re giving Labor this almost valueless installment of
democracy, just as they had previously granted instead such immediate
and material benefits as we see in the recent British budgets, _as if_
they were concessions, only hiding the fact that _they would soon have
conferred these benefits on the workers through their own self-interest,
whether the workers had given them their political support or not_.

Mr. Lloyd George has said:--

"The workingman is no fool. He knows that a great party like ours
can, with his help, do things for him he could not hope to
accomplish for himself without its aid. It brings to his assistance
the potent influences drawn from the great middle classes of this
country, which would be frightened into positive hostility by a
_purely class organization_ to which they do not belong. No party
could ever hope for success in this country which does not win the
confidence of a _large portion_ of this middle class....

"You are not going to make Socialists in a hurry out of farmers and
traders and professional men of this country, but you may scare
them into reaction.... They are helping us now to secure advanced
Labor legislation; they will help us later to secure land reform
and other measures for all classes of wealth producers, and we need
all the help they give us. But if they are threatened with a class
war, then they will surely sulk and harden into downright Toryism.
What gain will that be for Labor?" (My italics.)[44]

The Chancellor of the Exchequer here bids for Labor's political support
on the plea that what he was doing for Labor meant an expense and not a
profit to the middle class, and that these reforms would only be
assented to by that class as the necessary price of the Labor vote. I
have shown grounds for believing that the chief motives of the new
reforms have nothing to do with the Labor vote. However much Mr. Lloyd
George, as a political manager, may desire to control that vote, he
knows he can do without it, as long as it is cast _against_ the Tories.
The Liberals will hold the balance of power, and their small capitalist
followers will continue to carry out their capitalistic progressive and
collectivist program--even without a Labor alliance. Nor does he fear
that even the most radical of reforms, whether economic or political,
will enable Labor to seize a larger share of the national income o