oduction."[378] To
the delight of the Socialists, resolutions of the Trade Unions urging
the nationalisation of all land and capital are becoming more and more
emphatic. In the "Social Democrat" for October 1907 we read, under the
heading "Trade Unionists and Unemployment," the following: "The
resolution on unemployment passed at the Bath Trade Union Congress
shows that the Trade Unionists are falling into line with Social
Democrats on this question, and that they are beginning to see that
Trade Unionism alone is no solution for this evil. After referring to
the failure of the Unemployed Workmen Act, and the niggardly manner of
doling out the grant of _200,000l._, the resolution goes on to say
that 'This Congress, recognising that unemployment is now permanent in
character in busy as in slack seasons, in summer and in winter, and is
common to all trades and industries; also that this is due to industry
being unorganised and carried on for private profit and is bound to
continue, and indeed become more accentuated as the development of
machinery and other wage-saving methods proceeds, calls the attention
of the Government to its neglect of the interests of the people in not
grappling with this social evil, and urges it to at once embark upon
work of public utility with the object of (a) absorbing the present
unemployed labour, (b) laying the foundation for a permanent
reorganisation of industry upon a co-operative basis.'"[379]
The Socialists have been anxious to convince the workers that
unemployment is due to the private ownership of land and capital, and
that all unemployed should be relieved by the State because "A really
adequate system of helping the unemployed will completely alter the
relation of power between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It will
make the proletariat masters in the factory. If the workers sell
themselves to-day to the employer, if they allow themselves to be
exploited and oppressed, it is the ghost of unemployment, the whip of
hunger, which compels them to it. If, on the other hand, the worker is
secure in his existence, even when not in work, then nothing is easier
to him than to disable the capitalist. He no longer requires the
capitalist, while the latter cannot conduct his business without him.
When the matter has gone so far as that every employer, whenever a
dispute breaks out, will get the worst of it and be forced to yield,
the capitalists may certainly continue to be managers of
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