APPENDIX.
The American workingman will not find it very hard to see that the lesson of "Britain for the British" applies with even greater force to the conditions in his own country.
American railroads, mines, and factories exploit, cripple and kill American laborers on an even larger scale than the British ones. We have even less laws for the protection of the workers and their children and what we have are not so well enforced.
No one will deny the ability of America to feed herself. She feeds the world to-day save that some American workers and their families are rather poorly fed. The great problem with American capitalists is how to get rid of the wealth produced and given to them by American laborers.
Where Liberal and Conservative parties are mentioned every American reader will find himself unconsciously substituting Democratic and Republican.
It will do the average American good to "see himself as others see him" and to know that manhood suffrage, freedom from established Church and Republican institutions do not prevent his becoming an economic slave and living in a slum.
But we fear that some American readers will be shrewd enough to call attention to the fact that municipal ownership has not abolished, or to any great extent improved the slums of London, Glasgow and Birmingham. It is certain some of the thousands of German laborers who are living in America would be quick to point out that although Bismark has nationalized the railroads and telegraphs of Germany this has not altered the fact of the exploitation of German workingmen. Worst of all, it would be hard to explain to the multitude of Russian exiles now living in America that they would have been better off had they remained at home, because the Czar has made more industries government property than belong to any other nation in the world.
Even native Americans would find it somewhat hard to understand how matters would be improved by transferring the ownership of the coal mines, for example, from a Hanna-controlled corporation to a Hanna-directed government. There would be one or two different links in the chain of connection uniting Hanna to the mines and the miners but they would be as well forged and as capable of holding the laborer in slavery as the present ones.