life of the poor. The net result of all that discussion was an Act of Parliament, which is already an admitted failure. Its most stringent clause against insanitary dwellings has never been put in force. Things remain as they were, and the whole question is, to all appearance, shelved for years.1

There is no reason to anticipate any greater results from the present examination into the miseries of the poor. Consequently it is time that those (and I believe they are many) to whom these subjects are not merely exciting novelties to talk about, but matters of real and deep importance, should determine on a practical policy which offers a reasonable method of improving the material condition of the workers, and, if persisted in, of securing that diffusion of prosperity and contentment without which the triumphs of civilisation are but Dead Sea apples.

I believe that in the solution of the social problem Great Britain is destined again to take the lead amongst the nations of the world. It has been my lot to speak of these things to audiences of workmen of every trade in all parts of the country, of residents in the West End of London, of members of the Universities; to defend my opinions before a jury of Englishmen which acquitted me, and before a Church Congress which applauded me. I may claim therefore to speak from a fairly wide and varied experience when I declare my belief that the tolerance for all opinions, the good feeling still existing amongst all classes, the common sense, patience and fairness of rich and poor, that do exist here, give good grounds for the hope that as our race taught the world the lesson of political liberty so it may set it an example in the rapid and peaceful attainment of economic freedom.

I have no wish to belittle the great efforts made by charitable and philanthropic persons to sweep back the rising tide of misery. They themselves admit that it is gaining upon them. And this is natural, for their efforts are condemned to impotence by the fact that they are directed, not at the causes, but at the effects of poverty. We get no further by helping poor men while the causes that make and keep men poor are still at work. Philanthropists build model dwellings and, by only taking four or five per cent. on their capital, provide comparatively cheap house room. But they know, and all the

6

In January 1888, two years and a half since the passage of the Bill founded on the Report, a special committee of the Clerkenwell Vestry reported on the courts and blind alleys of the parish that they find families condemned to live in close, crowded areas, in rooms too small, where moral and physical health must alike be difficult to maintain. Pale, weakly, and stunted children, debility unfitting men for work, driving them to drink, and often bringing them on the rates, are the sure results. The Vestry might do much by pressing on the Metropolitan Board of Works, on Parliament, and the Government the melancholy fact that the Report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes has had no practical result.'

world knows, that by so doing they only enable the worker who pays the smaller rent to underbid his less fortunate fellow in the competition for employment. A few working men co-operators share amongst themselves the profits of the shopkeeper and drive him into the labour market, thus handicapping themselves more favourably for a contest in which there are so many more competitors. Diminish surplus labour by emigration, and you are but fitting a waste-pipe to a tank which is being filled by a supply-pipe of enormous and ever-increasing diameter. Point out that the workman with eight children or an unquenchable thirst for beer is heavily weighted, and no one can contradict you. But make all men teetotallers, restrict all parents to four children, and you only start all your competitors level in a race for which the subscription is lifelong labour, the prize for the lucky few inadequate comfort, and the lot of the many bare subsistence wages for never-ending toil, with starvation always in the foreground. Again, though the best educated man has the best chance now, make education general, and free competition lands you in a state where the many must still be miserable, and can thank you for minds that resent injustice being developed in bodies that suffer privation. This, or something very like it, is felt by everyone whose reason is not paralysed by an overwhelming impulse to devote all his energies to the immediate relief of suffering humanity.

It is not now necessary, though it would be easy, to speak with harshness of individuals that claim to represent the interests of labour. There are in the present House of Commons some halfdozen labour representatives.' These are now, have always been, and always will be, adherents of the Liberal party, ever ready, with a fidelity, fully recognised by their employers, to put the political necessities of the Liberals before the rights of the working classes. There is some evidence that the contemptuous criticism to which they have been subjected has had a disquieting effect upon these gentlemen, but there is no sign that they are able or willing to put the rights of labour before the interests of Liberalism.

Besides these faithful henchmen of a party not more distinguished by its anxiety, when in Opposition, to catch the labour vote than by its flagrant disregard, when in power, of the social condition of the labourer, there are 'advanced' organisations which can certainly not be accused of speaking with bated breath of the rights and wrongs of the working man. Of these some profess a regard for constitutional methods, and confess their inability to persuade even themselves that they can achieve anything in the immediate future, by quarrelling, as bad workmen are said to do, with the tools at their command. They declare for the social emancipation of the worker by political means, and then decide that all action must be deferred until after the G 2

establishment of manhood suffrage and the abolition of the House of Lords. The downright, thoroughgoing democrat, however, has no such respect for constitutional methods. For him political reforms are a means, but not in any way a necessary means, to an end. The purest form of political democracy may in the future supersede the class rule he now denounces, but the fire-breathing democrat is in the present determined to impose on the majority the will of the faithful few who agree with him-by methods not explained and at a date which is constantly receding. It is not wonderful that this policy fails to gather the forces necessary to secure its success. An excellent example both of its futility and its inherent lack of principle is given by the late proceedings with regard to Trafalgar Square.

At first the meetings in the Square were forbidden by the officials responsible for public order. In so using their discretion they may have been mistaken. I think they were, as I believe no real public inconvenience would result from mass meetings on Sundays in that place. But the officials only acted as officials in their position must clearly be entitled to do, pending the decision of the higher authority. No one can argue that in a city of four millions of inhabitants there should be no official empowered, when Parliament is not sitting, to decide whether a given spot should continue to be used as a public meeting place under altered conditions. But, right or wrong, it was certain that the Home Secretary's decision must come before the tribunal of Parliament. When it did so, fivesixths of the representatives of the metropolis endorsed his action, as everyone knew they would. Now, if the London members express the opinion of the majority of their constituents on the matter, the democrat will bow before their verdict. If they do not represent the majority, the electoral machinery, imperfect though it may be, is quite capable of altering the composition of the House of Commons, so as to reverse its opinion. For everyone knows that an energetic declaration on the part of even a few hundred voters in each London constituency that the question would be made a test one at the next election would have materially modified the views of their members. Thus the democrat is in a dilemma from which he can only escape by an appeal to physical force on the ground that the electoral machinery does not allow the real voice of the people' to be heard. But he would appeal in vain, for he and his audience know well enough that such a contention is false, and that, even if we have not manhood suffrage, the electorate is sufficiently extended to give ten men able and willing to vote about the use of Trafalgar Square for every non-elector who is prepared to fight about it.

The truth is that we must accept the disadvantages of democracy along with its advantages. Ministers in these days share their responsibility with the voters who elect the majorities which support

the Government. The composition of the House of Commons, which really governs the country, would not be materially altered at once by widening the electorate-witness the result of each extension. of the franchise. Without doubt that House now roughly represents the rule of the many, a rule which rests more directly than any other form of government on the brute force of numbers. Its decisions cannot be upset by violence, because the big battalions are on its side. They can only be altered by altering the opinions of the voters from whom their sanction is derived. It is precisely because these truths are recognised by Englishmen of all conditions that so little success attends professions of faith in democracy when accompanied by the advocacy of methods which are only justified, either by morality or expediency, against governments that do not rest upon the will of the governed.

From these considerations it appears that the times are ripe, and a field is open, for the action of a Party which places the rights of labour before everything else, and while it aims ultimately to secure to the worker the full fruits of his toil, pursues the immediate amelioration of the conditions of his life by a practical policy based on sound economics, and requiring for its speedy triumph only the action of legitimate forces ready to hand. The first condition of its success is fulfilled by the general admission that there is urgent need for improvement in the lot of the working class. The sympathy is at present mostly confined to the extreme forms of privation, but it is already being followed by a conviction that the sensational horrors are merely outward symptoms of a deeply-rooted disease. For all who examine the matter closely find that 'the sweating system' is but the last expression of that competition which drives all who live by labour, and that the unemployed' are but the worst sufferers from the uncertainty of employment, which acts on labour of every grade, with results differing only in degree.

What is now required is to lay the finger on the actual cause why wages are low, hours of work long, and employment scarce; to distinguish the factors in the industrial situation in Great Britain today that give a man without special skill, when seeking employment, no choice but to accept a standard of living worse than that of most chattel slaves, in return for a day of labour twice as long as that of the average slave. The answer may be given in one word-competition. The possessors of wealth are enabled, by the competition of the workers, to procure the means of life at the least possible cost; the workers, having no means of living save by the barter of their labour, are compelled, in the competition for permission to live at all, to underbid one another until the wage is the least that will support life, and the day's work the longest the human frame will endure. Nay, these limits are often passed, and the life is not sustained, and

the human frame breaks down. These are the simple facts of the case, and so long as this competition is allowed to go on the present conditions will remain.

Competition has two characters. To the buyer of the means of life it is an unmixed blessing; to the producer it is a curse. Every one now admits the truth of the general proposition of the Free Trader that commodities should be produced where they cost least in labour. But most people are beginning to see that this admirable theory, when reduced to practice under existing conditions, often means that commodities shall be produced where they cost least in wages. To such a result the working classes everywhere are, and must be, bitterly opposed. In Great Britain, in their fear of a Protection they believed to be aimed primarily at maintaining the rent of land, they adopted Free Trade as a political principle, but very wisely in practice greatly developed trades-unionism, which is nothing but the restriction of competition by common agreement. The only weapon hitherto used by trades-unionists is a strike, and that weapon is blunted during a depression of trade because the employer is then able to face a suspension of work with equanimity, and because he can also fall back upon a vast number of men out of work, and impelled by hunger to fill the places of the strikers. Trades-unionism also, as at present organised, can be effectively used by skilled labour only. Thus it comes about that dissatisfied trades-unionists, and unskilled workers, the latter more hardly treated and no less dissatisfied than the former, look for other and more effective weapons.

For the complete substitution of regulated co-operation for competition society is not yet prepared, but it is, I think, ready for the restriction of competition to an extent which would relieve the public conscience of the horrors which now abound, if any practical means can be shown of securing that result without a sudden and tremendous dislocation of industry. Such a means exists in the compulsory limitation of the hours of labour.

Passing over for the moment the political difficulties in the way of carrying legislation to this end, let us examine what would be its practical result. Take the case of the men, about 360,000 in number, who are now employed on the railway system of this country, working on an average twelve hours a day. The reduction of their hours of work to eight a day would immensely benefit them by giving them more leisure and rest. It would also at one stroke give employment to 180,000 men, now out of work, who form a portion of that surplus labour whose presence in the labour market is, through their competition for employment, the chief cause of low wages. Thus not only would these men be raised from the depths of poverty and despair, but wages in all trades would tend to rise by the competition for work becoming less keen. Consider for a