68 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



Dissipation of Valuable Political Power 



The British people have nil the political power necessary to 

 ensure work for all as well as national 'prosiierity, but they have 

 hitherto regarded that power so lightly as to hand it over to 

 a host of tricky politicians who have utterly wasted it in the 

 senseless strife of party warfare, instead of conserving and 

 using it for the public good. 



A more forcible illustration of this fact could not possibly 

 be found than in the Keport of this self-constituted Commission 

 of working-men — 



" As regards the ivorkhouse, we ham in vain looked for one ; and 

 in very deed the ' House'' jd ays no great role in these ;?«/•/.§," said this 

 small band of working-men who travelled through many parts of the 

 German Empire with their eyes very widely open to evidences of 

 poverty and unemployment. 



" Widespread, pinching poverty, in the worst sense of the icord, does 

 not exist under the present conditions of the tadour market^ * 



" llie question of the unemployed does not exist here.''^ f 



" We could, however, see no trace of want. There is no lack of 

 employment, and all the ivorks here are fully occupied.'''' X 



Indeed, the Eeport shows that there is in Germany no such 

 poverty as we know it ; no workhouses as we have them, 

 scattered over the length and breadth of the land ; no such un- 

 employment as we have it, causing demonstrations, discontent, 

 political unrest, loss to the commonwealth, and standing forth 

 as a menace to the peace of the nation : and yet all this is easily 

 avoidable, as the evidence of the times conclusively proves. 



" Poverty and pauperism, my dear sir," say some people, 

 " are the necessary outcome of human life, and there's no use 

 trying to get away from the fact." 



Then, in regard to the land, they say, " Everybody knows 

 that agriculture doesn't pay, and you'll be an uncommonly 

 clever man if you can make people believe otherwise." 



" Do you mean to tell me, if there is money in the land, 

 that it wouldn't have been worked for all it's worth Ions a^o, 

 or that Government wouldn't have made the mcist of it ? " 



" Don't you believe it, my dear fellov/. Agriculture's as 

 dead as a kippered herring, and, take my word for it, there's 

 nothing in it." 



* " Life and Labour in Germany," Report III. pp. 23, 24. 

 t Ibid., p. 29. 

 i Ibid., p. 31. 



