who will keep their poor bodies from starving? It is, therefore, a very hopeful sign that only last year men rose up and struck for what the papers called no reason at all. For in this state of ours things have come to such a pass that not only is a man regarded as having no right to say how and under what conditions he shall work during working hours, but the discipline exercised during work is being gradually extended to cover his activities when not working, lest he shall use them to the detriment of his master's (or owner's) business. Thus, to take one of many instances, it was recently reported the "magistrates at Rhyl had decided that two o'clock in the morning is far too late an hour for shop assistants to dance." For shop assistants, mark-mere workers! Who can imagine magistrates at Rhyl deciding that two o'clock in the morning was far too late an hour for city counsellors to dance or for stock-brokers to play cards? Why not? Because they do not come within the category of mere workers whose chief care ought to be to keep efficient for their master's business. The category of people who are so regarded embraces all whom the wage-system governs, and its limits can now be traced almost geographically.

Such, then, in brief are the main features of the economic scheme under which we live. And it has also been shown that so unjust a disposition of wealth cannot remain without making its influence felt in our social arrangements and bringing these at length to conform to the same plan. The proletariate state necessarily pro

1 1 Quoted from the "Evening News" by the "New Age".

duced the wage-system, and, while the wage-system persists, civic equality, and consequently political and legal equality, are as necessarily excluded. When one man has at his arbitrary disposal the economic fortunes of many men, no scheme or polity of any kind will secure the simultaneous redress of that inequality in any of the other spheres of life-civic, political, social or legal.

There is one inherent disadvantage which besets all attempts to review matters that are of our own age. For living contemporaneously with and being part of that order of things which we would estimate, we are unable to rise far enough above it to be able to see all its parts in their proper place and magnitude. So that it must happen that to many things of great proximity we are blind, neglecting them because of their obviousness; others we miss because of their distance; others, again, we misconceive, not seeing how they bear to one another. It is, therefore, very important to secure a proper correction of this disadvantage, and to that end there is no better means than that of historical compariFor by observing the motion of events we can in a measure obtain a truer idea of the different elements in their proportions and disposition, and also of the shiftings of them in the procession of the years.

son.

If, then, present analysis shows the havoc of the proletariate system, we may well look back a little way to discover whether the ills it causes now are new and increasing, or whether we are at the end of them and can look forward to better days.

Though there is a plain need for such a complete historical review as will either confirm or upset the

conclusions of a present analysis, it is not necessary in this matter to go back more than half a century to discover whether the real development has been towards the enlargement or the restriction of the proletariate system. For the movement which had as its conscious object the overthrow of that system did not begin to be widespread and permanent till about the seventies. And such a period of time in modern history is sufficient to lay bare the permanent tendency of any movement.

Bearing in mind, then, that our test is the measure and degree by which the existence of the proletariate state has been affected, the proper questions to be answered can, therefore, be set down as follows:

1. Does the average man possess a greater or a less economic resource, as against that of his master, in 1912 than in, say, 1880?

2. Compared with the increase in the population, is the proportion of men working under proletariate conditions greater or less in 1912 than it was in 1880?

3. Do the Unions possess a greater or a less economic reserve of property, as against the owners, in 1912 than in 1880 ?

4. Does the capitalist exercise a more stringent or a less stringent control over the lives and activities of his men in 1912 than in 1880?

5. Are the capitalists more united (both actually and by understandings) or less united as against the unity of the workers' Unions in 1912 than in 1880?

6. Is the power of the capitalist over the money-market, over political policies, and over the party organisations

greater in 1912 than in 1880? (In this case we do not make any mention of the workers, for though the capitalist's influence over their bodies certainly affects them, yet they themselves never had and do not now possess any real power or influence on these three things or on any one of them.)

7. Has there or has there not been a gradual speeding up in all industries so that in 1912 the ordinary worker must turn out considerably more work in an hour than in 1880?

8. Are the instincts and traditions of the capitalist more national or less national to-day than formerly?

The reader can answer all these questions for himself; and he can answer them in only one way. These questions all touch on points which go to the root of the proletariate system of industry, and the answers to them invariably point to the growth and strengthening of that system and to consequent enlargement of the rights, powers, and position of the owners.

Yet this period, which has resulted so disastrously for the workers in point of general advantage, is the very period during which 'democratic' reform gained the day. The Reform Act, which first conferred the suffrage on the working classes, and included (as Bagehot observes) even the unskilled labourer, was passed in 1867. Three years later there was an Act conferring the gift of popular education; while the franchise was further extended in 1884. And, in addition to this, Local Govern

ment Acts have provided extensive rights of local suffrage in every county of the Kingdom.

By all the formal tests, then, of democratic progress a very large measure of power had been conferred upon the people. And those who hoped to rectify the economic balance against the workers saw in this extension of the suffrage the weapon by which it might be accomplished. The superior voting artillery of an enfranchised proletariate was to batter down the walls of economic privilege and of economic power.

But nothing happened.

As for the democratic formulæ, there is hardly a particular in which they have not been carried out. There has been almost a complete concession of political rights; almost a complete recognition of the political status of the workers. But no one can point to any change in their economic condition which does not in reality amount to an aggravation of it.

The thing that strikes one first in this general failure of the reformers is the manner of it. For the failure cannot be traced to any burking of their policy, but exists despite the success of that policy. There was thus some element in the situation which they miscalculated or did not see at all; an element of such importance that it could divert the democratic policy from its professed and proper object and lead it blindly astray. This thing was the real nature and foundation of the power of the ruling classes, together with an incapacity among reformers to see the line these would take in the defence of such power.

Let the reader now consider, first, the deliberate and