POVERTY NOT A NECESSITY 35 



The People's Erkoii 



But the people must recognise their responsibilities, and 

 accept them iu a frank, manly manner. They must realise 

 that they are responsible for the present highly unsatisfactory 

 condition the country is in owing to their wrong mandate of 

 " lang syne," and then repair their error by giving a right one. 

 The People claim to possess the chief electoral power in the 

 country, and so they do. Good ! Let them exercise it. This 

 power was wrongly exercised in the days of Bright, Cobden, 

 and that fervid band of manufacturer-reformers who persuaded 

 the people to adopt certain fiscal and other measures which 

 particularly favoured their own industries, and which are 

 responsible for the present unenviable state of affairs. Let 

 them now exercise that same power in directions that will 

 relieve the intolerable strain and give their fellow-countrymen 

 prosperity and peace. This can be done, and easily done, if that 

 vast section of the electorate body which is widespread among 

 the masses of the people of this country could but be made to 

 see it. The power is in their hands if they choose to exercise 

 it. Then let that other vast section of the body electoral to 

 be found in the great middle-classes do the rest. They and the 

 working-class section form between them practically all the 

 elective power in this country ; but any one who takes 

 the trouble to study the attitude assumed by these puissant 

 bodies will find that their power is potential rather than 

 active. 



Dissipation of Working-class Electoral Power 



The working-class sections dissipate a good deal of their 

 power in organising strikes, fighting capital, brooding over 

 what they are pleased to term class-tyranny, siding with 

 those who foment political agitation and social unrest, and in 

 doing much that is foolish and unprofitable, instead of devoting 

 the great political power, which they undoubtedly possess, in 

 righting that which is wrong in the economic conditions of the 

 country. Unless they are prepared to do this, all the invectives 

 and fierce denunciations of this, that, and the other which tlie 

 more revolutionary sections of the great working-class electoral 

 body love to indulge in will not help them or relieve the 

 situation one whit. Their great trades unions offer ample 

 evidence of their splendid organising powers once their indi- 

 vidual interests are touched; let them, then, exercise tliat 



