But these are not all the facts. No. In this book about New York I find careful plans and drawings of the slums, and I can assure you we have nothing so horrible in all England. Nor do the revelations of Mr. Riis stop there. We have full details of the sweating shops, the men and women crowded together in filthy and noisome dens, working at starvation prices, from morning until late on in the night, "until brain and muscle break down together." We have pictures of the beggars, the tramps, the seamstresses, the unemployed, the thieves, the desperadoes, the lost women, the street arabs, the vile drinking and opium dens, and we have facts and figures to prove that this great capital of the great Republic is growing worse; and all this, my practical friends, in spite of the fact that in America they have
Manhood Suffrage;
Payment of Members;
No House of Peers;
No State Church; and
Free Education;
which is more than our most advanced politicians claim as the full extent to which England can be taken by means of practical politics—as understood by the two great parties.
Now, I want to know, and I shall be glad if some practical friend will tell me, whether a programme of practical politics which leaves the metropolis of a free and democratic nation a nest of poverty, commercial slavery, vice, crime, insanity, and disease, is likely to make the English people healthy, and wealthy, and wise? And I ask you to consider whether this seven-branched programme is worth fighting for, if it is to result in a density of slum population nearly twice as great as that of the worst districts of the worst slums of Manchester?
It seems to me, as an unpractical man, that a practical programme which results in 522 persons to the acre, 18 hours a day for bread and butter, and nearly 4000 pauper funerals a year in one city, is a programme which only very practical men would be fools enough to fight for.
At anyrate, I for one will have nothing to say to such a despicable sham. A programme which does not touch the sweater nor the slum; which does not hinder the system of fraud and murder called free competition; which does not give back to the English people their own country or their own earnings, may be good enough for politicians, but it is no use to men and women.
No, my lads, there is no system of economics, politics, or ethics whereby it shall be made just or expedient to take that which you have not earned, or to take that which another man has earned; there can be no health, no hope in a nation where everyone is trying to get more than he has earned, and is hocussing his conscience with platitudes about God's Providence having endowed men with different degrees of intellect and virtue.
How many years is it since the Newcastle programme was issued? What did it promise that the poor workers of America and France have not already obtained? What good would it do you if you got it? And when do you think you are likely to get it? Is it any nearer now than it was seven years ago? Will it be any nearer ten years hence than it is now if you wait for the practical politicians of the old parties to give it to you?
One of the great stumbling-blocks in the way of all progress for Labour is the lingering belief of the working man in the Liberal Party.