Labour leader

“ When the reader comes to consider this,—which is the great industrial object lesson of modern times,—when he sees what the share is which Labour has appropriated so triumphantly, he will see how the conclusions we have here arrived at, with regard to the causes of production, afford a foundation for the hopes and claims of Labour, as broad and solid as that by which they support the rights of Ability. ”

“ We do not look upon the labour union as an ultimate conception of labour, but we believe that whatever progress has been made in the lot of the labourer has been due wholly to the organization of the wage-workers! ”

“ They are the brains and mechanism of the organization and management, the connecting link between Capital and Labour. The success of an employer’s business is dependent on their tact, judgment, and power of governing men, but Capital has not yet risen to that conception. ”

“ The success of the labour movement as a whole depended on the loyalty of the men to those who were doing brain work on their behalf; let that loyalty once exhibit anything of doubt and the whole scheme, the whole business, the whole movement—the Labour member struck the wooden table emphatically at each variant of the phrase—the whole show would go to pot. ”

“ The intelligent and considerate spirit in which he looked on the struggles of the working class, while at the same time fully realising both the rights and responsibilities of employers, led to the belief that in his hands the problem of the relations of capital and labour would have found a solution acceptable to all. ”

“ The forces that are going to help, apparently, in this evolution will be the labour exchange—the centre for the mobilization of labour, the produce exchange, the inventor's spirit in the labour unions and employers' associations, and the gradual organization by inventors of the common vision of all men, and setting it at work on the supreme task of modern life—the task of drawing out, evoking each particular man in the world, and in behalf of all, freeing him for his own particular place. ”

“ The poverty and destitution of the working-classes as compared with the wealthier section of the community led to dissemination among the workers of revolutionary ideas, political and socialistic. One can read in the newspapers of the time, even as far back as 1829, familiar doctrines—that Labour is the only source of wealth—that the [47] working-men are the support of the middle and upper classes, the nerves and soul of production, the foundation of the nation. ”

“ Managers and superintendents will be put in office everywhere who see the cash value, the economy, of the simple, old-fashioned power in a man of a genius for being believed in; employers with the power of inspiring more and better work from their workmen; Labour men with the power of inspiring employers to believe in them, of inspiring their employers to put up money, stock, or profits on their belief—on the belief that workmen are capable of the highest qualities of manhood: hard work, loyalty, persistence, and faith toward a common end. ”

“ I well remember the earnestness with which some of the leaders preached, in season and out of season, the bounden duty of everybody to lay by something. Seeing in the labour-market of that day the normal labour-market of modern civilisation, they conceived that the great need of human society was more capital, in order to employ more labour. ”

“ As I hinted before, in the new order of things all branches of labour will be organised in a similar way to the arrangements we see to-day in large factories, large estates, or institutions of the Government. Unnecessary work will be avoided, and the reward for work done will be greater. Labour will not be wasted in making luxuries for the idle, but will be usefully employed in making the necessaries of life for other workers. ”

“ We have already noted how the industrial revolution had split the manufacturing class, which had hitherto been a middling and various sort of class, into two sections, the employers, who became rich enough to mingle with the financial, merchandizing, and landowning classes, and the employees, who drifted to a status closer and closer to that of mere gang and agricultural labour. ”

“ If all the workmen of the world to-morrow morning knew what Frederick Taylor (the American engineer) knows about planning workmen's work so that they receive, for the same expenditure of strength, a third more wages every day, the whole attitude of labour in every nation and of the trades unions of the world—the attitude of doing as little work as possible, of labouring and studying and slaving away to discover ways of not being of any use to employers—would face about in a day. ”

“ Under the double action of democratic life which has wakened or strengthened in him the pride of a man, and of modern industry which has given to united labour a consciousness of its power, the workman is becoming a person, and insists upon being treated as such, everywhere and always. ”

“ Capital is that through which the Ability of one set of men acts on the muscles—that is to say, the Labour—of another set, whether by setting Labour to produce machinery, or by so organising various multitudes of labourers that each multitude becomes a single machine in itself, or by settling or devising the uses to which these machines shall be put. ”

“ In Part III I then proceed to the true purpose of the book—to indicate in broad outline what seems to me to be the only possible Labour policy for the future. It must satisfy, and be attuned to, the human qualities of the workers; Part III, therefore, starts with a description of the aspirations and sentiments of the workers as I found them in real life, and then proceeds to set out the principles that I think should govern the three greatest relationships in industry—that of the Government to industry—that between employers and employed—that between industry and the community. ”

“ He believes that the next great political and social movement will be the emancipation of the wage-earner—the securing to the producer his fair share of the products of his labour. If that is so, it will be a big thing. ”

“ The other requisites for rendering labour attractive would, they think, be found in the execution of all labour by social groups, to any number of which the same individual might simultaneously belong, at his or her own choice: their grade in each being determined by the degree of service which they were found capable of rendering, as appreciated by the suffrages of their comrades. ”

“ Ability, or the employing class, being represented as one man.
◆1 Let us then take a community of eight labourers, each producing commodities worth fifty pounds a year, and each consuming—as he easily might—the whole of them. These men represent the productive power of Labour; ◆2 and now let us suppose the advent of Ability in the person of the ninth man, by whose assistance this productive power is multiplied, and consider more particularly what the ninth man does. There is one thing which it is quite plain he does not do. ”

“ We know Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired labourers amongst us. How little they know whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired labourers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago I was a hired labourer. The hired labourer of yesterday labours on his own account to-day, and will hire others to labour for him to-morrow.
Advancement—improvement in condition—is the order of things in a society of equals. ”

“ Labour will be then truly employed to profit, not diverted by Bounties, Jealousies, or Legislative Interference, from its natural and beneficial course. This system will attain its real object, [52] consolidating the strength of the remaining parts of the Empire, by encouraging the communications of their market among themselves, with preference to every part against all strangers! ”

“ Thus, we constantly find that when men have declared all wealth to be due to Labour, more or less consciously including Ability in the term, they go on to speak of Labour and the labouring classes, more or less consciously excluding it ”

“ But what reasoning will not do, industrial history will. Industrial history will provide us with an answer of the most striking kind—general, indeed, in its character; but not, for that reason, any the less decided, or less full of instruction. For industrial history, in a way which few people realise, will show us how, during the past hundred years, Labour [244] has actually succeeded in accomplishing the feat we are considering; how, without checking the development and the power of Ability, it has been able to appropriate year by year a certain share of what Ability produces. ”

“ Then there is the apparently inevitable antagonism between labour and capital, between the employer and employed, which drives the worker to Social Democracy, as offering the prospect of his becoming his own master and enjoying the whole fruits of his labour. ”

“ We see on both sides black suspicion twisting the motive behind every action, and the task is to create contentment among the workers, and enlist their hearty co-operation with employers in the process of production. ”

“ He will see that the principles, motives, and conditions that these men have employed in making themselves more like their superiors, in making themselves more and more fit to take the place of their superiors, in making their work a daily, creative, spirited part of a great business, are made so familiar to all Trades Unions that the policies of all our labour organizations everywhere shall change and shall be infected with a new spirit ”

“ Production ought, therefore, to be regarded as the principal means of advancing the happiness, social welfare and material prosperity of the nation, and industry, the chief instrument in that beneficent work, as the highest and the noblest form of national service. ”

“ The Political System of Socialism.—The progressive disintegration of the capitalist system, which has been increasingly taking place during the years of war, and not less during the years of peace following the war, makes it ever more urgent that Labour should assume power in society. In the term Labour we include not merely the manual working wage-earners, but also the intellectual workers of all kinds, the independent handicraftsmen and peasant cultivators, and, in short, all those who co-operate by their exertions in the production of utilities of any kind. ”

“ Let us not take the other result as probable; or, even in hypothesis, draw any picture that might make despondency plausible. Suppose, then, the success of individual, or united efforts, in raising the condition of the labouring classes. What an undivided good it is. Has any man some particular reform at heart, some especial hopes for his race? Where can he look for such a basis to rest upon as in the improved condition of the largest layer of the people? What a field it opens for science, literature, and art. What freedom may it not give to the highest ranges of thought. ”

“ The principles of Labour policy which I have outlined are generally in the direction of freedom and in its best sense [306] individualism, looking rather to the development in industry of co-operation than to struggle and the use of power to settle differences and express the balance of economic forces. But industrial freedom and individualism impose correlative responsibilities on all citizens, especially in regard to the maintenance of efficient social services. ”

“ Come into our ranks, ye shirkers, for we now rule this land.
Work or starve, the workers said, for you must earn your bread.
Then into their ranks came the masters and joined the workers' song;
Then into their ranks came the masters and joined the workers' song.
All workers, "The Army of Production," in One Big Union, regardless of age, creed, color or sex, is invincible.
Labor is entitled to all it produces. An injury to one is an injury to all. ”

“ Protection for the benefit of a particular trade, or all trades, while it may conduce to the immediate advantage of Labour, is presumed to operate to the greater ultimate advantage of the capitalist, and to strengthen his position. ”

“ The emancipation of labour requires the conversion of the instruments of labour into the common property of society, and the management of labour by association, and the application of the product with a view to the general good and an equitable distribution. ”

“ Let him imagine himself arraigned before the Deity at the Day of Judgment, and the Deity saying this to him: “You found when you entered the world that a man’s labour on the average produced each year such and such an amount of wealth. Have you done anything to make the product of the same labour greater? Have you discovered or applied any new principle to any branch of industry? Have you guided industry into any new direction? Have the exertions of any other human being been made more efficacious owing to your powers of invention, of enterprise, or of management?” ”

“ The force which has been at the bottom of all the labourers’ progress during the past, and on the continued action of which depends all these hopes for their future—that force is not Labour but Ability ”

“ The next most pressing reform in our present industrial system is to secure for the individual worker a definite status in industry. To describe what is intended is easier than to define it. At present the individual worker complains that the government of industry is conducted by the employer entirely as the latter thinks fit. ”

“ Thus, here, too, the central organ of the control of industry is composed of representatives of workers, and is supported by mass organisations of the working class and of the poorest elements of the peasantry. ”

“ The workers, by the strength of their Trade Unions, may from time to time obtain improved conditions of employment, but until they obtain possession of the means of producing wealth, namely, the land, the mines, the railways, shipping, factories and workshops, they will remain dependent on a small section of the community providing them with employment. ”