By the Way
Recently we were informed that a “soldier’s wife gets £400 a year” made up by army allowances, working on munitions, and some of her children also going out to work. The sequel of the case was that the woman was summoned for the non-attendance of her boy at school. In fining the mother £1 the Mayor remarked : “£8 a week ! £400 a year ! It sounds like a fairy tale from the ‘Arabian Nights.’ “—”DailyTelegraph,” 13.9.1917.
No mention is made in the report as to whether the learned gentleman passed any criticism on the state of society which tolerates the employment of children (in this case a boy of 13 years of age) on munition work when they ought to be at school. The condemnation being reserved only for the mother. Such are the methods of those who rule over us.
During the past three years great prominence has been given to a few cases where members of the working class have been the recipients of increased money wages. So extraordinary is it for those who toil and spin to be able to count their fabulous income by the hundred pound per annum method that our capitalist masters and their henchmen are screaming themselves into hysterics. Members of Parliament may receive anything from £400 to £5,000 per annum, others may be appointed insurance commisiioners with correspondingly high salaries and emoluments, and such things pass unnoticed. But when the merry wage-slave gets an increase in his or her salary as a result of capitalist anarchy, then it is a fit subject for our “superiors” to wax eloquent on.
Three years and three months of what our masters are pleased to call the “war of liberation” have rolled by. And the time is fast approaching when the priest and his satellites will be chanting their hymns of praise to the “Prince of Peace” the while they urge their fellow humans on to the slaughter of each other ! After all this time further signs are not wanting to confirm the correctness of our Manifesto issued in the early days of the war. Many stood aghast after reading our pronouncement, but at long last we are coming into our own. Those who then differed from us are having the scales removed from their eyes, and are beginning to see the position from a different view-point, which corresponds more nearly with our own.
Concerning the class to which we belong and the sacrifices that class has been called upon to make, another interesting admission recently saw the light of day in a weekly newspaper. Dealing with the Representation of the People Bill much adulation was being dispensed to the hard-working (and long-suffering) men and women who compose the bulk of the inhabitants of this isle. Then occurs the following notable passage :
“Such a measure of this kind could never have been passed by any Parliament in the days when Peace presided over the land. But there has been given to us all a new perspective of national things. The great burden of this vast war has fallen on the common people, who have had to make the highest efforts and to sorrow under the heaviest sacrifices. It is only in the hour of supreme danger that large numbers of the comfortable classes have learned how little relatively they have borne of the labours necessary towards victory in the bloody conflict on which the future of our Empire depends.”—”Reynolds’s,” Oct. 21st, 1917.
We have said similar things ourselves over and over again.
Turning to another phase of the same article one reads that “In every land the labouring man and the labouring woman have had the value of their efforts recognised at long last ;” and “the foundations are being laid for the political edifice of the future.” Passing on we observe that “so far all our electoral law has been so full of obstacles both to voters without property and candidates without wealth that numberless constituencies were safely set down as the preserves of the rich and the influential.” Having thus been taken to Pisgah’s heights we view the promised land, for the writer informs his readers that: “The new Bill changes all—or nearly all—this state of things. For the first time, the Democracy will be able to determine the course of legislation in this country in full degree, if it wants to do so.” Then follows a very significant observation, and one which we have had occasion to refer to in the past. It continues ;
“If it wants to do so. There, indeed, lies the pith of the whole matter. A people without vision, that does not know what it wants, can always be tricked by political charlatans, and set in conflict over petty things, while the graver issues are settled over its head.”
All this on the part of our contemporary is “much ado about nothing” and avails us little. Before the war the working class had all the essentials ready to hand. The one thing lacking was Socialist education. Given an understanding of the conflict of interest between capitalist and labourer, the class struggle and its necessary culmination, they could not be “tricked by politicel charlatans” nor “set in conflict over petty things.” Neither could they be hoodwinked by radical rag-time journals dangling the red-herring of an extended franchise before them.
Reference was recently made to Sir Auckland Geddes’ schemes for using available man-power in the country and the case of the conscientious objector. The concluding portion of the paragraph was as follows :
“One man, engaged before his arrest on income tax and excess profits work, is now making mail-bags in Wormwood Scrubbs. I suppose there are scores of similar instances of the eminently intelligent way in which our national labour resources are being husbanded.”—”Daily News,” Oct. i8th, 1917.
Such is the wisdom of our masters’ agents.
At the beginning of the war, when “voluntary” enlistment was the order of the day, we used to read of young ladies shouting to the men to “join up,” and even going so far as to present white feathers to the men who were in civilian clothes and minus an armlet. To-day we read that —
“Of the 13,000 volunteers 3,460 did not respond to their call to the Selection Board.
An official of the Ministry of Labour suggested to-day that girls should get the conditions of service from an employment exchange and ask the officials all the questions they are anxious about before filling in the form and wasting everybody’s time.
“The numbers of volunteers are not anything like what we need,” said an official to-day, “allhough the women are coming along steadily. The middle-class girls are still holding back.”
This appears to suggest the question : “Who are the slackers now ? Is it a case of when they are asked to join up they lack the courage, or have gained discretion ?
One has often wondered why some imperialistic capitalists have gone into hysterics over the utterances of Ramsay Macdonald. More amazing still does it become after reading the following.
“Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, speaking at Loughborough on Saturday night, said they wanted no patched up peace, or peace at any price, which would bring war in ten years. They wanted to remove the causes of war.”—”Daily News,” Oct. 11th, 1917.
Perhaps he will inform us how this result is to be obtained.
THE SCOUT.