CHAPTER V
Of the enormous Encouragement to be derived by Labour from a true View of the Situation; and of the Connection between the Interests of the Labourer and Imperial Politics.
◆1 Let me again remind the reader of the object of this book.
◆2 It is to show that the labourer’s income depends on the general forces of production firstly, and secondly on those of distribution.
◆¹Theobject of this work, as I explained in the opening chapter, is to point out to the great body of the people—that is to say, to the multitude of average men and women, whose incomes consist of the wages of ordinary Labour—the conditions which determine the possibility of these incomes being increased, and so to enable them to distinguish the true means from the false, which they may themselves adopt with a view to obtaining this result. ◆² And in order to show them how their present incomes may be increased, I have devoted myself to showing the reader how their present incomes have been obtained. Ihave done this by fixing his attention on the fact that their present incomes obviously depend upon two sets of causes: first, the forces that produce the aggregate income of the country; and secondly, the forces that distribute a certain portion of this amongst the labourers. And these last I have examined from two points of view; first exhibiting their results, and then indicating their nature. Let me briefly recapitulate what I have said about both subjects.
◆1 I have just shown how the normal forces of distribution are all in favour of the labourer, contrary to the vulgar view of the matter.
◆¹ I have shown that, contrary to the opinion which is too commonly held, and which is sedulously fostered by the ignorance alike of the agitator and the sentimentalist, the forces of distribution which are actually at work around us, which have been at work for the past hundred years, and which are part and parcel of our modern industrial system, have been and are constantly securing for Labour a share of every fresh addition to the total income of the nation; and have, for at all events the past fifty years, made the average income of the labouring man grow faster than the incomes of any other members of the community. They have, in fact, been doing the very thing which the agitator declaredcould be done only by resisting them; and they have not only given Labour all that the agitator has promised it, but they have actually given it more than the wildest agitator ever suggested to it. I have shown the reader this; and I have shown him also that the forces in question are primarily the spontaneous forces—“deep, strong, and silent,” as Professor Marshall calls them—“of normal distribution and exchange”; how that these have been, and are seconded by the deliberate action of men: by extended application of what is called the Socialistic principle, and to a far greater extent by combinations of the labourers amongst themselves.
◆1 This should encourage, and not discourage, political action on behalf of the labourers.
The practical moral of all this is obvious. As to the normal and spontaneous forces of distribution, what a study of them inculcates on the labourer is not any principle of political action, but a general temper of mind towards the whole existing system. It inculcates general acquiescence, instead of general revolt. Now temper of mind, being that from which policies spring, is quite as important as the details of any of the policies themselves. Still it must be admitted that were the normalforces of distribution the only forces that had been at work for the labourer’s benefit, the principal lesson they would teach him would be the lesson oflaisser aller. But though these forces have been the primary, they have not been the only forces; and the deliberate policies by which men have controlled their operation, and have applied them, have been equally necessary in producing the desired results. The normal forces of distribution may be compared to the waters of the Nile, which would indeed, as the river rises, naturally fertilise the whole of the adjacent country, but which would do as much harm as good, and do but half the good they might do, if it were not for the irrigation works devised by human ingenuity. And what these works are to the Nile, deliberate measures have been to the normal forces of distribution. The growing volume of wealth, which is spreading itself over the fields of Labour, even yet has failed to reach an unhappy fraction of the community; the tides and currents flow with intermittent force, which is often destructive, still more often wasted, rarely husbanded and applied to the best advantage. Had it notbeen for the deliberate action of men,—for legislation in favour of the labourers, and their own combinations amongst themselves,—these evils which have accompanied their general progress would have been greater. ◆¹ Wise action in the future will undoubtedly make them less; and may, though it is idle to hope for Utopias in this world, cause the larger and darker part of them to disappear.
◆1 Much is to be done beyond the mere raising of the labourers’ wages; and Trade Unionism and so-called Socialism vary much.
The lesson, then, to be drawn from what I have urged in the preceding chapter is, taken as a whole, no lesson oflaisser faire. Though neither Socialism nor Trade Unionism may have much, or perhaps any, efficacy in raising the maximum of the labourer’s actual income,—though this must depend on forces which are wholly different,—yet Trade Unionism, and the principle which is called Socialism, may be of incalculable service in bringing about conditions under which that income may be earned with greater certainty, and under improved circumstances, and, above all, be able to command more comforts, conveniences, and enjoyments. Thus many of these measures which I have called Socialistic underprotest, may be regarded as an interception of a portion of the labourer’s income, and an expenditure of it on his account by the State in a way from which he derives far more benefit than he would, or could have secured if he had had the spending of it himself; whilst Trade Unionism, though it cannot permanently raise his wages beyond a maximum determined by other causes, may, as has been said before, raise them to this earlier than they would have risen otherwise, and prevent what might otherwise occur—a fall in them before it was imperative. ◆¹ Trade Unionism, however, has many other functions besides the raising of wages. It aims—and aims successfully—at diminishing the pain and friction caused amongst the labourers by the vicissitudes alike of industry and of life. It has done much in this direction already; and in the future it may do more.
The fact then that the normal forces of distribution must, if things continue their present course, increase the income of the labourer, even without any action on their own part, though it is calculated to change the temper in which the labourers approachpolitics, is, instead of being calculated to damp their political activity, calculated to animate it with far more hope and interest than the wild denunciations and theories of the contemporary agitator, which those who applaud them do but half believe. It will to the labourer be far more encouraging to feel that the problem before him is not how to undermine a vast system which is hostile to him, and which, though often attacked, has never yet been subverted, but merely to accommodate more completely to his needs a system which has been, and is, constantly working in his favour.
◆1 Whilst as to mere wages, if the labourers will judge of the possible near future from the actual near past, the prospects before them must exceed their wildest dreams hitherto.
◆¹ Let him consider the situation well. Let him realise what that system has already done for him. In spite of the sufferings which, owing to various causes, were inflicted on the labouring classes during the earlier years of the century,—many of them of a kind whose recurrence improved policy may obviate,—the income of Labour has, on the aggregate, continued to rise steadily. Let him consider how much. I have stated this once, let me state it now again. During the first sixty years of this century the income of thelabouring classes rose to such an extent that in the year 1860 it was equal (all deductions for the increase of population being made) to the income of all classes in the year 1800. But there is another fact, far more extraordinary, to follow; and that is, that a result precisely similar has been accomplished since in one-half of the time. In 1880 the income of the labouring classes was (all deductions for the increase of population being made) more than equal to the income of all classes in the year 1850. Thus the labouring classes in 1860 were in precisely the same pecuniary position as the working classes in 1800 would have been had the entire wealth of the kingdom been in their hands; and the working classes of to-day are in a better pecuniary position than their fathers would have been could they have plundered and divided between them the wealth of every rich and middle-class man at the time of the building of the first Great Exhibition. I repeat what I have said before—that this represents a progress, which the wildest Socialist would never have dreamed of promising.
And now comes what is practically theimportant deduction from these facts. What has happened in the near past, will, other things being equal, happen in the near future. If the same forces that have been at work since the year 1850 continue to be at work, and if, although regulated, they are not checked, the labourers of this country will in another thirty years have nearly doubled the income which they enjoy at present. Their income will have risen from something underseven hundred millionsto something overthirteen hundred millions. The labourers, in fact, will, so far as money goes, be in precisely the same position as they would be to-day if, by some unheard-of miracle, the entire present income of the country were suddenly made over to them in the form of wages, and the whole of the richer classes were left starving and penniless. This is no fanciful calculation. It is simply a plain statement of what must happen, and will happen, if only the forces of production continue to operate for another thirty years as they have been operating steadily for the past hundred. Is not this enough to stimulate the labourer’s hopes, and convince him that for him the true industrialpolicy is one that will adjust his own relations with the existing system better, and regulate better the flow of the wealth which it promises to bring him, rather than a policy whose aim is to subvert that system altogether, and in especial to paralyse the force from which it derives its efficacy?
◆1 But the one point to remember is that all their prosperity depends on the continued action of Ability, and the best conditions being secured for its operation,
◆¹ And this brings me back to that main, that fundamental truth which it is the special object of this volume to elucidate. The force which has been at the bottom of all the labourers’ progress during the past, and on the continued action of which depends all these hopes for their future—that force is not Labour but Ability; it is a force possessed and exercised not by the many but by the few. The income which Labour receives already is largely in excess of what Labour itself produces. Were Ability crippled, or discouraged from exerting itself, the entire income of the nation would dwindle down to an amount which would not yield Labour so much as it takes now; whilst any advance, no matter how small, on what Labour takes now must come from an increasing product, which Ability only can produce.
◆1 Labour must remember that Ability is a living force which cannot be appropriated as Capital might be; but that it must be encouraged and propitiated.
◆¹ Hitherto this truth, though more or less apparent to economic writers and thoughtful persons generally, has been apparent to them only by fits and starts, and has never been assigned any definite or logical place in their theories of production, or has ever been expressed clearly; and, owing to this cause, not only has it been entirely absent from the theories of the public generally, but its place has been usurped by a meaningless and absurd falsehood. In place of the living force Ability, residing in living men, popular thought, misled by a singular oversight of the economists, has substituted Capital—a thing which, apart from Ability, assists production as little as a dead or unborn donkey; and hence has arisen that dangerous and ridiculous illusion—sometimes plainly expressed, often only half-conscious—to the effect that if the labourers could only seize upon Capital they would be masters of the entire productive power of the country. The defenders of the existing system have been as guilty of this error as its antagonists; and the attack and defence have been conducted on equally false grounds. Thus in a recent strike, the final threat of the employers—menwho had created almost the whole of their enormous business—was that, if the strikers insisted upon certain demands, the Capital involved in the business would be removed to another country; and a well-known journal, professing to be devoted to the interest of Labour, conceived that it had disposed of this threat triumphantly by saying that, of the Capital a large part was not portable, and that the employers might go if they chose, and leave this behind. A great musician, who conceived himself to have been ill-treated in London, might just as well have threatened that he would remove his concert-room to St. Petersburg, when the principal meaning of his threat would be that he would removehimself; and the journal referred to might just as well have said, had the business in question been the production of a great picture, “The painter may go if he likes—what matter? We can keep his brushes.”
The real parties, then, to the industrial disputes of the modern world are not active labourers on one side, and idle, perhaps idiotic owners of so much dead material on the other side: but they are, on the one side,the vast majority of men, possessed of average powers of production, and able to produce by them a comparatively small amount; and, on the other, a minority whose powers of production are exceptional, who, if we take the product of the average labourer as a unit, are able to multiply this to an almost indefinite extent, and who thus create an increasing store of Capital to be used by themselves, or transmitted to their representatives, and an increasing income to be divided between these and the labourers. In other words, the dispute is between the many who desire to increase their incomes, and the few by whose exceptional powers it is alone possible to increase them. Such has been the situation hitherto; it is such at the present moment; and the whole tendency of industrial progress is not to change, but to accentuate it. As the productivity of Human Exertion increases, the part played by Ability becomes more and more important. More and more do the average men become dependent on the exceptional men. So long as the nation at large remembers this, no reforms need be dreaded. If the nation forgets this, it will be in dangerevery day of increasing, by its reforms, the very evils it wishes to obviate, and postponing or making impossible the advantages it wishes to secure.
◆1 In this view there is nothing derogatory to Labour.
◆2 Ability does notimprovethe products of Labour, but multiplies them.
◆¹ And now let me pause to point out to the reader that to insist thus on the subordinate position of Labour as a productive agent is to insist on nothing that need wound the self-love of the labourers. In asserting that a man who can produce wealth only by Labour is inferior to a man who can produce ten times the amount by Ability, we assert his inferiority in the business of production only. In other respects he may be the better, even the greater man of the two. Shakespeare or Turner or Beethoven, if employed as producers of commodities, would probably have been no better than the ordinary hands in a factory, and far inferior to many a vulgar manufacturer. Again,—and it is still more important to notice this,—if we confine our attention to single commodities, many commodities produced by Labour[60]alone are better and more beautiful than any similar ones produced by Labour under the direction of Ability. ◆² Of some the reverse is true—notably those whose utility depends on their mechanical precision; but of others, in which beauty or even durability is of importance, such as fine stuffs or carpets, fine paper and printing, carved furniture, and many kinds of metal work, it is universally admitted that the handicraftsman, working under his own direction, was long ago able to produce results which Labour, directed by Ability, has never been able to improve upon, and is rarely able to equal. What Ability does is not to improve such commodities, but to multiply them, and thus convert them from rare luxuries into generally accessible comforts. A paraffin lamp, for instance, cast or stamped in metal, and manufactured by the thousand, might not be able to compare for beauty with a lamp of wrought iron, made by the skill and taste of some single unaided craftsman; but whereas the latter would probably cost several guineas, and be in reach only of the more opulent classes, the former would probably cost about half a crown, and, giving precisely as muchlight as the other, would find its way into every cottage home, and take the place of a tallow dip or of darkness. Now since what the labouring classes demand in order to improve their position is notbettercommodities than can be produced by hand, butmorecommodities than can be produced by hand, Ability is a more important factor in the case than Labour; but none the less, from an artistic and moral point of view, the highest kind of Labour may stand higher than many of the most productive kinds of Ability.
◆1 Ability, in yielding up part of its proceeds to Labour, is discharging a moral debt.
◆¹ Nor, again, do we ascribe to Labour any undignified position in insisting that much of its present income, and any possible increase of it, is and must be taken from the wealth produced by Ability. For even were there nothing more to be said than this, Labour is in a position, or we assume it will be, to command from Ability whatever sum may be in question, and can be neither despised nor blamed for making the best bargain for itself that is possible. But its position can be justified on far higher grounds than these. In the first place, Labour, by submitting itself to the guidance of Ability,—no matter whether thesubmission was voluntary, which it was not, or gradual, unconscious, and involuntary, which it was,—surrendered many conditions of life which were in themselves desirable, and has a moral claim on Ability to be compensated for having done so; whilst Ability, for its part, owes a moral debt to Labour, not upon this ground only, but on another also—one which thus far has never been recognised nor insisted on, but out of which arises a yet deeper and stronger obligation. I have shown that of the present annual wealth of the nation Ability creates very nearly two-thirds. But it may truly be said to have created far more than this. It may be said to have created not only two-thirds of the income, but also to have created two-thirds of the inhabitants. If the minority of this country, in pursuit of their own advantage, had not exercised their Ability and increased production as they have done, it is not too much to say that of our country’s present inhabitantstwenty-four millionswould never have been in existence. Those, then, who either contributed to this result themselves, or inherit the Capital produced by those who did so, are burdened by the responsibility ofhaving called these multitudes into life; and thus when the wages of Labour are augmented out of the proceeds of Ability, Ability is not robbed, nor does Labour accept a largess, but a duty is discharged which, if recognised for what it is, and performed in the spirit proper to it, will have the effect of really uniting classes, instead of that which is now so often aimed at—of confusing them.
◆1 But Labour must not forget that it owes a debt to Ability;
◆2 And that this debt will grow heavier as the national wealth increases.
◆¹ The labourers, on the other hand, must remember this: that having been called into existence, no matter by what means, and presumably wishing to live rather than be starved to death, they do not labour because the men of Ability make them, but—as I have before pointed out—because imperious Nature makes them; ◆² and that the tendency of Ability is in the long run to stand as a mediator between them and Nature, and whilst increasing the products of their Labour, to diminish its duration and severity.
There are two further points which yet remain to be noticed.
I have hitherto spoken of the increase of wealth and wages, as if that were the main object on which the labourers should concentratetheir attention, and which bound up their interests so indissolubly with those of Ability. But it must also be pointed out that were Ability unduly hampered, and its efficacy enfeebled either by a diminution of its rewards, or by interference with its action, the question would soon arise, not of how to increase wages, but of how to prevent their falling. This point I have indeed alluded to already; but I wish now to exhibit it in a new light. As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, of the inhabitants of this country, who are something likethirty-eight millionsin number,twenty-six millionslive on imported corn, and aboutthirteen millionslive on imported meat; or, to put it in another way, we all of us—the whole population—live on imported meat for nearlyfive monthsof the year, and on imported corn foreight months; and were these foreign food supplies interfered with, there are possibilities in this country of suffering, of famine, and of horror for all classes of society, to which the entire history of mankind offers us no parallel. This country, more than any country in the world, is an artificial fabric that has been built up by Ability, half of its presentwealth being,—let me repeat once more,—the marvellous product of the past fifty years; and the constant action of Ability is just as necessary to prevent this from dwindling as it is to achieve its increase. But in order that Ability may exert itself, something more is needed than mere freedom from industrial interference, or security for its natural rewards; and that is the maintenance of the national or international position which this country has secured for itself amongst the other countries of the world.
◆1 And this brings us round to what is commonly called Politics; which have, as this book will show, a far closer interest for the labourer than is commonly thought.
◆¹ And this brings us to that class of questions which, in ordinary language, are called questions of policy, and amongst which foreign policy holds a chief place. Successful foreign policy means the maintenance or the achievement of those conditions that are most favourable to the industries of our own nation; and this means the conditions that are most favourable to the homes of our own people. It is too commonly supposed that the greatness and the ascendancy of our Empire minister to nothing but a certain natural pride; and natural pride, in its turn, is supposed by some to be an immoral and inhuman sentimentpeculiar to the upper classes. No one will be quicker to resent this last ludicrous supposition than the great masses of the British people; but, all the same, they are apt to think the former supposition correct,—to regard the mere glory of the country as the principal result of our Empire; and such being the case, they are, on occasion, apt to be persuaded that glory can be bought at too dear a price, in money, struggle, or merely international friction. At all events, they are constantly tempted to regard foreign politics as something entirely unconnected with their own immediate, their domestic, their personal, their daily interests.
I am going to enter here on no debatable matter, nor discuss the value of this or that special possession, or this or that policy. It is enough to point out that, to a very great extent, on the political future of this country depends the magnitude of its income, and on the magnitude of its income depends the income of the working classes—the warmth of the hearth, the supply of food on the breakfast-table, of every labourer’s home,—and that when popular support is asked for some foreign war, the sole immediate aim of which seems thedefence of some remote frontier, or the maintenance of British prestige, it may well be that our soldiers will be really fighting for the safety and welfare of their children and wives at home—fighting to keep away from British and Irish doors not the foreign plunderer and the ravisher, but enemies still more pitiless—the want, the hunger, and the cold that spare neither age nor sex, and against which all prayers are unavailing.