The copper era., 1906-04-19

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alive and often more radical than
the trades union members. Seventy
seven per cent. of Great Britain's
population is engaged in manufac-
tory, commerce, or in personal labor.
If some of these are of, or vote with,
the employing class, it will be more
than balanced by the agricultural
laborers who are beginning to vote
with the workmen of the town. No
wonder England's worshipers of
things as they are stand aghast at
the prospect of things as they will
be in England.
PARTY'S ACHIEVEMENT.
Be it remembered, too, that cir
cumstances make fifty labor men in
Parliament vastly more significant
than eighty Social Democrats in the
German Reichstag or lis Socialists
of various types in the French Cham
Der of Deputies. The fifty labor men
in Parliament are but the beginning
of movement which must move in
creasingly fast. The growth of Ger
man and French Socialist votes must
move increasingly slow. The reason
is that in every country except Eng
land there is a large, unprogressiye
agricultural vote, which Socialism
finds it difficult to capture. In Ger
many 81 per cent. of the population
are engaged in agriculture or fisher
les; in France, A per cent; in the
United Kingdom it is only Is per
cent. This means that English work.
solidified as perhaps in no country in
the world. The English workingman
is growing class-conscious beyond any
metaphysics of German Marxism.
1t is English capitalism, vested inter-
ests, and a more concentrated land
monopoly than i'll any country of the
world that is producing this result.
The "Bitter Cry" of London, of
Newcastle, of Lancashire, of York,
is more bitter than in any country
where labor has learned to have any
voice at all. It is England's aris-
tocracy that is driving English work.
ing men into Parliament as their last
resource.
But these labor men will know how
to get what they want. They have
had, the most of them, life train
ing and a personal evolution almost
startling in what it reveals of per-
sonal power and intensity of pur-
pose. To-day they sit in the most
coveted seats in England, from which
they have ousted, most of them, sons
of peers or inheritors of millions.
They have done it, too, by hard per-
sonal work. 1t is doubtful if in the
whole number there is one who owes
his success to any accident of birth
or favor of social position. They
are. of necessity picked men, the
pick of English workingmen, picked
by their own efforts and strong with
the strength begotten of success.
Most of them have labored long at
their respective crafts. They know
the situation. They have thus been
chosen, almost all of them, as lead
ers or Woodworking secretaries of
their trades unions. They have or
ganized strikes and conducted agita-
tions. They have presided over
labor congresses and served on in
Vulnerable committees. Very many
of them have had legislative ex-
perience on county councils, or as
aldermen in city halls. Often they
1 have met with employers as equals
on arbitration boards or as repre-
sentatives of the employees. These
men will not be turned from their
purpose by Liberal attorney or Con-
sentative Primrose Leagues. They
are not all Socialists. Very few Of
them are doctrinaire Socialists. But
almost to a man they will favor con-
structive, step-by-step, evolutionary
Socialist measures. They will all
move in one direction, and usually
together. In demanding public own
ership, at least of municipal natural
monopolies, in voting for the state
employment of the unemployed, for
radical land reform, for old-age pen
sions, trades union legislation, educa-
tional reform, they will vote as one
man. And many not of their party
will vote with them. For most meas
ures the 81 Irish Nationalist votes
can be counted. Similarly England's
labor men almost unitedly will favor
Home Rule for Ireland. 1t is little
wonder that astute English observers
predict that in two years local Par
liaments, friendly to England's Par
Lament, will sit in Dublin and Edin-
burgh. The only question is how
long England's House of Peers will
continue to sit. Thus far the willy
Peers have been able to defy
slightly diyided Liberal and Con-
sentative House of Commons. 1t
will be another thing with united
House of Commons accustomed to
pushing loaded coal trucks and to
driving wheels of steel. There will
be erected on the Thames embank-
ment no guillotine presided over by
Il