litview of Kei-teirs, 20iS/06. 



The New House of Qcmmons. 



275 



6. Abolish the Pauper class: recognise henceforth 

 only fellow-citizen to be helped, or criminal to be 

 punished. Transform some Workhouses into places 

 of honourable retreat tor fellow-citizens in want, 

 others into Penal factories for those who can work 

 and won't. 



7. A system of Swift, Cheap, and Publicly-con- 

 trolled Locomotion, so as to spread out thin our city 

 populations over the surrounding country ; at the 

 same time laying out Garden Cities, or Model Vil- 

 lages, aisc under Popular Control, to iio.ise che out- 

 flowing multitude. 



8. Provision of Counter- Attraccio: s to the Public- 

 house by the Municipality and the Nation; greater 

 control by the neigtibourhood; Public-h uses closed 

 on Sundays and Polling Days, and closed earlier 

 every day. No more barmaids. 



9. Heavier penalties on illegal incitements to 

 Gambling; publication of betting odds made illegal. 



10. Taxation of Site Values ; greater facilities for 

 acquiring land by Municipalities. 



Whether you adopt the means we suggest, or not, 

 try in some way or other to carry out the Ten Plain 

 Duties. Let not the clamour of faction, or the hope 

 of Party gain, or mere laziness, make you unfaith- 

 ful to the commands of the Christ, or i:nmindful of 

 the least of His brethren. 



The majority of the Labour candidates were un- 

 aware of this new Decalogue. The average Labour 

 candidate formulated his demands somewhat as fol- 

 lows : — 



1. The restoration of the legal status enjoyed by the 



Trades Unious before the Taif Vale decision. 



2. Free Trade and no Protection. 



3. Amendment of the Compensation for Injuries Act. 



4. Amendment of the Education Act. 



5. Old Age Pensions. 



6. Taxation of ground values. 



7. The feedin? of starving scholars. 



8. Work for the unemployed. 



9. The nationalisation of everything that is practicable. 

 10. Adult man and woman suffrage. 



There are fifty-four members of the Labour 

 group, and over thirty of these are controlled by 

 the Labour Representation Committee, ihe latter 

 Ms.P. receive ^200 per annum each, raised by a 

 levy of a penny a year from the members of the 

 Trades Unions, which also defrays a portion of theit 

 election expenses. It is constituted by delegation 

 from the Trades Unions, the Independent Labour 

 Party, and some small Socialist bocJies. and has as 

 its Schnadhorst Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P. 

 for Leicester. 



Labour representation in Parliament was adopted 

 as a cardinal principle by the Trades Union Con- 

 gress as far back as 1869. It was not ill 1874 that 

 Tom Burt — now the Rt. Hon. Thoma.«; Burt — was 

 elected as the first workman M.P. He was joined 

 soon afterwards by Mr. Alex. Macdonald. another 

 miner ; but for a long time the movement languish- 

 ed. The Independent Labour Partv was forrre-' i--. 

 uSqt,. a few more working men had been elected, 



but they were almost without exceptio.i Liberals. 

 The National Committee of Organised Labour, 

 founded in 1898, to promote pensions for all in old 

 age, brought the Labour world to a new unity, and 

 made possible more definite collecti\e action. But 

 it was not until 1900 that the Labour Representation 

 Committee was formed, and this Election is the first 

 time that any serious attempt was made to secure 

 the return of a distinctively workman's party in the 

 House. The Committee started and financed fifty 

 members. Of these thirty have been returned. Be- 

 sides these there are two other groups to be reckoned 

 with. There are the miners, who are miners first, 

 labour men second, and Liberals third. Of these 

 there are about a dozen in tlie House, if we may 

 include Mr. Burt in the number, although he has 

 always been Liberal first, labour second, and miner 

 third. The third group is composed of men who are 

 Lib-Labs, who form an integral part of the Liberal 

 Party ; of these John Burns may be regarded as the 

 chief type and foremost representative. 



Taken as a whole. Labour members are a body 

 of men who will do credit t!o the House of Com'- 

 mons. The story of the lives of many of them 

 would make an epic of modem labour.' Most of 

 them began to earn their own living before they 

 were tivelve. Some started in the pit at eight. Two 

 of them were workhouse boys. ^lost of them were 

 very poor. Keir Hardie, the prophet seer of the 

 I.L.P., was seventeen before he learned to write 

 his name. He learned shorthand by scratching the 

 characters upon the sooted surface of a whitewashed 

 wall. ;Most of them have spent years in mine and 

 in factory. One, John Ward, was a navvy. Others 

 were -gas stokers, sailors, compositors. They are 

 men of true grit. They have been tested in the 

 furnace of adversity. Not for them were the soft 

 couches, the stately libraries, the lavishly-endowed 

 universities. Hunger and cold were their school- 

 masters, and their apprenticeship was over before 

 the sons of the well-to-do had left school. They 

 had to win the confidence of their fellows, and to 

 command the respect of their employers. They 

 are sober men. Many of them, like John Burns, 

 neither smoke nor touch intoxicating liquors. They 

 have learned the lesson of self-denial. They have 

 scorned delights and lived laborious days. Each 

 step on the upward path had to be won by 

 / sheer hard work. Some of them found their way 

 up by being pupil teachers, others became journal- 

 ists, the most of them by becoming the salaried 

 agents of their trades unions. But no one alleges 

 that any one of them has reached the top by any 

 shady means or tricky practices. Some of the so- 

 called Labour men, notably Mr. Snowden, have 

 never been bond fide workmen. Mr. Snowden \vas a 

 Civil ser\'ant. He became a Socialist, as Ignatius 

 Loyola became- a Jesuit, by being laid on a bed of 

 sickness long enough to give him time to think. 



