When labor rules

Contents

CBAP; PAOB

FOREWORD 7

I. THE ENGLAND OF TO-MORROW lO

Foreword

In the days preceding August, 19 14, the vast majority of the people of this country took so limited a view of life that they failed entirely to realise the existence of forces which they had not actually experienced; whatever label 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 recognise them as forces. They knew, for instance, that there were Socialists, 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 Labour movement or the suffrage movement could in any way affect the economic life of the nation, let alone fundamentally affect the constitution of the country, 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 University boat race.

Foreword

The past six years have opened people's eyes to things as they are. Nevertheless, there is still a very large number of people who have not yet gained the ability to understand 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 realise that the old order of things can never be re-established. But there undoubtedly is an enormous number of people who utterly fail to comprehend the possibilities 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 Labour Movement, realise that before long Labour will rule, but fail to understand what it portends.

The capitalists and the people whose means are derived from securities are wondering what will happen to them w^hen 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 Labour 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. 8

Foreword

In the following chapters I seek to remove these anxieties by the plain statement of what I firmly believe will be the effect of Labour government. These views are my own ; I am not professing to speak for the Labour Party or for any one whatever beyond myself. I do not for a moment expect that everything I write will be endorsed by my colleagues in the Labour Movement. I do not doubt that some will think my optimxism too great; that others will consider it too small. But however true or false future events may prove my vision to be I do assert, with all the vehemence at my command, that Labour 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.

Sej>tember^ 1920,

Chapter I

There is nothing Utopian in my vision of the England of to-morrow; I am not one of those confident and optimistic people who imagine that once Labour 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 excelled; 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 grandfathers would have believed to be possible within hundreds 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 fundamentally from the discontent of the past, inasmuch as it will not be based upon a sense of lo injustice and will not be received in a spirit of hostility.

Furthermore, the grounds for discontent will be considerably 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 living on his sweated labour; and no man will be able to proclaim that he lacks the opportunity to improve his lot if he wishes to do so.

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 favoured 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 convinced that not one half of them will be realised for generations to come, if, indeed, they are ever realised.

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.

II

But what is a revolution ? I maintain that it is not necessarily a violent and bloody revolt; an orgy of outrage and assassination; an affair of red caps and barricades. A revolution may be perfectly bloodless and peaceful, and I maintain that we are in the midst of such a revolution at the present moment.

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 Enquiry concerning the conditions of employment of dock labour. This report was published last March, and the paragraph to which I refer is so remarkable 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 promotive of better habits, which give a chance for the development of a greater sense of selfrespect, 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 assessingthe value of human labourat thepoverty line.

It is findings of this nature which are paving 12 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.

Day by day it is becoming more and more widely recognised that Labour is not a menial task. It is an indispensable 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 Labour must not only be immeasurably improved, but it must be given every possible aid and opportunity to improve itself.

In the creation of the new England one of the first essentials is the clear recognition that Labour 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 unaccountable 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 Westminster; and how on earth could a man who had spent his days at the loom or in the coal mine possess that experienced 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 according to the intelligence of the employer who directed his labour.

We have progressed far since those days and now the public body which did not contain its Labour representative would be hard to find. But whereas it has come to be fully recognised 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 Royal Commissions, on Conciliation Boards and Boards of Inquiry, it has still to be realised 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 recognised that the men, by virtue of their close and daily contact with the details of their work, must often be able to suggest improvements which would be invaluable to the concern by which they are employed.

Tentative steps have already been taken in this direction. 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 i2s. 6d. This is the men's scheme to which I have referred; there is also a scheme run on similar lines for girl employees.

* 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 ot 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 tremendously benefit by the workers having a share in the management, but, of course, this Bourneville experiment is not business; the award of honour 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 suspicion, 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 Railways, Mines, Canals, Harbours, and Roads. Also, there is no reason against, but plenty of reasons in favour 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 having a host of small and inadequate sources of supply, we shall see the erection of a score of huge super-power stations which will generate, at incredibly cheap rates, sufficient electricity for the use of every industrial establishment and every private household in the country. With proper arrangements for municipal co-operation in distribution, the whole country will be able to obtain the cheapest possible power, light, and heat.

It will be seen that by the nationalisation 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 labour to decrease within, of course, reasonable limits.

By the success of its commercial enterprises, by adequate 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 expropriated, and the great army of insurance agents will find their place in life as Civil Servants with equita i6

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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 England of to-day will be the change in the ownership of the 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 controlled under a scheme of local option by the various districts of the country.

This is but an indication of some of the more sweeping reforms which it may reasonably be assumed will be carried 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 labour 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 labour under the best possible conditions of health and comfort; there is no reason why a man should not be comfortable at his work if the circumstances of his task permit.

Hours of labour will be shorter than they are in general 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 instead 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 i8

The Enjrland of To-morrow

'to the desire for self-improvement; a great army of University Extension lecturers will be employed to give popular instruction, which will be available to all during the winter months, and there will be a National Theatre and a National Opera.

Those people who think they have a bent for arts and crafts will be given every opportunity of proving whether such is the case or not, and where latent talent in a sufficiently striking degree is discovered means will be provided for its proper and complete development.

The physical welfare of the people will not be forgotten, and there will be ample facilities for gymnastic exercises, while steps will be taken to foster a greater desire 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 recognised in the new England, and there will be State endowment 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 education 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 penalise 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 England of to-morrow as I see it, but it must clearly be understood that I do not for a moment pretend that this will be the immediate outcome of Labour's accession to office.

Labour 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 Labour's power to perform it.

The old England stands condemned, and the foundations of the new England are already laid — for years past the progressive forces, with ever-increasing strength and efficiency, have been engaged in digging them out, and with the formation of a Labour 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 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 civilisation 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 efficient work, but whom the economic conditions of the country 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 recognised — as a principle. Every individual of the nation has got to realise 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 labours of others — who view the possibility of compulsory work with alarm and indignation; they 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 recognised 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 22 the contrary view on the ground that without their wealth labour would be brought to a standstill.

* But for my wealth,' they say, * the workers would be without the necessary tools and machinery for their labour.*

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 labour, and that being so, it surely must be self-evident that the more labour 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 investment, 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 equitable. 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 comparatively sHghtly and very haltingly, and that inventors have as often as not died in poverty.

When Labour rules, this state of things will be altered.

That Capital will be entitled to some return will be recognised, 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 favour of the workers as the privileged class — it will be a big step towards eliminating privilege altogether and placing every man upon the level which his ability and industry entitles him to occupy; furthermore, the nation wall 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 necessarv incentive. 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 Labour of the despotic form of government they would have you believe Labour intends to set up; of the tyrannical interferences 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 24 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 labour is cheap — and there are plenty of employers who can find a market, and a good market, for the fruits of such labour.