Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



447 



THE WORLD OF WOMAN. 



CLAIMS OF LABOUR AND OF 

 WOMEN. 



In the September number of the Crusade Mrs. 

 Sidney Webb writes on the Autumn Campaign 

 of the National Committee for the Prevention 

 of Destitution. In the course of her article she 

 has some interesting remarks on the new 

 demands of Labour as set forth by the recent 

 strikes — demands which she likens to the claims 

 made by woman suffragists and by subject races. 



THE NEW ISSUE. 



The manual-working wage-earners, she 

 writes, are demanding better conditions of em- 

 ployment and also a larger share in the control 

 of industry and of their own working lives. The 

 strikes of the past year resemble the tumultuous 

 upheaval of Labour under the Owenite and 

 Chartist leaders of the past century. Though 

 the attempted general strikes of 1833 and 1842 

 failed at the time, the demands made by the 

 workers for a ten-hours' day for factory opera- 

 tives and an extended franchise had in the end 

 to be gr.inted. Broadly speaking, the Minority 

 Report was a plea for National Elliciency. The 

 new demand of Labour, however, cuts clean 

 across the issue of National Efficiency. Mrs. 

 Webb places it among the same range of issues 

 as the demand for Woman Suffrage, or the claim 

 of a subject race to Parliamentary institutions 

 and local autonomy. In the main the new de- 

 mands amount to this : — 



A passion.iie revolt against the status of serfdom ; a 

 semi-consLicius striving for the rise in personal dignity 

 and public consideration which comes from personal 

 independence; an insistent demand for participation in 

 the rule which has to be exercised over the common 

 work of production. 



PARTICIPATION IN CONTROL. 



But since independence and command over 

 industry cannot, in the modern capitalist State, 

 be exercised by each individual producer, the 

 workers must of necessity be governed by com- 

 mon rules. To these common rules, by whom, 

 soever made, all alike have to render obedience. 

 The qiri-stion therefore is how and by whom the 

 common rules shall be made. Wli.it the wage- 

 earners feel is that failure to participate in the 

 making of these rules amounts to failure to be 

 free. Mrs. Webb realises the difference of 

 plane lietween the aspirations of National Effi- 

 ciency .Tnd the demand for self-government. 

 She explains how vividly this difference was 

 brought before her and Mr. Webl) in India. 

 When they supgcstcf! further finvernment enter- 

 prise as a way of producing the additional 



income required for education, the Hindoo 

 Nationalists objected. " We do not want to 

 increase the functions of a Government over 

 which we have no control," they declared. 

 Similarly at home there is a corresponding 

 hesitation on the part of woman suffragists to 

 accept legislation from a Parliarrtent elected 

 exclusively by men. .Again, the manual workers 

 might well ask why they should be expected to 

 facilitate the increase of power of an industrial 

 organisation over which they have no control. 



Ft;LL CONSCIOUSNESS OF CONSENT ESSENTIAL. 



Speaking of the danger of hasty legislation, 

 Mrs. Webb notes that Compulsory Arbitration 

 has been rejected by the Trade Union Congresses, 

 and she thinks it was wise to do so. If such 

 legislation should be forced through Parliament 

 we may find that those who are primarily con- 

 cerned refuse to work it. .An Act to prevent 

 strikes, if unwisely drafted, might become an 

 Act to promote a general strike. Referring to 

 the Insurance Act, she points out that sickness 

 is, after all, an exceptional incident in the lives 

 of the bulk of the population, and that the 

 question of the ultimate control of the medical 

 service is insignificant compared with that of 

 ■ the control of industry. She writes : — 



A continued state of friction between the present direc- 

 tors of industry and those who do the manual work; a 

 refusal of the wage-earners to accept the decisions of 

 Courts of Arbitration to which they have never agreed ; 

 and a denial of the employers of all consultation with 

 the Trade I'nions, might easily lead to a state of 

 anarchy which would not only imperil our national 

 wealth, but might also result in a radical alteration in 

 the balance of power between different classes of the 

 community — in political reaction or in revolution. 



Mr. and Mrs. Webb propose to concentrate 

 their working energy on the problem of how to 

 combine, in the Control of Industry, Nation.il 

 Efficiency with that full "consciousness of 

 consent," which is Democracy. 



" England's Story in Portrait and Picture " 

 running through the Windsor reaches in the 

 October number the reign of George III. The 

 portraits given .ire of George 111. and his Queen, 

 of Captain Cook, the Earl of Ch.ith.im, William 

 Pitt the younger, Wellington, Nel.son, N.ipoleon. 

 There arc pictures of the Coronation of 

 George III., the Battle of Bunker's Hill, the 

 Signing of the Declaration of Independence, the 

 death of Chatham, the settlement of Sidney, the 

 r.'iising of the British fl.ig .it the Cape of Good 

 Hope, the n.iv.il battles of Camp<Tdown, the 

 Nile, Tr.ifalgar, and Dogger Bank ; as also of 

 the death of Nelson and the Battle of Waterloo. 



