Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (read novel full TXT) 📖

his work - to marry

his master’s daughter and succeed to his master’s business. In those

days to be a “master” tradesman meant to be master of the trade, not

merely of some underpaid drudges in one’s employment. The apprentices

were there to master the trade, qualifying themselves to become master

workers themselves; not mere sweaters and exploiters of the labour of

others, but useful members of society. In those days, because there

was no labour-saving machinery the community was dependent for its

existence on the productions of hand labour. Consequently the

majority of the people were employed in some kind of productive work,

and the workers were honoured and respected citizens, living in

comfort on the fruits of their labour. They were not rich as we

understand wealth now, but they did not starve and they were not

regarded with contempt, as are their successors of today.

 

`The next great change came with the introduction of steam machinery.

That power came to the aid of mankind in their struggle for existence,

enabling them to create easily and in abundance those things of which

they had previously been able to produce only a bare sufficiency. A

wonderful power - equalling and surpassing the marvels that were

imagined by the writers of fairy tales and Eastern stories - a power

so vast - so marvellous, that it is difficult to find words to convey

anything like an adequate conception of it.

 

`We all remember the story, in The Arabian Nights, of Aladdin, who in

his poverty became possessed of the Wonderful Lamp and - he was poor

no longer. He merely had to rub the Lamp - the Genie appeared, and at

Aladdin’s command he produced an abundance of everything that the

youth could ask or dream of. With the discovery of steam machinery,

mankind became possessed of a similar power to that imagined by the

Eastern writer. At the command of its masters the Wonderful Lamp of

Machinery produces an enormous, overwhelming, stupendous abundance and

superfluity of every material thing necessary for human existence and

happiness. With less labour than was formerly required to cultivate

acres, we can now cultivate miles of land. In response to human

industry, aided by science and machinery, the fruitful earth teems

with such lavish abundance as was never known or deemed possible

before. If you go into the different factories and workshops you will

see prodigious quantities of commodities of every kind pouring out of

the wonderful machinery, literally like water from a tap.

 

`One would naturally and reasonably suppose that the discovery or

invention of such an aid to human industry would result in increased

happiness and comfort for every one; but as you all know, the reverse

is the case; and the reason of that extraordinary result, is the

reason of all the poverty and unhappiness that we see around us and

endure today - it is simply because - the machinery became the

property of a comparatively few individuals and private companies, who

use it not for the benefit of the community but to create profits for

themselves.

 

`As this labour-saving machinery became more extensively used, the

prosperous class of skilled workers gradually disappeared. Some of

the wealthier of them became distributers instead of producers of

wealth; that is to say, they became shopkeepers, retailing the

commodities that were produced for the most part by machinery. But

the majority of them in course of time degenerated into a class of

mere wage earners, having no property in the machines they used, and

no property in the things they made.

 

`They sold their labour for so much per hour, and when they could not

find any employer to buy it from them, they were reduced to

destitution.

 

`Whilst the unemployed workers were starving and those in employment

not much better off, the individuals and private companies who owned

the machinery accumulated fortunes; but their profits were diminished

and their working expenses increased by what led to the latest great

change in the organization of the production of the necessaries of

life - the formation of the Limited Companies and the Trusts; the

decision of the private companies to combine and co-operate with each

other in order to increase their profits and decrease their working

expenses. The results of these combines have been - an increase in

the quantities of the things produced: a decrease in the number of

wage earners employed - and enormously increased profits for the

shareholders.

 

`But it is not only the wage-earning class that is being hurt; for

while they are being annihilated by the machinery and the efficient

organization of industry by the trusts that control and are beginning

to monopolize production, the shopkeeping classes are also being

slowly but surely crushed out of existence by the huge companies that

are able by the greater magnitude of their operations to buy and sell

more cheaply than the small traders.

 

`The consequence of all this is that the majority of the people are in

a condition of more or less abject poverty - living from hand to

mouth. It is an admitted fact that about thirteen millions of our

people are always on the verge of starvation. The significant results

of this poverty face us on every side. The alarming and persistent

increase of insanity. The large number of would-be recruits for the

army who have to be rejected because they are physically unfit; and

the shameful condition of the children of the poor. More than

one-third of the children of the working classes in London have some

sort of mental or physical defect; defects in development; defects of

eyesight; abnormal nervousness; rickets, and mental dullness. The

difference in height and weight and general condition of the children

in poor schools and the children of the so-called better classes,

constitutes a crime that calls aloud to Heaven for vengeance upon

those who are responsible for it.

 

`It is childish to imagine that any measure of Tariff Reform or

Political Reform such as a paltry tax on foreign-made goods or

abolishing the House of Lords, or disestablishing the Church - or

miserable Old Age Pensions, or a contemptible tax on land, can deal

with such a state of affairs as this. They have no House of Lords in

America or France, and yet their condition is not materially different

from ours. You may be deceived into thinking that such measures as

those are great things. You may fight for them and vote for them, but

after you have got them you will find that they will make no

appreciable improvement in your condition. You will still have to

slave and drudge to gain a bare sufficiency of the necessaries of

life. You will still have to eat the same kind of food and wear the

same kind of clothes and boots as now. Your masters will still have

you in their power to insult and sweat and drive. Your general

condition will be just the same as at present because such measures as

those are not remedies but red herrings, intended by those who trail

them to draw us away from the only remedy, which is to be found only

in the Public Ownership of the Machinery, and the National

Organization of Industry for the production and distribution of the

necessaries of life, not for the profit of a few but for the benefit

of all!

 

`That is the next great change; not merely desirable, but imperatively

necessary and inevitable! That is Socialism!

 

`It is not a wild dream of Superhuman Unselfishness. No one will be

asked to sacrifice himself for the benefit of others or to love his

neighbours better than himself as is the case under the present

system, which demands that the majority shall unselfishly be content

to labour and live in wretchedness for the benefit of a few. There is

no such principle of Philanthropy in Socialism, which simply means

that even as all industries are now owned by shareholders, and

organized and directed by committees and officers elected by the

shareholders, so shall they in future belong to the State, that is,

the whole people - and they shall be organized and directed by

committees and officers elected by the community.

 

`Under existing circumstances the community is exposed to the danger

of being invaded and robbed and massacred by some foreign power.

Therefore the community has organized and owns and controls an Army

and Navy to protect it from that danger. Under existing circumstances

the community is menaced by another equally great danger - the people

are mentally and physically degenerating from lack of proper food and

clothing. Socialists say that the community should undertake and

organize the business of producing and distributing all these things;

that the State should be the only employer of labour and should own

all the factories, mills, mines, farms, railways, fishing fleets,

sheep farms, poultry farms and cattle ranches.

 

`Under existing circumstances the community is degenerating mentally

and physically because the majority cannot afford to have decent

houses to live in. Socialists say that the community should take in

hand the business of providing proper houses for all its members, that

the State should be the only landlord, that all the land and all the

houses should belong to the whole people…

 

`We must do this if we are to keep our old place in the van of human

progress. A nation of ignorant, unintelligent, half-starved,

broken-spirited degenerates cannot hope to lead humanity in its

never-ceasing march onward to the conquest of the future.

 

`Vain. mightiest fleet of iron framed;

Vain the all-shattering guns

Unless proud England keep, untamed,

The stout hearts of her sons.

 

`All the evils that I have referred to are only symptoms of the one

disease that is sapping the moral, mental and physical life of the

nation, and all attempts to cure these symptoms are foredoomed to

failure, simply because they are the symptoms and not the disease.

All the talk of Temperance, and the attempts to compel temperance, are

foredoomed to failure, because drunkenness is a symptom, and not the

disease.

 

`India is a rich productive country. Every year millions of pounds

worth of wealth are produced by her people, only to be stolen from

them by means of the Money Trick by the capitalist and official class.

Her industrious sons and daughters, who are nearly all tdtal

abstainers, live in abject poverty, and their misery is not caused by

laziness or want of thrift, or by Intemperance. They are poor for the

same reason that we are poor - Because we are Robbed.

 

`The hundreds of thousands of pounds that are yearly wasted in

well-meant but useless charity accomplish no lasting good, because

while charity soothes the symptoms it ignores the disease, which is -

the PRIVATE OWNERSHIP of the means of producing the necessaries of

life, and the restriction of production, by a few selfish individuals

for their own profit. And for that disease there is no other remedy

than the one I have told you of - the PUBLIC OWNERSHIP and cultivation

of the land, the PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF the mines, railways, canals,

ships, factories and all the other means of production, and the

establishment of an Industrial Civil Service - a National Army of

Industry - for the purpose of producing the necessaries, comforts and

refinements of life in that abundance which has been made possible by

science and machinery - for the use and benefit of THE WHOLE OF THE

PEOPLE.’

 

`Yes: and where’s the money to come from for all this?’ shouted Crass,

fiercely.

 

`Hear, hear,’ cried the man behind the moat.

 

`There’s no money difficulty about it,’ replied Barrington. `We can

easily find all the money we shall need.’

 

`Of course,’ said Slyme, who had been reading the Daily Ananias,

`there’s all the