Page:Labour in Madras.djvu/26



XX LABOUR IN MADRAS Britain with the builders in their new guild, in Georgia with its new socialist state, in Russia as described by Mr, H. N. Brailsford. In the midst of crashing systems is slowly but surely emerging a new order of things economic, in which Labour will wield a new power, and its method of collective bargaining will not be by the old use of the strike-weapon. Hear the Labourer chant his mantram the world over: he sings it as his ploughshare turns the so1, he sings it as the clatter of machinery inakes him deaf, he sings it in the dark dungeon of the mine, he sings it as he earns his starvation wages, he sings it at home and abroad:We are the bewers and delvers who toil for another's gain,The common clods and the rabble, stunted of brow and brain. What do we want, the gleaners, of the harvest we have reaped ? What do we want, the neuters, of the boney we have beaped ? We want the drones to be driven away from our golden board ; We want to share in the harvest; we want to sit at the board ; We want what sword or suffrage bus never yet won for man, — The fruits of his toil God promised when the curse of toil began. B. P. W.