Chapter XIX: To-Day's Work

Self-interest being the strongest motive in human nature, he who wishes his interests to be served will be wise to attend to them himself.

If you, Mr. Smith, as a working man, wish to have better wages, shorter hours, more holidays, and cheaper living, you had better take a hand in the class war by becoming a recruit in the army of Labour.

The first line of the Labour army is the Trade Unions.

The second line is the Municipality.

The third line is Parliament.

If working men desire to improve their conditions they will be wise to serve their own interests by using the Trade Unions, the Municipalities, and the House of Commons for all they are worth; and they are worth a lot.

Votes you have in plenty, for all practical purposes, and of money you can yourselves raise more than you need, without either hurting yourselves or incurring obligations to men of other classes.

One penny a week from 4,000,000 of working men would mean a yearly income of L866,000.

We are always hearing that the working classes cannot find enough money to pay the election expenses of their own parliamentary candidates nor to keep their own Labour members if elected.

If 4,000,000 workers paid one penny a week (the price of a Sunday paper, or of one glass of cheap beer) they would have L866,000 at the end of a year.

Election expenses of 200 Labour candidates at L500 each would be L100,000.

Pay of 200 Labour members at L200 a year would be L40,000.

Total, L140,000: leaving a balance in hand of L726,000.

Election expenses of 2000 candidates for School Board, Municipal Councils, and Boards of Guardians at L50 per man would be L100,000. Leaving a balance of L626,000.

Now the cause of Labour has very few friends amongst the newspapers. As I have said before, at times of strikes and other industrial crises, the Press goes almost wholly against the workers.

The 4,000,000 men I have supposed to wake up to their own interest could establish weekly and daily papers of _their own_ at a cost of L50,000 for each paper. Say one weekly paper at a penny, one daily paper at a penny, or one morning and one evening paper at a halfpenny each.

These papers would have a ready-made circulation amongst the men who owned them. They could be managed, edited, and written by trained journalists engaged for the work, and could contain all the best features of the political papers now bought by working men.

Say, then, that the weekly paper cost L50,000 to start, and that the morning and evening papers cost the same. That would be L150,000, and the papers would pay in less than a year.

You see, then, that 4,000,000 of men could finance 3 newspapers, 200 parliamentary and 2000 local elections, and pay one year's salary to 200 Members of Parliament for L390,000, or less than _one halfpenny_ a week for one year.

If you paid the full penny a week for one year you could do all I have said and have a balance in hand of L476,000.

Surely, then, it is nonsense to talk about the difficulty of finding money for election expenses.

But you might not be able to get 4,000,000 of men to pay even one penny.

Then you could produce the same result if _one_ million (half your present Trade Union membership) pay twopence a week.

And even at a cost of twopence a week do you not think the result would be worth the cost? Imagine the effect on the Press, and on Parliament, and on the employers, and on public opinion of your fighting 200 parliamentary and 2000 municipal elections, and founding three newspapers. Then the moral effect of the work the newspapers would do would be sure to result in an increase of the Trade Union membership.

A penny looks such a poor, contemptible coin, and even the poor labourer often wastes one. But remember that union is strength, and pennies make pounds. 1000 pennies make more than L4; 100,000 pennies come to more than L400; 1,000,000 pennies come to L4000; 1,000,000 pennies a week for a year give you the enormous sum of L210,000.

We _Clarion_ men founded a paper called the _Clarion_ with less than L400 capital, and with no friends or backers, and although we have never given gambling news, nor general news, and had no Trade Unions behind us, we have carried our paper on for ten years, and it is stronger now than ever.

Why, then, should the working classes, and especially the Trade Unions, submit to the insults and misrepresentations of newspapers run by capitalists, when they can have better papers of their own to plead their own cause?

Suppose it cost L100,000 to start a first-class daily Trade Union organ. How much would that mean to 2,000,000 of Unionists? If it cost L100,000 to start the paper, and if it lost L100,000 a year, it would only mean one halfpenny a week for the first year, and one farthing a week for the next. But I am quite confident that if the Unions did the thing in earnest they could start a paper for L50,000, and run it at a profit after the first six months.

Do not forget the power of the penny. If 10,000,000 of working men and women gave _one penny a year_ it would reach a yearly income of _forty thousand pounds_. A good deal may be done with L40,000, Mr. Smith.

Now a few words as to the three lines of operations. You have your Trade Unions, and you have a very modest kind of Federation. If your 2,000,000 Unionists were federated at a weekly subscription of one penny per man, your yearly income would be nearly half a million: a very useful kind of fund. I should strongly advise you to strengthen your Trades Federation.

Next as to Municipal affairs. These are of more importance to you than Parliament. Let me give you an idea. Suppose, as in the case of Manchester and Liverpool, the difference between a private gas company and a Municipal gas supply amounts to more than a shilling on each 1000 feet of gas. Setting the average workman's gas consumption at 4000 feet per quarter, that means a saving to each Manchester working man of sixteen shillings a year, or just about fourpence a week.

Suppose a tram company carries a man to his work and back at one penny, and the Corporation carries him at one halfpenny. The man saves a penny a day, or 25s. a year. Now if 100,000 men piled up their tram savings for one year as a labour fund it would come to L125,000.

All that money those men are now giving to tram companies _for nothing_. Is that practical?

You may apply the same process of thought to all the other things you use. Just figure out what you would save if you had Municipal or State managed

Railways Coalmines
Tramways Omnibuses
Gas Water
Milk Bread
Meat Butter and cheese
Vegetables Beer
Houses Shops
Boots Clothing

and other necessaries.

On all those needful things you are now paying big percentages of profit to private dealers, all of which the Municipality would save you.

And you can municipalise all those things and save all that money by sticking together as a Labour Party, and by paying _one penny a week_.

Again I advise you to read those books by George Haw and R. B. Suthers. Read them, and give them to other workers to read.

And then set about making a Labour Party _at once_.

Next as to Parliament. You ought to put at least 200 Labour members into the House. Never mind Liberalism and Toryism. Mr. Morley said in January that what puzzled him was to "find any difference between the new Liberalism and the new Conservatism." Do not try to find a difference, John. Have a Labour Party.

"Self-interest is the strongest motive in human nature." Take care of your own interests and stand by your own class.

You will ask, perhaps, what these 200 Labour representatives are to do. They should do anything and everything they can do in the House of Commons for the interests of the working class.

But if you want programmes and lists of measures, get the Fabian Parliamentary and Municipal programmes, and study them. You will find the particulars as to price, etc., at the end of this book.

But here are some measures which you might be pushing and helping whenever a chance presents itself, in Parliament or out of Parliament.

Removal of taxation from articles used by the workers, such as tea
and tobacco, and increase of taxation on large incomes and on land.

Compulsory sale of land for the purpose of Municipal houses, works,
farms, and gardens.

Nationalisation of railways and mines.

Taxation to extinction of all mineral royalties.

Vastly improved education for the working classes.

Old age pensions.

Adoption of the Initiative and Referendum.

Universal adult suffrage.

Eight hours' day and standard rates of wages in all Government and
Municipal works.

Establishment of a Department of Agriculture.

State insurance of life.

Nationalisation of all banks.

The second ballot.

Abolition of property votes.

Formation of a citizen army for home defence.

Abolition of workhouses.

Solid legislation on the housing question.

Government inquiry into the food question, with a view to restore
British agriculture.

Those are a few steps towards the desired goal of _Socialism_.

You may perhaps wonder why I do not ask you to found a Socialist Party. I do not think the workers are ready for it. And I feel that if you found a Labour Party every step you take towards the emancipation of Labour will be a step towards _Socialism_.

But I should like to think that many workers will become Socialists at once, and more as they live and learn.

The fact is, Mr. Smith, I do not want to ask too much of the mass of working folks, who have been taught little, and mostly taught wrong, and whose opportunities of getting knowledge have been but poor.

I am not asking working men to be plaster saints nor stained-glass angels, but only to be really what their flatterers are so fond of telling them they are now: shrewd, hard-headed men, distrusting theories and believing in facts.

For the statement that private trading and private management of production and distribution are the best, and the only "possible," ways of carrying on the business of the nation is only a _theory_, Mr. Smith; but the superiority of Municipal management in cheapness, in efficiency, in health, in comfort, and in pleasantness is a solid _fact_, Mr. Smith, which has been demonstrated just as often as Municipal and private management have been contrasted in their action.

One other question I may anticipate. How are the workers to form a Labour Party?

There are already two Labour parties formed.

One is the Trade Union body, the other is the Independent Labour Party.

The Trade Unions are numerous, but not politically organised nor united.

The Independent Labour Party is organised and united, but is weak in numbers and poor in funds.

I should like to see the Trade Unions fully federated, and formed into a political as well as an Industrial Labour Party on lines similar to those of the Independent Labour Party.

Or I should like to see the whole of your 2,000,000 of Trade Unionists join the Independent Labour Party.

Or, best of all, I should like to see the Unions, the Independent Labour Party, and the great and growing body of unorganised and unattached Socialists formed into one grand Socialist Party.

But I do not want to ask too much.

Meanwhile, I ask you, as a reader of this book, not to sit down in despair with the feeling that the workers will not move, but to try to move them. Be you _one_, John Smith. Be you the first. Then you shall surely win a few, and each of those few shall win a few, and so are multitudes composed.

Let us make a long story short. I have here given you, as briefly and as plainly as I can, the best advice of which I am capable, after a dozen years' study and experience of Labour politics and economics and the lives of working men and women.

If you approve of this little book I shall be glad if you will recommend it to your friends.

You will find Labour matters treated of every week in the _Clarion_, which is a penny paper, published every Friday, and obtainable at 72 Fleet Street, London, E.C., and of all newsagents.

Heaven, friend John Smith, helps those who help themselves; but Heaven also helps those who try to help their fellow-creatures.

If you are shrewd and strong and skilful, think a little and work a little for the millions of your own class who are ignorant and weak and friendless. If you have a wife and children whom you love, remember the many poor and wretched women and children who are robbed of love, of leisure, of sunshine and sweet air, of knowledge and of hope, in the pent and dismal districts of our big, misgoverned towns. If you as a Briton are proud of your country and your race, if you as a man have any pride of manhood, or as a worker have any pride of class, come over to us and help in the just and wise policy of winning Britain for the British, manhood for _all_ men, womanhood for _all_ women, and love to-day and hope to-morrow for the children whom Christ loved, but who by many Christians have unhappily been forgotten.

That it may please thee to succour, help, and comfort _all_ that are
in danger, necessity, and tribulation.

That it may please thee to defend, and provide for, the fatherless
children, and widows, and _all_ that are desolate and oppressed.

That it may please thee to have mercy upon _all_ men.

I end as I began, by quoting those beautiful words from the Litany. If we would realise the prayer they utter, we must turn to _Socialism_; if we would win defence for the fatherless children and the widows, succour, help, and comfort for _all_ that are in danger, necessity, or tribulation, and mercy for _all_ men, we must win Britain for the British.

Without the workers we cannot win, with the workers we cannot fail. Will you be one to help us--_now_?

WHAT TO READ

The following books and pamphlets treat more fully the various subjects dealt with in _Britain for the British_.

TO-DAY'S WORK. G. Haw. Clarion Press, 72 Fleet Street. 2s. 6d.

DOES MUNICIPAL MANAGEMENT PAY? By R. B. Suthers. 6d. Clarion Press, 72 Fleet Street.

LAND NATIONALISATION. A. R. Wallace. 1s. London, Swan Sonnenschein.

FIVE PRECURSORS OF HENRY GEORGE. By J. Morrison Davidson. 1s. _Labour Leader_ Office, 53 Fleet Street, E.C.

DISMAL ENGLAND. By R. Blatchford. Clarion Press, 72 Fleet Street, E.C. 1s.

THE WHITE SLAVES OF ENGLAND. By R. Sherard. London, James Bowden. 1s.

NO ROOM TO LIVE. By G. Haw. 2s. 6d.

FIELDS, FACTORIES, AND WORKSHOPS. By Prince Kropotkin. 1s. _Clarion_ Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.

THE FABIAN TRACTS, especially No. 5, No. 12, and Nos. 30-37. One penny each. Fabian Society, 3 Clement's Inn, Strand, or _Clarion_ Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.

OUR FOOD SUPPLY IN TIME OF WAR. By Captain Stewart L. Murray. 6d. _Clarion_ Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.

THE CLARION. A newspaper for Socialists and Working Men. One penny weekly. Office, 72 Fleet Street, E.C.

The _Clarion_ can be ordered of all newsagents