Page:The State and the Slums.djvu/7



well-meaning persons, and some by no means stupid ones, would declare that it is not State-socialism at all, to devise schemes for the better housing of the poor at the cost of imperial or municipal funds. This, however, is not the opinion of Socialists themselves. They are not, indeed, prepared to give a release in full of all demands, in return for a measure such as is now under discussion; but they distinctly intimate that they would consider such a measure an instalment of their full claim, and an acknowledgment of its substantial justice. Mr. H. M. Hyndman, the chairman of the Democratic Federation, thus expresses himself in the Pall Mall Gazette of October 29, 1883: "The workers being able to get better rooms at lower rents could afford to take lower wages in time of pressure, and consequently so much would be deducted from their competition wages when next they came forward to struggle with one another for employment." And he goes on—"There it is; look at it how you will, there is the curse of our present system. Competition for gain above; competition for bare subsistence wages below . " These words go to the root of the whole matter, as doubtless they were intended to do. Unless society is reconstructed on the basis of which Mr. Hyndman and his friends approve, they treat such remedies as are offered by way of palliative, as a mere admission of the extreme principle for which they are contending. Nevertheless, Mr. Hyndman's words contain an important truth. The question is at bottom a question of wages. As he says, give men better lodgings for the same or less rent, and they will be tempted to accept lower wages when competition comes on them; but even this is not all. Some of them will be tempted to add to their