THE MAINTENANCE OF CIVILISED STANDARDS OF 
LIFE AND WORK 
The beginning of social reconstruction must be to set firm ground 
beneath the feet of the workers of the nation, in place of the quaking 
morass in which too often they flounder to-day. Since the war, whilst 
the Super-tax Payer has continued to flourish, wage-rates in many 
industries have been repeatedly reduced, actual earnings have been 
seriously diminished by unemployment, and the hours of the 
workers in a particularly arduous and dangerous occupation have been 
lengthened by the action of the Government. Moreover, while the 
reign of terror initiated by the mine-owners in certain of the coalfields 
of the country is exceptional, no doubt, in its ferocity and its folly, 
the miners are not alone in having suffered grave injuries to their 
standard of life. In other occupations, long-established rights have 
been curtailed and traditional safeguards against oppression have been 
andermined. 
Levelling Up, Not Dragging Down 
The Labour Party holds that to attempt to cheapen production by 
attacking the standard of life of the workers of the nation is, not only 
socially disastrous, but highly injurious to the economic prosperity of 
the whole community. The way to recover foreign markets which bave 
been lost or have contracted, is not to begin by destroying the home 
market: as well, To attempt to compete by following the 
downward path of lower wages and longer hours is to take 
the first step down a slippery slope, at the bottom of which lies 
universal ruin. Progress is to be achieved, not by pitting the workers 
of one nation against those of another, but by the common co-operation 
of all nations in establishing equitable international standards of life and 
work. Economic beggar-my-neighbour is a game at which more than 
one can play, and the reply of foreign producers to lower wages and 
longer hours in Great Britain is only too likely to be the introduction of 
lower wages and longer hours abroad. In so far as that result occurs, 
the conditions of the worker will everywhere be deteriorated, while the 
relative competitive positions of the countries concerned will remain 
unaltered. 
Wider Markets— At Home 
The course dictated by considerations both of common-sense and 
humanity, the Labour Party holds, is precisely the opposite from this 
suicidal rivalry in mutual degradation. It is not to curtail the purchasing 
power of the population of Great Britain, which offers to British 
producers what is overwhelmingly their most important market. It 
is to maintain and increase it by every means in our power. The time 
has, happily, passed when employers could venture with impunity to 
follow the primrose path of economies effected at the cost of the health 
and vigour of the human personnel, for whom alone the industrial system 
is worth maintaining. If, as their spokesmen allege, they are eager tu 
increase industrial efficiency, they will be well advised to begin by 
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