CHAPTER XV. FORM OF SLAVERY UNDER MODERN CIVILIZATION.
Persistence of Chattel-Slavery in Eastern Countries—Assumption of Form of Wages-Slavery under Modern Civilization—Creation of Millionaire Capitalists by Present System—Result in Ruin and Starvation of the Labouring Class—Necessity of Repressive Armies and Police—Measures necessary to secure Social Reform.
Having seen how human slavery originated in parental despotism—how it expanded by war, commerce, indebtedness, marriage, &c.—how it continued to be direct or chattel slavery all over the world till the advent of Christianity—how it, in consequence of the workings of the Gospel, gradually assumed the form of wages-slavery, and generated modern proletarianism throughout Western Europe and America—having also seen how the system of chattel-slavery worked in the ancient world and in the slave-states of America, and compared, or rather contrasted, that system with its more hideous successor, wages-slavery—let us now inquire what are the forms and conditions of human slavery as it exists under modern civilization, and by what means and appliances it may be effectually and for ever banished from the world.
As already stated, direct or chattel slavery is still the normal condition of the labouring classes in most Eastern countries, and of the black population in South America. In Russia and other countries a species of serfdom, until quite recently, obtained, which partook of the nature of both chattel and wages slavery, but which was probably, on the whole, less objectionable than either. The serfs of such countries correspond with our villains of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman times, and are clearly a remnant of the old feudal system which grew up in most parts of Europe upon the dissolution of the Roman empire. Wherever this serfdom prevails, proletarianism is confined to the cities and towns, the serfs being, like chattel-slaves, provided for out of the lands to which they are attached.
In the principal states of Europe and America, in our colonies generally, and indeed in most modern countries called “civilized,” wages-slavery is the normal condition of the labouring classes. This latter kind of slavery is, cæteris paribus, more or less intensely severe according to the degree of perfection to which civilization is carried. Thus, in our United Kingdom, which is accounted the most civilized country in the world, wages-slavery is attended with greater hardships, and subject to more privations and casualties, than anywhere else. Nowhere else do we find employment so precarious; nowhere else such multitudes of people overworked at one time and totally destitute of employment at other times; nowhere else do we see such masses of the population subsisting upon pittances wholly inadequate to sustain human beings in health and strength; nowhere else do we find jails and workhouses so overcrowded; nowhere else do we hear of whole districts depopulated by famine, nor of upwards of 1,500,000 out of eight millions of people being cut off by actual starvation and forced expatriation in the course of twelve months, as has happened in Ireland in our own times. All this, too, we find to be contemporaneous and in juxtaposition with granaries, warehouses, and shops teeming with a superabundance of the choicest produce of all climes—with cries of over-production and glutted markets ringing in our ears wherever we pass—and with the most opulent and numerous aristocracy, territorial and commercial, that was ever known to be congregated in any country of seven times the extent—to say nothing of a still more numerous middle-class, in whose ranks may be found some thousands far surpassing German counts or German princes in command of wealth and luxury. Hence, no doubt, it was that Sir Robert Peel, not many years since, accounted in Parliament for our distress by assuring the House that “the occasional distress and destitution of great numbers of people was a necessary consequence of our advanced civilization, and was therefore a thing naturally to be expected in such a country as England.”
We remember, some years ago, when an address was presented to this same Sir Robert Peel by some 6,000 or 7,000 of the merchants, bankers, shipowners, &c., of the City of London, to console him for his temporary expulsion from office by the Whigs,—we remember how the Times (which was then ratting from the Whigs) boasted, by way of demonstrating the respectability of the addressers, that the list contained the names of 1,500 citizens whose aggregate wealth would suffice to redeem the National Debt, and still leave enough to support the owners in opulence. We remember having seen it stated, about the same period, in a City article of the said Times, that so prosperous was trade that ironmasters in Staffordshire and Wales were known to have realised £200,000 in one year. We remember hearing, on the best authority, of the house of Baring & Co. clearing £650,000 by the speculations of a single year. We know a banker died, a few years since, in Liverpool whose estate was computed at from £5,000,000 to £7,000,000. Peel’s father is said to have died worth £3,000,000; and old Arkwright worth twice that much. Soames, the late shipowner, was worth several millions. Rentals varying from £20,000 to upwards of £200,000 a year are numerous in England. The Duke of Westminster’s property will, it is said, be now worth half-a-million per annum of income. London, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and other towns abound in millionaires worth from a plum to twenty, thirty, and even fifty plums. A year’s rental of some of our dukes would pay the wages of some 20,000 Irish labourers for a whole twelvemonth, at sixpence per day each, which is more than thousands of them can earn by a hard day’s work. A single bargain on the Stock Exchange will realise, for a Rothschild, a Baring, a Gurney, or a Goldsmid, more than 30,000 needlewomen in London could possibly earn in two years at present wages. Were a few of our great landowners and millionaire capitalists so inclined, they might, by clubbing together, keep an army of 100,000 fighting men about them, whose maintenance, at their present wages, would actually not be missed out of their enormous revenues. At £15 per man, the annual cost would be only a million and a half, which, divided amongst Sir Robert Peel’s 1,500 city addressers, would weigh less heavily upon them than a penny a week subscription upon a poor Chartist weaver.
And while this monstrous hell-begotten opulence stares us in the face wherever we go, what find we to be the condition of the men to whom we owe the very bread we eat, and without whom England would be a howling wilderness, namely, the agricultural labourers? We find them, in order to escape death from starvation, driven to the very brink of rebellion, as may be collected from paragraphs like the following, which may be seen in almost every agricultural journal we may chance to take up. We quote from a Wiltshire paper:—
“Riots in the Agricultural Districts.—The farm-labourers of the district round West Lavington, Devizes, have been resisting an attempt to reduce wages from seven to six shillings a week, by forcibly stopping farm operations. The men having got a hint of the contemplated reduction, a number of them waited upon the steward of Lord Churchill, the owner of the principal farms, with a view of inducing him to intercede in their behalf. This led to no beneficial results; and the men finding that their masters were determined on reduction, about a hundred and fifty of them assembled in front of the house of a Mr. Spencer, and stopped men, horses, and agricultural implements that were proceeding to work by that road. Having persuaded other labourers to join them, they went round to all the farms and completely stopped all operations. They took horses from ploughs, opened sheep-pens, and prevented all labour being proceeded with. On the following day some of them returned to work; but warrants being issued for the ringleaders, more than a hundred men formed themselves into a band and paraded the streets, armed with staves. The assistance of the constabulary was then obtained, and something like order restored. The next day a man named Kite was taken before the magistrates and committed to prison. He had not been long in custody before a large body of his fellow-labourers, armed with sticks, came into the town for the purpose of rescuing him, but were deterred by the presence of a strong military detachment.”
Here we find soldiers and policemen (whose keep costs for each man more than double the labourer’s pay) employed to force Englishmen to choose between starvation and toiling all the week round for six shillings. Supposing these unfortunate labourers to work every day in the year (Sundays excepted), their wages, at six shillings a week, would be just £15 12s. for the whole year! Here is a sum wherewith to keep a wife and, mayhap, five or six young children! Mr. Edward Smith has told us how common it is to see nigger-slaves in America making and spending from 50 to 150 dollars per annum by the labour of their leisure hours—that is to say, exclusive of the maintenance provided for them by their masters in exchange for their regular work. Take the mean—100 dollars. This, at 4s. 2d. per dollar, is just £20 16s. 8d. If he saves or spends 150 dollars, it is upwards of £30. Here, then, we find a nigger-bondsman so far superior in condition to the free-born Englishman, that he can actually afford to throw away upon luxuries (by the earnings of his leisure hours) one-third more than, or even double, the entire sum that a Wiltshire labourer is paid for the whole of his time, though he drudge all the year round, and is never sick a single day. If facts like these do not make the blood of Englishmen rush to their cheeks, and the very cravenest of them take the field for their social rights, they are past redemption.
Sir Robert Peel calls all this “civilization;” and the House of Commons cried, “Hear, hear,” and cheered and supported him, when he declared that the remedy for such a state of things lay not within the compass of legislation; that Parliament depended, itself, upon the people, and not the people on Parliament; and that the only and proper remedy for the distressed classes was for them “to take their affairs into their own hands”! Well, in the foregoing paragraph from the Devizes newspaper, we see them essay to take their affairs into their own hands; and we see also, that no sooner do they attempt to do so—no sooner do they proceed to act upon Sir Robert’s advice—than soldiers and police are brought down upon them, and warrants issued for their apprehension. If this be not the perfection of human slavery, as well as the perfection of inhumanity and injustice, we really know not what is.
But is it true that no Parliamentary cure is findable for the disease?—that the evil is one beyond the reach of legislative control?—that, after all, the boasted “omnipotence of Parliament” (which, Blackstone tells us, can do anything and everything not naturally impossible)—is it true that this boasted omnipotence cannot secure for an Englishman the food he has raised, the bread he has earned—nay, doubly, trebly, quintuply, decuply earned? Is this true? No, no; a thousand times no! What Parliament has done, it can undo; what Parliament ought to do, and can do, it ought to be made to do, or else to abdicate. There is not a member in either House of Parliament that does not know, as well as we know, that our land and money laws are at the bottom of all the distress in the country, and that the repeal of bad laws, and the enactment of good ones, are all that is wanted to make England a paradise. There is not a member in either House that does not know that all the slavery in the world, or that has ever been in the world, is, or has been, the work of landlords and money-lords; and that, consequently, the only true and proper way to put an end to slavery is to make laws to deprive landlords and money-lords of the power to enslave and rob their fellow-creatures. If it be said, this cannot be done without interfering with the rights of private property, we answer emphatically that it is laws against robbery, and not against property, that are wanted. We assert emphatically (because we know we can prove satisfactorily) that the repeal of unjust laws, and the enactment of a few just and salutary ones, upon Land, Credit, and Equitable Exchange (the latter including Currency), is all that is needed to terminate poverty and slavery for ever; and that it is perfectly within the compass of Parliament to enact such laws without violating the rights of private property, or confiscating to the value of one shilling of any man’s estate, or otherwise dealing with it than in the legitimate way of taxation and commutation, which the laws of all countries recognise and practise, and none more than our own.
But, before going a step further in this inquiry, we beg to submit here the following resolutions which were proposed to a crowded public meeting by the author of this work, and carried by acclamation without a single dissentient, although the meeting was composed of reformers and philanthropists of all shades and sects:—
“This meeting is of opinion that in addition to a full, fair, and free representation of the whole people in the Commons House of Parliament, upon principles the same, or similar to those laid down in the People’s Charter, the following measures, some of a provisional, the others of a permanent nature, are necessary to ensure real political and social justice to the oppressed and suffering population of the United Kingdom, and to protect society from violent revolutionary changes:—
“1. A repeal of our present wasteful and degrading system of poor-laws, and a substitution of a just and efficient poor-law (based upon the original Act of Elizabeth), which would centralise the rates, and dispense them equitably and economically for the beneficial employment and relief of the destitute poor; the rates to be levied only upon the owners of every description of realized property; the employment to be of a healthy, useful, and reproductive kind, so as to render the poor self-sustaining and self-respecting. Till such employment be procured the relief of the poor to be, in all cases, promptly and liberally administered as a right, and not grudgingly doled out as a boon; the relief not to be accompanied with obduracy, insult, imprisonment in the workhouses, separation of married couples, the breaking up of families, or any such other harsh and degrading conditions as, under the present system, convert relief into punishment, and treat the unhappy applicant rather as a convicted criminal than as (what he really is) the victim of an unjust and vitiated state of society.
“2. In order to lighten the pressure of rates, and at the same time gradually to diminish, and finally to absorb, the growing mass of pauperism and surplus population, it is the duty of the Government to appropriate its present surplus revenue, and the proceeds of national or public property, to the purchasing of lands, and the location thereon of the unemployed poor. The rents accruing from these lands to be applied to further purchases of land, till all who desired to occupy land, either as individual holders or industrial communities, might be enabled to do so. A general law, empowering parishes to raise loans upon the security of their rates, would greatly facilitate and expedite the operation of Government towards this desirable end.
“3. Pending the operations of these measures, it is desirable to mitigate the burdens of taxation and of public and private indebtedness upon all classes who suffer thereby,—the more especially as these burdens have been vastly aggravated by the recent monetary and free trade measures of Sir Robert Peel. To this end, the Public Debt and all private indebtedness affected by the fall of prices should be equitably adjusted in favour of the debtor and productive classes, and the charges of Government should be reduced upon a scale corresponding with the general fall of prices and of wages. And, as what is improperly called the National Debt has been admitted, in both Houses of Parliament, to be in the nature of a bona fide mortgage upon the realised property of the country, it is but strict justice that the owners of this property, and they only, should be henceforward held responsible for both capital and interest. At all events, the industrious classes should not be held answerable for it, seeing that the debt was not borrowed by them, nor for them, nor with their consent, and that even had it been so, they have had no assets left them for the payment of it. Moreover, the realised property of this country, being estimated at eight times the amount of the debt, the owners or mortgagers have no valid excuse or plea to offer on the score of inability, for refusing to meet the claims of their mortgagees.
“4. The gradual resumption by the State (on the acknowledged principles of equitable compensation to existing holders or their heirs) of its ancient, undoubted, inalienable dominion and sole proprietorship over all lands, mines, turbaries, fisheries, &c., of the United Kingdom and our Colonies; the same to be held by the State, as trustees in perpetuity for the entire people, and rented out to them in such quantities and on such terms as the law and local circumstances shall determine;—because the land, being the gift of the Creator to ALL, can never become the exclusive property of individuals; because the monopoly of the land in private hands is a palpable invasion of the rights of the excluded parties, rendering them more or less the slaves of landlords and capitalists, and tending to circumscribe or annul their other rights and liberties; because a monopoly of the earth by a portion of mankind is no more justifiable than would be the monopoly of air, light, heat, or water; and because the rental of land (which justly belongs to the whole people) would form a national fund adequate to defray all charges of the public service, execute all needful public works, and educate the population, without the necessity for any taxation.
“5. That, as it is the recognised duty of the State to support all those of its subjects who from incapacity or misfortune are unable to procure their own subsistence, and as the nationalization of landed property would open up new sources of occupation for the now surplus industry of the people (a surplus which is daily augmented by the accumulation of machinery in the hands of the capitalists), the same principle which now sanctions a public provision for the destitute poor should be extended to the providing a sound system of National Credit, through which any man might (under certain conditions) procure an advance from the national funds arising out of the proceeds of public property, and thereby be enabled to rent and cultivate land on his own account, instead of being subjected, as now, to the injustice and tyranny of wages-slavery (through which capitalists and profitmongers are enabled to defraud him of his fair recompense), or being induced to become a hired slaughterer of his fellow-creatures at the bidding of godless diplomatists, enabling them to foment and prosecute international wars, and trample on popular rights, for the exclusive advantage of aristocratic and ‘vested interests.’ The same privilege of obtaining a share of the national credit to be applicable to the requirements of individuals, companies, and communities in all other branches of useful industry, as well as in agriculture.
“6. That the National Currency should be based on real, consumable wealth, or on the bona fide credit of the State, and not upon the variable and uncertain amount of scarce metals; because a currency depending on such a basis, however suitable in past times, or as a measure of value in present international commerce, has now become, by the increase of population and wealth, wholly inadequate to perform the functions of equitably representing and distributing that wealth; thereby rendering all commodities liable to perpetual fluctuation in price, as those metals happen to be more or less plentiful in any country; increasing to an enormous extent the evils inherent in usury and in the banking and funding systems (in support of which a legitimate function of the law—the PROTECTION of property—is distorted into an instrument for the CREATION of property to a large amount for the benefit of a small portion of society belonging to what are called vested interests); because, from its liability to become locally or nationally scarce or in excess, that equilibrium which should be maintained between the production and consumption of wealth is destroyed; because, being of intrinsic value itself, it fosters a vicious trade in money and a ruinous practice of commercial gambling and speculation; and, finally, because, under the present system of society, it has become confessedly the ‘root of all evil,’ and the main support of that unholy worship of Mammon which now so extensively prevails, to the supplanting of all true religion, natural and revealed.
“7. That in order to facilitate the transfer of property or service, and the mutual interchange of wealth among the people, to equalize the demand and supply of commodities, to encourage consumption as well as production, and to render it as easy to sell as to buy, it is an important duty of the State to institute, in every town and city, public marts or stores for the reception of all kinds of exchangeable goods, to be valued by disinterested officers appointed for the purpose, either upon a corn or a labour standard; the depositors to receive symbolic notes representing the value of their deposits, such notes to be made legal currency throughout the country, enabling their owners to draw from the public stores to an equivalent amount, thereby gradually displacing the present reckless system of competitive trading and shopkeeping—a system which, however necessary or unavoidable in the past, now produces a monstrous amount of evil, by maintaining a large class living on the profits made by the mere sale of goods, on the demoralizing principle of buying cheap and selling dear, totally regardless of the ulterior effects of that policy upon society at large and the true interests of humanity.
“It is not assumed that the foregoing propositions comprise all the reforms needed in society. Doubtless there are many other reforms required besides those alluded to; doubtless we want a sound system of national education for youth, made compulsory upon all parents and guardians; doubtless we require a far less expensive system of military and naval defence than now obtains; doubtless we require the expropriation of railways, canals, bridges, docks, gas-works, water-works, &c.; and doubtless we require a juster and more humane code of civil and penal law than we now possess. But these and all other needful reforms will be easy of accomplishment when those comprised in the foregoing propositions shall have been effected. Without these, indeed, justice cannot be done to humanity; society cannot be placed in the true path of improvement, never again to be turned aside or thrown back; nor can those natural checks and counter-checks be instituted without which the conflicting passions and propensities of man fail to produce a harmonious whole, but with which, as in the material world, all things are made to work together for good, reconciling man to his position in the universe, and exalting his hopes of future destiny.”
We shall treat the subject of these propositions in the following chapters; and meanwhile the reader will please observe that similar resolutions have also received the sanction of numerous meetings, large and small, throughout the country.
