which all suffer.

Trade unions have done good work in the past; so far as they defend their own people from oppression and maintain a higher standard of life they are doing good work to-day; but by holding aloof from the political struggle, and by refusing to strive for the control of the machinery of production in concert with their fellows they keep back the advance of their own class as a class and prepare even for their own members a sad future in view of the constant changes which are going on in every branch of human industry.

When the capitalist press congratulates the Trade Unionists on the "moderation" of their Conferences, and the capitalist class themselves are good enough to express themselves as "quite gratified" with the attitude of the two Trade Union members of Parliament, anyone who understands the real antagonism which exists and must ever exist between the class which provides and the class which trades upon force of labour, can clearly see that the men who pretend to fight the battle of the workers arepossibly with the best intentions-betraying them. The acceptance by working-class leaders of the position of Factory Inspectors under the existing law and subject to capitalist regulation is but another form of insidious bribery similar to that which may be traced in many other directions. How can a workman refuse to take a place at a few hundreds a year when, having become a Secretary of his Union for years, he has probably lost his aptitude for work, and, moreover, considers himself entitled and qualified to protect the interests of his class in the service of the State? It is natural that he should take the bait, but in this way he enrols himself as a member of the dominant class, and becomes thenceforward opposed to that uncompro

mising revolutionary work which is absolutely necessary to enfranchise his fellows.

But the waste of Trades Union funds on strikes or petty benefits to the individuals who compose them is still more deplorable. Enormous sums have been spent or lost, directly, or indirectly, in consequence of strikes which, if applied by the Unionists to an active propaganda against the existing system, whereby a class is permitted to crush them under the pretence of scientific economy, would long since have produced a serious effect. Even the return of working-class members to Parliament, as in Germany, with a definite mandate from their fellows to uphold the claims of those who produce all wealth and live in comparative misery, would have gained the Unionists far more thaL they have secured by mere strikes. Twenty working-class members even in our present ill-chosen middle-class House with a thorough determination to force the economical and social oppression of their fellows upon the attention of the remaining 638 pensioners upon labour around them would soon, if thoroughly supported out of doors, change the whole course of legislation. And to bring this about would be a slight strain upon the workers compared with what unsuccessful strikes have often cost them. It is in this direction, at any rate, that we must look for any complete reform. The producing classes themselves must work out their own enfranchisement from the tyranny they suffer from. Our present suffrage, though still far from what it ought to be, gives far greater power to the workers than they have ever

used to force forward their own claims.

Even during this long period of apathy, however, we can see the irresistible tendency of the time. The interference of the State in sanitary matters, which, if the law were

fully observed, would be very stringent indeed the rules with respect to adulteration and the appointment of public analysts; the interference with shipping so as to prevent the monstrous overloading which used to go on leading to the loss of thousands of seamen's lives; the Employers' Liability Bill, already referred to; the Nine Hours' Bill of 1874, which raised such a storm of indignation among the straiter sect of pharisaical economists; the Education Act of 1870-all these measures, and others which will occur to the reader, prove, beyond a doubt, that the illusory personal freedom is being gradually checked in the interest of collective freedom and in spite of all bourgeois theories.* That this tendency has here and there been turned to account by fad-mongers is undoubted, but we have yet to see what will be the result when the people have full voting powers and are fairly represented. Labourers are not usually addicted to political or social fads. In any case it

* The first volume of Louis Blanc's "History of the French Revolution," contains a really beautiful summary of the long struggle between the ideas of collectivism and individualism. Though the antagonism of classes, and the necessity of the ultimate triumph of the proletariat is not brought out with the scientific accuracy of the German school of Marx and Engels, the charm of the style and the religious sentiment of the writer attract many whom the more rigid methods and more involved style of the Germans would repel. In the same way the great success of Mr Henry George's work, "Progress and Poverty," is due not to its economical principles, which are fundamentally unsound, but to its easy, flowing periods, and to the noble moral tone which pervades the whole. It is difficult to over-estimate the enormous value of Mr Henry George's book as the forerunner of organised socialism among the English-speaking peoples. Written from the middle-class standpoint, it has done more to clear away middle-class prejudice than any direct socialist volume could possibly have effected; even the proletariat, governed as they are by the ideas of their oppressors, were not prepared to learn the truth all at once. Mr Henry George has, in fact, led the way to an intellectual revolution far more complete perhaps than he himself thought at the time.

seems almost certain that apathy is at last developing into agitation and movement, and those statesmen, economists and jurists who fail to take account of the truth that all progress depends in existing conditions on class antagonism are likely to be seriously awakened to the fact as regards their own society in the immediate future.

CHAPTER IX.

THE LAND AND THE LABOURERS.

Ir is now generally admitted, alike by historians, jurists, antiquarians, and economists, that the earliest form of ownership and cultivation of land was that in which a certain district of greater or less extent was held as the property of a tribe in common. Traces of the existence of such societies are to be found in all parts of the world. The Russian mir, the village communities of Eastern Europe and India, are but survivals of ownership of land in common, such as formerly prevailed in England, and in every other civilised country, where common property in land has almost entirely disappeared. From this tribal ownership private property was gradually established, chiefly owing to the effect of war and exchange; for war gave supremacy to certain families, and exchange, though at first a communal business, soon helped to give power to the stronger or more dexterous. The tribal ownership once partially shaken, property in land became vested, to some extent, in the family, and the produce was, of course, common, so far as the members of each family were concerned; but a large portion of the soil was still at the disposal of the community in general for purposes of pasture. Slavery, no matter how introduced into different communities, tended to strengthen private ownership and to increase the inequality of conditions among the tribe or nation. Thus, in the slow evolution of