A Look Round
Last month the “Progressive” London County Council took over the tramways of the North Metropolitan Company and immediately signalised the march of “progress” by withdrawing a privilege that passengers had hitherto enjoyed.
Under the Company management two-journey tickets were issued at the rate of three-fourths of two “all-the-way” fares. The return portion of the ticket was available by any route at any time ; but, so soon as ownership and control by the public capitalists was substituted for that of the private ones, notices were exhibited in each car stating that these would be available on the day of issue only.
Such is the “progressive” policy of Messrs. Benn, Crooks, Burns, Isaac Mitchell & Co.
Eastwood & Co. have introduced a new process of making bricks at their works at Conyer, near Sittingbourne, by which bricks of good quality are now turned out by machinery in seven days, against three months under the old hand-made process.
There are “reformers” who, amongst other wild ideas, propose to solve the “problem” of the unemployed by a revival and extension of the apprenticeship system. By it, for example, they would increase the number of expert brick-makers, and then, even before then—along comes a machine which does all their work in one-thirteenth of the time !
Some people would argue that it would be better to put aside the machine and make the bricks by hand ; but these are usually people who have never made nor attempted to make any bricks. They are not Socialists. Socialists are working for the elimination of waste, for the greatest economy in the production and distribution of wealth. The difference between Socialism and Capitalism as regards machinery is that under Socialism machinery will be a real labour saver, reducing the hours of necessary work of all the wealth producers in the community, whilst under Capitalism machinery simply reduces the wages bill of the capitalist and intensities the unemployed question.
It is not, of course, wise to dogmatise as to the extent of the reduction of hours of labour that will be effected by the industrial organisation that will obtain under Socialism, but it is easy to see that when all useless occupations, such as those which are the necessary concomitants of the competitive system, are eliminated, and those engaged therein are performing their share of the useful labour ; when those who are now chronically unemployed or are in the ranks of the predatory professionals (or should it be the professional predatorists ?) are also helping, what an enormous reduction of each worker’s hours will be possible.
It is sometimes suggested that people under Socialism, having reduced the necessary labour to a minimum, will not know what to do with themselves in the leisure hours. It doesn’t strike me that way. In the summer time, at any rate, I can always enjoy a “laze,” stretched with my “back-to-the-land” by the side of a stream or the sea, and if I were living under a Socialist State, and had done my fair share of the necessary work, I don’t think time would hang very heavily on my hands. I have yet to learn that I am constituted much differently to other folk.
A book which is often mentioned when discussions arise concerning the hours of labour under Socialism is “Our National Resources and how they are wasted.” It was written by William Hoyle and published in 1871. The writer said (page 50), “Assuming every person did their share, a total of 1¼ hours’ daily labour would suffice to supply us in abundance with all the comforts of life.” He added, “The progress of invention and the increasing application of machinery, are daily reducing even this amount of labour, so that the part which has now mainly to be played by man is simply to superintend the machinery which does the work.” That was nearly 40 years ago.
Speaking of Wm. Hoyle reminds me of the shock which the rabid teetotallers have recently received. They glibly assert that “drink is the chief cause of crime,” and that “drink fills our prisons,” etc. Dr. Emile Keich has proved, by quotations from the United States Census Report on Crime, Pauperism, and Benevolence, that total abstainers committed more crimes than drunkards, and now we have a Special Correspondent of The Tribune declaring that, as a result of his investigations at Dartmoor, “the bulk of these specialists in crime, who represent the Genius of Evil, are confirmed teetotallers.”
Farther than this, the Daily News, the anti-alcohol, pro-cocoa, organ, last week reviewed the Criminal Statistics for England and Wales in 1904 and said, “Summarising the results, drunkenness is regarded as stationary, but minor offences of dishonesty and serious frauds and breaches of trust have increased, while offences of the vagrancy class are declared to be growing rapidly.” And if “drink fills our lunatic asylums” how is it that the consumption has seriously declined in recent years, but the number of lunatics has considerably increased ?
“The deepest root of the evils and iniquities which fill the industrial world is … the subjection of labour to capital and the enormous share which the possessors of the instruments of industry are able to take from the produce.” J. S. MILL.
Those who think that imprisonment for debt is one of the barbarisms of the past may be interested in the fact that 19,217 debtors went to prison in 1904, the figures for the four previous years being 17,598, 15,710, 13,635, and 12,875 respectively.
The recent earthquake and resulting fires in San Francisco have considerably affected the shares of many British and German Fire Insurance Companies. In these countries, as well as in America and others, the workers are exhorted to “support home industries,” “keep the money in the country,” etc. But these considerations do not weigh with the employing class. They know no lines of demarcation, whether geographical, national, or racial. And American capitalists are quite as willing to pay premiums to British Insurance Companies when it suits their purpose as British ones are to invest in industrial concerns abroad to compete against British productions.
But the fact that a seismic upheaval, as the “penny-a-liners” have it, occurring miles away, has caused the price of certain British shares to considerably decline on the London Stock Exchange, has a greater interest for the working class than at first sight appears. It shows the internationalism of capitalism.
This has of course been shown before. When Mr. Joseph Leiter was operating in Chicago with the object of cornering the world’s wheat supply, the price of wheat, flour, and bread rose, not only in America, but all over the civilized world, and in Southern Europe starving workers who were parading the streets unable to obtain bread, because of the prohibitive prices, were shot down by the national defenders of international capitalism. This was dealt with in detail in the article “Invasion or Starvation,” which appeared in THE SOCIALIST STANDARD in July last.
Capitalism has long since ceased to be local and national. It is international. The workers are hoodwinked by the capitalist class and their henchmen into thinking that workmen of other districts, of other countries, of other races, are their enemies. But the capitalists draw no distinction. They set out to exploit the working class irrespective of race, creed, or colour. They organise, but as a class against the working-class. The working class have not yet learned the lesson placed before them by their masters.
It is to the capitalists’ interests that the workers should be disunited, but that if organised they should be organised sectionally, even to the extent of workers in different departments of the same industry forming separate Unions and often blacklegging each other. This suits the so-called Labour Leader as well as the employing class. The more Unions the more jobs, the more joint conferences with the employers, and the more drawings of expenses by the “representatives of the men,” etc. And when some Trade Unionist arises to urge that so many Unions are inadvisable and prejudicial to the workers’ interest, that they involve more paid ollicials than are really necessary and are used by the capitalist class against each other, the “leaders” always find insurmountable difficulties against amalgamation, and if something must be done, they effect a Federation, and create some more well-paid jobs for their own kidney.
The “General Federation of Trade Unions” job will be fresh in the minds of most readers.
There is no hope for the workers until they became class-conscious, that is, until they recognise that their interests, like their masters’, are not sectional, trade, or national, but class, and that they must organise, as a class, as the international proletariat, “to the end” in the words of our Declaration of Principles,* “that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.”
Writing in the Labour leader the Gateshead I.L.P. express the opinion “that the reason that Socialism is not making the progress we have a right to expect is largely to be found in the matter served up to their audiences by our I.L.P. Lecturers.”
Truth will sometimes out ! If the I.L.P. lecturers were Socialists, intent upon imparting to the working class a clear understanding of the principles of Socialism, the matter served up would be different. But, as we have proved, to go no further back than the General Election, the I.L.P. leaders threw over their principles when they found that if they adhered to them they would fail to reach the above-all-things coveted seat in the House of Commons.
“Thank God,” writes the editor of the Labour Leader, “we are not logicians.” Thank God, say we, we are guiltless of laying that charge to their door.
In the course of the recent action for slander brought by Mr. J. Pitt Hardacre against Mr. Joseph Beavor Williams, a Labour member of the Manchester City Council, and prominent by his connection with the Musicians’ Union, the defendant admitted that when addressing meetings at Openshaw, in Manchester, he had not confined himself strictly to the truth.
It will go hard with lying labour “leaders” when the workers get hold of the truth !
J. KAY
* Manifesto of the S.P.G.B. post free 1½d., from 28, Cursitor Street, London, E.C.