THE LABOUR QUESTION.

Southern Cross, Volume 17, Issue 26, 9 October 1909, Page 6

THE LABOUR QUESTION.

(To the Editor). Sir, —"At the conclusion of my last letter I said that a man's right to live by his labour was above all other rights whatsoever. That is a mere statement of no value as it stands. Ethical value must be given to it by sound, convincing reasoning, or it will remain a valuless statement. In order to establish the statement on a sound ba'sis, it will be necessary to consider what is meant by the term "right." The dictionary takes up more than 26 lines in defining the meaning of the word "right," but the nearest approach to the definition of the word which I require for my purpose is "to do justice, to relieve from wrong." We sometimes hear the phrase "moral right" tised in contradistinction to the phrase "legal right." We infer from this that moral or ethical right is right of a higher order than legal right is, or, in other words, there is a kind of right which the law does not seach up to. This is well understood by students of jurisprudence. The law cannot provide for every contingency that may happen in huma'n life. But the right here asserted, viz., a man's right to live by his labour, is a right of a different order than any which society has in the past given much thought to. A great deal of attention is being given to this new kind of right in England just now. The advanced Liberals have adopted "the right to work" as a canon of their political creed, and that canon is in full consonance with the idea which declares that a man's right to work that he may live rises superior to every form of legal individual monopoly to the sources of living. This . idea brings the two kinds of rights into conflict, and we must decide which of these two kinds of rights must predominate over the other. In the past ages the individual right to property containing the sources of living, which are the land and the things in it and upon it has not been seriously questioned, .except by a comparative few advanced thinkers. But living under the system of individual right to landed property is becoming a more desperate struggle every day in the old world, while the means of producing a living from these sources have been so developed • as to be practically without limit.

This condition of things involves actual starvation to hundreds of people in the old world, and pauperism to hundreds of thousands of others, and poverty and a desperate struggle lor a living to millions more ; whilst the sources of living are closed against these starving people in Great Britain under the right of private property to make pleasure grounds for the rich. This regime has regarded the rights of property as more sacred than the right to live. That puts legality higher than humanity. Man made legality, but humanity was first, and therefore has a prior right, and this right the workers everywhere are rising in their strength of numbers to enforce. Our laws declare that a man's life is not his own ; the state claims suzerain rights over his life, and punishe him if he attempts to take his life by a violent act. The State puts forward its claim to the life of a human creature from the first hour of conception of such life, and punishes the authors of the life if they da anything to prevent that embryo life maturing. The life is made State property, but the State makes

the parent wholly responsible for the bringing up of its property in that human life. The State calls for population—for a high bii'th-rate, and when men and women comply with this demand, and bring forth children, the State lays these, parents undez* severe obligations regarding the maintenance of these children. If men and women don't comply with the State's demand for children, and do nothing to increase State property in children, the State doesn't punish those men anh women for neglact of duty. It only punishes men and women who perform their duty to the State by becoming parents. This is manifestly most unfair and inconsistent. The State should either assume the whole duty of providing a means of living by labour for every human creature which it admits within its borders, or give up all pretension of suerain rights -over the lives of the citizens. The proper alternative to adopt is the first one, and this is where society is trend- j ing to. By the la'w of suicide and] the law of infanticide the State not] only proclaims the right for every | human creature ta. secute a reasonable degree of equality in the style ! of living for every creature. This ! ethical right, I maintain, rises vast-' ly superior to any other right that can be named. Therefore a system! should be adopted—call it Socialism or what else you like —that would ! secure to each person a'ble to work a. means of working, and a living with a reasonable degree of comfort, for each worker should be made a first charge on the produce of united labour before a single luxury should be granted to any other person. This does not mean equality of style of living, or what is called a dead level. It simply puts humanitarian ism before a grander style of living. Labour is the source of all worth. Inventive genius may make a machine, high organising capacity may skilfully regiment workmen so as to extract the greatest amount of work out of them in a given time, which means exploitation. But the labourer is indispensable, and he should bo protected irom the grasping exploiter, whether his name be inventor, or organiser, or mercantile prince.'. The law claims man as a State chattel, when it forbids him to take his own life. This can only be done logically on the principle that man's claim upon the State, i.e.. a portion of the earth comprising the State, is equal to the State's claim upon his life. The one is a corollary of the other. So that a man's right to work and to live by his work inheres in the earth itself, of which he is by the laws of Nature and humanity part owner ; and if he is not de facto part owner, it is because he has been wronged by former generations. I have now narrowed the question of rights down to one of rights of humanity versus rights of monopolist 1 of the sources of labour and exploiters. The middleman comes under this last designation. The former is a monopolist, but only in a nominal sense. In this country he is often as much a victim as his hired labourer. Those who take the most from the harvest oi labour are the middleman. j and the owners of business frontages | in town—those choice spots of land that are valued as high as £SOO per foot, and pay rent on that value. These people, in my opinion, extract more from productive labour and the consumer than any other fa'ctors in the social hive. Thev gamble with the necessaries of life, making them so dear that they can only be purchased in such limited quantities as to destroy the balance between supply and demand, which culminates in stagnations of trade and starvation

to the workers. This is the sort of J social machine that we live under, that makes wealth for some and pov- ■ , erty for others. This machine com- J pels some to do the hardest, the dirtiest, and the most exhausting work for a bare means of living. Ft sends men down into the stoke-holes of steamships—the nearest approach to hell that imagination can picture —where every prospect horrifies, atad man is made vile, where the life juices are scorched out of him;; feeding the fiery monsters to make a quick passage for those that 101 l io cushioned seats in the saloon above. This and a thousand more kinds of life-destroying work, men, women, and children are forced- to do for a mere crust of bread, while the world teems with riches, and the exploiters and landlords revel in these riches, while the life is ground out of others.—l am, etc.. T. BUXTON. (To be continued).