has not many equivalent examples. 
 
 49 D
 
 " Hoarding " money is using it as capital ; " using " 
 money as an opposite process is spending it upon 
 luxuries. Thus again does Mr. Thomas encourage the 
 necessary capitalist. 
 
 But he has not by any means finished. Mr. Thomas 
 does not propose to wait until you are dead before 
 he grabs at your capital. There is the capital levy, 
 I have already referred to this proposal, but I must do 
 so again. One curious feature about Mr. Thomas's 
 handling of the subject is the quite excellent way in 
 which he introduces it. Thus : — 
 
 " I can see no permanent justification for the excess 
 profits tax. . . . Ultimately, it must, of course, 
 disappear, because it puts a handicap upon all business, 
 and is, in fact, an anchor on the ship of State. It is also 
 a distinct incentive to ' ca-canny,' and destroys initiative " 
 (p. 149). 
 
 Isn't it extraordinary that Mr. Thomas can use 
 considerations like this, and not see that they apply 
 equally well to crushing income-tax and death duties, 
 as well as to a capital levy ? But he doesn't, for he 
 calmly proceeds : — 
 
 " Still, the money must be found, and the only 
 alternative I can see is a capital levy." 
 
 He then glances at the " tremendous opposition " of 
 the thrifty man to this proposal to rob him, and offers 
 him the cold comfort — 
 
 " You can never get equality of sacrifice " (p. 150). 
 
 Moreover, Mr. Thomas is not going to try, for he 
 next views the matter " entirely as a business propo- 
 sition." By that he explains that the money could 
 be used to clear off the National Debt, and a capital 
 levy would effect the purpose at one fell swoop, instead 
 
 50
 
 of leaving the payer to work it off in annual payments 
 of interest and sinking fund out of taxation. 
 
 " No other interest to pay upon that thousand 
 miUions any longer, and every taxpayer in the country 
 would feel the immediate benefit of that " (p. 151). 
 
 Exactly. Thrifty Jolm Smith is to have a con- 
 siderable part of the savings which he has lent to the 
 State in its need removed from him, to relieve Jones 
 and Robinson, who have never saved a halfpenny 
 or subscribed to any War Loan, from having to pay 
 their share of the interest on the war debt ! "A 
 business proposition," 
 
 But it's so easy, exclaims Mr. Thomas. How could 
 a high-minded Labour Government resist the tempta- 
 tion ? 
 
 " The vast proportion of this huge debt is owned by 
 the State itself. [You don't own a debt, Mr. Thomas, 
 you owe it], and to raise a levy would, in a large measure, 
 merely mean cancelling the State's debt to the individual. 
 What I mean is this : Suppose I own one' hundred thou- 
 sand pounds and am told that out of that I must pay 
 twenty-five thousand pounds as a levy from my fortune. 
 What the State does is to take twenty-five thousand 
 pounds' of War stock that I hold and cancel it. It is only 
 tearing up a few scraps of paper after all, because, of 
 course, the whole debt is one of paper. [I shall remember 
 this phrase when I give Mr. Thomas an I O U for a loan.] 
 When the next dividend day comes round I get no interest 
 on that twenty-five thousand pounds of holding and the 
 Exchequer has so much less revenue to find " (p. 151). 
 
 " Well," said the prisoner, " there was the stuff in the 
 shop waiting to be picked up. What else could you 
 expect me to do ?" 
 
 Some authors preface their chapters with quotations 
 from the poets. Mr. Thomas might appropriately have 
 
 51 D 2
 
 headed his chapter on Finance with Shakespeare's hnes : 
 " How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes ill 
 deeds done I " 
 
 Apparently Mr. Thomas contemplates a levy of 
 25 per cent, of our capital, to help pay off the war 
 debt. He doesn't say how soon afterwards his Govern- 
 ment will levy on the remainder for the inauguration 
 of the various items in the proletariat millennium. 
 
 But our immediate point is not the injustice of the 
 thing ; it is the stupidity of it. This is how the 
 capitalist is to be encouraged ! 
 
 And we have not come to the end of the encourage- 
 ment even yet. Not only are big chunks to be pulled 
 off a man's capital ; not only is the income he receives 
 from what remains to be taxed to a point at which 
 scarcely any income will be left ; but the income which 
 that truncated capital may earn, and before the income- 
 tax man has got to work upon it, is itself to be limited. 
 Mr, Thomas graciously concedes " that Capital will be 
 entitled to some return," but, he goes on, " its interest 
 will most assuredly be limited," and " the nation will 
 benefit immeasurably in the process " (p. 24). If the 
 nation is to fill its exchequer out of income-tax, one 
 would have supposed that the higher the income to 
 be milked the better ; apparently in Labour economics 
 one takes a different view. However, to do Mr. Thomas 
 justice, he appears to mean that the limitation of 
 owners' profits will mean higher wages, and so do the 
 mass of the people good that way. But if it has the 
 effect of choking off industrial enterprise — an extremely 
 likely effect — the outcome will be unemployment, 
 rather than high wages, which will not be an im- 
 measurable benefit. Further, if we are to rely upon 
 the income-tax for all our national needs, and if, as 
 
 52
 
 Mr. Thomas intimates in his chapter on Finance (at 
 p. 152), the bigger incomes are to pay at a much higher 
 rate than the smaller incomes, we shall either find 
 ourselves in Queer Street, if we kill the golden goose 
 of big incomes, or the poorer payers will after all 
 have to be bled upon the exalted scale applicable to 
 their richer brethren, to make good the deficiency. 
 
 Still, Mr. Thomas is too enamoured of his proposal 
 to worry about considerations of this kind. It recurs, 
 like a musical theme, up and down his work. Its 
 expected results move him to a burst of anticipatory 
 thanksgiving, when he is discussing the subject of 
 Old Age Pensions. He there says : — 
 
 " The limitation of interest on capital will save the 
 country from the burden of millionaires " (p. 29). 
 
 Doubtless it will do that. It is less clear how it 
 is going to help us to pay pensions at 60, which is the 
 matter under discussion at the point where the quota- 
 tion is made. Nor is it clear how the impossibility 
 of any one becoming a millionaire (or anywhere within 
 miles of that consummation) is going to stimulate that 
 " energy and production " of which Mr. Thomas tells 
 us in another passage we must " have all the world 
 can show." 
 
 Scorning detail, in his customary manner, Mr. 
 Thomas refrains from telling us how he proposes to 
 limit the income from capital ; and that is a pity, for 
 it doesn't sound a simple or easy proposition. Digging 
 about his pages for some sort of explanation, one 
 happens upon the following passage, which may throw 
 some light upon the modus operandi :■ — 
 
 " In the first place we shall fix the profits that can be 
 earned at the factory, and at all the other stages before 
 the goods get to the purchasers " (p. 58). 
 
 53
 
 This sounds like our old war comrade — control of 
 prices. Unfortunately, Mr. Thomas does not trouble 
 to tell us what he is going to do in the second place ; 
 but a hundred pages farther on he has a paragraph 
 on " the very interesting question of what is a reason- 
 able return for capital," which may enlighten us. 
 
 " No fixed rule or principle can be applied for many 
 obvious reasons. There are many more risks in some 
 businesses than in others. If one man invests ^^loo in a 
 business which is risky — say, the obtaining of Spanish 
 gold from somewhere in South Seas — he is taking a much 
 greater risk on his money than the man who puts ;^ioo 
 into a grocery store. It is right that, if the greater risk 
 comes off, there would be a greater return. It is neces- 
 sary, before any regulations could be drawn up on this 
 line, that the whole subject should be much further 
 explored, but it can be stated that any legislation which 
 Labour might be called upon to frame would be based 
 upon the policy that the first charge upon any business 
 would be in the interests of Labour. That has the first 
 claim. After that a reasonable return should be allowed 
 for capital " (p. 159). 
 
 And so we are back at the point from which we started. 
 That is to say, Mr. Thomas is quite unable to give us 
 even a rough notion of what he thinks is a reasonable 
 return on capital, or what is to be the particular process 
 for preventing capitalists getting an undue return. 
 We are just to open our mouths and shut our eyes 
 and see w^hat the Labour Government will send us. 
 If Mr. Thomas had not been so superior to detail, he 
 might, one would have thought, have suggested a 
 perpetuation and extension of the Excess Profits Duty : 
 that would be at least a not altogether impracticable 
 mechanism ; but, as we have seen, he scouts that tax, 
 and rightly. But how does he propose to effect his 
 
 54
 
 purpose ? " The whole subject should be much further 
 explored." It should. And when Mr. Thomas begins 
 his exploration, if he bears the following considerations 
 in mind they may lighten his path somewhat. 
 
 Production and employment depend upon the attrac- 
 tion of capital. Capital is attracted by the prospect 
 of earning money, and by nothing else. Capital neces- 
 sarily takes risks. There is some risk in every indus- 
 trial undertaking, and capital will only be attracted 
 to the development of new fields or the prosecution of 
 businesses in which, for some reason or another, there 
 is special risk of loss, if there is a prospect of a commen- 
 surately high rate of profit. It is impracticable, even 
 if it were just, to say that, however great the risk, an 
 artificial State limit shall be placed upon the return 
 which a man risking his capital shall receive. It would 
 be hurtful to the well-being of the community to do 
 so, because many a useful development of civilized 
 life would not be given to the community if adven- 
 turous entrepreneurs were thus frightened off. It would 
 be unnecessary also, even from the equalisation or 
 reduction of profits point of view, because it is only 
 the pioneers who stand to make big profits. Develop- 
 ment, security and competition in an industry soon 
 bring down the profits to the point at which it is only 
 just worth while for capital to continue to flow into 
 the business. With regard to capital in those depart- 
 ments of finance and commerce — such as loans to the 
 State — where the return is always low, two factors 
 operate : the amount of money available and the 
 security of the investment — and the former depends 
 a good deal upon the latter ; the interest which has 
 to be paid for the use of the money depends upon the 
 strength of both factors. It is therefore suicidal for 
 
 55
 
 the State to do anything which may cast a breath of 
 doubt upon the borrower's good faith and power to 
 repay, or by extravagant taxation to diminish the 
 available fund. In a word, Mr. Thomas's schemes for 
 bleeding the capitalist are not only um'ighteous ; they 
 are as foolish and wrongheaded as any which the most 
 witless man could devise. 
 
 56
 
 VIII. 
 
 BAITING FOR THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 
 
 Consideration of Mr. Thomas's baiting of the 
 capitaHsts may appropriately be followed by a glance 
 at his baiting for the Middle Classes ; for the 
 smaller capitalists (meaning a great deal in the aggre- 
 gate) are members of the Middle Classes. Indeed, 
 until recently at any rate, Socialists (ignoring the 
 aristocracy as antique rubbish) have been wont to 
 divide society into two categories, the Workers and the 
 Middle Classes — the latter being the enemy. But 
 this rough-and-ready division seems now to be in process 
 of change. Some sections of the Middle Classes are 
 now invited to join with Labour. And it is logical 
 up to a point to classify clerks and professional men, 
 who sell their labour, with the working classes, rather 
 than with the capitalists, who employ labour. The 
 subject is intricate and not easy. It is fairly simple 
 in regard to the ordinary clerk, especially to-day, 
 when his wages are often lower than those of manual 
 labourers ; both economically and in other ways the 
 ordinary clerk or typist does fall more on the Worker 
 than the Bourgeois side of the fence. The same con- 
 siderations apply even more clearly to shop assistants ; 
 and it is significant that there are to-day both clerks' 
 and shop assistants' trade unions affiliated to the 
 
 57
 
 Labour party. But the people who are " something 
 in the City " vary a good deal in their station and out- 
 look ; and when we get into the professions the matter 
 gets more complicated and obscure. Schoolmasters 
 are an instance. Elementary school teachers have a 
 trade union. Eton masters don't join. It really 
 comes to this, that the logical and economic division 
 between employer and employed — the man who works 
 for a wage or fee and the other man who embarks 
 capital and reaps profit thereon — does not give a 
 completely satisfying classification. For one thing, 
 it fails to place the shopkeeper or the farmer, who 
 work as workmen as well as reap profit as capitalists, 
 or the solicitor with his office staff, or even the doctor 
 who has embarked capital in buying a practice. It is 
 doubtful if we can make the division better than by 
 placing on one side manual workers, as hitherto, adding 
 the poorer paid and less skilled non-manual workers, 
 and on the other side capitalists big and small, together 
 with professional people and all who, by social and 
 business relationship and consequent general outlook 
 on life, have more in common with the latter than the 
 former category. I don't profess that this analysis 
 is satisfying, but I can see none better. At all events 
 it gives us an hypothesis which works. 
 
 Mr. Thomas has essayed to grapple with the task — 
 to the extent, that is, of writing a short chapter on 
 " Labour Government and the Middle Classes." He 
 wants to rope them in, thereby to strengthen the 
 Labour party and weaken the opposition ; and, 
 as the subject is important and up to date — with 
 journalists' unions at Labour congresses and other 
 professional men dropping individually into the Labour 
 party's ranks — one turns with interest to Mr. Thomas's 
 
 58
 
 exposition of the unity of aim of the Middle Classes 
 and Labour. For though the class war is the basis of 
 Labour polemics, conceivably there might be sufficient 
 points of contact to make a harmony. 
 
 Is it possible that Labour rule could be good for 
 the Middle Classes ? The clinching answer is that 
 ultimately the Labour programme will be bad for 
 everybody, including those who unquestionably come 
 under the banner of Labour. But assuming for the 
 argument that the policy of despoiling the capitalists 
 and inaugurating democratic socialism is good for the 
 manual working class, can it be good also for the 
 Middle Classes ? Wondering how strong a case Mr. 
 Thomas had for an affirmative answer, and not at all 
 sure that he could not put up something of a case, I 
 turned over the half-dozen pages devoted to the matter. 
 Looking at them again, I see that my pencilled note 
 at the end is, " An extraordinarily ineffective appeal." 
 Let us see if you agree with me. 
 
 Mr. Thomas begins by explaining that the Middle 
 Class man is in a parlous state — " ground between 
 the upper and nether millstones " ; and it is worth 
 noting that the Middle Class men of whom he talks 
 are of two kinds — the salaried worker, apparently 
 with an income not exceeding £i,ooo a year, and the 
 retired man living on a fixed income — £250 a year 
 being suggested as the typical amount. These sections 
 are representative, but they are not exhaustive ; but 
 Mr. Thomas does not think it worth while to specify 
 others. 
 
 Then Mr. Thomas comes to the point, and in custo- 
 mary fashion. Thus : — 
 
 " I want to assert that the only future for the Middle 
 Class man is under Labour rule " (p. 62). 
 
 59
 
 The middle-class man's own way of putting it would 
 probably be that his only future lies in being saved 
 from Labour rule, including such virtual rule, through 
 trade unionism and strikes, as already obtains. How- 
 ever, let that pass. Let us see what the middle-class 
 man's future under Labour rule is to be. Mr. Thomas 
 makes a loose list of the benefits which Labour rule 
 will confer upon the middle-class man ; and here they 
 are : — 
 
 (i) " There will be no wars " (p. 63). 
 
 (2) "If we can largely obliterate strikes . . . 
 we are . . . giving him security and limiting the 
 cost of all commodities " (p. 63). 
 
 (3) " By nationalization we shall have efficiency in 
 the supply of all essentials . . . and the price of 
 things will be materially reduced by limiting profits " 
 (p. 63). 
 
 (4) " His demands will receive the same support as 
 the workers' demands " (p. 64). 
 
 (5) " The middle-class man will benefit considerably 
 in the matter of income-tax " (p. 65). 
 
 That's all. Perhaps the reader will say : Enough 
 too — if it can be realized. 
 
 That's all, that is to say, in the way of promised 
 benefits. But, seemingly prompted by some whimsical 
 demon at his elbow, Mr. Thomas adds one other result 
 of Labour rule affecting the middle-class man ; and 
 it is scarcely a benefit. The middle-class man must 
 not, in spite of benefits Nos. 2 and 3, rub his hands 
 too hard at the prospect of cheap commodities. 
 
 " For instance, the railwaymen demand a certain 
 scale of wages. These wages must come from somewhere, 
 which means they must be earned, and it may inevitably 
 mean the transferring to the consumer — in this case the 
 user of railways — a burden which he is entitled to say he 
 
 60
 
 himself cannot bear. By that means the railwayman may 
 be making a demand by the strength of his organization 
 that inflicts punishment upon the Middle Class " (p. 65). 
 
 " A Labour Cabinet, taking the place of the slipshod 
 compromising departments of the present regime, would 
 be invested with power in this respect, and could arbitrate 
 with fairness " (p. 66). 
 
 It is an engaging picture, this of a railway union 
 official Prime Minister, sitting aloof in the arbitrator's 
 chair — but a little vague in outline, as an art critic 
 would say. 
 
 Now let us look at the catalogued benefits. 
 
 No. I. There will be no wars. That millennial 
 consummation is not specifically a middle-class benefit ; 
 but it is adduced because the author realizes that 
 " many of the middle man's present hardships are the 
 direct result of the War." And when the middle 
 man contemplates the Labour government in Russia 
 bathing itself in its neighbours' blood, and thirsting 
 for more, he is likely to rate Mr. Thomas's promise of 
 perfect peace under a Labour Government in Britain 
 as simply silly. 
 
 No, 2. The stoppage of strikes. As I write these 
 words a strike has just been declared by the electric 
 light employees of the municipality in which I live. 
 So the substitution of the State or the municipality 
 for the capitalist does not stop strikes. It is note- 
 worthy that Mr. Thomas does in this promise guard 
 himself by the saving virture of an " if." It is " // 
 we can largely obliterate strikes." This promise 
 then is contingent — and the contingency is remote. 
 
 No. 3. Efficiency and cheapness through nationaliza- 
 tion. To avoid repetition I will ask my readers to 
 turn back to pages 25 to 33. 
 
 61
 
 No. 4- Equal support for Middle Class and workers' 
 demands. Again a personal illustration : it was 
 recently proposed to increase the salaries of the chief 
 officials of my municipality, to compensate for the 
 increased cost of living, and in correspondence (but 
 on a much smaller percentage scale) with the increased 
 pay which had been given to . the working-class em- 
 ployees. The proposal was carried — ifi the teeth of the 
 opposition of the Labour members. If the Middle 
 Classes enter the Labour party, they will be the very 
 junior partners ; they will be looked at askance by 
 their horny-handed brethren because their remunera- 
 tion and way of living are on a different scale. Are 
 the prospects of the partnership attractive ? Also, 
 it must be remembered that only the salary-taking 
 members of the Middle Classes are invited to trust 
 their luck to Labour. Even Mr. Thomas does not 
 suggest that the demands of the others — manufacturers 
 and merchants, shopkeepers and farmers — who live 
 by making profits, " will receive the same support 
 as the workers' demands " — or anything but hos- 
 tility. 
 
 No 5. Reduced income-tax. I have discussed this 
 matter also [see previous chapter), and so will not travel 
 over the ground again, save to remind the reader that 
 Mr. Thomas proposes to make the income-tax the only 
 tax, which means that an enormously greater sum must 
 be got from it than at present, and that it is merely 
 ridiculous to suppose that the incomes of the com- 
 paratively few rich (already taxed, with super-tax, 
 at about los. in the £) can be taxed at a sufficiently 
 higher rate to bring in the required revenue, and at the 
 same time so reduce the tax on smaller incomes that, 
 to quote Mr. Thomas's example, " possibly the £500 
 
 62
 
 a year man will pay only on £ioo, and then at a small 
 rate " (p. 64). The thing can't be done. 
 
 The conclusion, then, is that Mr. Thomas's bait for 
 Middle Class support is entirely illusory, and is simply 
 a bait. If he wants to get that support — outside a 
 few cranks, and perhaps the lowest grades of the salaried 
 Middle Class — he will have to produce a very different 
 programme from that which he outlines in his book. 
 
 63
 
 IX. 
 
 CO-PARTNERSHIP. 
 
 There is a way to industrial peace — permanent peace, 
 founded on generous justice, which will give the worker 
 all he can reasonably ask, and avoid suffocating society 
 in the toils of Socialism — the way of Co-partnership. 
 Some employers have already tried it, with excellent 
 results, and promise of yet better results, to all con- 
 cerned. Many have hitherto held aloof ; but their 
 number is diminishing. Trade union leaders and 
 Socialist agitators have viewed it with hostility and 
 apprehension. What is Mr. Thomas's attitude ? He 
 wants the lot of the worker improved, he wants him 
 to have a better share in the wealth he helps to create, 
 he wants even (to use his own precise words) " a 
 universal scheme of real partnership " (p. 15). Surely, 
 then, he will rise superior to the prejudices of his 
 colleagues, and have much to say in commendation of 
 co-partnership, in order to convert them to this 
 excellent way ? 
 
 Unfortunately he does not rise superior to those 
 prejudices, he has nothing to say in commendation 
 of co-partnership, and very little to say about it at 
 all. He is obviously nervously apprehensive of the 
 subject and afraid to tackle it. It is almost equally 
 obvious that, at the bottom of his mind, he recognizes 
 its merits, but won't say so frankly, because he fears 
 
 64
 
 his colleagues, and even more fears the effect upon his 
 own agitation of an industrial reform which would cut 
 away the ground of that agitation. The little he has 
 to say upon the subject is worth notice ; and it is so 
 little that the whole of it can be transcribed here, 
 without materially lengthening this chapter. Here 
 it is : — 
 
 " I can think of nothing at this moment that for so 
 long has been so strongly opposed by the working classes as 
 profit-sharing. It is only fair, however, that whatever 
 may be said of the principles which underlie the scheme, 
 it is the manner in which it was introduced which rendered 
 it anathema to the working classes. There is no doubt, 
 and indeed it has never been denied, that the intention of 
 the particular company which did introduce it was to 
 smash trade unionism. It was brought in in the midst of 
 a strike, and it was the panacea put forward to defeat 
 trade unionism. 
 
 " Is it, therefore, surprising that every suggestion 
 along these lines is at once suspect from Labour's point of 
 view ? It is perfectly true that there are places, like the 
 Lever Bros, works and others, where profit-sharing schemes 
 have been introduced and which have had none of the 
 tainted elements attached to them. Indeed, they run 
 side by side with collective bargaining. It is not any 
 good considering these where we are discussing matters 
 of principle. They are isolated cases — successful, very 
 beneficial, maybe, to the workpeople who are affected by 
 them; but, quite frankly, they could not be followed on uni- 
 versal lines, and attached to all businesses, large and small. 
 " For every reason it is obvious that, if you have a 
 profit-sharing scheme, it entails, by the ordinary laws of 
 fair-play, a loss-sharing scheme — that is, if the worker 
 agrees with the employer or the capitalist to take a share 
 of the profit, he surely must be ready to share in the risk 
 of loss should the business not go well. So you would get 
 a man in a humble walk of life, whose bill at each week 
 end — and he is not of the class which would get large 
 credits from tradespeople — for liis coal, his food, and his 
 
 65 E
 
 verj' necessities of life, would be contingent upon the suc- 
 cess of some business which, by the very reason of his 
 job, he could not in any way direct or control. The 
 capitalist risks his money. But that is what he gets his 
 return for, and he must have money and, therefore, be 
 able to take the risk, or he could not be a capitalist, and 
 would be a member of the working classes. 
 
 " The real solution is fair and equitable conditions, 
 and a frank and full recognition of the principles of collec- 
 tive bargaining — collective bargaining not only by the 
 officials of the big trade unions, but by the local members 
 in their own business houses consulting with the manage- 
 ment on all sorts of conditions in the works, the neglect 
 of which really create more industrial unrest than the 
 big mass questions of wages " (pp. 159-161). 
 
 That is what Mr. Thomas has to say, and all that he 
 has to say about this great question ; and I have 
 quoted in extenso in order that it may not be said that 
 I have not fully represented his views, as he sets them 
 forth ; but I gravely doubt if the passage does fully 
 represent his views. He uses the expression " quite 
 frankly " ; anything less frank than this exposition 
 I have seldom read. Let us briefly analyze it. 
 
 First, it will be noticed, he persistently uses the 
 phrase "profit-sharing." Now, co-partnership is other 
 than that, and greater than that, and if Mr. Thomas has 
 examined co-partnership schemes he must know that, 
 though sharing in profits is incidental to them, they 
 are much more than plans for profit bonuses ; and if 
 Mr. Thomas has not examined them, he is not entitled 
 to write about them, and is pro tanto disentitled to 
 discuss the Capital and Labour question at all. But 
 this less attractive and less accurate name suits better 
 the purpose of his destructive criticism. It is important 
 however, to get clearly into mind that co-partnership 
 is a real partnership — a co-ownership in the business. 
 
 66 
 
 «i
 
 That is what co-partnership offers to the working 
 man. 
 
 Mr. Thomas, conscious of the difficulty of attacking 
 boldly the governing principles of co-partnership, 
 runs to a poor refuge by alleging that " it is the manner 
 in which it was introduced which rendered it anathema 
 to the working classes." Tha ; is a very unworthy 
 suggestion. Just because one of the pioneer companies 
 conferred the benefit upon its staff after it had come 
 victoriously through a weary strike, we are to believe 
 that the working classes scout any improved conditions 
 of employment which are granted after a strike. It 
 is not true. Co-partnership is not anathema to the 
 working classes, whose members, whenever it is offered 
 to them, receive it gladly ; it is only anathema to the 
 cranks who want Socialism and to the agitators who' 
 fear their occupations will be gone. The anathema 
 may be pronounced by the leaders in the trade union 
 lodge ; it is not echoed by the men in the works. 
 
 The intention, Mr. Thomas alleges, " was to smash 
 trade unionism " ; and he emphasizes the allegation 
 by repetition ; but repetition does not make it true. 
 There is a sense, however, in which it is true. Note 
 that the word is "unionism," not "union." There 
 is a development of trade union activity, a misuse of 
 trade unions, an " ism," which it was in the mind of 
 George Livescy to defeat when he introduced co- 
 partnership in the South Metropolitan Gasworks. 
 And he was justified in offering his men an alternative 
 to that trade unionism which consisted in perpetual 
 unrest, which knew of no other development than 
 constant screwing of wages up and hours of labour 
 down, regardless of the conditions of the industry, 
 which looked upon the employer as the natural and 
 
 67 E 2
 
 inveterate enemy, instead of the partner and friend. 
 There was nothing unworthy, nothing inimical to the 
 welfare of the worker, in trying to defeat that mis- 
 taken, vinhappy, and often suicidal philosophy and 
 policy by offering something which would diminish 
 its attractiveness. But Livesey made no attempt 
 to smash the trade union exercising its legitimate 
 functions. No wage-earning co-partner in the gas- 
 works was asked to leave his union ; the union remains, 
 as strong as before. Moreover, the South Metro- 
 politan Gasworks co-partnership is only one out of 
 many ; and the others have not originated in strikes. 
 Indeed, Mr. Thomas admits that others have been 
 introduced " which have had none of the tainted 
 elements attached to them," But the opposition of 
 professional Labour leaders has not been mollified 
 thereby. Of these untainted co-partnerships, Mr. 
 Thomas writes that " they run side by side with col- 
 lective bargaining." It would have been more 
 " frank " upon his part to admit that all co-partner- 
 ships run side by side with collective bargaining — 
 though, doubtless, the harmony which a co-partnership 
 introduces between the capital and labour partners 
 tends to reduce the occasions upon which the trade- 
 union secretary finds scope for his services — which, 
 I suppose, is what Mr. Thomas has in mind under the 
 term " collective bargaining." 
 
 Mr. Thomas claims that the co-partnerships so 
 far introduced, though successful and ver}^ beneficial, 
 are isolated and could not be universally extended. 
 The only reason he gives for his assertion is that 
 profit-sharing must include loss-sharing, and that the 
 worker could not put up with that. The answer is 
 that any extension of co-partnership would be (subject 
 
 68
 
 to the necessary adaptations to particular businesses) 
 on the same lines as are followed in the co-partnerships 
 now existing ; and the question of sharing losses does 
 not come into them at all, further than that of course 
 no dividend is paid on a co-partnership share when no 
 profits are earned. But the worker is not shorn of 
 his wages. A fair wage, at current rates, is (as Mr. 
 Thomas elsewhere states should be in industry) 
 " the first claim " upon the company's funds. Those 
 wages are paid whether the trading shows a profit or 
 a loss. Afterwards comes a modest return upon the 
 capital invested, if the profit made is sufficient ; 
 then a division of the remainder between the capitalists 
 and the staff. In most co-partnerships the wage- 
 earner's proportion is given to him in two parts — one 
 cash, the other shares in the business. The wage- 
 earner therefore is always assured (unlike his capitalist 
 partner) of a living wage ; it is only over and above 
 that, in his capitalist capacity, that his income would 
 rise or fall with the varying fortunes of the business 
 in which he is a working partner. 
 
 This system, with individual adaptations, can be 
 followed throughout the industrial field. The only 
 business which cannot be turned into a co-partnership 
 is a business owned by the State or a municipality. 
 There is nothing peculiar about gas companies which 
 makes them specially suited to co-partnership. Soap- 
 miaking is an industry of an entirely different character ; 
 yet in the two great soap-manufacturing concerns of 
 this country co-partnership is flourishing. In the 
 textile trade it has been tried, and is doing well, as 
 in the Bradford Dyers' Association, William Thomson 
 & Sons of Huddersfield, and Taylors of Batley ; in 
 the last named, the workmen now own the greater part 
 
 69
 
 of the capital. It has been started in a brewery and 
 in a manufacturing confectioner's business. Nor is 
 it only where industry is organized on the joint-stock 
 company basis that co-partnership is practicable. 
 Private firms can manage it too, and the printing 
 firm of Hazell, Watson & Viney have demonstrated 
 this. A newspaper might appear to offer difficulties 
 to the organization of a co-partnership ; but at least 
 three — the North Mail, the Tamworth Herald, and the 
 Hampshire Post — have found the difficulties surmount- 
 able. Agriculture might be thought to offer more 
 difficulties than journalism ; but Lord Rayleigh's 
 and Mr. Strutt's farms in Essex, and Lady Wantage's 
 great farm in Berkshire, where everyone, from the 
 bailiff to the youngest lad, is a co-partner, prove the 
 practicability of co-partnership even in this industry. 
 And though it has not been introduced into railways, 
 a practical scheme for its application to them, in- 
 cluding even railway companies which do not pay a 
 dividend on their ordinary shares, was elaborated some 
 time ago in the Railway News. Mr. Thomas might 
 study that scheme with advantage. Its adoption, 
 or the adoption of something like it, would do more, 
 alike for the great industry in which he is specially 
 interested and for the nation than the fomenting 
 of interminable disputes and the advocacy of 
 nationalization. 
 
 But Mr. Thomas will have none of it. " Collective 
 bargaining," and a share in the management is his 
 alternative programme. And they are not really an 
 alternative. We have already seen that collective 
 bargaining is not ruled out by co-partnership ; it 
 would only diminish in practice because the need for 
 bargaining would diminish ; and that would be to the 
 
 70
 
 advantage of all concerned, except the union officials, 
 who to some extent live by the process — and they would 
 still find other and better outlets for their activities. 
 And certainly some share in the management need not 
 be ruled out. In point of fact, some existing co- 
 partnerships already provide for it. In the South 
 Metropolitan Gas Co. — Mr. Thomas's particular hete 
 noire — the workers have a direct share in the manage- 
 ment ; the workmen appoint two directors of the 
 company, and the clerks one director, and this 
 representation is of course additional to the voice in 
 the company's affairs which the men have in their 
 capacity of shareholders, for the shares which are 
 given to them are ordinary shares, carrying ordinary 
 rights. I don't say that this particular arrangement 
 is suitable universally — in the railway industry, for 
 example, where it might be hurtful to discipline ; but 
 there are businesses which can manage it. 
 
 So much for Mr. Thomas's jejune criticism of a great 
 economic reform. Let me conclude with a word on 
 the general issue. 
 
 There are two points to bear in mind. The first is 
 that co-partnership is adaptable. The best and 
 simplest form is to allot to the workers out of profits, 
 and after paying a reasonable interest on the capital 
 in the business, a sum each year in the form, not of 
 cash, but of ordinary shares. But the principle of 
 this method can be displayed in other methods, accord- 
 ing to the circumstances of the particular business ; 
 and instances could be quoted of this variety already 
 in operation. The second point is that co-partnership 
 has been successful wherever it has been tried. I 
 know of only one exception, and the reason for its 
 failure was that the money to buy the co-partnership 
 
 71
 
 shares was first deducted from the workmen's wages ; 
 and even that scheme was only turned down by a bare 
 majority of the workmen's votes. 
 
 Co-part nershp is practicable and successful because 
 it is right. It is founded on the doctrine that labour 
 is the source of all wealth ; and labour in this defini- 
 tion includes capital, which is the stored-up fruit of 
 labour available for the fructification of the current 
 labour. One cannot get on without the other. They 
 are necessary partners ; and, as necessary partners 
 in the act of production, they should be joint-owners of 
 the wealth which they jointly create. High wages 
 are not a satisfactory alternative ; for, however high 
 they may be, they still leave the worker a portionless 
 outsider. The piece-work system of payment is also 
 inadequate. It is only practical over a comparatively 
 small field of industry ; and it also leaves the worker 
 an uninterested party, in no sense the owner of his 
 product, and without any share in the business. Even 
 the new idea, of a collective bonus on collective output, 
 is open to the same objection. Socialism is no satis- 
 factory alternative either, for under it a man becomes 
 a wage-earner for a bureaucracy instead of for a 
 company ; and if socialism covered the whole field of 
 industry a man would simply become a drudge at an 
 allotted task, a wage-slave of the State. Syndicalism 
 comes nearer to co-partnership ; but syndicalism 
 would rob the capitalist of his share, and so is ruled 
 out on the ground of morality ; and there is, besides, 
 a fundamental difference between the co-partnership's 
 individual share in the business and syndicalist 
 ownership by a trade union. 
 
 There is no satisfactory alternative to co-partnership. 
 And we do not need to look for one. Co-partnership 
 
 72
 
 in a well-developed stage, provides all that is necessary. 
 It will make the workman a co-owner in the business 
 at which he works, give him an incentive to do his 
 best, help forward general prosperity, reduce to 
 insignificant proportions or entirely destroy the present 
 internecine antagonism between Capital and Labour, 
 make the worker a prosperous and independent 
 citizen, and banish the bug-bear of the slave state of 
 Socialism.
 
 X. 
 
 FINANCE 
 
 (including Protection). 
 
 " Not only is Labour fit to govern," says Mr. Thomas, 
 " but the needs of the country demand that it shall 
 govern " (p. 44). And though, as Mr. Thomas confesses 
 on an earlier page, " Labour is possessed of no super- 
 natural powers ; its ranks are not filled with super- 
 men " (p. 20), the needs of the country demand that 
 Labour's fitness to govern shall be demonstrated by 
 the production of statesmen who understand finance, 
 though they may not be supermen, and whose know- 
 ledge of finance inspires a right policy concerning it ; 
 otherwise our progress under the Red Flag will land 
 us in disaster. That is fairly elementary ; and finance 
 is of paramount importance. So the reader of " When 
 Labour Rules " will turn with particular interest to 
 Mr. Thomas's chapter on Finance for reassurance as 
 to Labour's ability to handle this vital department 
 of government. 
 
 The first paragraph will give him a shock. It 
 contains the following illuminating sentences : — 
 
 " We have a most enormous debt, as we all know. 
 Eight thousand millions won't bear thinking about, and 
 we need not think about it " (p. 149). 
 
 There ! What more do you want ? The matter is 
 satisfactorily settled. Overwhelmed with debt, are 
 
 74
 
 you ? Can't bear to think about it ? Well, don't 
 think about it. Make Comrade Harold Skimpole your 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, and be happy. One 
 spmetimes comes across a debtor who, when asked if 
 he is not worrying about his liabilities, says, " No ; 
 I let the other fellow do the worrying." That is the 
 Labour way, with regard to our national liabilities. 
 
 " But this is sheer folly," the prudent citizen may 
 exclaim ; " the road to bankruptcy." It certainly 
 looks like it ; but there are two possible explanations 
 which would give another colour to Mr. Thomas's 
 formula. 
 
 Among the amiable proposals in pre-war Socialist 
 programmes was one for repudiation of the National 
 Debt. And if this proposal is to be revived, and 
 extended to the post-war debt, Mr. Thomas is right 
 to assure us that there is no need to worry about the 
 debt ; for in that case, why should we ? We can 
 let the other fellow do all the worrying. That is one 
 explanation. 
 
 Worrying about one's liabilities, if carried too far, 
 saps a man's energies, which are needed for prosecuting 
 vigorous measures to pay off the liabilities ; and once 
 the debtor is started on that road, and is working hard, 
 and with prospects of success, to reduce his liabilities, 
 he is entitled to save his health and happiness by 
 cessation from anxious thought. A nation may do 
 the same. Having squarely faced the position, its 
 statesmen may embark upon a policy of stringent 
 economy, coupled with such encouragement of wealth- 
 production as will cause an easy and sufftcient flow of 
 revenue. That is another explanation. 
 
 Which, if either, has Mr. Thomas in mind ? 
 
 I fear it is No. i. 
 
 75
 
 Reference has already been made to the capital 
 levy ; so the matter may now be dealt with briefly. 
 
 Mr. Thomas talks in parables. He supposes a man 
 with a heavily mortgaged estate, who may " go on year 
 after year paying interest on the mortgage, and, 
 perhaps, being able to reduce the original amount 
 slightly as well." 
 
 " But the other thing he can do is to say : ' I am 
 going to cut off a corner of this estate, and sell it to Mr. 
 Smith. Half, if necessary. Mr. Smith will give me so 
 much for it — that is its proper value. With that money 
 I can pay off the mortgage on the remainder of the 
 ground, and so I shall be free.' . . . It is the same 
 way with a capital tax " (pp. 1 50-1 51). 
 
 Fables are usually composed for the instruction of 
 children ; and Mr. Thomas must have had a very child- 
 like mind in view when he penned this parable as an 
 apt illustration of the capital levj^ He mixes up 
 the mortgagor with the mortgagee. The mortgagor 
 we are concerned with is the State, not the bond- 
 holder. The State (imposing a capital levy) is not 
 selling a corner, or any other portion, of its estate in 
 order to pay off its mortgagees : it is just the case 
 of a mortgagor repudiating his debt to the mortgagees — 
 " tearing up a few scraps of paper," in Mr. Thomas's 
 already quoted phrase. Is Mr. Thomas really gauging 
 the intelligence of his friends in making this analogy ? 
 
 Our point, however, at the moment is rather to call 
 attention to the proportion of the debt which it is 
 proposed to repudiate. " Half if necessarj^" A trifle 
 of four thousand millions sterling lent by patriotic 
 citizens, not all of them wealthy, in faith in the British 
 Government's honesty. But why stop at half, Mr. 
 Thomas ? And will your more logical and violent 
 colleagues allow you to stop at half ? There is not 
 
 76
 
 much doubt but that we have here the explanation 
 of the appeal not to think about the debt which won't 
 bear thinking about. But the appeal is not universal. 
 Some of Mr. Thomas's readers — the aforesaid mort- 
 gagees — will go on thinking all the harder. 
 
 It therefore hardly seems worth while to discuss the 
 other possible explanation — the more worthy explana- 
 tion : that official economy is to be so drastic, and 
 wealth-production to be encouraged so vigorously, 
 that the burden of the debt need not rob the most 
 nervous citizen of his sleep. But the suggestion may 
 be finally disposed of by a glance at Mr. Thomas's 
 general proposals. " No man will be permitted to 
 work an excessive number of hours " (p. ii) ; " the 
 right to the best and highest education the country 
 can afford will no longer be the exclusive privilege of 
 a favoured class, but will be open to all whose talents 
 show that they will benefit by receiving it " (p. ii) ; 
 " wages will tend to increase, and the hours of labour 
 to decrease " (p. i6) ; " the army of insurance agents 
 will find their place in life as Civil servants with equitable 
 conditions of employment ; with the steadily increasing 
 functions of the Government in vital statistics and 
 social insurance, there will be plenty of work for them 
 to do " (p. i6) ; " the people who go to work will also 
 perform their labour under the best possible conditions 
 of health and comfort " (p. i8) ; " hours of labour 
 will be shorter " (p. i8) ; "a great army of University 
 Extension lecturers will be employed to give popular 
 instruction . . . and there will be a National Theatre 
 and a National Opera " (p. 19) ; " there will be ample 
 facilities for gymnastic exercises " (p. 19) ; " there 
 will be State endowment of motherhood " (p. 19) ; 
 " all children will receive a thorough education, and
 
 the school-leaving age will be raised " (p. 19) ; " those 
 who show themselves sufficiently gifted to benefit by 
 it will be given the opportunity to continue their 
 education at one of the Universities " (p. 19) ; " if 
 the family is proved to be in need of money which 
 the child would be earning by going to work instead 
 of continuing his education, that money, or some 
 reasonable percentage of it, would have to be provided 
 by the State " (p. 20). And so on, and so on. These 
 are just samples from the first twentypages. And the 
 capitalist, who might come to the rescue in some 
 degree, is to be frightened off. Less work, and un- 
 limited largesse, and infinitely more officials. And it 
 is all to come out of the income-tax. And don't 
 worry about the debt. It " won't bear thinking about ; 
 and we need not think about it." Such is Labour 
 finance. 
 
 The rest of Mr. Thomas's Finance chapter has for 
 the most part been already dealt with — co-partnership 
 and the return on capital, for instance, are matters 
 which Mr. Thomas thought relevant for inclusion under 
 the head of public finance ; and in point of fact, we 
 have no more constructiveness or detail in regard to 
 public finance than in regard to nationalization or 
 the other matters which he handles so airily. But 
 there are one or two other passages which may be noted. 
 
 There is a speculation " on the chances of one day 
 establishing a world-wide currency " ; and Mr. Thomas 
 doesn't " see any real difficulty ... in establishing 
 the same coinage all over the world," with the help of 
 the League of Nations, which " would become bankers. 
 They would hold the gold as the Bank of England does 
 to-day, and would issue to each country notes against 
 their holding " (p. 154). Mr. Thomas does not seem 
 
 78
 
 quite sure of his proposal, for he says he is " only 
 throwing it out here in quite a speculative way " ; 
 and it should be read in connection with other suggested 
 developments of the League, which, improved (some- 
 how) by changing its title to the League of Peoples, 
 is to constitute " a world-Parliament " (p. 198), with 
 " power to legislate." " We shall, in the end, get 
 international laws, not unwritten, but on a world- 
 Statute book " (p. 199) ; and the world-Parliament, 
 with apparently special and overwhelming represen- 
 tation of Labour, would be 
 
 " a Parliament of all peoples, a permanent body who 
 would discuss those things which had to do with the 
 peace of the world, with all manner of relations between 
 nations, whether concerning politics pure and simple, or 
 matters of employment of the workers " (p. 201). 
 
 So our British affairs will be handed over to the govern- 
 ment of the German workman, the Russian moujik 
 and the Hungarian peasant, not to mention the Bashi- 
 Bazouk of the Middle East and the emancipated nigger 
 of the West Coast. 
 
 But we are here discussing, not Utopia, but the 
 practical reasons why we should put Mr. Thomas and 
 his friends into power in the course of the next year 
 or two. So let us pass on. 
 
 In the course of his disquisition on Finance, Mr. 
 Thomas tilts at Protection. I have no love for vState 
 interference in trade, but surely the form of State 
 interference which is least open to objection is that 
 which seeks by means of import duties to offer some 
 compensation to the British producer for the taxation 
 he has to pay, by levying a toll upon competing 
 foreigners seeking to do business in our markets. 
 
 79
 
 However, that is not Mr. Thomas's view. Notwith- 
 standing his love of State interference, he won't look 
 at it in the form of a tariff, his particular objection 
 apparently being that " Protection means, in the end, 
 more money in the pockets of the manufacturers " 
 (p. 162). He grants that 
 
 " it may certainly be that the unions of the workers in 
 these trades will be able to force a more or less decent 
 wage from the employer, but if large profits are made in 
 any particular trade behind a tariff barrier, you may be 
 sure that the majority of those profits will go into the 
 hands of the capitalists " (p. 162). 
 
 And everything that will do good to the providers of 
 employment is, according to the gospel of Thomas, 
 thereby so finally condemned that even the circum- 
 stance of it doing good also to the employed cannot 
 save it from the anathema of this apostle of the 
 employed. 
 
 Mr. Thomas declares that 
 
 " the Labour Party will have nothing to do with Pro- 
 tection in any shape or form " (p. 161) 
 
 (except, of course, Mr. Thomas does not add, rigid 
 protection of trade-union exclusiveness). But I doubt 
 if the working men whom the Labour Party affects 
 to lead are so implacably hostile to any form of Protec- 
 tion, or will be so hostile when they see, during times 
 of slack employment, unending shiploads of competing 
 foreign goods discharging in our ports. " A very thin 
 stream of foreign manufactured goods " is Mr. Thomas's 
 description of our imports ; the description is hardly 
 adequate. 
 
 Mr. Thomas says that Protection will never cure 
 unemployment ; but I don't think any responsible 
 Protectionist has ever said that it would. What is 
 
 80
 
 claimed, on this side of the question, for a protective 
 tariff is that, by stimulating home industries, it would 
 mitigate unemployment ; and there is reason in this 
 claim, founded on experience. The tariff history of 
 the United States, for example, shows unemployment 
 more rife during the periods when that country experi- 
 mented with free imports. The depletion of our own 
 country-side when the free importation of rural produce 
 came into full working effect is another instance. It 
 is of no use for Mi. Thomas to declare pcntifically that 
 " you may take it from me that Free Trade as a prin- 
 ciple means greater employment " (p. 165), when study 
 of fiscal history reveals that Free Trade as a fact has 
 meant nothing of the sort. There are various objec- 
 tions to Protection, but they happen to be not those 
 which Mr. Thomas enumerates. 
 
 One of the objections which Mr. Thomas raises 
 might at first blush be thought to rank among the 
 more solid objections. He writes : — 
 
 " To have healthy competition from abroad in our 
 own markets must, of necessity, mean that the home 
 producer cannot exploit the purchasing public and charge 
 unreasonable prices " (p. 163). 
 
 This is a reference to the supposition that " behind the 
 tariff barrier " the home manufacturer puts up prices 
 to levels which correspond with the natural price plus 
 the tariff on the similar imported article. But a little 
 examination will suffice to discount this supposition. 
 If the foreign import is only the " very thin stream " 
 of Mr. Thomas's assertion, it necessarily follows that 
 the overwhelming bulk of the goods are of home 
 manufacture, and that their price is determined by 
 the activity of the competition of the home manufac- 
 turers among themselves. If, on the contrary, the 
 
 81 F
 
 import is very heavy, then the tariff is added to the 
 price — but only temporarily ; for the profits to be 
 made at once stimulate home production, and there- 
 with competition and the lowering of prices. The 
 lowered prices come just the same in the long run, but 
 they come from internecine, instead of from foreign, 
 competition, which is obviously the better way. 
 
 " Dumping " has also to be borne in mind. If 
 foreign manufacturers injure our industry by swamping 
 our markets with surplus goods at prices below the 
 natural cost, it does not seem unstatesmanlike, despite 
 the objection to State interference with trade, to save 
 home industry by the imposition of import duties 
 designed to check the practice. 
 
 Mr. Thomas uses yet another unsatisfactory economic 
 argument. He asks us to regard a company making 
 motor-cars, and says it is very doubtful if it would find 
 it profitable to set up a glass factory to make its own 
 wind-screens : it can buy its glass from outside. Of 
 course. But the analogy has no application. It may, 
 or may not, suit the company to have its own glass 
 factory : the point is, should it decide to buy its glass, 
 whether it should buy it from a home or a foreign 
 factory. And the real question is, therefore, is it worth 
 while having a glass industry in this country ? If it 
 is, then it may be desirable to give some reasonable 
 encouragement to that industry. It would be weU if 
 Mr. Thomas gave closer attention to these matters, 
 instead of indulging in such unworthy stuff as 
 
 " The wage-earner should disabuse his mind of any 
 idea that the Protectionist has as his motive the desire 
 to find more work or better wages for him " (p. 164). 
 
 That is very cheap, cheaper than the cheapest of 
 dumped goods. 
 
 82
 
 Mr. Thomas also develops political reasons against 
 Protection. 
 
 "It is probably the greatest cause of international 
 friction, resulting in strained relations with other countries, 
 and very often in wars " (p. i6i). 
 
 Mr. Thomas has no warranty for this charge. 
 " Very often in wars." He cannot point to a single 
 war which has resulted from a country imposing tariff 
 duties upon imports. And the great war just ended 
 makes nonsense of his statement. We were a free 
 import nation — and the object of Germany's special 
 hatred. Belgium had a very low tariff, and no quarrel 
 of any kind with Germany, but was promptly devas- 
 tated by her. France and Italy, Russia and the 
 United States, had heavy import duties against our 
 and each other's exports ; it made no difference to 
 their close alliance. Turkey was the only other free- 
 import country ; she went to war with us. 
 
 One other quotation from Mr. Thomas on Protection 
 and International politics. He writes : — 
 
 " It was a war to end war, and it must not leave 
 behind it a war of peoples in trade " (p. 88). 
 
 This may be epigrammatic, but it is woefully fallacious. 
 There is no more war, or danger of war, of peoples in 
 trade than there ever was. Tariff duties are not war, 
 but peaceful methods of raising revenue and protecting 
 home industry. The last use of the word " war " 
 in the sentence has no correspondence with the 
 primary use of the word at the beginning of the 
 sentence, but is merely a strained synonym for com- 
 mercial competition, and Mr, Thomas himself writes 
 on an earlier page of the advantages of " healthy 
 competition from abroad." This clouding of the issue 
 by the misuse of phrases is almost unpardonable. 
 
 83 F 2
 
 It will be appropriate to conclude this comment 
 upon Mr. Thomas's onslaught upon Protection with 
 what he may regard as a digression, but which I hope 
 the reader will see is pertinent. Protection against 
 foreign competition is hateful to Mr. Thomas, because 
 it is beneficial to the capitalist as well as the worker. 
 But he has not a word to say against the Protection of 
 one set of workers against fellow-workers at home. He 
 can even say a word in its favour, and notwithstanding 
 that the Protection referred to is protection against 
 the men who have themselves every right to be 
 protected — the men who fought for England on the 
 fields of France. He writes : — 
 
 " To-day the capitalists of the land are very eloquent 
 about the right to work, and because certain trade unions 
 refuse permission to discharged soldiers to enter parti- 
 cular trades, with all the indignation of a new-found 
 virtue, they accuse Labour of refusing the right to work 
 to the men who have fought for their country " (p. 26). 
 
 But he leaves the indignation to the capitalists at 
 whom he sneers, and, instead of admonishing his fellow 
 trade unionists to show more patriotic decency, he 
 defends them,- and talks of "the injustice of this 
 assertion," and says there is " plenty of evidence to 
 justify the workers going warily in the matter of 
 absorbing unskilled adults into their industry." A 
 union of workers, therefore, is justified in protecting 
 its members against their fellow-workers who have 
 lost their jobs through doing their duty, but a British 
 industry, comprising both capitalists and workers, 
 must not be protected against foreign competition. 
 It is neither a logical nor a pleasing attitude. 
 
 84
 
 XL 
 
 IRELAND, INDIA, WOMEN, AND ODDMENTS. 
 
 A BOOK intended to outline a method of government of 
 the British Empire in all its branches must of course 
 cover a wide field ; and " When Labour Rules " 
 has that quality — and its defects : so much is covered ; 
 but the covering is so thin. Like the Apostle, Mr. 
 Thomas regards nothing as foreign to him. He has 
 had to project himself in all sorts of directions, and it 
 cannot be altogether charged against him as a fault 
 that upon many topics he leaves the reader unsatisfied. 
 It would of course have been more satisfying had he 
 confined himself to one or two subjects, such as 
 Nationalization and Labour Legislation, and left the 
 others to experts. But the main charge, as we have 
 seen, is that he has not satisfied us with a full treatment 
 of any subject. 
 
 We, could have spared, for example, a dissertation 
 on Ireland for a more ample treatment of State 
 railways. It does not advance our understanding 
 of the distressful problem to be told that 
 
 " if this countrj' had only kept faith with such NationaHsts 
 as Parnell and Redmond, the present terrible, indeed 
 tragic, situation could never have arisen " (p. 140). 
 
 This country never broke faith with Parnell. Parnell 
 headed a movement for obtaining Home Rule for 
 Ireland. Great Britain, the predominant partner in 
 
 85
 
 the Union, said it did not think Ireland should have 
 Home Rule. There was no breach of faith. After 
 Parnell, Redmond continued the agitation. At first 
 this country continued its refusal of the demand. It 
 gave Ireland other things, but declined to give it 
 Home Rule. Eventually it altered its mind, and gave 
 Redmond what he asked. The war came. The Act 
 was just put on the Statute Book, but obviously its 
 operation had to be suspended. The Act was full 
 of defects, and when the war was over it was natural 
 and proper to overhaul it, and propose an amended 
 scheme ; and that is what the country, through its 
 Government, has now done. There has been no 
 breach of faith at all ; and Mr. Thomas has no right 
 to exacerbate the situation and besmirch his country's 
 good name by falsely trumpeting us before the world 
 as a nation which has brought Ireland to its present 
 plight by failing to keep faith with her political leaders. 
 And he doesn't mend matters by the statement that 
 
 " we have, to-dcLV, an army in Ireland whose chief duty 
 it is to keep the Irish from reaUzing their very natural 
 ambition of obtaining self-government " (p. 140). 
 
 Mr. Thomas prefaces this remark by saying that " it 
 is inconceivable to think "it. Unfortunately he says 
 it ; and he says what is untrue, unless he attaches the 
 Sinn Fein meaning of absolute separation to the phrase 
 self-government — and that we must assume, is the 
 meaning that he does attach. Indeed, he makes it 
 fairly clear when he writes : — 
 
 " Ireland is a nation, and the Irish should decide their 
 own destiny, and choose and get up in peace their own 
 government. If they have to wait until Labour comes 
 into power, they will have to wait only that long before 
 they get their freedom " (p. 143). 
 
 86
 
 He is against a republic, but suggests a plebiscite to 
 decide it, and " as a start " would " grant Dominion 
 Home Rule " (p. 144). This attitude will hardly 
 commend a Labour Government as the arbiter of the 
 Irish problem. It means that if a majority of Irish, 
 excited or coerced by the extremists, chose to 
 demand absolute separation — and it is likely enough 
 such a majority would be engineered — a Labour 
 Government would say yes to them. 
 
 Mr. Thomas has no better answer to the cry of the 
 minority than to argue that 
 
 " the railwaymen in Ireland are united. Here you have 
 men of both north and south joining together in one 
 industrial organization. There are no differences between 
 them " (p. 143). 
 
 And therefore Labour will provide the cohesion which 
 has never yet existed. Mr. Thomas omits any reference 
 to the circumstance that the railwaymen in the north 
 have not mutinied against carrying soldiers and muni- 
 tions, as their southern confreres have done ; so that, 
 even within the organized Labour ranks, the cohesion 
 has not been remarkable. A little while ago Mr. 
 Thomas essayed, rather gratuitously, to settle the 
 Irish question for us. He did not succeed ; and his 
 failure is not surprising. 
 
 On several occasions Labour leaders have paid 
 lightning visits to India, and afterwards have done 
 some mischief by the aid of their hastily acquired and 
 very imperfect knowledge, Mr. Thomas has been 
 better advised. In the course of a very short chapter 
 on India — a mere passing reference to the subject — 
 he admits that " India is a very complicated problem." 
 His positive contribution to the Labour solution of the 
 problem is that his party in power would by gradual 
 
 87
 
 stages confer Dominion Home Rule upon the seething 
 masses of the peninsula. 
 
 " India ought to become a self-governing Dominion 
 within a British Commonwealth, and under I-abour it 
 would be given every opportunity of development to this 
 end " (p. 138). 
 
 Mr. Thomas does not talk unfairly of British rule, 
 but he does us less than justice in one passage, where 
 he states that we have never sought to teach the 
 native " those principles of government, of citizenship 
 and of service to the State which might have made him, 
 in the end, able to dispense with outside administration 
 and, incidentally, with outside capital " (p. 138). Has 
 Mr. Thomas never seen Indians thronging our Univer- 
 sities, and learning law in the Temple, for subsequent 
 practice in their own country ? Are there no natives 
 in the civil administration of India, no native officers in 
 the Indian Army, no native captains of industry, 
 no Indian judge in the Supreme Court of the British. 
 Empire, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ? 
 Among those who know India well are those who say 
 that our Western methods of political democracy are 
 utterly foreign and unsuited to the various Eastern 
 races whose members jostle each other in India, and 
 that it is a dangerous and useless mistake to try to 
 import our methods. Therefore Labour politicians 
 should make careful enquiry as to India's real char- 
 acteristics and needs and wishes before pushing far 
 such methods of reform as this : — 
 
 " What we would do — and this is the essence of the 
 problem — would be to create real electorates ; and in 
 order to do this, we would gradually develop the limited 
 powers of local government in the provinces, increasing 
 these powers as the natives became experienced and 
 efficient in the arts of government " (p. 139).
 
 It sounds all right, on this side of the world ; but it 
 i.5 to be hoped that when Labour rules it will not be 
 in a hurry to experiment on the other side. 
 
 By far the most satisfactory chapter in Mr. Thomas's 
 book is that devoted to women ; and one is the more 
 glad to chronicle this fact, in view of the appalling 
 muck which is advocated by many of those who attach 
 themselves to the Labour Party. Mr. Thomas is to 
 be congratulated upon taking what is, upon the whole, 
 a sensible and moderate view of feminism. There are 
 branches of the subject which one would have liked 
 to see him handle, but which he has not touched — 
 divorce, for example ; and, speaking generally, his 
 chapter on the subject suffers from the defects of thin- 
 ness and nebulousness which are characteristic of the 
 book as a whole ; but his very omissions are capable 
 of a healthy interpretation. He seems in this matter 
 to represent the sound instinct of his class, which has 
 little sympathy either with the hysterical shriekings 
 of the neurasthenic female or the trifling with immo- 
 rality and the sanctity of marriage which has of late 
 gained baleful fashion in sections of Society. 
 
 Nothing could be better, for instance, than Mr. 
 Thomas's assertions that 
 
 " It is Labour's object as far as possible to wipe out 
 the necessity of married women working at all." 
 
 and 
 
 " Woman's sphere of influence is the home " (p. 185). 
 
 But it is not all so good as this. Mr. Thomas commits 
 himself to the view that 
 
 " I do not think women will ever dominate the 
 politics in this country " (p. 185). 
 
 89 •
 
 Yet he begins his chapter thus : — 
 
 " When I remind my readers that when the woman 
 adult suffrage comes in— as it unquestionably will, espe- 
 cially when Labour is in power, for we are all in favour 
 of it — women will hold the majority of votes in the 
 country, I do not wish them to assume that we, as a 
 party, intend to pander in any waj' to that voting power " 
 (p. 182). 
 
 These are brave words ; and we have heard the 
 last-quoted phrase from pohticians before ; but 
 poHticians who hve by votes have a habit of quaihng 
 when the test comes. It is safer not to be in the way 
 of the temptation. But, in view of the preponderance 
 of women over men, the adoption of adult suffrage 
 is simply the handing over of supreme political power 
 to women ; and if they do not then dominate politics 
 it will be their own fault — or that of the political 
 busybodies who will use them. Adult suffrage for 
 women figures in the Labour Party programme only 
 as a legacy, or credal liability taken over from the days 
 of theoretical Socialist agitation ; and Labour poli- 
 ticians would do well to seek counsel from their working- 
 class supporters as to whether this archaic item of 
 academic revolutionism is reall}^ among the aspirations 
 of the British workman. 
 
 It is not a question of bowing before the compulsion 
 of abstract justice — Fiat jicstitia, &c. ; because, 
 as Mr. Thomas says, " woman's sphere of influence is 
 the home," not the political arena ; and there is no 
 injustice in asking her to remain a woman, and not try 
 to be a mannikin. Whatever may be said about 
 giving the vote to a section of women, as there is no 
 principle of justice involved, the vote must not be so 
 extended as to make it swamp men's votes, and bring 
 
 90
 
 about the dominance of women in the body politic. 
 Mr. Thomas reahzes well enough that this would be an 
 evil, but he sticks to his moth-eaten formula of adult 
 suffrage, and tries to convince us that the natural 
 results would not happen. Upon what does he 
 base his view that women, though endowed with 
 supreme power in the State, will never dominate 
 politics ? On phrases of this sort : — 
 
 " The basic motives of her existence, her dreams, 
 aims, her instincts, all call her away from the political 
 arena and into the home " (p. 185). 
 
 They do. Then why interfere with those " basic 
 motives ? " The very fact of their existence means that 
 women will care less what they do in the political arena, 
 and will, without sense of responsibility, place their 
 power in the hands of designing politicians. Mr, 
 Thomas inveighs against the mischief which he says 
 has resulted from men's lack of political enthusiasm. 
 Is not worse mischief to be anticipated from the yet 
 more complete lack of political enthusiasm on the 
 part of women ? 
 
 Mr. Thomas has naturally something to say on the 
 economic side — the larger entry of women into the 
 industrial field. He treads gingerly over this thorny 
 ground, realizing that " when, instead of employers 
 begging for labour, labour may, unfortunately, find 
 itself begging for employment," women's competition 
 is going to become an acute source of trouble. And 
 this is his solution : — 
 
 " Labour in power, however, will not rely on a sense 
 of comradeship merely. It will legislate directly in favour 
 of equal pay, and that will wipe out any possibility of ill- 
 feeling on the part of the male worker. It will be straight 
 competition, a fair field and no favour. Who desires or 
 should expect anything better than that ?" (p. 189). 
 
 91
 
 Mr. Thomas is trying to extricate himself from a 
 dehcate situation by talking nonsense. If Labour 
 in power passes laws enacting that women shall be 
 paid at the same rates as men, that will be in the first 
 place an unwarrantable interference with bargains 
 between employers and employed ; and in the second 
 place, it will defeat its object, so far as women are 
 concerned, for they simply won't be employed, except 
 in their own specifically feminine occupations — and 
 that will not be a bad thing. 
 
 That Mr. Thomas should regard the House of Lords 
 with disfavour was to be expected, and we are warned 
 that Labour " is not prepared for a moment to 
 countenance an hereditary upper Chamber." The 
 reason Mr. Thomas gives as follows : — 
 
 " A peer may be entirely lacking in all training and 
 may be remarkable for his lack of natural endowments ; 
 he may be dissipated and utterly selfish and irresponsible " 
 (P- 47)- 
 
 Quite true ; he may be. So may a Labour Member 
 of the House of Commons. It is an imperfect world. 
 But it is also a fact that the peer who lacks all training 
 (though I don't know what that precisely means), 
 and who is further lacking in natural endowments, 
 rarely interferes in the legislation of his country ; 
 and the last place in which a scion of nobility who is 
 given over to dissipation, and is utterly selfish and irre- 
 sponsible, is likely to be found is in the staid precincts 
 of the House of Lords — he finds more attractive 
 spots. The objection, therefore, is a theoretical one, 
 and need not worry the practical politician. On the 
 other hand, however desirable it may be to strengthen 
 
 92
 
 the House of Lords by some modification of the 
 hereditary principle and extension of the life-peerage 
 part of it, it is of immense value to the nation to have a 
 body of legislators who are not subject to the transitory 
 whims of electoral politics, not perpetually wondering 
 what votes they are winning and losing, and which is 
 recruited from the best minds in the country — from 
 men who have made their mark in statesmanship, law, 
 public service, science, literature, industry, and religious 
 and philanthropic work. And that is what you have 
 in the House of Lords to-day. And it is those men who 
 transact the great bulk of the work in the House. 
 They are roughly representative of the country's best 
 (and as really representative as the average member of 
 the other House) ; they also often act as bulwarks of 
 freedom, and even Mr. Thomas is fain to admit that 
 it is — 
 
 " a curious and ironic fact that during many stages of the 
 war the real guardians of the people's liberty were to be 
 found in the Upper House " (p. 48). 
 
 Leave it there, Mr. Thomas. Or, if you must experi- 
 ment with Constitutional reform, be content with such 
 improvements in the composition of the House of 
 Lords as will insure a yet fuller and more extended 
 representation of those elements which have just 
 been named. Nothing more is needed. 
 
 Among the other " oddments " I have marked for 
 a note is the following : — 
 
 " There is one duty I should make compulsory, and 
 that is the feeding and clothing of children. This should 
 go upon the Statute Book as a thing municipalities were 
 compelled to do " (p. 175). 
 
 In other words, pauperism. It is nothing else. Else- 
 where Mr. Thomas is rightly anxious that a man should 
 
 93
 
 earn a wage which will enable him to maintain a family. 
 Here he proposes that the maintenance of a man's 
 family should be provided for out of the rates. It is 
 not enough that a child's education (with free medical 
 and dental attention) should be so provided, as is 
 already the case ; that there should be State endow- 
 ment of childbirth, as he proposes, with all sorts of 
 other State-provided assistance ; but a man is also to be 
 relieved of his primary duty of clothing and feeding his 
 family. 
 
 The family is the one institution which is essential 
 to human life ; which is at the foundation of, and is 
 superior to, all others ; which outlasts them all, and 
 they cannot last long without it. More than aught 
 else it must be preserved inviolate ; and the responsi- 
 bility of parenthood is a necessary accompaniment of 
 its preservation. Mr. Thomas's programme would 
 whittle that responsibility away, and would in time 
 destroy the family. These proposals sound so nice 
 and philanthropic, but in the long run they are deadly. 
 And Mr, Thomas himself, — master of contradictory 
 statements — declares on another page : — 
 
 " I cannot conceive it to be a good thing that the 
 working classes should be subsidized in any wav " (p. 74). 
 
 Another of my " oddments " is a return to the sub- 
 ject of Nationalization. Mr. Thomas, in his chapter on 
 Municipalities, becomes oppressed with the argument 
 that men working for a government lose their sense of 
 responsibility and desire to succeed, and he refers to 
 the " comment upon such organizations as the telephone 
 and the post office." And here is his answer : — 
 
 " The trouble here is that it is not easy to graft on 
 to the ordinary industrial system a national or municipal 
 undertaking. To test the matter properly, you must 
 
 94
 
 place in the hands of the community not a stray operation 
 here and there, but all those things that go towards the 
 service of the community. All monopolies. Then we 
 shall cause to grow up amongst us a large army of civil 
 servants who will not shelter behind bundles of red tape 
 and indulge in laziness, but who will be fired by common 
 ambition to succeed every bit as much as a man may be 
 who works for some private concern and does his best, not 
 only in order to get on, but because he is all the time in 
 fear of dismissal " (p. 177). 
 
 Look at this passage, and see what it amounts to. 
 A confession that State Socialism, so far as it has 
 been tried, is a failure, or, at any rate, exhibits just 
 those very serious faults which individualists allege 
 against Socialism. Yet these are picked industries — 
 picked out because they contained elements so specially 
 suited to State trading, if we are to have State trading 
 at all, that even in an individualist community the 
 State was allowed to take them. It might well be 
 that they were free from the defects of Socialism, and 
 yet that extension to less aptly situated fields of in- 
 dustry would be subject to them. Yet all Mr. Thomas 
 has to say is that, though the samples are bad, you 
 may trust the bulk of the consignment to be all right. 
 Is there a business man in the community credulous 
 enough to swallow that ? 
 
 And note further the invitation to extend Nationaliza- 
 tion to " all those things that go towards the service of 
 the community." This, we are told, is necessary. 
 Then what is to be left to private enterprise ? And 
 what becomes of those apparently moderate passages 
 to which reference has already been made, and in which 
 it is suggested that the State will only, under Labour 
 rule, expropriate here and there, leaving still a wide 
 field of commercial freedom ? What but another 
 
 95
 
 instance of Mr. Thomas's hopeless addiction to the 
 Jekyll and Hyde method of speaking with two voices — 
 the method which makes him so bewildering and so 
 dangerous ? 
 
 My last " oddment " is Mr. Thomas's apology for 
 ca' canny. It runs thus : — 
 
 " In passing I must refer to the talk there has been 
 to the effect that the bricklayers have refused to do their 
 best. It seems to be entirely lost sight of that, before the 
 war, the amount of under-employment, non-employment, 
 and casual labour in the building trade was simply enor- 
 mous. . . . Remembering this it will be more difficult 
 to blame them when, for the first time, there is a huge 
 demand for their labour. . . . Give the men — as they 
 . should be given, as every worker should be given — some 
 guarantee against these weeks of slackness and actual 
 want, and they will work. There will be no ' ca' canny ' 
 movements to make the jobs there are last out over the 
 lean times they fear may develop " (pp. 73-74). 
 
 But it is not only in the seasonal trade of bricklaying 
 and ca' canny cannot mitigate the seasons and their 
 enforced unemployment — in which this evil principle is 
 at work. Mr. Thomas would have done better service 
 to the Labour which he leads had he pointed out to 
 workmen the sophism of ca' canny and its ultimately 
 suicidal effect. He might well take as a model for his 
 teaching the words of another Labour leader, sounder 
 than himself — Mr. J. R. Clynes, M.P. ; and I cannot 
 make a better reply to Mr. Thomas than by quoting 
 from Mr, Clynes's speech to the Higher Production 
 Council on the 2nd December last. Mr Clynes said : — 
 
 " There are workmen who think that if they do less 
 there will be more for someone else to do. I submit 
 against that view the results of experience, which are the 
 real test. From one excuse or another this year of 1920 
 
 96
 
 has been one of low production, and it is towards the end 
 of this year of low production that we see the highest 
 figure of unemployment workmen have had to suffer in 
 recent years. If it were true that low production found 
 work for others, that would have solved your unemploy- 
 ment problem and absorbed these hundreds of thousands 
 of men. . . . It is, I think, proper for the workers to 
 secure safeguards against unemployment and against 
 additional output being of greater benefit to employers 
 than to anyone else, but even if these safeguards cannot 
 be secured, it would, I believe, still be desirable enormously 
 to increase output of commodities, for that output would 
 confer more benefit upon the working classes than on any 
 other class in the country. . . , Plenty, then, is the 
 friend of the worker. Increased production lessens his 
 difficulties ; decreased production increases his burdens 
 and diminishes the purchasing power of his wages. 
 The producer is also a consumer, and low production of 
 any of the common necessaries of life places him between 
 the two difficulties of shortage of goods on the one hand 
 and smaller purchasing power with his wages on the 
 other." {The Times, 3rd December, 1920.) 
 
 97
 
 XII. 
 
 SHOULD LABOUR RULE ? 
 
 In furnishing an answer to this question two considera- 
 tions have to be regarded. The first is of a more 
 particular or practical kind. Is the programme of the 
 Labour party one which recommends it for approval 
 beyond that of other parties ? Mr. Thomas outlines 
 that programme in his book ; and however his 
 exposition may fail in definiteness and detail, however 
 uncertain it may be rendered in places by contra- 
 dictory statements, it is at any rate as moderate a 
 programme as we are likely to get from his friends. 
 Doubtless, when the Labour party began to rule, it 
 would find numerous items even in this programme 
 unrealizable ; it is a fact also that there are a few men 
 in the Labour party whose political attitude is more 
 moderate than Mr. Thomas's. But allowing for these 
 things, it is fair to assume that the Labour party's 
 policy would not be more moderate than the exposition 
 which Mr. Thomas has purposely couched in moderate 
 terms. If the reader is not prepared to go at least as 
 far as Mr. Thomas, he had better abandon any thought 
 of supporting the Labour party. He could not safely 
 assume that the performance would be even more 
 moderate than the promise ; for though certain 
 stubborn facts in political and economic life would tend 
 to clog the wheels of Labour progress, there would be 
 
 98
 
 other factors at work making for increased velocity. 
 Within the Labour party and upon its fringe are men 
 of more extreme views, who would be agitating among 
 their fellows and intriguing against their comrades in 
 office for the adoption of a wilder policy, and the others 
 would not dare to maintain a steady resistance. They 
 would be embarked upon a slippery slope, down which 
 they would be impelled by the logic of facts and the 
 pressure of extremists. 
 
 It would be tedious to go back upon Mr. Thomas's 
 pages, or upon these, and quote over again the many 
 sample passages relating to Mr. Thomas's policy — a 
 policy which is often unjust, often impracticable, not 
 infrequently incoherent. If this is the best platform 
 which the Labour party can erect, it is a structure 
 which can only be condemned. 
 
 But it may be said that the idea of a Labour Party 
 Government should not be condemned because of the 
 mistakes made by a particular Labour leader in his 
 survey. And this brings us to the second consideration 
 which must be regarded when answe-'ing the question 
 whether Labour shoxild rule — the more general question 
 whether, apart from the errors of a particular exposi- 
 tion of Labour party policy, it would not be desirable 
 that nevertheless a Labour party should be placed at 
 the helm ? 
 
 Before, however, trying to get to the core of that 
 question, attention in passing should be called to the 
 immediate point of Labour's " fitness to govern," 
 to use Mr. Thomas's own phrase. The citizen who is 
 asked to give his suffrage to candidates for office who 
 have no record to which they can point can only judge 
 of their fitness by the sort of programme which they 
 elaborate. Mr. Thomas is by general consent one of 
 
 99
 
 the ablest leaders of his party, and he would take 
 a very high office if the party attained to power. 
 Moreover, in writing his book he was definitely taking 
 up a challenge as to Labour's fitness. If, therefore, 
 the result is so unsatisfying as it is submitted our 
 criticism shows it to be, indicating so little statesman- 
 ship or grip of the dominant facts, are we not driven to 
 the conclusion that Labour is not fit to govern ? 
 
 Now for the more fundamental matter. Ought 
 Labour to rule at all ? 
 
 When we were schoolboys we were familiar with 
 Macaulay's lines depicting the best days of ancient 
 Rome : — 
 
 " When none were for a party, 
 And all were for the State." 
 
 The State should, as lar as possible, be a harmonious 
 whole — not a cockpit of factions. But you must have 
 party government, replies the politician. For my own 
 part, I always find it difficult to appreciate that neces- 
 sity. But let me suppress a personal view, which 
 would rather carry us away from our subject. 
 
 Let us grant that, at any rate, the most convenient 
 method of government is by party. That does not 
 justify a Labour party. 
 
 The men who compose a community have different 
 temperaments, varying ideas. Some are eager to 
 experiment with changes, in the hope of attaining a 
 better ordering of society ; others prefer to tread 
 accustomed roads. Thus different schools of political 
 thought arise, and they crystallize in parties, and the 
 predominant party of the moment controls the govern- 
 ment of the country. But though the divisions between 
 these parties may at times become acute — often 
 absurdly acute, and even mischievous to the well- 
 
 100
 
 being of the State — they possess this saving grace : 
 being merely schools of thought, on matters where 
 unanimity is not to be looked for, they do not break 
 up the homogeneity of the nation ; they do not, save 
 by occasional, unfortunate accident, set class against 
 class. You may get men of one party in all classes, 
 and many of them — most of them — are so loosely 
 attached to the party allegiance as to be really inde- 
 pendent of it. Thus national harmony and unity are 
 preserved fundamentally. 
 
 It is quite otherwise when, instead of having free 
 choice to join one party or another, or remain aloof 
 from any, men are forced into a particular party 
 because of the class to which they belong, and when, 
 in place of speculative politics of those who are interested 
 in such matters, you have class warring against class 
 within the community. Instead of intellectual spar- 
 ring concerning measures and methods of government, 
 you then get hostile camps, whose mottoes are gene- 
 rated, not in thought, but in open and unabashed 
 self-interest, and between whom there is real, deadly 
 warfare. That is what a Labour party means. If 
 you belong to the wage-earning class you must join 
 with all other wage-earners to despoil and " down '' 
 the other classes. 
 
 Mr. Thomas's excuse is that the others began it. It 
 is not true ; and the argument would not be worthy 
 of a patriotic statesman if it were true. By such 
 phrases as " the Labour Government . . . will not 
 ... set up a new class warfare " (p. 56) ; "we claim 
 that, in the past, government has been for the privi- 
 leged few " (p. 84) ; " Government comes even yet 
 from the class who own, who employ " (p. 203) ; he tries 
 to get his readers to believe that government has 
 
 lOI
 
 always been by a class for a class ; and so another 
 class is justified in seizing the reins, as a class. But 
 history does not endorse this picture of selfishness. In 
 the long ago, when kings ruled, they ruled, not for 
 their personal benefit, but for the benefit of their 
 people, and often particularly for the benefit of the 
 poor and lowly against the rich and powerful. In 
 later times, when effective government was in the 
 hands of the aristocracy, shared afterwards with the 
 middle classes, much was done for the direct benefit of 
 the classes which had no share in the government. It 
 is customary to quote the game laws as instancing the 
 contrary. It is not a very formidable instance of 
 class government. All infractions of lav/s were heavily 
 punished in earlier days ; the poacher was not treated 
 worse than the burglar, but he was a more frequent 
 offender in rural districts. On the other hand, there 
 is such legislation as the Factory Acts, to prove a real 
 concern for the welfare of those who had no share in 
 the Government. It is not denied that members of 
 the governing classes have sometimes succumbed to 
 the weakness of human nature, and allowed their 
 judgment to be clouded by the prejudices of their 
 class ; but there is no justification for arguing from 
 these lapses that when government was in the hands 
 of those who by station and education were naturally 
 marked out for leadership their power was deliberately 
 used by them for selfish class ends. 
 
 Of course, the answer to the suspicion that lapses 
 towards class selfishness are the inevitable result of 
 class government is the answer which has already been 
 provided by the facts of modern politics — a wide fran" 
 chise, and opportunity for men representing the lowlier 
 classes to share in the legislation and government of 
 
 102
 
 the country, when they prove their personal fitness 
 to take a share. Surely, Mr. Thomas and his friends 
 cannot complain of any denial of opportunities of this 
 kind in recent years ! 
 
 It will always be — or one hopes that it will always 
 be in this country — that men of leisure and of those 
 attainments and wider outlook which are fostered by 
 a more ample station in society will take the lead in 
 the administration of national affairs ; that is far better 
 than the system of handing over that administration 
 to the exclusive possession of professional politicians 
 and adventurers — so long as the door is kept open, 
 as it is to-day, for the representatives of all classes. 
 We need to be united as a people ; and the worst way 
 to promote such unity is to establish a political party, 
 founded upon the principle of a class war, and a war 
 to the finish of other classes. 
 
 If Mr. Thomas and his friends want a party of their 
 own, let them have a Socialist party. Socialism and 
 Individualism are contrasted principles. Each man 
 and woman can then choose between the opposing 
 schools of thought — that which believes in State 
 ownership and control and that which stands by private 
 ownership and personal freedom. There would then 
 be no unfair compulsion upon wage-earners to join a 
 Socialist party camouflaged as Labour. Adherents of 
 each school would be found in all classes ; but in view 
 of the poor case for Socialism which Mr. Thomas has 
 made in his book, it might be hoped that the adherents 
 of that party would not be hurriedly called upon by 
 the nation to rule it. 
 
 103
 
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