Early Factory Legislation

first bill for the preservation of the health and morals of apprentices and of others employed in cotton and other factories. It immediately accomplished nothing, being fatally defective; but it_established the principle. Other bills introduced did little more. In 1824 a bill was passed, mainly owing to the efforts of Francis Place, outside of Parliament, and Joseph Hume within, giving trade-unions, which had secretly existed since about 1700, the right to partially organize. In 1830 Richard Oastler, speaking for the antislavery movement, discovered that there was "white slavery" in England, and from that date gave his time and strength in poverty, and even when imprisoned for debt, to exposing the facts of factory evils, and agitating for legislation. He accomplished little, however, till Lord Ashley, afterward the Earl of Shaftesbury, took up his cause. T. Sadler, in 1831, had moved a ten hours' bill, but to no effect. A select committee was appointed in the matter in 1832, but only to gain time and prevent action. Lord Ashley, however, now taking hold, brought in a ten hours' bill for women and children, which was read a second time in 1833. It was violently opposed, especially by individualist Liberals like Cobden and John Bright. Finally, Lord Althorp brought in for the government and carried a compromise bill, which was better than nothing. Oastler, however, continued his agitation. Children's Employment Commissions of 1842 and 1843 published terrible revelations. A factory act was passed in 1844, and finally the Ten Hours' Bill of 1847.

Meanwhile Robert Owen (q. v.), at his mills in New Lanark, had been putting in practise various reforms, and in the year 1817 laid a scheme of a socialistic community before the House of Commons. This act is sometimes considered the beginning of socialism in England; but it was not socialism as we understand the word to-day. Owen's utopianism and evolutionary social democracy in industry have little in common. In 1825 Owen purchased New Harmony in the U. S. and started a short-lived community. In 1835 he founded an association of all classes of all nations; and during the discussions which arose over this, the words "socialism" and "Socialist" seem first to have been used.

The Owenite Period

The passage of the Reform Bill in 1832 had abolished the "pocket boroughs" and given England a taste of democracy. Slavery (q. v.) was abolished in the British colonies in 1834. The poor laws were reformed. The middle classes were now indeed enfranchised, but these reforms did little for the workmen. These Owen reached. The Owenite press, the Crisis, the Pioneer, the Herald of the Rights of Industry, and other papers, created a wide-spread movement. Within a few weeks half a million members are said to have joined Owen's Grand National Consolidated Trade-Union, including tens of thousands of farm laborers and women. The object was to put an end to all competition. The wealthier classes were alarmed. In 1834 six Dorchester laborers were sentenced to seven years' transportation for the mere act of administering an oath. (See CONSPIRACY LAWS.) Monster labor congresses were held; 30,000 persons took part in a procession in London protesting against the judgment; over 250,000 signed a petition. Strikes were numerous. They generally failed, however.

A

Great Britain

levy of 18d. per member hurt the Grand National. It was too hurriedly organized, and did not endure. The trade-unions all suffered. Led by William Cobbett, William Lovett, and others, working men began to turn to political methods.

In 1838 a representative meeting of workmen drew up a program of political reforms which they held to be necessary. Speaking to the representatives, the Irish orator O'Connell called it their charter, and in all the subsequent agitation this program was called the "People's Charter," and its supporters "Chartists." (See CHARTISM.) The charter called for the famous "six points"-manhood suffrage, equal electoral districts, vote by ballot, annual parliaments, abolition of property qualification for members of the House of Commons, and payment of members of Parliament for their services. Enormous meetings were held. Orators, writers, editors, poets were developed-O'Connor, Lovett, Cleave, Hetherington, and O'Brien being among the leaders. Every center had its Chartist journal. But there soon developed a division as to the means to be adopted. Some favored an appeal to force; many-probably most-advocated constitutional methods. In June, 1839, a petition signed by nearly 1,300,000 persons was presented to the House of Commons, "bound in iron hoops, four men bearing it," asking that the charter be considered. By a large majority the House of Commons refused. Relations between

Chartism

the government and the people became strained; public meetings were forbidden; riots were of frequent occurrence. Agitation continued more or less vigorously until 1848, the year of revolutions. A meeting was called on Kennington Common for April 10th, at which it was expected that half a million workers would be present. Great alarm prevailed; the military under the Duke of Wellington was called out; cannon were planted to cover the meeting-place and the exits, and nearly 200,000 civilians were enrolled as special constables. After all these threatenings the gathering on the common was not as large as had been anticipated, a heavy storm interfering. Not 100,000 were present. This was the end of Chartism. The movement collapsed when apparently at its highest. During all the ten years of the agitation it had been largely an economic change that was desired. Political change was only sought in order to secure economic changes. Every constitutional means had been tried and had failed, and now the government had shown that if an appeal were to be made to force, it would use all its strength to crush the appeal, and would yield no quarter. Just while men were pondering the alternatives, a new door of escape was openedgold was discovered in America, and New Zealand and Australia were calling for colonists.

The repeal of the corn laws in 1846, after the long free-trade agitation of Cobden and Bright, and the passage of the Ten Hours' Bill in 1847, also gave hope of relief.

Christian Socialism

The close of the Chartist agitation witnessed the birth of organized Christian Socialism (q. v.). Charles Kingsley and Frederick Denison Maurice, clergymen_of_the Church of England, with E. Vansittart Neale, Thomas Hughes, J. M. Ludlow (see these names), organized a society under the avowed name of Christian Socialism. They published pamphlets and two

Greek Social Polity

papers, and started some cooperative stores. Their papers were soon discontinued; their stores either failed or were swallowed up in the larger Rochdale cooperative movement; but their thought lived. Kingsley's bold denunciation of the soulless Manchester school of political economy and the deeper philosophy of Maurice are potent to-day.

From 1850-80 English trade-unionism was taking form and growing, with many ups and downs. The Rochdale cooperative movement, beginning in 1844, during this period made its phenomenal advance. The writings of Carlyle and of Ruskin struck strong blows against the orthodox political economy. In 1848 Mill published his Political Economy." Henceforth political economy was no longer a dismal science of theories, but a discussion of how to meet practical industrial problems. Mill himself, in his "Autobiography," came to announce himself a Socialist. There were other radical forces at work. From 1849 to his death in 1883 Marx resided in London. In London, also, was Mazzini. Opposed to socialism, as it was presented to him, he really preached its deepest and most ethical ideas. As early as 1847 Marx and Engels, corresponding with a London society, turned this society into a communist league; and the following year published from Brussels the manifesto of the communist party. In 1862 a party of French working men visited the International Exhibition in London, getting into communication with English trade-unionists; on Sept. 28, 1864, the famous International" (q. v.) was founded at St. Martin's Hall, London. It was not at first a socialistic organization. Its simple aim was to unite the working men of all countries. Naturally it took a different coloring with different nations. In England it meant little more than an attempt at international tradeunionism, and took no deep root.

Socialism

Little as he intended it, the lectures in England of Henry George (q. v.), individualist as he proclaimed himself, seem to have been the occasion for the first crystallization in England of modern Socialist thought. According to Sidney Webb ("Socialism in England"), the coercive measures introduced by Mr. Gladstone's ministry against the Irish Land League had alienated many of the earnest Radicals from the Liberal Party. It became evident that Liberalism was not inconsistent with shameless international aggression in the interests of the officers and the bondholders. The neglect of English social questions became more and more pressingly felt. The "Democratic Federation was founded in 1881, by H. M. Hyndman, Herbert Burrows, Miss Helen Taylor (stepdaughter of John Stuart Mill), and some others. The only distinctively Socialist proposal explicitly set forth in the first program of this organization was "nationalization of the land," placed ninth in the list; but it was from the first essentially a Socialist body, and it changed its name in 1884 to the "Social Democratic Federation" (q. v.). Men joined like William Morris, Tom Mann, John Burns, and others.

At the end of 1884, however, William Morris (q. v.) withdrew from the Federation, and with others formed the Socialist League. The grounds of secession were mainly personal, but the new society soon developed a policy of its own, standing for a more communistic and less governmental

conception of socialism. Publishing the Commonweal (1885), to which Mr. Morris gave brilliant contributions, it exerted no small influence. About 1892, however, the organization and the Commonweal came under anarchist control; Mr. Morris withdrew, and the league virtually died, the Social Democratic Federation keeping on.

A more potent and unique organization of English Socialists is the Fabian Society (q. v.), founded in 1883, and to-day still adding to its strength. Commenced mainly as an educational and propagandist center, it includes members of other societies. In one year its members have given thousands of lectures and distributed still more thousands of Socialist essays and tracts. It has influenced political parties, economic literature, and trade-union thought. It may almost be said to have created the London County Council (q. v.), and to have changed the thought of the working men's clubs of London. Leaders in it like Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and others have had most respectful hearing, and many of its members have been elected to Parliament. (See FABIAN SOCIETY.)

These various societies, taking advantage of industrial depressions and discontent, have largely captured the English trade-unions for socialism. A "New Trade-Unionism" grew steadily till 1895. The agitation in behalf of the unemployed in 1886, resulting in the prosecution at the Old Bailey of Messrs. Hyndman, Burns, Champion, and Williams, led, altho they were acquitted, to making socialism somewhat popular among the London masses. The great dock strike of 1889 saw a turning of the tide. Ben Tillett, Tom Mann, and John Burns organized the dock laborers and won. It led to the organization of other trades thus far unorganized. These

New TradeUnionism

new unions followed the new leaders, and the movement began to grow in the rank and file of even the old unions. By 1890 the new unionism was in the majority in the trade congresses, and in 1894 voted to support only collectivist candidates. The defeat of the Liberal Party in 1894, however, to which many of the old trade-unionists were allied, led to the older trade-unions securing a change in representation, giving the newer trade-unions less power, and thus defeating the new trade-unionism at the Congress of 1895. Some of the new trade-unions, too, did not endure.

Labor representatives began to be elected to Parliament as Liberals or as miners' members. In 1873-74 no fewer than thirteen "labor candidates' went to the polls; and Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt (q. v.), two leading officials of the miners' national unions, were elected the first "labor members" of the House.

However, altho largely enfranchised by the Reform Bill of 1867, English workmen in their trades congresses even rejected amendments in favor of manhood suffrage as late as 1882 and 1883. In order to win legal recognition at all for their trade-unions, the leaders had had to plant themselves wholly on the middle-class ground of the individual freedom of each man to sell his labor as he pleased, collectively or not. Even after trade-unions were themselves in 1871 fully legalized, even when "in restraint of trade," their members were still so liable to prosecution under vague combination laws, that the unions were engaged in a battle for mere existence down to 1875. At this date, however, the Liberal Par

561

ty having been defeated largely by the division of the labor vote, a Conservative government wiped away the last vestige of the combination laws. But this long struggle for life had so indoctrinated the trade-unions with the individualist economy, that, save for a few leaders like Allan of the Engineers and Applegarth of the Carpenters, the average trade-unionist cared nothing for parliamentary action. Even when free to act, their very successes made the tradeunions conservative. Men, like Mr. Broadhurst, actually opposed eight-hour legislation; a motion in support of it was defeated by a large majority at a trade-union congress as late as 1889.

The collectivist policy, however, became so popular that, weary of the vast promises and slight fulfilment of both the Liberal and Conservative parties, there was organized (Jan., 1893), mainly under the lead of Keir Hardie, elected M. P., an Independent Labor Party, its object being, as stated, "the collective ownership and control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange." Robert Blatchford's "Merrie England," emphasizing the principles of the party, about this time is estimated to have reached 2,000,000 readers.

Municipalism of various kinds was long, however, the main practical form of English socialism. The formation of the county councils, and particularly of the London County Council, to bring together under one control the numberless boards and vestries that had power in various ways in London, was another step toward social

ism.

Labor Politics

Later, attention was directed to some extent from social problems by the Boer War and discussions arising from it, and under its influence the Conservatives gained a new lapse of life. Gradually, however, the majority of the tradeunions, while not committing themselves to avowed socialism, came to favor political action directly in their own interests, on largely socialistic lines and independent of any political party. A Labor Representation Committee was organized composed mainly of representatives of such unions, and of a few other organizations, like the Fabian Society, willing to cooperate on those lines, to manage the campaigns of candidates indorsed by the committee, and create a fund for the payment of the elected members. (See LABOR REPRESENTATION Committee.) This movement had growing success, till in the general election on Jan., 1906, the Labor forces astonished themselves and all England by electing to Parliament twenty-nine candidates indorsed by the Labor Representation Committee, which with eleven "miners' members" and fourteen Liberals, but also Labor members, made fifty-four Labor members (twenty-nine independent of other parties). The committee therefore adopted, 1906, the name of the Labor Party (q. v.), with Keir Hardie as its head. The independent, aggressive, and yet, on the whole, constructive and practical position of the party's representatives in Parliament has been the social reform political interest of the year, while by-elections have added three to their number (including one elected as a Socialist), making some eighty members all largely socialistic in their policies.

Meanwhile other phases of social reform have recently rapidly advanced. Distributive cooperation has grown steadily and productive cooperation has been begun in earnest. (See COOPERA

Present Movements

Greek Social Polity

TION.) Cooperative housebuilding has begun, but especially have municipal and county councils 'taken up the housing question, in many cases undertaking large housing schemes. (See HoUSING QUESTION.) A successful Garden City movement has been developed (see GARDEN CITIES), while prominent employers have developed large and beautiful model villages for their employees. (See BOURNEVILLE; PORT SUNLIGHT; MODEL VILLAGES.) The question of employing the unemployed has been largely agitated and successful attempts inaugurated. (See LABOR COLONIES; UNEMPLOYMENT.) Considerable attention has been called to the woman-suffrage question by women who were willing to storm the House of Parliament in demanding a hearing and allow themselves to be imprisoned for creating disturbance. (See WOMAN'S MOVEMENTS.) Much thought has been attracted to the taxation of land values by the introduction in Parliament of a Scotch bill calling for a distinction in making up rates on values of land and values of improvements. Many members, including the Premier, are said to favor the distinction. (See LAND.) The school question has been a burning theme, tho a compromise bill calling in the main for separation of all public schools from Church control was thrown out of the Lords after it had passed the Lower House. (See SCHOOL QUESTION, articles on both sides.) (For the home rule question, which has so largely affected English politics, see HOME RULE; IRELAND.) Great Britain may be said to-day to be leading the world (outside of New Zealand and Australia) in the actual taking up of detailed social questions and pressing for their solution from an advanced point of view, tho Germany and Switzerland are probably actually doing more on slightly more paternal lines. (See special articles for references and all details.)

GREDESKUL, NICHOLAS ANDREYEVICH: Russian jurist, editor, and politician; born in 1864. He was graduated from the University of Kharkof, and later became a professor there, and dean of the law department. Gredeskul, who was second vice-president of the first Duma, was arrested just before election by order of Minister Durnovo, and was exiled to Archangel; but on being elected he was released. He is a Constitutional Democrat, and edits a newspaper called Mir.

GREEK SOCIAL POLITY: This was, in a word, the exaltation of the State, ordinarily a democratic city, based upon slave labor, over all departments of life. (See ATHENS; ARISTOTLE; PLATO.) We give here the synopsis of the Greek economic and social idea, as given in Professor Ingram's "History of Political Economy":

1. The individual is conceived as subordinated to the State, through which alone his nature can be developed and completed, and to the maintenance and service of which all his efforts must be directed. The great aim of all political thought is the formation of good citizens; every social question is studied primarily from the ethical and educational point of view. The citizen is not regarded as a producer, but only as a possessor of material wealth; and this wealth is not esteemed for its own sake or for the enjoyments it procures, but for the higher moral and public aims to which it may be made subservient.

2. The State, therefore, claims and exercises a controlling and regulating authority over every sphere of social life, including the economic, in order to bring individual action into harmony with the good of the whole.

3. With these fundamental notions is combined a tendency

Greulich

to attribute to institutions and to legislation an unlimited efficacy, as if society had no spontaneous tendencies, but would obey any external impulse, if imprest upon it with sufficient force and continuity.

GREELEY, HORACE: American editor and social reformer; born at Amherst, N. H., 1811. Before he was ten years old his father became bankrupt. The family then moved to Vermont, where they made a scanty living as day laborers. When fourteen years of age Greeley was apprenticed in the office of the Northern Spectator, East Poultney, Vt. His wages were but $40 a year; but by living on almost nothing he was able to send money home. He remained here six years, when the paper was suspended. For a time he worked with his father on a rough farm in Pennsylvania, and then began to tramp the country in search of employment. In 1831 he entered New York with $io in his pocket, and two years later formed a partnership with a fellow workman, Francis V. Story. Combining their capital, which amounted to $150, they commenced by printing the Morning Post, which failed in three weeks. But Greeley went on writing as well as printing. He was invited by James Gordon Bennett to go into a partnership with him in the Herald, but he declined, and issued instead the New Yorker, a literary journal which lived seven years. Later he published the Log Cabin, a weekly campaign paper, which was a great success. On April 10, 1841, Greeley commenced the New York Tribune, his life-work.

Greeley was then entirely without money. From a personal friend, Mr. James Coggeshall, he borrowed $1,000, on which capital and the editor's reputation the Tribune was founded. It began with 600 subscribers. Mr. Greeley opened its columns to well-nigh every reform. He made it the leading abolition newspaper. He advocated in it dress reform, vegetarianism, and FOURIER

ISM.

From 1850 until the end of the Civil War the Tribune did much to create and awaken the antislavery sentiment of the North. Greeley urged in his paper the vigorous prosecution of the war, but at its close immediately advocated universal amnesty and suffrage. From 1848 to 1849 he was a Whig representative in Congress.

In 1867 Greeley was appointed delegate to the convention for the revision of the Constitution. He antagonized General Grant's administration, and was one of the chief promoters of the Liberal Republican Party, which held its national convention at Cincinnati in 1872, and nominated him for president. His lifelong opponents, the Democrats, nominated him also at their national convention-a move which greatly lessened his chances of success by repelling many of his Republican supporters. During the canvass feeling ran high, and he took the field in person and made one of the most brilliant, able, and sustained series of campaign speeches on record. election he received 2,834,079 votes as against 3,597,070 for Grant. Greeley carried Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. He at once resumed the editorship of the Tribune, but it was soon evident that he had overtaxed his strength in the campaign. No sooner was it ended than he was called to the bedside of his dying wife, from which he went only to be himself prostrated by a nervous disorder of the brain. His illness was short, and on Nov. 29, 1872, he died. His published volumes are as follows: "Hints Toward Reforms" (1850);

In the

"Glances at Europe" (1851); "History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension" (1856); "Overland Journey to San Francisco" (1860); "The American Conflict” (2 vols., 1864–66); “Recollections of a Busy Life" (1868); "Essays Designed to Elucidate the Science of Political Economy (1870); and "What I Know of Farming" (1871). His life was written by James Parton in 1855, and a new edition appeared in 1868.

GREENBACK PARTY, THE: A party which originated in the United States in 1873-74 as a result of the opposition felt by many to the asserted manipulation of the currency in favor of the banking and bondholding class. (See CURRENCY.) It was claimed that the bankers of the country had conspired (1) to make the issue of the war greenbacks a failure by inducing Congress to prevent their being legal tenders for customs and for payment of the national debt, and so depreciating their value; (2) to buy up these greenbacks at their depreciated value, and with them purchase bonds, paying for the bonds with greenbacks at their face value; (3) to induce Congress to vote that these bonds bought with greenbacks at thirty cents on the dollar should be redeemed by Congress under the pretense of national faith and of 'an honest dollar” in gold (interest as well as capital), while the soldiers and sailors of the war who had risked their lives and got no "interest" had been paid in greenbacks. Intense excitement was aroused, which the period of contraction of the currency greatly increased. As early as 1868 the demand called "the Ohio idea" was broached, claiming that all bonds which did not distinctly call for payment in coin should be redeemed in greenbacks. This "idea" seemed to have dominated the Democratic convention of 1868, but was distinctly disavowed by Mr. Tilden and other leading Democrats. Many local and state conventions in the West, however-chiefly Democratic-indorsed the idea. Its advocates still hoped to bring the entire party to their way of thinking.

Demands

Finally the financial crisis of 1873 caused the masses of the people to seek legislative relief for the evils from which they were suffering, and produced a certain disintegration of the established political parties. The pressing questions of the time appeared to require and justify new political organizations. A Greenback convention was held at Indianapolis in 1874, and demanded: (1) The withdrawal of the national bank-note currency; (2) that the only currency should be of paper, and that such currency should be made exchangeable for bonds bearing interest at 3.65 per cent; and (3) that coin might be used for the payment of the interest and principal of such bonds, and such only, as expressly called for coin payments. In 1876 a national Greenback convention was held at Indianapolis, which nominated Peter Cooper, of New York, and Samuel F. Cary, of Ohio, for president and vice-president. In the election which followed they received 81,737 popular votes.

To these attempts to found a new party, based on financial issues, a turn in another direction was given by the labor troubles which had culminated in the great railroad strikes of 1877. In 1878 a "National or Greenback-Labor Convention" was held at Toledo, O., as the result of a coalition between the labor reformers and the advocates of a greenback currency. In the following election