Dear Sorge,

I get the Nationalist regularly but unfortunately there’s not much in
it. Just feeble reflections of our Fabians!’6 over here. Dreary and shallow
as Dismal Swamp, but pleased as Punch about the magnanimous
magnanimity with which they, eddicated middle-class folk, condescend
to emancipate the workers who, however, are expected in return to be
sweetly submissive and kowtow obediently to the eddicated cranks and
their isms. Let them enjoy their little pleasure while they may; one fine
day the movement will efface all this. Indeed, we continentals are at an
advantage in that this sort of thing would not be possible in our case
because of the very different effect the French Revolution has had on us.

Today I am also sending you The People’s Press, which, so far as
reports on the new Trades Unions are concerned, has now taken the
place of the Labour Elector. The latter, as you will have seen, no longer
carries any factual news because the workers flatly refuse to have
anything further to do with it. Not that this prevents Burns, Mann and
others (particularly some of the dockers) from consorting a great deal
with Champion on the sly and allowing themselves to be influenced by
him. The People’s Press is edited by a very youthful Fabian named Dell,
the second in command being the parson Morris; both, from what I have
heard so far, are decent people and most obliging to the gas workers. The

(secret) leader of the gas workers is Tussy and the union is, to all appearances at any rate, far and away the best of the lot.°© The dockers have
been spoiled by the philistines’ subventions and are anxious not to blot
their copybook with the bourgeois public. Moreover, their secretary,
Tillett, is the mortal enemy of the gas workers, whose secretary he vainly
strove to become. The dockers and gas workers, large numbers of whom
are dockers in the summer and gas workers in winter, really belong
together; hence the latter proposed an agreement whereby anyone who
was a member of one of the two Unions should not, on changing his job,
be forced to join the other. So far this has been rejected by the dockers,
who demand that a gas worker who turns docker in the spring should
pay his joining fee and membership dues. Hence a lot of unpleasantness.
Altogether the dockers are putting up with the hell of a lot from their
Executive. The Gas Workers and General Labourers take in all the
unskilled workers, and in Ireland the agricultural day labourers are also
flocking to join it—to the annoyance of Davitt, who has progressed no
further than Henry George and considers, though quite without reason,
his domestic Irish policy to be threatened.? Here in London, the gas
workers south of the Thames have been thoroughly trounced by the
South Metropolitan Gas Co.,°”” that was all to the good, as they were
getting altogether much too cocky and thought they could carry everything before them; in Manchester they suffered a like fate and now they
are calming down and starting to consolidate the organisation and fill its
coffers. In the Union Tussy represents the girls and women of
Silvertown (India Rubber, etc., Works) whose strike she led,>*? and will
probably soon take her seat on the London Trades Council.5°”

In a country such as this, with an old political and labour movement,
there will always be a vast accumulation of traditionally received rubbish
to be gradually got rid of. There are the prejudices, all of which need to
be broken down, of the skilled Unions—Engineers, Bricklayers,
Carpenters, Joiners, Type Compositors, etc., the petty jealousies
between individual trades which, fomented in word and deed by the
leaders, are surreptitiously exacerbated to the point of outright enmity
and strife; there are the incompatible ambitions and the intrigues of the
leaders—this one wants to get into Parliament, so does that, the other
wants to get on to the County Council! or the School Board, yet
another to establish the universal centralisation of all workers, and
another still to found a newspaper, a club, etc., etc.,—in short, there are
endless causes of friction; and, in the midst of it all, the Socialist
League,”’ contemptuous of everything that is not downright revolution-

Letters ~ 1890 487

ary (which means here in England as with you in America, everything
that’s not confined to spouting hot air to the exclusion of everything
else), and the Federation,? which continues to behave as if, except for
itself, there were nothing but fools and bunglers, even though the
modicum of support it is regaining is due solely to the vigour of the new
movement. In short, anyone who merely considered the surface of
things would say that all was confusion and personal quarrels. But
beneath the surface the movement continues, spreading to ever wider
strata, for the most part precisely those at the very base of the hitherto
inert masses, nor is the day far off when those masses will suddenly
discover their identity, when it will dawn on them that it is they who are
these vast dynamic masses and, on that day, short work will be made of
all the shabby tricks and petty quarrels.

Needless to say, the above details as to persons and momentary differences are solely for your own information and must not on any account
be allowed to get into the Volkszeitung. Let this be understood once and
for all—for when Schliiter was over here, he more than once demonstrated a tendency to take this sort of thing rather too lightly.

I much look forward to the First of May. In Germany the group in the
Reichstag was duty-bound to restrain any excess of zeal. The bourgeois,
the political police, whose ‘bread and butter’ is at stake, the worthy officers—all are itching for mayhem and slaughter and are seeking any
pretext to persuade young William? that it’s never too soon to shoot. But
this would completely ruin our game. First we have to get rid of the AntiSocialist Law,°? i.e. survive the 30th of September. And after that our
prospects in Germany will be much too brilliant for us to wreck them
merely for the sake of blowing our own trumpet. Come to that, the
parliamentary group’s proclamation™ is bad; it stems from Liebknecht
and the nonsense about a ‘general strike’ was wholly unnecessary. But
either way, our people have been so elated by the 20th of February” that
a certain amount of restraint is necessary if blunders are to be avoided.

In France the First of May might be a turning-point, for Paris at any
rate, provided it helps to restore to their right minds the large numbers
of working men who have gone over to Boulangism there. For this, our
people have only themselves to blame. They have never had the courage
to oppose the outcry against the Germans, gua Germans, and now in
Paris they are falling victim to chauvinism. Luckily the position is better
in the provinces. But abroad people look only to Paris.

@ William IT

If the French sent me their stuff, I would send it on to you. But I
think they themselves are ashamed of the things. Well, it’s in the French
nature—defeat is more than they can stomach. The moment they again
have a taste of success, all will suddenly change.

Cordial regards to your wife? and yourself.

Likewise to the Schliiters.

Schorlemmer returned to Manchester last Monday. We are both of
necessity strict abstainers. Quelle horreur!>