CHAPTER I
How the Future and Hopes of the Labouring Classes are bound up with the Prosperity of the Classes who exercise Ability.
◆1 The foregoing conclusions not yet complete; but first let us see the lesson which it teaches us as it stands.
◆¹Theconclusion just arrived at is not yet completely stated; for there are certain further facts to be considered in connection with it which have indeed already come under our view, but which, in order to simplify the course of our argument, have been put out of sight in the two preceding chapters. I shall return to these facts presently; but it will be well, before doing so, to take the conclusion as it stands in this simple and broad form, and see, by reference to those principles which were explained at starting, and in which all classes and parties agree, what is the broad lesson which it forces on us, underlying all party differences.
◆1 If we sum up all that has been said thus far, it may seem at first sight that it teaches nothing but the negative lesson, that we should let Ability have its own way unchecked.
◆¹ I started with pointing out that, so faras politics are concerned, the aim of all classes is to maintain their existing incomes; and that the aim of the most numerous class is not only to maintain, but to increase them. I pointed out further that the income of the individual is necessarily limited by the amount of the income of the nation; and that therefore the increase, or at all events the maintenance, of the existing income of the nation is implied in all hopes of social and economic progress, and forms the foundation on which all such hopes are based. I then examined the causes to which the existing income of the nation is due; and I showed that very nearly two-thirds of it is due to the exertions of a small body of men who contribute thus to the productive powers of the community, not primarily because they possess Capital, but because they possess Ability, of which Capital is merely the instrument; that it is owing to the exercise of Ability only that this larger part of the income has gradually made its appearance during the past hundred years; and that were the exercise of Ability interfered with, the increment would at once dwindle, and before long disappear.
Thus the two chief factors in the production of the national income—in the production of that wealth which must be produced before it can be distributed—are not Labour and Capital, which terms, as commonly used, mean living labourers on the one hand, and dead material on the other; but they are two distinct bodies of living men—labourers on the one hand, and on the other men of Ability. The great practical truth, then, which is to be drawn from the foregoing arguments is this—and it is to be drawn from them in the interest of all classes alike—that the action of Ability should never be checked or hampered in such a way as to diminish its productive efficacy, either by so interfering with its control of Capital, or by so diminishing its rewards, as to diminish the vigour with which it exerts itself; but that, on the contrary, all these social conditions should be jealously maintained and guarded which tend to stimulate it most, by the nature of the rewards they offer it, and which secure for it also the most favourable conditions for its exercise. By such means, and by such means only, is there any possibility of the nationalwealth being increased, or even preserved from disastrous and rapid diminution.
◆1 But this is very far from being the whole lesson taught, or indeed the chief part of it.
◆¹ This, however, is but one half of the case; and, taken by itself, it may seem to have no connection with the problem which forms the main subject of this volume, namely, the social hopes and interests, not of Ability, but of Labour. For, taken by itself, the conclusion which has just been stated may strike the reader at first sight as amounting merely to this: that the sum total of the national income will be largest when the most numerous minority of able men produce the largest possible incomes,—incomes which they themselves consume; and that, unless they are allowed to consume them, they will soon cease to produce them. From the labourer’s point of view, such a conclusion would indeed be a barren one. It might show him that he could not better himself by attacking the fortunes of the minority; but it would, on the other hand, fail to show him that he was much interested in their maintenance, since, if Ability consumes the whole of the annual wealth which it adds to the wealth annually produced by Labour, the total mightbe diminished by the whole of the added portion, and Labour itself be no worse off than formerly. But when I said just now that it was to the interest of all classes alike not to diminish the rewards which Ability may hope for by exerting itself, this was said with a special qualification. I did not say that it was to the interest of the labourers to allow Ability to retain the whole of what it produced, or to abstain themselves from appropriating a certain portion of it; but what I did say was that any portion appropriated thus should not be so large, nor appropriated in such a way, as to make what remains an object of less desire, or the hope of possessing it less powerful as a stimulus to producing it. This qualification, as the reader will see presently, gives to the conclusion in question a very different meaning from that which at first he may very naturally have attributed to it.
◆1 The chief lesson to be learnt is that, whilst Ability is the chief producer of wealth, Labour may appropriate a large share of its products.
◆¹ For the precise point to which I have been leading up, from the opening page of the present volume to this, is that a considerable portion of the wealth produced by Ability may be taken from it and handedover to Labour, without the vigour of Ability being in the least diminished by the loss; that such being the case, the one great aim of Labour is to constantly take from Ability a certain part of its product; and that this is the sole process by which, so far as money is concerned, Labour has improved its position during the past hundred years, or by which it can ever hope to improve it further in the future.
◆1 The question is, How much may it appropriate without paralysing the Ability which produces it?
◆¹ The practical question, therefore, for the great mass of the population resolves itself into this: What is the extent to which Ability can be mulcted of its products, without diminishing its efficacy as a productive agent? An able man’s hopes of securingnine hundred thousand poundsfor himself would probably stimulate his Ability as much as his hopes of securing amillion. Indeed the fact that, before he could secure amillion poundsfor himself, he had to produce ahundred thousandfor other people, might tend to increase his efforts rather than to relax them. But, on the other hand, if, before he could secure ahundred thousand poundsfor himself, he had to produce amillionfor otherpeople, it is doubtful whether either sum would ever be produced at all. There must therefore be, under any given set of circumstances, some point somewhere between these two extremes up to which Labour can appropriate the products of Ability with permanent advantage to itself, but beyond which it cannot carry the process, without checking the production of what it desires to appropriate. But how are we to ascertain where that precise point is?
◆1 This is a question which can be answered only by experience; and we have the experience of a century to guide us.
◆¹ To this question it is altogether impossible to give any answer based uponà priorireasoning. The very idea of such a thing is ridiculous; and to attempt it could, at the best, result in nothing better than some piece of academic ingenuity, having no practical meaning for man, woman, or child. But what reasoning will not do, industrial history will. Industrial history will provide us with an answer of the most striking kind—general, indeed, in its character; but not, for that reason, any the less decided, or less full of instruction. For industrial history, in a way which few people realise, will show us how, during the past hundred years, Labourhas actually succeeded in accomplishing the feat we are considering; how, without checking the development and the power of Ability, it has been able to appropriate year by year a certain share of what Ability produces. When the reader comes to consider this,—which is the great industrial object lesson of modern times,—when he sees what the share is which Labour has appropriated so triumphantly, he will see how the conclusions we have here arrived at, with regard to the causes of production, afford a foundation for the hopes and claims of Labour, as broad and solid as that by which they support the rights of Ability.
Let us turn, then, once more to the fact which I have already so often dwelt upon, that during the closing years of the last century the population of Great Britain was aboutten millions, and the national income about ahundred and forty million pounds. It has been shown that to reach and maintain that rate of production required the exertion of an immense amount of Ability, and the use of an immense Capital which Ability had recently created. But let me repeat what Ihave said already: that we will, for the purpose of the present argument, attribute the production of the whole to average human Labour. It is obvious that Labour did not produce more, for no more was produced; and it is also obvious that if, since that time, it had never been assisted and never controlled by Ability, the same amount of Labour would produce no more now. We are therefore, let me repeat, plainly understating the case if we say that British Labour by itself—in other words, Labour shut out from, and unassisted by the industrial Ability of the past ninety years—can, at the utmost, produce annually ahundred and forty million poundsfor everyten millionsof the population.
◆1 In 1860 Labour took at least twenty-five per cent more than it produced itself, out of the products of Ability; and it now takes about forty-five per cent.
And now let us turn from what Labour produces to what the labouring classes[43]havereceived at different dates within the ninety or hundred years in question. ◆¹ At the time of which we have just been speaking, they received about half of what we assume Labour to have produced. A labouring population often millionpeople received annually aboutseventy million pounds.[44]Two generations later, the same number of people received in return for their labour about ahundred and sixty million pounds.[45]They were twenty-five per centricher than they possibly could have been if, in 1795, they had seized on all the property in the kingdom and divided it amongst themselves. In other words, Labour in 1860, instead of receiving, as it did two generations previously, half of what we assume it to have produced, received twenty-five per cent more than it produced. If we turn from the year 1860 to the present time, we find that the gains of Labour have gone on increasing; and that eachten millionsof the labouring classes to-day receives in return for its labourtwo hundred million pounds, or over forty per cent more than it produces. And all these calculations are based, the reader must remember, on the ridiculously exaggerated assumption which was made for the sake of argument, that in the days of Watt and Arkwright, Capital, Genius, and Ability had no share in production; and that all the wealth of the country, till the beginning of the present century, was due to the spontaneous efforts of common Labour alone.
◆1 The gains of Labour are put in a yet more striking light by comparing the present income of Labour with the total income of the country fifty years ago.
◆¹ And now let us look at the matter from apoint of view slightly different, and compare the receipts of Labour not with what we assume it to have itself produced, but with the total product of the community at a certain very recent date.
In 1843, when Queen Victoria had been six or seven years on the throne, the gross income of the nation was in round numbersfive hundred and fifteen million pounds. Of this,two hundred and thirty-five million poundswent to the labouring classes, and the remainder,two hundred and eighty million pounds, to the classes that paid income-tax. Only fifty years have elapsed since that time, and, according to the best authorities, the income of the labouring classes now is certainly not less thansix hundred and sixty million pounds.[46]That is to say, it exceeds, by ahundred and forty-five million pounds, the entire income of the nation fifty years ago.
An allowance, however, must be made for the increase in the number of the labourers. That is of course obvious, and we will at once proceed to make it. But when it is made,the case is hardly less wonderful. The labouring classes in 1843 numberedtwenty-six millions; at the present time they numberthirty-three millions.[47]That is to say, they have increased byseven millionpersons. Now assuming, as we have done, that Labour by itself produces as much asfourteen poundsper head of the population, this addition ofseven millionpersons will account for an addition ofninety-eight million poundsto thefive hundred and fifteen million poundswhich was the amount of the national income fifty years ago. We must therefore, to make our comparisons accurate, deductninety-eight million poundsfrom thehundred and forty-five million poundsjust mentioned, which will leave us an addition offorty-seven million pounds. We may now say, without any reservation, that the labouring classes of this country, in proportion to their number, receive to-dayforty-seven million poundsa year morethan the entire income of the country at the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria.
◆1 Every labourer anxious for his own welfare should reflect on these facts.
◆¹ To any labourer anxious for his own welfare, to any voter or politician of any kind, who realises that the welfare of the labourers is the foundation of national stability, and who seeks to discover by what conditions that welfare can be best secured and promoted, this fact which I have just stated is one that cannot be considered too closely, too seriously, or too constantly.
Let the reader reflect on what it means.
◆1 They show him that the existing system has done, and is doing for him far more than any Socialist ever promised.
Dreams of some possible social revolution, dreams of some division of property by which most of the riches of the rich should be abstracted from them and divided amongst the poor—these were not wanting fifty years ago. ◆¹ But even the most sanguine of the dreamers hardly ventured to hope that the then riches of the rich could be taken away from them completely; that a sum equal to the rent of the whole landed aristocracy, all the interest on Capital, all the profits of our commerce and manufactures, could be added to what was then the income of the labouring classes. No forces of revolution were thoughtequal to such a change as that. But what have the facts been? What has happened really? Within fifty years the miracle has taken place, or, indeed, one greater than that. The same number of labourers and their families as then formed the whole labouring population of the country now possess among them every penny of the amount that then formed the income of the entire nation. They have gained every penny that they possibly could have gained if every rich man of that period—if duke, and cotton lord, and railway king, followed by all the host of minor plutocrats, had been forced to cast all they had into the treasury of Labour, and give their very last farthing to swell the labourer’s wages. The labourers have gained this; but that is not all. They have gained an annual sum offorty-seven million poundsmore. And they have done all this, not only without revolution, but without any attack on the fundamental principles of property. On the contrary, the circumstances which have enabled Labour to gain most from the proceeds of Ability, have been the circumstances which have enabled Ability to produce most itself.
◆1 But before proceeding with this argument, there are two side points to dispose of.
◆¹ Before, however, we pursue these considerations further, it is necessary that we should deal with two important points which have perhaps already suggested themselves to the reader as essential to the problem before us. They are not new points. They have been discussed in previous chapters; but the time has now arrived to turn to them once again.