The Martyrdom of LabourG. Redway, 1899 - 293 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
able acres agricultural agricultural gangs alchemy amongst become better Bromsgrove capital capitalist century Christian civilisation co-operation common cottages Cotton Famine Cradley Heath crofter death degradation Devonport disease divine earn economics effect England evil exist fact factories French Revolution give greed hand heart helots hold honour human ideal idle idle class industry justice labour Lancashire land less live living wage London look lords man-the man's manhood masses means ment mind misery moral nature never noble organisation physical political economy poor pounds weight principle privilege produce question regard rent result rich Scotland selfishness shame Shylock slavery social society soul spirit starve suffering thing thought tion to-day toil towns trade true truth wage wealth week white-lead whole woman women workers worse
Popular passages
Page 185 - I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best — what we call goodness or virtue — involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless selfassertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival...
Page 19 - Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation...
Page 287 - OUT of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Page 197 - Marshall's definition was more picturesque, but related to a similarly severe physical standard: '. . . the necessaries for the efficiency of an ordinary agricultural or of an unskilled town labourer and his family, in England, in this generation . . . may be said to consist of a well-drained dwelling with several rooms, warm clothing, with some changes of underclothing, pure water, a plentiful supply of cereal food, with a moderate allowance of meat and milk, and a little tea, etc., some education...
Page 100 - Their general hours of work were from seven in the morning till nine at night, with half an hour for breakfast, an hour for dinner, and half an hour for tea for the man. The witness herself had no time, " on account of there being no one in the house to do the work besides myself.
Page 206 - Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies; There's not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou has great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind.
Page 19 - I take it to be a mere plain truth that, throughout industrial Europe, there is not a single large manufacturing city which is free from a vast mass of people whose condition is exactly that described, and from a still greater mass who, living just on the edge of the social swamp, are liable to be precipitated into it by any lack of demand for their produce.
Page 155 - In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless...
Page 185 - It demands that each man who enters into the enjoyment of the advantages of a polity shall be mindful of his debt to those who have laboriously constructed it ; and shall take heed that no act of his weakens the fabric in which he has been permitted to live. Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process and reminding the individual of his duty to the community, to the protection and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at least the life of something...
Page 184 - Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.