SLAVERY FOR BRITISH WORKERS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Your article under this title does not strike me as very satisfactory. May I suggest a few other considerations on the subject ? I suppose it will be admitted by all thinking men that the great need of the civilized world now is that workmen shall settle down to work. Most of all is it the heavy, uninteresting manual labour of which the world is in need, after four years of war, and a further year or more of agitation, revolution, and industrial unrest. The great test of statesmanship would therefore appear to be the amount of success in achieving this essential. Our Government tries to effect it by bribing the workmen; Lenin prefers to coerce them. It remains to be seen which will ultimately be the better. To me it seems that Lenin's plan is at least logical and practicable, and that our system will prove disastrous. It will prove disastrous because it is evident to an independent observer of human nature and economics that the one way not to get laborious manual labour done is to pay high wages for it. The rough work of the world has ever been done, and for ages-yet must be done, for low wages, and under some form of compulsion. It is a hard saying for professional Labour leaders and their sincere and insincere sympathizers to digest, but it is either true or it is not true; and if it is true all the indignation and maudlin sentiment in the world will not alter it.
"Evidence before the Court showed that in some docks the men will not work more than three or four days a week. . . . The facts show that the average docker is content to earn a certain amount of money, and to knock off work when he has made that amount." So you say in another article in the same issue. No doubt it is true, and who can say it is not natural ? Men work in coal-mines, in the docks, in mills and factories, because they are obliged to do so. You could not bribe a man to work six days a week in a coal-mine if he could earn a passable livelihood in four days, unless he was intent
on saving enough money to enable him to dispense with the mine altogether.
Sir, let us recognize for a few moments that the majority of men, whether workers or not, are mainly concerned with their own desires or interests. The collier or the docker who goes to his work determined to do his best because it is his duty, or because it is for the benefit of his country, does not exist. (This is not to say that other classes of the community are any better, but we are not dealing with them at present.) In selling his labour to the community, through the medium of his employer, he demands the highest price he can get, irrespective of all other considerations. While demanding that profits shall be limited, he refuses to admit any limitation to his own demands. There must be a minimum but no maximum wage. Parliament is called upon to guarantee him a minimum, leaving him free to demand as much more as he thinks proper. He objects to combinations of employers as tending to create a monopoly, while organizing labour monopolies in all important industries. The plain, brutal fact is that the work- man, as a workman, has no morality, but is ready to victimize society to the utmost of his abilities. Add to this that the majority of workmen are necessarily of limited intelligence, and we get something like a correct estimate of the power with which our statesmen are called upon to deal.
Are they going to get the work done by their present methods ? Does it look like it when every week they are faced with the threat of one or more great strikes for advances in wages, while the quantity of work done tends to diminish ? When is the futile chase of higher prices by wages going to end ? Sooner or later must come the limit of possible wages— and then what ? Compulsion in the form of competition for employment will be the inevitable result, and will be a greater hardship than Lenin's compulsion, exercised while as yet there is the opportunity to labour.
The Daily Herald is quite right in recognizing that com- pulsory labour—which is what " discipline" means—is inevitable, "whenever the workers come to power "; nothing is more certain. Lenin has had the intelligence—not that it needs much—and the courage to recognize the fact that the first thing to do is to make up the arrears of production, and by whatever methods are available to get this done. He will probably succeed, for he has evidently emancipated himself from the shibboleths, phrases, and catchwords which still dominate the minds of our publicists of all kinds. If "Liberty " is compatible with getting the work done—well : if not, Liberty is curtly shown the door—it is not with Liberty that hungry bellies can be filled and bare backs clothed. Nor are food and clothing necessarily the concomitants of universal or any other suffrage, of Parliaments, Congresses, or even Trade Unions. Lenin in Russia is the man with the big stick, and bids fair to be the saviour of Russia if he can but retain his weapon.. Sooner or later, unless we are to drift into anarchy and revolution, and its resulting despotism—whether of "Labour " or another—we too must find a Lenin, or he must find us. Well for us if he has the knowledge, ability, and integrity as well as the big stick of his Russian prototype.—
I am, Sir, &c., JOHN STAFFORD. [We cannot agree. We believe the manual worker has morality, and plenty of sense besides, even though he has been misled by half-baked theorists. We want to save him from compulsion or slavery. If he behaves sensibly he can and will be saved. But the Daily Herald has already thrown up the sponge on his behalf, and tells him that there is nothing for him but to knuckle under to Egyptian taskmasters.—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
