Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
If I believed that Mammonism with its adjuncts was to continue
henceforth the one serious principle of our existence, I should
reckon it idle to solicit remedial measures from any Government,
the disease being insusceptible of remedy. Government can do
much, but it can in no wise do all. Government, as the most
conspicuous object in Society, is called upon to give signal of
what shall be done; and, in many ways, to preside over, further,
and command the doing of it. But the Government cannot do, by
all its signalling and commanding, what the Society is radically
indisposed to do.--In the long-run every Government is the exact
symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to
say, Like People like Government.--The main substance of this
immense Problem of Organising Labour, and first of all of
Managing the Working Classes, will, it is very clear, have to be
solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it; by
those who themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can
be enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must
already lie potentially extant in those two Classes, who are to
obey such enactment. A Human Chaos in which there is no light,
you vainly attempt to irradiate by light shed on it: order never
can arise there.
But it is my firm conviction that the 'Hell of England' will
_cease_ to be that of 'not making money;' that we shall get a
nobler Hell and a nobler Heaven! I anticipate light _in_ the
Human Chaos, glimmering, shining more and more; under manifold
true signals from without That light shall shine. Our deity no
longer being Mammon,--O Heavens, each man will then say to
himself: "Why such deadly haste to make money? I shall not go
to Hell, even if I do not make money! There is another Hell, I
am told!" Competition, at railway-speed, in all branches of
commerce and work will then abate:--good felt-hats for the head,
in every sense, instead of seven-feet lath-and-plaster hats on
wheels, will then be discoverable! Bubble-periods, with their
panics and commercial crises, will again become infrequent;
steady modest industry will take the place of gambling
speculation. To be a noble Master, among noble Workers, will
again be the first ambition with some few; to be a rich Master
only the second. How the Inventive Genius of England, with the
whirr of its bobbins and billy-rollers shoved somewhat into the
backgrounds of the brain, will contrive and devise, not cheaper
produce exclusively, but fairer distribution of the produce at
its present cheapness! By degrees, we shall again have a Society
with something of Heroism in it, something of Heaven's Blessing
on it; we shall again have, as my German friend asserts,
'instead of Mammon-Feudalism with unsold cotton-shirts and
Preservation of the Game, noble just Industrialism and Government
by the Wisest!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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