ing sons and daughters-how can he do it?-how does he do it? It is the same "old, old story "-it is the Fire! it is the Love! The fire must be brought into contact with what is to be consumed, and that can only be done in a fellowship of suffering! The love can work only in one way-through the common Brotherhood which Socialism pre-eminently teaches! And what then? Still the question probes. Well, then comes forth, out of much tribulation, in robes of spotless purity, like a bride ready for her lord, the great central truth of Socialism, to receive her crown and to reign in the hearts of the people for ever. And the truth is this: that in all the great cosmogony of being there is nothing outside of Manthe Gift of Love, the Fellowship of Love, and the Ministry of Love constitute the trinity of Socialism, and all these in their ultimate issues are in Man. This trinity is Life--and this Life is Eternal Life-and this Eternal Life is the Coronation of Socialism! How many of us share this crown? J. N. W. FINIS! WAGES AND PROFITS IN THE UNITED STATES. ET any one look at the condition of the labourers and artisans of his acquaintance, and say whether or not in his opinion they were one per cent. better off on the average at the end of the year than they were at the beginning of it. If he thinks they were we shall be glad if he will so inform us, and give us also his reasons for his belief. A careful examination shows that the average wages for 1880 was nearly $1.11 per day. Here are the figures copied correctly from the census, and Subscriber can work the sum himself: No. of hands employed in man'ftrs. 2,738,950 Of the hand's employed there were- Children and youths $947,919,674 As to the other matter, the figures are as follows: 531,753 181,918 Capital employed in manufact'rs. $2,790,223, 506 Let us look at the profit made on that as shown by the $1,027,408,003 Profit. This is nearly 40 per cent. on the capital invested. This is net profit, because in the cost of operating and in the cost of materials, are the employer's personal services, the cost of repairs, and of insurance, wear and tear, freight, etc. This is the profit as confessed by the manufacturers themselves. Considering that wages is lower now than it was in 1880, and that more men are out of work now than then, it is safe to say that the average rate of wages for all the hands employed in manufactures does not amount to $1.04 a-day.Radical Review, Chicago. The wealth of a man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.-Carlyle. What a woman should demand is respect for her as a woman. Let her first lesson be to reverence her sex.-Charles Lamb. Economic Laws.-These doctrines, which you call sound political economy, I see lead in their application to misery and starvation. I infer, therefore, not that it is right men should starve and suffer rather than violate your economic laws, but that these are not in fact the laws of economy at all, and that the sooner we set them at nought and apply the true laws, the better.-W. E. Gladstone. SOCIETY AN ORGANISED FRATERNITY! E are all children of the same Father-God, and the common Father has not enslaved brethren to bre. thren. He has not said to one, "command;" to another, "obey." All owe to one another help and succour, justice and char ity, nothing more; and society, that wild and disordered passions, that pride and covetousness have rendered so burdensome to nearly the whole of the human race, is in its essence, and ought to be in fact, simply the union of forces and of wills to attain more surely the end of existence; society ought to be an organised fraternity. Were there any kings and nobles, patricians and plebeians before there were peoples? and if the people existed free and equal prior to all class distinctions, every distinction unless it be the fruit of violence and brigandage is derived from the people, originating in its independent will, its imperishable Sovereignty. Outside of this sanction nothing is legitimate. The patrician order, the nobility, royalty-in a word, every prerogative which has no basis but itself to rest upon, detracts from the will and sovereignty of the people and is an attack upon society, a revolutionary usurpation, at the very least a germ of tyranny. The people makes no classes, it creates no privileges, it merely delegates its functions, entrusting certain duties to one servant and others to another. It charges them to carry out the decisions it has arrived at for the common good in accordance with its own established forms, which it can always modify or change. Ye hypocrites, who call yourselves Christians, open the Christian law you will there read, "The princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, but it shall not be so with you; but whosoever will be great among you let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you let him be your servant." Then to whomsoever dare call himself your master, answer "No." Do not allow yourselves to be oppressed by men of violence nor deceived by those who preach up servitude in the name of God, who strive to plunge you into a brutish ignorance and then say "the people lack knowledge and rea. son; they cannot rule themselves; for their own sake they must be governed." It is your right, on the contrary, that no man shall govern you or impose laws at his will; it is your right that every law should emanate from you alone; it is your right that the exercise of public power should be a simple revocable office; it is your right that the public officer should be your servant and nothing more. When you have reconquered your right, if you exercise it wisely the world will be transformed; there will be fewer tears, and they will be less bitter. Little by little the contrast of extreme opulence and extreme indigence will cease to afflict humanity. The wan and gloomy spectre of hunger will no more haunt your hearth. All will have food for body and mind. Shared, as they ought to be among brethren, the good things that Providence has bestowed upon us will multiply in the very process of distribution. No more will weep ing children ask of their father, when he comes home tired and weary, the bread for which they pine; they will raise their innocent little hands only to bless heaven for its gifts. The smile will return to the mother's lips; and the old man full of days, as he watches the autumn sun, half-veiled by the shades of evening, gild with its last rays the yellow leaves and fading grass, will rejoice in an intimate although mysterious presentiment of a new spring and a new dawn. LAMENNAIS. The alienation of the lower classes from all that makes life interesting and ennobling is by far the most serious so cial problem of the day.-Athenæum. No matter who lives or dies, who goes up or goes down, What is truth? must be and ever is the supreme inquiry of honest and teachable spirits.—Joseph Parker, UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES. MANY of our Clergy still want arousing to the situation in which the Church is placed to-day. At a meeting of the Guild of St. Clement, at Stamford, A. W. Crickmay made an excellent speech on the Church and Democracy, pointing out the clear duty of followers of Christ. He was followed by the Rev. Mr. Igguldon, who said it was all nonsense to talk about the Church being a democratic institution. What was wanted was more attention to foreign missions and a larger attendance at missionary meetings. Christian Socialists in Stamford should pay a little attention to Mr. Ig guldon, and teach him what Christianity means. A new weekly journal, the Methodist Times, edited by the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, has appeared during the month just past. It will be remembered that it was Mr. Hughes whose speech on Christian Socialism drove Lord Shaftesbury from the chair at Exeter Hall, and the tone of the paper ought to be good. We fear, however, from the first number, which contains an article by Henry Broadhurst, that Mr. Hughes is too heavily weighted with "respectable ” politicians to allow the paper to be really Christian and outspoken. We shall watch its progress with interest. It is nearly time some change was made in legal charges. Last week a case came before the courts concerning the partition of a mountain estate in Wales of 27 acres. The lawyers' costs amounted to £658! Mr. Chamberlain is advancing nicely along the path of Social-Democracy. The speeches which he delivered at Birmingham and Ipswich could certainly not have been delivered by a Cabinet Minister, sitting in the same Government with Lord Derby and Lord Hartington, four or five years ago. His speeches form a pretty accurate guage of the advance which Socialism has made in this country. Ministers at the present day do not initiate a policy, or a course of action; they pretty nearly express the opinions of the average class men. Socialists must always remember, then, that they have to guide their legislators, and not to follow them. Henry George has returned to America once more, after a very successful tour in Scotland. All the news which comes from America goes to show that he will be very much wanted there very shortly. Our capitalist newspapers as a rule give but very little information of the struggles going on there between labour and capital. If any one here wishes to get correct information they must go to the American Labour Press, the Labour Enquirer of Denver, the Palladium of Hamilton, Canada, and the like. St. James's Gazette, however, has discovered that the class struggle under the Free Republic is assuming alarming proportions, and concludes an article on class strife in America: Under all circumstances there, it seems not improbable that the first absolute struggle between capital and labour will be witnessed in that land of perfect democracy and freedom for all-the United States." Under these circumstances Henry George's services are likely to be required in the States, and we wish him God-speed. Never have two more remarkable meetings been held in London than those held on the 16th and 17th of January, at Bermondsey Town Hall and in front of the Royal Exchange. The first was remarkable as being a crowded meeting of working men, got up by working men, with a working man chairman, and addressed by working men. There was only one middle-class man present, and it is a hopeful sign that the workers at length are taking their affairs into their own hands. The meeting at the Royal Exchange was remarkable for the fact that, for the first time in history probably, cheer after cheer was given for the "Social Revolution "' at the very centre of Capitalism. If there is a spot representative of Capitalism and all its evils, it probably is the steps of the Royal Exchange. Within a stone's-throw you have the Bank, Stock Exchange, Lloyd's, Lombard Street, Cornhill, the Mansion House-all the great siphons through which the heart's blood of the working classes is sucked up. To proclaim for Socialism in such a spot is to shake the power of Capital to its very foundation. There is no more important question than that of how to deal with the unemployed, to which we refer in our leading article. If the demonstration which it is proposed to hold in London shortly be carried out, we trust that every earnest man and woman will give their help in making it of such a kind that the Government shall be unable to avoid giving the question the attention it imperatively demands. Could it not be arranged to have delegates from the numerous unemployed of Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, and other large manufacturing centres? The terrible dynamite outrages at Westminster and the Tower show us what a power is placed in the hands of individuals to work mischief to the community. No one can think that the cause of Irish independence or of the enfranchisement of the proletariat is advanced by such actions. But surely the wise course for the Government to pursue is to remedy the grievances which drive men to commit these outrages, rather than turn stunt and say, "No, we will not move till you stop your outrages." 66 It must be remembered that the men who commit these outrages are not in most cases abandoned criminals and blackguards, but in most cases just the reverse-men of large enthusiasm. Brady, for instance, who was concerned in the murder of Cavendish and Burke, it is admitted on all sides was a young man of excellent moral character. Stinting himself to support his mother, full of love for Ireland, a devout Catholic, he was by no means the evil liver which the press represented him as being. The true course for us to take is then, surely, to show such men that we are really striving to redress the wrongs under which the people have been suffering so long. The February number of To-day contains a splendid poem, the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," by Julia Ward Howe. It was written during the American war between North and South. The last verse should go to the heart of every Christian Socialist: In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, This number also contains an excellent article by E. Carpenter, on the necessity of the individual's life tallying with his professions. This magazine, at its present low price, threepence, ought to attain a very large circulation. We have been asked to state that a Subscription Fund has been started to cover the weekly loss on Justice, the weekly Socialist journal. It has been running for just one year, and as it is the only weekly people's paper which never bows the knee to the Baal either of landlords or capitalists, we hope that it will be well supported. Subscriptions may be sent to R. P. B. Frost, hon. treasurer, "Justice Subscription Fund," 30, Woburn Place, London, W. C. To pray against temptations, and yet to rush into occasion, is to thrust your fingers into the fire and then pray they might not be burned.-Secker. It is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude, that all beauty and power which men covet are somehow born out of that Alpine district.-Emerson. FLUMMERY. MONG minds that feel effects without grasping causes there is necessarily a superstitious reverence for work. You have all heard of the benignant idiot who employed a labourer to remove a heap of stones and afterward to carry them back and pile them in the old place. His act has been lauded as if it were a piece of philanthropy. The labourer was out of employment, he gave him work and paid him for it. Was it necessary that the stones should be moved away and returned? Oh no, but the labourer needed work. Was it the work or the pay that the labourer needed? If the idiot wanted to give away money why didn't he do so without any silly flummery. There are other idiots who forego the help of machinery in order to give employment to a greater number of labourers. They do not seem to understand that the machinery might be used and just as many men employed for a less number of hours per day at the same wages now received for ten or twelve hours' labour. Want to give the labourer a chance to earn his money.' I dare say. How thoughtful! How philanthropic ! Better begin to kill off inventors before the perfection of their art has reduced the necessity of labour for each individual to be a mere bagatelle. I wonder how long the devil will have to keep an aristocrat shovelling brimstone before he will have earned in the climate of sinners the money he spent on earth posing as a saint, building holy houses and endowing Christian colleges. CLARA DIXON DAVIDSON. IF CONDUCT AND OCCUPATION. F mill girls or domestic servants possessed the rare accomplishment of house management, there would be little or no excuse for the dissipation of artisans. But this art is the heritage to some extent of refinement, and to a great extent mainly of education and sound sense. Consider also the monotonous labour of the artisan; his hands fall to one automatic routine. "He feels, each anxious hour, that the dull treadmill by which is secured the means of susten ance for a hungry household may, without warning, be closed by any number of forces over which he has no control." He has to work with the same crowd of people, in the same building, at the same ever-repeating labour, while his brain is left unemployed, to brood over real or imaginary evils: these conditions affect life to the core, and so we must indeed make many allowances for the factory worker. -From Great Industries of Great Britain. A Fruitless Life is a beggarly life: the soul that does not live to bless lives to curse both itself and the world. — Rev. 7. Baldwin Brown. British Liberty.-"When shall we have done with all this of British Liberty, Voluntary Principle, Dangers of Centralisation, and the like? It is really getting too bad. For British Liberty, it seems, the people cannot be taught to read. British Liberty, shuddering to interfere with the rights of capital, takes six or eight millions of money annually to feed the idle labour whom it dare not employ. For British Liberty we live over poisonous cesspools, gully-drains, and detestable abominations; and omnipotent London cannot sweep the dirt out of itself. British Liberty produceswhat? Floods of Hansard Debates every year, and apparently little else at present. If these are the results of British Liberty, I, for one, move we should lay it on the shelf a little, and look out for something other and farther. We have achieved British Liberty hundreds of years ago; and are fast growing, on the strength of it, one of the most absurd populations the sun, among his great museum of absurdities, looks down upon at present."― Crabbe. Whilst another man has no land, my title to mine, your title to yours, is at once vitiated.-Ralph Waldo Emer son. It is the men who have the purest and loftiest ideals in sight who do daily the noblest practical work for mankind. The use of the ideal is to make the practical fruitful.--Rev. 7. Baldwin Brown. Dr. Arnold's Opinion.—“It seems to me that people are not enough aware of the monstrous state of society-ab. solutely without a parallel in the history of the world-with a population poor, miserable, and degraded in body and mind, as much as if they were slaves. And the hopes entertained by many, of the effects to be wrought by new churches and schools, while the social evils of their condition are left uncorrected, appear to me to be utterly wild." "A Correspondent finds fault and would make capital against Socialism because Socialists use the word 'Revolution' so much; but he does not seem to fully understand what we mean by it. He appears unable to realise that we mean anything but blood and destruction. In this he, like many others, is greatly in error. The Revolution meant and intended by the Socialists is to be a COMPLETE CHANGE OF SYSTEMS."-Labour Enquirer, Denver. You believe, perhaps, labourers and fellow-citizens, that you are human beings-that you are men. Speaking from the standpoint of political economy, you make a terrible mistake. Speaking from the standpoint of political economy, you are nothing but a commodity, a high price for which increases your numbers, just the same as a high price for stockings increases the number of stockings, if there are not enough of them, and you are swept away, your number is diminished by smaller wages-by what Malthus calls the preventive and positive checks to population; your number is diminished, just as if you were vermin against which society wages war.— Ferdinand Lassalle. Poverty in the Midst of Wealth.--This our earth this day produces sufficient for all. Produces not only a sufficiency, but a superabundance. Sufficient for stores and granaries to be filled to the roof-tree for years ahead. Why, then, do people die of starvation? Why have millions upon millions to toil from morning till evening just to gain a mere crust of bread? Because it is preached and believed that the world exists for two or three out of every ten thousand who are born in it. This falsehood is the interested superstition of an age infatuated with money. It is the lie of a morality founded on money alone. From which darkness of superstition the world will in course of time emerge-marveling at the past as a man wonders at and glories in the light who has newly escaped from blindness.-Richard Jefferies (in the Story of my Heart"). Cobbett, as a young man, saw the rapid extinction of small freeholds, and of English yeomanry, due to the rapid growth of our trades and manufactures which began with the latter half of the last century, the result, partly, of Chatham's Mercantile Wars, partly of Watt's and Arkwright's inventions. From that time to this a continuous and most revolutionary change has been transforming English life. The land has been bought up by traders aspiring to be county magnates. The population from rural has become urban, and the transformation took place under the influence of a definite political doctrine, which some men suspected from the first, and many more now know to have been false, but which doctrine was too much in the interest of rich for tune makers not to be greedily accepted: That doctrine was Political Economy, as understood by the economists of the McCulloch and Lord Brougham school, the doctrine known in France as Laissez-faire, Laissez-aller; the firm belief that everything will find its right level if you only leave everything alone. Under the influence of this belief the industries of Lancashire and Staffordshire were created: beautiful hill countries have been made black countries; vast populations drained from healthy villages, or stimulated by the new industries unduly into life, have been huddled into the hideous brick encampments of Dudley, of Glasgow, and of London. -7. II. Bridges. TH HE NEW SERIES, commenced with the January Num ber, contains amongst others the following features: LEADERS OF LIBERALISM: a Series of Biographical and Critical articles on the Liberal Statesmen of the Century. POLITICS OF THE PAST: Historical articles on Great Political Events and Movements. THE STUDY OF POLITICS: Articles on Political Science, Economy, and History. REPORTS of the Junior Liberal Movement, Reviews, Essays, &c. "All Political and Social Reformers should read the Review as it indicates the coming Liberalism." (Vide Press Opinions). NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS. R. A. R. (Mauritius).-Balance of money pays for C.S. to May, 1885. Special.-"Christian Socialist," Vol. I., Now Ready, Handsomely Bound, 2/6 (by Post 3/-) (Covers for Binding, 1/6; Title and Index, price 2d. (by Post 1/9). THE QUESTION OF THE HOUR. be no doubt now that this is the pressing question of the hour in every industrial centre. Älike from Birmingham and Glasgow, Tyneside and Wearside, London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, the cry of those who can get no work is rising more and more loudly each day. Here in London meetings are being constantly held, whilst clergy, workers, and all who are acquainted with the conditions of the poor assert that every day it is harder to get work. In Birmingham things have approached perilously near to rioting and pillaging, while in other places, especially Glasgow, Nottingham, and Wolverhampton, the old and utterly inadequate system of public works supplemented by private charity is in full swing. The authorities in most cases, notably in London, are still blind to the evils which the people are suffering and the mischief which is inevitably brewing. In reply to a resolution passed at a meeting of the unemployed of Bermondsey, the Secretary of the Local Government Board replies, this very week, that as the number of paupers has not increased they cannot believe that any unusual amount of distress exists, and no steps can be taken to set on foot public works for the relief of those out of work. Will nothing short of riot and revolution convince these wooden-headed officials that, led on by Economists, falsely so called, they have so fenced in the distribution of relief that the workers find that death by starvation is preferable to life at such a cost? It is the cruelty of the poor-law which keeps down the returns of pauperism, not the lack of very real distress. In addition to this, many of those who are out of work have hitherto been living on their Trades Unions; but their funds are now rapidly diminishing, and as yet there is no prospect of a revival of trade-nay, rather, it is certain that the depression must become more crushing. Clearly the Trades Unions cannot support their members very much longer. What is to be done then? The authorities are incapable of taking initiative in this matter. They confess it themselves. It only remains for the unemployed themselves to point out how the difficulty, which is a crying shame to our civilisation, can be met and overcome. This we are glad to see they are about to do in London. The Social-Democratic Federation are undertaking the task of organising the unemployed in London, and have put forward proposals which it is for the Government to refuse or accept. They do not pretend that their proposals will solve the labour question-that can only be finally settled by full and complete socialisation of the means of production. But the present need is urgent, and there is no reason why, for instance, much-needed artisans' dwellings should not be erected at once on the many vacant plots of land in the metropolis. This would give employment to many. Why, again, should not the embankment of the south side of the Thames be undertaken ? To limit the labour day of Government servants to eight hours only would make room for the employment of many mechanics and unskilled labourers. Such are some of the practical proposals of the unemployed. The initial cost they propose should be borne in equal proportions by the State and by the ratepayers. Surely it is to the advantage of all, that citizens should be employed in work useful to the community, rather than in performing useless workhouse tasks. We have but very briefly sketched the demands of the unemployed, but full particulars can be obtained from the Secretary of the Federation, Palace Chambers, Westminster. The work they have undertaken is arduous and difficult, and for that reason we would urge. every one who has the interest of labour at heart to stretch out hands of help in this matter. Shall we be contented to stumble along and trust after the old blind fashions to things righting themselves, or is it not better to take hold of circumstances boldly and say, We are men, masters of our own fate, and we will bend circumstances to our will for the benefit of all who are ready to work! This is what Socialists are teaching the workers, and the most practical work which can be done is to get the unemployed in every industrial centre to make the same demands as their brothers in London. Who will help in the work? CORRESPONDENCE. To the Editor of the CHRISTIAN SOCIALIST. Sir, The Franchise and Redistribution Bills being passed, old political leaders like myself will be at liberty to turn their attention to matters social. I began my public life as a Chartist and Socialist. I ultimately sank my social views, in order to secure for myself and others Political Freedom. This I hold has now been fairly, if not fully, won. I was prompted to take the course indicated by a belief that it was better to appeal to political freemen than to political slaves. The success attained warrants the course followed by myself and others, the main points of the Charter having passed in. to law. It now remains to be seen whether the chief arguments used in our advocacy were founded in truth or error; in other words, the question now to be solved is, Will the newly enfranchised lend their power to rid themselves of Social Slavery? I have faith that they will; and, moreover, with a less divided attention, that the riddance will be more readily achieved than most persons imagine. Old Chartist leaders are dying off rapidly; still, I appeal to the few living now to lend their influence to the new gospel-or rather old gospel of Socialism. This is necessary in order to make their life-work perfect. As an old advocate of the rights of labour, I confess to be surprised that Mr. Samuel Smith should attempt to resuscitate old spectres in the shape of "rights of property,' ""revolution," &c. That dodge is too stale for repetition. Evidently that gentleman's Christianity is subordinated to his interests. Christ and his disciples said what they meant when their words bore no allusion to profitmongering; but Christ and his disciples were only funning when they declared that none should be allowed to starve while others had abundance ! Well done, Smith all this shows cleverness; but I am afraid, if your interpretation of Christianity be the right one, its converts from those who suffer social wrongs or starve in the midst of plenty will not be many. The curse of Christianity has been the selfishness of its professing believers. They never will admit that Christ drove money-changers out of the temple, earnestly denounced the selfish accumulation of wealth, and preached downright Socialism. In searching for texts for perversion, Mr. Smith must have fallen across a few-just a few-that should have convinced him that social community, not isolation, was the leading aim of Christianity.-Yours truly, JOHN BEDFOrd Leno, 13, Clare Court, W. C., Jan. Ist, 1885. |