Labour and the Popular Welfare
William Hurrell Mallock
9781465662422
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In republishing this work at a low price, I wish to reiterate emphatically what is said of it in the opening chapter,—namely, that any clearheaded Radical, as distinct from the New Unionist, the Socialistic dreamer, and the Agitator, will find nothing in it to jar against his sympathies, or to conflict with his opinions, any more than the most strenuous Conservative will. If the word “party” is used in its usual sense, this is a volume absolutely free from any party bias. It has, however, since its first publication, some nine months ago, been attacked continually, not by Socialistic writers only (whose attack was natural), but by Radicals also, who, apparently quite mistaking the drift of it, have done their best to detect in it flaws, fallacies, and inaccuracies. As any work like the present, whose aim is essentially practical, is worse than useless unless the reader is able to feel confidence in it, let me say a few words as to the degree of confidence which is claimed, after nine months of criticism, for the facts and arguments set forth in the following pages. Let the reader emphasise in his mind the division between facts and arguments, for they stand on a different footing. In estimating the truth of any general arguments, the final appeal is to the common sense of the reader. The reader is himself the judge of them; and the moment he understands and assents to them, they belong to himself as much as they ever did to the writer. On the other hand, the historical facts, or statistics, by which arguments are illustrated, or on which they are based, claim acceptance on the authority, not of our internal common sense, but of external evidence. Let me speak separately, then, of the arguments of this book, and of the facts quoted in it. Of the arguments, whether taken individually or as a whole, it will be enough here to say that no hostile critic of these has been able in any way to meet them. The only writers who have affected to do so have, either intentionally or unintentionally, entirely failed to understand them; and when they have seemed to be refuting anything, they have been refuting only their own misconceptions or misrepresentations. It is impossible in a short preface to say more than this; but in order to illustrate the truth of the foregoing statement, a paper published by me in the Fortnightly Review is (by kind permission of Messrs. Chapman and Hall) reprinted as an Appendix to the present volume. That paper consists of an examination of the criticisms made, on behalf of the Fabian Society, by Mr. Bernard Shaw on two previous papers of my own published (also in the Fortnightly Review) under the title of “Fabian Economics,” in which the main arguments of this book were condensed. It is true that many of these arguments are here stated merely in outline, and in a popular rather than in a philosophical form, as is explained more fully in the Preface to the First Edition. But it may be safely asserted that there is hardly a single Socialistic argument used by the Socialistic party in this country to which this present book does not contain a reply, or at all events a clear indication of the grounds on which a reply is to be founded.
