Chapter XXI: Appendix

The American workingman will not find it very hard to see that the lesson of "Britain for the British" applies with even greater force to the conditions in his own country.

American railroads, mines, and factories exploit, cripple and kill American laborers on an even larger scale than the British ones. We have even less laws for the protection of the workers and their children and what we have are not so well enforced.

No one will deny the ability of America to feed herself. She feeds the world to-day save that some American workers and their families are rather poorly fed. The great problem with American capitalists is how to get rid of the wealth produced and given to them by American laborers.

Where Liberal and Conservative parties are mentioned every American reader will find himself unconsciously substituting Democratic and Republican.

It will do the average American good to "see himself as others see him" and to know that manhood suffrage, freedom from established Church and Republican institutions do not prevent his becoming an economic slave and living in a slum.

But we fear that some American readers will be shrewd enough to call attention to the fact that municipal ownership has not abolished, or to any great extent improved the slums of London, Glasgow and Birmingham. It is certain some of the thousands of German laborers who are living in America would be quick to point out that although Bismark has nationalized the railroads and telegraphs of Germany this has not altered the fact of the exploitation of German workingmen. Worst of all, it would be hard to explain to the multitude of Russian exiles now living in America that they would have been better off had they remained at home, because the Czar has made more industries government property than belong to any other nation in the world.

Even native Americans would find it somewhat hard to understand how matters would be improved by transferring the ownership of the coal mines, for example, from a Hanna-controlled corporation to a Hanna-directed government. There would be one or two different links in the chain of connection uniting Hanna to the mines and the miners but they would be as well forged and as capable of holding the laborer in slavery as the present ones.

Happily the chapter on "Why the old Parties will not do" gives us a clue to the way out. While the government is controlled by capitalist parties government ownership of industries does little more than simplify the process of reorganization to be performed when a real labor party shall gain control. The victory of such a party will for the first time mean that government-owned industries will be owned and controlled by all the workers (who will also be all the people, since idlers will have disappeared).

American workers are fortunate in that there is a political party already in the field which exactly meets the ideal described in the last three chapters. The Socialist Party is a trade-union party, a labor party and the political expression of all the workers in America who have become intelligent enough to understand their own self-interest. Those who feel that they wish to lend a hand in securing the triumph of the ideas set forth in "Britain for the British" should at once join that party and work for its success.

A. M. SIMONS.

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End of Project Gutenberg's Britain for the British, by Robert Blatchford

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