Chapter 17: How the Change Came
Dick broke the
silence at last, saying: "Guest, forgive us for a little after-dinner
dulness. What would you like to do? Shall we have out Greylocks and
[Page 120]
trot back to Hammersmith? or will you come
with us and hear some Welsh folk sing in a hall close by here? or would
you like presently to come with me into the City and see some really fine
building? or -- what shall it be?"
"Well,"
said I as I am a stranger, I must let you choose for me."
In point of fact, I did not by any means want to
be "amused" just then; and also I rather felt as if the old man, with his
knowledge of past times, and even a kind of inverted sympathy for them
caused by his active hatred of them, was as it were a blanket for me
against the cold of this very new world, where I was, so to say, stripped
bare of every habitual thought and way of acting; and I did not want to
leave him too soon. He came to my rescue at once, and said:
"Wait a bit, Dick; there is some one else to be
consulted besides you and the guest here, and that is I. I am not going
to lose the pleasure of his company just now, especially since I know
he has something else to ask me. So go to your Welshmen, by all means;
but first bring us another bottle of wine to this nook, and then be off
as soon as you like; and come again and fetch our friend to go westward,
but not too soon."
Dick nodded smilingly, and
the old man and I were soon alone in the great hall, the afternoon sun
was gleaming on the red wine in our tall quaint-shaped glasses. Then said
Hammond:
"Does anything especially puzzle you
about our way of living, now you have heard a good deal and seen a little
of it?"
Said I: "I think what puzzles me most
is how it all came about."
"It well may,"
said he, so great as the change is. It would be difficult indeed to tell
you the whole
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story, perhaps impossible:
knowledge, discontent, treachery, disappointment, ruin, misery, despair
-- those who worked for the change because they could see further than
other people went through all these phases of suffering; and doubtless
all the time the most of men looked on, not knowing what was doing,
thinking it all a matter of course, like the rising and setting of the
sun -- and indeed it was so."
"Tell me one
thing, if you can," said I. Did the change, the `revolution' it used to
be called, come peacefully?"
"Peacefully?"
said he; what peace was there amongst those poor confused
wretches of the nineteenth century? It was war from beginning to end:
bitter war, till hope and pleasure put an end to it."
"Do you mean actual fighting with weapons?" said
I, "or the strikes and lock-outs and starvation of which we have
heard?"
"Both, both," he said. As a matter of
fact, the history of the terrible period of transition from commercial
slavery to freedom may thus be summarised. When the hope of realising a
communal condition of life for all men arose, quite late in the
nineteenth century, the power of the middle classes, the then tyrants of
society, was so enormous and crushing, that to almost all men, even those
who had, you may say despite themselves, despite their reason and
judgement, conceived such hopes, it seemed a dream. So much was this the
case that some of those more enlightened men who were then called
Socialists, although they well knew, and even stated in public, that the
only reasonable condition of Society was that of pure Communism (such as
you now see around you), yet shrunk from what seemed to them the barren
task of preaching the realism of a happy dream. Looking back now, we can
see that
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the great motive-power of the
change was a longing for freedom and equality, akin if you please to the
unreasonable passion of a lover; a sickness of heart that rejected with
loathing the aimless solitary life of the well-educated men of that time:
phrases, my dear friend, which have lost their meaning to us of the
present day; so far removed we are from the dreadful facts which they
represent."
"Well, these men, though conscious
of this feeling, had no faith in it, as a means of bringing about the
change. Nor was that wonderful: for looking around them they saw the huge
mass of the oppressed classes too much burdened with the misery of their
lives, and too much overwhelmed by the selfishness of misery to be able
to form a conception of any escape from it except by the ordinary way
prescribed by the system of slavery under which they lived; which was
nothing more than a remote chance of climbing out of the oppressed into
the oppressing class."
"Therefore, though they
knew that the only reasonable aim for those who would better the world
was a condition of equality; in their impatience and despair they managed
to convince themselves that if they could by hook or by crook get the
machinery of production and the management of property so altered that
the `lower classes'(so the horrible word ran) might have their slavery
somewhat ameliorated, they would be ready to fit into this machinery, and
would use it for bettering their condition still more and still more,
until at last the result would be a practical equality (they were very
fond of using the word `practical'), because `the rich' would be forced
to pay so much for keeping `the poor' in a tolerable condition that the
condition of riches would become no longer valuable and would gradually
die out. Do you follow me?"
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"Partly," said I. Go on.
Said old Hammond: "Well, since you follow me, you
will see that as a theory this was not altogether unreasonable; but
`practically', it turned out a failure."
"How
so?" said I.
"Well, don't you see," said he,
because it involved the making of a machinery by those who didn't know
what they wanted the machines to do. So far as the masses of the
oppressed class furthered this scheme of improvement, they did it to get
themselves improved slave-rations -- as many of them as could. And if
those classes had really been incapable of being touched by that instinct
which produced the passion for freedom and equality aforesaid, what would
have happened, I think, would have been this: that a certain part of the
working classes
would have been so far improved in condition that they would have
approached the condition of the middling rich men; but below them would
have been a great class of most miserable slaves, whose slavery would
have been far more hopeless than the older class-slavery had been."
"What stood in the way of this?" said I.
"Why, of course," said he, just that instinct for
freedom aforesaid. it is true that the slave-class could not conceive the
happiness of a free life. Yet they grew to understand (and very speedily
too) that they were oppressed by their masters, and they assumed, you see
how justly, that they could do without them, though perhaps they scarce
knew how; so that it came to this that though they could not look forward
to the happiness or peace of the freeman, they did at least look
forward to the war which a vague hope told them would bring that peace
about."
"Could you tell me rather more closely
what
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actually took place?" said I; for I
thought him rather vague here.
"Yes, he said," I can. That machinery of life for
the use of people who didn't know what they wanted of it, and which was
known at the time as State Socialism, was partly put in motion, though in
a very piecemeal way. But it did not work smoothly; it was, of course,
resisted at every turn by the capitalists; and no wonder, for it tended
more and more to upset the commercial system I have told you of, without
providing anything really effective in its place. The result was growing
confusion, great suffering amongst the working classes, and, as a
consequence, great discontent. For a long time matters went on like this.
The power of the upper classes had lessened, as their command over wealth
lessened, and they could not carry things wholly by the high hand as they
had been used to in earlier days. So far the State Socialists were
justified by the result. On the other hand, the working classes were
ill-organised, and growing poorer in reality, in spite of the gains (also
real in the long run) which they had forced from the masters. Thus
matters hung in the balance; the masters could not reduce their slaves to
complete subjection, though they put down some feeble and partial riots
easily enough. The workers forced their masters to grant them
ameliorations, real or imaginary, of their condition, but could not force
freedom from them. At last came a great crash. To explain this you must
understand that very great progress had been made amongst the workers,
though as before said but little in the direction of improved
livelihood."
I played the innocent and said:
"In what direction could they improve if not in livelihood?"
Said he: "In the power to bring about a state of
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things in which livelihood would be full,
and easy to gain. They had at last le
arned how to combine after a long period of mistakes and disasters. The
workmen had now a regular organisation in the struggle against their
masters, a struggle which for more than half a century had been accepted
as an inevitable part of the conditions of the modern system of labour
and production. This combination had now taken the form of a federation
of all or almost all the recognised wage-paid employments, and it was by
its means that those betterments of the condition of the workmen had been
forced from the masters: and though they were not seldom mixed up with
the rioting that happened, especially in the earlier days of their
organisation, it by no means formed an essential part of their tactics;
indeed at the time I am now speaking of they had got to be so strong that
most commonly the mere threat of a `strike' was enough to gain any minor
point: because they had given up the foolish tactics of the ancient
trades unions of calling out of work a part only of the workers of such
and such an industry, and supporting them while out of work on the labour
of those that remained in. By this time they had a biggish fund of money
for the support of strikes, and could stop a certain industry altogether
for a time if they so determined."
Said I:
"Was there not a serious danger of such moneys being misused -- of
jobbery in fact?"
Old Hammond wriggled
uneasily on his seat, and said:
"Though all
this happened so long ago, I still feel the pain of mere shame when I
have to tell you that it was more than a danger: that such rascality
often happened; indeed more than once the whole combination seemed
dropping to pieces because of it: but at the time of which I am telling,
things
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looked so threatening, and to the
workmen at least the necessity of their dealing with the fast-gathering
trouble which the labour-struggle had brought about, was so clear, that
the conditions of the times had begot a deep seriousness amongst all
reasonable people; a determination which put aside all non-essentials,
and which to thinking men was ominous of the swiftly-approaching change:
such an element was too dangerous for mere traitors and self-seekers,
and one by one they were thrust out and mostly joined the declared
reactionaries."
"How about those
ameliorations," said I; what were they? or rather of what nature?"
Said he: "Some of them, and these of the most
practical importance to the men's livelihood, were yielded by the masters
by direct compulsion on the part of the men; the new conditions of
labour so gained were indeed only customary, enforced by no law: but,
once established, the masters durst not attempt to withdraw them in face
of the growing power of the combined workers. Some again were steps on
the path of `State Socialism'; the most important of which can be
speedily summed up. At the end of the nineteenth century the cry arose
for compelling the masters to employ their men a less number of hours in
the day: this cry gathered volume quickly, and the masters had to yield
to it. But it was, of course, clear that unless this meant a higher
price for the work per hour, it would be a nullity, and that the masters,
unless forced, would reduce it to that. Therefore after a long struggle
another law was passed fixing a minimum price for labour in the most
important industries; which again had to be supplemented by a law fixing
the maximum price on the chief wares then considered necessary for a
workman's life."
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"You were getting perilously near to the late
Roman poor-rates," said I, smiling, "and the doling out of bread to the
proletariat."
"So many said at the time," said
the old man drily; "and it has long been a commonplace that that slough
awaits State Socialism in
the end, if it gets to the end, which as you know it did not with us.
However, it went further than this minimum and maximum business, which by
the bye we can now see was necessary. The government now found it
imperative on them to meet the outcry of the master class at the
approaching destruction of commerce (as desirable, had they known it, as
the extinction of the cholera, which has since happily taken place). And
they were forced to meet it by a measure hostile to the masters, the
establishment of government factories for the production of necessary
wares, and markets for their sale. These measures taken altogether did do
something: they were in fact of the nature of regulations made by the
commander of a beleaguered city. But of course to the privileged classes
it seemed as if the end of the world were come when such laws were
enacted."
"Nor was that altogether without a
warrant: the spread of communistic theories and the partial practice of
State Socialism had at first disturbed, and at last almost paralysed the
marvellous system of commerce under which the old world had lived so
feverishly, and had produced for some few a life of gambler's pleasure,
and for many, or most, a life of mere misery: over and over again came
`bad times' as they were called, and indeed they were bad enough for the
wage-slaves. The year 1952 was one of the worst of these times; the
workmen suffered dreadfully: the partial, inefficient government
factories, which were terribly jobbed, all but broke down, and a vast
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part of the population had for the time
being to be fed on undisguised `charity' as it was called."
"The Combined Workers watched the situation with
mingled hope and anxiety. They had already formulated their general
demands; but now by a solemn and universal vote of the whole of their
federated societies, they insisted on the first step being taken toward
carrying out their demands: this step would have led directly to handing
over the management of the whole natural resources of the country,
together with the machinery for using them into the power of the Combined
Workers, and the reduction of the privileged classes into the position of
pensioners obviously dependent on the pleasure of the workers. The
`Resolution', as it was called, which was widely published in the
newspapers of the day was in fact a declaration of war, and was so
accepted by the master class. They began henceforward to prepare for a
firm stand against the `brutal and ferocious communism of the day', as
they phrased it. And as they were in many ways still very powerful, or
seemed to be, they still hoped by means of brute force to regain some of
what they had lost, and perhaps in the end the whole of it. It was said
amongst them on all hands that it had been a great mistake of the various
governments not to have resisted sooner; and the liberals and radicals
(the name as perhaps you may know of the more democratically inclined
part of the ruling classes) were much blamed for having led the world to
this pass by their mis-timed pedantry and foolish sentimentality: and one
Gladstone, or Gledstein (probably, judging by this name, of Scandinavian
descent), a notable politician of the nineteenth century, was especially
singled out for reprobation in this respect. I need scarcely point out to
you the absurdity of all this. But terrible tragedy lay hidden
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behind this grinning through a horse-collar
of the reactionary party. `The insatiable greed of the lower classes must
be repressed' -- `The people must be taught a lesson' -- these were the
sacramental phrases current amongst the reactionists, and ominous enough
they were."
The old man stopped to look keenly
at my attentive and wondering face, and then said:
"I know, dear guest, that I have been using words
and phrases which
few people amongst us could understand without long and laborious
explanation; and not even then perhaps. But since you have not yet gone
to sleep, and since I am speaking to you as to a being from another
planet, I may venture to ask you if you have followed me thus far?"
"O yes," said I, I quite understand: pray go on; a
great deal of what you have been saying was common-place with us -- when
-- when -- "
"Yes," said he gravely, when you
were dwelling in the other planet. Well, now for the crash aforesaid."
"On some comparatively trifling occasion a great
meeting was summoned by the workmen leaders to meet in Trafalgar Square
(about the right to meet in which place there had for years and years
been bickering). The civic bourgeois guard (called the police) attacked
the said meeting with bludgeons, according to their custom; many people
were hurt in the mêlée, of whom five in all died,
either trampled to death on the spot, or from the effects of their
cudgeling; the meeting was scattered, and some hundreds of prisoners cast
into gaol. A similar meeting had been treated in the same way a few days
before at a place called Manchester, which has now disappeared. Thus the
`lesson' began. The whole country was thrown into a ferment by this;
meetings were held which attempted some rough organisation for the
holding of another
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meeting to retort on the
authorities. A huge crowd assembled in Trafalgar Square and the
neighborhood (then a place of crowded streets), and was too big for the
bludgeon-armed police to cope with; there was a good deal of dry-blow
fighting; three or four of the people were killed, and half a score of
policemen were crushed to death in the throng, and the rest got away as
they could. This was a victory for the people as far as it went. The next
day all London (remember what it was in those days) was in a state of
turmoil. Many of the rich fled into the country; the executive got
together soldiery, but did not dare to use them; and the police could not
be massed in any one place, because riots or threats of riots were
everywhere. But in Manchester, where the people were not so courageous or
not so desperate as in London, several of the popular leaders were
arrested. In London a convention of leaders was got together from the
Federation of Combined Workmen, and sat under the old revolutionary name
of the Committee of Public Safety; but as they had no drilled and armed
body of men to direct, they attempted no aggressive measures, but only
placarded the walls with somewhat vague appeals to the workmen not to
allow themselves to be trampled upon. However, they called a meeting on
Trafalgar Square for the day fortnight of the last-mentioned skirmish."
"Meantime the town grew no quieter, and business
came pretty much to an end. The newspapers -- then, as always hitherto,
almost entirely in the hands of the masters -- clamored to the Government
for repressive measures; the rich citizens were enrolled as an extra body
of police, and armed with bludgeons like them; many of these were strong,
well-fed, full-blooded young men, and had plenty of stomach for fighting;
but the Government did not dare to use
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them, and contented itself with getting full powers voted to it by the
Parliament for suppressing any revolt, and bringing up more and more
soldiers to London. Thus passed the week after the great meeting; almost
as large a one was held on the Sunday, which went off peaceably on the
whole, as no opposition to it was offered, and again the people cried
`victory'. But on the Monday the people woke up to find that they were
hungry. During the last few days there had been groups of men parading
the streets asking (or, if you please, demanding) money to buy food; and
what for goodwill, what for fear, the
richer people gave them a good deal. The authorities of the parishes also
(I haven't time to explain that phrase at present) gave willy-nilly what
provisions they could to wandering people; and the Government, by means
of its feeble national workshops, also fed a good number of half-starved
folk. But in addition to this, several bakers' shops and other provision
stores had been emptied without a great deal of disturbance. So far, so
good. But on the Monday in question the Committee of Public Safety, on
the one hand afraid of general unorganised pillage, and on the other
emboldened by the wavering conduct of the authorities, sent a deputation
provided with carts and all necessary gear to clear out two or three big
provision stores in the centre of town, leaving papers with the shop
managers promising to pay the price of them: and also in the part of the
town where they were strongest they took possession of several bakers'
shops and set men at work in them for the benefit of the people; -- all
of which was done with little or no disturbance, the police assisting in
keeping order at the sack of the stores, as they would have done at a big
fire."
"But at this last stroke, the
reactionaries were so alarmed, that they were determined to force the
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executive into action. The newspapers next
day all blazed into the fury of frightened people, and threatened the
people, the Government, and everybody they could think of, unless `order
were at once restored'. A deputation of leading commercial people waited
on the Government and told them that if they did not at once arrest the
Committee of Public Safety, they themselves would gather a body of men,
arm them, and fall on `the incendiaries', as they called them."
"They, together with a number of the newspaper
editors, had a long interview with the heads of the Government and two or
three military men, the deftest in their art that the country could
furnish. The deputation came away from that interview, says a
contemporary eye-witness, smiling and satisfied, and said no more about
raising an anti-popular army, but that afternoon left London with their
families for their country seats or elsewhere."
"The next morning the government proclaimed a
state of siege in London, -- a thing common enough amongst the absolutist
governments on the Continent, but unheard of in England in those days.
They appointed the youngest and cleverest of their generals to command
the proclaimed district; a man who had won a certain sort of reputation
in the disgraceful wars in which the country had been long engaged from
time to time. The newspapers were in ecstacies, and all the most fervent
of the reactionaries now came to the front; men who in ordinary times
were forced to keep their opinions to themselves or their immediate
circle; but who began to look forward to crushing once for all the
Socialist, and even the democratic tendencies, which, said they had been
treated with such foolish indulgence for the last sixty years.
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"But the clever
general took no visible action; and yet only a few of the minor
newspapers abused him; thoughtful men gathered from this that a plot was
hatching. As for the Committee of Public Safety, whatever they thought of
their position, they had now gone too far to draw back; and many of them,
it seems, thought the Government would not act. They went on quietly
organising their food supply, which was a miserable driplet when all is
said; and also as a retort to the state of siege, they armed as many men
as they could in the quarter where they were strongest, but did not
attempt to drill or organise them, thinking, perhaps, that they could not
at best turn them into trained soldiers till they had some breathing
space. The clever general, his soldiers, and the police did not meddle
with all this
in the least in the world; and things were quieter in London that
week-end; though there were riots in many places of the provinces, which
were quelled by the authorities without much trouble. The most serious
of these were at Glasgow and Bristol.
"Well,
the Sunday of the meeting came, and great crowds came to Trafalgar Square
in procession, the greater part of the Committee amongst them, surrounded
by their band of men armed somehow or other. The streets were quite
peaceful and quiet, though there were many spectators to see the
procession pass. Trafalgar Square had no body of police in it; the people
took quiet possession of it, and the meeting began. The armed men stood
round the principal platform, and there were a few others armed amidst
the general crowd; but by far the greater part were unarmed.
"Most people thought the meeting would go off
peaceably; but the members of the Committee had
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134]
heard from various quarters that something would be
attempted against them; but these rumors were vague, and they had no idea
what threatened. They soon found out."
"For
before the streets about the square were filled, a body of soldiers
poured into it from the north-west corner and took up their places by the
houses that stood on the west side. The people growled at the sight of
the red-coats; the armed men of the Committee stood undecided, not
knowing what to do; and indeed this new influx so jammed the crowd
together that, unorganised as they were, they had little chance of
working through it. They had scarcely grasped the fact of their enemies
being there, when another column of soldiers, pouring out of the streets
which led into the great southern road going down to Parliament House
(still existing, and called the Dung Market), and also from the
embankment by the side of the Thames, marched up, pushing the crowd into
a denser and denser mass, and formed along the south side of the Square.
Then any of those who could see what was going on, knew at once that they
were in a trap, and could only wonder what would be done with them."
"The closely-packed crowd would not or could not
budge, except under the influence of the height of terror, which was soon
to be supplied to them. A few of the armed men struggled to the front,
or climbed up to the base of the monument which then stood there, that
they might face the wall of hidden fire before them; and to most men
(there were many women amongst them) it seemed as if the end of the world
had come, and to-day seemed strangely different from yesterday. No sooner
were the soldiers drawn up aforesaid than, says an eye-witness, `a
glittering officer on horseback came prancing out
[Page
135]
from the ranks on the south, and read something from a
paper which he held in his hand; which something, very few heard; but I
was told afterwards that it was an order for us to disperse, and a
warning that he had a legal right to fire on the crowd else, and that he
would do so. The crowd took it as a challenge of some sort, and a hoarse
threatening roar went up from them; and after that there was comparative
silence for a little, till the officer had got back into the ranks. I was
near the edge of the crowd, towards the soldiers,' says this eye-witness,
`and I saw three little machines being wheeled out in front of the
ranks, which I knew for mechanical guns. I cried out, "Throw yourselves
down! they are going to fire!" But no one scarcely could throw himself
down, so tight as the crowds were packed, I heard a sharp order given,
and wondered where I should be the next minute; and then -- It was as if
the earth had opened, and hell had come up bodily amidst us. It is no use
trying to describe the scene that followed. Deep lanes were mowed amidst
the thick crowd; the dead and dying covered the ground, and the shrieks
and
wails and cries of horror filled all the air, till it seemed as if there
was nothing else in the world but murder and death. Those of our armed
men who were still unhurt cheered wildly and opened a scattering fire on
the soldiers. One or two soldiers fell; and I saw the officers going up
and down the ranks urging the men to fire again; but they received the
orders in sullen silence, and let the butts of their guns fall. Only one
sergeant ran to a machine-gun and began to set it going; but a tall young
man, an officer too, ran out of the ranks and dragged him back by the
collar; and the soldiers stood there motionless while the horror-stricken
crowd, nearly wholly unarmed (for most of the armed
[Page
136]
men had fallen in that first discharge), drifted out of
the Square. I was told afterwards that the soldiers on the west side had
fired also, and done their part of the slaughter. How I got out of the
Square I scarcely know; I went, not feeling the ground under me, what
with rage and terror and despair."
"So says
our eye-witness. the number of the slain on the side of the people in
that shooting during a minute was prodigious; but it was not easy to come
at the truth about it; it was probably between one and two thousand. Of
the soldiers, six were killed outright, and a dozen wounded."
I listened, trembling with excitement. The old
man's eyes glittered and his face flushed as he spoke, and told the tale
of what I had often thought might happen. Yet I wondered that he should
have got so elated about a mere massacre, and I said:
"How fearful! And I suppose that this massacre put
an end to the whole revolution for that time?"
"No, no," cried old Hammond; it began it!
He filled his glass and mine, and stood up and
cried out, "Drink this glass to the memory of those who died there, for
indeed it would be a long tale to tell how much we owe them."
I drank, and he sat down and went on.
"That massacre of Trafalgar Square began the civil
war, though, like all such events, it gathered head slowly, and people
scarcely knew what a crisis they were acting in."
"Terrible as the massacre was, and hideous and
overpowering as the first terror had been, when the people had time to
think about it, their feeling was one of anger rather than fear;
although the military organisation of the state of siege was now carried
out without shrinking by the clever young general. For though the
ruling-classes when the news spread
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next
morning felt one gasp of horror and even dread, yet the Government and
their immediate backers felt that now the wine was drawn and must be
drunk. However, even the most reactionary of the capitalist papers, with
two exceptions, stunned by the tremendous news, simply gave an account of
what had taken place, without making any comment upon it. The exceptions
were one, a so-called `liberal' paper (the Government of the day was of
that complexion), which, after a preamble in which it declared its
undeviating sympathy with the cause of labor, proceeded to point out that
in times of revolutionary disturbance it behooved the government to be
just but firm, and that by far the most merciful way of dealing with the
poor madmen who were attacking the very foundations of society (which had
made them mad and poor) was to shoot them at once, so as to stop others
from drifting into a position in which they would run a chance of being
shot. In short, it praised the determined action of the Government as the
acmé of human wisdom and mercy, and exulted in the
inauguration of an epoch of reasonable democracy free from the tyrannical
fads of Socialism."
"The other exception was a
paper thought to be one of the
most violent opponents of democracy, and so it was; but the editor of
it found his manhood, and spoke for himself and not for his paper. In a
few simple, indignant words he asked people to consider what a society
was worth which had to be defended by the massacre of unarmed citizens,
and called on the Government to withdraw their state of siege and put the
general and his officers who fired on the people on their trial for
murder. He went further, and declared that whatever his opinion might be
as to the doctrine of the Socialists, he for one
[Page
138]
should throw in his lot with the people, until the
Government atoned for their atrocity by showing that they were prepared
to listen to the demands of men who knew what they wanted, and whom the
decrepitude of society forced into pushing their demands in some way or
other."
"Of course, this editor was
immediately arrested by the military power; but his bold words were
already in the hands of the public, and produced a great effect: so great
an effect that the Government, after some vacillation, withdrew the state
of siege; though at the same time it strengthened the military
organisation and made it more stringent. Three of the Committee for
Public Safety had been slain in Trafalgar Square: of the rest, the
greater part went back to their old place of meeting, and there awaited
the event calmly. They were arrested there on the Monday morning, and
would have been shot at once by the general, who was a mere military
machine, if the Government had not shrunk before the responsibility of
killing men without any trial. There was at first a talk of trying them
by a special commission of judges, as it was called -- i.e.,
before a set of men bound to find them guilty and whose business it was
to do so. But with the Government the cold fit had succeeded to the hot
one; and the prisoners were brought before a jury at the assizes. There a
fresh blow awaited the Government; for in spite of the judge's charge,
which distinctly instructed the jury to find the prisoners guilty, they
were acquitted, and the jury added to their verdict a presentment, in
which they condemned the action of the soldiery, in the queer phraseology
of the day, as `rash, unfortunate, and unnecessary'. The Committee of
Public Safety renewed its sittings, and from thence-forth was a popular
rallying-point in opposition to the
[Page 139]
Parliament. The Government now gave way on all sides, and made a show of
yielding to the demands of the people, though there was a widespread plot
for effecting a coup d'état set on foot between the
leaders of the two so-called opposing parties in the parliamentary
faction fight. The well-meaning part of the public was overjoyed, and
thought that all danger of a civil war was over. The victory of the
people was celebrated by huge meetings held in the parks and elsewhere,
in memory of the victims of the
massacre."
"But the measures passed for the
relief of the workers, though to the upper classes they seemed ruinously
revolutionary, were not thorough enough to give the people food and a
decent life and they had to be supplemented by unwritten enactments
without legality to back them. although the Government and Parliament had
the law-courts, the army, and `society' at their backs, the Committee of
Public Safety began to be a force in the country, and really represented
the producing classes. It began to improve immensely in the days which
followed on the acquittal of its members. Its old members had little
administrative capacity, though with the exception of a few self-seekers
and traitors, they were honest, courageous men, and many of them were
endowed with considerable talent of other kinds. But now that the times
called for immediate action, came forward the men capable of setting it
on foot; and a new network of workmen's associations grew up very
speedily, whose avowed single object was the tiding over of the ship of
the community into a simple condition of Communism; and as they
practically undertook also the management of the ordinary labour-war,
they soon became the mouthpiece and intermediary of the whole of the
working classes;
[Page 140]
and the manufacturing
profit-grinders now found themnselves powerless before this combination;
unless their committee, Parliament, plucked up courage to
begin the civil war again, and to shoot right and left, they were bound
to yield to the demands of the men whom they employed, and pay higher and
higher wages for shorter and shorter day's work. Yet one ally they had,
and that was the rapidly approaching breakdown of the whole system
founded on the World-Market and its supply; which now became so clear to
all people, that the middle classes, shocked for the moment into
condemnation of the Government for the great massacre, turned round
nearly in a mass, and called on the Government to look to matters, and
put an end to the tyranny of the Socialist leaders."
"Thus stimulated, the reactionist plot exploded
probably before it was ripe; but this time the people and their leaders
were forewarned, and, before the reactionaries could get under way, had
taken the steps they thought necessary."
"The
Liberal Government (clearly by collusion) was beaten by the
Conservatives, though the latter were nominally much in the minority. The
popular representatives in the House understood pretty well what this
meant, and after an attempt to fight the matter out by divisions in the
House of Commons, they made a protest, left the House, and came in a body
to the Committee of Public Safety: and the civil war began again in good
earnest."
"Yet its first act was not one of
mere fighting. The new Tory Government determined to act, yet durst not
re-enact the state of siege, but it sent a body of soldiers and police to
arrest the Committee of Public Safety in the lump. They made no
resistance, though they might have done so, as they had now a
considerable body of men who were quite prepared
[Page
141]
for extremities. But they were determined to try first a
weapon which they thought stronger than street fighting."
"The members of the Committee went off quietly to
prison; but they had left their soul and their organisation behind them.
For they depended not on a carefully arranged centre with all kinds of
checks and counter-checks about it, but on a huge mass of people in
thorough sympathy with the movement, bound together by a great number of
small centres with very simple instructions. These instructions were now
carried out."
"The next morning, when the
leaders of the reaction were chuckling at the effect which the report in
the newspapers of their stroke would
have upon the public -- no newspapers appeared; and it was only towards
noon that a few straggling sheets, about the size of the gazettes of the
seventeenth century, worked by policemen, soldiers, managers, and
press-writers, were dribbled through the streets. They were greedily
seized on and read; but by this time the serious part of their news was
stale, and people did not need to be told that the GENERAL STRIKE had
begun. The railways did not run, the telegraph-wires were unserved;
flesh, fish, and green stuff brought to market was allowed to lie there
still packed and perishing; the thousands of middle-class families, who
were utterly dependent for the next meal on the workers, made frantic
efforts through their more energetic members to cater for the needs of
the day, and amongst those of them who could throw off the fear of what
was to follow, there was, I am told, a certain enjoyment of this
unexpected picnic -- a forecast of the days to come, in which all labour
grew pleasant."
"So passed the first day, and
towards evening the Government grew quite distracted. They had but
[Page 142]
one resource for putting down any popular
movement -- to wit, mere brute-force; but there was nothing for them
against which to use their army and police: no armed bodies appeared in
the streets; the offices of the Federated Workmen were now, in
appearance, at least, turned into places for the relief of people thrown
out of work and under the circumstances, they durst not arrest the men
engaged in such business, all the more, as even that night many quite
respectable people applied at these offices for relief, and swallowed
down the charity of the revolutionists along with their supper. So the
Government massed soldiers and police here and there -- and sat still for
that night, fully expecting on the morrow some manifesto from the
`rebels', as they now began to be called which would give them an
opportunity of acting in some way or another. They were disappointed. The
ordinary newspapers gave up the struggle that morning, and only one very
violent reactionary paper (called the Daily Telegraph)
attempted an appearance, and rated `the rebels' in good set terms for
their folly and ingratitude in tearing out the bowels of their `common
mother', the English Nation, for the benefit of a few greedy paid
agitators, and the fools whom they were deluding. On the other hand, the
Socialist papers (of which three only, representing somewhat different
schools, were published in London) came out full to the throat of
well-printed matter. They were greedily bought by the whole public who,
of course, like the Government, expected a manifesto in them. But they
found no word of reference to the great subject. It seemed as if their
editors had ransacked their drawers for articles which would have been in
place forty years before, under the technical name of educational
articles. Most of these were admirable and straightforward expositions of
the
[Page 143]
doctrines and practice of Socialism,
free from haste and spite and hard words, and came upon the public with a
kind of May-day freshness, amidst the worry and terror of the moment; and
though the knowing well understood that the meaning of this move in the
game was mere defiance, and a token of irreconcilable hostility to the
then rulers of society, and though, also, they were meant for nothing
else by `the rebels', yet they really had their effect as `educational
articles'. However, `education' of another kind was acting upon the
public with irresistible power, and probably cleared their heads a
little."
" As to the Government, they were
absolutely terrified by this act of `boycotting'(the slang word then
current for such acts of abstention). Their counsels became wild and
vacillating to the last degree: one hour they were for giving way for the
present till they could
hatch another plot; the next they all but sent an order for the arrest in
the lump of all the workmen's committees; the next they were on the point
of ordering their brisk young general to take any excuse that offered for
another massacre. But when they called to mind that the soldiery in that
`Battle' of Trafalgar Square were so daunted by the slaughter which they
had made, that they could not be got to fire a second volley, they
shrank back again from the dreadful courage necessary for carrying out
another massacre. Meantime, the prisoners, brought the second time before
the magistrates under a strong escort of soldiers, were the second time
remanded."
"The strike went on this day also.
The workmen's committees were extended and gave relief to great numbers
of people, for they had organised a considerable amount of production of
food by men whom they could depend upon. Quite a number of well-to-do
people were now compelled to seek relief of them.
[Page
144]
But another curious thing happened: a band of young men
of the upper classes armed themselves and coolly went marauding in the
streets, taking what suited them of such eatables and portables that they
came across in the shops which had ventured to open. This operation
they carried out in Oxford Street, then a great street of shops of all
kinds. The Government, being at that hour in one of their yielding moods,
thought this a fine opportunity for showing their impartiality in the
maintenance of `order' and sent to arrest these hungry rich youths; who,
however, surprised the police by a valiant resistance, so that all but
three escaped. The Government did not gain the reputation for
impartiality which they expected from this move; for they forgot that
there were no evening papers; and the account of the skirmish spread wide
indeed but in a distorted form; for it was mostly told simply as an
exploit of the starving people from the East-end; and everybody thought
it was but natural for the Government to put them down when and where
they could."
"That evening the rebel prisoners
were visited in their cells by very polite and sympathetic
persons, who pointed out to them what a suicidal course they were
following, and how dangerous these extreme courses were for the popular
cause. Says one of the prisoners: `It was great sport comparing notes
when we came out anent the attempt of the Government to "get at" us
separately in prison, and how we answered the blandishments of the highly
"intelligent and refined" persons set on to pump us. One laughed; another
told extravagant long-bow stories to the envoy; a third held a sulky
silence; a fourth damned the polite spy and bade him hold his jaw -- and
that was all they got out of us."
"So passed
the second day of the great strike. It
[Page 145]
was
clear to all thinking people that the third day would bring on the
crisis; for the present suspense and ill-concealed terror was
unendurable. The ruling classes and the middle-class non-politicians who
had been their real strength and support, were as sheep lacking a
shepherd; they literally did not know what to do."
"One thing they found they had to do: try to get
the `rebels' to do something. So the next morning, the morning of the
third day of the strike, when the members of the Committee for Public
Safety appeared again before the magistrate, they found themselves
treated with the greatest possible courtesy -- in fact, rather as envoys
and ambassadors than prisoners. In short, the magistrate had received his
orders; and with no more to do than might come of a long stupid speech,
which might have been written by Dickens in mockery, he discharged the
prisoners, who went back to their meeting-place and at once began a due
sitting. It was high time. For this third day the mass was fermenting
indeed.
There was, of course, a vast number of working people who were not
organised in the least in the world; men who had been used to act as
their masters drove them, or rather as the system drove, of which their
masters were a part. That system was now falling to pieces, and the old
pressure of the master having been taken off these poor men, it seemed
likely that nothing but the mere animal necessities and passions of men
would have any hold on them and that mere general overturn would be the
result. Doubtless this would have happened if it had not been that the
huge mass had been leavened by Socialist opinion in the first place, and
in the second place by actual contact with declared Socialists, many or
indeed most of whom were members of those bodies of workmen above said."
[Page 146]
"If anything of
this kind had happened some years before, when the masters of labour were
still looked upon as the natural rulers of the people and even the
poorest and most ignorant man leaned upon them for support, while they
submitted to their fleecing, the entire break-up of all society would
have followed. But the long series of years during which the workmen had
learned to despise their rulers, had done away with their dependence upon
them, and they were now beginning to trust (somewhat dangerously, as
events proved) in the non-legal leaders whom events had thrust forward;
and though most of these were now become mere figure-heads, their names
and reputations were useful in this crisis as a stop-gap."
"The effect of the news, therefore, of the release
of the Committee gave the Government some breathing time: for it was
received with the greatest joy by the workers, and even the well-to-do
saw in it a respite from the mere destruction which they had begun to
dread, and the fear of which most of them attributed to the weakness of
the Government. As far as the passing hour went, perhaps they were right
in this."
"How do you mean?" said I. What
could the Government have done? I often used to think that they would be
helpless in such a crisis."
Said old
Hammond: "Of course I don't doubt that in the long run matters would have
come about as they did. But if the Government could have treated their
army as a real army, and used them strategically as a general would have
done, looking on the people as a mere open enemy to be shot at and
dispersed wherever they turned up, they would probably have gained a
victory at the time."
"But would the soldiers
have acted against the people in this way?" said I.
[Page
147]
Said he: "I think from all I
have heard that they would have done so if they had met bodies of men
armed however badly, and however badly they had been organised. It seems
also as if before the Trafalgar Square massacre they might as a whole
have been depended upon to fire upon an unarmed crowd, though they were
much honeycombed by Socialism. The reason for this was that they dreaded
the use by apparently unarmed men of an explosive called dynamite of
which many loud boasts were made by the workers on the eve of these
events; although it turned out to be of little use as a material for war
in the way that was expected. Of course the officers of the soldiery
fanned this fear to the utmost, so that the rank and file probably
thought on that occasion that they were being led into a desperate battle
with men who were really armed, and whose weapon was the more dreadful,
because it was concealed. After that massacre, however, it was at all
times doubtful if the regular soldiers would fire upon an unarmed or
half-armed crowd."
Said I:"The regular
soldiers? Then there were other combatants against the people?"
"Yes," said he, we shall come to that presently.
"Certainly," I said, you had better go on straight
with your story. I see that time is wearing."
Said Hammond: "The Government lost no time in
coming to terms with the Committee of Public Safety; for indeed they
could think of nothing else than the danger of the moment. They sent a
duly accredited envoy to treat with these men, who somehow had obtained
dominion over people's minds, while the formal rulers had no hold except
over their bodies. There is no need at present to go into the details of
the truce (for such it was) between these high contracting parties, the
Government of the
[Page 148]
empire of Great Britain
and a handful of working-men (as they were called in scorn in those
days), amongst whom, indeed, were some very capable and `square-headed'
persons, though, as aforesaid the abler men were not then the recognised
leaders. The upshot of it was that all the definite claims of the people
had to be granted. We can now see that most of these claims were of
themselves not worth either demanding or resisting; but they were looked
on at that time as most important, and they were at least tokens of
revolt against the miserable system of life which was then beginning to
tumble to pieces. One claim, however, was of the utmost immediate
importance, and this the Government tried hard to evade; but as they were
not dealing with fools, they had to yield at last. This was the claim of
recognition and formal status for the Committee of Public Safety, and all
the associations which it fostered under its wing. This it is clear
meant two things: first, amnesty for the `rebels', great and small, who,
without a distinct act of civil war, could no longer be attacked; and
next, a continuance of the organised revolution. Only one point the
Government could gain, and that was a name. The dreadful revolutionary
title was dropped and the body with its branches, acted under the
respectable name of the `Board of Conciliation and its local offices'.
Carrying this name, it became the leader of the people in the civil war
which soon followed."
"O," said I, somewhat
startled, so the civil war went on, in spite of all that had happened?"
"So it was," said he. In fact, it was this very
legal recognition which made the civil war possible in the ordinary
sense of war; it took the struggle out of the element of mere massacres
on one side, and endurance plus strikes on the other."
[Page
149]
"And can you tell me in what
kind of way the war was carried on?" said I.
"Yes," he said; we have records and to spare of
all that; and the essence of them I can give you in a few words. As I
told you, the rank and file of the army was not to be trusted by the
reactionists; but the officers generally were prepared for anything, for
they were mostly the very stupidest men in the country. Whatever the
Government might do, a great part of the upper and middle classes were
determined to set on foot a counter revolution; for the Communism which
now loomed ahead seemed quite unendurable to them. Bands of young men,
like the marauders in the great strike of whom I told you just now, armed
themselves and drilled and began on any opportunity or pretence to
skirmish with the people in the streets. The Government neither helped
them nor put them down, but stood by, hoping that something might come of
it. These `Friends of Order', as they were called, had some successes at
first, and grew bolder; they got many officers of the regular army to
help them, and by their means laid hold of munitions of war of all kinds.
One part of their tactics consisted in their guarding and even
garrisoning the big factories of the period: they held at one time, for
instance, the whole of that place called Manchester which I spoke of just
now. A sort of irregular war was
carried on with varied success all over the country; and at last the
Government, which at first pretended to ignore the struggle, or treat it
as mere rioting, definitely declared for `the Friends of Order', and
joined to their bands whatsoever of the regular army they could get
together and made a desperate effort to overwhelm `the rebels', as they
were now once more called, and as indeed they called themselves."
[Page 150]
"It was too late.
All ideas of peace on a basis of compromise had disappeared on either
side. The end, it was seen clearly, must be either absolute slavery for
all but the privileged, or a system of life founded on equality and
Communism. The sloth, the hopelessness, and, if I may say so, the
cowardice of the last century, had given place to the eager, restless
heroism of a declared revolutionary period. I will not say that the
people of that time foresaw the life we are leading now, but there was a
general instinct amongst them towards the essential part of that life,
and many men saw clearly beyond the desperate struggle of the day into
the peace which it was to bring about. The men of that day who were on
the side of freedom were not unhappy, I think, though they were harrassed
by hopes and fears, and sometimes torn by doubts, and the conflict of
duties hard to reconcile."
"But how did the
people, the revolutionists, carry on the war? What were the elements of
success on their side?"
I put this question,
because I wanted to bring the old man back to the definite history, and
take him out of the musing mood so natural to an old man.
He answered: "Well, they did not lack organisers;
for the very conflict itself, in days when, as I told you, men of any
strength of mind cast away all consideration for the ordinary business of
life, developed the necessary talent amongst them. Indeed, from all I
have read and heard, I much doubt whether, without this seemingly
dreadful civil war, the due talent for administration would have been
developed amongst the working men. Anyhow, it was there, and they soon
got leaders far more than equal to the best men amongst the
reactionaries. For the rest, they had no difficulty about the material of
their army;
[Page 151]
for that revolutionary
instinct so acted on the ordinary soldier in the ranks that the greater
part, certainly the best part, of the soldiers joined the side of the
people. But the main element of their success was this, that wherever the
working people were not coerced, they worked, not for the reactionists,
but for `the rebels'. The reactionists could get no work done for them
outside districts where they were all-powerful: and even in those
districts they were harassed by continual risings; and in all cases and
everywhere got nothing done without obstruction and black looks and
sulkiness; so that not only were their armies quite worn out with the
difficulties which they had to meet but the non-combatants who were on
their side were so worried and beset with hatred and a thousand little
troubles and annoyances that life became almost unendurable to them on
those terms. Not a few of them actually died of the worry; many committed
suicide. Of course, a vast number of them joined actively in the cause of
reaction, and found some solace to their misery in the eagerness of
conflict. Lastly, many thousands gave way and submitted to `the rebels';
and as the numbers of these latter increased, it became clear to all men
that the cause which was once hopeless, was now triumphant, and that the
hopeless cause was that of slavery and privilege."