Charles Bradlaugh

“ We deny it. We only attack that private property for a few thousand loiterers and slave-drivers, which renders all property in the fruits of their own labor impossible for millions. We challenge that private property which renders poverty at once a necessity and a crime." But surely this flatly contradicts the declaration by Mr. Hyndman in the debate, of "the collective ownership of land, capital, machinery, and credit." I am afraid that Mr. Joynes has in his mind some other unexplained meaning for the words "capital" and "property." ”

“ Joynes says that it is not private property, the fruits of labor, that is attacked by the Socialists, but "private capital, the power to hire laborers." Does that mean that £30 saved by an artisan would not be attacked so long as he kept it useless, but that if he deposited it with a banker who used it in industrial enterprise, or if he invested it in railway shares, it would be forfeited? If an artisan may, out of the fruits of his labor, buy for £3 and keep as his own a silver watch, why is the £3 to be confiscated when it gets into the hands of the Cheapside or Corn-hill watch dealer? ”

“ But this is the distinction between those with whom I stand and the Socialists.
We want reform, gradual, sure, and helpful. They ask for revolution, and know not its morrow. Revolution may be the only remedy in a country where there is no free press, no free speech, no association of workers, no representative institutions, and where the limits of despotic outrage are only marked by the personal fear of the despot. ”

“ If the laborer procured his own raw material, fashioned it into an exchangeable commodity, and then went and exchanged it, there are many to whom the raw material would be inaccessible, and more who would lose much of the profits of their labor in fruitless efforts to exchange. The vague declarations by the Socialist that production and exchange are to be organised are delusive without clear statement of the methods and principles of the organisation. ”

“ We contend that he or she who lives by the sale of labor should, with the purchase money, be able to buy life, not only for the worker, but for those for whom that worker is fairly bread-winner. And life means not only healthy food, reasonable clothing, cleanly, healthy shelter, education for the children until they are so sufficiently grown that labor shall not mean the crippling of after life—but also leisure. ”

“ Each annual period shows some progress, some advantage secured, and though there is much sore evil yet, much misery yet, much crime yet, much—far too much—poverty yet, to-day's progress from yesterday shows day-gleam for the people's morrow. ”

“ We would urge the more thorough experiment on, and establishment of, cooperative productive societies in every branch of manufacture, so that the laborers furnishing their own capital and their own industry, may not only increase the profit result of labor to the laborer, but also afford at least a reasonable indication as to the possible profit realised by capitalists engaged in the same industries. We would increase wage (if not in amount, at any rate in its purchasing power) , by diminishing the national and local expenditure, and thus also decreasing the cost of the necessaries of life. ”

“ The great evils connected with and resulting from poverty—evils which are so prominent and so terrible in old countries, and especially in populous cities—have, in our own land compelled the attention, and excited the sympathy, of persons in every rank of society. Many remedies have been suggested and attempted, and from time to time, during the present century, there have been men who, believing that the abolition of individual private property would cure the misery abounding, have advocated Socialism. ”

“ Many hundreds of shareholders in unsuccessful lines have never received back one farthing of what they paid to the laborer. No laborer worked on those unsuccessful lines without wage. Some railway shareholders have got too much, but there are thousands of comparatively poor shareholders who are to be ruined by the seizure of their shares without compensation. It is not at all true that railway shareholders use "the labor of the dead in order to get the labor of the living." ”

“ But in a country like our own, where the political power is gradually passing into the hands of the whole people, where, if the press is not entirely free it is in advance of almost every European country, and every shade of opinion may find its exponent, here revolution which required physical force to effect it would be a blunder as well as a crime. ”

“ We agree that "wage" is often much too low, and we urge the workers in each trade to join the unions already existing, and to form new unions, so that the combined knowledge and protection of the general body of workers as to the demand for, and value of, the labor, may be at the service of the weakest and most ignorant. We would advocate the establishment of labor bureaux, as in Massachusetts, so that careful and reliable statistics of the value of labor and cost of life may be easily accessible. ”

“ We say the way to render the cost of exchange of products less onerous to the laborer is by the extension and perfection of this organisation of co-operative distribution, and that this may be and is being done successfully and usefully, ameliorating gradually the condition and developing the self-reliance of the individual workers who take part in such co-operative stores, and thus inciting and inducing other individuals to join the societies already founded, or to establish others, and so educating individual after individual to better habits of exchange. ”

“ That all railway managers are not equally far-seeing is true, that much more might be done in this direction is certain, that some managing directors are over-greedy is clear, but that the change has been for the better during the past twenty years none would deny who had any regard for truth. That railway porters, pointsmen, guards, firemen, and drivers are, as Mr. Joynes well urges, often badly paid, and nearly always overworked, is true, but making the railways State property would not necessarily improve this. ”

“ Thus, all savings however moderate; all household furniture, books, indeed everything but the simplest clothing are property, and the property owners belong to all classes. The wage-earning classes, being largely property owners, viz., not only by their household goods, but by their investments, building societies, their small deposits in savings banks, their periodical payments to their trade societies and friendly societies, they would naturally and wisely defend these against confiscation. ”

“ A difficulty arising from the repressive measures resorted to in Germany has been that German emigrants to the United States and to Great Britain, speak and write as if precisely the same wrongs had to be assailed in the lands of their adoption as in the land of their birth. ”

“ If the physical force revolution were possible, because of the desperate energy of those owning nothing, its success would be achieved with serious immediate crime, and would be attended with consequent social mischief and terrible demoralisation extending over a long period. ”

“ It is an undoubted evil that in this crowded kingdom so few as 2,238 persons should own 39,924,232 acres of land, and that the enormous holdings should be inadequately taxed, but we need the influence of the one million small landowners to enable us legally to reform and modify those obnoxious land laws which have facilitated the accumulation of such vast estates in so few hands. ”

“ For example, they declare that the whole of the land of the country is held by "a handful of marauders," who ought to be dispossessed, and when told that there are 852,438 persons owning on an average less than one fifth of an acre each, holding probably in the neighborhood of towns, and that more than half a million of these persons are members of building societies, paying for their small properties out of their wage-earnings, they only say: "Do you suppose those who hold building allotments will be dispossessed?" ”

“ Robert Owen is called "Utopian" by these Democratic Federation Socialists, but at least he did try to reduce to practice his theories of production and exchange. The Democratic Federation say that "surplus value" is produced by "labor applied to natural objects under the control of the capitalist class." I object that but for capital, fixed and circulating, there are many natural objects which would be utterly inaccessible to labor; many more which could only be reached and dealt with on a very limited scale. ”

“ James's Hall debate, viz.: (1) "Socialism denies all individual private property, and affirms that society, organised as the state, should own all wealth, direct all labor, and compel the equal distribution of all produce." (2) "A Socialistic State would be a State in which everything would be held in common, in which the labor of each individual would be directed and controlled by the State, to which would belong all results of such labor." ”

“ That but for capital the laborer would often be unable to exist until the object had exchangeable value, or until some one was found with an equivalent article ready to exchange, and I submit that the banker, the shopkeeper, the broker may and do facilitate the progress of labor, and would and could not do so without the incentive of profit. ”

“ Very recently in England—and largely at the instance of foreigners—there has been a revival of Socialist propaganda, though only on a small scale compared with fifty years ago, by persons claiming to be "Scientific Socialists," who declare that such Socialists as Robert Owen and his friends were Utopian in thinking that any communities could be successfully founded while ordinary society exists. ”

“ We point to the fact that there are now in Great Britain—all established during the present reign—nearly one thousand distributive co-operative societies, with more than half a million members, with over seventeen and three-quarter millions of pounds of yearly sales, with two and a half millions of stock-in-trade, with five and a quarter millions of working capital, and dividing one and a half millions of annual profit ”

“ The Socialist leader says that the small ownership of land and these small savings do not really benefit the working classes, for that in times of depression the savings are soon used up. That may often be true, but if there were no savings then it must be starvation, pauperism, or crime ”

“ The realisation of a Socialistic State in this country would, as I then urged, require (1) a physical force revolution, in which all the present property owners unwilling to surrender their private properties to the common fund would be forcibly dispossessed. This revolution would be in the highest degree difficult, if not impossible, for property holders are the enormous majority. ”

“ Joynes and his friends mean anything, wages are to disappear altogether, and the State is to apportion to each a sort of equal subsistence, without regard to the skill or industry of the individual laborer, so that the skilled engineer, the unskilled hod-carrier, the street sweeper, the ploughman, and the physician, would each, in the Socialistic State, have neither less nor more than the other.
The Socialists say "the laborers on the average replace the value of their wages for the capitalist class in the first few hours of their day's work ”

“ Here, where our workmen can organise and meet, we can claim reforms and win them. The wage-winners of Durham and Northumberland, under the guidance of able and earnest leaders, have won many ameliorations during the past twenty years. Each year the workers' Parliament meets in Trades Union Congress, to discuss and plan more complete success, and to note the gains of the year. Every twelve months, in the Co-operative Congresses, working men and women delegates gather together to consult and advise. ”

“ Joynes a little fails in candor. He takes one set of my figures, and says "the share of each individual is on the average a little more than £3 3s., and the dividend which annually accrues to each of these propertied persons is slightly over 2s. It does not require a very high standard of intelligence to enable a man to perceive that Socialists who intend to deprive him of these 2s., and at the same time to secure him the full value of his work, are proposing not to diminish his income, but to raise it in a very high degree." ”

“ As communities, none of these attempts have been permanently successful, though they have doubtless, by encouraging and suggesting co-operative effort in England, done something to modify the fierceness of the life struggle, in which too often the strongest and most unscrupulous succeeded by destroying his weaker brother. Some Socialistic associations in the United States,* as the Shakers and the Oneida community, have been held together in limited numbers as religious societies, but only even apparently successful, while the numbers of each community remained comparatively few. ”

“ During the past generation, Socialistic theory has been specially urged in Germany, and the Socialist leaders there have acquired greater influence because of the poverty of the people, and because too of the cruel persecution to which Social Reformers, as well as Socialists, have been subjected by Prince Bismarck's despotic government. ”

“ These Socialists declare that there must be "organisation of agricultural and industrial armies under State control," and that the exchange of all production must be controlled by the workers; but they decline to explain how this control is to be exercised, and on what principles. We agree that there are often too many concerned in the distribution of the necessaries of life, and that the cost to the consumer is often outrageously augmented ”

“ Joynes here entirely overlooks the substance of Mr. Hoyle's declaration, which is, in effect, that the working men do now receive, and then spend wastefully, what would keep them. I have always contended that in nearly every department of industry labor has been insufficiently paid, in some cases horribly paid, and I have claimed for the laborer higher wages, and tried to help to teach him, through trades' unions and otherwise, how to get these higher wages ”