ists tried to win over the trade-unionists to their own pet projects, and so, too, did the manufacturers. The more skillful trades, however, pursued their own way with such evident advantage to themselves that soon they set the standard for the other trades to follow, and the trade-unionists became absorbed so wholly in furthering their own especial ends that they speedily lost sight of their broader sympathies and duty. Quite opposite in fundamentals were the ideals of Robert Owen and his followers. To them no compromise was possible; they understood beyond the peradventure of a doubt the diagnosis of all human woes and, what is more, they knew the cure, so positive, so sweet, convincing that society of its own accord would quickly be won over without necessity of friction or of hardship. They realized well enough the inhumanities and horrors that inevitably followed in the wake of crude and rigid competition; they criticized with logic sound and true the broader meanings and significance of laissez-faire, and then, with all the rosy hopes, ingenuous optimisms that characterized so well their celebrated founder, jumped far to opposite extremes, plunged headlong into untried ventures, and rubbed their eyes with childlike wonderment when face to face with proven failure. The early history of English socialism is not easy to unravel, so interwoven is it with the curious quirks of circumstance and character that were part and parcel of Robert Owen's public life. That broad-souled Welshman, by the very force and magnetism of his personality, drew the socialistic movement into such various directions that to generalize upon the aims and measures of the Owenites is a task beset with difficulties. Their propaganda permeated for a time trade-unionism, and for a season captured it; their orators were friendly with that strange clique of atheists who thought primarily to regenerate mankind by undermining and destroying organized religion; their missionaries hobnobbed with the Chartists and sought with considerable measure of success to win them from their political mirage; for Robert Owen and his disciples never sought to crystallize their message of salvation within the limits of a party platform. Their fundamental creed, indeed, was simple the character of all men depends upon environment, and that environment alone is healthy where private property, private interests and ambitions exist no longer. But the creed is one thing, the application yet another; for by three distinct and separate methods Robert Owen sought to demonstrate the worth and substance of his gospel. The first of these was by founding industrial societies upon a communistic basis, or, as he put it, "villages of cooperation and industry"; and such was the persuasive earnestness of this leader that capital and lands and friends came quickly. At Orbiston in Scotland, New Harmony in Indiana, at Manea Fen and Queenswood in England they were started, flourished for a season, and then failed. * * The second method, organically less pretentious, aimed to unite all British workmen on a broad and common basis. Owen's organization to accomplish this, the "Grand National Consolidated TradesUnion," grew with great rapidity; a half million members were enrolled. "The London Operative Cabinet Makers," "The Ploughman's Union," of distant Perthshire, Leicester hosiers, the workers in all trades and occupations here were welcome. The enthusiasm of Owen, prophet, founder, organizer, was boundless. The change, he said, "shall come upon society like a thief in the night. It is intended that national arrangements shall be found to include all workingmen in the great organization * that all individual competition shall cease, that all manufactores are to be carried on by national companies;" for under this system of Owen's, so similar in aim to modern syndicalism, the instruments of production were to become not the property of the whole community, but of the particular set of workers who used them. But Owen's proposals in this second instance never met with a fair trial. The Government, thoroughly alarmed, believed, as did Sir Robert Peel, that the "Grand National" must be suppressed; and armed with their favorite weapon, then, as almost always, the judiciary, they swiftly came to the attack. The "Grand National," new, untried, with empty treasury, bent before the storm, and less than one year after its inception fell to pieces. And finally the Owenites endeavored, by the labor exchange, to revolutionize economic distribution. Ignoring altogether, like Carl Marx, the reality and significance of economic rent, they thought "all exchange value could be measured in terms of labor time alone.” All wealth proceeds from labor, said Robert Owen, and consequently let us have depots where anyone may exchange the goods which he produces for labor notes; with these he may buy goods which others deposit at the labor exchange, and so receive the exact value of the labor time expended. And this idea, so simple, met with extensive approbation. The exchanges started; in London they were so much approved that labor notes were taken freely by theaters and shops in lieu of ready cash. Again the sanguine Owenites saw in the near future the millennial days, the downfall of all specie currency, justice triumphant. But the exchanges, unsuccessful, closed their doors. Except for the modest endeavors of the Rochdale Pioneers, the English socialism of the early nineteenth century was a failure. The socialists reasoned logically enough, but not with thoroughness. The truths that they were sure of were halfway truths alone; environment determines human character, but not altogether so; in dividualism also in personal habits, life, and thought is, or should be, sacred. But this they did not fathom; and finally they erred most signally in attacking religious sanctions-which above all things are tabooed. They did not have the wit to see that many things will die a natural death if left alone, but if handled roughly, violently assailed, become more powerful than before. When in the forties the Bishop of Exeter began his holy war against the lovable and simple Owen the death knell sounded for the latter's propaganda. For him who seeks in history the picturesque and the dramatic, legitimately analyzing the personalities and characters of noted heroes, statesmen, the social history of the nineteenth century affords tales of heroism, suffering, bravery, as startling as ever Motley painted of the siege of Haarlem. The story of the seven Dorsetshire laborers vies in vividness with the coronation of Queen Victoria. The hardships and calamities the Rev. J. R. Stephens faced in wandering penniless and alone upon the Yorkshire heath, a counselor of violence to the Chartists, are full as worthy of description as is the curious composition of "The Ministry of all the Talents." But the true historian ever seeks for more than the dramatic, for the obligation which is his of demonstrating the direct utility of his history for the needs of his own generation never can be laid aside. His work must bear directly on the causes that have brought about the complexities of the society in which he lives. Surely, if this is so, the attitude of organized Christianity toward the child-labor agitation of Richard Oastler has more pragmatic value than debates upon the divorce of George IV. When Oastler, maddened to fury by the indifference of the clergy, cried out, "Where are the ministers of Jesus? With a few honorable exceptions, they, like the priests of old, pass by on the other side," we understand to some extent the attitude of the English working class toward the church. Certainly this is as noteworthy as any limitations upon the prerogative of the crown that may have accrued from the amours of the first gentleman in Europe. The Bed-Chamber Question in the early reign of Queen Victoria is not without genuine constitutional significance; but he who would understand the decay, both moral and physical, in the very fiber of the English working classes should study Dr. Kay's report of 1842 on the Manchester operatives. The source material for our social history is almost inexhaustible. The blue books of the nineteenth century, as yet but faintly tapped by the general historian, are full to overflowing with the most exact and scientific data. And beyond these lies the newspaper. The columns of the Leeds Mercury alone portray with an unique clearness the rifts within the nation. Certainly no one is more typical of the English manufacturer than Edward Baines, its editor, whom Cobbett dubbed "the great white liar of the north." His Yorkshire daily fairly teems with most enlightening controversial matter. To appreciate in full Macaulay's stand in politics in 1832 one must delve into the columns of the Mercury, see there Macaulay's other side, the evils of the Whiggism inherent in the man, class conscious, obdurate. These provincial journals tell to him who scans them sympathetically the story of the nation in a way that makes us wonder at the written history of nineteenth-century England, composed so largely as it is from diplomatic correspondence, parliamentary debates, statesmen's memoirs. Because of this one-sided research, the point of view of even Spencer Walpole is sadly warped and narrowed, as may readily be seen by his treatment of poor Wooler, the editor of that naïve labor weekly, The Black Dwarf. Not, indeed, until the historian includes within his narrative, in broadest knowledge and fullest sympathy, the aims and aspirations of every social stratum is his labor well proportioned and truly catholic. |