| [3] | See p. 313. |
CHAPTER XVI
CONCLUSION
In the last chapter we have seen how in many lands the social democracy is seeking to reach its goal by parliamentary action, and how in France, Italy, and Russia the socialist movement tends less or more to assume an aggressive and violent form. We have seen how socialism is everywhere becoming the creed of organised labour. The socialist parties and the trade unions are the organised and articulate expression of the labour of the world, and they are being combined into one great movement. We must, therefore, understand the socialist movement as having its basis and its background in a vast reality which as yet has only partially found voice and organisation. One of the most striking features in recent history is to be found in the symptoms which so frequently appear of a latent and undefined socialism, which only needs a fitting occasion to call it forth, and which forms a serious but incalculable quantity in the forces of our time. In these symptoms the seeing eye can discern labour moving uneasily under its chronic burden. The unorganised labour breaks out in street riots and agrarian risings. Labour partially organised in Russia shows an intense revolutionary energy. While the prevalent socialism seeks to gain its ends by peaceful action the situation contains serious possibilities of revolution, especially in Eastern Europe.
It behoves all men of good-will in every country to ponder the extreme gravity of the situation which is being established throughout the civilised world. Are we to face a confused struggle of the old sort between those who have and those who have not, or are we to see the blessed and beneficent action of a great transforming principle? Is it to be a contest for the possession of political power, carried on with violence, and pregnant with incalculable disaster to all concerned? Or may we expect to watch the peaceful progress of a new type of industry gradually but effectually realised, under the guidance of men inspired by high economic and ethical ideals?
In England we have good ground to hope for a peaceful solution. Among our working classes there is a notable absence of rancour, and even of bitterness. But it would be very unwise to count upon the continuance of this spirit, and most unfair to make it an occasion or excuse for further neglect. It should rather be a stimulus to a truer appreciation of the position and needs of the working class. If we survey English history to the beginning of the nineteenth century, our main difficulty is to determine whether our sins of omission or commission have been the greater. Both have been heinous and enormous. In the village community as it existed long ago we see comprehended all that we now call land, labour, and capital. For the worker it performed the services that are now rendered by the trade union, the co-operative society, the friendly and benefit society, and the insurance society. It stood also for local government, and even to a large degree for what now is national government, defence, justice, and for education so far as was possible long ago. The economic, social, and political life of the men of those earliest times was summed up in the village community.
On the rise of feudalism this village community was transformed into the manor, and on the downfall of feudalism the manor was changed to the modern parish, definable as ‘a distinct area, in which a separate poor-rate is, or can be, levied.’ For a long period after the Black Death in 1349 labour was scarce and had a great opportunity. Through the conversion of small holdings into sheep-runs and the dissolution of the monasteries, labour was made superfluous and helpless. It was a tragic reversal of the situation which has had serious consequences during all the centuries that have followed. The opportunities and advantages which were offered to the worker in ancient times by the village community were at the close of the reign of Elizabeth reduced to the miserable privilege of poor relief! The worker could not be regarded as included within the body politic or social. He was no longer a citizen or member of the community. He was a landless serf, the subject of the landed class, and his position was determined by class legislation and class administration.
When the change came from class legislation to laissez faire, his position was little improved. Centuries of oppression were followed by generations of neglect. Thus the English workers have suffered in succession from evils of two kinds, from the evils of oppression and from the evils of neglect. This aspect of English history is summed up and condemned in the single fact that we had no national system of education till 1870, a fact all the more striking because Scotland, though much later in its political and economic development, had an enlightened system of education at a very early date.
Factory workers gained much dining the nineteenth century. But even yet the State has hardly done anything substantial for the rural workers. Scarcely a voice has been raised for a class which has borne the chief burden of national industry, of colonisation and war, which for so many centuries carried Church and State, aristocracy and squirearchy, on its much-enduring shoulders. Some of us hoped that in 1885 the time had at last come. We all know what happened to defer it again. Will the State never give heed to such a duty till the demand grows clamorous and agitation menacing? No class has done so much and received so little as the rural workers. Every man connected with the ruling class in England should be ashamed to look one of the peasantry in the face. It is the continual neglect of the needs and claims of the people that makes a peaceful change difficult and prepares for revolution.
There are however, many very promising symptoms. Among these we may note a growing spirit of conciliation and of sympathy with the claims of labour, shown particularly in the friendly and courteous reception accorded to the newly founded Labour Party. In the ruling and possessing classes we may observe an increasing recognition of the necessity to make substantial concessions to the needs and aspirations of the workers. One of the brightest of recent symptoms was the atmosphere, enlightened, sympathetic, and generous, which pervaded the discussions at the Pan-Anglican Congress in 1908. It was a sign of the times. No one could accuse the Congress of being a revolutionary gathering. We may expect that the influence of its members among the conservative and influential classes all over the English-speaking world will have good results.
We have abundant evidence that the American people have done much hard thinking on social politics during recent years. A striking instance of it appears in President Roosevelt’s message to Congress in December 1908. We may summarise as follows the proposals for social legislation which it contained. Besides the general control of the great corporations which he has all along urged, he advocated supervision of corporate finance, a progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes, lightening of the burden of taxation on the small man, prohibition of child labour, diminution of woman labour, shortening of hours of all mechanical labour, an eight hours’ day to be extended as soon and as far as practicable to the entire work to be carried on by Government. He particularly urges the immediate passing of an effective Employers’ Liability Act. This is a good beginning, and it is a happy omen that such legislation should be advocated by a man with so fearless and stainless a record as Mr. Roosevelt. If the American people are prepared to follow him a beneficent solution of many grave problems is assured.