[28] Lactantius quoted by Harnack, Ibid. p. 168.
[29] History of England (Longman's, 1885), vol. I. p. 25.
[30] St Mark x. 43-45.
UNITY BETWEEN CLASSES
II
By the Right Hon. J. R. Clynes, M.P.
I have not the advantage of knowing anything of the treatment of any part of this subject by any preceding speaker. I myself intend to deal with it from the industrial and social standpoint, for I think if we are to seek unity amongst classes it is most important in the national interest that unity should first be sought and secured in the industries of the country. That there is disunity is suggested and admitted in the terms of the subject. This disunity has grown out of conditions which range over a few generations. I believe that these conditions grew largely out of our ignoring the human side of industry and the general life conditions of the masses of our workers. Our economic doctrine ignored the human factor, and measured what was termed national progress in terms merely of material wealth without due regard to who owned the wealth, made mainly by the energy of the industrial population. Religious doctrines and religious institutions were not the cause of that unhappy situation, but they had suffered from it, until now we find a very considerable number of the population engaged in a struggle for life, in a struggle for the material means of existence, handicapped by belief that their own unaided effort alone can assist them, that they must not look for help to any other class, or to any other quarter. Moral precepts have not the influence which they ought to have upon our industrial relations. Workers are thrown back upon their own resources; and in the use of those resources, during the past fifteen years particularly, much has been revealed to us of what is now in the working class mind. I am not suggesting that to seek a settlement of conditions of disunity, or the trouble arising from those conditions, you must coddle the working classes, praise them and pay them highly, and try to keep them contented with conditions which in themselves cannot be defended. I do not mean that at all. What I mean is that if unity between classes in industrial and economic life is to be sought and secured, it can be got only at a price, paid in a two-fold form; that of giving a larger yield of the wealth of the nation to those who mainly by their energies make that wealth, and of placing the producing classes upon a level where they will receive a higher measure of respect, of thanks, and regard than they previously have received from the nation as a whole. I was asked among others some twelve months ago to share in the investigations then made by representatives of the Government to discover the immediate cause of the very serious unrest then displayed in the country, and we went for a period of many weeks into the main centres of the kingdom and brought a varied collection of witnesses before us in order that the most reliable evidence should be obtained, and one who favoured us with his views was the Rev. Canon Green, whom I am going to quote because of his great experience among the working class populations in various circumstances and over many years in Manchester and elsewhere. This is what Canon Green writes:
They (the working classes) do not see why their hours should be so long, and their wages so small, their lives so dull and colourless, and their opportunities of reasonable rest and recreation so few. Can we wonder that with growing education and intelligence the workers of England are beginning to contrast their lot with that of the rich and to ask whether so great inequalities are necessary?