Do not forget the power of the penny. If 10,000,000 of working men and women gave one penny a year it would reach a yearly income of forty thousand pounds. A good deal may be done with £40,000, Mr. Smith.
Now a few words as to the three lines of operations. You have your Trade Unions, and you have a very modest kind of Federation. If your 2,000,000 Unionists were federated at a weekly subscription of one penny per man, your yearly income would be nearly half a million: a very useful kind of fund. I should strongly advise you to strengthen your Trades Federation.
Next as to Municipal affairs. These are of more importance to you than Parliament. Let me give you an idea. Suppose, as in the case of Manchester and Liverpool, the difference between a private gas company and a Municipal gas supply amounts to more than a shilling on each 1000 feet of gas. Setting the average workman's gas consumption at 4000 feet per quarter, that means a saving to each Manchester working man of sixteen shillings a year, or just about fourpence a week.
Suppose a tram company carries a man to his work and back at one penny, and the Corporation carries him at one halfpenny. The man saves a penny a day, or 25s. a year. Now if 100,000 men piled up their tram savings for one year as a labour fund it would come to £125,000.
All that money those men are now giving to tram companies for nothing. Is that practical?
You may apply the same process of thought to all the other things you use. Just figure out what you would save if you had Municipal or State managed
| Railways | Coalmines |
| Tramways | Omnibuses |
| Gas | Water |
| Milk | Bread |
| Meat | Butter and cheese |
| Vegetables | Beer |
| Houses | Shops |
| Boots | Clothing |
and other necessaries.
On all those needful things you are now paying big percentages of profit to private dealers, all of which the Municipality would save you.
And you can municipalise all those things and save all that money by sticking together as a Labour Party, and by paying one penny a week.