CHAPTER IX. The English Labor Party

THE ENGLISH LABOR PARTY

We come now to the land of the industrial revolution--that colossal upheaval which changed the face of society, as the vast continental uplifts of past geological epochs changed the face of the earth. And just as the continents were centuries in settling themselves to their new conditions, so human society is now slowly adjusting itself to the conditions wrought by this violent change. One of the evidences of this gradual readjustment is Socialism. For to Socialism machine industry is a condition precedent. In this sense England has produced modern Socialism.

There is no blacker picture than the England of 1780 to 1840, and no drearier contrast than the quaint villages and their household industries of the earlier period and the "spreading of the hideous town," after Arkwright and Hargreaves and Watt. These inhuman conditions are faithfully and dispassionately revealed in the reports of the various Royal Commissions of Inquiry: statistical mines where Marx and Engels found abundant material for their philosophy of gloom. And from these dull and depressing government folios Charles Kingsley drew his indignant invectives, and Carlyle his trenchant indictments against a society that would imprison its eight-year-old children, its mothers, and its grandmothers in dingy factories fourteen hours a day for the sake of profits, and then release them at night only to find lodgings in the most miserable hovels and rickety tenements. It is almost surprising to one familiar with the details of this gruesome record that a social revolution did not follow immediately in the wake of the industrial revolution.

There were riots at first, and machines were smashed. But the hand of the worker was impotent against the arm of steel. The workman soon resigned himself to his fate and his misery. The poor laws did not help, they only multiplied the burdens upon the state without taking the load from the poor. The laborer was too helpless to help himself, and the state and society were apathetic. The rapid expansion of industry found an ample outlet in the growing commerce to every corner of the world. England was making money. She was gradually shifting control from the traditional landowner to the new factory owner. The landed gentry had inherited a fine sense of patriarchal responsibility. The factory owner had no traditions. He was a parvenu. His interests were machinery and ships, not politics and humanity. He acquiesced in the poor laws as the easiest way out of a miserable mess; he let private charity take its feeble and intermittent course, paying his rates and giving his donations with self-satisfied sanctity.

All this time labor was abundant. The markets of the world were hungry for the goods of English mills. Then came suddenly the Chartist Movement. The flame of discontent spread and a revolution seemed impending. This first great outbreak of English labor was a political movement, fed by economic causes. The repeal of the corn laws and the passage of the factory acts modified economic conditions and mollified labor for the time. The repeal of the corn laws brought cheaper food; the factory acts brought better conditions of labor.

Meanwhile individualism was evolving an economic creed. The Manchester doctrine was the logical outcome of England's insular position and her driving individualistic manufactures. But it was laissez-faire in industrialism, not in unionism. The laboring men were now beginning to organize, and Cobden himself proposed the act that made unionism ineffective as a political force. However, indirectly, free trade stimulated labor, because it brought great prosperity, made work abundant, and employers sanguine. Unions now rapidly multiplied, but they were local, isolated. Their federation into a great national body came later.

Socialism, or unionism, or any other general movement cannot develop in England with the rapidity and enthusiasm that is shown for "movements" on the Continent. The traditions of the English people are constitutional. Socialism can thrive among them only if it is "constitutional," and the Fabians are to-day talking about "constitutional Socialism" with judicial solemnity. All the training of the English people is contrary to the theory of progress through violence. They have had few revolutions accompanied by bloodshed, they have had a great many accompanied by prayers and Parliamentary oratory--"constitutional" methods. They have, moreover, a real reverence for property. The poor who have none are taught to respect the rich who have. The Church, the common law, the statute law, the customs, all the sources of tradition and habit, have emphasized the sanctity of property. Only within the last few decades, as will be seen presently, has a radical change, a veritable revolution, come over the people in this respect.

The British temperament is not given to nerves. This stolid, phlegmatic, self-contained individualist has no inflammable material in his heart. Ruskin failed to arouse him, he wove too much artistry into his appeal; and Carlyle could not move him, his epigrams were too rhapsodical. Such temperaments are not given to rapid propagandism. And finally, the Englishman is too practical to be a utopist. He concerns himself with the duties of to-day rather than the vagaries of to-morrow. Utopianism made no impression on him. Owen, the great Utopian, was a Welshman. The Celt has imagination. Nor do intricate theories or involved philosophies touch the mind of the Briton. The splendor that enraptures the Frenchman, the abstruse reasoning that delights the German, are alike boredom to this practical inventor of machinery and builder of ships.

In spite of these characteristics there is no country in Europe where there is more agitation about Socialism than there is in England to-day. It is discussed everywhere. Almost the entire time of Parliament during the past few years has been taken up with more or less "Socialistic" legislation. The public mind is steeped in it.

There is more actually being done in England toward the "socialization" of property, and the state, than in any other European country. And less being said about the theory of value, the class war, capitalistic production, proletariat and bourgeois, and the other Continental pet phrases of Socialism.

Marx, who lived among the English for many years, but whose heart was never with them, would not call this rapid social movement Socialistic, because it does not avowedly "aim" at "socializing capitalistic production." The doings of the English are certainly not accomplished in the spirit of his orthodoxy. But the current toward state control, toward pure democracy, land nationalization, nationalization of railways and mines, has set in with the swiftness of a mill-race and is grinding grist with an amazing rapidity.

As I write these words, London and the whole country are wrought up over Lloyd George's Insurance Bill and the projected ballot reform bill. Meetings everywhere, fervid Parliamentary debate, the papers filled with letters from everybody; every organization, debating society, and board of directors of great industries passing resolutions. Even the Labor Party is divided over the paternalistic measure that aims to bring relief to the sick and disabled working man and woman. Amidst all this discussion, noise, and party zeal is discerned the drift of the nation toward a new and unexpected goal.

Nowhere is it so difficult to define a Socialist, or to mark boundaries to the movement. But why mark shore-lines? The flood is on. I will here take the position that whatever extends the functions of the state (community) over property, or into activities formerly left to individuals or to the home, is an indication of the Socialistic trend. Old-fashioned Socialists like Keir Hardie are constantly warning the people that what is now going on in England is only social reform, not Socialism. The Fabians, on the other hand, are exerting every effort to add to the swiftness of the present movement.

To a student of democracy things now passing into law, and events now shaping into history, in England, are of peculiar significance. Such events, transpiring in a country so long abandoned to a rampant individualism, are portents of a newer time. They are signals of approaching changes to America, to us who have inherited the common law, the governmental traditions, the democratic ideals of liberty, if not the substantial stolidity of temperament and self-complacent egoism of the Briton.

All parties, Socialists and Conservatives, will admit this: that all this turmoil, these rapidly succeeding general elections, these public discussions, these new laws, indicate that a new social ideal is being formed. That in itself is worthy of consideration. For the ideal will shape the destiny.

Present-day Socialism in England seems to have risen to sudden magnitude from vacuity, to have permeated this cautious island over night. For over a generation all Socialism had disappeared from view. The elaborate schemes of Owen, the altruistic propaganda under the gentle Kingsley and his noble companion Maurice, the artistic revolt against the ugliness of commercialism led by Ruskin, who even shared the toil of the breakers of stones to prove his sincerity--all these movements seem suddenly to have disappeared from the face of the island, like a glacial current dropping suddenly, without warning, into the depths of the Moulin.

England was given over to a highly prosperous industrialism. The Manchester doctrine was enthroned. Commercialism and a glittering pseudo-humanitarian internationalism found expression in the alternating victories of the astute Disraeli and the grandiloquent Gladstone.

Meanwhile poverty and misery infested the underplaces of the land, a poverty and misery that was appalling. Every protester was proudly pointed to the repeal of the corn laws, the revision of the poor laws, the reform act of 1832, and the factory acts.

When Sir Henry Vane had ascended the scaffold which his sacrifice made historic, he said: "The people of England have long been asleep; when they awake they will be hungry." When the England of to-day awoke it was to a greater hunger than the politically starved Roundhead or Cavalier ever endured.

It is no figure of speech to speak of hungry England. Its brilliant industrialism has always had a drab background of want. Chiozza Money says of the present position of labor: "The aggregate income of the 44,500,000 people in the United Kingdom in 1908-9 was approximately L1,844,000,000; 1,400,000 persons took L634,000,000; 4,100,000 persons took L275,000,000; 39,000,000 persons took L935,000,000." And he sums up the condition as follows: "The position of the manual workers in relation to the general wealth of the country has not improved. They formed, with those dependent upon them, the greater part of the nation in 1867, and they enjoyed but about forty per cent. of the national income, according to the careful estimate of Dudley Baxter. To-day, with their army of dependents, they still form the greater part of the nation, although not quite so great a part, and, according to the best information available, they take less than forty per cent. of the entire income of the nation." Although during this time the national income had increased much faster than the rate of population, "the Board of Trade, after a careful examination of the question of unemployment in 1904, arrived at the general conclusion that 'the average level of employment during the last 4 years has been almost exactly the same as the average of the preceding 40 years.'"

While the general level of wage-earners has been maintained, and while wealth has greatly increased, the poverty of the kingdom has shown little tendency to diminish. "As for pauperism, it is difficult to congratulate ourselves upon improvement since 1867, when we remember that in England and Wales alone 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 persons are in receipt of relief in the course of a single year. This means one person in every 20 has recourse to the poor-law guardians during a single year."

"If our national income had but increased at the same rate as our population since 1867, it would in 1908 have amounted to but about L1,200,000,000. As we have seen, it is now about L1,840,000,000. Yet the Error in Distribution remains so great, that, while the total population in 1867 was 30,000,000, we have to-day a nation of 30,000,000 poor people in our rich country, and many millions of these are living under conditions of degrading poverty. Of those above the line of primary poverty, millions are tied down by the conditions of their labor to live in surroundings which preclude the proper enjoyment of life or the proper raising of children."

An event occurred in 1889 that aroused public opinion on the question of labor conditions. The dockers along the great wharves in London went out on strike, and forced public attention upon the misery of these most wretched of British workmen, whose wages were so low that they could not buy bread for their families and their employment was so irregular that they were idle half of the time. John Burns came into prominence first during this strike. He raised over $200,000 by public appeals to support the strikers. General sympathy was with the men; and the arbitrators to whom their grievances were submitted awarded most of their demands.

The effect of this strike was far-reaching. All over the kingdom unskilled labor was roused to its power, and a new era in labor organization began.

III

In no country has the labor-union movement achieved a greater degree of organization than in England. The movement has been economic, turning to politics only in recent years; it concerned itself with wages and conditions of labor, not with party programs and Parliamentary candidates.

The characteristic feature of English trade-unionism is collective bargaining, long since introduced into America, but unknown in most European countries. The English unions also organized insurance societies called "Friendly Societies."

For many years the laws regulating labor unions had been liberally construed by the courts, and the unions had done very much as they pleased. Two decisions have been rendered during the last decade that threatened the unions' existence both as a political and economic force.

In 1900 the Taff Vale Railway Company brought suit against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, charging the men with conspiring to induce the workmen to break their contracts with the company. The court enjoined the union from picketing and from interfering with the men in their contractual relations with the employing company, and assessed the damages at $100,000 against the offending union. The House of Lords, sitting in final appeal, affirmed the judgment of the trial court. This virtually meant the stopping of strikes, for strikes without pickets and vigilance would usually be unavailing. It also meant financial bankruptcy.

A second far-reaching decision was made by the House of Lords in December, 1909, when the "Osborne Judgment" was affirmed, granting to one Osborne, a member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, an injunction restraining the union from making a levy on its members, and from using any of its funds for the purpose of maintaining any of its members, or any other person, in Parliament. The unions had taken it for granted that they had the legal right to contribute out of their funds to political campaigns, and to pay the labor members of Parliament a salary out of the union treasury. The court held such payments were illegal, on the ground that they were ultra vires. The charter of the unions did not sanction it.

The English workman has not only had the trade union for a training school in practical affairs, but the co-operative movement began here; and here it flourishes, not as widely spread among the poorer workmen as in Belgium, but among the better-paid workers it is very popular.

It is singular that the only practical result left of Owen's stupendous plans was the little co-operative shop, opened in 1844 at Rochdale, with a capital of $140 and a gross weekly income of $10. Owen did not start this shop, but a handful of his followers were the promoters of the tiny enterprise. The co-operative union to-day embraces wholesale, retail, productive, and special societies, with nearly 3,000,000 members, increasing at the rate of 70,000 a year, and doing $550,000,000 worth of business annually.

There is also a rapidly growing co-partnership movement, especially in the building of "garden suburbs" and tenements. In 1903 there were two such companies, with $200,000 worth of property. In 1909 they had increased to 15 associations, with over $3,085,000 worth of property. The membership is not confined to workingmen, but they form the bulk.

From the beginning of the modern labor movement we see that the British workmen have shown a strong tendency to organize. Their organizations included at first only the skilled workers. There was a gulf between the trained worker and the unskilled worker. The latter, forming the substratum of poverty, were too abject for organizing.

These two great bodies of workers, skilled and unskilled, have been gradually brought together and their interests united. The Taff Vale and Osborne judgments have forced them into politics. The unskilled have been given the benefit of the experience of the skilled, and a fair degree of homogeneity and group ambition has been reached.

To enter politics a new form of organization was necessary. We will see how one was prepared for them.

We will now turn to the Socialist organizations. They are more numerous than in the other countries we have studied, and more varied in color. But not any of them are as strong as the French or German organizations.

In 1880 William Morris and H.M. Hyndman, a personal friend of Marx, organized the "Democratic Federation." For a few years it was the only Socialist organization. It split on the question of revolution. Morris and his friends, many of them inclined toward Anarchy, founded the "Socialist League." This league has long since vanished. Hyndman and his followers renamed their society the "Social Democratic Federation." It still persists, under the name Social Democratic Party (popularly "S.D.P."), and remains the only organized trace of militant, reactionary Marxianism in England. For a long time it refrained from politics, advocated violence, and was the faithful imitator of the Guesdist party in France. These are doctrines and methods that repel the English mind, and the Federation never has been strong. It has a weekly paper, Justice, and a monthly paper, The Social Democrat; claims one member in Parliament, elected however by the Labor Party, and (in 1907) 124 members of various local governing bodies. Its aged leader, Hyndman, clings tenaciously to the dogmas of Marx, and all the changes that have come over the Socialist movement during the last decades have not altered his views or methods. The Federation's affiliations and sympathy have been with the International rather than the British movement, and until a few years ago it monopolized British representation on the International Executive Committee.

Soon after Morris left the Federation a new and novel Socialist society was formed in London. Two Americans gave the impulse that started the movement--Henry George, through his works on Single Tax, and Thomas Davidson of New York, a gentle dreamer of the New To-morrow. Henry George's books had been read by a group of young men in London, and when Dr. Davidson went there to lecture he found these young men ready to listen to his utopian generalizations. Soon these men organized the Fabian Society. They were not sure of their ground, and took for their motto: "For the right moment you must wait as Fabius did when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain and fruitless."

A number of brilliant young men soon joined the Fabians, and their "tracts" have become famous. Among their members they include Sidney Webb, the sociologist; George Bernard Shaw, the playwright and cynic; Chiozza Money, statistician and member of Parliament; Rev. R.J. Campbell of the City Temple; Rev. Stewart Headlam, leader in the Church Socialist Movement; and a horde of others, famous in letters, the professions, and the arts.

It is difficult to estimate the influence of this unique group of personages, and it is very easy to underestimate it. From the first they committed themselves to the policy of "permeation," instead of aggressive propaganda. They would transform the world by intellectual osmosis. They have, thus, not only contributed by far the most brilliant literature to modern Socialism, but have touched some of the inner springs of political and social power. Prime ministers and borough councilmen, poor-law guardians and chancellors of the exchequer, have been influenced by the propulsion of their ideas. But it has all been done so noiselessly and so well disguised, that to the Social Democratic Federation the Fabians are "mere academicians," and to the Independent Labor Party they are forerunners of "tyrannical bureaucracy."

Eleven Fabians are in Parliament, and they are not silent onlookers. For years the Fabians have dominated the London County Council. Its brilliant "missionaries" attract large audiences, and "Fabian Essays" have passed through many editions. Each member of this society is the creator of his own dogma. The Marxian formulas, especially the theory of surplus value, are not reverenced by them.

England is the only country in Europe where there is a strong Church Socialist Movement. In 1889 the Christian Social Union was formed by members of the Church of England. It is not a Socialist organization, but it has enlisted a wide practical interest in the labor movement. It was the outgrowth of the Pan-Anglican Congress, which met at Lambeth in 1888. At this conference a committee on Socialism made a noteworthy report, recommending the bringing together of capital and labor through the agency of co-operation and association.

In 1906 "The Church Socialist League" was organized. "It seeks to convert the christened people of England to Socialism. Its members are committed to the definite economic Socialism of accredited Socialist bodies. The League is growing rapidly. Branches are springing up all over the country. Its members have addressed thousands of meetings on behalf of both Socialist and labor candidates at Parliamentary and principal elections.... The members of the League are Socialists. They seek to establish a commonwealth in which the people shall own the land and industrial capital collectively and administer the same collectively."

The influence of the Church Socialist League and the Fabians has spread to the universities, especially to Oxford and Cambridge. A number of distinguished professors are active Socialists.

The movement thus gained ground more rapidly among the intellectuals than among the workingmen. It was not until 1893 that a Socialist Labor Party was organized. The Social Democratic Federation was too dogmatic, hard, and bitter to draw the English laboring man; the Fabians and the Church Socialists were avowedly not partisan. In 1893 a group of labor delegates met at Bradford and, under the leadership of Keir Hardie, organized the Independent Labor Party (I.L.P.). This definite step had been preceded by many local political organizations among labor unionists. The necessity for political activity had been felt in many places. The Bradford convention was merely the coalescing of many local movements. The I.L.P. is a Socialist body, but it is not dogmatically, not obnoxiously so. It forms, rather, a connecting link between Socialism and labor unions.

It entered politics at once, but with discouraging results. Its 29 candidates polled only 63,000 votes; only 5 were elected. A closer alliance with the labor unions was necessary. This was accomplished when the unions, in 1899, appointed a Labor Representative Committee, whose duty it was, as the name implies, to increase labor's representation in Parliament. This committee had first to determine its relation to the other political parties. The Liberals and Conservatives among the laborites were outvoted, and the committee determined upon a new course. Representatives from the Socialist bodies--the I.L.P., S.D.F., and Fabians--were asked to join the unions in an alliance that should use its united strength in electing members to Parliament. All agreed, but the S.D.F. soon withdrew.

In 1906 the name of the committee was changed to the Labor Party. It is founded upon the broadest basis of co-operation, so that neither Socialist, no matter how radical, nor non-Socialist should find it impossible to work with the party. Its constitution defines this coalition: "The Labor Party is a federation consisting of Trade Unions, Trade Councils, Socialist Societies, and Local Labor Parties." "Co-operative Societies are also eligible," as are "national organizations of women accepting the basis of this constitution and the policy of the party."

The object of the party is "to secure the election of candidates to Parliament and to organize and maintain a Labor Party with its own whips and policy."

Party rigor is carefully prescribed: "Candidates and members must accept this constitution and agree to abide by the decisions of the Parliamentary party in carrying out the aims of this constitution; appear before their constituents under the title of labor candidates; abstain strictly from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests of any Parliamentary party not affiliated, or its candidates; and they must not oppose any candidate recognized by the national executive of the party." "Before a candidate can be regarded as adopted for a constituency, his candidature must be sanctioned by the national executive."

The party, thus centrally controlled, is well organized in every part of the kingdom. It maintains a fund for paying the election expenses of its members. The Osborne judgment has been a serious setback to the party, especially in local elections. The payment of members was voted in 1911 by Parliament as a partial remedy, and the government has promised a reform election bill that will impose the burden of all necessary election expenses upon the state.

The party membership has grown from 375,000 in 1900 to nearly 1,500,000 in 1912. Such leading members of the party as J. Ramsay MacDonald, Keir Hardie, Philip Snowden, and over one-half of the Parliamentary group, are Socialists. The party refused to commit itself to Socialistic principles until 1907, when it declared itself in favor of the following resolution: "The socialization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange to be controlled in a democratic state in the interests of the entire community, and the complete emancipation of labor from the domination of capitalism and landlordism, with the establishment of social and economic equality between the sexes."

In 1908 the party had 26 members in county councils, 262 in town councils, 168 in urban district councils, 27 in rural district councils, 124 in parish councils, 145 on poor-law boards, 23 on school boards. There are (1910) about 1,500 labor men and Socialist members on the various local governing bodies in Great Britain.

We see, then, that Socialism and trades-unionism in England coalesced. But a more important confluence of political ideals was soon to occur.

The elections of 1906 indicated to the people of England that a new force had entered the domain of political power, which had so long been assigned to the gentry and men of wealth. A careful observer of political events, and a member of Parliament, described the results as follows: "When the present House of Commons (1907) was completed in January last, and it was discerned that 50 labor members had been elected, a cry of wonder went up from press and public. People wrote and spoke as if these 50 members were the forerunners of a political and social revolution; as if the old party divisions were completely worn out, and as if power were about to pass to a new political party that would represent the masses as opposed to the classes. These fears or hopes were reflected in the House of Commons itself. During the early months of the session the Labor Party received from all quarters of the House an amount of deference that would have been described as sycophantic if it had been directed towards an aristocratic instead of towards a democratic group." The tidal wave of reaction following the Boer war had swept the Liberal Party into power, and had given fifty seats to the Labor Party. The effect was nothing short of revolutionary.

Disraeli, in his Sibyl, spoke of "two nations," two Englands, the England of the gentry and the England of the working classes. The elections since the Boer war have given this "other England" its chance. The gentry, the Whigs and Tories, will never again fight their political jousts with the "other England" looking contentedly on. This "mass mind of organized labor" has become the "new controlling force in progressive politics."

The "transformed England" began to see evidences of the change. The first bill brought in by the Labor Party provided for the feeding of school children, from the homes of the poor, out of public funds. "The business in life of my colleagues and myself is to impress upon this House the importance of the poverty problem," said the spokesman of the Labor Party in an important debate.

England had awakened hungry.

Now occurred the most significant political event in the history of modern England. The Liberal Party took over the immediate program of the Labor Party. This is significant because it swept England away from her industrial moorings of individualistic laissez-faire, and extended the functions of the state into activities that had hitherto been left to individual initiative. A complete revolution had taken place since Cobden's day. The state acknowledged new social and economic obligations. In the Parliamentary struggle that followed hereditary prerogative in property was undermined and hereditary prerogative in government virtually destroyed, and the principles of democracy enormously extended.

In England the question of co-operation between Socialists and other parties has been more important than in any other European country: because in a democratic parliament concessions are always made to large portions of the electorate by the parties in power, and because the practical temperamental qualities of the British discard the fine-drawn distinctions between groups and sub-groups that are so assiduously maintained in France and Germany.

In the Amsterdam Congress of The International the question was discussed whether Socialists should act with other parties. Jaures and his bloc were the occasion of the debate. Kautsky said that in times of national crises like war it might be necessary for Socialists to co-operate with the government to insure national safety. No such extraordinary standard has ever existed among practical Englishmen, who usually know what they want, and are not particular about the means of getting it.

William Morris, uncompromising dogmatist, inveighed against the Whigs in 1886 as "the Harlequins of Reaction." Democracy was his ideal of government, and he was not entirely averse to political action on the part of Socialists. "To capture Parliament, and turn it into a popular but constitutional assembly, is, I must conclude, the aspiration of the genuine democrats wherever they may be found."

But he was wary of compromise. "Some democrats take up actual pieces of Socialism, the nationalization of land, or of railways, or cumulative taxation of incomes, or limiting the right of inheritance, or new patent laws, or the restriction by law of the day's labor.... All this I admit and say is a hopeful sign, and yet once again I say there is a snare in it.... A snake lies lurking in the grass." "Those who think they can deal with our present system in this piecemeal way very much underrate the strength of the tremendous organization under which we live, and which appoints to each of us his place, and, if we do not choose to fit it, grinds us down until we do."

Morris' advice, "Beware the Whigs," was uttered at a time when the leader of that party, Gladstone, was beginning to see that the chief event of the century would be the merging of the social question with politics. The "piecemeal" method that Morris decried became the actual method of Parliamentary activity as soon as a new party, a third party, arose and drew its inspiration from the working classes.

Such a party was anticipated. Lord Rosebery said in 1894: "I am certain there is a party in this country, unnamed as yet, that is disconnected with any existing political organization--a party that is inclined to say, 'A plague on both your houses, a plague on all your politics, a plague on all your unending discussions that yield so little fruit.'" And the same year John (now Lord) Morley prophesied: "Now I dare say the time may come, it may come sooner than some think, when the Liberal Party will be transformed or superseded by some new party." And Professor Dicey, over a decade ago, spoke of the waning orthodoxy of Liberalism and its rapid merging into Socialism.

The "piecemeal" party of Morris, the "transformed" party of Morley, the radicalized party of Dicey, is the Liberal Party of to-day. The "unnamed" party of Rosebery is the Labor Party, which not only says, "A plague upon all your discussions," but, "A plague upon all your fine-spun theories of class war--it's results we want."

Before detailing some of the significant acts of this new democratic coalition, it should be added that the motive of the Liberal Party has not been unmixed with politics. The Labor Party possesses not only the 30 or 40 votes in the House of Commons; there are hundreds of thousands of labor votes outside. This background of silent, vigilant voters forms the greatest force of the Labor Party. Many Liberal members hold their seats by its favor.

There are in both the great parties men with strong sympathies for the labor ideal. In fact, a number of Socialists are sitting with the Liberals. There is no clear demarcation. It is only a difference of the degree of infusion.

The Labor Party has had a strong influence upon the House of Commons. For many years the "Government" has ruled quite arbitrarily. When there are only two parties this is possible. But when an influential third party appears on the scene, government by the "front benchers" must be moderated.

The "cross benchers" have wrested a good deal of power from the leaders. This is necessary in a democracy which is kept alive only by contact with the people. There is more government by the Commons, and less government by the ministry. This entente can degenerate into Parliamentary tyranny if it wishes. It can demand the cloture, as well as open the valves of useless debate. But an arbitrary act unsanctioned by the cross benchers would be likely to bring destruction upon the government that perpetrated it.

A review of the Acts of Parliament since the Liberal-Labor coalition and a perusal of the debates are convincing proof of the character of the new legislation and the opinions that prompt it. We must confine ourselves to a few types of this legislation, enough to show the actual changes now in process.

The first bill introduced by the Labor Party, and enacted into law, authorized the providing of meals for poor children in the schools. It does not make this compulsory, but under its sanction in 1909 over $670,000 were spent in providing over 16,000,000 meals. Nearly half of these were in London. This law is especially assailed by the anti-Socialists. They claim its administration has been too lenient, not discriminating between the needy and those capable of self-help. It is only the entering wedge of Socialism, they say; it is only a step from feeding the child to clothing him, and from feeding and clothing the child to caring for the parent. They recall that Sidney Webb has often said that if the city furnishes water free to its citizens it should be able to furnish milk as well.

The second bill introduced by the Labor Party was the Trades Dispute Act. This was framed to annul the Taff Vale decision, making the unions immune from suits for tortious acts and providing an elaborate system of arbitrating labor disputes. The provisions of this act were tested by two railway crises. In 1907 the railway employees threatened to go out on strike. Lloyd George, then president of the Board of Trade, averted the strike by enlisting all the power of the government in persuading the companies and the men to agree to a scheme of arbitration. This was to last a stipulated term of years, but before the time had elapsed the men actually struck (1911), and for a week the country was in a panic. Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, again used all the power of the government to bring peace, and a commission was appointed to investigate the grievances of the men, who had agreed to abide by its decision. In this way the government has become the most active force in settling labor disputes--a subject that was formerly left to the two parties of the labor contract.

A Workman's Compensation Act and an Old-Age Pension Act soon followed. The latter provides a pension for all workmen who are 70 years old. Unlike the German act, the government provides all the funds. In 1909 the Labor Exchange Act empowered the Board of Trade to establish labor exchanges. These have been established in every city. At first there was some friction with the unions because "blacklegs" were assigned to places. But since union men have been invited to sit on the local governing committees, things are running smoother.

There are three laws which show the trend of the changing relation of the state to property.

The Development Act of 1909 provides for the appointment of five commissioners, upon whose recommendation the Treasury advances money to any governmental department or public authority or university or association of persons for the purpose of aiding agriculture and rural industries of all sorts; the reclamation of drainage lands and of forests; the general improvement of rural transportation, including the building of "light railways"; the construction and improvement of harbors; the improvement of inland navigation, including the building of canals; and the development and improvement of fisheries. This law endows the government with the necessary authority for the absorption of virtually all the internal means of communication except the trunk railways, and extends the paternal arm of the government over agriculture and the fisheries and subsidiary industries. The first report of the commission, 1910-11, indicates that work under this law has begun in earnest. A comprehensive plan of regeneration, embracing the entire kingdom and based on adequate surveys, is outlined. One of the interesting features of the plan is the proposal to do as much of the work as possible by direct labor rather than by competitive bidding. The commission wants to make sure "that the funds shall not go into the pockets of private individuals." Under an enthusiastic commission there will be practically no limit to the influence of this law.

Two other acts are closely allied with this scheme: the Small Holdings Act of 1908, and the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909. The Small Holdings Act gives authority to county councils to "provide small holdings for persons who desire to buy or lease and will themselves cultivate the holdings." This provision is extended to borough, urban, district, and parish councils. These authorities may purchase such lands "whether situate within or without their county."

The Town Planning Act gives cities and towns the power to purchase land and allot it, to tear down undesirable buildings, to co-operate with any workingman's association for improving and erecting dwellings, and to buy the necessary land for making improvements of all kinds. John Burns, who stood sponsor for this bill, explained that it gave complete authority to local governing bodies "to make a city healthful and a city beautiful."

Following the British habit, work has very cautiously begun under these acts. Up to December, 1910, about 28,000 acres were purchased or leased under the allotment act, and sublet to 100,498 individual tenants. "Town planning" has progressed rapidly, and the regeneration of the British slums, the most dismal in the world, may be not far distant.

Under the Small Holdings Act there were, up to December, 1910, nearly 31,000 applicants, asking for over 500,000 acres. Only one-fifth of this amount was acquired, for 7,000 holders. Thirty per cent. of the applicants are agricultural laborers, and the majority of the others are drawn from the rural population who have some small business or trade in the villages and wish a plot of land for a garden. This "often makes the difference between a bare subsistence and comparative prosperity."

These laws show the drift of the current. The question of the nationalization of railways has been the subject of Parliamentary inquiry, and the great railway strike of 1911 emphasized the matter profoundly. The state in 1911 completed the taking over of all the telephone lines; it conducts an extensive postal savings bank and a parcels post.

In local affairs some British cities are models of municipal enterprise. Even London, that amorphous mass of human misery and opulence, is changing its aspect. Since the granting of municipal home rule it has built a vast system of street railways, cleaned out acres of slums, opened breathing spaces, built tenements, and in many other ways displayed evidences of an awakening civic consciousness.

Three other pieces of legislation must be described more in detail, because they are more revolutionary, far-reaching, and democratic than anything attempted by the British nation since the days of the Reform Bill.

First is the famous "Budget" of Lloyd George. When this virile Welshman became Chancellor of the Exchequer he cast his budget in the mold of his social theories. He said: "Personally, I look on the Budget as a part only of a comprehensive scheme of fiscal and social reform: the setting up of a great insurance scheme for the unemployed and for the sick and infirm, and the creation, through the development bill, of the machinery for the regeneration of rural life."

The land system of England is feudal. Tenure still legally exists. There still clings the flavor of social and political distinction to fee simple. This the landowners have fortified against all the changes that industrialism has wrought. There has been no general land appraisement since the Pilgrims landed at the new Plymouth. The "land monopoly" successfully resisted every attack until the famous budget of 1908. Chiozza Money quotes John Bateman's analysis of the "New Domesday Book," fixing the ownership of land in England and Wales as follows:

In 1883, in the United Kingdom, there was a total area of 77,000,000 acres; of this 40,426,000 acres were owned by 2,500 persons. "While the total income of the nation is L1,840,000,000, the landowners take L106,000,000 as land rent." England is a great industrial and commercial nation living on leased land.

The development of the industrial towns has enormously multiplied the value of some of these vast estates.

The new budget proposed, first, to tax the land values; not a fictitious sum, or the value of the land with improvements, but the site value--the increment value with which the land is endowed because of its favorable location. Second, to this was added a 10 per cent. reversion duty. Third, a tax was levied on undeveloped land held for speculative purposes. And, fourth, a 5 per cent. tax on mineral rights was assessed on the owners of the land that contained the mines.

These proposals raised a storm. They aimed at the traditional stronghold of English aristocracy. The budget passed the House of Commons by a large majority; the Lords rejected it. The government promptly prorogued Parliament and went before the people. And what was at first only an attack upon hereditary rights in land became an attack also upon hereditary rights in politics. The House of Lords became an issue as well as the budget. After a fiery and furious campaign, in which Socialists and Laborites joined Radicals and Liberals, the budget won by a safe majority. The Lords passed the measure. But this resistance cost them dear. One of the first prerogatives established by the House of Commons was the right to control the purse-strings of the kingdom. Custom has given the sanction of constitutionality to this prerogative. And the Lords, in first denying and then delaying the budget, laid themselves open to the charge of "hereditary arrogance" and "unconstitutionalism."

After the passage of the budget there followed six months of conference between the two front benches, to find a basis of reform for the House of Lords upon which all could unite. When it became evident that this was impossible, the government again prorogued Parliament and went to the people for a mandate on the question of "reforming the Lords." The Liberals and their allies were, for a third time, returned to power, and in February, 1911, the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, introduced his "Parliament Bill," taking from the House of Lords the power to amend a money bill so as to change its character. If any other bill passed by the Commons is rejected by the Lords, the Commons can pass it over their veto; and if this is done in three consecutive sessions of the same Parliament--provided two years elapse between the introduction of the bill and its third rejection by the Lords--it becomes a law. The law is intended as a preliminary measure. The preamble states that it is the intention of the government to provide for a second chamber "constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis." The bill was so amended by the Lords as to change its character and returned to the Commons. The Prime Minister then informed the leaders of the opposition that the King, "upon the advice of his ministers," had consented to create enough peers to insure the passage of the bill in its original form. Rather than have their house encumbered by 400 new peers, the Lords gave a reluctant consent to the measure that virtually destroyed the bicameral system in England.

This profound constitutional change, that practically makes England a representative democracy pure and simple, was unaccompanied by any of those popular and spectacular demonstrations one naturally expects to see on such occasions. The debate in both houses rarely touched the pinnacle of excitement, its fervor was partisan rather than patriotic.

In 1832, when the hereditary peers stood in the way of the Reform Bill, which had passed the Commons by only one majority, the populace rose en masse, surged through the streets of the capital, and threatened the King and his Iron Duke,--whose statue now adorns every available square in the city,--and made it known that their wishes must be respected. To-day the people, secure in the knowledge of their supremacy, scarcely notice the efforts of the opposition, in its attempts to bolster the falling walls of hereditary prerogative in representative government. So far has England assumed the air of democracy.

The third piece of legislation, to which allusion has been made, indicates the direction that this democracy is taking. It is the Insurance Bill, also introduced by Lloyd George, and passed in December, 1911. It insures the working population against "sickness and breakdown." It is planned to follow up the law with insurance against non-employment. The law is of especial interest to Americans, because it adapts the principle of the German system to the Anglo-Saxon's traditional aversion to state bureaucracy. It commands a compulsory contribution from employer and employee, supplemented by state grants. These funds are not administered by the state, but by "Friendly Societies" (insurance orders organized by the unions) and other benevolent organizations of workingmen now in existence. These are democratic, voluntary organizations. Where no such organizations exist, the post-office administers the fund.

The keynote of this law is the prevention of invalidity. Its details are largely based upon the reports of the Royal Poor Law Commissioners, 1905-9. The commission made two voluminous reports; Mrs. Sidney Webb, a member of the commission, prepared the minority report.

The Labor Party, in all of these measures, voted with the Liberals. The Insurance Bill was denounced by the most radical Laborites on the ground that labor was charged with contributing to the fund, and that the bill was inadequate. But the majority of the delegation voted for the measure.

VII

Enough has now been said to indicate the changes in economic and social legislation that are being brought about in England by the coalition of Socialists and Liberals. The causes for this change cannot be laid to Socialism alone. Socialism is an effect quite as much as a cause; it is the result of industrial conditions, as well as the prompter of changes. The permeation of the working classes with the principles of state aid; the spread of discontent; the lure of better days; all deepened and emphasized by the poverty of the Island, are the sources of this Social Democratic current. This has led, first, to the unification of the several Socialist groups; secondly, to the coalescing of labor union and Socialist ambitions into the Labor Party; thirdly, to an effective co-operation between the Labor Party and the Liberal-Radicals.

Sagacious Socialists saw this trend long ago. In 1888 Sidney Webb appealed to the Liberals to espouse the cause of labor. He pointed out the inevitable, and it has happened.

Two questions naturally arise: First, how far will this movement toward Social Democracy go? Second, how long will the Labor Party hold together and prompt the action of the Liberals and Radicals in social legislation?

The first question is not merely conjectural. The Reform Bill now (1912) prepared by the government will destroy the last vestige of property qualifications for voting. It will destroy plural voting, which now allows a freeholder to vote in every district where he holds land. In some districts the absentee voters hold the balance of power. Votes for women are also promised. This increased electorate will not be conservative in its convictions. Along with this will come the abolishing of the custom that compels candidates to bear the election expenses; the payment of members of Parliament has already begun; the lure of office is no longer a will-o'-the-wisp to the poor with ambition.

The new Liberalism is, then, devoted first of all to real democracy, in which the King's prerogatives retain their sickly place. As to the functions of the state, it will "probably retain its distinction from Socialism in taking for its chief test of policy the freedom of the individual citizen rather than the strength of the state, though the antagonism of the two standpoints may tend to disappear in the light of progressive experience."

As to property, it will probably continue to make unearned increments and incomes bear the burden of social reform; create a business democracy for running the public utilities, leaving more or less unhampered the fields of legitimate industrial opportunity. "Property is not an absolute right of the individual owner which the state is bound to maintain at his behest. On the contrary, the state on its side is justified in examining the rights which he may claim, and criticising them; seeing it is by the force of the state and at its expense that all such rights are maintained." This, the well-considered opinion of a well-known scholar, may be properly taken as the gauge of present-day English Radical sentiment on the inviolability of property rights.

As to the second question: How long will the coalition hang together? the Socialists are now (1912) showing signs of restiveness. The old question, that has rent all Socialists in all countries, and always will, because Socialism is a wide-spreading and vague generalization, has arisen among these practical Englishmen. In the convention of the I.L.P., 1910, there was a prolonged discussion on the policy of the party in its relation to other parties. "The Labor Party should stand for labor, not for Liberalism," was the complaint. Keir Hardie suggested that they were not in Parliament to keep governments in office or to turn them out, but "to organize the working classes into a great independent political power, to fight for the coming of Socialism." A resolution objecting to members of the party "appearing on platforms alongside Liberal and Tory capitalists and landlords," was defeated by a large majority.

In the House of Commons clashes are not infrequent between the Laborites and the Liberals. Annually the labor members move an amendment to the Address of the Crown, asking for a bill "to establish the right to work by placing upon the state the responsibility of directly providing employment or maintenance for the genuinely unemployed." John Burns opposed their amendment in 1911, in a brilliant and vehement speech, not so much because the government was opposed to the principle, but for the political reason that the government was not ready to bring in a bill of its own, which should be a part of its comprehensive system of social reform.

The great strike of transportation workers, in the summer of 1911, widened the breach between Laborites and Liberals, and between the extreme and moderate Socialists. This strike spread from the dockers of Liverpool to London, from the dockers to the railway workers, and then to the teamsters and drivers of the larger cities, until a general tie-up of transportation was threatened. It came very near being a model general strike. Its violence was met with a call for the troops. The labor members in Parliament protested earnestly against the use of soldiers. But the government was prompt and firm in its suppression of disorder. A bitter debate took place between the government and the labor leaders.

How much of this give and take must be attributed to the play of politics, it is impossible to declare. But this great strike clearly revealed the difference between violent Socialism and moderate radicalism. The one is willing to effect revolutions through law and order, the other to effect them through violence and disruption.

The moderate Socialists seem willing to take a middle course between these extremes. The following quotation from a speech delivered by Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the Labor Party, at a convention of the I.L.P., clearly illustrates the moderate view:

"We can cut off kings' heads after a few battles, we can change a monarchy into a republic, we can deprive people of their titles, and we can make similar superficial alterations by force; but nobody who understands the power of habit and of custom in human conduct, who appreciates the fact that by far and away the greater amount of an action is begun, controlled, and specified by the system of social interrelationship in which we live, move, and have our being; and still more, nobody who understands the delicate and intricate complexity of production and exchange which keeps modern society going, will dream for a single moment of changing it by any act of violence. As soon as that act is committed, every vital force in society will tend to re-establish the relationship which we have been trying to end, and what is more, these vital forces will conquer us in the form of a violent reaction, a counter revolution. When we cut off a newt's tail, a newt's tail will grow on again.

"I want the" I.L.P.'s action "to be determined by our numbers, our relative strength, the state of public opinion, the character of the question before the country. I appeal to it that it take into account all the facts and circumstances, and not, for the sake of satisfying its soul and sentiment, go gaily on, listening to the enunciation of policies and cheering phrases which obviously do not take into account some of the most important and at the same time most difficult problems which representation in Parliament presents to it." In another place MacDonald has detailed the steps in the progress of Parliamentary Socialism. He begins with "palliatives," such as factory inspection, old-age pensions, feeding of school children; next, the state engages in constructive legislation, "municipalization and nationalization in every shape and form, from milk supplies to telephones," and finally insists on the taxing of unearned increment and a general redistribution of the burdens of the state.

Not all the members of the I.L.P. are agreed upon this moderate statement. Keir Hardie and his immediate followers still cling to the "larger hope" of a socialized society, to which commonplace legislation is only a crude preliminary.

Bernard Shaw has confessed the orthodoxy of the new Social Democracy. "Nobody now considers Socialism as a destructive insurrection ending, if successful, in millennial absurdities," and of the budget he said: "If not a surrender of the capitalist citadel, it is at all events letting down the drawbridge." The public utterances of the Radical leaders are often less restrained than those of the Socialists, so that it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the difference.

Professor Hobhouse, in his analysis of the difference between Liberal-Radicalism and Socialism, says: "I venture to conclude that the differences between a true and consistent public-spirited liberalism and a rational collectivism, ought, with a genuine effort at mutual understanding, to disappear. The two parties are called on to make common cause against the growing power of wealth, which, by its control of the press and of the means of political organization, is more and more a menace to the healthy working of popular government."

And Brougham Villiers stated, a year before the Liberals gained control of the government, that the hope of the country lay in an "alliance, won by persistent, intelligent helpfulness on the part of the Liberals, with the alienated artisans, for the betterment of the conditions of the poorest, so as to give at once hope and life and better leisure for thought."

So we see Socialism and Liberalism united in accomplishing changes in legislation and ancient institutions--changes that are revolutionary in character and will be far-reaching in results. It is not the red revolutionary Socialism of Marx; it is the practical British Socialism of amelioration. "This practical, constitutional, evolutionary Socialism," a chronicler of the Fabians calls it. It would have to be practical to appeal to the British voter, constitutional to lure the British statesman, and evolutionary to satisfy the British philosopher.

In the troublous days of 1888-90 there were a great many young Socialists who believed the social revolution was waiting around the next corner and would soon sweep over London in gory reality. Many of these young men are sober Fabians now, or staid Conservatives or Liberals. To-day they think they were mistaken. They were not. There was a revolution around the next corner. It has already captured the high places. Society, government, is rapidly encroaching upon private property through the powers of taxation, of police supervision, and all manner of constitutional instrumentalities. Ownership, even in land, is now only an incident, the rights of the community are in the ascendant. Democracy has conquered hereditary privilege. And the revolution is still advancing. England is showing the world that "The way to make Socialism safe is to make democracy real."

FOOTNOTES:

See supra, p. 51.

See CHIOZZA MONEY, Riches and Poverty, first page, edition 1911.

Op. cit., p. 337.

Op. cit., pp. 337-8.

See V. NASH and H.L. SMITH, The Story of the Dockers' Strike, London, 1890.

See SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB, History of Trades Unionism, London, 1911.

There are about 650,000 members in those unions that pay out-of-work benefits. The following table gives some conception of the magnitude of the out-of-work problem in England. It shows the sums expended by the unions for out-of-work relief:

Year Amount 1898 L234,000 1899 185,000 1900 261,000 1901 325,000 1902 429,000 1903 516,000 1904 655,000 1905 523,000 1906 424,000 1907 466,000

Out of a body of 15,000,000 workmen, Chiozza Money estimates that 500,000 are always out of work. Opus cit., p. 122.

Members of Parliament received no pay until 1911, when the Radical-Liberal government passed a law giving each member a salary of $2,000 a year.

A discussion of this case from the Fabian point of view is found in the Preface to WEBB'S History of Trades Unionism, edition of 1911. The labor unions and the Labor Party have issued pamphlets on these two decisions. The legal points are fully discussed in the official reports of the cases.

There are 15,000,000 working men and women in Great Britain; 3,000,000 belong to co-operative enterprises, 2,500,000 to trade unions.

See H.M. HYNDMAN, Autobiography, London, 1911.

Dr. Wescott, Bishop of Durham, was the founder of the Christian Social Union. His pamphlet, Socialism, is a real contribution to the literature on the Church and its relation to labor. The present attitude of the Union may be gleaned from the following quotation taken from the letter written by Dr. Gore, Bishop of Birmingham, to his diocese, on the occasion of his transfer to the bishopric of Oxford. The letter was written during the railway and dockers' strike, in September, 1911: "There is a profound sense of unrest and dissatisfaction among workers recently. I cannot but believe that this profound discontent is justified, though some particular exhibitions of it are not. As Christians we are not justified in tolerating the conditions of life and labor under which the vast mass of our population is living. We have no right to say that these conditions are not remediable. Preventable lack of equipment for life among young, and later the insecurity of employment and inadequacy of remuneration, and consequent destitution and semi-destitution among so many people, ought to inspire in all Christians a determination to reform our industrial system."

From Statement of Principles of the League.

Even at this time the conservatism of the unions was hard to break. The vote to take this step was 546,000 to 434,000 in favor of appointing the committee.

Election expenses are borne by the candidates, not by the state. They frequently are over $3,000, and it obviously is impossible for a workingman to conduct such a campaign at his own expense.

Proceedings of Labor Party, Annual Congress, 1907.

See Socialists in Great Britain, a compilation published by the London Times, p. 24.

The following table shows the membership of the Labor Party since its formation in 1900, from the annual report of the party executive, 1911:

Trades Councils and Local Labor Trade Unions Parties Socialist Societies No. Membership No. No. Membership Total 1900-1 41 353,070 7 3 22,861 375,931 1901-2 65 455,450 21 2 13,861 469,311 1902-3 127 847,315 49 2 13,835 861,150 1903-4 165 956,025 76 2 13,775 969,800 1904-5 158 885,270 73 2 14,730 900,000 1905-6 158 904,496 73 2 16,784 921,280 1906-7 176 975,182 83 2 20,885 998,338{1} 1907 181 1,049,673 92 2 22,267 1,072,413{2} 1908 176 1,127,035 133 2 27,465 1,158,565{3} 1909 172 1,450,648 155 2 30,982 1,486,308{4} 1910 137 1,306,473 125 2 31,377 1,342,610{5}

{1} This total includes 2,271 Co-operators. {2} Includes 472 Co-operators. {3} Includes 565 Co-operators, and 3,500 members of the Women's Labor League. {4} Includes 678 Co-operators, and 4,000 members of the Women's Labor League. {5} Includes 760 Co-operators, and 4,000 members of the Women's Labor League.

The decrease in membership during the last year is ascribed to the Osborne judgment.

HAROLD COX, Socialism in the House of Commons, p. 1.

See J.A. HOBSON, The Crisis of Liberalism, for a discussion of the new party alignments.

EMILE BOUTMY, philosophical critic of the English, says that England, "transformed in all outward seeming, ... has just begun a new history." See his The English People: A Study in Their Political Psychology, London, 1904, for a keen analysis of English political proclivities.

Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 21, p. 649. Speech by G. Lansbury.

The new Liberal government invited John Burns into the cabinet. He is the first workingman in English history to occupy a cabinet position. The more restless Socialists are inclined to call him a Liberal because responsibility has taught him caution. But he still persists that he is a Socialist. He is a Fabian, and boasts of the three times that he was imprisoned for participating in labor agitations. About twenty years before his elevation he said in the Old Bailey, where he had been arraigned for "sedition and conspiracy" in conducting a strike: "I may tell you, my lord, that I went to work in a factory at the early age of ten years and toiled there until five months ago, when I left my workshop to stand as Parliamentary candidate for the western division of Nottingham."

It must be kept in mind that many of the Conservatives are committed to social legislation. They are not, however, in favor of the indefinite expansion of democracy, and are opposed to the adult suffrage bill as proposed by the Liberals.

WILLIAM MORRIS, Signs of Change, p. 4.

Speech delivered in St. James' Hall, March 21, 1894.

Speech delivered at Newcastle, May 21, 1894.

In the British House of Commons the ministry and the opposition leaders sit in the front benches on opposite sides of the House facing each other. A "front bencher" always commands a hearing, owing to his high position in the party. The members of the party sit behind their leaders and are called "back benchers." The minor groups, the Labor Party and the Irish Party, sit in the cross benches at the lower end of the chamber and are called "cross benchers."

See Annual Report Board of Education, 1909-1910.

Keir Hardie, the dean of the Socialist group in Parliament, fathered this law. Sidney Webb, the distinguished Fabian, was made a member of the commission.

See First Annual Report of the Commission.

See Annual Report Home Office, 1909-1910.

Ibid.

The money for these things he proposed to raise by taxes, and especially by a tax on land values.

CHIOZZA MONEY, Riches and Poverty, p. 82.

No. of Owners Class of Owners Acres owned 400 Peers and peeresses 5,729,927 1,288 Great landowners 8,497,699 2,529 Squires{1} 4,319,271 9,589 Greater yeomen{1} 4,782,627 24,412 Lesser yeomen{1} 4,144,272 217,049 Small proprietors 3,931,806 703,289 Cottagers 151,148 14,459 Public bodies 1,443,548 Waste lands 1,524,624 ------- --------- 973,015 34,524,922

{1} This classification is purely arbitrary.

Op. cit., p. 91.

The leaseholder is burdened with "rack-rent" and "premiums"; when the lease expires the improvements revert to the landlord. There has been, for years, a well-organized Single-Tax movement in England that points to the evils of this land system as conclusive proof of the validity of Henry George's theory.

One of the choruses popular with the great throngs that paraded the streets in that eager campaign is full of significance. It was sung to the tune of "Marching through Georgia."

"The land, the land, 'twas God who gave the land; The land, the land, the ground on which we stand; Why should we be beggars, with the ballot in our hand? God gave the land to the people."

During the debate on the second reading in the House of Commons, the writer one day counted twenty members on the benches, and a labor member called the attention of the Speaker to the fact that "in this hour of constitutional crisis only twenty brave men are found willing to defend the prerogatives of the realm!"

Some of the Fabians, nevertheless, fought the bill, and their champion, Bernard Shaw, called Lloyd George's effort "The premature attempt of a sentimental amateur."

In 1909 the Labor Party claimed credit for the following measures passed during the Parliamentary session of that year:

"(1) The grant of an additional L200,000 ($1,000,000) for the unemployed, and the extraction of a promise that, if it was insufficient, 'more would be forthcoming.'

"(2) The passing of the Trades Boards Bill--the first effective step against 'sweating.'

"(3) The smashing of the bill authorizing the amalgamation of three great railways.

"(4) A discussion, protest, and vote against the visit of Bloody Nicholas, the Tsar. The Labor Party's amendments secured 70 supporters, whilst only 187 members of the British Parliament were dirty enough to support the Tsar's visit.

"(5) The introduction of the Shop Hours Bill and the extortion of a promise that it shall be adopted by the government and passed."--From a campaign pamphlet, The Labor Party in Parliament, p. 20.

See Wanted--A Program: An Appeal to the Liberal Party. S. WEBB, London, 1888.

See article by PROFESSOR HOBHOUSE, on "Democracy in England," Atlantic Monthly, February, 1912.

J.A. HOBSON, The Crisis of Liberalism, p. 93.

L.T. HOBHOUSE, Democracy and Reaction, p. 230.

See "Report Eighteenth Annual Conference, I.L.P.," 1910, p. 59.

Supra cit., p. 71.

Some of the I.L.P. members are Continental in their views. The president of the party used these words in his address, 1910: "All this jiggery-pokery of party government played like a game for ascendency and power is no use to us" (supra cit., p. 35). The discipline of the Labor Party was unable to keep half a dozen of its ablest debaters from fighting the Insurance Bill. The reversion of the radical Socialist element to the I.L.P. is by some observers considered not unlikely. Then the liberal or reformiste element will become either a faction of the Liberal-Radical party or melt entirely away as the Chartists did in 1844.

This was the language used in the amendment moved in January, 1911.

See Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 21, February 10, 1911.

The Socialist workmen always resent the activity of the police and soldiers during strikes. In 1888 F. Engels wrote to an American friend: "The police brutalities in Trafalgar Square have done wonders in helping to widen the gap between the workingmen Radicals and the middle-class Liberals and Radicals." (See Briefe und Auszuege aus Briefen von Fr. Engels u. A., Stuttgart, 1906.)

One of the incidents of the debate over the railway strike in the House of Commons was a clash between Lloyd George, the Liberal leader, and Keir Hardie, the Socialist. Keir Hardie had made inflammatory speeches to striking workmen, and for this the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave him a terrific and unmerciful flaying. (See Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 29, Aug. 22, 1911.)

J. RAMSAY MACDONALD: speech delivered at Edinburgh, 1909.

See J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, The Socialist Movement, pp. 150-7.

G.B. SHAW, Preface to "Fabian Tracts."

See LLOYD GEORGE'S famous "Limehouse Speech."

L.T. HOBHOUSE, Democracy and Reaction, p. 237.

BROUGHAM VILLIERS, The Opportunity of Liberalism, Preface.

See article by Secretary PEASE, of the Fabians, on the Fabian Society, T.P.'s Magazine, February, 1911.

J.A. HOBSON, The Crisis of Liberalism, p. 156.