THE LABOR MOVEMENT.

and TOM MANN AT THE TEMPERANCE HALL.

Continuing his Sunday lecture, as partially reported in the Tasmanian News yesterday. Mr Tom Mann said⎼

AMOS AS AGITATOR.

 Have any of you ever read of a Labor agitator who lived about 750 B.C.? There were a number of them; but I refer to one in particular. We have a little record of  what he did and said. We know that he was a fruit-gatherer, working  for a living. But he was also a student of the social problems of time. He lived at Tekos. I refer to the prophet Amos. Don't be alarmed because I call him a Labor agitator; when you have heard me, you will come to the same conclusion. He was a workman and a student of social and industrial development, as they had it then. He made his way to the capital, and held various meetings denouncing the behavior of the wealthy of the time, declaring that the poverty of the people was a crying sin against Jehovah—said that there were people then directly responsible for that poverty— said that Jehovah's people ought to be well, and happy, and contented, and living in accordance with the divine justice and idea. " But," said he, " here you are, exploiting these people for the results of their labor." I'll give you his own language, spoken in the name of Jehovah ; "I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies."  Why? Listen ! " Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat; ye have built yourselves houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards: but ye shall not drink wine of them." Then comes the condemnation as to the burnt offerings. Now, will you first remember that these offerings were stipulated for in the old Jewish ritual ? He points out the particular cause which makes the offerings unacceptable. They trod on the poor; they took burdens of wheat from them. You see, he is not talking to the poor ; not theirs the condemnation. It was a pastoral and agricultural country, and the crops were produced by the labor of the poor. The foodstuffs created the wealth, and only a section of the results of the labor of the poor, and still pretended to serve God. This is why they received condemnation. The condemnation of Amos, in the name of God, was against these wealthy Jews because they took from the poorer, the working Jews, the results of their labor, living on the fat of the land at their expense, doing little or no work themselves. But all the time they attended the fashionable place of worship on the Sabbath, and pretended to serve the Deity in a wonderfully nice fashion. That is why they were condemned. This was 750 years before Christ; but the Gentiles of our modern civilisation are outdoing the Jews altogether in the matter of exploitation of labor—doing more than the Jews of that time even knew how to do. (Applause.) And yet, you have your churches to-day, your politicians to-day, your social reformers (of a mild type) to-day. You have your newspapers, as they had theirs— in a very primitive form. But the system that Amos condemned still exists; and in our churches we hear these condemnations read, we acquiesce in them; we say that it was quite right that the old Jews should be condemned for doing what was wrong. True, we are not particularly clear as to what it was they did ; but we are absolutely sure that no such wrongdoing goes on now. It does go on, none the less, in a more intensified form. There they kept the poor poor ; we literally destroy them. Here in our modern civilisation their very lives threatened, and the weeping and wailing of women and children goes up from every populous centre of the world. And yet we are acquiescing in the system that exists. I tell you : these connected with the Labor Movement would be ashamed to have so paltry a religion as that which is advocated from the pulpit of the average church ! (Loud applause). 

AS TO MONOPOLY.

I am not condemning religion, but the absence of religion. The pretence goes up from the ordinary citizen also that all is right; in any case, that there is little to grumble about. If this were not so, some degree of activity would be manifested in the old and newer countries with a view to rectifying the terrible evils that exist. Look at the awful monopolies at Home ! I have called attention to America in passing; but look at the monopolists in Britain ! They get hold of the lands. Here, perhaps, they don't— (Oh, oh, and laughter); but in the Old Country they have the land, and that land is made increasingly valuable in every one of the districts where people live and work. You know what that results in : the result of the added value of that land. The landholder or owner having the law to protect him, and the military and naval forces to put into operation to back the law, if need be, is secured against the people. That is to say if he should have any difficulty in getting that which he desires to obtain by ordinary means, then the Law says it is his, and if he still cannot get it, the Law orders that the military and naval forces shall be there to mow down the mob that dares to resist his obtaining what he calls his. These are facts I’m talking. (Applause.) By this means, in Britain alone, the landlords are receiving over £230,000,000 per annum, for they do not work. They take it from the people who do work, and by their work create the value of the land. (Hear hear ) The ground-rents alone that the landlords of London are receiving amount to £16,500,000 per annum. That is from the City of London alone⏤rent for the sites only : which site, have been made valuable by the men who have worked and the men who are now living and working there. Many of these people, who are poverty-stricken, and never get enough food, must pay increased rents to landlords who have never done anything to produce the value of the land or make it suitable for habitation. Taking the country right through for urban and agricultural land, over £230,000,000 goes to the landlords, without any effort being put forth to earn it or produce value on their part.

 PLUTOCRACY AND POVERTY

But the landlords are not the only ones who obtain wealth without working for it. We have the wealthy plutocracy connected with industrial matters, who receive interest on investments and profits on trade. After allowing for any work that these plutocrat perform, for a fair remuneration for the work they do, and looking at them only from that side on which they are exploiting the people, we find, in  the form  of interest and profit, apart from rent, that another £500,000,000 per annum is taken from the people who create the value in the British Isles. Here, sir, we have the solution of the problem of poverty in Britain. The people are producing by their labor over £700,000,000 per annum. I am not including in that the sum derived as interest or profit from foreign and colonial investments ; which makes £100,000000 more.

ENGLAND'S CHRISTIANITY. 

Now let us see what this brings us to. England is said to be a Christian country; and some of you, I know, would declare that it is. Is it? It may be nominally; and if Christianity approves of the exploitation of poor—if Christianity condones ar approves the encouragement of one section to live by legalised robbery, at the expense of these who do the work—it is a Christian country, undoubtedly, But if Christianity means the putting into practice the principles of Jesus Christ which are diametrically opposed to robbery in any form, then England is far from being the country of a Christian nation. For our wealthy people—wealthy politicians, statesmen, knights of industry, and those who keep away from industrial pursuits altogether—are exploiting and enslaving the workers in a manner that no man in any country of the older world knew how to do or had the opportunity of doing. (Applause.) As a labor man I could not be identified with such flimsy theology as they are identified with. (Applause.) I could not ; because I say that by their proceedings they are creating a social Hell, and are throwing the people into that Hell by the hundreds of thousands (Renewed applause.) My object is not now to denounce these people, but only to inferentially refer to them, in order to indicate the attitude they occupy.

THE LABOR PROPAGANDA.

 The Labor Movement calls on those seriously concerned to lose no time in getting to work to rectify the conditions that exist. (Hear, hear.) Nothing short of a complete change in the industrial bases of society will serve—carrying with it the clearing out of the landed aristocracy and the capitalist plutocracy, and the restoration to the people of that which God gave for everybody, and not for a mere handful, (Applause.) If this strikes you as extreme, I am perfectly willing that it should be extreme. It is not more extreme than what we have been advocating during a long period now, and what is accepted by a large proportion of the workers of Europe. If you should be surprised at this, permit me to say that the thoughtful men and women of the various countries of Europe—including well-educated Germany, and France, and Belgium, and Holland, and Sweden, and Denmark, and Norway, and, to a less but increasing extent, Spain and Italy—are arriving at the same conclusion. There, as well as in Britain, these problems are up for consideration. What is more— and this will weigh with you—young America, which was till yesterday solely and essentially individualistic, in the sense of every man for his own hand and the devil take every other, is coming to the same position.

 CHANGE IN AMERICA.

The attitude of America until recently was individualistic: each man for himself: get on ! get on!—never mind who gets off ! This was the dominant characteristic of the American; but it is less so to-day, and it is less so in proportion as there have been careful students of these social and industrial problems. They have come to the conclusion that the discord that exists directly arises, not from the niggardliness of nature or the unkindness of the Deity, but because of the lack of wiser arrangement among human beings. (Applause.) They are resolving to leave undone that may be necessary in applying such principles as shall result in the complete change of our present individualistic, capitalist, competitive system of industry to a democratic, practical co-operative system, in the interests of everybody. What we have in view is nothing more than that. The cure of existing evils is to be found in the change from capitalistic competition to genuinely fair co-operation, to cover all the ramifications of industry ; but that will mean putting a stop to legalised robbery by rent-receiving, interest-receiving, profit-receiving. It will mean the recognition that the land is for the people, and not for a handful—the land of England, of Ireland, of Wales, of Scotland, and so with the land of all countries. (Applause.)

"STRIKE-LEADER, MOSES." 

Let us look at another strike leader, Moses. He'd his colleague, Aaron, too. One did the agitating and one led. Moses stipulated certain conditions. He had thought the subject out well. He laid it down that no man should be called on to work more than six days in any one week; and further, that after working well for six years, the whole crowd should have a good year's holiday. He said, "Give good attention to the land, and you'll find it will grow enough. In the six years you will have brought it into a good state, and you will get sufficient to cover you for the year you don't work, and seed for the next." You may doubt that as much as you like. I believe it was so. I believe Moses knew a good deal when it was so arranged. He knew it was a good thing to give the land and the people a chance. But Moses knew something more than you do. He said, " The land shall not be sold for ever. Every fifty years we shall have a good old jubilee, and the whole crowd shall have a rattling good time." Some of you don't believe this ever took place : or if you do, you don't think it could be imitated now. Well, it comes down to this: that the average working representative of mining in Tasmania is called to work fifty-two weeks in the year, and seven days a week at that. It is not an advance on the time before they had machinery. Then a man had to work eight hours a day six days a week, in order to maintain his family up to the standard of health. That was the system five hundred years ago. I refer you as to that to Professor Thorold Rogers's book, " Six Centuries of Work and Wages." You will find in there in detail: the actual conditions they worked under, the value they created, what they received, and the standard of life made possible to them. But even this is inferior to what Moses stipulated for, where the tools were yet more primitive for land that would yield well ; but we have no reason to believe that it would yield better than Tasmania. You will see then, that in spite of making social and industrial progress, you are only making progress for a few exploiters who are taking the results of your labor. Moses also said, " You shan't take usury from your brother." But the Englishman doesn't see it that way—nor the Irishman, Welshman, Scotchman, or Tassie, (Laughter).

Tasmanian News (Hobart, Tas. : 1883 - 1911), Tuesday 20 January 1903, page 2