The war, sad to say, has much modified our general conception of the value of human life, even when unnecessarily thrown away. But sacrifices for a great cause on the battlefield or on the ocean, however serious, are made as a rule for high ideals. They differ widely from the loss of life deliberately occasioned by capitalist neglect or greed. Thus a mining accident on a large scale, or a conflagration in a peaceful city, produces a stronger impression on the public mind than the loss of ten or twenty times the number of soldiers or sailors in a world-wide struggle. Among the widows and children and relations and comrades of the victims on the spot the exasperation against the employers was still greater. Class hatred and personal hatred were excited to a very high pitch.
This was the more natural for two reasons. First, the company on whose property the immolation of so many pitmen had occurred, and to whose mismanagement and cold-blooded indifference the avoidable explosions were due, had made enormous, almost incredible profits. From dividends of fifty per cent. in 1863 their returns had risen to profits of 1,000 per cent. in 1905. Yet they could not spare the comparatively small sum necessary to safeguard the lives of the men who obtained this wealth for the shareholders. Secondly, the Germans, who rendered assistance in the attempts to rescue the Frenchmen still in the workings below, openly proclaimed that it was quite impossible—as indeed was the truth—that such an accident on such a scale should have occurred in Germany. That the Empire in Germany should be far more careful of the lives and limbs of the miners than the Republic in France, and that huge profits should have been made still huger by the refusal of the French coal-owners to adopt the ordinary precautions enforced by law on the other side of the frontier—these considerations, driven home by the results of the great catastrophe, rendered the situation exceedingly perilous from every point of view. A strike for increased wages seemed a very poor outcome of the horrors inflicted upon the actual producers of the coal under such conditions.
Clemenceau was perhaps the best man in the country to deal with the miners at such a juncture. A Socialist of mining experience would possibly have taken more decidedly the side of the men, but he would not have been able to carry with him to the same extent the support of the Chambers. And Clemenceau had gone very far already on collectivist lines. Not many years before, in an article on “The Right to Strike,” he had put the case of the men very strongly indeed. In a vehement protest against the theory of supply and demand, as applied to the human beings compelled to sell labour power as a commodity, and the political economy of the profiteers based upon subsistence wages for the workers—all being for the best in the best of possible worlds—Clemenceau set forth how the system worked in practice:—
“The State gives to some sleek, well-set-up bourgeois immense coal-fields below ground. These fine fellows turn to men less well dressed than themselves, but who are men all the same, men with the same wants, the same feelings, the same capacity for enjoyment and suffering, and say: ‘We will grant you subsistence; sink us some pits in the earth; go below and bring us up coal, which we will sell at a good price.’
“Agreed. The pits are sunk, the coal comes out of the earth.
“But, observe, those comfortable bourgeois for their outlay of five hundred francs (£20) have now a bit of paper which is worth forty thousand francs (£1,600).
“The miners, who watch what is going on, think this a good deal, and, as they have got nothing by way of profit, they protest and ask for a share.
“‘That, my friend, is impossible. The price of coal has fallen this year, the price of man must come down in proportion. All I could do for you is to reduce your wages. You object to that. All right; down the shaft you go: don’t let us talk about it any more.’
“But the men won’t go down.
“‘You don’t make money this year. All right. But when you made huge profits, did you give us even the crumbs from your banquet?’