Page images
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER 771
DUBLIN REVIEW

II. An Agnostic Defeat. By G. K. Chesterton.
III. Fortuna Chance. Chapter III. Hollin Well. Chapter IV. The
Minuet. By James Prior. (To be continued.)
IV. Henry Labouchere. By the Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell.

777

783

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

Mr. Roosevelt Again in the Limelight.
Mr. Roosevelt's Campaign.

VIII. Stories of Successful Lives. III. The Barrister's.

IX. After Count Von Aehrenthal?

A PAGE OF VERSE.

X. Romance in the City. By G. E. M.
XI. Supersensual. By Evelyn Underhill.
XII. The Turn of the Years. By V. H. Friedlaender.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

770

NATION 770

WESTMINSTER GAZETTE 770

822

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

THE LIVING AGE COMPANY.

6 BEACON STREET, Boston.

TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION

FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is 50 cents per annum.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, express and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE CO.

Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents.

[blocks in formation]

When first the busy, clumsy tongue is stilled.

[blocks in formation]

THE TURN OF THE YEARS. How may we know you, year of all? You come, as others come, Night-sandalled, and your flying feet Set bells aswing in every streetBut you are dumb.

We run, unwearied travellers

Still on the upward slope

Of life, to take your strong young hand,
To search, to dare, to understand—
Pilgrims of hope.

You lead us on, you lead us up;
We seek your Avatar

Save that some childish, stammering By fords of faith, the pass of tears,

[blocks in formation]

Peaks of delight-O year of years,
You take us far!

And then you go. We hear your voice,
We know your name at last.
You were the Future that we sought,
And all the years may bring us nought
But you, the Past.

V. H. Friedlaender. The Westminster Gazette.

HOLDING A NATION TO RANSOM.

In spite of the many columns that have appeared in the daily papers upon the coal crisis, the public does not appear even yet to have fully realized all that is involved in the attitude taken up by the Miners' Federation. It is mainly because the situation is a new one. The conception of the "general strike" is a quite modern development in the trade-union movement. Until this conception was borrowed from the Continental syndicalists, English trade unionists were content to use the weapon of the strike to hit particular enemies against whom they had a particular grievance. If a firm or group of firms refused an advance of wages, or took some other course of which the union disapproved, a strike was decreed against that firm or group of firms, and unless other employers made common cause with those firms and ordered a lock-out, the strike remained localized. The new development consists in striking against all the employers because of a quarrel with some employers.

The first complete revelation which the country received of this new method of industrial warfare was last autumn, in connection with the railway strike. Here the point at issue was the "recognition" of the trade unions by the railway companies. Most of the companies refused to grant recognition, and therefore in this case the strike would have been extensive, even on the older principles of trade unionism. The significant fact was that the strike was declared not only against the companies which refused recognition, but also against the one company -the North Eastern-which had already granted recognition. On the surface nothing could be more absurd than such a proceeding. The servants of the North Eastern Railway Company had no quarrel with their em

ployers. They had secured the very object for which the servants of other companies were asking, and according to the older conception of trade unionism their duty was to continue at work and to help their less fortunate comrades by subscribing liberally to the strike fund. By this means increased pressure would have been brought upon the other railway companies to follow the example set by the North Eastern, which, for the sake of argument, is here assumed to have been a good example. Why, then, was this rational and traditional method of trade-union warfare abandoned? The answer is, because the new conception of a general strike had become the basis of trade-union policy. The essence of that conception is that the strike must be so general, so widespread, as to terrorize the whole nation. Therefore good employers must be attacked as well as bad employers. Those firms which have conceded every demand of the trade unions must be treated in the same way as those which refuse to make any concession. purpose to be accomplished is not the punishment of particular firms, but the holding up of the industries of the country on so gigantic a scale that the nation may be cowed into immediate surrender.

The

This is the true meaning of the railway strike last autumn, and of the coal strike in the present spring. The deliberate purpose of the authors of these movements is to hold the nation to ransom, and the important question for the nation to decide is how it proposes to meet this new danger.

One thing at any rate is certain: that the danger will not be obviated either by appeals for pity or by expressions of moral indignation. The men who are responsible for the policy of the

general strike will not be deterred from their purpose by being told that its execution will bring ruin and misery to tens of thousands of persons who have no share in the original cause of dispute. This is exactly the object of the general strike. The more widespread the misery threatened, the more likely is the nation to succumb in a panic of terror to the demands of the strikers. Nor is it in any way profitable to point out that such a policy involves the negation of most of the virtues which the human race has hitherto respected. The men who organize general strikes are at war with society as now constituted, and would probably argue that they are morally justified in adopting any methods which would be employed by belligerent armies. In the United States, trade-union leaders of the new type have even gone to the length of organizing dynamite outrages. There is happily no sign yet of any such extreme development in our own country, nor is there any evidence that the trade-union leaders have personally encouraged criminal violence or intimidation. They have, however, displayed a laxity with regard to the observance of agreements which can only be explained on the supposition that they hold that in time of war it is legitimate to deceive an enemy. Their ethical outlook is, in fact, so remote from that of the average English citizen that it is useless to employ arguments which would be applicable to any ordinary political or social movement.

Nor is there much, if anything, to be hoped from Government intervention. On the contrary, there is good reason to believe that the present epidemic of strikes is very largely due to the constant intervention of the Government in industrial disputes. Certainly in the case of the railway strike last year, if the Government had stood aside, the strike organizers would have received

so severe a rebuff from the railway workers themselves that the popularity of the general strike as a weapon of industrial warfare would have been greatly diminished. There is, indeed, always the danger that when the Government intervenes it will be actuated by political motives. Those who remember clearly the history of last autumn's strike will not dispute the statement that the action of the Government was determined rather by the necessity of conciliating the Labor party in the House of Commons than by the desire to avert a national disaster. As regards more general action on the part of the State, the results have been, if possible, even more disastrous. On all sides it is agreed that the unrest among the coal miners throughout the kingdom is largely the consequence of the Eight Hours Act which was forced through the House of Commons in obedience to the demands of the Socialist party. On this point an illuminating passage appears in the Daily Chronicle of the 21st of February. In support of a suggested scheme for a Government guarantee against any losses which mine owners might incur by conceding the minimum wage, this paper wrote:

A few years ago the State enforced on the coal-mining industry an eight hours' working day. Eight hours is quite enough for a man to spend underground in the laborious and hazardous occupation of mining; but it is undeniable that the adaptation of working conditions in the mines to meet the requirements of an eight hours' day has, in the transitional period, meant new difficulties and extra cost of working to the management. So far as the miners themselves are concerned, the eight hours' day has also produced inconveniences. If the State can now help to mitigate the effects of past State action, it is bound in honor to do So.

This gem, culled from an extreme Radical paper, sufficiently illustrates

the mischief which can be done by Parliamentary interference with the organization of industry.

The essence of the present situation is that the coal-miners now, like the railway workers last autumn, are threatening by their collective action to deprive the nation of the necessaries of existence. It is a conspiracy so gross in character that almost any action for the effective defence of the community would be justifiable. "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword." It would, however, be a grave mistake to rush into a panic and to adopt measures for dealing with this particular evil which might afterwards be misused for the destruction of the legitimate liberties of the subject. As long as the coal-miners give the agreed strike notices before leaving their work they are within their legal rights, whatever the motive of the strike may be. It is true that the exercise of a legal right by a number of persons in combination may become an illegal act. For example, every man has a legal right to walk up and down the Strand, but if a thousand men agree together to exercise that right simultaneously they would become a public nuisance, and could be restrained by legal process. Conceivably the same principle of law could be applied to the men who organize a national strike. But it is not desirable so to apply it; for the result might be to prevent workmen from using the weapon of the strike in perfectly legitimate circumstances. It is far safer to maintain the principle that any number of workmen may agree together to hand in their strike notices for whatever reason they choose to adopt, or for no reason at all. This is one of the British workman's most valuable liberties, and no temporary danger ought to make us even consider the possibility of withdrawing it. We must find other ways of dealing with the general strike.

At the back of the present strike epidemic there is the desire on the part of a large section of the working classes to improve their economic position. It is not only a legitimate, it is a laudable desire. Indeed, the pity is that the desire is not more widely felt and expressed. The mass of the worst-paid workers and semi-workers, the alleged "thirteen millions on the verge of starvation," submit to their lot with regrettable apathy. The movement for higher wages and improved conditions of work comes from those who are rel

atively well off. The railway men

who struck last autumn were able to point to the low wages earned in certain grades of the service, but even in the lowest grades the wages and general conditions of employment are so much better than those of agricultural laborers that the railway companies are besieged with applicants for employment. Moreover, it was noticeable that the strength of the railway strikers lay not with these poorly paid men at the bottom of the service, but with the more skilled men earning relatively high wages. In the same way with the coal strikers now, it is absolutely false to allege that the men are striking for a "living wage." This is proved by an examination of the detailed demands put forward. Within the area of the English Conciliation Board the minimum demanded by coalgetters varies from 6s. a day in North Wales to 78. 6d. a day in Yorkshire. At the same time the minimum for other adult workers in the mines throughout the same area is fixed at 58. a day. These variations show clearly that the minimum wage asked for is not the lowest that a man can afford to live upon, but the highest that the different grades of men think they can obtain as a guaranteed minimum. In practice the men under existing conditions earn more than the minimum demanded. They nearly always earn very much

« PreviousContinue »