Britain for the British

by Robert Blatchford

And when he leaves college he has money to pay fees, and he has a name, and he has education; and I ask you, what are the odds against the son of a crossing-sweeper in a race like that?

Well, there is not a single case where men are striving for wealth or for place where the sons of the workers are not handicapped in the same way. Now and again a worker's son wins. He may win because he is a genius like Stephenson or Sir William Herschel; or he may win because he is cruel and unscrupulous, like Jay Gould; or he may win because he is lucky.

But it is folly to say that there is "nothing to prevent him" from winning. There is almost everything to prevent him. To begin with, his chances of dying before he's five years old are about ten times as numerous as the chances of a rich man's son.

Look at Lord Salisbury. He is Prime Minister of England. Had he been born the son of a crossing-sweeper do you think he would have been Prime Minister?

I would undertake to find a hundred better minds than Lord Salisbury's in any English town of 10,000 inhabitants. But will any one of the boys I should select become Prime Minister of England? You know they will not. But yet they ought to, if "there is nothing to prevent them."

But there is something to prevent them. There is poverty to prevent them, there is privilege to prevent them, there is snobbery to prevent them, there is class feeling to prevent them, there are hundreds of other things to prevent them, and amongst those hundreds of other things to prevent them from becoming Prime Ministers I hope that their own honesty and goodness and wisdom may be counted; for honesty and goodness and true wisdom are things which will often prevent a poor boy who is lucky enough to possess them from ever becoming what the world of politics and commerce considers a "successful man."

Do not believe the doctrine that the rich and poor, the successful and the unsuccessful, get what they deserve. If that were true we should find intelligence and virtue keeping level with income. Then the mechanic at 30s. a week would be half as good again as the labourer at 20s. a week; the small merchant, making £200 a year, would be a far better man than one mechanic; the large merchant, making £2000 a year, would be ten times as good as the small merchant; and the millionaire would be too intellectual, too noble, and too righteous for this sinful world.

But don't you know that there are stupid and drunken mechanics, and steady and intelligent labourers? And don't you know that some successful men are rascals, and that some very wealthy men are fools?

Take the story of Jacob and Esau. After Jacob cheated his hungry brother into selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, Jacob was rich and Esau poor. Did each get what he deserved? Was Jacob the better man?

Christ lived poor, a homeless wanderer, and died the death of a felon. Jay Gould made millions of money, and died one of the wealthiest men in the world. Did each get what he deserved? Did the wealth of Gould and the poverty of Christ indicate the intellectual and moral merits of those two sons of men?