Cornell University Library JN 234 1921.T4 When labour rules, lilllllillil I II III Mil 3 1924 002 408 742 THE LIBRARY OF THE NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002408742 WHEN LABOR RULES BY J. H. THOMAS, M.P. PROPERTY OF LIBRARY NEW YORK STATE SO'Wl INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS CORNELL UNIVERSITY NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 1921 COPYRIGHT, 1921, ST HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. THE QUINN a BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY. N. J. CONTENTS PAGE Foreword v I. The England of To-morrow ... 9 II. The Eight to Woek and the Eight to Eest 20 III. To-day and Yesterday . . . . 29 IV. The Labor Government and the Con- stitution .43 V. Nationalization, 49 VI. Labor Government and the Middle Classes ,7 VII. Housing and Health: Health and Housing .65 VIII. Education — in the University and the Home ....... 81 IX. The " Trade " 95 X. Our Foreign Eelationships . . .111 XL Our Colonies and Dependencies . . 120 XII. India 131 XIII. Ireland' 135 XIV. Finance 144 XV. The Eesponsibilities of the Munici- palities 162 XVI. Women 176 XVII. The League of Peoples . . . .184 FOEEWOED In the days preceding August, 1914, the vast majority of the people of this country took so' limited a view of life that they failed entirely to realize the existence of forces which they had not actually experienced; whatever lahel they were pleased to attach to themselves they were, beneath the skin, as conservative as their insularity could possibly make them. It is true that they knew there were ever- growing forces in the land, but they did not recognize them as forces. They knew, for instance, that there were Social- ists, but they identified them merely as people who wore red neckties and waved red flags and sometimes made rude remarks about the monarchy. Suffragettes were notoriety hunters. . Trade Unionism was a movement promoted with the object of getting the lazy working man as much more than his pound of flesh as could be wrested from the employer. That the Labor Movement or the suffrage movement could in any way affect the economic life of the nation, let alone fundamentally affect the constitution of the coun- try, was too preposterous to be thought of. These people saw the government of the land going on until Doomsday as it was going on then — Tory and Liberal, Liberal and Tory, change and change about with the swing of the pendulum — and they gave the subject as much interest and nearly as much enthusiasm as they accorded the Uni- versity boat race. The past six years have opened people's eyes to things vi FOBEWOED as they are. Nevertheless, there is still a very large num- ber of people who have not yet gained the ability to under- stand what they see, and of those who can see, there are some who make it their business to use every means within their power to distort the vision of the remainder. I do not think that there is any one to-day who fails to realize that the old order of things can never be re- established. But there undoubtedly is an enormous num- ber of people who utterly fail to comprehend the possi- bilities of the future and who, as a consequence, are filled with misgivings and forebodings. It is to these people I address this book: the people who, persuaded at last of the seriousness and strength of the Labor Movement, realize that before long Labor will rule, but fail to under- stand what it portends. The capitalists and the people whose means are derived from securities are wondering what will happen to them when the workers take charge of the ship of State. The black-coated workers of the cities — the middle classes — the people who have always had a tight squeeze to make ends meet and have long since given up hope of ever expecting anything else are wondering what will happen to them when Labor rules, and are questioning whether they will be robbed of the little they have ; whether it will be worth while struggling any more. Then there is the working man who has always voted Tory; who mistrusts his "hot-headed fellow-workers," and has always been content to leave his destiny in the hands of his " betters," as his father did before him — he also is perturbed at the prospect. In the following chapters I seek to remove these anxi- eties by the plain statement of what I firmly believe will FOKEWOKD vii be the effect of Labor government. These views are my own; I am not professing to speak for the Labor Party or for any one whatever beyond myself. I do not for a moment expect that everything I write will be indorsed by my colleagues in the Labor Movement. I do not doubt that some will think my optimism too great; that others will consider it too small. But however true or false fu- ture events may prove my vision to be I do assert, with all the vehemence at my command, that Labor Rule 'will be entirely beneficent, and that its dealings with high and low, rich and poor, will be marked with broad-minded toleration and equity. September, 1920. WHEN LABOR RULES CHAPTEE I THE ENGLAND OF TO-MORROW Theeb is nothing Utopian in my vision of the England of to-morrow; I am not one of those confident and op- timistic people who imagine that once Labor comes into power all will be well with the world ; nevertheless, I do foresee a far happier England than any historian has yet been in a position to describe. Utopia, as I understand it, is a place which cannot be improved upon; a State in which the social and political conditions have reached a standard which cannot be ex- celled; a State of ideal perfection. I cannot conceive England or any other country reaching the summit of such an ambition in a thousand to-morrows, but I can and do conceive an England which by to-morrow will have made greater strides towards perfection than our grand- fathers would have believed to be possible within hun- dreds of years. 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 little hope of the future ; but the discontent of to-morrow will differ f unda- 10 WHEN LABOK RULES mentally from the discontent of the' past, inasmuch as it will not be based upon a sense of injustice and will not be received in a spirit of hostility. Furthermore, the grounds for discontent will be con- siderably fewer. The holiday-maker will still have the weather to grumble about ; the dyspeptic will continue to complain of his breakfast, and the farmer will still find a grievance in the state of his crops, but no man will have occasion to protest against the conditions under which he is expected to live ; no man will be able to state that some one else is Jiving on his sweated labor ; and no man will be able to proclaim that he lacks the opportunity to im- prove his lot if he wishes to do so. There will be no profiteers, no unemployment, no slums, no hungry children. !No man will be expected to work an excessive number of hours, and no man who is fit for work will be permitted to shirk it; the right to live upon the accumulated wealth of another will no longer exist; the right to the best and highest education the country can afford. will no longer be the exclusive privilege of a fa- vored class, but will be open to all whose talents show that they will benefit by receiving it; the only qualifications for the higher civil service will be character and ability. These are only some of the outstanding differences in the life of to-morrow from the life of to-day, but I have no doubt there are many people who feel thoroughly con- vinced that not one-half of them will be realized for generations to come, if, indeed, they are ever realized. These people will say that nothing but a revolution could bring about such startling and far-reaching changes, and that no revolution could have such beneficent effects. But what is a revolution? I maintain that it is not THE ENGLAND OF TOMORROW 11 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 peace- 1 ful, and I maintain that we are in the midst of such a revolution at the present moment. One of the many evidences of this peaceful revolution which would have created a storm forty, twenty, even ten years ago, is to be found in one of the paragraphs of the report of the Court of Inquiry concerning the conditions of employment of dock labor. This report was published last March, and the paragraph to which I refer is so re- markable that I reproduce it here in full: — The true and substantial case presented by the dockers was based upon a broad appeal for a better standard of living. What is a better standard of living? By this is not meant a right to have merely a subsistence allowance, in the sense of keeping the soul and body of the worker together, but a right to have life ordered upon a higher standard, with full regard to those comforts and decencies which are promo- tive of better habits, which give a chance for the development of a greater sense of self-respect, and which betoken a higher regard for the place occupied by these workers in the scheme of citizenship. 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. In the opinion of the Court the time has gone past for assessing the value of human labor at the poverty line. It is findings of this nature which are paving the road to the England of to-morrow, but time was and not so long since, when such a statement as that given above would have been found only in a minority report and would have been viewed by the majority of people as a very estimable but highly unpractical expression of opinion. 13 WHEN LABOR RULES Day by day it is becoming more and more widely recog- nized that Labor is not a menial task. It is an indispen- sable contribution to the welfare of the State, and in the interests of the State, no less than in its own interests, it is essential that it should be clothed in a proper dignity and invested in a fitting independence. The position and condition of Labor must not only be immeasurably im- proved, but it must be given every possible aid and oppor- tunity to improve itself. In the creation of the new England one of the first essentials is the clear recognition that Labor must have a share in all those things which govern the daily life,; thirty years ago the appearance of a working man on the benches of the House of Commons was looked upon as an amusing but rather ridiculous anomaly ; it was considered by many people to be the result of a freakish and unac- countable twist of the electoral mind — a matter of no importance which would be righted at the next election. What serious help could a horny-handed son of toil give in the making of laws ? All the evidence was against any such ability. To begin with, there was no precedent ; furthermore, the son of toil lacked the niceness of apparel which in those days was so important a thing at. West- minster ; and how on earth could a man who had spent his days at the loom or in the coal mine possess that experi- enced knowledge of affairs which was so essential an asset of the Member of Parliament? The worker was the human machine and his value was greater or less accord- ing to the intelligence of the employer who directed his labor. We have progressed far since those days and now the public body which did not contain its Labor representative THE ENGLAND OF TO-MOEEOW 13 would be hard to find. But whereas it has come to be fully recognized that the workers, by their knowledge and ability, can be of invaluable assistance in the House of Commons, on County, Town, and District Councils, on Eoyal Commissions, on Conciliation Boards and Boards of Inquiry, it has still to be realized that, with a very few exceptions, the worker has no voice whatever in the control of the industry by which he gains his livelihood and which, therefore, is the primary concern of his daily life. The workers must be taken more into the confidence of the employers and it must be more generally recognized that the men, by virtue of their close and daily contact' with the details of their work, must often be able to sug- gest improvements which would be invaluable to the con- cern by which they are employed. Tentative steps have already been taken in this direc- tion. At Bourneville, for instance, there is in existence a Suggestion Scheme under which the workers are invited to recommend new or improved goods ; improved methods of manufacture; new suggestions for advertising, and so forth. In the first half-year after the inception of this scheme two hundred and seventy-nine suggestions were made and fifty-one per cent, of them were accepted; in the half-year ending April 30th, 1912, just over thirteen hundred suggestions were received, of which four hundred and twenty-eight were accepted. Prizes are awarded to the employees whose suggestions are accepted; in April, 1912, these amounted to £141 12s. 6d. This is the men's scheme to which I have referred; there is also a scheme run on similar lines for girl employees. 14 WHEN LABOK RULES " It has been found," says Mr. Cadbury, " that the good accomplished is not only in the pecuniary value to the firm or to the suggestor, but also in the development of the mental and creative power which makes both men and girls more efficient and valuable workers and fosters an intelligent independence." This is exceedingly interesting as an experiment and gives ample proof of the belief that industry would tre- mendously benefit by the workers having a share in the management, but, of course, this Bourneville experiment is not business; the award of honor and a small prize can hardly be considered an equitable arrangement. Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction and nothing but the hedge of hostility, mistrust, and sus- picion, which from time immemorial has separated the employers and workers, prevents the country from sharing the indisputable benefit which would accrue to individual employers and workers under the logical development of the experiment— a universal scheme of real partnership. This hedge must and will be broken down and then the nation will be filled with astonishment that partnership was not an accomplished fact years ago. Another feature of the England of to-morrow will be the National ownership of Kailways, Mines, Canals, Har- bors, and Roads. Also, there is no reason against, but plenty of reasons in favor of the public ownership ,of the great lines of steamers. Another very important industry which calls for public ownership is the generation of electricity, and, when this industry is taken over by the nation, instead of hav- ing a host of small and inadequate sources of supply, we shall see the erection of a score of huge super-power sta- THE ENGLAND OF TO-MOEROW 15 tions which will generate, at incredibly cheap rates, suffi- cient electricity for the use of every industrial establish- ment and every private, household in the country. With proper arrangements for municipal co-operation in dis- tribution, the whole country will be 'able to obtain the cheapest possible power, light, and heat. It will , be seen that by the nationalization of these things alone — Coal, Transport, Heat, Light, and Power — not only will there be a very considerable impetus given to industry, but the individual as well as the public purse will feel a remarkable benefit. The cost of living will more closely approximate its pre-war scale, wages will tend to increase and the hours of labor to decfease within, of course, reasonable limits. By the success of its commercial enterprises, by ade- quate taxation of unearned increment and by drastic death duties, the Government will be in a position to develop a really satisfactory Ministry of Health, and will be able to put Education, Insurance, Pensions, and other matters closely touching the social life of the nation upon a proper footing. Profit-making Industrial Insurance Companies which now deal with the poor by a system of wasteful house-to- house collection of weekly pence will also have to be ex- propriated, and the great 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. Another thing which will do much towards altering the appearance of the England of to-morrow from the Eng- land of torday will be the change in the ownership of the 16 WHEN LABOR RULES liquor traffic. Any one who can read the signs of the times cannot fail to perceive the fact that the days of Mr. Bung's bloated opulence are numbered. To-morrow there will be no Mr. Bung; the nation will control the manufacture and distribution of intoxicating liquor, and its consumption will in all probability be con- trolled under a scheme of local option by the various dis- tricts of the country. This is but an indication of some of the more sweeping reforms which it may reasonably be assumed will be car- ried out to-morrow and which will be dealt with in more detail in the succeeding chapters. Let it now suffice for me to give a general and rough survey of what life under these new and improved conditions may be expected to be like. In the first place, the lives of the people will without question be far happier than they have ever been before,, and by " the people " I do not merely mean those whom to-day we are accustomed to distinguish as the workers. To-morrow all who are bodily and mentally fit will be workers, and those to whom the experience is new will find considerably more happiness in it than they have hitherto found in their lives of unproductive idleness. The people, or the workers, call them which you please, will all, without exception, live under decent conditions; their homes will be decently built, will be sanitary, and will be so constructed that they will involve a minimum rather than a maximum amount of labor for those who have to live in them. So far as the character of employment permits, the people who go to work will also perform their labor under the best possible conditions of health and comfort; there THE ENGLAND OP TO-MORROW 17 is no reason why a man should not be comfortable at his work if the circumstances of his task permit. Hours of labor will be shorter than they are in gen- eral to-day, and there will be a greater tendency in those industries which lend themselves to it for the employment of two or more shifts. Having a decent home, and having decent wages to spend upon it, and decent leisure in which to enjoy the home he is able to create, the worker will naturally be more disposed than he has been in the past to go to it in- stead of to the public-house, but when he goes to the latter, instead of finding a comfortless place of which the sole inducement to enter is the liquor which is handed over the counter, he will discover a bright and comfortable place, in which to rest or amuse himself — a well-ordered place into which he will not be ashamed to take his wife, and in which he will be able to obtain whatever non-alcoholic drink he pleases without his choice being looked upon as in any way remarkable. Indeed, there is no reason why he should not, if he chooses, use these houses as places in which to meet and chat with his friends without being under any obligation whatever to spend his money — a sort of national club. Everything that is possible will be done to foster the de- sire for self-improvement; a great army of University Extension lecturers will be employed to give popular in- struction, which will be available to all during the winter months, and there will be a National Theater and a Na- tional Opera. Those people who think they have a bent fer arts and crafts will be given every opportunity of proving whether such is the case or not, and where latent talent in a suffi- 18 WHEN LABOR RULES ciently striking degree is discovered means will be pro- vided for its. proper and complete development. The physical welfare of the people will not be for- gotten and there will be ample facilities for gymnastic exercises, while steps will be taken to foster a greater de- sire to take part in sports rather than to play the role of a mere onlooker. The open-air life will be encouraged, and there is no reason why it should not be made possible, by the granting of cheap fares, to create summer colonies in the country and at the seaside. The tremendous importance of children will be recog- nized in the new England, and there will be State endow- ment of motherhood. All children will receive a thorough education, and the school-leaving age will be raised ; special attention will be paid to the aptitude of a child, and his education will be fitted to the trade or profession he shows most promise of succeeding in in after life. Those who show themselves sufficiently gifted to benefit by it will be given the opportunity to continue their edu- cation at one of the Universities, and at the same time regard will be paid to the financial position of the family from which the child comes. It would not encourage a desire for education, nor would it foster ambition ; indeed, it would not be right from any point of view to penalize a family for the cleverness of its children, and if the family is proved to be in need of the money which the child would earn 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. This is my outline, sketched in the rough, of the Eng- land of to-morrow as I see it, but it must clearly be under- THE ENGLAND OF TO-MORROW 19 stood that I do not for a moment pretend that this will be the immediate outcome of Labor's accession to office. Labor is possessed of, no supernatural powers; its ranks are not filled with supermen. On taking charge, its first duty will be to clear up the accumulation of errors made by its predecessors. This would be a giant's task in any circumstances, but in the face of the opposition of those people who by heredity, upbringing, and custom are so Saturated in the present order of things that they cannot imagine any change which would not be for the worse, the work will be as formidable as can well be conceived. Nevertheless, I have confidence in Labor's power to perform it. The old England stands condemned, and the founda- tions of the new England are already laid — f or years past the progressive forces, with ever-increasing strength and efficiency, have been engaged in digging them out, and with the formation of a Labor Government, the keystone will be placed in position, and slowly, but firmly and surely, a new, more healthy, more beautiful, and more enduring structure will be erected. CHAPTER II THE BIGHT TO WOEK AND THE EIGHT TO BEST The right to work and the right to rest should be the common heritage of humanity. It is a preposterous thing that under any system of civilization there should be men who are fit and able to work but unable to enforce their right to do so; it is a preposterous thing that there should be any men who are unfit for work and unable to enforce their right to rest ; it is a still more preposterous thing that there should be men fit and able to work yet permitted to live in idle luxury. In England to-day there are thousands of men fit, able, and anxious to work who are living in enforced idleness ; there are thousands of men who are unfit to perform effi- cient work, but whom the economic conditions of the coun- try compel to carry on as best they can or go under ; there are thousands of other men, fit and able but unwilling to work, who are permitted by the accident of birth to live in complete and useless idleness. That the right to live is only earned by a recognition of the duty to work is to-day almost universally recognized — as a principle. Every individual of the nation has got to realize that any one who contributes nothing to the well-being of the country is essentially a parasite. There are people — men, for the most part, who have lived upon the labors of others — who view the possibility of compulsory work with alarm and indignation; they 20 EIGHT TO WOEK AND EIGHT TO EEST 21 proclaim such a proposition to be full of injustice, and maintain that their duty is done and their share of the tasks of the world performed by the investment of their wealth in the country's industry. This is a fallacy for the universal recognition of which we need but to recall the period of the War. During the War the one person who was looked upon as an enemy to the country was he who did nothing. The man who invested his money in the War — to his own very great advantage — was recognized to have done a very excellent and praiseworthy thing, but he was by no means absolved from the duty to work either in France or at home, according to his strength and abilities. What tribunal would have granted exemption to a man on the grounds that he had invested his inherited wealth, or even his self -earned riches, in the war? Certainly there was no man so foolish as to lodge any such claim. If, then, it is admitted that it is the duty of every man to work in time of war, what logical argument can be found against the same duty in time of peace? During the War the nation was fighting for its life; our every effort was directed solely and entirely to saving the life of the nation and with the end of the War that object was attained; but it would be a useless achievement were it succeeded by no effort to maintain the life which had been saved at such appalling cost. Clearly the possession and investment of capital does not absolve one from the duty to work in peace-time any more than it does in time of war. Some people there are who persist in maintaining the contrary view on the ground that without their wealth labor would be brought to a standstill. 22 WHEN LABDE RULES " But for my wealth," they say, " the workers would i be without the necessary tools and machinery for their labor." On the other hand, it may be pointed out that but for the workers the tools and machinery would be of precious little value. Argue round and about it as you please, we come back to the basic fact that wealth can only be provided by labor, and that being so, it surely must be self-evident that the more labor there is the more wealth there will be. No one will deny for a moment that Capital is an excellent and a useful thing, but all the same, to-day no less than in the past, its excellence and usefulness are prone to be very much exaggerated. Capital has no creative power ; it cannot build a steam engine; it cannot assemble the parts of a motor-car; it can invent absolutely nothing. It brings its owner affluence by feeding upon the brain power and the muscular power of other people. As, therefore, it has decided limitations, surely it is only reasonable to claim that its returns should be limited accordingly. The man' who invests his brains in the invention of a new machine should have an equitable return for his in- vestment, and the workers who invest their health and strength and industry in the building of the machine should also have an equitable return. No one can suggest that the returns made at the present time to brain, muscle, and Capital are in the least equi- table. Look back upon the last fifty years and you will find that whereas wealth has increased enormously,, the conditions under which the workers live have improved EIGHT TO WOEK AND EIGHT TO BEST 23 comparatively slightly and very haltingly, and that in- ventors have as often as not died in poverty. When Labor rules, this state of things will be altered. That Capital will be entitled to some return will be recognized, but its interest will most assuredly be limited, and the workers by hand and brain will receive a more equitable share of the wealth which they create. Such a readjustment will not have the effect of displacing the capitalists in favor of the workers as the privileged class — it will be a big step towards eliminating privilege alto- gether and placing every man upon the level which his ability and industry entitles him to occupy ; furthermore, the nation will benefit immeasurably in the process. I am not, of course, suggesting that the possession of Wealth is a proof of idleness — some of the richest men are the hardest workers and are rich largely because of that, but there is also a very considerable class the members of which have never lifted a finger nor exercised a speck of gray matter in the creation of their wealth. Those people will have to work and a proper limitation of their unearned wealth will provide the necessary incen- tive. What form their work will take will, of course, be a matter entirely for themselves; that is obvious, despite the grotesque pictures drawn by the enemies of Labor of the despotic form of government they would have you believe Labor intends to set up; of the tyrannical inter- ferences they suggest it would make in the life of the individual and in the sanctity of the home. Now let us turn to the question of those who are unfit to perform efficient work but who to-day are compelled, by reason of their handicap, to accept a starvation wage in employments where efficiency is ignored so long as labor 34 WHEN LABOK RULES is cheap — and there are plenty of employers who can find a market, and a good market, for the fruits of such labor. The analogy of the War still holds good. If men are totally incapacitated by fighting to save the life of their country, it is recognized to be the country's duty to pro- vide for them ; if they are incapacitated only for the par- ticular work in which they are skilled, it is recognized to be the country's duty to train them for such work as they can best perform. Surely, then, if men are incapacitated by working to maintain the life of the country, the State is under an obligation to care for them also. If by losing a limb a man can no longer follow his call- ing the State must train him for another calling which he can follow ; if a man's health is threatened, say, by unsuit- able indoor work, and he has not the ability to perform any other work, the State must help him to get the necessary ability. Not only fairness to the worker but the good of the State demands this. It is to the good of the State, not only that every man should work well, but for him to work well it is necessary that he should be well in health. Every man should do the work for which he is best fitted, and every man should be properly recompensed for his work. To-day the man who lives upon the investments of Capital created by the hard work of his forbears has an altogether better existence than the man who sweeps the streets and clears away the refuse ; but the latter is more deserving of a good time, for he earns his living by his own labor and by the performance of a highly essential service; surely it is a wrong and scandalous thing that EIGHT TO WOEK AND EIGHT TO EBST 25 this man's standard of life should be poorer than that of a man who has never done a day's work in his life ? You may say that the road sweeper would not appreci- ate a higher standard than that which he has at present; probably not, immediately. But given the means and the leisure and the opportunity to acquire a finer standard he would, in the natural course of things, grow to appre- ciate and demand it. Perhaps the greatest of the tragedies which have existed under the governments of the past is the tragedy of the men who, though fit and anxious to work, can get no em- ployment. Prom the outcry which has arisen on this sub- ject since the armistice one would almost be led to believe that this evil is one which has existed only since the War, but if you sought to track down its history you would be taken back a very long way indeed. To-day the capitalists of the land are very eloquent about the right to work, and because certain Trade Unions refuse permission for discharged soldiers to enter particu- lar trades, with all the indignation of a new-found virtue they accuse Labor of refusing the right to work to the men who have fought for their country. Every one who has taken the trouble to look at the facts knows the injustice of this assertion. The Industrial his- tory of the country provides plenty of evidence to justify the workers going warily in the matter of absorbing un- skilled adults into their industries. Unemployment in the past has been the joy of the employer's heart, for it has meant cheap labor, and but for the strength of Trade Unionism it would mean exactly the same to-day in every industry in the land. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers is roundly 26 WHEN LABOE EULES abused for not supporting the training of disabled men for the engineering ( and metal trades, and at the same time the Labor Gazette, an official publication, shows that the number of ex-service men receiving the unemployment pay as engineering and foundry workers is between thirty-two and thirty-three thousand. What, then, is the explanation of this demand for the acceptance of new and untrained labor in this particular trade? The answer is provided by no less an authority than the Minister of Labor : , i A substantial number of women and girl substitutes who replaced men joining H. M. Forces were beipg retained, mainly on account of the lower wages required. It is not the right to work which is exercising the minds l of the capitalists — it is the right to get cheap labor, and this is one of the great " rights " of the past which- will be brought to a very unceremonious end when Labor comes into power. . i The right to rest, no less than the right to wbrk, is of the greatest importance to a country whose high place among the nations of the world is largely dependent upon the individuality and independence of its people. The Government that passed the Old Age Pensions Act was mightily proud of its achievement, but if you consider what that achievement really was you will find that it amounted to very little indeed. The Old Age Pensions Act was an act of mercy and was on much the same level as would be the foundation by a benevolent old lady of a fund for worn-out cab horses. Labor supported this measure in the House of Commons, not because it viewed the Bill as the last word in pro- RIGHT TO WORK AND RIGHT TO REST 27 gressive legislation, but because it was the best that could be looked for at the moment. Labor takes a rather larger view of the right to rest than can be encompassed in the grant of an Old Age Pen- sion of a few shillings a week at the age of seventy. Rest is something more than vegetation; there is no rest about lying in bed when one is too worn out to get up ; there is but little rest to be gained by sitting in the sun when one is so eaten up with old age and rheumatism that one has not the strength to stir from the doorstep. The right to rest, as Labor views it, means the right to a few years' freedom from toil while the brain and body are still young enough to take an interest in life, i Most people at the age of seventy are close upon de- crepitude — even at sixty they are keenly conscious of the burden of their years. But if their labor had been rightly adjusted, as it will be in the future; if throughout their lives their working hours 'had been rea- sonably short and their hours of leisure reasonably long; if their wages had been more than sufficient for the bare means of subsistence; if their homes and workshops had been constructed more with a view to maintaining life at its highest level than of merely housing life, the average man of seventy would be at least as young as the man of sixty. Let him begin to draw his pension at sixty, and he would be able to look forward, with as much certainty as ^one can anticipate anything in this life, to fifteen years or so of happy activity. What pension a man should be given at the age of sixty is dependent on the economic conditions of the coun- try.. If every one works, the wealth of the nation — indi- vidually and collectively — will be greater and living will 28 WHEN LABOE KULES be cheaper. Proper wages and work for all will relieve the country of the burden of pauperism, and the limitation of interest on capital will save the country from the burden of millionaires. Therefore, even if the pensions granted by a Labor Government were no greater than those given to-day, it may be assumed that their value would be con- siderably more. When the Old Age Pensions Bill was first brought before Parliament, there were many people who decried it on the grounds that it would encourage thriftlessness. It was pointed out that, with the assurance of a pension in their old age, people would no longer scheme and scrape for the days when they would be able to work no more. This horror of people spending, instead of saving, the little money which they earn is one of the pet themes of many self-styled reformers. Saving, in so far as it teaches self-restraint and encourages unselfishness, is undoubtedly a good thing, but there is also much to be said for teach- ing people to spend wisely, and greater benefits are to be won by wise spending than have ever been gained by the careful hoarding of every penny not needed for actual sub- sistence. It is an altogether good thing that people should be enabled to spend without the fear of suffering penurious old age as a consequence, and it is within the power of the State to make wise spending a more enjoyable and profit- able thing then unwise spending. When Labor rules, the right to rest will no longer be an empty and ironic phrase ; it will no longer mean merely the privilege to sit a moment in the sun before descending into the grave — it will be a right well worth the having, and it will be attained while there is still sufficient life and energy left to enjoy it to the full. CHAPTEE III TO-DAY AND YESTEEDAY In considering the coming establishment of a Labor Gov- ernment it is of the greatest importance to bear in mind the growth and vicissitudes of the Labor Movement and the social and industrial conditions under which it origi- nated and grew. Trade Unionism — and it is upon Trade Unionism that the Labor Movement has its basis — can look back upon a long history and from its early days of a couple of cen- turies ago its story is one of bitter struggle; it has had to fight tyrannical oppression, intimidation, ignorance, self- ishness, greed, apathy, the coward fear of vested interests, the suspicions of plutocracy — all these things have been ranged against it and it is in the face of these that it has gradually grown to be the power that it is to-day. Natu- rally the latter years of its growth have been the speediest, and the last twenty years have proved the efficacy of the solid spade-work performed by the pioneers. To-day the Trade Union Movement is composed of six and a half million organized men and women and their number is daily growing — its ranks are being swelled by the black-coated community, who are coming to realize that the task of wielding the pen is no less one of the tasks of labor than wielding the pick-ax; who have learnt that, whatever delusions their fathers may have suffered from, 29 30 WHEN LABO& ETJLES they are less kin to the lord of the manor than to the toiler who builds the houses and makes the roads. In addition to this movement of six and a half million workers — a movement which is both industrial and politi- cal — there is a co-operative movement definitely allied to Labor, having a membership of three and a half million men and women, and a revenue of about one hundred mil- lion pounds a year. There are people who seem to imagine that the Labor Movement is a growth that has sprung up in the night ; an unsophisticated, inexperienced body full of youthful am- bitions with nothing to support them ; a body which shows a certain amount of presumption in even so much as think- ing of the day when it will be called upon to take charge of the affairs of the country. Others, people who have not the excuse of ignorance to support them, people who by virtue of heredity rule the country, and who have but little faith in anything but heredity, anxiously proclaim that Labor is not fit to rule and they draw a picture of it as a rapacious monster which threatens to bring the coun- try to ruin. One statesman, whose sense of responsibility should have saved him from such an exhibition of insincere foolishness, insulted the intelligence of a Cambridge Uni- versity audience by declaring that the policy of the Labor Party was not merely to make people equal but to keep them equal. This same gentleman, whose rash exploits and wild statements have on more than one occasion been a source of embarrassment to the Government of which he is a member, declared to another audience that the Labor Party would shatter the reviving prosperity of the country and cast away the Empire which British genius had built up; furthermore, he has made the absurd and ignorant TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 31 assertion that the Labor Party does not represent one-fifth part of Labor. Despite all these wild and alarming statements, the fact remains that Labor forms the second largest party in the State; its history proves that it is not the inexperienced stripling some people would have us believe, and demon- strates that it possesses as great a sense of responsibility as any body of men which has ever claimed the right and ability to administer the affairs of the nation. Let us take a brief survey of the history of this move- ment which will to-morrow be at the helm 1 of the country's affairs. The common lot of the vast majority of the work- ers in the early days of Trade Unionism was one of per- secution and repression ; the workers were completely under the heels of the employing classes, and their efforts towards emancipation were met by petitions to Parliament in ever- increasing numbers from the employers complaining of the existence of combinations amongst the workers; the workers, on the other hand, sought the sympathies of Parliament by petitioning against the employer's habit of beating down wages. The Government, after a good deal of wavering over the matter, came down upon the em^ ployers' side of the fence, and the workers, their patience exhausted by useless petitioning, adopted, with ever- increasing frequency, the only method of defense which , was left to them — the strike weapon. A strike is always a last resort — a desperate measure for the gaining of jus- tice, and these strikes were often accompanied by still more desperate acts of violence which frequently culminated in riots, incendiarism, and machine breaking. Lancashire magistrates of this period declared that the sole cause of the riots was the new machines employed in cotton manu- 32 ' WHEN LABOE RULES facture — an excellent example of the shortsightedness of the employers. The introduction of new machinery was undoubtedly an aggravation of the existing state of affairs and was undoubtedly looked upon by many of the workers as an evidence of worse times to come, but to describe it as being the sole cause of the troubles was utterly absurd. The law forbidding the combination of workers was repealed in 1824, but the employers found it easy to cir- cumvent the benefits which this greater freedom should have brought, and, furthermore, so prosperous had become the manufacturers, and so plentiful had become the stocks produced by the workers, that industry came almost to a standstill, and all efforts to stem the general fall of wages, low enough in all conscience already, proved ineffectual. The condition of the lives of the people at this period was indeed appalling, and the power of the employers, Hespite the relief gained by the repeal of the Combina- tion Laws, viewed in the light of to-day, was incredible. Piece workers and day workers were so continually subjected to reduced prices and wages that they were never certain how much or how little they would receive at the end of each week; and George Jacob Holyoake, that ar- dent advocate of co-operation and social reform, has recorded how a Birmingham mill-owner was one day as- tonished by the appearance of a " new " hand who turned up at his work in a well-fitting and handsome suit of clothes. This employer was very much shocked by the spectacle and at once concluded that he had offered the man too high a wage, and he forthwith proposed that it should be reduced. The only remarkable thing about such an oc- currence in those days was that the worker should have a decent suit of clothes. If a workman by some miraculous TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 33 means succeeded in saving a little money he was lacking in wisdom if he allowed it to become known ; if he could afford to dress in clean and decent clothes he was afraid to do so lest, as in the case I have quoted, the wages should be lowered — but there were not many in danger of a decreased income from this cause. Capital held unre- stricted sway during this period, and as a result the greater part of the country was reduced to an appalling state ; not only were wages bad, and housing conditions worse, but the women and children of the industrial centers were liv- ing under conditions as bad as any suffered by slaves in the whole of recorded history. The wages of the men reduced to the lowest conceivable rate, it became necessary that if any life were to be retained by their families, the women and children would have to work. If you refer to the history of this time you will find recorded how children of both sexes worked together in the mines, often for sixteen hours a day, and how women, even when preg- nant, labored for long hours underground, and how these women were back again at work within a week of their children's birth. Some of these women stood knee-deep in water throughout the day, whilst other women, and children of tender age, with a girdle round their waist and a chain between their legs, crawling on all fours, ■drew carts of coal along the passages of the mines. The cotton mills have an equally bad record; there also women and young children were employed under dis- graceful conditions. The children were " apprenticed " — that was the polite formula employed in this great anti- slavery country. The workhouses of the land were found to be a valuable source of supply, and-the mill-owners found it a highly advantageous thing to keep in close touch with 34 WHEN LABOR RULES the overseers of the poor. These poor little defenseless children were "worked for as many as sixteen hours a day — sometimes doing day shifts, sometimes night shifts. They lived, or were housed — to say they were stabled would sug- gest a state of well-being they did not possess — in wretched inclosed buildings adjoining the factories in which they slaved, and the beds in which they slept were said never to become cold, for as one batch rested the other batch went to the loom, only half the requisite number of beds were used — a fine piece of economy this. The cheapest and coarsest of foods were given to these children, and often there was no discrimination of the sexes, with the result that disease, misery, and vice were rampant, as can well be imagined. Lord Shaftesbury, speaking in the House of Lords in 1873, gave a picture of the conditions which prevailed at the time of which I am writing; he described how he waited at the factory gates to see the children come out — a set of sad, dejected, cadaverous creatures. In Bradford, he said, the proofs of long and cruel toil were most remark- able. " The crippled and distorted forms might be num- bered by hundreds, perhaps thousands. They seemed to me, such was their crooked shapes, like a mass of crooked alphabets." Had the Lancashire magistrates been correct in their inference that the sole cause of riots was the new ma- chines there would not, I think, have been much to wonder at. In 1819 the Cotton Mills Act was passed, limiting the age at which children might work in factories, and also reducing the time of their labors to seventy-two hours a week; and it was not until some years later that these TO-DAY AND YBSTEEDAY ' 35 Jbours were further reduced to sixty-nine per week. Legis- lation was passed in 1833 making forty-eight hours the maximum for children and sixty-nine for young persons, whilst night work for children under eighteen was alto- gether prohibited. Furthermore, provision was made for daily school attendance. It was not until 1840 that the first mining act prohibiting underground work by women and boys under ten years of age was passed, and a further four years ^elapsed before child labor was reduced to six and a half hours a day. Throughout this dreadful period drunkenness was gen- eral, and the men were said to die off like rotten sheep. Each generation, it was stated, was commonly extinct by the age of fifty. Following the repeal of the Combination Laws, Robert Owen started the Grand National Consolidated Trades' Union, which in a few months gained a membership of half a million, but this had to be disbanded, for not only private employers but even the Government itself in its workshops compelled the workers to resign all connection with the tJhions and to sign the " Document " to that effect. Trades Unionists were prosecuted in great num- bers under the Master and Servants Act, and were often summarily arrested and condemned upon a mere complaint of misbehavior lodged by the employer. The military were employed in suppressing strike riots, and punish- ment was meted out to men whose sole offense lay in announcing a strike or acting as a delegate to it. Even up to 1869 the agreement to strike and the announcement by placards of a strike was frequently punished as in- timidation, and it was not until 1875, when the Master and Servant Act was repealed, that peaceful picketing was 36 WHEN LABOE RULES permitted and " violence and intimidation " became a mat- ter of common law. All these efforts to kill Trades Unionism lamentably failed and the Movement steadily grew, so that by 1902 it had a membership of about one million five hundred thousand workers. Three years before this the Trades Union Congress resolved upon the establishment upon a Joint Committee of Trade Union and Socialist bodies, with the purpose of promoting direct representation in Parlia- ment. Fifteen candidates went to the polls in 1901, but only two of them — Keir Hardie and Kichard Bell — were elected. In this same year, however, the Labor Movement received great impetus from a decision given by the House of Lords in relation to the Taff Vale strike. In this judg- ment the Lords threw down the belief that the Act of 1871 afforded absolute protection to Trade Unionists in their collective capacity, and ruled that a Union could be sued in its collective capacity for a tortuous act committed by any one of its officials or members, and this aroused so much indignation that in the election of .1906 no fewer than twenty-nine candidates of the Labor Representation Committee were returned to Parliament, and in 1910 the accession of the miners increased the number of the Labor members to forty. If we examine the legislation of the past fourteen, or fifteen years we shall find that the laws passed for the betterment of the social and industrial conditions of the people synchronize in a remarkable manner with the grow- ing political strength of the people. In 1906 the Work- men's Compensation Act was passed — an Act which in many respects marked a considerable improvement upon TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 37 earlier legislation of this character. Hitherto accidents which did not happen on or near the employer's premises were ruled out, and illness and death due exclusively to certain trade diseases were untouched; furthermore, the Act of 1906 made compensation payahle in the case of death or serious and permanent disablement, even when the accident could not he attributed to the wilful and seri- ous misconduct of the workman concerned. Next, in 1908, came the Old Age Pensions Act, the provisions of which every one is acquainted with. Good as this measure was, it by no means represented the high- water mark of Labor's aims in this respect. At the time this Act was passed efforts were made by the Labor Party to .reduce the age of pensioners to sixty-five and to make the income limit higher. Labor members of the House of Commons also made a very great attempt to obtain the removal of a particularly uncalled for clause disqualifying any person who had, even if only on one occasion, been in receipt of Poor Law relief; this unhappy blemish was removed three years later, but it is a very notable fact that before the Government's measure became law nearly one million veterans of the Labor Movement were enjoying free pensions to the amount of £11,000,000 per year, and more than nine in ten were in receipt of the full pension of five shillings a week. One of the most important movements towards the creation of a better state of affairs in Industrial England was the formation of a Royal Commission on Poor Laws and Eelief of Distress, and as another evidence of the progress of the Labor Movement, it may be recalled that Labor was well represented on the Commission. Poverty is such an enormous evil, and is the source of so many 38 WHEN LABOE RULES other great social evils, that it is astounding it should have been allowed to drift so long under a relief administra- tion which experience has proved to have nothing to recom- mend it, and which utterly failed to solve the problem of the poor. For over eighty years the only important change made in the organization of Poor Law Relief was the absorption of the Poor Law Commissioners, in 1871, by the Local Government Board, thus bringing the sys- tem under the responsibility of the Government. Tbe faults of our Poor Law administration were many, and some of them were disgraceful, but the greatest criticism which can be made of it is that it failed — and failed very miserably — to put an end to pauperism. Twenty years ago there were 735,388 paupers in England and Wales; ten years ago their number had grown to 916,377. In England and Wales, in 1911, the deaths registered as hav- ing taken place in Poor Law institutions, workhouses, in- firmaries, schools, hospitals, and asylums, numbered 106,- 642, or 20.11 per cent, of the total deaths ; the proportion during the ten years immediately preceding averaged 17.88 per cent., and of these 55,570 occurred in work- houses, 38,899 in hospitals, and 10,636 in lunatic asylums. In London, in 1911, four persons in every ten died in the workhouse, hospital, or lunatic asylum. The Commission to consider the Poor Law emphatically condemned the methods hitherto adopted of dealing with the poor, and in particular condemned the system of re- lief work which was employed. The Commission's investi- gations clearly showed the us,elessness and folly of treat- • ing unemployment as an unforeseen emergency instead of a normal and recurring incident in industrial life. TO-DAY AND YBSTEEDAY 39 One of the recommendations of this Commission was the establishment — since achieved — of Labor Exchanges. Labor Bureaus have existed in this country for upwards of twenty years, but for the most part their work has been in connection with the relief of distress. The Un- employed Workman Act of 19Q5 gave the power to estab- lish Labor Exchanges, but only one body in England, the Central (Unemployed) Body for London, made any great use of it. This body established a system of Metropolitan Employment Exchanges, and when the Labor Exchanges Act came into force it had a list of twenty offices, and during the preceding twelve months had filled 30,580 vacancies for employment. The Unemployed Workman Act expressly required that wherever a Distress Commit- tee was not established the Council of every County and County Borough should appoint a .special Committee to investigate the conditions of the Labor market by means of Labor Exchanges, and to establish or assist such Ex- changes within its own area. As was pointed out in the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, such a net- work of Labor Exchanges, covering the whole kingdom, would have afforded, as the experience of the Metropolitan Exchanges demonstrated, valuable information both to unemployed workmen and to local authorities dealing with the problem. Unfortunately, this provision of the Act was ignored by the Local Government Boards, and was, with the exception of London and three places in Scotland, not put into operation. Other legislation, such as Health Insurance and Unem- ployment Insurance, are so much within the round of our daily life that to record its achievement is unnecessary, but it would be well to observe where Labor stands to-day 40 WHEN LABOR RULES when the legislation in its interest has come to occupy so important a part of parliamentary time. Twenty-one years ago a General Federation of Trade Unions was established with the object of combining the various separate Unions into one army capable of con- certed 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 condi- tion. There are now over one hundred and thirteen dif- ferent Unions. Amongst the largest of these Federations are the General Federation of Trade Unions, the Miner's Federation of Great Britain, Railwaymen's Societies, the Transport Workers' Federation, and the Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades. The strength which Labor gains by uniting its forces in federations is obvious, but a still further advance in securing the solidar- ity 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 could be brought to a standstill. This is not a weapon which Labor would lightly use — as was demon- strated 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 dis- putes. As an outcome of the great railway dispute of 1919, a special board, on which railway workers have equal repre- sentation with railway managers, was set up to deal with conditions of service^ This arrangement made between the TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 41 Government and the Eailwaymen's Unions marked the first step towards Lahor's control of industry. Another recognition of Lahor's strength to enforce its just claims was the estahlishment a few years ago of the Joint Indus- trial Councils — the outcome of the recommendations df a Committee which was appointed to consider the ques- tion of securing a permanent improvement in the relations between employers and workmen. The excellence of the work performed by these Councils is evidenced by the steady growth of their number. This is intentionally but a brief and scanty outline of the progress which has been made by the Labor Move- ment, but it is sufficient, I think, to serve its purpose, which is to indicate how very clear the evidence is that Labor has reached that stage in its development which justifies it in the belief that it is fit to rule; its history shows the hard-earned experience it has had; its attitude towards the world problems with which the country is faced, and which are crying out for solution, shows how it has profited by that experience, and its conduct of its private affairs gives ample proof of its possession of a well-balanced and statesman-like mind. Not only is Labor fit to govern, but the needs of the country demand that it shall govern. The country stands to-day at the entrance-gate of a new era ; the old panaceas are generally recognized as being out-of-date and useless ; the old political parties show themselves to be eaten up by the moth of precedence; they are empty of ideas yet they still try to trumpet forth resounding phrases, though timid in their actions, and fearful to follow the lead of their own words. If ever in the country's history oppor- 42 WHEN LABOK RULES tunity knocked at the door, it is doing so to-day. The Labor Party is ready, and filling and able to open the door, and the Labor Party is the only party which is pre- pared to throw the door wide and lead the way into an Era of progress and sanity. CHAPTEE IV THE LABOR GOVERNMENT AND THE CONSTITUTION Many people when they face the prospect of a Labor Government coming into power, immediately become pos- sessed of all manner of fearful forebodings about the Con- stitution ; they see the King sharing the fate of the Czar of Russia ; they see a sort of South American Republic set up with a bewildering succession of Opportunists as its Presidents; they see a Cabinet under the thumb of a powerful coterie of Trade Unionists outside the House; and they see the country speedily going to wrack and ruin, as it undoubtedly would do under such impossible condi- tions. Happily, none of these forebodings is justified. Take, first, the question of the Monarchy — a question of the highest importance not only to Great Britain, but to the whole of the British Empire. There can be no ques- tion among thoughtful people that the monarchy plays a large part in holding the British Empire together ; loyalty to the King both at home and in the Dominions is more a religious than a political attitude, and it would require a very unwise monarch to change this faith in the hearts of the people. Our present King has proved himself during many political crises, to be an essentially constitutional monarch, and I have no hesitation in saying that while such an atti- 43 44 WHEN LABOR RULES tude is adopted by the King, the question of Republic versus Monarchy will not arise. If any evidence of this were required, it could be found in the unique position occupied by the heir to the Throne — the Prince of Wales — during his tour of the Empire. It would be true to say that there has been no factor which has contributed more to the unity of the Empire than the Prince of Wales's visit to the Dominions, and this, let it be noted, immediately following the Great War, which very naturally left considerable suffering and disappointment in many lands. I have met many people who were present at some of the colonial receptions to the Prince, and the universal opinion is that he has, by his clean bearing and unassum- ing manner, won the hearts of all. Not only has the Prince been a unifying factor to the Empire as a whole, but he has made himself more popular than ever at home. In many respects the workers are even more conserva- tive than the Conservatives, and in none are their views more steadfastly established than on this question of the head of the State; and, notwithstanding heated contro- versies on almost every subject under the sun, no question of Republicanism as a serious proposition ever finds a place in Labor discussions. I would say, therefore, that while the King recognizes, as he does, that the navvy of to-day may be the Prime Minister of to-morrow, and that no question either of birth or social power is involved in the occupancy of high offices of State, the least of all the difficulties facing a Labor Gov- ernment would be that of the Crown. It is very easy to be misled by definitions, and nothing could be more false than an assertion that Republicanism LABOE GOVEENMENT AND CONSTITUTION 45 is necessarily synonymous with democracy. Take, for example, America. All the evidence goes to show that the American Republic can be, and, indeed, has been, more autocratic than our own monarchical Government would dare to be, and in time of war the power of the American Eepublic has amounted almost to a danger to its people. Whilst, however, Labor recognizes the wisdom of hav- ing an hereditary monarch, it is not prepared for a moment to countenance an hereditary upper Chamber, and there is obviously nothing contradictory in this attitude. A king, whilst possessing hereditary privileges, also has hereditary duties, and if he fails to perform them he can be brought to book. The responsibilities of a king can- not be burked without serious consequences, but a peer may be as irresponsible as he pleases, and whilst he him- self may not suffer, the chances are that every one else will. A king of England to-day holds a skilled and respon- sible position, and what he may lack in the way of per- sonal endowments is largely compensated for by a strict and severe training; furthermore, a king is surrounded by skilled and well-qualified advisers. A peer, on the other hand, 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. Clearly, then, it is the height of unwisdom that he should be permitted to have any hand in the fram- ing of the laws of the country or in the vetoing of measures which he has not the wisdom to understand. There are, I know, some people who imagine that the House of Lords represents aristocracy of brains as well as 46 WHEN LABOR RULES aristocracy of birth, but ,up to the present I have failed to discover any evidence of the truth of this. The futility of the House of Lords, however, is recog- nized even by the people who from time to time find it expedient to add to its membership, and the question of the reform of the Lords has long been before the country. There can be no doubt whatever that many of the troubles that have arisen in the House of Lords have been of the Peers' own seeking. The controversies which arose during the first Lloyd George Budget and during the dis- cussions of the Home Eule Bill gave rise in a very definite form to the whole question of the Second Chamber ; it is, however, a curious and ironic fact that during many stages of the war the real guardians of the people's liberties were to be found in the Upper House. I am frankly prepared to admit that there are very natural differences of opinion in the Labor Movement re- garding the value of a Second Chamber, but there is complete unanimity in Labor's assertion that all hereditary influence must be wiped out ; and this objection to heredity, it may be pointed out, is not solely confined to the Labor Party. Lord Astor felt so keenly on the subject that a Bill was promoted to relieve him of the necessity of being compelled to take a title and exercise an hereditary right which he himself felt he was not fitted for. I, personally, favor a Second Chamber, but I am firmly convinced that it should be elected by the people. There are two methods by which it could be formed ; it could be a small body elected on a large geographical basis, or it could be a body chosen from the House of Commons, and con- taining proportionate representation of the political parties returned to the Lower Chamber. LABOE GOVERNMENT AND CONSTITUTION 47 By this means we should get over the absurd position of having, during the same period, an Upper House of one political complexion and a Lower House of another. As is the case at present, the Second Chamber's powers would be limited, and any measure passed by the Com- mons three successive times would become law. I do not think an Upper Chamber should have more than three hundred members, and, unquestionably, it should be dissolved concurrently with the Lower House, thus insuring that Parliament in its entirety is as repre- sentative as possible of the wishes of the country. With the disbandment of the Peers the spiritual lords would also go, but the abolition of the spiritual and heredi- tary right to govern should not, of necessity, in any way rob the country of ability, for I see no reason why peers and bishops (not to mention priests, who are now excluded from Parliament) should not be permitted to submit them- selves for election. The possible relationship between a Labor 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 no Cabinet which put it into practice could exist a session; indeed, the position would be so rates and taxes, is to be added a large increase in his rent, if by chance he is not the owner, but the tenant, of his house. He sees his little capital threatened, and, too old probably to return to work, the future is ominous. These classes are the folk I am talking about now — both the middle class at work, whose incomes have not risen nearly in proportion to the cost of living, and the retired, but not rich, man whose income has, in effect, been halved. To a very large extent in the past this man has been quite contented to let the old world jog on past his garden gate without worrying much about social problems. He has desired no change. He could be relied upon to vote solidly Tory because* he was prone to look upon what he called law and order as being entirely safe in the Tory Party's hands. The War has changed his condition, and it is changing his views. He is waking up. Just at first, true enough, and, I suppose, naturally enough, his early stirrings are evidenced often in a blind disapproval of strikes that hit him ; of the departmental " fools " who let things " go to the dogs " ; and of " these Bolshevist workers " who are, 60 WHEN LABOR RULES in his words, " overreaching all demands, and ought to be shot." These are the extremists, I know. Moderate middle class men have seen the increase in wages coming, and, realizing the strength of organization and how they are being left behind in the race, they are proving how hard they have been hit by themselves tending towards organiza- tion and concerted action. Let these men look into the future and ask themselves under what regime they will benefit most. The Tory control ? That is the power and autocracy of government by privi- lege, and ownership by the chance of birth. Under that regime — fine as some of its elements and personalities have been in the past (it would be very surprising if it were otherwise, seeing the chances these fortunate members of the community have had; the lavish education, the lack of all anxiety concerning the wherewithal to exist) — the individual will continue to be crippled, not to get the re- ward of his toil, and the middle class man will more than ever be the victim of the struggle between Capital and Labor ; for, should the old standard of government be main- tained, you may be sure this struggle against oppression will be continuous and more bitter than ever before. The men are so much stronger. The Liberal regime is a possible alternative, but that is better than the Tory only in so far as it is a stepping-stone on the way to the fulfilment of the Labor program. I want to assert that the only future for the middle class man is under the Labor rule. We welcome him into our ranks. We do not propose to solicit his support with- out giving him ours. The Labor Party is not merely LABOR GOVERNMENT AND MIDDLE CLASSES 61 brawn under organization. The brain worker is already in our ranks. Thousands and thousands of our members are not manual workers. Slaves of the pen and the office stool — these are among us, and the lot of these workers will he better under our administration than under any other. I know very well that many of the middle man's present hardships are the direct result of the War. If Labor rules in Britain and in other countries too, there will be no wars. Internationalism, which means arbitration in coun- cil instead of the arbitrament of arms, will displace that sort of "patriotism" which means: "We are better than you, and if you don't believe it, take this and this." We shall hope to talk in consultation and not with howitzers, and in saying this I am not criticizing our part in the late War. It was an honorable part, a great part. Any administration that had acted differently from Mr. As- quith's in August, 1914, would have stained our name as a people. But we, as a party representing the workers, mean to use all our might against wars, against the mad race in armament which preceded the last upheaval, and which must inevitably sooner or later bring about conflict, i And I want to tell the middle class man that, if we can largely obliterate strikes which hit so disastrously at pro- duction and prices, and if we can reduce to absurdity the possibility of great wars, we are, in those two things alone, giving him security and limiting the cost of all com- modities. But more, as I explained in the last chapter, by national- ization we shall have efficiency in the supply of all essen- tials; his coal, gas, electric-light, bread, milk, the charges 62 WHEN LABOR RULES for transport, will all be under control, and the prices of things will be materially reduced by limiting profits. There is something beyond all these general considera- tions. His demands will receive the same support as the worker's demands. It will be realized that there are grades of service and that the man who works with his brain is entitled to his minimum wage and opportunity for advancement and for leisure just as much as the man who toils with his hands. The middle class union need not be* in antagonism with the Labor Movement; it can be part and parcel of it. Every one who, whether with muscle or with brain, renders any service to the State has interests in common against the selfishness of large pri- vate fortune-making. What has the middle man to fear from us ? Take as an instance the question of income-tax. The Labor Party's policy is based on the principle of ability to pay. That must appeal to the middle class man, because ability to pay must not be determined alone upon income as income, but the liability which that income carries. Take the £500 to £1000 a year man. In the first place the limit below which no tax is charged will be far higher than at present. Possibly the £500 a year man will pay only on £100, and then at a small rate. Above this figure there must be a margin when taxation will be small. The man with a family to clothe and educate — the number of children will of course be taken into consideration — hasn't much left over for extravagant luxuries, even on £1000 a year. Greater taxes on the greater incomes will suffice to cover the allowances made to this man and his type. Later on we must discuss national finance, but for the LABOR GOVERNMENT AND MIDDLE CLASSES 63 moment our assurance is that the middle class man will benefit considerably in the matter of income-tax. Could it be otherwise in any Labor program? That program demands that a higher value be paid upon the workers' commodity — that is, theft labor — and how shall it, then, deny to other workers that justice which itself is so earnestly fighting for ? Here's another case that affects him — coal; when such commodities as this are no longer made the medium of a Stock Exchange gamble, the basis of trusts and combines, this voter clearly ought to go for the better course of na- tional service for the public good than for the system which considers the payment of large profits and high dividends. Ability to pay means more than enough to pay. For instance, the railway men 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 himself cannot bear. By that means the railway man may be making a demand by the strength of his organization that inflicts punishment upon the middle class. The chief answer to this is that no industry ought to continue to exist that cannot provide a decent standard of existence for all those engaged in it. Labor must of necessity be the first charge on industry, and we have no right to say that a concern shall be run which only pro- vides cheap facilities to the user at the expense of sweated conditions for the producers. There is a reverse side. It may be conceived that a business cannot pay, not because it is badly managed, but 64 WHEN LABOR RULES because demands are made upon it by the workers which make it impossible to carry on successfully. Many undertakings are saying that to-day, and in the present order of things we have the workers making their demands on the one hand and the employers bartering on the other, and maybe even losing money in carrying on. There is no one tq say with authority either to the employ- ers, " you can pay more," or to the workers, " you must not expect more, the business does not justify it." A Labor Cabinet, taking the place of the slipshod com- promising departments of the present regime, would be invested with power in this respect, and could arbitrate with fairness. It would have the whole weight of the country's workers behind it and possess their confidence, whereas now the Government of to-day has succeeded only in acquiring their suspicions. ' There is, of course, to every impartial mind vast room for improvements in the wages and conditions of prac- tically every grade of worker without in any way crippling industry, and only by limiting individual profit-making. CHAPTEE VII HOUSING AND HEALTH: HEALTH AND HOUSING The question of housing has been obscured by a lot of uninformed gossip. At the moment we have to recognize that the conditions are entirely abnormal, but we have also to recognize that there was a considerable shortage of houses before the War. We are all inclined to forget that. Yet it was so. The census of 1911 showed that one-tenth of the popula- tion, was living in overcrowded habitations, and in stating that, let me remind my readers that the authorities re- gard people to be living in overcrowded conditions only when there are more than two persons to a room and that including living rooms. Which, of course, means three or more to a bedroom. If a cottage or tenement consist of two bedrooms and a living room it is regarded as over- crowded only if there are more than six persons occupy- ing that accommodation, and be it added, children under fourteen are counted as halves. This is bringing things down to the minimum, so that when I use the word " over- crowding " it means really definite unhealthiness and irri- tating discomfort. Now this state of affairs was not confined to the towns. It applied equally to the rural parts of the country, and it should be stated that it was not entirely the result of house shortage ; it was very often the result of the fact that work- 65 66 WHEN LABOE EULBS ers had not sufficient to pay for the rent of houses that they needed. Even then, mark you, the number of rooms I have quoted did not properly represent the position in its true perspective, because thousands of these houses occupied by the working classes were really unfit for human habita- tion. They were insanitary, dilapidated, dark, damp. I should like in this connection to quote the reports of the medical officers of two towns and two rural au- thorities, taken quite at random. They are not examples picked out carefully in order to emphasize my point by taking the worst cases. I will not mention the places, but they are, in my opinion, representative of the ma- jority of localities ; one report says : — In this town there are probably 40,000 to 50,000 houses built on the back to back principle (and you must know what that means in lack of air and light), most of them in court- yards or in short terraces shut in behind houses facing the street. During 1911, 926 of these houses were condemned as " unfit for human habitation." And how many of the others ought to be classed as unfit? All of them. They are a dis- grace to a civilized community. Have you ever visited these courts and alleys in the slums of cities such as Birmingham? There is no light in them, no draught of air. They are stag- nant. They are breeding grounds of disease. Put the health- iest of men in them, confined, and in a few years he will weaken. Consumption is rife in these parts, and on the top of this liability to disease there is — or has been — no oppor- tunity to cure such troubles. If by luck a man or child has been snatched from such surroundings the victim has per- force been sent back again and thus lost all chance of a per- manent cure. So disease spreads. Now consider the report from a country district: — HOUSING AND HEALTH 67 There is in many villages a clamant need for new and bet- ter houses, and after these have been erected for the closure of the old insanitary ones (this, mind you, in 1911, before there was anything heard of a housing shortage), certain villages have suffered evident demoralization as a result of the slow deterioration of the housing conditions of the people. In one district — a small one — there were forty-nine cot- tages inspected last year in which nothing short of pulling down and entirely rebuilding could make them habitable. And besides these things, were discovered forty-four cases of overcrowding — in which cases it was impossible to abate the trouble as there were no other houses available, even if the occupants could have afforded to occupy them. Also a much larger number of houses would have been condemned save that there was an entire lack of other accommodation in the neighborhood. Taking the census figures of 1911 for Scotland, and assuming a house to be overcrowded only if there were more than three persons to a room (as against the standard of two to a room in England and Wales), in 1911 nearly a quarter of the population were living in overcrowded conditions. Taking the English standard, the figure would he nearly one-half; and that figure has largely increased since then. The following extract is quoted from a memorandum submitted to the Scottish Local Government Board by a deputation from the Middle Ward District of Lanark- shire : — In some houses there are three families resident; as many as twelve persons have been found in one-apartment houses; houses closed as uninhabitable have been reoccupied ; in Cam- buslang two families are living in the ruins of a property with a tarpaulin sheet as their only roof. In Coatbridge, as a typical example, some one-apartment houses contain two 68 WHEN LABOK RULES married families, and in such houses sometimes three male lodgers are housed ... for one that fell vacant 57 appli- cations were received. Miners and their families form nearly a tenth of the total population of Scotland. Their houses are usually- single story houses of two rooms built in long parallel straight rows, occasionally varied by " the square." They have usually been erected by the colliery companies, and because of the uncertainty of the mines the cheapest avail- able form of construction and material has been adopted. The sanitary arrangements often outrage all decency. As the report says: — The Miners' Eow of inferior class is often a dreary and featureless place, with houses, dismal in themselves, arranged in monotonous lines or in squares. The open spaces are en- cumbered with wash-houses, privies, etc., often out of repair, and in wet weather get churned up into a morass of semi- liquid mud. . . . Many houses show the faults of their class — leaky roofs, damp walls, and uneven and broken floors. What is the state of things to-day now that five years have passed with stagnation in the building and repair- ing of houses! It is unthinkable. Thousands of our fellow-subjects must be living in houses which will not bear thinking about. They are cramped, they are un- healthy. Thousands of these houses ought to be con- demned. They would be condemned even on pre-war standards, but where are the unfortunate residents to go ? Even a pigsty is better than the gutter, and so many a dwelling has been allowed to stay, whereas it otherwise would have been scrapped. I have heard — and you have heard — of the airy way HOUSING AND HEALTH 69 some shallow critics answer these facts: these folk assert that it is useless supplying decent houses to the poor. The poor get drunk, they quarrel, they take no care of their homes. They have no consideration for the owner of the house. They pull down the banisters for firewood. Clean paint is anathema to them. They exercise no control over their children, and let them do what damage they please, knocking nails into woodwork, and glass out of windows. This is an easy bypath to follow. It is the act of the moral coward who sees an enemy ahead and turns aside, as a thief darts down the nearest alley-way at the approach of a policeman. There are drunkards, alas, in every ' sphere of life, but, mark you, just as much in Mayf air as in Shadwell. And even for the poor of this class there is the excuse of the sordid surroundings from which the mind, however small, instinctively longs to escape. But in the main the assertion is a libel. The majority of decent citizens among the working classes to the inebri- ated irresponsible must be thousands to one, and to point a finger of cynical contempt at the one as a reason for ignoring the just needs of the thousands is the meanest of false arguments. Educate, educate, educate, by all means, until you have wiped out this miserable minority and given the entire community a sense of responsibility. And let me say that, in my opinion, one of the most powerful forms of education in this direction would be to improve the very conditions of the habitations in which these ignorant men and women live. It is so largely the environment which creates the character. There is nothing as bad as overcrowding, both from the point of view of health and morals. The moral side is 70 WHEN LABOE EULES self-apparent. To think of numerous male and female members of a family, often of two families, crowded into one or two rooms by day and night, leaving no sort of privacy at any time, is at once to picture a state of things which must lessen the moral tone down to the vanishing point. We, as a State, are ready enough to judge these people when they commit some act which is against the public good, and is entirely the result of these conditions, yet we have gone on for generations ignoring those very circumstances which not only render these acts likely but almost inevitable. From the purely health point of view — though to be sure, it is impossible to divorce the morals of a people from the people's health, the two are so interdependent — Dr. Mair, who made a special investigation, found that the number of deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis and the diseases of the young were half as many again in back- to-back houses as in ordinary dwelling housesr An exami- nation of the reports of the London Tuberculosis Dispen- saries (1913) shows that one-half of the patients under the care of these institutions live in dwellings with one and two rooms. Only 134 out of 766 patients suffering from definite signs of pulmonary tuberculosis occupied separate rooms at night. The others were sleeping in rooms shared by one or more persons, and of these only 179 slept in separate beds, the remainder occupying the same bed as one or more members of the family. The War has made it infinitely worse. The very definite shortage has become a famine. For four years the building of houses stopped. The carpen- HOUSING AND HEALTH 71 ters, mechanics, plasterers, masons, plumbers, and labor- ers were all conscripted into the army. Large numbers were skilled, others, who in the ordinary way during that time would have been apprenticed, were not apprenticed, and that alone must hold things back. 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-employ- ment, and casual labor in the building trade was simply enormous. Men dreaded the approach of winter. There were weeks of actual want, just at a time when the pinch of cold was felt the worst. We must remember the days when these men, anxious to work, called day after day upon their employers, only to find there was nothing to do. Eemembering this it will be more difficult to blame them when, for the first time, there is a huge demand for their labor; they are skeptical and fear the return of the old state of affairs. There was no security then, and they fear there will one day be no security again, no guarantee against the long weeks of unemployment. Give the men — as they should be given, as every worker should be given — some guarantee against these weeks of slackness or 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. But to return to the subject of housing proper. Of all reflections on civilization the worst is to be found in some of the streets and slums, the courts' and alleys of our cities and towns. None is free. The houses are an in- sanitary mass, a jumble of. mean, bricks,, foul and unre- TO WHEN LABOE KTJLES freshed by draughts of clean air. No thought, no decency, no art, no beauty. The policy of Labor would be the extension of the gar- den suburb idea, which, however, must always be accom- panied by improvements in our transport. It is useless to expect a man to go and live miles from his work and afford him no reasonable facility of getting from home to work- shop and back again quickly and comfortably, and cheaply. Much in this connection could be done — and would be done — to encourage the building of factories out of cities and not in them. But ehanges cannot be made rapidly. We must face the fact that, for a long time to come, the housing problem will be aggravated by what has been called the economic rent question. When one talks of economic rents it always must include the liability to pay them. The nation to-day is so involved by the effects of the War that clearly it should as yet bear some of the burden, but after that has passed, the houses must be let at an economic rental. I cannot conceive it to be a good thing that the working classes should be subsidized in any way. It savors too much of charity, and, in the end, is demoralizing and leads to corruption. It will not be the policy of the Labor Government to nationalize houses. I believe, however, that the municipali- ties ought to be encouraged to find accommodation. They should, in fact, be held responsible for the housing ac- commodation in their districts. It means not only a direct control in the sort of houses that shall be erected, with the voter directly able to express his opinion on any branch of the subject — whether there are too few or too many being provided, whether the right type are going up, HOUSING AND HEALTH 73 whether the gardens are extravagant or mean, and so on — but it would greatly foster local pride. At the same time, the matter cannot be left there, for if a municipality happened to be indifferent or reluctant to provide for the needs of its people, it is clear some one else must provide for them. I would not cut out private building, but I would make conditions that would largely curtail the power of the speculative builder, which is, obviously, a very different thing. The gentleman I refer to has made as a contribution to housing nothing of value, and has too often merely hoodwinked the working man to struggle to obtain from him a bad bargain. Something must be said here of the benefit of a work- ing man owning his home. There is nothing that gives so great a feeling of security, and pride, and stability, as the owning of even a small cottage, and could there be universal ownership you would never have to fear that the occupier was tearing down banisters to make fires. That is the result of direct and personal experience among the men of our Unions. There are many thousands who have bought their houses through the Union, and let it be said that the Unions find it possible to advance money to these members on better terms than they could get by any ordinary method of borrowing. I am not entering here into question of detail. We are out for principles, for sweeping alterations. Very often it is not too wise to say until the occasion arises just in what manner the details should be worked out. I should never be stereotyped in the matter of accommodation. One thing we are at length realizing is that the pokey small box of a room that invariably goes under the name of par- lor in working men's cottages, and which really takes 74 WHEN LABOK KULES its space out of the living room, should be entirely ob- literated. It is not in the parlor that the family sit in the evenings, and certainly it is not there that the house- wife spends her life. Take away this fusty, unused room, and put some room and light and air into the parts of the house which are in use every day. This subject takes us immediately to that of Health, and it is amazing to think that, prior to the Insurance Act of 1912, there was an entire absence of provision of any sort officially to look after the health of the public. When the Government set out for the first time to recognize that there were people whose income and position as work- ers and through many causes, did not enable them to make provision for times of sickness, the fact of this disability had a far more serious effect than is generally understood. There were large numbers of men and women going to work when they ought to have been in bed. They spread the germs of disease among their fellow-workers, and, so far as they themselves were concerned, gave them- selves no chance to make a complete recovery. They re- turned too soon after an illness, and there was the inevi- table set-back, and, of course, in thousands and thousands of cases, diseases and physical troubles developed seriously because they were not taken in hand in time. All this was solely due to the fact that no provision was made for them. There was no Inspector to look after their health; there was, unfortunately, not the knowledge to realize their trouble, and, when it was pressed home to them, there was not the means to obtain that remedy which every human being is entitled to. The Insurance Act did some- thing, but not nearly enough. The amount of money it allowed, which has since been increased, is even now totally HOUSING AND HEALTH 75 inadequate, and, in addition, the measure leaves some of the most fundamental needs of health untouched. It enabled the father to receive medical benefits, but no pro- vision was made for the mother or the children, unless the mother herself happened to be an insured worker under the Act. It even resulted in a man going from a Sanatorium after treatment to conditions which rendered any perma- nent recovery impossible. And mixed up with these deficiencies is the position of our hospitals. You have only to take up a daily paper any day, and you will see appeal after appeal made by public-spirited men to enable them to carry on hospital work. Have you thought that these pathetic appeals are often an intimation that hundreds of patients are waiting to be treated should ever the funds render it possible? Thousands of people ill, perhaps in a state dangerous not only to themselves, but to the community, simply because these national institutions, being entirely dependent upon charity, cannot use even the accommodation that they have because of lack of money. The only way out is a State Medical Service! Hitherto there was a feeling that a doctor would not work with the State. Well, we saw the best answer to that in the mag- nificent service they rendered during the War. That alone justifies us in the assumption that they will be equally available again, under proper safeguards and con- ditions, to serve the people in peace as they did when in khaki. And more attention would be paid to the question of medical research. It is a scandal that a man to-day whose work is research, and ought to be research, has to worry over difficulties about domestic balance sheets. If you read history you will find that a vast amount of dis- 76 WHEN LABOR EULES covery in every branch of life, particularly in medical affairs, has been at the expense of some great human suffer- ing and sacrifice, merely because the discoverer had not proper means to work regardless of income. All this should be looked after by the State, and, just as the Uni- versities would give primary education to the medical student, the hospitals, governed by the State, would pro- vide the training. What better return could a young •doctor make than to work in the service and for the institu- tion that ga\e him his profession? With this question of health, too, must be definitely associated the question of the children. We must remem- her among all this talk of indemnities and wealth and shortage, that the real and lasting wealth of any country is not the amount of capital within it, not the number of capitalists it possesses, but the number of happy and contented homes with children enjoying a free, full, and healthy existence. It is upon this that the future of a nation depends. Encourage the people to have children, and give every child a welcome and a reasonable start in life, and the nation will be laying a proper foundation for future greatness. At the moment, the birth-rate is improv- ing enormously. What sort of welcome are we preparing for these citizens-to-be? They come, remember, mostly to lower middle classes of working men's homes, yet there are magistrates, and coroners, too, who are sometimes prompted by an unfortunate sense of duty to bully poor people for having large families. Of course, it is quite right to view with apprehension the entry into the world of a large number of children for whom no adequate pro- vision has been made ; but as children are essential, beyond everything else, to the continued existence of a nation, it HOUSING AND HEALTH 77 is clearly the Government, in whose hands lie the means for improving social conditions, rather than the parents of the children, that should he censured. Undouhtedly there are large numhers of sensible men and women who, faced by the problem of maintaining a family, have come to the conclusion that it is a greater crime to bring children into the world to starve than de- liberately to connive at preventing their advent. This, I readily admit, is a most undesirable state of affairs, but it is essential that we should do more than this. We have not yet reached that desirable stage wherein to admit an evil is to remedy it. To burke the facts does not in any way help to solve the problem ; it is, indeed, an imperative necessity that we should boldly apply ourselves to the finding of a remedy, and this is especially necessary when we remember the terrible losses of the manhood of this country that the War occasioned. It is true that the Government have recognized, though very tardily, one side of this question in the provision of school feeding ; but encouragement and help must be given at a much earlier stage than this, and I would boldly de- clare for a State scheme for the endowment of Motherhood. It could take many forms, and might vary in details, but, if it contained the assurance that every child born should have a fair chance without impoverishing its brothers and sisters and making the life of the parents, and especially the mother, one long misery, much would be done towards solving this delicate but very urgent problem. Is it not obvious that child life cannot thrive in the stifling atmosphere of an overcrowded slum, where even a plant would find it difficult to grow ? Is it not obvious that, when a child does survive this unhealthy environ- 78 WHEN LABOR RULES ment, it is likely to profit little more than a warped and stunted manhood ? Think for a moment what it would mean if a scheme were found by which the mortality of children under five years of age was reduqed by fifty per cent. Such an achievement would be a revolution in social reform, and surely there is none to-day who, in the face of all our boasted progress and broadened vision, would say it is not possible ? In that lies the greatest tragedy. Through all the long years of peace the nation, often with complacency, has been suffering terrible losses which could have been averted. Quite naturally and properly we deplore our losses in sturdy manhood on the battlefields — losses suffered in a good and righteous cause; hut year in and 1 year out we have supinely permitted this life blood of the nation to be shamefully wasted. The little children who would be the men and women of to-morrow are lost to the nation, be- cause our legislature has never found time to evolve a sufficiently drastic reform in our social conditions to remedy this evil. The revelation which resulted from the Statement of Inspection of Teeth has clearly demonstrated the value, to the future citizens of the country, of official observa- tion, and no department in the Government has a greater opportunity in this direction than the new Ministry of Health. So long have the activities touching health — even such as they are — been diversely controlled, very often pulling against each other. Mothers, workers in factories, infants, school children, disabled soldiers and sailors, desti- tute persons — all these and other classes have come under different handling. Sometimes the authority has been the HOUSING AND HEALTH 79 Local Government Board, sometimes the Insurance De- partment, the Privy Council come in here, the Board of Education there. The Pensions Ministry-r-the Board of Agriculture have their spheres, too. How could any gen- eral improvement on broad lines be effected with such a conglomeration of direction ? The Health Ministry may — and should associate these efforts into one big channel, but it is doubtful if, until Labor governs, the matter will be freed from the Eed Tape of Officialdom and assume a vast national campaign. Consider, for example, the mothers ; what has been done for them ? Nothing. It is almost unbelievable, and would appear so to any one who could come with fresh ideas from the remote top of some other world upon this our so-called civilization. That they should go ignored by the authority that is called a government ! One can imagine almost a worship given to these women of our race at the time when new lives are born. One can imagine a State full of carefulness and gentleness .towards them, helping with every possible effort of science and comfort to bring to fruition the promised life, and afterwards to tend it until the plant, so to speak, is hardy and able to meet the storms and frosts. Instead — well, we are beginning to realize that perhaps the mother ought not to go to work right up to the moment of confinement, or yet to return immediately afterwards. Some of my readers may believe I am exaggerating in indi- cating that such a state of things ever obtained in Eng- land. But it did, and even the belated effort made under the Insurance Act is not nearly sufficient. The public conscience has been aroused a trifle over the matter. If nothing further can be done before, then when Labor 80 WHEN LABOE KTJLES holds the reins there will be a drastic change in this matter. Our conception of a free and happy people does not, for one thing, include such a possibility as the mother being compelled to do part of the bread winning. All the talk of healthy and happy homes, of a fair chance for the children, is mere playing with words if it means that the mother must take her share in the factory toil. Too much mischief has already been caused in a thousand ways through this system, and in any state x)f society we are boasting of, it ought not to require the joint incomes of husband and wife to keep the house going. " There you have the essence of the present trouble and the heart of future reform. Improvement will never come, save in small instalments, until Government has lifted the general status of Labor. The fight for mere existence, which has been the normal condition for generations of the man who worked with his hands, shall cease. He shall get adequate pay for necessities and for comfort. We insist on his development. Work shall not be the all and end all of his life. Under more liberality and sym- pathy his ego will expand, education will open his eyes to the wealth of existence, and with the beginnings of aspiration towards higher living and general uplift in his home will come, in the end, the great justification for that social regeneration for which Labor step by step is fighting. CHAPTER VIII EDUCATION— IN THE UNIVEESITY AND THE HOME It is as unfortunate as it is unfair to suggest that there can be no relationship between Labor and the direction of education. " How can Labor control our big univer- sities ? " ask the unthinking, and they add, with a sneer, " It would be a bad day for the universities and for learn- ing if such control ever happened." These critics, of course, think that a navvy typifies Labor, and, just as it always takes the process of years to work any evolution, I suppose it will be long before certain branches of the public grow to appreciate that there is an intelligence in the Labor Party, that there are men in it thoroughly capable of large-minded governing, and of universal .statesmanship ; that this party has a thor- ough program which includes all the activities of all grades, and does not exist for the exploitation of the toiler at the expense of every one else. We shall not legislate only for the navvy, or the miner, or the railway worker, or the bricklayer. For none of these to the exclusion of others. Our government will be for the community as a whole, whereas we claim that, in the past, government has been for the privileged few. It is true that, during recent years, we have fought for the lower classes almost exclusively, but that is only because other governments have allowed them to get into a 81 82 WHEN LABOR RULES state that in many ways was slavery. Their claims were so obvious, their needs so crying, that in setting out on the great scheme of social reform, which makes up our program for the entire community, these grievances had first to be tackled. We are only on the fringe of even that improvement. It is granted that much has been done towards bettering the lot, of the mass of workers, but we shall see no funda- mental alteration until Labor holds the reins. There are many who still shrug their shoulders at the notion. They can see nothing but strikes and can say noth- ing but that one word, " Bolshevism." Labor does not want strikes. Strikes are the necessary evil in the campaign of education — the education of the majority of electors towards what is just to the worker. It is transitory; the froth on the stream. We are at the confluence. Labor has been only a tributary, but now it has gathered force, and has mixed its power with that river of capitalism which for generations was entirely dominant. Before the tributary increases into the main stream there will inevitably be bubbles. But there will be no Bolshevism. We who knew all along that the ideals and material changes for which we were fighting were those that must set right the world and make it a better and happier and more just place for the majority, never feared that anarchy would result. At all events only in the passing phase. Had it come to that we should have had to face it just as we had to face the Germans when their system of dominatioU grew too great and threatened peaceful progress. But there was never any chance of that sort of riotous breaking from old ways, which has just been seen in Russia, coming into opera- EDUCATION— IN UNIVERSITY AND HOME 83 tidn in England. The British 'working man is too sane a fellow for that, and let me add — as the War proved — too patriotic, and too proud of his own country. There was no anarchy in Australia when, fifteen years ago, Lahor took over office there. I know that we can make no general comparisons between this country and Australia, but there is this : No one would assert that the Empire is any way less secure because in Australia and New Zealand Labor is in charge. They have had differ- ences, we know, as every political party has, but all I want to say here is that they have not failed in the art of government. And neither will the same party fail in Britain, though I am well aware that the problems here are a hundred times more acute and more complicated, built up slowly through the generations, whereas out in the colonies the ground has been fresh and the population scant. Those who were natural enemies of Labor looked to see their predictions fulfilled at the memorable conference at Scarborough, and I suppose these prophets were never more confounded than by the vote which was given there against the Moscow International. We are not out for anarchy, we are out for peace, far more so than those who, having vast personal possessions and, therefore, vast in- terests in their properties, are prepared to risk all to keep them. Whilst considering Labor conferences and education it is a striking fact that, whenever education comes up for discussion, there is always a strong vote in favor of a bold and generous policy of improvement. We realize that, in any community such as we are aiming at, and boast one day to get, the worst of all possible handicaps will 84 WHEN LABOE RULES be an ignorant democracy. Of all public expenditure there can be none so important as that which insures true citizenship for the future. Labor, when it rules, does not mean to be but another autocracy. We will wipe out selfish interests if we can, and legislate for the good of the majority. And in education that means the throwing open of all possibilities of instruction to every child in the land. I know we are supposed to have such a situation to-day, but it does not work out in practice. Some will say that the universities are open to the brilliant boy. So they are. But what do you say to the fact that there are lads who, despite handicaps in their upbringing, haye won scholar- ships and then have been unable to take advantage of them because they have had to go to work for the sake of their brothers and sisters or their own parents? Isn't this a scandal ? Is this throwing open all avenues to every one ? To give an ambitious boy the key to a door, and then to say he may not use it — could there be any greater tragedy ? especially when he sees countless others with the key pushed into their hands without effort and quite often without its being likely to be of any benefit to them- selves and, therefore, to the community and posterity? What do we lose when we thus debar boys (who have, in fact, proved themselves above all others of their age) from achieving whatever their genius might lead to 1 The world must be poorer by such blindworm policies. Surely any student who has proved himself worthy should not be lost to advancement because of the lack of the mere wherewithal of his daily bread, or that of his parents! Education should not depend on a domestic balance sheet. We are all proud of our public schools. Every one senses EDUCATION— IN UNIVEKSITY AND HOME 85 the tone of the public school hoy. Why is there not a similar tone in the elementary sehools of the land ? Why are not the same results obtainable? It is possible to make every boy a public schoolboy by making every public school public. The snobbish will smile,, and smile they may, but in the end it will come. At present in our elementary schools you have a thou- sand wrongs, each constituting a brake on proper educa- tion. For one thing, this wise government allows a teacher to be paid less than a navvy. Think of that little fact and, at the same time, remember that the real test of a teacher is not merely the conveying of a certain knowledge, but the impressing upon the pupil the traits of high character. The teachers are falling off. We have been threatened with something of a famine of men teachers in our ele- mentary schools. No wonder. We do not at present en- courage them — not the right type of teachers at all events. Those who have any ambition at all have certainly no ambition to spend their days in hardship while they seek, in sacrifice, to impress young Britain with that which is best in manhood. No, they go out into the world of busi- ness or into other of the professions where the reward comes for work done. Blame them if you like, but I blame the system that makes such a situation possible, There are other reasons against the present schools. The classes are too large, instruction becomes hopeless for the teacher and useless for the student. There is not the right opportunity given for the development of sport. Com- pare the slum school playground with the fields of Eton. And, of course, there are the general surroundings of the schools, drab and uninspiring. There is no atmosphere, and no pride in the schools is created. 86 WHEN LABOE RULES Let us also be rid of the sectarian and religious bicker- ings. This is a clearly established policy of the Labor Party. Home and the Sunday School are the right en- vironment for religious education. Make your elementary schools right, and you will have the beginnings of the right product of man. Let those who are worthy go on to the universities, all free and open, no class differences, every one with the same chance,, and you will have done something to put education on the right lines. Education should be under the control of the nation from start to finish. The present system of local and municipal management is absurd. Why, for instance, should the rates in West Ham be higher than in any other of the better-class suburbs? Do they get better treat- ment — these little fellows of West Ham ? And, anyhow, the man trained in one place is very likely to spend his life, and, therefore, his abilities, in a far different place. The system must be made national, it must go on the national budget, and all should be treated alike, all alike having the same chances to go on as far as their abilities will carry them. There is another side of education, which demands the earnest consideration of everybody of thought who seeks to lead the country. That is the education of adults. It is one of the good signs of the times that there is a demand among adults to improve themselves and so fit themselves for better things. The working classes — at least the more intelligent members of them — are desirous of improvement not only for their own advancement, but with the object of social development and good citizenship. The feeling was so apparent that the Ministry of Recon- EDUCATION— IN UNIVERSITY AND HOME 87 struction, before the end of the War, set up a committee to look into the matter. Describing the nature of the demand among adults for education of a non-vocational character, the Committee The motive which impels men and ■women to seek educa- tion is partly the wish for fuller personal development. It arises from the desire for knowledge, for self-expression, for the satisfaction of intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual needs^ and for a fuller life. It is based upon a claim for the recog- nition of human personality. This desire is not confined to any class of society, but is to be found amongst people of every social grade. The motive is also plainly social. Indeed, so far as the workers are concerned, it is, we think, this social purpose which principally inspires the desire for education. They demand opportunities for education in the hope that the power which it brings will enable them to understand and help in the solution of the common problems of human society. In many cases, therefore, their efforts to obtain edu- cation are specifically directed towards rendering themselves better fitted for the respbnsibilities of membership in political, social, and industrial organizations. This movement had set in before the War. Naturally it had a set-back when hostilities started, but it is a strik- ing tribute to the workers that, since the armistice, the volume of educational activity is larger than ever. The working man is no longer a lethargic individual just indolently doing what he finds necessary in order to get his daily bread. He wants to know. He wants to learn, to improve, and not only does he wish to learn those things which will help him in the particular job he may be en- gaged in, he wants general knowledge and general culture so that he may be a. more useful member of the community^ 88 WHEN LABOR EULES We shall make it easier for men and women to acquire knowledge. At present excessive hours of work, and many -other causes, make it difficult for them to obtain educa- tion, and I think one may fairly state, judging by what has been done, that the more you reduce working hours the more will the average working man take advantage of his spare time to obtain knowledge. How can many men and women to-day satisfy any am- bition that they may have for education? Their hours are long, and they very often have to work overtime. In seasonal trades, where the period of pressure happens to be in the winter time — when educational facilities are most available — there is a further hindrance. And, of course, there are many grades of workers who, though their total number of working hours may not be excessive, have those hours so spread out over the day that they have no regular evenings to themselves. The tram- way worker, for instance, has his periods of in'action sev- eral times during the day, but from beginning to end his work is spread out over the best part of twelve hours. The shift system has the same effect. One week a man may work in the mornings, the next in the afternoons, and the next at night time. For a man to be engaged upon night-work means that he cannot use any educational facilities there may be in his neighborhood; he cannot even take part in civic or social activities. I would like further to quote the considered findings of the Committee set up by the Ministry of Reconstruc- tion : — From the point of view of education and of participation in public activities (a most valuable means of education) one EDUCATION— IN UNIVERSITY AND HOME 89 of the greatest needs is the provision of a greater amount of leisure time; this is the more necessary because of the in- creasing strain of modern life. The -view sometimes held that the community must necessarily suffer economic loss as a re- sult of shortening of working hours is not one to which modern economic science lends any confirmation, and has, indeed, received an impressive practical refutation from the inquiries into the relation between output and working hours conducted on behalf of the Ministry of Munitions during the War. The unduly long hours which still obtain in many industries are, in fact, but a legacy from the traditions of half a century and more ago, and persist in the face of scien- tific proof of their uneconomical results. We have done much since the War ended to reduce the hours of work, but not enough. In the England that lives under Labor's rule the day's work will be got into shorter time, and this while it will give greater chances for leisure and improvement, will not, in the end, reduce production. The experience of the War in munition fac- tories is convincing to any one that leisure, more leisure, does not mean less work, but on the contrary, a man who has leisure does more during his working hours than the man who works longer and who gets stale because of much overtime. We are making steps towards the right end, and can we not to-day agree with this opinion of the Committee's re- port though it was written just before the end of the War ? It says: — The revulsion against long hours, exhausting forms of labor and monotonous employment is fully justified by the results of scientific research. The fear of unemployment which hangs like a heavy cloud over so many breadwinners brings a 90 WHEN LABOE EULES ' . sense of insecurity into their lives and deprives them of all incentive to take a whole-hearted interest in the various activities which are a necessary accompaniment of a complete life. In such circumstances it is surprising that they make as much response as they do to the appeals of science, litera- ture, music, art, and the drama, and exert so much effort to equip themselves for the responsibilities of citizenship. The workman demands (a) security ,of tenure, (6) adequate wages, (c) freeing from the limitations which our present specialism imposes upon him. To hand out doses of educa- tion while these things are ungranted will be to play with the problem. You cannot "educate" a man whose upper; most thought is the economic " Struggle for Existence." Nor can a spirit of intelligent and responsible citizenship be readily developed in those whose mainspring to activity is a continual struggle for the bare necessities of physical existence. , No man is going to worry about improvement when , he is concerned too much about the bare necessities of existence; that worry obsesses him to the exclusion of all else. But I think he is never going to get that freedom which security of tenure gives him until we have lapsed from the individual to the communistic system of business. We must have a democratic control of industry before we get any real emancipation. Now the democratic control of industry does not mean that the worker shall purloin the factories and run them for his own advantage. It merely means that he should come into the government and management of those factories. There should be no board of directors that has not some representative of the work- - ers upon it. And in this connection I wonder if oppo- nents — blind opponents — of the claim have given any thought to the advantages that might accrue to the man- agement itself by such a practice. EDUCATION— IN UNIVERSITY AND HOME 91 I have heard it said often that the workers in a works do not understand the conditions, that, if they did, they would never dream of pressing this or that claim. They have been charged with making unreasonable demands, such as would, if granted, make business unprofitable and end in shutting down the works. We all remember that, in one or two cases, this has actually happened. Firms — the members having made their fortunes — have declared that they would rather close down than pay increased wages, that the business would not stand increased wages, and that the owners would rather quietly go away for a holiday. This argument may be true, the directors being well off haven't to worry, as the workman has, about the next week's victuals. But has it never struck these firms that the best way to let the worker understand the position is to permit him to have a representative or representatives upon the board of management? After all, it is as much their lives as those of the members of the directorate. They, as human beings, have as much right to see they get their deserts as have the owners of the business, and it seems to me if a certain claim is going legitimately to close down a business the men themselves, if they were represented on the board, would be able to appreciate it as well as the directors. It would exercise a restraining influence upon excess just as surely as it would exercise an influence to see that justice was done to the worker, and that vast profits did not go to the fortunate employer, while the worker who made them possible was left in the cold — unconsidered and in poverty — as has been the case so regularly for so many generations. What the worker objects to is the feeling of inferiority 92 WHEN LABOR EULES that has heen pressed upon him for so long. He holds, and to my mind holds with justice, that the suhordination of the worker to an industrial policy and to regulations for which he is in no way responsible, is unjustifiable be- cause it is not consistent with the rights and obligations which ought to be inherent in membership of any organized group in society. We want, and mean to grant, indus- trial democracy. There is too much of the spirit of acquisition on the part of the few. Industry does not exist to make the few wealthy, it exists for the benefit of all. And those who declare that the worker will assume, should he get the power, the arrogance the employer assumes, do not realize the worker's claim nor his ambition. He wants only fair play, a fair reward for his labor, which means, to bring the matter back to the subject of education, a reasonable time of leisure in which he can improve himself, and take his rightful place in the duties of citizenship. Before I leave the question of education I should like to say a word on the subject of foreign languages. The classical regime is dead, so far as the masses are con- cerned. There will always be the student who will take the dead languages, and, of course, it is well that the glories of those tongues and the lost civilization of the peoples who spoke them should not pass from our ken and our studies. But apart from these few, we must modernize our teach- ing. It must no longer be felt that those who take the modern side are merely escaping the classics because of any mental deficiencies. It must be admitted that our insularity in this respect has meant a great loss to us even in the business world. We are inclined to think that any EDUCATION— IN UNIVERSITY AND HOME 93 one who does not speak English is a fool and deserves not to have our custom. But the thing acts hoth ways, and every one knows that we, as a nation, have lost because we have not been conversant with the language of peoples with whom we have wished to do business. The distribut- ing trade of South America passed from British into Ger- man hands, even where British goods were concerned, just because our people, would not take the trouble to learn Spanish, whereas the Germans did take that trouble. The Germans, our rivals, take the trouble to learn any lan- guage, and we must do the same. The inclusion of lan- guages in every school curriculum ought to be made compulsory. And a knowledge of languages should also be accompanied by a knowledge of the history and the movements of the countries to which the languages belong. We must understand the thoughts of the people and the movements which control them. Education needs vast widening in this respect. There is a story, I believe a true one, of an embassy out east, where no single member could talk the language of the natives among whom it was established. That is typically British and typically stupid. How could the members of that embassy understand the psychology of the people when none of its members were able to speak the language ? And in other ways the same argument applies in the business world. It applies, too, more abundantly in regard to scientific discoveries. The ethnologist, the economist, and every expert is, to a degree, dependent upon ideas that are born among other peoples. Unless these students are able at first hand to read and under- stand the thoughts that are animating foreign students, how can they keep abreast of new discoveries, and how 94 WHEN LABOR RULES i much do we, as a nation, and the world in general, lose by the handicap? The ideal of education is to enable men to live better. To carry out this ideal we must know the mind of the world. Yet there are few schools to-day properly equipped to teach modern languages. No — we rely upon foreigners themselves who come to this country and work for us, we feeing too lazy to learn. And this not only handicaps us, and loses to our people a big scope for utility, but it provides a means for the foreigner, our business rival pos- sibly, to learn our ways of life and of business, and, there- fore, gives him a very real start in the race of the nations for success and prosperity. CHAPTER IX THE " TEADE " I do not believe Prohibition is practicable at present. The prohibitionist campaign is a propagandist activity. As a method of dealing with the drink question it is out- side the range of practical politics. I am not concerned with the pros and cons of prohibition. I am looking at the drink problem from a practical point of view. At the present time three-quarters of the male population of the country take alcoholic drink. In face of this, it is obvi- ous that, whether prohibition is a desirable policy or not, it is not one which would command public support. As practical men we must look to some policy which will be acceptable to the people as a whole. But national control of the liquor trade — yes! That will be part of our legislation, undoubtedly. Out in the States to-day, where extreme Sahara-like dryness is supposed to be applied, it is the fashion for the wealthy no longer to display their art treasures and their curio collections, but to beckon the visitor below stairs, and, undoing the padlocks, to exhibit their wine cellars. Moreover, in some quarters the laws are cheerily evaded. I was reading in the papers not so long ago of a petition that had been got up and signed by the women of one rather remote locality — which threatened those who make the whisky, those who were selling it, and those who drank it that, all the names being thoroughly known to them, 95 96 WHEN LABOE EULES they would one and all be reported to the authorities unless the illicit practice were at once stopped — a form of direct action which, apart altogether from the merits or demerits of it, clearly proved that behind-the-scenes drinking goes on. There is no sort of reason in the methods of license that have obtained so long in this country. We must have the " Trade " in the hands, not of the profiteer, but of the Government. If you know anything of the history of this business — and as a member of the Liquor Control Board I may claim some first-hand knowledge — you will know that the pub- lican has had a very good innings. For generations he had the power to dictate to the legislature what laws should govern him. He practically controlled a certain political party, and, of course, propa- ganda — had it been necessary then — was simple, since his house was | the talking shop of every locality. Houses went from father to son ; the profits came easily and were assured, Unless by some excess the license was placed in jeopardy. It was only when elementary education began to be general and free that the " Trade " took alarm. There began to grow up powerful movements which not only were tilted against the unsanitary public-house, but led away from its influence and into the country by cycle, or on to the local cricket fields. The outlook was darkening for the publican, and, though he instantly sought to save his own skin by becoming a limited liability company, or selling out to the big brewery firms which began to form large capital concerns, he, nevertheless, saw the time near when his large profits THE "TKADE" 97 were not to be easily scooped in ; when, indeed, there looked like being no profits at all. The shareholders, who had been persuaded to put their money into the " Trade " were none too jubilant. Tbey began to realize that they were not being allowed mag- nanimously to share the wonderful success of the brewer ; having made the brewer safe by investing their money they were now reaping the tares. Shares fell right and left, dividends were small. The " Trade " called its henchmen in Parliament to- gether, and the scheme of making the licenses into free- holds was conceived and passed. Think how this improved the value of the properties. It made them financially sound again. And now, when the Labor Party come into power and want to buy out the present holders, a vast sum must be paid, seeing these licenses are all freeholds instead of being held from year to year upon" the sufferance of the magis- trate. It was a gift of millions. But that is only half the story. The War contributes the other half — and pretty bad reading it makes. No one will forget the sort of stuff that the brewers put out during those years of War. 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 quan- tity was being drunk in the 1918 year. And of course, with the curtailment of the quality came also the cur- tailment of the hours of work to the publican. A very right thing from two points of view. 98 WHEN LABOE EULES (1) The hours those engaged in public-houses had been forced to work before the War were terrible. The houses opened at six in the morning, and closed at eleven in the country and half-past twelve in London. It was not right to keep bar- maids standing behind counters until such times. How much ill-health and lowered moral tone the business was responsible for can never be com- puted. (2) It enforced a restriction on the consumption in a period of national strain. That it did so is proved by the fact that in 1918, despite the enormous revenue from drink only one-half the amount of liquor was consumed, and that of an infinitely lower gravity. But why on earth should these restrictions have re- sulted in such swollen profits to the trade ? They should have made no single penny extra. They worked less. They sold poorer stuff. But one knows of public-house after public-house which reaped a rich harvest, and one reads of brewery after brewery whose profits have skied like a shell. Whether they will return to earth, which means reasonableness, or not, remains to be seen. I have an idea that we shall never get to the rights of this mat- ter until Labor takes hold, for this is all part and parcel of larger schemes for the workers of all monopolies and public services for the good of the entire community. Only then, upon this point, will the consumer get a fair article for a fair price, because the vast profits now being made by individual companies under license from the State will be wiped out. Think what that means. Do you know of the enormous THE "TRADE" 99 profits made by the publican and the brewer during the War ? They are almost unbelievable. I will take half a dozen companies' profits: — 1915-16 1917-18 A 14,427 40,576 B 2,484 26,953 C 295,628 437,120 D 36,811 181,062 E 80,885 239,686 F 206,009 472,974 It's pretty serious, isn't it ? Don't you think it time all these profits ceased to go into private pockets? A Labor Government would insist on the country buying out the liquor business from start to finish, and running it for the good of the community. There would be no vast profits then, and what profits there were would go into the national purse and thus help to lower taxation. Private ownership failed during the War. It failed to play the game. , It is not right that taking fifteen firms the profits during two years expanded from £2,591,060 to £4,164,048 — over a million and a half. Dividends rose gaily from nil to 33%, from 9 to 30, from 2 to 7, from nil to 7% — to take four specific cases. But these dividends are deceptive and unrevealing. One firm made over £262,000, but only a paltry £20,000 was distributed in dividends. Huge sums were placed to reserve. Now it is a proper business precaution in a year such as the last of the War to lay up a reserve against a time ahead which might conceivably hold all manner, of difficulties and trouble. But to place such a huge sum as I 100 WHEN LABOE ETTLES have indicated to reserve was doing far more than take rea- sonable precautions.' Moreover, in many cases new shares were issued, this being but another way of hiding the dividends. Here is an actual case, being a newspaper para- graph appearing in 1918 : — Messrs. , the well-known brewers, to-day decided to make a further distribution of nearly £500,000 undivided profits in the form of additional share capital to existing holders. About £300,000 was so capitalized in 1916, and the chairman said there had been evidence of an increasing tend- ency to State control and ultimately to State purchase after the War. The State, therefore, should have some indication of the capital values with which it was dealing. You observe what lies behind this gentle threat. If there is going to be any notion of buying out the " Trade," the " Trade "is going to bump up the price as high as it can so that the purchase price may be inflated to the skies. It is the same sort of smart business as that carried out by the man who happens to know that, for some public needj a certain piece of land will be necessary in the com- mon interest. He secretly purchases it, and, when the State or the municipality comes along, this interesting gentleman quietly doubles or trebles the price. Oh, yes, Mr. Bung did very well out of the War. Glance at the values of his shares. Here are actual quotations on the stock exchange: — 1915 1917 1919 A 2 25% 86 B 12% 91 185 O 213% 307% 39iy 2 D 10 85 169 THE "TRADE" 101 Those simple figures spell fortunes to the investor, and one might think the " Trade " would be content with its career of profiting. But no, it is striving, as is clearly indicated by the speech I have quoted, to convert this as- tonishing windfall into the basis for purchase if purchase comes. But we will have none of it. Labor agrees, and has agreed all along, that the drink traffic must be controlled, must indeed, become the property of the State, but we shall not buy out the brewers at twice the normal value of their industry. When Labor is in power the " Trade " will not have the authority in the House of Parliament to override what is fair and just from the point of view of the public. It will pull its strings, no doubt, it will fight through its representatives, but those representatives will be in opposition and not in power, and a Labor Govern- ment will legislate for the good, not of the vested interests, but for the benefit of the community. The " Trade " will go, and the liquor business will be- come Government owned. And purchase will, of course, be based upon the pre-war value, which has been declared to be 350 millions — quite enough to put into Mr. Bung's pocket, seeing the enormous profits he has made during the War just when he was beginning to think his con- cerns, greatly over-capitalized, were going to the bad. And if the argument that money is worth only half its pre- war value, and, therefore, the purchase price now ought to be at least 700 millions is maintained, we shall point to these enormous profits and shall say a decided " No." The War did one good thing while it was filling up the empty coffers of the " Trade." It proved the wisdom of control. 102 WHEN LABOR RULES The effects of that were indeed amazing and encouraging to the highest degree. As Lord d'Abernon said in 1918 :— The most vital and interesting claim for the work of the first three years (the period during which control had been in operation) is not that it effectually prevented alcoholic excess from interfering with national efficiency in the prosecu- tion of the War — that, I hope, is common ground — but that by practical experiment and trial it has thrown so much new light upon the problem that the whole position has to be considered anew. Reform can now be entered upon with a firmer hope and a more confident assurance. New and easier avenues of approach have been discovered, large vistas of at-' tainment to conditions far above previous contemplations are now open. Those who have striven in the cause of improve- ment may now, without undue optimism, assert that a permanent solution upon lines of general consent is more nearly within reach than at any previous period, without the sacrifice of any reasonable objective, and without injustice or injury to any legitimate interest. We must glance at the actual results of this control through the latter period of the War, and, indeed, the con- trol that to-day exists. It is doubtful if the public are cognizant of what was accomplished. Let us first take the figures of actual convictions for drunkenness. In 1913, throughout England and Wales, the weekly average of convictions was 3482. During the first six months of 1918 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 at- tempted suicides, of the suffocation of infants, and in other respects where trouble could be definitely traced to THE "TKADE" 103 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 by over eighty per cent., but a similar fall was registered in crime, and there is on all sides, from those who had opportunities for observation, the same testimony as to the improvement in home conditions. For figures of actual cases of drunkenness do not reveal the full extent of the reform. A man's work is impaired long before his state could justify police interference with his freedom. Look beyond statistics of this sort and in- quire what was the amount of increased efficiency in the world of Labor. , The immediate object of the control was for the efficiency of the army, navy, and munition workers, and, in order to understand just how far that control was successful in these departments of public service during the War, you have only to read of the way the authorities constantly were asking for this and that area to be placed under the provisions of the order. This was not merely for the purpose of maintaining sobriety in the services, it was to make for efficiency. " We want the order which is working so well in to be applied to ." This was the constant request that came to the Liquor Control Board. Now the authorities were not out to restrict the rea- sonable freedom of those men and women who were fight- ing our battles either in the army, navy, or in the making of the necessary munitions. They were out for the great- est possible output of effort, and they found that, putting restrictions upon the sale of alcohol was one of the sure means of getting the best. As a matter of fact, if the 104 WHEN LABOE KULES army authorities could have had their way they would have increased the restrictions rather than diminished them. If you read the second report of the Board you will have seen that the judgment of the Admiralty based upon reports from admirals and other officers in important com- mands was to the effect that " the general result of the restrictions has been decidedly beneficial," that transport officers were unanimously of the opinion that the restric- tions had been of great benefit to the transport service, and in especial that the principal officer at Southampton had " commended on the increased efficiency and good health of all the labor at the docks." These statements were made in 1916, and all later reports substantiated the statements and enlarged upon them. So much for the navy. The army said exactly the same. Thus: In 1916 the military put it upon record that "re- ports had been received from the various commands, the general effect of which shows that the orders of the Board have had a beneficial effect on the discipline, training, and efficiency of soldiers, and have helped in the recovery of the sick and wounded." At the same time Sir Edward Henry, the then com- missioner of police for the metropolis, was saying concern- ing the reduction in the convictions for drunkenness: The figures are remarkable. They confirm police observa- tion that many fewer drunken persons are to be seen in the streets of London, and they indicate that the measures taken by the Central Control Board have had a very marked effect. And one could go on endlessly quoting authorities to prove the efficacy of the new regulations. It was an THE "TRADE" 105 experiment; it was novel when it was introduced, but seldom has an experiment so highly justified itself. But in considering the future of the " Trade " it is not too wise to rely on these statements concerning the fighting service. Times were abnormal, and it may be claimed that men were living under such stress of excitement that their conduct is not a reflex of what one might expect under normal peace conditions. Let us then turn to the indus- trial side of the community. Here there was, if anything, more temptation for the drinker than normally. Work was heavy, trade union restrictions had lapsed temporarily, men were working overtime, straining every effort to pile up the munitions for the men at the front. We all are aware of the strain of these times, and it would be reasonable to suppose that, after the day's tasks were over, the workers would be only too ready to turn to the refresh- ment of the public-house. We have already seen, however, how the number of cases of drunkenness among the general public fell with a bump, and it may be added that the testimony of all employers went to show that work in factories had vastly benefited by the orders of the Board. Bad timekeeping stopped, output increased, quality, too, and the general health of the workers. There were those among the em- ployers who, when first the restrictions were suggested, looked upon them with doubt and even disfavor. They thought, I imagine, that it would lead not to better work but to unrest as a result of criticism among the men. The testimony of these employers is, therefore, particularly valuable. They had to eat their own words, had to admit one and all that the restnictions had meant in every case gains to efficiency. I have read a hundred reports from 106 WHEN LABOE EULBS overseers of work during that period, and they are unani- mous. In many parts the new scheme was " almost unex- pectedly successful." Even in such places as steel smelt- ing works, where the temperature of 138 Fahr. would justify, if anything did, the resort to liquid refreshment. This is what an overseer at one of these works reported in writing: — For an onlooker unaccustomed to conditions of labor such as these the greatest sympathy for the workers is excited, be- cause the effort called for is tremendous, and the way these men perspire as a result of their heavy work and exposure to the furnace is astonishing. Beer is the usual refreshment. A few of the workers are abstainers, and these are the most reliable. When the supply of drink was restricted, owing to the closing of the public-houses in the district, a great im- provement in the health and timekeeping of the workmen , was noticed, and was admitted by the men. But it is not only work which matters — production. It is much in the national welfare, of course, but not every- thing. The home life is just as important, and the health and care of the children. Those who watched the results with the keen eyes of the expert agreed that, when the sale of drink went down, the sale of essentials to the good of the home went up. Groceries, other food, clothing, fur- niture — all those things which make for a decent and com- fortable home. Meanwhile pawnbrokers were losing their trade. The money was not going in drink. Children gained enormously. The number of cases of cruelty, for instance, from 1914 to 1917 went down 10 per cent., and an even greater effect could be traced in that sort of cruelty which is not sufficiently marked to merit police court proceedings. The women sanitary inspectors, who know THE "TRADE" 107 better than any one else, because their work ;takes them into the homes of the poor, all reported improvement. The women were more in their homes in the morning, and, consequently, the children were better looked after; less drinking during the day meant more baking of bread, and families got into the habit of going to bed earlier and, therefore, getting more rest. All over the country the hospitals felt the result. Cases of accident in the streets, very often the result of inebriety, became fewer, and that this really was the result of the closing is shown by the simple fact that these cases which used to come in late — in the country after eleven o'clock, and in London after midnight — now came earlier, syn- chronizing with the earlier closing of the public-houses. Street brawls lessened impressively. That is just a hurried glance at the record of restricted selling of drink. It may be only part of the tale, but it suffices to justify up to the hilt, to any unprejudiced mind, what was done. The position now is: Are we going to allow the country to slide back into the old ways when already so much has been done? Lord d'Abernon put it concisely when he said : " To restore drink conditions to the position before the War would be deliberately to re-create drunkenness at the rate of nearly 200,000 convictions a year, with its terrible accompaniment of crime, disease, and death." We must never go back. I have gone into the* experi- ence of the past because of the lessons they hold for us in the future. It is a fact that the restrictions were for the period of the War only and a little time afterwards, and, in some respects, there has since been a slight easing up. Whatever is done by the present rulers of the country in 108 WHEN LABOR RULES this important matter, the Labor Government which is to be will never permit the old conditions to return, and if by then they have returned, as they might because of the vested interests there are in Parliament,' we shall change them again. Not back merely to what things are to-day, infinitely better though these are than what they were. We must go further. It is understandable that men engaged in monotonous labor turn to the public-house for recreation, just for the mere forgetting of the day's routine which deadens the mind and kills aspiration. It is not sug- gested that we close the public-houses. The right thing to do is to improve them as well as restrict the hours they are open. Some one has said that, with the old opportunities of drinking, it was surprising not that people got drunk but that any who drank at all remained sober. Let us then have a reasonable service in this respect, but also a rea- sonable restriction. And more than that, let us have the houses decent places, with light and air, and none of that secrecy which seems to lie behind the closed doors of the bars to-day. Drink is encouraged because, very often, eating facilities are poor. The canteens, which were set up all over the munition areas during the War, were of incalculable benefit to the workers. And 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 un- healthy conditions, where the place may be open to the world on the lines of the cafes in France. THE "TRADE" 109 But beyond all, the great barrier which private interest raises to big reform in the sale of drink must be torn down firmly and finally. Mr. Bung must go. We come back inevitably to the position with which we set out. The State must own the " Trade." Brewers, distillers, pub- licans are like the rest of human beings. The moment they see their own particular interest threatened, they re- sist. They get every ounce of influence they can pull to help in the fight. This has gone on until it is proverbial. They have established themselves in a system which is unbelievably bad for the community, and now that we have had the lessons of control so successfully demonstrated, there is nothing to justify the nation in holding back from complete control and reform. The whole business should — and will — be taken over, run for the public good, and, incidentally, whatever profit "there is, run too for the sake of the public purse. For there will be profit, naturally ! but not the amazing profits the pub- lican has been recently putting in his pocket. The Labor stands for decentralization and local control of the drink trade. It is of the utmost importance that the " Trade " should be governed in accordance with local needs and local opinion. There is no reason why State ownership should not be combined with local control. It is, in fact, only in this way that the public can be sure of bringing its will to bear upon the drink trade. The local management must reflect the real opinion of the people in any district. It should be for the locality to determine, subject to general national regulations, the distribution of licensed houses, the provision made in them for public needs, and the number of public-houses. This 110 WHEN LABOE RULES last point brings us to the question of the power of locali- ties to extinguish all the licenses within its area. Localities would be empowered by the State where there is a dominant opinion in favor of abolishing the " Trade " entirely, to convert the public-houses to other social uses. But such a policy of local option would be effective only if the " Trade " were in the hands of the State. Local option, when «it is adopted, must rest on a basis of public owner- ship. The two methods in conjunction would insure that the drink question was being dealt with nationally on a comprehensive scale, whilst allowing local autonomy. In this way, and in this way only, can this traffic be sub- ordinated to the will of the people, and made to reflect public opinion. CHAPTER X OUR FOREIGN RELATIONSHIPS Whatever may be said of the merits of the late War there is one thing which cannot be dissociated from it. That is our foreign policy, and, in this respect, one has more espe- cially to remember our commitments in the way of secret agreements. The most notorious illustration that happened after the War, and which led to all the trouble in the Peace Treaty in regard to Italy, was the secret arrangement with that Power, known as the Pact of London. One appreciates how far that pact helped this country in the time of its trial, and, when the defeat of a nation is threatened, it is human to suppose the politician becomes an opportunist, and will be ready even to bribe an outsider to come to his help. When War has its grip upon the world the harassed men who are behind the scenes are not apt to be exactly punctilious about arrangements between themselves, nor to realize too readily that the promises they make to gain immediate ends may bring a harvest of trouble as an after- math. The great thing is to plan the progress of mankind towards the elimination of wars, and one of the greatest helps to this end would be the abolition of the very thing we are talking about — secret diplomacy. If there is one thing the working classes, I believe not only of this land but of every land, are keen about, and united upon, it is the ill 112 WHEN LABOR RULES ending of secret diplomacy. That must inevitably form the basis of any Labor policy. And that must mean a vastly different attitude towards the Peace Treaty from that which has been adopted dur- ing the creation of it. If Labor had been in power on the two continents when that treaty was drawn up, it would have been a very different document, for you must realize that, if ever decisions were taken leaving the world in the dark, they were taken by that inner committee, first of four, then of three, who sat and re-made the map of the world. They laid down rule after rule which none knew of; they came to decision after decision entirely upon their own individual authority, and in doing these things they built brick upon brick, not of a new founda- tion for world peace, but of a barrier against the hope that the end of all war had come. In the peace there are such seeds of war as it will be difficult for even a united international Labor Government to eradicate. The world's hope lies in Labor in this matter. The politicians and the capitalists and the military fanatics have had their try, and failed. We are no farther along the road under their narrow guidance than we were in 1914. All that has happened is that they have invented a few new machines — and turned the eyes of the sane and peaceful to a possible community of peoples, which the peoples themselves, and only the peoples, will ever be able to carry out. It must be changed from a League of Nations. It must be the League of Peoples. The professional diplomat with his secrets and pigeon-holed agreements must go. There can never be any accommodation with them on the part of a Labor Government — with these men who broke OUR FOREIGN RELATIONSHIPS 113 through all the promises of a new world and resorted in the end to the old, old tricks. Since the War has finished we have made again private agreements with other natipns. We have a new triple alliance. We are under contract to help France if France is attacked by Germany. On the fact of the matter that is a perfectly friendly and just thing to do. We stick by our friend, good. We help him to defend himself. Oh, yes, it is entirely a defensive undertaking. British labor certainly desires the protection of repub- lican France from the horrors of invasion. But alas ! we know what these " defensive " wars may be. Has not Germany declared she fought only to defend herself? And, again, how often do we hear that the best method of defense is attack! Rightly so. If a man is going to knock you down, you get your blow in first, if you can. The trouble is afterwards to prove he meant to attack you. Very well, we are under contract to help France in case of emergency. What are the possibilities of that emer- gency ? It is only natural that we should consider that. Assume for the moment that Germany recovers, and re-creates her military strength, what is she going to do ? She is not going to attack France. She will develop on the eastern side. She will seek to undermine the ledge that separates her from Russia, with the idea eventually of forming a new German-Russian alliance. Poland stands between. It is to the interest of France that she supports Poland, for the very purpose of stopping a Ger- man-Russian compact. Imagine then a fight between these warring interests, where are we? France supports Po- land, we support France. Here are the bases of a first-class 114 WHEN LABOR RULES war, and Eussia, our late allies, may complicate the whole situation by boldly accepting the attention of Germany. The Labor Movement all over the world is alive to this danger mine created by secret pacts, that the peace of the world will again be subject to the casual flare of a match. The French General Confederation of Labor has passed resolutions stating that, in their opinion the Peace Treaty "carries on the transactions born of secret diplomacy, which is now indefensible," and that " far from establish- ing a new world regime which would render impossible any recurrence of war, it is permitting the continuance of germs of conflict similar to those which brought the late catastrophe upon humanity." The Italian Socialists have said much the same formally, and, as a matter of fact, the diplomacy of Versailles was more secret than that of the Conference of Vienna. We can recall what M. Clemen- ceau said when he went to the conference table. It was a direct assertion that the " system of alliances would be his guiding thought " throughout the negotiations. It is all wrong. We, surely, might have used this tre- mendous upheaval to break from those fusty ways, and set out on a new road which would have been an open road. We must have publicity in order to get honesty and justice in these matters. I don't for a moment suggest that there shall be no relations between powers without it is done at a mass meeting with the press of the world invited to at- tend. But the nation should never be committed on any vital foreign policy without the sanction and ratification of the people's parliament. That is our aim, and, as far as Britain is concerned, that will be the immediate policy to be adopted as soon as Labor is in power. And have you thought that such a lead will have a OUR FOREIGN RELATIONSHIPS 115 tremendous effect on the other nations? You may- say that one side only would have difficulty in exer- cising open diplomacy. We might he discussing some question with Timhuctoo. Timbuctoo may say to us: " This matter must not be mentioned or So-and-So will not like it." What is our course? Well, in the first place, they would know that we should not agree to secrecy. Then, you may think, the matter will go undiscussed. Perhaps at first, and in a few isolated instances. But is it not more probable that the other side will think, as the matter is to be open for the world to examine in the light of day, that they must talk straighter, not bringing into the argument things that will not bear the light of day ? Surely with such a power as Britain concerned that is the more likely, and that will make for the good of all inter- national relationships. Every country will be provoked to put their cards down on the table, and, consequently, we shall be rid of those hole-in-the-corner proceedings which, depending upon the astuteness of individuals, lead to the spirit of revenge on the part of the bested party, and bring, in the end, some such conflict as that we have been through. I may be asked, would we, if others would not treat with us thus openly, refuse to deal with such a Power? My reply is that our responsibility would be first to our own people, the people who had elected us on the platform of open negotiations. We should keep to our policy in face of anything of that sort, even if we could convince ourselves that to treat secretly would ultimately, upon some given point, render a service not against but to our own nation. We should probably be able to cut down the staffs con- 116 WHEN LABOR RULES siderably. For one thing, this open method would see the end of a great deal of espionage — espionage, that is, upon opinions, not entirely upon facts. What I mean is, that we should have to keep staffs for the purpose of necessary inspections and reports upon happenings. We should have our ambassadors and our consulates. These are necessary, both as a connecting link between governments, providing an obvious and easy vehicle of discussion, but also to assist the business relation! between the nations. They might also be the means of encouraging good feeling inter- nationally, but the spy as a spy seeking to weave intrigue and sway opinions would be no more. We should also change the method by which the staffs associated with our Foreign Office are recruited. At the moment this office is the preserve of the wealthy. The diplomats who are trained there must have a private income of their own, which at once rules out merit. This service will, one day, be open to any member of the community who, by his attainments, proves worthy to fulfil the tasks, whether he is a person of wealth and " good connections " or not. This is especially apparent when we think that the future diplomacy will keep in mind the good of the masses, and not of the classes. It will be from the ranks of the workers, more likely than not, that we shall obtain the right men to discuss with other powers the rights and wrongs of questions, since a Labor Government in Britain will be acting not for the vested interests but for the interests of the majority, of the community as a whole. I think I ought to add this : We realize that this matter of Foreign Policy is closely bound up with our commit- ments on the army and navy. The two matters are in- separable. Some, no doubt, think that Labor would let OUR FOREIGN RELATIONSHIPS 117 the fighting forces be dissolved. That we should "let the country go to the dogs." But we understand, of course, that we shall have to have an army and a navy "capable of backing our decisions. We should never countenance any expenditure on these services that would permit of the charge that we were aiming at military strength for offense. We, as a party, have finished with militarism, and especially in the present position of fi- nances in this country we should not be lavish in our ex- penditure for a fighting machine. But there would have to be an army and especially a navy, and these would be maintained. But wars are going to have poor ground to grow upon when once we have persuaded the world to stop their secret intrigues and talk things over in the open. And another thing also of great importance in consider- ing our relations with foreigners : There must be no more private trading in armaments. That this has been al- lowed has merely created a vested interest in war, and it is appalling to think that we have reached this stage in our civilization, and still permit private people to make money out of methods of human destruction. To put it as mildly as possible : The man who makes military equip- ment, who manufactures shot and shell, is not the most troubled man on the day a war is declared and an army mobilized. It would be interesting to know just how much British money or German money was made by the international armament people. Make it illegal for any one but the State itself to make munitions; make it impossible to supply foreign powers with munitions, and you have done as much as anything ever could to bring about disarmament. These things, I believe, are the definite wish of the vast 118 WHEN LABOR RULES majority, of the people of this country. Why then should we have fallen hack to the old tricks of diplomacy ? It is perhaps the greatest and gravest sign of the times, and will inevitahly lead to another disaster on a huge scale unless the people themselves insist on things heing altered. Lahor will alter them as soon as it gets the chance. Lahor, in- deed, is more and more committed to revision of the Peace Treaty. This is not a view belonging merely to us. Here is a criticism taken from an American organ of repute — The New Republic: — Examine the plan of the arrangement between France, Britain, and America in the European setting, and what does it mean? As a result of the War France is left as the one great military power on the Continent of Europe. Her army has a glorious tradition, the staff is the finest in Europe, her greatest rival is completely and permanently disarmed. Against this rival she is to be reinsured by a covenant which is supposed to apply the force of all its members against any kind of sudden aggression. Then a military frontier is given her, which means that at first hint of aggression by the disarmed Germans the whole left flank of the Rhine can be occupied without resistance by a completely armed France. To the French people, terrorized for forty years and in- vaded for four, this may at the moment seem merely defensive caution. But not to the very astute politicians who manage French foreign policy. They know better. They know that the real meaning of this alliance is to give France a free hand in the mastery of the Continent. By making France absolutely immune to the consequences of any policy she may pursue, she is free to pursue any policy. On the Continent of Europe a nation which is in a privileged position of security is fatally tempted to pursue a policy of intrigue and aggression. That privileged position may be the military power of France abso- lutely reinsured by special alliance with sea power. Where that privileged position exists, the temptation to assert mas- OUE FOBEIGN KELATIONSHIPS 119 tery is so intoxicating as to be beyond the power of con- trol. . . . The result will be what it has always been. The other nations, far more insecure than France, will infer that if the authors of the Covenant do not trust the League, why in heaven's name should they? If France needs a special pro- tection, the weaker States certainly do, and the next step is to find allies. Now, in the choice of allies as a- means of protection, no nation has the slightest scruple. Eepublican France and Czarist Eussia, England and Japan, Germany and Turkey; it is not principles, but battalions that count. The number of possible combinations is considerable. All of them, of course, will be purely " defensive." The only thing to remember is that these defensive groups will be extraordi- narily interested in being loyal to one another. And being loyal to a defensive alliance means doing just about what the most determined member of the group insists upon. The result is a set of rival diplomatic groups, each arming for its own defensive purposes, and each intriguing for a good start in the next war. I do not wish necessarily to agree with all that this commentator says, but there is surety in the fear that, unless some one puts right the errors of the Peace Treaty trouble will spring from it in the end. But perhaps we can consider this matter further when we glance more closely at the subject of the League of Nations. CHAPTER XI OUR COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES Peehaps even more important than our relations with foreign countries is our management of our own Colonies and Dependencies. In this chapter I do not propose to speak of those Colonies which have their own Parliaments. Each is an entity unto itself, and, while it would he the ambition of a Labor Government to foster the friendship of all the children of the mother country, we should never interfere in their domestic government. But there are, as we all know, vast tracts of this world's land which fall under the jurisdiction of Great Britain, the peoples of which have no voice in their own manage- ment. Of these countries I should like to set out the policy that Labor would adopt in regard to their govern* ment. At the outset let me say that, in bidding for the right to rule, we make no ephemeral appeal. These prob- lems of National and Colonial Government, and, indeed, all relationships that affect the country and the Empire, have been carefully weighed by many experts who have given much thought, on behalf of Labor, to these problems. And when I set down here the statement that we should change radically many of the institutions which have grown up during the years, I would like my readers to understand that the effects of such changes have been carefully gone into and weighed by minds amply able to adjudicate upon the effect of such changes. 120 OUR COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 121 It is a fact which we do not always recognize, that prac- tically a quarter of the earth, and over a quarter of the earth's inhabitants are included within the British Em- pire, and that of the four hundred and thirty-five millions who inhabit these domains only sixty-five millions (and these include those in the United Kingdom and the Do- minions) enjoy a responsible government. And this leaves a vast conglomerate mass of varying races, with diverse religions and in different stages of civilization, number- ing in all three hundred and seventy millions, who have no control over the way they are governed, and whose des- tinies are really guided by gentlemen who sit in little offices in Whitehall, London. In view of this it is obvious that Labor must have an imperial policy based upon its eternal principles of mutual goodwill, of government for the good of the majorities, of services, not to private or vested inter- ests of the capitalists, but to the common will of the com- mon citizen, which form the basis of our own home policy. I know of no better example which it might profit us to study than that of Africa — that part of Africa which is governed either as crowned colonies, or protectorates. That rules out the Union of South Africa, which is a self- governing dominion, and leaves — though you may not think it — a million and a half square miles of territory, and twenty-eight million Africans who are without the power of raising a voice, subject to our rule. The little gentle- men in "Whitehall are the autocrats who dictate to this vast community of people. We ought to remember that this community in its numbers almost equals the entire popula- tion of Great Britain. There are over twenty millions in West Central Africa, which includes Nigeria, the Gold 123 WHEN LABOE KULES Coast, Sierra Leone and Gambia ; nearly eight millions in East Central Africa ; over half a million in South Africa (exclusive of the dominion governed from the Cape) ; a million and a half in Khodesia, and three millions in the Sudan. Now Labor says that it is not right that these human beings should have their lives directed by strings pulled in Whitehall. We have acquired practically the whole of this African Empire between 1880 and 1900. It was the outcome of that virulent attack of economic imperial- ism which has, unfortunately, affected most of the great powers of Europe during the past thirty years or so. Chamberlain the greater was, of course, the outstanding exponent of this imperialism, and he quite frankly ad- mitted that the acquisitions were mainly of an economic value, in order to provide the markets with the products of British industry, to provide sources of raw materials, and a profitable field of investments for British capital. In other words, we were out to exploit these tropical pos- sessions for the benefit of British capital. The Empire in Africa offers, perhaps, the best possible ground-work for the study of the principles of retrogres- sion in Government, and the principles of Labor in Gov- ernment, that we could find in the whole of our Empire. There are two distinct policies in Africa which, for the purpose of convenience, may be described as the African policy and the European policy. In broad terms, the former favors the preservation of native rights in the land, and the development of native possessions. The European policy favors the economic development of the country by European syndicates and European money, these govern- jaents " hiring " forced native labor ,to do their work- OUK COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 123 Let us, for a moment, glance at the latter system. In the first place, it confines the native population into " re- serves," and gives to that population no sort of opening even within those reserves. Outside these barriers it per- mits European companies or individuals to come in and take leases upon immense areas of land. It permits these syndicates to make the natives work for them on prac- tically no wage. It closes its eyes entirely to any effort to encourage the native population either in the direction of acquiring education, or in the way of developing the land which through many generations has belonged to them. It ignores any hope of creating self-respecting races of African producers with a security of tenure of the land, and, instead, looks upon the native as a likely gate through which to recruit servile laborers who will work to create interest upon European capital. Labor can have nothing to do with this policy. It is entirely retrograde, it is arrogant, it is the rough-shod selfish method of autocracy, and obviously is antagonistic to Labor's policy of service for the majority. Now the African policy aims at the development of the native's interests. It applies practically all over Central Africa, with its four hundred and forty-five thousand square miles of territory. It assists the native population to develop the resources of the land by growing crops and gathering products for export. Where European capital is introduced there is a laudable effort to confine its opera- tions within limits which do not infringe the opportunities and the progress of the native people. It is true that it permits licenses to be issued to the European merchant for the collection of forest products (but these are definitely fixed for a term of years not exceeding ten), and that the 124 WHEN LABOR RULES native communities are consulted as to the issue of these licenses and are granted a portion of the fees. In regard to actual cultivation there is a limit of one square mile per applicant put upon the amount of land which can be leased to Europeans, and the very wise pro- viso that no group of persons is enabled to hold more than three square miles. The idea behind all this is quite obvi- ous. It is that the land belongs to the natives who have so long inhabited it, and that the coming of the white man should have the effect not of stealing the benefits of that land, but of seeking to uplift the native and make his own possessions worth more. Before considering what Labor's idea of dealing with these problems would be, let us, for a moment, glance at the results of the two policies upon labor and the social condi- tions of the population, and as to the economic develop- ments of the territories. Those who support the European policy say that, if the natives are left alone, they have not the experience, nor the capital, nor the initiative properly to develop their possessions to the general good of the world. The natives, they say, are indolent, and, unless out- side influence and capital is introduced, much product, for which the world is in need, will lie fallow. You would be amazed at the number of intelligent Britishers who un- hesitatingly swallow this argument, and unblushingly re- peat it. But the facts are entirely against them. The Labor Party has collected, and has issued, reports which throw a strange and striking light upon the subject. It is beyond question that the native can beat the white man, that is if the native receives reasonable encourage- ment from the administration. In Nigeria, in West Africa, we have the African policy in operation. The na- OUE COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 135 tive communities work their own land as free men. They cultivate, gather, and sell to European markets, palm- kernels, cocoa, cotton, rubher, ground-nuts, and other things. In British East Africa, and Nyassaland, the most fertile land has been alienated to European companies who employ the natives to produce cotton, hides, skins, coffee, oil, copra, ground-nuts, etc. and a comparison between the exports of these territories shows that the results of the African policy compare quite favorably with the other. African- Policy Area Population Exports Export per head sq. miles in 1,000's. 1913, in £'s of population Nigeria 336,000 16,500 7,352,377 £0 8 10 Gold Coast 80,000 1,500 5,427,106 * 3 12 Gambia 4,500 200 867,187* 4 5 Sierra Leone 24,195 1,403 1,731,252 13 European Policy B. East Africa . . . 246,322 2,800 1,039,252 * 7 1 Nyassaland 39,573 1,200 234,317 2 * Excluding bullion and specie. It is of course, true that the natural wealth of British tropical Western Africa is far greater than that of East Africa. But when due weight has been given to this fact it is clear from these figures that the economic exploita- tion of African territory under the African Policy is more successful than under the European Policy. But, of course, there is an obviously more important side to this problem than the mere export figures. These may, or should indicate a certain prosperity among the natives, but Labor would be far more concerned with the result of Government upon the social conditions of the people. The immediate result of the European policy 126 WHEN LABOR EULES has been to reproduce in a certain form, on African soil, the same labor problems that we have at home. The Euro- peans have come in, taken vast tracts of land, and pushed the natives into confined areas. Even in these areas the natives have no title, and may be pushed on like so many sheep. One gets examples of white men who have suddenly come into possession, through their capital, of tracts of land upon which the homesteads of hundreds of natives have hitherto been located. The natives have to go, Capital wins. This, of course, creates- discontent, which is only added to by the fact that the white man immediately im- poses taxes upon the natives, which taxes can only be paid by the native undertaking to work for the white man and so earning money. The interested will at once answer that all labor in British East Africa is free; there is no slavery. But these people conveniently forget the taxes which the native is forced to pay, and which he can only pay by what really amounts to slavery in the white man's interest. How else could he pay them ? He has no other means of earning money, unless it could be by the sale of commodi- ties. But the white man has taken his land. How, there- fore, can he grow things which are marketable? So he has to sell his labor. Eor what little land is left to the native is overcrowded to the point of overflowing. There is another subtle law in Nyassaland, which is that the native who stays at home pays double the tax that the employee is called upon to pay. If this is not forcing the native to work for the white man I don't know what is. I should say that increased tax acts as a veritable recruiting sergeant for the army of laborers under the white man. OTJK COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 127 There is also what is known as moral suasion. One finds the police going with the tax collector, and one knows of appeals to the chiefs who, for the favor of the white man and so that they shall not undermine their own au- thority, put a form of compulsion upon their subjects. The European, you see, in tropical Africa, is not huilt to work the land himself, hut must get native labor, and the moment the native is not looked upon as the rightful owner he is a predestined laborer in the interests of Euro- peans. It is easy to understand that compulsion in various forms is sooner or later applied. And so you get a sullen and unresponsive community. Punishments in the shape of fines and floggings constantly occur. These things naturally lead to uprisings, with the inevitable loss of life and calling in of the military. It has also, unfortunately, to be admitted that sanitary and moral conditions are not so good under the white man's rule as they are in the native settlements, where the chiefs of the community are the rulers of the community. The physical conditions of the laborers deteriorate. The na- tives do not get as good food as they did in their own' villages. Disease is very prevalent, and it is to be feared that the Government consider their responsibilities ended when they send an inspector to see that the contract rates of pay are observed. Do you blame the native that he idles ? Can you blame him that he talks in corners of sedi- tion ? and that his love for the British is not fostered ? It is difficult to blame him if he deserts, which, in some parts of Africa, is a criminal offense. Can you not readily un- derstand there is a grave danger to-day of insurrection ? As against this it is good to admit that, where the African policy has been allowed to exist, one sees the na- 138 WHEN LABOE RULES tive communities working their own land as free men, liv- ing in comfort and in harmony under their chiefs, and themselves governing themselves in their own country. Now, hoth in regard to Africa and other dependencies, Labor has its principles, and the first one is that there should he no economic exploitation of the natives by the white man. We shall look upon the native as a free man ; we shall endeavor to acquire for him the opportunity of development, and to retain for him the economic resources of his own land. The land will, under us, be treated as the property of the native community or communities. We shall bring in Acts of Parliament to make their tenure secure. We shall legislate definitely against alienation of land to Europeans. Where expensive machinery, expert advice, etc., are required we, as the Government, will supply the necessary capital and necessary instruction, so that the best may be obtained in the way of products. If any concessions of land are made to Europeans they must be in the shape of short time leases, and granted with the consent of the native community, and then only in re- stricted areas. Mines, railways, and any monopolies should be run by the State for the community as a whole. We shall have no slave-trading. We shall have no pawning of persons, as is permitted at present, for this is slavery. The pro- hibition of compulsory labor will be absolute, and all voluntary labor must be paid by a wage in cash to the laborer himself, and not to any tribal chief, who shall be stripped of all power to call out those under him in order to provide, under pressure, an army of workers for any white man. Taxation should be the same for all, whether they work OUR COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 129 for themselves or for Europeans. It may be said that, in the beginning, this will make labor scarce and no doubt it will. It will put up the price of it, perhaps, but not unreasonably, and, if the attractions offered are sufficient, free labor will, in the end, be as sufficient as forced labor is now. The whole system of Government will have to be altered. At the present time a Governor is appointed by the Crown. There is then appointed an Executive Council, composed of officials, and a Legislative Council, nominated by the Government, and composed mostly of officials. Those that do not fall under that heading are representatives of Euro- pean commerce, as a rule. Laws are made by the Govern- ment, though, on occasions, natives are allowed a certain number of nominees. These responsibilities all the time rest with the Colonial Office, and the native's voice goes unheard, and the native's quite legitimate aspirations are unvoiced. Labor would aim at the establishment of a genuine repre- sentative of the natives upon the Councils and, as educa- tion progressed, a deepening of the responsibilities of government. This might first operate through local government in small areas, and apply to the supervision of sanitation, roads, and education, and would ultimately lead up to the development of a responsible Government for the whole country. Eventually the general interests of such dependencies as these would come under the eye of the League of Nations. In the African colonies, of all needs the one most para- mount is that of education. We have nowhere in Africa made a serious attempt to give the African knowledge which would make him capable of understanding and 130 WHEN LABOE KTJLES controlling the circumstances that the Government imposes upon him. It is to be feared that the natives have been deliberately kept uneducated and ignorant, in the hope that they may more easily be used for the benefit of the white man. In Nigeria the revenue was two million eight hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling — the expenditure on education was forty-six thousand. In British East Africa the revenue was three hundred and twenty-six thousand — the cost of education one thousand two hundred and fifty — the wage of a good many middle-class men. It is our prin- ciple that Government under Labor rule shall aim at condi- tions in which the native will take his place as a free man in the economic system, utilizing for himself the riches of his own country, and taking his place as a free citizen. To this end education is the first essential among our many duties to these fellow-subjects of ours. Primary educa- tion must be established; training colleges must be pro- vided; an African university should be an immediate object. Let us not seek what we can make out of these millions of fellow human beings, but let us rather ask our- selves what we can do to make their life fuller and more independent, and more worth living. Let us not extract all we can, but let us give them the results of our own education. For one thing, let us provide doctors, giving them a sanitary service adequate to fight the mosquito, the tsetse fly, and so breaking down the great barrier of native ignorance and superstition, and so irrigate this breeding-ground of plague and disease. Labor's aim will be to civilize, not to exploit the African. CHAPTER XII INDIA It is doubtful if any international question presents so many difficulties as that of the government of India. Here again we have strings running all the way from Whitehall to the Far East, and pulling the reins of control. The Indian people themselves have practically no voice in the matter of their own destinies. We know recently that they have tried to impress their will upon the officials — hence the terrible events of Amritsar. But the fact that a British general was convinced it was right to fire upon a body of natives in a meeting, shows — whatever the rights or wrongs of that particular episode may be — that there is a very big dissatisfaction on the part of the natives as to the way they are governed, and a very genuine failure on the part of the governors, seeing that it needs such show of force in order to impress their judgments upon the peo- ple whom they rule. India is a very complicated problem. It contains, for instance, roughly one-fifth of the human population of the earth, and it is easy to understand that a few gentlemen sitting in Whitehall cannot, with any degree of success, rule 315,000,000 souls. It is not as though these people were all of one religion, or even all of one tongue. They are themselves divided into many races. There are no fewer than 180 distinct languages spoken in India, some of which are as diverse as Bussian and English. They 131 132 WHEN LABOR RULES have nine quite dominating religions, ranging from Hin- duism to Christianity. There are 2000 castes, none of whom may intermarry with the other. Probably 70,000,- 000 of these people are under the rule of Indian princes who owe their religions to the British Empire. The re- mainder are governed by officials who have their impetus and origins in Whitehall. The task for the future is, how can all these different and varying people be brought together in unity, and carry on their own government? The Parliamentary control of India does not date back a very long way. If we go back far enough we find the East India Company seeking to create trade connections among numerous tribes busily engaged in fighting each other. The Company employed force to combat this, and thus a great part of the country was conquered and placed under some sort of discipline. Then in 1858 the Company was abolished, and Parliament assumed direct control in India. That is how India came under our rule, and though with the best intentions, no doubt, in the world, we set out to govern the country for the good of the Indians, it certainly did happen that, through officers being ap- pointed, and through the Company being disbanded, com- mittees that used to keep a watchful eye on the adminis- tration of the country ceased to exist also, and Parliament began to lose track of Indian affairs, and ceased to under- stand them. I am not seeking to criticize these officers who ruled on behalf of this country. There have been many able and upright men who dispensed justice, kept the peace, made almost interminable railways and roads, carried out great irrigation schemes over millions of acres, and indeed ac- INDIA 133 quitted the country in a thoroughly modern manner. The great fault that crept in, however, was that these officials never made any effort to train the native himself to do this work for himself. With perhaps a touch of arrogant su- periority, the white man, who did these things, very likely, at the back of his mind, hud the notion that he was helping the natives, but he never looked upon his dark-skinned brother as his kin, and never sought to teach him 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. India ought to become a self-governing dominion within a British Commonwealth, and under Labor it would be given every opportunity of development to this end. I know it could not happen quickly. I am not suggesting that, if a Labor Government be elected to-morrow, the government of India in London would cease the next day. One has to educate. But what I do say is that we have not shaped any policy at all to this end. We have, I know, established a system of education on Western lines up to a degree, and I think five or six per cent, of the people can now read and write their own language. Two persons out of every 300 can speak English, and — let me underline this — you must understand that English is the only lan- guage in which the government of India can be conducted. It is not as though among the educated classes of natives there are not sufficient Indians to take over some sort of control. There are. And, of course, Lord Morley, in 1909, recognized this 'when he allowed members to be elected to the Legislative Councils. They were only given a voice, and no power, because Government retained al- 134 WHEN LABOR RULES ways the majority of- members, which means the voting power. 'And even he, when he carried out this reform, refused to acknowledge that he had as a goal the establish- ment of self-government. Truly we have got one stage beyond that now, because as a result of the Hindus and the Mohammedans joining forces in 1916, Mr. Montague definitely asserted that responsible government was now the goal of British policy in India. His report, however, did not carry this out. It is a fact that, at the moment, there would be very few people in India among the natives who would under- stand the significance of the power to vote. This means that responsible government, as in Canada and in the other colonies, could not be arranged just now. But 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 gov- ernment in the provinces, increasing these ppwers as the natives became experienced and efficient in the arts of government. This is an integral part of the Labor policy with regard to all Colonies and Dependencies. We wish to secure to the natives in all parts of our dominions effective protection against the excess of capitalist colonization, and we wish to create, in all these dependencies, a system of Home Bule, so soon as the degree of civilization can be attained which will make it possible. CHAPTER XIII IEELAND And if we can see our way to give freedom to the African and Indian native, what of Ireland? The history of Ireland is a tragedy of errors. If we go back far enough the trouble lies, perhaps, in the fact that, when the Normans conquered England, they divided up the country and left Ireland. If only they had finished the job we might have seen some sort of unity among the race who occupies both Great Britain and Ireland, but the Irish were, at that time, left alone, and then began the separation which the succeeding generations have made more and more definite. But to come to more recent times, if this country had only kept faith with such Nationalists as Parnell and Red- mond, the present terrible, indeed tragic situation could never have arisen. For how long did the Liberals in Par- liament get the support of the Irish Nationalists ? And why? Because through constitutional methods the Irish hoped, at the instigation of the Liberals, to obtain Home Rule. The cry for that is as old as my memory of politics. It takes us back to Gladstone, and, if we , think in a de- tached way of the matter, it is inconceivable to think that we have, to-day, an army in Ireland whose chief duty it is to keep the Irish from realizing their very natural am- bition of attaining self-government. The Irish have a genuine complaint. They have been 135 136 WHEN LABOR RULES made, for many years, the hub of a political controversy, of mere political intrigue; the battleground of/party politics. When one talks of the settling of the Irish question, the first difficulty always to be mentioned is, of course, the Ulster Orangemen. It would be a very foolish man who attempted to solve that Irish problem and ignore that there was also an Ulster problem. But before considering it, do not let us forget that the very strong feeling — almost amounting to bitterness and hatred — that exists to-day in many parts of the northeast of Ulster is due to the machi- nations of responsible politicians. It would be a very simple matter for me to give extracts from the speeches of these responsible statesmen, occupying the highest positions in the land, which show them to be guilty of nothing short of treason. And, if one connects these speeches with an already inflamed people, it is easy to understand the antagonism and suspicion that exists. One does instinctively condemn the outrages and mur- ders that have taken place of late in Ireland, and there is no man worthy of the name of Labor Leader who would not condemn them because of their brutality and wicked- ness, and I would like to point out to these Sinn Feiners that, while one understands how far these responsible statesmen of England have almost justified the inflamed feelings which they express, the malcontents must remem- ber that murder and outrage is a method that never has succeeded, and never will succeed in all this world's his- tory. The Curragh episode, which resulted in important gen- erals refusing to obey the King's regulations, struck almost a fatal blow to discipline and constitutional government, IRELAND 137 and from that, and other incidents prior and subsequent, the present state of Ireland can be traced. But, even allow- ing for this, I am firmly convinced that the feeling of apprehension of the Ulster people must be considered. Writing at a moment when things are in a state of flux, when it is difficult to see just which way the road is bend- ing, I do not hesitate to say that, if the provocation is sufficiently severe, the Ulster men unquestionably will fight, not constitutionally through the ballot boxes, but literally with the bayonet. Whether this suddenly flares up, or whether it is a danger that will come to a head in the future, it must not be taken that I mean any Government should allow themselves to be bullied or browbeaten into taking action with what they do not feel is legitimate policy, because of a threat. In fact, it must be obvious to any impartial observer that, if it is right of the Govern- ment not to submit to a threat from the Sinn Feiners, it is not right that they should submit to a threat from the Ulster men. That logic is unanswerable. We have got to get a much more detached view of the whole question. We have got to forget Carson, indeed to sink all personalities, and see if we cannot apply to Ire- land the general principles we would apply to other de- pendencies. Our signatures are on the Peace Treaty, are they not ? And there we have made a fine gesture before the world in favor of the small peoples. The little fellows are to have the same independence as the big ones. A man shall run his small garden as much in accordance with his own desires as the owner of the mansion and the hundred acres. Then how can we browbeat Ireland into submis- sion to our views, while, at the same time we trample in jackboots across bis flower beds? 138 WHEN LABOK EULES / 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 Lahor conies into power, they will have to wait only that long before they get their freedom. I do not think a republic would be right. I believe that is not a necessary part of the granting of freedom to that country. I am against it, and I believe the great masses of people are against it, both in this country and in Ire- land. Why could not a plebiscite be taken on the ques- tion. This has been done in other countries, and it seems to me we might accord to our neighbors the liberty we grant to far away Silesia. I shall, no doubt, be answered with the assertion that the Irish are split themselves — and so they are. But the political opportunists in Parliament have done their best to exaggerate and perpetuate this division of opinion. No really honest and generous effort has been made to unite the Irish, yet I have reason for the hope that unity, to a certain and sufficient degree, could be obtained. The railwaymen in Ireland are united. Here you have men of both the north and south joining together in one industrial organization. There are no differences between theiri, and, in this matter of their daily jobs, the religious note, so prominent in politics, does not intrude. I know the Irish are a peculiar race. They are very lovable and very charming. One will find in their houses a Sinn Feiner, a Unionist, a Catholic, and a Protestant mixing in perfect amity, dining together and being in agreement on most things, on as many things as you would find the average dinner party in the average English house. Yet, to-morrow, the Sinn Feiner and the Unionist will be IEELAND 139 firing at each other from behind barricades! It would be comic if it did not happen to be tragic. Still, my hope is that, if we withdraw the irritation provided by the jackboot, Ireland will work out its salva- vation through industrial association rather than through political propaganda. In business all shades of political and religious thought mix at ease, and that is the reason I think the Trades Union and the Labor Party will be able to do what the heated and more biased political parties have failed in. The majority should decide, and, of course, there must be safeguards for the liberty of minorities. As a start I would grant dominion Home Rule. Ulster ? Ulster, too, should make her own choice. Why not ? But one thing I would insist upon. If Ulster voted not to ac- cept an all-Irish Parliament, they would remain under the British Parliament, that's all, until such time as they cared to change. I would never recognize Ireland as two nations with two Parliaments. How could you? Look at the map. Its interests must be the same; it is so compact, so com- plete a country. It would be wrong to permit its parti- tion. There would be only four counties who would vote to remain under British rule, even to-day, and one would have a reasonable hope that, when a beneficial system of government by an Irish Parliament had been running. for a little time, unity of the race would result. Ireland must be a nation, and then her people will prosper. It has been argued that, if Ireland does become a na- tion, with her own Parliament and power, therefore, to make her own laws, she would set up a tariff wall against us, and the danger of her nearness has been pointed at in 140 WHEN LABOB RULES case she made any association with other and possible enemy countries. People who make this assertion have not studied the actual conditions of our business relations with Ireland. If we look at the normal returns of her imports and ex- ports to us and from us, we shall discover that the figures practically balance. This rather seems to make an end of any reasonable move on Ireland's part, should she be a power under herself, to fight us in the way of protec- tions. There is another point, too, perhaps even more impor- tant, that would keep her in the straight path-of-free-trade that is. It is the fact that Ireland is dependent on us for her coal, and you must remember that at present coal is easily the most important element in manufactures. Some might say that America can supply Ireland with coal. To-day she might, but, in anything like normal conditions, Ireland would have only one economic source of supplies, and that would be England. One more factor there is — a social one, perhaps the most important of all — which makes me believe in a possibility of better understanding between the divergent minds in Ireland. I refer to the inter-marrying between North and South, and the many Irishmen there are in England with their families. If there were no possibility of peace among the factions in Ireland, we should have to believe that there is no domestic felicity in Ireland, for the oppos- ing groups inter-marry freely, and, presumably, are able to sink their political differences in the larger efforts of household management. Again, the suggestion that the Irish people in England are all filled with bitter hatred towards the English is IRELAND 141 mere moonshine. All that they have is a pride in na- tionality and — I grant you this — a hatred for what has been misgovernment, and for the arrogant gesture that comes from Dublin Castle, a gesture both in London and in Dublin which has stifled every legitimate aspiration of the Irish people. I may be told that the results of the 1920 elections dis- prove my view concerning an Irish republic. If I could believe that was the considered judgment of the Irish peo- ple, it would indeed be conclusive evidence, but it must be clearly kept in mind that the past eighteen months, has created a very effective appeal to the Irish people to vote on the broad national plane — " Ireland, A Nation " — and I assert, with knowledge, that there are not only large masses of moderate people who are not in favor of a re- public, but who, by the blundering of the Government, and the mishandling of the Irish situation, have found themselves crushed. Many responsible persons, with in- fluence and power, have in effect said to me : " If we could only be satisfied that we were not being further humbugged- and tricked, and if we could only believe that a real at- tempt was to be made to do justice to Ireland, we would have some basis of appeal in the country, of using what influence and power we have, and you would find the ex- tremists would be greatly in the minority." Since, so far, all efforts made by any political party have failed, it might, with justice, be asked of the Labor Party what steps it would take in order to settle Ireland, to give it peace and prosperity. My first endeavor would be to establish — what really is the first essential to the solution — a better atmosphere. I would invite both the Sinn Feiners and Ulstermen to join the organized workers of 142 WHEN LABOK ETJLES Ireland in a frank and open discussion of the situation. I can see the bigoted gentlemen smiling at the suggestion, and thinking they would not come, these varying factions. But I know they would come. And it is because we have- proved in our trade union meetings that these apparently hostile forces will meet around the conference table in per- fect amity, and not each for his own narrow interests, I am confident that, with the right atmosphere, they would fore- gather to settle this more national problem. It is because so many of them do not believe in the promises that have been made to them, and that, therefore, they are so sus- picious of any overture from anywhere, that hesitation might be expected in this suggested discussion. But I do want to say that no one is at heart more anxious for a solution than those who are at the head of the Sinn Fein movement. They are not fools. They are men who love their country, and are prepared to make great sacrifices for it. But they also know that the present state of affairs cannot continue. They know that nothing would be so foolish as a rising against the military, and, whilst re- taining their claim and wielding the power and influence they do, they would certainly welcome a real effort to end this long, bitter, and tragic chapter in our own as well as Ireland's history. It is unquestionable that the British people, or, at least the large majority of them, not having any personal knowl- edge of Ireland or the Irish, look upon them as hopeless and violent imbeciles. They have not worried to under- stand how the present position has grown up, and they certainly do not give the Sinn Fein any credit for modera- tion or any sense of justice. These people would be amazed if they had the opportunity of examining the system which IRELAND 143 is being adopted by the heads, of trying their own cases in their own courts. The way these cases have been handled proves beyond all shadow of doubt the fact that' those responsible for the. Sinn Fein direction are utterly and completely opposed to crime. They punish their own members severely, and with impartiality if they have out- raged what the courts consider justice. When, moreover, the officials have considered it part of their plans to seize the mails, I am told that no one has suffered pecuniary loss. After the mails have been searched postal orders and checks are never interfered with, but are sent on to their proper recipients, and this, at least, is evidence that they are not a set of brigands, as most people in Eng- land seem to imagine. CHAPTEE XIV , FINANCE The first and most important thing to remember when dealing with the finances of the country, especially in regard to the individual, is the ability to pay. You must not overtax a man ; you must not overtax an industry ; or it will rebound against the community to every one's hurt. 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. What we have got to meet is the imme- diate bill, and that is the Budget. Well, our Budget for some time may be over a thousand millions sterling — more than five times what it was before the War. How are we going to obtain this money? No Chancellor of the Exchequer has ever had such a serious problem put before him. We must admit that, even though we are, some of us, thoroughly convinced that most of the taxation is fundamentally wrong. Personally, I can see no permanent justification for the excess profits tax. When it was originally put on it was bad. But it had to be done in order to meet a ter- rible emergency. Ultimately, it must, of course, dis- appear, because it puts a handicap upon all business, and is, in fact, an anchor on the ship of State. It is also a direct incentive to " ca'-canny," and destroys initiative. Still, the money must be found, and the only alterna- tive I can see is a capital levy. There is tremendous opposition to this, I know, but then 144 FINANCE 145 one would not anticipate that people with capital would submit without a word to a levy being made upon it. They say, with some truth, why should they have their money taken from them because they have been suffi- ciently industrious and thrifty to make and to save it, whereas the spendthrift, who is not of equal value to the community, goes practically, if not entirely, free? It is true that the drones are no good in the hives, and it is true that the thrifty man is of more value to the country than the spendthrift, because he lends out his money and so develops business. You can never get equality of sacrifice. For the mo- ment, and from a national point of view, it is a matter of business, and let us view it entirely as a business propo- sition. Suppose a man is left an estate heavily mortgaged. He has two alternatives as to what to do with that estate. , He can go on year after year paying interest on the mort- gage, and, perhaps, being able to reduce the original amount slightly as well. It is a stone round his neck probably for his lifetime, and he, no doubt, would consider himself fortunate if he could clear the debt in time for his sons, or his next of kin, to inherit the estate free. 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 groundj and so I shall be free." Well, as a commercial proposition, there is no doubt it is the better course to pursue. Sell what is necessary, and clear yourself. It is the same way With a capital tax. We have a tre- mendous debt to clear. A capital levy, on a reasonable 146 WHEN LABOR RULES percentage, would probably realize a thousand millions sterling. No other interest to pay upon that thousand millions any longer, and every tax-payer in the country . would feel the immediate benefit of that. How would it be done? Suppose there are no more Mr. Smiths to buy your plot of ground! It is all very well, people say, to tell us we have diamonds, or other valuables, and we must sell them. Who is going to buy ? You cannot have sellers without buyers. That is perfectly true, but what the argument omits, in this particular case, is that the vast proportion of this huge debt is owned by the State itself, and to raise a levy would, in a large measure, merely mean canceling the State's debt to the individual. What I mean is this: 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. 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. Apart from this exceptional emergency there will, when Labor comes into power, I hope be only one tax — income- tax. We stand absolutely for the entire abolition of all indirect taxation. You will not help the Exchequer of the country by paying more for your wine, or your cigars, or your sugar, or anything. You will know exactly what you are paying, because you pay it direct, and in no round- about way. It is far better for the people to know what they have to pay, and while, of course, they will make an FINANCE 147 equivalent saving on the goods they buy, because prices will at once fall tremendously, they would have increased that sense of responsibility towards the State which a genu- ine realization of their contribution towards the State must inevitably bring. I have been asked what the amount of the income-tax is likely to be. Of course it cannot be answered. Con- ditions change, and the upheaval of the War has made costly difficulties which will disappear in due course. But I do think by this one simple, straightforward method of taxation a lot of unnecessary overlapping in the work of various departments will be saved, and this will affect, in the end, the amount that has to be paid. It is doubtful if it will go any higher than it is to-day to the average man, though, of course, we should insist upon the ex- tremely wealthy man paying a much greater proportion than he does now. I should apply this direct taxation even to houses, and make the tenant pay direct rather than through the land- lord. It develops citizenship, and brings home to every one a consciousness of their necessary contribution and their liability to the State. Death duties would remain — very much so! There is no more justifiable source of income than these, and we should considerably increase those at present ruling. I want to justify death duties on the strongest possible" grounds, and one of these grounds, which is not always thought of, is the curtailment and limitation of brain ability which follows the easy position of inherited wealth. Whatever may be said for the man who has acquired wealth by his own individual effort and brain, there is nothing to be said for that wealth being made the medium 148 . WHEN LABOE RULES of preventing his son or sons giving the nation the benefit of their brains. Dozens of instances could be collected supporting the fact that this does happen. How could it be otherwise? A young man of twenty finds himself in possession of an enormous fortune. The chances are that he slacks and lazes, and the certainty is that he does not develop and expand his abilities as he very likely would if he had the prod of having to earn his own liveli- hood. It is that that makes a man strive for develop- ment, and improvement, and advancement, and it is that striving which makes the world go round. So we shall increase the death duties enormously, and one effect, no doubt, will be to make men hoard their money less and use it more, though everything} of course, is gradually shaping towards a more equal distribution of money, so that we shall not have so many very wealthy men, but instead, very many more men comfortably off. If we take the principle I set out with in this chapter — the ability to pay — and apply it here, who has a greater ability to pay a tax, however high, than the man who hasn't yet but will come by chance into possession of the very money that is to be taxed ? It would have the inevitable effect of breaking up some of the big estates, but that would not matter very much except to a very few individuals. Experience, to sum the matter up, has proved that, despite the very consider- able opposition that was originally put up when the death duties were first introduced, they have proved in their working a really satisfactory tax. When we think of finance, it is rather interesting to speculate on the chances of one day establishing a world- wide currency. It is a possibility that, perhaps, is not so FINANCE 149 far off as some people suspect. With the League of Na- tions possible, with it very much further developed than it is to-day, and with a complete representation from other nations upon it, I don't see any real difficulty, or any in- surmountable difficulty, in establishing the same coinage all over the world — at all events, shall we say, for the moment, all over Europe, where in the main coinage is a gold one. This would obliterate the exchanges on foreign countries, which have caused such havoc since the armistice. Incidentally, too, they have caused a good deal of gam- bling, and that is not a good thing. Our money has gone abroad to buy German marks, and that is much worse than ordinary stock-exchange speculation, because, even though the gambling element is there, the money is, as a rule, being used in the development of business. To cut out the exchanges would be a very big thing, and would vastly simplify international business relation- ships. There would be the British sovereign, which would* be of the same value in every country in Europe, that is if they took the English coinage as the one that would be adopted. I should think probably a new coinage, would be created, working on the metric system. But still, that is a detail. The League of Nations 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 hold- ing. These notes would be used, of course, for business. It would be possible to arrange credits for countries on a percentage system of their holding. Whatever the banks can do now, that bank could do, either through the exist- ing banking organization, or through some other system which could be created. It would certainly simplify busi- 150 WHEN LABOR RULES ness relations between one country and another, and to simplify things means to improve them, to cut out waste and to make for efficiency. But, you might object, you must have exchanges, because a pound will buy more labor in, shall we say, Belgium, than it will in, shall we say, Birmingham. That is per- fectly true, and, until that is changed, you could not have an international currency. It ought to be changed. Why should we not have a more equal standard of wages all over Europe? When Labor is in power, not only here but in other countries, it seems to me quite feasible that the railwayman, or the bricklayer, or the miner, should be able to demand the same standard of wages and of living, whether he works in England, or whether he works in France, or in Rumania. These reforms, if they could be accomplished — and I am only throwing it out here in quite a speculative way — would help to stabilize the world in general, as well as to balance up the benefits of life among all human beings. There is another side of the nation's finances I would like to touch upon. It is the instinctive antagonism of the average business man to the notion of Labor being in power. That great and useful community, comprised of busi- ness men as apart from wage earners or the professional classes, seems to think that we should at once cheerily seize their money and their connections and divert all the proceeds to some sort of sharing out scheme among the manual laborers. That, of course, is the result of igno- rance. I wish business men would drop their instinctive hostility to our principles, and spend a little time in study- ing our aims. There is, of course, a sphere for the business FINANCE 151 man in every state of society. There is a very real rcdson d'etre for the financier. True it is that what is generally called high finance has been the medium for abuses, espe- cially in America before Koosevelt made his great attack upon " big business." But because on occasions — alas ! too often — the public has been badly gulled and fleeced by the business financier, it does not follow that genuine finan- cial operations are not of benefit to the general community. They are. Money must come from somewhere to make work pos- sible, and it is only the extremist, who is a man with warped enthusiasm and narrow inspiration, who wants to seize the nation's works and money and valuables and dis- tribute them among those of his own kind. That is not a Labor program. It is anarchy. And we will have noth- ing to do with anarchy. That is where critics like the Duke of Northumberland go astray. He has asserted that determined effort was being made to insure unity of action with the railwaymen and transport workers in Ireland and those in England, and the miners were to co-operate by a fresh agitation for an increase of wages. All this was to be supported by the Eussian Bolsheviks. In Ireland, too, parties which were working, the one for national inde- pendence, and the other for a world-wide revolution, were in alliance. They were also in alliance with national so- cialism. They were working in England with various Labor organizations, who again were in close touch with the Soviet Government. He knew also that " there was the closest intimacy between all these parties and the Na- tionalist movement in India and in Egypt. It was a world-wide conspiracy aimed at the destruction of the British Empire*" 152 WHEN LABOE EULES We do not aim to destroy the British Empire. We aim to change its Government, so that there shall be no chance of uprising, and so that peace and justice, and not autoc- racy, shall govern us. Such loose talk as I have quoted does a lot of harm. That the Duke of Northumberland was erroneous is shown by the fact that his remarks con- necting us with the Bolshevik rulers of Russia, were made only a little after the Trades Union Congress had given a decided vote against the attendance at the Moscow In- ternational. I am afraid he is, like many others, merely striving to create a panic against Labor by making asser- tions which have no foundation in fact. The only revolution we aim at is already here. It has nothing to do with machine guns. It has to do with the control of affairs. We want to control them — we mean to control them — because for too long Labor has been ex- ploited for the good of the few. That does not mean that Labor wishes to exploit capital. Let us look at this question of the financier. Who and what is he? You can divide him under two headings. Let us take the man who provides capital for the de- velopment of the business. No one could suggest for a moment that he was anything other than a desirable and useful citizen, rendering a great service to the community. To suggest that a man occupying that position is a para- site is, of course, playing with the subject. But, on the other hand, let us take the other man, not a financier, but a mere speculator whose service is limited to Stock Exchange booming, to the rigging of the financial market, and who gives nothing to, but who invariably draws very largely from, the community, often creating FINANCE 153 both misery and suffering. Here is a very clear distinction between the two definitions of a financier. Now I suppose that for a very long time to come, even under a Labor Government, it will be necessary to retain the Stock Exchange. But I certainly hope that there would not be such a feeling for exploiting people as now exists. The mere rigging of the market, with the artificial inflation of prices which inevitably follows, does an in- calculable amount of harm. The recent operations in Lancashire in cotton are the best evidence as to the danger whereby a quite artificial and abnormal price was paid for shares, clearly the result of manipulation, and, remember, from these inflated prices dividends must be earned, or a break must come with its concomitant unemployment and financial losses. It is reasonable to ask how one could regulate these things. It could be — and should be — the duty of a State Department to satisfy itself as to operations in this land. Neither watered stock, nor financial jugglery, should be allowed to exist, and a "Government Department should check what was a legitimate exchange of the transfer of business and what was mere unhealthy speculation, unwise and dangerous, because in these matters it is not the people who know most who suffer — they invariably get out before the crash comes. It is only too often the innocent victims who are left. This raises, too, the very interesting question of what is a reasonable return for capital. Here, 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 £100 in a business which is risky — say, the obtaining of Spanish gold from somewhere in South 154 WHEN LABOE RULES Seas — he is taking a much greater risk on his money than the man who puts £100 into a grocery store. It is right that, if the greater risk comes off, there would he a greater return. It is necessary, 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 legis- lation which Labor 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 Labor. That has the first claim. After that a reasonable return should be allowed for capital. And then? Well, then, we come to the many schemes of co-partnership and profit-sharing. I can think of nothing at this moment that for so Ipng 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 by 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 Labor'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 FINANCE 155 are isolated cases, successful, very beneficial, maybe, to tbe work-people who are affected by them, but, quite frankly, they could not be followed on universal 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 who would get large credits from trades people— for his coal, his food, and his very necessities of life would be contingent upon the success of some business which, by 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 collective 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 management on all sorts of conditions in the works, the neglect of which really create more industrial unrest than the big mass questions of wages. Intimately associated with any question of national finance is the problem of Free Trade. On the surface it ought not to be a problem. Even the supporters of the • late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, in his Tariff Reform cam- 156 WHEN LABOE RULES paign, would be the first, probably, to admit that universal Free Trade is the right thing, the best thing, the most economic policy we as a race could pursue. The trouble, of course, is complicated, because other countries set up their tariffs. Otherwise, there would never have been one word to be said in favor of any Tariff Eeform within our own legislation. Despite this, I, of course, stand entirely and all the time for absolute Free Trade. The Labor Party will have nothing to do with Protection in any shape or form. And this is not only an economic matter. It is probably the greatest cause of international friction, resulting in strained relations with other countries, and very often in wars. It is only natural that this should be so. If we put a protective duty against the goods of one country, or against the goods that one country produces, and not against the goods that chiefly come from another country, it is natural that the first country should not like us for it. It also provokes that country to seek the friendship of other nations, and so, easily based upon these economic associations, you can make a stepping-stone for political alliances among nations and thus get back to the old stupid position of the balance of power, the narrowness and mean- ness of which caused the last war. But, primarily, of course, the question of tariffs is an economic rather than a political factor. The Protectionist says glibly to the working man : " If we charge a duty upon the importation of certain goods from foreign coun- tries, you will get less competition from abroad, therefore the price of the commodity you make will be higher in consequence of that, so wages will be bigger." Before the War it was one of the first ideas of the Protectionist FINANCE 157 platform that their system of tariff wars against the for- eigner would solve the unemployment problem. As a mat- ter of fact the expedient has been tried in almost every country under the sun, including our own, at one time or another, and it has never succeeded in curing the trouble of unemployment. At this moment it is particularly opportune to point out this fallacy, because it is likely, dur- ing the next phase of the industrial position of the country, that unemployment will prevail. There are so many forces working both from the sides of Capital and Labor, over- lapping each other, and affecting the position of employ- ment, that no one can with certainty say what will result, nor how it is possible to obviate the troubles that certainly are threatening. But, if there is unemployment to any" extent, of one thing I am certain — Protection will never cure it. Protection means, in the end, more money in the pockets of the manufacturers of whatever goods are protected. 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 par- ticular trade behind a tariff barrier, you may be sure that the majority of those profits will go into the hands of the capitalists. But, of course, this subject is very much larger than that. To wipe out Protection, to establish complete Free Trade eventually, must mean the lowering of the price of goods. 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 unrea- sonable prices. The more goods come into the country, the more goods there are to buy, and the cheaper, therefore, 158 WHEN LABOR RULES they become. For instance, if a man with £1 in his pocket goes to buy a hat, and finds that, because there are so many hats from all sources, the price of a hat has gone down to 15s, he has got 5s over with which to buy a pair of socks, or perhaps a tie. It is obvious that, by doing this he is creating a greater demand for goods in general. That means more work — less unemployment. But, if you put a tax upon goods coming into this country, that hat, in- stead of being 15s will be 17s 6d, because of the tax; and if imported goods can only be sold at 17s 6d, the English maker, who really can afford to sell them at 15s, is not going to do anything of the sort — he is going to sell them either at 17s 6d or something more nearly approaching that figure. And so prices are kept up, and demands for goods are kept down. As a matter of fact, the bogey of unemployment being affected by Protection is easily tracked down. It is really a very thin stream of foreign manufactured goods that comes into this country. It is not more than 5 per cent of the total of products used in the country. The other 95 per cent are products of our own effort. And you have got to remember that, even if the manufactured goods do come in, quite a large proportion of them is merely used for the creation of our own goods. Let us bring the matter down to an individual com- pany. This company may turn out, shall we say, motor- cars. It may be quite a sound business proposition if they produce everything that is required to make that motor- car. But it is very doubtful if they would find it profitable to set up a glass factory, shall we say, in order to make their wind-screens, simply because it would not pay them to produce the small quantity that they would use. They FINANCE 159 can buy their glass from outside, just as they can buy the electric-light globes, which light their works, from out- side^ — they don't want to make them. A very good propor- tion of the goods imported into this country are in the same category as these accessories — very necessary, in fact, en- tirely essential, but not necessarily hitting in any way our own employment question. It is a fact, you cannot in- crease, the total volume of unemployment by any tariff jugglery, and it is opportune to point out here that 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. The working classes realize — or, if they don't, they should — that if tariffs are not proposed with the object of bringing higher prices and larger profits to capitalists and landlords, the movement would have been still-born, and even the agitation — such as it is — is only engineered by a few who would benefit, because it would be only the par- ticular trades that were protected who would get anything out of them even if they did. Unquestionably, Protection cuts right across the path of Labor. By a careful scrutiny of the figures of unemployment during the last twenty years, you will find that in every country where there is any sort of Protection, unemployment is infinitely greater than it is in those countries where Free Trade, or some- thing near to Pree Trade, operates. If any system of Protection is to be the result of this War, then all the fine professions of ideals for which we fought lie in the dust and are but mockeries. It was a war to end war, and it must not leave behind it a war of peoples in trade, and a competition among diplomats for the ob- taining of particular privileges and spheres of influence in 160 WHEN LABOR RULES this, that, or the other end of the world, which would carry no benefit to workers, but would only be a means of in- creasing the dividends upon capital. This sort of thing only speeds another war, because, in order to combat these trade interests in various parts of the world, it is necessary to maintain a high standard of efficiency in armaments, so that opposition can be withstood and privileges enforced. You can take it from me that Free Trade as a prin- ciple means greater employment, and would be one of the chief mediums for peace among the nations. Let us lead in this, and the others will follow. Perhaps I ought to add a postscript, as it were to the subject of Protection, by saying that imperial preference is just as incompatible with any notion of vast increase as a tariff wall. For myself, I think if the British Empire had not been a Free Trade Empire, the War of 1914 might have come a decade earlier than it did. The great powers began to realize that preferential treatment within their own communities was likely to be attempted gen- erally, and, in order to obtain all the raw material they could, the scramble for territory in Africa and Asia com- menced. This too was definite #pan-Germanism, and that was the soil upon which the seeds of war were planted. Britain, owning the largest Empire, refused to adopt the scheme of imperial preference, happily for the world's sake. But short-sighted politicians persisted all the time in exploiting the policy, and lecturing up and down the country in favor of it, using the shallow argument that it must increase employment to the British workman, and appealing, on jingoistic principles, to a self-efficient and water-tight British Empire. We must toy now, with all the influence we have, to FINANCE 161 maintain all the world over the open door, and, when Labor comes into power, it will unquestionably break down any beginnings that have been made towards Protection by the present rulers. The way the so-called " key industries " are being sheltered behind tariffs and duties is wrong. We don't want to plan and plot to preserve some special indus- try in view of some possible war; we don't want war; but we do want Free Trade for the sake of the workman and the sake of peace. I do hope that the League of Nations, when it gets to any sort of force in the world, will definitely declare for Free Trade and the open door. What we want, in Mr. Wilson's words, is " the removal of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions." CHAPTER XV THE BESPONSIBILITIES OF THE MUNICIPALITIES A Laboe Government will work on a system of devolution. It will not arrogate to itself the management of all the a6tivities of the national machinery. There are some things, such as insurance, education, health, which it will undertake for the good of the entire community. These things, in its view, are matters of interest to the entire public, and are not concerned with any locality in particu- lar. The responsibility of these things should be a general responsibility, and not a local one. Why should a person living in one place pay infinitely more for education than a person living in the next street but under a different au- thority ? And why should a student get an inferior chance of education for the same reason ? There is no logic in it. There is no justice in it. But there are many things which are local in their in- terest. And we would very largely increase the powers of local government. Why, for instance, should a big authority such as, say, the Manchester City Council have to come to Parliament to get powers to draw water for the inhabitants of their town from Wales or somewhere ? It is a costly and entirely unnecessary procedure. They ought to have power to do such a thing upon their own authority. But, to-day, they must come to Parliament, taking up the time of Parliament and paying large fees to local as well 162 RESPONSIBILITIES OF MUNICIPALITIES 163 as London lawyers to bring the matter forward and get the necessary formal consent to borrow whatever money they require to carry out the operation which they have decided upon. If their decision to do a certain thing is wrong, the resi- dents in their city who are primarily concerned have the power, through the ballot-box, to say so, and put into power those men who will do what their community require. This, by the way, makes considerably for local pride, and the sense of local responsibility. It is all to the good that this local patriotism should he fostered, and this would be t one and not a small result of increased powers placed in their hands. But you say they have come to the central authority to borrow the necessary money to carry out any really large scheme. , Birmingham, for instance, wanted half a million to lay their pipes from the Elian Valley and bring their water to the Midland capital. To get that they had to borrow from the then Local Government Board at a cer- tain rate of interest, giving an undertaking to repay in a certain number of years, and, on the surface, it may seem a reasonable thing to do — to have this control upon munici- palities. But, as I have said, if a local authority loses its sense of responsibility in the matter of spending money, it can be deposed at the elections, and there is this to remember, that if the money has to be raised within its own borders there is the more likely to be a careful scrutiny of expendi- ture than if the sum comes out of official pockets in Lon- don, and if the decision is entirely in the hands of that outside authority. With the latter it is largely a business deal. They are there to lend the money at a rate of interest 164 WHEN LABOR RULES which shows a right and proper return for the loan. They - are not concerned with the rates, and are not affected hy their rise or fall. The man who has a house in the suburbs of that city is much more likely to be a careful critic of such expenditure, and we can safely leave the matter in his hands. He will kick, and kick effectively, if he is being overcharged for what he gets. And it need never be the responsibility of the Imperial Parliament. It is entirely a matter of local politics and local expediency. " Where is the money coming from, then ? " you ask. " Where is Birmingham to get its half million from \ " The answer is very simple. Every city, every town, should have its own municipal bank. Imagine the position of a great municipality going to a firm of underwriters to back them for a loan. It is almost unbelievable, yet it is done to-day. Why should not the local authority be given powers to take the savings of its inhabitants — those whose interests it has been elected to look after — and use them, paying, of course, a right and proper percentage, for such purposes as I have indicated ? How better could the money of the people of Birmingham be invested than in the im- provement of its water supply ? And what better security could the saving residents have for the interest on their money than their own corporation, which after all means their very existence ? Under Labor the privileges of these corporations would be generously enlarged, and they would be able to become bankers, and, with the invested capital of their own in- habitants, have a balance for them which could be utilized for the improvements which would make for the well-being of all the inhabitants of the town. But this, of course, is only a small part of the work a KESPONSIBILITIES OP MUNICIPALITIES 165 municipality might and ought to perform. Already, as we know, many of them provide such things as gas and elec- tricity, though why any such undertakings should be left in the hands of private enterprise I cannot imagine. It only spells lethargy on the part of these authorities. Ob- viously it is right and proper, and for the good of all, that the local authority should be in charge of such things as gas and electricity. Why allow large profits to go into the pockets of private companies? Those profits should, if they are earned at all, go into the local exchequer and so help to relieve the rates. But it is not only the profit that municipalities should trade. It is entirely true that corpo- rations and town councils can make money out of selling electricity and gas to their inhabitants. But the test of the wisdom of those local authorities running those businesses is, do the inhabitants thereby get better gas, better elec- tricity, and at a cheaper rate ? It is not profit alone that justifies municipal trading. I think that, in addition to gas and electricity, milk should be in the hands of the municipalities — also bread. Think for a moment of the stupidity of perhaps twenty, or per- haps two hundred different milk businesses distributing milk in a town every morning. One, two, three, four, per- haps even six milk carts go up the same road. Think of the enormous waste of effort this entails. All this would be saved by a proper central organization run under the mu- nicipal council. Unquestionably, the price could be much less than it is. The municipality could buy just as well from the farmer as the milk dealer could. Indeed, I am not sure if it would not be good for large towns to run their own farms, and so get their own milk. But whether this is practicable or not, I want to make this point, that, by 166 WHEN LABOR RULES the necessary system of inspection which municipalization would set up, you would not only get cheaper milk, but get purer milk. There would not be the same, shall we say, margin of possibility of dilution as there is to-day. There would probably be more milk, because it would be simple, when supplies were scarce, to ration this commodity, so that the poor, having many children to feed, would get what was necessary for health, even if it meant that the rich, with probably fewer children to feed, would not get more than they really needed, because they happened to have more money. Bread, too, might come under the local control, and if you have municipal bakeries, and a municipal milk supply, you are going to cut out a good deal of the possibility of hardship among people with trivial incomes. Now, what are the objections to municipal trading? You will find they mostly come from interested parties — I mean by that, investors in private undertakings. They say that municipal trading increases the rates. That is one of their points. Let us examine it. A corporation decide to run trams. They go to the Local Government Board, and obtain the loan of £100,000, interest upon which has to be paid, and the total has to be paid back to the center of authority, say, within twenty-one years. This loan comes out of the rates at present. There is no other source from which it can be obtained. " Oh," say the objectors to municipal trading, " look at the debt on the town because these foolish councilors want to run their own trams." Now what happens when the private enterprise com- pany comes along and — just in order to keep the example in harmony — obtains permission to run trams in a town? Can they lay down miles of track through the streets, and EESPONSIBILITIES OF MUNICIPALITIES 167 can they build their tramcars, and can they erect their elec- tric generating station — without money? It is going to cost them just as much as it cost the corporation to lay down its tramway system. Where do they get their money from ? They float a company. -They get subscribers who invest in the company, thinking to obtain profits upon their investments. They call this their capital. Now the true economic position is that this capital is exactly equivalent to the loan which the corporation for the Bame purpose borrow from the Local Government Board. The private company has to pay dividends — if it can ; the corporation has to pay interest upon its borrowing. The thing is absolutely identical, except that in the past, as a rule, the corporation loan has been obtained on very ad- vantageous terms — much better terms than investors in industrial concerns expect to pay by way of dividend upon their money, and, if we establish, as I have suggested, municipal banks, these corporations would be in a still far better position, because they would be investing their own money in their own undertakings, and paying themselves interest upon their borrowings. Some very interesting figures were published by the Board of Trade, which, despite the usual belief to the con- trary, show how much better tramways, and gas undertak- ings, too, are worked under local authorities than they are under private companies. They lay their track cheaper, they show a better return upon their money, their work- ing expenses are less, and — which is the most important of all — the fare charged to the passenger is less. These figures seem to me to prove conclusively that municipal trading does pay, that it is not extravagantly conducted, and that it does provide a better commodity than that 168 WHEN LABOK KtJLES offered by private capital. There is, incidentally, this also to be remembered — that, whereas the track of private enter- prise, in the matter of trams and gas and electricity, is strewn with bankruptcies and failures, with their inevitable results of disaster to the private investor, the corporation cannot go bankrupt. So that if you, as a ratepayer, look upon yourself as an investor in local trams, you are sure of not losing your money even though you are compulsorily anticipating in the scheme. Also these municipal undertakings are year by year repaying the capital invested in them, so that in time they become the town's property, and the town free of debt. If they are then in good condition they should provide a greatly increased reduction to the rates, and a cheaper and more efficient service. Another great objection is that, as a rule, the local councilors are looked upon as being unable to conduct such an undertaking as a tramway scheme. Of course, the point here is that a collection of the veriest fools can obtain the right experience to do these jobs. They do not run the trams. They merely obtain officers of experience and knowl- edge to do it for them. And it is a fact that a municipality can always get an efficient manager more cheaply than a company can. He says to himself that the job is safe so long as he carries out his duties satisfactorily. The mu- nicipality will never go bankrupt. He is not likely to be dismissed through any personal spite, because he can al- ways have his case discussed in public for all to hear or* read. People also allege that it is unfair for a municipality to trade. You might also say that it is unfair to expect a small shop to compete with big stores. But no one would RESPONSIBILITIES OF MUNICIPALITIES 169 suggest that we should not have stores. That is the only analogy I can see. I find municipal trading is better, and, to my mind, it would not be right to the community if its municipalities did not make use of its obvious advantages. The whole trouble here is that the private investor is in- clined to "be annoyed if a certain field of commercial opera- tion is undertaken by the local authority, not for the pur- pose of making money so much as to serve the general com- munity. This, thinks the speculator, cuts out the chance for him to exploit the public, and make money for himself. There is a side to municipal undertakings which can- not be judged upon the basis of competition of private enterprise. While certain of its operations show a direct revenue, there is a branch of municipal work which no private capitalist would undertake, because it shows no profit. Unless the work is done by the local authority it is not done at all. Yet it is to the advantage of the com- munity. Suppose, for instance, there is a congested slum, and the municipality knocks down many of the houses there, and creates a fine, open space where children can play, and fresh air can penetrate. That is to the good of the community as a whole, because it affects the health of the population. In the end, to be sure, it may also improve the rents of the other houses that remain in the neighborhood, and, therefore, the landlords may grow rich. But you never find a private speculator make that open space as a private speculation, trusting to some slight charge he might be able to make for admission. Labor in general would develop the municipal life as far as it could, but there are some things which essentially fall under the heading of nationalization: coal, railways, etc. There is one other thing which the municipality at pres- 170 WHEN LABOE KULES ent carries on— and by municipality I mean all urban and county authorities as well — and that is education. This authority would be taken from them and placed under the State at headquarters, its upkeep coming out of the national exchequer. But in every other respect we should en- deavor to leave it to the choice of the local authorities, and give them greater freedom and infinitely more powers than they have now to carry on municipal trading and various branches of reform. Housing, for instance; and drink, for instance. We should permit local option in all these things. I do not think there would be any necessity for compulsory legislation in regard to them. By centering power in their hands, we should foster local pride in town- ships, and give a fillip to the sense of citizenship. But there is one duty that 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. Nb child should go to school in a starving condition, or with badly shod feet, and the munici- pality should have power to obtain the money through the rates for this purpose. It must not be left to charity which, with all its virtues, is apt to miss the individual cases. One other thing — while We are upon this subject — I would wipe out the present Poor Law system. We should set out for the abolition of the Board of Guardians. The words " pauper " and " Poor Law " would be swept from the Statute Book. More especially as we have abolished the old Local Government Board, and established a Min- istry of Health, I want to see the last of the Board of Guardians, and I want to see their work, just as the Edu- cation Act is, administered to-day by a committee of the local authority. I would abolish the name of "work- EESPONSIBILITIBS OF MUNICIPALITIES 171 house," and have instead an institution, or institutions, for the disahled and the needy. But not as the present system has it, which separates the needy, and labels all those who are compelled to seek relief. The system of the casual ward is very bad, and a man, if he can work, should always be able to demand existence. He should not, because he needs a bed, be kept breaking stones, thus curtailing his opportunity of finding reasonable work. All this, however, is part of a larger industrial question of wages and work. It is a fact that, during the War, there were practically no tramps. That was because their work was needed, and, if we can insure by private organiza- tion that there will be security of tenure to the worker and, consequently, little or no unemployment, if we can make it certain that the man who is willing to work shall have work found for him, we shall find that our casual wards will be pretty well empty, and the problems of the tramp will dis- appear in the general prosperity of the nation. It must not be supposed that Labor would nationalize, or municipalize, everything. There will always be left scope for private endeavor, and it would be a pity if that were ever entirely wiped out. I do not mean because I have not faith in the effort and initiative of the man who works for the State. I believe honestly that, in the end, there would be an added stimulus to the man who was serving his fellows in addition to finding a living for him- self. It would not . sterilize industry-^personal industry, I mean — to think he was more or less secure in his position. He would still do his best — perhaps better than if he worked for himself. I think that, as the idea of the State grew — the idea of all working for all, with, of course, the security of his own position — we should get a higher idea 172 WHEN LABOR RULES of work. It would spell service rather than mere income. Do not be put off with the common unthoughtful argu- ment that, because a man works for the Government, he gives up all sense of responsibility, and loses all ambition to succeed in his job. It is an old cry that. And so often these critics illustrate their argument with comment upon such organizations as the telephone and the post office. The trouble here is that it is not easy to graft on to the ordinary industrial system a national or municipal under- taking. To test the matter properly, you must 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 a 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 dis- missal. That fear of unemployment is at the root of more than half the industrial unrest in the world. To wipe it out in government service will contribute enormously to settled conditions, and that means efficiency. Let us glance at the alternative to nationalization and municipal control of essentials. That alternative more often than not is trusts. Trusts are the industrial equivalent to secret treaties and international alliances. They aim to corner a com- modity and then to exploit the public in order to maintain high prices and big dividends. If you can have free com- petition in the business world all right. But free com- petition — the very word " competition " — means a diver- RESPONSIBILITIES OF MUNICIPALITIES 173 sity of endeavor, and many competitors striving to obtain public support by means of producing the best article at the lowest profitable price. But where you have a trust you do not have competition, or practically none. Only a small percentage of those who deal in a given article are out- side — or it would not be anything approaching a corner or trust — and these have but little power because by their very limited output their appeal of necessity must be trivial. What we want to reach is a position where all those com- modities which are not run by the State, either nationally or locally, such as coal, milk, bread (and why not boots?), are purchased at only a reasonable percentage over the cost of production. Instead, to-day, we find capitalist com- binations operate in some form at almost every stage of production from the raw material up to the point when the article is handed over the counter to the purchaser. Even distribution is implied in this. In what can the ordinary purchaser be sure he is being charged no more than is required to defray the necessary costs of manufacture and distribution plus a reasonable- profit to those who necessarily must handle the goods? Even if new labor-saving machinery is introduced, there is no guarantee that the saving in cost of producing an article means any reduction in the cost to the producer. The manufacturer pockets it — he and his shareholders. And if the Government place any new tax upon a commodity, it is never adequately shared by producer and purchaser. On the contrary, it is almost invariably made the excuse for an added profit. The salesman or the manufacturer puts not only the whole of the tax on to the article, but adds to it, to compensate himself for possible reduction in demand. 174 WHEN LABOK RULES As a digression, it would be our policy not pnly to na- tionalize coal mines, but to municipalize the distribution of coal in the towns and urban districts. When you get a ring in business you may be very sure these facts apply in double force. The very object of the ring is admittedly to increase prices. As against this, it is opportune here to mention, the chief object of municipal trading is to reduce prices. A local authority is not pro- voked to charge what the trade — and the public— will stand. It aims at charging as little as the cost of produc- tion will bear. Another name for the working of trusts is profiteering. Now a profiteer cannot exist if there is no secret treaty between the various manufacturers of a given commodity. The co-operative movement has been one means to checking prices. They return their profits to their members, and they do not endeavor to make much more than 1;heir work- ing expenses. The national factories during the, War were also valuable in this respect, and it would be a good thing to perpetuate them in the production of essentials. In this connection an additional emphasis is found in favor of no tariffs. These capitalistic combines are only too anxious to see an import duty put upon foreign goods similar to those they are making. The free ingress of goods from abroad — Germany or anywhere else — will al- ways help to keep down prices, and that is why you find it is the capitalistic class who are keenest upon preferential treatment and protection. They do not make these pro- posals for the good of the working classes. They want to keep out the foreigner in order to keep up prices and in order to increase their own profits. Since Labor organizes, it is only reasonable for em- EESPONSIBILITIES OP MUNICIPALITIES 175 ployers to federate also. It is desirable, indeed, that organized Labor should have an amalgamated interest to deal with. If there is any question of working conditions, houses and wages to be discussed, Labor could not discuss it with employers unless the employers had some repre- sentative organization. But just as all discussions of this sort always are made public, so ought all agreements be- tween employers to be published. They should be filed where inspection is possible and simple. This is the local industrial application of the principle we have outlived in regard to international affairs. We will not have secret diplomacy in business, secret trusts organized not to dis- cuss questions with Labor, but entirely aiming at exploit- ing the purchasing public by unnecessarily high prices. And just as eventually all international relationships will need to be ratified by Parliament, and so become subject to open discussion, so ought a government department be empowered to examine, approve or disapprove, and report upon, all trustification of British industries. The best of all methods of defeating unfair control of commodities is publicity, and with the press free and unfettered as it is to-day public opinion need never go uninformed where abuses exist in this direction, provided such arrangements were compulsorily filed for public inspection. To open to government inspection the accounts of these trusts would be a wise safeguard. Labor in power will certainly break what trusts may exist for unfair private gains, and will tend, wherever pos- sible, to place under either the national or local authorities the control — not necessarily the actual management, but certainly the control — of the production and distribution of all essentials. CHAPTER XVI WOMEN When I remind my readers that when the woman adult suffrage comes in — as it unquestionably will, especially when Labor is in power, for we are all in favor 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 way to that voting power. Whatever we may suggest by way of legislation in favor of women will be strictly in accordance with our general principles of gov- ernment. We shall merely place women on an equality with men in all political and economical considerations. Why we should assume that a boy of 18 because he has been a soldier, is more intelligent (and, therefore, ' entitled to a vote) than a woman of 29, is beyond my compre- hension. We have passed the age when woman is looked upon as the inferior or the weaker sex. She is coming more and more out into business and, in certain branches, is making a big success of her venture. I should like to state quite definitely that I, personally, have no objection to the competition of women, as women, in the workshops. There have been natural feelings of jealousy on the part of men when they, coming back from the War, have- found the jobs they left in order to fight being held by women. There was, I know, a reaction from this which caused the arguments to be brought forward in Trade Union circles objecting to women being employed in 176 WOMEN 177 their particular trades. Though this may have been so in certain restricted areas of industry, our policy for the fu- ture will exclude no woman from any occupation, as long as she is prepared to come in on the same terms as a man, and expects no special considerations other than the reason- able provisions of rest and healthy surroundings — which we hope one day to obtain for all workers of whatever sex. The woman worker will have the same pay as the man. You cannot make any differences. Equal pay for equal work, to my mind, is unassailable. There will, however, be certain classes of work from which women will be ex- cluded — not because of any question of competition, but purely out of consideration for womanhood, because these particular trades I refer to are either dangerous or neces- sitate night work. Labor will bring in legislation com- pelling the abolition of all night work for women in indus- try. It is altogether unnatural and wrong that a woman should be engaged during the night in the factory or in the office. I think very soon that this law will apply the world over. The only exceptions to it to be made, of course, are in connection with maternity and the nursing profession. Women, too, must be excluded from dangerous occupa- tions. There are facts and figures to prove that women, on becoming mothers, have suffered because of their previ- ous employment in certain industries — such as those that include the handling of lead. Furthermore, mortality among infants is always greater where the mother has been engaged in work of this description. It is true in this country that women are excluded from many processes involving the contact with lead, but we might go much further and extend the list of dangerous 178 WHEN LABOK KULES trades. In Japan, for instance, the prohibition covers work in places in which dust or gas are generated from arsenic, mercury, yellow (white), phosphorus, prussic acid, fluorine, aniline, chrome, chlorine or other chemical com- pounds, or from other similar poisonous substances. I do not like to think that we should be behind Japan in pro- tecting our own from any danger of this kind, and I am glad to feel that we are already considering regulations dealing with processes in which mercury is used. In this matter one does not want to work in any re- stricted area. We want to make these advantages world- wide. As you know, there has been established an interna- tional Labor Office, which is the industrial side of the League of Nations. Anything that is done in any country would have a direct influence upon this office and, there- fore, the medium by which every government in the civilized world, who is a signator to the League of Nations, would be affected. Here is a great task for Labor, and one of the biggest branches of it, not only from the point of view of women, but also from the point of view of man workers, is the constant effort of scientists to discover any improvement in conditions which are producing the poisonous results of work with lead and mercury, etc. Labor will spare no effort or money on research work. We, shall spare no effort or money on experiments in wiping out such things as plumbism, and it can be done by finding harmless sub- stitutes for dangerous ingredients in manufacture. We have already discovered a leadless glaze. During the War there was a substitute found for tetrachlorethane in dopes used for areoplane wings, which was so fruitful in produc- WOMEN 179 ing cases of poisoning, and, no doubt, by th© cultivation of research work, many other evils of labor could be elimi- nated. Meantime, women should be kept out of all such proc- esses. But it is Labor's object as far as possible to wipe out the necessity of married women working at all. When we read of the number of miscarriages that women suffer, entirely because of their occupation in certain dangerous processes, one realizes the appalling crime it is that con- ditions should be such as to have to make them work in order to maintain their households. Woman's sphere of in- fluence is the home, and we must endeavor to see to it that, first, every willing worker in the country should have suf- ficient income to keep a wife and family, and sufficient security of tenure in his work as not to fear unemployment for any long periods, and, secondly, that, while unmarried women should be allowed to enter into all branches of healthy occupation, there should be the most stringent regu- lations against them being engaged in any of the poisonous trades I have mentioned, because it has been demonstrated by statistics that miscarriages follow the marriage of those women who have been engaged in such trades as the lead industry. I do not think that women will ever dominate the poli- tics in this country. The basic motives of her existence, her dreams, aims, her instincts, all call her away from the political arena, and into the home. But still it is a fact that she will have a tremendous voting power, and should ever any big question arise, there is no doubt that we must be ready for the women of the country to come forward, almost in one, and say, "You shall not do this." There are one or two problems in which mere man has 180 WHEN LABOR RULES cheerily gone on and got himself into a hole; woman would be much more determined in her efforts. It is that same instinctive dislike of a man to put up with the incon- venience of a crowd in order to get a bargain, whereas woman will fight to get in, if her interest is sufficiently roused. And it is a good thing for the country. The indifference of men has permitted such disastrous things as secret diplomacy to exist for generations. His lack of political enthusiasm has permitted a few men, who happened to be in power, to make agreements and arrangements which have resulted in war, and the average male has rather come to look upon such a catastrophe as war as being unavoid- able, and, on the whole, rather a sporting event. If there is never to be another war you will have to thank the women for it. They will come forward practically as one and turn out any government who are complacently antici- pating any participation in any war. And it is only right that they should have this veto, since it is the woman who suffers all the time. Her part in war is infinitely the great- est. It is her agony far rather than the soldier's, and it is only right that she, who brought the soldiers into the world, should prohibit war. Now that she has the vote she will be able to do this, especially if we can really establish a system of open diplomacy. And it is only if we can do that that any body of public influence will impress itself ef- fectively. If a government makes treaties with other gov- ernments, and if those governments are threatened and attacked, their friends must, under their contract, come to their aid. No one can then say, " Stand off ! " The time to discuss the possibility of war is not the week before it breaks out, but is when these arrangements WOMEN 181 among the nations are being made, if ever they are to be made. It is then the voice of women should be heard, and it is then that I think you will hear it. In the indus- trial world, too, her voice will be very big. I do not anticipate any large majority among women taking any particularly enthusiastic part in local govern- ment. Although they have the vote, and everything is now open to them, it is interesting to notice that there is at the moment of writing only one woman member of Parliament. When Labor comes into power, however, women will be greatly encouraged and helped in every way to enter Par- liament, to join Cabinets, even to the extent of a woman becoming Prime Minister of England, if she should be eminently suited to, and the right person for that position. There is one thing, I think, that women will always do when the big emergency arises, they will always vote in favor of industrial peace, and never of strikes or up- heaval. For here again the woman at home is the one who stands the racket when her husband and sons are out of work, and there is only the small strike pay allowance upon which to eke out a hazardous existence. It is certain that the day when women workers ap- proached the sphere of slavery is past. We all know quite well that it has been the custom for many long years, wherever and whenever women have been brought into the industrial arena, to employ them on sweated wages and with a view to the general lowering of the standard of labor. Consider the long hours at which shirtmakers had to work to gain even the most miserable pittance; the ap- palling conditions under which the Cradley Heath chain 182 WHEN LABOE EULES workers were employed; think of the great army of sweated home-workers — the matchhox makers and the arti- ficial flower makers, who hy working unceasingly from dawn until the small hours of the night succeeded, and then only with help from other members of the family, in gaining a few miserable shillings a week with which to keep body and soul together. The general acquiescence in this deplorable state of affairs shows the inhuman views that so long prevailed on the subject of women's work. Then came the great world conflict, and women were called upon to mobilize themselves for war work. Happily the trades union movement had become sufficiently strong by then — and, indeed, the public mind had so happily altered for the good that the conditions were altogether different from those which had previously existed. As a consequence of this we find to-day not only that women are working in a more congenial atmosphere than they ever dreamt of in the past; not only that they are treated with the consideration that is their due ; but that in the main they are enjoying the same rates as those paid to men — and what is still more important to remember, they are being organized; and this means that they will have the full benefits and advantages of combination to protect their labor in the future. It would, however, be foolish to assume that the present abnormal demand for labor of any kind will continue, and it is necessary, therefore, to keep clearly in mind that we must sooner or later, in the very nature of things, revert to a more or less normal period when, instead of employers begging for Labor, Labor may, unfortunately, find itself begging for employment. It is when we reach the realization of that possibility WOMEN 183 that we have to consider whether or not women will he unfair competitors in the Lahor Movement, and whether the nation will continue to benefit from their labor. Now, with regard to the first point, judging by the keen interest which the women are showing in the work they have undertaken, notwithstanding the fact that they are learning and becoming proficient in what hitherto has been exclusively men's labor, there is growing up a very strong and welcome bond of comradeship. Labor in power, however, will not rely on a sense of com- radeship merely. It will legislate directly in favor 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 favor. Who desires or should expect anything better than that % It may be that, as a rule, the man will win in work against the woman. There are some branches of employ- ment where she will always lead. But, even supposing she is not largely employed in the factory, will it not have the effect of making her think more of home-keeping. That is for the good of the State. And if we can provide that at the age of twenty-one our capable workman is earning a wage sufficient to keep a wife, and maybe a small family, this tendency of the woman towards her natural functions of the home will bring back the average marriage age to the old time level — which is far nearer twenty than thirty. CHAPTEE XVII THE LEAGUE OP PEOPLES In principle, of course, the Labor Party supports the League of Nations. It did, indeed, hold out some hope that the end of international friction was in sight, and that, if the leaders of the peoples in every country honestly sought to push forward the great scheme, the world at length might find peace. We saw some hope of doing away for ever with the secret intrigues between nations, and a retuirn to a state of creating a universal desire to promote not the narrow interests of this or that country, but the good of the world. It was a dream, and, like most dreams, has suffered a fading process. How far we are after Spa and Geneva from those ideals which Wilson put before the world and upon which peace was arranged ! It has been growing steadily in the minds of those who think for the large mass of the workers in every country that the need for revision of the Versailles Treaty is a fundamental necessity before we can progress far along the lines of world reform. We see clearly that, in the terms of that treaty, are set the seeds which must, of necessity, poison the future and bring back war, which is unthink- able, knowing as we do what lengths of horror any further outbreak of fighting would entail. It is only fair that Germany should pay. She must 184 THE LEAGUE OF PEOPLES 185 make reparation for the wrongs she inflicted upon Europe. If that -were not done we should be losing an opportunity to leave posterity a lesson — that the criminal aggressor shall be rewarded by punishment and not by profit. But the Peace Treaty has gone further than that. For instance, it should have permitted Trance only to obtain the coal from the Saar Valley mines, and not to have handed over the district itself into the hands of the Trench for them to govern. France had her great coal mines destroyed in her northern provinces, and that German mines should supply the coal France thus cannot mine for herself is perfectly just. But the occupation by the French must cause irrita- tion for years to come, and re-create the old Alsace-Lorraine trouble, only from the opposite angle. There is in the treaty far too much that can be put down to vindictiveness. It will not pay in the long run. It does not spell peace. Even the Alsace-Lorraine matter was not handled in accordance with our own assertions as to the right of people to determine their own destinies. The population of these provinces was not consulted when they were handed back, though in the Allied Memorandum of War Aims in 1918 it was laid down: " France can prop- erly agree to a fresh consultation of the population of Alsace and Lorraine as to their own desires." Then again, if there is anything meant by the authority of a League of Nations, surely this authority should have supervised the plebiscites in Silesia and East Prussia. In- stead they have been carried out under the auspices of an Allied Commission. And all the limitations that have been placed upon the several districts that are largely German determining their own allegiance should be re- moved. These people should freely say under what Gov- 186 WHEN LABOK EULBS ernment they wish to live. It should be the wishes of the inhabitants that should be thought of, and not the interests of capital and the acquiring of economic rights by the victors. Self-determination should have been respected most rigidly. We made so much of it, talked so glibly of "no annexations." Yet the right " freely to choose their al- legiance " has been violated in the case of the Germans in Czecho-Slovakia, of the Tyrolese Highlands, important districts of "West Prussia (which have been added to Poland for strategic and economic reasons) the district of Menel, and, during a generation, the Saar Valley, while, in a more limited sense, there is the refusal to allow German Austria to unite with the main German body. The point I want to make is this, that here we have a vast population all embittered by the Peace, and which, in the aggregate, constitutes a larger population than Al- sace and Lorraine. And we all know how those provinces, torn from France, poisoned the relations of the European countries for half a century. Certainly it serves Germany right. On that ground we could have gone infinitely farther than we have done. There is hardly any end to what could have been done and yet have overshot the position in which we could have said it served them right. There was no justification for the War at all ; the whole of the tragedy of it lies largely at Germany's door. But two considerations enter here. The first is that it makes no distinction between these few arrogant Junkers who really caused the War, planned for it, hoped for it, and the great mass of German people who, granted, were foolish enough to allow themselves to be governed by these people, but who had as little to do with THE LEAGUE OF PEOPLES 187 declaring war as the working men of this country have had in manipulating the war in Russia. The second and more important point is, of course, that it is of the peace of the future of which we are think- ing, or of which we ought to he thinking ; the happiness and comfort and security of the generations to come. That it serves Germany right is not the hasis of a durable peace. It is the hasis of the next war, the impulse which will lend help to those who wish to return to the old Junker rule. The old alliances. The old balance of power. It dis- credits the League of Nations. But there are causes of war hidden in the economic side of the treaty even more abundantly than in the more political and territorial side. What we are proposing to do is to say to Germany the prisoner : " You are fined so much for your misdeeds, also you will have to go to prison for so many years." The thing is impossible. Our best way of getting the money for reparation from Germany is not to cripple her trade. We must encourage her to be productive, or we shall get nothing. We shall get promises, under threats of ultimatums, but that will not pay for the rebuilding of France. We shall not get money unless Germany can make money by produce. Yet, as an American writer has pointed out, the Treaty gives the Entente dictatorship over the industrial system out of which Germany has to pay. This was never stipulated for under the armistice. The unconditional surrender of German militarism is accompanied by the unconditional surrender of German commerce. What really has happened is that decisions were made on political grounds without any full consideration as to 188 WHEN LABOE RULES the economic possibilities of carrying them into effect. They were impossible of realization, and the sooner we grasp this the better. When Labor comes into power the Treaty will be revised, and I fear a thorough revision will never be effected until Labor is the controlling influence in Brit- ish Government. We shall not be lenient towards Germany — we are as conscious as any one else of her wrongs as a nation, see- ing it was from the ranks of Labor that the majority of our soldiers came, with all the concomitant agony and personal loss that fact means. But we are out for larger ends. We want to see the world at peace, we want to see Labor all over the world get justice, and since we wish to get full reparation from Germany we understand that we must not trample her down and prevent her industrial development. We have no election cries to urge us to do that which is not expedient and for the general good of the peace. The League of Nations is the right medium for keeping the industrial balance as well as the political peace of the world. This authority, if properly handled, would control, for instance, the supply of raw material without which pro- duction cannot go on. We shall never foster economic wars. There must be economic equality, no tariff walls, no protection and imperialist preference. Look at the position for one moment. If we grant a preference on tea to India, or to Egypt on cotton, or to Canada on wheat, we expect a preference to be given to our goods in those markets. The immediate result of that is to penalize the goods of other nations in those markets. We therefore become hostile to those other countries. The larger grows our trade in these preferential countries the THE LEAGUE OP PEOPLES 189 greater grows the antagonisms of other rivals. What is the result ? These rivals, cut out from these special markets, look around to do the same thing to us. France expands her empire in Africa, Japan hers in China, America hers in Mexico. It is all bound to lead to greater and greater rivalry. This in turn is backed up by armaments. We get back to that stupid race for naval and military power which preceded the Great War. The burden of creating these huge armies and navies on the top of that terrible taxation we are at present bearing will make life impossible. That way ruin lies. And there is no need for it. There is no reason for this small spirit of exclusion and of preference. The open door is the only policy which will lead to univer- sal development, and Labor will lead the world in this whenever it has the right to decide what the policy of this country shall be. The League of Nations, under our scheme, would control all this raw material, and see that every country had its share, so that it might develop its trade as far as the general supply of material the world over permitted. This, not in the interest merely of that country as a nationality, but because whenever you create an economic war you must, in the end, hit at the workers. This point is not a new one that has been brought out since the War ended. It was part of our considered view as expressed in the Labor War Aims in February, 191S, wherein it was declared : — All attempts at economic aggression, whether by Protective Tariffs or Capitalist Trusts or Monopolies, inevitably result in the spoliation of the working classes of the several countries 190 WHEN LABOE EULES for the profit of the capitalists ; and the working class *see in the alliance between Military Imperialists and the Fiscal Pro- tectionists in any country whatsoever not only a serious danger to the prosperity of the masses of the people, but also a grave menace to Peace. The Treaty will have to be revised in this respect. I must now pass on to the larger view of the League of Nations as I see it for the future. It is one of the saddest facts connected with the peace that this great movement has fallen into inconsequence. It should have aroused an inspiration that should enliven humanity all over the world. A great vision to realize which would have changed the whole course of history. Instead it has become a shadowy shrine at which lip serv- ice only is offered by the majority. There are, to be sure, a few enthusiasts who have said that this movement for the world's peace is the only thing in politics worth while for them. They throw over in- trigue, secret treaties, the arts and little ways of the mere diplomatists. This is profoundly to their credit. But what the League needs is for the workers of the world to back it, and that will never be until the workers of the world have the power to say what shall be done, having at their backs the necessary voting strength to support their actions. This will come, we feel sure, and there is nothing more likely to bring it about than the total failure of the profes- sional politicians to realize what the League might become. Every woman voter especially ought to look at this mat- ter for herself, and with all seriousness. I should like to say to her : " This is your great opportunity to save any future wars with all their horrors and agonies and loss of THE LEAGUE OP PEOPLES 191 son and husband. Support it with all the power you have, help us to make it vital, real, the greatest power there is in the world." Which, of course, means an essential change in its con- stitution. And here I want to emphasize that the very name of it should he altered. It should not be the League of Nations, but the League of Peoples, and I will explain what the difference means. It is true that there is a Labor side to the League. There was established, when the terms of the Treaty were drawn up, an International Labor charter. That is a very big step forward along the path which, one day, will lead to justice being done to the worker on the same generous principles in one country as another. Already a great deal has been done by this organization, and the Industrial Committee of the League, which has met in Washington, has collected most valuable information on vital labor sub- jects, and issued important recommendations. In such cases as employment of women and children the various governments have definitely promised to bring in legisla- tion to put these recommendations into effect. Also, one of the great points about the International Labor Committee is that, having been set up, it cannot now be discharged. It is separate from the League itself, and so, even in the grave eventuality of the League failing, the Labor organization it has set up would go on — and perhaps with increasing power restart a League that would succeed and demand respect of the civilized world. Because it would be a League of Peoples. At present minorities within a nation have no power of expression, are given no opportunity to give effect to the thoughts of what may be quite an important portion of the 193 -WHEN LABOE EULES community. England has a vote. That vote is cast on behalf of — whom? The people? No, it is cast in ac- cordance with the instructions of the Cabinet at the moment in power. You cannot compress the considered opinions of 40,000,000 people into a vote. But, it may be argued, the majority must be allowed to rule. Is there any assurance that the vote would repre- sent the views of the majority? It is often an open ques- tion whether the Government really represents the majority of the voters of the country. But this is beside the point, because there is a far better scheme which, if carried out — and Labor would do its best to promote it — would insure the varying opinions of all the world being represented on the League in the strength according to their degree of acceptance in the world. There should be a world Parliament. In the first place this League, whatever its name, must have representatives of all free peoples upon it. As long as it is only composed of the victorious nations it is little better than an alliance. Every one must be represented, since in all international matters every one is affected. Germany should have been admitted immediately the Peace Treaty was signed, and every month's delay only gave cause for increased suspicions on their part. We want to be rid of suspicions. If Germany had come in at the start, many of the troubles, territorial and economic, which followed Peace, and were the occasions of ultima- tums on our part, would never have been necessary. Crises would have become subjects of discussion, and would have found easier solution. Meanwhile, it would not have been necessary to reduce by one iota, all reasonable claims for THE LEAGUE OF PEOPLES 193 reparation, or our demands for the full and sufficient pun- ishment of all war criminals. But even th'at would not be sufficient. So a League of Peoples' Parliament must be something more than a mere debating club or an advisory committee. It must have power to legislate. This is the road along which we may eventually reach complete free trade, which, if it could be complete, would be objected to by none, which would lower prices to every consumer, increase general production, and make the world in' the end wealthier. Law is more likely to succeed than arms, and arbitration than oppression. We shall, in the end, get international laws, not unwritten, but on a world Statute book, and those who break them will have to know the rest of the peoples will combine to enforce them. That fear will be sufficient to keep the wilful to the right path. The inter- national law-breaker is not likely to have a very pleasant time. And a nation will become an outlaw just as soon as it disobeys the ruling of the League. It can come there and make out its case ; if it succeeds well and good, if the' consensus of the world's opinion is against it, then it must fall into line, and it is not probable that it will wish to do anything other. It might be tempted to try this with the constitution as it has been originally drawn up. At present on this as- sembly of delegates you might very well have a conserva- tive landlord representing this country, voting for the entire forty-five millions of residents in the land. On the face of it that is wrong, and it would perhaps lead a socialistic government to say to itself, " Yes, we know the League vetoed us, but we are convinced that if we do as we meant to we shall have the support of the laboring 194: WHEN LABOR RULES classes all over the world. We'll risk it; we don't think our colleagues among the workers in other countries will take up arms against us/' It's a pretty serious possibility, and constitutes a -weak- ness of the League. But if those workers were fully represented on the body which made the decision against the supposed government over their dispute they would not be able to persuade themselves that some influence, some faction, would support them in breaking the law laid down by the League. ■ ' You don't give the power to legislate to your home Cabinet, they have to come to Parliament for sanction in practically every move they take for every new law that is made. Why then should you give power to make decisions to an international committee ? You must have the same parliamentary control there that you insist on — and quite rightly insist on — at home. We in power would send to such a Parliament as I have outlined a number of representatives reflecting the opinions in the House at home in exactly the same way as we pro- pose to create a Second Chamber at home instead of the House of Lords, though, of course, if it were wished the country could elect their representatives for the League at the polls just as they now elect their Members of Parlia- ment. Either way guarantees that public opinion is di- rectly recorded. It is necessary to break away from the idea that the representatives should be members of the executives of the nation. The way Labor will seek to make the League a real thing is to invest it with far more power than at present, and then to enlarge its number of representatives. We should seek to create a Parliament of all peoples, a permanent body who would discuss those THE LEAGUE OF PEOPLES 195 things which had to do with the peace of the world, with all manner of relations between nations, whether concern- ing politics pure and simple, or matters of employment of the workers. This Parliament would have in proportion the same party representation as was in existence in the home Par- liament. This could easily be arranged on a system of proportional representation, a system which we should cer- tainly introduce into our own domestic elections. Thus all branches of thought at home would be reflected at this world Parliament, and the same would apply to all other countries. It is not, of course, suggested that the work of the League could be done with this large body acting as an executive. It would appoint its own Cabinet, so to speak, but all decisions would have to be ratified by the Parlia- ment, and then brought before the attention of the home Parliaments. The whole business would be open to the world's criticism at all stages. There would no longer be the possibility of secret understandings between nations, everything would be open and above board. If such a body had been in existence in 1914 there would have been no explosion such as followed the murders at Serajevo, there would have been no war. But as it took the War to make the world see this it will be a million pities if the lesson is not taken to heart to the fullest pos- sible extent, and the possibility of such an occurrence breaking out again made out of the question. Supposing, however, the League, had there been one, had settled the difference between Austria and Serbia, it would have wanted powers far greater than the League at present pretends to. Austria, or any other State which 196 WHEN LABOE EULES happens to be in the geographical position, can without any interference place such duties upon transit through its dpmain, ■ that a landlocked country could be crippled. Suppose the countries that lie round Switzerland decided to strangle that country's trade, it would be the easiest thing in the world. Tariffs could make it impossible, for her to do. any trade at all save within her own borders, and every- thing going into the country could be made so dear to bring in that the price of everything would be prohibitive, and throw the country out of competition with the rest of the world. The whole of the ground needs further exploration, but it is sufficiently clear to me that a League of Peoples will go far to prevent the wars that the generals tell us are sure to come. The causes which might lead to war are sure to arise, that we must all recognizee But it is not thinkable that, with women soon to have the power to vote the world over upon reaching twenty-one years of age, a Parliament of Peoples will not find a way to avoid disaster, to adjust the differences between nations, and so bring in the real reign of peace. \ Just what powers it would be necessary to give to this central authority it is not the moment to dogmatize about, but again there are some things clear. It must be in a position to regulate the supply of raw materials. It must assist in the maintenance of credit, that is purchasing power in the various countries, so that each may obtain a fair allocation of materials. It would be able to en- courage the supply of important things by stimulating production in various countries, and so there would not be a world shortage of things really needed. It would have its fingers upon any trusts of an international character, THE LEAGUE OF PEOPLES 197 whose operations might be likely to aim at exploiting the public by making undue profits and holding back sup- plies. And not the least of their aims should be flinging ■wide the door for the produce of all nations to enter all nations, and so sweep away the restricting tariff walls which can never benefit the workers nor the community as a whole. That last is the acid test to which all our laws will be submitted. Labor policy will benefit the community. Labor ignores vested interests; it prohibits a few privi- leged persons battening on the work of the masses ; but, let me add as a final word, it never will seek other than justice for every branch of the population. It might be thought that, just as to-day the workers are suspicious of the Government, because Government even yet comes from the class who own, who employ, so when the workers govern, employers will return the .compli- ment, and be suspicious of them. I believe we shall defeat this threat. I think they will* find that our demands are reasonable. They will see that all we claim is a first charge on industry to the point of a reasonable share in the decencies and comforts — not luxuries, note — of, life. And I am optimistic enough to ihope that, when they see our objects are fair play all round, when they have it proved to them that our adminis- tration will mean industrial peace, with all the stupendous saving that means, they will be ready, not only to give us the credit for having the good of the community at heart, but will come forward and associate themselves with our ideals both in home and international affairs. Cornell University Library JN 234 1921.T4 When labour rules 3 1924 002 408 742