“If there wasn’t something wrong with your minds,” continued Owen, “you would be able to see that we might have ‘Plenty of Work’ and yet be in a state of destitution. The miserable wretches who toil sixteen or eighteen hours a day—father, mother and even the little children—making match-boxes, or shirts or blouses, have ‘plenty of work’, but I for one don’t envy them. Perhaps you think that if there was no machinery and we all had to work thirteen or fourteen hours a day in order to obtain a bare living, we should not be in a condition of poverty? Talk about there being something the matter with your minds! If there were not, you wouldn’t talk one day about Tariff Reform as a remedy for unemployment and then the next day admit that Machinery is the cause of it! Tariff Reform won’t do away with the machinery, will it?”
“Tariff Reform is the remedy for bad trade,” returned Crass.
“In that case Tariff Reform is the remedy for a disease that does not exist. If you would only take the trouble to investigate for yourself you would find out that trade was never so good as it is at present: the output—the quantity of commodities of every kind—produced in and exported from this country is greater than it has ever been before. The fortunes amassed in business are larger than ever before: but at the same time—owing, as you have just admitted—to the continued introduction and extended use of wages-saving machinery, the number of human beings being employed is steadily decreasing. I have here,” continued Owen, taking out his pocket-book, “some figures which I copied from the Daily Mail Year Book for 1907, page 33:
“‘It is a very noticeable fact that although the number of factories and their value have vastly increased in the United Kingdom, there is an absolute decrease in the number of men and women employed in those factories between 1895 and 1901. This is doubtless due to the displacement of hand labour by machinery!’
“Will Tariff Reform deal with that? Are the good, kind capitalists going to abandon the use of wages-saving machinery if we tax all foreign-made goods? Does what you call ‘Free Trade’ help us here? Or do you think that abolishing the House of Lords, or disestablishing the Church, will enable the workers who are displaced to obtain employment? Since it IS true—as you admit—that machinery is the principal cause of unemployment, what are you going to do about it? What’s your remedy?”
No one answered, because none of them knew of any remedy: and Crass began to feel sorry that he had re-introduced the subject at all.
“In the near future,” continued Owen, “it is probable that horses will be almost entirely superseded by motor cars and electric trams. As the services of horses will be no longer required, all but a few of those animals will be caused to die out: they will no longer be bred to the same extent as formerly. We can’t blame the horses for allowing themselves to be exterminated. They have not sufficient intelligence to understand what’s being done. Therefore they will submit tamely to the extinction of the greater number of their kind.
“As we have seen, a great deal of the work which was formerly done by human beings is now being done by machinery. This machinery belongs to a few people: it is worked for the benefit of those few, just the same as were the human beings it displaced. These Few have no longer any need of the services of so many human workers, so they propose to exterminate them! The unnecessary human beings are to be allowed to starve to death! And they are also to be taught that it is wrong to marry and breed children, because the Sacred Few do not require so many people to work for them as before!”
“Yes, and you’ll never be able to prevent it, mate!” shouted Crass.
“Why can’t we?”