From the time of its founding in 1884, the Fabian Society issued a series of Fabian Tracts, pamphlets designed to carry out the Fabian goal of "spreading knowledge and education." They were sold for a penny. The subjects of the tracts ranged from the theoretical ("What Socialism Is," "The Impossibilities of Anarchism," "Why Are The Many Poor") to the practical ("Sweating: Its Cause and Remedy," "A Plan of Campaign for Labour," Parish Council Cottages and How to Get Them") to the topical ("The Fabian Manifesto for the General Election of 1892). Although most of the tracts were published anonymously, a few were written by such prominent Fabians as George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb.
The one demand of the laboring masses which to-day forces itself on the attention alike of the willing and the unwilling, is the rapidly growing international movement in favor of an Eight Hours Day.
In England and Scotland, in Australia and America, and throughout the Continent of Europe, the wage-earners are quickly coming to be unanimous on this point.
This has come about, not so much from the conviction that the present hours are injurious to health-though that in many cases is the fact-not so much from the theory that shorter hours mean higher wages-though that theory is in the main sound,--but from the strongly-felt desire for additional opportunities for self-cultivation and the enjoyment of life.
Men and women who toil for wages are everywhere growing tired of being only working animals. They wish to enjoy, as well as to labor; to pluck the fruits, as well as dig the soil; to wear as well as to weave. They are eager for opportunity to see more of the great world in which they live-a world of which many of them now for the first time hear from books. On all sides there is an expansion of life. New possibilities of enjoyment, physical, emotional, intellectual, are daily opening for the masses. New aspirations are daily surging up. We need not wonder then that this generation is no longer content to live as its fathers and mothers lived. Hence in all classes the demand for leisure grows keener and keener. Both men and women are growing dally more conscious of the cruelty of a system which condemns them to a barely broken round of monotonous toil. Everywhere they begin fiercely to rebel against this system, and nerve themselves to prepare for its overthrow.
"Work we will," they say in effect, if not in words, " for we know that work is the condition of life. But we demand in return the wage for our work. Not mere money wage-for that by itself is useless-but the power and opportunity to enjoy the advantages which the labor of all of us has created."
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This power and opportunity to enjoy the civilisation which labor creates is now to denied to the great mass of the workers. In many industries, practically the whole of their waking life is takes up in the mere struggle to live. Many thousands of them never see their children out of bed. Nearly all of them are worked too long for physical health.
Here are some cases of the hours of labor now being worked in Great Britain.
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The men who work on the tramcars in our cities are on duty for at least fourteen hours a day, without including meal times. Many of them work longer even than this, and seven days a week. One conductor in Bradford was found to be working regularly, 115 hours a week, with no intervals for meals, at wages of three shillings a day. One town in England works its own tramways free from the control of profit-making shareholders. On this tramway the workers enjoy an Eight Hours Day.
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The great Scotch strike of 1890-1 has made us all familiar with the monstrously excessive hours of nearly all grades of railway men. Particulars of their overwork are to be found in the Railway Companies' own returns to the Board of Trade.
Nearly all the great Railway Companies have thousands of men at work for fifteen, and even eighteen hours at a stretch. Nor is this made necessary by fogs or pressure of business. The London and South-Western Railway suffers from as many fogs as the rest, and is no less liable to sudden increase of traffic. But the London and South-Western Railway hardly ever keeps any engine-driver or signalman at work for more than twelve hours at a stretch. What one company can do, the others could imitate if they liked; but they prefer to work with an inadequate staff.[ . . .]
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The President of the Shop Hours Labor League tells us that "the majority of shop assistants in this country work from 75 to 90 hours in every week. Of that majority one-fourth work the full 90 hours per week, two-fourths 80 hours, and the remaining fourth 75 hours."
Here is one out of many cases:-
'''William H., aged 22, grocer's assistant: Have been in three places since I was 15 years of age. My hours have been and are from 7.30 a.m. to 9.30 p.m., Fridays 10 p.m., Saturdays 12 p.m. At the end of the day my feet burn and my limbs ache. On Saturday it is something cruel. We have no holidays. I have known one death through the long hours, and many a one I have known broken down and be obliged to leave. It's very hard to have one's health ruined at the very beginning of life, and then having to go through the world with half a constitution.'''
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Women are, in many industries, protected against excessive hours of labor by the Factory Acts. But where these do not apply, or are not enforced, the women often have to work scandalously long hours. The washerwomen in little laundries rarely work less than 72 hours a week. Barmaids are often on duty for over 100 hours a week. Women in small shops suffer much from their excessively prolonged day. Doctors are unanimous in affirming the evil physical effects of this undue labor.
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We are often told of the short hours which the coal miners have won for themselves. The Government return shows, however, that very few even of the coal hewers are underground for less than nine hours a day. The other workers in the mine are in the pit still longer. Only in Northumberland and Durham, where the masters have chosen to institute a double shift, do the coal hewers spend less than eight hours underground. The ''rulleymen" and boys in those mines work over ten hours underground.
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Many other workers toil for excessive hours. The prosperous artisans who have nominally won the Nine Hours Day, form but a small minority of the wage earners. At Liverpool the bakers in 1890 worked on an average eighty hours a week. The ''sweated" tailors in East London often work sixteen, or even eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. Nor are the worst scandals confined to the great towns.
The following instance of a contract actually put into writing, at Slough (Buckinghamshire), may be taken as typical of much unrecorded tyranny in the agricultural districts:-
''I, WILLIAM BURTCHELL, agree to hire myself to Alfred William and Joseph Reffell for one year as carter at 7s. per week for the first half, 8s. for the second half-year, and £3 at Michaelmas, 11th October, 1891, to make myself generally useful at all kinds of work, and to do anything I am asked to do at any time. In case of illness or accident I agree to support myself; to be in the stable at four o'clock every morning in order to get my horses ready for work by six o'clock; to rack up my horses every night at eight o'clock; to find my own whip, masters to keep it in repair; to get up in the morning when called by the carter; to be in every night by nine o'clock, except when required to be later by my masters; to clean boots and shoes on Sunday mornings."
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| (a) | (b) | (c) | (d) |
Some shortening of the working day has already taken place. In some cases the employers have voluntarily conceded more leisure to their workers. In some industries Trade Union action has reduced the hours. Many thousands of workers now enjoy leisure secured to them by the Factory Acts for which their fathers fought. Let us see how much has yet been won by each of these methods.
Little has been gained in the past, and little can be hoped for in the future, from the voluntary action of individual employers. Many capitalists declare that they desire, in the abstract, a shorter working day; but few have had the courage to start it in their own works. Nor is this to be wondered at. Every employer is afraid of his rival's competition. No mill-owner dare run his mill only eight hours whilst other mills are running ten. No shopkeeper dare close his shop whilst his competitors remain open.
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Nor does public opinion suffice to bring about voluntary agreement to shorten the hours of labor. Agreements among shopkeepers to close early, even on one night a week only, are continually breaking down. Those who most relied on public opinion to bring about a shorter working day are now the most emphatic in their demand for more effective methods. [ . . .]
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But we are often told that the English artisans have won a Nine Hours Day, and the Australians an Eight Hours Day, by trade union action. Why cannot all workers go and do likewise, and not ''go whining to the State"?
It is true that a series of successful strikes has brought about a nominal nine hours day in most English skilled crafts. But the gain has often been little more than nominal. Habitual overtime in many industries makes the day as long as before.
But only one out of nine of the English wage earners is organised into a trade union at all, and still fewer are members of a union strong enough to enforce any reduction of hours.[ . . .]
[E]ven if Trade Unions were powerful enough to secure a serious and effective reduction in the hours of labor, it may still be doubted whether it is to the interest of the community as a whole that the work of obtaining an Eight Hours Day should be left to them. The methods of Trade Unions are essentially the methods of war. A strike, with all the misery entailed, is the only effective instrument which Trade Unions possess for enforcing their will.
Few people realise how much misery a strike of necessity entails. The long, anxious waiting, the insufficiency of food, the cessation of every luxury, and the spectacle daily growing sadder of the home bit by bit bereft of all its little ornaments and comforts, while its inmates, like its owner, are visibly suffering from downright starvation: these are the trials imposed upon the workman and upon his family when a Trade Union asserts its independence by striking. Nor are the workmen actually engaged in a strike the only members of the community who suffer, thereby. To many a little tradesman who has just with difficulty been able to keep his head above water, a strike in his neighborhood will mean inevitable bankruptcy.
Moreover, a well-supported, widespread strike in some industries could not be tolerated by any Government. If all the railways running into London were really paralysed for a fortnight, with sympathetic strikes among the seamen and carmen, it may safely be predicted that Government intervention would be necessary to prevent food going to famine prices and serious tumult ensuing. Similar reasoning applies to the gas-workers, by whose labor London is lighted; the men in the service of the waterworks, by means of which it lives; or even those servants of the community who bury its dead. In all these cases, and in many others, the proposal that the workers should gain their ends by a strike can be made only because it is assumed that they must fail.
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The more ignorant writers in the daily press, and some of the parliamentary representatives of non-manufacturing constituencies, still persist in declaring that there is no precedent in the history of English legislation for interference on the part of the State with the hours of adult male labor. But those who remember the long fight over the Factory Acts know better than this. When the Ten Hours Bill was being discussed in 1844, Sir C. Wood, in opposing it, said: ''The object of the Bill before them was the limitation of the hours of labor, not of young persons and women only, but of all factory labor. To the credit of the delegates from the manufacturing districts they had fairly and openly acknowledged that such was the object. It would therefore be waste of time to discuss it on any other footing than on that of a Bill for limiting all labor in factories to ten hours a day." [. . .]
In the debates on the 1874 Bill, all the old arguments were brought up by Professor Fawcett, who once more pointed out to the House of Commons that the measure would apply to the hours of men. " Although," said he, ''the Bill nominally applied to women only, its real effect would be to place a Parliamentary limit on the Length of the day's work, and its general application would be precisely the same in a great majority of cases as if in every clause after the word 'woman' they had inserted the word 'man.' '' Notwithstanding this explicit statement, Parliament reduced the hours of labor in textile factories from 60 to 56 1/2 hours per week. Four years later the whole body of factory legislation was codified in the Factory and Workshop Act of 1878. This Act confirmed the statutory week of 56 1/2 hours in textile factories, and of 60 hours in non-textile factories, with a certain margin of overtime for the latter only. Workshops-i.e., places where no steam or other power is employed-are on much the same footing as non-textile factories, but the provisions of the law are slightly less stringent. In each case the limitation of hours nominally applies only to women and children: practically, wherever men are engaged in work requiring the assistance of women or of children, their hours of labor are limited. That this result was foreseen at the time the original Acts were passed has been amply proved by the above quotations. [ . . . ]
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Many persons oppose an Eight hours law but profess themselves in favor of an Eight Hours Day, provided that it is secured by Trade Union action, and in the same breath declare that any compulsory diminution of working time would ruin the nation's trade. This confusion finds no support in Political Economy. Whatever, may be the economic effect of a shortening of hours, it will be the same whether this shortening is enforced by Trade Union rule or by Act of Parliament.
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No previous Factory Act has had this effect. The gas stokers know that their wages went up when they obtained the eight hours day. Wage-earners have been told often enough that when wages fall it is because two men are running after one master. When two masters are running after one man, wages rise. And in many industries it would happen that a reduction in the hours of labor would bring into regular work men who are now either unemployed or half employed. In the United States those trades which have, in many cities, secured an Eight Hours Day, invariably gained this without any fall in wages, even for a time. In Victoria the reduction in 1856 of the hours of labor of the skilled artisans to eight per day was not accompanied by any fall in wages. The continued prosperity of the capitalist interest in this wealthy colony indicates that the Eight Hours Day has not spelt ruin.[ . . .] The capitalists and their newspapers say so; but they ignore, as they have always ignored, the industrial advantages of the improved health and increased intelligence which follow upon the employment of adequate daily leisure. Seventy-five years ago our cotton mills commonly worked ninety and one hundred hours per week. By successive stages these hours have been brought down to fifty-six and a half. At every stage it has been conclusively ''proved " by the manufacturers that the proposed new restriction of hours would deprive them of all margin of profit, would raise the price of the commodity, lower the wages of the workers, and destroy the export trade. Yet the result has over and over again shown that manufacturers and theorists alike were wrong; the hours of work have been successively reduced, without diminution of production, fall of wages, rise of prices, or slackening of trade. This is for the workers in each industry to consider for themselves. The same fear has been expressed about every previous Factory Act: yet the successive reductions of hours in the textile factories have been followed by a rapid increase of textile exports. But even if it were true that any branch of our export trade depended on the overwork and degradation of our working population, we could afford to let that branch go, with the certainty of finding in our home markets better employment for the workers engaged in it. However, we shall always find that the easiest way to get Greek currants and Jamaica sugar is to buy them with our own productions. The fear of foreign competition is used as a bogey to frighten the workers in every country. The French coal miners are told that unless they work themselves to death they must starve to death, because of ''English competition." Will our coal miners let themselves be frightened by the same story? Not unless the total national production falls off; and this, we have seen, is not likely to happen. As regards purchasing power, what the capitalists may lose in profits the workers will gain in wages. Even if it should happen that here and there three fashionable ladies spend less on their caprices while thirty artizans spend more on their comforts, the "market" would be none the worse for that; and the country would be much the better for it, whatever the three fashionable ladies might think. If, in the aggregate, production and demand are not altered, there is no reason why prices generally should rise or fall. Some prices may go up, while others go down, as they are doing every day from changes of fashion, commercial panics, and one cause or another. [. . .] Neither the Ten Hours Law nor the Nine Hours Day has had this effect. Victoria, with its Eight Hours day, has enormously increased its capital. The rate of interest in England is uniformly lower than elsewhere, and yet the emigration of capital which has hitherto taken place has been a mere overflow of surplus annual savings. Quite three-fourths in value of what is called capital (including, that is, the land, mines, railways, harbors, buildings of all kinds) is absolutely incapable of emigration. Other nations, indeed, are increasing their factory legislation parallel with our own advance, so that the gap is not by any means widening. A revolution in Brazil or a panic in Argentina is, moreover, far more potent in discouraging foreign investments than any difference in the rate of interest. The notion of any important emigration of capital in consequence of an Eight Hours Bill appears, indeed, as chimerical as the same threat proved to be in the cases of the Ten Hours Bill and the general Nine Hours Movement. Few persons, nowadays, confess to any opposition to an Eight Hours Day; what the manufacturer now says is, that he objects to an Eight Hours Law. The ordinary journalist or Member of Parliament says: ''I don't consult anyone except my doctor as to my hours of labor. That is a matter which each man must settle for himself." You never hear that said by a working man belonging to any trade more highly organised than chimney-sweeping. When the carrier drove his own cart, and the weaver sat in his cottage at his own loom, they began and left off work at the hours that suited them, each man pleasing himself. Now the railway worker or the power-loom weaver knows that he must work the same hours as his mates.
The industrial revolution which became general in the United Kingdom during the eighteenth century, and is now rapidly becoming universal, has swept away this individual liberty in all the main occupations of industrial life. The worker, in most of the great manufacturing industries of advanced communities, must now begin and leave off work at the sound of the factory bell or steam ''hooter,'' over the times of which he feels that he has as little individual control as over the sunrise. To fix by law the working hours of a journalist or a doctor would diminish his personal liberty of action; to hasten by Act of Parliament the welcome signal for the close of the factory day would increase the personal liberty of the operative. At present the latter has practically no control over his working hours. What he wants is a share in settling how long those hours shall be. Some people are afraid that an Eight Hours Bill would destroy the personal independence of the English working man. Yet they know that the Factory Acts, which nominally apply only to women and children, really limit the hours of every man who works in a cotton-mill. Have the Lancashire operatives less personal independence than they had when their masters fixed the hours of labor to fifteen per day? Are the East-end tailors really freer than the men who work under the Factory Acts in the Yorkshire cloth mills? [. . . ]
Why, indeed, should it injure the personal independence or the valiant self-reliance of working-men voters for them to fix by law their own hours of labor? Why should all the moral qualities of manliness be supposed to depend, in some mysterious way, upon the worker being exposed to long hours or any other form of industrial tyranny? No! Personal independence is produced, not by overwork and fear and suspicion, but by bodily and mental health, by regularity of life, and by that feeling of security which comes when humane conditions of employment are guaranteed to the workers by the only power which they know to be stronger than their masters: and that is the Power of the Law. It may, indeed, be contended that the prevention of excessive hours of labor is one of the essential duties of Government in an advanced industrial community. It is universally admitted to be the primary duty of Government to prescribe the plane on which it will allow the struggle for existence to be fought out. Of course, the fittest to survive under the given conditions will inevitably survive, but the Government does much to determine the conditions, and therefore to decide whether the fittest, by the test of conflict, shall be also the best then and there possible. We have long ruled out of the conflict the appeal to brute force, thereby depriving the strong man of his natural advantage over his weaker brother. We stop, as fast as we can, every development of fraud and chicanery, and so limit the natural right of the cunning to overreach their neighbors. We prohibit the weapon of deceptive labels and trade-marks. [ . . .] The whole history of Government is, indeed, one long series of definitions and limitations of the conditions of the struggle, in order to raise the quality of the fittest who survive. This service can be performed only by Government. [ . . .] It is for the citizens collectively, through their representatives in Parliament, to do what neither the employers nor the employed can do individually. Law is but the expression of the common will, and there is no reason why it should not express our common will as to the hours of our labor, just as it does our common will on other points. [ . . .] The leaders of both political parties are continually proclaiming ''Only let the working classes declare what they want, and we will carry it out at once." The working classes are beginning to declare pretty clearly a want for legislation to shorten the working day. If the party leaders are fit for anything, they ought to be fit to put such a demant into practical shape. If not, the thing has been done for them often enough already.[ . . .]
But the exact form of the Act of Parliament is of no great importance at the present moment. What is now wanted is not only that every workman should insist on a promise from his Parliamentary candidate that he will support an Eight Hours Bill, but that even when such a pledge is given by a party candidate, the worker should still threaten to withhold his confidence until the pledge is confirmed by some public utterance on the part of the official leaders of the candidate's party.
Members of Parliament and candidates are coming reluctantly to recognise the need for conforming to the popular will. An Eight Hours Bill has now become a political necessity. But let no one imagine that its enactment will accomplish all that is needed. It will make the three-hooped pots to have ten hoops, nor endow as with a new heaven and a new earth. It will do little to remedy the evils caused by the great disparity of incomes, or by the individual ownership of the means by which the worker lives. It will not restore to social health a ''submerged tenth " wasted by the demoralization of extreme, poverty, or the results of drink and disease. But if it secures for millions of tired workers an hour or two of leisure which would otherwise have been spent in toil; if it enables many who would, otherwise have plodded the daily round of monotonous labor to obtain access to some share in that larger life from which they are now relentlessly excluded; if it protects the future generations of the race from physical degradation or mental decay; if it makes brighter the lives of those who have toiled that a small class among us might have education, and holidays, and culture; if it accomplishes only partially some of these great ends, an Eight Hours Bill will be no mean achievement even for the greatest statesman, and no unfitting close to the century of the Factory Acts. He wants Better Wages.-Now he usually gets ten or twelve shillings a week, not enough to keep himself and his family in health.
He wants a Safe and Healthy Home.-Frequently he lives in a cottage belonging to the farmer or the squire, often little better than a pigstye, out of which he can be turned at a week's notice. The drinking water may be bad, and the drainage worse; and so fever comes, and ague, and rheumatism.
He wants more Freedom.-Now he must touch his hat to the squire or he will get no blankets at Christmas; he must go to the church, or the parson can cut him out of his Charity List; and he must submit like a slave to the farmer, or he will get turned off the land when winter comes.
No laborer by himself can get better wages, a better home, or more freedom. He is so poor, that the farmer, the squire, and the parson are always too many for him. Too often, he, like his father before him, will just drag along with his family on his wages, beg for out-door relief in his old age, and finish up by being buried as a pauper.
But many a thing that a man cannot get by himself, he can get if banded together with his fellows into a Trade Union. If all the laborers in the village will stand by one another, they can raise wages several shillings a week, get good homes for themselves with land to work on, and become more powerful in the village than the squire and the parson and the farmer put together.
All these things an agricultural laborer can get slowly but surely, bit by bit, if he will only use the power which he already has-if he will only stand shoulder to shoulder with his fellow man and claim his rights.
Two things he must do.
He must have a Union. He must Use his Vote.
Joining the Union will cost him a few pence a week, but the Union will, in return, enable him to fight his battles. The Coal Porters in London, without a Union, used to get about twenty-four shillings a week; now that they have a Union they get thirty-two shillings, or at least eight shillings a week more than they had before; and all they have to pay to the Union is threepence a week. A Union is always worth more than it costs.
Moreover, the laborer now has several Votes. Using these costs him nothing at all, and can do very much to make things better for him.
The laborer can vote at the PARISH MEETING whenever one is held. He can also vote every year for the election of PARISH COUNCILLORS and of DISTRICT COUNCILLORS, who are also GUARDIANS. These elections are very important to him; and he cannot be cheated out of his vote on the excuse that his landlord pays the poor rate. Every occupier of a cottage and every lodger voter is entitled to vote, and may also be elected a member of the Parish or District Council, whether he pays the poor rate or not.
The laborer can also vote at the elections for the COUNTY COUNCIL, and for PARLIAMENT.
Parliament, the County Council, and the Parish and District Councils can do for the laborer out of the rates and taxes what he can never do for himself out of his small wages. That is why the landlords, the farmers, and sometimes even the parsons have done all they could to keep the friends of the laborers from getting elected to the County Council or to Parliament. And that is why they prevented the establishment of Parish Councils as long as they could, and will try to keep the laborers off the Council now. But they cannot prevent it if the laborers are determined to have their rights. Nobody can now be elected, either to any of the local Councils or to Parliament, without the votes of laborers; and the laborers must see to it that only their own friends get elected. They need not be afraid to vote as they like, for the ballot keeps their votes secret. Remember there are at least four laborers to every man of any other class in the country; and no one can now have more than one vote at the election of a Parish or District Council. Each laborer's vote is as good as the squire's or the parson's.
In the past the village has been ruled by the squire and the parson, with the help of the lawyer and the farmer. Now it will be ruled by the Parish Meeting and the Parish Council, elected by the votes of all the village. These bodies can get land for allotments for laborers, and for a village hall and baths, look after the parish charities, lay on pure water, light the village streets, make good drains to keep away fever, open a village library and reading room, protect the village green, see that no one stops up public footpaths, and generally look after the interests of the laborers.
But the laborers want more than this, and they must use their votes at the election of Members of Parliament so that the powers of the Parish Council may be increased. 'They want
In the old times there were plenty of common lands and roadside strips on which the villager could play cricket, graze his donkey or cow, or let his poultry and geese pick up a living; but the landlords in Parliament made laws by which these rights were lost. Every year the squires, with the help of their lawyers, sneak acres of common land. The Parish Council call put a stop to all future robbery, but it must have power to make them disgorge what has been stolen.
Everyone knows how the farmer and the squire try to prevent the men from getting reasonably cheap allotments.
Parish Councils have power to hire land for allotments if they can come to an agreement with the landowner, but they have no power to buy land or compel the landowner to let it. If he refuses to sell or to let, the Parish Council or six electors may appeal to the District Council, the County Council, or the Local Government, Board. All this appealing will take a long time and cost a lot of money, and may not be successful. The laborers must not be satisfied until Parliament has given the Parish Councils full powers to buy or hire all the land they want.
Allotments of bare land are not much use so long as the laborer can be turned out of his cottage at a week's notice. They know this well in Ireland, where the Boards of Guardians often build cottages and let them to laborers at fair rents. Our Parish Councils must have the same power. When the laborer has no other landlord than the Parish Council which he and his fellow laborers elect, he will no longer run the risk of being turned out of house and home merely because his master is angry with him.
Parliament has already passed a Free Education Act, but in many village schools pence are still asked for, and the laborers must see to it that the Act shall be a reality instead of a sham.
They should now demand Free Education everywhere, not as a charity but as a right; and they should also demand that the schools should be managed by an elected Board instead of by the parson and his friends. The laborers should vote for Free Education in schools under public control, with good teachers, plenty of books, and a free dinner for every child; and, when clever village boys or girls have passed their standards, there should be free Continuation Schools provided where they can be prepared for public scholarships which will give them a free College training.
When the laborer gets old, or so broken with rheumatism that he can work no more, what happens to him now? He becomes a pauper, and either goes into the workhouse, or (if he is lucky) gets half-a-crown a week as out-door relief to starve on. He loses his vote; he is no longer a citizen. When he dies lie is buried as a pauper.
This is not what the rich provide for their own class. Perhaps the squire is an army officer; if so, in the prime of life he will get a pension, paid regularly out of the taxes. While he lives, even in his old age, he keeps all his rights and dignities; when he dies he will be buried with all honor.
Why should not the laborer have a pension in his old age, like the army officer and the government clerk? He has served his country as truly as they, and instead of the workhouse or parish pay, the worn-out laborer must demand an honorable pension so that he may spend his old age in freedom.
Whenever the laborer spends threepence for tobacco, he pays only a farthing for the tobacco itself: the other twopence three-farthings is a tax. Every glass of beer, every cup of tea, every mug of cocoa, every pound of currents is made dearer because the Government has taxed it. But all the money got by this taxation is used up, before it comes to the laborer, in making things pleasant for people like the squires, parsons, and other rich idlers. Now the laborer must only vote for those members of Parliament who will take the taxes off his tobacco and his beer, his tea, his cocoa and his currants, and put in their place new taxes on the backs of those who can best bear them.
Whose backs are these? Why, the backs of the landlords, of course: that is, those people who take the rent out of the land, though they never do a stroke of hard work to raise the crops. They did not make the land: why should they have the power to make other men pay for it? In past times much of the land was held by those that worked on it, and they kept for themselves the whole of the crops. Now the land is "owned" by a few landlords who among them all, draw over fifty million pounds a year as rent of agricultural land alone. This amounts to more than a pound a week for every agricultural laborer in the country. Is not this reason enough why wages are so low?
Some day we shall get back the rent which the landlords take from us, and restore the land to the people. Meantime it is only fair that those who draw the rent should pay the rates. All the things which the Parish Council can be set to do for the village can be paid for out of the rates; and the landlord and the title-owner must pay those rates.
All these things you can get for yourself by your Trade Union and your vote, if you and all the other laborers in district will join the Union and will agree to vote only for those who will promise to help to got them for you.
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WILL SHORTER HOURS RUIN OUR COMMERCE?
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SHALL WE LOSE OUR EXPORT TRADE?
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BUT WILL NOT PRICES RISE AND DEMAND FALL OFF?
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BUT WILL NOT OUR CAPITAL BE SENT ABROAD?
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OBJECTIONS TO LEGISLATIVE ACTION.
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WHY NOT LET EACH MAN SETTLE HIS OWN HOURS?
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HOW ABOUT PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE?
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THE NEED FOR GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE.
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PRACTICAL PROPOSALS.
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What the Parish Councils Can Do.
I. Restoration of the Common Land.
2. Cheap and Good Allotments.
3. Better Homes.
4. Real Free Schools and Better Ones.
5. Pensions for the Old People.
6. Reform of Taxation.
BETTER WAGES.
MORE POWERS FOR THE PARISH COUNCILS.
RESTORATION OF COMMON LANDS.
REAL FREE SCHOOLS AND BETTER ONES.
CHEAP AND GOOD ALLOTMENTS.
PENSIONS FOR THE OLD PEOPLE.
BETTER HOMES. REFORM OF TAXATION.