A LIVING WAGE FOR WOMEN.
AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. WILLIAM MORRIS.
JOURNEYING from town, direct by road to Hammersmith, I traveled
over the ground which Mr. William Morris has made famous in his "News from
Nowhere," and I must confess that the dream of transformation which he
describes seemed impossible of realization. Where on earth, I queried, are all
these houses, shops, and people to be banished, in order that the charming
district of Mr. Morris' dream may become possible?
A short turning from the main road of Hammersmith brought me suddenly face
to face with old Father Thames and a pretty stretch of country lining the
further bank. It all looked so pleasant, gleaming in the sunshine, and was so
great and sudden a cont... (From: Marxists.org.) The following pages form a book giving information concerning that Social
Revolution which may be said rather to be in progress than to be at hand;
information to those who stand outside it, either as curious spectators, or as
declared enemies, but encouragement to those who are within it, and are doing
their best in their generation to hasten its progress, or to light the way for
its footsteps in the earliest hours of the new dav.
The literature of Scientific Socialism in the English tongue is yet but scanty,
and a book planned as this, and carried out with so much care as to figures — to
speak of nothing else — will doubtless he heartily welcomed by all our comrades
in the cause; but the book, besides its intrinsi... (From: Marxists.org.) Introductory
Source: Commonweal, Vol. I no. 1, Feb 1885, p.1; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. We beg our readers’ leave for a few words in which to introduce to them this Socialist journal, The Commonweal. In the first place we ask them to understand that the Editor and Sub-Editor of The Commonweal are acting as delegates of the Socialist League, and under its direct control: any slip in principles, therefore, and mis-statement of the aims or tactics of the League, are liable to correction from the representatives of that body.
As to the conduct of The Commonweal, it must be remembered that it has one aim — the propagation of Socialism. We shall not, therefore, make any excuses for what may be thought journalistic short-comings... (From: Marxists.org.) The poem here illustrated by Mr Gaskin's beautiful pictures was written to suit a
Medieval tune by Dr John Mason Neale, who was one of the leaders in the early days
of the Ritualistic movement. Dr Neale was a representative of a side of the
movement, which, unless I am mistaken, has almost died out as a special
characteristic of Ritualism: the historical side to wit. This has happened I think
because of the growth among thinking people generally of a sense of the
importance of Medieval history, and of the increasing knowledge that the
ecclesiastical part of it cannot be dissociated from its civil and popular parts.
Medieval history in all its detail, with all its enthusiasms, legends, ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “Ireland and Italy — A Warning” Commonweal, Vol I, No. 9, October 1885, pp. 86-87; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. Mr Parnell has been celebrating his triumphs in the past Parliament, and it may be said also those that are to come in the future one; he and his supporters also fully believe in the complete organization of the party, which will be strong enough not only to return 85 members this autumn, but also to compel every accepted candidate to sign a solemn pledge to submit to party discipline. Doubtless Mr Parnell is strong, and he and his are quite justified in their cries of victory. The English Parties cannot conceal their terror: Tory is calling to Whig, Whig to Liberal, to stand firm at last, since now the ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “Is Lipski’s Confession Genuine?” Commonweal, Vol 3, No. 85, 27 August 1887, p. 276; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. So Lipski has confessed and all is right, ‘he has been brought to a frame of mind that has enabled him to make the reparation’, says the Daily News. Bourgeois justice and the Home Secretary are triumphantly vindicated. Thus, doubtless, thought the ‘respectable’ world on Monday morning.
There is nothing to be surprised at in Lipski’s confession. Indeed, it was just what was to be expected; those who have never believed in his guilt have no need to do so now, the evidence is entirely against such an hypothesis; but that under the circumstances the world should be given to u... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “Is Trade Recovering?” Commonweal, Vol 2, No. 49, 18 December 1886, p.300; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. We are being told by the middle-class press at present, that there are signs of the passing away of that depression of trade which nobody denies is real enough. Now, non-Socialists will doubtless look on Socialists who dread this recovery of trade as likely to calm down the present agitation as very dreadful persons; but I would ask them first to remember that the realization of Socialism means to us a new and happy world; and considering how frightful are the sufferings of a large part of civilized populations, and how still more frightful is their degradation even in prosperous times of trade, we are surely justifie... (From: Marxists.org.) It is told of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary--the Alfred the Great of his time and people--that he once heard (once ONLY?) that some (only SOME, my lad?) of his peasants were over- worked and under-fed. So he sent for his Council, and bade come thereto also some of the mayors of the good towns, and some of the lords of land and their bailiffs, and asked them of the truth thereof; and in diverse ways they all told one and the same tale, how the peasant carles were stout and well able to work and had enough and to spare of meat and drink, seeing that they were but churls; and how if they worked not at the least as hard as they did, it would be ill for them and ill for their lords; for that the more the churl hath the more he asketh; and ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “Labor Day” Commonweal, Vol 6, No. 225, 3 May 1890, p.137; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. Is the demonstration of Labor Day a mere isolated demonstration, bearing no relation to anything but to the claim for a legal restriction of the hours of labor to the arbitrary figure of eight? Surely it is not so, whatever may be the wishes of some of those who may take part in it. On the, one hand it points to what has taken place within the last few years, on the other to the coming events of the next few.
The great event in the history of labor of the last few years has been the growing comprehension of Socialism by the English workmen, as shown by the spirit underlying all the strikes which have lately taken place, and which ha... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “Law and Order in Ireland Commonweal, Vol 3, No. 65, 9 April 1887, p. 113; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. The Coercion Bill and the attempt to drive it through Parliament is really a matter of great simplicity, although the whirl of party politics has made it seem somewhat intricate. It is the mere ‘outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace’ of that Conservatism, Toryism or Reactionism, whichever you please to call it, to which all the respectability of Parliamentary life gravitates, and which has engulfed not only the grave and portentous Philistinism of the once Tribune of the People, John Bright, but also the gathering ambition and vague aspiration to do something remarkable of Joseph Chamberlai... (From: Marxists.org.) The Lesser Arts of Life
The Lesser Arts of Life may not seem to some of you worth considering, even for an
hour. In these brisk days of the world, amid this high civilization of ours, we
are too eager and busy, it may be said, to take note of any form of art that does
not either stir our emotions deeply, or strain the attention of the most
intellectual part of our minds. Now for this rejection of the lesser arts there may
be something to be said, supposing it be done in a certain way and with certain
ends in view; nevertheless it seems to me that the lesser arts, when they are
rejected, are so treated for no sufficient reason, and to the injury of the
community; ther... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “The Lesson of the Hour” Commonweal, Vol 5, No. 191, 7 September 1889, p.281-282; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. The labor revolt in the East-end, whatever the result of the dock-laborers’ strike may be, will leave a lasting impression behind it, at least on the working men. The wiseacre Norwood, in his speech of Tuesday last, made the very remarkable discovery that ‘the strike was aimed at capital and employers generally’, and seemed to think that this discovery was a set-off against his other shortcomings.
As matter of fact, it is just this element of conscious or semi-conscious attack on the slave-drivers generally which distinguishes this strike from the ordinary trades-union bickerings. These latte... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “A Letter from Scotland” Commonweal, Vol 2, No. 25, 3 July 1886, p.105-106; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. On Tuesday 22nd I found myself at Arbroath, a pleasant stone-built town of some 20,000 inhabitants on the German Ocean, the original of ‘Fairport’ in Scott’s ‘Antiquary’, the remains of a magnificent church and abbey dominating the homely houses. The industry practiced there is sail-cloth making, and it is in a very dismal condition at present. There was much suffering there in the past winter. In a walk that I took with my host (a Free Kirk minister and a Socialist), we got into conversation with a field-laborer who was resting from his job of harrowing at a field’s end. I should ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “A Letter from the Pacific Coast” Commonweal, Vol 2, No. 13, February 1886, pp. 13; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. We have received an interesting letter from San Francisco relative to the labor question and especially to the conference lately held there, in which the main subject of discussion was the Chinese labor question. Our correspondent’s letter is as follows:
‘1035 Post Street, S. F., California, Dec. 9. ‘85.
‘Dear Comrades,- We last night adjourned from the ‘Trades and Labor Organizations Convention’ which had, with an interval of two days, been sitting since last Monday week. A full report is in course of preparation, of which you will undoubtedly receive a copy, but this i... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “The Liberal Party Digging Its Own Grave” Commonweal, Vol 3, No. 98, 26 November 1887, p. 380; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford.. For months past the Gladstonian Liberals have been protesting loudly against Coercion in Ireland, and the speeches of the ‘distinguished’ among them have been filling columns on columns of the papers. They have just had a splendid opportunity of striking a great blow against Coercion in London. We need not ask how they have used that opportunity, that would be a joke; but it may be profitable to point out some possible consequences of their gross stupidity in throwing it away. It is their business as political Liberals to get the working-classes to believe that if they come in again so... (From: Marxists.org.) Walsall Observer, and South Staffordshire Chronicle
On Sunday afternoon, happening to be in the neighborhood of Ravenscourt
Park — which, I may state, is near Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush ─ I saw the
sturdy, well-knit figure of Mr. William Morris tramping along heedless of the
driving rain and the keen north-east wind. Mr. William Morris is an
extraordinary character — in fact, he answers to the description of "three
single gentlemen rolled into one." Firstly, he is a poet ─ "the idle singer of an empty day" he calls himself; secondly, be is an art-decorator, a designer of
artistic wall-papers, and man of a flourishing business in which there is
little time for idle singing; thirdly, he is a gentlemanly ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “London in a State of Siege” Commonweal, Vol 3, No. 97, 19 November 1887, p. 369-70; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. Sir Charles Warren has kept his promise and prevented the meeting organized by the Radical Clubs. From the military point of view he has been eminently successful, and deserved to be so, and it is now proper that we should make him a peer of the realm and Commander-in-Chief of the British forces, if he will kindly consent to waive the title of Emperor or three-tailed Bashaw or whatever else is the proper nick-name of a supreme and irresponsible ruler. Sir Charles, I repeat, made his military dispositions admirably, and revolutionists should study them, since they have had a little piece of real war suddenly ... (From: Marxists.org.) It would be a hard-hearted person indeed who could either object seriously to or look sourly upon the Lord Mayor's Show as a holiday pageant, an afternoon brightening-up of the hideous and sordid streets of the "Great Wen," as Cobbett called it: and considering the depths of the degradation of all spectacular art at the present day, it would be too cruel to criticize the spectacle of last Monday from an artistic point of view, even if the columns of JUSTICE were the best place in which to do so. But since the Fathers of the City have thought good in one part of their show to call attention to an episode of London history, the murder of Wat Tyler, it may be worth while for the sake of the practical moral to recall to our readers the story of... (From: Marxists.org.) The Committee of the S.P.A.B. having noticed that the Pall Mall Gazette
has on several occasions done good service towards the cause of the preservation of
the remains of the art of past times, has desired me to write to you, & beg the
favor of space in your columns for the following remarks on the threatened
destruction of Magdalen Bridge at Oxford, which it is much to be feared is
imminent.
It may well be thought that the mere words, `the destruction of Magdalen Bridge'
would go at once to the heart of any one who knows Oxford well; that any one who
has lived there either as gownsman or townsman, & who does not want to be set
down as dull to any impression ... (From: Marxists.org.) As other ages are called, e.g., the ages of learning, of chivalry, of
faith and so forth, so ours I think may be called the Age of makeshift. In other
times of the world's history if a thing was not to be had, people did without it,
and there was an end. Nay, most often they were not conscious of the lack. But
to-day we are so rich in information, that we know of many and many things which we
ought to have and cannot, and not liking to sit down under the lack pure and
simple, we get a makeshift instead of it; and once more it is just this insistence
on makeshifts, and I fear content with them, which is the essence of what we call
civilization.
Now I want to run throu... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Manifesto, pub. 1st May 1893 Authors: J.M. Hyndman, W. Morris, G.B. Shaw Transcribed: by Graham Seaman, May 2019 There is a growing feeling at the present time that, in view of the
increasing number of Socialists in Great Britain, an effort should be made to
show that, whatever differences may have arisen between them in the past, all
who can fairly be called Socialists are agreed in their main principles of
thought and action.
This is the more hopeful since, though much has been made of those
differences by the opponents of Socialism, it is safe to say that they have
been of rather less importance than similar disputes of the early days of
great movements which have afterwards become solid and irresistible. There has
in... (From: Marxists.org.) Fellow Citizens,
We come before you as a body advocating the principles of Revolutionary
International Socialism; that is, we seek a change in the basis of Society - a
change which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities.
As the civilized world is at present constituted, there are two classes of Society
- the one possessing wealth and the instruments of its production, the other
producing wealth by means of those instruments but only by the leave and for the
use of the possessing classes.
These two classes are necessarily in antagonism to one another. The possessing
class, or non-producers, can only live as a class on the u... (From: Marxists.org.) Prefatory Note
The spread of Socialism since the first issue of this
Manifesto makes a new edition necessary; all the more, as the word Socialism is
now freely used by Ministers and ex-Ministers, who cannot be expected to understand
it, and who nevertheless take credit to themselves for their audacity in
patronizing it before vast popular audiences, so that the word has got to be used
loosely and in a misleading manner.
It is hoped that this new issue may be a corrective against misunderstandings that
may arise from all this.
The Notes appended to this edition will at any rate, we hope, clear up any possible
ambiguities in the text as w... (From: Marxists.org.) A Society coming before the public with such a name as that above written must
needs explain how, and why, it proposes to protect those ancient buildings which,
to most people doubtless, seem to have so many and such excellent protectors. This,
then, is the explanation we offer.
No doubt within the last fifty years a new interest, almost like another sense, has
arisen in these ancient monuments of art; and they have become the subject of one
of the most interesting of studies, and of an enthusiasm, religious, historical,
artistic, which is one of the undoubted gains of our time; yet we think that if the
present treatment of them be continued, our descendants will find them ... (From: Marxists.org.) Certainly May Day is above all days of the year fitting for the protest of the
disinherited against the system of robbery that shuts the door betwixt them and a
decent life; the day when the promise of the year reproaches the waste inseparable
from the society of inequality, the waste which produces our artificial poverty of
civilization, so much bitterer for those that suffer under it than the natural
poverty of the rudest barbarism. For it is undoubtedly true that full-blown
capitalism makes the richest country in the world as poor as, nay poorer than, the
poorest, for the life of by far the greater part of its people.
Are we to sit down placidly under this, hoping that s... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “Misanthropy to the Rescue” Commonweal, Vol 2, No. 33, 28 August 1886, p.172; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. A paper read by Mr Wordsworth Donnisthorpe at the Fabian Conference has been printed in the Anarchist. It excited much interest at the time when it was read, and aroused no little indignation in the minds of some of the Socialists that heard it; but printed, it does not seem a very remarkable piece, being simple an example of the ordinary pessimistic paradoxical exercises which are a disease of the period, and whose aim would seem to be the destruction of the meaning of language. Thus Mr Donnisthorpe declares himself an evolutionist, but his evolution simply runs round the circle; and in fact what he really means i... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “A Modern Midas” Commonweal, Vol 4, No. 141, 22 September 1888, p.300; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. In one respect at least, we Socialists have an advantage over other people. The very simplest and rudest ideal that a Socialist can conceive of would bear realization well; a Socialist could only be discontented with such realization by ceasing to be a Socialist; and there are few creeds or causes of which this could be said. Some have discounted the usual ideals, so to say, and rejected them beforehand, like the old Scotch lady who declined to sacrifice her pleasure on earth for the chance of sitting on a damp cloud and singing psalms all day for ever in another world; others, like Swedenborg, have gravely (though in his... (From: Marxists.org.) I want you to consider the position of the working-classes generally at the present
day: not to dwell on the progress that they may (or may not) have made within the
last five hundred or the last fifty years; but to consider what their position is,
relatively to the other classes of which our society is composed: and in doing so I
wish to guard against any exaggeration as to the advantages of the position of the
upper and middle-classes on the one side, and the disadvantages of the
working-classes on the other; for in truth there is no need for exaggeration; the
contrast between the two positions is sufficiently startling when all admissions
have been made that can be made. After all, ... (From: Marxists.org.) May I be allowed a further word or two on the subject of monuments in Westminster
Abbey and its precincts, since I see by your issue of the 11th April that it
appears probable that the plan of carrying the plague of monuments into the
cloisters and Chapter House will be approved of by the authorities? I think that,
whatever scheme for the continuance of what is called, in the detestable slang of
the day, our National Valhalla, may be second-worst, this surely must be called the
worst. Here very briefly is the position. Incongruous monuments have been allowed
to block up and disfigure the Abbey church; this is now allowed by every one who
claims to know or care anything about art to hav... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “The Moral of Last Lord Mayor’s Day” Commonweal, Vol 2, No. 45, 20 November 1886, p.265; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. The Lord Mayor’s Show has come and gone, and it may be supposed that many respectable people, including probably the city magnates who formed part of the procession, are easier in their minds that it is well over. But perhaps they will not on reflection be thoroughly reassured. The procession was far from being a triumphant one, and was escorted by hoots and groans all along. The success of the police in preventing a demonstration was only partial, since a huge meeting was held and harangued in Trafalgar Square, in spite of Sir Charles Warren’s proclamation, besides the large meeting in... (From: Marxists.org.)