Being anxious to catch even the faintest streak of dawn in the dreary political sky, we _do_ look to the great parties. I have been looking to them for quite twenty years. And nothing has come of it.
What _can_ come of it? What are the "practical" reforms about which we hear so much?
Putting the broadest construction upon them, it may be said that the practical politics of both parties are within the lines of the following programme:--
1. Manhood Suffrage.
2. Payment of Members of Parliament.
3. Payment of Election Expenses.
4. The Second Ballot.
5. Abolition of Dual Voting.
6. Disestablishment of the Church.
7. Abolition of the House of Lords.
And it is alleged by large numbers of people, all of them, for some inexplicable reason, proud of their hard common sense, that the passing of this programme into law would, in some manner yet to be expounded, make miserable England into merry England, and silence the visionaries and agitators for ever.
Now, with all deference and in all humility, I say to these practical politicians that the above programme, if it became law to-morrow, would not, for any practical purpose, be worth the paper it was printed on.
There are seven items, and not one of them would produce the smallest effect upon the mass of misery and injustice which is now crushing the life out of this nation.
No. All those planks are political planks, and they all amount to the same thing--the shifting of political power from the classes to the masses. The idea being that when the people have the political power they will use it to their own advantage.
A false idea. The people would not know _how_ to use the power, and if they did know how to use it, it by no means follows that they would use it.
Some of the _real_ evils of the time, the real causes of England's distress, are:--
1. The unjust monopoly of the land.
2. The unjust extortion of interest.
3. The universal system of suicidal competition.
4. The baseness of popular ideals.
5. The disorganisation of the forces for the production of wealth.
6. The unjust distribution of wealth.
7. The confusions and contradictions of the moral ethics of the nation, with resultant unjust laws and unfair conditions of life.
There I will stop. Against the seven remedies I will put seven evils, and I say that not one of the remedies can cure any one of the evils.
The seven remedies will give increased political power to the people.
So. But, assuming that political power is the one thing needful, I say the people have it now.
Supposing the masses in Manchester were determined to return to Parliament ten working men. They have an immense preponderance of votes.
They could carry the day at every poll? But _do_ they? If not, why not?
Then, as to expenses. Assuming the cost to be 200 a member, that would make a gross sum of 2000 for ten members, which sum would not amount to quite fivepence a head for 100,000 voters. But do voters find this money? If not, why not?
Then, as to maintenance. Allowing each member 200 a year, that would mean another fivepence a year for the 100,000 men. So that it is not too much to say that, without passing one of the Acts in the seven-branched programme, the workers of Manchester could, at a cost of less than one penny a month per man, return and maintain ten working men Members of Parliament?
Now, my practical friends, how many working-class members sit for Manchester to-day?
And if the people, having so much power now, make no use of it, why are we to assume that all they need is a little more power to make them healthy, and wealthy, and wise?
But allow me to offer a still more striking example--the example of America.
In the first place, I assume that in America the electoral power of the people is much greater than it is here. I will give one or two examples.
In America, I understand, they have:--
1. No Established Church.
2. No House of Lords.
3. Members of the Legislature are paid.
4. The people have Universal Suffrage.
There are four out of the seven branches of the practical politicians'
programme in actual existence. For the other three--
The Abolition of Dual Voting; The Payment of Election Expenses; and The Second Ballot--
I cannot answer; but these do not seem to have done quite as much for France as our practical men expect them to do for England.
Very well, America has nearly all that our practical politicians promise us. Is America, therefore, so much better off as to justify us in accepting the seven-branched programme as salvation?
Some years ago I read a book called _How the Other Half Lives_, written by an American citizen, and dealing with the conditions of the poor in New York.
We should probably be justified in assuming that just as London is a somewhat intensified epitome of England, so is New York of America; but we will not assume that much. We will look at this book together, and we will select a few facts as to the state of the people in New York, and then I will ask you to consider this proposition:--
1. That in New York the people already enjoy all the advantages of practical politics, as understood in England.
2. That, nevertheless, New York is a more miserable and vicious city than London.
3. That this seems to me to indicate that practical politics are hopeless, and that practical politicians are--not quite so wise as they imagine.
About thirty years ago there was a committee appointed in New York to investigate the "great increase in crime." The Secretary of the New York Prison Association, giving evidence, said:--
Eighty per cent. at least of the crimes against property and against the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost connection with home life or never had any, or whose homes have ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to afford what are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and family.
The younger criminals seem to come almost exclusively from the worst tenement-house districts.
These tenements, it seems, are slums. Of the evil of these places, of the miseries of them, we shall hear more presently. Our author, Mr.
Jacob A. Riis, asserts again and again that the slums make the disease, the crime, and the wretchedness of New York:--
In the tenements all the influences make for evil, because they are the hot-beds that carry death to rich and poor alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime, that fill our gaols and police-courts; that throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out, in the last eight years, a round half-million of beggars to prey upon our charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps, with all that that implies; because, above all, they touch the family life with moral contagion.