Unemployment
reached a height which has never since been touched. Messrs. Hyndman,
Champion, Burns, and Williams were actually tried for sedition, but
happily acquitted; and public opinion was justified in regarding
Socialism rather as destructive and disorderly than as constructive,
and, as is now often said, even too favourable to repressive
legislation. In these commotions the Society as a whole took no part,
and its public activities were limited to a meeting at South Place
Chapel, on December 18th, 1885, addressed by Mrs. Besant.
In March, 1886, the Executive Committee was increased to seven by the
addition of Mrs. Besant and Frank Podmore, and in April Tract No. 4,
"What Socialism Is," was approved for publication. It begins with a
historical preface, touching on the Wars of the Roses, Tudor
confiscation of land, the enclosure of commons, the Industrial
Revolution, and so on. Surplus value and the tendency of wages to a
minimum are mentioned, and the valuable work of Trade
Unionism--sometimes regarded by Guild Socialists and others nowadays as
a recent discovery--is alluded to: indeed the modern syndicalist
doctrine was anticipated: the workman, it is said, "has been forced to
sell himself for a mess of pottage and is consequently deprived of the
guidance of his own life and the direction of his own labour." Socialist
opinion abroad, it says, "has taken shape in two distinct schools,
Collectivist and Anarchist.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66