The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New Age

by Salem Goldworth Bland

England broke the trail which all other peoples that have accepted democracy have followed. The mobile and logical intelligence of France, slower through historical conditions to snap the feudal bonds, when it was at last aroused, at one bound outstripped England. Not content to limit, it swept away both monarchy and the House of Peers. A still more striking illustration of how the last may be first may yet be yielded by that great half-European, half-Asiatic people, so long, apparently, impenetrable to democracy, but now in the obscure throes of a revolution which despite its initial disorders and excesses, may, it is perhaps possible to hope, give to Russia the high honour of being the first nation to achieve the last conquest of democracy--its triumph in the economic realm. For it would seem impossible to doubt that that final triumph of democracy can be long delayed. Autocracy and aristocracy overthrown in politics cannot stand in economics.

He who will trace a river like the Mississippi from its source, and find it growing in hundreds of miles from a stream that may be waded to a great river a mile in width and a hundred feet in depth, does not need to actually follow the river to its mouth to be assured that it must reach the sea. Such a river cannot be diverted or dammed. Obstructions will only serve to make its current more violent.

This, then, would seem to be clear, that by an action as cosmic and irresistible as the movement of a great river, democracy is invading the industrial world. The time has passed for all temporary and makeshift expedients. A kindly spirit in the employer, improved hygienic conditions, rest rooms, better pay and shorter hours, will not secure equilibrium, though the spirit of good-will they tend to evoke may make further struggle less bitter. Profit-sharing furnishes no permanent resting place. It is merely a camping place on the journey. In the papers of Feb. 12, 1919, appeared a significant despatch from London of the same date, describing the acute labor situation.

"The labor situation reaches a crisis to-day in conferences between the government and three great unions, representing nearly 1,500,000 workers, the result of whose demands is awaited with keen interest by the entire labor world.

"The unions are the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, membership 800,000; National Union of Railway-men, membership 400,000; and the National Transport Workers' Federation, membership 250,000. The unions are acting together, and it is believed they have agreed on joint action if dissatisfied with the result of the conferences.

"The railwaymen's demands include a 48-hour week and control of railways by representatives of the managements and workers. This latter clause is considered a step toward nationalization, but an alternative has been prepared in the form of a commission of labor delegates and boards of directors.

"William Adamson, leader of the Labor party in the House of Commons, speaking on the industrial situation, said that it was almost as menacing and dangerous as the war itself. He said that the principal Labor amendment to the reply to the address from the throne would relate to the causes of industrial unrest.

"'I hope,' he continued, 'that no attempts will be made to disappoint the legitimate expectations of the working people. All sections of the people should understand that we have reached the stage when we have laid the cards upon the table and when the working classes will refuse longer to be treated as cogs in a machine or for mere profit-making purposes.'"

In short, nothing will now satisfy the workers but a share in the control. The most hopeful scheme of harmony would seem to be some such arrangement as the Whitley scheme which has been officially endorsed by the British Government. The essential features of the Whitley scheme are the organization of all the workers in any industrial area, the organization of all the employers, the creation of joint committees representative of both groups to fix wages and determine conditions of labor. And this is not the end but the beginning. The end, at least of this phase of industrial evolution, would appear to promise to be the disappearance of the capitalistic control of industry. So far as industries are not owned and managed by the community, they will be owned and managed by the workers that carry them on. The revolution will be accomplished when the men of inventive and organizing and directive ability recognize that their place is with the workers and not with the owners. Capitalistic control must pass away. It has, no doubt, played a necessary and useful part in the social evolution. It has shown courage and enterprise. But it has been, on the whole, rapacious and heartless, and its sense of moral responsibility has been often rudimentary. When the managers on whom it depends desert to the side of the workers, it will be patent how little capacity or service is in capitalism, and how little it deserved the immense gains it wrung from exploited labor and skill.

The process may be harder and slower than even the most sober-minded would estimate, or it may be much easier and quicker; but the process has begun, and there can be but one end. Feudalistic industry must follow feudalistic land holding. Feudalistic landlordism went because the feudal lords were enormously overpaid in proportion to their services. When organizing and directive ability breaks the artificial bond that has associated it with capital, it will be seen how slight is the service capital has rendered and how enormously it has been overpaid.