Britain for the British

by Robert Blatchford

But let me use this example of the hall and the panic more fully.

Suppose the hall to be divided into three parts. First the stalls, then the pit stalls, then the pit. Suppose the only door is the door in the stalls. Suppose the people in the pit stalls have to climb a high barrier to get to the stalls. Suppose those in the pit have to climb a high barrier to get to the pit stalls, and then the high barrier that parts the pit stalls from the stalls. Suppose there is, right at the back of the pit, a small, weak boy. Now, I ask you, as sensible men, is there "nothing to prevent" that boy from getting through that door? You know the boy has only the smallest of chances of getting out of that hall. But he has a thousand times a better chance of getting safely out of that door than the son of a crossing-sweeper has of becoming Lord Chancellor of England.

In our hall the upper classes would sit in the stalls, the middle classes in the pit stalls, and the workers in the pit. Whose son would have the best chance for the door?

I compared the race for the Chancellorship just now to a foot-race of twenty men; and I showed you that if all the runners were as fleet as greyhounds only one could win, and nineteen must lose.

But the M.P.'s crossing-sweeper's son has to enter a race where there are millions of starters, and where the race is a handicap in which he is on scratch, with thousands of men more than half the course in front of him.

For don't you see that this race which the lucky or successful men tell us we can all win is not a fair race?

The son of the crossing-sweeper has terrible odds against him. The son of the gentleman has a long start, and carries less weight.

What are the qualities needed in a race for the Chancellorship? The boy who means to win must be marvellously strong, clever, brave, and persevering.

Now, will he be likely to be strong? He may be, but the odds are against him. His father may not be strong nor his mother, for they may have worked hard, and they may not have been well fed, nor well nursed, nor well doctored. They probably live in a slum, and they cannot train, nor teach, nor feed their son in a healthy and proper way, because they are ignorant and poor. And the boy gets a few years at a board school, and then goes to work.

But the gentleman's son is well bred, well fed, well nursed, well trained, and lives in a healthy place. He goes to good schools, and from school to college.