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It is impossible to survey our modern society without at once seeing that there is something seriously amiss in the conditions of our every-day life. All may indeed lament the inequalities around them, the wasted wealth and excessive luxury of the rich, the infinite misery and degradation of the poor. So clear is the mischief which results from causes apparently beyond control, that now and then a paroxysm of self-reproach seizes upon the comfortable classes, and they try some new-fangled scheme of charity to remedy the ills which, for the moment, they think must be due to them. But this temporary feeling is very short-lived. The conditions of human existence are said to be unchangeable by collective, far less by individual, action, and religion is often called in to justify the let-alone policy which is so far the most convenient to the well-to-do.
Possibly, however, a change is at hand. In England as elsewhere, ideas in these days move fast. That disgust with both the political parties in the State which has long been felt by the more intelligent of the working-class – that rooted impression that men in broadcloth, no matter how they label themselves, are banded together, in spite of their pledges at the polls, to keep the men in fustian from their fair share of the enjoyments of life, is spreading now from the abler men to the less far-sighted. More and more clear is it becoming to our people that their interest in politics is something which, if fully understood, lies far deeper than that of their daily or weekly wage. “We working men,” said one, “shall never know our real interest in politics till the mother teaches the truth about them to her child;” and this phrase by itself happily shows that a very different view of the duty of the community to all is growing up from that indifference and sluggishness which have hitherto checked progress. How could it be otherwise? Is it conceivable that the men who make the wealth of the country will permanently be satisfied with a system which shuts them out for ever from all interest in their own land? that they will be content to live from hand to mouth on the strength of mere phrases, and that they will always consent to be deprived of their due share of representation? They are indeed shortsighted who so suppose. Now therefore it becomes necessary that people of all classes who desire that our existing society should be peacefully modified should be content to examine, a little more deeply than heretofore, into the present state of things.
This, so far as the wealthy are concerned, from the most selfish point of view; for there is nothing here in the eternal fitness of things. The evolution of mankind will not stand still, in order that landowners and capitalists may continue their present leisurely existence, or that the well-to-do generally may regard the sufferings of the toilers as of small account. Such poverty as now exists is not an inseparable accompaniment of human society; neither is such excessive concentration of wealth an incentive to human progress. The gospel of greed and selfishness, of corruption and competition, now proclaimed as the only means of social salvation, is seen to be false in its principles, and baneful in its results. This furious development of wealth, on which we sometimes congratulate ourselves, has done little to elevate, and much to lower, the tone even of the classes which have benefited by it. What has it done for the working class? Never at any period in our history were the many who work and the few who live upon their labour so wide apart, socially and politically, as they are to-day; never – and this is becoming in itself serious – has there been such a general sensation of uneasiness without any immediate cause.
Yet who can wonder that uneasiness there should be? Political reforms have done very little for our people. Periods of flash prosperity, speedily followed by depression which pinches and starves even the best artisan class; education progressing so slowly that still another generation will be suffered to grow up instructed enough only to be ignorant; overcrowded insanitary dwellings permitted to continue, and paid for at an exorbitant price because this is to the benefit of the classes who trade upon the necessities of their fellows; vast monopolies encouraged and overwork checked, – here we have the boasted freedom of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The very champions of free trade as the universal panacea are themselves driven to confess that, true though their theory is, it has not produced the social effect they predicted. [1] The rich have grown richer; but the poor – their condition is but little bettered, and relatively has gone back. Our civilization is in many respects but an organized hypocrisy, filming over as ulcerous places below as ever disgraced the worst periods of past history. But there is something more than hypocrisy or indifference to account for the crying evils of our great cities, and the miserable poverty and bad lodgment which degrades our agricultural population. More general causes than any which individuals can right, are at work. Private enterprise has been tried and found wanting: laissez-faire has had its day. Slowly the nation is learning that the old hack arguments of “supply and demand,” “freedom of contract,” “infringement of individual liberty,” are but so many bulwarks of vested interests, which inflict misery on the present, and deterioration on the next, generation, in the name of a pseudo-science of government. Bad as is the education of the majority of Englishmen compared with what it ought to be, they have learnt enough to be dissatisfied with arrangements which, when more ignorant, they might have accepted as inevitable. Of the sufferings which the real producers of this great industrial community undergo, the comfortable classes hear but little. They barely talk of their troubles to their most intimate friends. The natural inclination of Englishmen is to bear in silence. Hitherto many have found consolation in religion, which held out to them the prospect of happiness hereafter in return for sorrow and misery here. That resource is now failing, and the bolder spirits – it is useless to blink plain truths – openly deride those “drafts on eternity” which they say are issued solely in the interest of employers and rich men. Their own ills nevertheless they may bear: that they will consent to hand on the same lot to their children is very unlikely. The day for private charity and galling patronage is at an end; the time for combination and political action in redress of social wrongs is at hand.
Such changes as are needed may be gradual, but they must be rapid. In England, fortunately, we have a long political history to lead up to our natural development, the growth of a great nation such as ours has its effect on all portions of the people. Patriotism is part of our heritage; self-restraint necessarily comes from the exercise of political power. Even the poorest are ready to accept the assurance of real reform, rather than listen to those who would urge them to resort in desperation to violent change. Yet these reforms must in the end be far more thorough than the enthusiasts of compromise, and the fanatics of moderation are ready to admit. Hitherto there has been patience, because all have hoped for the best. But longer delay is not only harmful but dangerous. We are ready enough to talk about justice to others. Greeks, Slavs, Bulgars, Boers, Negroes, are ever appealing to our sense of what is due to the oppressed. Let the people of these islands, without despising others, now be just to themselves. If the theories now gaining ground all over the Continent, as well as here with us, are to be met peacefully, and turned to the advantage of all, the necessary change of front can no longer be delayed. The State, as the organized common-sense of public opinion, must step in, regardless of greed or prejudice, to regulate that nominal individual freedom which simply strengthens the domination of the few. Thus only shall the England of whose past we all are proud, and of whose future all are confident, clear herself from that shortsighted system which now stunts the physical and intellectual growth of the great majority, knit together the great democracies near and far under our flag, and deal out to our dependencies a full measure of that justice which alone can secure for us and for ours the leadership in the social reorganization which will be our greatest claim to respect and remembrance from countless generations of the human race.
1. Two professors of the straitest sect of economic orthodoxy, Mr. Henry Fawcett and Mr. Thorold Rogers, are of the same opinion on this point. Free trade is undeniably true in theory, but they agree that it has benefited the poor very little in comparison with the enormous wealth it has given to the rich. Free “trade lowers the price of the necessaries of life; but it also keeps wages lower than they otherwise would he. It would be easy to show that the working classes owe all the improvement that has been made in their condition, not to free trade, but to combination among themselves, and to legislation carried directly in the teeth of the most violent opposition from the leaders of the free trade party.
England for All
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Last updated on 30.7.2006