Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/47

 the expense of the class which supplies the labour-force that produces wealth.

The total income of the country is £1,300,000,000; of this the producers receive £300,000,000 in wages; and of these wages they pay back one-fifth to one-third to the landlord and capitalist class in rent, apart from the amount they refund in profits on retail and adulterated goods. The producers live on the average one-half the number of years the comfortable classes live. The total amount of property owned by 220,000 families is nearly £6,000,000,000, whilst millions are living on insufficient food and 4,500,000 persons receive charitable relief in England and Wales alone, in one shape or another, during the course of the year. The land of England is practically owned by 30,000 people against 30,000,000 and 8,000 landowners in Great Britain and Ireland receive no less than £35,000,000 a year in rents. Such plain facts as these are sufficient of themselves to show the anarchy of what we call civilisation. There have been no fewer than six commercial crises since the beginning of the century to crush the workers, not counting the Lancashire cotton famine due to the American Civil War. Meanwhile commercial war—competition in cheapness, that is, adulteration to make great profits, and attacks upon helpless people to open up new markets—has been going on all round.

Yet in the face of all this a certain school still contend that there is no class robbery; that there should be no class antagonism; that the blessings of peace and eternal money-getting for all would be ever with us if only our people—our producing people—would cease to have any families at all. What is it produces value?—labour