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quit of them. The feeling which would prompt that reflection may have something to say for itself; but the reflection is not relevant. We are considering what would be the results of an attempt to divide the nation's wealth on the principles affirmed by certain Socialists. Therefore, having ascertained the amount of the wealth, we have to ascertain its nature; and to see how much of it is divisible. Much of it, as our example indicates, is not divisible in any real sense. It is only destructible, destructible either in itself or in the social conditions which give it value; and in the destruction of it a very large part of the national wealth, which the Socialists, in their calculations, treat as a fixed quantity, would be gone. Whether beautiful things and rare things are reprehensible or are not reprehensible, they are to be found in abundance all over the land. That, and the fact that they cannot be socialised without greatly diminishing the sum of the wealth to be nationalised, are the only relevant considerations; and they should make the ardent reformer pause.

Still, there are forms of wealth which do not depend on beauty or on rarity. It is well to consider how far, with the best will in the world, this remnant could surrender to the reformer's theories. The national wealth may be stated in three categories. In the first category, there are the things of which we have written, those which are not susceptible of being divided. In the second category we have railways, shipping, gasworks, the plant of factories, roads, streets, public works, and public buildings. Of the value of those things, which is 2500,000,000l., 1000,000,000l., Mr. Giffen has stated, represent goodwills in certain businesses. In as far as they are tangible commodities, they could be divided, like the buhl cabinet, only by being destroyed. There are also in the second category values to the amount of 1500,000,000l. Those values consist in legal claims on the part of British subjects to shares in the profits of enterprise abroad. They do not represent anything in this country. It is probable that they would vanish at the moment of their confiscation. It is clear, then, that a division of the things in the second category would bring us sorry comfort. Those in the third category are more promising. They are such things as land, houses, useful furniture, clothing, merchandise, all the commodities known as 'provisions,' and live-stock. Although some of the houses are much above the average size, and the roof of many of them would afford a shelter to dozens of reformed citizens, we might be able to do sound business in that department. It is to be feared, however, that it would be less than, at first sight, the category promises.

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The nature of the new tenancies would depreciate the value of many of the houses, and the value of much of the furniture also would go down. The other things may be admitted to be genuinely divisible; but the distribution of them would be a deplorable spectacle. Their quantity, like the number of the populace, has been authoritatively ascertained; and the possibilities which they hold forth are sad to think of. On an equitable division of them, each of us would have a lodging, clothes, and furniture to the value of 81., 'provisions' and miscellaneous movables worth 8., a 31. ring, or pin, or brooch, an acre, the fourth part of a cow, the twentieth part of a horse, two-thirds of a sheep, and the tenth part of a pig.

That, it will be said by certain Social Reformers, is a reductio ad absurdum of a proposition which is not made by all Social Reformers unanimously. We know it is. We are quite aware that the Fabians, if not the Social Democrats, will say that only the Anarchists dream of an actual division of the national wealth; that it is only the Anarchists who are ignorant of the truth that capital is of next to no value when regarded merely as an aggregate of material things, and not as material things vivified by connection with a social order for the service of which they were designed; and that it is they, the Fabians, or perhaps the Democrats, to whom we should address ourselves if we mean to challenge seriously the true doctrine of Social Reform. We do hold that intention; but we cannot allow either the middle class or the aristocracy of Progressives to rebuke us for having held counsel with the humbler orders in the same school of philosophers. The extremists in the policy of Social Reform may, as we have already had occasion to remark, turn out to be a force to be reckoned with just as formidable as the Moderates are, or as what may be called the High Church Party of Progress is; and, if we are to deal with the subject comprehensively, it is necessary to consider all its aspects. Besides, it is not for the Social Democrats, or for the Fabians, to cast stones at their advanced brethren. It is demonstrable that the doctrine of the comparatively moderate Social Reformers is not based on sounder actuarial calculations than the surmises of the most extreme.

It has, undoubtedly, an appearance of being less irrational. 'The man in the street,' that imaginary stolid person to whom we all make reference in the last resort, could tell us, out of his infallible intuition, that any proposal to divide the national wealth in the manner we have been discussing is absurd. Without being able to explain scientifically why, he is assured that communism of the crudest order is not feasible. It is not certain

certain that he does not incline a respectful ear to the less immoderate proposals which are sometimes spoken of as Scientific Socialism. The idea that all the industries of the country might be taken over as a going concern by the State has commended itself to the approval of not a few men who, if we may judge by the frequency with which their names appear in the newspapers and periodicals, are eminent; and the man in the street is not sure that there may not be something in it.' It is obviously different from the notion which inflames the Anarchists. Their notion, carried out, would simply destroy wealth. We should be none the happier from the possession of two wheels of a steam-engine and the other fractional commodities which would come to us from Socialism of the lootand-booty kind; but it would be pleasant to be presented, at statutory terms, with those hard-cash shares in the profits of the mechanisms and the organisms to which our fractional interests would entitle us. In short, whilst an arbitrary division of the divisible national wealth is not to be heard of by sane citizens, the proposal to nationalise the means of production, and to divide the income, is another affair; and the man in the street, like the company in the Fabian salons, thinks there is much to be said for it. It is not so manifestly a design to slay the goose which lays the golden eggs.

There is, however, a much greater similarity between the two proposals, the extreme and the temperate, than appears at first sight. An attempt to divide the income of the nation would be met by difficulties, inherent in the nature of things, almost identical with those which make a division of the wealth of the nation impossible. The income, which, as has been mentioned, amounts to 1300,000,000l. yearly, is not money. It is made up partly of things which are actually utilised, or of legal rights in accumulations of them; and partly of perishable goods, durable goods, and services. The accumulations, which are savings, might, in a polity of Scientific Socialism mitigated by humaneness, have to be let alone. As they are 130,000,0007. annually, the amount of income with which the reformed State would have to work is 1170,000,000l. Much the larger part of it is represented by food, clothing, lodging, fuel, lighting, attendance of servants, defence of the empire, and the maintenance of law and order. The cost of those things is 800,000,0007. The cost of travelling and that of the transport of goods are about a third of the remaining 370,000,000l.; and 270,000,000l., not much more than quarter of the total income, is represented by new furniture, new books, new plate, new pictures, and other miscellaneous articles. Of the total 1170,000,000Z., 520,000,0007.

are

are perishable goods, 250,000,0007._ are durable goods, and 400,000,000l. are services and uses. Less than a quarter of the national income, that is to say, consists of material things collected; less than a half consists of things produced to perish; and more than a third consists of services and other actions, immaterial things which pass and are renewed more quickly than food and fuel. In order that we may realise the difficulties in the way of the scientific Social Reformer, we must specialise the details of the national income further. Nearly half the durable and perishable things are imported. If it were not that we produce much of our alcoholic liquor, the proportion would be more than half. For example, the wheat which we import is to our home-grown wheat as 26 is to 12. What the Social Reformer and citizens generally have to ponder, then, is the fact that, far from being the aggregate of many sums of money, an aggregate which could be summoned into the Exchequer for a division more reasonable than that indicated by the widely varying items in which it went thither, the national income is nothing more nor less than our daily meat and drink and the amenities amid which we consume them. It has grown to be what it is, the approximate means of our subsistence, through many centuries of increasing effort on the part of merchants, financiers, and statesmen; effort of the nature of which most of us are entirely ignorant; effort the results of which we know only in the fact, marvellous in itself but stale and unimpressive from its familiarity, that all of us contrive to live although our own country does not produce meat and bread enough for half of us.

Thus explained, one would suppose that the national income, the product, as Lord Beaconsfield remarked, of the delicate marvel of our credit,' is a thing too complicated and fragile to be tampered with according to the engineering of the most earnest of Social Reformers. We should pay dearly for the pleasure of having the most symmetrical of polities if half the people, amid whom it established social equality, starved to death in its wake; or if, in the result of being only half-fed and half-clad, the whole community became too enfeebled to produce even its modified rations. Those contingencies, however, are as yet merely hypothetical. It has not yet been shown that the State is less competent than private enterprise to conduct all the industries of the kingdom and to maintain our exchanges with foreign countries in full volume. There is, however, good reason for affirming that proposition. Astonishing as the assertion may be to those who think that there must be justice in the cry for a 'living wage' because so many strenuous voices

join in it, and that therefore we must acquiesce in a social revolution, it is a fact that the national income, especially the part of it enjoyed by the working classes, has been increasing rapidly. During the first sixty years of the century the income of the working classes rose so quickly that in 1860 it was equal to the income of all classes in 1800. Since 1860 the same doubling of prosperity has been achieved in half the time. The income of the working classes in 1880 was more than equal to that of all classes in 1850. In 1860 the working classes were as well to do as those of 1800 would have been if they had possessed all the wealth in the United Kingdom, and the working classes of to-day are better to do than those of the generation before them would have been if they had confiscated the possessions of every man and every woman in the land who did not work with their hands. The income of the whole nation now is double what it was forty years ago.

If we seek the causes of this increased prosperity, we shall find that they are not such as justify the working class, or the thinking class, or any other class, in believing that the poor are unrighteously treated, or in regarding hopefully any project to transfer the ownership and the control of industry from private men to the State. The increase of national prosperity is not attributable to any of the conditions which agitators affirm to have been its cause. It has not been due to growth of the population. The doubling of the national income has been in proportion to the growth of the population. Indeed, the growth of the population has had very little to do with the matter. Within the last 110 years the income of France has, relatively to the population, multiplied itself four times; yet it is now 21 per cent. less than that of the United Kingdom. Relatively to the populations concerned, our income is greater than that of Norway as 34 is to 20; than that of Switzerland as 34 is to 19; than that of Italy as 34 is to 12; than that of Russia as 34 is to 11. It is clear, then, on the testimony of the civilized world, that, whilst the labourer is worthy of his hire, there is some cause rendering it difficult to assert what the hire is to be.

This cause cannot be explained by those who ring the changes on the three words Capital and Labour.' It does not lie in difference of race. The French and ourselves are similar races; yet we make better incomes than the French. Their agricultural population is three times greater than ours; yet the value of the French agricultural product is less than double that of the English. It does not lie in difference of soil or in difference of climate. Belgium has as good agricultural land as England has; yet we till with results 40 per

cent.

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