The first farm colony was established in Holland. The system has since taken root all through Europe, but has reached its finest development in the Canton of Berne, in Switzerland. It proceeds upon the principle that while it is difficult to make money out of farm land, it is easy to get nourishment from it, and that the most obvious remedy for idle labor is to apply it to idle land.
In Switzerland it is also recognized that idle labor is divided into two distinct classes—the unemployed and the unemployable—and the unemployable must be again classified into those unable to work through physical defect and those unable to work through moral defect;that is to say, those who are morally willing and physically unable and those physically able and morally unwilling. There are therefore in Switzerland two different kinds of farm colonies: forced colonies which deal with the tramp, the drunkard, and the misdemeanant—all those persons upon whom discipline has to be exercised; and free colonies for those physically disabled or who are out of employment through causes over which they have no control.
It is in the poorest countries in Europe that farm colonies have reached their highest development. Switzerland has been driven to organize farm colonies by the fact that she is too poor to disregard the burden of the unemployed and unemployables. It is in the richest countries, England, France, and America, that the farm colony system has been most neglected. The farm colony plan is the cheapest as well as the best way of solving the problem of pauperism, deserving or undeserving. This question has been fully treated elsewhere[165]and it is only referred to here in sufficient detail to explain why it is believed that the farm colony system will form an essential feature of every Socialistic community. For although there will be an enormous diminution in the number of those unwilling or unable to work (for the reason that under a coöperative commonwealth no one need be overworked and, therefore, no one need be reduced to the physical exhaustion which is the prime cause of pauperism), and although there will be fewer drunkards because drunkenness, also, is largely due to overwork, nevertheless, until the coöperative commonwealth has been in operation several generations, that part of the population that is unwilling or unable to workwill have to be provided for. And even later there will certainly be some part of the population that will require discipline as regards work. The farm colony system, more and more indispensable in our existing civilization, will perform an important rôle in the gradual transformation of society from the competitive to the coöperative form. It probably presents to-day one of the most perfect pieces of constructive Socialistic work in which legislators can engage. For it has the extraordinary advantage of satisfying an immediate necessity of the competitive system and at the same time realizing some fundamental principles of Socialism; for example, that every man and woman is entitled to work; that the aged are entitled to support; and that the state should own enough land to assure both these things.
The fact that our railroads are now awakening to the necessity of handling the tramp proves the necessity of the system, and the fact that in Switzerland the forced colonies have been made to pay their own expenses indicates its economy. Indeed, no proposed legislation illustrates so well the power driving us towards Socialism as the history of attempts at legislation in this direction in New York State.
Twelve years ago a farm colony bill was drawn by a committee appointed by the charitable societies in New York; but it did not secure at Albany a moment's serious attention. We were told by our legislators that poverty is not a crime. When we answered that our bill did not make it a crime more than the penal code, but only purposed to substitute for the expensive and degenerating system of the misnamed workhouse, inexpensive and regenerating work on a state farm, and that the plan had operated effectually in Holland and Belgium for over a hundred years, we were told that the plan might do inHolland, but would not do here. So in the archives of the French senate may still be read the report made by Thiers, when appointed by Louis Philippe on a committee to investigate the first railroad ever built, which concludes as follows: "Railroads may serve a purpose in England, but they are not suited to France."
A similar bill, improved by borrowing from late experience in Switzerland, drawn by a similar committee (to which was added the Commissioner of Charities, Mr. Hebberd) was presented at Albany at the session of 1909, and although not passed, was sufficiently well received to encourage the hope that it will pass at the session of 1910. It had the support of the great railroads in New York state; for the railroads have discovered that the tramp is an intolerable nuisance.[166]Colonel Pangborn of the Baltimore & Ohio has lately estimated that the damage occasioned by tramps to railroads in the United States amounts in a single year to twenty-five million dollars.[167]For the tramp in America does not tramp; he rides on railroads; he sets fire to freight cars and freight stations; he obstructs the lines, wrecks trains, and is a fruitful cause of action for damages. The measure, therefore, which was thrown out by the Assembly when proposed from motives of humanity, may be passed as a measure of self-defence, and self-defence thus constitutes an element of the power always at work on the side of progress that neither ignorance nor interest will be able to resist.
The reason for believing that the farm colony will perform an important function not only during the period which must elapse before the coöperative commonwealth, but also after the coöperative commonwealth has been attained, is that work on land seems to be the only workto which the unemployed and unemployables can be suitably put.
Every day we seem to be increasing our capacity to make land productive. We not only make new discoveries, but profit by those of more ancient civilizations than our own. It has long been known that in the East they subject grain to the same system of replanting that truck gardeners do early vegetables.[168]
Dr. Fesca informs us that in Japan rice is treated in the same way: "It is allowed first to germinate; then it is sown in special warm corners, well inundated with water and protected from the birds by strings drawn over the ground. Thirty-five to fifty-five days later, the young plants, now fully developed and possessed of a thick network of rootlets, are replanted in the open ground. In this way the Japanese obtain from twenty to thirty-two bushels of dressed rice to the acre in the poor provinces, forty bushels in the better ones, and from sixty to sixty-seven bushels in the best lands. The average, in six rice-growing States of North America, is at the same time only nine and a half bushels."[169]
Agriculturists are familiar with the results obtained by Major Hallett's growing what he called "pedigree cereals"; that is to say, by using as seed only the bestears in his crop; and by giving to each grain sufficient space he obtained sometimes as much as 2500 grains for one grain planted. Even better results were obtained by Grandeau.[170]
We are only beginning to know how much can be produced out of an acre of ground. One thing, however, is certain: where labor is cheap and land limited as in the case of our unemployed, there is no method known by which labor can produce better results than by putting it to what is called "intensive culture"; and as the secrets of intensive culture become more known, it becomes clear that if the state would only take the trouble to set aside a certain amount of land for the purpose, it could without further expense than that of the first installation make able-bodied unemployed and unemployables self-supporting.
This is not a question of fertility; it is simply a question of space. Unfertile land is made fertile by intensive culture. It has been said that the Paris gardener defies the soil and the climate. Every truck gardener there stipulates in renting land that he "may carry away his soil down to a certain depth, when he quits his tenancy."[171]In other words, soil is now a manufacture; we are no longer confined to fertile areas; we can make any area fertile by the application to it of industry and intelligence.
Municipalities can contribute enormously to the fertility of the land around them. A district near Paris, called Genevilliers, was a few years ago a desert tract of sand. The city poured over this tract the sewage of the city after a filtration that deprived it of its offensive features.This tract has become of fabulous fertility; but the municipality having failed to buy this land before this operation, the increased value of the land has accrued to the persons who happened to be the owners of it; whereas if the city had begun by purchasing the land at the price at which it could have been purchased before this operation, it would have had here a tract of enormous value that, by the farm colony system, would have greatly contributed to relieve the city of the burden of pauperism.
It would seem as though the art of using manure were practically unknown in this country by the farmers. The results that can be obtained in this way are given in the Farmer's Bulletin, No. 242, where an intelligent use of manure resulted in crops of 6.7 tons of hay for every acre of cultivation;[172]and this not by the application of any extraordinary science, but simply by recognizing the obvious fact that manure must be spread daily and not allowed to lose most of its value from being piled into heaps, where it burns and degenerates.[173]
The farm colony must be so organized that it furnishes work summer and winter. As its name implies, the colony is not confined to work on land. Many skilled workmen would lose their skill if they were put to farm work. Swiss colonies, therefore, have a few industries established in each colony to which skilled workmen are put. This occupies unskilled inmates during the wintermonths when the weather is too inclement for out of door work, and also teaches them. Moreover, in a self-supporting farm colony there is work which can be done by the aged and the infirm, teaming, taking care of animals, plucking fruits and vegetables, preparing them for preserving, and all the small jobs that attend large housekeeping.
The farm colony plan will in part relieve the state of the expense of old-age pensions. Every industry will provide pensions for its own workers and thus the state will be relieved by the guilds; but there will always be some aged left unsupported by such private industries as will continue to exist by the side of the guilds. Of these it may be expedient to relieve some in their own homes; but many will find in the free farm colony an abiding place more congenial to themselves than the almshouse, and far less expensive to the state. It will be more congenial because there will be no more disgrace attending a free farm colony than any other state employment, and because it will be organized so as to render its work as agreeable as possible. It will never be so attractive as work outside the colony because it will be subject to the kind of regulations that attend all big institutions, so there is little fear of these colonies becoming larger than is good for the community. But it will be a home rather than an almshouse, and it will be less expensive to the state because of the work which even the aged can do.
The farm colony furnishes a system by means of which the state can compel the unwilling, able-bodied tramp and pauper to earn his own livelihood; where it can afford work to the unemployed without cost to the state; and can utilize to the utmost possible the services of those who are not able-bodied.
It must not be imagined that discipline of a harsh character is necessary. There are in every one of these colonies in Europe dark cells, where a man who will not work, or will not obey rules, is confined and kept on bread and water until he consents to work and to obey rules; and the very fact of the existence of these cells, and of this system, has been found sufficient to secure good work and obedience to rules without using the dark cells except under exceptional circumstances. The director of one of the Dutch colonies told me that he did not use the dark cell once a year.
There is no reason why the farm colony system should not be extended to the treatment of all crime except that we have prisons, prison managers, and a prison administration which stand in the way of radical prison reform; and the general stupidity which prefers the ills we have to the blessings which, obvious as they are, we have not imagination enough to comprehend. The folly of keeping an enormous population of criminals idle, within four walls, at an enormous expense to the community, when we could keep them busy to their great advantage, physical, intellectual, and moral, without a penny of cost to the community, is one of those things which future generations will find it difficult to believe.[174]
In the coöperative commonwealth there will be no prisons, no penitentiaries, no almshouses, no tramps, no unemployed. There will be farm colonies of various grades, from those that have no discipline beyond that necessary to secure the observance of rules necessary to all institutional life, through those that have just enough discipline to keep lazy men at work, to those that have sufficient discipline to keep even criminals at work. For although it is obvious that under a coöperativecommonwealth in which there is no necessity for exhausting any individual, no necessity for alcoholism or stimulation, no anxiety regarding the means of existence; where there is throughout a high standard of living, ease for the mind and abundance for the body, the production of the natural criminal ought to be immensely diminished, yet the occasional criminal will have to be provided for.
For further study of the farm colony system as it has been developed in Switzerland, and as it might be applied in the United States under existing conditions, the reader is referred to "The Elimination of the Tramp."[175]It is hoped, however, that enough has been said regarding these colonies to enable us to consider the immense rôle which an intelligent classification of farm colonies would play, not only under existing conditions, but in the future coöperative commonwealth.
A single farm colony for dealing with tramps as proposed in the bill now before the Assembly of New York State would render an indispensable service by taking off the streets and highways the vagrants who, because they are now confounded with the unemployed, tend to confuse the mind of the public on this all-important subject. But although such a colony, organized under the same conditions as the forced labor colony in Switzerland, would render this service without cost to the state beyond that of first installation, its usefulness in the problem of production at large would be extremely small. It would attain its purpose if it were self-supporting. But if this tramp colony proves a success, the same system could be applied not only to take care of all our dependent and criminal classes, but to play an important rôle in the production of the necessaries of life.
There ought to be three distinct classes of colonies:
The criminal farm colony surrounded by walls where the strictest discipline would be enforced, and within which the inmates would be confined to intensive cultivation, handicrafts, and some form of machine industry.
The forced labor colony for misdemeanants and able-bodied vagrants and paupers where larger liberty would be enjoyed; and
The free labor colony where there would be no regulation except that indispensable in all institutions.
Perhaps to these should be added probationary colonies as described in the "Elimination of the Tramp," p. 59, for those as to whose willingness to work there is doubt. These would furnish the "test" so much sought by English Poor Law Guardians. From these probationary colonies the inmates would be graduated down to the forced labor colony, or up to the free. So also criminals would be prepared for social life by passing through the forced labor colony, and inmates of the forced labor colony prepared for social life by passing through the free labor colony.
In a coöperative commonwealth free labor would have no objection to industrial work conducted within these colonies, because the less work there is to be done in any given industry, the less hours would the workers in that industry have to give to it. So that every industry carried on in the colony would by so much diminish the amount of goods produced outside by that industry, and to that extent relieve the free labor engaged therein. This great objection to penal labor being removed, the state will have an advantage in distributing the industries throughout its colonies according to geographical conditions.
The criminal colonies will naturally be more industrial in their character than the agricultural, because they willhave to be operated within prison walls. They will nevertheless include truck gardening and horticulture.[176]Penal colonies, therefore, will group themselves around great water power, which will be retained by the state and not dissipated by the gift of franchises to private corporations.[177]
Misdemeanants and tramps will preferably be set to work on large farms which, because of their size and remoteness from towns, will render escape difficult. The methods adopted in Switzerland for making escape difficult if not impossible, are fully described in the "Elimination of the Tramp."[178]
As in these colonies there is more or less work to be done all the year round, it would be indispensable to build in connection with them factories which could be operated during the winter months, the state being careful to limit the factories to the production of things already socialized, so as not to compete injuriously with private industry.
Free labor colonies ought to be located near large centers of population, not only because of the character of the things they will produce, for example, milk, vegetables, and fruits, which need a market at the door, but also because it is in these great centers that pauperism and unemployment express themselves in largest figures and in greatest variation. In these colonies inmates will remain the shortest terms, and it is important, therefore, to have them in proximity to places where the inmates are likely to live in order to avoid the heavy expense of transportation.
Free labor colonies will be engaged in the productionof milk for two reasons: The hygienic importance of milk is so great that it should as much as possible be removed from the competitive field. It is important that milk should be produced as near as possible to the town where it is to be consumed. It is wiser, therefore, to assign the production of milk to the free labor colony, near the city, than to the penal or forced labor colony that would be comparatively remote. But it must not be imagined that the production of milk can be confided exclusively to such inexpert labor as that of the inmates of free labor colonies. The production of milk can only be entrusted to careful experts receiving a relatively high rate of wages. Free labor colonies, therefore, will have to be provided with a corps of men and women trained in the production of milk and dairy products.
It may be suggested that the fact that dairy products must be entrusted to trained experts is a reason for not associating the production of milk with free labor colonies. This objection disappears when account is taken of the fact that dairy farms should have connected with them such subsidiary products as chickens and pigs. Skimmed milk is of the greatest value in these subsidiary productions; so also is the garbage that would accumulate in such an institution as a farm colony. The care of pigs and poultry can be confided to defectives such as we are likely to find in a free labor colony. It furnishes work all the year round; it enriches the soil rather than impoverishes it.
Free labor colonies, therefore, will be engaged in the production of milk, pigs, poultry, vegetables, fruits, and flowers. They will be furnished with grain by the forced labor colonies in the States where grain can be cultivated on a large scale; and by distributing industries among the three classes of colonies and arranging for exchange ofproducts, the whole colony system ought not only to be self-supporting, but to produce more than the colonies can themselves consume. The disposition made of these products will be studied in connection with the problem of distribution.
Under such a plan, no pauperism or even poverty will be tolerated in the towns. As soon as a man, woman, or family is incapable of self-support in the competitive field, or because of sickness or accident in the coöperative field, they will be taken out of the town where their presence is an expense and a nuisance not only to themselves, but to the community, to a free farm colony where health can be restored and defectives put to the best use possible.
Farm colonies in the Rocky Mountain region where sheep and cattle can be fed on public land for nine or ten months in the year, and fed by hand during the remaining two or three months, will furnish cattle and sheep to municipal packing-houses that will distribute meat with the economy of the postoffice system from door to door.
State farm colonies in the grain-growing districts will furnish grain to all the other colonies and wheat to municipal bakeries that will distribute bread with the economy of the postoffice system from door to door.
Free labor colonies adjoining cities will produce milk, butter, and dairy products, pork and pork products, chickens, eggs, vegetables, fruits, and flowers and distribute them with the economy of the postoffice system from door to door.
State factories distributed amongst penal colonies in accordance with the geographical conditions that will make them most efficient, will furnish garments, shoes,hats, etc., to the other colonies at the cheapest possible price.
By the side of these productions, there will be maintained exactly the same system of private ownership that exists to-day with all the virtues that emulation produces free from the fatal consequences that make failure result in misery, pauperism, prostitution, vagrancy, and crime. For so long as the individual prospers in his private enterprise, he will be encouraged to maintain it; whereas the moment he fails, he will come within the state system under which the private individual having proved his inability to support himself and his family under the competitive plan, will be shown how to support himself and his family by state institutions that will have reduced this task to a science.
That the state will occasionally fail in this task is to be expected. But what is the worst consequence that can result from failure? Nothing more than the maintenance of the competitive system in every field of industry where the state fails. If the state fails to furnish good bread, private initiative will take the baking of bread from the state and will keep it until the state succeeds in furnishing bread to the taste of the public. If the state fails in furnishing garments, private initiative will keep garment making in its hands except in so far as the state makes garments for the inmates of its own institutions.
Many problems connected with this system of production will occur to the mind of the intelligent reader. These problems, however, will be found to belong more strictly to the question of distribution and government control—two subjects that cannot be intelligently discussed until the question of private property in land has been answered.
Socialism was formerly defined as including state ownership of land. This idea is to-day, however, abandoned in favor of a much more intelligent system:
One principal difference between the Socialist and the Single Taxer is that the Single Taxer is opposed to state ownership of all land; and it is probable that the Single Taxer is more wise in this respect than the state Socialist. In the first place, the state Socialist who wants all land to be owned by the state ignores some very fundamental facts in human nature: He ignores the fact that humanity has for generations cultivated the instinct of ownership in land. There is nothing dearer in life to the French peasant than the strip of land barely sufficient to support life, and he will cling to that strip of land until some accident has torn it from him and reduced him to the condition of a pauper. Out of this instinct of ownership springs the extraordinary industry of the farmer—an industry which is not excelled or equalled in any but sweated trades.
The life of the peasant or small farmer is one of hardship that leaves no moment for leisure, and of monotony that populates our lunatic asylums.[179]Not only is the life of the farmer one of the hardest, but it is also one of the least secure. The failure of a single crop, the loss of a single horse, disease in a chicken yard, a violent hail-storm—any of these may oblige a farmer to put that first small mortgage on his farm which is the beginning of his ruin. Nevertheless, the farmer sticks to his farm and labors on it from the rising of the sun, through the glareof noon and up to the last ray in the west, because the land is his own and he has for it the kind of affection that a mother has for her child—an affection that makes no sacrifice too great. It would seem unwise to deprive the farmer of the satisfaction of ownership and the community of the industry and productivity which this sense of ownership results in.
There is no conceivable advantage in depriving the farmer of the ownership of his farm. The farmer now pays taxes on his land. The right of the state to exact a tax puts the state in the position of a landlord except that the state calls the tribute it levies on the farm a "tax," whereas the owner calls this tribute "rent." Of course there is a great difference between the tax levied by the state and the rent paid by the farmer to the private owner, because the one is light and the other heavy. This is the material difference which must not be lost sight of in the discussion of the subject. Every farmer expects to pay taxes to the state and all he asks is that the tax be not an onerous one. It can be rendered less onerous in the coöperative commonwealth than to-day because a coöperative commonwealth will not exact payment of taxes in money, but will content itself with payment in produce. Instead of the state taking over the land and depriving the farmer of ownership, and exacting rent, the coöperative commonwealth will leave the ownership in the farmer and exact a tax in produce; and so long as this tax is paid, the farmer will remain the undisputed owner of his land, and will continue to give it that hourly care without which the best results can hardly be obtained.
There is nothing in modern Socialism, therefore, to frighten the farmer. He cannot but benefit by it, for his taxes will be levied in produce instead of in cash;and it is the conversion of farm produce into cash which is the farmer's main difficulty to-day, as was seen when money was discussed.
The title of a farmer under a coöperative commonwealth will be much like that of the peasant in the Island of Jersey, who generally purchases his land on condition of paying a certain amount to the owner per annum. These Jersey titles are just as secure as freeholds in England or in this country, subject of course to the payment of the rent charged.
The tax in produce, however, which the farmer is to pay the state will be far more just and fair. Land will be classified according to productivity, and the farmer will never be called upon to furnish the state with a larger proportion of his crop than he can afford. On the other hand, farmers will not be allowed to keep the ownership of land which they do not use. If it is to the benefit of the community that land be drained, the owner will be called upon to drain it within a definite period. If he does not drain it within that period, the state will take his undrained land from him. Nor will the farmer be allowed to cut down timber where the maintenance of the timber is deemed important to the commonwealth.[180]He will be taught forestry and the propagation of deer, and shown how to produce as much income out of his timber as he would out of the land when cleared. Above all, he will be relieved from the exorbitant prices whichhe now pays the trust for every article which he does not himself produce. The state will undertake the task of distribution, so that he can receive as the farmer in South Australia does to-day—a part payment in cash for all produce he delivers at the nearest railroad, and a subsequent payment when his goods have been sold through the instrumentality of the state. But this last belongs to Distribution.
Prices will not be lowered by the competition of farm colonies. On the contrary, they will be maintained by the prices asked by farm colonies. Farm-colony prices will allow every efficient farmer a substantial living, and the farmer will have the benefit of the example and advice furnished him by the nearest farm colony, which will be a model farm.
It may be objected that under this system the farmer will not have sufficient motive for adopting modern methods. There are undoubtedly farmers who are averse to the adoption of modern methods; but there are also thousands of farmers eager to know modern methods. Rev. J.D. Detrich, who produced 6.7 tons of hay for every acre in cultivation on his farm[181]was so pestered by neighbors who called to study his methods that he was obliged to remove to an adjoining State. Recalcitrant farmers will slowly be compelled to adopt modern methods by the fixing of prices that will make modern methods indispensable to prosperity.
In every way, therefore, the farmer will be benefited by the introduction of Socialism. He will keep the title of ownership in his farm that is dear to him; he will pay his taxes in produce instead of in cash; he will have the benefit of education and advice at his door; and he will be relieved of the exorbitant prices now demanded bythe trusts, and of that greatest of all his anxieties, the conversion of his produce into cash.
As regards city land, the problem is a very different one, because the treatment of city land is an essential part of the whole municipal problem.
Practically all municipal problems may be reduced to one—namely, crowding. As long as farmers live half a mile apart as they do on a standard 160-acre farm in the West, sewage and garbage are matters of individual rather than social interest. Provided the farmer does not pollute springs and water courses, he may dispose of his sewage and garbage as he chooses; but the moment men and women are crowded into cities on the vertical as well as on the horizontal plane, the disposal of sewage and garbage becomes of vital importance to the whole community.
So also the maintenance of roads is a comparatively simple problem in the country, where traffic is light; whereas in the city, where traffic is great, the pavement of the streets presents problems not only of resistance, but of noise. The droppings of horses on the country road can be neglected; whereas those of horses passing a thousand per hour in a crowded city street create a dust injurious to health, and give rise to the problem of street cleaning.
Again, where land is plentiful compared with population, the rent charged for land is small and often negligible; whereas where land is scarce compared with the population, as in the island of Manhattan, the rent becomes prohibitive for all except the wealthy, and workingmen are reduced to the alternative between living near their work in unwholesome tenements and living far from their work in less unwholesome conditions. And this scarcity of land gives rise to many problems ofcongested districts, of tuberculosis, sanitation, transportation, and of rent.
If we look back on the whole history of our civilization, we shall see an unconscious struggle always going on between private interest and public spirit. The one tends to divide cities into two districts, one composed of the palaces of the rich, the other of the slums of the poor, and seeks to convert every problem of municipal government into means of increasing private wealth. The other, on the contrary, we find manifested in the "Age of Faith" building cathedrals; in the Age of Beauty or Renaissance, building public squares and gardens; and in recent years taking such services as transportation out of the hands of private individuals and vesting them in the city. This struggle between public and private interest has been, up to the present time, unconscious or fitful. The Socialist asks that it should become conscious and progressive; that is all.
Let us take a few concrete instances: It was not until dark alleys were found to facilitate the work of criminals that municipalities were driven to light the streets; it was not until a district of Birmingham had become a menace to public welfare because its filth engendered both disease and crime that the municipality was driven to put an end to it; it was not until cholera began its ravages that municipalities were driven to provide clean dwellings; it was not until the evils attending imperfect transportation became intolerable that New York was driven to build subways; it was not until fires devastated the city that New York organized its fire department; it was not until the filth of the streets was intolerable that the city took the cleaning of streets out of the hands of private contractors. Up to the present time municipal activities have been forced into existence by the growthof the evils to a point where they could no longer be endured.
Over a century ago it was said that municipalities were "sores upon the body politic," and this phrase has been solemnly quoted ever since as a sort of slogan of despair; whereas the municipality might be and ought to be, if intelligently administered, the mainspring of all our great national activities. The Socialist asks that, instead of waiting for evils to become intolerable before we attempt to cope with them and then adopting measures which, because they come late, are inadequate, we should take up municipal administration as a housekeeper takes hold of the administration of her house, adopting measures which we must inevitably in the end adopt before the evils become intolerable, and before the city becomes so over-built as to make the difficulty of coping with these evils insurmountable.
This is the spirit in which a citizen should approach the question of city land; and if we do approach it in this spirit, the problem of how to put an end to the evils arising from private ownership of land is in many respects similar to those which present themselves in our effort to put an end to the evils of private ownership of stock.
For example, some land will be in the hands of men who have contributed absolutely nothing to its value. They have inherited it, and upon the rent which conditions have enabled them to exact they have lived lives of uselessness if not of profligacy. One has abjured his American nationality to avoid the payment of the personal tax, and applies the sums which he receives, thanks to the industry of the community in New York, to the publishing of a conservative newspaper in London opposed to every effort permanently to improve theconditions of humanity there. Some land will be in the hands of men and women who have invested it in the economies of a laborious life and for whom it represents an old-age pension. Between these two, there is every degree of merit.
The problem of compensation in taking over of city land will prove as complicated as in the socialization of industries, and very much the same principles will apply. Every city presents problems of its own, and it is difficult, therefore, to lay down general principles applicable to all cities. But one point seems clear: We shall have to live in our cities while we are transforming them, and this means that the transformation will have to be slow. If the state undertakes to transform the slums into habitable tenements, the present families of the slums must be accommodated somewhere while the transformation takes place.
Rebuilding our cities to accommodate them to the changed conditions of a coöperative commonwealth, will be little more than doing on a large scale what Birmingham did on a small scale when it converted its slums into Corporation Street. If it is to be done well, it must be preceded with the deliberate preparation indispensable to the success of every large undertaking.
The Single Taxers are right when they claim that the enhancement of the value of land due to the industry of the many ought not to be appropriated by the idle few. The "unearned increment" should accrue to the whole community and not to a few landowners. As, therefore, the enhancement of the value of land due to crowding is a peculiar feature of the city, and distinguishes it from the country, it seems indispensable that city land should eventually be owned by the city; by the mass of citizens who labor and dwell therein.
Another thing seems clear, namely, that a city cannot be transformed to suit the needs of a coöperative commonwealth so long as the city is owned by a few individuals who, by virtue of their ownership, have a right to resist the transformation.
The ownership in city land is, therefore, totally different from ownership in farmland. In the latter case, there is no necessity for suppressing private ownership; whereas in the city, such suppression seems indispensable. It may be added that the beautiful parts of every city are due to state ownership. The Place des Vosges was built by Henry IV; the Place Vendôme was built by Louis XIV; the Place de la Concorde was built by Louis XV; the Champs Elysées and the Arc de l'Etoile were built by the two Napoleons. Practically all the great monuments of Paris were built by the state. Her streets were planned by the state, and the height of her private buildings regulated by the state. The same thing is true of London and Vienna. It is in our American cities alone that private initiative being allowed full sway, our buildings look like ill-assorted books in a neglected library; that we are committed to interminable streets and avenues which pass what monuments we have but lead up to none. In a word, our cities are committed to conditions so inartistic that the task of making them beautiful seems impossible short of destroying and rebuilding them altogether.
It will be seen that modern Socialism does not propose to interfere with the private ownership of the farmer in his farm, and that the production of agricultural anddairy products will remain much in the same hands as at present, except that the state will have farm colonies to standardize production; to weed out those farmers who, because of their incapacity, are unable to produce what the land is capable of producing; and to furnish work not only for unsuccessful farmers, but for all who cannot earn a living in socialized industries or under competitive conditions. Such a condition of things will involve no redistribution of tasks. It will leave every man working in the industry in which he is; it will leave those who are engaged in competition still engaged in competition where it is not productive of injurious result. It will raise wages in all socialized industries, and raise the purchasing power of these industries by reducing prices; it will, therefore, raise the standard of life for the workingman, secure for him clean and wholesome habitations, and a possibility of maintaining a home in the best sense of the word, where our present civilization makes such a home impossible. By farm colonies it will make the exploitation of men, women, and children impossible. Children will not work at all until they have reached the fullest education of which they are capable; women will not be allowed in industrial work as long as they are bearing and rearing children; and men need never receive a sweated wage when they have state institutions where they can in exchange for their work, have board, lodging, and as much wage as they can in addition earn. There will be no criminal class, for no man need be driven to crime by want; and by the abolition of the criminal class and the criminal environment, it is probable that crime resulting from economic causes will tend to disappear. Nor will a woman be driven by need to prostitution. Every industry will provide compensation for its own superannuated and defectives, and the state will havebut few for whom to furnish old-age pensions. The community will be relieved, therefore, of the enormous burden of vagrancy, pauperism, prostitution, and crime; and all this without interfering with any competitive industry capable of supporting its workers up to the standard of life created by socialized industry, and without any such convulsion as will throw upon the state the dangerous problem of assigning tasks.
We have heretofore considered only the problem of production; we have still to consider that of distribution.
At the present time anarchy reigns over production and distribution. This anarchy has been in great part already replaced in the field of manufacture by the trust. By combination, or as Mr. Rockefeller says, "by coöperation" (Book II, Chapter III), all those engaged in the manufacture of the same thing have eliminated competition so as to obtain the advantages of production on a large scale. The coöperative commonwealth will avail itself of the work already done by the trust, and as has been already shown, will leave all these trusted industries in the hands of those actually engaged in the work thereof.
In the field of agricultural production, however, little has been done to diminish the anarchy of distribution.[182]
The anarchy which now characterizes distribution must be considered under two heads: competition in the field of transportation, and competition in the field of retail trade. America is unique among the nations of the world for insisting upon railroads being run on the competitive system. In Europe franchises are given to railroads with a view to public welfare and the distinct policy of avoiding competition. Capitals are adopted as railroad centers and franchises so granted as to furnish a system of main lines radiating from these centers in such a manner as to compete with one another the least possible. In America we have proceeded upon the plan that railroads are to compete just as traders do, and that it is by competition that rates are to be kept down. Railroads competing with one another between the same places are run at a social loss, the community is better served by one railroad run in the interests of the country than by two between the same points run in the interests of private individuals.
As regards transportation then there seems to be no room for competition whatever. The state should own all systems of transportation with a view to bringing the produce of the country and of the factory to the consumer at the lowest possible cost to the community.
Let us consider how a coöperative community will deal with competition in the retail trade.
There is no reason why the private retailer conducting a business for his own account should not continue to exist side by side with a system of state distribution. There are reasons of propinquity and convenience that enable the small retailer to live to-day next door to the big department store. In the same way, the private retailer can perfectly well continue to live by the side of the state distributing system. Nevertheless, some partsof retail trade will be taken over absolutely, for example, milk, for hygienic reasons. And other departments will be so completely in the hands of the state that so long as the state furnishes a good quality it will be improbable that private enterprise will find it useful to interfere; as for example, the baking of bread.
As regards all those things which are likely to remain in the hands of individual enterprise, as, for example, things in which taste plays an important rôle—garments, hats, wallpaper, furniture, musical instruments, other instruments of pleasure such as athletic goods, bicycles, automobiles, steam launches, photographic apparatus—the retailing of these is likely to remain as much a matter of private enterprise as the production of them.
As regards the necessaries of life the consumer should be able to get them at the lowest possible price. All things of a hygienic character, which it is of the utmost importance that the consumer should have of the purest quality, the state will undertake not only to transport, but to distribute in state stores. It is of course conceivable that in some towns the state store will not be conducted to the satisfaction of its citizens, and private enterprise will therefore run a store in that place better than the state. In such case, private enterprise ought to be encouraged in its competition. But inasmuch as good state management will be in a coöperative commonwealth a matter of the greatest importance, it is not likely that the citizen will long endure bad administration. This belongs more to the political aspect of Socialism than to the economic, and will be studied there. We shall therefore now pass to a brief consideration of just how this system of distribution will work.
The state, having control of transportation, will adopt the method now prevailing in South Australia, and willpay the manufacturer and the farmer in cash at least 50 per cent—if not more—of the value of his goods at the railroad station. These will then be transported by the state in conformity with the needs of the various villages, towns and cities to stores of its own. These will be run upon the coöperative plan; the goods sold at only a small margin above cost, this margin being kept to meet the expense of distribution; and the profits—if any—will be distributed at the end of the year amongst customers on the coöperative plan.
It is obvious, however, that if the state is to distribute in the most economical manner, it must have some control over production. It must not be called upon to transport and distribute more of any one thing than the public wants; nor must it be caught without enough to satisfy the needs of the consumer. This makes it indispensable to study the problem of control at the same time with the problem of distribution.
No function of the state will probably be more important in a coöperative commonwealth than that of controlling the production of those things which, because they are necessaries or have hygienic importance, a coöperative commonwealth should itself control, transport, and distribute.
The problem of control is not as difficult as it might at first seem. We know perfectly well to-day how much wheat, corn, beef, mutton, etc., are actually consumed by our population. All we have to do to determine this amount for ourselves is to take, for example, the amount of wheat produced in the country, and the amount exported, subtract the exports from the product and determine the amount consumed in this country. The same thing can be done practically with every staple product. The state, therefore, can determine every year in advancehow much of every staple productmustbe produced for the needs of the country. It will, of course, add to the amount actually needed a margin to provide for poor crops and other accidents.
Let us consider how this control will be exercised as regards farm and dairy products. It has been already suggested that land should be classified according to geographical conditions, exposure, and soil. The productivity of the farm colonies will of course be known by the state. Every private farm will have its productivity roughly determined and every farmer will be expected to produce a minimum amount. Of the amount he produces, a part will be taken as taxes to furnish the government with the means to pay for administration. The rest will be paid for partly in gold and partly in orders on the state stores. The object of this system of payment is the following:
It has been explained that taxes will be paid in produce. This payment therefore needs no further comment. A minimum product ascribed to every farm will be paid for with orders on the state store. This represents the amount which the farmermustproduce to keep his farm. It also represents the amount which the statemusthave to supply its citizens with food. All over and above this amount will be paid for in orders on the public store, or in cash, as the farmer shall elect; or, if the farmer chooses to dispose of this part to private traders he will be at liberty to do so. By this method the community will be furnished with produce belonging to three different categories: produce in the shape of a tax for which the farmer receives no compensation, this being practically the rent he pays the state for his land; second, the minimum produce for which the farmer receives equivalent orders on the public store, this category being theproduce upon which the community depends for its sustenance.
The order upon the public store need differ in no way from the greenback of to-day except that, instead of entitling the holder to a dollar's worth of gold, it will entitle him to a dollar's worth of goods in the public store. Thus if wheat can be produced in a coöperative commonwealth at 50 cents per bushel, as seems likely,[183]the farmer will receive for every two bushels an order for one dollar on the public store.
The third category which represents the surplus above what the farmer is required to produce in order to keep his farm, will constitute a surplus of production applicable to exchange for luxuries and foreign goods. This exchange can be made directly by the farmer or by private banks and private merchants, or by the state.
Let us consider the control the state must exercise over, and the rôle it must play in, the distribution of products of socialized industries such as oil, sugar, steel, iron, leather, etc. The amount of iron and steel required by the nation in the course of a year is not as constant a quantity as the amount of wheat. It is, however, sufficiently constant to make it possible to establish a minimum. The state will begin by requiring socialized industries to furnish this minimum and determine the price to be paid for it, thus creating a stock on hand which can be accumulated so as to diminish the amount needed in subsequent years and furnish a reserve which can be called upon in case of extraordinary need. The state, having established the minimum of steel, sugar, oil, etc., which it needs, will require of the socialized industriesto produce this minimum. It will also require them to produce, in addition, an amount necessary to contribute their share to the maintenance of the government. Every associated industry, therefore, will furnish at regular intervals the result of its manufacture in three categories similar to those already explained—a part for taxes; a minimum already referred to that will be paid for in orders on the public stores, and a surplus of which it can dispose either to the state or directly to foreign bankers and merchants. In this way, every associated industry will so adjust its manufacture as to produce these three categories; the proceeds of the surplus will be applicable in the first place to the support of workers through accidents, illness, and during old age; and the rest will be divided as profits amongst those engaged for example in the steel industry. These profits will be applicable to the purchase of luxuries either produced at home or produced abroad.
Under this system the coöperative commonwealth will have goods to exchange with foreign countries and will to this extent be a merchant as regards all those things which it holds in excess of the needs of the community, and as regards that surplus which it may purchase from the farmer and the socialized industries. This leaves room for a system of private banks and private enterprises in international trade; for the farmer and the socialized industries will be free to trade their surplus through the government or through private individuals as they may consider most to their profit.
The distributive stores will present very much the same aspect as our department stores of to-day except that, though they may be even more gigantic in size, they are not likely to be as diverse; for a large proportion of the things now dealt in by department stores will doubtlessremain in the hands of private industry. The essential duty of the state will be to provide its citizens with necessaries, not luxuries pertaining to taste and pleasure.
The state store will be divided into two departments, retail and wholesale; not that a different price need necessarily be charged in the retail than in the wholesale department, but because the machinery for furnishing builders with bricks is different from that for furnishing housewives with groceries. The state stores will also have a system for the regular delivery from door to door of such necessaries of life as are daily or at stated intervals consumed, e.g., milk, bread, coal, ice, meat, vegetables, and fruit, thereby applying postoffice economies to the distribution of these things.
The labor of distribution will be diminished by the slow transformation of city dwellings into gigantic apartment houses so constructed as to give the fullest supply of light and air to every room; and these apartment houses will have a distributing system of their own to the relief of the state.
As regards alcoholic drinks, the state will undoubtedly undertake the production of these with a view to taking this industry as far as possible out of private hands. It will not be necessary, however, to take it entirely out of private hands provided all private production is subjected to vigorous control. But the distribution of alcoholic liquors will probably be monopolized by the state on the Gothenburg plan with, perhaps, the important feature which characterizes the Public House Trust in England; that is, the persons in charge will receive a salary and an additional commission upon the sale of non-alcoholic drinks, but no commission on the sale of alcoholic drinks; and this with a view to giving the persons in charge an interest in selling non-alcoholicdrinks. Under these circumstances, there will be no temptation to encourage drunkenness and the rule of not giving alcoholic drinks to persons already under the influence of liquor will be complied with.
It will be possible under such a general system for the state to serve as a medium for an exchange of labor that will greatly enhance the pleasure of life. Under existing conditions, the factory works summer as well as winter despite the fact that temperature makes work during the summer irksome and dangerous to health and life; and at the very time that the population is debilitated by being called upon to work in factories during the heat of June, July, and August, the farmer is in despair because he cannot find help to take in his harvest. Once industries are associated so that they have a definite knowledge of how much they have to produce, there is no reason why they should not so adjust the work of the factory as to keep it open during the eight cool months of the year, leaving the factory hands free to help the farmer in the country during the four hot months. The same thing holds good with the farmer who, during the short cold days of winter, has little to do on the farm and can, therefore, to his advantage as well as to the advantage of the community, devote those months to factory work. There need be nothing compulsory about this exchange, for socialized industry is master of its own time and can distribute its work throughout the year as it chooses. But the fact that the state is possessed of the knowledge how much is to be produced by every factory and how much by every farmer—how many men are needed in the winter in every factory and how many men in the summer on every farm, will enable the state to serve as a medium through which the factory hand can arrange to work on the farm during the summerand the farmer can arrange to work in the factory in the winter, if they respectively desire to do so.
It does not follow that the farmer is to be compelled to work long hours in the summer in the field and also in the factory during the winter; or the factory hand to give up his holiday in order to work on the farm during the summer. It has been shown that all the necessaries of life can probably be produced, even at the present time, by the adults in the community though they work no more than two hours and a half a day. If this be so, it would be easy so to adjust the work as to enable those who desire it to work more hours in the day and become entitled to so much longer vacation. The foregoing is only intended to show that in addition to the vacation which can be thus enjoyed, the farmer can relieve the monotonous existence of the farm during the winter months by work in the factory, and the factory hand can escape from factory conditions during the summer to his own advantage and to the advantage of the community at large.
Another object we have in view is to put an end to the anarchy which exists in all that part of our industry which has not been concentrated into trusts—the anarchy under which some things are produced in greater quantities than are needed, and some things needed are not produced in sufficient quantities—under which no producer can tell whether he is producing enough of a thing until the time for profiting by the knowledge has passed; no producer can tell whether he is producing too much of a thing until he is injured and even ruined by the discovery. It is, I think, obvious that all these objects are obtained by concentrating industry after the fashion of trusts in the hands of the men actually engaged in the process of production; by producing things not to make profit butto satisfy needs; and in the quantities which we know to be needed and not in quantities determined by the desire of the producer to make large profits cheeked only by the bankruptcy that attends production in larger quantities than the market will take.
Thus, the state orders thirty million tons of iron ore because we know that this amount of iron ore has served the needs of the country during a period of great activity, and will furnish not only all we can use ourselves in that year, but all that we can dispose of abroad. These thirty million tons represent then the maximum that we can usefully manufacture; and we can safely order thirty million tons because the state is not under the necessity to sell this iron to get gold with which to pay wages, rent, coal, and the running expenses of the factory. In a coöperative commonwealth there will be no rent to pay. The coal will be paid for in exactly the same way as the iron, by the issue of store orders.
The workers will get as nearly as possible the exact product of their work. There will be no capitalist who will take from them what the capitalist now takes, that is, about one-half of their earnings. Nor will those doing a low order of work receive as much as those doing a high order of work; every man will be paid according to his capacity; for we begin by assuming that the distribution of work according to capacity to-day is not far wrong, and so every man engaged in the steel industry will continue to receive the same wages as he received before with a certain prospect of an additional wage in the shape of profit, representing the difference in wage between the new conditions and the old.
Overwork will be impossible in the iron trade, because a sufficient number will be employed to prevent overwork. And unemployment will be impossible because if, at anyperiod, it turns out that more iron is being produced than the community can use, the excess men employed in the previous year will be set to work by the state in some other industry.
The effect of such a discovery will be to diminish the number of hours required all round. It must not be forgotten how little work need actually be done to produce the things we need. Under these circumstances, we need hardly consider the question of overwork, for all will enjoy ample leisure. The hours of labor will not diminish in a great degree in the first year that an industry is taken over, for during the transition period, experience must be given time to demonstrate the extent to which hours of labor can be reduced.
And as regards unemployment, even though there be no industry in which, for instance, the surplus workers of the iron trade can be usefully employed, there will always be farm colonies where their labor can be self-supporting.
Another beneficial consequence of this system is that if, as is likely, it turns out that thirty million tons of iron are more than we can use, the state will not be obliged to dump the excess upon European markets as do now the trusts,[184]thereby incurring a heavy loss to the home industry and arousing the animosity of the European industry affected thereby.
Again, no financial panic can hurt the iron industry. The bankers may gamble to their heart's desire. If they withhold gold the worst they can do is to injure those engaged in competitive industry. No withholding of gold can affect an industry which produces for use and not for profit and receives weekly the wages of its employees in a currency which, because it is not gold orbased upon gold and not, therefore, within the control of the banker or the financier, escapes entirely the evil effects of financial operations. Nor can such an industry be affected by what are called "industrial panics"; for industrial panics are the result of overproduction—of the anarchy that exists under the competitive system. These panics may affect competitive industries, but cannot affect guild industries built on yearly state orders for definite amounts calculated beforehand from the known needs of the community, and not left as now to the anarchy and accidents of the market.
Neither financial nor industrial panics can ever have the terrible consequences in a coöperative commonwealth that they have under existing conditions, because in a coöperative commonwealth all the necessaries and most of the comforts of life will be produced upon the coöperative plan, and therefore, a financial or industrial panic can only affect that part of industry which proceeds under the competitive system and as regards, for the most part, luxuries and not necessaries of life.
Obviously, the system of store orders cannot be applied upon the first transfer of an industry from the hands of the capitalist to those of the guild. For a time gold will have to be used until the transformation from capitalism to coöperation has been sufficiently extended to put the state in a position to open public stores. There need, however, be no anxiety as to the state not being in possession of enough gold to handle this part of the business, because it will obviously be the first duty of the coöperative commonwealth to expropriate the mines and put itself in possession of the gold necessary to carry on financial operations with the guilds until such time as the public stores can be usefully opened. Moreover, in taking over the gold mines, the state will also take overthe iron mines; and iron ore will be furnished to the iron guild under conditions that will make the necessity of the use of gold far smaller than it would be if the iron ore remained in private hands and had to be paid for in gold. The state will only have to pay gold representing the labor cost of extracting the ore, and will not have to pay miners' profits.
Under this system, there is no temptation to mine more ore or to cut down more forests than is absolutely necessary for the needs of the community. When every member in the community is educated to understand that waste means more work for himself and that the saving of waste means less work for himself, every man in the community will have a direct personal interest in discouraging waste and promoting economy.
Obviously, too, industry will be conducted at its maximum efficiency. Instead of being slaves of the market, we shall become its master. We shall have only so many factories running as are necessary to produce the things we need. Every factory will be running at maximum capacity, at maximum efficiency.
It will be observed that it is proposed to pay the same price for pig iron after taking over the industry as was paid under competitive conditions at the time of the transfer. The objection may be made that this is obviously improper; that it is not fair to the workers in other industries to pay what is known to be an excessive price to the workers in pig iron. To this it may be answered that it will always be better to apply a regular rule than to leave questions of this kind to arbitrary administrative action. Besides, the rule that on taking over a new industry the price paid for the production of the first year shall be the price ruling at that time, will eventually put all industries upon the same footing. Atthe excessive prices now ruling, the workers will during the first year get a larger proportion than they will ultimately be entitled to; but the larger proportion they will get this year will be needed to face the initial expenses of a higher standard of life.
But here comes the most serious objection that can be made to this plan. It has been said that these prices will have to be revised; that if those manufacturing cotton thread believe themselves to be receiving less for the work they accomplish in their industry than those engaged in making pig iron, they will insist on revision; if so, there will be continual altercations between industries as to the price to be paid for their goods and as to the share in this price that each is to receive; and the problem arises, who is to settle these innumerable questions?
This difficulty is the one that tends to make communists of us. It would be easy to wave away this difficulty by providing that the total profits be divided equally amongst all the members of the community. Humanity, however, is not prepared for such a system. Generations of selfishness have so determined the minds of those who are likely to have to decide these questions in a coöperative commonwealth, that the idea of paying the man at the head of the iron guild the same wages as the man who puddles, will seem too preposterous to be entertained. Whether man will ever develop to a point of unselfishness that will enable him to entertain this idea is a matter of speculation. Suffice it to recognize that if Socialism is to come within one hundred years, and if we take into account the attitude of the public mind as it is to-day, and the slowness with which the public mind changes in matters so radical as these, we shall have to recognize that Communism is still beyond the range of practicalpolitics; and we shall have to face the problem how the questions of the price of goods and the remuneration of the individual are to be solved.