Robert Blatchford

“ You don't think you are going to make the best of life by selling for the sake of drudgery and bread and butter your proud man's right to work for, fight for, and die for the woman you love?
For, having sold your love for permission to work, how long will you be before you sell your honour? Nay, is it not true that many of you have sold it already?
For every man who works at jerry work, or takes a part [Pg 133] in any kind of adulteration, scampery, or trade rascality, is selling his honour for wages, and is just as big a scamp and a good deal more of a coward than a burglar or a highwayman. ”

“ Let us once get the people, or a big majority of the people, to understand Socialism, to believe in Socialism, and to work for Socialism, and the real revolution is accomplished.
In a free country, such as ours, the almighty voice is the voice of public opinion. What the public believe in and demand has got to be given. Who is to refuse? Neither King nor Parliament can stand against a united and resolute British people.
And do not suppose, either, that brute force, which is powerless to get good or to keep it, has power to resist it or destroy it. ”

“ How the Duke, and the Coalowner, and the Money-lender, and the Jerry-builder must laugh!
Yet so it is. It is not the landlord, the company promoter, the coalowner, the jerry-builder, and all the other useless rich who prey upon his wife and his children whom he mistrusts. His enemies, poor man, are the Socialists; the men and women who work for him, teach him, sacrifice their health, their time, their money, and their prospects to awaken his manhood, to sting his pride, to drive the mists of prejudice from his worried mind and give his common sense a chance. ”

“ It looks as if the "immutable laws" of political economy resemble the laws of the land. It looks as if there is one economic law for the rich and another for the poor.
The merchants, commission agents, and other middlemen I leave out of the question. These men are worse than worthless—they are harmful. They thwart; and hinder, and disorder the trade, and live on the colliers, the coal masters, and the public. There is no excuse, economic or moral, for their existence. But there is only one cure for the evil they do, and that is to drive them right out of the trade. ”

“ Ignorance is a curse: it is a deadlier curse than poverty. Indeed, but for ignorance, poverty and wealth could not continue to exist side by side; for only ignorance permits the rich to uphold and the poor to endure the injustices and the criminal follies of British society, as now to our shame and grief they environ us, like some loathly vision beheld with horror under nightmare.
Is it needful to tell you more, Mr. Smith, you who are yourself a worker? Have you not witnessed, perhaps suffered, many of these evils? ”

“ If you find a newspaper or an employer to be wrong when he denounces Trade Unionism, which you do understand, why should you assume that the same authority is right in denouncing Socialism, which you do not understand? You know that in attacking Trade Unionism the employer and the pressman are speaking in their own interest and against yours; why, then, should you be ready to believe that in counselling you against Socialism the same men are speaking in your interest and not in their own? ”

“ Believe me, we can overcome the constable, the soldier, the Parliament man, the landlord, and the man of wealth, without shedding one drop of blood, or breaking one pane of glass, or losing one day's work.
Our real task is to win the trust and help of the people (I don't mean the workers only, but the British people) , and the first thing to be done is to educate them—to teach them and tell them what we mean; to make quite clear to them what Socialism is, and what it is not. ”

“ Socialism is not a wild dream of a happy land where the apples will drop off the trees into our open mouths, the fish come out of the rivers and fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out ready-made suits of velvet with golden buttons without the trouble of coaling the engine. Neither is it a dream of a nation of stained-glass angels, who never say damn, who always love their neighbours better than themselves, and who never need to work unless they wish to. ”

“ There are half a million of men out of work, but there are many millions of acres idle. Abolish private ownership of land, and the nation, being now owner of all land, can at once find work for that so-called "superfluous labour."
All wealth comes from the land. All wealth must be got from the land by labour. Given a sufficient quantity of land, one man can produce from the land more wealth than one man can consume. Therefore, as long as there is a sufficiency of land there can be no such thing as "superfluous labour," and no such thing as over-population. ”

“ I have been engaged for more than a dozen years in studying political economy and Socialism, and in trying, as a Socialist, pressman, and author, to explain Socialism and to confute the arguments and answer the objections of non-Socialists, and I say, without any hesitation, that I have never yet come across a single argument against practical Socialism that will hold water.
I do not believe that any person of fair intelligence and education, who will take the trouble to study Socialism fairly and thoroughly, will be able to avoid the conclusion that Socialism is just and wise. ”

“ I now ask the reader of this book, with those words of broad charity and sweet kindliness still fresh in mind, to remember the unmerited miseries, the ill-requited labour, the gnawing penury, and the loveless and unhonoured lives to which an evil system dooms millions of British men and women. I ask the reader to discover for himself how much pity we bestow upon our "prisoners and captives," how much provision we make for the "fatherless children and widows," what nature and amount of "succour, help, and comfort" we vouchsafe to "all who are in danger, necessity, and tribulation." ”

“ I would do a great deal for Socialism if it were only to do that one good act of wiping out for ever the shameful sin of prostitution. This thing, indeed, is so horrible that I never think of it without feeling tempted to apologise for calling myself a man in a country where it is so common as it is in moral Britain.
There are several other common charges against Socialists; as that they are poor and envious—what we may call Have-nots-on-the-Have; that they are ignorant and incapable men, who know nothing, and cannot think ”

“ Imagine this poor London clerk, whose house stands on land owned by a peer worth £300,000 a year, whose "boss" makes £50,000 a year out of timber or coals, whose pipe pays four shillings taxes on every shilling's worth of tobacco (while the rich man's cigar pays a tax of five shillings in the pound) , whose children go to the board school, while those of the coalowner, the company promoter, the railway director, and the landlord go to the university. Imagine this man, anxious, worried, overworked, poor, and bled by a horde of rich parasites. ”

“ The landlord does not make the land, he does not till the land, he does not improve the land; he only draws the rent, and he draws that for ever. His patent never lapses; and the harder the workers work, and the more wealth inventors and workers produce, the more rent he draws—for nothing.
The inventor does make his invention. He is, upon Mr. Mallock's showing, the creator of immense wealth. And, even if he is lucky, he can only draw rent on his ability for fourteen years. ”

“ It is very important that every worker in the kingdom should understand the relations of our foreign trade and our native agriculture.
The creed of the commercial school is that manufactures pay us better than agriculture; so that by making goods for export and buying food from abroad we are doing good business.
The idea is, that if by making cloth, cutlery, and other goods, we can buy more food than we can produce at home with the same amount of labour, it pays us to let the land go out of cultivation and make Britain the "workshop of the world." ”

“ There is one excuse which is still too often made for the extravagance of the rich, and that is the excuse that "The consumption of luxuries by the rich finds useful employment for the poor."
It is a ridiculous excuse, and there is no eminent economist in the world who does not laugh at it; but the capitalist, the landlord, and many pressmen still think it is good enough to mislead or silence the people with. ”

“ Now think over the iron and cotton and other trades, and remember the analysis we made of the cost of production, and tell me why, since the rich landlord gets his rent, and since the rich capitalist gets his interest or profits out of cotton, wool, or iron, the invariable suggestion of those who would retain our foreign trade by reducing the cost of production amounts to no more nor less than a reduction of the poor workers' wages. ”

“ Why, then, should there be any such thing as poverty?
One fundamental truth of economics is that every able-bodied and willing worker is worth more than his keep.
There is such a thing as locked-out labour, but there is no such thing in this country as useless labour. While we have land lying idle, and while we have to import our food, how can we be so foolish as to call a man who is excluded [Pg 140] from the land superfluous? He is one of the factors of wealth, and land is the other. Set the man on the land and he will produce wealth. At present he is out of work and the land out of use. ”

“ The duke does not spend all the rent in finding work for the poor. He spends a good deal of it on food and drink for himself and his dependants. This wealth is consumed—it is wasted, for it is consumed by men who produce nothing. And it all comes from the earnings of the men who pay the rent. Therefore, if the farmer and his men, instead of giving the money to the duke for rent, could spend it on themselves, they would find more employment for the poor than the duke can, because they would be able to spend all that the duke and his enormous retinue of servants waste. ”

“ Have we not often heard our manufacturers declare that if the British workers would emulate the thrift and sobriety of the foreigner they might successfully compete against foreign competition in the foreign market? What does that mean, but that thrift would enable our people to live on less, and so to accept less wages?
Why are wages of women in the shirt trade low?
It is because capitalism always keeps the wages down to the lowest standard of subsistence which the people will accept. ”

“ John Smith, a British workman, that you need a Labour Party. It is a queer task for a bookish man, a literary student, and an easy lounger through life, who takes no interest in politics and needs no party at all. To persuade you, a worker, that you need a worker's party, is like persuading you that you need food, shelter, love, and liberty. ”

“ You may perhaps wonder why I do not ask you to found a Socialist Party. I do not think the workers are ready for it. And I feel that if you found a Labour Party every step you take towards the emancipation of Labour will be a step towards Socialism.
But I should like to think that many workers will become Socialists at once, and more as they live and learn. ”