The apostle of free labour : the life story of William Collison, founder and general secretary of the National Free Labour Association, told by himself . thepossessors ; the wolves are the Socialists ; the road acrossthe steppes is the path of human progress ; and the cap,the mantle, the children, and the wife, abandoned oneby one to the wolves, are the concessions made every dayby the capitalists to the proletariat—the reforms to whichthey are compelled to assent, under pain of being them-selves devoured. And, sooner or later, unless they arecareful, their turn will come. Little by little we
The apostle of free labour : the life story of William Collison, founder and general secretary of the National Free Labour Association, told by himself . thepossessors ; the wolves are the Socialists ; the road acrossthe steppes is the path of human progress ; and the cap,the mantle, the children, and the wife, abandoned oneby one to the wolves, are the concessions made every dayby the capitalists to the proletariat—the reforms to whichthey are compelled to assent, under pain of being them-selves devoured. And, sooner or later, unless they arecareful, their turn will come. Little by little we shalltake all; as soon as we obtain one liberty we shall demandanother. The wolves, the wolves, you know—the wolvesbehind the sledge. From a Socialist point of view this speech is perfect. Andthe Socialists, from their point of view, were justified in think-ing that the words might be transmuted into deeds. I remember hearing the late Tom McCarthy say that in recenthistory there were two men who had an opportunity of makinga revolution and did not avail themselves of it. The one wasGeneral Boulanger—who, had he ridden on his black horse e /. ^i^ ^ ^1 t^l zr. 1 E THE DAWN OF FREE LABOUR 91 after the celebrated Review, to the Elysee, would have beendictator of France. The other was John Burns—the onlySocialist in England who ever had a mob of forty thousandmen marching through the richest City in the world at hiscommand, and who refused to loose it against law and order. For this neglected opportunity of bringing about a revolutionthe Socialists have never forgiven John Burns ; but in earningtheir opprobrium he has also earned the thanks of all decentcitizens. Although the views above quoted were written in 1893, theyto-day accurately represent the ultimate aims of Socialist TradeUnions ; and, as such, I commend them to all those Capitalists,politicians and philanthropists, who think to pacify the LabourSocialists by profit-sharing and Boards of Arbitration. At the termin
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1913
