Part 7 (2/2)
The crux, the very core of the whole problem, is to find some means by which this new outlook can be produced, and a new motive by which men can be constrained to turn the vision into fact.
Here will come in that power which, as I pointed out, has sometimes been so potent and sometimes so impotent, but which, if it is allowed its proper scope, can never fail. I mean of course religion.
If men can be brought to see that this new outlook with its corresponding re-adjustment of social life is not merely a project of reformers but the plan of the Most High G.o.d, the deliberate intention of the supreme Spirit-force of the universe, the Scheme that was taught by the Prince of men, then indeed we may hope that the cla.s.s distinction of which He spoke will at last be adopted: ”Whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many[30].”
FOOTNOTES:
[19] _Encycl. Brit._ xi. 604.
[20] Macaulay's _History of England_ (Longman's, 1885), pp. 38, 39, 40.
[21] _The Town Labourer_, p. 205.
[22] _Ibid._, p. 212.
[23] G. K. Chesterton, _Short History of England_, p. 98.
[24] Stubbs' _Lectures on Early English History_, pp. 18, 19.
[25] Benjamin Kidd, _Encycl. Brit._ vol. xxv. p. 329.
[26] Lucian quoted by Harnack, _Mission and expansion of Christianity_, vol. I. p. 149.
[27] _Ibid._
[28] Lactantius quoted by Harnack, _Ibid._ p. 168.
[29] _History of England_ (Longman's, 1885), vol. I. p. 25.
[30] St Mark x. 43-45.
UNITY BETWEEN CLa.s.sES
II
By the Right Hon. J. R. CLYNES, M.P.
I have not the advantage of knowing anything of the treatment of any part of this subject by any preceding speaker. I myself intend to deal with it from the industrial and social standpoint, for I think if we are to seek unity amongst cla.s.ses it is most important in the national interest that unity should first be sought and secured in the industries of the country. That there is disunity is suggested and admitted in the terms of the subject. This disunity has grown out of conditions which range over a few generations. I believe that these conditions grew largely out of our ignoring the human side of industry and the general life conditions of the ma.s.ses of our workers. Our economic doctrine ignored the human factor, and measured what was termed national progress in terms merely of material wealth without due regard to who owned the wealth, made mainly by the energy of the industrial population.
Religious doctrines and religious inst.i.tutions were not the cause of that unhappy situation, but they had suffered from it, until now we find a very considerable number of the population engaged in a struggle for life, in a struggle for the material means of existence, handicapped by belief that their own unaided effort alone can a.s.sist them, that they must not look for help to any other cla.s.s, or to any other quarter.
Moral precepts have not the influence which they ought to have upon our industrial relations. Workers are thrown back upon their own resources; and in the use of those resources, during the past fifteen years particularly, much has been revealed to us of what is now in the working cla.s.s mind. I am not suggesting that to seek a settlement of conditions of disunity, or the trouble arising from those conditions, you must coddle the working cla.s.ses, praise them and pay them highly, and try to keep them contented with conditions which in themselves cannot be defended. I do not mean that at all. What I mean is that if unity between cla.s.ses in industrial and economic life is to be sought and secured, it can be got only at a price, paid in a two-fold form; that of giving a larger yield of the wealth of the nation to those who mainly by their energies make that wealth, and of placing the producing cla.s.ses upon a level where they will receive a higher measure of respect, of thanks, and regard than they previously have received from the nation as a whole. I was asked among others some twelve months ago to share in the investigations then made by representatives of the Government to discover the immediate cause of the very serious unrest then displayed in the country, and we went for a period of many weeks into the main centres of the kingdom and brought a varied collection of witnesses before us in order that the most reliable evidence should be obtained, and one who favoured us with his views was the Rev. Canon Green, whom I am going to quote because of his great experience among the working cla.s.s populations in various circ.u.mstances and over many years in Manchester and elsewhere. This is what Canon Green writes:
They (the working cla.s.ses) do not see why their hours should be so long, and their wages so small, their lives so dull and colourless, and their opportunities of reasonable rest and recreation so few.
Can we wonder that with growing education and intelligence the workers of England are beginning to contrast their lot with that of the rich and to ask whether so great inequalities are necessary?
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