Source: “Pentonville Prison” Commonweal, Vol 4, No. 128, 23 June 1888, p.195; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. The following letter is worth reprinting entire as a really cheering sign of the times; and one can scarcely be wrong in thinking that such a letter could hardly have been written to the ordinary press or printed by it but for Bloody Sunday and all that followed it, which has dragged to light the horrors of the English prison system.
Sir, — As foreman of a jury at Clerkenwell Sessions, on being discharged yesterday, after sitting six days, I with my fellow-jurymen (by order obtained of the judge) went over the above prison. We were much horrified and pained to see the brutal system under which torture is hourly infl... (From: Marxists.org.) A note published from a correspondent about Peterborough Cathedral is somewhat
alarming. Will you allow me a few words on this subject? As to what has been done
at Peterborough I will not say much; some of us thought that when the necessary
rebuilding of the arches of the crossing took place, it might have been possible to
save the tower from rebuilding; but it was at any rate highly creditable to the
good sense of the Chapter that they refused to allow the church to be disfigured
with an experimental modern Norman tower, especially as much pressure was put upon
them in favor of that absurdity. Let us hope that they will understand their
responsibilities in the future as well as they d... (From: Marxists.org.) In your issue of the 28th ult. appears a letter from the Dean of Peterborough
giving an account of the damage done by the recent storm to the west front of that
Cathedral. Everyone who has any interest in art or history must be moved by this
accident, and wish for its speedy repair. I may add also that from some years past
it has been known that this magnificentwork of art, which is by common consent the
noblest and most beautiful of our English west fronts, has shown signs of movement,
probably due to some defect of the foundations caused by the draining of the
fen-land, so that a thorough search into its present condition has been recognized
to be necessary. I must say for my own par... (From: Marxists.org.) I am glad your correspondent `Muratore' agrees with me in deprecating the
rebuilding of the west front of Peterborough [Cathedral]. As to the rest of his
letter, I find some difficulty in understanding it, and more still in understanding
why he should have taken the trouble to write it. It is proverbially difficult to
argue about matters of taste; but the combination in one mind of the study (and
perhaps consequent knowledge) of architecture with contempt for the west
front of Peterborough [Cathedral] must point to such a rarity as almost to amount
to a monstrosity. I can only wish that the fabric of that lovely work of art were
as safe from the attacks of restorers as its reputation f... (From: Marxists.org.) I venture, at the risk of being troublesome, to draw your attention once more to
Peterborough Cathedral. The Restoration Committee are calling on the public for
£12,000, which is needed, as I gather from a note in the Standard,
"to repair the damage done by the gale in the spring, to secure the safety of the
west front, and to execute repairs still needed in the transepts and eastern
chapel." Now, it may well be that this sum is under rather than over what is needed
for indispensable work; but I must again repeat that the necessary work on
the west front was necessary before the gale of last spring took place,
and this work is not the replacing or re-doing of a few pinnacles, som... (From: Marxists.org.) The blame for the waste of money in the interior of Peterborough Cathedral on
things which must to everybody seem non-essentials (and which to me seem
mischievous modernizations) does not rest specially on the restoration committee,
and I did not in my former letter mean to imply that it did. The committee shares
the blame with the general public. Yet it seems to me that as the body made
responsible for carrying out necessary repairs, and which in consequence was and is
bound to know more than others of the needs of the Cathedral, it was their business
rather to lead the public than be led by it, and to point out emphatically what
those needs were. The only effective way of doing this ... (From: Marxists.org.) As the word "philanthropist" is pretty often used in the columns of Justice, it may be worth while to write a short chapter on the natural history of this species of man, with as little bitterness or even grumbling as may be; though it must he admitted that "their ways and their manners" are often not a little trying to those who are doing their best to get the "poor" to understand the real causes of their poverty, so that they may themselves attack the disease instead of sitting hopeless while others feebly palliate its worst symptoms.
Well, the Philanthropists may, first of all, be broadly divided into two kinds, the old and the new, or the uneconomical and the economical; the first give, I think, with some pleasure in the act of givin... (From: Marxists.org.) O muse that swayest the sad Northern Song,
Thy right hand full of smiting & of wrong,
Thy left hand holding pity; & thy breast
Heaving with hope of that so certain rest:
Thou, with the gray eyes kind and unafraid,
The soft lips trembling not, though they have said
The doom of the World and those that dwell therein.
The lips that smile not though thy children win
The fated Love that draws the fated Death.
O, borne adown the fresh stream of thy breath,
Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart,
That, if it may be, I may have a part
In that great sorrow of thy children dead
That vexed the brow, and bowed adown the head,
Whitened the hair, made life a wondrous dream,
And d... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “Police Spies Exposed” Commonweal, Vol 4, No. 104, 7 January 1888, p.1-2; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. There have always been found by the governments of all countries traitors ready to mingle in the ranks of every revolutionary party, including the Socialist, and by worming themselves into the confidence of the members, obtain their secrets to betray them, or by getting up dynamite plots and things of that kind, to arouse public feeling against the movement. Many other devices are there in the armory of a tyrant, and in the days of the Third Empire they were carried, as men thought, to the utmost pitch of a devilish perfection. It has been left however for Bismark and his underlings to attain a yet higher (or lower) d... (From: Marxists.org.) All Socialists who can be considered to have any claim to that title agree in
putting forward the necessity of transforming the means of production from
individual into common property: that is the least that the party can accept as
terms of peace with the capitalists; and obviously they are hard terms of peace for
the latter, since they mean the destruction of individualist capital. This minimum
which we claim therefore is a very big thing: its realization would bring about
such a revolution as the world has not yet seen, and all minor reforms of
civilization which have been thought of or would be possible to think of would be
included in it: no political party has ever had a program ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “The Policy of the Socialist League” Commonweal, Vol 4, No. 126, 9 June 1888, p.180; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. Since the Socialist League was founded to support the principles of International Revolutionary Socialism, and since there has been some difference of opinion among us as to the meaning of those words, the Council of the League thinks it its duty to point out what in its opinion that meaning is, as expressed by publications of the League, which at the time of their publication were not challenged by any of its branches or members; and in doing this the Council wishes to disclaim any narrowing of the principles of the League beyond what it believes has been recognized from the first as necessary to give it a ... (From: Marxists.org.) Preface to 'Socialism made Plain'
I HAVE been asked to write a Preface to this book, and do so with pleasure,
believing that it will supply a need to those who are really anxious to know
the aims and methods of Socialism. There is, indeed, a good deal of socialist
literature in circulation; but a part of this is in pamphlet form, and though
often excellent in their way, not one of these pamphlets goes far enough
towards exhausting the subject, and satisfying the demand for information. On
the other hand, the more learned socialist literature, like Marx's celebrated
book, requires such hard and close study that those who have not approached the
subject by a more easy road, are not likely to begin on that side, or if they
d... (From: Marxists.org.) THE papers that follow this need no explanation, since they are directed
towards special sides of the Arts and Crafts. Mr. Crane has put forward the
aims of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society as an Exhibition Society,
therefore I need not enlarge upon that phase of this book. But I will write a
few words on the way in which it seems to me we ought to face the present
position of that revival in decorative art of which our Society is one of the
tokens.
And, in the first place, the very fact, that there is a "revival"
shows that the arts aforesaid have been sick unto death. In all such changes
the first of the new does not appear till there is little or no life left in
the old, and yet the old, even when it is all but dead, ... (From: Marxists.org.) It is not long since the Middle Ages, of the literature of which this book gives us
such curious examples, were supposed to be an unaccountable phenomenon accidentally
thrust in betwixt the two periods of civilization, the classical and the modern,
and forming a period without growth or meaning: a period which began about the time
of the decay of the Roman Empire, and ended suddenly and more or less unaccountably
at the time of the Reformation. The society of this period was supposed to be
lawless and chaotic; its ethics a mere conscious hypocrisy, its art gloomy and
barbarous fanaticism only, its literature the formless jargon of savages; and as to
its science, that side of human inte... (From: Marxists.org.) The Chapter which is here put before the reader can be well considered as a
separate piece of work, although it contains here and there references to what has
gone before in The Stones of Venice. To my mind, and I believe to some
others, it is one of the most important things written by the author, and in future
days will be considered as one of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances
of the century.
To some of us when we first read it, now many years ago, it seemed to point out a
new road on which the world should travel. And in spite of all the disappointments
of forty years, and although some of us, John Ruskin among others, have since
learned what the eq... (From: Marxists.org.) It is good to review the state of political parties from time to time and to try to
get an idea of what our relations as socialists are to the general mass of
political opinion, whether we are advancing, or retro[gressing], or standing still:
in fact we cannot help speculating on the influence ordinary parties may have upon
our movement and in what direction they are pushing us as to tactics in carrying on
that movement: there are dangers as well as hopes for us in the welter of political
life so that it behooves us to look at the prospect with as clear eyes as we can
lest we fall into traps. Perhaps however some of you may say that unless to the
eyes of an electioneering agent the pro... (From: Marxists.org.) The Whig revolution, which began on the fall of medieval society and culminated in
the French revolution, on the one hand, and the establishment of the factory
organization of production amid the ruins of handicraft, on the other, seemed in
the first half of this century to have stranded the civilized world on a period of
academical coma, having some analogy to the great period of the classical
civilization inaugurated by the accession of Augustus. In England at any rate a
modus vivendi had been established between the employers of labor and
their "hands," and free-trade and the abolition of the corn laws had so greased the
wheels of factory production that, though profits were not mad... (From: Marxists.org.) That a weekly English journal would be started with
every prospect of success to support organized Socialism in the British
Islands would not so very long ago have been scouted as an absurdity by many,
perhaps even of those who read these lines. Democratic Socialism was
everywhere spoken of as merely another name for secret assassination or
dynamite outrage, and the greatest efforts were made to show plainly that no
matter how rife such ideas might be abroad, Socialism could never take root in
England. Now, however, it is quite clear that Socialists are gaining strength
more rapidly than any existing party. An interest has been roused in the
propaganda, and Socialism in one form or another has become rather
fashionable. Of this we... (From: Marxists.org.) Printing, in the only sense with which we are at present concerned, differs from
most if not from all the arts and crafts represented in the Exhibition in being
comparatively modern. For although the Chinese took impressions from wood blocks
engraved in relief for centuries before the wood-cutters of the Netherlands, by a
similar process, produced the block books, which were the immediate predecessors of
the true printed book, the invention of movable metal letters in the middle of the
fifteenth century may justly be considered as the invention of the art of printing.
And it is worth mention in passing that, as an example of fine typography, the
earliest book printed with movable types... (From: Marxists.org.) The Promise of May.
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 some blessing will drop
down fr... (From: Marxists.org.) Those who care about the remains of the ancient art of our country may well be
somewhat anxious about the scheme which is before the public for the building of a
memorial chapel at Westminster to hold the monuments of distinguished men in the
future, since it is now admitted on all hands that there is no more room for them
in the Abbey church. As representing the Society for the Protection of Ancient
Buildings, it is not my business to criticize the various proposals, except from
one point of view, that is: as to how they may affect the existing ancient
buildings. I beg you to allow me a word or two on this point, while there is yet
time to say anything concerning the scheme. What I ha... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “Radicals Look Round You!” Commonweal, Vol 4, No. 105, 14 January 1888, p.12-13; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. The Winchester election is, it must be admitted, a shabby text to preach from: given, a cathedral establishment, a military depot, a middle-class public school, a large class of the villa-dwellers, and a noble lord as owner of a greater part of the town, and the result of an election in such a place would seem to be certain — the return of the Tory candidate — even if he were not a local magnate, and his opponent a mere name: only an electioneering agent on the look-out for a job one would think could venture to encourage opposition to the winning color under such circumstances. However, the Liberals... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: “The Reaction and the Radicals” Commonweal, Vol 4, No. 121, 5 May 1888, p.137-138; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. The other day a friend was remarking to me that the ordinary Liberal and Radical of the Parliamentary type was very slack in his resistance to the Tory supremacy in these days; and in spite of the brags of the Gladstonian press, it must be admitted that this is true, after making all the allowances that can be made for the apparently brisk conflict over Irish matters: for that conflict is really in the hands of the Irish themselves; Mr Parnell’s causing the Irish vote to be cast in favor of the Tories in 1885 forced Mr Gladstone’s hand. Up to that time the Liberals had reckoned on the general suppo... (From: Marxists.org.) IN considering this important subject it is necessary to look
371
into the past history of the world, and, however summarily, glance at the tale
of the twins. Art and Labor, which tale, indeed, means nothing less than the
history of the world.
To pass over the conditions of men as mere savages, one comes across civilized
men in history served by labor under three conditions—chattel slavery, serfdom,
and wage-earning.
Under the classical peoples society was founded on chattel slavery; agriculture
and the industrial arts were carried on for the most part by men who could he
bought and sold like beasts; and as a consequence the industrial arts, at least
in the heyday of Greek intelligence, were looked down on with co... (From: Marxists.org.) In putting forth their Second Annual Report, the Committee feel that while they
have undoubtedly to congratulate the Society on the progress made by its
principles, the nature of their work is little altered from what it was last year.
It must be remembered that as so much of that work is of a negative character, is
preventive rather than creative, it is not easy to show the obvious signs of
success that attend some undertakings; while on the other hand the Committee are
apt to see most of the discouraging side of the matter, because the greater part of
their work consists in protesting and advising in cases in which there is not much
hope of direct success, since such sche... (From: Marxists.org.) In putting forth this First Annual Report since the institution of our Society, the
Committee cannot but regret, considering how widely-spread and rapid has been both
the destruction and falsification of our ancient monuments during the last twenty
years, that some such society as this was not long ago called into existence; a
society with the principal aim of guarding the life and soul of those monuments, so
to speak, and not their bodies merely; a society that might have impressed upon the
public the duty of preserving jealously the very gifts that our forefathers left
us, and not merely their sites and names.
This lack heretofore of such a body as ours (the result among ... (From: Marxists.org.) (1) The London Daily News
A meeting convened by the Committee to Promote the Free Navigation of the
Straits of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, and admitted by ticket, was held
at Willis's Rooms yesterday afternoon, in favor of the objects of the
committee, and to protest against any attempt to maintain the present
conditions affecting those straits by the employment of military force.
[....]
[....]
Mr. MORRIS, author of "The Earthly Paradise," denied the
truth of the statement that there was no war party in the country. There was
a war party in this country, and, what was more, a party for war at any
price. (Cheers.) There were some good Liberals and Radicals who lived in
'48 who thought that Russia was the same now as... (From: Marxists.org.) William Morris and Frank Kitz were the two delegates from the executive committee of the Socialist League to the International Socialist Congress in Paris (later known as the first Congress of the Second International) in July 1889. Morris gave a verbal report to the Congress on the state of the socialist movement in England, and submitted a handwritten text of the report to the Congress for later publication.
The text was never published in its original form, and although it
survives in the Guesde archive of the IISG it has become damaged over
the years, losing most of the top of each page and some of the left side.
However, the Congress was held in three languages: English, French, and
German, and all the reports were tr... (From: Marxists.org.) I can only thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and say that the best return I could
receive would be to take a list out of my pocket at the next meeting of the Society
of 20 or 30 new members. That would be a real vote of thanks to me. After all, what
one wants is the opportunity to go on working in the same course.
Bibliographical Note
Title
Response to a Vote of Thanks (1889).
Deliveries
1. 3 July 1889: Before the Annual Meeting held at ?.
Publication
1. [Untitled] in SPAB Report, 1889, (London 1889), p. 79. (From: Marxists.org.) I am glad to see that the Daily Chronicle understands so well the danger
of the threatened restoration of Rouen Cathedral. It would be impossible to
over-estimate the interest of this most beautiful monument of art, which, taking it
altogether, is second to none in the two great architectural countries, France and
England. And though visitors to the ancient Norman capital are most often
captivated by the extraordinary elegance of St Ouen, and in consequence somewhat
neglect the cathedral, the latter has both more interest and more special beauty
than the former. As to work to be done, of course it is possible that structural
repairs are necessary; nay, on some scale or other they are s... (From: Marxists.org.)