MR. GRAYSON.
MR. GRAYSON, as we have all been told, is the first real Socialist Member of Parliament. Other Members, indeed, are Socialists, but being accredited to Trade-Unions, or not being independent of the Independent Labour Party, they are ostensibly delegates rather than apostles. Mr. Grayson stands for Socialism in the pure region of thought. He is, in fact, the real Simon Pure of those Socialists who are not labouring men, and are therefore by presumption political philosophers. Mr. H. G. Wells or Mr. Bernard Shaw might have served the same end in Parliament, though, apart from differences in colour between their Socialism and Mr. Grayson's, the one with his romantic vision and the other with his perverse wit would have done it very differently. At all events, those two distinguished thinkers, and others like them, but less distinguished, have not thought it worth while to enter Parliament. Mr. Grayson is the first Socialist philosopher to take part in the life of the House of Commons, and record for posterity what this doomed Assembly was like just before the searching north wind of revolutionary Socialism began to blow upon it. On the evening of the debate on the grant to Lord Cromer, Sir Edward Grey, practising the immemorial courtesy of the House to a new Member, gave way to Mr. Grayson, as we learn from a letter in the Times, and thus Mr. Grayson had the advantage, which he might otherwise have missed, of a full and attentive audience for his prophecy of the judgment that is to come. He remarked upon the animated aspect " of the Members who were waiting for Sir Edward Grey's speech, and suggested that one explana- tion might be that a rumour had slipped out that he himself was to speak. We need not examine his speech, but will pass on to his opinion of the House as he expressed it in public afterwards to his friends. If the country cares to send to Parliament more Socialists like Mr. Grayson, whose mental struggles have been in the regions of abstract thought—and Mr. Grayson says he is only the first of a great army to come—it is as important as it is interesting to know what they will think of Parliament as we know it and what they will want to do with it.
This maiden speech by Mr. Grayson in the House of Commons was on Tuesday, July 30th. The next evening he was welcomed by the Metropolitan District Council of the Independent Labour Party at Caxton Hall, and with all the weight of his experience as a Member of Parlia- ment, he advised those " who wished to get a sample of third-class intellectual mediocrity to go to the House of Commons." " Intellectual mediocrity " means a middle class of intellect ; but what a middle class of intellect, which is also "third-class," may be, it is not so easy to determine. But no matter; perhaps Mr. Grayson thought that on the site where the first press was set up to print the English language the English language might reasonably be expected to look after itself. He then went on to denounce the procedure by which the House of Commons was " tied down" and which was " the most horrible one could contemplate." Of course Mr. Grayson sincerely believes this. That his experience of the House of Commons should have led him to so firm a conclusion is naturally not encouraging. But being optimists—we cannot help it—we dare to hope that an even longer experience of the British Parliamentary system will enable him to discover two great facts :- (1) That the average Member cannot be prevented from talk- ing any more than Mr. Grayson himself can be prevented ; and it is the talk that takes up the time; (2) That Parliament is a defining body, and that it cannot define before it has analysed,—in fact, talked. Mr. Grayson, no doubt, defines things himself with a broad and generous touch (witness his definition of the intellectual character of the House of Commons) but, unhappily, this will not do for the sordidly practical purposes of life. Every Act of Parliament is a legal Act, and has to be framed accurately so that lawyers cannot drive a coach and four through it. Mr. Grayson has the noble intolerance of peddling rules of debate which characterises all the other noble minds for whose good and guidance those very rules have been invented. His intellectual predecessors have wanted to introduce the millennium on the spot, just as he does, and from age-long experience a procedure has emerged which, while not flouting anyone who wishes once more to describe the millennium, insists that there shall be the most search- ing possible criticism of the precise way in which it would work. Mr. Grayson stood in the assembly which has hedged itself round painfully, manfully, and unflinchingly, with stout bastions of the people's rights from the time of Simon de Montfort onwards, and beheld all these things as (in his own words) " trappings and trimmings."
At Hyde on Saturday last Mr. Grayson continued his criticism of the House of Commons which he had begun in the Caxton Hall. He was presented with a silver cigarette-case in honour of his success in vanquishing his competitors thus early in a career which aims at the extinction of all competition. He said (we quote from the Manchester Guardian) that he
"had been watching for some time "—since the previous Wednes- day in fact—" what was taking place on both sides of the House. Mr. Balfour was smiling beamingly on Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, and Sir Henry reciprocated Mr. Balfour's smile. Liberals caressed Tories, and Tories caressed Liberals. Free Trade, Protection, and all matters of superficial political warfare were for the moment buried as these capitalists gathered together to discuss this pension or grant. That night one realised—and the House realised—that a new phase was being entered upon in the House of Commons. What was needed was that people should go to the House realising that in its stupendous mountain of tradition there was something so alien to real reform that it would take revolutionary and unconstitutional means to break it."
We have always said that if ever Socialism were 'intro- duced it would be a tyranny, but here we are fairly warned how bitter the tyranny would be. For the ithplication certainly appears to be that the amenities which sweeten public life must cease. Under the stern rule of Socialism you must never smile at those who honestly differ from you. You must scowl instead. "Even advanced democratic Members have told me," said Mr. Grayson, "that they had got to love the dear old place [the House of Commons], and wouldn't like to fall out with anybody." He added, "but Socialists will make them fall out." Moreover, he found a sinister signifi- cance in the amenities he observed, because they were excited by an affair of capitalism. One would think, from his account, that both sides were agreeing to line their own pockets. But not at all,—they were agreeing to pay away money to some one outside either political party in the full knowledge that the grant would slightly increase their financial difficulties without bringing them any political service, and that it would have to be justified before critical constituencies. There is still a difference between taking and giving, even after it has been realised that a new phase is being entered upon in the House of Commons owing to the arrival of Mr. Grayson.
Mr. Grayson earnestly believes, of course, that if a Government of Socialists were formed business would be despatched at express speed, and starvation and misery would be banished from the face of the land,—even from the homes of those who courted starvation and deserved misery. Every one else who has had as long an experi- ence of Parliamentary life as Mr. Grayson knows that nothing of the sort would happen. However moderate men's estimates may be of what will be accomplished by their own party when it comes into power, they always exceed the reality. If Mr. Grayson could be brought to trust the word of any Liberal, many disappointed Liberals would assure him just now that this is so. If he himself became Prime Minister he would very likely discover at the end of his first Session that he had accomplished nothing, except perhaps the abolition of smiling and other tokens of good fellow- ship. In the Colne Valley, where we have heard that bands of ardent idealists hang on his words and slave in his cause, it must be difficult indeed to realise this sobering fact,—and it would be disastrous to confess it. How much pleasanter and richer in effects it must be to make promises which he is not in a position to redeem, and, therefore, can hardly be blamed for not redeeming ! We may remember, though, that those who set forth in public life with very violent opinions are the most liable to violent changes of conviction. Already Mr. Grayson, if he was not misreported in the first case, has modified an extreme declaration in favour of the abolition of sex ties" to one in favour of the removal of " sex-barriers." In a few years—who knows ?—he may be recon- structing old barriers and inventing new ones. Mean- while, his eloquence makes heavy drafts on the political loyalty or credulity of his constituents, and these will have to be honoured some day. It is one of the dis- advantages of an inspiring tongue. Another type of man —let us say the " public-school type," for no jealousy can possibly be excited by the mention of a class which we may feel sure in advance Mr. Grayson heartily despises— would have curiously different emotions aroused in him by the very circumstances in the House of Commons which affront Mr. Grayson. Let us picture such a man with no learning or power of words. He would still have some clumsy and tacit feeling which would have the 25,000 dollars (£5,000)." Prosecutions of other Trusts are being announced, and most opportunely Mr. H. Knox Smith, Commissioner of Corporations, has issued a merciless indictment of Trust methods entitled " Prices and Profits of the Petroleum Industry." The Standard Oil Company have professed to keep prices down, but Mr. Smith utterly disposes of this pretension. He shows that the Company have made enormous and unjustifiable profits, and are still raising prices. In a letter to Mr. Roosevelt—we quote from a telegram by the Washington correspondent of the Times—Mr. Smith says of the Company :- "Its domination has not been acquired or maintained by superior efficiency, but rather by unfair competition and methods economically and morally unjustifiable. The Standard Oil Company has superior efficiency in running its own business; it has equal efficiency in destroying business competitors. Its history is one of the persistent use of the worst industrial methods—exaction of exorbitant prices from the consumer, and securing excessive profits for a small group of men who for a long series of years have dominated the business."
If Mr. Roosevelt accepts that opinion the " holy war " will certainly not fail for want of a rallying-cry.
HOUSES AND HOMES.
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