The Henson Journals

[79]

Tuesday, July 26th, 1921.

After the storm of last night, the country looked clean and refreshed, and shewed to the best advantage under a cloudless sky, and in brilliant sunshine. The air was pleasant & exhilarating. I spend the morning sauntering in the park, & talking with mine host, to whom I felt that an amende was owing, for my too brusque denunciation of the "National Assembly". I ought to have remembered that he is the Secretary of that preposterous body: that he gives freely of his time & energy: & that he does so by way of religious service. He shewed me some letters of his ancestor, Baker, who was physician to George III. His notes on the king's symptoms of madness are very curious. After lunch we continued our journey as far as Condover Hall, stopping at Shrewsbury Railway station to drop Fearne, who was to catch the train for Hereford. The Fieldens received us very pleasantly. After tea I walked for a while with mine host, and discussed the economic situation. He is less despondent than I expected, but certainly very far from being optimistic.

There was a large company at dinner, mostly of relations. Nicholas Fielden said that the negroes in the Southern States were still practically slaves, for they were employed on the plantations at a very low wage; and there was a strict understanding between the planters that no one of them would employed [sic] a negro who had been dismissed by any other! We had much talk about Prohibition, and the probability of its permanence in America, and its adoption in Britain.

[80] [symbol]

Of course the subject of "Labour & Capital" came under discussion. Nicholas Fielden is the proprietor of coal mines in this neighbourhood. He told me that he had proposed to his employees that he & they should deal with one another directly, retiring severally from the organizations, that this proposal had been accepted by a two–thirds majority; that the Miners' Federation had thereupon intervened, & persuaded the men to go back on their vote. The argument was purely a class argument. "If you break away from your class, you are dooming yourselves & your children to perpetual servitude!". It is vain for our good "Christian Socialists" to go on denouncing the absence of "personal relations" in the sphere of modern industry, the while they bless and toady "Organized Labour" which systematically discourages, & as far as can be, prohibits every attempt of employers to deal directly with their workmen. It all comes back to the crucial fact that the ulterior object of "Labour policy" is, not to make Industrialism work successfully, i.e. harmoniously and equitably, but to make it break down: and this fact explains & compels the failure to secure any permanent agreement between "Labour" and "Capital". Chronic war, not harmony, is, from the Labour leader's point of view, the natural & normal relation of employer and employed. In order to reconcile such an assumption with Christianity, our "Christian Socialists" have persuaded themselves that "Industrialism" itself is in principle morally indefensible.

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