The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-09-13 00:00:00

"A U NIVE RSAL E MPIRE !"

Animadverting on the International Working Men's Con-
gress!, held Si Gottelll, The Timm has the folitming lender:—
The Internationalists have conceived the happy
thought of a universal Empire. They are far-eighte4
and content to be harbingers and precursors of this
mighty birth of time. They can only collect materials
and mature the deeign of a great Industrial Temple.
One or two of the Delegates at Geneva are naturally
impatient to see something in their time, and press the
question with • view to remits ; but the greater part
think that much has to be done first in the extenrion of
Trades' Unions and in giving them a national and an
international character. There are also several points
on which even the International does not yet see its
way. Who are to be members, and what the objects of
these Unions? Are head workers admissable ? Medical
men, lawyers, writers, possessors of capital in one
form or another, and a good many others that could be
named, work hard enough, but, as they live on the pro-
ceeds of other people's labour and professedly occupy
a distinct position over the great working class, they are
alien, and cannot be trusted. They are middlemen,
having a game of their own, and that not the people's.
On the other hand, there is the proletarian cless,—the
mere labourers, the slaves, beasts of burden—shadowe,
not men. How are these to be dealt with? The Con-
glees has decided that working men are to aim
eeforth at International Trade Societies, and
to make an active Socialist Propaganda; but
the Delegates confess • &Penh, in dealing with
the political &spent of the movement. They
cannot recommend Trades' Unions at once to avow a
Republican or a Revolutionary character. The world
I. not prepared far the avowal, and it might bring the
Unions into fruitless, not to say unpleasant, encounters
with existing systems. Industry is everywhere to
organise itself, to fraternise with other like organisa-
tions, to leap over political barriers, and to become a
universal confederation. A time may come when an
electric spark from Geneva, or Paris, or London itself,
may lay the whole world at the het of a Senate of
Working Men, redtme head work to its proper subser-
viency, and Wabash the Hands in the government of
the world.

No doubt all this promims • pleasant time for those
who come after nu and • very ancient prescription for-
bids us to doubt that the Members always will have
I their little quarrel with the Head, or whatever else is
to be considered the ruler of the system. But it is nothing
more than • simple kindness to our workpeople to
point out that • general Strike is just now as iujos
able • thing as • general rising against Governments, •
general division of property, or any other design for
instant and universal reconstruction. The Dele-
gates very truly observe that industry can do
nothing of this sort without complete organisation;
that in some countries there is no organisation at
all, while in others there are trades not yet organised,
and other trsdes only partially. The very conception
of a general Strike is one too hazy and flimsy to
picture itself in the liveliest imagination. What sort
of an operation is it to be? We suppose that all the
hands now at work are on a given signal to drou
I down idle, and all the works of industry are to
I be left to those who now usually work only with their
heads, and to such poor help as they may obtain from
familiar, friends, and ontaiders. There is to be no
difficulty in the shape of contracts or engagement.,
I for the International will by anticipation have annulled
such slarish forms. But if the vent bidy of all
races and nations thus on sudden Strike be indeed
numerous enough to oomprise all ranks of industry,
it, physical wants will be of proportionate extent,
and it will want the greater part of the available fa,d
and other necessary things in the world for its sub
sietence from one week to another. It will find itself
on one side of the social line, and all the capital, even
in the shape of bread and cheese, en the other aide.
By the time that day comes charity will have be mme a
very obsolete idea, even if it should then be a- passible
practice. Internationalists have not yet made up their
minds whom they will admit into industrial citizen.
ship, but it is plain they cannot afford to be as er.
clindve as they wall if they are to show • good
front in the day of need. Anyhow, they will moon
have to fight for it, and lay their hands on what they
can get without working or paying for it. But long
before things come to this pass the heads of the
world, forewarned and forearmed, will force the qua
tion to an early issue, and the industrial question will
be merged in a simple measuring of strength. Such,
indeed, is the great evil of these visionary, but
not less dangerous speculations. They not only
provoke, but they justify—indeed, they neesai.
tate— counter promations. While the Interns-
tiocalista of Berlin are despatching telegrams of
yapouring sympathy to Geneva, and protesting
against We exultation of the ruling classes over bloody
victories and annexations, they are in truth MM.
ing Power to stand on its guard, and to consolidate all
its elements of strength. They do this by proclaiming
a universal fraternisation for self-deliverance from
what the
_call the re-action and from the power of
capital. This is to announce an Intention of OM-

throwing all government, all property, and all rights,
except those hereafter to be crested by their own par.
tinnier class. This is nothing less than a declaration
of war, social in It. preteneions, but universal in its
range. They that &Mare war must expect resistance,
and it is not their own fault if they have not to pay
for the bravado.
and again has it been our outy to warn
calculators that trade, a hatever "
. . .

Again
too sanguine noan trade, a he,, the
matter of it, has no limits soort of the whole w.gid,
or a very large part of it. Not Po many years since we
bad to warn the agricultural class. ,f this country
that it would be f rued impossible to maintain an in.
terest founded on the exc!usion of foreign pro lace,
and contrary to universal laws. In other matters the
public hie repeatedly seen the many become too
strong for the few, and the whole beating the part.
This has been exemplified of late years preeminently
in the matter of labour itself. Labour is now as free
as the winds and the tides. It runs to and fro
wherever it hears a ; it everywhere takes up with
the most needed work; it learns and unlearns, and it
changes its wagon and condition, even faster than it
does its soil or its allegiance. Cigna now actually
'ways the labour market of our Australian Colonies,
and if the industry of the world sees as great revolu-
tions in the next thirty years as it has seen in the last,
the British race will count by millions its Chinese and
Japanese auxiliaries, not merely in one or two
branches of industry, but in all. Nearer home the
Continent pours an increasing swarm into this country
and into the United States, where, for the purpose
of competition, they are as well employed as they
would be in this metropolis. These are plain facts, and
expectations justified by facto. . . . But we are only
doings very sinagle duty when we call attention to the
fact that labour and skill are even more abundant,
more universal, more negotiable, and more movable
commodities than corn or cotton and tea. Labour can
move itself. It has legs, it has eyes it has hands,
and also everywhere some of that "head" which the
Internationalists appear to think the tyrant and the
curse of the world. Never before was labour found so
quick and subtle, so released from local ties and fixed
conditions as it is now. . . .