As We Are and As We May Be

by Walter Besant

For many reasons, some of which concern ourselves: it failed, because the members themselves forgot the original reason of their combination, and neglected to look after their own interests; it failed, because the members were too ignorant to remember, or to know, that the Company was founded for the interests of the Craft itself, and not for those of the masters alone or the men alone. Now every Association must needs, of course, have wardens or masters; it must needs elect to those posts of dignity and responsibility such men as could understand law and maintain their privileges if necessary before the dread Sovereign, his Highness the King. The men they necessarily elected were therefore those who had received some education, master-workmen—their own employers—not their fellows. It speedily came about, therefore, that the masters, not the men, ruled the hours of work, the wages of work, the quantity and quality of work: the masters, not the craftsmen, admitted members and limited their number. Do you now understand? The officers ruled the Company of the Craftsmen for the benefit of the masters and not the men. Nay, they did more. Since in some trades the men showed a disposition, on dimly perceiving the reality, to form a union within a union, the masters were strong enough to put down all combinations for the raising of wages as illegal; to attempt such combinations was ruled to be conspiracy. And conspiracy all unions of working men have remained down to the present day, as the founders of the first Trades Unions in this country discovered to their cost. So the men were gagged; they were silenced; they were enslaved by the very institution that they had founded for the insurance of their own freedom. The thing was inevitable because they were ignorant, and because, if you put into any man's hands the power of robbing his neighbour with impunity, that man will inevitably sooner or later rob his neighbour. I fear that we must acknowledge the sorrowful fact that not a single man in the whole world, whatever his position, can be trusted with irresponsible and absolute power—with the power of robbery coupled with the certainty of immunity.

Well, in this way came about the first enslavement of the working man. It lasted for three hundred years. Then followed a time of comparative freedom, when, the wealth and population of the city increasing, the craftsmen found themselves pushed out beyond the walls, and taking up their quarters beyond the power of the Companies. But it was a freedom without knowledge, without order, without forethought. It was the freedom of the savage who lives only for himself. For they were now unable to combine. In the long course of centuries they had lost the very idea of combination; they had forgotten that in an age we call rude and rough they possessed the power and perceived the importance of combination. The great-grandchildren of the men who had formed this union of the trade had entirely forgotten the meaning, the reason, the possibility, of the old combination. In this way, then, the Companies gradually lost their craftsmen, but retained their property.

One very remarkable result may be noticed. Formerly, the Lord Mayor of London was elected by the whole of the commonalty. All the citizens assembled at Paul's Cross, and there, sometimes with tumult and sometimes with fighting, they elected their mayor for the next year. But since every man in the City was compelled to belong to his own Company, to speak of the commonalty meant to speak of the Companies. Every man who voted for the election of Lord Mayor was therefore bound to be a liveryman—i.e., a member of a Company. This restriction is still in force; that is to say, the City of London, the richest and the greatest city in the world, now allows eight thousand liverymen, or members of the Companies, to elect their chief magistrate.

Why do I tell over again this old threadbare tale? Perhaps, however, it is not old or threadbare to you: perhaps there are some here who learn for the first time that association, trade union, combination, is a thousand years old in this ancient city. I have told it chiefly, however, because the history should be a warning to you of London; because it shows that association itself may be made the very weapon with which to destroy its own objects; in other words, because you must find in this history an illustration or the great truth that the forms of liberty require the most unceasing vigilance to prevent them from becoming the means of destroying liberty. The Companies failed because they could be, and were, used to destroy the freedom of the very men for whose benefit they were founded. At present, as you know, some of them are very poor indeed: those which are rich are probably doing far more good with their wealth in promoting all kinds of useful work than ever they did in all their past history.

There followed, I said, a long period in which association among working men was absolutely unknown. The history of this period, from a craftsman's point of view, has never been written. It is, indeed, a most terrible chapter in the history of industry.

Imagine, if you can, crowded districts in which there were no schools, or but one school for a very few, no churches, no newspapers or books, a place in which no one could read; a place in which every man, woman and child regarded the Government of the country, in which they had not the least share, as their natural enemy and oppressor. Among them lurked the housebreaker, the highway robber, and the pickpocket. Along the riverside, where many thousands of working men lived—at St. Katherine's, Wapping, Shadwell, and Ratcliff—all the people together, high and low, were in league with the men who loaded and unloaded the ships in the river and robbed them all day long. What could be expected of people left thus absolutely to themselves, without any power of action, without the least thought that amendment was possible or desirable? Can we wonder if the people sank lower and lower, until, by the middle of the last century, the working men of London had reached a depth of degradation that terrified everyone who knew what things meant? Listen to the following words, written in the year 1772:

'To paint the manners of the lower rank of the inhabitants of London is to draw a most disagreeable caricature, since the blackest vices and the most perpetual scenes of villainy and wickedness are constantly to be met with there. The most thorough contempt for all order, morality, and decency is almost universal among the poorer sort of people, whose manners I cannot but regard as the worst in the whole world. The open street for ever presents the spectator with the most loathsome scenes of beastliness, cruelty, and all manner of vice. In a word, if you would take a view of man in his debased state, go neither to the savages nor the Hottentots; they are decent, cleanly, and elegant, compared with the poor people of London.'

This is very strongly put. If you will look at some of Hogarth's pictures you will admit that the words are not too strong.

Union had long since been forbidden; union was called conspiracy; conspiracy was punishable by imprisonment. If men cannot combine they sink into their natural condition and become savages again. All these evils fell upon our unfortunate working men as a natural result of neglect first, and of enforced isolation. Union was forbidden. During all these years every man worked for himself, stood by himself; there was no association. Therefore, there followed savagery. There was no education. Had there been either, association or rebellion must have followed. The awakening of associated effort took place at the beginning of the French Revolution. It was caused, or stimulated, by that prodigious movement; and the first combinations of working men were formed for political purposes. Since then, what have we seen? Associations for political purposes formed, prohibited, persecuted, formed again in spite of ancient laws. Associations victorious; we have seen Trades Unions formed, prohibited, formed again, and now flourishing, though not quite victorious. And the spirit of association, I cannot but believe, grows stronger every day. In this most glorious century—the noblest century for the advancement of mankind that the world has ever seen, yet only the beginning of the things that are to follow—we have gained an immense number of things: the suffrage, vote by ballot, the Factory Acts, abolition of flogging, the freedom of the press, the right of public meeting, the right of combination, and a system of free education by which the national character, the national modes of thought; the national customs, will be changed in ways we cannot forecast; but since the national character will always remain British we need have no fear of that change. All these things—remember, all these things; every one of these things—is the result, direct or indirect, of association. Think, for instance, of one difference in custom between now and a hundred years ago. Formerly, when a wrong thing had to be denounced, or an iniquity attacked, the man who saw the thing wrote a pamphlet or a book, which never probably reached the class for whom it was intended at all. He now writes to the papers, which are read by millions. He thus, to begin with, creates a certain amount of public opinion; he then forms a society composed of those who think like himself; then, for his companions, he spreads his doctrines in all directions. That is our modern method; not to stand up alone like a prophet, and to preach and cry aloud while the world, unheeding, passes by, but to march in the ranks with brother soldiers, exhorting and calling on our comrades to take up the word, and pass it on—and when the soldiers in the ranks are firm and fixed to carry that cause.

We are now witnessing one of the most remarkable, one of the most suggestive, signs of the time—a time which is, I verily believe, teeming with social mange—a time, as I have said above, of the most stupendous importance in the history of mankind. We read constantly, in the paper and everywhere, fears, prophecies, bogies of approaching revolution. Approaching! Fears of approaching revolution! Why, we are in the midst of this revolution, we are actually in the midst of the most wonderful social revolution! People don't perceive it, simply because the revolutionaries are not chopping off heads, as they did in France. But it has begun, all the same, and it is going on around us silently, swiftly, irresistibly. We are actually in the midst of revolution. Everywhere the old order of things is slipping away; everywhere things new and unexpected are asserting themselves. Let me only point out a few things. We have become within the last twenty years a nation of readers—we all read; most of us, it is true, read only newspapers. But what newspapers? Why, exactly the same papers as are read by the people of the highest position in the land. Perhaps you have not thought of the significance, the extreme significance, of this fact. Certainly those who continually talk of the ignorance of the people have never thought of it! What does it mean? Why, that every reasoning man in the country, whatever his social position, reads the same news, the same debates, the same arguments as the statesman, the scholar, the philosopher, the preacher, or the man of science. He bases his opinions on the same reasoning and on the same information as the Leader of the House of Commons, as my Lord Chancellor, as my Lord Archbishop himself. Formerly the working man read nothing, and he knew nothing, and he had no power. He has now, not only his vote, but he has as much personal influence among his own friends as depends upon his knowledge and his force of character, and he can acquire as much political knowledge as any noble lord not actually in official circles, if he only chooses to reach out his hand and take what is offered him! Is not that a revolution which has so much raised the working man? Again, he was, formerly, the absolute slave of his employer; he was obliged to take with a semblance of gratitude whatever wages were offered him. What is he now? A man of business, who negotiates for his skill. Is not that a revolution? Formerly he lived where he could. Look, now, at the efforts made everywhere to house him properly. For, understand, association on one side, which shows power, commands recognition and respect on the other. None of these fine things would have been done for the working men had they not shown that they could combine. Consider, again, the question of education. Here, indeed, is a mighty revolution going on around us: the Board Schools teaching things never before presented to the children of the people; technical schools teaching work of all kinds; and—a most remarkable sign of the times—thousands upon thousands of working lads, after a hard day's work, going off to a Polytechnic for a hard evening's work of another kind. And of what kind? It is exactly the same kind as is found in the colleges of the rich. The same sciences, the same languages, the same arts, the same intellectual culture, are learned by these working lads in their evenings as are learned by their richer brothers in the mornings. In many cases the teachers are men of the same standing at the University as those who teach at the public schools. There are, I believe, a hundred thousand of these ambitious boys scattered over London, and the number increases daily. If this is not revolution, I should like to know what is. That the working classes should study in the highest schools; that they should enjoy an equal chance with the richest and noblest of acquiring knowledge of the highest kind; that they should be found capable actually of foregoing the pleasures of youth—the rest, the society, the amusements of the evenings—in order to acquire knowledge—what is this if it is not a revolution and an upsetting? As for what is coming out of all these things, I have formed, for myself, very strong views indeed, and I think that I could, if this were a fitting time, prophesy unto you. But, for the present, let us be content with simply marking what has been done, and especially with the recognition that everything—every single thing—that has been gained has been either achieved by association, or has naturally grown and developed out of association.