19. In Conclusion.

'WE can now pause to summarise the whole of our lessons, make a mental stocktaking, and in retrospect retrace our journey —a Journey through the long avenue from prehistoric time, "a time when no man knows," to the known, experienced events of modern days. The evidence accumulated and pieced together by arch groping in the past, misty traditions of ancient peoples, and the surer written records of later times have all lent us their aid. Brief references were made to the Stone and Iron Age, the coming of the Aryans east to Europe, of how our own particular country emerged upon the stage of written history with the coming of the Romans, and of how Saxon, Dane, and Norman followed, and finally lost their racial identity in later times. The geologist told us of the struggle between the elements in the earth’s formation. The biologist showed how individual animals and species struggled with each other. And we passed on to sociology and witnessed a struggle still proceeding.

In this struggle the new class and the old class were engaged, and out of it came the evolution of society. We followed "the chain of change" from mark to manor, from tribal communism to slavery, from slavery to feudalism, and then onwards to manufacture and machinofacture and our own industrial system. The evolution of the warrior, the merchant, the guildsman, and of the industrial capitalist, with his inevitable companion the wage-worker, has engaged our attention.

The growth of trade, the division of labour, the rise and fall of handicraft, the division between town and country, the development of the local, the national and (with the discovery of new continents) the world market, the dawn of the new day of science after medieval night —these and many other things figure upon our Syllabus. The attempts of each rising class to gain political power, the different phases passed through by Capitalism, the beginning of permanent organizations by our own class, with the success and failure which attended its attempts, all formed subjects for later lessons. We have watched new orders and relations arising out of the old; and have seen that the triumph of each class, as well as its birth, always coincides with the development and progress of material conditions. Every system in its maturity also contained the germs of its own decay. From being a helper the particular system becomes a hinderer. Instead of being revolutionary and a useful aid to production, it becomes reactionary and a useless fetter upon production. Then comes into play the new class which the old has begotten and carries forward the banner of progress. Therefore, using history as a touchstone, and recognising that new ideas, new codes of morality, new laws, etc., have their origin in changing economic conditions, we are now in a position clearly to examine the economic factors at present at work, to act in accordance with their evolution, and take up our stand with the new class in its forward march.

The Logic of the Machine.—This is a term often used to describe the economic factors which are inherent in capitalist production, and which, as we have seen, especially since the Industrial Revolution, have been compelling the working-class to take up arms in its own defence.

Right at the beginning of this book it was shown that man only differed from the animal in his power of tool-making, which of course predicates a corresponding development of the thinking faculty, and this again would be closely connected with a vocal language; tool-making, thinking, and talking being inseparable and correlative in their growth. Man has in common with the animal "the will to live," but he has something else, viz., "the will to live better." Now the economic needs of man for food, clothing and shelter are satisfied by contact with Nature, i.e., the soil, fruit-trees, and all the earth’s contents and inhabitants. Moreover, these bodily needs must be satisfied before he can indulge in art or any other spicitual needs which in later development may be his. Naturally, man tries to satisfy these former needs with the least possible exertion. But he can only continue "to live better" by constantly developing and improving his tools. For here, with the making of the first tool, begins the great gulf between man and the animal. The animal acts directly upon Nature; but man interposes between himself and Nature a tool— an action mighty in its consequences, as we shall see. For example, a dog and a rabbit scratch and burrow the ground with their paws; but man makes a sharpened stick, a spade, and in time a steam plough, and successfully, by means of his tools, honeycombs even the rocks of the earth in search of minerals. The fox jumps for the grapes; but man, as a result of his improved technique, thinks of a ladder. When even the eagle’s eye fails to pierce the distance, man’s telescope is more successful. Man’s power over his natural environment results from this interposition. A fish out of water has become proverbial as an instance of an unsuitability to environment which spells death. Likewise, a bird cannot live under water. But man, with his technique, becomes a fish in his submarine and a bird in his aeroplane. The dense forests are cleared; the jungle inhabited; the ocean spanned; the deserts irrigated ; the microbe-infested fever swamps made healthy, and the mountains bored, because man increases his science, harnesses natural forces to do his bidding, and is ever perfecting his tools and machinery.

There is another aspect of the important results of the tool, and that is the consequences arising from its ownership by particular persons. Jack London, in his pamphlet, The Strength of the Strong, tells in a simple, picturesque fashion the story of these results. To cut a long story short, it can be said:—The class of persons owning the tools or the means of production is the ruling class. In the realm of biology there is a very obvious division of labour based upon physiological grounds,. e.g., that of sex. It is impossible for the queen bee, the worker bee, or the drone to do each other’s work. But in sociology, with the coming of tools, a new division of labour, based upon economic grounds arises. It has already been shown that man, unlike the animal, is not physically changed by his environment, but that he able, by changing and improving his tools, to overcome it. First came a difference between man and man, based upon tool-using; in modern life the difference between a miner and an engineer, a painter and a plumber, is in the different tools they use. Physically, a capitalist and a wage-worker, a queen and a washer-woman, are alike. Neither has an arm, an eye, or a leg more than the other. The difference is one of economic position which is based in this case upon tool- ownership. Technique has developed to the extent that a leisured class is possible, i.e., a class which appropriates the surplus labour of another.

The breakup of the tribal community of pauperism, the rise of private property and the State, the division of society into classes, and the use of slaves, have been noted by us previously. Out of slavery came Feudalism. Then, the land was the chief means of production, and as the fighters became its owners, they were the ruling class. Gradually we saw trade and the merchant class increase. From handicraft evolved manufacture. New means of production dwarfed the importance of the land. The old relations were broken down, and a new class rose to power. We witnessed how it asserted its strength upon the economic field first, and then later, in a political revolution, but how the industrial capitalist was never all-powerful until he possessed the machine. The following is a bare enumeration of some of the effects of the operation of its logic. In dealing with the results of the Industrial Revolution we have had occasion to notice them before :—

(1) The machine breaks down all barriers of age, sex, and race. The use of machinery destroyed much of the laborious, heavy work, and thus made possible its performance by women and children. The merciless exploitation of the child slaves of the factory has not yet faded from our memory; and, though restricted, it has not even now disappeared. The "breaking up of the home" —that anti-Socialist bogey— has already been in many instances accomplished.[See Mary Marcy’s leaflet.] While women’s entrance into industry may —especially if the male workers do not tackle the problem intelligently— at first have disastrous results, still, if she fmally gains economic independence and becomes the true equal and comrade of man, undreamt of beneficial results will accrue.

Again, the possibility of sharing the Imperialist’s ideas of there being "superior" and "inferior" peoples is clearly revealed if we recognise that the difference between lesser and more developed peoples, just as between man and the animal, is one of more or less developed technique. One need not be very well versed in world politics to notice demonstrations of how the capital and commodities of the more advanced countries, by investment and export, beget their like in all the ends of the earth; and of how the so-called backward countries are reproducing the industrial systems of the forward ones, and following practically the same lines of development.

(2) In the wake of the machine comes the crisis, the growth of large production, and the increasing of the rate of exploitation of the worker. There is no need to elaborate these points, as they have already been dealt with. They occur as the inevitable outcome of the inherent laws of the capitalist system and were given as the fundamental cause of the Industrial Unrest in Outline 18.

(3) Born before the machine, yet made doubly necessary by its coming, trade unions commenced striving to retain by collective effort the imperilled status and livelihood of their members. Individual bargaining having failed, workmen formed local trade clubs. From these grew national clubs or unions of each separate trade. These again formed into federations and congresses to gain strength. Some attempts were made tp form international unions between like trades, and national delegates were appointed at some of the congresses to to express the international unity of Labour, which was being already realised.

Our recent lessons have indicated how the logic of the machine has destroyed the craft basis of the oldest unions by destroying handicraft and introducing unskilled labour —the machine minders and "hands" of modern production. Changing circumstances thus caused the basis, aim and policy of the unions to be revised. The members of an industry union now aim at controlling industry through their organizations. Having understood the logic of the machine, they seek to master it. To do this, they have first to shape their own union, control its policy and representatives, and convert their organization into a fighting machine capable of efficiently waging war on the industrial and political fields.

Before our lesson finishes an endeavour will be made to direct attention to the theoretical weapons already at hand, which will give the worker a clear understand ing of his proper aim, and stimulate him to practical work and to solve the question of ways and means to attain that desired end.

The Rise of Scientific Socialism.—Since we have been discussing the machine and the effects of its private ownership, it is only proper that we should turn to a proposed alternative economic system, the founders of which for the first time in history, laid bare the forces making for the dissolution of the capitalist system. It has been well said that though the machine has no voice, its victim has one, and that this victim is forced to cry out in protest and cherish ideas of revolt. Another writer has well described Capitalism as being to the worker a chair with spikes in it, which will not allow him to sit content until they are removed. And thus, in spite of conservative forces and the power of traditian, the worker will be forced to face "things as they are" and alter them. "Labour, the Atlas of the capitalist system, is destined to become its Nemesis."

Socialism is a word which came into general use in the third decade of the 19th century, and it has always heen understood to signify a new state of affairs in opposition to Capitalism. The adjective "scientific" is used to distinguish this Socialism from the schemes of these Utopians and idealist Socialists who based their plans for a new state of affairs upon abstract principles, rather than upon the logic of the machine and the historical growth of society resulting from the friction between rival classes.["The Utopian is one who, starting from an abstract principle seeks for a perfect social organization." —Plekhanov].

Many great thinkers in the past, dissatisfied with the conditions of their times, had drafted out plans for a re-modelling of affairs. Some of them put their p1an into practice and experimented with communal colonies. Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Cabet’s Icaria, St. Simon’s Industrial System , Fourier’s Phalanstery, and Robert Owen’s New Moral World are the best known examples.

Scientific Sociaiinn can only be understood by knowing the conditions of its birth and the experience of its founders. At the close of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, society in the two most advanced countries, France and England, was passing through a change. And the Socialism fathered by that change was based, not upon ideals, wishes, or a subjective change in men’s heads, but upon the objective processes of society. None of the Utopians saw Socialism as an historic necessity, or recognised the class struggle In which the workers were the true bearers of progress. The real test of Scientific Socialism is that it explains itself; for its theories clearly came out of the material conditions of the times. The French Revolution, "promising the reign of reason, had brought the despotism of the factory." The French section of the capitalist class triumphed, and the feudal nobility were sent packing. But the proletarian element in the Revolution remained unsatisfied. A new, distinct class could be clearly seen for the first time, for whom the Revolution did go far enough, and who, in the 19th century, made many revolts against the bourgeoisie. In England, too, a revolution of another sort was taking place. The rapid introduction of machinofacture revolutionised the old methods of production and caused immense misery among the working class, making it feel and express its antagonism to the capitalists here also. To explain these new social facts, new theories were required and these theories were expressed most clearly by Marx and Engels, the acknowledged founders of Scientific Socialism. As these men happened to be born in Germany, their theories are sometimes dismissed as being "foreign" by people (e.g., the Fabians) who claim to have distinctly British (!) economic theories. As if there was anything national about a scientific theory or as if Socialism was determined by geography! The foolishness of the objection becomes more apparent when it is realised that the forty years of research embodied in Capital were spent in England, the classic land of Capitalism. Owing to Germany’s then backward state, the conclusions could never have been arrived at there.

Marx was born in 1818 at Trèves. He studied law, history, and philosophy at the Bonn and Berlin universities. His Radical opinions spoiled his chance of appointment as lecturer on philosophy at the former, and he became editor of the Rhenish Gazette in 1842. This being suppressed, he went to Paris in 1843. Here he met Proudhon and Heine, and began his famous collaboration with Frederick Engels. Being expelled from France, he resided in Brussels. With Engels he produced, in 1848, the famous Communist Manifesto. After the failure of the uprisings in the same year, he finally settled in London in 1849, and died there in 1883.

Engels (1820-95) was the son of a wealthy cotton spinner and was destined for a commercial career. But he too became interested in philosophy, and contributed to the Rhenish Gazette. In 1842 he came to Manchester and became connected with the Owenite and Chartist movements. After 1844, he and Marx were in constant
touch with each other, and their work became inseparable. Engels, with becoming humility, always gave Marx the chief credit, as the following passage written by him at the death of Marx shows:— "I cannot grasp the thought that this genius should have ceased to fertilize with his powerful thoughts the proletarian movement of both worlds. Whatever we all are, we are through him; and whatever the movement of today is, it is through his theoretical and practical work; without him we should still be stuck in the mire of confusion." Alone, either of these men would have made a mark. Combined, they left behind them works whose true insight and value have not yet been fully appreciated.

The poverty and sorrows of Marx, of his family, and of his fellow-exiles, his activities in the formation of the first International —for neither Marx nor Engels were closet philosophers— his herculean theoretic labours, his disdain of popularity, his hatred of phrasemongery and his many other distinguishing traits may be read of in the biographies which exist. As Wilhelm Liebknecht put it:—

Today Marx’s Capital dominates social and political science like Darwin’s works in the science of natural history. And there is no thinking proletarian in all the countries of the globe who does not know that Capital is an armoury filled with "mental weapons" that, wielded by the proletariat, will ensure its emancipation.

The same writer, in the same book, Karl Marx:Biographical Memoirs, wrote:-

On Capital he was at work forty years—and how he did work! Only a Marx can work so. And I am not exaggerating when I say: The worst paid day-labourer in Germany has received more wages in forty years than Marx did for a salary, as an honorary fee for one of the two greatest scientific creations of the century. The other one is repre ented by Darwin’s works.
"Science" is not a market value. And can we expect that human society would pay a decent price for the execution of its own death warrant?

Liebknecht for twelve years shared Marx’s exile in London, and the following is a glimpse of how they spent their time: -

About this time the magnificent reading-room of the British Museum, with its inexhaustible treasures of books, had been built—and thither, where lie passed a certaiis time every day, Marx drove us; Tn learn! To learn! This was the categorical Imperative he frequently enough loudly shouted to us, but it also was expressed by his example, yea, by the sole aspect of this forever strenuously working mind.

Here he mentions the wild plans and hopes of other fugitives, and in contrast to this he says :—

We...were sitting in the British Museum and trying to educate ourselves and to prepare arms and ammunition for the battles of the future. Sometimes we would not have had a bite, but that would not prevent our going to the Museum —there were at least comfortable chairs to sit down on, and in winter a cheering warmth— which were missing at home, if one had any "house" or "home" at all.

The Marxian Theories.—From the men to their message. The Marxian Theories can be well compared to a triangle, with the Labour Theory of Value, the Theory of Surplus Labour, and the Materialist Conception of History as its three sides. In our lessons, we have had chiefly to do with the latter, though the two former are bound up with it, and would also repay investigation and test. The M.C.H. was first formulated in the Communist Manifesto:— "The history of all hitherto existing society (i.e., all written history) is the history of class struggles." And in later works the theory was enlarged and applied to the history of different nations. The historic mission of the working class, the true nature of the State, and the real, underlying factor beneath all changes in ideas were roughly perceived even when the Manifesto was penned in 1848. "History for the first time," wrote Engels, "was placed on its real foundation; the obvious fact, hitherto totally neglected, that first of all men must eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, and therefore must work before they can struggle for supremacy and devote themselves to politics, religion, philosophy, etc.—this obvious fact at last found historical recognition."

As we have already dealt with the logic of the machine, and seen how social relations are based upon tool-ownership and that the class which owns the tools is very different from the other class that is forced to use those tools in order to get a living— besides having consistently used this theory right throughout our lessons— there is no need to dwell upon it further. Though the expectations and prophecies of the historic Manifesto were not fulfilled, yet the theory explains in a scientific manner its own mistakes, and, as a method of looking upon society and explaining its evolution, it is unparalleled.

There is one other matter that should be mentioned before our conclusion. When giving particulars concerning the lives of Marx and Engels, we found that both took up the study of philosophy, in which branch of learning at that time Hegel was the leading figure. It is some times alleged that the work of Marx is vitiated by this Hegelian influence, and that he lacked the insight into society which Darwinism later brought. Apart from this mixing up, in an "organic" view of society, of biology and sociology, this misconception of Hegelianism (for it taught evolution in general before Darwin gave it individual specific proof in biology) and this false assumption that Marx did not know and appreciate Darwin’s work, there is also a sad neglect of the vital difference between the philosophy of Hegel and Historical Materialism.

There is room here only for a brief reference to that difference. Hegel, living in revolutionary times, with his "dialectic method" saw movement through inherent struggle. But he was misled by the ideological form wbich the contest took. To him it was "the Absolute Idea" coming to recognition in the minds of men. For example, Feudalism broke down because feudal ideas became obsolete in the face of new; Socialism from the Hegelian viewpoint will come because old ideas are displaced by new. In later reactionary times Hegel’s tame political conclusions and his glorification of the State made him popular with the ruling powers. Bernstein, in his Ferdinand Lassalle as Social Reformer shows how the works of Lassalle— "the man who forged the sword of Social Democracy in Germany" —were vitiated by his adherence to the Hegelian "idea" as a cause of progress.

The mysticism of Hegel and his "Absolute Idea" were attacked by the left wing of his school, which accepted his method but rejected his conclusions. With Hegel the world stood on its head, i.e., on the idea. Marx stood it on its feet, and showed that ideas were generated in material conditions. "With me," wrote he (p. 30, Capital), "the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind and transformed into forms of thought." The relations between ideas and the conditions which generate them are more fully explained in the Preface of The Critique(1859).

The Future —What of it? Will our lessons help us to face it? If they do not, they have failed. The sole object of our studies is to get a knowledge of past events and of theories which truly explain the facts of our working life, and which will guide us in future practice. Our classes are connected with an institution which had its birth in the Industrial Unrest. The C.L.C. was founded in 1909 out of the most unique strike on record. [See Plebs Magazine, (Vol.1) and What Does Education Mean to the Worker? (Plebs Pamphlet.)] It aims at spreading independent working-class education, and upon its curriculum figure the truths arrived at by these two German thinkers, who gave themselves so wholeheartedly and "wholeheadedly" to the workers’ cause. As W.W. Craik finely puts it: "The good they did was not interred with the bones of Marx at Highgate, nor lost in the sea into which the dust of Engels was thrown, but lives on and fertilises in the conquering army of an intellectual Labour Movement by the side of whose cradle Marx and Engels stood at the dawn of a new day."

Vain are the hopes of an industrial peace. Like snow upon the mountain side they will vanish before the sun of economic heat. In every country Capitalism begets its gravediggers. In its endeavour to increase its profits it will force the workers to take up a militant attitude upon the industrial, political and educational fields, and progress will be accelerated until the workers of the world will unite and their emancipation be accomplished. To the Day!

Books—Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs (Leibknecht). Karl Marx(Spargo). Books and pamphlets by Marx and Engels are too numerous to list, and are obtainable at cheap rates from the S.L.P. and 20th Century Press. Ramsay Macdonald’s Socialism and Societyand The Socialist Movement contain good accounts of the Utopians, though somewhat spoilt by the "organic" view of society above-mentioned. Other general and particular histories of Socialism are available.

AGITATE EDUCATE ORGANIZE
Particulars of PLEBS Publications are announced in
THE PLEBS MAGAZINE: AN ORGAN OF INDEPENDENT WORKING CLASS EDUCATION.
Monthly, 2d.; post paid, 2.5d. Annual postal sub., 2/6. Six months, 1/3.
Articles on Labour-Educational questions, Reviews, Correspondence, Class Notes, and Reports, etc.

The circulation of the PLEBS has more than doubled during the last two years, and is increasing monthly. Educational classes are being formed in all parts of the country, and the question of Independent Working Class Education becomes more and more important to the organized Labour Movement. Since 1908 the PLEBS has been working "to further the interests of Independent Working Class Education as a partizan effort to improve the position of Labour in the present, and ultimately to assist in the abolition of wage-slavery."

From Secretary, Plebs League, 176, Springvale Rd., Sheffield.'

From A Worker Looks at History, by Mark Starr.

18. The Trade Unions from 1900-1916.

'WE have followed the trade unions in their progress from illegal secret societies, with their hand against every man, to legally recognised law-abiding bodies, with sane and responsible leaders and policies; from wild schemes of general unions, with revolutionary aims,- to the "model" unions with their huge reserve and benefit funds and their highly centralised structure.

We have seen how changing material conditions destroyed the anti-strike policy, and the "no politics in the union" stage of the organizations, by reviving the hostility between the two classes; how the alarmed capitalist class used their legal and political power to hamper the growth of the unions, thus forcing them to take up the issue in the political field; how these conditions produced the "new unionism," differing in policy and structure from the ol; and how new schools of thought and propagandist bodies, working through the trade unions, gave fresh aims and new ideas and methods to the trade unionists. An explanation as to why militancy was so long delayed was also offered. The first years of the 20th century were chiefly occupied with the political phase of this militancy, and for very good reasons.

Political Activity.—Undoubtedly it was the backwardness of the craft unions which caused so much faith to be placed in political action. The new unions openly adopted it, and one by one the older unions saw its usefulness. Many of the workers hoped to achieve a unity and independence upon the political field which the craft unions and their policy prevented them from getting on the industrial field. Many of them, too, being State Socialists, had hopes of electing sufficient Labour M.P.’s to be able to "legislate in" in a new state of affairs, which would bring for the worker surer, morelasting, and better conditions than those obtained by him in his industrial efforts. As if political unity and strength could be obtained before industrial unity and strength! Laws are not the horses of the chariot of progress; in actual fact, the politicians are ever striving with their measures and constant amendments to catch up to industrial development.

Yet, in dealing with the breakdown of peace between the workers and their employers and its industrial and political manifestations, it should be remembered that progress was slow. New ideas, generated in new conditions, filtered but slowly into the heads of the workers; ideas stubbornly persist long after development has made them obsolete. The independence of Labour was realised only in a nominal fashion. Only the more advanced few of the workers recognised the divorce of interests between the old parties and the new one.

For numbers and names of Labour representatives, from 1874 till 1910, the reader should consult Part III of the Labour Year Book (1916). The Labour Representation Committee, which in 1906 became the Labour Party, was formed in 1900 by trade unions, Socialist and other kindred organizations. The alliance of the older unions to form the Labour Party resulted, not from a general conversion of their rank and file to Socialism by the propagandist bodies —though this may have been a contributing factor— but, as in their previous history, they were again forced into politics in order to safeguard their own position.

The employers were disturbed at the aggressive policy of the militant New Unionism, which carried on vigorous attacks upon non-unionism. In 1898 the Allen v. Flood law case showed how they endeavoured to limit the growing powers of the Trade Unions. Two non-unionists, discharged by their employers at the suggestion of a union official representing their fellow-workmen, who otherwise would have struck, brought an action against Allen, the union official. The magistrates decided that he had "maliciously induced the emp1oyers to discharge them," and awarded damages to Flood and Taylor. This decision was, however, reversed by the House of Lords.

Another case, Quinn v Leatham, in 1901, did not end so favourably for the unions. The well-known Taff Vale Case was the occasion of another adverse decision which made instant action necessary by the Trade Unions. The Taff Vale Railway Company were granted damages against the A.S.R.S. because some of its members, acting upon official instructions, had "watched" and "beset" blacklegs, thus preventing them from entering into the service of the railway company. "The result of this decision was that the funds of the unions became liable for damages for the wrongful acts
of their agents; the damages and costs of the action cost the union over £46,000, and trade union officials and labour leaders were astonished and dismayed at the result." The Trade Unions were left in a dangerous position; they could not take legal action against their members, yet they could be sued for the doings of those members, and their accumulated funds were now in peril.

The political activity and agitation caused by this situation had its effect in the Trades Disputes’ Act of 1906. This Act made "peaceful picketing" lawful, took away the right of the capitalist to recover damages for loss of trade in a dispute from the funds of the union, and prevented a trade union being sued for the acts of its members.

However, another attempt was made, in 1908, to find "a weak spot in the armour of the trade unions" by the famous Osborne Judgment. This case challenged the right of the Trade Unions to meddle in politics at all, and decided that a union could not make a compulsory levy for Parliamentary representation. Injunctions were granted against many of the Unions, and the position was only remedied by the Trade Union Act of 1913, which recognised the right of the unions to use their funds for political purposes, but ordered that that such funds should be kept separate, and that any person having a conscientious objection to paying for benefits received by him, should, by filling up a form, have the right of exemption. The unions so far have not been strong enough to secure compulsion in this matter; the battle is unfinished.

The Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1897, the Miners’ Eight Hour Bill and 0ld Age Pensions of 1908, and the Minimum Wage and National Insurance Acts of 1912 were events of this period. Before turning to the industrial activity which followed the disappointment of the high hopes of 1906, it should be noticed that the failure of the craft union outlook revealed itself upon the political field. No party can be "forrarder" than its members, and the workers, as a whole, do not possess that class-consciousness which is necessary to successful action upon both fields. When that is achieved, the Labour Party will no longer be emasculated by reformism, and content to be the useful ally of another party. Parliament can afford to disdain the protests of a Grayson or a Lansbury, just because these protests are not backed by industrial might. The M.P. of the future, having this, will compel attention; "the scaffolding" of the industrial commonwealth must needs be built.

Labour Unrest.—While there are many contradictory explanations of the Industrial Unrest, which lasted from 1906 to the outbreak of the European War, its existence is admitted by all. Before investigating its causes, we will enumerate some of the chief incidents in which it was manifested. In 1906 and 1907 there was a series of local strikes in South Wales over the non-unionist question; and in the latter year the "all-grades movement" of the railwaymen threatened a stoppage, only avoided by the intervention of Mr. Lloyd George with his Conciliation Boards machinery.

A fifteen years’ peace was broken in the cotton industry in 1908 by a seven weeks’ strike, followed by another in 1909. In the same year, contrary to their officials’ advice, the N.E. engineers struck, and in 1910 the Boilermakers won a contest in spite of the stubborn resistance of the employers, and also the opposition of their own officials.

The year 1911 saw a brief strike among the railway—men and successful agitation by the transport workers. The M.F.G.B. secured in 1912 the minimum wage principle by a six weeks’ national strike. 1,462 disputes, involving 677,254 workers, took place in 1913, one of which was the famous Dublin strike. The outbreak of the war curtailed a prolonged dispute in the London building trade, where the employers had locked out their men for refusing to work with non-unionists.

False "Causes."— To explain and understand the cause of a disease is to make the first step towards its cure. Many explanations and cures were put forward in relation to this undeniable disease of the 20th century, Industrial Unrest.[For more recently assigned causes and cures, consult Reports of Commission of Enquiry into Industrial Unrest (1916),. No. 7 (South Wales) being especially interesting.] Some of the attempts at explanation need not detain us long. We can afford to quickly dismiss the theory advanced by the conservative person who thinks that the present discontent is the result of the workers having lost their respect for their betters, and who sighs for the "good old days" when children were not sent to school till they were thirteen years of age. True, education of the right sort is a lever of progress, but much that is now taught in the schools has to be deliberately unlearnt in later life, and, only in an indirect fashion is general education the cause of industrial unrest.

Time would also be wasted in dealing at length with the theory which ascribed the growing unrest to the increase of selfishness; whose advocates advance an ethical solution to the problem. The sufferings in the industrial warfare and the beauties of peace are enlarged upon by these pacifists. But they ignore the present hard situation. Classes cannot love each other while one of them is busy not praying for but preying upon the other.

Another theory attributed the cause of unrest to climatic conditions. Workmen felt disinclined to work in the hot summer days, and it was supposed that it only needed a trifling dispute to provoke a stoppage. Though this theory is not so high up in the clouds as the former one, yet it located the cause of the disturbance far enough away to be out of man’s reach. Its superficiality is obvious; a strike is a grim holiday. Behind strikes there is an economic heat, engendered by the friction between master and man, of which learned writers are unaware. Not having had any experience of the class-struggle, they doubt its existence.

The Great Man Theory was also brightened up to do duty on this occasion. Able agitators, with their inflammatory speeches and writings, were said to be the cause of the trouble. But though able speakers and writers do considerably help to awaken industrial unrest, they only focus attention upon facts; they cannot create them.

False Cures.—Many cures were put forward as certain remedies. The boasted panacea, Free Trade, having failed to prevent unemployment - the unemployment returns of the Trade Unions in 1908, for example, rising from 4.3 to 9.1 per cent— a return to tariff protection was proposed. Those who would build up a tariff wall around the nation forgot, however, that there is "an enemy within the gates," i.e., the capitalist; who, though he points out how national trade is decreased and unemployment created by the free imports produced by machinery and cheap foreign labour, has no scruples about introducing machinery and cheap labour himself, if he has the opportunity.

Other cures coming from the bourgeois physicians, were schemes of profit-sharing and co-partnership, which claimed to unite master and worker in one common interest and prevent all further unrest. These schemes have, on the whole, failed; they have been well likened to a rider, seated upon the back of a donkey, who enjoys a speedier transit by enticing the beast to travel at a faster rate in order to gain a carrot which its rider for ever dangles ahead of its nose.

Another "red herring" was the attempt of the Workers’ Educational Association to revive the old ideology of the 1850—70 period, when it was believed that it was only necessary for master and man to understand each other’s viewpoint and they would recognise their identity of interest and become the best of friends. Even Gibbins’ text-book-—excellent in many respects— may be disagreed with on this point. (See pages 220 and 231). An organization thus foolishly hoping to accomplish the impossible, to reconcile the irreconcilable, is not to be trusted with the teaching of the social sciences to the workers. Testimonials to the success of the W.E.A. as an antidote to industrial unrest, from opponents of this unrest, are not hard to find.

Minor consequences arising were Governmental inquiries into methods of conciliation and arbitration adopted by other countries to settle industrial disputes. Beyond the creation of an Industrial Council, no attempt was made to embody the result of these inquiries in any legal enactment. Labour Exchanges and the Insurance Act but tinkered with the real problem.

True Causes.— Having "cleared the ground," we can estimate the true causes; they were:—

(1) A rise in the cost of living. The "mitigating factor" which had delayed militancy now ceased. Real wages diminished from 1897 onwards. Prices rose, and the workers, then as ever, stood to lose in a rising market because they cannot quickly raise their wages to follow the soaring prices.

One important factor which caused prices to rise was the cheapening of gold resulting from the application of sience and machinery to goldmining; the amount of the annual output has risen from £20,00O,00O to £90,000,000.[As explained by the Labour Theory of Value the process takes place thus: The gold, containing less labour, would be of less value; therefore it would need more gold to purchase the same amount of other commodities than before, provided, of course, that the value of these commodities had not also been decreased in the same way. Hence the purchasing power of the workers’ wages would be smaller.]

The costs of Imperialism, by raising taxation, also increased the cost of living. "The closest and most malign influence," says Gibbins, "was that of the South African War (1899—1903) which, after at first giving an impetus to the trades supplying the munitions of war, left behind it a legacy of debt, increased military and naval expenditure, and widespread depression in trade, with consequent unemployment during the ‘lean years’ which followed. The National Debt in 1898—99, before the outbreak of war, stood at £638,000,000, but had risen by 1903—4 to £798,000,000, or to the level of 1870, thus wiping out in four years the laborious debt reduction of more than thirty years." The verdict of future historians upon modern events, when the ravages of war-fever have subsided, should be interesting.

(2) The further introduction of machinery, with all its accompanying intensification of labour, growth of unskilled processes and unemployed workers. The forces which became prominent in the Industrial Revoltion have not ceased their operation. The concentration of capital, the growth of the big business and the need for larger starting capitals may all be noted. Capitalism proceeds to its dissolution.

(3) Another true cause of Industrial Unrest, and one arising out of the general laws of capitalist production, is the fact that, besides the decrease in real wages and the growth of unemployment, as outlined above, the relative wages of the labourer decrease also. The rate of profit may be less, but its mass is greater. The contrast between luxury and poverty becomes more glaring. The luxury motor in the street, the display in the shop windows illustrating the heights reached by modern production, and the dress and leisure of the well-to-do - these are things which emphasise the worker the poverty of his own position.

The True Cure.—To sum up the causes of Industrial Unrest, it might be said truly that it is the logical outcome, the inevitable result, of the development of the capitalist system. Passing on to deal with its consequences upon the policy, and structure of the Trade Unions, we shall see the true cure and the solution to the problem in the making.

The strongest tendency in the modern Trade Union movement is one to secure unity; amalgamation is the order of the day. The unions are being driven to revise their basis, policy and structure by necessity born of experience. Different ideals as to their importance in the future society prevail from those which obtained when Collectivism and political activities were predominant.

The policy of diplomacy and skilled bargaining becomes more out of date. The lengthy agreement makes way for a shorter.

The old bureaucratic centralisation is found to be a hindrance to mass action. We noticed, in some of the unofficial strikes, friction between the leaders and the led. The problem is to secure democratic control without sacrificing efficiency; to get all grades and sections of the industry into the Industrial Union without getting any of the sectional interests snowed under. Some of the unions have already tackled these problems. The need for efficiency necessitates alert intelligence.

When the union is no longer a sick and death club, when the class antagonism is clearly understood, and when craft-consciousness has made way for class-consciousness, then the aim of the unionists will be to give "the knock-out blow" to the true cause of industrial unrest.

Despite all the prophecies we hear from the pacifists of the finish of war upon the industrial field, the effects of the present crisis will be to hasten and not change the development of the forces which we have seen are immanent in the capitalist system. The shortage of male labour has stimulated rather than started the dilution of labour and the use of labour-saving machinery. Our newspapers and illustrated papers contain ample evidence of the rapidity of this process. The true meaning of State control has been forcibly learnt. In its two centuries of life, Trade Unionism has fought its way upward into importance, in spite of the obstacles placed in its way. And who shall say what it will accomplish in its future? The class which has opposed it will, when the workers have the power to think and the will to do, be deposed by this its conquering rival.

BO0KS.—Gibbins, Period V. Craik’s Modern Working-Class Movement, Sections VII.-XI. Cole’s World of Labour, for details of the present state of Trade Unionism, abroad as well as at home. The Miners’ Next Step (1912) attracted much attention in Parliament and elsewhere on its publication. Issued by an Unofficial Reform Committee inside the S.W.M.F., it deserves the attention of the student as a clear statement of the aims and policy of the advanced section of trade or industry unionism. Mr. W. H. Mainwaring, the Committee Secretary, confesses to only one effective criticism :— "It is not so much a 'step' as a whole 'staircase.'"'

From A Worker Looks At History, by Mark Starr.

17. Trade Unionism from 1830 to 1900

'THE history of the Trade Unions will now be taken up where it was left in Outline 14. In the various phases of Trade Unionism can be seen mirrored all the developments of England’s Industrial History in the 19th century. Mention has already been made of how the condition of the workers depreciated from that of their Golden Age; of the distress and the high prices of food—wheat, for example, being 105/- per quarter in 1795— and of the social discontent, which honeycombed society with secret organizations and found expression in riotous disturbances and political agitations (at first mercilessly suppressed), that existed in the troubled years which followed upon the Industrial Revolution in the first quarter of the century.

Thorold Rogers tells us that the destruction of the iron lace-making frames at Nottingham, in 1811—12, by the displaced hand-workers, was punished by sentences
of death, and other similar instances could be quoted. Assessments of wages by quarter sessions and compulsory apprenticeship were finally destroyed in 1814. The
same writer informs us that, while the workers were in a desperate plight, "wealth was never more rapidly accumulated than in Yorkshire and Lancashire in the years 1800 to 1840"; and that, while the Factory Acts "were believed to be the deathblow to English manufacture, they have made labour more efficient, more intelligent, more decent, and more continuous, without trençhing on profits."

The Trade Unions were able to come into the daylight after the Repeal of the Combination Act in 1824; and in their subsequent revival they attempted to make good for the long years of suppression, with the result that some of the old restrictions were reimposed by the alarmed employers.

Attempts at Federation.- After the failure of many of the unions to weather the crisis of 1825, Trade Unionism became active once again. Recognising that sectionalism had been a source of weakness, plans for its removal were made. From the local trade club began to develop the national trade union; and attempts were made to federate various trades. The material conditions for these new developments were a general expansion of capitalist production and the great improvements in transport and communication. The unity of the workers was born of necessity. Collective bargaining had come to stay and increase, until membership of the Trade Union became a compulsory condition of employment.

Contemporaneously with this boom in Trade Unions vigorous political agitation continued up to the Reform Bill of 1832, which gave the middle-class their desired triumph over the landed aristocracy, and left many of the workers disappointed.[ "When the middle class got their £10 franchise they did not see what the working class needed with votes." —G. J. HOlyoake]

The following are examp1es of these early unions :— The Grand General Union of the United Kingdom, formed in 1829 by the Lancashire textile workers; The National Association for the Protection of Labour (connected with the name of Doherty), a federation of 150 trades, which lasted two years from its start in 1830; and the Builders’ Union (1832—4), a federation of the building trades, especially strong in the Midlands and Liverpool which was broken up by the frightened master-builders by means of the "document" and the lock-out.

The Owenite Period.—In this period occurs the best known attempt at federation. It centres round the year 1834, and derives its name from Robert Owen. Born at Newtown in Montgomerys in 1771, Owen was a man of high intelligence, and a pioneer who laboured hard in the cause of progress. He had risen from a draper’s assistant to a factory owner, and in his factory at New Lanark he showed his fellow-capitalists the advantages of treating their employees with consideration, instituted a system of co-partnership, and provided some wonderful schools for their education. His failure to arouse his middle-class associates—partially caused by his openly declared religious scepticism— drove him to the side of the wage-workers. He was one of the prime movers in the agitation which secured the first Factory Acts.

The federation which he formed in 1834, the Grand Consolidated Union of Great Britain and Ireland, was more ambitious in its aims than any of its predecessors. Its founders hoped to supersede the capitalist economy and the State, and carry on production by means of this great union of workers. The disappointment of many of the advanced workers with the results of the 1832 Reform Bill caused them to join the Owenite movement, in order to try and win by industrial means what they had failed to win by political action.

Over half a million persons enrolled themselves in the G.N.C.; but few of them understood or shared the aims of its leaders. The general strike was to be its chief weapon. But though it possessed such magnificent ideals and roused such bitter animosity in the minds of the employers, the G.N.C. disappeared with its mission unaccomplished.

The reasons for its failure are not hard to discover. Its temporary success was due to the misery of the times, and not to an intelligent endorsement of any scheme. When dealing with the rise of Scientific Socialism, we shall endeavour to show that economic conditions were not ripe for the realisation of Owen’s scheme, and that, however admirable his Utopia was, the logic of the machine had yet to complete its work before society could give birth to a new order emerging from the old, and not from the heads of idealists, however sincere those idealists might be.

After all, the G.N.C. was only a loose federation attempting to unite at the top. It indiscriminately opened its arms to all corners. Rival unions in the sametrades, and unions as diverse as those of the agricultural labourers, the chimney sweeps, the Operative Bonnet Makers, and the Female Tailors all found a place in its ranks. Sectional interests demanded sectional strikes, and when these failed disaffection ensued. A lasting unity became impossible; the general strike, which was to usher in the "New Moral Era," and "the Villages of Harmony," began to appear an unlikely event. Thus the G.N.C. went down before the onslaught of the opposition which it aroused. The fierceness of this opposition is typified in the case of the Dorchester labourers, six of whom were transported for seven years on the charge of administering unlawful oaths. Those who seek "to falsify history in order to fortify reaction" endeavour vainly to make deadly parallels between the failure of the G.N C. and the failure which awaits the claims and efforts of Industrial Unionism. But the intervening years have not been empty; the past has its lessons. Unity must begin, not at the top, but at the bottom. The amalgamation of all rival unions in the same industry must precede that greater unity and progress which Owen desired.

The rise of the Chartists, the beginning of the Co-operative Movement by the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844, and the triumph of the Corn Law League in 1846 have received previous treatment.

Chartism might be described as part of the travail by which machinofacture was delivered. In the prosperous years of "the grand era of capitalist expansion" which followed, it died away; and the workers, discarding all their former revolutionary hopes, settled down to build up stable, national organizations in their separate trades.

The "Model Unions."- In the first half of the century wages fell steadily. Then, out of their increased profits, the employers, in order to retain their workmen, paid better wages. After 1848, revolutionary methods were discredited, and, disappointed by the failure of the Chartist movement, many of the more militant workers emigrated.

Now, the trade unions, shelving all their former schemes for general unity, became a recognised part of society, trying to show the reasonableness of their claims. Ceasing to look to the past, not yet compelled to look toward the future, the unions modestly claimed "a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work" and reconciled themselves to the present.

The "model" unions were highly centralised. The right to strike and the control of policy and finance were placed in the hands of permanent officials. This bureaucratic control made for the aggrandisement of the leaders and the forcing of the masses into inactivity. The diplomacy of the leaders, in negotiation with the employers, settled the disputes, while the rank and file remained in the background. Lengthy contracts were the order of the day. The friendly benefit side of the organization was enlarged at the expense of the trade side. Huge reserve funds were built up. Outside thinkers tried to prove the harmony of interests between employers and workers. The Fixed Wage Fund theory was believed in.[According to this theory, £100 of wealth is produced; the cost of the raw material, wear and tear of machinery, and the profits of the employer are paid out of this, perhaps leaving only £20 as a wage fund. More than this the labourers could not get. All they could do was to keep, if they possibly could, the supply of labour low so that the £20 would yield larger individual shares to the fewer workmen.] Thus the unions subsidised their out-of-work members, provided in some cases emigration funds, tried to abolish overtime, and restricted the number of apprentices.

The employers, having at last recognised that the trade unions had "come to stay," found it convenient to deal with the union through its all-powerful executive, who, after a little negotiation, would bargain away the collective rights of the union members to make new wage claims for a lengthy period.

The Amalgamated Society of Engineers served as a pattern to other unions of the highly-centralised "new model unions." Allan and Newton were the chief spirits in getting together the eight unions which formed it in 1861. The Carpenters and Joiners followed the A.S.E pattern in 1861. Other unions adopting the same policy and structure were the Compositors, the Flint Glass Makers, Bookbinders, Ironmoulders, and the Potters.

Between 1841 and 1848 attempts were made to link the miners into a national union. We are told of the doings of "the miners’ attorney-general," W. P. Roberts, in connection with the association which was then started, only to die out in 1848. In 1860 the Yorkshire miners won the right of appointing a check-weigher. After two other attempts had been made, the M.F.G.B. was formed in 1888.

Trades’ Councils.—While national unions in particular trades were being started, the branches of these unions often joined with each other to carry on local confficts or agitate for the removal of some legal barriers; for though the model unions frowned upon strikes, these still took place; and though, remembering the failure of the Chartists, the workers were still in the "no politics in the union" stage, adverse judicial decisions and the need for protection of their funds drove the unions into politics.

Soon, in several of the big towns, permanent councils of the trades grew up, which served as rallying points for the agitation and "lobbying" that was necessary to secure legal recognition in 1871. "The movement for the amendment of the Master and Servant Law was initiated by the Glasgow Trades Council, and resulted finally in the passing of the Master and Servant Act of 1867."

The London Trades Council was especially prominent, because working through it was the "Junta," or "Cabinet," of the Trade Union Movement. Several of the important unions had their offices in London, and the permanent paid officials of these centralised unions were able to work in close touch with each other. When the Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into Trade Unionism in 1867, they were able to secure the appointment of Frederick Harrison and Thomas Hughes (two prominent middle-class friends of Trade Unionism) upon it, and to supply them with information which largely influenced the findings of the Commission. At this time the employers were making strenuous efforts to smash the growing power of Trade Unionism by exploiting the public feeling excited by the Sheffield outrages, where a local union had resorted to "rattening" non-unionists and exploding cans of gunpowder. Also, the Lord Chief Justice, in 1867, had ruled that the Trade Unions, being illegal associations, could not take legal proceedings to prosecute any official if he absconded with union funds. The Junta, the most prominent figures in which were Allen (Engineers); Applegarth (Carpenters); Guile (Ironfounders); Coulson (London Order of Bricklayers), and Odger (connected with a small shoemakers’ union), directed a counter agitation; and their efforts secured a legal status for the unions, and legal protection for their funds, in the Bill of 1871. While this Bill secured full recognition and expansion of the friendly side of the unions, it was accompanied by another stringently enforcing severe penalties against
"picketing," "intimidation," etc., which hampered all trade unions — strikes under such restrictions being still practically impossible. Further agitation secured the repeal of this measure in 1875, peaceful picketing then becoming permissible, and also in the same year the Master and Servant Act was repealed and another placed in its stead, giving both worker and employer the right of suing each other in a court of law for breach of contract.

The Trade Union Congress.—The need for common action by the unions and the Trades Councils gave birth to the Trade Union Congress. The Councils sent delegates to the Congress up to the year 1895, when their representation was destroyed, to prevent duplication of membership. The Congress was first held in Manchester in 1868, and was convened in London by the Junta in 1871 to help in the Repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. Its Parliamentary Committee superseded the Junta, and the Congress became a regular institution. Thus in time, from the Lobby, Labour tried to go inside to make its influence more directly felt in politics. The Reform Bill of 1867, the Ballot Act of 1872, and another Reform Bill in 1884 helped to increase the political power of the working class. Congress sanctioned Parliamentary candidates in 1874, and Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt then entered Parliament.

The Awakening and its Cause.—However, it should be clearly understood that these political activities were made necessary in the seventies by the activity upon the industrial field which had excited the employers’ hostility—expressed in judicial rulings and legal restrictions. For in the years 1871—5 there was a great extension of Trade Unionism. The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants saw the light in 1871. In 1872, led by Joseph Arch, the agricultural labourers formed a union (which finally collapsed in 1894). The Engineers and Builders fought for a nine-hour day. On the other side we hear of the National Federation of Employers in 1873.

Tile slump 1876—9 caused only a temporary disappearance of this militancy; and in the eighties the "new unionism" comes into prominence, spreading among unskilled workers, hitherto unorganized, and often despised by the aristocratic craft unions.

Before noticing the difference between the model unions and the new unions a survey of England’s industrial position will help us to grasp the true cause of this militancy. The splendid start England had received from the Industrial Revolution and her consequent prosperity have already been pointed out. While trade went ahead by "leaps and bounds" the capitalist could afford to let a few crumbs fall to the workers from his well-spread table. But when the British capitalists were losing their unchallenged supremacy, when their competitors —chiefly American and German—were catching up to them, then the employers were forced to cut down expenses, and were less disposed to listen to the demands of their employees. Even during the years of rapid expansions, crises had not been absent; but now they became prolonged in their effects. The capitalists of other nations, too, sought for markets in which to dispose of their surplus prnducts. Capitalism like a huge banyan tree, strikes its branches down into the soil of every land, and each branch taking root, itself becomes a part of the tree, sending out still more branches in search of foothold. The country, which to-day is a market, by to-morrow will have imported machinery and become a rival competitor, needing markets herself.

From now on to the end of the century a change can be seen coming over the structure and policy of the trade unions. The new unions organized the growing mass of unskilled workers who had no craft to preserve. They had a lower scale of benefit, and ordinary contributions and smaller reserve funds, and relied upon fighting rather than conciliation to gain their demands. The policy of the model unions was founded upon the recognition of the essential goodwill of the employer; but the increased friction undermined the old ideas of harmony between master and man, though these old ideas even persist in our own day, and the breaking away from them is often performed unconsciously.

With the change in policy, the disappearance of lengthy contracts, and the decrease of reserve and benefit funds, came a change in the structure of the unions. The highly-centralised union, dominated by its officials, who relied upon diplomacy and negotiation, did not respond quickly enough to the feelings of the rank and file. The leaders of the new unionism tried hard to stir the leaders of the old unions from a "craft consciousness" to a "class consciousness." "John Burns and Tom Mann were among the foremost critics of the 'aristocratic' organizations, with their high contributions and lack of militancy, with their miserly solicitude for funds and exclusive attention to friendly benefits, and their apathy and lack of vigour with respect to advancing the industrial position of the wage-labourer-—especially that of the unskilled working men and women."[W.W. Craik, in Railway Review.]

In 1887 the Dockers’ Union was born, and in 1889 the famous Dock Strike in London occurred. Ben Tillett has described how the "docker’s tanner" was won, and how the horrors of the terrible system of the "call on" were removed by this strike, in his Brief History of the Dockers’ Union. Previous to this, in 1888, with the help of Mrs. Besant, the match girls of Bryant & May successfully struck to better their conditions. The Gas-workers’ and General Labourers’ Union won an eight—hour day for the London gas stokers.

Trusting the reader will look up the excellent books, now easily available, for further particulars of the advances made in this period, brief mention will be made, before concluding this Outline, of the propaganda bodies which at this time came into existence. Formerly the unions strove only to remove legal restrictions by their political action, their leaders being impregnated with the individualism of the times; but new conceptions were abroad regarding the way out. The aim of the trade unions, "a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work" was altered by the influence of new ideas, which were collectivist rather than individualist. The impossibility of getting "a fair day’s wage" and the need of a more fundamental change began to be recognised. The wide circulation of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty played a part in the creation and discussion of new ideas.

Propaganda Bodies.— "In the year 1881, an attempt was made," wrote Bax and Morris, "to federate the various Radical Clubs of London under the name of the Democratic Federation. Part of the heterogeneous elements, mainly the mere political Radicals, of which this was composed, withdrew from it in 1883; but other elements connected with the intellectual and literary side of Socialism joined it, and soon after the body declared for unqualified Socialism, and took the name of the Social Democratic Federation." The S.D.F. reduced the Marxian theory of development to a "rigid orthodoxy." The backward state of the Trade Unions gave it no hope from that quarter; and though it joined the Labour Party whén the latter was formed, it soon broke away because the trade unionists were not advanced enough to share its views.

The Fabian Society was another Socialist body started in 1884. Mostly composed of middle-class people, it helped to permeate Liberalism with collectivist iaeas. It was frankly opportunistic; out to "break the spell of Marxism"; and distinctly British in its economics. It "glossed over the class struggle," and attempted to organize society from a consumer’s point of view. With its excellent literature it has paved the way for the coming of State Socialism.

The Independent Labour Party, formed in 1893, came more into touch with the trade unions than any of the preceding propaganda bodies. Since their formation the New Unions had been active, and the I.L.P. was a manifestation of this new spirit on the political field. It was an attempt to permeate the Trade Unions with Socialism and create an independent political party to displace the Lib-Labs of the Broadhurst, Burt and Fenwick type. The Swansea Congress of 1887 was the scene of a conflict between the new and "the owd gang," personified respectively in Keir Hardie and Henry Broadhurst.

The End of the Century.—Owing to the fall in the cost of living, due to improvements in production and national competition, the industrial unrest was delayed for some time. The end of the century saw the number of trade unionists gradually increasing; the 4 millions of 1898 increased to nearly 2.5 in 1910.

Gibbins speaks of the disastrous cost of the South African War (1899—1903). The General Federation of Trade Unions began in 1899 to attempt to realise its ideal of a million members and "a gigantic central fund," proving that the moneybags method survives, though obsolete.

In 1898 occurred the strike out of which emerged the South Wales Miners’ Federation. Prior developments to this event are as yet unrecorded, and their tale should be told while some of the people who took an active part in them, and who remember even farther back, are still with us. From the local craft unions (e.g., hauliers’ nd hewers’) and the individual colliery owners or small companies came the need of a definite united organisation on both sides. The men financially helping that section of their fellows who were out of work by fighting for the wage advance, formed contacts which he to clear the way for larger unity.

The spirit of revolt against the old structure, the friction between the leader and the mass, and the continued activity on the industrial and political fields were general characteristics of the trade union movement which did not cease with the century.

Books.—Gibbins, Period V. Craik’s Modern Working-Class Movement, Sections III. IV., and VI. Trade Unions, by Jos, Clayton (People’s Books) contains in a condensed, readable, and cheaper form much information for which the student generally consults the bulkier volumes of Webbs’ The History of Trade Unionism and Industrial Democracy.'

From A Worker Looks At History, by Mark Starr.

16. The Industrial Revolution and the Workers

'AT the conclusion of the last Outline, and also in dealing with the early phases of the trade unions in Outline 14., the gloomy and disastrous results of the Industrial Revolution upon the status and conditions of the workers were foreshadowed. They will now be followed more closely. But no pen will ever do justice to this period of "dreadful night," or ever succeed in fully describing the pitiful state to which so many of the workers were then degraded. The Industrial Revolution enabled the middle-class to achieve final supremacy over the old nobility, who now became its adjuncts. It enabled the capitalist to ignore all limits of sex or age, day or night, and to satisfy his ravenous appetite for surplus labour and profits in a mad orgy; until the glutton had - for his own sake as well as his victims— to put a knife to his throat and restrain his greed for the good of his digestion, and in order to secure his continued existence. The ravages and the forced checking of the stretching of this natural appetite form our present subject.

The Competition of the Machine.—The fate of the early workers, competing with the machine when it began to invade their industry, was especially unhappy. The machine-produced commodity contains less labour than the hand-produced commodity; as it is the amount of socially necessary labour which determines the value of the product, the human competitor who still follows the older process has to sell at the same price as the machine: and his wages are lowered and hours extended in the hopeless struggle. The same process occurs when old machinery is competing with new, or a small factory with a big one; the workers’ wages are lowered to help make up for the handicap of the old machinery and obsolete methods. Writing in 1844, Engels painted the poverty endured by the hand-loom weavers before they were finally ousted by the power-loom.

Introduction of Woman and Child Labour.— "The constant aim and the tendency of every improvement in machinery," wrote Dr. Ure, the philosopher of machino-facture, "is, in fact, to do away entirely with the labour of man, or to lessen its price by substituting the labour of women and children for that of grown-up men, or of unskilled for that of skilled workmen." Ample contemporary evidence is given in Chap. IV., Gibbins, to prove this statement. "Persons of all ages and both sexes collected together in huge buildings, under no moral control, with no arrangement for the preservation of health, comfort or decency." The terrible lot of the child slaves of the factory-system sickens the imagination. As early as 1802, legislation was necessary, "for the preservation of the health and morals of apprentices and others employed in cotton and other mills," because of the ravages of a terrible disease in the factory districts, the natural result of insanitary workshops and homes, inferior and scanty food, and constant overwork. Extracts from the speeches of Shaftesbury and other reformers, and even from the official reports of factory inspectors, teem with details of these early horrors of the factory system which are almost unbelievable; and they also contain figures giving indubitable proof of the displacement of adult labour.

By the employment of women and children the home was broken up. The following may be found in the sad pages of Engels’ Conditions:—

The employment of women at once breaks up the family for when the wife spends twelve or thirteen hours every day in the mill, and the husband works the same length of time, there or elsewhere, what becomes of the children? They grow-up like wild weeds; they are put out to nurse for a shilling or eighteen pence a week, and how they are treated may be imagined...In many cases the family is not wholly dissolved by the labour of the wife, but turned upside down. The wife supports the family, the husband sits at home tends the children, sweeps the room and cooks.

Then he (Engels) gives a pathetic letter from a working man relating such an instance. Thus while there took place an enormous increase in infantile mortality, while immorality, child slavery, ignorance, and want flourished, capital, by machinery aid raised the degree of exploitation.

The value of labour-power was determined, not by the labour-time necessary to maintain the adult labourer, but also by that necessary to maintain his family. Machinery by throwing every member of that family upon the labour-market, spreads the value of the man’s labour-power over the whole family. It thus depreciates his labour-power. To purchase the labour-power of a family of four workers may perhaps cost more than it formerly did to purchase the labour-power of the head of the family, but, in return, four days’ labour takes the place of one, and their price falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus-labour of one. In order that the family may live, four people must now, not only labour, but expend surplus-labour for the capitalist.

Extension and Intensification of Labour.— When Capitalism "was in the summer-time of this its first love," we read of ceaseless day and night work, of children working by relays and sleeping "in filthy beds which were never allowed to cool," and weary of hands and feet having to rapidly follow the quick movements of the never-tiring machines. Not till 1832 and 1847 was the factory working day reduced to 12 and 10 hours respectively; and when hours were limited, then by increased intensity, within the shortened day, production was maintained at the same level.

The factors making the capitalist anxious for a quick turn-over can be easily understood. Besides the stimulus of a wide, ready, world market, and the huge profits made by the first adopters of the new machines over their slower rival capitalists, the early capitalist wished to get back as quickly as possible the constant capital embodied in the new machines, because they were not then so well protected against the natural elements as now, and they stood in danger of being superseded by new superior inventions. Therefore, as these dangers of dead losses existed, the capitalist, by extending the working day to the 24 hours, attempted to get back his capital as soon as be could. The faster the value of the machinery was transfered to the commodity by the labourer, the more the risks of non-use and supersession were obviated. Thus the machine made man its slave.

Crises and Distress. - Another result of the Industrial Revolution was the terrible decennial crises and times of depression which now regularly occurred. Famines and scarcity through natural causes, earthquakes, drought, hurricanes, etc., had always been known to mankind; but these new periods of disaster, dogging the most prosperous and busy periods, had never been known before. Many explanations have been put forward which, upon examination, are not satisfactory, or only record the symptoms and not the true cause and cure of this disease. The fact is that Capitalism practises law and order inside the workshop, but outside it practises anarchy. In times of prosperity, their owners being eager for profits, the wheels of production are speeded up. Everything proceeds madly. Rival capitalists, in fierce competition, make no attempt to estimate the needs of the market, and glut it with their commodities, until soon the prices fall and the inevitable crash comes, and lasts until the stocks have been consumed and confidence is again restored. At such times as these, when poverty is caused by plenty; when bootmakers’ children have to go without boots because their parents have produced too many boots, and when it would be a good thing for the workers if the products produced by their toil and effort were to vanish into smoke, so that they might once again have the opportunity of earning wages, then the contradictions in the capitalist system are most apparent; then social production and individual distribution stand in vivid contrast with each other, and Capitalism is dearly seen to be a fetter upon production. For as long as the surplus labour, or the unpaid for part of the product, is owned, not by the worker, but by the capitalist, then there must be a search for a market in which to dispose of this surplus product, and when the market fails, then must come the crisis. Previous to the Industrial Revolution, production had never been able to fully supply the needs of the market. Later in our lessons, we shall have occasion to refer to the various crises in the 19th century as they affected the workers, gradually changing from sharp and acute affairs to longer periods of permanent depression.[For a good account of these happenings, the student should consult Hyndman’s Commercial Crises of the 19th Century.]

An attempt might well be made to show how the warlike phase of capitalism, needing markets for its surplus iron and steel commodities, as well as supplies of raw material for the making of the same, has resulted in a terrible crisis and in the highest form of waste imaginable.

The high wheat prices, ranging often above lOOs. per quarter, and spelling starvation to the workers, aggravated the distress of the workers in the early decades of the century. The capitalist, increasing his constant capital, and dispensing with some of his workers as he lessened his variable capital, was the upper millstone; while the landed interest, intent on securing good rents from the farmers by protecting them by the Corn Laws, was the nether millstone, which, between them, crushed into poverty and starvation the powerless workers.

The state of affairs which the Truck Act in later times made an attempt to remedy was in existence, and this, too, helped to fill the workers’ bitter cup to the brim.

Destruction of Skill. —This was another effect of the Industrial Revolution. Back in the neighbourhood of 1860, Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer, said:—

The characterstic feature of our modern mechanical improvements is the introduction of self-acting machinery. What every mechanical workman has now to do, and what every boy can do, is not to work himself, but to superintend the beautiful labour of the machine. The whole class of workmen that depend exclusively upon their skill is now done away with. Formerly, I employed four boys to every machine. Thanks to these new mechanical combinations, I have reduced the number of grown-up men from 1,500 to 759. The result was a considerable increase in my profits.

Bearing in mind who are the receivers of the benefits of the modern dilution of labour, the truth of the last sentence will not be doubted. The undermining of the craft basis and structure of the trade unions by industrial development hastened the Revolution - and, being still continued, is a subject big enough for separate treatment.

The Factory Acts.—We have now to turn to the limits which had to be placed upon the operations of a soulless Capitalism —limits strenuously opposed by the capitalists, who prophesied immediate disaster from these attempts to interfere with the rights of unrestrainedly exploiting men, women and children. "John Bright especially distinguished himself (February 10th, 1847) by his violent denunciation of the Ten Hours’ Bill, which he charactensed as 'one of the worst measures ever passed in the shape of an Act of the legislature.'" (Gibbins furnishes the page, etc., in Hansard, where this "extraordinary utterance" can still be found.) However, these gloomy prognostications proved to be false. These limits prevented capitalism from "killing the goose that laid the golden egg," and delayed its Nemesis.

Marx, in his chapter on The Working Day, tells us that:-

As soon as the working class, stunned at first by the noise and turmoil of the new system of production, recovered, in some measure, its senses, its resistance began, and first in the native land of mechanism, in England. For thirty years, however, the concessions conquered by the work—people were purely nominal. Parliament passed five Labour Laws between 1802 and 1833, but was shrewd enough not to vote a penny for their carrying out, for the requisite officials, etc.

To follow the various Factory Acts which were passed between 1833 and 1864; to notice how these Acts were passed in the face of fierce opposition, and then evaded in many ingenious ways, by the help of biassed interpretations from interested magistrates; to admire the work of men like Owen, Shaftesbury, Oastler, and Sadler in getting these Acts passed, the work of men like Factory Inspector Leonard Horner in getting them actually observed; and to notice how the landlords helped the workers with the Factory Acts in order to revenge themselves upon the industrial capitalists, but how they fonght the Repeal of the Corn Laws when their own interests were involved —these are things to which the reader can profitably direct his attention by reading the chapters listed.

The Act of 1833 was the first to stop children under nine years of age from entering certain factories, and it limited the working week of a nine-year-old child to 69 hours. The educational needs of the workers —previously entirely neglected— were recognised by the in-institution of "half-timers" in later Acts. The schools for many years hardly deserved their name. Many of the teachers could not even Write their own names correctly. Fatigued by toil, the children fell asleep on the stools. Later, rival theologians, squabbling over the children’s souls, hindered the education of their minds and bodies. At Queen Victoria’s accession one quarter of the children were totally uneducated; 49 per cent of the boys and 57 per cent of the girls could not read; and 67 per cent of the boys and 88 per cent of the girls could not write. Sympathy for our fellows, with their often low outlook upon life is engendered when one looks back to these dark years of dense ignorance of not so long ago.

It was the terrible state of ignorance and misery among the workers which drew from Carlyle in 1838 those scathing denunciations of a society which allowed such things to be: he wondered, not at the rumours of rebellion, but that the workers were content to be quiet so long. Ruskin, Dickens, and others echoed his criticisms in their own individual ways.

Sanitary inquiries into the state of the crowded, hideous towns, the new industrial centres which had grown up so rapidly, began in 1840. The first medical officer of health was appointed in 1847, and legislation making compulsory the cleaning and draining of towns and houses was started in 1848. Experience taught Capitalism that over-exploitation did not pay; reluctantly it had to recognise its own harmful effects.

The Chartist Movement (1238-1848).- The Chartist Movement was undoubtedly born out of the distress following the Industrial Revolution, for with the amelioration of the distress the movement disappeared. The only way by which workers could preserve their manhood was in revolt. The Chártists were the proletarian wing of the movement which was endeavouring to secure political freedom in the first three decades of the 19th century right up to its success in the Reform Bill of 1832. Many of them were disappointed with the results of this Bill, and drew up a Charter demandig further reforms. Though their demands were political, yet many of them saw that these political demands were only a means to the end that they nnght win economic justice. Diverse in their aims and methods, with their chief strongholds in the towns, having many fine men within their ranks, aiding the workers in their strikes, and spreading much fear and alarm in the minds of the ruling classes, the Chartists and their movement, after several of their risings had been suppressed by the military, flickered out in 1848. For a while they joined with the machinofacturers to repeal the Corn Laws, but the alliance was only a temporary one. Engels (p. 229) describes how the capitalists tried to use the workers as a catspaw to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. But the workers discovered that cheaper bread might mean, not more food, but less wages; the landlords were not their only enemies.

Reserving Trade Union development for our next lesson, it is worthwhile to notice the start of Co-operation in 1844, the separate societies federating to form the English Wholesale in 1863. Another example of the workers trying to improve their position is shown by the fact that friendly societies were formed and legally recognised and protected in the years 1829—50. Again, we hear of the formation of Workmen’s Institutes and educational efforts. The worker was passing on from the Luddite machine-breaking stage to another, in which he sought to gain self-reliance and education in order to understand and remedy his condition.

"The Grand Era of Capitalist Expansion." - This occurred in the years from 1850 onwards. Trade went ahead by leaps and bounds. With America suffering irom the effects of the Civil War, with Germany late in arriving at national unity, and France yet disturbed by external and internal trouble, England, thanks to the start given her by the Industrial Revolution, remained the first industrial nation of the world till about the year 1875. The capitalists could afford to pay their work men fairly good wages and hence a higher standard of living was attained. But that "standing feud between worker and master," which was so evident and bitter throughout the years of the Industrial Revolution, only temporarily disappeared in these years of prosperity, to reappear again more open and distinct than ever. The forces which will finally compel the Workers to control the means of production are to be easily discerned if we have followed our lesson closely.

Books. Gibbin's Period V. Capital, Vol. I., Chaps. X. and XV., on the working day and machinery and modern industry. Craik’s Modern Working-Class Movement, Section I. and V. Engels’ Conditions of Working Class in England, 1844. (No full knowledge of the Industrial Revolution upon the workers can be gained until this terrible collection of evidence is read.) Kingsley’s Alton Locke contains interesting sidelights upon the Chartist Movement and the conditions of the poor. Wage Labour and Capital.'

From A Worker Looks At History, by Mark Starr.

15. The Industrial Revolution

'OUR last two Outlines have overlapped this remarkable event, or series of events, which is the great landmark in industrial history. The Industrial Revolution took place between the years 1760 and 1830, and, like other revolutions, it was the product of centuries of evolution. It neither abruptly started nor finished at the dates given; for previous inventions had been made, and the perfecting of the inventions therein made has never stopped. It was in these momentous years, however, that machinery and science were applied to industry in an unprecedented fashion.

Thus, again remembering the relativity of all beginnings, we can follow the development of manufacture into machinofacture—a process so important and powerful in its effects that it is rightly termed a revolution. The speeding of the labour processes, and the dilution of labour then made possible, is only faintly parallelled in our own day by the wonderful increase in the productivity of labour, secured by organized efforts made under the stress of war.

It should be clearly understood that the introduction of machinery into industry could only come after manufacture had instituted the division of labour inside the
workshop, and split up the old handicrafts into simple detail operations. "The Revolution of the 18th century began with the tool only because the preceding revolution began with the labourer." Only when the labourer performed a simple mechanical task could he be displaced by a machine. A machine could not take a piece of leather and make it into a boot; but when the process was divided up into stitching and other separate tasks, then machines were competent to perform the separated, simplified operations. Unlike the first simple original machines or automatic tools, modern machines tend to become more complex and often preform all the operations necessary to complete the product. Take, for example, the production of a modern daily paper.

Again, machinofacture would never have commenced if there had not been the need of supplying a world market. This was the great factor which made the old methods of production inadequate.

The Tool and the Machine.—Man’s tools are as old as himself; he is "the tool—making animal." Long before the science of mechanics had been thought of, unnamed inventors had discovered the use of the wheel, the lever, the pulley, the screw, the inclined plane, and the wedge, these simple mechanical powers of which the most complex machine is composed. It was a long time, however, before the tool—defined as "an instrument used by workmen" —was combined with these mechanical powers to form the machine as we now know it.

Viewed apart from their historic evolution, the difference between the tool and the machine is hard to define. For example, the plough drawn by oxen, according to the definition already given, would be a machine; while a complicated machine, if operated by human labour, would be a tool. As Marx puts it, a fully developed machine has three essentially different parts, the motor mechanism, where the driving power is generated, the transmitting mechanism, such as gearing, ropes, belts, fly-wheels, etc., and the tool or working part of the machine. The machine begins when the tool is taken out of the hands of the workman "and fitted into a mechanism." But here comes the great improvement. "The number of implements that man himself can use simultaneously is limited by the number of his own natural instruments of production, by the number of his bodily organs." (Try to imagine a collier using two mandrils or sledges at once and you will see the point.) With the coming of the machine, however, these "organic limits" are destroyed. "The spinning jenny, even at its very birth, spun with twelve to eighteen spindles, and the stocking-loom knits with many thousand needles at once." The man-drill has only one point in operation at a time; but the swiftly-revolving disc or bar of a coal cutter is armed with many points in simultaneous operation. When many ploughshares are combined for use we talk about ploughing by machinery.

The First Stage of the Machine.—Here man is still the generator and transmitter of the necessary motive power; only the function of handling the tool has been taken from him. This spells the further destruction of handicraft. The domestic producers had in their cottages simple machines. Later, when the machines grew bigger, man’s powers of strength and endurance were not sufficient, and animal power was tried. We read of Cartwright’s first power-loom being worked by a bull. But animal-power, too, had its limits and was expensive. The horse, even in transport and agriculture, is slowly making way for petrol-driven and other machines.

The Second Stage of the Machine.—In this stage the power of wind and water is utilised, the latter being, especially used by the new machines. Wind-power has never been used on a large scale in England. "In 1836, 12,000 windmills of 6,000 horse-power were still employed in Holland, to prevent two-thirds of the land being re-converted into morasses." Wind is too inconstant and variable to be a successful motive power for machinery. Water-power also has its drawbacks; it, too, is variable and uncertain. Available heads of water —Niagaras being scarce— are hard to find, and the factories are restricted to the local water-sides. "In the 17th century attempts had already been made to turn two pairs of millstones with a single water-wheel. But the increased size of the gearing was too much for the water— power, which had now become insufficient, and this was one of the circumstances that led to a more accurate investigation of the laws of friction." Arkwright’s mill was water-driven.

The Third Stage.—The ever-increasing size of the machines made imperative the finding of a reliable, sure, control1able power. The power was found in steam, a never-tiring, almighty giant, stopping only when its human attendants have exhausted themselves. The discovery came about gradually. In James Watt’s patent of 1769 culminated the efforts of a large number of scientists and inventors reaching back to a very crude pumping engine in 120 B.C. A century previous to Watt, Savery and Worcester, and in 1705 Newcomen also, had invented steam engines for pumping purposes. Besides having the much-mentioned benefit of noticing the lid of the boiling kettle, Watt had the advantage of being instrument maker to Glasgow University, of acquaintance with Dr. Black, the discoverer of latent heat, who, with Dr. Roebuck, helped Watt financially, and of having the opportunity of reading the books and examining and repairing the models of men like Papin, Savery and Worcester. Like other inventions, his was not an individual but a social product. He greatly improved the steam engine by introducing a separate condenser and making it double-acting. Later he joined with Boulton, and as purveyors of the means of power urgently needed by the new machinery, the firm of Boulton & Watt thrived.

Machinery and Textiles.—The mode of production in the textile industry—that industry, as usual, being in the forefront of development—was revolutionised in the 18th century by a succession of inventions of which the following are examples (different authorities give different dates; Gibbins’ are here followed) :—Kay’s flying shuttle (1730) greatly quickened the process of weaving. "Hitherto the weaver had passed the shuttle carrying the weft through the threads of the warp from hand to hand...Kay’s invention, by which the shuttle was mechanically propelled from side to side, not only enabled the weaver to work wide cloth as easily as narrow, but it more than doubled the pace at which the work could be done." It now became impossible for the spinners to supply the weavers with enough yarn. Machinery applied in one branch of the industry must needs be applied to other branches in order for them to keep step. (The coalcutter and the conveyor are close associates.) In 1770 Hargreaves invented "the spinning jenny," which, displacing the old single thread spinning-wheel, spun sixteen to eighteen threads at once, and supplied the weavers with the yarn they needed. Ark-wright’s "water frame" (1771) for carding, roving, and spinning, "first made possible the manufacture of true cotton goods in England."

Crompton (1779) combined the advantages of the last two inventions in his "mule." By 1811 we hear of 44 million spindles being worked; and in modern production, in striking contrast to the old methods, 12,000 spindles are often simultaneously worked by one spinner. Crompton died, as many inventors have died, in poverty, and he and his fellow inventors were often the victims of the violence of the workers, who feared that these new machines would destroy their livelihood.

The power-loom of Cartwright (1785) brought weaving up to spinning again. After many improvements it provided the chance of the first application of steam power in textiles. In 1813, 2,400 of these power-looms were in operation. Twenty years later that number had increased to 100,000.

Until Eli Whitney invented his gin for cleaning cotton by machinery, the cotton trade suffered from a lack of raw material. Before this machine came, five or six pounds of cotton per man were cleaned in one day; but after its coming one man could clean 1,000 lbs. per day, and the shortage of raw material disappeared.

These inventions in the cotton industry were afterwards applied to the woollen and linen trades, to hosiery, silk and lace-making. Hundreds of minor improvements were brought about in printing, bleaching and dyeing the fabrics produced. One example must suffice: Bell’s printing cylinder (1783), used to print calico goods, with the aid of one man and a boy, performed the work formerly done by 200 block-printers.

Moreover, progress was not confined to the textile industry; in the china and earthenware trades, similar advances were made. Inventions in one trade provoked inventions in others. Wedgwood, about 1763, began to produce the pottery which made his name famous.

Coal Mining.—It was the difficulties and necessities of the early miners which led to the first steam-driven pumping engines. Improved steam engines and machinery were soon used in sinking shafts and raising coal. The machine brought within reach its own fuel. The industrial centres shifted from the South and West of England to the North; from the riversides to the coalfields. Gibbins’ map (facing page 164) forcibly demonstrates how intimately linked together are the industrial towns and their large populations with the coal mining centres. The output of coal rapidly increased. 10 millions of tons in 1800 had increased to 49 in 1850 and to 272 in 1907, and keeping to about that level ever since.

Iron Mining and Smelting.—The machine, coal, and iron are inseparable, and they cannot be considered apart from each other. The superiority of iron machines over wooden ones did not take much finding out. Yet England for a long time could not use, on a large scale, her own supplies of ore because of the great amount of timber consumed in its smelting. The use of coke and, afterwards, by improved furnaces, of raw coal for smelting destroyed this barrier.

The end of the century saw the growth of gigantic iron works all over the country. In 1784 Colebrookdale had sixteen steam-engines, eight blast-furnaces, and nine forges. In 1765 Anthony Bacon had got a ninety-nine year’s lease of mineral rights over forty square miles of country round Merthyr Tydfil for £200 a year, but in less than twenty years he retired with a fortune, and from the sale of his rights began the great works at Cyfarthfa, Dowlais and Penydarren. Crawshay, of Cyfarthfa, who in 1787 had made forty tons of malleable iron in a month was, by l8l2 turning out twenty times as much.

In 1856 the Bessemer process of making steel was originated. With iron machinery in all the important industries, with iron engines running on iron rails over iron bridges, with houses built on iron girders, with iron vessels and armour-plated Dreadnoughts, and with the universal use of iron, in war as well as peace, in things
both small and great, ours can be truly called the age of iron and steel.

Machine-Made Machinery.—But the smelting difficulty was not the only one to be overcome. When Watt was labouring with his early engine, "Beelzebub," he thought himself "fortunate if the cylinder bored by the Canon workmen were not more than three-eighths of an inch out of truth." Besides this lack of accuracy, there was the inability of manufacture to produce "the cyclopean machines" needed, owing to their size. The limits of manufacture blocked the way until machinery
was produced by machinery. In his brilliant chapter on Machinery and Modern Industry, Marx writes:-

The most essential condition to the production of machines by machines was a prime mover capable of exerting any amount of force, and yet under perfect control. Such a condition was already supplied by the steam engine. But at the same time it was necessary to produce the geometri cally straight lines, planes, circles, cones, and spheres required in the detail parts of the machine. This problem Henry Maudsley solved in the first decade of this century by the invention of the slide-rest, a tool that was soon made automatic, and in a modified form was applied to other
constructive machines besides the lathe, for which it was originally intended. This mechanical appliance replaces not some particular tool, but the hand itself, which produces a given form by holding and guiding the cutting tool alone the iron or other material operated upon. Thus it became possible to produce the forms of the individual parts of machinery, "with a degree of speed, accuracy and ease that no accumulated experience of the most skilled work man could give."

Much better should we be able to appreciate the immense effects of the Industrial Revolution, if we could make an extended tour throughout England’s modern workshops, see the gigantic steam-hammers and hydraulic presses at work; follow the iron ore through its processes until it is forged, welded, bored and planed as if it were clay, into the required shapes; watch the cranes swinging easily about their heavy burdens; visit the dockyards where the mammoth floating palaces and the huge ships of war have their birth; enter the factories where the production of textile commodities proceeds ceaselessly, or the engineering shops where forests of quickly moving belts connect the individual machines to the central driving automaton. After such a tour the Industrial Revolution would assume added significance - "Man is the master of things".

Transport.—A revolution in the ways of transport now became necessary to meet the new methods of production. How could industry proceed without efficient transport facilities on sea and land? The roads, formerly with ruts in winter 4 ft. deep, in which waggons were often stranded, and having only a narrow causeway for the use of the pack—horses, were improved, and new roads engineered by Metcalf, Telford, Macadam and others. These improvements made the comparatively swift stage-coach possible.

In addition canals were made. Gibbins furnishes in formation of the boom in canal-making which reached its height in 1791—4. Space forbids us to follow the story of the application of the steam engine to transport. However, from the canals of 1761, from Trevithick’s railroad-engine of 1803 (which is not without strong Welsh local associations), from the steam-driven vessels on the Clyde in 1812, and from Stephenson’s "Rocket" of 1814, and its application to passenger traffic in 1825, right on down to our own day, we see these very necessary transport facilities developing; they now connect market with factory, town with country, and link the whole world together. The first Atlantic steam-crossing in 1837, the beginning of the penny post in 1840, the first telegraph wires of 1844, the railway speculation mania of 1845 —which would have turned the country into a gridiron and made transport impossible if all its projected railways had been laid down— and the laying of the first submarine cable from Dover to Calais in 1850— these are only a few of the many developments which followed.

England’s Start.—Reference has already been made to the need of the world market for supplies as the chief cause of the Industrial Revolution. Having won commercial supremacy, and owning the markets, England was able to achieve industrial supremacy over her rivals. Thanks to her insular position, which kept her Unravaged by European wars, her natural stores of coal and iron, and her early application of the new powers and machinery, England became "the workshop of the
world." She was "the world’s factory, the world’s carrier, and the world’s money-market" for many years. Such a splendid start did she have that only within recent years have her competitors caught her up.

Agricultural Effects.—After a while farming benefitted, too, from the Industrial Revolution, and adopted new methods. The destruction of the class of domestic producers encouraged large-scale farming. The large proprietors completed the decay of "the open field system" and the peasant small-holder. New roots and grasses, rotation of crops, and better breeds of cattle were introduced. The great increase of population and the increasing difference between town and country enlarged the demand for agricultural produce. Agricultural machinery helped to displace the labourer. From 1750 onwards, there begins that depopulation of
the country and that crowding into the towns which has left so many problems as unenviable legacies of the past to the present. Three-quarters of England’s inhabitants are now town-dwellers.

This brings our Outline to a close. The student should read carefully the chapters listed. To examine the birth of the machine is the first step to understand its logic. "Our knowledge of Nature is still in its infancy." Invention nas only just begun. Next we shall see how machinery, "which is in itself a victory of man over the forces of nature," extended and intensified labour, brought new and untold, horrors in its train, and made a large section of mankind less free than they had ever been before. But these are the effects of the Industrial Revolution only so long as its fruits are privately owned. Our efforts should be directed to rise to possession and control, so that machinery shall no longer work against us, but for us. The social forces, as well as the natural forces, must be consciously conquered.

Books.—Gibbins, Period V. Warner, Chaps. XV. and XVI. Capital. Vol. I., Chap. XV. Craik’s Modern Working-Class Movement, Section II. Beard’s Industrial Revolution.'

From A Worker Looks At History, by Mark Starr.