12 
LAND ic WATER 
October 25, 1917 
is a statue to celebrate riclden's services to the cause of the 
Ten Hours Bill erected' bv the workpeople of ],ancashire. 
Nobodv thinks now that Fielden's exertions were injurious to 
the manufacturing interest in its competition with (lermany 
and I'rance. Let us keep this example in mind in consider- 
ing tlie case for a further reform to-daw and let us beware of 
allowing a nightmare to frighten us from the path of humanity. 
There are mauv manufacturers who are quite ready for such 
a reform of the iiidustrv as will secure decent opportunities 
to the bovs and girls engaged in it : tliere are many workpeople 
bolder than the Colloit Fuclory Tiiin's. for a working class 
educational association in I.^ncashirc has petitioned Mr. 
I'isher to iminove his I^ill and to provide not eight liours a 
week but half the week for books and games. It is not a con- 
flict between the friends of education and the manufacturing 
community ; it is a conflict between two views, two sets of 
principles, and the two views do not follow any such strict 
lines of demarcation. 
There is one important difference between our situation to- 
dav and the situation of our grandfathers. At that time 
there was a prevalent belief, inspired originally by the general 
interpretation of the teaching of Malthus, that our danger 
was over-population. The wars of Napoleon wcie not 
destructive of lift' in these islands on any large scale. The 
population of liiigland and Wales increased by over 40 per 
cent, between i/go and 1811. The reasoning of the age was 
governed bv this obsession, this dread that there would soon be 
more mouths than food. At this moment almost all Europe 
is suffering under the greatest calamity that can befall the 
race : the extinction of its youth. Death is striking at all 
that is best, most vigorous, most full of life and energy for the 
futui"e of the nation. 
War's Ravages 
No man can measure the ravages of the war. It is as if 
another Black Death had visited Europe, sparing the old 
and the weak, and singling out the young and the robust. 
Let there be no mistake about the price that is paid. Conceal 
and disguise it as they may, the boys who return from the 
front, with a new seriousness and a certain haunted look in 
their eyes have lost for ever something of the atmosphere of 
youth. And this i)remature loss of the spirit of youth is 
inflicted by the nation on itself every time that it buries a 
boy and girl in the industrial system, taking them away from 
all "the natural and buoyant conditions of life that are essential 
to their growth. 
This then is the question befoie the race to-day. Are we 
going to give the youth of to-morrow the opportunity of 
.developing their minds and their bodies, of growing into 
strong healthy and happy men and women , or are we going to 
say that some law of economic predestination has assigned 
all this population to a special fate, the fate of serving industry 
to the eternal loss of their own faculties ? Let any man or 
woman think of the question as affecting his own child. Let 
him read Sir (ieorge Newman's report as if the million of 
children whose lives are wasted from bad conditions of living 
were not the children of the people whom he never sees, but 
the children of himself and his friends. Let him. ask himsell 
whether he would be satisfied if his boy instead of spending 
his time from 14 to 18 at school with long hours in the open 
.air, games and friendships was swept away into the factory 
or the mine for the livelong day, turned into a rivetter's boy 
or a bobbin boy or a van boy, or a messenger boy, working 
long hours with scarcely any recreation, as if neither his mind 
nor his body needed education or the nourishment of games 
and rest and air. How many parents in the comfortable 
classes would hesitate about their choice ? But if their own 
minds are made up in the case of their own children, they are 
^ clearly satished that if you are considering only the good of the 
child, his prospect of mental and bodily growth, the future of 
his health and happiness, it is much better that a boy should 
go on being educated after 14, and that he should play games 
and develop his muscles and his limbs. 
Now the nation should look upon everv child in this con- 
nection in the spirit in which the parent looks on his own child. 
For the nation as a whole it makes an infinite difference w^hether 
the men and women of the future are well-educated and 
developed, In this sense the nation of to-day has in its hands 
the making of the nation of to-morrow. All the nations start 
. with the havoc caused by the war and any " forward looking 
man " considering what his nation will be like fifty years 
hence will do to-day what a doctor implored our grand- 
fathers to do in the early years of the factory system and con- 
sult " vital " rather than " political " economy as the canon of 
wisdom. What a different }X'(jple we should have to-day. 
How difl'erent our towns, our industries, our homes, and our 
healths — if our grandfathers had listened to him ! 
Some will say that this is all \ery plausible but that to 
pro\idc that c\ery boy and girl shall have half his or her time 
for education and games up to 18 means an immense soc'al 
revolution in which industry will" suffer and poor parents will 
sufter. The answer surely is that the war has brought a 
revolution, and that even if we leave the law exactly as it is, 
industry has to adapt itself to new conditions. There have 
been \ast changes in the structure and details of industrijil 
work during these three years. Who would have supp<3sed 
three years ago that our industries could carry on at all with 
five millions of men withdrawn from productive work" 
Are we to be told that they will be peinwnently crippled if 
the bo\-s and girls available between the ages of 14 and iS 
are reduced by oue-Jialf .•' 
Every industry will have to take stock of its new positicm 
at the end of the war. If new difficulties have aris(!^n, new 
sources of power and energy have been discovered. Many 
boys and girls are doing work that must be done, but ncjbocly 
supposes that a great industry like the cotton industry will 
pull down the blinds because it has fewer boys and girls to 
employ. The effect will be, of course, to introduce another 
element into the problem of reorganisation. If there are fewer 
\-oung tenters, and young piercers, the industry will have 
to pay better wages to grown-up workpeople. All industry 
suffers from the employment of boys and girls on a great 
scale, because wages are depressed and men and women arc; 
driven into other occupations. The boy w ho becomes a full- 
time wage earner before he has half grown up, will give place 
thirty or fortv years hence to another generation of victims 
of the custom" that is robbing him to-day of his right to the 
full development, of his mind and body. Partly the problem 
will be solved by the introduction of machinery such as mec- 
hanical " doffers." 
So far as the work w hich is being 4one by young boys and 
girls is necessary- work, it will be done in part by boys and 
girls (for a half-time boy of 16 would be often more productive 
thanawhole time boy of 16), partly by grown-up men, partly 
by disabled soldiers, and women, partly by machinery, and 
the effect, of course, will be to add enormously to the indus- 
trial power of the nation, for education and health are sovran 
elements of strength. 
But a great deal of the work done by these boys and guls 
is not necessary to industry : the selling of papers, the running 
of errands, many and other miscellaneous occupations which 
absorb boys and girls for a few years of We and then throw 
them on to the world without experience or training of any 
value. Still, it will be said, these boys are helping to keep a 
roof over manv a widow's head. What are you going To d(j 
with the homes which depend on their earnings ? It would 
be infinitely better to subsidise directly e\ery person who has 
to depend on the earnings of those children than to allow 
this process to continue indefinitely, and to keep generation 
after generation in this vicious circle. These children will not 
cease to earn ; it is even doubtful whether their earnings w ill 
be much reduced. Their parents suffer. They must be 
compensated, but in time of course the earnings of the parents 
will rise in consequence. Moreover, it is (;oniing more and 
mfjre to be recognised that the li\ing wage must mean a wage 
that makes a man independent of his children's earnings. In 
this, as in many cases, the bold policy is the safest. 
Mr. Fisher would do well tt) follow" his own inclinations 
as an educationalist and to allot to education mure than 
till' mere eight hours a week for which he asks in the Bill. 
Flight hours will not go far if they are to include.games, camp 
life, physical training, as well as education in the narrower 
sense of the terni. Let him ask the nation to make a great 
bid for the power that belongs to a society which de\-elops its 
highest resouTces. for the happiness that men and women can 
obtain, the strength of the body and the pleasures of the 
mind. The Go\ernment ha\'e announced that they cannot 
find time for Mr. Fisher's Bill this session. This will not be 
an unqualified misfortune if advantage is taken of the delay 
to continue the process of educating the country and also to 
improve the Bill. It is quite possiiple that to provide for 
half-time at first perhaps to i() and then to 18 would be less 
of an interference with industry than taking merely eight 
hours a week. 
All the tendencies of the age point to a new and 
nobler conception of industrial life in which a greater and 
more responsible space will fall to the men and women who 
are now tcjo often merely part of a great machine. An 
educated industrial democracy will provide the energy and 
ixjwer that are needed to give" to such associations their hope 
of success. For the moment certain industries will have to 
suffer the incon\'enience and the trouble of revising their 
arrangements, but is that too great a demand to make of them ? 
Let Hi supiwse that these boys and girls were wanted for the 
army, that the defence of the nation depended absoluteh" on 
tlieii" being withdrawn from employment for half the day, 
would the nation hesitate ? Neither" then ought it to hesitate 
when the need is not the defence of its shores but the defence 
of its future- 
