1. The Conflict between Capital and Labour.
WHILE our legislators are reforming and legislating at hazard,
the natural evolution of the world is slowly pursuing its course.
New interests arise, the economic competition between nation and
nation increases in severity, the working-classes are bestirring
themselves, and on all sides we see the birth of formidable
problems which the harangues of the politicians will never
resolve.
Among these new problems one of the most complicated will
be the problem of the conflict between labour and capital. It is
becoming acute even in such a country of tradition as England.
Workingmen are ceasing to respect the collective contracts which
formerly constituted their charter, strikes are declared for
insignificant motives, and unemployment and pauperism are
attaining disquieting proportions.
In America these strikes would finally have affected all
industries but that the very excess of the evil created a remedy.
During the last ten years the industrial leaders have organised
great employers' federations, which have become powerful enough
to force the workers to submit to arbitration.
The labour question is complicated in France by
the intervention of numerous foreign workers, which the
stagnation of our population has rendered
necessary.
13 This
stagnation will also make it difficult for France to contend with
her rivals, whose soil will soon no longer be able to nourish its
inhabitants, who, following one of the oldest laws of history,
will necessarily invade the less densely peopled countries.
These conflicts between the workers and employers of the
same nation will be rendered still more acute by the increasing
economic struggle between the Asiatics, whose needs are small,
and who can therefore produce manufactured articles at very low
prices, and the Europeans, whose needs are many. For twenty-five
years I have laid stress upon this point. General Hamilton, ex-military attaché to the Japanese army, who foresaw the
Japanese victories long before the outbreak of hostilities,
writes as follows in an essay translated by General Langlois:—
“The Chinaman, such as I have seen him in Manchuria,
is capable of destroying the present type of worker of the white
races. He will drive him off the face of the earth. The
Socialists, who preach equality to the labourer, are far from
thinking what would be the practical result of carrying out their
theories. Is it, then, the destiny of the white races to
disappear in the long run? In my humble opinion
this destiny depends upon one single factor: Shall we or shall
we not have the good sense to close our ears to speeches which
present war and preparation for war as a useless evil?
“I believe the workers must choose. Given the present
constitution of the world, they must cultivate in their children
the military ideal, and accept gracefully the cost and trouble
which militarism entails, or they will be let in for a cruel
struggle for life with a rival worker of whose success there is
not the slightest doubt. There is only one means of refusing
Asiatics the right to emigrate, to lower wages by competition,
and to live in our midst, and that is the sword. If Americans
and Europeans forget that their privileged position is held only
by force of arms, Asia will soon have taken her revenge.”
We know that in America the invasion of Chinese and
Japanese, owing to the competition between them and the workers
of white race, has become a national calamity. In Europe the
invasion is commencing, but has not as yet gone far. But already
Chinese emigrants have formed important colonies in certain
centres—London, Cardiff, Liverpool, &c. They have provoked
several riots by working for low wages. Their appearance has
always lowered salaries.
But these problems belong to the future, and those of the
present are so disquieting that it is useless at the moment to
occupy ourselves with others.
