OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS.[1]
By Canon Barnett.February, 1913.
By Canon Barnett.
February, 1913.
1From “The Nineteenth Century and Afterâ€. By permission of the Editor.
1From “The Nineteenth Century and Afterâ€. By permission of the Editor.
“History,†we are told, “has often been the record of statesmen’s illusions,†and to one into whose mind over thirty years’ memories of East London have been burnt, it seems as if this generation concerning itself about foreign aggression, and the grouping of European Powers, were walking in the vain shadow of such an illusion. It is spending millions annually on armaments against a possible enemy, and grudges a comparatively small sum against the evils which are even now eating into the strength of the nation.
Strikes and rumours of strikes are shaking the foundations of the wealth by which our Dreadnoughts are built and our great Empire secured—political apathy and indifference to the commonwealth mock fervid appeals for patriotic self-sacrifice—railing accusations are hurled by the rich that workmen loaf and drink, and by the tyranny of trades unions ruin trade; and the equally railing accusations are urged by workmen that the rich in their luxury are content to plunder the poor and live in callous indifference to the wrongs they see; and to crown all the other evidences of discontent, violent speeches and lawless conduct are weakening the old calm confidence in thestability of the social structure which has been built up by the elaborate care of many generations.
An enemy has got a footing in the heart of the Empire, and is causing this disturbance. He has evaded our fleet and our forts, and he has the power to destroy our power. The nation, like a dreamer awakening, is shaking itself as it becomes conscious of another danger than that of foreign fleets and armies. It is beginning to be anxious about its social condition and is asking somewhat fitfully, What is to be done? What is the cause of the present discontent? What are the remedies?
Many causes are suggested. It may be that education, having developed the people’s capacities for enjoyment, has increased the area of discontent, and those who used to sit placidly in the shadow now demand a ray of the abundant sunshine. It may be that the frantic pace at which the modern world moves has stimulated the demand for excitement and made men impatient for change; it may be that the popular philosophy of the street and the Press, eclipsing older philosophies of the Church and the chair, impels men and nations to put their own interests before other interests—to retaliate blow for blow, and to become proud of pride. When nations, classes, or individuals seek first to protect themselves, then the other things, greed, panic, suspicion, and strife, are soon added.
All these causes may operate, but they would not, I think, be dangerous, if it were not for the fact of poverty. Ideas, philosophies, and feelings have only stirred mankind when they have been able to appeal to facts, and agitators would now agitate in vain if conditions did not agitate more eloquently. Mean streets and ailing bodies jar upon the more widely spread sense of joy, and the long hours of labour and the small wages stir an anger which becomesready to upset society in order that the greater number might profit in the scramble. Poverty, as far as I can see, is the root cause of the prevailing discontent, the door by which the enemy enters and the fortress from which he sends out suspicion and strife to compass the nation’s ruin. Poverty! And our national income is £1,844,000,000, and the nation’s accumulated wealth is the almost inconceivable sum of £13,762,000,000.
The voice of the times—would that it had a Gladstone for its interpreter—is one that calls every one, be he patriot or business man, or even a pleasure-lover, to set himself to help in the eviction of poverty. If there be any fighting spirit—any chivalry left, here is the object for its attack; if there be any enlightened selfishness, here is the field for its exercise. Poverty, if it be not destroyed, will destroy the England of our hopes and our dreams.
The curious thing is that the public mind which speaks through the Press hardly realizes what is meant by poverty. There is much talk on the subject—numberless volumes are issued, and charities are multiplied, but what is in the minds of speakers, writers, and givers is obviously destitution. They think of the ragged, broken creatures kept waiting outside the doors of the shelter, and they have mental pictures of squalid rooms and starving children. Many and many a time visitors have come to Whitechapel expecting to see whole streets occupied by the ragged and the wretched, and they have been almost disappointed to find such misery the exception. There are, indeed, many thousands of people destitute, but they form only a fraction of the poor, and could, as the Poor Law Commissioners have shown, be lifted out of the condition by action at once drastic and humane. Why that action has not even been attempted is one of the many questions which the Local Government Board has to answer. But my present point is that, if all the destitutewere removed, the poverty which is at the back of our present discontent would remain.
Mr. Seebohm Rowntree, whose opinion has been supported by subsequent social explorers and by scientific research, concludes that 3s. a week for an adult and 2s. 3d. for a child is necessary to keep the body in physical repair, the food being chosen simply to get the most nutrition for the least money, without any regard to appetite or pleasure. The rent for a family, even if one room be considered sufficient, can hardly be less than 4s. a week in a town, and if household sundries are to include fuel, light, and clothing for a family of five persons, 4s. 11d. is a moderate sum. It thus seems as if the smallest income on which it would be possible for an average family to exist is 21s. 8d. a week.
Mr. Charles Booth, Mr. Rowntree, and other subsequent investigators have shown that 30 per cent. of the town population have an income below or hardly above that sum, and as the wages of agricultural labourers average in England 18s. 3d. a week, in Scotland 19s. 3d., and in Ireland 10s. 11d., it is fair to conclude that the estimate of the towns may be applied to the whole kingdom, and that at least 12,000,000 of the 45,000,000 people are living on incomes below the poverty line.
Mr. Chiozza Money, in his “Riches and Poverty†approaching the subject from another side, justifies the conclusion. He shows that a population amounting to 39,000,000 persons is dependent on incomes of less than £160 a year—say 60s. a week, and absorbs £935,000,000 of the national income; that 4,100,000 persons depend on incomes between £160 and £700 per annum, and absorb £275,000,000 of the national income; and that the comparatively small number of 1,400,000 dependent on incomes over £700 a year absorb the mighty sum of £634,000,000. In other words, more than one-third of the entire incomeof the United Kingdom is enjoyed by one-thirtieth of its people.
In the light of these facts it is not incredible that 30 per cent of the population live in the grip of actual poverty. “The United Kingdom contains,†it may be said in truth and shame, “a great multitude of poor people veneered with a thin layer of the comfortable and rich.â€[2]
The broad fact which stands out of these figures is that, when 21s. 8d. is taken as the sum necessary so that an average family may keep body and soul together, 12,000,000 people must give up in despair, and many other millions, depending on wages of 30s. or even 40s. a week, live anxious days. And this despair or anxiety is not on account of life, in all its multitudinous aspects, but only as to the maintenance of simple physical efficiency.
2These and other figures are put together very lucidly by Mr. Will Reason in a little shilling book, “Poverty†published by Headly Bros., which I commend to all as a good introduction to the subject.
2These and other figures are put together very lucidly by Mr. Will Reason in a little shilling book, “Poverty†published by Headly Bros., which I commend to all as a good introduction to the subject.
Let us, says Mr. Rowntree, clearly understand what physical efficiency means. A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a halfpenny newspaper or buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save nor can they join sick clubs or trade unions, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket-money for dolls, marbles, and sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and must drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children. Should a child fall ill, it must be attended by the parish doctor; should it die, it must beburied by the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his work for a single day.
Let us, says Mr. Rowntree, clearly understand what physical efficiency means. A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a halfpenny newspaper or buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save nor can they join sick clubs or trade unions, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket-money for dolls, marbles, and sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and must drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children. Should a child fall ill, it must be attended by the parish doctor; should it die, it must beburied by the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his work for a single day.
A few parents of heroic mould may have succeeded in bringing up children to healthy and useful manhood and womanhood on small wages. Tales of such are repeated in select circles, but these families generally belong to a generation less open to temptation than the present. There are now few, very few, parents who, with an uncertain wage of 30s. a week, never spend a penny for the sake of pleasure, taste, or friendship. The result is that their own or their children’s physical health and well-being are sacrificed. The boys are rejected when they offer themselves as soldiers, the infant mortality is high, and the girls unprotected are more ready to become the victims of vice. The saddest of all experiences of life among the poor is the gradual declension of respectable families into the ranks of the destitute, when loss of work finds them without resources in body or skill.
It is the poverty of the great multitude of the working people and not the destitution of the very poor which is the force of the present discontent. This is not realized even by Mrs. George Kerr, whose book, “The Path of Social Progress,†seems to me one of the best of those lately published on the subject. She speaks of Dr. Chalmers as having advocated a policy “which still holds the field,†and is the “only scheme which actually did diminish povertyâ€. But this policy aimed at diminishing a poverty which was practically destitution, and its method was to strengthen the people in habits which would enable them to live independent lives on wages of 20s. a week. Mrs. Kerr herself talks of the importance of a wife averaging her husband’s wages, so that if her husband as a painter earns 36s. a week for four months the family expenditure ought to be limited within18s. a week, and she evidently condemns as waste the purchase of a perambulator or bicycle. The methods she advocates by which character may be raised and strengthened are admirable, and the lead given by Dr. Chalmers cannot be too closely followed, but they have reference to destitution and not to the poverty from which working people suffer whose wages reach a more or less uncertain 30s. or 40s. a week.
Destitution, in the crusade against which philanthropists and Poor Law reformers are so well engaged, does not indeed affect the present discontent, except in so far as the presence of the destitute is a warning to the workman of his possible fate. A mechanic is, perhaps, earning 30s. a week, or even more; he, by great frugality on his own part, or by almost miraculous management on his wife’s part, just succeeds in keeping his family in health; he sees the destitute in their wretchedness, he hears of many who are herded in the prison-like workhouses, and he feels that if he loses his work, if illness overtakes him or his wife, their fate must be his fate. The destitute may be a burden to the nation, but they are also a danger, in so far as they by their examples rouse a dangerous mood in thousands of workpeople whose wages hardly lift them out of the reach of poverty, and give them no opportunity by saving to make the future secure.
The cure of destitution, necessary though it be on humane and economic grounds, is not the remedy for the present discontent. If all people incapable of earning a living were cared for under the best conditions, if by careful selection according to the straitest sect of the eugenists all the people engaged in work were fit for their work, if by better education and more scientific physical training every child were fully developed, or if by moral and religious impulse all citizens were to become frugal and self-restrained, there would still be the poverty which is the source ofdanger so long as the share of the national income which comes to the workers is so small. The greatest need of the greatest number is a larger income.
It is, I think, fair to say that on their present income the majority of our people can neither enjoy themselves rationally nor give an intelligent vote as joint governors of the nation. They have not the freedom which takes pride in self-government.
There are, it must be evident, few signs of rational enjoyment in the vastly increased pleasure-seeking of to-day. The people crowd into the country, but only a few people find anything in nature which is theirs. They pass by the memorials of great men and great events, and seldom feel a thrill of national pride. They wander aimlessly, helplessly through museums and picture-galleries, the things they see calling out little response in their minds. They have a limited and often perverted taste for music, and have so little conversation that on holidays they are silent or shout senseless songs. They get a short-lived excitement out of sport, so that for a whole countryside the event of a year is a football match and the chief interest of a Press recording the affairs of the Empire is the betting news. The recreations of the people and their Bank Holiday pleasures, at a time when the universal mind is stirring with a consciousness of new capacity, and the world is calling more loudly than ever that its good things should be enjoyed, give cause for some anxiety. Where there is no rational enjoyment there is likely to be discontent and mischief.
The people cannot enjoy themselves so as to satisfy their nature because of poverty. They began to work before they had time to enjoy learning and before they had become conscious of their capacities and tastes. They have been crushed from their youth upwards by the necessity of earning a livelihood, and have never had the leisure to lookat the beautiful world in which they have been placed. They have from their childhood been caught in the industrial machine, and have been swept away from the things which as men and women they were meant to enjoy. They have been too poor to find their pleasure in hope or in memory, enough for them if they have been able to snatch at the present and passing excitement.
Poverty is the enemy of rational enjoyment, and it also prevents the freedom which has pride in self-government. The people cannot be said to be keen to take a part in the government of their country, they are almost ready to accept a despot if they could secure for themselves more health and comfort. There is evident failure to grasp great principles in politics, and a readiness to accept in their stead a popular cry. Parties are judged by their promises, and national interests are often put below private interests; motives which are untrue to human nature are charged against opponents, and the “mob spirit†has an easy victory over individual judgment. The votes of the people may be at any moment fatal to the commonwealth.
Poverty is to a large extent the cause of this weakness in self-government and of the consequent danger to the nation. People whose minds have been crushed under the daily anxiety about the daily bread have little thought for any object but “how to live,†and thus they are apt to lose the power of vision. They see money as the only good, and they are disposed to measure beauty, tradition, and work in its terms. The pictures of “the happy homes of England†and the tales of her greatness have for them little meaning. “What are our homes that we should fight for them?†“What has England done for us?†The welfare of the nation is nothing alongside that of their own class; their chief want is security from starvation.
Some conception of the nation as a whole is necessary tokindle interest in self-government, and modern poverty is gradually blotting out the old conception which grew up when people loved the countryside, where the fields laughed and sang with corn and the cottages nestled in gardens, and when they had leisure to enjoy the tales of their fathers’ great deeds. Some knowledge is also necessary if those who give votes have to decide on policies which affect international relations, and hold firmly to principles in dark as well as in bright times. But how can the men and women have such knowledge who have been driven by the poverty of their homes to go to work as children, and have had no leisure in which to read history or to dream dreams? Of course they vacillate and of course they fall victims to shallow philosophy.
The people, in a word, because of poverty, are not free. They are “cogs in a great machine which uses human lives as the raw stuff out of which to fashion material wealthâ€. They are by fear of starvation compelled to be instruments of production almost as much as if they were under a law of slavery. They do not live for an end in themselves, but for an end for which others desire to use them.
The poverty of the multitude of workpeople, which limits their capacities for enjoyment and for self-government, and is divided only by a very thin partition from the destitution of squalor and starvation, is, I believe, the chief source of our present discontent, and of the bitterness which makes that discontent dangerous. The “cares of this life†equally with “the deceitfulness of riches†are apt to choke that communion with an ideal which is the source of healthy progress.
Schemes of relief and charity do not aim to reach this poverty. What, then, is to be done? “Give more education, and better education,†is the reply of the best reformers. “Let there be smaller classes in the elementaryschool, so that each child’s personality may be developed by the teacher’s personality.†“Let more attention be given to physical training.†“Let compulsory continuous education prevent the appalling wastage which leaves young people to find their interests in the excitement of the street.†Yes, a system of more and of better education would send out men and women stronger to labour and more fit both for the enjoyment and business of life. But poverty still stands in the way of such a system of education. The family budget of the mass of the people cannot keep the boy or girl away from work up to the age of fifteen or sixteen, nor can it allow the space and leisure necessary for study, for reading, and for intellectual recreation.
What, then, is to be done? The answer demands the best thought of our best statesmen. There are, doubtless, many things possible, and no one thing will be sufficient. But by some means or other the great national income must be so shared that the 39,000,000 of poor may have a larger proportion.
We have lately been warned against careless talk about rights. It may, therefore, be inaccurate to say that 39,000,000 out of 45,000,000 citizens have a right to more than half of the eighteen hundred million pounds of income. But it is as inaccurate to say that 6,000,000 citizens have a right to the half of the eighteen hundred million pounds which they now receive. What are called “rights†have been settled by law on principles which seemed to the lawmakers of the time the best for the commonwealth. It is law made by our ancestors by which it is possible to transfer the property of the dead to the living, providing thereby a foundation on which stands the mighty accumulation of £13,762,000,000. It is, indeed, by such laws that the capitalist who has saved a small sum is able to go on increasing that sum to millions. There is no natural rightby which the poor may be said to have a claim on wealth or the rich to possess wealth.
Law which has determined the lines which the present distribution of the national income follows might determine others which would make the poor richer and the rich poorer. Law has lately, by a system of insurance and pensions, given some security for illness, old age, and unemployment; it has in some trades fixed a minimum wage.
This principle might be extended. The consequent better organization of labour and its improved capacity would secure larger wages for efficient workers and probably reduce the cost of production for the benefit of consumers, but doubtless the number of the unemployed would be increased. Their inefficiency would not earn the minimum wage. For these, training or a refuge would have to be provided in farm colonies, industrial schools, or detention colonies, in accordance with the suggestion of the Poor Law Commissioners.
The law might, by taxing the holders of the accumulated wealth of the nation, subsidize education, so that no child by want of food and clothing should be driven from school before the age of fifteen or sixteen. It might, by securing for the poor as well as for the rich an abundant provision of air-space and water for the healthy and adequate care and attention for the sick, reduce the death-rate among the 39,000,000 poor people to the level of that which now obtains among the 6,000,000 richer people. “Health before all things†has long been on the banner of politicians, and though much has been done much more remains to be done. There is no reason why the death-rate of a poor district should be higher than that of a rich district.
Law, to offer one other example, might do more “to nationalize luxuriesâ€. In an article on “PracticableSocialism,†which, as the first-fruits of an experience gained by my wife and myself in ten years of Whitechapel life, the Editor of this Review accepted in April, 1883, I suggested that legislation might provide for the people not what theywantbut what theyneed. Much has been done in this direction during the last thirty years; but still there is not the free and sufficient provision of the best music in summer and winter, of the best art, of the best books—there is not even the adequate supply of baths and flower-gardens, which would bring within the reach of the many the enjoyments which are the surest recreations of life.
It is thus possible to give examples of laws which would bring to the poor the use of a larger share of the national income. It is not easy to frame laws which, while they remove the burden and the danger of poverty, may by encouraging energy and self-respect develop industrial resourcefulness. But it ought not to be beyond statesmen’s power to devise such measures.
The point, however, which I desire to make clear is that if the poor are to become richer the rich must become poorer. Increase of production followed by an increased national income has under the present laws—as has been shown in the booming trade of recent years—meant that the rich have become richer. The present income is sufficient to assure the greater health and well-being of the whole population, but the rich must submit to receive a smaller proportion.
This proposition rouses much wrath. Its advocates are charged with preaching spoliation and robbery, with setting class against class, and with destroying the basis on which national prosperity is settled. The taxation which compels the rich to reduce their expenditure on holidays and luxuries may seem hard, and the fear lest the tax which this year takes 5 per cent of their income will be further increasedmay induce panic among certain classes; but it is harder for the poor to go on suffering for want of the means of life, and there is more reason for panic in the thought that the mass of the people remain indifferent to the national greatness. The tax, it must be remembered, which reduces the expenditure of the rich on things which perish in their using—on out-of-season foods, on aimless locomotion, and the excitements of ostentation—and at the same time makes it possible for the poor to spend more on food and clothing, increases the work of working people. The millions of money, for example, taken from the rich to supply pensions for the poor have enabled the old people to spend money on food and clothing, which has been better for the nation’s trade than money spent on luxuries. It is a striking fact that if the people used what is held to be a bare sufficiency of woollen and cotton goods, the demand for these goods would be increased threefold to sixfold. The transference, therefore, of more of the national income from the few rich to the many poor need not alarm patriots.
The tax-collectors’ interference with the use of the accumulated wealth, now controlled by a comparatively small number of the people, is much less dangerous to the national prosperity than the discontent which arises from poverty. A proposition which offers security for the nation at the cost of some sacrifice by a class should, it might be expected, be met to-day by the more powerful members of society as willingly as in old days the nobles met the call to battle. But the powerful members of modern society hate the doctrine of taxation, and the hatred becomes a sort of instinct which draws them towards any alternative policy which may put off the evil day. If they give, their gifts are generous, frequently very generous, but often unconsciously they have regarded them as a sort of ransom which they threaten they will not pay if taxes are imposed, doingthereby injustice to their generosity. The rich do not realize the meaning of poverty, its wounds to human nature, or its dangers to the nation.
Poverty, I would submit is at the root of our present discontent, not the poverty which the Poor Law and charity are to relieve, but the poverty of the great mass of the workers. Out of this poverty rises the enemy which threatens our peace and our greatness, and this poverty is due not to want of trade or work or wealth, but to the want of thought as to the distribution of our enormous national income. When the meaning of poverty is realized, the courage and the sacrifice which in the past have so often dared loss to avert danger will hardly fail because the loss to be faced is represented by the demand-note of the tax-collector. Gifts cannot avert the danger, repression will increase the danger, and the preachers who believe in the coming of the Kingdom must for the old text, “God loveth a cheerful giver,†substitute as its equivalent, “God loveth a cheerful taxpayerâ€.
Samuel A. Barnett.
Samuel A. Barnett.