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diff --git a/75859-0.txt b/75859-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..14904ae --- /dev/null +++ b/75859-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24940 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75859 *** + + + + + + THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN’S GUIDE + TO SOCIALISM AND CAPITALISM + + + [Illustration] + + + + + THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN’S GUIDE + TO SOCIALISM AND CAPITALISM + BY BERNARD SHAW + + [Illustration] + + BRENTANO’S PUBLISHERS NEW YORK + 1928 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY BRENTANO’S INC. + + _First printing, June, 1928_ + + MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + + TO + + MY SISTER-IN-LAW + + MARY STEWART CHOLMONDELY + + THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN TO WHOSE QUESTION + THIS BOOK IS THE BEST ANSWER I CAN MAKE + + + + +A FOREWORD FOR AMERICAN READERS + + +I have never been in America; therefore I am free from the delusion, +commonly entertained by the people who happen to have been born there, +that they know all about it, and that America is their country in the +same sense that Ireland is my country by birth, and England my country +by adoption and conquest. You, dear madam, are an American in the sense +that I am a European, except that the American States have a language +in common and are federated, and the European states are still on the +tower of Babel and are separated by tariff fortifications. When I hear +people asking why America does not join the League of Nations I have +to point out to them that America _is_ a League of Nations, and sealed +the covenant of her solidity as such by her blood more than sixty years +ago, whereas the affair at Geneva is not a League of Nations at all, +but only a so far unsuccessful attempt to coax Europe to form one at +the suggestion of a late American President, with the result that the +British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs makes occasional trips +to Geneva, and, on returning, reassures the British House of Commons by +declaring that in spite of all Woodrow-Wilsonic temptations to combine +with other nations he remains an Englishman first, last, and all the +time; that the British Empire comes before everything with him; and +that it is on this understanding and this alone that he consents to +discuss with foreigners any little matters in which he can oblige them +without detriment to the said reserved interests. And this attitude +seems to us in England so natural, so obvious, so completely a matter +of course, that the newspapers discuss the details of Mr Chamberlain’s +report of his trip without a word about the patriotic exordium which +reduces England’s membership of the League to absurdity. + +Now your disadvantage in belonging to a league of nations instead of +to a nation is that if you belong to New York or Massachusetts, and +know anything beyond the two mile radius of which you are the centre, +you probably know much more of England, France, and Italy than you do +of Texas or Arizona, though you are expected, as an American, to know +all about America. Yet I never met an American who knew anything about +America except the bits she had actually set eyes on or felt with her +boots; and even of that she could hardly see the wood for the trees. +By comparison I may be said to know almost all about America. I am +far enough off to get a good general view, and, never having assumed, +as the natives do, that a knowledge of America is my intuitional +birthright, I have made enquiries, read books, availed myself of the +fact that I seem to be personally an irresistible magnet for every +wandering American, and even gathered something from the recklessly +confidential letters which every American lady who has done anything +unconventional feels obliged to write me as a testimony to the ruinous +efficacy of my books and plays. I could and should have drawn all the +instances in this book from American life were it not that America +is such a fool’s paradise that no American would have believed a +word of them, and I should have been held up, in exact proportion +to my accuracy and actuality, as a grossly ignorant and prejudiced +Britisher, defaming the happy West as ludicrously as the capitalist +West defames Russia. What I tell you of England you will believe. What +I could tell you of America might provoke you to call on me with a +gun. Also it would lead you to class me as a bitter enemy to America, +whereas I assure you that though I do not adore your country with the +passion professed by English visitors at public banquets when you have +overwhelmed them with your reckless hospitality, I give it a good deal +of my best attention as a very interesting if still very doubtful +experiment in civilization. + +But this much I will permit myself to say. Do not imagine that because +at this moment certain classes of American workmen are buying bathtubs +and Ford cars, and investing in building societies and the like the +money that they formerly spent in the saloons, that America is doing +as well as can be expected. If you were at this moment a miner’s wife +in South Wales you would be half starving; but the wife of a Colorado +miner might think you very lucky in having nothing more violent than +half starving to endure. The sweated women workers in the tenements +of your big cities are told that in America anyone can make a fortune +who wants to. Here we spare them that mockery, at least. You must take +it from me, without driving me to comparisons that between nations +wound as personalities do between individuals, that Capitalism is the +same everywhere, and that if you look for its evils at home you will +miss nothing of them except perhaps some of the socialistic defences +which European States have been forced to set up against their worst +extremities. + +In truth it is odd that this book should not have been written by an +American. Its thesis is the hopelessness of our attempts to build up a +stable civilization with units of unequal income; and it was in America +that this inequality first became monstrous not only in money but in +its complete and avowed dissociation from character, rank, and the +public responsibility traditionally attached to rank. On the eastern +shores of the Atlantic the money makers formed a middle class between +the proletariat, or manual working class, and the aristocracy, or +governing class. Thus labor was provided for; business was provided +for; and government was provided for; and it was possible to allow and +even encourage the middle class to make money without regard to public +interests, as these were the business of the aristocracy. + +In America, however, the aristocracy was abolished; and the only +controlling and directing force left was business, with nothing to +restrain it in its pursuit of money except the business necessity for +maintaining property in land and capital and enforcing contracts, the +business prudence which perceives that it would be ruinous to kill +outright the proletarian goose that lays the golden eggs, and the +fear of insurrection. There was no longer a king and an aristocratic +governing class to say to the tradesman “Never mind the public +interest: that is our business: yours is to get as rich as you can, +incidentally giving employment to the proletariat and increasing our +rent rolls”. All that remained was the tradition of unscrupulous +irresponsibility in business; and when the American millionaires first +began to astonish Europe with their wealth it was possible for the most +notorious of them, in the course of an enquiry into the proceedings +of a Trust with which he was connected, to reply to a criticism as to +the effect of his business policy on the public with a simple “Damn +the public!”. Had he been a middle class man in a country where there +was a governing class outside and above business, or a monarch with +a council in the same position, or even a State Church, his answer +would have been entirely in order apart from its verbal profanity. Duly +bowdlerized it would have run “I am a man of business, not a ruler and +a lawgiver. The public interest is not my job: I do not presume to +meddle with it. My sole function is to make as much money as I can”. +Queen Elizabeth would have applauded such an attitude as socially +sound and highly becoming: nothing angered her more than presumptuous +attempts on the part of common persons to concern themselves with _her_ +business of high politics. + +When America got rid of monarchs and prelates and popes and British +cabinets and the like, and plunged into the grand republican experiment +which has become the rule instead of the exception in Europe since the +war swept all the emperors into the dustbin of history, she raised the +middle classes to the top of the social structure and thus delivered +its civilization into their hands without ennobling their traditions. +Naturally they raced for money, for more money, and still more money, +and damned the public when they were not doping it with advertisements +which were by tacit agreement exempted from the law against obtaining +money by false pretences or practising medicine without qualifications. +It is true that they were forced to govern as well by the impossibility +of maintaining civilization without government; but their government +was limited and corrupted by their principle of letting nothing stand +in the way of their getting rich quickly. And the ablest of them at +that game (which has no attraction for the ability that plays the +higher games by which finally civilization must live) soon became rich +at a rate that made the European middle classes envious. In my youth I +heard little of great men arising in America--not that America did not +produce them, but that her money masters were more apt to persecute +than to advertize them--but I heard much of the great fortunes that +were being made there. Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Carnegie, Rockefeller +became famous by bringing our civilization to the point to which +Crassus and the other millionaire contemporaries of Sulla and Julius +Cæsar brought the civilization of ancient republican Rome just before +it set up Emperor idolatry as a resting place on the road to ruin. +Nowadays we have multimillionaires everywhere; but they began in +America; and that is why I wonder this book of mine was not written +in America by an American fifty years ago. Henry George had a shot at +it: indeed it was his oratory (to which I was exposed for fortyfive +minutes fortyfive years ago by pure chance) that called my attention +to it; but though George impressed his generation with the outrageous +misdistribution of income resulting from the apparently innocent +institution of private property in land, he left untouched the positive +problem of how else income was to be distributed, and what the nation +was to do with the rent of its land when it was nationalized, thus +leaving the question very much where it had been left a century earlier +by the controversy between Voltaire and the elder Mirabeau, except for +the stupendous series of new illustrations furnished by the growth of +the great cities of the United States. Still, America can claim that in +this book I am doing no more than finishing Henry George’s job. + +Finally, I have been asked whether there are any intelligent women +in America. There must be; for politically the men there are such +futile gossips that the United States could not possibly carry on +unless there were some sort of practical intelligence back of them. +But I will let you into a secret which bears on this point. By this +book I shall get at the American men through the American women. In +America as in England every male citizen is supposed to understand +politics and economics and finance and diplomacy and all the rest of +a democratic voter’s business on the strength of a Fundamentalist +education that excites the public scorn of the Sioux chiefs who have +seen their country taken from them by palefaced lunatics. He is ashamed +to expose the depths of his ignorance by asking elementary questions; +and I dare not insult him by volunteering the missing information. +But he has no objection to my talking to his wife as to one who knows +nothing of these matters: quite the contrary. And if he should chance +to overhear----!!! + +G. B. S. + + CONWAY, NORTH WALES + _17th April 1928_ + + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + + + 1 + + A CLOSED QUESTION OPENS + + Socialism is an opinion as to how the income of the country should be + distributed. Its distribution is not a natural phenomenon: it is a + matter for arrangement, subject to change like any other arrangement. + It has been changed within living memory to an extent that would have + seemed incredible and scandalous to Queen Victoria, and is still being + changed from year to year. Therefore what we have to consider is not + whether our distribution shall be altered or not, but what further + changes are desirable to attain a prosperous stability. This is the + closed question which re-opened in the nineteenth century under the + banner of Socialism; but it is one on which everyone should try to + form an original personal opinion without prompting from Socialists. + PAGE 1 + + + 2 + + DIVIDING-UP + + Dividing-up is neither a revolutionary novelty nor a Mosaic jubilee: + it is a necessary and unpostponable daily and hourly event of + civilized life. As wealth consists of food that becomes uneatable + unless immediately consumed, and of articles that wear out in use and + perish if kept unused, it must be divided-up and consumed at once. + Saving is impossible: the things will not keep. What is called saving + is a bargain whereby a person in possession of spare food allows + another to consume it in return for an undertaking to reverse the + transaction at some future time. Between the two nothing is saved, as + one consumes what the other saves. A proposal that everybody should + save is pure nonsense. A nation which stopped working would perish + within a fortnight even if every member of it had “saved” a million. 6 + + + 3 + + HOW MUCH FOR EACH? + + This question does not settle itself. It has to be settled by law + and enforced by the police. If the shares are to be altered the law + must be altered. Examples of existing distribution. This has today + become so repugnant to the general moral conception of fairness and so + incompatible with the public health that there is a general revulsion + of feeling against it. But the revulsion can have no political effect + until it becomes arithmetically precise. It cannot be dealt with in + terms of more or less: the question of how much more or less must be + exactly determined. And as wealth is measured in money, distribution + must be dealt with in terms of income. 7 + + + 4 + + NO WEALTH WITHOUT WORK + + As a nation lives from hand to mouth there must be continuous + productive labor or there will be no food to distribute. But though + everyone must eat, everyone need not work, because under modern + conditions each of us can produce much more than enough to support + one person. If everyone worked everyone would have a good deal of + leisure. But it is possible to arrange that some people shall do all + the work and have no leisure in order that others should have all + leisure and no work. These two extremes are represented by complete + Socialism and complete Slavery. Serfdom and Feudalism and Capitalism + are intermediate stages. The continual struggle of persons and classes + to alter the allotment of the labor task and the distribution of + wealth and leisure in their own favor is the key to the history of + revolutions. Enormous increase of the stakes in this game through + modern discoveries and inventions. 9 + + + 5 + + COMMUNISM + + Communism must be considered without personal, political, or religious + prejudice as a plan of distribution like any other. It was the plan + of the apostles, and is universally practised in the family. It is + indispensable in modern cities. All services and commodities which + are paid for by a common fund and are at the disposal of everyone + indiscriminately are examples of communism in practice. Roads and + bridges, armies and navies, street lighting and paving, policemen, + dustmen, and sanitary inspectors are familiar and obvious instances. 11 + + + 6 + + LIMITS TO COMMUNISM + + Communism is so satisfactory and unquestioned as far as it has gone + that those who are conscious of it may ask why everything should + not be communized. Reasons why this cannot be done. Communism is + applicable only to commodities and services which, being necessary or + useful to everybody, enjoy general moral approval. It can be extended + to matters in which the citizens are willing to give and take, as + when the oarsman pays rates for a cricket pitch in consideration of + the cricketer paying rates for the lake. But services as to which + there is any serious difference of opinion, such as church services, + and commodities which some people believe to be deleterious, such + as alcoholic liquors, are excluded from the scope of Communism. + Surreptitious communism is necessary in the case of science, and of + learning generally, because the ordinary citizen does not understand + their importance sufficiently to be willing to pay for their + endowment. Governments are therefore obliged to endow them without + consulting the electors, who are left to believe that Greenwich + Observatories, National Galleries, British Museums and the like are + provided gratuitously by Nature. 14 + + + 7 + + SEVEN WAYS PROPOSED + + Seven plans of distribution are at present advocated or practised. 1. + To each what he or she produces. 2. To each what he or she deserves. + 3. To each what he or she can get and hold. 4. To the common people + enough to keep them alive whilst they work all day, and the rest to + the gentry. 5. Division of society into classes, the distribution + being equal or thereabouts within each class, but unequal as between + the classes. 6. Let us go on as we are. 7. Socialism: an equal share + to everybody. 19 + + + 8 + + TO EACH WHAT SHE PRODUCES + + Apparent fairness of this plan. Two fatal objections to it: (_a_) + it is impossible to ascertain how much each person produces even + when the product is a material object; and (_b_) most people’s work + consists, not in the production of material objects, but in services. + The clearest case of individual production is that of a baby by its + mother; but a baby is an expense, not a source of income. In practice + production and service are made commensurate by paying the workers + according to the time taken in producing the commodity or rendering + the service; but this does not carry out the plan, as, when the time + spent in qualifying the worker is taken into account, the calculation + becomes impossible. Illustrative cases. Case of the married woman + keeping a house and bringing up a family. The plan is impossible, and, + at bottom, nonsensical. 21 + + + 9 + + TO EACH WHAT SHE DESERVES + + Tendency of those who are comfortably off to believe that this is + what is actually happening. Circumstances which support this view. + Facts which reduce it to absurdity. Proposals to adopt the principle + and make it happen in future. The first and final objection is that + it cannot be done. Merit cannot be measured in money. The truth + of this can be ascertained at once by taking any real case of two + human beings, and attempting to fix the proportion of their incomes + according to their merits or faults. 26 + + + 10 + + TO EACH WHAT SHE CAN GRAB + + This plan postulates equal grabbing power as between children, old + people, invalids, and ablebodied persons in the prime of life. That + is, it presupposes a state of things that does not exist. Otherwise + it is simple amorality, which even pirates find impossible if they are + to hold together for any length of time. It is, however, tolerated at + present in trade. Lawless robbery and violence are barred; but the + tradesman may get as much and give as little for it as he can; and the + landlord may even use legalized violence to get the utmost for the + use of his land. The results of this limited toleration of grab are + so unsatisfactory that laws are continually being made to palliate + them. The plan, which is really no plan at all, must be dismissed as + disastrous. 29 + + + 11 + + OLIGARCHY + + The plan of making the few rich and the many poor has worked for a + long time and is still working. The advantages claimed for it. The + rich class as a preserve of culture. The incomes of the rich as + a reservoir of money which provides by its overflow the socially + necessary fund of spare money called capital. The privileges of the + rich as a means of securing a governing class. Efficacy of the plan + when organized as the Feudal System. How it works in villages and + Highland clans. How it fails in cities. Modern urbanized civilization + has no use for it, all our governing work being done by paid public + servants. This leaves it with only one pretension: that of providing + capital by satiation and overflow. But the satiation is too costly + even when it is achieved. There is no guarantee that the rich will use + any part of their income as capital, or that when they do so they will + invest it at home where it is most needed. The accumulation of capital + can be provided for in other ways. The plan is breaking under the + weight of its enormous abuses. 30 + + + 12 + + DISTRIBUTION BY CLASS + + This happens to some extent at present. We are accustomed to think + that monarchs, as a class, should receive more than manual laborers; + and as a rule they do. But monarchs receive much less than Steel + Kings and Pork Barons; and unskilled laborers receive more than + great mathematicians, who, as such, receive nothing, and have to + live by poorly paid professorships. Clergymen get very little; and + racing bookmakers get a good deal. Nobody can determine what they + ought to get; yet nobody can defend what they do get on any rational + ground. Those who think it a matter of course that scavengers should + receive less than bank managers cannot say how much less, without + which determination their opinion can have no effect in a political + settlement of distribution. The main argument for enriching a class is + that it enabled them to produce an idolatrous illusion of superiority + which gives them authority, which is necessary in organizing society. + But in modern society the persons in authority are often much poorer + in money than those whom they command. Illustrative cases. Real + authority has nothing to do with money. 35 + + + 13 + + LAISSER-FAIRE + + Letting things alone is now called letting them slide: an admission + that they will not stay where they are. Change is a law of nature; and + when parliaments neglect it and Churches try to ignore it, the effect + is not to avert the changes but to make them hasty, ill-considered, + and often catastrophic. Unless laws and Articles of Religion change + as often and as quickly as the activities they control, a strain is + set up which, if not relieved by the prevalence of up-to-date ideas in + government and the Churches, must wreck civilization. 38 + + + 14 + + HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? + + The study of poverty. Poverty does not produce unhappiness: it + produces degradation: that is why it is dangerous to society. Its + evils are infectious, and cannot be avoided by any possible isolation + of the rich. The attractions of poverty. The folly of tolerating it as + a punishment. We cannot afford to have the poor always with us. The + statute of Elizabeth. What constitutes poverty. The sufferings of the + rich. They are avoidable only by voluntarily foregoing idleness and + gluttony: that is, foregoing the only privileges that riches confer. + Poor and rich being equally objectionable, the question arises how + much is enough? What is enough for savage life. What was enough for + our grandmothers is not enough for ourselves. There is no limit to the + higher requirements of mankind. The question is therefore unanswerable + as applied to civilized life. The problem of distribution cannot be + solved by giving everyone enough: nobody can ever have enough of + everything. But it is possible to give everybody the same. 41 + + + 15 + + WHAT WE SHOULD BUY FIRST + + The effect of distribution on industry. Political economy, or the art + of spending the national income to the greatest general advantage. + Importance of the order in which goods are produced. Those which are + wanted most should be produced first. Food, clothes, and houses should + come before scent and jewellery, babies’ needs before the needs of + lapdogs. Nothing but equality of purchasing power can preserve this + vital order in the industries which cater for purchasers. Inequality + of income upsets it hopelessly: the labor which should feed starving + children is expended in the production of trivial luxuries. This is + excused on the ground that the purchasers give employment. Absurdity + of this plea. 49 + + + 16 + + EUGENICS + + Effect of distribution on the quality of people as human beings. The + problem of breeding the nation. In breeding animals the problem is + simple though the art is uncertain and difficult, because the animal + is bred for some single specific purpose, such as the provision of + food or for racing or haulage. The stockbreeder knows exactly what + sort of animal is wanted. Nobody can say what sort of human being is + wanted. It is not enough to say that certain sorts are not wanted. + The stockbreeders’ methods are therefore not applicable: the keeper + of a human stud farm, if such a thing were established by a mad + professor of eugenics, would not know what to aim at or how to begin. + We are therefore thrown back on natural sexual attraction as our only + guide. Sexual attraction in human beings is not promiscuous: it is + always specific: we choose our mates. But this choice is defeated by + inequality of income, which restricts our choice to members of our own + class: that is, persons with similar incomes or no incomes. Resultant + prevalence of bad breeding and domestic unhappiness. The most vital + condition of good distribution is that it shall widen the field + of sexual selection to the extent of making the nation completely + intermarriageable. Only equality of income can do this. 53 + + + 17 + + THE COURTS OF LAW + + Though Justice should not be a respecter of persons, the courts must + respect persons if they have different incomes. Trial by jury is + trial by a jury of peers, not only the peers of the accused but of + the accusers and of the whole body of citizens. This is in practice + impossible in a civilized society of persons with unequal incomes, + as the person with a large income has not the same interests and + privileges as the person with a small one. As access to the courts of + justice costs money the poor are cut off from them by their poverty or + terrorized by the threats of the rich to drag them there. The abuses + of divorce and alimony. Sale of husbands and wives. Blackmail. Abuses + in the criminal courts. Corruption of the law itself at its source in + Parliament by the rich majority there. Severity of the laws against + theft practised by the poor on the rich. Complete exemption of the + crime of rich idling, which is the form of theft practised by the rich + on the poor. Inequality of income thus effects a divorce of law from + justice, leading to an anarchic disrespect for the law and a general + suspicion of the good faith of lawyers. 56 + + + 18 + + THE IDLE RICH + + Idleness does not mean inactivity. Over-exertion and “rest cures” of + the rich. Their dangerous and exhausting sports. The flapper dances + harder than the postman walks. Spartan training of the old rich. + It is soon acquired by the new rich, who begin by trying to loaf. + The diplomatic and military services as preserves for the energetic + rich. The unpaid magistry. Estate management. Parliament. Effect + of contraception and hotel life in service flats in extending the + possibilities of complete uselessness and self-indulgence. Exceptional + cases of eminent workers with unearned incomes. Florence Nightingale + and John Ruskin. Not inactivity but consuming without producing is + what is meant by economic idleness. Ironic vanity of the attempt to + secure happiness and freedom by having plenty of money and nothing to + do. 59 + + + 19 + + CHURCH, SCHOOL, AND PRESS + + The Church school in the village. Deference to the rich taught as + loyalty and religion. Persecution of schoolmasters for teaching + equalitarian morality. Corruption of the universities and of the + newspapers. Difficulty of separating the mass of falsehood inculcated + and advertized in the interest of the rich from the genuine learning + and information in which rich and poor have a common interest. 63 + + + 20 + + WHY WE PUT UP WITH IT + + We endure misdistribution and even support it because it is associated + with many petty personal benefits and amusements which come to us + by way of charity and pageantry, and with the chance of winning the + Calcutta Sweep or inheriting a fortune from an unknown relative. + These pageants and prizes are apprehensible by the narrowest minds in + the most ignorant classes, whereas the evils of the system are great + national evils, apprehensible only by trained minds capable of public + affairs. Without such training the natural supply of broad minds + is wasted. Poverty, by effecting this waste on an appalling scale, + produces an artificial dearth of statesmanlike brains, compelling + us to fill up first-rate public posts with second-rate and often + sixth-rate functionaries. We tolerate the evils of inequality of + income literally through want of thought. 65 + + + 21 + + POSITIVE REASONS FOR EQUALITY + + Equal division has been tested by long experience. Practically all + the work of the world has been done and is being done by bodies + of persons receiving equal incomes. The inequality that exists is + between classes and not between individuals. This arrangement is + quite stable: there is no tendency for the equality to be upset + by differences of individual character. Here and there abnormal + individuals make their way into a better paid class or are thrown + out into an unpaid vagrancy; but the rule is that each class either + keeps its economic level or rises and falls as a class, its internal + equality being maintained at every level. As people are put so they + will stay. Equality of income, far from being a novelty, is an + established practice, and the only possible one as between working + individuals in organized industry. The problem is therefore not one of + its introduction, but of its extension from the classes to the whole + community. 68 + + + 22 + + MERIT AND MONEY + + Equality of income has the advantage of securing promotion by merit. + When there is inequality of income all merits are overshadowed by + the merit of having a large income, which is not a merit at all. + Huge incomes are inherited by nincompoops or made by cunning traders + in vice or credulity; whilst persons of genuine merit are belittled + by the contrast between their pence and the pounds of fools and + profiteers. The person with a thousand a year inevitably takes + precedence of the person with a hundred in popular consideration, no + matter how completely this may reverse their order of merit. Between + persons of equal income there can be no eminence except that of + personal merit. Hence the naturally eminent are the chief preachers of + equality, and are always bitterly opposed by the naturally ordinary or + inferior people who have the larger shares of the national income. 70 + + + 23 + + INCENTIVE + + It is urged against equality that unless a person can earn more than + another by working harder she will not work harder or longer. The + reply is that it is neither fair nor desirable that she should work + harder or longer. In factory and machine industry extra exertion is + not possible: collective work goes on at the engine’s speed and stops + when the engine stops. The incentive of extra pay does not appeal + to the slacker, whose object is to avoid work at any cost. The cure + for that is direct compulsion. What is needed is an incentive to the + community as a whole to choose a high standard of living rather than + a lazy and degraded one, all standards being possible. Inequality of + income is not merely useless for this purpose, but defeats it. The + problem of the Dirty Work. On examination we discover that as it is + done mostly by the worst paid people it is not provided for at present + by the incentive of extra pay. We discover also that some of the + very dirtiest work is done by professional persons of gentle nurture + without exceptional incomes. The objection to dirty work is really an + objection to work that carries a stigma of social inferiority. The + really effective incentive to work is our needs, which are equal, and + include leisure. 72 + + + 24 + + THE TYRANNY OF NATURE + + The race must perish through famine if it stops working. Nobody + calls this natural obligation to work slavery, the essence of which + is being compelled to carry another ablebodied person’s burden of + work as well as one’s own. Pleasurable toil and toilsome pleasure. + General ignorance of the art of enjoying life. The imposture of our + commercially provided amusements. Working for fun is more recreative + than wasting time and money. Monotonous work makes even a painful + change welcome: hence our hideous excursion train holidays. Labor is + doing what we must; leisure is doing what we like; rest, or doing + nothing, is a necessity imposed by work, and is not leisure. Work can + be so absorbing that it can become a craze like the craze for drink. + Herbert Spencer’s warning. 80 + + + 25 + + THE POPULATION QUESTION + + To every proposal for a general increase of incomes it is objected + that its benefits will be swallowed up by married people having too + many children. It is also alleged that existing poverty is due to + the world being too small to produce food enough for all the people + in it. The real cause is that there are too many people living as + parasites on their fellows instead of by production. Illustrations + from domestic service. Increase of population, leading to division of + labor, enriches the community instead of impoverishing it. Limits to + this law of increasing return. Possibilities of human multiplication. + The question is not one of food alone but of space. The speed at which + population increases has to be considered as well as the ultimate + desirability of the increase. Too many unproductive children may + starve a family though the country as a whole may have unlimited + employment for adults; therefore the cost of bearing and bringing up + children should be borne by the State. Checks to population. War, + pestilence, and poverty. Contraception, or artificial birth control. + Exposure of female infants. Mahomet’s view of it. Capitalism, by + producing parasitism on an enormous scale has produced premature + overpopulation, kept under by excessive infant mortality and the + diseases of poverty and luxury. Equality of income can get rid of + this, and place population on its natural basis. University teaching + on the subject, which alleges that a natural law of diminishing return + is now in operation, is merely one of the corruptions of political + science by Capitalism. Possibility of local overpopulation in an + underpopulated world. Examples. 83 + + + 26 + + THE DIAGNOSTIC OF SOCIALISM + + Socialism entirely independent of Socialists or their writings and + utterances. “Joining the Socialists”. Many professed Socialists + are so because they believe in a delusion called Equality of + Opportunity, and would recant if they discovered that Socialism + means unconditional equality of income for everyone without regard + to character, talent, age, or sex. This is the true diagnostic of + Socialism, and the touchstone by which Socialists may be distinguished + from Philanthropists, Liberals, Radicals, Anarchists, Nationalists, + Syndicalists, and malcontents of all sorts. Henri Quatre’s + prescription of “a chicken in the pot for everybody” is amiable and + kindly; but it is not Socialism. 92 + + + 27 + + PERSONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS + + Amateur reformers who believe that the world can be made good by + individual effort. Ordering the servants to dine with you. Inequality + is not the fault of the rich. Poverty is not the fault of the poor. + Socialism has nothing to do with almsgiving or personal generosity or + kindness to the poor. Socialism abhors poverty and the poor, and has + no more to do with relieving them than with relieving riches and the + rich: it means to abolish both ruthlessly. Questionableness of the + virtues that feed on suffering. Doles and almsgiving are necessary + at present as an insurance against rebellion; but they are dangerous + social evils. _Panem et circenses._ Government cannot suppress this + abuse until it possesses the powers of employment now in private + hands. It must become the national landlord, employer, and financier. + It is not enough to know the object of Socialism and to be convinced + of its possibility. Commandments are no use without laws; and + Socialism is from beginning to end a matter of law and not of personal + righteousness. 95 + + + 28 + + CAPITALISM + + Capitalism might more properly be called Proletarianism. Its + abolition does not involve the destruction of capital. The social + theory of Capitalism. The Manchester School. Property, private or + real, and personal. Powers of landlords. Distinction between private + property and personal possession. Private property an integral part + of Capitalism. Incompatible with Socialism. Conservative and Labor + parties are at bottom parties for the maintenance and abolition + respectively of private property. Literary property. 100 + + + 29 + + YOUR SHOPPING + + Incidence of unequal distribution in the shop. Nothing obtainable at + cost price: every price is loaded with a tribute to private property. + Averaging the cost of production of the entire national supply gives + the real cost price. This is the price aimed at by Socialism. Under + Capitalism the cost of production of that part of the supply which is + produced under the most unfavorable circumstances fixes the price of + the entire supply. The coal supply. By nationalizing the coal industry + the public can be supplied at the averaged cost price per ton. + Examples from our numerous existing nationalizations. 105 + + + 30 + + YOUR TAXES + + Grumbling about the taxes. Government gives value at the cost price + to itself; but this includes loaded prices paid by it to profiteers + and landlords for materials, services, and sites. Taxation of unearned + income as a method of avoiding these overcharges and even of providing + the service at the cost of the landlords and capitalists. Income tax, + supertax, and death duties. The National Debt. Taxation as a means of + redistributing income. The War Loan. The failure of private enterprise + and the success of National Factories during the war. 111 + + + 31 + + YOUR RATES + + The method of rating makes every rate a roughly graduated income tax. + How the ratepayers are exploited. Illustrations: the charwoman, the + Dock Companies, and the Drink Trade. The Poor Law, Municipal trading, + and the Post Office as instruments of exploitation. 117 + + + 32 + + YOUR RENT + + Rent is the most simple and direct form of exploitation. Difference + between house rent and cost of house. Ground rents in great cities. + Powers of life and death and of exile enjoyed by landlords. Sheep + runs. Deer forests. The value of all improvements is finally + appropriated by the landlords. The Single Tax. 122 + + + 33 + + WHAT CAPITAL IS + + Definition of Capital. Spare money. Pathological character of + Capitalist civilization. Wickedness of preaching thrift to the poor. + Capital, being perishable, must be consumed promptly, disappearing + in the process. Danger of Hoarding. Instability of money values. + Inflation. Debasing the currency. Constant expenditure necessary. 127 + + + 34 + + INVESTMENT AND ENTERPRISE + + The nature of investment. Not deferred consumption, but transferred + and postponed claim to be fed. Exploitation of the hungry by the + intelligent. Estate Development. Illustrative case of a country house + and park developed into a suburb. Proprietors without the necessary + business ability can hire it. Big business. The magic of capital. 131 + + + 35 + + LIMITATIONS OF CAPITALISM + + Capital is indispensable to civilization; but its private + appropriation is finally a hindrance to it, and perverts the order + of its application. Examples: Distilleries _versus_ lighthouses and + harbors. Error of assuming that low prices with large sales are more + profitable than high prices with restricted sales. Cases in point: + telegraph and telephone services. Snowball letters. Commercial profit + is no index to social utility. 113 + + + 36 + + THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION + + Capital, though beginning at the wrong end, is driven finally to + the right end. Invention and inventors. Labor-saving machinery. + Power: water, steam, and electric. Handmade and machine-made goods. + Cheapness. The industrial revolution, though it has wrought evil, is + not evil in itself. Retrogression is neither possible nor desirable. + 137 + + + 37 + + SENDING CAPITAL OUT OF THE COUNTRY + + Capital has no country, being at home everywhere. Restrictions on + trade at home, however beneficial, drive it abroad. Example: the + trade in intoxicating drink may be driven to Africa by high excise in + England and prohibition in America. Superior attraction of the slave + trade. Suppression of slave trading followed by indirect enforcement + of compulsory labor by means of hut taxes and the like. Development + of other countries by English capital accompanied by neglect of home + industrial resources and of the improvement of our towns. The foreign + competition of which capitalists complain is often created by their + own exports of capital. 140 + + + 38 + + DOLES, DEPOPULATION, AND PARASITIC PARADISES + + Investments of our capital abroad bring in gratuitous imports as + interest. The expenditure of this tribute gives employment. It is, + however, parasitic employment. The employees may be more pampered than + productive employees; and this, combined with the disappearance of + manufacturing towns and their replacement by attractive residential + resorts, may produce an air of increased prosperity and refinement + in all classes; but it does not provide suitable employment for the + rougher workers discharged by the discarded factories, who have to + be got rid of by Assisted Emigration or kept quiet by doles. If the + process were unchecked England would become a country of luxurious + hotels and pleasure cities inhabited by wealthy hotel guests and + hotel servants with their retinue of importers and distributors, all + completely dependent on foreign tribute from countries which might at + any moment tax the incomes of absentee capitalists to extinction, and + leave us to starve. 145 + + + 39 + + FOREIGN TRADE AND THE FLAG + + Only freshly saved capital can be exported. The capital consumed in + the establishment of mines, railways, and fixed industrial plant + cannot be shipped abroad. When the home market supplied by them dries + up through change or exhaustion of demand, the plant must either close + down or seek markets abroad. This is the beginning of foreign trade. + Trade with civilized nations is hampered by foreign protective duties + or by the competition of the manufacturers on the spot. Undeveloped + countries which have no tariffs and no manufactures are the most + lucrative markets; but the ships’ crews and cargoes must be defended + against massacre and plunder by the natives. This leads to the + establishment of trading stations where British law is enforced. The + annexation of the station makes it an outpost of the British Empire; + and its boundary becomes a frontier. The policing of the frontier + soon necessitates the inclusion of the lawless district beyond the + frontier; and thus the empire grows without premeditation until its + centre shifts to the other side of the earth. 150 + + + 40 + + EMPIRES IN COLLISION + + Collision of the expanding empires. Fashoda incidents. The German + demand for a place in the sun. The war of 1914-18. Expansion of + professional soldiering into conscription. The strains set up + automatically by the pressure of capitalistic commerce, and not the + depravity of human nature, are the causes of modern wars. Its horrors + are therefore not a ground for despair of political mankind. We + celebrate the end of the Great War, not the beginning of it. The real + origin of the mischief. 152 + + + 41 + + THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE + + Foreign trade not objectionable as such. Need for international + institutions as well as national ones. Supernational federations + and Commonwealths highly desirable: the fewer frontiers the better. + Combination obstructed by the hard fact that Capitalism creates + universal rivalry, seeking, not to combine for the common benefit, but + to appropriate for the individual benefit. Its resistance to national + self-determination and independence arises from its reluctance to + relinquish its booty. Our colonies and our conquests. Being by its + nature insatiable Capital cannot stop fighting until it is killed. + Hence the comparison of our civilization to the magician’s apprentice + who set demons to work for him, but could not stop them when his life + depended on his getting rid of them. 157 + + + 42 + + HOW WEALTH ACCUMULATES AND MEN DECAY + + Personal helplessness produced by division of labor. Illustration from + pin manufacture. Optimism of Adam Smith. The various qualifications + and accomplishments of the complete individual craftsman. The relative + incompetence and ignorance of the employed through division of labor. + Total technical ignorance of the machine minder. Misgivings of Oliver + Goldsmith, Ruskin, and Morris. The remedy not retrogression but + equal distribution of the leisure made possible by mass production. + Ignorance and helplessness as great in the modern household as in the + factory. 161 + + + 43 + + DISABLEMENT ABOVE AND BELOW + + As the disablement does not extend to the workers’ leisure it is + important that they should have plenty of it. Unfortunately it is + as ill distributed as income, the tendency of Capitalism being to + separate the population into a class doing all the work with no + leisure and a class doing no work and having all the leisure. The + feudal system avoided this by placing all the public services on + the shoulders of the landlords. The transfer of these services to + a bureaucracy leaves the proprietary or capitalist class even more + completely disabled than the proletariat for the conduct of industry. + This disablement increases with the development of capitalist + civilization, and maybe regarded as a function of it. 164 + + + 44 + + THE MIDDLE STATION IN LIFE + + The industrial disablement of the proletariat and the proprietariat + necessitates the intervention of a middle class to direct industrial + operations and transact the business they involve. How this + necessity was met. Primogeniture. The propertyless younger sons. The + professions. The men of business. The clerks. The breakdown of the + monopoly of education by the middle class now opens it to capable + proletarians as well as to younger sons and their descendants. The + resultant hardening of the lot of the younger sons. The propertyless + daughters. Opening of the professions to them. Woman’s natural + monopoly of housekeeping. It creates not only a Woman Question but a + Man Question. 168 + + + 45 + + DECLINE OF THE EMPLOYER + + The employer was master of the situation in the days of small + firms with modest capitals. Modern big business has outgrown their + resources. Joint stock companies have succeeded to firms, and + Trusts to joint stock companies. Multiple shops are conquering the + retail trade. Enormous capitals now required. Resultant rise of the + financier, whose special function it is to procure such capitals and + promote companies to exploit them. Thus the owner-employer becomes the + employed employer, and, as an employee, falls into the proletariat. + His son cannot succeed him, as he could when the employer was also the + owner. This disappearance of the old nepotism in business is a public + advantage, but abolishes heredity in the business class. “The Middle + Station in Life” so highly praised by Defoe is now the least eligible + in the community. 177 + + + 46 + + THE PROLETARIAT + + The slogan of Karl Marx. The reduction of the middle class employer + to a proletarian employee produces Socialism. The Fabian Society. + Its success as a middle class society. Failure of its Socialist + rivals as working class societies. Working class organization against + Capitalism. Trade Unionism, or the Capitalism of the working class + proletariat. 183 + + + 47 + + THE LABOR MARKET AND THE FACTORY ACTS + + Employers and employed alike buy in the cheapest and sell in the + dearest markets open to them. Resultant opposition of interest + between the buyer of labor and the seller of it. The Class War. Its + atrocities. Slaves better cared for than “free” vendors of their + own labor. Exposures by Karl Marx. Restraints imposed by factory + legislation. Opposition by employers. Their apprehension not + justified by the effect of the Acts. Opposition of the proletariat. + Its parental interest in child labor. The parish apprentices. Prices + in the labor market. The value of labor falls to zero. The theory of + Capitalism. The Manchester school. Failure of the Capitalist system to + make good its guarantees. The reserve army of unemployed. The Statute + of Elizabeth. The workhouse. Child sweating practically compulsory on + parents. 187 + + + 48 + + WOMEN IN THE LABOR MARKET + + Men’s wages are family wages, women’s wages individual wages. The + effect is to make the proletarian married woman the slave of a slave, + and to establish conventions that the man is the breadwinner; that + the woman’s work in the home being apparently gratuitous, is not work + at all; and that women, when they are directly paid for their work, + should be paid less than men. Protection of women in the propertied + class by marriage settlements, and in the middle class by the Married + Women’s Property Acts. The sweating of daughters living partly on + their father’s wages enables one trade to sweat another, and produces + a class of women who work for less than subsistence wages without + starving. Their competition brings down the wages of all women of + their class below subsistence level, with the result that women who + have neither husband nor father to make up the shortage must make + it up by prostitution or suffer the extremity of excessive toil + and insufficient food. The wages of sin often much higher than the + wages of virtue. The affiliation laws and the advantages of having + illegitimate children. The Song of the Shirt and the Mind The Paint + Girl. Male prostitution: dancing partners, barristers, clerks, + journalists, parliamentary careerists, doctors, etc. Difference in + quality between the physical prostitution forced on the woman and the + mental prostitution forced on the man. 196 + + + 49 + + TRADE UNION CAPITALISM + + Resistance of the proletariat to the capitalists. Combination the + first condition of effective resistance. Combination difficult + or impossible as between segregated workers (domestic servants + and agricultural laborers) and workers differing greatly in class + (actors). Easy as between factory operatives, miners, and railway + workers. The weapon of the combinations is the strike: that of + the employers’ counter-combinations the lock-out. The warfare at + its worst. Rattening. The Manchester and Sheffield outrages. “Ca’ + canny”, and “restricting output”. The cost of this warfare to the + community. Capitalism cannot check it because Trade Unionism is only + the application of the Capitalist principle to labor as well as to + land and capital. Resistance of the employers. Attempt to suppress + the Unions as criminal conspiracies. Refusal to employ unionists. + Combinations of employers into employers’ federations. Victimization. + The disablement of labor by machinery obliges the Unions to insist on + piecework wages instead of time wages. Machine minding by girls’ and + women’s Unions. Failure of the proletariat to secure any considerable + share of the increase in the national output produced by machinery. 204 + + + 50 + + DIVIDE AND GOVERN + + The impermanence of the concessions wrested by the Unions from the + employers by strikes makes it necessary for the proletariat to have + them established as laws (Factory Acts, etc.): hence the appearance + in Parliament of Labor members, and finally of an Independent Labor + Party. The Factory Acts, beginning with the protection of children + and women, acted as a protection for the men also. In factories, + when the women and children stop the engine stops; and when the + engine stops the men must stop. How these concessions were wrung + from Parliament through a split in the Capitalist ranks whilst Labor + was in a negligible minority there. The manufacturers in 1832 break + the monopoly of Parliament by the landlords. The Factory Acts as the + revenge of the landlords. These two Capitalist parties compete for + popular support by bribing the proletariat with votes. Final complete + enfranchisement of the proletariat. Meanwhile Socialism, having + sprung into existence under middle class leadership, had undertaken + the political education of the proletariat. Romantic illusions of + the middle class about the industrial proletariat. Failure of the + Socialist societies to supplant Trade Unionism. Success of the Fabian + Society as a middle class body permeating all existing political + organizations. Establishment of the Labor Party in Parliament as a + political federation of Socialist societies and Trade Unions. Its + history up to 1927. On the Trade Union side the tendency is not to + Socialism but to Capitalism controlled by Labor, with the middle + and propertied classes reduced to subjection in the interest of the + proletariat. As the proletariat has the advantage of numbers this + arrangement would profit the majority; but it would be so unpalatable + to the propertied and learned classes that they may conceivably be + driven to clamor for Socialism to save them from it. 213 + + + 51 + + DOMESTIC CAPITAL + + The conversion of capital into machines, vehicles, and other aids + to labor. The delusion that this operation can be reversed, and + the machines and vehicles converted into spare ready money. Why + this impossible operation seems to practical business men to be not + only possible but an everyday occurrence. The real nature of the + transactions which delude them. As these transactions can be effected + only by a few people at a time, an attempt to force them on the + whole Capitalist class simultaneously by a tax on capital must fail. + The income of the capitalist is real: her capital, once invested, is + imaginary, as it has been consumed in the act of converting it into + aids to labor. Death Duties, nominally taxes on capital, are not + really so, and are as objectionable in practice as they are unsound in + theory. Insanity of estimates of the wealth of the country in terms of + capital values. 225 + + + 52 + + THE MONEY MARKET + + The Money Market is not a market for the sale and purchase of spare + money, but for its hire. Difference between hiring and borrowing. + Payment for the hire of spare money is called in business interest, + and in old-fashioned economic treatises “the reward of abstinence”. + In the case of spare cash in the money market the obligation of the + owner to the hirer is as great as that of the hirer to the owner, + since capital not hired perishes by natural decay. Negative interest. + The real business of the money market is to sell incomes for lump sums + of spare ready money. Enormous rates of interest paid by the poor. + The Bank Rate. Lending to companies. Limited liability. Varieties of + shares and debentures. Jobbers and brokers. The connection of Stock + Exchange transactions with industry is mostly only nominal. Warnings. + Bogus companies. Genuine companies which are smoked out. “Coming in on + the third reconstruction.” Perils of enterprise, of public spirit, of + conscience, and of imaginative foresight. 231 + + + 53 + + SPECULATION + + Risk of becoming a gambler’s wife. Selling and buying imaginary + shares for phantom prices. How this is possible. Settling day on the + Stock Exchange. Fluctuations. Bulls, bears, and stags. Contango and + Backwardation. Cornering the bears. The losses risked are only net, + not gross. Cover. Bucket shops. Unreality of the transactions. An + extraordinary daily waste of human energy, audacity, and cunning. 239 + + + 54 + + BANKING + + Spare money for business purposes is mostly hired from bankers. + Overdrafts. Discounted bills of exchange. The Bank Rate. How the + bankers get the spare money they deal in. Customers must not draw + their balances simultaneously. The word credit. Credit is not capital: + it is a purely abstract opinion formed by a bank manager as to the + ability of a customer to repay an advance of goods. Credit, like + invested capital, is a phantom category. Its confusion with real + capital is a dangerous delusion of the practical business man. + “Bubbles” founded on this delusion. The Bank Rate depends on the + supply and demand of spare subsistence available. Effective demand. + Proposals to tax invested capital and credit. A hypothetical example. + 243 + + + 55 + + MONEY + + Money as a tool for buying and selling. As a measure of value. As + material available for other purposes and therefore valuable apart + from its use as money. The latter a guarantee against the dishonesty + of governments. Debasing the currency. Paper money. Inflation. + Post-war examples. Deflation. Stability the main desideratum. How + to maintain this. Fluctuations in the value of money indicated by + a general rise or fall of prices. Cheques and clearing houses as + economisers of currency. Communism dispenses with pocket money. The + Bank of England as the bankers’ bank. An intrinsically valuable + coinage the safest and most stable. 251 + + + 56 + + NATIONALIZATION OF BANKING + + The nationalization of minting is necessary because only a Government + can establish a legal tender currency. Cheques and the like, + circulating as private currency, are not legal tender money but only + private and insecure title deeds to such money; but legal tender money + is a Government title deed to goods. Cheques and bills of exchange + are senseless unless expressed in terms of money. The nationalization + of the manufacture of money is a matter of course. The case for + nationalization of banking, though less obvious, is equally strong. + Profiteering in spare money. Municipal banks. There is no mystery + about banking; and those who now conduct it are as available for + public as for private employment. 264 + + + 57 + + COMPENSATION FOR NATIONALIZATION + + The fate of the shareholder when the banks are nationalized. Purchase + of their shares no expense to the nation if the cost be levied on + the whole body of capitalists. The apparent compensation is really + distributed confiscation. The process a well established and familiar + one. Candidates who advocate expropriation without compensation do + not know their business and should not be voted for. Alternative of + Government entering competitively into industries and beating private + enterprises out of them. Objections. Wastefulness of competition. + A competing State enterprise would have to allow competition with + itself, which is often inadmissible in the case of ubiquitous + services. The private competitor is indifferent to the ruin of a + defeated rival; but the State must avoid this. 268 + + + 58 + + PRELIMINARIES TO NATIONALIZATION + + Nationalization, though theoretically sound, and its expense a bogey, + is practically an arduous undertaking, involving the organization of a + central department with local services throughout the country. It is + possible only in stable and highly organized States. Revolutions and + proclamations cannot by themselves nationalize anything. Governments + may plunder and wreck State industries to avoid imposing unpopular + direct taxes. 274 + + + 59 + + CONFISCATION WITHOUT COMPENSATION + + There is always a clamor by indignant idealists for direct retributive + confiscation without compensation. Its possibilities. Taxation of + capital as a means of forcing defaulters to surrender their title + deeds and share certificates to the Government is plausible and not + physically impossible. 276 + + + 60 + + REVOLT OF THE PARASITIC PROLETARIAT + + The expropriation of the rich is objected to on the ground that the + rich give employment. The sense in which this is true. The parasitic + proletariat. Bond Street and Bournemouth. All transfers of purchasing + power from the rich to the Government depress the parasitic trades and + their employees. A sudden wholesale transfer would produce an epidemic + of bankruptcy and unemployment. Governments must immediately expend + the incomes they confiscate. 277 + + + 61 + + SAFETY VALVES + + Doles. Throwing the confiscated money into nationalized banks. Raising + wages in confiscated industries. War. Would these act quickly enough? + An uninterrupted circulation of money is as necessary to a nation + as an uninterrupted circulation of blood to an animal. Any general + and simultaneous confiscation of income would produce congestion in + London. Grants-in-aid to municipalities an important safety valve. + Public works. Roads, forests, water power, reclamation of land + from the sea, garden cities. Examination of these activities shews + that none of them would act quickly enough. They would provoke a + violent reaction which would give a serious set-back to Socialism. + Nationalizations must be effected one at a time, and be compensated. + 279 + + + 62 + + WHY CONFISCATION HAS SUCCEEDED HITHERTO + + Direct confiscation of income without compensation is already in + vigorous operation. Income tax, super tax, and estate duties. The + Chancellor of the Exchequer and his budget. Gladstone’s attitude + towards income tax. General agreement of Capitalist parties that + all other means of raising money shall be exhausted before levying + taxes on income. Contrary assumption of the proletarian Labor + Party that the Capitalists should pay first, not last. This issue + underlies all the Budget debates. Estate duties (“death duties”), + though unsound economically, and often cruel and unfair in operation, + succeed in carrying Socialistic confiscation further in England under + Conservative Governments than some avowedly Socialistic ones have + been able to carry it abroad. The success of the operation is due to + the fact that the sums confiscated, though charged as percentages + on capital values, can be paid out of income directly or indirectly + (by insuring or borrowing), and are immediately thrown back into + circulation by Government expenditure. Thus income can be safely + confiscated if immediately redistributed; but the basic rule remains + that the Government must not confiscate more than it can spend + productively. This is the Socialist canon of taxation. 284 + + + 63 + + HOW THE WAR WAS PAID FOR + + War must be paid for on the nail: armies cannot be fed nor slaughtered + by promissory notes. Men are obtained by conscription, and money + partly by direct taxation and inflation, but mainly by borrowing from + the capitalists in spite of the protests of the Labor Party against + the exemption of capital from conscription. The quaint result is + that in order to pay the capitalists the interest on their loans, + the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to tax them so heavily that, + as a class, they are losing by the transaction. Robbing Peter, who + did not lend, to pay Paul, who did. As the property owners who hold + War Loan Stock gain at the expense of those who do not, a unanimous + Capitalist protest is impossible. An illustration. But the Labor + contention that it would pay the propertied class as a whole to cancel + the National Debt is none the less sound. Financing war by “funded” + loans. As capital invested in war is utterly and destructively + consumed it does not, like industrial capital, leave the nation better + equipped for subsequent production. The War Loan, though registered + in the books of the Bank of England as existing capital, is nothing + but debt. The country is therefore impoverished to meet interest + charges on 7000 millions of non-existent capital. There are reasons + for not repudiating this debt directly; but as the war produced an + enormous consumption of capital and yet left the world with less + income to distribute than before, a veiled repudiation of at least + part of the debt is inevitable. Our method of repudiation is to + redistribute income as between the holders of War Loan and the other + capitalists. But as the huge borrowing and confiscation of capital + that was feasible when the Government had war employment ready for an + unlimited number of proletarians leaves them destitute now that the + Government has demobilized them without providing peace employment, + the capitalists have now to pay doles in addition to finding the money + to pay themselves their own interest. 289 + + + 64 + + NATIONAL DEBT REDEMPTION LEVIES + + Though taxation of capital is nonsensical, all proposals in that form + are not necessarily impracticable. A Capitalist Government could, + without requiring ready money or disturbing the Stock Exchange or the + Bank Rate, cancel the domestic part of the National Debt to relieve + private industry from taxation by veiling the repudiation as a levy + on capital values and accepting loan and share scrip at face value + in payment. Illustration. The objection to such a procedure is that + levies, as distinguished from established annual taxes, are raids on + private property. As such, they upset the sense of security which + is essential to social stability, and are extremely demoralizing to + Governments when once they are accepted as legitimate precedents. + A raiding Chancellor of the Exchequer would be a very undesirable + one. The regular routine of taxation of income and compensated + nationalizations is available and preferable. 294 + + + 65 + + THE CONSTRUCTIVE PROBLEM SOLVED + + Recapitulation. The difficulty of applying the constructive program + of Socialism lies not in the practical but in the metaphysical part + of the business: the will to equality. When the Government finally + acquires a virtually complete control of the national income it will + have the power to distribute it unequally; and this possibility + may enlist, and has to a certain extent already enlisted, the most + determined opponents of Socialism on the side of its constructive + political machinery. Thus Socialism ignorantly pursued may lead to + State Capitalism instead of to State Socialism, the same road leading + to both until the final distributive stage is reached. The solution of + the constructive problem of Socialism does not allay the terrors of + the alarmists who understand neither problem nor solution, and connect + nothing with the word Socialism except red ruin and the breaking up + of laws. Some examination of the effect of Socialism on institutions + other than economic must therefore be appended. 297 + + + 66 + + SHAM SOCIALISM + + The War, by shewing how a Government can confiscate the incomes + of one set of citizens and hand them over to another set with or + without the intention of equalizing distribution or nationalizing + industries or services, shewed also how any predominant class, + trade, or clique which can nobble our Cabinet Ministers can use the + power of the State for selfish ends by measures disguised as reforms + or political necessities. All retrogressions and blunders, like + all genuine reforms, are lucrative to somebody, and so never lack + plausible advocates. Illustrative cases of exploitation of the rates + and taxes and of private benevolence by Capitalism and Trade Unionism. + Public parks, endowed schools, garden cities, and subsidies. The + Government subsidy to the coal owners in 1925 not Socialistic nor + even Capitalistic, but simply unbusinesslike. Poplarism. Mischief + done by subsidies and doles. Subsidies plus Poplarism burn the candle + at both ends. The danger of conscious and deliberate exploitation of + the coercive and confiscatory powers of the Government by private + or sectional interests is greatly increased by the modern American + practice of employing first-rate brains as such in industrial + enterprise. The American Trade Unions are following this example. + Surprising results. What its adoption by English Trade Unions will + mean. Socialists will still have to insist on equalization of income + to prevent Capitalist big business and the aristocracy of Trade + Unionism controlling Collectivist Governments for their private ends. + 299 + + + 67 + + CAPITALISM IN PERPETUAL MOTION + + Nothing stays put. Literal Conservatism impossible. Human society + is like a glacier, apparently stationary, always in motion, always + changing. To understand the changes that are happening, and the + others that are coming, it is necessary to understand the changes + that have gone before. Examples of every phase in economic evolution + still survive and can be studied from life. Without such study we are + liable to be misguided and corrupted or exasperated. Those adventures + of Capitalism in pursuit of profits which took the form of thrilling + exploits by extraordinary individuals with no sordid aims are narrated + as the splendid history of our race. On the other hand, the more + shameful episodes in that pursuit may be imputed to the greed of + capitalists instead of to the ferocity and bigotry of their agents. + Both views may be discounted as special pleadings. A capitalist may + accidentally be a genius just as she may be a fool or a criminal. But + a capitalist as such is only a person with spare money and a legal + right to withhold it from the hungry. No special ability or quality of + any sort beyond ordinary prudence and selfishness is involved in the + capitalist’s function: the solicitor and stockbroker, the banker and + employer, will carry the capital to the proletarians and see that when + consuming it they replace it with interest. The most intelligent woman + can do no better than invest her money, which does far more good when + invested than when spent in charity. But the employers and financiers + who exploit her capital are pressed by the exhaustion of home markets + and old industries to finance adventurous and experimental geniuses + who explore and invent and conquer. They cannot concern themselves + with the effect of these enterprises on the world or even on the + nation provided they bring back money to the shareholders. Capital, to + save itself from rotting, has to be ruthless in its ceaseless search + for investment; and mere Conservatism is of no avail against this iron + necessity. Its chartered companies. It adds India, Borneo, Rhodesia to + the white Englishman’s burden of its naval and military defence. It + may yet shift our capital from Middlesex to Asia or West Africa. Our + helplessness in such an event. No need to pack up yet; but we must get + rid of static conceptions of civilization and geography. 308 + + + 68 + + THE RUNAWAY CAR OF CAPITALISM + + Controlled motion is a good thing; but the motion of Capital is + uncontrollable and dangerous. As the future of civilization depends + on Governments gaining control of the forces that are running away + with Capitalism an understanding of them is necessary. Very few people + do understand them. The Government does not: neither do the voters. + The difference between Governments and governed. The Governments + know the need for government and want to govern. The governed have + no such knowledge: they resent government and desire freedom. This + resentment, which is the central weakness of Democracy, was not + of great importance when the people had no votes, as under Queen + Elizabeth and Cromwell. But when great extensions of government and + taxation came to be required to control and supplant Capitalism, + bourgeois Democracy produced an increase of electoral resistance to + government; and proletarian Democracy has continued the bourgeois + tradition. The resultant paralysis of Parliament has produced a demand + for dictatorships; and Europe has begun to clamor for political + disciplinarians. Between our inability to govern well and our + unwillingness to be governed at all, we furnish examples of the abuses + of power and the horrors of liberty without ascertaining the limits of + either. 314 + + + 69 + + THE NATURAL LIMIT TO LIBERTY + + We are not born free: Nature is the supreme tyrant, and in our + latitudes a hard taskmaster. Commercial progress has been at root + nothing more than inventing ways of doing Nature’s tasks with less + labor: in short, saving labor and winning leisure. Some examples. + Actually Liberty is Leisure. Political liberations cannot add to + liberty unless they add to leisure. For example: woman’s daily + routine. Sleep, feeding, resting, and locomotion are not leisure: + they are compulsory. A seven hour working day gives at most six hours + leisure out of the seventeen non-working hours. The woman of property. + Leisure is the incentive to attain her position. All wage workers + value leisure more than money. Property coveted because it confers + the maximum of leisure. Nevertheless, as leisure brings freedom, and + freedom brings responsibility and self-determination, it is dreaded + by those accustomed to tutelage: for instance, soldiers and domestic + servants. The national fund of leisure. Its present misdistribution. + Description of a hypothetical four hours working day. Exceptions + to intermittent labor at regular hours. Pregnancy and nursing. + Artistic, scientific, and political work. Fixed daily hours only a + basis for calculation. A four hours day may mean in practice six days + a month, two months a year, or an earlier retirement. Difference + between routine work and creative work. Complete freedom impossible + even during leisure. Legislative restraints on religion, sport, and + marriage. The Inhibition Complex and the Punch baby. The contrary or + Anarchic Complex. The instinctive resistance to Socialism as slavery + obscures its aspect as a guarantee of the maximum possible of leisure + and therefore of liberty. 319 + + + 70 + + RENT OF ABILITY + + The proper social use of brains. Methods of making exceptional + personal talents lucrative. When the talents are popular, as in the + case of artists, surgeons, sports champions and the like, they involve + hard work and confer no political or industrial power. As their + lucrativeness is a function of their scarcity their power to enrich + their possessors is not formidable and is controllable by taxation. + Occasional freak incomes would not matter if equality of income were + general. Impossibility of living more expensively than the richest + class. Millionaires give away money for this reason. Special case of + the talent for exploitation, which is a real social danger. Its forms. + Administrative ability. The ability to exercise authority and enforce + discipline. Both are indispensable in industry and in all organized + activities. When tactfully exercised they are not unpopular, as most + of us like to be saved the trouble of thinking for ourselves and so + are not averse from being directed. Authority and subordination in + themselves are never unpopular; but Capitalism, by creating class + differences and associating authority with insolence, destroys the + social equality which is indispensable to voluntary subordination. + Scolding, slave driving, cursing, kicking, and slacking. Reluctance + to obey commanders who are trusted and liked is less likely to + give trouble than reluctance to command. Fortunately, persons of + exceptional ability do not need any special inducement to exercise + it. Instances of their failure in subordinate employment. In our + socialized services they do not demand excessive incomes. The demand + of the real lady or gentleman. Both are compelled to act as cads in + capitalist commerce, in which organizers and financiers, by reason of + their special cunning, are able to extort prodigious shares of the + country’s output as “rent of ability.” The meaning of rent. It cannot + be abolished but it can be nationalized. Futility of recriminations + as to indispensability between employers and employed. The talent of + the exploiter is as indispensable to the landlord and capitalist as + to the proletarian. Directed labor is indispensable to all three. + Nationalization and equalization socializes rent of ability as well as + rent of land and capital by defeating its private appropriation. 331 + + + 71 + + PARTY POLITICS + + The steps to Socialism will not necessarily be taken by Socialist + Governments. Many of them may be taken, as some already have, by + anti-Socialist Cabinets. The growth of the Labor Party and the + enormous electoral preponderance of the proletarian electorate + promises a complete Labor conquest of the House of Commons. In + that case the victorious Labor Party would split into several + irreconcilable groups and make parliamentary government impossible + unless it contained a unanimous Socialist majority of members really + clear in their minds as to what Socialism exactly means. Precedent + in the Long Parliament. The danger is not peculiar to Labor. Any + political party obtaining complete possession of Parliament may go to + pieces and end in a dictatorship. The Conservative triumph produced + by the anti-Russian scare of 1924 made it almost impossible to hold + the party together. Large majorities in Parliament, far from enabling + Cabinets to do what they like, destroy their cohesion and enfeeble + their party. Demoralization of Parliament during the period of large + majorities brought in by the South African war. Concealment of + preparations for the war of 1914-18. Parliamentary value of the fact + that Socialism cannot be shaken by political storms and changes. 343 + + + 72 + + THE PARTY SYSTEM + + Popular ignorance of what the term Party System really means. + Enslavement of voters by the system, in and out of Parliament. Its + advantage is that if the House of Commons has good leaders the quality + of the rank and file does not matter. How it was introduced as a war + measure by William III. Under it the upshot of the General Elections + is determined not by the staunch party voters but by the floating body + of independent electors who follow their impulses without regard to + the Party System. The system is essentially a two-party system of + solid majority Government party _versus_ solid minority Opposition + party. When independence prevails, groups form, each in a minority + in the House; and only by combining enough groups to form a majority + can any leader form a Cabinet and carry on. Such combinations are + called Blocks. They have little cohesion, and do not last. The French + Chamber exhibits this phenomenon. Possibility of its occurring in + the House of Commons. Alternative systems. Government by committees + without a Cabinet as practised by our municipalities. This is a local + survival of the old system of separate King’s cabinets upon which the + Party System was imposed. The non-party methods of local government + are quite efficient. Increasing tendency to lessen the rigidity of + the Party System in Parliament by declaring more and more questions + non-party. Tendency of Governments to resign on defeated votes of + confidence only. Inadequacy of our two Houses of Parliament for the + work put upon them by modern conditions. Need for changes involving + the creation of new chambers. The Webb proposals. 348 + + + 73 + + DIVISIONS WITHIN THE LABOR PARTY + + Questions on which the present apparent unanimity in the parliamentary + Labor Party is delusive: for instance, the Right to Strike. Socialism + and Compulsory Social Service _versus_ Trade Unionism and Freedom of + Contract. A Bill to enforce social service and penalize strikes would + split the party. Magnitude of modern strikes through the extension + of Trade Unionism from crafts to industries. Modern strikes tend + to become devastating civil wars. Arguments for Compulsory Labor. + Military and civil service. When the issue is joined the non-Socialist + Trade Unionists will combine with the Conservatives against the + Socialists. 354 + + + 74 + + RELIGIOUS DISSENSIONS + + The nation’s children. Religious teaching in public schools. + Impossibility of expressing the multifarious conflict of opinions + on this subject by a two-party conflict in the House of Commons. + Sectarian private schools. Roman Catholic and Nonconformist scruples. + Passive resistance. Impracticable solutions. Cowper-Templeism. The + Bible and Copernican astronomy. Modern physics and evolutional + biology. Men professing science are as bigoted as ecclesiastics. + Secular education impossible because children must be taught conduct, + and the ultimate sanctions of conduct are metaphysical. Weakness of + the punishment system. Conceptions of God. Personifications of God as + the Big Papa and the Roman Catholic Big Mamma needed for children. + Voltaire and Robespierre anticipated in the nursery. Comte’s law + of the three stages of belief. Tendency of parents, voters, elected + persons, and governments to impose their religions, customs, names, + institutions, and even their languages on everyone by force. Such + substitutions may be progressive. Toleration is incompatible with + complete sectarian conviction: the historic tolerations were only + armistices or exhaustions after drawn battles. Examples of modern + bigotry. Toleration is impossible as between Capitalism and Socialism. + It is therefore necessary to demonstrate that a Labor Party can + neither establish Socialism by exterminating its opponents, nor its + opponents avert it by exterminating the Socialists. 359 + + + 75 + + REVOLUTIONS + + Difference between revolutions and elections or ordinary reforms. + Revolutions transfer political power from one faction or leader to + another by violence or the threat of violence. Examples from English + history. The transfer of political power from our capitalists to our + proletarians has already taken place in form but not in substance, + because, as our proletariat is half parasitic on Capitalism, and + only half productive and self-supporting, half the proletarians + are on the side of Capitalism. “Ye are many: they are few” is a + dangerously misleading slogan. Consciousness of their formidable + proletarian backing may embolden the capitalists to refuse to accept + a parliamentary decision on any issue which involves a serious + encroachment of Socialism on Private Property. The case of Ireland, + and the simultaneous post-war repudiations of parliamentary supremacy + in several continental countries forbid us to dismiss this possibility + as unlikely. But whether our political decisions are made by votes + or by blood and iron the mere decisions to make changes and the + overruling of their opponents cannot effect any changes except nominal + ones. The Russian Revolution effected a complete change from absolute + monarchy to proletarian republicanism and proclaimed the substitution + of Communism for Capitalism; but the victorious Communists found + themselves obliged to fall back on Capitalism and do their best + to control it. Their difficulties were greatly increased by the + destruction involved by violent revolution. Communism can spread only + as a development of existing economic civilization and must be thrown + back by any sudden overthrow of it. “The inevitability of gradualness” + does not imply any inevitability of peaceful change; but Socialists + will be strongly opposed to civil war if their opponents do not force + it on them by repudiating peaceful methods, because though civil war + may clear the way it can bring the goal no nearer. The lesson of + history on this point. The French Revolution and the _mot_ of Fouquier + Tinville. Socialism must therefore be discussed on its own merits as + an order of society apart from the methods by which the necessary + political power to establish it may be attained. 370 + + + 76 + + CHANGE MUST BE PARLIAMENTARY + + As peaceful settlement of the struggle for political supremacy between + the Capitalists and the Socialists cannot be guaranteed we must + resign ourselves to the unpleasant possibilities of our sedulously + glorified pugnacity. But as destructive quarreling must be followed + by constructive co-operation if civilization is to be maintained + the consummation of Socialism can proceed when the fighting is + over. A civil war can therefore be only an interruption and need + not be further considered. Socialism in Parliament. How a series of + properly prepared and compensated nationalizations may be voted for + by intelligent politicians who are not Socialists, and carried out + without disturbing the routine to which the unthinking masses are + accustomed. Importance of the preparations: every nationalization will + require extensions of the civil and municipal services. Socialism at + one stroke is impossible. How far it must stop short of its logical + completion. 380 + + + 77 + + SUBSIDIZED PRIVATE ENTERPRISE + + Private commercial enterprise will not be completely superseded + by nationalization; but it may become bankrupt; and in that case + it may demand and receive subsidies from the Government. A simple + instance. This process, long familiar in cultural institutions, has + now begun in big business: for example the Government subsidy to coal + owners in 1925, the Capitalists thus themselves establishing the + practice, and providing precedents for the subsidizing of private + experimental ventures by Socialist Governments. Direct industrial + nationalizations must be confined to well-established routine + services. When State-financed private ventures succeed, and thereby + cease to be experimental, they can be nationalized, throwing back + private enterprise on its proper business of novelty, invention, + and experiment. The objections of doctrinaire nationalizers. The + Socialist objective is not nationalization but equalization of + income, nationalization being only a means to that end. The abuse + of subsidies. Looting the taxpayer. Subsidies as mortgages. The + national war factories. Their sale to private bidders after the war + as an illustration of the impossibility of nationalizing or retaining + anything for which the Government cannot find immediate use. 386 + + + 78 + + HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE? + + If it takes too long a revolutionary explosion may wreck civilization. + Equality of income can be attained and maintained only in a settled + and highly civilized society under a Government with a highly trained + civil service and an elaborate code of laws, fortified by general + moral approval. The process of its establishment will necessarily + be dangerously slow rather than dangerously quick; for we are not + educated to be Socialists: we teach children that Socialism is wicked. + The material advantages of the steps towards Socialism are, however, + biassing proletarian parents, who are in a huge majority, more and + more in favor of the movement towards Socialism. This tendency is + helped by the moral revolt against the cruelty of Capitalism in its + operation and the sordidness of its principle. In a Socialist State + economic selfishness would probably stand on the moral level now + occupied by cardsharping instead of being held up as the key to social + eminence. 391 + + + 79 + + SOCIALISM AND LIBERTY + + Nervous dread of over-regulation produced by the endless inspections + and restrictions needed to protect the proletariat from unbridled + Capitalist exploitation. These would have no sense in a Socialist + state. Examples. Preoccupation of the police with the enforcement of + private property rights and with the crimes and disorder caused by + poverty. The drink question. Drink the great anæsthetic. Artificial + happiness indispensable under Capitalism. Dutch courage. Drugs. + Compulsory prophylactics as substitutes for sanitation. Direct + restrictions of liberty by private property. “The right to roam.” + Deer forests and sheep runs. Existing liberties which Socialism would + abolish. The liberty to be idle. Nonsense about capital and not labor + being source of wealth. The case of patents and copyrights. Unofficial + tyrannies. Fashion. Estate rules. The value of conventionality. 393 + + + 80 + + SOCIALISM AND MARRIAGE + + Socialists apt to forget that people object to new liberties more + than to new laws. Marriage varies from frontier to frontier. Civil + marriage. Religious and communist celibacy, or the negation of + marriage. Socialism has nothing to do with these varieties, as + equality of income applies impartially to them all. Why there is + nevertheless a rooted belief that Socialism will alter marriage. + The legend of Russian “nationalization of women”. Where women and + children are economically dependent on husbands and fathers marriage + is slavery for wives and home a prison for children. Socialism, by + making them economically independent, would break the chain and open + the prison door. Probable results. Improvement in domestic manners. + The State should intervene to divorce separated couples, thus + abolishing the present power of the parties to enforce a broken tie + vindictively or religiously. Clash of Church and State on marriage. + The State must intervene to control population. As Socialism would + clear away the confusion into which Capitalism, with its inevitable + result of parasitic labor and premature overpopulation, has plunged + the subject, a Socialist state is more likely to interfere than a + Capitalist one. Expedients. Limitation of families. Encouragement of + families. Polygamy. Experience of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) on + this point. Bounties for large families plus persecution of birth + control. State endowment of parentage. Compulsory parentage. Monogamy + practicable only when the numbers of the sexes are equal. Case of a + male-destroying war. Conflicting domestic ideals affecting population. + The Bass Rock ideal. The Boer ideal. The bungalow ideal. The monster + hotel ideal. 406 + + + 81 + + SOCIALISM AND CHILDREN + + The State school child. Need for the protection of children against + parents. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The + new Adoption Act. Need for the organization of child life as such. + Schools essentially prisons. General ignorance after nine years of + enforced elementary schooling. Limits of child liberty. The real + nature and purpose of education. Our stupidities about it. Injury + done by forcing children to learn things beyond their capacity or + foreign to their aptitudes. Girls and compulsory Beethoven. Boys + and compulsory classics and mathematics. Eton began by forbidding + play and now makes it compulsory. Children as animals to be tamed + by beating and sacks to be filled with learning. Opportunities for + the Sadist and child fancier. Children in school are outlawed. + Typical case of assault. Unendurable strain of the relations between + teachers and children. Schools, though educationally disastrous, + have the incidental advantage of encouraging promiscuous social + intercourse. University manners. Middle class manners. Garden City + and Summer School manners. Need for personal privacy and free choice + of company not supplied by the snobbery and class segregations of + Capitalism. Socialism preferable on this score. Technical education + for citizenship. As knowledge must not be withheld on the ground + that it is as efficient for evil as for good, it must be accompanied + by moral instruction and ethical inculcation. Doctrines a Socialist + state could not tolerate. Variety and incompatibility of British + religions. Original sin. Brimstone damnation. Children’s souls need + protection more than their bodies. The Bible. A common creed necessary + to citizenship. Certain prejudices must be inculcated. Need for an + official second nature. Limits to State proselytizing. Beyond the + irreducible minimum of education the hand should be left to find its + own employment and the mind its own food. 412 + + + 82 + + SOCIALISM AND THE CHURCHES + + Will a Socialist State tolerate a Church? This question must be + discussed objectively. Survey of the age-long struggle between Church + and State for the control of political and social institutions. + The Inquisition and the Star Chamber. Theocracy has not lost its + power. Mormon Theocracy. Christian Science. Both have come into + conflict with the secular government. New Churches capture secular + Governments by denying that they are Churches. The persecutions + and fanaticisms of today rage in the name of Science. The avowed + Church of Christ Scientist _versus_ the masked Church of Jenner and + Pasteur, Scientists. Tests for public office, governing bodies, and + professions. Church of England tests broken by the English people + refusing to remain in one Church. The Quakers. Admission to Parliament + of Dissenters, then of Jews, finally of Atheists, leading to civil + marriage and burial and the substitution of civil registration of + birth for baptism, leaves the State in the grip of pseudo-scientific + orthodoxy. Extravagances of this new faith in America and the new + European republics. The assets of religion are also the assets of + science. The masses, indifferent to both, are ungovernable without + an inculcated faith (the official second nature). Modern conflicts + between secular authority and Church doctrine. Cremation. Rights + of animals. Use of cathedrals. The Russian situation: the State + tolerating the Church whilst denouncing its teaching as dope. Such + contemptuously tolerant anti-clericalism is necessarily transient: + positive teaching being indispensable. Subjective religion. Courage. + Redskin ideals. Man as hunter-warrior with Woman as everything else. + Political uselessness of ferocity and sportsmanship. Fighting men + cowardly and lazy as thinkers. Women anxious lest Socialism should + attack their religion. It need not do so unless inequality of income + is part of their religion. But they must beware of attempts to + constitute Socialism as a Catholic Church with an infallible prophet + and Savior. The Moscow Third International is essentially such a + Church, with Karl Marx as its prophet. It must come into conflict with + the Soviet and be mastered by it. We need not, however, repudiate its + doctrine and vituperate its prophet on that account any more than we + need repudiate the teaching of Christ and vilify his character when + we insist that the State and not the Church shall govern England. The + merits of Marx. 429 + + + 83 + + CURRENT CONFUSIONS + + The Intelligent Woman must resist the impulse to intervene in + conversational bickerings and letters to the Press about Socialism + and Capitalism by people who understand neither. Meaningless + vituperation and general misuse of nomenclature. Politicians misname + themselves as well as oneanother. Self-contradictory names such + as Communist-Anarchist. Real distinctions. Direct Action _versus_ + Fabianism. Poor Man’s Capitalism: its forms. It often masquerades as + Socialism. The assumption of the name Communist by the cruder sort + of Direct-Actionists produces the anomaly of a Labor Party expelling + Communists whilst advocating Communist legislation. Fascism, produced + by impatient disgust with Parliament as an institution, is common to + the extreme Right and the extreme Left. Methods of Direct Action. + The General Strike. Its absurdity. Its futility as a preventive + of war. Pacifism. Supernational social organization. Empires and + Commonwealths. Confusions as to Democracy. Proletarian jealousy of + official power. Resultant autocracy in the Trade Unions. Labor leaders + more arbitrary than Peers, and much more cynical as to working class + political capacity than middle class and aristocratic idealists. + Democracy in practice has never been democratic; and the millennial + hopes based on every extension of the franchise, from the Reform Bill + of 1832 to Votes for Women, have been disappointed. The reaction. + Discipline for everybody and votes for nobody. Why women should stick + resolutely to their votes. Proportional Representation opposed by the + Labor Party. Need for a scientific test of political capacity. Those + who use democracy as a stepping stone to political power oppose it + as a dangerous nuisance when they get there. Its real object is to + establish a genuine aristocracy. To do this we must first ascertain + which are the aristocrats; and it is here that popular voting fails. + Mrs Everybody votes for Mrs Somebody only to discover that she has + elected Mrs Noisy Nobody. 443 + + + 84 + + PERORATION + + A last word. Danger of discouragement through excessive sympathy. + Public evils are fortunately not millionfold evils. Suffering is not + cumulative; but waste is; and the Socialist revolt is against waste. + Honor, health, and joy of heart are impossible under Capitalism: + rich and poor are alike detestable: both must cease to exist. Our + need for neighbors whose interests do not compete with ours is + against the principle of Capitalism. Waiting for dead men’s shoes. + The professions. Husband hunting. The social friction is intense: + Capitalism puts sand instead of oil in all the bearings of our + machinery. The remonstrance of the optimist. Natural kindliness. + Capitalism itself was better-intentioned in its inception than + early Christianity. Goodwill is not enough: it is dangerous until + it finds the right way. Unreasoning sentiment an unsafe guide. We + believe what we want to believe: if a pecuniary bias is given to our + activities it will corrupt them in institution, teaching, and practice + until the best intentioned citizens will know no honest methods and + doctrines. In our search for disinterested service we come up against + profiteering and Trade Unionism at every turn. Resultant cynicism + and pessimism. Gulliver’s Travels and Candide. Equality of income + would make these terrible books mere clinical lectures on an extinct + disease. The simple and noble meaning of gentility. 455 + + + APPENDIX + + Instead of a bibliography. The technical literature of Capitalism + and Socialism mostly abstract, inhuman, and written in an academic + jargon which only specialists find readable. Failure to define either + capital or Socialism. The early Capitalist economists: their candor. + Ricardo, De Quincey, and Austin. The Socialist reaction: Proudhon + and Marx. The academic reaction: John Stuart Mill, Cairnes, and + Maynard Keynes. The artistic reaction: Ruskin, Carlyle, and Morris. + The reaction of the novelists: Dickens and Wells, Galsworthy and + Bennett. The reaction in the theatre: Ibsen and Strindberg. Henry + George and Land Nationalization. Literature of the conversion of + Socialism from an insurrectionary movement in the Liberal tradition + to a constitutional one. Fabian Essays. Sidney and Beatrice Webb. The + author’s contributions. 465 + + INDEX 471 + + + + +THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN’S GUIDE TO SOCIALISM AND CAPITALISM + + + + +1 + +A CLOSED QUESTION OPENS + + +It would be easy, dear madam, to refer you to the many books on modern +Socialism which have been published since it became a respectable +constitutional question in this country in the eighteen-eighties. But +I strongly advise you not to read a line of them until you and your +friends have discussed for yourselves how wealth should be distributed +in a respectable civilized country, and arrived at the best conclusion +you can. + +For Socialism is nothing but an opinion held by some people on that +point. Their opinion is not necessarily better than your opinion or +anyone else’s. How much should you have and how much should your +neighbors have? What is your own answer? + +As it is not a settled question, you must clear your mind of the fancy +with which we all begin as children, that the institutions under which +we live, including our legal ways of distributing income and allowing +people to own things, are natural, like the weather. They are not. +Because they exist everywhere in our little world, we take it for +granted that they have always existed and must always exist, and that +they are self-acting. That is a dangerous mistake. They are in fact +transient makeshifts; and many of them would not be obeyed, even by +well-meaning people, if there were not a policeman within call and a +prison within reach. They are being changed continually by Parliament, +because we are never satisfied with them. Sometimes they are scrapped +for new ones; sometimes they are altered; sometimes they are simply +done away with as nuisances. The new ones have to be stretched in the +law courts to make them fit, or to prevent them fitting too well if +the judges happen to dislike them. There is no end to this scrapping +and altering and innovating. New laws are made to compel people to do +things they never dreamt of doing before (buying insurance stamps, +for instance). Old laws are repealed to allow people to do what they +used to be punished for doing (marrying their deceased wives’ sisters +and husbands’ brothers, for example). Laws that are not repealed are +amended and amended and amended like a child’s knickers until there +is hardly a shred of the first stuff left. At the elections some +candidates get votes by promising to make new laws or to get rid of old +ones, and others by promising to keep things just as they are. This is +impossible. Things will not stay as they are. + +Changes that nobody ever believed possible take place in a few +generations. Children nowadays think that spending nine years +in school, old-age and widows’ pensions, votes for women, and +short-skirted ladies in Parliament or pleading in barristers’ wigs in +the courts, are part of the order of Nature, and always were and ever +shall be; but their greatgrandmothers would have set down anyone who +told them that such things were coming as mad, and anyone who wanted +them to come as wicked. + +When studying how the wealth we produce every year should be +shared among us, we must not be like either the children or the +greatgrandmothers. We must bear constantly in mind that our shares +are being changed almost every day on one point or another whilst +Parliament is sitting, and that before we die the sharing will be +different, for better or worse, from the sharing of today, just as +the sharing of today differs from the nineteenth century sharing more +than Queen Victoria could have believed possible. The moment you begin +to think of our present sharing as a fixture, you become a fossil. +Every change in our laws takes money, directly or indirectly, out of +somebody’s pocket (perhaps yours) and puts it into somebody else’s. +This is why one set of politicians demands each change and another set +opposes it. + +So what you have to consider is not whether there will be great changes +or not (for changes there certainly will be) but what changes you and +your friends think, after consideration and discussion, would make +the world a better place to live in, and what changes you ought to +resist as disastrous to yourself and everyone else. Every opinion you +arrive at in this way will become a driving force as part of the public +opinion which in the long run must be at the back of all the changes +if they are to abide, and at the back of the policemen and jailers who +have to enforce them, right or wrong, once they are made the law of the +land. + +It is important that you should have opinions of your own on this +subject. Never forget that the old law of the natural philosophers, +that Nature abhors a vacuum, is true of the human head. There is no +such thing as an empty head, though there are heads so impervious to +new ideas that they are for all mental purposes solid, like billiard +balls. I know that you have not that sort of head, because, if you +had, you would not be reading this book. Therefore I warn you that if +you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other +people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters, from advertisements, +from newspapers, from books and pamphlets, from gossip, from political +speeches, from plays and pictures--and, you will add, from this book! + +Well, of course I do not deny it. When I urge you to think for yourself +(as all our nurses and mothers and schoolmistresses do even though they +clout our heads the moment our conclusions differ from theirs) I do +not mean that you should shut your eyes to everyone else’s opinions. +I myself, though I am by way of being a professional thinker, have to +content myself with secondhand opinions on a great many most important +subjects on which I can neither form an opinion of my own nor criticize +the opinions I take from others. I take the opinion of the Astronomer +Royal as to when it is twelve o’clock; and if I am in a strange town I +take the opinion of the first person I meet in the street as to the way +to the railway station. If I go to law I have to consent to the absurd +but necessary dogma that the king can do no wrong. Otherwise trains +would be no use to me, and lawsuits could never be finally settled. +We should never arrive anywhere or do anything if we did not believe +what we are told by people who ought to know better than ourselves, and +agree to stand by certain dogmas of the infallibility of authorities +whom we nevertheless know to be fallible. Thus on most subjects we are +forced by our ignorance to proceed with closed minds in spite of all +exhortations to think boldly for ourselves, and be, above all things, +original. + +St Paul, a rash and not very deep man, as his contempt for women shews, +cried “Prove all things: hold fast that which is good”. He forgot that +it is quite impossible for one woman to prove all things: she has not +the time even if she had the knowledge. For a busy woman there are no +Open Questions: everything is settled except the weather; and even +that is settled enough for her to buy the right clothes for summer and +winter. Why, then, did St Paul give a counsel which he must have known +to be impracticable if he ever thought about it for five minutes? + +The explanation is that the Settled Questions are never really settled, +because the answers to them are never complete and final truths. We +make laws and institutions because we cannot live in society without +them. We cannot make perfect institutions because we are not perfect +ourselves. Even if we could make perfect institutions, we could not +make eternal and universal ones, because the conditions change, and +the laws and institutions that work well with fifty enclosed nuns in +a convent would be impossible in a nation of forty million people +at large. So we have to do the best we can at the moment, leaving +posterity free to do better if it can. When we have made our laws in +this makeshift way, the questions they concern are settled for the +moment only. And in politics the moment may be twelve months or twelve +hundred years, a mere breathing space or a whole epoch. + +Consequently there come crises in history when questions that have +been closed for centuries suddenly yawn wide open. It was in the teeth +of one of these terrible yawns that St Paul cried that there are no +closed questions, that we must think out everything for ourselves all +over again. In his Jewish world nothing was more sacred than the law of +Moses, and nothing more indispensable than the rite of circumcision. +All law and all religion seemed to depend on them; yet St Paul had to +ask the Jews to throw over the law of Moses for the contrary law of +Christ, declaring that circumcision did not matter, as it was baptism +that was essential to salvation. How could he help preaching the open +mind and the inner light as against all laws and institutions whatever? + +You are now in the position of the congregations of St Paul. We are all +in it today. A question that has been practically closed for a whole +epoch, the question of the distribution of wealth and the nature of +property, has suddenly yawned wide open before us; and we all have to +open our closed minds accordingly. + +When I say that it has opened suddenly, I am not forgetting that it +never has been closed completely for thoughtful people whose business +it was to criticize institutions. Hundreds of years before St Paul +was born, prophets crying in the wilderness had protested against the +abominations that were rampant under the Mosaic law, and prophesied +a Savior who would redeem us from its inhumanity. I am not forgetting +either that for hundreds of years past our own prophets, whom we +call poets or philosophers or divines, have been protesting against +the division of the nation into rich and poor, idle and overworked. +But there comes finally a moment at which the question that has been +kept ajar only by persecuted prophets for a few disciples springs +wide open for everybody; and the persecuted prophets with their tiny +congregations of cranks grow suddenly into formidable parliamentary +Oppositions which presently become powerful Governments. + +Langland and Latimer and Sir Thomas More, John Bunyan and George Fox, +Goldsmith and Crabbe and Shelley, Carlyle and Ruskin and Morris, with +many brave and faithful preachers, in the Churches and out of them, +of whom you have never heard, were our English prophets. They kept +the question open for those who had some spark of their inspiration; +but prosaic everyday women and men paid no attention until, within +my lifetime and yours, quite suddenly ordinary politicians, sitting +on the front benches of the House of Commons and of all the European +legislatures, with vast and rapidly growing bodies of ordinary +respectable voters behind them, began clamoring that the existing +distribution of wealth is so anomalous, monstrous, ridiculous, +and unbearably mischievous, that it must be radically changed if +civilization is to be saved from the wreck to which all the older +civilizations we know of were brought by this very evil. + +That is why you must approach the question as an unsettled one, with +your mind as open as you can get it. And it is from my own experience +in dealing with such questions that I strongly advise you not to wait +for a readymade answer from me or anyone else, but to try first to +solve the problem for yourself in your own way. For even if you solve +it all wrong, you will become not only intensely interested in it, but +much better able to understand and appreciate the right solution when +it comes along. + + + + +2 + +DIVIDING-UP + + +Everybody knows now that Socialism is a proposal to divide-up the +income of the country in a new way. What you perhaps have not noticed +is that the income of the country is being divided-up every day and +even every minute at present, and must continue to be divided-up every +day as long as there are two people left on earth to divide it. The +only possible difference of opinion is not as to whether it shall be +divided or not, but as to how much each person should have, and on what +conditions he should be allowed to have it. St Paul said “He that will +not work, neither shall he eat”; but as he was only a man with a low +opinion of women, he forgot the babies. Babies cannot work, and are +shockingly greedy; but if they were not fed there would soon be nobody +left alive in the world. So that will not do. + +Some people imagine that because they can save money the wealth of +the world can be stored up. Stuff and nonsense. Most of the wealth +that keeps us alive will not last a week. The world lives from hand to +mouth. A drawingroom poker will last a lifetime; but we cannot live by +eating drawingroom pokers; and though we do all we can to make our food +keep by putting eggs into water-glass, tinning salmon, freezing mutton, +and turning milk into dry goods, the hard fact remains that unless most +of our food is eaten within a few days of its being baked or killed it +will go stale or rotten, and choke or poison us. Even our clothes will +not last very long if we work hard in them; and there is the washing. +You may put india-rubber patches on your boot soles to prevent the +soles wearing out; but then the patches will wear out. + +Every year must bring its own fresh harvest and its new generations +of sheep and cattle: we cannot live on what is left of last year’s +harvest; and as next year’s does not yet exist, we must live in the +main on this year’s, making things and using them up, sowing and +reaping, brewing and baking, breeding and butchering (unless we are +vegetarians like myself), soiling and washing, or else dying of dirt +and starvation. What is called saving is only making bargains for the +future. For instance, if I bake a hundred and one loaves of bread, I +can eat no more than the odd one; and I cannot save the rest, because +they will be uneatable in a week. All I can do is to bargain with +somebody who wants a hundred loaves to be eaten on the spot by himself +and his family and persons in his employment, that if I give my hundred +spare loaves to him he will give me, say, five new loaves to eat every +year in future. But that is not saving up the loaves. It is only a +bargain between two parties: one who wants to provide for the future, +and another who wants to spend heavily in the present. Consequently I +cannot save until I find somebody else who wants to spend. The notion +that we could all save together is silly: the truth is that only a few +well-off people who have more than they need can afford to provide +for their future in this way; and they could not do it were there not +others spending more than they possess. Peter must spend what Paul +saves, or Paul’s savings will go rotten. Between the two nothing is +saved. The nation as a whole must make its bread and eat it as it goes +along. A nation which stopped working would be dead in a fortnight +even if every man, woman, and child in it had houses and lands and a +million of money in the savings bank. When you see the rich man’s wife +(or anyone else’s wife) shaking her head over the thriftlessness of the +poor because they do not all save, pity the lady’s ignorance; but do +not irritate the poor by repeating her nonsense to them. + + + + +3 + +HOW MUCH FOR EACH? + + +You now realize that a great baking and making and serving and counting +must take place every day; and that when the loaves and other things +are made they must be divided-up immediately, each of us getting her +or his legally appointed share. What should that share be? How much +is each of us to have; and why is each of us to have that much and +neither more nor less? If the hardworking widow with six children is +getting two loaves a week whilst some idle and dissolute young bachelor +is wasting enough every day to feed six working families for a month, +is that a sensible way of dividing-up? Would it not be better to give +more to the widow and less to the bachelor? These questions do not +settle themselves: they have to be settled by law. If the widow takes +one of the bachelor’s loaves the police will put her in prison, and +send her children to the workhouse. They do that because there is a +law that her share is only two loaves. That law can be repealed or +altered by parliament if the people desire it and vote accordingly. +Most people, when they learn this, think the law ought to be altered. +When they read in the papers that an American widow left with one baby +boy, and an allowance of one hundred and fifty pounds a week to bring +him up on, went to the courts to complain that it was not enough, and +had the allowance increased to two hundred, whilst other widows who +had worked hard early and late all their lives, and brought up large +families, were ending their days in the workhouse, they feel that +there is something monstrously unjust and wicked and stupid in such a +dividing-up, and that it must be changed. They get it changed a little +by taking back some of the rich American widow’s share in taxes, and +giving it to the poor in old-age pensions and widows’ pensions and +unemployment doles and “free” elementary education and other things. +But if the American widow still has more than a hundred pounds a week +for the keep of her baby boy, and a large income for herself besides, +whilst the poor widow at the other end of the town has only ten +shillings a week pension between her and the workhouse, the difference +is still so unfair that we hardly notice the change. Everybody wants +a fairer division except the people who get the best of it; and as +they are only one in ten of the population, and many of them recognize +the injustice of their own position, we may take it that there is a +general dissatisfaction with the existing daily division of wealth, and +a general intention to alter it as soon as possible among those who +realize that it can be altered. + +But you cannot alter anything unless you know what you want to alter it +to. It is no use saying that it is scandalous that Mrs A. should have +a thousand pounds a day and poor Mrs B. only half a crown. If you want +the law altered you must be prepared to say how much you think Mrs A. +should have, and how much Mrs B. should have. And that is where the +real trouble begins. We are all ready to say that Mrs B. ought to have +more, and Mrs A. less; but when we are asked to say exactly how much +more and how much less, some say one thing; others say another; and +most of us have nothing to say at all except perhaps that Mrs A. ought +to be ashamed of herself or that it serves Mrs B. right. + +People who have never thought about the matter say that the honest way +is to let everyone have what she has the money to pay for, just as at +present. But that does not get us out of the difficulty. It only sets +us asking how the money is to be allotted. Money is only a bit of paper +or a bit of metal that gives its owner a lawful claim to so much bread +or beer or diamonds or motor-cars or what not. We cannot eat money, nor +drink money, nor wear money. It is the goods that money can buy that +are being divided-up when money is divided-up. Everything is reckoned +in money; and when the law gives Mrs B. her ten shillings when she is +seventy years old and young Master A. his three thousand shillings +before he is seven minutes old, the law is dividing-up the loaves +and fishes, the clothes and houses, the motor-cars and perambulators +between them as if it were handing out these articles directly instead +of handing out the money that buys them. + + + + +4 + +NO WEALTH WITHOUT WORK + + +Before there can be any wealth to divide-up, there must be labor at +work. There can be no loaves without farmers and bakers. There are a +few little islands thousands of miles away where men and women can lie +basking in the sun and live on the cocoa-nuts the monkeys throw down to +them. But for us there is no such possibility. Without incessant daily +labor we should starve. If anyone is idle someone else must be working +for both or there would be nothing for either of them to eat. That was +why St Paul said “If a man will not work neither shall he eat”. The +burden of labor is imposed on us by Nature, and has to be divided-up as +well as the wealth it produces. + +But the two divisions need not correspond to oneanother. One person +can produce much more than enough to feed herself. Otherwise the young +children could not be fed; and the old people who are past work would +starve. Many a woman with nothing to help her but her two hands has +brought up a family on her own earnings, and kept her aged parents into +the bargain, besides making rent for a ground landlord as well. And +with the help of water power, steam power, electric power, and modern +machinery, labor can be so organized that one woman can turn out more +than a thousand women could turn out 150 years ago. + +This saving of labor by harnessing machines to natural forces, like +wind and water and the heat latent in coal, produces leisure, which +also has to be divided-up. If one person’s labor for ten hours can +support ten persons for a day, the ten can arrange in several different +ways. They can put the ten hours’ work on one person and let the other +nine have all the leisure as well as free rations. Or they can each do +one hour’s work a day and each have nine hours leisure. Or they can +have anything between these extremes. They can also arrange that three +of them shall work ten hours a day each, producing enough for thirty +people, so that the other seven will not only have nothing to do, but +will be able to eat enough for fourteen and to keep thirteen servants +to wait on them and keep the three up to their work into the bargain. + +Another possible arrangement would be that they should all work much +longer every day than was necessary to keep them, on condition that +they were not required to work until they were fully grown and well +educated, and were allowed to stop working and amuse themselves for +the rest of their lives when they were fifty. Scores of different +arrangements are possible between out-and-out slavery and an equitable +division of labor, leisure, and wealth. Slavery, Serfdom, Feudalism, +Capitalism, Socialism, Communism are all at bottom different +arrangements of this division. Revolutionary history is the history of +the effects of a continual struggle by persons and classes to alter +the arrangement in their own favor. But for the moment we had better +stick to the question of dividing-up the income the labor produces; +for the utmost difference you can make between one person and another +in respect of their labor or leisure is as nothing compared to the +enormous difference you can make in their incomes by modern methods and +machines. You cannot put more than 24 hours into a rich man’s day; but +you can put 24 million pounds into his pocket without asking him to +lift his little finger for it. + + + + +5 + +COMMUNISM + + +If I have made this clear to you, will you try to make up your mind how +you would like to see the income of your country divided-up day by day? +Do not run to the Socialists or the Capitalists, or to your favorite +newspaper, to make up your mind for you: they will only unsettle and +bewilder you when they are not intentionally misleading you. Think it +out for yourself. Conceive yourself as a national trustee with the +entire income of the country placed in your hands to be distributed +so as to produce the greatest social wellbeing for everybody in the +country. + +By the way, you had better leave your own share and that of your +children and relations and friends out of the question, lest your +personal feelings upset your judgment. Some women would say “I never +think of anyone else: I don’t know anyone else”. But that will never do +in settling social questions. Capitalism and Socialism are not schemes +for distributing wealth in one lady’s circle only, but for distributing +wealth to everybody; and as the quantity to be distributed every year +is limited, if Mrs Dickson’s child, or her sister’s child, or her +dearest and oldest friend gets more, Mrs Johnson’s child or sister’s +child or dearest friend must get less. Mrs Dickson must forget not only +herself and her family and friends, but her class. She must imagine +herself for the moment a sort of angel acting for God, without any +earthly interests and affections to corrupt her integrity, concerned +solely with the task of deciding how much everybody should have out +of the national income for the sake of the world’s greatest possible +welfare and the greatest possible good of the world’s soul. + +Of course I know that none of us can really do this; but we must get +as near it as we can. I know also that there are few things more +irritating than the glibness with which people tell us to think for +ourselves when they know quite well that our minds are mostly herd +minds, with only a scrap of individual mind on top. I am even prepared +to be told that when you paid the price of this book you were paying me +to think for you. But I can no more do that than I can eat your dinner +for you. What I can do is to cook your mental dinner for you by putting +you in possession of the thinking that has been done already on the +subject by myself and others, so that you may be saved the time and +trouble and disappointment of trying to find your way down blind alleys +that have been thoroughly explored, and found to be no-thoroughfares. + +Here, then, are some plans that have been tried or proposed. + +Let us begin with the simplest: the family plan of the apostles and +their followers. Among them everybody threw all that she or he had +into a common stock; and each took from it what she or he needed. The +obligation to do this was so sacred that when Ananias and Sapphira kept +back something for themselves, St Peter struck them dead for “lying to +the Holy Ghost”. + +This plan, which is Communism in its primitive purity, is practised to +this day in small religious communities where the people live together +and are all known to one another. But it is not so simple for big +populations where the people do not live together and do not know each +other. Even in the family we practise it only partially; for though +the father gives part of his earnings to the mother, and the children +do the same when they are earning anything, and the mother buys food +and places it before all of them to partake in common, yet they all +keep some of their earnings back for their separate use; so that family +life is not pure Communism, but partly Communism and partly separate +property. Each member of the family does what Ananias and Sapphira +did; but they need not tell lies about it (though they sometimes do) +because it is understood between them that the children are to keep +back something for pocket money, the father for beer and tobacco, and +the mother for her clothes if there is any left. + +Besides, family Communism does not extend to the people next door. +Every house has its own separate meals; and the people in the other +houses do not contribute to it, and have no right to share it. There +are, however, exceptions to this in modern cities. Though each family +buys its own beer separately, they all get their water communistically. +They pay what they call a water rate into a common fund to pay for a +constant supply to every house; and they all draw as much or as little +water as they need. + +In the same way they pay for the lighting of the streets, for paving +them, for policemen to patrol them, for bridges across the rivers, and +for the removal and destruction of dustbin refuse. Nobody thinks of +saying “I never go out after dark; I have never called a policeman in +my life; I have no business on the other side of the river and never +cross the bridge; and therefore I will not help to pay the cost of +these things”. Everybody knows that town life could not exist without +lighting and paving and bridges and police and sanitation, and that +a bedridden invalid who never leaves the house, or a blind man whose +darkness no street lamp can dispel, is as dependent on these public +services for daily supplies of food and for safety and health as any +healthy person. And this is as true of the army and navy as of the +police force, of a lighthouse as of a street lamp, of a Town Hall as +of the Houses of Parliament: they are all paid for out of the common +stock made up by our rates and taxes; and they are for the benefit of +everybody indiscriminately. In short, they are Communistic. + +When we pay our rates to keep up this Communism we do not, like +the apostles, throw all we have into the common stock: we make a +contribution according to our means; and our means are judged by the +value of the house we live in. But those who pay low contributions +have just the same use of the public services as those who pay high +ones; and strangers and vagrants who do not pay any contributions at +all enjoy them equally. Young and old, prince and pauper, virtuous and +vicious, black and white and yellow, thrifty and wasteful, drunk and +sober, tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggarman +and thief, all have the same use and enjoyment of these communistic +conveniences and services which cost so much to keep up. And it works +perfectly. Nobody dreams of proposing that people should not be allowed +to walk down the street without paying and producing a certificate of +character from two respectable householders. Yet the street costs more +than any of the places you pay to go into, such as theatres, or any of +the places where you have to be introduced, like clubs. + + + + +6 + +LIMITS TO COMMUNISM + + +Would you ever have supposed from reading the newspapers that +Communism, instead of being a wicked invention of Russian +revolutionaries and British and American desperadoes, is a highly +respectable way of sharing our wealth, sanctioned and practised by +the apostles, and an indispensable part of our own daily life and +civilization? The more Communism, the more civilization. We could not +get on without it, and are continually extending it. We could give up +some of it if we liked. We could put turnpike gates on the roads and +make everybody pay for passing along them: indeed we may still see the +little toll houses where the old turnpike gates used to be. We could +abolish the street lamps, and hire men with torches to light us through +the streets at night: are not the extinguishers formerly used by hired +linkmen still to be seen on old-fashioned railings? We could even hire +policemen and soldiers by the job to protect us, and then disband the +police force and the army. But we take good care to do nothing of the +sort. In spite of the way people grumble about their rates and taxes +they get better value for them than for all the other money they spend. +To find a bridge built for us to cross the river without having to +think about it or pay anyone for it is such a matter of course to us +that some of us come to think, like the children, that bridges are +provided by nature, and cost nothing. But if the bridges were allowed +to fall down, and we had to find out for ourselves how to cross the +river by fording it or swimming it or hiring a boat, we should soon +realize what a blessed thing Communism is, and not grudge the few +shillings that each of us has to pay the rate collector for the upkeep +of the bridge. In fact we might come to think Communism such a splendid +thing that everything ought to be communized. + +But this would not work. The reason a bridge can be communized is that +everyone either uses the bridge or benefits by it. It may be taken as +a rule that whatever is used by everybody or benefits everybody can +be communized. Roads, bridges, street lighting, and water supply are +communized as a matter of course in cities, though in villages and +country places people have to buy and carry lanterns on dark nights +and get their water from their own wells. There is no reason why +bread should not be communized: it would be an inestimable benefit to +everybody if there were no such thing in the country as a hungry child, +and no housekeeper had to think of the cost of providing bread for the +household. Railways could be communized. You can amuse yourself by +thinking of lots of other services that would benefit everyone, and +therefore could and should be communized. + +Only, you will be stopped when you come to services that are not useful +to everyone. We communize water as a matter of course; but what about +beer? What would a teetotaller say if he were asked to pay rates or +taxes to enable his neighbors to have as much beer as they want for +the asking? He would have a double objection: first, that he would +be paying for something he does not use; and second, that in his +opinion beer, far from being a good thing, causes ill-health, crime, +drunkenness, and so forth. He would go to prison rather than pay rates +for such a purpose. + +The most striking example of this difficulty is the Church. The Church +of England is a great communistic institution: its property is held +in trust for God; its temples and services are open to everybody; and +its bishops sit in Parliament as peers of the realm. Yet, because we +are not all agreed as to the doctrines of the Church of England, and +many of us think that a communion table with candles on it is too like +a Roman Catholic altar, we have been forced to make the Church rate a +voluntary one: that is, you may pay it or not as you please. And when +the Education Act of 1902 gave some public money to Church schools, +many people refused to pay their rates, and allowed their furniture to +be sold year after year, sooner than allow a penny of theirs to go to +the Church. Thus you see that if you propose to communize something +that is not used or at least approved of by everybody, you will be +asking for trouble. We all use roads and bridges, and agree that they +are useful and necessary things; but we differ about religion and +temperance and playgoing, and quarrel fiercely over our differences. +That is why we communize roads and bridges without any complaint or +refusal to pay rates, but have masses of voters against us at once when +we attempt to communize any particular form of public worship, or to +deal with beer or spirits as we deal with water, and as we should deal +with milk if we had sense enough to value the nation’s health. + +This difficulty can be got round to some extent by give-and-take +between the people who want different things. For instance, there are +some people who care for flowers and do not care for music, and others +who care for games and boating and care neither for flowers nor music. +But these differently minded people do not object to paying rates for +the upkeep of a public park with flower-beds, cricket pitches, a lake +for boating and swimming, and a band. Laura will not object to pay for +what Beatrice wants if Beatrice does not object to pay for what Laura +wants. + +Also there are many things that only a few people understand or use +which nevertheless everybody pays for because without them we should +have no learning, no books, no pictures, no high civilization. We have +public galleries of the best pictures and statues, public libraries +of the best books, public observatories in which astronomers watch +the stars and mathematicians make abstruse calculations, public +laboratories in which scientific men are supposed to add to our +knowledge of the universe. These institutions cost a great deal of +money to which we all have to contribute. Many of us never enter a +gallery or a museum or a library even when we live within easy reach +of them; and not one person in ten is interested in astronomy or +mathematics or physical science; but we all have a general notion that +these things are necessary; and so we do not object to pay for them. + +Besides, many of us do not know that we pay for them: we think we +get them as kind presents from somebody. In this way a good deal of +Communism has been established without our knowing anything about it. +This is shewn by our way of speaking about communized things as free. +Because we can enter the National Gallery or the British Museum or the +cathedrals without paying at the doors, some of us seem to think that +they grew by the roadside like wildflowers. But they cost us a great +deal of money from week to week. The British Museum has to be swept and +dusted and scrubbed more than any private house, because so many more +people tramp through it with mud on their boots. The salaries of the +learned gentlemen who are in charge of it are a trifle compared with +the cost of keeping it tidy. In the same way a public park needs more +gardeners than a private one, and has to be weeded and mown and watered +and sown and so forth at a great cost in wages and seeds and garden +implements. We get nothing for nothing; and if we do not pay every time +we go into these places, we pay in rates and taxes. The poorest tramp, +though he may escape rent and rates by sleeping out, pays whenever he +buys tobacco, because he pays about eight times as much for the tobacco +as it costs to grow and put on the market; and the Government gets the +difference to spend on public purposes: that is, to maintain Communism. +And the poorest woman pays in the same way, without knowing it, +whenever she buys an article of food that is taxed. If she knew that +she was stinting herself to pay the salary of the Astronomer Royal, or +to buy another picture for the National Gallery, she might vote against +the Government at the next election for making her do it; but as she +does not know, she only grumbles about the high prices of food, and +thinks they are all due to bad harvests or hard times or strikes or +anything else that must be put up with. She might not grudge what she +has to pay for the King and Queen; but if she knew that she was paying +the wages of the thousands of charwomen who scrub the stone staircases +in the Houses of Parliament and other great public buildings, she would +not get much satisfaction out of helping to support them better than +she can afford to support herself. + +We see then that some of the Communism we practise is imposed on us +without our consent: we pay for it without knowing what we are doing. +But, in the main, Communism deals with things that are either used by +all of us or necessary to all of us, whether we are educated enough to +understand the necessity or not. + +Now let us get back to the things as to which tastes differ. We have +already seen that Church of England services and beer and wine and +spirits and intoxicants of all sorts are considered necessary to life +by some people, and pernicious and poisonous by others. We are not +agreed even about tea and meat. But there are many things that no one +sees any harm in; yet everybody does not want them. Ask a woman what +little present she would like; and one woman will choose a pet dog, +another a gramophone. A studious girl will ask for a microscope when +an active girl will ask for a motor bicycle. Indoor people want books +and pictures and pianos: outdoor people want guns and fishing-rods +and horses and motor cars. To communize these things in the way that +we communize roads and bridges would be ridiculously wasteful. If you +made enough gramophones and bred enough pet dogs to supply every woman +with both, or enough microscopes and motor bicycles to provide one each +for every girl, you would have heaps of them left on your hands by the +women and girls who did not want them and would not find house room for +them. They could not even sell them, because everybody who wanted one +would have one already. They would go into the dustbin. + +There is only one way out of this difficulty. Instead of giving people +things you must give them money and let them buy what they like with +it. Instead of giving Mrs Smith, who wants a gramophone, a gramophone +and a pet dog as well, costing, say, five pounds apiece, and giving Mrs +Jones, who wants a pet dog, a pet dog and a gramophone as well, with +the certainty that Mrs Smith will drive her pet dog out of her house +and Mrs Jones will throw her gramophone into the dustbin, so that the +ten pounds they cost will be wasted, you can simply give Mrs Smith and +Mrs Jones five pounds apiece. Then Mrs Smith buys a gramophone; Mrs +Jones buys a pet dog; and both live happily ever after. And, of course, +you will take care not to manufacture more gramophones or breed more +dogs than are needed to satisfy them. + +That is the use of money: it enables us to get what we want instead +of what other people think we want. When a young lady is married, her +friends give her wedding presents instead of giving her money; and the +consequence is that she finds herself loaded up with six fish-slices, +seven or eight travelling clocks, and not a single pair of silk +stockings. If her friends had the sense to give her money (I always +do), and she had the sense to take it (she always does), she would have +one fish-slice, one travelling clock (if she wanted such a thing), and +plenty of stockings. Money is the most convenient thing in the world: +we could not possibly do without it. We are told that the love of money +is the root of all evil; but money itself is one of the most useful +contrivances ever invented: it is not its fault that some people are +foolish or miserly enough to be fonder of it than of their own souls. + +You now see that the great dividing-up of things that has to take +place year by year, quarter by quarter, month by month, week by week, +day by day, hour by hour, and even minute by minute, though some of it +can be done by the ancient simple family communism of the apostles, or +by the modern ratepayers’ communism of the roads and bridges and street +lamps and so forth, must in the main take the form of a dividing-up of +money. And as this throws you back again on the old questions: how much +is each of us to have? what is my fair share? what is your fair share? +and why? Communism has only partly solved the problem for you; so we +must have another shot at it. + + + + +7 + +SEVEN WAYS PROPOSED + + +A plan which has often been proposed, and which seems very plausible +to the working classes, is to let every person have that part of the +wealth of the country which she has herself produced by her work (the +feminine pronoun here includes the masculine). Others say let us all +get what we deserve; so that the idle and dissolute and weak shall have +nothing and perish, and the good and industrious and energetic shall +have all and survive. Some believe in “the good old rule, the simple +plan, that they shall take who have the power, and they shall keep who +can”, though they seldom confess it nowadays. Some say let the common +people get enough to keep them alive in that state of life to which +it has pleased God to call them; and let the gentry take the rest, +though that, too, is not now said so openly as it was in the eighteenth +century. Some say let us divide ourselves into classes; and let the +division be equal in each class though unequal between the classes; so +that laborers shall get thirty shillings a week, skilled workers three +or four pounds, bishops two thousand five hundred a year, judges five +thousand, archbishops fifteen thousand, and their wives what they can +get out of them. Others say simply let us go on as we are. + +What the Socialists say is that none of these plans will work well, and +that the only satisfactory plan is to give everybody an equal share no +matter what sort of person she is, or how old she is, or what sort of +work she does, or who or what her father was. + +If this, or any of the other plans, happens to startle and scandalize +you, please do not blame me or throw my book into the fire. I am only +telling you the different plans that have been proposed and to some +extent actually tried. You are not bound to approve of any of them; and +you are quite free to propose a better plan than any of them if you can +think one out. But you are not free to dismiss it from your mind as +none of your business. It is a question of your food and lodging, and +therefore part of your life. If you do not settle it for yourself, the +people who are encouraging you to neglect it will settle it for you; +and you may depend on it they will take care of their own shares and +not of yours, in which case you may find yourself some day without any +share at all. + +I have seen that happen very cruelly during my own lifetime. In the +country where I was born, which is within an hour’s run of England +at the nearest point, many ladies of high social standing and gentle +breeding, who thought that this question did not concern them because +they were well off for the moment, ended very pitiably in the +workhouse. They felt that bitterly, and hated those who had brought it +about; but they never understood why it happened. Had they understood +from the beginning how and why it might happen, they might have averted +it, instead of, as they did, doing everything in their power to hasten +their own ruin. + +You may very easily share their fate unless you take care to understand +what is happening. The world is changing very quickly, as it was around +them when they thought it as fixed as the mountains. It is changing +much more quickly around you; and I promise you that if you will be +patient enough to finish this book (think of all the patience it has +cost me to finish it instead of writing plays!) you will come out with +much more knowledge of how things are changing, and what your risks and +prospects are, than you are likely to have learnt from your schoolbooks. + +Therefore I am going to take all these plans for you one after another, +and examine them chapter by chapter until you know pretty well all that +is to be said for and against them. + + + + +8 + +TO EACH WHAT SHE PRODUCES + + +The first plan: that of giving to every person exactly what he or she +has made by his or her labor, seems fair; but when we try to put it +into practice we discover, first, that it is quite impossible to find +out how much each person has produced, and, second, that a great deal +of the world’s work is neither producing material things nor altering +the things that Nature produces, but doing services of one sort or +another. + +When a farmer and his laborers sow and reap a field of wheat nobody +on earth can say how much of the wheat each of them has grown. When a +machine in a factory turns out pins by the million nobody can say how +many pins are due to the labor of the person who minds the machine, +or the person who invented it, or the engineers who made it, to say +nothing of all the other persons employed about the factory. The +clearest case in the world of a person producing something herself by +her own painful, prolonged, and risky labor is that of a woman who +produces a baby; but then she cannot live on the baby: the baby lives +greedily on her. + +Robinson Crusoe on his desert island could have claimed that the +boats and shelters and fences he made with the materials supplied by +Nature belonged to him because they were the fruit of nobody’s labor +but his own; but when he returned to civilization he could not have +laid his hand on a chair or table in his house which was not the work +of dozens of men: foresters who had planted the trees, woodmen who +had felled them, lumbermen and bargemen and sailors and porters who +had moved them, sawyers who had sawn them into planks and scantlings, +upholsterers and joiners who had fashioned them into tables and chairs, +not to mention the merchants who had conducted all the business +involved in these transactions, and the makers of the shops and ships +and all the rest of it. Anyone who thinks about it for a few minutes +must see that trying to divide-up by giving each worker exactly what +she or he has produced is like trying to give every drop of rain in a +heavy shower exactly the quantity of water it adds to the supply in +your cistern. It just cannot be done. + +What can be done is to pay every person according to the time she or he +spends at the work. Time is something that can be measured in figures. +It is quite easy to pay a worker twice as much for two hours work as +for one. There are people who will work for sixpence an hour, people +who will work for eighteenpence an hour, people who will work for two +guineas an hour, people who will work for a hundred and fifty guineas +an hour. These prices depend on how many competitors there are in the +trade looking for the work, and whether the people who want it done are +rich or poor. You pay a sempstress a shilling to sew for an hour, or a +laborer to chop wood, when there are plenty of unemployed sempstresses +and laborers starving for a job, each of them trying to induce you to +give it to her or him rather than to the next applicant by offering to +do it at a price that will barely keep body and soul together. You pay +a popular actress two or three hundred pounds a week, or a famous opera +singer as much a night, because the public will pay more than that to +hear her. You pay a famous surgeon a hundred and fifty guineas to cut +out your appendix, or a famous barrister the same to plead for you, +because there are so few famous surgeons or barristers, and so many +patients and clients offering them large sums to work for them rather +than for you. This is called settling the price of a worker’s time, or +rather letting it settle itself, by supply and demand. + +Unfortunately, supply and demand may produce undesirable results. A +division in which one woman gets a shilling and another three thousand +shillings for an hour of work has no moral sense in it: it is just +something that happens, and that ought not to happen. A child with an +interesting face and pretty ways, and some talent for acting, may, by +working for the films, earn a hundred times as much as its mother can +earn by drudging at an ordinary trade. What is worse, a pretty girl can +earn by vice far more than her plain sister can earn as an honest wife +and mother. + +Besides, it is not so easy to measure the time spent on a piece of work +as it seems at first. Paying a laborer twice as much for two hours work +as for one is as simple as twice one are two; but when you have to +divide between an opera singer and her dresser, or an unskilled laborer +and a doctor, you find that you cannot tell how much time you have to +allow for. The dresser and the laborer are doing what any ablebodied +person can do without long study or apprenticeship. The doctor has +to spend six years in study and training, on top of a good general +education, to qualify himself to do his work. He claims that six years +of unpaid work are behind every minute of his attendance at your +bedside. A skilled workman may claim in the same way that seven years +of apprenticeship are behind every stroke of his hammer. The opera +singer has had to spend a long time learning her parts, even when, as +sometimes happens, she has never learnt to sing. Everybody acknowledges +that this makes a difference; but nobody can measure exactly what the +difference is, either in time or money. + +The same difficulty arises in attempting to compare the value of the +work of a clever woman with that of a stupid one. You may think that +the work of the clever woman is worth more; but when you are asked how +much more in pounds, shillings, and pence you have to give it up and +fall back on supply and demand, confessing that the difference cannot +be measured in money. + +In these examples I have mixed up making things with doing services; +but I must now emphasize this distinction, because thoughtless people +are apt to think a brickmaker more of a producer than a clergyman. +When a village carpenter makes a gate to keep cattle out of a field of +wheat, he has something solid in his hand which he can claim for his +own until the farmer pays him for it. But when a village boy makes a +noise to keep the birds off he has nothing to shew, though the noise +is just as necessary as the gate. The postman does not make anything: +he only delivers letters and parcels. The policeman does not make +anything; and the soldier not only does not make things: he destroys +them. The doctor makes pills sometimes; but that is not his real +business, which is to tell you when you ought to take pills, and what +pills to take, unless indeed he has the good sense to tell you not to +take them at all, and you have the good sense to believe him when he +is giving you good advice instead of bad. The lawyer does not make +anything substantial, nor the clergyman, nor the member of Parliament, +nor the domestic servant (though she sometimes breaks things), nor the +Queen or King, nor an actor. When their work is done they have nothing +in hand that can be weighed or measured: nothing that the maker can +keep from others until she is paid for it. They are all in service: in +domestic service like the housemaid, or in commercial service like the +shop assistant, or in Government service like the postman, or in State +service like the King; and all of us who have fullsize consciences +consider ourselves in what some of us call the service of God. + +And then, beside the persons who make the substantial things there must +be persons to find out how they should be made. Beside the persons who +do things there must be persons who know how they should be done, and +decide when they should be done, and how much they should be done. +In simple village life both the making or the doing and the thinking +may be done by the same person when he is a blacksmith, carpenter, +or builder; but in big cities and highly civilized countries this is +impossible: one set of people has to make and do whilst another set of +people thinks and decides what, when, how much, and by whom. + +Our villages would be improved by a little of this division of labor; +for it is a great disadvantage in country life that a farmer is +expected to do so many different things: he has not only to grow crops +and raise stock (two separate arts to begin with, and difficult ones +too), but to be a man of business, keeping complicated accounts and +selling his crops and his cattle, which is a different sort of job, +needing a different sort of man. And, as if this were not enough, +he has to keep his dwelling house as part of his business; so that +he is expected to be a professional man, a man of business, and a +sort of country gentleman all at once; and the consequence is that +farming is all a muddle: the good farmer is poor because he is a bad +man of business; the good man of business is poor because he is a bad +farmer; and both of them are often bad husbands because their work is +not separate from their home, and they bring all their worries into +the house with them instead of locking them up in a city office and +thinking no more about them until they go back there next morning. In +a city business one set of men does the manual work; another set keeps +the accounts; another chooses the markets for buying and selling; and +all of them leave their work behind them when they go home. + +The same trouble is found in a woman’s housekeeping. She is expected to +do too many different things. She may be a very good housekeeper and +a very bad cook. In a French town this would not matter, because the +whole family would take all the meals that require any serious cooking +in the nearest restaurant; but in the country the woman must do both +the housekeeping and the cooking unless she can afford to keep a cook. +She may be both a good housekeeper and a good cook, but be unable to +manage children; and here again, if she cannot afford a capable nurse, +she has to do the thing she does badly along with the things she +does well, and has her life muddled and spoilt accordingly. It is a +mercy both to her and the children that the school (which is a bit of +Communism) takes them off her hands for most of the day. It is clear +that the woman who is helped out by servants or by restaurants and +schools has a much better chance in life than the woman who is expected +to do three very different things at once. + +Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to +the country and to mankind is to bring up a family. But here again, +because there is nothing to sell, there is a very general disposition +to regard a married woman’s work as no work at all, and to take it as a +matter of course that she should not be paid for it. A man gets higher +wages than a woman because he is supposed to have a family to support; +yet if he spends the extra money in drink or betting, the woman has no +remedy against him if she is married to him. But if she is his hired +housekeeper she can recover her wages at law. And the married man is +in the same predicament. When his wife spends the housekeeping money +in drink he has no remedy, though he could have a hired housekeeper +imprisoned for theft if she did the very same thing. + +Now with these examples in mind, how can an Intelligent Woman settle +what her time is worth in money compared to her husband’s? Imagine her +husband looking at it as a matter of business, and saying “I can hire a +housekeeper for so much, and a nursemaid for so much, and a cook for so +much, and a pretty lady to keep company with for so much; and if I add +up all this the total will be what a wife is worth; but it is more than +I can afford to pay”! Imagine her hiring a husband by the hour, like a +taxi cab! + +Yet the income of the country has to be divided-up between husbands and +wives just as it has between strangers; and as most of us are husbands +and wives, any plan for dividing-up that breaks down when it is applied +to husbands and wives breaks in the middle and is no use. The old plan +of giving the man everything, and leaving the woman to get what she +could out of him, led to such abuses that it had to be altered by the +Married Women’s Property Acts, under which a rich woman with a poor +husband can keep all her property to herself whilst her husband is +imprisoned for life for not paying her taxes. But as nine families out +of ten have no property, they have to make the best of what the husband +can earn at his trade; and here we have the strangest muddles: the +wife getting nothing of her own, and the bigger children making a few +shillings a week and having the difference between it and a living wage +made up by the father’s wage; so that the people who are employing the +children cheaply are really sweating the father, who is perhaps being +sweated badly enough by his own employer. Of this, more later on. + +Try to straighten out this muddle on the plan of giving the woman and +the children and the man what they produce each by their own work, or +what their time is worth in money to the country; and you will find the +plan nonsensical and impossible. Nobody but a lunatic would attempt to +put it into practice. + + + + +9 + +TO EACH WHAT SHE DESERVES + + +The second plan we have to examine is that of giving to each person +what she deserves. Many people, especially those who are comfortably +off, think that this is what happens at present: that the industrious +and sober and thrifty are never in want, and that poverty is due to +idleness, improvidence, drink, betting, dishonesty, and bad character +generally. They can point to the fact that a laborer whose character is +bad finds it more difficult to get employment than one whose character +is good; that a farmer or country gentleman who gambles and bets +heavily, and mortgages his land to live wastefully and extravagantly, +is soon reduced to poverty; and that a man of business who is lazy and +does not attend to it becomes bankrupt. But this proves nothing but +that you cannot eat your cake and have it too: it does not prove that +your share of the cake was a fair one. It shews that certain vices and +weaknesses make us poor; but it forgets that certain other vices make +us rich. People who are hard, grasping, selfish, cruel, and always +ready to take advantage of their neighbors, become very rich if they +are clever enough not to overreach themselves. On the other hand, +people who are generous, public-spirited, friendly, and not always +thinking of the main chance, stay poor when they are born poor unless +they have extraordinary talents. Also, as things are today, some are +born poor and others are born with silver spoons in their mouths: that +is to say, they are divided into rich and poor before they are old +enough to have any character at all. The notion that our present system +distributes wealth according to merit, even roughly, may be dismissed +at once as ridiculous. Everyone can see that it generally has the +contrary effect: it makes a few idle people very rich, and a great many +hardworking people very poor. + +On this, Intelligent Lady, your first thought may be that if wealth is +not distributed according to merit, it ought to be; and that we should +at once set to work to alter our laws so that in future the good people +shall be rich in proportion to their goodness and the bad people poor +in proportion to their badness. There are several objections to this; +but the very first one settles the question for good and all. It is, +that the proposal is impossible. How are you going to measure anyone’s +merit in money? Choose any pair of human beings you like, male or +female, and see whether you can decide how much each of them should +have on her or his merits. If you live in the country, take the village +blacksmith and the village clergyman, or the village washerwoman and +the village schoolmistress, to begin with. At present the clergyman +often gets less pay than the blacksmith: it is only in some villages +he gets more. But never mind what they get at present: you are trying +whether you can set up a new order of things in which each will get +what he deserves. You need not fix a sum of money for them: all you +have to do is to settle the proportion between them. Is the blacksmith +to have as much as the clergyman? or twice as much as the clergyman? +or half as much as the clergyman? or how much more or less? It is no +use saying that one ought to have more and the other less: you must be +prepared to say exactly how much more or less in calculable proportion. + +Well, think it out. The clergyman has had a college education; but +that is not any merit on his part: he owes it to his father; so you +cannot allow him anything for that. But through it he is able to read +the New Testament in Greek; so that he can do something the blacksmith +cannot do. On the other hand, the blacksmith can make a horse-shoe, +which the parson cannot. How many verses of the Greek Testament are +worth one horse-shoe? You have only to ask the silly question to see +that nobody can answer it. + +Since measuring their merits is no use, why not try to measure their +faults? Suppose the blacksmith swears a good deal, and gets drunk +occasionally! Everybody in the village knows this; but the parson has +to keep his faults to himself. His wife knows them; but she will not +tell you what they are if she knows that you intend to cut off some of +his pay for them. You know that as he is only a mortal human being he +must have some faults; but you cannot find them out. However, suppose +he has some faults that you can find out! Suppose he has what you call +an unfortunate manner; that he is a hypocrite; that he is a snob; that +he cares more for sport and fashionable society than for religion! Does +that make him as bad as the blacksmith, or twice as bad, or twice and a +quarter as bad, or only half as bad? In other words, if the blacksmith +is to have a shilling, is the parson to have a shilling also, or is he +to have sixpence, or fivepence and one-third, or two shillings? Clearly +these are fools’ questions: the moment they bring us down from moral +generalities to business particulars it becomes plain to every sensible +person that no relation can be established between human qualities, +good or bad, and sums of money, large or small. It may seem scandalous +that a prize-fighter, for hitting another prize-fighter so hard at +Wembley that he fell down and could not rise within ten seconds, +received the same sum that was paid to the Archbishop of Canterbury for +acting as Primate of the Church of England for nine months; but none of +those who cry out against the scandal can express any better in money +the difference between the two. Not one of the persons who think that +the prize-fighter should get less than the Archbishop can say how much +less. What the prize-fighter got for his six or seven minutes boxing +would pay a judge’s salary for two years; and we are all agreed that +nothing could be more ridiculous, and that any system of distributing +wealth which leads to such absurdities must be wrong. But to suppose +that it could be changed by any possible calculation that an ounce of +archbishop or three ounces of judge is worth a pound of prize-fighter +would be sillier still. You can find out how many candles are worth a +pound of butter in the market on any particular day; but when you try +to estimate the worth of human souls the utmost you can say is that +they are all of equal value before the throne of God. And that will not +help you in the least to settle how much money they should have. You +must simply give it up, and admit that distributing money according to +merit is beyond mortal measurement and judgment. + + + + +10 + +TO EACH WHAT SHE CAN GRAB + + +The third plan: that of letting everyone have what she can lay her +hands on, would produce a world in which there would be no peace and +no security. If we were all equally strong and cunning we should all +have an equal chance; but in a world where there are children and old +people and invalids, and where able-bodied adults of the same age and +strength vary greatly in greediness and wickedness, it would never do: +we should get tired of it in no time. Even pirate crews and bands of +robbers prefer a peaceful settled understanding as to the division of +their plunder to the Kilkenny cat plan. + +Among ourselves, though robbery and violence are forbidden, we still +allow business to be conducted on the principle of letting everyone +make what he can out of it without considering anyone but himself. A +shopkeeper or a coal merchant may not pick your pocket; but he may +overcharge you as much as he likes. Everyone is free in business to get +as much and give as little for his money as he can induce his customers +to put up with. House rent can be raised without any regard to the cost +of the houses or the poverty of the tenant. But this freedom produces +such bad results that new laws are continually being made to restrain +it; and even when it is a necessary part of our freedom to spend our +money and use our possessions as seems best to us, we still have to +settle how much money and what possessions we should be given to start +with. This distribution must be made according to some law or other. +Anarchy (absence of law) will not work. We must go on with our search +for a righteous and practicable law. + + + + +11 + +OLIGARCHY + + +The fourth plan is to take one person in every ten (say), and make +her rich without working by making the other nine work hard and long +every day, giving them only enough of what they make to keep them +alive and enable them to bring up families to continue their slavery +when they grow old and die. This is roughly what happens at present, +as one-tenth of the English people own nine-tenths of all the property +in the country, whilst most of the other nine-tenths have no property, +and live from week to week on wages barely sufficient to support them +in a very poor way. The advantage claimed for this plan is that it +provides us with a gentry: that is, with a class of rich people able +to cultivate themselves by an expensive education; so that they become +qualified to govern the country and make and maintain its laws; to +organize and officer the army for national defence; to patronize and +keep alive learning, science, art, literature, philosophy, religion, +and all the institutions that distinguish great civilizations from mere +groups of villages; to raise magnificent buildings, dress splendidly, +impose awe on the unruly, and set an example of good manners and fine +living. Most important of all, as men of business think, by giving +them much more than they need spend, we enable them to save those +great sums of spare money that are called capital, and are spent in +making railways, mines, factories full of machinery, and all the other +contrivances by which wealth is produced in great quantities. + +This plan, which is called Oligarchy, is the old English plan of +dividing us into gentry living by property and common people living +by work: the plan of the few rich and the many poor. It has worked +for a long time, and is still working. And it is evident that if the +incomes of the rich were taken from them and divided among the poor as +we stand at present, the poor would be only very little less poor; the +supply of capital would cease because nobody could afford to save; +the country houses would fall into ruins; and learning and science +and art and literature and all the rest of what we call culture would +perish. That is why so many people support the present system, and +stand by the gentry although they themselves are poor. They see that +if ten women can produce only £110 a year each by their labor, it may +be wiser for nine of them to be content with £50 apiece, and make the +other one an educated lady, mistress, and ruler by giving her £500 a +year without any obligation to work at all, or any inducement to work +except the hope of finding how to make their work more fruitful for her +own benefit, rather than to insist on having £110 a year each. Though +we make this sort of arrangement at present because we are forced to, +and indeed mostly without knowing that we are making it, yet it is +conceivable that if we understood what we were doing and were free to +carry it out or not as we thought best, we might still do it for the +sake of having a gentry to keep up finer things in the world than a +miserable crowd all equally poor, and all tied to primitive manual +labor. + +But the abuses that arise from this plan are so terrible that the world +is becoming set against it. If we decide to go on with it, the first +step is to settle who is to be the tenth person: the lady. How is that +to be decided? True, we could begin by drawing lots; and after that +the gentry could intermarry and be succeeded by their firstborns. But +the mischief of it is that when we at last got our gentry established +we should have no guarantee that they would do any of the things we +intended them to do and paid them to do. With the best intentions, the +gentry govern the country very badly because they are so far removed +from the common people that they do not understand their needs. They +use their power to make themselves still richer by forcing the common +people to work still harder and accept still less. They spend enormous +sums on sport and entertainment, gluttony and ostentation, and very +little on science and art and learning. They produce poverty on a vast +scale by withdrawing labor from production to waste it in superfluous +menial service. They either shirk military duties or turn the army into +a fashionable retinue for themselves and an instrument of oppression at +home and conquest abroad. They corrupt the teaching in the universities +and schools to glorify themselves and hide their misdeeds. They do +the same with the Church. They try to keep the common people poor and +ignorant and servile so as to make themselves more indispensable. At +last their duties have to be taken out of their hands and discharged by +Parliament, by the Civil Service, by the War Office and the Admiralty, +by city corporations, by Poor Law Guardians, by County and Parish and +District Councils, by salaried servants and Boards of paid directors, +by societies and institutions of all kinds depending on taxation or on +public subscription. + +When this occurs, as it actually has occurred, all the cultural and +political reasons for the maintenance of a gentry vanish. It always +does occur when city life grows up and takes the place of country life. +When a peeress resides on her estates in a part of the country where +life is still very simple, and the nearest thing to a town is a village +ten miles from the railway station, the people look to her ladyship for +everything that is not produced by their daily toil. She represents +all the splendor and greatness and romance of civilization, and does a +good deal for them which they would not know how to do for themselves. +In this way a Highland clan, before Scotland became civilized, always +had a chief. The clansmen willingly gave him the lion’s share of such +land and goods as they could come by, or of the plunder they took in +their raids. They did this because they could not fight successfully +without a leader, and could not live together without a lawgiver. Their +chief was to them what Moses was to the Israelites in the desert. The +Highland chief was practically a king in his clan, just as the peeress +is a queen on her estates. Loyalty to him was instinctive. + +But when a Highland chief walked into a city he had less power than the +first police constable he met: in fact it sometimes happened that the +police constable took him in charge, and the city authorities hanged +him. When the peeress leaves her estate and goes up to London for the +season, she becomes a nobody except to her personal acquaintances. +Everything that she does for her people in the country is done in +London by paid public servants of all sorts; and when she leaves the +country and settles in America or on the Continent to evade British +income tax she is not missed in London: everything goes on just as +before. But her tenants, who have to earn the money she spends abroad, +get nothing by her, and revile her as a fugitive and an Absentee. + +Small wonder then that Oligarchy is no longer consented to willingly. +A great deal of the money the oligarchs get is now taken back from +them by taxation and death duties; so that the old families are being +reduced very rapidly to the level of ordinary citizens; and when their +estates are gone, as they will be after a few generations more of our +present heavy death duties, their titles will only make their poverty +ridiculous. Already many of their most famous country houses are +occupied either by rich business families of quite ordinary quality, +or by Co-operative Societies as Convalescent Homes or places for +conference and recreation, or as hotels or schools or lunatic asylums. + +You must therefore face the fact that in a civilization like ours, +where most of the population lives in cities; where railways, motor +cars, posts, telegraphs, telephones, gramophones and radio have brought +city ways and city culture into the country; and where even the +smallest village has its parish meeting and its communal policeman, the +old reasons for making a few people very rich whilst all the others +work hard for a bare subsistence have passed away. The plan no longer +works, even in the Highlands. + +Still, there is one reason left for maintaining a class of excessively +rich people at the expense of the rest; and business men consider it +the strongest reason of all. That reason is that it provides capital +by giving some people more money than they can easily spend; so that +they can save money (capital is saved money) without any privation. The +argument is that if income were more equally distributed, we should all +have so little that we should spend all our incomes, and nothing would +be saved to make machinery and build factories and construct railways +and dig mines and so forth. Now it is certainly necessary to high +civilization that these savings should be made; but it would be hard to +imagine a more wasteful way of bringing it about. + +To begin with, it is very important that there should be no saving +until there has been sufficient spending: spending comes first. A +nation which makes steam engines before its little children have enough +milk to make their legs strong enough to carry them is making a fool’s +choice. Yet this is just what we do by this plan of making a few rich +and the masses poor. Again, even if we put the steam engine before +the milk, our plan gives us no security that we shall get the steam +engine, or, if we get it, that it will be set up in our country. Just +as a great deal of the money that was given to the country gentlemen of +England on the chance of their encouraging art and science was spent +by them on cock-fighting and horse-racing; so a shocking proportion of +the money we give our oligarchs on the chance of their investing it as +capital is spent by them in self-indulgence. Of the very rich it may +be said that they do not begin to save until they can spend no more, +and that they are continually inventing new and expensive extravagances +that would have been impossible a hundred years ago. When their income +outruns their extravagance so far that they must use it as capital or +throw it away, there is nothing to prevent them investing it in South +America, in South Africa, in Russia, or in China, though we cannot get +our own slums cleaned up for want of capital kept in and applied to our +own country. Hundreds of millions of pounds are sent abroad every year +in this way; and we complain of the competition of foreigners whilst +we allow our capitalists to provide them at our expense with the very +machinery with which they are taking our industries from us. + +Of course the capitalists plead that we are none the poorer, because +the interest on their capital comes back into this country from the +countries in which they have invested it; and as they invest it abroad +only because they get more interest abroad than at home, they assure +us that we are actually the richer for their export of capital, +because it enables them to spend more at home and thus give British +workers more employment. But we have no guarantee that they will spend +it at home: they are as likely to spend it in Monte Carlo, Madeira, +Egypt, or where not? And when they do spend it at home and give us +employment, we have to ask what sort of employment? When our farms and +mills and cloth factories are all ruined by our importing our food and +cloth from abroad instead of making them ourselves, it is not enough +for our capitalists to shew us that instead of the farms we have +the best golf courses in the world; instead of mills and factories +splendid hotels; instead of engineers and shipwrights and bakers and +carpenters and weavers, waiters and chambermaids, valets and ladies’ +maids, gamekeepers and butlers and so forth, all better paid and more +elegantly dressed than the productive workers they have replaced. We +have to consider what sort of position we shall be in when our workers +are as incapable of supporting themselves and us as the idle rich +themselves. Suppose the foreign countries stop our supplies either +by a revolution followed by flat repudiation of their capitalistic +debts, as in Russia, or by taxing and supertaxing incomes derived from +investments, what will become of us then? What is becoming of us now +as taxation of income spreads more and more in foreign countries? The +English servant may still be able to boast that England can put a more +brilliant polish on a multi-millionaire’s boots than any foreigner +can; but what use will that be to us when the multi-millionaire is an +expropriated or taxed-out pauper with no boots to have polished? + +We shall have to go into this question of capital more particularly +later on; but for the purposes of this chapter it is enough to shew +that the plan of depending on oligarchy for our national capital is +not only wasteful on the face of it, but dangerous with a danger that +increases with every political development in the world. The only plea +left for it is that there is no other way of doing it. But that will +not hold water for a moment. The Government can, and to a considerable +extent actually does, check personal expenditure and enforce the use +of part of our incomes as capital, far less capriciously and more +efficiently than our oligarchy does. It can nationalize banking, as we +shall see presently. This leaves oligarchy without its sole economic +excuse. + + + + +12 + +DISTRIBUTION BY CLASS + + +Now for the fifth plan, which is, that though everybody should work, +society should be divided into as many classes as there are different +sorts of work, and that the different classes should receive different +payment for their work: for instance, the dustmen and scavengers +and scullery-maids and charwomen and ragpickers should receive less +than the doctors and clergymen and teachers and opera singers and +professional ladies generally, and that these should receive less than +the judges and prime ministers and kings and queens. + +You will tell me that this is just what we have at present. Certainly +it happens so in many cases; but there is no law that people employed +in different sorts of work should be paid more or less than oneanother. +We are accustomed to think that schoolmistresses and clergymen and +doctors, being educated ladies and gentlemen, must be paid more than +illiterate persons who work with their hands for weekly wages; but +at the present time an engine driver, making no pretension to be a +gentleman, or to have had a college education, is paid more than many +clergymen and some doctors; and a schoolmistress or governess is +very lucky indeed when she is as well off as a firstrate cook. Some +of our most famous physicians have had to struggle pitiably against +insufficient means until they were forty or fifty; and many a parson +has brought up a family on a stipend of seventy pounds a year. You must +therefore be on your guard against the common mistake of supposing +that we need nowadays pay more for gentility and education than for +bodily strength and natural cunning, or that we always do pay more. +Very learned men often make little money or none; and gentility without +property may prove rather a disadvantage than otherwise to a man who +wants to earn a living. Most of the great fortunes are made in trade +or finance, often by men without any advantages of birth or education. +Some of the great poverties have been those of saints, or of geniuses +whose greatness was not recognized until they were dead. + +You must also get rid of the notion (if you have it: if not, forgive +me for suspecting you of it) that it costs some workers more than +others to live. The same allowance of food that will keep a laborer in +health will keep a king. Many laborers eat and drink much more than +the King does; and all of them wear out their clothes much faster. +Our King is not rich as riches go nowadays. Mr Rockefeller probably +regards His Majesty as a poor man, because Mr Rockefeller not only has +much more money, but is under no obligation to spend it in keeping up +a great establishment: that is, spending it on other people. But if +you could find out how much the King and Mr Rockefeller spend on their +own personal needs and satisfaction, you would find it came to no more +than is now spent by any other two persons in reasonably comfortable +circumstances. If you doubled the King’s allowance he would not eat +twice as much, drink twice as much, sleep twice as soundly, build a +new house twice as big as Buckingham Palace, or marry another queen +and set up two families instead of one. The late Mr Carnegie, when +his thousands grew to hundreds of thousands and his hundreds of +thousands to millions, gave his money away in heaps because he already +had everything he cared for that money could buy for himself or his +household. + +Then, it may be asked, why do we give some men more than they need and +some less? The answer is that for the most part we do not give it to +them: they get it because we have not arranged what anyone shall get, +but have left it to chance and grab. But in the case of the King and +other public dignitaries we have arranged that they shall have handsome +incomes because we intend that they shall be specially respected and +deferred to. Yet experience shews that authority is not proportionate +to income. No person in Europe is approached with such awe as the Pope; +but nobody thinks of the Pope as a rich man: sometimes his parents and +brothers and sisters are very humble people, and he himself is poorer +than his tailor or grocer. The captain of a liner sits at table every +day with scores of people who could afford to throw his pay into the +sea and not miss it; yet his authority is so absolute that the most +insolent passenger dares not treat him disrespectfully. The village +rector may not have a fifth of the income of his farmer churchwarden. +The colonel of a regiment may be the poorest man at the mess table: +everyone of his subalterns may have far more than double his income; +but he is their superior in authority for all that. Money is not the +secret of command. + +Those who exercise personal authority among us are by no means our +richest people. Millionaires in expensive cars obey policemen. In our +social scale noblemen take precedence of country gentlemen, country +gentlemen take precedence of professional men, professional men of +traders, wholesale traders of retail traders, retail traders of skilled +workmen, and skilled workmen of laborers; but if social precedence +were according to income all this would be completely upset; for the +tradesmen would take precedence of everybody; and the Pope and the King +would have to touch their hats to distillers and pork packers. + +When we speak of the power of the rich, we are speaking of a very real +thing, because a rich man can discharge anyone in his employment who +displeases him, and can take away his custom from any tradesman who is +disrespectful to him. But the advantage a man gets by his power to ruin +another is a quite different thing from the authority that is necessary +to maintain law and order in society. You may obey the highwayman +who puts a pistol to your head and demands your money or your life. +Similarly you may obey the landlord who orders you to pay more rent or +take yourself and your brats into the street. But that is not obedience +to authority: it is submission to a threat. Real authority has nothing +to do with money; and it is in fact exercised by persons who, from the +King to the village constable, are poorer than many of the people who +obey their orders. + + + + +13 + +LAISSER-FAIRE + + +And now, what about leaving things just as they are? + +That is just what most people vote for doing. Even when they dont like +what they are accustomed to, they dread change, lest it should make +matters worse. They are what they call Conservative, though it is only +fair to add that no Conservative statesman in his senses ever pretends +(except perhaps occasionally at election times, when nobody ever tells +the truth) that you can conserve things by simply letting them alone. + +It seems the easiest plan and the safest; but as a matter of hard fact +it is not only difficult but impossible. When Joshua told the sun to +stand still on Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, for a +trifle of twentyfour hours, he was modest in comparison with those who +imagine that the world will stay put if they take care not to wake it +up. And he knew he was asking for a miracle. + +It is not that things as they are are so bad that nobody who knows how +bad they are will agree to leave them as they are; for the reply to +that may be that if they dont like them they must lump them, because +there seems to be no way of changing them. The real difficulty is that +things will not stay as they are, no matter how careful you are not +to meddle with them. You might as well give up dusting your rooms and +expect to find them this time next year just as they are now. You +might as well leave the cat asleep on the hearthrug and assume that you +would find her there, and not in the dairy, when you came back from +church. + +The truth is that things change much faster and more dangerously +when they are let alone than when they are carefully looked after. +Within the last hundred and fifty years the most astounding changes +have taken place in this very business that we are dealing with (the +production and distribution of the national income) just because what +was everybody’s business was nobody’s business, and it was let run +wild. The introduction of machinery driven by steam, and later on of +electric power distributed from house to house like water or gas, and +the invention of engines that not only draw trains along the ground +and ships over and under the sea, but carry us and our goods flying +through the air, has increased our power to produce wealth and get +through our work easily and quickly to such an extent that there is no +longer any need for any of us to be poor. A labor-saving house with gas +stoves, electric light, a telephone, a vacuum cleaner, and a wireless +set, gives only a faint notion of a modern factory full of automatic +machines. If we each took our turn and did our bit in peace as we +had to do during the war, all the necessary feeding and clothing and +housing and lighting could be done handsomely by less than half our +present day’s work, leaving the other half free for art and science and +learning and playing and roaming and experimenting and recreation of +all sorts. + +This is a new state of things: a change that has come upon us when we +thought we were leaving things just as they were. And the consequence +of our not attending to it and guiding and arranging it for the good of +the country is that it has actually left the poor much worse off than +they used to be when there was no machinery at all, and people had to +be more careful of pence than they now are of shillings; whilst the +rich have become rich out of all reason, and the people who should be +employed in making bread for the hungry and clothes for the naked, or +building houses for the homeless, are wasting their labor in providing +service and luxuries for idle rich people who are not in the old sense +of the words either gentle or noble, and whose idleness and frivolity +and extravagance set a most corrupting moral example. + +Also it has produced two and a half revolutions in political power, +by which the employers have overthrown the landed gentry, the +financiers have overthrown the employers, and the Trade Unions have +half overthrown the financiers. I shall explain this fully later on; +meanwhile, you have seen enough of its effects in the rise of the +Labor Party to take my word for it that politics will not stand still +any more than industry merely because millions of timid old-fashioned +people vote at every election for what they call Conservatism: that is, +for shutting our eyes and opening our mouths. + +If King Alfred had been told that the time would come in England when +one idle family would have five big houses and a steam yacht to live +in whilst hard-working people were living six in a room, and half +starving at that, he would have said that God would never allow such +things to happen except in a very wicked nation. Well, we have left God +out of the question and allowed it to happen, not through wickedness, +but through letting things alone and fancying that they would let +themselves alone. + +Have you noticed, by the way, that we no longer speak of letting things +alone in the old-fashioned way? We speak of letting them slide; and +this is a great advance in good sense; for it shews that we at last see +that they slide instead of staying put; and it implies that letting +them slide is a feckless sort of conduct. So you must rule out once for +all the notion of leaving things as they are in the expectation that +they will stay where they are. They wont. All we can do in that line +is to sit idly and wonder what will happen next. And this is not like +sitting on the bank of the stream waiting for the water to go by. It is +like sitting idly in a carriage when the horse is running away. You can +excuse it by saying “What else can I do?”; but your impotence will not +avert a smash. People in that predicament must all think hard of some +way of getting control of the horse, and meanwhile do all they can to +keep the carriage right side up and out of the ditch. + +The policy of letting things alone, in the practical sense that the +Government should never interfere with business or go into business +itself, is called Laisser-faire by economists and politicians. It has +broken down so completely in practice that it is now discredited; but +it was all the fashion in politics a hundred years ago, and is still +influentially advocated by men of business and their backers who +naturally would like to be allowed to make money as they please without +regard to the interests of the public. + + + + +14 + +HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? + + +We seem now to have disposed of all the plans except the Socialist one. +Before grappling with that, may I call your attention to something that +happened in our examination of most of the others. We were trying to +find out a sound plan of distributing money; and every time we proposed +to distribute it according to personal merit or achievement or dignity +or individual quality of any sort the plan reduced itself to absurdity. +When we tried to establish a relation between money and work we were +beaten: it could not be done. When we tried to establish a relation +between money and character we were beaten. When we tried to establish +a relation between money and the dignity that gives authority we were +beaten. And when we gave it up as a bad job and thought of leaving +things as they are we found that they would not stay as they are. + +Let us then consider for a moment what any plan must do to be +acceptable. And first, as everybody except the Franciscan Friars and +the Poor Clares will say that no plan will be acceptable unless it +abolishes poverty (and even Franciscan poverty must be voluntary and +not compelled) let us study poverty for a moment. + +It is generally agreed that poverty is a very uncomfortable misfortune +for the individual who happens to be poor. But poor people, when they +are not suffering from acute hunger and severe cold, are not more +unhappy than rich people: they are often much happier. You can easily +find people who are ten times as rich at sixty as they were at twenty; +but not one of them will tell you that they are ten times as happy. +All the thoughtful ones will assure you that happiness and unhappiness +are constitutional, and have nothing to do with money. Money can cure +hunger: it cannot cure unhappiness. Food can satisfy the appetite, but +not the soul. A famous German Socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle, said that +what beat him in his efforts to stir up the poor to revolt against +poverty was their wantlessness. They were not, of course, content: +nobody is; but they were not discontented enough to take any serious +trouble to change their condition. It may seem a fine thing to a poor +woman to have a large house, plenty of servants, dozens of dresses, +a lovely complexion and beautifully dressed hair. But the rich woman +who has these things often spends a good deal of her time travelling +in rough places to get away from them. To have to spend two or three +hours a day washing and dressing and brushing and combing and changing +and being messed about generally by a lady’s maid is not on the face +of it a happier lot than to have only five minutes to spend on such +fatigues, as the soldiers call them. Servants are so troublesome that +many ladies can hardly talk about anything else when they get together. +A drunken man is happier than a sober one: that is why unhappy people +take to drink. There are drugs that will make you ecstatically happy +whilst ruining your body and soul. It is our quality that matters: take +care of that, and our happiness will take care of itself. People of +the right sort are never easy until they get things straight; but they +are too healthy and too much taken up with their occupations to bother +about happiness. Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in +the Sermon on the Mount: the objection to it is not that it makes +people unhappy, but that it degrades them; and the fact that they can +be quite as happy in their degradation as their betters are in their +exaltation makes it worse. When Shakespear’s king said + + Then happy low, lie down: + Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, + +he forgot that happiness is no excuse for lowness. The divine spark in +us flashes up against being bribed to submit to degradation by mere +happiness, which a pig or a drunkard can achieve. + +Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the +poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in +which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade +a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, +which is only a large neighborhood. Its bad effects cannot be escaped +by the rich. When poverty produces outbreaks of virulent infectious +disease, as it always does sooner or later, the rich catch the disease +and see their children die of it. When it produces crime and violence +the rich go in fear of both, and are put to a good deal of expense +to protect their persons and property. When it produces bad manners +and bad language the children of the rich pick them up no matter how +carefully they are secluded; and such seclusion as they get does them +more harm than good. If poor and pretty young women find, as they do, +that they can make more money by vice than by honest work, they will +poison the blood of rich young men who, when they marry, will infect +their wives and children, and cause them all sorts of bodily troubles, +sometimes ending in disfigurement and blindness and death, and always +doing them more or less mischief. The old notion that people can “keep +themselves to themselves” and not be touched by what is happening to +their neighbors, or even to the people who live a hundred miles off, +is a most dangerous mistake. The saying that we are members one of +another is not a mere pious formula to be repeated in church without +any meaning: it is a literal truth; for though the rich end of the town +can avoid living with the poor end, it cannot avoid dying with it when +the plague comes. People will be able to keep themselves to themselves +as much as they please when they have made an end of poverty; but until +then they will not be able to shut out the sights and sounds and smells +of poverty from their daily walks, nor to feel sure from day to day +that its most violent and fatal evils will not reach them through their +strongest police guards. + +Besides, as long as poverty remains possible we shall never be sure +that it will not overtake ourselves. If we dig a pit for others we may +fall into it: if we leave a precipice unfenced our children may fall +over it when they are playing. We see the most innocent and respectable +families falling into the unfenced pit of poverty every day; and how do +we know that it will not be our turn next? + +It is perhaps the greatest folly of which a nation can be guilty to +attempt to use poverty as a sort of punishment for offences that it +does not send people to prison for. It is easy to say of a lazy man +“Oh, let him be poor: it serves him right for being lazy: it will +teach him a lesson”. In saying so we are ourselves too lazy to think +a little before we lay down the law. We cannot afford to have poor +people anyhow, whether they be lazy or busy, drunken or sober, virtuous +or vicious, thrifty or careless, wise or foolish. If they deserve +to suffer let them be made to suffer in some other way; for mere +poverty will not hurt them half as much as it will hurt their innocent +neighbors. It is a public nuisance as well as a private misfortune. Its +toleration is a national crime. + +We must therefore take it as an indispensable condition of a sound +distribution of wealth that everyone must have a share sufficient to +keep her or him from poverty. This is not altogether new. Ever since +the days of Queen Elizabeth it has been the law of England that nobody +must be abandoned to destitution. If anyone, however undeserving, +applies for relief to the Guardians of the Poor as a destitute person, +the Guardians must feed and clothe and house that person. They may do +it reluctantly and unkindly; they may attach to the relief the most +unpleasant and degrading conditions they can think of; they may set +the pauper to hateful useless work if he is able-bodied, and have him +sent to prison if he refuses to do it; the shelter they give him may be +that of a horrible general workhouse in which the old and the young, +the sound and the diseased, the innocent girl and lad and the hardened +prostitute and tramp are herded together promiscuously to contaminate +one another; they can attach a social stigma to the relief by taking +away the pauper’s vote (if he has one), and making him incapable of +filling certain public offices or being elected to certain public +authorities; they may, in short, drive the deserving and respectable +poor to endure any extremity rather than ask for relief; but they +must relieve the destitute willy nilly if they do ask for it. To that +extent the law of England is at its root a Communistic law. All the +harshnesses and wickednesses with which it is carried out are gross +mistakes, because instead of saving the country from the degradation of +poverty they actually make poverty more degrading than it need be; but +still, the principle is there. Queen Elizabeth said that nobody must +die of starvation and exposure. We, after the terrible experience we +have had of the effects of poverty on the whole nation, rich or poor, +must go further and say that nobody must be poor. As we divide-up our +wealth day by day the first charge on it must be enough for everybody +to be fairly respectable and well-to-do. If they do anything or leave +anything undone that gives ground for saying that they do not deserve +it, let them be restrained from doing it or compelled to do it in +whatever way we restrain or compel evildoers of any other sort; but +do not let them, as poor people, make everyone else suffer for their +shortcomings. + +Granted that people should not on any account be allowed to be poor, +we have still to consider whether they should be allowed to be rich. +When poverty is gone, shall we tolerate luxury and extravagance? This +is a poser, because it is much easier to say what poverty is than +what luxury is. When a woman is hungry, or ragged, or has not at +least one properly furnished room all to herself to sleep in, then +she is clearly suffering from poverty. When the infant mortality in +one district is much greater than in another; when the average age of +death for fully grown persons in it falls far short of the scriptural +threescore-and-ten; when the average weight of the children who survive +is below that reached by well-fed and well-cared-for children, then +you can say confidently that the people in that district are suffering +from poverty. But suffering from riches is not so easily measured. That +rich people do suffer a great deal is plain enough to anyone who has +an intimate knowledge of their lives. They are so unhealthy that they +are always running after cures and surgical operations of one sort or +another. When they are not really ill they imagine they are. They are +worried by their property, by their servants, by their poor relations, +by their investments, by the need for keeping up their social position, +and, when they have several children, by the impossibility of leaving +these children enough to enable them to live as they have been brought +up to live; for we must not forget that if a married couple with fifty +thousand a year have five children, they can leave only ten thousand +a year to each after bringing them up to live at the rate of fifty +thousand, and launching them into the sort of society that lives at +that rate, the result being that unless these children can make rich +marriages they live beyond their incomes (not knowing how to live +more cheaply) and are presently head over ears in debt. They hand on +their costly habits and rich friends and debts to their children with +very little else; so that the trouble becomes worse and worse from +generation to generation; and this is how we meet everywhere with +ladies and gentlemen who have no means of keeping up their position, +and are therefore much more miserable than the common poor. + +Perhaps you know some well-off families who do not seem to suffer from +their riches. They do not overeat themselves; they find occupations +to keep themselves in health; they do not worry about their position; +they put their money into safe investments and are content with a low +rate of interest; and they bring up their children to live simply and +do useful work. But this means that they do not live like rich people +at all, and might therefore just as well have ordinary incomes. The +general run of rich people do not know what to do with themselves; and +the end of it is that they have to join a round of social duties and +pleasures mostly manufactured by West End shopkeepers, and so tedious +that at the end of a fashionable season the rich are more worn out +than their servants and tradesmen. They may have no taste for sport; +but they are forced by their social position to go to the great race +meetings and ride to hounds. They may have no taste for music; but they +have to go to the Opera and to the fashionable concerts. They may not +dress as they please nor do what they please. Because they are rich +they must do what all the other rich people are doing, there being +nothing else for them to do except work, which would immediately reduce +them to the condition of ordinary people. So, as they cannot do what +they like, they must contrive to like what they do, and imagine that +they are having a splendid time of it when they are in fact being bored +by their amusements, humbugged by their doctors, pillaged by their +tradesmen, and forced to console themselves unamiably for being snubbed +by richer people by snubbing poorer people. + +To escape this boredom, the able and energetic spirits go into +Parliament or into the diplomatic service or into the army, or manage +and develop their estates and investments instead of leaving them to +solicitors and stockbrokers and agents, or explore unknown countries +with great hardship and risk to themselves, with the result that their +lives are not different from the lives of the people who have to do +these things for a living. Thus riches are thrown away on them; and +if it were not for the continual dread of falling into poverty which +haunts us all at present they would refuse to be bothered with much +property. The only people who get any special satisfaction out of +being richer than others are those who enjoy being idle, and like to +fancy that they are better than their neighbors and be treated as if +they were. But no country can afford to pamper snobbery. Laziness +and vanity are not virtues to be encouraged: they are vices to be +suppressed. Besides, the desire to be idle and lazy and able to order +poor people about could not be satisfied, even if it were right to +satisfy it, if there were no poor people to order about. What we should +have would be, not poor people and rich people, but simply people with +enough and people with more than enough. And that brings up at last the +knotty question, what is enough? + +In Shakespear’s famous play, King Lear and his daughters have an +argument about this. His idea of enough is having a hundred knights to +wait on him. His eldest daughter thinks that fifty would be enough. +Her sister does not see what he wants with any knights at all when her +servants can do all he needs for him. Lear retorts that if she cuts +life down to what cannot be done without, she had better throw away her +fine clothes, as she would be warmer in a blanket. And to this she has +no answer. Nobody can say what is enough. What is enough for a gipsy is +not enough for a lady; and what is enough for one lady leaves another +very discontented. When once you get above the poverty line there is +no reason why you should stop there. With modern machinery we can +produce much more than enough to feed, clothe, and house us decently. +There is no end to the number of new things we can get into the habit +of using, or to the improvements we can make in the things we already +use. Our grandmothers managed to get on without gas cookers, electric +light, motor cars, and telephones; but today these things are no longer +curiosities and luxuries: they are matter-of-course necessities; and +nobody who cannot afford them is considered well-off. + +In the same way the standard of education and culture has risen. +Nowadays a parlormaid as ignorant as Queen Victoria was when she came +to the throne would be classed as mentally defective. As Queen Victoria +managed to get on very well in spite of her ignorance it cannot be +said that the knowledge in which the parlormaid has the advantage of +her is a necessity of civilized life any more than a telephone is; but +civilized life and highly civilized life are different: what is enough +for one is not enough for the other. Take a half-civilized girl into a +house; and though she may be stronger and more willing and goodnatured +than many highly civilized girls are, she will smash everything that +will not stand the roughest handling. She will be unable to take or +send written messages; and as to understanding or using such civilized +contrivances as watches, baths, sewing machines, and electric heaters +and sweepers, you will be fortunate if you can induce her to turn off a +tap instead of leaving the water running. And your civilized maid who +can be trusted with all these things would be like a bull in a china +shop if she were let loose in the laboratories where highly trained +scientific workers use machines and instruments of such delicacy +that their movements are as invisible as that of the hour hands of +our clocks, handling and controlling poisons and explosives of the +most dangerous kind; or in the operating rooms where surgeons have +to do things in which a slip of the hand might prove fatal. If every +housemaid had the delicacy of touch, the knowledge, and the patience +that are needed in the laboratories and operating theatres (where they +are unfortunately not always forthcoming), the most wonderful changes +could be made in our housekeeping: we could not only have the present +work done much more quickly, perfectly, and cleanly, but we could do a +great deal that is now quite impossible. + +Now it costs more to educate and train a laboratory worker than a +housemaid, and more to train a housemaid than to catch a savage. What +is enough in one case is not enough in another. Therefore to ask baldly +how much is enough to live on is to ask an unanswerable question. It +all depends on what sort of life you propose to live. What is enough +for the life of a tramp is not enough for a highly civilized life, with +its personal refinements and its atmosphere of music, art, literature, +religion, science, and philosophy. Of these things we can never have +enough: there is always something new to be discovered and something +old to be bettered. In short, there is no such thing as enough +civilization, though there may be enough of any particular thing like +bread or boots at any particular moment. If being poor means wanting +something more and something better than we have--and it is hard to +say what else feeling poor means--then we shall always feel poor no +matter how much money we have, because, though we may have enough of +this thing or of that thing, we shall never have enough of everything. +Consequently if it be proposed to give some people enough, and others +more than enough, the scheme will break down; for all the money will +be used up before anybody will be content. Nobody will stop asking +for more for the sake of setting up and maintaining a fancy class of +pampered persons who, after all, will be even more discontented than +their poorer neighbors. + +The only way out of this difficulty is to give everybody the same, +which is the Socialist solution of the distribution problem. But you +may tell me that you are prepared to swallow this difficulty rather +than swallow Socialism. Most of us begin like that. What converts us +is the discovery of the terrible array of evils around us and dangers +in front of us which we dare not ignore. You may be unable to see any +beauty in equality of income. But the least idealistic woman can see +the disasters of inequality when the evils with which she is herself +in daily conflict are traced to it; and I am now going to shew you the +connexion. + + + + +15 + +WHAT WE SHOULD BUY FIRST + + +To test the effects of our unequal division of the nation’s income +on our national institutions and on the life and prosperity of the +whole people we must view the industry of the country, and see how +it is affected by inequality of income. We must view one by one the +institution of marriage, the working of the courts of justice, the +honesty of our Houses of Parliament, the spiritual independence of +the Church, the usefulness of our schools, and the quality of our +newspapers, and consider how each of them is dependent on the way in +which money is distributed. + +Beginning with industry, we are at once plunged into what we call +political economy, to distinguish it from the domestic economy with +which we are all only too familiar. Men find political economy a dry +and difficult subject: they shirk it as they shirk housekeeping; yet +it means nothing more abstruse than the art of managing a country as a +housekeeper manages a house. If the men shirk it the women must tackle +it. The nation has a certain income to manage on just as a housekeeper +has; and the problem is how to spend that income to the greatest +general advantage. + +Now the first thing a housekeeper has to settle is what things are +wanted most, and what things can be done without at a pinch. This +means that the housekeeper must settle the order in which things are +desirable. For example, if, when there is not enough food in the +house, she goes out and spends all her money on a bottle of scent +and an imitation pearl necklace, she will be called a vain and silly +woman and a bad mother. But a stateswoman would call her simply a bad +economist: one who does not know what should come first when money has +to be spent. No woman is fit to have charge of a household who has not +sense and self-control enough to see that food and clothing and housing +and firing come first, and that bottles of scent and pearl necklaces, +imitation or real, come a long way afterwards. Even in the jeweller’s +shop a wrist watch comes before a necklace as being more useful. I am +not saying that pretty things are not useful: they are very useful and +quite right in their proper order; but they do not come first. A Bible +may be a very proper present to give to a child; but to give a starving +child a Bible instead of a piece of bread and a cup of milk would be +the act of a lunatic. A woman’s mind is more wonderful than her flesh; +but if her flesh is not fed her mind will perish, whereas if you feed +her flesh her mind will take care of itself and of her flesh as well. +Food comes first. + +Think of the whole country as a big household, and the whole nation as +a big family, which is what they really are. What do we see? Half-fed, +badly clothed, abominably housed children all over the place; and the +money that should go to feed and clothe and house them properly being +spent in millions on bottles of scent, pearl necklaces, pet dogs, +racing motor cars, January strawberries that taste like corks, and all +sorts of extravagances. One sister of the national family has a single +pair of leaking boots that keep her sniffing all through the winter, +and no handkerchief to wipe her nose with. Another has forty pairs of +high-heeled shoes and dozens of handkerchiefs. A little brother is +trying to grow up on a penn’orth of food a day, and is breaking his +mother’s heart and wearing out her patience by asking continually for +more, whilst a big brother, spending five or six pounds on his dinner +at a fashionable hotel, followed by supper at a night club, is in the +doctor’s hands because he is eating and drinking too much. + +Now this is shockingly bad political economy. When thoughtless people +are asked to explain it they say “Oh, the woman with the forty shoes +and the man drinking at the night club got their money from their +father who made a fortune by speculating in rubber; and the girl with +the broken boots, and the troublesome boy whose mother has just clouted +his head, are only riffraff from the slums”. That is true; but it does +not alter the fact that the nation that spends money on champagne +before it has provided enough milk for its babies, or gives dainty +meals to Sealyham terriers and Alsatian wolf-hounds and Pekingese dogs +whilst the infant mortality rate shews that its children are dying by +thousands from insufficient nourishment, is a badly managed, silly, +vain, stupid, ignorant nation, and will go to the bad in the long run +no matter how hard it tries to conceal its real condition from itself +by counting the pearl necklaces and Pekingese dogs as wealth, and +thinking itself three times as rich as before when all the pet dogs +have litters of six puppies a couple. The only way in which a nation +can make itself wealthy and prosperous is by good housekeeping: that +is, by providing for its wants in the order of their importance, and +allowing no money to be wasted on whims and luxuries until necessities +have been thoroughly served. + +But it is no use blaming the owners of the dogs. All these mischievous +absurdities exist, not because any sane person ever wanted them to +exist, but because they must occur whenever some families are very much +richer than others. The rich man, who, as husband and father, drags +the woman with him, begins as every one else begins, by buying food, +clothing, and a roof to shelter them. The poor man does the same. But +when the poor man has spent all he can afford on these necessaries, +he is still short of them: his food is insufficient; his clothes +are old and dirty; his lodging is a single room or part of one, and +unwholesome even at that. But when the rich man has fed himself, and +dressed himself, and housed himself as sumptuously as possible, he has +still plenty of money left to indulge his tastes and fancies and make +a show in the world. Whilst the poor man says “I want more bread, more +clothes, and a better house for my family; but I cannot pay for them”, +the rich man says “I want a fleet of motor cars, a yacht, diamonds +and pearls for my wife and daughters, and a shooting-box in Scotland. +Money is no object: I can pay and overpay for them ten times over”. +Naturally men of business set to work at once to have the cars and the +yacht made, the diamonds dug out in Africa, the pearls fished for, and +the shooting lodge built, paying no attention to the poor man with his +crying needs and empty pockets. + +To put the same thing in another way, the poor man needs to have labor +employed in making the things he is short of: that is, in baking, +weaving, tailoring, and plain building; but he cannot pay the master +bakers and weavers enough to enable them to pay the wages of such +labor. The rich man meanwhile is offering money enough to provide good +wages for all the work required to please him. All the people who take +his money may be working hard; but their work is pampering people who +have too much instead of feeding people who have too little; therefore +it is misapplied and wasted, keeping the country poor and even making +it poorer for the sake of keeping a few people rich. + +It is no excuse for such a state of things that the rich give +employment. There is no merit in giving employment: a murderer gives +employment to the hangman; and a motorist who runs over a child +gives employment to an ambulance porter, a doctor, an undertaker, a +clergyman, a mourning-dressmaker, a hearse driver, a gravedigger: in +short, to so many worthy people that when he ends by killing himself it +seems ungrateful not to erect a statue to him as a public benefactor. +The money with which the rich give the wrong sort of employment would +give the right sort of employment if it were equally distributed; for +then there would be no money offered for motor cars and diamonds until +everyone was fed, clothed, and lodged, nor any wages offered to men +and women to leave useful employments and become servants to idlers. +There would be less ostentation, less idleness, less wastefulness, +less uselessness; but there would be more food, more clothing, better +houses, more security, more health, more virtue: in a word, more real +prosperity. + + + + +16 + +EUGENICS + + +The question has been asked, would the masses be any better for having +more money? One’s first impulse on hearing such a silly question is +to take the lady who asks it by the shoulders and give her a violent +shaking. If a fully fed, presentably clothed, decently housed, fairly +literate and cultivated and gently mannered family is not better than a +half-starved, ragged, frowsy, overcrowded one, there is no meaning in +words. + +Still, let us not lose our tempers. A well-fed, clean, decently +lodged woman is better than one trying to live on tea and rashers in +dirty clothes in a verminous garret. But so is a well-fed clean sow +better than a hungry dirty one. She is a sow all the same; and you +cannot make a silk purse out of her ear. If the common women of the +future were to be no better than our rich ladies today, even at their +best, the improvement would leave us deeply dissatisfied. And that +dissatisfaction would be a divine dissatisfaction. Let us consider, +then, what effect equality of income would have on the quality of our +people as human beings. + +There are some who say that if you want better people you must breed +them as carefully as you breed thoroughbred horses and pedigree boars. +No doubt you must; but there are two difficulties. First, you cannot +very well mate men and women as you mate bulls and cows, stallions and +mares, boars and sows, without giving them any choice in the matter. +Second, even if you could, you would not know how to do it, because you +would not know what sort of human being you wanted to breed. In the +case of a horse or a pig the matter is very simple: you want either a +very fast horse for racing or a very strong horse for drawing loads; +and in the case of the pig you want simply plenty of bacon. And yet, +simple as that is, any breeder of these animals will tell you that he +has a great many failures no matter how careful he is. + +The moment you ask yourself what sort of child you want, beyond +preferring a boy or a girl, you have to confess that you do not know. +At best you can mention a few sorts that you dont want: for instance, +you dont want cripples, deaf mutes, blind, imbecile, epileptic, or +drunken children. But even these you do not know how to avoid as there +is often nothing visibly wrong with the parents of such unfortunates. +When you turn from what you dont want to what you do want you may say +that you want good children; but a good child means only a child that +gives its parents no trouble; and some very useful men and women have +been very troublesome children. Energetic, imaginative, enterprising, +brave children are never out of mischief from their parents’ point +of view. And grown-up geniuses are seldom liked until they are dead. +Considering that we poisoned Socrates, crucified Christ, and burnt Joan +of Arc amid popular applause, because, after a trial by responsible +lawyers and Churchmen, we decided that they were too wicked to be +allowed to live, we can hardly set up to be judges of goodness or to +have any sincere liking for it. + +Even if we were willing to trust any political authority to select +our husbands and wives for us with a view to improving the race, the +officials would be hopelessly puzzled as to how to select. They might +begin with some rough idea of preventing the marriage of persons with +any taint of consumption or madness or syphilis or addiction to drugs +or drink in their families; but that would end in nobody being married +at all, as there is practically no family quite free from such taints. +As to moral excellence, what model would they take as desirable? St +Francis, George Fox, William Penn, John Wesley, and George Washington? +or Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and Bismarck? It takes all sorts to +make a world; and the notion of a Government department trying to make +out how many different types were necessary, and how many persons of +each type, and proceeding to breed them by appropriate marriages, is +amusing but not practicable. There is nothing for it but to let people +choose their mates for themselves, and trust to Nature to produce a +good result. + +“Just as we do at present, in fact,” some will say. But that is just +what we do not do at present. How much choice has anyone among us when +the time comes to choose a mate? Nature may point out a woman’s mate to +her by making her fall in love at first sight with the man who would be +the best mate for her; but unless that man happens to have about the +same income as her father, he is out of her class and out of her reach, +whether above her or below her. She finds she must marry, not the man +she likes, but the man she can get; and he is not often the same man. + +The man is in the same predicament. We all know by instinct that it is +unnatural to marry for money or social position instead of for love; +yet we have arranged matters so that we must all marry more or less +for money or social position or both. It is easy to say to Miss Smith +or Miss Jones “Follow the promptings of your heart, my dear; and marry +the dustman or marry the duke, whichever you prefer”. But she cannot +marry the dustman; and the duke cannot marry her; because they and +their relatives have not the same manners and habits; and people with +different manners and habits cannot live together. And it is difference +of income that makes difference of manners and habits. Miss Smith and +Miss Jones have finally to make up their minds to like what they can +get, because they can very seldom get what they like; and it is safe +to say that in the great majority of marriages at present Nature has +very little part in the choice compared to circumstances. Unsuitable +marriages, unhappy homes, ugly children are terribly common; because +the young woman who ought to have all the unmarried young men in the +country open to her choice, with dozens of other strings to her bow +in the event of her first choice not feeling a reciprocal attraction, +finds that in fact she has to choose between two or three in her own +class, and has to allow herself to be much petted and tempted by +physical endearments, or made desperate by neglect, before she can +persuade herself that she really loves the one she dislikes least. + +Under such circumstances we shall never get a well-bred race; and it is +all the fault of inequality of income. If every family were brought up +at the same cost, we should all have the same habits, manners, culture, +and refinement; and the dustman’s daughter could marry the duke’s son +as easily as a stockbroker’s son now marries a bank manager’s daughter. +Nobody would marry for money, because there would be no money to be +gained or lost by marriage. No woman would have to turn her back on +a man she loved because he was poor, or be herself passed by for the +same reason. All the disappointments would be natural and inevitable +disappointments; and there would be plenty of alternatives and +consolations. If the race did not improve under these circumstances, it +must be unimprovable. And even if it be so, the gain in happiness by +getting rid of the heartbreak that now makes the world, and especially +its women, so miserable, would make the equalization of income worth +while even if all the other arguments for it did not exist. + + + + +17 + +THE COURTS OF LAW + + +When we come to the courts of law the hopeless incompatibility of +inequality of income with justice is so plain that you must have been +struck by it if you ever notice such things. The very first condition +of legal justice is that it shall be no respecter of persons; that it +shall hold the balance impartially between the laborer’s wife and the +millionairess; and that no person shall be deprived of life or liberty +except by the verdict of a jury of her peers, meaning her equals. +Now no laborer is ever tried by a jury of his peers: he is tried by +a jury of ratepayers who have a very strong class prejudice against +him because they have larger incomes, and consider themselves better +men on that account. Even a rich man tried by a common jury has to +reckon with their envy as well as their subservience to wealth. Thus +it is a common saying with us that there is one law for the rich and +another for the poor. This is not strictly true: the law is the same +for everybody: it is the incomes that need changing. The civil law +by which contracts are enforced, and redress given for slanders and +injuries that are not dealt with by the police, requires so much legal +knowledge and artistic eloquence to set it in motion that an ordinary +woman with no legal knowledge or eloquence can get the benefit of +it only by employing lawyers whom she has to pay very highly, which +means, of course, that the rich woman can afford to go to law and the +poor woman cannot. The rich woman can terrorize the poor woman by +threatening to go to law with her if her demands are not complied with. +She can disregard the poor woman’s rights, and tell her that if she is +dissatisfied she can take her complaint into court, knowing very well +that her victim’s poverty and ignorance will prevent her from obtaining +proper legal advice and protection. When a rich woman takes a fancy +to a poor woman’s husband, and persuades him to abandon her, she can +practically buy him by starving the abandoned wife into divorcing +him for a sufficient allowance. In America, where the wife can sue +for damages, the price of the divorce is higher: that is all. When +the abandoned wife cannot be starved into the divorce court she can +stand out for an exorbitant price before setting her husband free to +remarry; and an abandoned husband can sell out likewise. Men and women +now trap one another into marriage with this object to such an extent +that in some States the word alimony has come to mean simply blackmail. +Mind: I am not disparaging either divorce or alimony. What is wrong is +that any woman should by mere superiority of income be able to make +another woman’s husband much more comfortable than his wife can, or +that any man should be able to offer another man’s wife luxuries that +her husband cannot afford: in short, that money should have any weight +whatever either in contracting or dissolving a marriage. + +The criminal law, though we read murder trials and the like so eagerly, +is less important than the civil law, because only a few exceptional +people commit crimes, whilst we all marry and make civil contracts. +Besides, the police set the criminal law in motion without charging the +injured party anything. Nevertheless, rich prisoners are favored by +being able to spend large sums in engaging famous barristers to plead +for them, hunting up evidence all over the country or indeed over the +world, bribing or intimidating witnesses, and exhausting every possible +form of appeal and method of delay. We are fond of pointing to American +cases of rich men at large who would have been hanged or electrocuted +if they had been poor. But who knows how many poor people are in prison +in England who might have been acquitted if they could have spent a few +hundred pounds on their defence? + +The laws themselves are contaminated at their very source by being made +by rich men. Nominally all adult men and women are eligible to sit in +Parliament and make laws if they can persuade enough people to vote for +them. Something has been done of late years to make it possible for +poor persons to avail themselves of this right. Members of Parliament +now receive salaries; and certain election expenses formerly borne by +the candidate are now public charges. But the candidate must put down +£150 to start with; and it still costs from five hundred to a thousand +pounds to contest a parliamentary election. Even when the candidate +is successful, the salary of four hundred a year, which carries with +it no pension and no prospects when the seat is lost (as it may be at +the next election) is not sufficient for the sort of life in London a +member of Parliament is obliged to lead. This gives the rich such an +advantage that though the poor are in a nine-to-one majority in the +country their representatives are in a minority in Parliament; and +most of the time of Parliament is taken up, not by discussing what is +best for the nation, and passing laws accordingly, but by the class +struggle set up by the rich majority trying to maintain and extend its +privileges against the poor minority trying to curtail or abolish them. +That is, in pure waste of it. + +By far the most unjust and mischievous privilege claimed by the +rich is the privilege to be idle with complete legal impunity; and +unfortunately they have established this privilege so firmly that we +take it as a matter of course, and even venerate it as the mark of a +real lady or gentleman, without ever considering that a person who +consumes goods or accepts services without producing equivalent goods +or performing equivalent services in return inflicts on the country +precisely the same injury as a thief does: in fact, that is what theft +means. We do not dream of allowing people to murder, kidnap, break +into houses, sink, burn, and destroy at sea or on land, or claim +exemption from military service, merely because they have inherited +a landed estate or a thousand a year from some industrious ancestor; +yet we tolerate idling, which does more harm in one year than all the +legally punishable crimes in the world in ten. The rich, through their +majority in Parliament, punish with ruthless severity such forms of +theft as burglary, forgery, embezzlement, pocket-picking, larceny, and +highway robbery, whilst they exempt rich idling, and even hold it up +as a highly honorable way of life, thereby teaching our children that +working for a livelihood is inferior, derogatory, and disgraceful. To +live like a drone on the labor and service of others is to be a lady +or a gentleman: to enrich the country by labor and service is to be +base, lowly, vulgar, contemptible, fed and clothed and lodged on the +assumption that anything is good enough for hewers of wood and drawers +of water. This is nothing else than an attempt to turn the order of +Nature upside down, and to take “Evil: be thou my good” as the national +motto. If we persist in it, it must finally bring upon us another of +those wrecks of civilization in which all the great empires in the past +have crashed. Yet nothing can prevent this happening where income is +unequally distributed, because the laws will inevitably be made by the +rich; and the law that all must work, which should come before every +other law, is a law that the rich never make. + + + + +18 + +THE IDLE RICH + + +Do not let yourself be put out at this point by the fact that people +with large unearned incomes are by no means always loafing or lolling. +The energetic ones often overexert themselves, and have to take “rest +cures” to recover. Those who try to make life one long holiday find +that they need a holiday from that too. Idling is so unnatural and +boresome that the world of the idle rich, as they are called, is a +world of ceaseless activities of the most fatiguing kind. You may +find on old bookshelves a forgotten nineteenth century book in which +a Victorian lady of fashion defended herself against the charge of +idleness by describing her daily routine of fashion both as hostess +and visitor in London. I would cheerfully sweep a crossing rather than +be condemned to it. In the country, sport is so elaborately organized +that every month in the year has its special variety: the necessary +fishes and birds and animals are so carefully bred and preserved for +the purpose that there is always something to be killed. Risks and +exposures and athletic feats of which the poor in towns know nothing +are matters of course in the country house, where broken collar +bones are hardly exceptional enough to be classed as accidents. If +sports fail there are always games: ski-ing and tobogganing, polo, +tennis, skating on artificial ice, and so forth, involving much more +exhausting physical exercise than many poor women would care to face. +A young lady, after a day of such exercise, will, between dinner and +bedtime, dance a longer distance than the postman walks. In fact +the only people who are disgustingly idle are the children of those +who have just become rich, the new rich as they are called. As these +unfortunate fortunates have had neither the athletic training nor the +social discipline of the old rich, with whom what we call high life is +a skilled art needing a stern apprenticeship, they do not know what to +do with themselves; and their resourceless loafing and consumption of +chocolate creams, cigarets, cocktails, and the sillier sort of novels +and illustrated papers whilst they drift about in motor cars from one +big hotel to another, is pitiable. But in the next generation they +either relapse into poverty or go to school with the class they can now +afford to belong to, and acquire its accomplishments, its discipline, +and its manners. + +But beside this Spartan routine invented to employ people who have not +to work for their living, and which, you will notice, is a survival of +the old tribal order in which the braves hunted and fought whilst the +squaws did the domestic work, there is the necessary public work which +must be done by a governing class if it is to keep all political power +in its own hands. By not paying for this work, or paying so little for +it that nobody without an unearned income can afford to undertake it, +and by attaching to the upper division of the civil service examination +tests that only expensively educated persons can pass, this work is +kept in the hands of the rich. That is the explanation of the otherwise +unaccountable way in which the proprietary class has opposed every +attempt to attach sufficient salaries to parliamentary work to make +those who do it self-supporting, although the proprietors themselves +were the holders of the main parliamentary posts. Though they officered +the army, they did everything they could to make it impossible for an +officer to live on his pay. Though they contested every parliamentary +seat, they opposed the public payment of members of Parliament and +their election expenses. Though they regarded the diplomatic service as +a preserve for their younger sons, they attached to it the condition +that no youth should be eligible for it without a private income of +four hundred a year. They fought, and still fight, against making +government a self-supporting occupation, because the effect would be to +throw it open to the unpropertied, and destroy their own monopoly of it. + +But as the work of government must be done, they must do it themselves +if they will not let other people do it. Consequently you find rich men +working in Parliament, in diplomacy, in the army, in the magistracy, +and on local public bodies, to say nothing of the management of their +own estates. Men so working cannot accurately be called the idle rich. +Unfortunately they do all this governing work with a bias in favour of +the privilege of their class to be idle. From the point of view of the +public good, it would be far better if they amused themselves like most +of their class, and left the work of governing to be done by well-paid +officials and ministers whose interests were those of the nation as a +whole. + +The stamina of the women of the idle class was formerly maintained by +their work in childbearing and family housekeeping. But at present many +of them resort to contraception (called birth control) not to regulate +the number of their children and the time of their birth, but to avoid +bearing any children at all. Hotel life, or life in service flats, or +the delegation of household management to professional ladies who are +practically private hotel managers, is more and more substituted for +old-fashioned domestic housekeeping. If this were an ordinary division +of labor to enable a woman to devote herself entirely to a professional +career of some sort, it would be defensible; for many women, as you +must often have noticed, have no aptitude for domestic work, and +are as much out of place in the kitchen and nursery as all men are +conventionally supposed to be; but when you have women with unearned +and excessive incomes its possibility involves an equal possibility of +complete uselessness and self-indulgence, of which many rich women, +knowing no better, take the fullest advantage. + +There are always a few cases in which exceptional men and women with +sufficient unearned income to maintain them handsomely without a +stroke of work are found working harder than most of those who have +to do it for a living, and spending most of their money on attempts +to better the world. Florence Nightingale organized the hospital work +of the Crimean war, including the knocking of some sense into the +heads of the army medical staff, and much disgusting and dangerous +drudgery in the wards, when she had the means to live comfortably at +home doing nothing. John Ruskin published accounts of how he had spent +his comfortable income and what work he had done, to shew that he, +at least, was an honest worker and a faithful administrator of the +part of the national income that had fallen to his lot. This was so +little understood that people concluded that he must have gone out of +his mind; and as he afterwards did, like Dean Swift, succumb to the +melancholia and exasperation induced by the wickedness and stupidity of +capitalistic civilization, they joyfully persuaded themselves that they +had been quite right about him. + +But when every possible qualification of the words Idle Rich has been +made, and it is fully understood that idle does not mean doing nothing +(which is impossible), but doing nothing useful, and continually +consuming without producing, the term applies to the class, numbering +at the extreme outside one-tenth of the population, to maintain whom in +their idleness the other nine-tenths are kept in a condition of slavery +so complete that their slavery is not even legalized as such: hunger +keeps them sufficiently in order without imposing on their masters any +of those obligations which make slaves so expensive to their owners. +What is more, any attempt on the part of a rich woman to do a stroke of +ordinary work for the sake of her health would be bitterly resented by +the poor because, from their point of view, she would be a rich woman +meanly doing a poor woman out of a job. + +And now comes the crowning irony of it all, which many intelligent +women to whom irony means nothing will prefer to call the judgment +of God. When we have conferred on these people the coveted privilege +of having plenty of money and nothing to do (our idiotic receipt for +perfect happiness and perfect freedom) we find that we have made them +so wretched and unhealthy that instead of doing nothing they are always +doing something “to keep themselves fit” for doing nothing; and instead +of doing what they like, they bind themselves to a laborious routine +of what they call society and pleasure which you could not impose on a +parlormaid without receiving notice instantly, or on a Trappist without +driving him to turn atheist to escape from it. Only one part of it, the +Red Indian part, the frank return to primitive life, the hunting and +shooting and country life, is bearable; and one has to be by nature +half a savage to enjoy that continually. So much for the exertions of +the idle rich! + + + + +19 + +CHURCH, SCHOOL, AND PRESS + + +Just as Parliament and the Courts are captured by the rich, so is +the Church. The average parson does not teach honesty and equality +in the village school: he teaches deference to the merely rich, and +calls that loyalty and religion. He is the ally of the squire, who, +as magistrate, administers the laws made in the interests of the rich +by the parliament of rich men, and calls that justice. The villagers, +having no experience of any other sort of religion or law, soon lose +all respect for both, and become merely cynical. They may touch their +hats and curtsey respectfully; but they whisper to oneanother that +the squire, no matter how kind his wife may be at Christmas by way of +ransom, is a despoiler and oppressor of the poor, and the parson a +hypocrite. In revolutions, it is the respectful peasants who burn the +country houses and parsonages, and rush to the cathedrals to deface the +statues, shatter the stained windows, and wreck the organ. + +By the way, you may know parsons who are not like that. At least I do. +There are always men and women who will stand out against injustice, +no matter how prosperous and well-spoken-of it may be. But the result +is that they are ill-spoken-of themselves in the most influential +quarters. Our society must be judged, not by its few rebels, but by its +millions of obedient subjects. + +The same corruption reaches the children in all our schools. +Schoolmasters who teach their pupils such vital elementary truths +about their duty to their country as that they should despise and +pursue as criminals all able-bodied adults who do not by personal +service pull their weight in the social boat, are dismissed from their +employment, and sometimes prosecuted for sedition. And from this +elementary morality up to the most abstruse and philosophic teaching +in the universities, the same corruption extends. Science becomes a +propaganda of quack cures, manufactured by companies in which the rich +hold shares, for the diseases of the poor who need only better food +and sanitary houses, and of the rich who need only useful occupation, +to keep them both in health. Political economy becomes an impudent +demonstration that the wages of the poor cannot be raised; that without +the idle rich we should perish for lack of capital and employment; +and that if the poor would take care to have fewer children everything +would be for the best in the worst of all possible worlds. + +Thus the poor are kept poor by their ignorance; and those whose parents +are too well-off to make it possible to keep them ignorant, and who +receive what is called a complete education, are taught so many flat +lies that their false knowledge is more dangerous than the untutored +natural wit of savages. We all blame the ex-Kaiser for banishing from +the German schools and universities all teachers who did not teach +that history, science, and religion all prove that the rule of the +house of Hohenzollern: that is, of his own rich family, is the highest +form of government possible to mankind; but we do the same thing +ourselves, except that the worship of rich idleness in general is +substituted for the worship of the Hohenzollern family in particular, +though the Hohenzollerns have family traditions (including the learning +of a common craft by every man of them) which make them much more +responsible than any Tom or Dick who may happen to have made a huge +fortune in business. + +As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read, +the corruption of the schools would not matter so much if the Press +were free. But the Press is not free. As it costs at least quarter +of a million of money to establish a daily newspaper in London, the +newspapers are owned by rich men. And they depend on the advertisements +of other rich men. Editors and journalists who express opinions in +print that are opposed to the interests of the rich are dismissed and +replaced by subservient ones. The newspapers therefore must continue +the work begun by the schools and colleges; so that only the strongest +and most independent and original minds can escape from the mass of +false doctrine that is impressed on them by the combined and incessant +suggestion and persuasion of Parliament, the law-courts, the Church, +the schools, and the Press. We are all brought up wrongheaded to keep +us willing slaves instead of rebellious ones. + +What makes this so hard to discover and to believe is that the false +teaching is mixed up with a great deal of truth, because up to a +certain point the interests of the rich are the same as the interests +of everybody else. It is only where their interests differ from those +of their neighbors that the deception begins. For example, the rich +dread railway accidents as much as the poor; consequently the law on +railway accidents, the sermons about railway accidents, the school +teaching about railway accidents, and the newspaper articles about them +are all quite honestly directed to the purpose of preventing railway +accidents. But when anyone suggests that there would be fewer railway +accidents if the railwaymen worked fewer hours and had better wages, +or that in the division of the railway fares between the shareholders +and the workers the shareholders should get less and the workers +more, or that railway travelling would be safer if the railways were +in the hands of the nation like the posts and the telegraphs, there +is an immediate outcry in the Press and in Parliament against such +suggestions, coupled with denunciations of those who make them as +Bolsheviks or whatever other epithet may be in fashion for the moment +as a term of the most infamous discredit. + + + + +20 + +WHY WE PUT UP WITH IT + + +You may ask why not only the rich but the poor put up with all this, +and even passionately defend it as an entirely beneficial public +morality. I can only say that the defence is not unanimous: it is +always being attacked at one point or another by public-spirited +reformers and by persons whose wrongs are unbearable. But taking it in +the lump I should say that the evil of the corruption and falsification +of law, religion, education, and public opinion is so enormous that the +minds of ordinary people are unable to grasp it, whereas they easily +and eagerly grasp the petty benefits with which it is associated. The +rich are very charitable: they understand that they have to pay ransom +for their riches. The simple and decent village woman whose husband +is a woodman or gardener or gamekeeper, and whose daughters are being +taught manners as domestic servants in the country house, sees in the +lord of the manor only a kind gentleman who gives employment, and whose +wife gives clothes and blankets and little comforts for the sick, and +presides over the Cottage Hospital and all the little shows and sports +and well-meant activities that relieve the monotony of toil, and rob +illness of some of its terrors. Even in the towns, where the rich +and poor do not know oneanother, the lavish expenditure of the rich +is always popular. It provides much that people enjoy looking at and +gossiping about. The tradesman is proud of having rich customers, and +the servant of serving in a rich house. At the public entertainments +of the rich there are cheap seats for the poor. Ordinary thoughtless +people like all this finery. They will read eagerly about it, and look +with interest at the pictures of it in the illustrated papers, whereas +when they read that the percentage of children dying under the age +of five years has risen or fallen, it means nothing to them but dry +statistics which make the paper dull. It is only when people learn to +ask “Is this good for all of us all the time as well as amusing to +me for five minutes?” that they are on the way to understand how one +fashionably dressed woman may cost the life of ten babies. + +Even then it seems to them that the alternative to having the +fashionably dressed rich ladies is that all women are to be dowdy. They +need not be afraid. At present nine women out of ten are dowdy. With a +reasonable distribution of income every one of the ten could afford to +look her best. That no woman should have diamonds until all women have +decent clothes is a sensible rule, though it may not appeal to a woman +who would like to have diamonds herself and does not care a rap whether +other women are well-dressed or not. She may even derive a certain +gratification from seeing other women worse dressed than herself. But +the inevitable end of that littleness of mind, that secret satisfaction +in the misfortunes of others which the Germans call _Schadenfreude_ (we +have no word for it), is that sooner or later a revolution breaks out +as it did in Russia; the diamonds go to the pawnbroker, who refuses +to advance any money on them because nobody can afford diamonds any +longer; and the fine ladies have to wear old clothes and cheaper and +worse readymades until there is nothing left for them to wear. Only, as +this does not happen all at once, the thoughtless do not believe that +the police will ever let it come; and the littlehearted do not care +whether it comes or not, provided it does not come until they are dead. + +Another thing that makes us cling to this lottery with huge money +prizes is the dream that we may become rich by some chance. We read +of uncles in Australia dying and leaving £100,000 to a laborer or a +charwoman who never knew of his existence. We hear of somebody no +better off than ourselves winning the Calcutta Sweep. Such dreams would +be destroyed by an equal distribution of income. And people cling all +the more to dreams when they are too poor even to back horses! They +forget the million losses in their longing for the one gain that the +million unlucky ones have to pay for. + +Poor women who have too much natural good sense to indulge in these +gambler’s dreams often make sacrifices in the hope that education will +enable their sons to rise from the slough of poverty; and some men with +an exceptional degree of the particular sort of cleverness that wins +scholarships owe their promotion to their mothers. But exceptional +cases, dazzling as some of them are, hold out no hope to ordinary +people; for the world consists of ordinary people: indeed that is the +meaning of the word ordinary. The ordinary rich woman’s child and the +ordinary poor woman’s child may be born with equally able brains; but +by the time they begin life as grown men the rich woman’s son has +acquired the speech, manners, personal habits, culture, and instruction +without which all the higher employments are closed to him; whilst the +poor woman’s son is not presentable enough to get any job which brings +him into contact with refined people. In this way a great deal of the +brain power of the country is wasted and spoiled; for Nature does not +care a rap for rich and poor. For instance, she does not give everybody +the ability to do managing work. Perhaps one in twenty is as far as she +goes. But she does not pick out the children of the rich to receive her +capricious gifts. If in every two hundred people there are only twenty +rich, her gift of management will fall to nine poor children and one +rich one. But if the rich can cultivate the gift and the poor cannot, +then nine-tenths of the nation’s natural supply of managing ability +will be lost to it; and to make up the deficiency many of the managing +posts will be filled up by pigheaded people only because they happen to +have the habit of ordering poor people about. + + + + +21 + +POSITIVE REASONS FOR EQUALITY + + +So far, we have not found one great national institution that escapes +the evil effects of a division of the people into rich and poor: that +is, of inequality of income. I could take you further; but we should +only fare worse. I could shew you how rich officers and poor soldiers +and sailors create disaffection in the army and navy; how disloyalty +is rampant because the relation between the royal family and the bulk +of the nation is the relation between one rich family and millions +of poor ones; how what we call peace is really a state of civil war +between rich and poor conducted by disastrous strikes; how envy and +rebellion and class resentments are chronic moral diseases with us. But +if I attempted this you would presently exclaim “Oh, for goodness’ sake +dont tell me everything or we shall never have done”. And you would be +quite right. If I have not convinced you by this time that there are +overwhelming reasons of State against inequality of income, I shall +begin to think that you dislike me. + +Besides, we must get on to the positive reasons for the Socialist plan +of an equal division. I am specially interested in it because it is my +favorite plan. You had therefore better watch me carefully to see that +I play fairly when I am helping you to examine what there is to be said +for equality of income over and above that there is to be said against +inequality of income. + +First, equal division is not only a possible plan, but one which has +been tested by long experience. The great bulk of the daily work of the +civilized world is done, and always has been done, and always must be +done, by bodies of persons receiving equal pay whether they are tall +or short, fair or dark, quick or slow, young or getting on in years, +teetotallers or beer drinkers, Protestants or Catholics, married or +single, short tempered or sweet tempered, pious or worldly: in short, +without the slightest regard to the differences that make one person +unlike another. In every trade there is a standard wage; in every +public service there is a standard pay; and in every profession the +fees are fixed with a view to enable the man who follows the profession +to live according to a certain standard of respectability which is the +same for the whole profession. The pay of the policeman and soldier +and postman, the wages of the laborer and carpenter and mason, the +salary of the judge and the member of Parliament, may differ, some of +them getting less than a hundred a year and others five thousand; but +all the soldiers get the same, all the judges get the same, all the +members of Parliament get the same; and if you ask a doctor why his fee +is half a crown or five shillings, or a guinea or three guineas, or +whatever it may be, instead of five shillings or ten shillings, or two +guineas or six guineas or a thousand guineas, he can give you no better +reason than that he is asking what all the other doctors ask, and that +they ask it because they find they cannot keep up their position on +less. + +Therefore when some inconsiderate person repeats like a parrot that +if you gave everybody the same money, before a year was out you would +have rich and poor again just as before, all you have to do is to +tell him to look round him and see millions of people who get the +same money and remain in the same position all their lives without +any such change taking place. The cases in which poor men become rich +are most exceptional; and though the cases in which rich men become +poor are commoner, they also are accidents and not ordinary everyday +circumstances. The rule is that workers of the same rank and calling +are paid alike, and that they neither sink below their condition nor +rise above it. No matter how unlike they are to oneanother, you can +pay one of them two and sixpence and the other half a crown with the +assurance that as they are put so they will stay, though here and +there a great rogue or a great genius may surprise you by becoming +much richer or much poorer than the rest. Jesus complained that he was +poorer than the foxes and birds, as they had their holes and nests +whilst he had not a house to shelter him; and Napoleon became an +emperor; but we need take no more account of such extraordinary persons +in forming our general plan than a maker of readymade clothes takes of +giants and dwarfs in his price list. You may with the utmost confidence +take it as settled by practical experience that if we could succeed +in distributing income equally to all the inhabitants of the country, +there would be no more tendency on their part to divide into rich and +poor than there is at present for postmen to divide into beggars and +millionaires. The only novelty proposed is that the postmen should get +as much as the postmasters, and the postmasters no less than anybody +else. If we find, as we do, that it answers to give all judges the +same income, and all navy captains the same income, why should we go +on giving judges five times as much as navy captains? That is what the +navy captain would like to know; and if you tell him that if he were +given as much as the judge he would be just as poor as before at the +end of a year he will use language unfit for the ears of anyone but a +pirate. So be careful how you say such things. + +Equal distribution is then quite possible and practicable, not only +momentarily but permanently. It is also simple and intelligible. It +gets rid of all squabbling as to how much each person should have. It +is already in operation and familiar over great masses of human beings. +And it has the tremendous advantage of securing promotion by merit for +the more capable. + + + + +22 + +MERIT AND MONEY + + +That last sentence may puzzle even the most Intelligent Woman if she +has never before given her mind seriously to the subject; so I had +better enlarge on it a little. + +Nothing hides the difference in merit between one person and another +so much as differences in income. Take for example a grateful nation +making a parliamentary grant of twenty thousand pounds to a great +explorer, or a great discoverer, or a great military commander (I have +to make my example a man: women get only statues after their death). +Before he has walked half way down the street on his way home to +tell his wife about it he may meet some notorious fool or scandalous +libertine, or some quite ordinary character, who has not merely twenty +thousand pounds but twenty thousand a year or more. The great man’s +twenty thousand pounds will bring him in only a thousand a year; and +with this he finds himself in our society regarded as “a poor devil” +by tradesmen and financiers and quacks who are ten times as rich +because they have never in their lives done anything but make money for +themselves with entire selfishness, possibly by trading in the vices +or on the credulity of their fellow-countrymen. It is a monstrous +thing that a man who, by exercising a low sort of cunning, has managed +to grab three or four millions of money selling bad whiskey, or +forestalling the wheat harvest and selling it at three times its cost, +or providing silly newspapers and magazines for the circulation of +lying advertisements, should be honored and deferred to and waited on +and returned to Parliament and finally made a peer of the realm, whilst +men who have exercised their noblest faculties or risked their lives in +the furtherance of human knowledge and welfare should be belittled by +the contrast between their pence and the grabbers’ pounds. + +Only where there is pecuniary equality can the distinction of merit +stand out. Titles, dignities, reputations do more harm than good if +they can be bought with money. Queen Victoria shewed her practical +common sense when she said that she would not give a title to anyone +who had not money enough to keep it up; but the result was that the +titles went to the richest, not to the best. Between persons of unequal +income all other distinctions are thrown into the background. The woman +with a thousand a year inevitably takes precedence of women with only +a hundred, no matter how inferior she may be to them; and she can give +her children advantages qualifying them for higher employments than +those open to poor children of equal or greater natural capacity. + +Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except +the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and +capacity are everything. Instead of all the workers being levelled +down to low wage standards and all the rich levelled up to fashionable +income standards, everybody under a system of equal incomes would find +her and his own natural level. There would be great people and ordinary +people and little people; but the great would always be those who had +done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them +and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the +little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not +poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always +in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and +the really great in favour of equality. + + + + +23 + +INCENTIVE + + +When we come to the objections to equal division of income we find that +most of them come to no more than this: that we are not accustomed to +it, and have taken unequal division between classes so much for granted +that we have never thought any other state of things possible, not to +mention that the teachers and preachers appointed for us by the rich +governing class have carefully hammered into us from our childhood that +it is wicked and foolish to question the right of some people to be +much better off than others. + +Still, there are other objections. So many of them have been already +disposed of in our examination of the schemes for unequal distribution +that we need deal now with two only. + +The first is that unless a woman were allowed to get more money than +another she would have no incentive to work harder. + +One answer to this is that nobody wants her to work harder than another +at the national task. On the contrary, it is desirable that the burden +of work, without which there could be no income to divide, should be +shared equally by the workers. If those who are never happy unless they +are working insist on putting in extra work to please themselves, they +must not pretend that this is a painful sacrifice for which they should +be paid; and, anyhow, they can always work off their superfluous energy +on their hobbies. + +On the other hand, there are people who grudge every moment they have +to spend in working. That is no excuse for letting them off their +share. Anyone who does less than her share of work, and yet takes her +full share of the wealth produced by work, is a thief, and should be +dealt with as any other sort of thief is dealt with. + +But Weary Willie may say that he hates work, and is quite willing +to take less, and be poor and dirty and ragged or even naked for +the sake of getting off with less work. But that, as we have seen, +cannot be allowed: voluntary poverty is just as mischievous socially +as involuntary poverty: decent nations must insist on their citizens +leading decent lives, doing their full share of the nation’s work, +and taking their full share of its income. When Weary Willie has +done his bit he can be as lazy as he likes. He will have plenty of +leisure to lie on his back and listen to the birds, or watch his more +impetuous neighbors working furiously at their hobbies, which may be +sport, exploration, literature, the arts, the sciences, or any of +the activities which we pursue for their own sakes when our material +needs are satisfied. But poverty and social irresponsibility will be +forbidden luxuries. Poor Willie will have to submit, not to compulsory +poverty as at present, but to the compulsory well-being which he dreads +still more. + +However, there are mechanical difficulties in the way of freedom to +work more or less than others in general national production. Such work +is not nowadays separate individual work: it is organized associated +work, carried on in great factories and offices in which work begins +and ends at fixed hours. Our clothes, for instance, are mostly washed +in steam laundries in which all the operations which used to be +performed by one woman with her own tub, mangle, and ironing board +are divided among groups of women using machinery and buildings which +none of them could use single-handed even if she could afford to buy +them, assisted by men operating a steam power plant. If some of these +women or men were to offer to come an hour earlier or stay two hours +later for extra wages the reply would be that such an arrangement was +impossible, as they could do nothing without the co-operation of the +rest. The machinery would not work for them unless the engine was +going. It is a case of all or nobody. + +In short, associated work and factory work: that is to say, the sort of +work that makes it possible for our great modern civilized populations +to exist, would be impossible if every worker could begin when she +liked and leave off when she liked. In many factories the pace is set +for the lazy and energetic alike by the engine. The railway service +would not be of much use if the engine driver and the guard were to +stop the train to look at a football match when they felt inclined that +way. Casual people are useless in modern industry; and the other sort: +those who want to work longer and harder than the rest, find that they +cannot do it except in comparatively solitary occupations. Even in +domestic service, where the difference between the unpunctual slacker +and sloven and the model servant is very perceptible, the routine of +the household keeps everybody up to a certain mark below which a +servant is discharged as unemployable. And the slacker neither accepts +lower wages nor can be cured by higher. + +No external incentive is needed to make first-rate workers do the +best work they can: their trouble is that they can seldom make a +living by it. First-rate work is done at present under the greatest +discouragement. There is the impossibility of getting paid as much +for it as for second-rate work. When it is not paid for at all, there +is the difficulty of finding leisure for it whilst earning a living +at common work. People seldom refuse a higher employment which they +feel capable of undertaking. When they do, it is because the higher +employment is so much worse paid or so unsuitable to their social +position that they cannot afford to take it. A typical case is that +of a non-commissioned officer in the army refusing a commission. If +the quartermaster-sergeant’s earnings and expenses came to no more +than those of the officer, and both men were of the same class, no +inducement in the way of extra money would be needed to make any +soldier accept promotion to the highest rank in which he felt he could +do himself credit. When he refuses, as he sometimes does, it is because +he would be poorer and less at home in the higher than in the lower +rank. + +But what about the dirty work? We are so accustomed to see dirty work +done by dirty and poorly paid people that we have come to think that it +is disgraceful to do it, and that unless a dirty and disgraced class +existed it would not be done at all. This is nonsense. Some of the +dirtiest work in the world is done by titled surgeons and physicians +who are highly educated, highly paid, and move in the best society. The +nurses who assist them are often their equals in general education, +and sometimes their superiors in rank. Nobody dreams of paying nurses +less or respecting them less than typists in city offices, whose work +is much cleaner. Laboratory work and anatomical work, which involves +dissecting dead bodies, and analysing the secretions and excretions of +live ones, is sometimes revoltingly dirty from the point of view of a +tidy housekeeper; yet it has to be done by gentlemen and ladies of the +professional class. And every tidy housekeeper knows that houses cannot +be kept clean without dirty work. The bearing and nursing of children +are by no means elegant drawingroom amusements; but nobody dares +suggest that they are not in the highest degree honorable, nor do the +most fastidiously refined women shirk their turn when it comes. + +It must be remembered too that a great deal of work which is now +dirty because it is done in a crude way by dirty people can be done +in a clean way by clean people. Ladies and gentlemen who attend to +their own motor cars, as many of them do, manage to do it with less +mess and personal soiling than a slovenly general servant will get +herself into when laying a fire. On the whole, the necessary work of +the world can be done with no more dirt than healthy people of all +classes can stand. The truth of the matter is that it is not really +the work that is objected to so much as its association with poverty +and degradation. Thus a country gentleman does not object to drive +his car; but he would object very strongly to wear the livery of his +chauffeur; and a lady will tidy up a room without turning a hair, +though she would die rather than be seen in a parlormaid’s cap and +apron, neat and becoming as they are. These are as honorable as any +other uniform, and much more honorable than the finery of an idle +woman: the parlormaids are beginning to object to them only because +they have been associated in the past with a servile condition and a +lack of respect to which parlormaids are no longer disposed to submit. +But they have no objection to the work. Both the parlormaid and her +employer (I dare not say her mistress), if they are fond of flowers +and animals, will grub in a garden all day, or wash dogs or rid them +of vermin with the greatest solicitude, without considering the dirt +involved in these jobs in the least derogatory to their dignity. If +all dustmen were dukes nobody would object to the dust: the dustmen +would put little pictures on their notepaper of their hats with flaps +down the backs just as now dukes put little pictures of their coronets; +and everyone would be proud to have a dustman to dinner if he would +condescend to come. We may take it that nobody objects to necessary +work of any kind because of the work itself; what everybody objects to +is being seen doing something that is usually done only by persons of +lower rank or by colored slaves. We sometimes even do things badly on +purpose because those who do them well are classed as our inferiors. +For example, a foolish young gentleman of property will write badly +because clerks write well; and the ambassador of a republic will wear +trousers instead of knee-breeches and silk stockings at court, because, +though breeches and stockings are handsomer, they are a livery; and +republicans consider liveries servile. + +Still, when we have put out of our heads a great deal of nonsense about +dirty work, the fact remains that though all useful work may be equally +honorable, all useful work is most certainly not equally agreeable or +equally exhausting. To escape facing this fact we may plead that some +people have such very queer tastes that it is almost impossible to +mention an occupation that you will not find somebody with a craze for. +There is never any difficulty in finding a willing hangman. There are +men who are happy keeping lighthouses on rocks in the sea so remote +and dangerous that it is often months before they can be relieved. +And a lighthouse is at least steady, whereas a lightship may never +cease rolling about in a way that would make most of us wish ourselves +dead. Yet men are found to man lightships for wages and pensions no +better than they could find in good employment on shore. Mining seems +a horrible and unnatural occupation; but it is not unpopular. Children +left to themselves do the most uncomfortable and unpleasant things to +amuse themselves, very much as a blackbeetle, though it has the run of +the house, prefers the basement to the drawingroom. The saying that God +never made a job but He made a man or woman to do it is true up to a +certain point. + +But when all possible allowances are made for these idiosyncrasies it +remains true that it is much easier to find a boy who wants to be a +gardener or an engine driver, and a girl who wants to be a film actress +or a telephone operator, than a boy who wants to be a sewerman, or a +girl who wants to be a ragpicker. A great deal can be done to make +unpopular occupations more agreeable; and some of them can be got rid +of altogether, and would have been got rid of long ago if there had +been no class of very poor and rough people to put them upon. Smoke and +soot can be done away with; sculleries can be made much pleasanter than +most solicitors’ offices; the unpleasantness of a sewerman’s work is +already mostly imaginary; coal mining may be put an end to by using the +tides to produce electric power; and there are many other ways in which +work which is now repulsive can be made no irksomer than the general +run of necessary labor. But until this happens all the people who have +no particular fancy one way or the other will want to do the pleasanter +sorts of work. + +Fortunately there is a way of equalizing the attraction of different +occupations. And this brings us to that very important part of our +lives that we call our leisure. Sailors call it their liberty. + +There is one thing that we all desire; and that is freedom. By this +we mean freedom from any obligation to do anything except just what +we like, without a thought of tomorrow’s dinner or any other of the +necessities that make slaves of us. We are free only as long as we can +say “My time is my own”. When workers working ten hours a day agitate +for an eight-hour day, what they really want is not eight hours work +instead of ten, but sixteen hours off duty instead of fourteen. And +out of this sixteen hours must come eight hours sleep and a few hours +for eating and drinking, dressing and undressing, washing and resting; +so that even with an eight hours working day the real leisure of the +workers: that is, the time they have after they are properly rested +and fed and cleaned up and ready for any adventures or amusements or +hobbies they care for, is no more than a few hours; and these few are +reduced in value by the shortness of daylight in winter, and cut down +by the time it takes to get into the country or wherever is the best +place to enjoy oneself. Married women, whose working place is the man’s +home, want to get away from home for recreation, just as men want to +get away from the places where they work; in fact a good deal of our +domestic quarrelling arises because the man wants to spend his leisure +at home whilst the woman wants to spend hers abroad. Women love hotels: +men hate them. + +Take, however, the case of a man and his wife who are agreed in liking +to spend their leisure away from home. Suppose the man’s working day +is eight hours, and that he spends eight hours in bed and four over +his breakfast, dinner, washing, dressing, and resting. It does not +follow that he can have four hours to spare for amusement with his wife +every day. Their spare four hours are more likely to be half wasted in +waiting for the theatre or picture show to begin; for they must leave +the open air amusements, tennis, golf, cycling, and the seaside, for +the week-end or Bank Holiday. Consequently he is always craving for +more leisure. This is why we see people preferring rough and strict +employments which leave them some time to themselves to much more +gentle situations in which they are never free. In a factory town it is +often impossible to get a handy and intelligent domestic servant, or +indeed to get a servant at all. That is not because the servant need +work harder or put up with worse treatment than the factory girl or +the shop assistant, but because she has no time she can call her own. +She is always waiting on the doorbell even when you dare not ring the +drawingroom bell lest she should rush up and give notice. To induce +her to stay, you have to give her an evening out every fortnight; then +one every week; then an afternoon a week as well; then two afternoons +a week; then leave to entertain her friends in the drawingroom and use +the piano occasionally (at which times you must clear out of your own +house); and the end is that, long before you have come to the end of +the concessions you are expected to make, you discover that it is not +worth keeping a servant at all on such terms, and take to doing the +housework yourself with modern labor saving appliances. But even if you +put up with the evenings out and all the rest of it, the girl has still +no satisfying sense of freedom; she may not want to stay out all night +even for the most innocent purposes; but she wants to feel that she +might if she liked. That is human nature. + +We now see how we can make compensatory arrangements as between +people who do more or less agreeable and easy sorts of work. Give +more leisure, earlier retirement into the superannuated class, more +holidays, in the less agreeable employments, and they will be as much +sought after as the more agreeable ones with less leisure. In a picture +gallery you will find a nicely dressed lady sitting at a table with +nothing to do but to tell anyone who asks what is the price of any +particular picture, and take an order for it if one is given. She has +many pleasant chats with journalists and artists; and if she is bored +she can read a novel. Her desk chair is comfortable; and she takes care +that it shall be near the stove. But the gallery has to be scrubbed +and dusted every day; and its windows have to be kept clean. It is +clear that the lady’s job is a much softer one than the charwoman’s. To +balance them you must either let them take their turns at the desk and +at the scrubbing on alternate days or weeks; or else, as a first-rate +scrubber and duster and cleaner might make a very bad business lady, +and a very attractive business lady might make a very bad scrubber, you +must let the charwoman go home and have the rest of the day to herself +earlier than the lady at the desk. + +Public picture galleries, in which the pictures are not sold, require +the services of guardians who have nothing to do but wear a respectable +uniform and see that people do not smoke nor steal the pictures, nor +poke umbrellas through them when pointing out their beauties. Compare +this work with that of the steel smelter, who has to exercise great +muscular strength among blast furnaces and pools of molten metal; that +is to say, in an atmosphere which to an unaccustomed person would seem +the nearest thing to hell on earth! It is true that the steel smelter +would very soon get bored with the gallery attendant’s job, and would +go back to the furnaces and the molten metal sooner than stick it; +whilst the gallery attendant could not do the steel smelter’s job at +all, being too old, or too soft, or too lazy, or all three combined. +One is a young man’s job and the other an old man’s job. We balance +them at present by paying the steel smelter more wages. But the same +effect can be produced by giving him more leisure, either in holidays +or shorter hours. The workers do this themselves when they can. When +they are paid, not by time, but by the piece; and when through a rise +in prices or a great rush of orders they find that they can earn twice +as much in a week as they are accustomed to live on, they can choose +between double wages and double leisure. They usually choose double +leisure, taking home the same money as before, but working from Monday +to Wednesday only, and taking a Thursday to Saturday holiday. They do +not want more work and more money: they want more leisure for the same +work, which proves that money is not the only incentive to work, nor +the strongest. Leisure, or freedom, is stronger when the work is not +pleasurable in itself. + + + + +24 + +THE TYRANNY OF NATURE + + +The very first lesson that should be taught us when we are old enough +to understand it is that complete freedom from the obligation to work +is unnatural, and ought to be illegal, as we can escape our share of +the burden of work only by throwing it on someone else’s shoulders. +Nature inexorably ordains that the human race shall perish of famine if +it stops working. We cannot escape from this tyranny. The question we +have to settle is how much leisure we can afford to allow ourselves. +Even if we must work like galley slaves whilst we are at it, how soon +may we leave off with a good conscience, knowing that we have done our +share and may now go free until tomorrow? That question has never been +answered, and cannot be answered under our system because so many of +the workers are doing work that is not merely useless but harmful. But +if by an equal distribution of income and a fair division of work we +could find out the answer, then we should think of our share of work as +earning us, not so much money, but so much freedom. + +And another curious thing would happen. We now revolt against the +slavery of work because we feel ourselves to be the slaves, not of +Nature and Necessity, but of our employers and those for whom they +have to employ us. We therefore hate work and regard it as a curse. +But if everyone shared the burden and the reward equally, we should +lose this feeling. Nobody would feel put upon; and everybody would +know that the more work was done the more everybody would get, since +the division of what the work produced would be equal. We should then +discover that haymaking is not the only work that is enjoyable. Factory +work, when it is not overdriven, is very social and can be very jolly: +that is one of the reasons why girls prefer working in weaving sheds +in a deafening din to sitting lonely in a kitchen. Navvies have heavy +work; but they are in the open air: they talk, fight, gamble, and have +plenty of change from place to place; and this is much better fun than +the sort of clerking that means only counting another man’s money and +writing it down in figures in a dingy office. Besides the work that is +enjoyable from its circumstances there is the work that is interesting +and enjoyable in itself, like the work of the philosophers and of the +different kinds of artists who will work for nothing rather than not +work at all; but this, under a system of equal division, would probably +become a product of leisure rather than of compulsory industry. + +Now consider the so-called pleasures that are sold to us as more +enjoyable than work. The excursion train, the seaside lodgings, the +catchpenny shows, the drink, the childish excitement about football +and cricket, the little bands of desperately poor Follies and Pierrots +pretending to be funny and cute when they are only vulgar and silly, +and all the rest of the attempts to persuade the Intelligent Woman that +she is having a glorious treat when she is in fact being plundered and +bored and tired out and sent home cross and miserable: do not these +shew that people will snatch at anything, however uneasy, for the +sake of change when their few whole days of leisure are given to them +at long intervals on Bank Holidays and the like? If they had enough +real leisure every day as well as work they would learn how to enjoy +themselves. At present they are duffers at this important art. All they +can do is to buy the alluringly advertized pleasures that are offered +to them for money. They seldom have sense enough to notice that these +pleasures have no pleasure in them, and are endured only as a relief +from the monotony of the daily leisureless drudgery. + +When people have leisure enough to learn how to live, and to know the +difference between real and sham enjoyment, they will not only begin +to enjoy their work, but to understand why Sir George Cornewall Lewis +said that life would be tolerable but for its amusements. He was clever +enough to see that the amusements, instead of amusing him, wasted +his time and his money and spoiled his temper. Now there is nothing +so disagreeable to a healthy person as wasting time. See how healthy +children pretend to be doing something or making something until they +are tired! Well, it would be as natural for grown-up people to build +real castles for the fun of it as for children to build sand castles. +When they are tired they do not want to work at all, but just to do +nothing until they fall asleep. We never want to work at pleasure: what +we want is work with some pleasure and interest in it to occupy our +time and exercise our muscles and minds. No slave can understand this, +because he is overworked and underrespected; and when he can escape +from work he rushes into gross and excessive vices that correspond +to his gross and excessive labor. Set him free, and he may never be +able to shake off his old horror of labor and his old vices; but never +mind: he and his generation will die out; and their sons and daughters +will be able to enjoy their freedom. And one way in which they will +enjoy it will be to put in a great deal of extra work for the sake of +making useful things beautiful and good things better, to say nothing +of getting rid of bad things. For the world is like a garden: it needs +weeding as well as sowing. There is use and pleasure in destruction as +well as in construction: the one is as necessary as the other. + +To have a really precise understanding of this matter you must +distinguish not merely between labor and leisure but between leisure +and rest. Labor is doing what we must; leisure is doing what we like; +rest is doing nothing whilst our bodies and minds are recovering +from their fatigue. Now doing what we like is often as laborious as +doing what we must. Suppose it takes the form of running at the top +of our speed to kick a ball up and down a field! That is harder than +many forms of necessary labor. Looking at other people doing it is a +way of resting, like reading a book instead of writing it. If we all +had a full share of leisure we could not spend the whole of it in +kicking balls, or whacking them about with golf clubs, or in shooting +and hunting. Much of it would be given to useful work; and though +our compulsory labor, neglect to perform which would be treated as +a crime, might possibly be reduced to two or three hours a day, we +should add much voluntary work to that in our leisure time, doing for +fun a huge mass of nationally beneficial work that we cannot get done +at present for love or money. Every woman whose husband is engaged +in interesting work knows the difficulty of getting him away from it +even to his meals; in fact, jealousy of a man’s work sometimes causes +serious domestic unhappiness; and the same thing occurs when a woman +takes up some absorbing pursuit, and finds it and its associations more +interesting than her husband’s company and conversation and friends. +In the professions where the work is solitary and independent of +office and factory hours and steam engines, the number of people who +injure their health and even kill themselves prematurely by overwork +is so considerable that the philosopher Herbert Spencer never missed +an opportunity of warning people against the craze for work. It can +get hold of us exactly as the craze for drink can. Its victims go on +working long after they are so worn out that their operations are doing +more harm than good. + + + + +25 + +THE POPULATION QUESTION + + +The second of the two stock objections to equal division of income +is that its benefits, if any, would soon be swallowed up by married +couples having too many children. The people who say this always +declare at the same time that our existing poverty is caused by there +being already too many people in the world, or, to put it the other way +round, that the world is too small to produce food enough for all the +people in it. + +Now even if this were true, it would be no objection to an equal +division of income; for the less we have, the more important it is that +it should be equally divided, so as to make it go as far as possible, +and avoid adding the evils of inequality to those of scarcity. But it +is not true. What is true is that the more civilized people there are +in the world the poorer most of them are relatively; but the plain +cause of this is that the wealth they produce and the leisure they +provide for are so unequally divided between them that at least half of +them are living parasitically on the other half instead of producing +maintenance for themselves. + +Consider the case of domestic servants. Most people who can afford to +keep a servant keep one only; but in Mayfair a young couple moving in +the richest society cannot get on without nine servants, even before +they have any children to be attended to. Yet everyone knows that the +couples who have only one servant, or at most two (to say nothing of +those who have none), are better attended to and more comfortable in +their homes than the unfortunate young people who have to find room for +nine grown-up persons downstairs, and keep the peace between them. + +The truth is, of course, that the nine servants are attending mostly to +one another and not to their employers. If you must have a butler and +footman because it is the fashion, you must have somebody to cook their +meals and make their beds. Housekeepers and ladies’ maids need domestic +service as much as the lady of the house, and are much more particular +about not putting their hands to anything that is not strictly their +business. It is therefore a mistake to say that nine servants are +ridiculous with only two people to be attended. There are eleven people +in the house to be attended; and as nine of them have to do all this +attendance between them, there is not so much to spare for the odd +two as might be imagined. That is why couples with nine servants are +continually complaining of the difficulty of getting on with so few, +and supplementing them with charwomen and jobbing dressmakers and +errand boys. Families of ordinary size and extraordinary income find +themselves accumulating thirty servants; and as the thirty are all more +or less waiting on oneanother there is no limit except that of sleeping +room to the number wanted; the more servants you have, the less time +they have to attend to you, and therefore, the more you need, or rather +the more they need, which is much jollier for them than for you. + +Now it is plain that these hordes of servants are not supporting +themselves. They are supported by their employer; and if he is an idle +rich man living on rents and dividends: that is, being supported by +the labor of his tenants and of the workers in the companies in which +he has shares, then the whole establishment, servants, employer and +all, is not self-supporting, and would not be even if the world were +made ten times as large as it is to accommodate them. Instead of too +many people in the world there are too many idlers, and much too many +workers wasting their time in attending to idlers. Get rid of the +idlers, and set these workers to useful work, and we shall hear no more +for a long time yet about the world being overcrowded. Perhaps we shall +never hear of it again. Nature has a way with her in these matters. + +Some people will find it easier to understand this if I put it to +them like a sum in arithmetic. Suppose 20 men are producing by their +labor £100 a year each, and they agree, or are forced by law, to give +up £50 of it to the owner of the estate on which they work. The owner +will receive £1000 a year, not for work, but for owning. The owner can +afford to spend £500 a year on himself, which makes him ten times as +rich as any of the twenty workers, and use the other £500 to hire six +men and a boy at £75 a year each to wait on him as servants and act as +an armed force to deal with any of the twenty men who may attempt to +rebel and withhold the £50 from him. The six men will not take the part +of the men with £50 a year because they themselves get £75; and they +are not clever enough to see that if they all joined to get rid of the +owner and do useful work, they could have £100 a year apiece. + +You have only to multiply the twenty workers and the six or seven +retainers by millions to get the ground plan of what exists in every +country where there is a class of owners, with a great police force and +an army to protect their property, great numbers of servants to wait on +them, and masses of workers making luxuries for them, all supported by +the labor of the really useful workers who have to support themselves +as well. Whether an increase of population will make the country richer +or poorer depends, not on the natural fruitfulness of the earth, but +on whether the additional people are set to do useful work or not. If +they are, then the country will be richer. If, however, the additional +people are set to work unproductively for the property owners as +servants, or armed guardians of the rights of property, or in any of +the other callings and professions to minister only to the owners, +then the country will be poorer, though the property owners may become +richer, the display of diamonds and fine dresses and cars much more +splendid, and the servants and other retainers receiving higher wages +and more schooling than their grandfathers. + +In the natural course of things the more people there are in a country +the richer it ought to be, because of the advantage of division of +labor. Division of labor means that instead of every man having to +do everything for himself like Robinson Crusoe, the different sorts +of work are done by different sets of men, who become very quick and +skilful at their job by doing nothing else. Also their work can be +directed by others who give their whole minds to directing it. The time +saved in this way can be used in making machinery, roads, and all sorts +of contrivances for saving more time and labor later on. That is how +twenty workers can produce more than twice what ten can produce, and a +hundred much more than five times what twenty can produce. If wealth +and the labor of producing it were equally shared, a population of a +hundred would be much better off than a population of ten, and so on up +to modern populations of millions, which ought to be enormously better +off than the old communities of thousands. The fact that they are +either very little better off or sometimes actually worse off, is due +wholly to the idlers and idlers’ parasites who are plundering them as +we plunder the poor bees. + +I must not, however, let you believe that if we all shared equally the +increase of wealth per head could go on for ever. Human beings can +multiply very fast under favorable conditions. A single pair, if their +posterity managed their affairs well enough to avoid war, pestilence, +and premature death, might have twenty million descendants alive at +the end of four hundred years. If all the couples now alive were to +multiply at that rate there would soon not be standing room on the +earth, much less fields to grow wheat in. There is a limit to the +quantity of food the earth can yield to labor; and if there were no +limit to the increase of population we should at last find that instead +of increasing our shares of food by breeding more human beings, we +should diminish them. + +Though we now cultivate the skies by extracting nitrogen from the air, +other considerations than that of food will check our multiplication. +Man does not live by bread alone; and it is possible for people to +be overfed and overcrowded at the same time. After the war there was +no exceptional scarcity of food in England; but there was a terrible +scarcity of houses. Our cities are monstrously overcrowded: to provide +every family they contain with a comfortably spacious house and garden +some of our streets would have to be spread over miles of country. Some +day we may have to make up our minds how many people we need to keep us +all healthy, and stick to that number until we see reason to change it. + +In this matter the women who have to bear the children must be +considered. It is possible for a woman to bear twenty children. In +certain country districts in Europe families of fifteen are not +uncommon enough to be regarded as extraordinary. But though a properly +cared-for woman of vigorous constitution, with her confinements +reasonably spaced out, can apparently stand this strain without +permanent disablement or damage, and remain as well and strong as +women who have borne no children at all, yet the bearing of each +child involves a long period of discomfort and sickness, culminating +in temporary disablement, severe pain, and a risk of death. The +father escapes this; but at present he has to earn wages to support +the children while they are growing; and though there may be plenty +of employment for them when they come to working age, that does not +provide any bread and butter for them in the meantime. Consequently an +increase of population that benefits the country and the world may be +an almost unbearable burden to the parents. They therefore restrict +their families to the number the father can afford, or the mother cares +to bear, except when they do not know how this can be done, or are +forbidden by their religion to practise birth control. + +This has a very important bearing on the equal distribution of income. +To understand this I must go back a little, and seem to change the +subject; but the connexion will soon be plain. + +If the workers in all occupations are to receive the same income, how +are we to deal with the fact that though the cost of living is the +same for all workers, whether they are philosophers or farm hands, the +cost of their work varies very greatly. A woman in the course of a +day’s work may use up a reel of cotton costing a few pence whilst her +husband, if a scientific worker, may require some radium, which costs +£16,000 an ounce. The gunners on the battle-fields in Flanders, working +at a dreadful risk of life and limb, needed very little money for +themselves; but the cost of the materials they used up in a single day +was prodigious. If they had had to pay on the nail, out of their wages, +for the cannons they wore out and the shells they fired, there would +have been no war. + +This inequality of expense cannot be got over by any sort of adjustment +of leisure or holidays or privileges of any sort between worker and +worker. Still less can it be met by unequal wages. Even the maddest +upholder of our wage system will not propose that the man who works +a steam hammer costing many thousands of pounds should have wages +proportionately higher than the wages of the navvy who swings a +sledgehammer or the woodcutter who wields a beetle costing shillings +instead of thousands of pounds. The worker cannot bear the cost of his +materials and implements if he is to have only an equal share of the +national income: he must either be supplied with them, or repaid for +them in the cases in which he has to supply them at his own cost. + +Applying this to the labor of child-bearing and the cost of supporting +children, it is clear that the expenses of both should not be borne +by the parents. At present they are repaid very insufficiently by +maternity benefits and by an allowance off income tax for each child +in the family. Under a system of equal division of income each child +would be entitled to its share from birth; and the parents would be +the trustees for the children, subject, no doubt, to the obligation of +satisfying the Public Trustee, if any neglect were reported, that the +children were getting the full benefit of their incomes. In this way a +family of growing children would always be in easy circumstances; and +the mother could face the labor and risk of bearing them for the sake +of motherhood’s natural privileges, dignities, and satisfaction. + +But it is conceivable that such pleasant conditions, combined with +early marriages and the disappearance of the present terrible infant +mortality, would lead to a greater increase of population than might +seem desirable, or, what is equally inconvenient, a faster increase; +for the pace of the increase is very important: it might be desirable +to double the population in a hundred years and very undesirable to +double it in fifty. Thus it may become necessary to control our numbers +purposely in new ways. + +What are the present ways? How is the population kept down to the +numbers our system of unequal sharing can support? They are mostly very +dreadful and wicked ways. They include war, pestilence, and poverty +that causes multitudes of children to die of bad feeding and clothing +and housing before they are a year old. Operating side by side with +these horrors, we have the practice of artificial birth control by +the parents on such an enormous scale that among the educated classes +which resort to it, including the skilled artisan class, population +is actually decreasing seriously. In France the Government, dreading +a dearth of soldiers, urges the people to have more children to make +up a deficiency of twenty millions as compared with Germany. To such +restrictions on population must be added the criminal practice of +abortion, which is terribly prevalent, and, in eastern countries, the +more straightforward custom of frank infanticide by literally throwing +away the unwanted child, especially the female child, and leaving it +to perish of exposure. The humane Mahomet could not convince the Arabs +that this was sinful; but he told them that on the Day of Judgment the +female child that was exposed would rise up and ask “What fault did I +commit?” In spite of Mahomet children are still exposed in Asia; and +when exposure is effectually prevented by law as it is in nominally +Christian countries, the unwanted children die in such numbers from +neglect, starvation, and ill-usage, that they, too, may well ask on the +Day of Judgment “Would it not have been kinder to expose us?” + +Of all these methods of keeping down the population there can be +no doubt that artificial birth control: that is, the prevention of +conception, is the most humane and civilized, and by far the least +demoralizing. Bishops and cardinals have denounced it as sinful; but +their authority in the matter is shaken by their subjection to the +tradition of the early Christians, for whom there was no population +question. They believed also that marriage is sinful in itself, whether +conception be prevented or not. Thus our Churchmen are obliged to +start by assuming that sex is a curse imposed on us by the original +sin of Eve. But we do not get rid of a fact by calling it a curse and +trying to ignore it. We must face it with one eye on the alternatives +to birth control, and the other on the realities of our sexual nature. +The practical question for the mass of mankind is not whether the +population shall be kept down or not, but whether it shall be kept down +by preventing the conception of children or by bringing them into the +world and then slaughtering them by abortion, exposure, starvation, +neglect, ill-usage, plague, pestilence and famine, battle, murder +and sudden death. I defy any bishop or cardinal to choose the latter +alternatives. St Paul abhorred marriage; but he said “Better marry than +burn”. Our bishops and cardinals may abhor contraception (so do I, by +the way); but which of them would not say, when put to it like St Paul, +“Better have no children, by whatever means, than have them and kill +them as we are killing them at present”. + +We have seen how our present unequal sharing of the national income has +forced this question of Birth Control prematurely on us whilst there +is still plenty of room left in the world. Canada and Australia seem +underpopulated; but the Australians say that their waste spaces are +uninhabitable, though the overcrowded Japanese are restrained only +by our military prestige from saying “Well, if you will not inhabit +them, we will”. We have birth control even where the Churches struggle +hardest against it. The only thing that can check it is the abolition +of the artificial poverty that has produced it prematurely. As equal +division of income can do this, those who dislike birth control and +would defer it to the latest possible moment, have that reason as well +as all the others we have studied, for advocating equal division. + +When the last possible moment comes, nobody can foresee how the +necessary restriction of the population will be effected. It may be +that Nature will interfere and take the matter out of our hands. This +possibility is suggested by the fact that the number of children born +seems to vary according to the need for them. When they are exposed to +such dangers and hard conditions that very few of them can be expected +to survive, Nature, without any artificial interference, produces +enormous numbers to provide against the complete extinction of the +species. We have all heard of the codfish with its million eggs and of +the queen bee laying four thousand eggs a day. Human beings are less +prolific; but even within human limits Nature apparently distinguishes +between poor, undernourished, uncultivated, defective people whose +children die early and in great numbers, and people who are fully +cultivated mentally and physically. The defectives are appallingly +prolific: the others have fewer children even when they do not practise +birth control. It is one of the troubles of our present civilization +that the inferior stocks are outbreeding the superior ones. But the +inferior stocks are really starved stocks, slum stocks, stocks not +merely uncultivated but degraded by their wretched circumstances. By +getting rid of poverty we should get rid of these circumstances and of +the inferior stocks they produce; and it is not at all unlikely that in +doing so we should get rid of the exaggerated fertility by which Nature +tries to set off the terrible infant mortality among them. + +For if Nature can and does increase fertility to prevent the extinction +of a species by excessive mortality, need we doubt that she can and +will decrease it to prevent its extinction by overcrowding? It is +certain that she does, in a mysterious way, respond to our necessities, +or rather to her own. But her way is one that we do not understand. +The people who say that if we improve the condition of the world it +will be overpopulated are only pretending to understand it. If the +Socialists were to say positively that Nature will keep the population +within bounds under Socialism without artificial birth control, they +would be equally pretending to understand it. The sensible course +is to improve the condition of the world and see what will happen, +or, as some would say, trust in God that evil will not come out of +good. All that concerns us at present is that as the overpopulation +difficulty has not yet arisen except in the artificial form produced +by our unequal distribution of income, and curable by a better +distribution, it would be ridiculous to refrain from making ourselves +more comfortable on the ground that we may find ourselves getting +uncomfortable again later on. We should never do anything at all if we +listened to the people who tell us that the sun is cooling, or the end +of the world coming next year, or the increase of population going to +eat us off the face of the earth, or, generally, that all is vanity and +vexation of spirit. It would be quite sensible to say “Let us eat and +drink; for tomorrow we die” if only we were certain about tomorrow; but +it would be foolish anyhow to say “It is not worth while to live today; +for we shall die tomorrow”. It is just like saying “It will be all the +same a thousand years hence” as lazy people do when they have neglected +their duties. The fact is that the earth can accommodate its present +population more comfortably than it does or ever did; and whilst we +last we may as well make ourselves as comfortable as we can. + +Note that as long as two persons can produce more than twice as much +as one, and two million very much more than twice as much as one +million, the earth is said by the political economists to be under the +Law of Increasing Return. And if ever we reach a point when there will +be more people than the earth can feed properly, and the next child +born will make the whole world poorer, then the earth will be under +the Law of Diminishing Return. If any gentleman tries to persuade you +that the earth is now under the Law of Diminishing Return you may +safely conclude that he has been told to say so at a university for +the sons of the rich, who would like you to believe that their riches, +and the poverty of the rest, are brought about by an eternal and +unchangeable law of Nature instead of by an artificial and disastrous +misdistribution of the national income which we can remedy. + +All the same, do not overlook the fact that there may be overpopulation +in spots whilst the world as a whole is underpopulated. A boat in +mid ocean, containing ten castaways, a pint of water, and a pound +of biscuits, is terribly overpopulated. The cottage of a laborer +with thirty shillings a week and eight children is overpopulated. A +tenement house with twelve rooms and fifty people living in them is +overpopulated. London is abominably overpopulated. Therefore, though +there is no world population question, and the world is under the law +of increasing return, there are innumerable spots in the world which +are overpopulated and under the law of diminishing return. Equality of +income would enable the unfortunate denizens of these plague spots to +escape from the slavery of diminishing returns to the prosperity of +increasing returns. + + + + +26 + +THE DIAGNOSTIC OF SOCIALISM + + +We have now disposed of the only common objections to equal division +of income not dealt with in our earlier examination of the various +ways in which income is or might be unequally divided. And we have +done the whole business without bothering over what the Socialists +say, or quoting any of their books. You see how any intelligent woman, +sitting down to decide for herself how the national income should be +distributed, and without having ever heard the word Socialism or read +a line by any Socialist writer, may be driven by her own common sense +and knowledge of the world to the conclusion that the equal plan is the +only permanent and prosperous one possible in a free community. If you +could find a better way out of our present confusion and misery for us, +you would be hailed as one of the greatest of discoverers. + +“And if I cannot,” you will say, “I suppose you will tell me I must +join the Socialists!” + +Dear lady: have you ever read St Augustine? If you have, you will +remember that he had to admit that the early Christians were a very +mixed lot, and that some of them were more addicted to blackening their +wives’ eyes for tempting them, and wrecking the temples of the pagans, +than to carrying out the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. Indeed +you must have noticed that we modern Christians are still a very mixed +lot, and that it is necessary to hang a certain number of us every +year for our country’s good. Now I will be as frank as St Augustine, +and admit that the professed Socialists are also a very mixed lot, and +that if joining them meant inviting them indiscriminately to tea I +should strongly advise you not to do it, as they are just like other +people, which means that some of them steal spoons when they get the +chance. The nice ones are very nice; the general run are no worse than +their neighbors; and the undesirable ones include some of the most +thoroughpaced rascals you could meet anywhere. But what better can you +expect from any political party you could join? You are, I hope, on the +side of the angels; but you cannot join them until you die; and in the +meantime you must put up with mere Conservatives, Liberals, Socialists, +Protestants, Catholics, Dissenters, and other groups of mortal women +and men, very mixed lots all of them, so that when you join them you +have to pick your company just as carefully as if they had no labels +and were entire strangers to you. Carlyle lumped them all as mostly +fools; and who can deny that, on the whole, they deserve it? + +But, after all, you are an Intelligent Woman, and know this as well as +I do. What you may be a little less prepared for is that there are a +great many people who call themselves Socialists who do not clearly and +thoroughly know what Socialism is, and would be shocked and horrified +if you told them that you were in favor of dividing-up the income of +the country equally between everybody, making no distinction between +lords and laborers, babies in arms and able-bodied adults, drunkards +and teetotallers, archbishops and sextons, sinners and saints. They +would assure you that all this is a mere ignorant delusion of the +man in the street, and that no educated Socialist believes such +crazy nonsense. What they want, they will tell you, is equality of +opportunity, by which I suppose they mean that Capitalism will not +matter if everyone has an equal opportunity of becoming a Capitalist, +though how that equality of opportunity can be established without +equality of income they cannot explain. Equality of opportunity is +impossible. Give your son a fountain pen and a ream of paper, and tell +him that he now has an equal opportunity with me of writing plays, +and see what he will say to you! Do not let yourself be deceived by +such phrases, or by protestations that you need not fear Socialism +because it does not really mean Socialism. It does; and Socialism means +equality of income and nothing else. The other things are only its +conditions or its consequences. + +You may, if you have a taste that way, read all the books that +have been written to explain Socialism. You can study the Utopian +Socialism of Sir Thomas More, the Theocratic Socialism of the Incas, +the speculations of Saint Simon, the Communism of Fourier and Robert +Owen, the so-called Scientific Socialism of Karl Marx, the Christian +Socialism of Canon Kingsley and the Rev. F. D. Maurice, William +Morris’s News from Nowhere (a masterpiece of literary art which you +should read anyhow), the Constitutional Socialism of Sidney and +Beatrice Webb and of the highly respectable Fabian Society, and several +fancy Socialisms preached by young men who have not yet had time to +become celebrated. But clever as they all are, if they do not mean +equality of income they mean nothing that will save civilization. The +rule that subsistence comes first and virtue afterwards is as old as +Aristotle and as new as this book. The Communism of Christ, of Plato, +and of the great religious orders, all take equality in material +subsistence for granted as the first condition of establishing the +Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Whoever has reached this conclusion, by +whatever path, is a Socialist; and whoever has not reached it is no +Socialist, though he or she may profess Socialism or Communism in +passionate harangues from one end of the country to the other, and even +suffer martyrdom for it. + +So now you know, whether you agree with it or not, exactly what +Socialism is, and why it is advocated so widely by thoughtful and +experienced people in all classes. Also, you can distinguish between +the genuine Socialists, and the curious collection of Anarchists, +Syndicalists, Nationalists, Radicals, and malcontents of all sorts +who are ignorantly classed as Socialists or Communists or Bolshevists +because they are all hostile to the existing state of things, as well +as the professional politicians, or Careerists, who are deserting +Liberalism for Labor because they think the Liberal ship is sinking. +And you are qualified to take at its proper value the nonsense that +is talked and written every day by anti-Socialist politicians and +journalists who have never given five minutes serious thought to the +subject, and who trot round imaginary Bolshies as boys trot round Guys +on the fifth of November. + + + + +27 + +PERSONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS + + +And now that you know what Socialism is, let me give you a warning, +with an apology in advance if the warning is unnecessary. English +people, especially English ladies, are so individualistically brought +up that the moment they are convinced that anything is right they are +apt to announce that they are going to begin practising it at once, and +to order their children and servants to do the same. I have known women +of exceptional natural intelligence and energy who believed firmly +that the world can be made good by independent displays of coercive +personal righteousness. When they became convinced of the righteousness +of equality, they proceeded to do ridiculous things like commanding +their servants to take their meals with the family (forgetting that the +servants had not bargained for their intimacy and might strongly object +to it), with Heaven knows what other foolishness, until the servants +gave notice, and their husbands threatened to run away, and sometimes +even did. + +It is perhaps natural that ignorant poor women should imagine that +inequality is the fault of the rich women. What is more surprising is +that many rich women, though they ought to know better than anybody +that a woman can no more help being born rich than born poor, feel +guilty and ashamed of their wealth, and plunge into almsgiving to +relieve their sickly consciences. They often conceive Socialism as a +charitable enterprise for the benefit of the poor. Nothing could be +further from the truth. Socialism abhors poverty, and would abolish +the poor. A hearty dislike and disapproval of poor people as such is +the first qualification of a good Equalizer. Under Socialism people +would be prosecuted for being poor as they are now for being naked. +Socialism loathes almsgiving, not only sentimentally because it fills +the paupers with humiliation, the patrons with evil pride, and both +with hatred, but because in a country justly and providently managed +there could be neither excuse for it on the pauper’s part nor occasion +for it on the patron’s. Those who like playing the good Samaritan +should remember that you cannot have good Samaritans without thieves. +Saviors and rescuers may be splendid figures in hagiography and +romance; but as they could not exist without sinners and victims they +are bad symptoms. + +The virtues that feed on suffering are very questionable virtues. +There are people who positively wallow in hospitals and charitable +societies and Relief Funds and the like, yet who, if the need for their +charitable exercises were removed, could spend their energy to great +advantage in improving their own manners and learning to mind their +own business. There will always be plenty of need in the world for +kindness; but it should not be wasted on preventible starvation and +disease. Keeping such horrors in existence for the sake of exercising +our sympathies is like setting our houses on fire to exercise the vigor +and daring of our fire brigades. It is the people who hate poverty, not +those who sympathize with it, who will put an end to it. Almsgiving, +though it cannot be stopped at present, as without it we should have +hunger riots, and possibly revolution, is an evil. At present we give +the unemployed a dole to support them, not for love of them, but +because if we left them to starve they would begin by breaking our +windows and end by looting our shops and burning our houses. + +It is true that a third of the money has come directly out of their +own pockets; but the way in which it is repaid to them is none the +less demoralizing. They find out that whether they contribute or not, +the rich will pay ransom all the same. In ancient Rome the unemployed +demanded not only bread to feed them but gladiator shows to keep them +amused (_panem et circenses_); and the result was that Rome became +crowded with playboys who would not work at all, and were fed and +amused with money taken from the provinces. That was the beginning +of the end of ancient Rome. We may come to bread and football (or +prize-fights) yet: indeed the dole has brought us to the bread already. +There is not even the blessing of kindness on it; for we all grudge the +dole (it comes out of all our pockets) and would stop it tomorrow if +we dared. + +Equalization of Income will be brought about, not by every woman making +it her private business, but by every woman making it her public +business: that is, by law. And it will not be by a single law, but a +long series of laws. These laws will not be commandments saying thou +shalt or thou shalt not. The Ten Commandments gave the Israelites a +set of precepts which none of their laws were to violate; but the +commandments were politically useless until an elaborate set of laws +and institutions had been provided to give effect to them. The first +and last commandment of Socialism is “Thou shalt not have a greater or +less income than thy neighbor”; but before such a commandment can be +even approximately obeyed we shall have not only to pass hundreds of +new Acts of Parliament and repeal hundreds of old ones, but to invent +and organize new Government departments; train and employ no end of +women and men as public servants; educate children to look at their +country’s affairs in a new way; and struggle at every step with the +opposition of ignorance, stupidity, custom, prejudice, and the vested +interests of the rich. + +Imagine a Socialist Government elected by an overwhelming majority +of people who have read the preceding chapters of this book and been +convinced by them, but not otherwise prepared for any change. Imagine +it confronted with a starving woman. The woman says “I want work, not +charity”. The Government, not having any work for her, replies “Read +Shaw; and you will understand all about it”. The woman will say “I am +too hungry to read Shaw, even if I considered him an edifying author. +Will you please give me some food, and a job to enable me to pay for it +honestly?” What could the Government do but confess that it had no job +to give her, and offer her a dole, just as at present. + +Until the Government has acquired all the powers of employment that the +private employers now possess, it can give nothing to starving women, +but outdoor relief with money taken by taxation from the employers and +their landlords and financiers, which is just what any unsocialist +government does. To acquire those powers it must itself become the +national landlord, the national financier, and the national employer. +In other words, it cannot distribute the national income equally +until it, instead of the private owners, has the national income to +distribute. Until it has done so you cannot practise Socialism even +if you want to: you may even be severely punished for trying. You may +agitate and vote for all the steps by which equalization of income will +be reached; but in your private life you cannot do otherwise than you +have to do at present: that is, keep your social rank (know your place, +as it is called), paying or receiving the usual wages, investing your +money to the best advantage, and so forth. + +You see, it is one thing to understand the aim of Socialism, and +quite another to carry it into practice, or even to see how it can +or ever could be carried into practice. Jesus tells you to take no +thought for the morrow’s dinner or dress. Matthew Arnold tells you +to choose equality. But these are commandments without laws. How can +you possibly obey them at present? To take no thought for the morrow +as we now are is to become a tramp; and nobody can persuade a really +intelligent woman that the problems of civilization can be solved by +tramps. As to choosing equality, let us choose it by all means; but +how? A woman cannot go into the streets to rifle the pockets of those +who have more money than she has, and give money away to those who +have less: the police would soon stop that, and pass her on from the +prison cell to the lunatic asylum. She knows that there are things that +the Government may do by law that no private person could be allowed +to do. The Government may say to Mrs Jobson “If you murder Mrs Dobson +(or anyone else) you will be hanged”. But if Mrs Dobson’s husband said +to Mrs Jobson “If you murder my wife I will strangle you” he would be +threatening to commit a crime, and could be severely punished for it, +no matter how odious and dangerous Mrs Jobson might be. In America, +crowds sometimes take criminals out of the hands of the law and lynch +them. If they attempted to do that in England they would be dispersed +by the police, or shot down by the soldiers, no matter how wicked the +criminal and how natural their indignation at the crime. + +The first thing civilized people have to learn politically is that they +must not take the law into their own hands. Socialism is from beginning +to end a matter of law. It will have to make idlers work; but it must +not allow private persons to take this obligation on themselves. For +instance, an Intelligent Woman, having to deal with a lazy slut, might +feel strongly tempted to take up the nearest broomstick and say “If you +dont get on with your work and do your fair share of it I will lambaste +you with this stick until you are black and blue”. That occasionally +happens at present. But such a threat, and much more its execution, is +a worse crime than idleness, however richly the slattern may deserve +the thrashing. The remedy must be a legal remedy. If the slattern is to +be whacked it must be done by order of a court of law, by an officer of +the law, after a fair trial by law. Otherwise life would be unbearable; +for if we were all allowed to take the law into our own hands as we +pleased, no woman could walk down the street without risk of having her +hat torn off and stamped on by some æsthete who happened to think it +unbecoming, or her silk stockings tarred by some fanatic who considers +women’s legs indecent, not to mention mobs of such people. + +Besides, the Intelligent Woman might not be stronger than the lazy one; +and in that case the lazy one might take the broomstick and whack the +intelligent one for working too hard and thereby causing more to be +expected from the lazy ones. That, also, has often been done by too +zealous Trade Unionists. + +I need not labor this point any more. Should you become a convert to +Socialism you will not be committed to any change in your private +life, nor indeed will you find yourself able to make any change that +would be of the smallest use in that direction. The discussions in the +papers as to whether a Socialist Prime Minister should keep a motor +car, or a Socialist playwright receive fees for allowing his plays to +be performed, or Socialist landlords and capitalists charge rent for +their land or interest on their capital, or a Socialist of any sort +refrain from selling all that she has and giving it to the poor (quite +the most mischievous thing she could possibly do with it), are all +disgraceful displays of ignorance not only of Socialism, but of common +civilization. + + + + +28 + +CAPITALISM + + +Nobody who does not understand Capitalism can change it into Socialism, +or have clear notions of how Socialism will work. Therefore we shall +have to study Capitalism as carefully as Socialism. To begin with, +the word Capitalism is misleading. The proper name of our system +is Proletarianism. When practically every disinterested person who +understands our system wants to put an end to it because it wastes +capital so monstrously that most of us are as poor as church mice, it +darkens counsel to call it Capitalism. It sets people thinking that +Socialists want to destroy capital, and believe that they could do +without it: in short, that they are worse fools than their neighbors. + +Unfortunately that is exactly what the owners of the newspapers want +you to think about Socialists, whilst at the same time they would +persuade you that the British people are a free and independent race +who would scorn to be proletarians (except a few drunken rascals and +Russians and professional agitators): therefore they carefully avoid +the obnoxious word Proletarianism and stick to the flattering title +of Capitalism, which suggests that the capitalists are defending that +necessary thing, Capital. + +However, I must take names as I find them; and so must you. Let it be +understood between us, then, that when we say Capitalism we mean the +system by which the land of the country is in the hands, not of the +nation, but of private persons called landlords, who can prevent anyone +from living on it or using it except on their own terms. Lawyers tell +you that there is no such thing as private property in land because +all the land belongs to the King, and can legally be “resumed” by him +at any moment. But as the King never resumes it nowadays, and the +freeholder can keep you off it, private property in land is a fact in +spite of the law. + +The main advantage claimed for this arrangement is that it makes the +landholders rich enough to accumulate a fund of spare money called +capital. This fund is also private property. Consequently the entire +industry of the country, which could not exist without land and +capital, is private property. But as industry cannot exist without +labor, the owners must for their own sakes give employment to those +who are not owners (called proletarians), and must pay them enough +wages to keep them alive and enable them to marry and reproduce +themselves, though not enough to enable them ever to stop working +regularly. + +In this way, provided the owners make it their duty to be selfish, and +always hire labor at the lowest possible wage, the industry of the +country will be kept going, and the people provided with a continuous +livelihood, yet kept under a continuous necessity to go on working +until they are worn out and fit only for the workhouse. It is fully +admitted, by those who understand this system, that it produces +enormous inequality of income, and that the cheapening of labor which +comes from increase of population must end in an appalling spread +of discontent, misery, crime, and disease, culminating in violent +rebellion, unless the population is checked at the point up to which +the owners can find employment for it; but the argument is that this +must be faced because human nature is so essentially selfish, and +so inaccessible to any motive except pecuniary gain, that no other +practicable way of building up a great modern civilization stands open +to us. + +This doctrine used to be called the doctrine of The Manchester School. +But as the name became unpopular, it is now described generally as +Capitalism. Capitalism therefore means that the only duty of the +Government is to maintain private property in land and capital, and +to keep on foot an efficient police force and magistracy to enforce +all private contracts made by individuals in pursuance of their own +interests, besides, of course, keeping civil order and providing for +naval and military defence or adventure. + +In opposition to Capitalism, Socialism insists that the first duty of +the Government is to maintain equality of income, and absolutely denies +any private right of property whatever. It would treat every contract +as one to which the nation is a party, with the nation’s welfare as +the predominant consideration, and would not for a moment tolerate +any contract the effect of which would be that one woman should work +herself to death prematurely in degrading poverty in order that another +should live idly and extravagantly on her labor. Thus it is quite true +that Socialism will abolish private property and freedom of contract: +indeed it has done so already to a much greater extent than people +realize; for the political struggle between Capitalism and Socialism +has been going on for a century past, during which Capitalism has been +yielding bit by bit to the public indignation roused by its worst +results, and accepting instalments of Socialism to palliate them. + +Do not, by the way, let yourself be confused by the common use of +the term private property to denote personal possession. The law +distinguished between Real Property (lordship) and Personal Property +until the effort to make a distinction between property in land and +property in capital produced such a muddle that it was dropped in 1926. +Socialism, far from absurdly objecting to personal possessions, knows +them to be indispensable, and looks forward to a great increase of +them. But it is incompatible with real property. + +To make the distinction clear let me illustrate. You call your umbrella +your private property, and your dinner your private property. But they +are not so: you hold them on public conditions. You may not do as you +please with them. You may not hit me on the head with your umbrella; +and you may not put rat poison into your dinner and kill me with it, or +even kill yourself; for suicide is a crime in British law. Your right +to the use and enjoyment of your umbrella and dinner is a personal +right, rigidly limited by public considerations. But if you own an +English or Scottish county you may drive the inhabitants off it into +the sea if they have nowhere else to go. You may drag a sick woman with +a newly born baby in her arms out of her house and dump her in the snow +on the public road for no better reason than that you can make more +money out of sheep and deer than out of women and men. You may prevent +a waterside village from building a steamboat pier for the convenience +of its trade because you think the pier would spoil the view from your +bedroom window, even though you never spend more than a fortnight a +year in that bedroom, and often do not come there for years together. +These are not fancy examples: they are things that have been done again +and again. They are much worse crimes than hitting me over the head +with your umbrella. And if you ask why landowners are allowed to do +with their land what you are not allowed to do with your umbrella, the +reply is that the land is private property, or, as the lawyers used +to say, real property, whilst the umbrella is only personal property. +So you will not be surprised to hear Socialists say that the sooner +private property is done away with the better. + +Both Capitalism and Socialism claim that their object is the attainment +of the utmost possible welfare for mankind. It is in their practical +postulates for good government, their commandments if you like to call +them so, that they differ. These are, for Capitalism, the upholding +of private property in land and capital, the enforcement of private +contracts, and no other State interference with industry or business +except to keep civil order; and, for Socialism, the equalization of +income, which involves the complete substitution of personal for +private property and of publicly regulated contract for private +contract, with police interference whenever equality is threatened, and +complete regulation and control of industry and its products by the +State. + +As far as political theory is concerned you could hardly have a flatter +contradiction and opposition than this; and when you look at our +Parliament you do in fact see two opposed parties, the Conservative +and the Labor, representing roughly Capitalism and Socialism. But +as members of Parliament are not required to have had any political +education, or indeed any education at all, only a very few of them, +who happen to have made a special study, such as you are making, of +social and political questions, understand the principles their parties +represent. Many of the Labor members are not Socialists. Many of the +Conservatives are feudal aristocrats, called Tories, who are as keen +on State interference with everything and everybody as the Socialists. +All of them are muddling along from one difficulty to another, settling +as best they can when they can put it off no longer, rather than on +any principle or system. The most you can say is that, as far as the +Conservative Party has a policy at all, it is a Capitalistic policy, +and as far as the Labor Party has a policy at all it is a Socialist +policy; so that if you wish to vote against Socialism you should vote +Conservative; and if you wish to vote against Capitalism you should +vote Labor. I put it in this way because it is not easy to induce +people to take the trouble to vote. We go to the polling station mostly +to vote against something instead of for anything. + +We can now settle down to our examination of Capitalism as it comes to +our own doors. And, as we proceed, you must excuse the disadvantage I +am at in not knowing your private affairs. You may be a capitalist. +You may be a proletarian. You may be betwixt-and-between in the sense +of having an independent income sufficient to keep you, but not +sufficient to enable you to save any more capital. I shall have to +treat you sometimes as if you were so poor that the difference of a few +shillings a ton in the price of coal is a matter of serious importance +in your housekeeping, and sometimes as if you were so rich that your +chief anxiety is how to invest the thousands you have not been able to +spend. + +There is no need for you to remain equally in the dark about me; and +you had better know whom you are dealing with. I am a landlord and +capitalist, rich enough to be supertaxed; and in addition I have a +special sort of property called literary property, for the use of which +I charge people exactly as a landlord charges rent for his land. I +object to inequality of income not as a man with a small income, but as +one with a middling big one. But I know what it is to be a proletarian, +and a poor one at that. I have worked in an office; and I have pulled +through years of professional unemployment, some of the hardest of them +at the expense of my mother. I have known the extremes of failure and +of success. The class in which I was born was that most unlucky of all +classes: the class that claims gentility and is expected to keep up its +appearances without more than the barest scrap and remnant of property +to do it on. I intrude these confidences on you because it is as well +that you be able to allow for my personal bias. The rich often write +about the poor, and the poor about the rich, without really knowing +what they are writing about. I know the whole gamut from personal +experience, short of actual hunger and homelessness, which should never +be experienced by anybody. If I cry sour grapes, you need not suspect +that they are only out of my reach: they are all in my hand at their +ripest and best. + +So now let us come down to tin tacks. + + + + +29 + +YOUR SHOPPING + + +Ask yourself this question: “Where does unequal distribution of the +national income hit me in my everyday life?” + +The answer is equally plain and practical. When you go out to do your +marketing it hits you in every purchase you make. For every head of +cabbage you buy, every loaf of bread, every shoulder of mutton, every +bottle of beer, every ton of coals, every bus or tram fare, every +theatre ticket, every visit from your doctor or charwoman, every word +of advice from your lawyer, you have to pay not only what they cost, +but an additional charge which is handed over finally to people who +have done nothing whatever for you. + +Now though every intelligent woman knows that she cannot expect to have +goods or services for less than they cost in education, materials, +labor, management, distribution, and so on, no intelligent woman will +consent, if she knows about it and can help it, to pay over and above +this inevitable cost for the luxuries and extravagances of idlers, +especially if she finds great difficulty in making both ends meet by +working pretty hard herself. + +To rid her of this overcharge, Socialists propose to secure goods for +everyone at cost price by nationalizing the industries which produce +them. This terrifies the idlers and their dependents so much that they +do their best to persuade the Intelligent Woman in their newspapers +and speeches and sermons that nationalization is an unnatural crime +which must utterly ruin the country. That is all nonsense. We have +plenty of nationalization at present; and nobody is any the worse for +it. The army and navy, the civil service, the posts and telegraphs and +telephones, the roads and bridges, the lighthouses and royal dockyards +and arsenals, are all nationalized services; and anyone declaring +that they were unnatural crimes and were ruining the country would be +transferred to the county lunatic asylum, also a national institution. + +And we have much more nationalization than this in the form called +municipalization, the only difference being that instead of the central +Westminster Parliament owning and conducting the industry for the +nation, as it does the Post Office, the industry is owned and conducted +by City Corporations or County Councils for the local ratepayers. Thus +we get publicly owned electric light works, gas works, water works, +trams, baths and washhouses, public health services, libraries, picture +galleries, museums, lavatories, parks and piers with pavilions and +bands and stages, besides many other public services which concern the +maintenance of the Empire, and of which the public knows nothing. + +Most of these things could be done by private companies and shops; +indeed many of them are done at present partly by private enterprise +and partly by public: for instance, in London private electric lighting +companies supply light in one district whilst the Borough Councils +provide a municipal supply in others. But the municipal supply is +cheaper, and with honest and capable management always must be cheaper +than the private company’s supply. + +You will ask, why must it? Well, shortly, because it pays less for its +capital, less for its management, and nothing at all for profits, this +triple advantage going to the consumer in cheapness. But to take in +the whole scope of public enterprise as compared with private, let us +begin with the nationalized services. Why is it that the nationalized +Post Office is so much cheaper and more extensive than a private +letter-carrying company could make it, that private letter-carrying is +actually forbidden by law? + +The reason is that the cost of carrying letters differs greatly as +between one letter and another. The cost of carrying a letter from +house to house in the same terrace is so small that it cannot be +expressed in money: it is as near nothing as does not matter: to get +a figure at all you would have to take the cost per thousand letters +instead of per letter. But the cost of carrying the same letter from +the Isle of Wight to San Francisco is considerable. It has to be +taken from the train to the ship to cross the Solent; changed into +another ship at Southampton or perhaps at Liverpool after another +train journey; carried across the Atlantic Ocean; then across the +continent of North America; and finally delivered at the opposite +side of the world to the Isle of Wight. You would naturally expect +the Postmaster-General to deliver a dozen letters for you in the +same terrace for a penny, and charge you a pound or so for sending +one letter to San Francisco. What he actually does for you is to +deliver the thirteen letters for three-halfpence apiece. By the time +these lines are in print he may be charging you only a penny apiece, +as he used to before the war. He charges you less than the cost of +sending the long-distance letter, and more than the cost of sending +the short-distance letters; but as he has thousands of short-distance +letters to send and only dozens of long-distance ones he can make up +for the undercharge on the long by an overcharge on the short. This +charging the same for all letters is called by economists averaging. +Others call it gaining on the swings what we lose on the roundabouts. + +Our reason for forbidding private persons or companies to carry letters +is that if they were allowed to meddle, there would soon be companies +selling stamps at threepence a dozen to deliver letters within a few +miles. The Postmaster-General would get nothing but long-distance +letters: that is, the ones with a high cost of carriage. He would have +to put up the price of his stamps; and when we found that the advantage +of sending a letter a mile or two for a farthing was accompanied by +the disadvantage of paying sixpence or a shilling when we wanted to +write to someone ten miles off, we should feel that we had made a very +bad bargain. The only gainers would be the private companies who had +upset our system. And when they had upset it they would raise their +short-distance prices to the traditional penny, if not higher. + +Now let us turn from this well-established nationalized service to one +that might be nationalized, and that concerns every housekeeper in the +country very intimately. I mean the coal supply. Coals have become a +necessary of life in our climate; and they are dreadfully dear. As +I write these lines it is midsummer, when coals are cheapest; and a +circular dated the 16th June offers me drawingroom coal for thirty-six +and threepence a ton, and anthracite for seventy shillings. That is +much more than the average cost. Why must I pay it? Why must you pay +it? Simply because the coal industry is not yet nationalized. It is +private property. + +The cost price of coal varies from nothing to a pound a ton or more, +without counting what it costs to carry and distribute the coal +throughout the country. Perhaps you do not believe that coals can be +had for nothing; but I assure you that on the Sunderland coast when the +tide is out coals can be picked up on the shore by all comers as freely +as shells or seaweed. I have seen them with my own eyes doing it. A +sack and a back to carry it on is all that anybody needs there to set +up as a hawker of coals in a small way, or to fill the cellar at home. +Elsewhere on our coasts coal is so hard to reach that shafts have been +sunk and mines dug for miles under the sea, the coal not having been +reached until after twenty years work and a heavy expenditure of money. +Between these two extremes there are all sorts of mines, some yielding +so little coal at such high cost that they are worked only when the +price of coal rises to exceptional heights, and others in which coal +is so plentiful and easily got at that it is always profitable to work +them even when coal is unusually cheap. The money they cost to open up +varies from £350 to over a million. But the price you have to pay never +falls below the cost from the very dearest mines. + +The reason is this. What makes prices high is scarcity: what +brings them down is plenty. Coals rise and fall in price just like +strawberries. They are dear when scarce, cheap when plenty. + +Now an article can become scarce in several ways. One is by reducing +the quantity in the market by slackening or ceasing to manufacture. +Another is to increase the number of people who want to buy the +article and have money enough to pay for it. Yet another is to find +out new uses for it. A scarcity of coal can be produced not only by +the increase of the population, but by the people who formerly wanted +only a scuttle of coals for the kitchen fire wanting thousands of tons +for blast furnaces and ocean steamers. It is the scarcity produced +in these ways that has raised the price of coal to such a point that +it is now worth while to tunnel out mines under the sea. The cost of +such mines is heavy; but it is not incurred until the price of coal +has gone up sufficiently to cover it with a profit. If the price falls +enough to cut off that profit the mine stops working and is abandoned. +And what is the consequence of that? The stopping of the mine cuts off +the supply of coals it used to send to the market; and the scarcity +produced by the stoppage sends the price up again until it is high +enough to restart the mine without losing money by it. + +In this way the Intelligent Woman (and also the unintelligent one) +finds herself condemned always to pay for her coals the full cost of +getting them from the very dearest mines in use, though she may know +that only the fag end of the supply comes from these mines, the rest +coming from mines where the cost is much lower. She will be assured, +if she remonstrates, that the price is barely sufficient to enable +some of the collieries to continue working; and this will be quite +true. What she will not be told, though it also is quite true, is that +the better mines are making excessive profits at her expense, to say +nothing of landlord’s royalties. + +And here comes in another complication. The miners who hew out the coal +for wages in the better mines are paid no more than those in the worse +ones which can barely afford to keep going, because the men, unlike the +coal, can go from one mine to another, and what the poorest miner must +accept all must accept. Thus the wages of all the miners are kept down +to the poverty of the worst mines, just as the coal bills of all the +housekeepers are kept up to their high cost. The dissatisfied miners +strike, making coals scarcer and dearer than ever. The housekeepers +grumble, but cannot bring down prices, and blame “the middleman”. +Nobody is satisfied except the owners of the better mines. + +The remedy here is, of course, the Postmaster-General’s plan of +averaging. If all the coal mines belonged to a Coalmaster-General he +could set off the good mines against the bad, and sell coal for the +average cost of getting the whole supply instead of having to sell +it for the cost of getting it in the very worst mines. To take fancy +figures, if half the supply cost a pound a ton to raise and the other +half cost half a crown a ton, he could sell at eleven and threepence +a ton instead of at a pound. A Commercial Coal Trust, though it might +come to own all the mines, would not do this, because its object would +be to make as much profit as possible for its shareholders instead of +to make coal as cheap for you as possible. There is only one owner who +would work in your interest, and not want to make any profit at all. +That owner would be a Government Coalmaster-General, acting for the +nation: that is, acting for you and all the other housekeepers and +users of coal. + +Now you understand why you have the miners and the intelligent users +and buyers of coal demanding the nationalization of the coal mines, +and all the owners of the mines and the sellers of coal shrieking +that nationalization would mean waste, corruption, ruinously high +prices, the destruction of our commerce and industry, the end of our +empire, and anything else they can think of in their dismay at the +prospect of losing the profits they make by compelling us to pay a +great deal more for our coal than it costs. But however recklessly +they shriek, they are careful never to mention the real point of the +whole business: that is, the procuring of coal for everybody at cost +price. To keep the attention of the public off that, they will declare +that nationalization is a wicked invention of the Bolshevists, and +that the British Government is so corrupt and incompetent that it +could not manage a baked potato stand honestly and capably, much less +a coal mine. You may read ten debates in the House of Commons on coal +nationalization, and a hundred newspaper articles on those debates, +without ever learning what I have just told you about the difference +between the mines, and how by averaging the cost of working them the +price of your coals could be greatly reduced. Once these facts are +known and understood there is no room for further argument: every +purchaser of coal becomes a nationalizer at once; though every coal +proprietor is ready to spend the last penny he can spare to discredit +and prevent nationalization. + +You see then how separate private property in coal mines hits a woman +every time she buys coals. Well, it hits her in precisely the same way +every time she buys a pair of scissors or a set of knives and forks +or a flat-iron, because iron mines and silver mines differ like coal +mines. It hits her every time she buys a loaf of bread, because wheat +farms differ in fertility just like mines: a bushel of wheat will cost +much more to raise on one farm than on another. It hits her every time +she buys anything that is made in a factory, because factories differ +according to their distance from railways or canals or seaports or big +market towns or places where their raw materials are plentiful, or +where there is natural water power to drive their works. In every case +the shop price represents the cost of the article in the few mines and +factories where the cost of production is greatest. It never represents +the average cost taking one factory and one mine with another, which +is the real national cost. Thus she is kept poor in a rich country +because all the difference between the worst and the best in it is +skimmed off for the private owners of the mines and factories by simply +charging her more for everything she uses than the things cost. And +it is to save her from this monstrous imposition that the Socialists, +and many people who never dream of calling themselves Socialists, +propose that the mines and factories shall be made national property +instead of private property. The difference between the Socialist and +non-Socialist nationalizers is that the non-Socialists aim only at +cheap coal, whereas the Socialists have the ulterior object of bringing +the mines into national ownership and control so as to prevent their +remaining an instrument of inequality of income. On the immediate +practical question of nationalization they are agreed. That is how +Socialism can advance without a majority of professed Socialists in +Parliament, or even without any. + +Note that the difference between the highest cost of production under +the worst circumstances and the lower costs under more favorable +circumstances is called by economists rent. Mining rents and rents of +copyrights and patent rights are called royalties; and most people call +nothing rent except what they pay for house and land. But rent is part +of the price of everything that has a price at all, except things that +are communized, and things that are produced under the most unfavorable +conditions. + + + + +30 + +YOUR TAXES + + +Besides buying things in the shops you have to pay rates, taxes, +telephone rent (if you have a telephone), and rent of house and land. +Let us examine this part of your expenditure, and see whether you get +hit here again and again. + +People grumble a great deal about the rates, because they get nothing +across the counter for them; and what they do get they share with +everyone else, so that they have no sense of individual property in +it, as they have in their clothes and houses and furniture. But they +would not possess their clothes or their furniture or their houses very +long in peace but for the paved and lighted and policed streets, the +water supply and drainage, and all the other services the rates pay +for. The Intelligent Woman, when she begins to study these matters, +soon realizes that she gets better value for her rates than for any +other part of her expenditure, and that the municipal candidates who +ask for her vote on the ground that they are going to abolish or reduce +the rates (which they fortunately cannot do) are mostly either fools +or humbugs, if not both. And she has the satisfaction of knowing that +she gets these services as nearly as possible at their cost to the +local authority, which not only does not profiteer at her expense, but +does for nothing a great deal of directorial work that in any private +business would have to be paid for, and under present circumstances +ought to be paid for, in public business as well. + +The same advantage can be claimed for taxes. Of all the public services +which you pay for in taxes to the Government it can be said that there +is no direct profiteering in them: you get them for what they cost the +Government: that is, for much less than you would have to pay if they +were private business concerns. + +So far it would seem that when you pay your rates and taxes you escape +the exactions which pursue you whenever you spend money in any other +way. You are perhaps beginning to feel that the next time the collector +calls you will hear his knock with joy, and welcome him with the +beaming face of the willing giver. + +I am sorry to spoil it all; but the truth is that Capitalism plunders +you through the Government and the municipalities and County Councils +as effectually as it does through the shopkeeper. It is not only +that the Government and the local authorities, in order to carry on +their public services, have to buy vast quantities of goods from +private profiteers who charge them more than cost price, and that this +overcharge is passed on to you as a ratepayer and taxpayer. Nor is +it that the Government of the country, acting for the people of the +country, cannot use the land of the country without paying some private +person heavily for leave to do so. There are ways of getting round +these overcharges, as, for instance, when the Government buys a piece +of land for its operations, but raises the money to pay for it by a tax +on rent which only the landlords pay, or when it raises capital by a +tax on unearned incomes. By this expedient it can, and sometimes does, +give you a complete and genuine cost price service. It can even give it +to you for nothing and make richer people pay for it. + +But you are rated and taxed not only to pay for public services which +are equally useful to all, but for other things as well; and when you +come to these you may, if you are a rich woman, complain that you are +being plundered by Socialists for the benefit of the poor, or, if you +are a poor woman, that you are being plundered by Capitalists who +throw on the rents and taxes certain expenses which they should pay out +of their own pockets. + +Let us see what foundation there is for such complaints. Let us begin +with the rich. By taxation rich people have a quarter or a third +of their incomes, and very rich people more than half, taken from +them by the Government, not for any specified public service, but as +pure nationalization (communization) of their income to that extent +without any compensation, and by simple coercion. This is now taken so +completely as a matter of course that the rich never dream of asking +for compensation, or refusing to pay until their goods are forcibly +seized, or even of calling it Bolshevik confiscation; and so we are apt +to talk as if such things never happened except in the imaginations +of wicked Communists; but they happen in Great Britain regularly +every January; and the Act authorizing them is brought in every April +by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Though reassuringly called the +Appropriation Act it is really an Expropriation Act. + +There is nothing in the law or the Constitution, or in any custom or +tradition or parliamentary usage or any other part of our established +morality, to prevent this confiscated third or half being raised to +three-quarters, nine-tenths, or the whole. Besides this, when a very +rich person dies, the Government confiscates the entire income of the +property for the next eight years. The smallest taxable properties have +to give up their incomes to the Government for ten months, and the rest +for different periods between these extremes, in proportion to their +amount. + +In addition, there are certain taxes paid by rich and poor alike, +called indirect taxes. Some of them are taxes on certain articles of +food, and on tobacco and spirits, which you pay in the shop when you +buy them, as part of the price. Others are stamp duties: twopence +if you give a receipt for £2 or more, sixpence if you make a simple +written agreement, hundreds of pounds on certain other documents which +propertyless people never use. None of these taxes are levied for a +named service like the police rate or the water rate: they are simple +transfers of income from private pockets to the national pocket, and, +as such, acts of pure Communism. It may surprise you to learn that even +without counting the taxes on food, which fall on all classes, the +private property thus communized already amounts to nearly a million a +day. + +The rich may well gasp at the figure, and ask what does the Government +do with it all? What value do they get for this contribution which +appears so prodigious to most of us who have to count our incomes +in hundreds a year and not in millions a day? Well, the Government +provides an army and navy, a civil service, courts of law and so forth; +and, as we have seen, it provides them either at cost price or more +nearly at cost price than any commercial concern would. But over a +hundred million solid pounds of it are handed over every year in hard +cash in pensions and doles to the unfortunate people who have small +incomes or none. + +This is pure redistribution of income: that is, pure Socialism. The +officers of the Government take the money from the rich and give it to +the poor because the poor have not enough and the rich have too much, +without regard to their personal merits. And here again there is no +constitutional limit to the process. I can remember a time when there +was no supertax, and the income tax was twopence in the pound instead +of four-and-sixpence or five shillings, and when Gladstone hoped to +abolish it altogether. Nobody dreamt then of using taxation as an +instrument for effecting a more equal distribution of income. Nowadays +it is one of the chief uses of taxation; and it could be carried to +complete equality without any change in our annual exchequer routine. + +So far the poor have the better of the bargain. But some of the rich +do very well out of the taxes. By far the heaviest single item of +Government expenditure is the annual payment for the hire of the money +we borrowed for the war. It is all spent and gone; but we must go on +paying for the hire until we replace and repay it. Most of it was +borrowed from the rich, because they alone had any spare money to lend. +Consequently the Government takes a vast sum of money every year from +the whole body of rich, and immediately hands it back to those who +lent it money for the war. The effect of this transaction is simply to +redistribute income between the rich themselves. Those who lose by it +make a fuss about what they call the burden of the National Debt; but +the nation is not a penny the poorer for taking money from one bold +Briton and giving it to another. Whether the transfer is for better +or worse depends on whether it increases or diminishes the existing +inequality. Unfortunately, it is bound, on the whole, to increase it, +because the Government, instead of taking money from some capitalists +and dividing it among them all, is taking money from all capitalists +and dividing it among some of them. This is the real mischief of the +National Debt, which, in so far as it is owed to our own people, is +not a debt at all. To illustrate, one may say that an elephant does +not complain of being burdened because its legs have to carry its own +weight; but if all the weight were on one side instead of being equally +distributed between the legs, the elephant would hardly be able to +carry it, and would roll over on its back when it met the slightest +obstacle, which is very much what our trade does under our unequal +system. + +It is sometimes said that the capitalists who lent the Government the +money for the war deserve the hire of it because they made sacrifices. +As I was one of them myself I can tell you without malice that this +is sentimental nonsense. They were the only people who were not +called on to make any sacrifice: on the contrary, they were offered +a gilt-edged investment at five per cent when they would have taken +four. The people who were blinded, maimed, or killed by the war were +those really sacrificed; and those who worked and fought were the real +saviors of the country; whilst the people who did nothing but seize +the national loaf that others had made, and take a big bite out of it +(they and their servants) before passing on what they left of it to +the soldiers, did no personal service at all: they only made the food +shortage still shorter. The reason for pampering them in this absurd +fashion was not for any service or merit on their part: it was the +special consideration we have to shew to spare money as such because +we are afraid there would not be any available if we did not pamper a +class by giving it more than it can spend. We shall have to go further +into this when we examine the nature of capital later on. Meanwhile, if +you had the misfortune to lose an eye during one of the air raids, or +if you lost your husband or son, or if you “did your bit” strenuously +throughout the war, and are now a taxpayer, it must seem to you, to say +the least, funny to have money taken from you by the Government and +handed over to some lady who did nothing but live as indulgently as +she could all the time. You will not easily be convinced that it would +have been a more dreadful thing for the Government to commandeer her +money than your husband’s limbs, or your son’s life. The utmost that +can be said is that it may have been more expedient. + +One more example of how your taxes may be used to enrich profiteers +instead of to do you any service. At the beginning of the war, the +influence of the profiteers was so strong that they persuaded the +Government to allow them to make all the shells instead of having them +made in national factories. The result was that you were paying taxes +to keep workmen standing idle in Woolwich Arsenal at full wages in +order that the profiteering firms should have all the work at a profit. +You had to pay their workmen too, and the profit into the bargain. It +soon turned out that they could not make nearly enough shells. Those +they did make were unnecessarily expensive and not always explosive. +The result was an appalling slaughter of our young men in Flanders, +who were left almost defenceless in the trenches through the shortage +of munitions; and we were on the verge of being defeated by simple +extermination when the Government, taking the matter in hand itself, +opened national factories (you may have worked in some of them) in +which munitions were produced on such a scale that we have hardly +yet got rid of what was left of them when the war ended, besides +controlling the profiteers, teaching them their business (they did not +know even how to keep proper accounts, and were wasting money like +water), and limiting their profits drastically. And yet, in the face +of this experience (which was of course a tremendous triumph for the +advocates of nationalized industries), the war was no sooner at an end +than the capitalist papers began again with their foolish and corrupt +declarations that Governments are such incompetent and dishonest and +extravagant jobbers, and private firms so splendidly capable and +straightforward, that Governments must never do anything that private +firms can make profits by doing; and very soon all the national +factories were sold for an old song to the profiteers, and the national +workers were in the streets with the demobilized soldiers, living on +the dole, two millions strong. + +This is only a sensational instance of something that is always going +on: namely, the wasting of your money by employing profiteering +contractors to do the work that could be done better by the +authorities themselves without charging you any profit. + +You see therefore that when you pay rates and taxes you are not safe +from being charged not only the cost price of public services, but huge +sums which go to private employers as unnecessary or excessive profits, +to the landlords and capitalists whose land and capital these employers +use, and to those property owners who hold the War Loan and the other +stocks which represent the National Debt. But as you may also get back +some of it as a pensioner or a recipient of public relief in some form +or other, or as you may yourself be a holder of War Loan or Consols, +or a shareholder in one of the commercial concerns which get contracts +from the Government and the municipalities, it is impossible for me to +say whether, on the whole, you gain or lose. I can only say that the +chances are ten to one that you lose on balance; that is, that the rich +get more out of you through the Government than you get out of them. So +much for the taxes. Now for the rates. + + + + +31 + +YOUR RATES + + +The rates are not paid equally by everybody. The local authorities, +like the Government, have to recognize the fact that some people are +better able to pay than others, and make them pay accordingly. They do +this by calculating the rates on the value of the house occupied by the +ratepayer, and of his place of business, guessing that a person with +a house or shop worth a hundred a year will be richer than one with a +house or shop worth twenty, and rating him on the valuation. + +Thus every rate is really a graduated income tax as well as a payment +for public services. Then there are the municipal debts as well as +the national debt; and as municipalities are as lazy and wasteful +as central governments in the way of giving public jobs out to +profiteering contractors, everything that happens with the taxes +happens with the rates as well on a smaller scale. + +But there are other anomalies which rating brings out. + +Just consider what happens when even the quite genuine part of our +national and municipal Communism, paying its way honestly by taxing and +rating, is applied, as we apply it, to people of whom some are very +poor and some are very rich. If a woman cannot afford to feed herself +well enough to nurse her baby properly she clearly cannot afford +to contribute to the maintenance of a stud of cream-colored ponies +in the stables of Buckingham Palace. If she lives with her husband +and children in a single room in a back-to-back dwelling in a slum, +hopelessly out of reach of the public parks of the great cities, with +their flowers and bands and rides and lakes and boats, it is rather +hard on her to have to pay a share of the cost of these places of +recreation, used largely by rich people whose horses and motor cars +shew that they could easily pay a charge for admission sufficient to +maintain the place without coming to her for a contribution. + +In short, since communistic expenditure is compulsory expenditure, +enforced on everybody alike, it cannot be kept within everybody’s means +unless everybody has the same income. But the remedy is, not to abolish +the parks and the cream-colored ponies, and to tell the Prince of Wales +that he cannot have more than one suit of clothes until every poor +woman’s son has two, all of which is not only impossible but envious +and curmudgeonish, but to equalize incomes. In the meantime we must +pay our rates and taxes with the best grace we can, knowing that if we +tried to drag down public expenditure to the level of the worst private +poverty our lives would be unendurable even by savages. + +This, however, does not apply to certain ways in which the ratepayer is +“exploited”. To exploit a person is to make money out of her without +giving her an equivalent return. Now practically all private employers +exploit the ratepayer more or less in a way that she never notices +unless she has studied the subject as we are studying it at present. +And the way they do it is this. + +A woman who employs domestic servants gives regular employment to +most of them; but to some she gives only casual employment. The +housemaid and cook are in regular employment; the nurse is in temporary +employment; and the charwoman is in casual employment: that is, she is +taken on for a few hours or for a day, and then cast off to shift for +herself as best she can until she gets another equally short job. If +she is ill, none of her occasional employers need concern herself: and +when rich people die and make provision for their servants in their +wills, they never think of including a legacy for the charwoman. + +Now no doubt it is very convenient to be able to pick up a woman +like a taxi for an hour or so, and then get rid of her without any +further responsibility by paying her a few shillings and turning her +into the street. But it means that when the charwoman is ill or out +of employment or getting so old that younger and stronger women are +preferred to her, somebody has to provide for her. And that somebody +is the ratepayer, who provides the outdoor relief and the workhouse, +besides, as taxpayer, the old age pension and part of the dole. If +the ratepayer did not do this the householder would have either to do +without the charwoman or pay her more. Even regular servants could not, +as at present, be discharged without pensions when they are worn out, +if the ratepayers made no provision for them. Thus the householder is +making the other ratepayers, many of whom do not employ charwomen, pay +part of the cost of her domestic service. + +But this is perhaps not the most impressive case, because you, as an +experienced woman, can tell me that charwomen do not do so badly for +themselves; that they are hard to get; and that steady ones often have +their pick of several jobs, and make a compliment of taking one. But +think of the great industrial concerns which employ huge armies of +casuals. Take the dock companies for example. The men who load and +unload the ships are taken on by the hour in hundreds at a time; and +they never know whether there will be an hour’s work for them or eight +hours, or whether they will get two days in the week or six. I can +remember when they were paid twopence an hour, and how great a victory +they were supposed to have gained when they struck for sixpence an hour +and got it. The dock companies profit; but the men and their families +are nearly always living more or less on the rates. + +Take the extreme case of this. The ratepayers have to maintain a +workhouse. If any man presents himself at that workhouse as a destitute +person, he must be taken in and lodged and fed and clothed. It is +an established practice with some men to live at the workhouse as +ablebodied paupers until they feel disposed for a night of drinking and +debauchery. Then they demand their discharge, and must be let out to +go about their business. They unload a ship; spend all the money they +earn in a reckless spree; and return to the workhouse next morning as +destitute persons to resume their residence there at the ratepayers’ +expense. A woman can do the same when there are casual jobs within her +reach. This, I repeat, is the extreme case only: the decent respectable +laborers do not do it; but casual labor does not tend to make people +decent and respectable. If they were not careless, and did not keep up +their spirits and keep down their prudence by drinking more than is +good for them, they could not endure such worrying uncertainty. + +Now, as it happens, dock labor is dangerous labor. In busy times in +big docks an accident happens about every twenty minutes. But the dock +company does not keep a hospital to mend its broken casuals. Why should +it? There is the Poor Law Infirmary, supported by the ratepayers, near +at hand, or a hospital supported by their charitable subscriptions; and +nothing is simpler than to carry the victim of the accident there to +be cured at the public expense without troubling the dock company. No +wonder the dock company chairmen and directors are often among our most +ardent advocates of public charity. With them it begins at home. + +Another public institution kept by the ratepayers and taxpayers is +the prison, with its police force, its courts of law, its judges, and +all the rest of its very expensive retinue. An enormous proportion +of the offences they deal with are caused by drink. Now the trade +in drink is extremely profitable: so much so that in England it is +called _The_ Trade, which is short for The Trade of Trades. But why +is it profitable? Because the trader in drink takes all the money the +drunkard pays for his liquor, and when he is drunk throws him into the +street, leaving the ratepayer to pay for all the mischief he may do, +all the crimes he may commit, all the illness he may bring on himself +and his family, and all the poverty to which he may be reduced. If the +cost of these were charged against the drink trade instead of against +the police rates and poor rates, the profits of the trade would vanish +at once. + +As it is, the trader gets all the takings; and the ratepayer stands +all the losses. That is why they made the trade unlawful in America. +They shut up the saloons (public houses), and found immediately that +they could shut up a good many of the prisons as well. But if they had +municipalized the drink traffic: that is, if the ratepayer had kept +the public house as well as the prison, the greatest care would have +been taken to discourage drunkenness, because drunkenness would have +produced a loss in the municipal accounts instead of a profit. As it +is, the ratepayer is being exploited outrageously by the drink trade, +and the whole nation weakened and demoralized in order that a handful +of people may become unnaturally rich. It is true that they rebuild our +tumble-down cathedrals for us occasionally; but then they expect to be +made peers for it. The bargain is an insanely bad one anyhow. + +There is one more trick that can be played on you both by the +municipality and the Government. In spite of their obligation not to +profiteer, but to give you every service at cost price, they often do +profiteer quite openly, and actually boast of their profits as a proof +of their business efficiency. This takes place when you pay for the +service, not by a tax or a rate, but by the ordinary process of paying +for what you consume. Thus when you want a letter sent, you pay the +Government three halfpence across the counter for the job. When you +live where electric light is made and supplied by the municipality, you +do not pay for it in your rates: you pay so much for every unit you +consume. + +I am sorry to have to add that the Postmaster-General takes advantage +of this to charge you more for carrying your letter than the average +cost of it to the Post Office. In this way he makes a profit which he +hands over to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who uses it to keep down +the income tax and supertax. You pay more that the income tax payers +may pay less. A fraction of your three halfpence goes into the pockets +of the millionaires. True, if you are an income tax payer you get a +scrap of it back yourself; but as most people do not pay income tax and +everybody buys at least a few postage stamps, the income tax payers +in effect exploit the purchasers of stamps. The principle is wrong, +and the practice a dangerous abuse, which is nevertheless applauded +and carried to greater and greater lengths as the Government adds +telegraphs to posts, telephones to telegraphs, and wireless to both. + +In the case of a municipal electric lighting supply, I must tell you +that in spite of the fact that the municipality, unlike a private +company, has to begin paying off the cost of setting up its works from +the moment it borrows it, and must clear it all off within a certain +period, yet even when it does this and yet supplies electricity at +a lower price than the private companies, it makes a profit in spite +of itself. It applies the profit to a reduction of the rates; and the +ratepayers are so pleased by this, and so accustomed to think that a +business which makes profits must be a sound one, that the municipality +is tempted to make a profit on purpose, and even a big one, by charging +the consumer more than the supply costs. When this happens, it is +clear that the overcharged people who use electric light are paying +part of the rates of those who do not. Even if everybody used electric +light there would still be inequalities in the consumption of current. +A struggling shopkeeper, who must make his shop blaze with light to +attract custom, must have a heavier bill for electric light than much +richer people who have only their private houses to illuminate. + +We must not spend any more time on your rates and taxes. If they were +entirely abolished (how popular that would be!) and their places taken +by profiteering charges for State and municipal services, the result +would be, not State and municipal Socialism but State and municipal +Capitalism. As it is, you can see how even in your rates, which ought +to be quite free from the idler’s toll, you can be and to some extent +are “exploited” just as you are in your ordinary shopping. + + + + +32 + +YOUR RENT + + +When we come from your rates and taxes to your rent, your grievance +is far clearer, because when you pay your rent you have to hand your +money directly to your exploiter to do what she or he likes with +instead of to a public treasurer who gives you value for part of +it in public service to yourself, and tells you nothing about the +remainder which goes to septuagenarians, paupers, ground landlords, +profiteering contractors, and so forth, some of whom are poorer than +you, which makes for equality of income and is therefore a move in the +right direction, and others richer, which aggravates inequality and is +therefore a move in the wrong direction. + +Rent paying is simpler. If you rent a piece of land and work on it, +it is quite clear that the landlord is living on your earnings; and +you cannot prevent him, because the law gives him the power to turn +you off the land unless you pay him for leave to use it. You are so +used to this that it may never have struck you as extraordinary that +any private person should have the power to treat the earth as if it +belonged to him, though you would certainly think him mad if he claimed +to own the air or the sunlight or the sea. Besides, you may be paying +rent for a house; and it seems reasonable that the man who built the +house should be paid for it. But you can easily find out how much of +what you are paying is the value of the house. If you have insured the +house against fire (very likely the landlord makes you do this), you +know what it would cost to build the house, as that is the sum you have +insured it for. If you have not insured it, ask a builder what it would +cost to build a similar house. The interest you would have to pay every +year if you borrowed that sum on the security of the house is the value +of the house apart from the value of the land. + +You will find that what you are paying exceeds this house value, unless +you are in the landlord’s employment or the house has become useless +for its original purpose: for instance, a medieval castle. In big +cities like London, it exceeds it so enormously that the value of the +building is hardly worth mentioning in comparison. In out-of-the-way +places the excess may be so small that it hardly goes beyond a +reasonable profit on the speculation of building the house. But in +the lump over the whole country it amounts to hundreds of millions of +pounds a year; and this is the price, not of the houses, but of the +landlords’ permission to live on the native earth on which the houses +have been built. + +That any person should have the power to give or refuse an Englishwoman +permission to live in England, or indeed--for this is what it comes +to--to live at all, is so absurdly opposed to every possible conception +of natural justice that any lawyer will tell you that there is no such +thing as absolute private property in land, and that the King, in whom +the land is vested, may take it all back from its present holders if +he thinks fit. But as the landlords were for many centuries also both +the lawmakers and the kingmakers, they took care that, king or no king, +land should become in practice as much private property as anything +else, except that it cannot be bought and sold without paying fees to +lawyers and signing conveyances and other special legal documents. And +this private power over land has been bought and sold so often that you +never know whether your landlord will be a bold baron whose ancestors +have lived as petty kings on their tenants since the days of William +the Conqueror, or a poor widow who has invested all her hardearned +savings in a freehold. + +Howbeit the fact remains that the case of landlord and tenant is one +in which an idle and possibly infamous person can with the police at +his back come quite openly to an industrious and respectable woman, and +say, “Hand me over a quarter of your earnings or get off the earth”. +The landlord can even refuse to accept a rent, and order her off the +earth unconditionally; and he sometimes does so; for you may remember +that in Scotland whole populations of fishermen and husbandmen with +their families have been driven from their country to the backwoods of +America because their landlords wanted the land on which they lived for +deer forests. In England people have been driven from the countryside +in multitudes to make room for sheep, because the sheep brought more +money to the landlord than the people. When the great London railway +stations, with their many acres of sidings, were first made, the houses +of great numbers of people were knocked down, and the inhabitants +driven into the streets; with the result that the whole neighbourhood +became so overcrowded that it was for many years a centre of disease +infecting all London. These things are still happening, and may happen +to you at any moment, in spite of a few laws which have been made to +protect tenants in towns in times of great scarcity of houses such as +that which followed the war, or in Ireland, where the Government bought +the agricultural land and resold it to the farmers, which eased matters +for a time, but in the long run can come to nothing but exchanging one +set of landlords for another. + +It is in large towns and their neighbourhood that the Intelligent Woman +will find not only how much the landlord can make her give up to him, +but, oddly enough, how devoutly he believes in equality of income for +his tenants, if not for himself. In the middle of the town she will +find rents very high. If she or her husband has work to do there it +will occur to her that if she were to take a house in the suburbs, +where rents are lower, and use the tram to come to and fro, she might +save a little. But she will find that the landlord knows all about +that, and that though the further she moves out into the country the +lower the rents, yet the railway fare or tram fare will bring up the +yearly cost to what she would have to pay if she lived close enough in +to walk to her market or for her husband to walk to his work. Whatever +advantage she may try to gain, the landlord will snatch its full money +value from her sooner or later in rent, provided it is an advantage +open to everyone. It ought to be plain even to a fairly stupid woman +that if the land belongs to a few people they can make their own terms +with the rest, who must have land to live and work on or else starve on +the highway or be drowned in the sea. They can strip them of everything +except what is barely enough to keep them alive to earn money for the +landowner, and bring up families to do the same in the next generation. + +It is easy to see how this foolish state of things comes about. As +long as there is plenty of land for everybody private property in land +works very well. The landholders are not preventing anyone else from +owning land like themselves; and they are quite justified in making +the strongest laws to protect themselves against having their lands +intruded on and their crops taken by rascals who want to reap where +they have not sown. But this state of things never lasts long with a +growing population, because at last all the land gets taken up, and +there is none left for the later comers. Even long before this happens +the best land is all taken up, and later comers find that they can do +as well by paying rent for the use of the best land as by owning poorer +land themselves, the amount of the rent being the difference between +the yield of the poorer land and the better. At this point the owners +of the best land can let their land; stop working; and live on the +rent: that is, on the labor of others, or, as they call it, by owning. + +When big towns and great industries arise, the value of the land goes +up to enormous heights: in London bits of land with frontages on the +important streets sell at the rate of a million pounds an acre; and +men of business will pay the huge rents that make the land worth such +a figure, although there is land forty miles away to be had for next +to nothing. The land that was first let gets sublet, and yet again +and again sublet until there may be half a dozen leaseholders and +subleaseholders drawing more rent from it than the original ground +landlord; and the tenant who is in working occupation of it has to make +the money for all of them. Within the last hundred and fifty years +villages in Europe and pioneer encampments in the other continents +have grown into towns and cities making money by hundreds of millions; +yet most of the inhabitants whose work makes all this wealth are no +better off, and many of them decidedly worse off, than the villagers +or pioneer campers-out who occupied the place when it was not worth a +pound an acre. Meanwhile the landlords have become fabulously rich, +some of them taking every day, for doing nothing, more than many a +woman for sixty years drudgery. + +And all this could have been avoided if we had only had the sense and +foresight to insist that the land should remain national property in +fact as well as in legal theory, and that all rents should be paid into +a common stock and used for public purposes. If that had been done +there need have been no slums, no ugly mean streets and buildings, +nor indeed any rates or taxes: everybody would benefit by the rent; +everybody would have to contribute to it by work; and no idler would +be able to live on the labor of others. The prosperity of our great +towns would be a real prosperity, shared by everyone, and not what it +is now, the enslavement and impoverishment of nine persons out of every +ten in order that the tenth should be idle and rich and extravagant +and useless. This evil is so glaring, so inexcusable by any sophistry +that the cleverest landlord can devise, that, long before Socialism was +heard of, a demand arose for the abolition of all taxation except the +taxation of landowners; and we still have among us people called Single +Taxers, who preach the same doctrine. + + + + +33 + +CAPITAL + + +Now the Single Taxers are not wrong in principle; but they are behind +the times. Out of landowning there has grown a lazier way of living on +other people’s labor without doing anything for them in return. Land +is not the only property that returns a rent to the owner. Spare money +will do the same if it is properly used. Spare money is called Capital; +its owner is called a capitalist; and our system of leaving all the +spare money in the country in private hands like the land is called +Capitalism. Until you understand Capitalism you do not understand human +society as it exists at present. You do not know the world, as the +saying is. You are living in a fool’s paradise; and Capitalism is doing +its best to keep you there. You may be happier in a fool’s paradise; +and as I must now proceed to explain Capitalism, you will read the rest +of this book at the risk of being made unhappy and rebellious, and +even of rushing into the streets with a red flag and making a greater +fool of yourself than Capitalism has ever made of you. On the other +hand, if you do not understand Capitalism you may easily be cheated out +of all your money, if you have any, or, if you have none, duped into +sacrificing yourself in all sorts of ways for the profit of mercenary +adventurers and philanthropic humbugs under the impression that you are +exercising the noblest virtues. Therefore I will risk letting you know +where you are and what is happening to you. + +Nothing but a very narrow mind can save you from despair if you look at +all the poverty and misery around you and can see no way out of it all. +And if you had a narrow mind you would never have dreamt of buying this +book and reading it. Fortunately, you need not be afraid to face the +truth about our Capitalism. Once you understand it, you will see that +it is neither eternal nor even very old-established, neither incurable +nor even very hard to cure when you have diagnosed it scientifically. I +use the word cure because the civilization produced by Capitalism is a +disease due to shortsightedness and bad morals: and we should all have +died of it long ago if it were not that happily our society has been +built up on the ten commandments and the gospels and the reasonings +of jurists and philosophers, all of which are flatly opposed to the +principles of Capitalism. Capitalism, though it has destroyed many +ancient civilizations, and may destroy ours if we are not careful, is +with us quite a recent heresy, hardly two hundred years old at its +worst, though the sins it has let loose and glorified are the seven +deadly ones, which are as old as human nature. + +And now I hear you say “My gracious goodness me, what on the face of +the earth has all this to do with the possession of spare money by +ordinary ladies and gentlemen, which you say is all that Capitalism +is?” And I reply, farfetched as it may seem, that it is out of that +innocent looking beginning that our huge burden of poverty and misery +and drink and crime and vice and premature death has grown. When we +have examined the possibilities of this apparently simple matter of +spare money, _alias_ Capital, you will find that spare money is the +root of all evil, though it ought to be, and can be made, the means of +all betterment. + +What is spare money? It is the money you have left when you have bought +everything you need to keep you becomingly in your station in life. If +you can live on ten pounds a week in the way you are accustomed and +content to live, and your income is fifteen pounds a week, you have +five pounds spare money at the end of the week, and are a capitalist +to that amount. To be a capitalist, therefore, you must have more than +enough to live on. + +Consequently a poor person cannot become a capitalist. A poor person +is one who has less than enough to live on. I can remember a bishop, +who ought to have known better, exhorting the poor in the east end +of London, at a time when poverty there was even more dreadful than +it is at present, to become capitalists by saving. He really should +have had his apron publicly and officially torn off him, and his +shovel hat publicly and officially jumped on, for such a monstrously +wicked precept. Imagine a woman, without enough money to feed her +children properly and clothe them decently and healthily, letting them +starve still more, and go still more ragged and naked, to buy Savings +Certificates, or to put her money in the Post Office Savings Bank and +keep it there until there is enough of it to buy stocks and shares! She +would be prosecuted for neglecting her children: and serve her right! +If she pleaded that the bishop incited her to commit this unnatural +crime, she would be told that the bishop could not possibly have meant +that she should save out of her children’s necessary food and clothing, +or even out of her own. And if she asked why the bishop did not say so, +she would be told to hold her tongue; and the gaoler would be ordered +to remove her to the cells. + +Poor people cannot save, and ought not to try. Spending is not only +a first necessity but a first duty. Nine people out of ten have not +enough money to spend on themselves and their families; and to preach +saving to them is not only foolish but wicked. Schoolmistresses are +already complaining that the encouragement held out by Building +Societies to poor parents to buy their own houses has led to the +underfeeding of their children. Fortunately most of the poor neither +save nor try to. All the spare money invested in the Savings Banks and +Building Societies and Co-operative Societies and Savings Certificates, +though it sounds very imposing when it is totalled up into hundreds +of millions, and all credited to the working classes, is such a mere +fleabite compared to the total sums invested that its poor owners would +gain greatly by throwing it into the common stock if the capital owned +by the rich were thrown in at the same time. The great bulk of British +capital, the capital that matters, is the spare money of those who have +more than enough to live on. It saves itself without any privation to +the owner. The only question is, what is to be done with it? The answer +is, keep it for a rainy day: you may want it yet. This is simple; but +suppose it will not keep! Of course Treasury notes will keep; and Bank +notes will keep; and metal coins will keep: and cheque books will keep; +and entries of sums of money in the ledgers in the bank will keep +safely enough. But these things are only legal claims to the goods we +need, chiefly food. Food, we know, will not keep. And what good will +spare money be to us when the food it represents has gone rotten? + +The Intelligent Woman, when she realizes that money really means the +things that money can buy, and that the most important of these things +are perishable, will see that spare money cannot be saved: it must be +spent at once. It is only the Very Simple Woman who puts her spare +money into an old stocking and hides it under a loose board in the +floor. She thinks that money is always money. But she is quite wrong +in this. It is true that gold coins will always be worth the metal +they are made of; but in Europe at present gold coins are not to be +had: there is nothing but paper money; and within the last few years +we have seen English paper money fall in value until a shilling would +buy no more than could be bought for sixpence before the war, whilst +on the Continent a thousand pounds would not buy a postage stamp, and +notes for fifty thousand pounds would hardly pay a tram fare. People +who thought themselves and their children provided for for life were +reduced to destitution all over Europe; and even in England women left +comfortably-off by insurances made by their fathers found themselves +barely able to get along by the hardest pinching. That was what came of +putting their trust in money. + +Whilst people were being cheated in this fashion out of their savings +by Governments printing heaps of Treasury notes and Bank notes with no +goods at their back, several rich men of business became enormously +richer because, having obtained goods on credit, they were able to +pay for them in money that had become worthless. Naturally these rich +men of business used all their power and influence to make their +Governments go from bad to worse with their printing of bogus notes, +whilst other rich men of business who, instead of owing money were +owed it, used their influence in the opposite direction; so that the +Governments never knew where they were: one set of business men telling +them to print more notes, and another set to print less, and none of +them seeming to realize that they were playing with the food of the +people. The bad advice always won, because the Governments themselves +owed money, and were glad enough to pay it in cheap paper, following +the example of Henry VIII, who cheated his creditors by giving short +weight in his silver coins. + +The Intelligent Woman will conclude, and conclude rightly, that +hoarding money is not a safe way of saving. If her money is not spent +at once she can never be sure what it will be worth ten years hence, or +ten weeks or even ten days or minutes in war time. + +But you, prudent lady, will remind me that you do not want to spend +your spare money: you want to keep it. If you wanted anything that it +could buy it would not be spare money. If a woman has just finished +a good dinner it is no use advising her to order another and eat it +immediately so as to make sure of getting something for her money: she +had better throw it out of the window. What she wants to know is how +she can spend it and save it too. That is impossible; but she can spend +it and increase her income by spending it. If you would like to know +how, read the next chapter. + + + + +34 + +INVESTMENT AND ENTERPRISE + + +If, having finished your dinner, you can find a hungry person who can +be depended on to give you a dinner, say after a year’s time, for +nothing, you can spend your spare money in giving him a dinner for +nothing; and in this way you will in a sense both spend your money on +the spot and save it for next year, or, to put it the other way, you +will have your spare food eaten while it is fresh and yet have fresh +food to eat a year hence. + +You will at once reply that you can find a million hungry persons +only too easily, but that none of them can be depended on to provide +a dinner for themselves, much less for you, next year: if they could, +they would not be hungry. You are quite right; but there is a way +round the difficulty. You will not be able to find dependable men who +are hungry; but your banker or stockbroker or solicitor will find you +plenty of more or less dependable persons, some of them enormously +rich, who, though overfed, are nevertheless always in want of huge +quantities of spare food. + +What do they want it for? Why, to feed the hungry men who cannot be +depended on, not on the chance of their returning the compliment next +year, but for doing some work immediately that will bring in money +later on. There is nothing to prevent any Intelligent Woman with spare +money enough from doing this herself if she has enough invention and +business ability. + +Suppose, for instance, she has a big country house in a big park. +Suppose her park blocks up the shortest way from one important town to +another, and that the public roads that go round her park are hilly and +twisty and dangerous for motor cars. She can then use her spare food to +feed the hungry men while they make a road for motors through her park. +When this is done she can send the hungry men away to find another job +as best they can, leaving herself with a new road for the use of which +she can charge a shilling to every motorist who uses it, as they all +will to save time and risk and difficulty. She can keep one of the +hungry men to collect the shillings for her. In this way she will have +changed her spare food into a steady income. In city language, she will +have gone into business as a roadmaker with her own capital. + +Now if the traffic on the road be so great that the shillings, and +the spare food they represent, pile themselves up on her hands faster +than she can spend them (or eat them), she will have to find some new +means of spending them to prevent the new spare food going bad. She +will have to call the hungry men back and find something new for them +to do. She might set them to build houses all along the road. Then she +could present the road to the local authorities to be maintained by the +ratepayers as a public street, and yet greatly increase her income by +letting the houses. Having in this way obtained more spare money than +ever, she could establish a service of motor buses to the nearest town +to enable her tenants to work there and her workmen to live there. She +could set up an electric lighting plant and gasworks to supply their +houses. She could turn her big house into a hotel, or knock it down and +cover its site and the park with new houses and streets. The hungry +would do all the executive work for her: what she would have to do +would be to give them the necessary orders and allow them to live on +her spare food meanwhile. + +But, you will say, only an exceptionally able and hardworking woman of +business could plan all this and superintend its carrying-out. Suppose +she were too stupid or too lazy to think of these things, or a genius +occupied with art or science or religion or politics! Well, if only she +had the spare money, hungry women and men with the requisite ability +would come to her and offer to develop her estate and to pay her so +much a year for the use of her land and of her spare money, arranging +it all with her solicitor so that she would not have to lift her little +finger in the matter except to sign her name sometimes. In business +language, she could invest her capital in the development of her estate. + +Now consider how much further these operations can be carried than +the mere investment of one lady’s savings, and the development of one +lady’s estate in the country. Big companies, by collecting millions +of spare subsistence in small or large sums from people all over the +country who are willing to take shares according to their means, can +set the hungry to dig those mines that run out under the sea and need +twenty years work before the coal is reached. They can make railways +and monster steamships; they can build factories employing thousands +of men, and equip them with machinery; they can lay cables across the +ocean: there is no end or limit to what they can do as long as they can +borrow spare food enough for the hungry men until the preparations are +finished and the businesses begin to pay their own way. + +Sometimes the schemes fail, and the owners of the spare food lose it; +but they have to risk this because, as the food will not keep, they +would lose it all the same if they did not invest it. So there is +always spare money being offered to the big men of business and their +companies; and thus our queer civilization, with its many poor and its +few rich, grows as we see it with all its shops, factories, railways, +mines, ocean liners, aeroplanes, telephones, palaces, mansions, flats, +and cottages, on top of the fundamental sowing and reaping of the food +that it all depends on. + +Such is the magic of spare subsistence, called capital. That is how +idle people who have land and spare subsistence become enormously rich +without knowing how, and make their babies enormously rich in their +cradles, whilst the landless penniless persons who do it all by slaving +from dawn to dusk are left as poor at the end of the job as they were +at the beginning. + + + + +35 + +LIMITATIONS OF CAPITALISM + + +Many people are so impressed with the achievements of Capitalism that +they believe that if you overthrow it you overthrow civilization. It +seems to them indispensable. We must therefore consider, first, what +are the disadvantages of this way of doing it? and, second, is there +any other way? + +Now in one sense there is no other way. All the businesses that need +to have many weeks or months or years of work done on them by large +bodies of men before they can pay their way, require great quantities +of spare subsistence. If it takes ten years to make a harbor or twenty +years to make a coal mine, the men who are making it will be eating +their heads off all that time. Other people must be providing them with +food, clothes, lodging, and so forth without immediate return, just as +parents have to provide for growing children. In this respect it makes +no difference whether we vote for Capitalism or Socialism. The process +is one of natural necessity which cannot be changed by any political +revolution nor evaded by any possible method of social organization. + +But it does not follow that the collection and employment of spare +subsistence for these purposes must be done by private companies +touting for the money that very rich people are too gorged with +luxuries to be able to spend, and that people of more moderate means +are prudent enough to put by for a rainy day. + +To begin with, there are many most necessary things that the private +companies and employers will not do because they cannot make people pay +for them when they are done. Take for instance a lighthouse. Without +lighthouses we should hardly dare to go to sea; and the trading ships +would have to go so slowly and cautiously, and so many of them would +be wrecked, that the cost of the goods they carry would be much higher +than it is. Therefore we all benefit greatly by lighthouses, even +those of us who have never seen the sea and never expect to. But the +capitalists will not build lighthouses. If the lighthouse keeper could +collect a payment from every ship that passed, they would build them +fast enough until the cost was lighted all round like the sea front in +Brighton; but as this is impossible, and the lighthouses must shine on +every ship impartially without making the captain put his hand in his +pocket for it, the capitalists leave the coast in the dark. Therefore +the Government steps in and collects spare subsistence in the shape +of taxes from everybody (which is quite fair, as everybody shares the +benefit), and builds the lighthouses. Here we see Capitalism failing +completely to supply what to a seafaring nation like ours is one of the +first necessaries of life (for we should starve without our shipping) +and thereby forcing us to resort to Communism. + +But Capitalism often refuses necessary work even when some money can be +made out of it directly. + +For example, a lighthouse reminds us of a harbor, which is equally +necessary. Every ship coming into a harbor has to pay harbor dues; +therefore anyone making a harbor can make money by it. But great +harbors, with their breakwaters and piers built up in the sea, take +so many years to construct, and the work is so liable to damage and +even destruction in storms, and the impossibility of raising harbor +dues beyond a certain point without sending the ships round to cheaper +harbors so certain, that private capital turns away from it to +enterprises in which there is more certainty as to what the cost will +be, less delay, and more money to be made. For instance, distilleries +make large profits. There is no uncertainty about the cost of building +them and fitting them up; and a ready sale for whiskey can always be +depended on. You can tell to within a few hundred pounds what a big +distillery will cost, whereas you cannot tell to within a million what +a big harbor will cost. All this would not influence the Government, +which has to consider only whether another distillery or another harbor +is more wanted for the good of the nation. But the private capitalists +have not the good of the nation in their charge: all they have to +consider is their duty to themselves and their families, which is to +choose the safest and most profitable way of investing their spare +money. Accordingly they choose the distillery; and if we depended on +private capitalists alone the country would have as many distilleries +as the whiskey market could support, and no harbors. And when they have +established their distillery they will spend enormous sums of money +in advertisements to persuade the public that their whiskey is better +and healthier and older and more famous than the whiskey made in other +distilleries, and that everybody ought to drink whiskey every day as +a matter of course. As none of these statements is true, the printing +of them is, from the point of view of the nation, a waste of wealth, a +perversion of labor, and a propaganda of pernicious humbug. + +The private capitalists not only choose what will make most money for +them, but what will make it with least trouble: that is, they will do +as little for it as possible. If they sell an article or a service, +they will make it as dear as possible instead of as cheap as possible. +This would not matter if, as thoughtless people imagine, the lower the +price the bigger the sale, and the bigger the sale the greater the +profit. It is true in many cases that the lower the price the bigger +the sale; but it is not true that the bigger the sale the greater the +profit. There may be half a dozen prices (and consequently sales) at +which the profit will be exactly the same. + +Take the case of a cable laid across the ocean to send messages to +foreign countries. How much a word is the company to charge for the +messages? If the charge is a pound a word very few people can afford to +send them. If the charge is a penny a word the cable will be crowded +with messages all day and all night. Yet the profit may be the same; +and, if it is, it will be far less trouble to send one word at a pound +than two hundred and forty words at a penny. + +The same is true of the ordinary telegraph service. When it was in the +hands of private companies, the service was restricted and expensive. +When the Government took it over, it not only extended lines of all +sorts to out-of-the-way places; cheapened the service; and did without +a profit: it actually ran it at what the private capitalist calls a +loss. It did this because the cheap service was such a benefit to +the whole community, including the people who never send telegrams +as well as those who send a dozen every day, that it paid the nation +and was much fairer as well to reduce the price charged to the actual +senders below the cost of the service, the difference being made up by +everybody in taxes. + +This very desirable arrangement is quite beyond the power of private +Capitalism, which not only keeps the price as high as possible above +the cost of production and service for the sake of making the utmost +profit, but has no power to distribute that cost over all the people +who benefit, and must levy it entirely on those who actually buy the +goods or pay for the service. It is true that business people can +pass the cost of their telegrams and telephone messages on to their +customers in the price of the things they sell; but a great deal of +our telegraphing and telephoning is not business telegraphing and +telephoning; and its cost cannot be passed on by the senders to anyone. +The only objection to throwing the cost entirely on public taxation is +that if we could all send telegrams of unlimited length without having +to pay across the counter enough ready money to prevent us using the +telegraph service when the post would do as well, or sticking in “kind +regards from all to dear Aunt Jane and a kiss from Baby” at the end of +every message, the lines would be so choked that we should not be able +to send telegrams at all. As to the telephone, some women would hang +on to it all day if it made no difference to their pockets. Even as it +is, a good deal of unnecessary work is put upon the telegraph service +by people spinning out their messages to twelve words because they are +not allowed to pay for less, and they think they are not getting full +value for their money if they say what they have to say in six. It +does not occur to them that they are wasting their own time and that +of the officials, besides increasing their taxes. It seems a trifle; +but public affairs consist of trifles multiplied by as many millions +as there are people in the country; and trifles cease to be trifles +when they are multiplied on that scale. Snowball letters, which seem a +kindly joke to the idiots who start them, would wreck our postal system +if sensible people did not conscientiously throw them into the waste +paper basket. + +It is necessary to understand these things very clearly, because most +people are so simple and ignorant of big business matters that the +private capitalists are actually able to persuade them that Capitalism +is a success because it makes profits, and public service (or +Communism) a failure because it makes none. The simpletons forget that +the profits come out of their own pockets, and that what is the better +for the private capitalists in this respect is the worse for their +customers, the disappearance of profit being simply the disappearance +of overcharge. + + + + +36 + +THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION + + +You now see how it is that the nation cannot depend on private capital +because there are so many vitally necessary things, from town drainage +to lighthouses, which it will not provide at all, and how what it does +provide it provides in the wrong order, refusing to make a harbor until +it has made as many distilleries as the trade will hold, and building +five luxurious houses for one rich person whilst a shocking proportion +of the nation’s children is dying of overcrowding in slums. + +In short, the private capitalists, instead of doing the most desirable +work first, begin at the wrong end. All that can be said for this +policy is that if you begin at the wrong end you may be driven towards +the right end when you have done your worst and can get no further in +the wrong direction; and this is in fact the position into which our +most respectable capitalists have been forced by circumstances. When +the poor have bought all the strong drink they can afford to pay for, +and the rich their racing stables and all the pearls they can find +room for on their wives’ necks, the capitalists are forced to apply +their next year’s accumulations of capital to the production of more +necessary things. + +Before the hungry can be set to work building mills and making +machinery to equip them, somebody, possibly a woman, must invent +the machinery. The capitalists buy her invention. If she is good at +business, which very few inventors are, she makes them pay her enough +to become a capitalist herself; but in most cases she makes a very poor +bargain, because she has to sell the lion’s share in her invention for +a few pounds to enable her to pay for the necessary models and trials. +It is only in modern Big Business that inventiveness in method and +organization superadded to mechanical ingenuity has a chance against +capital. If you have that talent the Big Business people will not +trouble to buy your patents: they will buy you at a handsome price, and +take you into the concern. But the simpleminded mechanical inventor has +no such luck. In any case, the capitalists have made a communist law +nationalizing all inventions after fourteen years, when the capitalists +can use them without paying the inventor anything. They soon persuade +themselves, or at least try to persuade others, that they invented the +machines themselves, and deserve their riches for their ingenuity. +Quite a number of people believe them. + +Thus equipped with mechanical devices which are quite beyond the +means of small producers, the big capitalists begin to wipe the small +producers off the face of the earth. They seize on the work done by the +handloom weaver in his cottage, and do it much more cheaply in great +mills full of expensive machine looms driven by steam. They take the +work of the oldtime miller with his windmill or waterwheel, and do it +in vast buildings with steel rollers and powerful engines. They set up +against the blacksmith a Nasmyth hammer that a thousand Vulcans could +not handle, and scissors that snip sheet steel and bite off heavy bars +more easily than he could open a tin of condensed milk. They launch +huge steel ships, driven by machinery which the shipwrights who built +for Columbus would have called devil’s work. They raise houses in +skyscraping piles of a hundred dwellings one on top of another, in +steel and concrete, so that in place of one horizontal street you have +bunches of perpendicular ones. They make lace by machinery, more of it +in a day than ten thousand women could make by hand. They make boots +by machinery, clocks by machinery, pins and needles by machinery. They +sell you machines to use yourself in your own house, such as vacuum +cleaners, to replace your old sweeping brush and tea leaves. They +lay on the electric power and hydraulic power that they use in their +factories to your house like water or gas; so that you can light and +heat your house with it, and have yourself carried in a lift from the +basement to the attic and back again without the trouble of climbing +the stairs. You can boil your kettle and cook your dinner with it. You +could even make toast with it (they sell you a little oven for the +purpose) if it were not that you always forget to take the toast out +before it is burnt to a cinder. + +Bad as the machine-made goods are at first compared to hand-made goods, +they end by being sometimes better, sometimes as good, sometimes as +well worth buying at the lower price, and always in the long run the +only goods you can get. For at last we forget how to make things by +hand, and become dependent on the bigger machine industries in spite +of the little groups of artists who try to keep the old handicrafts +alive. When William Morris, a great artist and craftsman, invented +a story about the handle coming off a rake in a village, and nobody +knowing how to put it on again, so that they had to get a big machine +and eight engineers down from London to do it, his tale was not at all +so improbable as it would have been in the days of Queen Anne. Our +consolation is that if machinery makes rakes so cheap that it is not +worth while mending them instead of throwing them away and going on +with new ones, the loss is greater than the gain. And if the people who +work the machines have a better life of it than the old handy people, +then the change is for the better. + +Mind: I do not say that these advantages are always gained at present. +Most of us are using cheap and nasty articles, and living a cheap and +nasty life; but this is not the fault of the machines and the great +factories, nor of the application of spare money to construct them: +it is the fault of the unequal distribution of the product and of the +leisure gained by their saving of labor. + +Now this misdistribution need not have occurred if the spare money had +not been in private hands. If it had been in the hands of national and +municipal banks controlling its use in the interest of all of us the +capitalization of industry on a large scale would have been an unmixed +blessing, instead of being, as it is at present, a blessing so mixed +with curses of one kind or another that in Samuel Butler’s famous +Utopia, called Erewhon, the making and even the possession of machinery +is punished as a crime. + +Some of our cleverest anti-Socialists advocate a return to the life of +the early eighteenth century, before the machines and factories came +in. But that would mean going back to the small population of that +time, as the old methods would not produce enough for our fortytwo +millions. High capitalization of industry, in which a million of spare +money is spent to provide us with fourpenny reels of cotton, has +come to stay; but if Socialism prevails, the million will be public +and not private property, and the reels will cost considerably less +than twopence. To put it shortly, capitalization is one thing, and +Capitalism quite another. Capitalization does not hurt us as long as +capital is our servant and not our master. Capitalism inevitably makes +it our master instead of our servant. Instead of public servants we are +private slaves. + +Note that the great change from cottage handicraft to factories and +machine industries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is called +by economists and historians The Industrial Revolution. + + + + +37 + +SENDING CAPITAL OUT OF THE COUNTRY + + +So far we have considered the growth of Capitalism as it occurs at +home. But capital has no home, or rather it is at home everywhere. It +is a quaint fact that though professed Socialists and Communists call +themselves Internationalists, and carry a red flag which is the flag of +the workers of all nations, and though most capitalists are boastfully +national, and wave the Union Jack on every possible occasion, yet when +you come down from the cries and catchwords to the facts, you find +that every practical measure advocated by British Socialists would +have the effect of keeping British capital in Britain to be spent on +improving the condition of their native country, whilst the British +Capitalists are sending British capital out of Britain to the ends of +the earth by hundreds of millions every year. If, with all our British +spare money in their hands, they were compelled to spend it in the +British Isles, or were patriotic or public spirited or insular enough +to do so without being compelled, they could at least call themselves +patriots with some show of plausibility. Unfortunately we allow them to +spend it where they please; and their only preference, as we have seen, +is for the country in which it will yield them the largest income. +Consequently, when they have begun at the wrong end at home, and have +exhausted its possibilities, they do not move towards the right end +until they have exhausted the possibilities of the wrong end abroad as +well. + +Take the drink trade again as the most obvious example of the wrong end +being the most profitable end commercially. + +It soon became so certain that free Capitalism in drink in England +would destroy England, that the Government was forced to interfere. +Spirits can be distilled so cheaply that it is quite possible to make a +woman “drunk for a penny: dead drunk for twopence”, and make a handsome +profit by doing it. When the capitalists were allowed to do this +they did it without remorse, having nothing to consider commercially +but their profits. The Government found that masses of people were +poisoning, ruining, maddening themselves with cheap gin. Accordingly a +law was made by which every distiller had to pay the Government so much +money for every gallon of strong drink he manufactured that he could +make no profit unless he added this tax to the price of the drink; and +this made the drink so dear that though there was still a great deal +too much drunkenness, and working women suffered because much more had +to come out of the housekeeping money for the men’s beer and spirits, +yet the working people could not afford to drink as recklessly and +ruinously as they did in the days when Hogarth’s picture of Gin Lane +was painted. + +In the United States of America the resistance of the Government to +the demoralization of the people by private traffic in drink has gone +much further. These States, after trying the plan of taxing strong +drink, and finding it impossible to stop excessive drinking in this +way, were driven one by one to a resolution to exterminate the trade +altogether, until at last it was prohibited in so many States that +it became possible to make a Federal law (that is, a law for all the +States) prohibiting the sale or even the possession of intoxicating +liquor anywhere within the United States. The benefits of this step +were so immediate and so enormous that even the Americans who buy +drink from smugglers (bootleggers) whenever they can, vote steadily +for Prohibition; and so, of course, do the bootleggers, whose profits +are prodigious. Prohibition will sooner or later be forced on every +Capitalist country as a necessary defence against the ruinous effect of +private profiteering in drink. The only practicable alternative is the +municipalization of the drink trade: that is, socialism. + +When our drink profiteers and their customers fill the newspapers +with stories about Prohibition being a failure in America, about all +Americans taking to drugs because they cannot get whiskey, about their +drinking more whiskey than ever, and when they quote a foolish saying +of a former bishop of Peterborough, that he would rather see England +free than England sober (as if a drunken man could be free in any +sense, even if he escaped arrest by the police), you must bear in mind +the fact, never mentioned by them, that millions of Americans who have +never been drunk in their lives, and who do not believe that their +moderate use of the intoxicants they have found pleasant has ever done +them the slightest harm, have yet voted away this indulgence for the +general good of their country and in the interests of human dignity and +civilization. Remember also that our profiteers have engaged in the +smuggling trade, and actually tried to represent the measures taken +against it by the American Government as attacks on British liberties. +If America were as weak militarily as China was in 1840 they would +drive us into a war to force whiskey on America. + +Do not, however, rush to the conclusion that Prohibition, because it +is a violently effective method of combating unscrupulous profiteering +in drink, is an ideal method of dealing with the drink question. It +is not certain that there would be any drink question if we got rid +of capitalism. We shall consider that later on: our present point is +simply that capital has no conscience and no country. Capitalism, +beaten in a civilized country by Prohibition, can send its capital +abroad to an uncivilized one where it can do what it likes. Our +capitalists wiped multitudes of black men out of existence with gin +when they were forcibly prevented by law from doing the same to their +own countrymen. They would have made Africa a desert white with the +bones of drunkards had they not discovered that more profit could be +made by selling men and women than by poisoning them. The drink trade +was rich; but the slave trade was richer. Huge profits were made by +kidnapping shiploads of negroes and selling them as slaves. Cities +like Bristol have been built upon that black foundation. White queens +put money into it. The slave trade would still be a British trade +if it had not been forbidden by law through the efforts of British +philanthropists who, with their eyes in the ends of the earth, did not +know that British children were being overworked and beaten in British +factories as cruelly as the negro children in the plantations. + +If you are a softhearted person, be careful not to lose your head +as you read of these horrors. Virtuous indignation is a powerful +stimulant, but a dangerous diet. Keep in mind the old proverb: anger +is a bad counsellor. Our capitalists did not begin in this way as +perversely wicked people. They did not soil their own hands with the +work. Their hands were often the white hands of refined, benevolent, +cultivated ladies of the highest rank. All they did or could do was +to invest their spare money in the way that brought them the largest +income. If milk had paid better than gin, or converting negroes to +Christianity better than converting them into slaves, they would +have traded in milk and Bibles just as willingly, or rather just as +helplessly, as in gin and slaves. + +When the gin trade was overdone and exhausted, and the slave trade +suppressed, they went on into ordinary industrial work, and found that +profits could be made by employing slaves as well as by kidnapping and +selling them. They used their political power to induce the British +Government to annex great tracts of Africa, and to impose on the +natives taxes which they could not possibly pay except by working for +the capitalists like English working men, only at lower wages and +without the protection of English Factory Acts and English public +opinion. Great fortunes were made in this way. The Empire was enlarged: +“trade followed the flag” they said, meaning that the flag followed +trade and then more trade followed the flag; British capital developed +the world everywhere (except at home); the newspapers declared that it +was all very splendid; and generals like Lord Roberts expressed their +belief that God meant that three-quarters of the earth should be ruled +by young gentlemen from our public schools, in which schools, by the +way, nothing whatever was done to explain to them what this outrageous +pillage of their own country for the development of the rest of the +earth really meant over and above the temporary enrichment of their own +small class. + +Nothing in our political history is more appalling than the +improvidence with which we have allowed British spare money, +desperately needed at home for the full realization of our own powers +of production, and for the clearing away of our disgraceful slum +centres of social corruption, to be driven abroad at the rate of two +hundred millions every year, loading us with unemployed, draining +us by emigration, imposing huge military and naval forces upon us, +strengthening the foreign armies of which we are afraid, and providing +all sorts of facilities for the foreign industries which destroy our +powers of self-support by doing for us what we could and should do +just as well for ourselves. If a fraction of the British spare money +our capitalists have spent in providing South America with railways +and mines and factories had been spent in making roads to our natural +harbors and turning to account the gigantic wasted water power of the +tideways and torrents of barren savage coasts in Scotland and Ireland, +or even in putting an end to such capitalistic absurdities as the +sending of farm produce from one English county to another by way of +America, we should not now be complaining that the countries our spare +money has developed can undersell our merchants and throw our workers +on public charity for want of employment. + + + + +38 + +DOLES, DEPOPULATION, AND PARASITIC PARADISES + + +I became a little rhetorical at the end of the last chapter, as +Socialists will when they have, like myself, acquired the habit of +public speaking. I hope I have not carried you away so far as to make +you overlook in your indignation the fact that, whilst all these +dreadful things have been going on, the profits of the capital which +has gone abroad are coming into the country gratuitously (imports +without equivalent exports) and being spent here by the capitalists, +and that their expenditure gives employment. The capital went out; but +the income comes in; and the question arises, are we any the worse for +being pampered paupers, living on the labor of other nations? If the +money that is coming in in income is more than went out as capital, are +we not better off? + +One’s impulse is to say certainly not, because the same money spent as +capital at home would have brought us in just as large an income, and +perhaps larger, than it fetches from abroad, though the capitalists +might not have got so much of it. Indeed they might have got none of +it if it had been spent in great public works like clearing slums, +embanking rivers, roadmaking, smoke abatement, free schools and +universities, and other good things that cannot be charged for except +communistically through rates and taxes. But the question is more +complicated than that. + +Suppose yourself a mill hand in a factory, accustomed to tend a +machine there, and to live with your people in a poor quarter of a +manufacturing town. Suddenly you find yourself discharged, and the +factory shut up, because the trade has mysteriously gone abroad. You +find that mill hands are not wanted, but that there is a scarcity of +lady’s maids, of assistants in fashionable shops, of waitresses in +week-end motoring hotels, of stewardesses in palatial steamships, of +dressmakers, of laundresses, of fine cooks (hidden in the kitchen and +spoken of as “_the chef_”), of all sorts of women whose services are +required by idle rich people. But you cannot get one of these jobs +because you do not know the work, and are not the sort of person, +and have not the speech, dress, and manners which are considered +indispensable. After a spell of starvation and despair you find a +job in a chocolate cream factory or a jam and pickles works, or you +become a charwoman. And if you have a daughter you bring her up to +the chocolate cream or lady’s maid business, and not to weaving and +spinning. + +It is possible that in the end your daughter may be better paid, better +dressed, more gently spoken, more ladylike than you were in the old +mill. You may come to thank God that some Indian, or Chinaman, or +negro, or simply some foreigner is doing the work you used to do, and +setting your daughter free to do something that is considered much +more genteel and is better paid and more respected. Your son may be +doing better as a trainer of racehorses than his father did as a steel +smelter, and be ever so much more the gentleman. You might, if you +lived long enough, see the ugly factory towns of the Manchester and +Sheffield and Birmingham districts, and of the Potteries, disappear +and be replaced by nice residential towns and pleasure resorts like +Bournemouth, Cheltenham, and the Malverns. You might see the valleys of +Wales recover the beauty they had before the mines spoiled them. And it +would be quite natural for you to call these changes prosperity, and +vote for them, and sincerely loathe anyone who warned you that all it +meant was that the nation, having become a parasite on foreign labor, +was going to the devil as fast as it could. + +Yet the warning would be much needed. If a nation turns its rough mill +hands into well-educated, well-dressed, well-spoken, ladylike mill +officials, properly respected, and given a fair share of the wealth +they help to produce, the nation is the stronger, the richer, the +happier, and the holier for the change. If it turns them into lady’s +maids and sellers of twenty-guinea hats, it breaks its own backbone +and exchanges its page in honorable history for a chapter in The Ruins +of Empires. It becomes too idle and luxurious to be able to compel the +foreign countries to pay the tribute on which it lives; and when they +cease to feed it, it has lost the art of feeding itself and collapses +in the midst of its genteel splendor. + +But this dismal sketch of the future of countries that let themselves +become dependent on the labor of other countries and settle down into +a comfortable and ladylike parasitism is really much too favorable. If +all our factory foremen could be turned into headwaiters with a touch +of Cinderella’s godmother’s wand, neither they nor their wives might +object. But this is not what happens. The factory foreman may bring up +his son to be a waiter; but he himself becomes an unemployed man. If he +is not fit for any of the new jobs, and too old to learn, and his trade +is not merely going through one of the usual periods of depression but +has left the country for good, he becomes a permanently unemployed man, +and consequently a starving man. Now a starving man is a dangerous man, +no matter how respectable his political opinions may be. A man who has +had his dinner is never a revolutionist: his politics are all talk. +But hungry men, rather than die of starvation, will, when there are +enough of them to overpower the police, begin by rioting, and end by +plundering and burning rich men’s houses, upsetting the government, and +destroying civilization. And the women, sooner than see their children +starve, will make the men do it, small blame to them. + +Consequently the capitalists, when they have sent their capital +abroad instead of giving continuous employment with it at home, and +are confronted at home with masses of desperate men for whom they can +find no suitable jobs, must either feed them for nothing or face a +revolution. And so you get what we call the dole. Now small as the +dole may be it must be sufficient to live on; and if two or three in +one household put their doles together, they grow less keen on finding +employment, and develop a taste for living like ladies and gentlemen: +that is, amusing themselves at the expense of others instead of earning +anything. We used to moralize over this sort of thing as part of the +decline and fall of ancient Rome; but we have been heading straight for +it ourselves for a long while past, and the war has plunged us into it +head over ears. For it was after the war that the capitalists failed +to find employment for no less than two million demobilized soldiers +who had for four years been not only well fed and clothed, but trained +in the handling of weapons whilst occupied in slaughtering, burning, +destroying, and facing terrible risks of being themselves destroyed. If +these men had not been given money to live on they would have taken it +by violence. Accordingly the Government had to take millions of spare +money from the capitalists and give it to the demobilized men; and +they are still doing so, with the grudged consent of the capitalists +themselves, who complain bitterly, but fear that if they refuse they +will lose everything. + +At this point Capitalism becomes desperate, and quite openly engages in +attempts to get rid of the unemployed: that is, to empty the country of +part of its population, which it calls overpopulation. How is it to be +done? As the unemployed will not let themselves be starved, still less +will they let themselves be gassed or poisoned or shot, which would +be the logical Capitalist way out of the mess. But they can perhaps +be induced to leave the country and try their luck elsewhere if the +Government will pay the fare, or as much of it as they cannot scrape +up themselves. As I write these lines the Government announces that +if any Englishwoman or Englishman will be so kind as to clear out of +England to the other side of the world it will cost them only three +pounds apiece instead of five times that sum, as the Government will +provide the odd twelve pounds. And if sufficient numbers do not jump at +this offer before these lines are printed, the Government may be driven +to offer to send them away for nothing and give them ten pounds apiece +to start with in their new country. That would be cheaper than keeping +them at home on the dole. + +Thus we see Capitalism producing the amazing and fantastic result +that the people of the country become a drawback to it, and have to +be got rid of like vermin (polite people call the process Assisted +Emigration), leaving nobody in it but capitalists and landlords and +their attendants, living on imported food and manufactures in an +elegant manner, and realizing the lady’s and gentleman’s dream of a +country in which there is lavish consumption and no production, stately +parks and palatial residences without factories or mines or smoke or +slums or any unpleasantness that heaps of gratuitous money can prevent, +and contraception in full swing to avoid any further increase in the +population. + +Surely, you will say, if Capitalism leads to this, it leads to an +earthly paradise. Leaving out of account the question whether the +paradise, if realized, would not be a fool’s paradise (for, I am sorry +to say, we have all been brought up to regard such a state of things +as the perfection of human society), and admitting that something +like it has been half realized in spots in many places from Monte +Carlo to Gleneagles, and from Gleneagles to Palm Beach, it is never +realized for a whole country. It has often been carried far enough to +reduce powerful empires like Rome and Spain to a state of demoralized +impotence in which they were broken up and plundered by the foreigners +on whom they had allowed themselves to become dependent; but it never +has, and never can, build up a stable Parasitic State in which all the +workers are happy and contented because they share the riches of the +capitalists, and are kept healthy and pleasant and nice because the +capitalists are cultivated enough to dislike seeing slums and shabby +ugly people and running the risk of catching infectious diseases from +them. When capitalists are intelligent enough to care whether the +whole community is healthy and pleasant and happy or not, even when +the unpleasantnesses do not come under their own noses, they become +Socialists, for the excellent reason that there is no fun in being a +capitalist if you have to take care of your servants and tradesmen +(which means sharing your income with them) as affectionately as if +they were your own family. If your taste and conscience were cultivated +to that extent you would find such a responsibility unbearable, +because you would have to be continually thinking of others, not only +to the necessary and possible extent of taking care that your own +activities and conveniences did not clash unreasonably and unkindly +with theirs, but to the unnecessary and impossible extent of doing all +the thinking for them that they ought to do, and in freedom could do, +for themselves. It is easy to say that servants should be treated well +not only because humanity requires it but because they will otherwise +be unpleasant and dishonest and inefficient servants. But if you treat +your servants as well as you treat yourself, which really amounts to +spending as much money on them as on yourself, what is the use of +having servants? They become a positive burden, expecting you to be a +sort of Earthly Providence to them, which means that you spend half +your time thinking for them and the other half talking about them. +Being able to call your servants your own is a very poor compensation +for not being able to call your soul your own. That is why, even as it +is, you run away from your comfortable house to live in hotels (if you +can afford it), because, when you have paid your bill and tipped the +waiter and the chambermaid, you are finished with them, and have not to +be a sort of matriarch to them as well. + +Anyhow, most of those who are ministering to your wants are not in +personal contact with you. They are the employees of your tradesmen; +and as your tradesmen trade capitalistically, you have inequality of +income, unemployment, sweating, division of society into classes, +with the resultant dysgenic restrictions on marriage, and all the +other evils which prevent a capitalist society from achieving peace or +permanence. A self-contained, self-supporting Capitalism would at least +be safe from being starved out as Germany was in the war in spite of +her military successes; but a completely parasitic Capitalism, however +fashionable, would be simply Capitalism with that peril intensified to +the utmost. + + + + +39 + +FOREIGN TRADE AND THE FLAG + + +Now let us turn back to inquire whether sending our capital abroad, and +consenting to be taxed to pay emigration fares to get rid of the women +and men who are left without employment in consequence, is all that +Capitalism can do when our employers, who act for our capitalists in +industrial affairs, and are more or less capitalists themselves in the +earlier stages of capitalistic development, find that they can sell no +more of their goods at a profit, or indeed at all, in their own country. + +Clearly they cannot send abroad the capital they have already invested, +because it has all been eaten up by the workers, leaving in its place +factories and railways and mines and the like; and these cannot be +packed into a ship’s hold and sent to Africa. It is only the freshly +saved capital that can be sent out of the country. This, as we have +seen, does go abroad in heaps. But the British employer who is working +with capital in the shape of works fixed to British land held by him +on long lease, must, when once he has sold all the goods at home that +his British customers can afford to buy, either shut up his works until +the customers have worn out their stock of what they have bought, which +would bankrupt him (for the landlord will not wait), or else sell his +superfluous goods somewhere else: that is, he must send them abroad. + +Now it is not so easy to send them to civilized countries, because they +practise Protection, which means that they impose heavy taxes (customs +duties) on foreign goods. Uncivilized countries, without Protection, +and inhabited by natives to whom gaudy calicoes and cheap showy brass +ware are dazzling and delightful novelties, are the best places to make +for at first. + +But trade requires a settled government to put down the habit of +plundering strangers. This is not a habit of simple tribes, who are +often friendly and honest. It is what civilized men do where there is +no law to restrain them. Until quite recent times it was extremely +dangerous to be wrecked on our own coasts, as wrecking, which meant +plundering wrecked ships and refraining from any officious efforts +to save the lives of their crews, was a well-established business in +many places on our shores. The Chinese still remember some astonishing +outbursts of looting perpetrated by English ladies of high position, +at moments when law was suspended and priceless works of art were to +be had for the grabbing. When trading with aborigines begins with the +visit of a single ship, the cannons and cutlasses it carries may be +quite sufficient to overawe the natives if they are troublesome. The +real difficulty begins when so many ships come that a little trading +station of white men grows up and attracts the white ne’er-do-wells and +violent roughs who are always being squeezed out of civilization by +the pressure of law and order. It is these riffraff who turn the place +into a sort of hell in which sooner or later missionaries are murdered +and traders plundered. Their home Governments are appealed to to put +a stop to this. A gunboat is sent out and an inquiry made. The report +after the inquiry is that there is nothing to be done but set up a +civilized government, with a post office, police, troops, and a navy in +the offing. In short, the place is added to some civilized Empire. And +the civilized taxpayer pays the bill without getting a farthing of the +profits. + +Of course the business does not stop there. The riffraff who have +created the emergency move out just beyond the boundary of the annexed +territory, and are as great a nuisance as ever to the traders when they +have exhausted the purchasing power of the included natives and push +on after fresh customers. Again they call on their home Government to +civilize a further area; and so bit by bit the civilized Empire grows +at the expense of the home taxpayers, without any intention or approval +on their part, until at last, though all their real patriotism is +centred on their own people and confined to their own country, their +own rulers, and their own religious faith, they find that the centre of +their beloved realm has shifted to the other hemisphere. That is how +we in the British Islands have found our centre moved from London to +the Suez Canal, and are now in the position that out of every hundred +of our fellow-subjects, in whose defence we are expected to shed the +last drop of our blood, only eleven are whites or even Christians. +In our bewilderment some of us declare that the Empire is a burden +and a blunder, whilst others glory in it as a triumph. You and I need +not argue with them just now, our point for the moment being that, +whether blunder or glory, the British Empire was quite unintentional. +What should have been undertaken only as a most carefully considered +political development has been a series of commercial adventures thrust +on us by capitalists forced by their own system to cater for foreign +customers before their own country’s needs were one-tenth satisfied. + + + + +40 + +EMPIRES IN COLLISION + + +If the British Empire were the only State on earth, the process might +go on peacefully (except for ordinary police coercion) until the whole +earth was civilized under the British flag. This is the dream of +British Imperialism. But it is not what the world is like. There are +all the other States, large and small, with their Imperialist dreamers +and their very practical traders pushing for foreign markets, and their +navies and armies to back the traders and annex these markets. Sooner +or later, as they push their boundaries into Africa and Asia, they come +up against oneanother. A collision of that kind (called the Fashoda +incident) very nearly involved us in a war with France. Fortunately +France gave way, not being prepared to fight us just then; but France +and Britain were left with the whole Sudan divided between them. +France had before this pushed into and annexed Algeria and (virtually) +Tunisia; and Spain was pushing into Morocco. Italy, alarmed lest there +should be nothing left for her, made a dash at Tripoli and annexed it. +England was in Egypt as well as in India. + +Now imagine yourself for a moment a German trader, with more goods +than you can sell in Germany, having either to shut up your factory and +be ruined, or find a foreign market in Africa. Imagine yourself looking +at the map of Africa. The entire Mediterranean coast, the pick of the +basket, is English, Italian, French, and Spanish. The Hinterland, as +you call it, is English and French. You cannot get in anywhere without +going through the English Suez Canal or round the Cape to some remote +place down south. Do you now understand what the German Kaiser meant +when he complained that Germany had not been left “a place in the +sun”? That hideous war of 1914-18 was at bottom a fight between the +capitalists of England, France, and Italy on the one side, and those of +Germany on the other, for command of the African markets. On top, of +course, it was about other things: about Austria making the murder of +the Archduke a pretext for subjugating Serbia; about Russia mobilizing +against Austria to prevent this; about Germany being dragged into the +Austro-Russian quarrel by her alliance with Austria; about France being +dragged in on the other side by her alliance with Russia; about the +German army having to make a desperate attempt to conquer the French +army before the Russian troops could reach her; about England having to +attack Germany because she was allied to France and Russia; and about +the German army having taken the shortest cut through Belgium, not +knowing that Belgium had a secret arrangement with England to have a +British expedition sent to defend her if Germany invaded her. Of course +the moment the first shot was fired all the Britons and Belgians and +Germans and French and Austrians and Russians became enraged sheep, and +imagined all sorts of romantic reasons for fighting, in addition to the +solid reason that if Tommy and the Poilu and Ivan did not kill Hans and +Fritz, Hans and Fritz would kill Tommy and the Poilu and Ivan. Before +the killing had gone on very long, the Turks, the Bulgarians, the +Japanese, the Americans, and other States that had no more to do with +the first quarrel than you had, were in it and at it hammer and tongs. +The whole world went mad, and never alluded to markets except when they +ridiculed the Kaiser for his demand for a place in the sun. + +Yet there would have been no war without the alliances; and the +alliances could not have fought if they had not set up great +armaments, especially the new German navy, to protect their foreign +markets and frontiers. These armaments, created to produce a sense of +security, had produced a sense of terror in which no nation dared go +unarmed unless it was too small to have any chance against the great +Powers, and could depend on their jealousy of oneanother to stave off +a conquest by any one of them. Soon the nations that dared not go +unarmed became more terrified still, and dared not go alone: they had +to form alliances and go in twos and threes, like policemen in thieves’ +quarters, Germany and Austria in one group and England, France, and +Russia in another, both trying to induce Italy and Turkey and America +to join them. Their differences were not about their own countries: +the German navy was not built to bombard Portsmouth nor the British +navy to bombard Bremerhaven. But when the German navy interfered in the +north of Africa, which was just what it was built for, and the French +and British navies frightened it off from that market in the sun, the +capitalist diplomatists of these nations saw that the first thing +to concentrate on was not the markets but the sinking of the German +navy by the combined French and British navies (or vice versa) on any +available pretext. And as you cannot have fleets fighting on the sea +without armies fighting on the land to help them, the armies grew like +the fleets; the Race of Armaments became as familiar as the Derby; all +the natural and kindly sentiments of white civilized nations towards +oneanother were changed into blustering terror, the parent of hatred, +malice, and all uncharitableness; and after all, when the explosive +mixture blew up at last, and blew millions of us with it, it was not +about the African markets, but about a comparatively trumpery quarrel +between Austria and Serbia which the other Powers could have settled +with the greatest ease, without the shedding of one drop of blood, +if they had been on decent human terms with oneanother instead of on +competitive capitalistic terms. + +And please do not fail to note that whereas in the early days of +Capitalism our capitalists did not compel us to fight for their +markets with our own hands, but hired German serfs and British +voluntary professional soldiers for the job, their wars have now +become so colossal that every woman’s husband, father, son, brother, +or sweetheart, if young and strong enough to carry a rifle, must go +to the trenches as helplessly as cattle go to the slaughterhouse, +abandoning wife and children, home and business, and renouncing normal +morality and humanity, pretending all the time that such conduct is +splendid and heroic and that his name will live for ever, though he +may have the greatest horror of war, and be perfectly aware that the +enemy’s soldiers, against whom he is defending his hearth, are in +exactly the same predicament as himself, and would never dream of +injuring him or his if the pressure of the drive for markets were +removed from both. + +I have purposely brought you to the question of war because your +conscience must be sorely troubled about it. You have seen the men +of Europe rise up and slaughter oneanother in the most horrible +manner in millions. Your son, perhaps, has received a military cross +for venturing into the air in a flying machine and dropping a bomb +on a sleeping village, blowing several children into fragments, and +mutilating or killing their parents. From a militarist, nationalist, +or selfishly patriotic point of view such deeds may appear glorious +exploits; but from the point of view of any universally valid morality: +say from the point of view of a God who is the father of Englishmen +and Germans, Frenchmen and Turks alike, they must seem outbursts of +the most infernal wickedness. As such they have caused many of us to +despair of human nature. A bitter cynicism has succeeded to transports +of pugnacious hatred of which all but the incorrigibly thoughtless, and +a few incurables who have been mentally disabled for life by the war +fever, are now heartily ashamed. I can hardly believe that you have +escaped your share of this crushing disillusion. If you are human as +well as intelligent you must feel about your species very much as the +King of Brobdingnag did when he took Gulliver in his hand as a child +takes a tin soldier, and heard his boastful patriotic discourse about +the glories of military history. + +Perhaps I can console you a little. If you will look at the business in +the light of what we have just been studying I think you will see that +the fault lay not so much in our characters as in the capitalist system +which we had allowed to dominate our lives until it became a sort of +blind monster which neither we nor the capitalists could control. +It is absurd to pretend that the young men of Europe ever wanted to +hunt each other into holes in the ground and throw bombs into the +holes to disembowel oneanother, or to have to hide in those holes +themselves, eaten with lice and sickened by the decay of the unburied, +in unutterable discomfort, boredom, and occasionally acute terror, or +that any woman ever wanted to put on her best Sunday clothes and be +gratified at the honor done to her son for killing some other woman’s +babies. The capitalists and their papers try to persuade themselves +and us that we are like that and always will be, in spite of all the +Christmas cards and Leagues of Nations. It is not a bit true. The +staggering fact about all these horrors was that we found ourselves +compelled to do them in spite of the fact that they were so unintended +by us, and so repugnant and dreadful to us that, when at last the war +suddenly stopped, our heroic pretences dropped from us like blown-off +hats, and we danced in the streets for weeks, mad with joy, until +the police had to stop us to restore the necessary traffic. We still +celebrate, by two minutes’ national silence, not the day on which the +glorious war broke out, but the day on which the horrible thing came +to an end. Not the victory, which we have thrown away by abusing it +as helplessly as we fought for it, but the Armistice, the Cessation, +the stoppage of the Red Cross vans from the terminuses of the Channel +railways with their heartbreaking loads of mutilated men, was what we +danced for so wildly and pitifully. If ever there was anything made +clear in the world it was that we were no more directly guilty of the +war than we were guilty of the earthquake of Tokio. We and the French +and the Germans and the Turks and the rest found ourselves conscripted +for an appalling slaughtering match, ruinous to ourselves, ruinous +to civilization, and so dreaded by the capitalists themselves that +it was only by an extraordinary legal suspension of all financial +obligations (called the Moratorium) that the City was induced to face +it. The attempt to fight out the war with volunteers failed: there were +not enough. The rest went because they were forced to go, and fought +because they were forced to fight. The women let them go partly because +they could not help themselves, partly because they were just as +pugnacious as the men, partly because they read the papers (which were +not allowed to tell them the truth), and partly because most of them +were so poor that they grasped at the allowances which left most of +them better off with their husbands in the trenches than they had ever +been with their husbands at home. + +How had they got into this position? Simply by the original sin of +allowing their countries to be moved and governed and fed and clothed +by the pursuit of profit for capitalists instead of by the pursuit +of righteous prosperity for “all people that on earth do dwell”. The +first ship that went to Africa to sell things to the natives at more +than cost price because there was no sale for them at home began not +only this war, but the other and worse wars that will follow it if we +persist in depending on Capitalism for our livelihood and our morals. +All these monstrous evils begin in a small and apparently harmless way. +It is not too much to say that when a nation, having five shillings +to divide-up, gives four to Fanny and one to Sarah instead of giving +half a crown to each and seeing that she earns it, it sows the seed of +all the evils that now make thoughtful and farseeing men speak of our +capitalistic civilization as a disease instead of a blessing. + + + + +41 + +THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE + + +Do not, however, disparage foreign trade. There is nothing wrong +with foreign trade as such. We could have no gold without foreign +trade; and gold has all sorts of uses and all sorts of beauties. I +will not add that we could have no tea, because I happen to think +that we should be better without this insidious Chinese stimulant. +It is safer and probably healthier for a nation to live on the food +and drink it can itself produce, as the Esquimaux manage to do under +much harder conditions. But there are many necessaries of a high +civilization that nations cannot find within their own boundaries, and +must buy from oneanother. We must trade and travel and come to know +oneanother all over the habitable globe. We have to make international +institutions as well as national ones, beginning with Trading Treaties +and Postal Conventions and Copyright Conventions, and going on to +the Leagues of Nations. The necessities of travelling and trade, and +the common interest of all nations in the works and discoveries of +art, literature, and science, have forced them to make international +agreements and treaties with oneanother which are making an end +of “keeping ourselves to ourselves”, and throwing half bricks at +foreigners and strangers. Honest foreign trade would never have got us +into trouble. + +Neither is the combination of little States in great Federations and +Commonwealths undesirable: on the contrary, the fewer frontiers the +better. The establishment of law and order in uncivilized places should +not have made us hated there: it should have made us popular; and it +often did--at first. The annexation of other countries under our flag, +when it was really needed, should have been a welcome privilege and a +strengthening partnership for the inhabitants of the annexed regions. +Indeed we have always pretended that this was actually the case, and +that we were in foreign countries for the good of the inhabitants +and not for our own sake. Unfortunately we never could make these +pretensions good in the long run. However noble the aspirations of our +Imperialist idealists might be, our capitalist traders were there to +make as much profit out of the inhabitants as they could, and for no +other purpose. They had abandoned their own country because there was +no more profit to be made there, or not so much; and it is not to be +expected that they would become idealistically disinterested the moment +they landed on foreign shores. They stigmatized the Stay-at-homes, +the anti-Expansionists, the Little-Englanders, as friends of every +country but their own; but they themselves were the enemies of every +country, including their own, where there was a sweatable laborer +to make dividends for them. They pretended that the civilization of +the annexed country was “the white man’s burden”, and posed as weary +Titans reluctantly shouldering the public work of other nations as a +duty imposed on them by Providence; but when the natives, having been +duly civilized, declared that they were now quite ready to govern +themselves, the capitalists held on to their markets as an eagle holds +on to its prey, and, throwing off their apostolic mask, defended their +annexations with fire and sword. They said they would fight to the last +drop of their blood for “the integrity of the Empire”; and they did +in fact pay many thousands of hungry men to fight to that extremity. +In spite of them half of North America broke loose, after a war which +left a volcano of hatred that is still smouldering and winning Chicago +elections after a century of American independence. Roman Catholic +Ireland, South Africa, and Egypt have extorted self-government from us. +India is doing the same. But they do not thank us for it, knowing how +loth our Capitalism was to let them go. + +On the other hand look at Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. We did +not dare coerce them after our failure in North America. We provide a +costly fleet gratuitously to protect their shores from invasion. We +give them preferences in trade whilst allowing them to set up heavy +protective duties against us. We allow them to be represented at +international congresses as if they were independent nations. We even +allow them access to the King independently of the London Cabinet. The +result is that they hang on to us with tyrannical devotion, waving +the Union Jack as enthusiastically as the Americans wave the Stars +and Stripes. And this is not because they are of our own race. The +Americans were that; yet they broke away; so were the Irish and their +leaders. The French Canadians, who are of the same race with us only +in the sense that we all belong to the human race, cling to us just +as hard. They all follow us to war so boldly that we begin to have +misgivings as to whether someday they may not make us follow them to +war. The last land to strike for independence of the British Empire may +be Protestant England herself, with Ulster and Scotland for allies, and +the Irish Free State heading her Imperialist opponents. + +But Capitalism can be depended on to spoil all these reconciliations +and loyalties. True, we no longer exploit colonies capitalistically: +we allow them to do it for themselves, and to call the process +self-government. Whilst we persisted in governing them they blamed +us for all the evils Capitalism brought upon them; and they finally +refused to endure our government. When we left them to govern +themselves they became less and less hostile to us. But the change +always impoverishes them, and leaves them in comparative disorder. +The capitalistic evils for which they blamed us still oppress them. +Their self-government is more tyrannical than our alien government +ever dared to be. Their new relation to the Imperial State becomes +more dangerously strained than the old relation, precisely as the +relation of England to Germany was more dangerously strained in +1913 than the relation of England to Ireland. The most liberal +allowance of self-government cannot reconcile people as long as their +capitalists are competing for markets. Nationalism may make Frenchmen +and Englishmen, Englishmen and Irishmen, savage enemies when it is +infringed. Frenchmen and Irishmen laid their own countries waste to get +rid of English rule. But Capitalism makes all men enemies all the time +without distinction of race, color, or creed. When all the nations have +freed themselves Capitalism will make them fight more furiously than +ever, if we are fools enough to let it. + +Have you ever seen the curiosity called a Prince Rupert’s Drop? It +is a bead of glass in such a state of internal strain that if you +break off the tiniest corner the whole bead flies violently to bits. +Europe was like that in 1914. A handful of people in Serbia committed +a murder, and the next moment half Europe was murdering the other +half. This frightful condition of internal strain and instability was +not set up by human nature: it was, I repeat, intensely repugnant to +human nature, being a condition of chronic terror that at last became +unbearable, like that of a woman who commits suicide because she can +no longer endure the dread of death. It was set up by Capitalism. +Capitalism, you will say, is at bottom nothing but covetousness; and +covetousness is human nature. That is true; but covetousness is not +the whole of human nature; it is only a part, and one that vanishes +when it is satisfied, like hunger after a meal, up to which point it +is wholesome and necessary. Under Capitalism it becomes a dread of +poverty and slavery, which are neither wholesome nor necessary. And, +as we have just seen, capital is carried by its own nature beyond the +control of both human covetousness and human conscience, marching on +blindly and automatically, until we find on the one hand the masses +of mankind condemned to poverty relieved only by horrible paroxysms +of bloodshed, and on the other a handful of hypertrophied capitalists +gasping under the load of their growing millions, and giving it away +in heaps in a desperate attempt, partly to get rid of it without +being locked up as madmen for throwing it into the sea, and partly to +undo, by founding Rockefeller institutes and Carnegie libraries, and +hospitals and universities and schools and churches, the effects of the +welter of ignorance and poverty produced by the system under which it +has accumulated on their hands. To call these unfortunate billionaires +monsters of covetousness in the face of their wild disgorgings (to say +nothing of their very ordinary portraits) is silly. They are rather to +be compared to the sorcerer’s apprentice who called up a demon to fetch +a drink for him, and, not knowing the spell for stopping him when he +had brought enough, was drowned in an ocean of wine. + + + + +42 + +HOW WEALTH ACCUMULATES AND MEN DECAY + + +I want to stress this personal helplessness we are all stricken with in +the face of a system that has passed beyond our knowledge and control. +To bring it nearer home, I propose that we switch off from the big +things like empires and their wars to little familiar things. Take pins +for example! I do not know why it is that I so seldom use a pin when my +wife cannot get on without boxes of them at hand; but it is so; and I +will therefore take pins as being for some reason specially important +to women. + +There was a time when pinmakers could buy the material; shape it; make +the head and the point; ornament it; and take it to market or to your +door and sell it to you. They had to know three trades: buying, making, +and selling; and the making required skill in several operations. They +not only knew how the thing was done from beginning to end, but could +do it. But they could not afford to sell you a paper of pins for a +farthing. Pins cost so much that a woman’s dress allowance was called +pin money. + +By the end of the eighteenth century Adam Smith boasted that it took +eighteen men to make a pin, each man doing a little bit of the job and +passing the pin on to the next, and none of them being able to make a +whole pin or to buy the materials or to sell it when it was made. The +most you could say for them was that at least they had some idea of how +it was made, though they could not make it. Now as this meant that they +were clearly less capable and knowledgeable men than the old pinmakers, +you may ask why Adam Smith boasted of it as a triumph of civilization +when its effect was so clearly a degrading effect. The reason was that +by setting each man to do just one little bit of the work and nothing +but that, over and over again, he became very quick at it. The men, it +is said, could turn out nearly five thousand pins a day each; and thus +pins became plentiful and cheap. The country was supposed to be richer +because it had more pins, though it had turned capable men into mere +machines doing their work without intelligence, and being fed by the +spare food of the capitalist as an engine is fed with coals and oil. +That was why the poet Goldsmith, who was a farsighted economist as well +as a poet, complained that “wealth accumulates, and men decay”. + +Nowadays Adam Smith’s eighteen men are as extinct as the diplodocus. +The eighteen flesh-and-blood machines are replaced by machines of +steel which spout out pins by the hundred million. Even sticking them +into pink papers is done by machinery. The result is that with the +exception of a few people who design the machines, nobody knows how +to make a pin or how a pin is made: that is to say, the modern worker +in pin manufacture need not be one-tenth so intelligent and skilful +and accomplished as the old pinmaker; and the only compensation we +have for this deterioration is that pins are so cheap that a single +pin has no expressible value at all. Even with a big profit stuck on +to the cost-price you can buy dozens for a farthing; and pins are so +recklessly thrown away and wasted that verses have to be written to +persuade children (without success) that it is a sin to steal a pin. + +Many serious thinkers, like John Ruskin and William Morris, have been +greatly troubled by this, just as Goldsmith was, and have asked whether +we really believe that it is an advance in wealth to lose our skill and +degrade our workers for the sake of being able to waste pins by the +ton. We shall see later on, when we come to consider the Distribution +of Leisure, that the cure for this is not to go back to the old ways; +for if the saving of time by modern machinery were equally divided +among us, it would set us all free for higher work than pinmaking or +the like. But in the meantime the fact remains that pins are now made +by men and women who cannot make anything by themselves, and could not +arrange between themselves to make anything even in little bits. They +are ignorant and helpless, and cannot lift their finger to begin their +day’s work until it has all been arranged for them by their employers, +who themselves do not understand the machines they buy, and simply pay +other people to set them going by carrying out the machine maker’s +directions. + +The same is true of clothes. Formerly the whole work of making clothes, +from the shearing of the sheep to the turning out of the finished and +washed garment ready to put on, had to be done in the country by the +men and women of the household, especially the women; so that to this +day an unmarried woman is called a spinster. Nowadays nothing is left +of all this but the sheep-shearing; and even that, like the milking +of cows, is being done by machinery, as the sewing is. Give a woman a +sheep today and ask her to produce a woollen dress for you; and not +only will she be quite unable to do it, but you are as likely as not +to find that she is not even aware of any connection between sheep and +clothes. When she gets her clothes, which she does by buying them at a +shop, she knows that there is a difference between wool and cotton and +silk, between flannel and merino, perhaps even between stockinet and +other wefts; but as to how they are made, or what they are made of, or +how they came to be in the shop ready for her to buy, she knows hardly +anything. And the shop assistant from whom she buys is no wiser. The +people engaged in the making of them know even less; for many of them +are too poor to have much choice of materials when they buy their own +clothes. + +Thus the capitalist system has produced an almost universal ignorance +of how things are made and done, whilst at the same time it has caused +them to be made and done on a gigantic scale. We have to buy books and +encyclopedias to find out what it is we are doing all day; and as the +books are written by people who are not doing it, and who get their +information from other books, what they tell us is from twenty to fifty +years out of date, and unpractical at that. And of course most of us +are too tired of our work when we come home to want to read about +it: what we need is a cinema to take our minds off it and feed our +imagination. + +It is a funny place, this world of Capitalism, with its astonishing +spread of ignorance and helplessness, boasting all the time of its +spread of education and enlightenment. There stand the thousands of +property owners and the millions of wage workers, none of them able to +make anything, none of them knowing what to do until somebody tells +them, none of them having the least notion of how it is that they find +people paying them money, and things in the shops to buy with it. And +when they travel they are surprised to find that savages and Esquimaux +and villagers who have to make everything for themselves are more +intelligent and resourceful! The wonder would be if they were anything +else. We should die of idiocy through disuse of our mental faculties +if we did not fill our heads with romantic nonsense out of illustrated +newspapers and novels and plays and films. Such stuff keeps us alive; +but it falsifies everything for us so absurdly that it leaves us more +or less dangerous lunatics in the real world. + +Excuse my going on like this; but as I am a writer of books and plays +myself, I know the folly and peril of it better than you do. And when I +see that this moment of our utmost ignorance and helplessness, delusion +and folly, has been stumbled on by the blind forces of Capitalism as +the moment for giving votes to everybody, so that the few wise women +are hopelessly overruled by the thousands whose political minds, as +far as they can be said to have any political minds at all, have been +formed in the cinema, I realize that I had better stop writing plays +for a while to discuss political and social realities in this book with +those who are intelligent enough to listen to me. + + + + +43 + +DISABLEMENT ABOVE AND BELOW + + +You must not conclude from what I have just said that I grudge the +people their amusements. I have made most of my money by amusing +them. I recognize more clearly than most people that not only does +all work and no play make Jill a dull girl, but that she works so +that she may be able to enjoy life as well as to keep herself from +dying of hunger and exposure. She wants, and needs, leisure as well +as wages. But breadwinning must come before charabancs and cinemas. I +have the strongest sympathy, as I daresay you have, with the French +gentleman who said that if he could have the luxuries of life he could +do without the necessities; but unfortunately Nature does not share +our sympathy, and ruthlessly puts breadwinning first on pain of death. +The French gentleman is less important than the women who are asking +for an eight-hour working day, because, though what they are really +asking for is for a few hours more leisure when they have rested and +slept, cooked and fed and washed up, yet they know that leisure must be +worked for, and that no woman can shirk her share of the work except by +putting it on some other woman and cutting short _her_ leisure. + +Therefore when I say that Capitalism has reduced our people to a +condition of abject helplessness and ignorance in their productive +capacity as workers, you cannot reassure me by pointing out that +factory girls are no fools when it comes to gossiping and amusing +themselves; that they are resourceful enough to learn lip reading in +the weaving-sheds, where the banging of the looms makes it impossible +to hear each other speak; that their dances and charabanc excursions +and whist drives and dressing and wireless concerts stimulate and +cultivate them to an extent unknown to their grandmothers; that +they consume frightful quantities of confectionery; and that they +limit their families to avoid too much mothering. But all this is +consumption, not production. When they are engaged in producing these +amusements: when they take the money for the tickets at the pay-boxes, +or do some scrap of the work of making a charabanc, or wind the wire +on a coil for broadcasting, they are mere machines, taking part in a +routine without knowing what came before or what is to follow. + +In giving all the work to one class and all the leisure to another as +far as the law will let it, the Capitalist system disables the rich +as completely as the poor. By letting their land and hiring out their +spare money (capital) to others, they can have plenty of food and fun +without lifting their little fingers. Their agents collect the rent +for the land, and lodge it in the bank for them. The companies which +have hired their spare money lodge the half-yearly hire (dividends) +in the same way. Bismarck said of them that they had only to take a +pair of scissors and cut off a coupon; but he was wrong: the bank does +even that for them; so that all they have to do is to sign the cheques +with which they pay for everything. They need do nothing but amuse +themselves; and they would get their incomes just the same if they +did not do even that. They can only plead that their ancestors worked +productively, as if everybody’s ancestors had not worked productively, +or as if this were any excuse for their not following their ancestors’ +excellent example. We cannot live on the virtues of our grandmothers. +They may have farmed their own land, and invented the ways in which +their spare money was applied to the land to make them richer; but when +their successors found that all this trouble would be taken for them by +others, they simply let the land and put out their spare money for hire +(invested it). + +Some of our great landholders inherit their land from feudal times, +when there were no factories nor railways, and when towns were so +small that they were walled in as gardens are now. In those days the +landholders, with the king at their head, had to raise armies and +defend the country at their own cost. They had to make the laws and +administer them, doing military work, police work, and government work +of all sorts. Henry IV, who died of overwork, found to his cost how +true it was in those days that the greatest among us must be servant +to all the rest. Nowadays it is the other way about: the greatest is +she to whom all the rest are servants. All the chores and duties of +the feudal barons are done by paid officials. In country places they +may still sit on the Bench as unpaid magistrates; and there remains +the tradition that military service as officers is proper for their +sons. A few of them, with the help of solicitors and agents, manage +the estates on which they actually live, or allow their wives to do +it. But these are only vestiges of a bygone order, maintained mostly +by rich purchasers of estates who are willing to take a little trouble +to be ranked as country gentlemen and county ladies. There are always +newly enriched folk who have this vanity for a while, and will buy +the estate of a real country gentleman to take on his position in the +country. But at any moment our landed gentry, whether they are so by +descent or purchase, can sell their country houses and parks, and +live anywhere they please in the civilized world without any public +duties or responsibilities. Sooner or later they all do so, thus +breaking the only link that binds them to the old feudal aristocracy +save their names and titles. For all the purposes of the real world +of today there is no longer a feudal aristocracy: it is merged in the +industrial capitalist class, with which it associates and intermarries +without distinction, money making up for everything. If it be still +necessary to call the rich an ocracy of any kind, they must be called +a plutocracy, in which the oldest ducal estate and the newest fortune +made in business are only forms of capital, imposing no public duties +on the owner. + +Now this state of things may seem extremely jolly for the plutocracy +from the point of view of those who are so overworked and underamused +that they can imagine nothing better than a life that is one long +holiday; but it has the disadvantage of making the plutocrats as +helpless as babies when they are left to earn their own living. You +know that there is nothing more pitiable on earth within the limits +of good health than born ladies and gentlemen suddenly losing their +property. But have you considered that they would be equally pitiable +if their property were thrown on their own hands to make what they +could of it? They would not know how to farm their lands or to work +their mines and railways or to sail their ships. They would perish +surrounded by what Dr Johnson called “the potentiality of growing rich +beyond the dreams of avarice”. Without the hungry they would have to +say “I cannot dig: to beg (even if I knew how) I am ashamed”. The +hungry could do without them, and be very much the better for it; but +they could not do without the hungry. + +Yet most of the hungry, left to themselves, would be quite as helpless +as the plutocrats. Take the case of a housemaid, familiar to the +intelligent lady who can afford to keep one. A woman may be a very +good housemaid; but you have to provide the house for her and manage +the house before she can set to work. Many excellent housemaids, when +they marry, make a poor enough job of their own housekeeping. Ask them +to manage a big hotel, which employs dozens of housemaids, and they +will think you are laughing at them: you might as well ask the porter +at the Bank of England to manage the bank. A bricklayer may be a very +good bricklayer; but he cannot build a house nor even make the bricks +he lays. Any laborer can lay a plank across a stream, or place a row of +stepping-stones in it; but just ask him to build a bridge, whether it +be the simplest sort of canal bridge or a gigantic construction like +the Forth Bridge! You might as well ask your baby to make its cot and +knit its jumper, or your cook to design and construct a kitchen range +and water supply. + +This helplessness gets more and more complete as civilization advances. +In villages you may still find carpenters and blacksmiths who can make +things. They can even choose and buy their materials, and then sell +the finished article. But in the cities on which our existence now +depends you find multitudes of workers and plutocrats who cannot make +anything; do not know how anything is made; and are so inept at buying +and selling that without fixed-price-shops they would perish. + + + + +44 + +THE MIDDLE STATION IN LIFE + + +And now, if the landlords and capitalists can neither make anything +nor even tell others how to make it; and if the workers can do nothing +until they are told what to do, how does the world get on? There must +be some third class standing between the propertied class on the one +hand and the propertyless class on the other, to lease the land and +hire the capital and tell the workers what to do with them. + +There is. You can see for yourself that there is a middle class which +does all the managing and directing and deciding work of the nation, +besides carrying on the learned and literary and artistic professions. +Let us consider how this class arose, and how it is continually +recruited from the capitalist families. + +The capitalists do something more than merely own. They marry and +have children. Now an income which is comfortable for two people +may not be enough for three or four children in addition, to say +nothing of possibly twice or thrice that number. And when the three +or four children grow up and marry and have three or four children +each, what meant riches for the grandparents may mean poverty for the +grandchildren. + +To avoid this, propertied families may arrange that only the eldest +son shall inherit the property, leaving the younger sons to shift for +themselves, and the daughters to marry men of property if they can. +This is called primogeniture. Until 1926 it was the law of the land +in England when the owner of a landed estate died without leaving a +will to the contrary. Where there is no such law, and all the children +inherit equal shares of the parents’ property, as they do among the +peasant proprietors in France, the family must come to an arrangement +of the same kind between themselves, or else sell the property and +leave its owners with a few pounds each that will not last them very +long. Therefore they almost always do agree that the younger children +shall live by working like the hungry, whilst the eldest keeps the +farm and cultivates it. This cannot be done when the property is not +land but capital, and all the members of the family are living on the +interest of hired out spare money. Parents may make wills leaving all +of it or most of it to one son; but they do not do this as a rule; and +sooner or later the property gets divided and divided among children +and other next-of-kin until the inheritors cannot live on their shares. + +But please remark that the younger sons who are thus thrown on the +world to earn their living have the tastes and habits and speech and +appearance and education of rich men. They are well connected, as +we say. Their near relations may be peers. Some of them have been +schooled at Eton and Harrow, and have taken degrees at Oxford and +Cambridge. Others have less distinguished connections. Their parents or +grandparents may have made money in business; and they may have gone +to the big city schools, or to day schools, instead of to Eton, and +either to one of the new democratic universities or to no university +at all. Their most important relative may be a mayor or alderman. +But they are educated at secondary as distinguished from elementary +schools; and though not what they themselves call great swells, they +have the manners and appearance and speech and habits of the capitalist +class, are described as gentlemen, and politely addressed by letter as +Esquires instead of plain Misters. + +All these propertyless people who have the ways and the culture +of propertied ones have to live by their wits. They go into the +army and navy as officers, or into the upper grades of the civil +service. They become clergymen, doctors, lawyers, authors, actors, +painters, sculptors, architects, schoolmasters, university professors, +astronomers and the like, forming what we call the professional class. +They are treated with special respect socially; but they see successful +men of business, inferior to themselves in knowledge, talent, +character, and public spirit, making much larger incomes. The highest +sorts of mental work are often so unremunerative that it is impossible +to make a living by practising them commercially. Spinoza lived by +grinding lenses, and Rousseau by copying music. Einstein lives by +professorships. Newton lived, not by discovering gravitation and +measuring fluxions, but by acting as Master of the Mint, which other +men could have done as well. Even when a profession is comparatively +lucrative and popular, its gains are restricted by the fact that the +work must all be done by the practitioner’s own hand; for a surgeon +cannot employ a thousand subordinates to deal with a million patients +as a soap king deals with a million customers, nor the President of the +Royal Academy hand over a two thousand guinea portrait sitter to his +secretary. The years of professional success are usually preceded by a +long struggle with scanty means. I myself am held to be a conspicuous +example of success in the most lucrative branch of the literary +profession; but until I was thirty I could not make even a bare living +by my pen. At thirty-eight I thought myself passing rich on six or +seven pounds a week; and even now, when I am seventy, and have achieved +all that can be achieved commercially at my job, I see in the paper +every day, under the heading Wills and Bequests, that the widow of some +successful man of business, wholly unknown to fame, has died leaving a +fortune which reduces my gains to insignificance. + +The consequence is that professional men and civil servants, when they +are not incurable old-fashioned snobs who regard trade as beneath the +dignity of their family, and when their sons have no overwhelming +aptitude for one or other of the professions, advise them strongly to +go in for business. The man of business may not have much chance of a +public statue unless he pays for it and presents it to his native town +with a spacious public park attached; and his occupation may be a dry +one in itself, however exciting the prospect of pocketing more and more +money may make it. But he can make profits not only out of his work, +like the surgeon or painter, but out of the work of thousands of others +as well. And his work is not necessarily dry: modern businesses tend to +become more interesting and important, and even more scientific, than +average professional work. Their activities are much more varied: in +fact modern commercial magnates, when they control a dozen different +businesses, become better informed and better developed mentally than +the rank and file of the professions. What is more, they are learning +to snap up the ablest university scholars and civil servants, and +take them into partnership not as office managers but as thinkers, +diplomatists, and commercial scientists. It is in industrially +undeveloped countries that professional men rank as an aristocracy of +learning and intellect: in European centres today commercial society +is a more effective reserve of culture than professional society. When +the professional man or the public servant tells his son that a berth +in the civil service is a blind alley, or doctoring at the call of the +night bell a dog’s life, contrasting them with the unlimited prospects +and the infinite scope for personal initiative in business, he is +recommending the young man to improve on his father’s condition instead +of starting him on the downward path socially. + +And what is business in the lump? It is hiring land from landlords and +spare money from capitalists, and employing the hungry to make enough +money out of them day by day to pay the wages for their keep and bring +in a profit as well. Astonishing fortunes can be made in this way by +men and women with the necessary ability and decision who have the +particular sort of pecuniary keenness and pertinacity that business +requires. Even more staggering profits are made sometimes by accident, +the business man hitting by chance on something new that the public +happens to fancy. Millions are made by medicines which injure people’s +health instead of improving it (read Tono-Bungay), and hair restorers +that leave the buyer as bald as before. Articles that nobody needs, +and sham pleasures that give only fatigue and boredom at extravagant +prices, are advertized and advertized until people are beglamored into +thinking they cannot do without them. + +But the main scope in business is for honorable and useful activity, +from growing food and building houses and making clothes, or +manufacturing spades and sewing-machines, to laying cables round the +world, and building giant ships to turn the ocean or the air into +a highway. The planning and management and ordering of this gives +employment to able and energetic men who have no property, but have +the education and social address of the propertied class. The educated +who are neither able nor energetic, and who have no professions, find +employment as agents or clerks carrying out the routine and keeping the +accounts of businesses which the able ones have established and are +directing. And the women of their class are forced to live by marrying +them. + +In this way we get, between the propertied class and the hungry mass, +a middle class which acts as a sort of Providence to both of them. It +cultivates the land and employs the capital of the property holders, +paying them the rent of their lands and the hire of their spare money +without asking them to lift a finger, and giving the hungry wages to +live on without asking them to think or decide or know or do anything +except their own little bit of the job in hand. The hungry have neither +to buy the material nor to sell the product, neither to organize the +service nor find the customer. Like children they are told what to do, +and fed and lodged and clothed whilst they are doing it, not always +very handsomely perhaps; but at worst they are kept alive long enough +to produce a fresh set of hungry ones to replace them when they are +worn out. + +There are always a few cases in which this management is done, not by +descendants of propertied folk, but by men and women sprung from the +hungriest of the hungry. These are the geniuses who know most of the +things that other people have to be taught, and who educate themselves +as far as they need any education. But there are so few of them that +they need not be taken into account. In great social questions we are +dealing with the abilities of ordinary citizens: that is, the abilities +we can depend on everyone except invalids and idiots possessing, and +not with what one man or woman in ten thousand can do. In spite of +several cases in which persons born in poverty and ignorance have risen +to make vast fortunes, to become famous as philosophers, discoverers, +authors, and even rulers of kingdoms, to say nothing of saints and +martyrs, we may take it that business and the professions are closed +to those who cannot read and write, travel and keep accounts, besides +dressing, speaking, behaving, and handling and spending money more or +less in the manner of the propertied classes. + +This is another way of saying that until about fifty years ago the +great mass of our people working for weekly wages were as completely +shut out from the professions and from business as if there had been +a law forbidding them on pain of death to attempt to enter them. I +remember wondering when I was a lad at a man who was in my father’s +employment as a miller. He could neither read nor write nor cipher +(that is, do sums on paper); but his natural faculty for calculation +was so great that he could solve instantly all the arithmetical +problems that arose in the course of his work: for instance, if it +were a question of so many sacks of flour at so much a sack, he could +tell you the answer straight off without thinking, which was more +than my father or his clerks could do. But because he did not know +his alphabet, and could not put pen to paper, and had not the speech +and manners and habits and dress without which he would not have +been admitted into the company of merchants and manufacturers, or of +lawyers, doctors, and clergymen, he lived and died a poor employee, +without the slightest chance of rising into the middle class, or the +faintest pretension to social equality with my father. And my father, +though he was propertyless, and worked as a middle class civil servant +and subsequently as a merchant, was not at all proud of being a member +of the middle class: on the contrary, he resented that description, +holding on to his connexion with the propertied class as a younger +son of many former younger sons, and therefore, though unfortunately +reduced to living not very successfully by his wits, a man of family +and a gentleman. + +But this was sixty years ago. Since then we have established Communism +in education. If my father’s miller were a boy now, he would go to +school for nine years, whether his parents liked it or not, at the +expense of the whole community; and his mathematical gift would enable +him to win a scholarship that would take him on to a secondary school, +and another scholarship there that would take him to the university +and qualify him for a profession. At the very least he would become an +accountant, even were it only as a bookkeeper or clerk. In any case he +would be qualified for middle class employment and pass into that class. + +Now the social significance of this is that the middle class, which +the younger sons and their descendants formerly had all to themselves +as far as the most desirable positions in it were concerned, is now +recruited from the working class as well. These recruits, with no +gentlemanly nonsense about them, are not only better taught than the +boys who go to cheapish middle class schools, but better trained to +face the realities of life. Also the old differences in speech and +dress and manners are much less than they were, partly because the +working class is picking up middle class manners, but much more +because they are forcing their own manners and speech on the middle +class as standards. A man like my father, half a merchant, but ashamed +of it and unable to make up his mind to it, and half a gentleman +without any property to uphold his pretension, would, if he were +a boy nowadays, be beaten hollow in the competition for land, for +capital, and for position in the civil service by the sons of men +whose grandfathers would never have dreamed of presuming to sit down +in his presence. The futile propertyless gentlemen, the unserviceable +and grossly insolent civil servants whom Dickens described, have to be +content nowadays with the refuse of middle class employment. They are +discontented, unhappy, impecunious, struggling with a false position, +borrowing (really begging) from their relatives, and unable to realize, +or unwilling to admit, that they have fallen out of the propertied +class, not into an intermediate position where they have a monopoly of +all the occupations and employments that require a little education +and manners, but right down into the ranks of the hungry, without the +hardening that makes the hungry life bearable. + +And what of the daughters? Their business is to get married; and I +can remember the time when there was no other hopeful opening in life +for them. When they failed to find husbands, and no special provision +had been made for them, they became governesses or school teachers +or “companions” or genteel beggars under the general heading of +poor relations. They had been carefully trained to feel that it was +unladylike to work, and still more unladylike to propose marriage to +men. The professions were closed to them. The universities were closed +to them. The business offices were closed to them. Their poverty cut +them off from propertied society. Their ladylikeness cut them off +from the society of working people as poor as themselves, and from +inter-marriage with them. Life was a ghastly business for them. + +Nowadays, there are far more careers open to women. We have women +barristers and women doctors in practice. True, the Church is closed +against them, to its own great detriment, as it could easily find +picked women, eloquent in the pulpit and capable in parish management, +to replace the male refuse it has too often to fall back on; but women +can do without ecclesiastical careers now that the secular and civil +services are open. The closing of the fighting services is socially +necessary, as women are far too valuable to have their lives risked +in battle as well as in child-bearing. If ninety out of every hundred +young men were killed we could recover from the loss, but if ninety out +of every hundred young women were killed there would be an end of the +nation. That is why modern war, which is not confined to battle fields, +and rains high explosives and poison gas on male and female civilians +indiscriminately in their peaceful homes, is so much more dangerous +than war has ever been before. + +Besides, women are now educated as men are: they go to the universities +and to the technical colleges if they can afford it; and, as Domestic +Service is now an educational subject with special colleges, a woman +can get trained for such an occupation as that of manageress of a hotel +as well as for the practice of law or medicine, or for accountancy +and actuarial work. In short, nothing now blocks a woman’s way +into business or professional life except prejudice, superstition, +old-fashioned parents, shyness, snobbery, ignorance of the contemporary +world, and all the other imbecilities for which there is no remedy +but modern ideas and force of character. Therefore it is no use +facing the world today with the ideas of a hundred years ago, when +it was practically against the law for a lady who was not a genius +to be self-supporting; for if she kept a shop, or even visited at +the house of a woman who kept a shop, she was no lady. I know better +than you (because I am probably much older) that the tradition of +those bad old times still wastes the lives of single gentlewomen to +a deplorable extent; but, for all that, every year sees an increase +in the activities of gentlewomen outside the home in business and +the professions, and even in perilous professional exploration and +adventure with a cinematographic camera in attendance. + +This increase is hastened by the gigantic scale of capitalist +production, which, as we have seen, reduces the old household labor +of baking and brewing, spinning and weaving, first to shopping at +separate shops, and then to telephoning the day’s orders to one big +multiple shop. We have seen also how it leads prematurely to Birth +Control, which has reduced the number of children in the middle class +households very notably. Many middle-class women who could formerly +say with truth that there was no end to a woman’s work in the house +are now underworked, in spite of the difficulty of finding servants. +It is conceivable that women may drive men out of many middle class +occupations as they have already driven them out of many city offices. +We are losing the habit of regarding business and the professions as +male employments. + +Nevertheless males are in a vast majority in these departments, and +must remain so as long as our family arrangements last, because the +bearing and rearing of children, including domestic housekeeping, is +woman’s natural monopoly. As such, being as it is the most vital of all +the functions of mankind, it gives women a power and importance that +they can attain to in no other profession, and that man cannot attain +to at all. In so far as it is a slavery, it is a slavery to Nature and +not to Man: indeed it is the means by which women enslave men, and thus +create a Man Question which is called, very inappropriately, the Woman +Question. Woman as Wife and Mother stands apart from the development +we are dealing with in this chapter, which is, the rise of a business +and professional middle class out of the propertied class. This is +a sexless development, because when the unmarried daughters, like +the younger sons, become doctors, barristers, ministers in the Free +Churches, managers, accountants, shopkeepers, and clerks under the term +typist (in America stenographer), they virtually leave their sex behind +them, as men do. In business and the professions there are neither men +nor women: economically they are all neuters, as far as that is humanly +possible. The only disadvantage the woman is at in competition with +the man is that the man must either succeed in his business or fail +completely in life, whilst the woman has a second string to her bow in +the possibility of getting married. A young woman who regards business +employment as only a temporary support until she can find an eligible +husband will never master her work as a man must. + + + + +45 + +DECLINE OF THE EMPLOYER + + +At first sight it would seem that the employers must be the most +powerful class in the community, because the others can do nothing +without them. So they were, a hundred years ago. The dominant man +then was not the capitalist nor the landlord nor the laborer, but +the employer who could set capital and land and labor to work. These +employers began as office employees; for business in those days was +mostly on so small a scale that any middle class employee who had +learnt the routine of business as a clerk or apprentice, in his +father’s office or elsewhere, and who could scrape together a few +hundred pounds, could enter into partnership with another thrifty +employee, and set up in almost any sort of business as an employer. + +But as spare money accumulated in larger and larger quantity, and +enterprise expanded accordingly, business came to be done on a larger +and larger scale until these old-fashioned little firms found their +customers being taken away from them by big concerns and joint stock +companies who could, with their huge capitals and costly machinery, +not only undersell them, but make a greater profit out of their lower +prices. Women see this in their shopping. They used to buy their +umbrellas at an umbrella shop, their boots at a boot shop, their +books at a book shop, and their lunches-out at a restaurant. Nowadays +they buy them all at the same shop, lunch and all. Huge bazaars like +Selfridge’s and Whiteley’s in London, and the great multiple shops +in the provincial cities, are becoming the only shops where you can +buy anything, because they are taking away the trade of the small +separate shops and ruining the shopkeepers who kept them. These ruined +shopkeepers may think themselves lucky if they get jobs in the multiple +shops as shop assistants, managers of departments, and the like, when +they are not too old for the change. + +Sometimes the change is invisible. Certain retail trades have to be +carried on in small shops scattered all over the place. For example, +oil shops, public houses, and tobacconists. These look like separate +small businesses. But they are not. The public houses are tied houses +practically owned in dozens by the brewers. A hundred oil shops or +tobacco shops may belong to a single big company, called a Trust. Just +as the little businesses conducted by a couple of gentlemen partners, +starting with a capital which they counted in hundreds, had to give way +to companies counting their capital in thousands, so these companies +are being forced to combine into Trusts which count their capital in +millions. + +These changes involve another which is politically very important. +When the employers had it all their own way, and were in business for +themselves separately and independently, they worked with what we +should call small capitals, and had no difficulty in getting them. +Capital was positively thrown down their throats by the bankers, who, +as we shall see later, have most of the spare money to keep. Those were +the days of arrogant cotton lords and merchant princes. The man who +could manage a business took every penny that was left in the till when +the landlord had had his rent, the capitalist (who was often himself) +his interest, and the employees their wages. If he were a capable man, +what remained for him as profit was enough to make him rich enough to +go into Parliament if he cared to. Sometimes it was enough to enable +him to buy his way into the peerage. Capital being useless and Labor +helpless without him, he was, as an American economist put it, master +of the situation. + +When joint stock companies, which were formerly supposed to be suitable +for banking and insurance only, came into business generally, the +situation of the employers began to change. In a joint stock concern +you have, instead of one or two capitalists, hundreds of capitalists, +called shareholders, each contributing what spare money she or he +can afford. It began with £100 shares, and has gone on to £10 and +£1 shares; so that a single business today may belong to a host of +capitalist proprietors, many of them much poorer people than could ever +have acquired property in pre-company days. This had two results. One +was that a woman with a £5 note to spare could allow a company to spend +it, and thereby become entitled to, say, five shillings a year out of +the gains of that company as long as it lasted. In this way Capitalism +was strengthened by the extension of property in industry from rich +people with large sums of spare money to poor people with small ones. +But the employers were weakened, and finally lost their supremacy and +became employees. + +It happened in this way. The joint stock company system made it +possible to collect much larger capitals to start business with than +the old separate firms could command. It was already known that the +employer with a thousand pounds worth of machinery and other aids +to production (called plant) could be undersold and driven out of +the market by the employer with twenty thousand pounds worth. Still, +employers could get twenty thousand pounds lent to them easily enough +if it was believed that they could handle it profitably. But when +companies came into the field equipped with hundreds of thousands of +pounds, and these companies began to combine into Trusts equipped with +millions, the employers were outdone. They could not raise such sums +among their acquaintances. No bank would allow them to overdraw their +accounts on such a gigantic scale. To get more capital, they had to +turn their businesses into joint stock companies. + +This sounds simple; but the employers did not find it so. You, I hope, +would not buy shares in a new company unless you saw what are called +good names on the prospectus, shewing that half a dozen persons whom +you believe to be wealthy, trustworthy, good judges of business, and +in responsible social stations were setting you the example. If ever +you do you will regret it, possibly in the workhouse. Now the art +of getting at the people with the good names, and interesting them, +is one at which practical employers are for the most part incurably +unskilled. Therefore when they want to raise capital on the modern +scale they are forced to go to persons who, having made a special +profession of it, know where to go and how to proceed. These persons +are called Promoters, though they usually call themselves financiers. +They naturally charge a very high commission for their services; and +the accountants and solicitors whose reputations inspire confidence +put a high price on their names also. They all find that they can +make so much by raising large capitals that it is not worth their +while to trouble themselves with small ones; and the quaint result +of this is that an employer finds it easier to raise large sums than +small ones. If he wants only £20,000, the promoters and financiers +shew him the door contemptuously: the pickings on so small a sum are +beneath their notice. If, however, he wants £100,000, they will +listen superciliously, and perhaps get it for him. Only, though he +has to pay interest on £100,000, and stand indebted in that amount, +he is very lucky if he receives £70,000 in cash. The promoters and +financiers divide the odd £30,000 among themselves for their names +and their trouble in raising the money. The employers are helpless in +their hands: it is a case of take it or leave it: if they refuse the +terms they get no capital. Thus the financiers and their go-betweens +are now masters of the situation; and the men who actually conduct and +order the industry of the country, who would have been great commercial +magnates in Queen Victoria’s reign, are now under the thumbs of men who +never employed an industrial workman nor entered a factory or mine in +their lives, and never intend to. + +And that is not all. When an employer turns his business into a joint +stock company he becomes an employee. He may be the head employee who +orders all the other employees about, engaging and dismissing them as +he thinks fit; but still he is an employee, and can be dismissed by +the shareholders and replaced by another manager if they think he is +taking too much for his services. Against this possibility he usually +protects himself by selling his establishment to the company at first +for a number of shares sufficient to enable him to outvote all the +discontented shareholders (each share carries a vote); and in any case +his position as the established head who has made a success of the +business, or at least persuaded the shareholders that he has, is a +strong one. But he does not live for ever. When he dies or retires, a +new manager must be found; and this successor is not his heir, but a +stranger entering as a removable employee, managing the concern for a +salary and perhaps a percentage of the profits. + +Now an able employee-manager can command a high salary, and have a +good deal of power, because he is felt to be indispensable until he is +worn out. But he can never be as indispensable as the old employers +who invented their own methods, and clung to their “trade secrets” +jealously. Their methods necessarily resolved themselves into an office +routine which could be picked up, however unintelligently, by those +employed in it. The only trade secret that really counted was the new +machinery, which was not secret at all; for all the great mechanical +inventions are soon communized by law: that is, instead of the +inventor of a machine being allowed to keep it as his private property +for ever and make all the employers who use it pay him a royalty, he is +allowed to monopolize it in this way under a patent for fourteen years +only, after which it is at everybody’s disposal. + +You can guess the inevitable result. It may take a genius to invent, +say a steam-engine, but once it is invented a couple of ordinary +workmen can keep it going; and when it is worn out any ordinary +engineering firm can replace it by copying it. Also, though it may +need exceptional talent, initiative, energy, and concentration to set +up a new business, yet when it is once set up, and the routine of +working it established, it can be kept going by ordinary persons who +have learnt the routine, and whose rule is “When in doubt as to what +to do, see what was done the last time, and do it over again”. Thus +a very clever man may build up a great business, and leave it to his +quite ordinary son to carry on when he is dead; and the son may get on +very well without ever really understanding the business as his father +did. Or the father may leave it to his daughter with the certainty +that if she cannot or will not do the directing work herself, she can +easily hire employee-employers who can and will, for a salary plus a +percentage. The famous Krupp factory in Germany belongs to a lady. +I will not go so far as to say that managerial ability has become a +drug in the market, though, in the little businesses which are still +conducted in the old way in the poorer middle class, the employer often +has to pay his more highly skilled employees more than he gets out of +the business for himself. But the monopoly of business technique which +made the capitalist-employer supreme in the nineteenth century has +gone for ever. Employers today are neither capitalists nor monopolists +of managerial ability. The political and social power which their +predecessors enjoyed has passed to the financiers and bankers, who +monopolize the art of collecting millions of spare money. That monopoly +will be broken in its turn by the communization of banking, to which we +shall come presently. + +Meanwhile you, putting all these developments together in your mind, +can now contemplate the Middle Class understandingly. You know now +how it sprang from the propertied class as an educated younger-son +class without property, and supported itself by practising the +professions, and by doing the business of the propertied class. You +know how it rose to supreme power and riches when the development of +modern machinery (called the Industrial Revolution) made business so +big and complicated that neither the propertied class nor the working +class could understand it, and the middle class men who did (called +generally employers), became masters of the situation. You know how, +when the first generations of employers had found out how to do this +work, and established a routine of doing it which any literate man +could learn and practise, and when all that remained was to find more +and more capital to feed it as its concerns grew bigger and bigger, +the supremacy passed from the employers to the financiers who hold it +at present. You know also that this last change has been accompanied +by a change in the status of the employer, who instead of hiring the +land and capital of the propertied classes for a fixed payment of rent +and interest, and taking as his profit all that remains, is now simply +employed to manage for companies and trusts, the shareholders taking +everything that is left after they have paid rent and wages (including +his salary). You see that in applying for such posts he has to meet the +competition not only of other middle class men as of old, but of clever +sons of the working class, raised into the middle class by education at +the public expense by our system of scholarships, which act as ladders +from the elementary school to the University or the Polytechnic. You +see that this applies not only to employers, but much more to their +clerks. Clerking was formerly a monopoly of the less energetic sons of +the middle class. Now that everybody has to go to school the middle +class monopoly of reading, writing, and ciphering is gone; and skilled +manual workers are better paid than clerks, being scarcer. As to +parlormaids, what ordinary typist does not envy their creature comforts? + +The Middle Station in Life no longer justifies the pæan in its praise +which Daniel Defoe raised in Robinson Crusoe. For those who possess no +special talent of a lucrative kind, it is now the least eligible class +in the community. + + + + +46 + +THE PROLETARIAT + + +We have disposed of the Middle Classes: let us turn to the Lower +Classes, the Hungry Ones, the Working Classes, the Masses, the Mob, +or whatever else you call them. Classical culture has invented a +general name for all people, of whatever nation, color, sex, sect, +or social pretension, who, having no land nor capital (no property), +have to hire themselves out for a living. It calls them proletarians, +or, in the lump, The Proletariat. Karl Marx, who was born in Rhenish +Germany in 1818, and died in London in 1883, after spending the last +thirty-four years of his life in England making a special study of the +development of Capitalism among us, was, and still is, the most famous +champion of the Proletariat as the really organic part of civilized +society to which all the old governing and propertied classes must +finally succumb. When Marx raised his famous slogan, “Proletarians of +all lands: unite”, he meant that all who live by the sale or hire of +their labor should combine to do away with private property in land and +capital, and to make everyone do her or his bit of the labor of the +world, and share the product without paying toll to any idler. + +The difficulty at that time was that the employers, without whom the +proletarians could do nothing, were, as we have seen, strong, rich, +independent, and masterful. They not only owned a good deal of land and +capital themselves, but fully intended to become propertied country +gentlemen when they retired. It was not until they began to slip down +into a salaried, or proletarian class, that they also began to listen +to Karl Marx. You see, they were losing their personal interest in +private property with its rents and dividends, and were becoming +interested solely in the price that could be got out of the landlords +and capitalists for active services: that is, for labor of hand and +brain. Instead of wanting to give Labor as little as possible and get +as much out of it as possible, they wanted property to get as little +as possible, and the sort of labor they themselves did to get as much +as possible. They found that skilled manual work, and even unskilled +manual strength, was coming more and more to be better paid than +bookkeeping work and routine managing and professional work. + +Now it is no use pretending to be better than other people when you are +poorer. It only leads to keeping up more expensive appearances on less +money, and forbidding your children to associate with most people’s +children whilst they forbid their children to speak to yours. If the +parents do not realize the vanity of such pretension the children do. +I remember thinking when I was a boy how silly it was that my father, +whose business was wholesale business, should consider himself socially +superior to his tailor, who had the best means of knowing how much +poorer than himself my father was, and who had a handsome residence, +with ornamental grounds and sailing-boats, at the seaside place where +we spent the summer in a six-roomed cottage-villa with a small garden. +The great Grafton Street shopkeepers of Dublin outshone the tailor +with their palaces and yachts; and their children had luxuries that I +never dreamt of as possible for me, besides being far more expensively +educated. My father’s conviction that they were too lowly to associate +with me, when it was so clear that I was too poor to associate with +them, may have had some sort of imaginary validity for him; but for me +it was snobbish nonsense. I lived to see those children entertaining +the Irish peerage and the Viceroy without a thought of the old social +barriers; and very glad the Irish peers were to be entertained by them. +I lived to see those shops become multiple shops managed by salaried +employees who have less chance of entertaining the peerage than a +baked-potato man of entertaining the King. + +My father was an employer whose whole capital added to that of his +partner would not have kept a big modern company in postage stamps for +a fortnight. But at my start in life I found it impossible to become +an employer like him: I had to become a clerk at fifteen. I was a +proletarian undisguised. Therefore, when I began to take an interest +in politics, I did not join the Conservative Party. It was the party +of the landlords; and I was not a landlord. I did not join the Liberal +Party. It was the party of the employers; and I was an employee. My +father voted Conservative or Liberal just as the humor took him, +and never imagined that any other party could exist. But I wanted a +proletarian party; and when the Karl Marx slogan began to take effect +in all the countries in Europe by producing proletarian political +societies, which came to be called Socialist societies because they +aimed at the welfare of society as a whole as against class prejudices +and property interests, I naturally joined one of these societies, and +so came to be called, and was proud to call myself, a Socialist. + +Now the significant thing about the particular Socialist society which +I joined was that the members all belonged to the middle class. Indeed +its leaders and directors belonged to what is sometimes called the +upper middle class: that is, they were either professional men like +myself (I had escaped from clerkdom into literature) or members of +the upper division of the civil service. Several of them have since +had distinguished careers without changing their opinions or leaving +the Society. To their Conservative and Liberal parents and aunts and +uncles fifty years ago it seemed an amazing, shocking, unheard-of +thing that they should become Socialists, and also a step bound to +make an end of all their chances of success in life. Really it was +quite natural and inevitable. Karl Marx was not a poor laborer: he was +the highly educated son of a rich Jewish lawyer. His almost equally +famous colleague, Friedrich Engels, was a well-to-do employer. It +was precisely because they were liberally educated, and brought up +to think about how things are done instead of merely drudging at the +manual labor of doing them, that these two men, like my colleagues in +The Fabian Society (note, please, that we gave our society a name that +could have occurred only to classically educated men), were the first +to see that Capitalism was reducing their own class to the condition +of a proletariat, and that the only chance of securing anything more +than a slave’s share in the national income for anyone but the biggest +capitalists or the cleverest professional or business men lay in a +combination of all the proletarians without distinction of class or +country to put an end to Capitalism by developing the communistic side +of our civilization until Communism became the dominant principle +in society, and mere owning, profiteering, and genteel idling were +disabled and discredited. Or, as our numerous clergymen members put +it, to worship God instead of Mammon. Communism, being the lay form of +Catholicism, and indeed meaning the same thing, has never had any lack +of chaplains. + +I may mention, as illustrating the same point, that The Fabian Society, +when I joined it immediately after its foundation in 1884, had only +two rival Socialist Societies in London, both professing, unlike the +Fabian, to be working-class societies. But one of them was dominated +by the son of a very rich man who bequeathed large sums to religious +institutions in addition to providing for his sons, to whom he had +given a first-rate education. The other was entirely dependent on one +of the most famous men of the nineteenth century, who was not only a +successful employer and manufacturer in the business of furnishing and +decorating palaces and churches, but an eminent artistic designer, a +rediscoverer of lost arts, and one of the greatest of English poets +and writers. These two men, Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris, +left their mark on the working-class proletariat as preachers of +Socialism, but failed in their attempts to organize a new working-class +Socialist Party in their own upper middle class way under their own +leadership and in their own dialect (for the language of ladies and +gentlemen is only a dialect), because the working classes had already +organized themselves in their own way, under their own leaders, +and in their own dialect. The Fabian Society succeeded because it +addressed itself to its own class in order that it might set about +doing the necessary brain work of planning Socialist organization for +all classes, meanwhile accepting, instead of trying to supersede, the +existing political organizations which it intended to permeate with the +Socialist conception of human society. + +The existing form of working-class organization was Trade Unionism. +Trade Unionism is not Socialism: it is the Capitalism of the +Proletariat. This requires another chapter of explanation, and a +very important one; for Trade Unionism is now very powerful, and +occasionally leaves the Intelligent Woman without coals or regular +trains for weeks together. Before we can understand it, however, we +must study the Labor Market out of which it grew; and this will take +several preliminary chapters, including a somewhat grim one on the +special position of women as sellers in that market. + + + + +47 + +THE LABOR MARKET AND THE FACTORY ACTS + + +The workwoman working for weekly wages is like her employer in one +respect. She has something to sell; and she has to live on the price +of it. That something is her labor. The more she gets for it the +better-off she is: the less she gets for it the worse-off she is: if +she can get nothing for it she starves or becomes a pauper. When she +marries, she finds her husband in the same position; and he has to pay +for the upkeep of her domestic labor out of the price of his industrial +labor. Under these circumstances they are both naturally keen on +getting as much for his industrial labor as possible, and giving as +little for its price as the purchaser (the employer) will put up with. +This means that they want the highest wages and the shortest hours of +work they can get. Unless they are exceptionally thoughtful and public +spirited persons, their ideas are limited to that. + +The employer is in the same predicament. He does not sell labor: he +has to buy it: what he sells are the goods or services produced under +his direction; and if he, as mostly happens, is neither thoughtful nor +public spirited, his ideas are limited to getting as much for what he +sells as possible and giving as little for the money as the purchaser +will put up with. In buying labor his interest and policy are to pay as +little and get as much as he can, being thus precisely the opposites of +the workers’ interest and policy. + +This not only produces that unhappy and dangerous conflict of feeling +and interest between employers and employed called Class War, but +leads to extremities of social wickedness that are hardly credible of +civilized people. The Government has been forced again and again to +interfere between the buyers and sellers of labor to compel them to +keep their bargains within the barest limits of common humanity. To +begin with, all the employers want is labor, and whether the labor +is done by a child or a woman or a man is nothing to them: they buy +whatever labor is cheapest. Also the effect of the work on the health +and morals of the employed is nothing to the employer except in so far +as they may make a difference in his profit; and when he takes them +into consideration with this in view he may conclude that an inhuman +disregard of all natural kindness will pay him better than any attempt +to reconcile his interest with the welfare of his employees. + +To illustrate this I may cite the case of the London tramways when the +cars were drawn by horses, and of certain plantations in America before +negro slavery was abolished there. The question to be decided by the +tramway managers was, what is the most moneymaking way of treating +tramway horses? A well-cared-for horse, if not overworked, may live +twenty years, or even, like the Duke of Wellington’s horse, forty. On +the other hand, reckless ill-usage will kill a horse in less than a +year, as it will kill anyone else. If horses cost nothing, and a new +horse could be picked up in the street when the old one died, it would +be more profitable commercially to work horses to death in six months, +say, than to treat them humanely and let them retire to the salt +marshes of Norfolk at the age of eighteen or so. But horses cost money; +and the tramway managers knew that if they wore out a horse too quickly +he would not pay for his cost. After figuring it out they decided that +the most profitable way of treating tram horses was to wear them out +in four years. The same calculation was made on the plantations. The +slave, like the horse, cost a substantial sum of money; and if he were +worked to death too soon his death would result in a loss. The most +businesslike planters settled that the most paying plan was to wear out +their slaves in seven years; and this was the result they instructed +their overseers to aim at. + +The Intelligent Woman will naturally exclaim “What a dreadful thing to +be a company’s horse or a slave!” But wait a moment. Horses and slaves +are worth something: if you kill them you have to pay for new ones. But +if instead of employing horses and slave you employ “free” children +and women and men, you may work them to death as hard and as soon as +you like: there are plenty more to be had for nothing where they came +from. What is more, you need not support them, as you have to support +slaves, during the weeks when you have no work for them. You take them +on by the week; and when trade is slack, and you have no work for them, +you just discharge them, leaving them to starve or shift for themselves +as best they can. In the heyday of Capitalism, when this system was +in full swing, and no laws had been made to limit its abuse, small +children were worked to death under the whip until it was commonly +said that the northern factory employers were using up nine generations +in one generation. Women were employed at the mines under conditions of +degradation which would have horrified any negress in South Carolina. +Men were reduced to lives which savages would have despised. The places +these unhappy people lived in were beyond description. Epidemics of +cholera and smallpox swept the country from time to time; typhus was +commoner than measles today; drunkenness and brutal violence were +considered as natural to the working classes as fustian coats and horny +hands. The respectability and prosperity of the propertied and middle +classes who grew rich on sweated labor covered an abyss of horror; +and it was by raising the lid from that abyss that Karl Marx, in his +terrible and epoch-making book called Capital, became the prophet of +that great revolt of outraged humanity against Capitalism which is the +emotional force of the Socialist movement. However, your subject and +mine just now is not Emotional Socialism but Intelligent Socialism; so +let us keep calm. Anger is a bad counsellor. + +Long before Marx published his book the Government had been forced to +interfere. A succession of laws called the Factory Acts, which include +regulation of mines and other industries, were passed to forbid the +employment of children below a certain age; to regulate the employment +of women and young persons; to limit the hours during which a factory +employing such persons could be kept open; to force employers to fence +in machines which crushed and tore to pieces the employees who brushed +against them in moments of haste or carelessness; to pay wages in money +instead of in credit at employers’ shops where bad food and bad clothes +were sold at exorbitant prices; to provide sanitary conveniences; to +limewash factory walls at frequent intervals; to forbid the practice +of taking meals at work in the factory instead of during an interval +and in another place; to frustrate the dodges by which these laws were +at first evaded by the employers; and to appoint factory inspectors +to see that the laws were carried out. These laws were the fruit of +an agitation headed, not by Socialists, but by a pious Conservative +nobleman, Lord Shaftesbury, who did not find in his Bible any authority +for the Capitalist theory that you could and should produce universal +well-being by breaking all the laws of God and Man whenever you could +make a commercial profit by doing so. This amazing theory was not only +put into practice by greedy people, but openly laid down and explicitly +advocated in books by quite sincere and serious professors of political +economy and jurisprudence (calling themselves The Manchester School) +and in speeches made in opposition to the Factory Acts by moral and +highminded orator-manufacturers like John Bright. It is still taught +as authentic political science at our universities. It has broken the +moral authority of university bred Churchmen, and reduced university +bred Statesmen to intellectually self-satisfied impotence. It is +perhaps the worst of the many rationalist dogmas that have in the +course of human history led naturally amiable logicians to countenance +and commit villainies that would revolt professed criminals. + +Now one would suppose on first thoughts that the Factory Acts would +have been opposed by all the employers and supported by all their +employees. But there are good employers as well as bad ones; and +there are ignorant and shortsighted laborers as well as wise ones. +The employers who had tender consciences, or who, like some of the +Quakers, had a form of religion which compelled them to think sometimes +of what they were doing by throwing all the responsibility for it on +themselves and not on any outside authority like the professors of +Capitalist political economy, were greatly troubled by the condition of +their employees. You may ask why, in that case, they did not treat them +better. The answer is that if they had done so they would have been +driven out of business and ruined by the bad employers. + +It would have occurred in this way. Cheap sweated labor meant not only +bigger profits: it also meant cheaper goods. If the good employer paid +a decent living wage to his workpeople, and worked them for eight hours +a day instead of from twelve to sixteen, he had to charge high enough +prices for his goods to enable him to pay such wages. But in that case +the bad employer could and would at once offer the same goods at a +lower price and thus take all the good employer’s customers away from +him. The good employer was therefore obliged to join Lord Shaftesbury +in telling the Government that unless laws were passed to force all +employers, good and bad alike, to behave better, there could never +be any improvement, because the good employers would have either to +sweat the workers like the bad ones, or else be driven out of business, +leaving matters worse than ever. They found that social problems cannot +be solved by personal righteousness, and that under Capitalism not only +must men be made moral by Act of Parliament, but cannot be made moral +in any other way, no matter how benevolent their dispositions may be. + +The opposition to the Factory Acts by the workers themselves was +actually harder to overcome in some ways than that of the employers, +because the employers, when they were forced by law to try the +experiment, found that extreme sweating, like killing the goose that +laid the golden eggs, was not the best way to make business pay, and +that they could more than make up for the cost of complying with +the very moderate requirements of the Acts by putting a little more +brains into their work. Even the stupid ones found that by speeding +up their machinery, and thus making their employees pull themselves +together and work harder, they could get more out of them in ten hours +than in twelve. The Intelligent Woman, if she has travelled, may have +noticed that in countries where there is no Shop Hours Act, and shops +remain open until everyone has gone to bed, the shopkeepers and their +assistants are far less tired and strained at nine in the evening than +the assistants in a big shop in a big English city are at five in the +afternoon, though the shop closes at six. Impossible as it may sound, +in the ginning mills of Bombay, before any factory legislation was +introduced, the children employed went into the factory, not for so +many hours a day, but for months at a time; and there are such things +in the world as Italian cafés that are open day and night without +regular night and day waiters, the employees taking a nap when and +where they can. And this lazy happy-go-lucky way of doing business may +do no great harm, whilst an eight hour day at high wages under modern +scientific management may mean work so intense that it takes the last +inch out of the workers, and cannot be done except by persons in the +prime of life, nor even by them for many consecutive months. + +The employers had another resource in the introduction of machinery. +When employers can get plenty of cheap labor they will not introduce +machinery: it is too much trouble, and though the machine may do the +work of several persons it may cost more. At this moment (1925) in +Lisbon the very rough and dirty business of coaling steamships can be +done by machinery. The machinery is actually there ready for use. But +the work is done by women, because they are cheaper and there is no +law against it. If a Portuguese Factory Act were passed, forbidding +the employment of women, or imposing restrictions and regulations on +it (possibly not really for the sake of the women, but only to keep +them out of the job and thus reserve it for men), the machinery would +be turned on at once; and it would soon be improved and added to until +it became indispensable. But as the women would lose their employment, +they would object to any such Factory Act much more vociferously than +the employers. + +All the protestations of the employers that they would be ruined by the +Factory Acts were contradicted by experience. By better management, +more and better machinery, and speeding up the work, they made bigger +profits than ever. If they had been half as clever as they claimed +to be, they would have imposed on themselves all the regulations the +Factory Acts imposed on them, without waiting to be forced by law. But +profiteering does not cultivate men’s minds as public service does. +The greatest advances in industrial organization have been forced on +employers in spite of their piteous protests that they would be unable +to carry on under them, and that British industry must consequently +perish. It may shock you to learn that the employees themselves +resisted the Factory Acts at first because the Acts began by putting +a stop to the ill treatment and overworking of children too young to +be decently put to commercial work at all. At first these victims of +unregulated Capitalism were little Oliver Twists, sold into slavery by +the Guardians of the Poor to get rid of them. But the later generations +were the children of the employees; and the wage on which the employee +kept his family in squalid poverty was added to by the children’s +earnings. When people are very poor the loss of a shilling a week is +much worse than the loss of £500 a week to a millionaire: it means, for +the woman who has a desperate struggle to keep the house and make both +ends meet every Saturday, that her task becomes impossible. It is easy +for comparatively rich people to say “You should not send your young +children out to work under such inhuman conditions”, or, “You should +rejoice in a new Factory Act which makes such infamies impossible”. +But if the immediate result of listening to them is that the children +who were only half starved before are now to be three-quarters +starved, such pious remonstrances produce nothing but exasperation. +The melancholy truth is that, as the Factory Acts were passed one +after another, gradually raising the age at which children might be +employed in factories from infancy to fourteen and sixteen, and half +the children’s time below a certain age had to be spent in school, the +parents were the fiercest opponents of the Acts; and when they got the +vote, and became able to influence Parliament directly, they made it +impossible for anybody to get elected as a member for a factory town +where children’s labor was employed unless he pledged himself to oppose +any extension of the laws restricting child labor. The common saying +that the parents are the best people to take care of the interests of +the children depends not only on the sort of people the parents are, +but on whether they are well enough off to be able to afford to indulge +their natural parental instinct. Only a small proportion of parents, +and these not the poorest, will deliberately bring up their children +to be thieves and prostitutes; but practically all parents will, and +indeed must, sweat their children if they are themselves sweated +so mercilessly that they cannot get on without the few pence their +children can earn. + +Now that I have explained the seeming heartlessness of the parents, you +have still to ask me why these parents accepted wages so low that they +were forced to sacrifice their children to the employers’ greed for +profits. The answer is that the increase of population which produced +the younger son class in the propertied class, and finally built up the +middle class, went on also among the employees who lived from hand to +mouth on the wages of manual labor. Now manual labor is like fish or +asparagus, dear when it is scarce, cheap when it is plentiful. As the +numbers of propertyless manual workers grew from thousands to millions +the price of their labor fell and fell. In the nineteenth century +everybody knew that wages were higher in America and Australia than in +Great Britain and Ireland, because labor was scarcer there; and those +who could afford it emigrated to these countries. Half the population +of Ireland went to America, where labor was so scarce that immigrants +were welcomed from all countries. But today the labor market in America +is so choked with them that immigration is sternly restricted to a +fixed number from each European country every year. Australia restricts +its births artificially, and refuses to admit Chinamen or Japanese on +any terms. America also excludes Japanese. But in the days when the +Factory Acts were made really effective (the first ones were evaded +by all sorts of employers’ tricks) emigration from our islands was +unrestricted, and went on at a great rate among those who could afford +the passage money. + +This shewed that our labor market was overstocked. When the fish market +is overstocked the fish are thrown back into the sea. Emigration was, +in effect, throwing men and women into the sea with a ship to cling +to and a chance of reaching another country in it. The value of men +and women in England, unless they could do some sort of work that was +still scarce, had fallen to nothing. Doctors and dentists and lawyers +and parsons were still worth something (parsons shamefully little: +£70 a year for a curate with a family); and exceptionally skilled or +physically powerful workmen could earn more than the poorer clergy; +but the mass of manual employees, those who could do nothing except +under direction, and even under direction could do nothing that any +ablebodied person could not learn to do in a very short time, were +literally worth nothing: you could get them for what it cost to keep +them alive, and to enable them to bring up children enough to replace +them when they were worn out. It was just as if steam-engines had been +made in such excessive quantities that the manufacturers would give +them for nothing to anyone who would take them away. Whoever took them +away would still have to feed them with coal and oil before they could +work; but this would not mean that they had any value, or that they +would be taken proper care of, or that the coal and oil would be of +decent quality. + +You see, people without property have no other way of living than +selling themselves for their market value, or, when their value falls +to nothing, offering to work for anyone who will feed them. They have +no land, and cannot afford to buy any: and even if land were given to +them few of them would know how to cultivate it. They cannot become +capitalists, because capital is spare money, and they have no money +to spare. They cannot set up in business for themselves with borrowed +money, because nobody will lend them money: if anyone did, they would +lose it all and become bankrupt for want of the requisite education and +training. They must find an employer or starve; and if they attempt to +bargain for anything more than a bare subsistence wage they are told +curtly but only too truthfully that if they do not choose to take it +there are plenty of others who will. + +Even at this they cannot all get employment. Although the plea made +for Capitalism by the professors of The Manchester School was that at +least it would always provide the workers with employment at a living +wage, it has never either kept that promise or justified that plea. +The employers have had to confess that they need what is called “a +reserve army of unemployed”, so that they can always pick up “hands” +when trade is good and throw them back into the street when it is bad. +Throwing them back into the street means forcing them to spend the few +shillings they may have been able to put by while employed, selling or +pawning their clothes and furniture, and finally going on the rates +as paupers. The ratepayers naturally object very strongly to having +to support the employer’s workmen whenever he does not happen to want +them; consequently, when the Capitalist system developed on a large +scale, the ratepayers made Poor Law relief such a disgraceful, cruel, +and degrading business that decent working class families would suffer +any extremity rather than resort to it. We said to the unemployed +father of a starving family, “We must feed you and your children if +you are destitute, because the Statute of Elizabeth obliges us to; but +you must bring your daughters and sons into the workhouse with you +to live with drunkards, prostitutes, tramps, idiots, epileptics, old +criminals, the very dregs and refuse of human society at its worst, +and having done that you will never be able to hold up your head again +among your fellows”. The man naturally said “Thank you: I had rather +see my children dead”, and starved it out as best he could until trade +revived, and the employers had another job for him. And to get that job +he would accept the barest wages the family could support life on. If +his children could earn a little in a factory he would snatch at wages +that were just enough, when the children’s earnings were thrown in, to +support them all; and in this way he did not benefit in the long run +by letting his children go out to work, as it ended in their earnings +being used to beat down his own wages; so that, though he at first sent +his children into the factories to get a little extra money, he was at +last forced to do it to make up his own wages to subsistence point; +and when the law stepped in to rescue the children from their slavery, +he opposed the law because he did not see how he could live unless his +children earned something instead of going to school. + + + + +48 + +WOMEN IN THE LABOR MARKET + + +The effect of the system on women was worse in some respects than +on men. As no industrial employer would employ a woman if he could +get a man for the same money, women who wished to get any industrial +employment could do so only by offering to do it for less than men. +This was possible, because even when the man’s wage was a starvation +wage it was the starvation wage of a family, not of a single person. +Out of it the man had to pay for the subsistence of his wife and +children, without whom the Capitalist system would soon have come to an +end for want of any young workers to replace the old ones. Therefore +even when the men’s wages were down to the lowest point at which their +wives and children could be kept alive, a single woman could take +less without being any worse off than her married neighbors and their +children. In this way it became a matter of course that women should +be paid less than men; and when any female rebel claimed to be paid as +much as a man for the same work (“Equal wages for equal work”), the +employer shut her up with two arguments: first, “If you dont take the +lower wage there are plenty of others who will”, and, second, “If I +have to pay a man’s wages I will get a man to do the work”. + +The most important and indispensable work of women, that of bearing +and rearing children, and keeping house for them, was never paid for +directly to the woman but always through the man; and so many foolish +people came to forget that it was work at all, and spoke of Man as The +Breadwinner. This was nonsense. From first to last the woman’s work +in the home was vitally necessary to the existence of society, whilst +millions of men were engaged in wasteful or positively michievous work, +the only excuse for which was that it enabled them to support their +useful and necessary wives. But the men, partly through conceit, partly +through thoughtlessness, and very largely because they were afraid that +their wives might, if their value were recognized, become unruly and +claim to be the heads of the household, set up a convention that women +earned nothing and men everything, and refused to give their wives +any legal claim on the housekeeping money. By law everything a woman +possessed became the property of her husband when she married: a state +of things that led to such monstrous abuses that the propertied class +set up an elaborate legal system of marriage settlements, the effect of +which was to hand over the woman’s property to some person or persons +yet unborn before her marriage; so that though she could have an income +from the property during her life, it was no longer her property, and +therefore her husband could not make ducks and drakes of it. Later on +the middle classes made Parliament protect their women by The Married +Women’s Property Acts under which we still live; and these Acts, owing +to the confusion of people’s minds on the subject, overshot the mark +and produced a good deal of injustice to men. That, however, is another +part of the story: the point to be grasped here is that under the +Capitalist system women found themselves worse off than men because, +as Capitalism made a slave of the man, and then, by paying the woman +through him, made her his slave, she became the slave of a slave, which +is the worst sort of slavery. + +This suits certain employers very well, because it enables them to +sweat other employers without being found out. And this is how it is +done. A laborer finds himself bringing up a family of daughters on a +wage of twenty-nine shillings a week in the country (it was thirteen in +the nineteenth century) or, in or near a city, of from thirty (formerly +eighteen) to seventy, subject to deductions for spells of unemployment. +Now in a household scraping along on thirty shillings a week another +five shillings a week makes an enormous difference: far more, I repeat, +than another five hundred pounds makes to a millionaire. An addition +of fifteen shillings or a pound a week raises the family of a laborer +to the money level of that of a skilled workman. How were such tempting +additions possible? Simply by the big girls going out to work at five +shillings a week each, and continuing to live at home with their +fathers. One girl meant another five shillings, two meant another ten +shillings, three another fifteen shillings. Under such circumstances +huge factories sprang up employing hundreds of girls at wages of from +four-and-sixpence to seven-and-sixpence a week, the great majority +getting five. These were called starvation wages; but the girls were +much better fed and jollier and healthier than women who had to support +themselves altogether. Some of the largest fortunes made in business: +for example in the match industry, were made out of the five shilling +girl living with, and of course partly on, her father, or as a lodger +on somebody else’s father, a girl lodger being as good as a daughter in +this respect. Thus the match manufacturer was getting three-quarters +of his labor at the father’s expense. If the father worked in, say, a +brewery, the match manufacturer was getting three-quarters of his labor +at the expense of the brewer. In this way one trade lives by sweating +another trade; and factory girls getting wages that would hardly +support a prize cat are plump and jolly and willing and vigorous and +rowdy, whilst older women, many of them widows with young children, +are told that if they are not satisfied with the same wages there are +plenty of strong girls who will be glad to get them. + +It was not merely the daughters but the wives of working men who +brought down women’s wages in this way. In the cities young women, +married to young men, and not yet burdened with many children or with +more than a room or two to keep tidy at home (and they were often not +too particular about tidiness), or having no children, used to be quite +willing to go out as charwomen for an hour a day for five shillings +a week, plus such little perquisites and jobs of washing as might be +incidental to this employment. As such a charwoman had nothing to do +at home, and was not at all disposed to go on to a second job when she +had secured the five shillings that made all the difference between +pinching and prodigality to her and her husband, the hour easily +stretched to half a day. The five shillings have now become ten or so; +but as they buy no more, the situation is not altered. + +In this way the labor market is infested with subsidized wives and +daughters willing to work for pocket money on which no independent +solitary woman or widow can possibly subsist. The effect is to make +marriage compulsory as a woman’s profession: she has to take anything +she can get in the way of a husband rather than face penury as a single +woman. Some women get married easily; but others, less attractive or +amiable, are driven to every possible trick and stratagem to entrap +some man into marriage; and that sort of trickery is not good for a +woman’s self-respect, and does not lead to happy marriages when the men +realize that they have been “made a convenience of”. + +This is bad enough; but there are lower depths still. It may not be +respectable to live on a man’s wages without marrying him; but it is +possible. If a man says to a destitute woman “I will not take you +until death do us part, for better for worse, in sickness and in +health and so forth; nor will I give you my name and the status of +my legal wife; but if you would like to be my wife illegally until +tomorrow morning, here is sixpence and a drink for you, or, as the +case may be, a shilling, or a pound, or ten pounds, or a hundred +pounds, or a villa with a pearl necklace and a sable mantle and a +motor car”, he will not always meet with a refusal. It is easy to ask +a woman to be virtuous; but it is not reasonable if the penalty of +virtue be starvation, and the reward of vice immediate relief. If you +offer a pretty girl twopence halfpenny an hour in a match factory, +with a chance of contracting necrosis of the jawbone from phosphorus +poisoning on the one hand, and on the other a jolly and pampered +time under the protection of a wealthy bachelor, which was what the +Victorian employers did and what employers still do all over the world +when they are not stopped by resolutely socialistic laws, you are +loading the dice in favor of the devil so monstrously as not only to +make it certain that he will win, but raising the question whether +the girl does not owe it to her own self-respect and desire for wider +knowledge and experience, more cultivated society, and greater grace +and elegance of life, to sell herself to a gentleman for pleasure +rather than to an employer for profit. To warn her that her beauty +will not last for ever only reminds her that if she takes reasonable +care of her beauty it will last long past the age at which women, “too +old at twenty-four”, find the factory closed to them, and their places +filled by younger girls. She has actually less security of respectable +employment than of illicit employment; for the women who sell labor +are often out of work through periods of bad trade and consequent +unemployment; but the women who sell pleasure, if they are in other +respects well conducted and not positively repulsive, are seldom +at a loss for a customer. The cases which are held up as terrible +warnings of how a woman may fall to the lowest depths of degradation by +listening to such arguments are pious inventions, supported by examples +of women who through drink, drugs, and general depravity or weakness +of character would have fallen equally if they had been respectably +married or had lived in the strictest celibacy. The incidental risks +of venereal diseases are unfortunately not avoidable by respectable +matrimony: more women are infected by their husbands than by their +lovers. If a woman accepts Capitalist morality, and does what pays her +best, she will take what district visitors call (when poor women are +concerned) the wages of sin rather than the wages of sweated labor. + +There are cases, too, where the wedding ring may be a drawback instead +of a makeweight. Illicit unions are so common under the Capitalist +system that the Government has had to deal with them; and the law at +present is that if an unmarried woman bears a child she can compel its +father to pay her seven-and-sixpence a week for its support until it is +sixteen, at which age it can begin to help to support her. Meanwhile +the child belongs to her instead of to the father (it would belong to +him if they were married); and she is free from any obligation to keep +his house or do any ordinary drudgery for him. Rather than be brought +into court he will pay without demur; and when he is goodnatured and +not too poor he will often pay her more than he is legally obliged +to. The effect of this is that a careful, discreet, sensible, +pleasant sort of woman who has not scrupled to bear five illegitimate +children may find herself with a legally guaranteed steady income of +thirty-seven-and-sixpence a week in addition to what she can earn by +respectable work. Compared to a widow with five legitimate children +she was on velvet until the Government, after centuries of blind +neglect, began to pension widows. + +In short, Capitalism acts on women as a continual bribe to enter into +sex relations for money, whether in or out of marriage; and against +this bribe there stands nothing beyond the traditional respectability +which Capitalism ruthlessly destroys by poverty, except religion and +the inborn sense of honor which has its citadel in the soul and can +hold out (sometimes) against all circumstances. + +It is useless to pretend that religion and tradition and honor always +win the day. It is now a century and a half since the poet Oliver +Goldsmith warned us that “Honor sinks where commerce long prevails”; +and the economic pressure by which Capitalism tempts women grew fiercer +after his time. We have just seen how in the case of the parents +sending their children out to work in their infancy to add a little to +the family income, they found that their wages fell until what they and +the children between them could earn was no more than they had been +able to earn by themselves before, so that in order to live they now +had to send their children to work whether they liked it or not. In +the same way the women who occasionally picked up a little extra money +illicitly, presently found themselves driven to snatch at employment +by offering to take lower wages and depending on the other resource to +make them up to subsistence point. Then the women who stood on their +honor were offered those reduced wages, and, when they said they could +not live on them, were told as usual that others could, and that they +could do what the others did. + +In certain occupations prostitution thus became practically compulsory, +the alternative being starvation. Hood’s woman clad in unwomanly rags, +who sang the Song of the Shirt, represents either the woman who would +starve rather than sell her person or the woman neither young enough +nor agreeable enough to earn even the few pence she could hope for from +the men within her reach. The occupations in which prostitution is +almost a matter of course are by no means the sensationally abject and +miserable ones. It is rather in the employments in which well-dressed +and goodlooking but unskilled women are employed to attract the +public, that wages are paid on which they cannot possibly keep up the +appearance expected from them. Girls with thirty shillings a week +come to their work in expensive motor cars, and wear strings of pearls +which, if not genuine, are at least the best imitations. If one of them +asks how she can dress as she is expected to on thirty shillings a week +she is either met with the old retort, “If you wont take it there are +plenty who will”, or else told quite frankly that she is very lucky +to get thirty shillings in addition to such a splendid advertisement +and show-case for her attractions as the stage or the restaurant, the +counter or the showroom, afford her. You must not, however, infer from +this that all theatres, restaurants, showrooms and so forth exploit +prostitution in this way. Most of them have permanent staffs of +efficient respectable women, and could not be conducted in any other +way. Neither must it be inferred that the young gentlemen who provide +the motor cars and furs and jewels are always allowed to succeed in +their expensive courtship. Sir Arthur Pinero’s play Mind the Paint is +instructively true to life on this point. But such relations are not +made edifying by the plea that the gentlemen are bilked. It is safe to +assume that when women are employed, not to do any specially skilled +work, but to attract custom to the place by their sex, their youth, +their good looks and their smart dressing, employers of a certain +type will underpay them, and by their competition finally compel more +scrupulous employers to do the same or be undersold and driven out of +the business. Now these are extremities to which men cannot be reduced. +It is true that smart ladies can and do hire dancing partners at fifty +francs an evening on the Riviera; but this quite innocent transaction +does not mean that Capitalism can as yet say to a man, “If your wages +are not enough to live on, go out into the streets and sell pleasures +as others do”. When the man deals in that commodity he does so as a +buyer, not as a seller. Thus it is the woman, not the man, who suffers +the last extremity of the Capitalist system; and this is why so many +conscientious women are devoting their lives to the replacement of +Capitalism by Socialism. + +But let not anyone imagine that men escape prostitution under +Capitalism. If they do not sell their bodies they sell their souls. +The barrister who in court strives “to make the worse appear the +better cause” has been held up as a stock example of the dishonesty +of misrepresenting for money. Nothing could be more unjust. It is +agreed, and necessarily agreed, that the best way of learning the truth +about anything is not to listen to a vain attempt at an impartial and +disinterested statement, but to hear everything that can possibly be +said for it, and then everything that can possibly be said against +it, by skilled pleaders on behalf of the interested parties on both +sides. A barrister is bound to do his utmost to obtain a verdict for a +client whom he privately believes to be in the wrong, just as a doctor +is bound to do his utmost to save the life of a patient whose death +would, in his private opinion, be a good riddance. The barrister is an +innocent figure who is used to distract our attention from the writer +and publisher of lying advertisements which pretend to prove the worse +the better article, the shopman who sells it by assuring the customer +that it is the best, the agents of drugging and drink, the clerk making +out dishonest accounts, the adulterator and giver of short weight, +the journalist writing for Socialist papers when he is a convinced +Liberal, or for Tory papers when he is an Anarchist, the professional +politician working for his party right or wrong, the doctor paying +useless visits and prescribing bogus medicines to hypochondriacs who +need only Abernethy’s advice, “Live on sixpence a day, and earn it”, +the solicitor using the law as an instrument for the oppression of the +poor by the rich, the mercenary soldier fighting for a country which he +regards as the worst enemy of his own, and the citizens of all classes +who have to be obsequious to the rich and insolent to the poor. These +are only a few examples of the male prostitutions, so repeatedly and +vehemently denounced by the prophets in the Bible as whoredoms and +idolatries, which are daily imposed on men by Capitalism. + +We see, then, that when the reproach of prostitution is raised neither +woman nor man dares cast the first stone; for both have been equally +stained with it under Capitalism. It may even be urged by special +pleaders on behalf of women that the prostitution of the mind is more +mischievous, and is a deeper betrayal of the divine purpose of our +powers, than the prostitution of the body, the sale of which does not +necessarily involve its misuse. As a matter of fact nobody has ever +blamed Nell Gwynne for selling her body as Judas Iscariot for selling +his soul. But whatever satisfaction the pot may have in calling the +kettle blacker than itself the two blacks do not make a white. And +the abstract identity of male and female prostitution only brings out +more strongly the physical difference, which no abstract argument can +balance. The violation of one’s person is a quite peculiar sort of +outrage. Anyone who does not draw a line between it and offences to +the mind ignores the plain facts of human sensitiveness. For instance, +landlords have had the power to force Dissenters to send their children +to Church schools, and have used it. They have also had a special power +over women to anticipate a husband’s privilege, and have either used +it or forced the woman to buy them off. Can a woman feel about the one +case as about the other? A man cannot. The quality of the two wrongs is +quite different. The remedy for the one could wait until after the next +general election. The other does not bear thinking of for a moment. Yet +there it is. + + + + +49 + +TRADE UNION CAPITALISM + + +Now we must go into the history of the resistance offered by the +proletariat to the capitalists. It was evident, to begin with, that no +woman or man could do anything against the employers single-handed. +The stock retort, “If you will not take the wage offered, and do +the work put upon you, there are plenty who will”, checkmated the +destitute solitary bargainer for a decent living wage and a reasonable +day’s work. The first necessity for effective resistance was that +the employees should form some sort of union and stand together. In +many cases this was impossible, because the employees did not know +oneanother, and had no opportunities of coming together and agreeing +on a joint course of action. For instance, domestic servants could not +form unions. They were in private kitchens all over the country, more +or less imprisoned in them, and working singly, or at most in groups of +two or three, except in the houses of the very rich, where the groups +might be as large as thirty or forty. Or take agricultural laborers. +It is very difficult to organize them into unions, and still more +difficult to keep their unions together for any length of time. They +live too far apart. The same thing is true more or less of almost every +kind of labor except labor in factories and mines or on railways. + +In some callings there are such differences of pay and social position +that even if all their members could be brought together they would not +mix. Thus on the stage an actor may be a highly accomplished gentleman +with a title, who plays Hamlet, or a lady who is an aristocrat and a +Dame of the British Empire, and plays Portia: both of them receiving +weekly salaries counted in hundreds of pounds. With them are working +every night actors and actresses who never utter a word, because, if +they did, their speech would betray the fact that, far from being the +court lords and ladies they are dressed up to look like, they are not +earning as much as the carpenters who shift the scenes. It is even +possible for an acrobat or clown to be more highly paid than Hamlet, +and yet in private life be so illiterate, and have such shocking table +manners, that the titled Hamlet could endure neither his conversation +nor his company at dinner. For this reason a union of actors is +difficult: a class split is inevitable. Union is possible only in +trades where the members work together in large bodies; live in the +same neighborhoods; belong all to the same social class; and earn about +the same money. The miners in the coalfields, the cotton spinners in +the factory towns of Lancashire, the metal smelters and fitters in the +Midlands, were the first to form enduring and powerful unions. The +bricklayers, masons, carpenters, and joiners who come together in the +building trades were also early in the field with attempts at unionism. +Under the stress of some intolerable oppression they would combine to +make the employers see their situation in some particular point; and +when they had carried that point, or were defeated, the union would +dissolve until another emergency arose. Then they began to subscribe to +form little insurance funds against unemployment, which obliged them to +keep the union together; and in this way the unions grew from momentary +rebellions into permanent Trade Unions of the kind we know. + +We now have to consider what a union of proletarians can do to defend +their livelihood from the continual encroachments of Capitalism. First, +when the union is sufficiently complete, it enables them to face the +employer without any risk of being told that if they will not submit +to his terms others will. If nearly all the bricklayers in a town +form a union, and each pays into it week by week a small contribution +until they have a little fund to fall back on, then, if their employers +attempt to reduce their wages, they can, by refusing to work and living +on their fund, bring the employers’ business to a dead stop for weeks +or months, according to the size of the fund. This is called a strike. +They can strike not only against a reduction of wages but for an +increase, or for a reduction of their working hours, or for anything +that may be in dispute between them and the employers. Their success +will depend on the state of the employers’ business. The employers +can practically always wait if they choose until the strike fund is +exhausted, and thus starve the strikers into submission. But if trade +is so flourishing at the moment, and the employers consequently in such +a hurry to get on with their profit making, that they would lose more +by an interruption to their business than by giving the strikers what +they demand, then the employers will give in. + +But the employers will bide their time for a counterstrike. When trade +gets slack again, and they have little or nothing to lose by shutting +up their works for a while, they reduce the wage, and lock out all the +workers who will not submit to the reduction. This is why an employers’ +strike is called a lock-out. The newspapers use the word strike for +strikes and lock-outs indiscriminately, because their readers blame the +workers instead of the employers for a strike; but some of the greatest +so-called strikes should have been called lock-outs. A boom in trade +always produces a series of strikes which are generally successful. A +falling-off in trade produces a series of lock-outs; and they, too, are +generally successful, the one series undoing the work of the other in a +dreary see-saw. After the war we went through a gigantic boom followed +by a disastrous slump, with strikes and lock-outs all complete. Your +own experience of these civil wars of strike and lock-out must have +left you convinced that they are public disasters which would have no +sort of sense in a well ordered community. But let that pass for the +moment. We have not yet finished our study of primitive Trade Unionism, +nor seen what it led to besides saving up for a strike and then +“downing tools”. + +The first necessity of the situation was that everybody in the trade +should join the union, as outsiders could be used by employers to +break the strike by taking on the work that the strikers refused. +Consequently a fierce hatred of the men who would not join the unions +grew up. They were called scabs and blacklegs, and boycotted in every +possible way by the unionists. But vituperation and boycotting were +not sufficient to deter the scabs. The unions, when they declared a +strike, stationed bodies of strikers at the gates of the works to +persuade the scabs not to enter. No Intelligent Woman will need to be +told that unless there was a strong force of police on the spot the +persuasion was so vigorous that the scabs felt lucky when they survived +it without broken bones. At last there came a time in Sheffield and +Manchester when scabs working at furnaces found bombs there that blew +them to pieces; when machinery and tools were tampered with so as to +make them dangerous to those who used them (this was called rattening); +and when factory chimneys were shattered by explosives like fulminate +of mercury, so risky to handle that only very ignorant and desperate +men would venture on their use. This was stopped less by punishing the +perpetrators than by forcing the employers to relax the provocation. +For instance, the Sheffield sawgrinders died prematurely, and suffered +miserably during their lifetimes, because the air they breathed was +half steel dust. It was quite easy to prevent this by using vacuum +cleaners (as we call them) to suck away the deadly dust; but the +employers would not fit them, because, as they cost extra capital on +which there was no extra profit, an employer who fitted them could +be undersold by those who did not. At that time a Sheffield steel +worker of fifty (when he was lucky enough to reach that age) looked +like a weedy and very unhealthy lad of seventeen. In the face of such +murderous conditions, persisted in for a hundred years, the burst of +outrage on the part of the victims seems trifling enough. At last the +Government had to come to the rescue and force all the employers to fit +suction fans. Sheffielders’ lungs are now no worse than most people’s, +and better than those of many who are not so carefully protected by the +law. + +But accepting a lower wage than that demanded by the union was not the +only way in which an employee could drag down his fellows. In many +trades it was not much use fixing the wage the worker was to receive +unless the quantity of work he gave for it was also fixed. You must +be tired by this time of the silly joking of the Capitalist newspapers +about bricklayers who are not allowed by their unions to lay more than +three bricks a day. A bricklayer has clearly as much right to charge +a day’s wages for laying three bricks as his employer has to sell the +house when it is built for the biggest price he can get for it. Those +who condemn either of them are condemning the Capitalist system, like +good Bolshevists. The three-brick joke is only a comic exaggeration of +what actually occurs. The employers, to find out how much work can be +got out of a man, pick out an exceptionally quick and indefatigable man +called a slogger, and try to impose what he can do in a day on all the +rest. The unions naturally retort by forbidding any of their members to +lay a brick more than he must do if he is to be worth employing at all. +This practice of deliberately doing the least they dare instead of the +most they can is the ca’canny of which the employers complain so much, +though they all do the same thing themselves under the more respectable +name of “restricting output” and selling in the dearest market. It is +the principle on which the Capitalist system is avowedly founded. + +Thus Capitalism drives the employers to do their worst to the +employed, and the employed to do the least for them. And it boasts +all the time of the incentive it provides to both to do their best! +You may ask why this does not end in a deadlock. The answer is it is +producing deadlocks twice a day or thereabouts. The King’s speeches +in opening Parliament now contain regularly an appeal to the workers +and employers to be good boys and not paralyze the industry of the +nation by the clash of their quite irreconcilable interests. The +reason the Capitalist system has worked so far without jamming for +more than a few months at a time, and then only in places, is that it +has not yet succeeded in making a conquest of human nature so complete +that everybody acts on strictly business principles. The mass of the +nation has been humbly and ignorantly taking what the employers offer +and working as well as it can, either believing that it is doing its +duty in that station of life to which it has pleased God to call it, +or not thinking about the matter at all, but suffering its lot as +something that cannot be helped, like the weather. Even late in the +nineteenth century, when there were fourteen million wage workers, +only a million and a half of them were in trade unions, which meant +that only a million and a half of them were selling their labor on +systematic Capitalist business principles. Today nearly four and a +half millions of them are converts to Capitalism, and duly enrolled in +militant unions. Between six and seven hundred battles a year, called +trade disputes, are fought; and the number of days of work lost to +the nation by them sometimes totals up to ten millions and more. If +the matter were not so serious for all of us one could laugh at the +silly way in which people talk of the spread of Socialism when what is +really threatening them is the spread of Capitalism. The moment the +propertyless workers refuse to see the finger of God in their poverty, +and begin organizing themselves in unions to make the most money they +can out of their labor exactly as they find the landlord doing with his +land, the capitalist with his capital, the employer with his knowledge +of business, and the financier with his art of promotion, the industry +of the country, on which we all depend for our existence, begins +rolling faster and faster down two opposite slopes, at the bottom of +which there will be a disastrous collision which will bring it to +a standstill until either Property drives Labor by main force into +undisguised and unwilling slavery, or Labor gains the upper hand, and +the long series of changes by which the mastery of the situation has +already passed from the landlord-capitalist to the individual employer, +from the individual employer to the joint stock company, from the joint +stock company to the Trust, and finally from the industrialists in +general to the financiers, will culminate in its passing to capitalized +Labor. The battle for this supremacy is joined; and here we are in the +thick of it, our country ravaged by strikes and lock-outs, a huge army +of unemployed billeted upon us, the ladies and gentlemen declaring that +it is all the fault of the workers, and the workers either declaring +that it is all the fault of the ladies and gentlemen, or else, more +sensibly, concluding that it is the fault of the Capitalist system, and +taking to Socialism not so much because they understand it as because +it promises a way out. + +When this open war was first declared, the employers used their +command of Parliament to have it punished as a crime. The unions were +classed as conspiracies; and anybody who joined one was held to be a +conspirator and punished accordingly. This did not prevent the unions: +it only “drove them underground”: that is, made secret societies of +them, and thereby put them into the hands of more determined and less +law-abiding leaders. The Government at last found it impossible to +go on with such coercion; for the few cases in which the law could +be carried out had the effect of martyrdoms, producing noisy popular +agitations, and stimulating Trade Unionism instead of suppressing it. + +Then the employers tried what they could do for themselves. They +refused to employ unionists. This was no use: they could not get +enough non-unionist labor to go on with: and the unionists whom they +had to employ refused to work with non-unionists. Then the employers +refused to “recognize” the unions, which meant that they refused to +negotiate questions of wages with the secretaries of the unions, and +insisted on dealing with their employees directly and individually, +one at a time. This also failed. Making a separate bargain with each +employee is easy enough in the case of a woman engaging a domestic +servant or an oldfashioned merchant engaging a clerk or warehouseman; +but when men have to be taken on by the hundred, and sometimes by +the thousand, separate bargaining is impossible. The big employers +who talked about it at first really meant that there was to be no +bargaining at all. The men were to come in and just take what they +were told were the wages of the firm, and not presume to argue. The +moment the formation of the unions enabled the men to bargain, the big +employers, to save their own time, had to insist on its being done with +a single representative of the men who was experienced in bargaining +and qualified to discuss business: that is, with the secretary of the +Trade Union; so that all the fuss ended in the unions being not only +recognized by the big employers, but looked on as a necessary part of +their industry. Finally the unions were legalized; and here, as in the +case of the Married Women’s Property Acts, the change from outlawry to +legal protection went a little beyond the mark, in its reaction against +previous injustice, and gave the Trade Unions privileges and immunities +which are not enjoyed by ordinary societies. The employers then found +that they also must act together in dealing with the Trade Unions. +Accordingly, they formed unions of their own, called Employers’ +Federations. The war of Capital with Labor is now a war of Trade Unions +with Employers’ Federations. Their battles, or rather blockades, are +lock-outs and strikes, lasting, like modern military battles, for +months. + +Though some of the battles are about victimization (that is, +discharging an employee for actively advocating Trade Unionism, or +refusing to reinstate a prominent striker when the strike is over), all +the disputes in which ground is won or lost are about wages or hours of +work. You must understand that there are two sorts of wages: time wages +and piecework wages. Time wages are paid for the employee’s time by the +month, week, day, or hour, no matter how much or how little work may be +done during those periods. Piecework wages are paid according to the +work done: so much for each piece of work turned out. + +Now you would suppose that the employees would be unanimously in favor +of time wages, and the employers of piecework wages: indeed this was +roughly so in early days. But the introduction of machinery altered the +case. Piecework wages are really only time wages paid in such a way as +to prevent the employee from slacking. He has to keep hard at it to +earn the wage; but the amount of the wage is arrived at by considering +whether what he can make in an hour or a day or a week at piecework +will enable him to live in the way he is accustomed to live, or, as +it is called, to maintain his standard of subsistence. Now suppose a +machine is invented by which he can turn out twice as many pieces in +a day as before. He will then find that he has earned as much in the +week by Wednesday evening as he had previously earned by Saturday. +What will he do? You may think, if you are a very energetic lady, +that he will put in the whole week as usual, and rejoice his wife by +bringing home twice as much money. But that is not what a man is like. +He prefers a shillingsworth of leisure to another shillingsworth of +bread and cheese or a new hat for his wife. What he actually does is +to bring her just what he brought her before, and have a holiday on +Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, leaving his employer with no labor to +go on with, and perhaps with the most pressing contracts to be finished +by a certain date. To force him to remain at work the whole week the +employer has to “cut the rate”: that is, to reduce the piecework wage +by half. Then the fat is in the fire: the Trade Union resists the +reduction fiercely, and threatens that if the employees are to have no +benefit from the new machine they will refuse to work it. There was a +time when the introduction of machines led to riots and the wrecking +of newly equipped factories by furious mobs of handworkers. When the +mobs were replaced by Trade Unions the introduction of new machines was +often followed by strikes and lock-outs. But when the heated personal +disputes of hot-headed employers with resentful employees gave way +to cool negotiations between experienced secretaries of Employers’ +Federations and equally experienced secretaries of Trade Unions, who +had settled similar difficulties many times before, it became an +established practice to readjust the piecework wage so as to allow the +employee to share the benefit of the machine with the employer. The +only question was how much each could claim. + +On time wages the employee gets no benefit from the introduction of a +machine. The product of his labor may be multiplied a hundred times; +but he remains as poor as before. That is why in many industries the +employees insist on piecework wages, and the employers would be only +too glad to pay time wages: all the more because, when machinery comes +into play, the machine works the man instead of the man working the +machine, and slacking becomes either impossible or easy to detect. + +But it often happens that neither the time wage worker nor the piece +wage worker has any say in the matter at all, for the very simple +reason that the introduction of the machine enables the employer to +“slack the lot” and replace them by girls who are only machine minders. +And we have already seen what the effect of women’s and girls’ labor +has on wages. Besides, Trade Unionism is weaker among women than among +men, because, as most women regard industrial employment as merely a +temporary expedient to keep them going until they get married, they +will not take the duty of combination as seriously as the men, who +know that they will be industrial employees all their lives. In the +Lancashire weaving industry, where women do not retire from the factory +when they marry, the women’s unions are as strong as the men’s. + +In the long run the reserves of the employer are so much greater than +those of the employees that though John Stuart Mill’s statement in +the middle of last century that the wage workers had not benefited by +the introduction of machinery is no longer quite true, yet they have +gained so little in comparison with the prodigiously greater national +output from the machines, that it is putting it very mildly to say that +they have not only not gained but lost ground heavily relatively to the +capitalists. + + + + +50 + +DIVIDE AND GOVERN + + +The weakness of Trade Unionism was that the concessions wrung from the +employers when trade was good were taken back again when trade was +bad, because, as the employers commanded the main national store of +spare money, they could always stop working without starving for longer +than their employees. The Trade Unions soon had to face the fact that +unless they could get the concessions fixed and enforced by law, they +were certain to lose by the lock-outs all they gained by the strikes. +At the same time they saw that Parliament had put a permanent stop to +the sweating of very young children in factories; and though, as I have +explained, their members had been driven by poverty to object to this +reform, nevertheless it convinced them that Parliament, if it liked, +could fix any reform so firmly that the employers could not go back on +it. They wanted a permanent reduction in the then monstrous length of +the factory working day. The cry for a reduction to eight hours was +set up. At first it seemed an unattainable ideal; and it is still very +far from being completely attained. But a ten hours day for women and +children and young persons seemed reasonable and possible. As to the +men, they were told they were grown-up independent Britons, and that it +would be an outrage on British liberty to prevent an Englishman from +working as long as he liked. But when the women and young children +go home the factory engine is stopped, because its work cannot go on +without them. When the engine stops the men may as well go home too, as +their work cannot go on without the engine. So the men got the factory +hours shortened by law “behind the petticoats of the women”. + +And how did the employees, who had no votes at that time, induce +Parliament, in which there were only landlords, capitalists, and +employers, to pass these benevolent Acts of Parliament for the +protection of the employees against the employers? + +If I were to reply that they were acts of pure conscience, nobody +nowadays would believe me, because Capitalism has destroyed our belief +in any effective power but that of self-interest backed by force. But +even Capitalist cynicism will admit that however unconscionable we may +be when our own interests are affected, we can be most indignantly +virtuous at the expense of others. The Intelligent Woman must guard +herself against imagining that the property owners and employers in +Parliament a hundred years ago had read this book, and therefore +understood that their interests were the same, though their occupations +and habits and social positions were so very different. The country +gentlemen despised the employers as vulgar tradesmen, and made them +feel it. The employers, knowing that any fool might be a peer or a +country gentleman if he had the luck to be born in a country house, +whilst success in business needed business ability, were determined to +destroy the privileges of the landed aristocracy. This had been done +in France in 1789 by a revolution; and it was by threatening a similar +revolution that the English employers, in 1832, forced the King and the +peerage, after a long popular agitation, to pass into law the famous +Reform Bill which practically transferred the command of Parliament +in England from the hereditary landed aristocracy to the industrial +employers. + +You know what a popular agitation means. It means a little reasoning +and a great deal of abuse of the other side. Before 1832 the employers +did not confine themselves to pointing out the absurdity of allowing +a couple of cottages owned by a county aristocrat to send a member +to Parliament when the city of Birmingham was not represented there. +Most people thought it quite natural that great folk should have great +privileges, and cared nothing about Birmingham, which they had heard +of only as a dirty place where most of the bad pennies (Brummagem +buttons) came from. The employers therefore stirred up public feeling +against the landed gentry by exposing all their misdeeds: their driving +of whole populations out of the country to make room for sheep or +deer; their ruthless enforcement of the Game Laws, under which men +were transported with the worst felons for poaching a few hares or +pheasants; the horrible condition of the laborers’ cottages on their +estates; the miserable wages they paid: their bigoted persecution of +Nonconformists not only by refusing to allow any places of worship +except those of the Church of England to be built on their estates, but +by nominating to the Church livings such clergymen as could be depended +on to teach the children in the village schools that all Dissenters +were disgraced in this world and damned in the next; their equally +bigoted boycotting of any shopkeeper who dared to vote against their +candidates at elections; with all the other tyrannies which in those +days made it a common saying, even among men of business, that “the +displeasure of a lord is a sentence of death”. By harping on these +grievances the employers at last embittered public opinion against the +squires to such a pitch that the fear of a repetition in England of the +French Revolution broke down the opposition to the Reform Bill. The +employers, after propitiating King William IV by paying his debts, were +able to force Parliament to pass the Bill; and that event inaugurated +the purseproud reign of the English middle class under Queen Victoria. + +Naturally the squires were not disposed to take this defeat lying down. +They revenged themselves by taking up Lord Shaftesbury’s agitation for +the Factory Acts, and shewing that the employer’s little finger was +thicker than the country gentleman’s loins; that the condition of the +factory employees was worse than that of the slaves on the American +and West Indian plantations; that the worst cottages of the worst +landlords had at least fresher air than the overcrowded slums of the +manufacturing towns; that if the employers did not care whether their +“hands” were Church of England or Methodist, neither did they care +whether they were Methodists or Atheists, because they had no God but +Mammon; that if they did not persecute politically it was only because +the hands had no votes; that they persecuted industrially as hard as +they could by imprisoning Trade Unionists; and that the personal and +often kindly relations between the peasantry and the landlords, the +training in good manners and decent housekeeping traditions learnt by +the women in domestic service in the country houses, the kindnesses +shewn to the old and sick on the great estates, were all lost in +the squalor and misery, the brutality and blasphemy, the incestuous +overcrowding, and the terrible dirt epidemics in the mining and factory +populations where English life was what the employer’s greed had made +it. + +All this, though quite true, was merely the pot again calling the +kettle black; for the country gentlemen did not refuse the dividends +made for them by the employers in the mines and factories, nor +refuse to let factories and slums be built all over their estates +in Lancashire; nor did the employers, when they had made fortunes, +hesitate to buy country estates and “found families” to be brought up +in the strictest county traditions, nor to disparage trade as vulgar +when the generation that remembered what their grandfathers were had +died out. But the quarrel between them explains how it was that when +Parliament consisted exclusively of landlords and capitalist employers +or their nominees, and the proletariat had no votes, yet the Factory +Acts got passed. The Acts were the revenge of the squires for the +Reform Act. + +Also, the poor were not wholly voteless. The owner of a freehold +worth forty shillings a year had a vote; and a number of odd old +franchises existed which gave quite poor people a certain weight at +elections. They could not return a Labor member (such a thing was then +unheard of); but they could sometimes turn the scale as between the +Conservative landlord and the Liberal employer. If the Conservatives +and Liberals had understood that their political interests were the +same, and that they must present a united front to Labor, the employees +would have had no hope except in revolution. But the Conservatives +and Liberals did not understand their commercial interests. The +Conservative clung blindly to his old privileges: the Liberal followed +the slot of his new profits as thoughtlessly as a hound follows the +slot of a fox. Both of them wanted to be in Parliament because it gave +them personal importance, opening the way to the front bench, where the +Cabinet Ministers sit, and to knighthoods, baronetcies, and peerages. +The Liberals considered themselves the party of reform because they +had carried the Reform Bill, and, as the employees wanted all sorts +of reform very badly, took it for granted that they would always vote +gratefully for the Liberals. + +Under this delusion a Liberal Government made a bid for popular +support by offering votes to the working class. The Conservatives at +first opposed this so fiercely that they turned the Liberals out at the +next election; but a very clever Conservative leader named Benjamin +Disraeli, afterwards Earl of Beaconsfield, a Jew who had begun his +political career, like Karl Marx, as a champion of the proletariat, +persuaded the Conservatives that they were really more popular in the +country than the Liberals, and induced them to make the very extension +of the franchise they had just been opposing. Naturally the employees, +when they got some votes in this way, used them to get more votes; and +the end of it was that everybody got a vote, including at long last the +women, though the women had to make a special and furious fight for +their inclusion, and did not win it until the national work they did +when they took the place of the absent men during the war of 1914-18 +shamed the country into enfranchising them. + +The proletarian voters who could formerly only turn the scale between +Conservative and Liberal can now turn out both Conservative and +Liberal, and elect candidates of their own. They did not at first +realize this, and have not fully realized it yet. They began by timidly +sending into Parliament about a dozen men who were not called Labor +members, but working class members of the Liberal Party. It became the +custom for Liberal Governments to give a minor ministerial post to some +mild middle class professor who was vaguely supposed to be interested +in factory legislation and popular education, and who was openly +treated as a negligible nobody by the rest of the Cabinet. + +Meanwhile Socialist societies were growing up among students of Karl +Marx’s famous exposure of the sins of Capitalism, and of a very widely +circulated book called Progress and Poverty, written by an American +named Henry George, who had seen within his own lifetime American +villages, where people were neither poor enough to be degraded and +miserable nor rich enough to be idle and extravagant, changed by the +simple operation of private property in land and capital into cities +of fabulous wealth, so badly divided that the mass of the people were +weltering in shocking poverty whilst a handful of owners wallowed +in millions. These Societies broke the tradition of proletarian +attachment to the Liberal Party by making the workers what Marx called +class-conscious, a phrase which the Intelligent Woman has probably met +several times in the papers without knowing any more clearly than the +newspaper writers exactly what it means. The voters who had believed +that there were only two parties in politics, the Conservatives and the +Liberals (or Tories and Whigs), representing the two great religious +parties of the Churchmen and the Dissenters, and the two great economic +interests of the country farmers with their landlords and the town +men of business with their capitalists, were now taught that from the +point of view of the employee there is not a penny to choose between +Conservatives and Liberals, as the gain of either means the employee’s +loss, and that the only two parties who really have opposed interests +are the party of the propertied class on the one hand and the party of +the propertyless proletariat on the other: in other words, the party of +Capital and the party of Labor. What mattered was not the Parliamentary +struggle between the Liberal Mr Gladstone and the Conservative Mr +Disraeli as to which should be Prime Minister, or between their +successors Mr Balfour, Mr Bonar Law, and Mr Baldwin of the one party, +and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Mr Asquith, and Mr Lloyd George +of the other. To the class-conscious proletarian all that is mere +Tweedledum and Tweedledee: what is really moving the world is the Class +Struggle, the Class War (both terms are in use) between the proprietors +and the proletariat for the possession of the land and capital of the +country (the Means of Production). When a man realized that, he was +said to be class-conscious. These terms are misleading because they +imply that all the proletarians are in one camp and all the bourgeoisie +in the other, which is untrue; but as the Intelligent Woman who has +read thus far now knows what they mean, let them pass for the moment. + +The Socialist Societies had begun badly by treating Parliament as +the enemy’s camp; boycotting the Churches as mere contrivances for +doping the workers into submission to Capitalism; and denouncing Trade +Unionism and Co-operation as mistaken remedies. Under Marx and Engels, +Morris and Hyndman, Socialism was a middle class movement caused by the +revolt of the consciences of educated and humane men and women against +the injustice and cruelty of Capitalism, and also (this was a very +important factor with Morris) against its brutal disregard of beauty +and the daily human happiness of doing fine work for its own sake. Now +the strongest and noblest feelings of this kind were quite compatible +with the most complete detachment from and ignorance of proletarian +life and history in the class that worked for weekly wages. The most +devoted middle class champions of the wage workers knew what housemaids +and gardeners and railway porters and errand boys and postmen were +like; but factory hands, miners, and dockers might as well have been +fairies for all their lady and gentleman sympathizers knew about them. + +Whenever your sympathies are strongly stirred on behalf of some cruelly +ill used person or persons of whom you know nothing except that they +are ill used, your generous indignation attributes all sorts of virtues +to them, and all sorts of vices to those who oppress them. But the +blunt truth is that ill used people are worse than well used people: +indeed this is at bottom the only good reason why we should not allow +anyone to be ill used. If I thought you would be made a better woman by +ill treatment I should do my best to have you ill treated. We should +refuse to tolerate poverty as a social institution not because the poor +are the salt of the earth, but because “the poor in a lump are bad”. +And the poor know this better than anyone else. When the Socialist +movement in London took its tone from lovers of art and literature who +had read George Borrow until they had come to regard tramps as saints, +and passionate High Church clergymen (Anglo-Catholics) who adored +supertramps like St Francis, it was apt to assume that all that was +needed was to teach Socialism to the masses (vaguely imagined as a huge +crowd of tramplike saints) and leave the rest to the natural effect +of sowing the good seed in kindly virgin soil. But the proletarian +soil was neither virgin nor exceptionally kindly. The masses are not +in the least like tramps; and they have no romantic illusions about +oneanother, whatever illusions each of them may cherish about herself. +When John Stuart Mill was a Parliamentary candidate in Westminster, his +opponents tried to defeat him by recalling an occasion on which he had +said flatly that the British workman was neither entirely truthful, +entirely sober, entirely honest, nor imbued with a proper sense of +the wickedness of gambling: in short, that he was by no means the +paragon he was always assumed to be by parliamentary candidates when +they addressed his class as “Gentlemen”, and begged for his vote. Mill +probably owed his success on that occasion to the fact that instead of +denying his opinion he uncompromisingly reaffirmed it. The wage workers +are as fond of flattery as other people, and will swallow any quantity +of it from candidates provided it be thoroughly understood that it is +only flattery, and that the candidates know better; but they have no +use for gushingly idealistic ladies and gentlemen who are fools enough +to think that the poor are cruelly misunderstood angels. + +In the eighteen-eighties the Socialists found out their mistake. The +Fabian Society got rid of its Anarchists and Borrovians, and presented +Socialism in the form of a series of parliamentary measures, thus +making it possible for an ordinary respectable religious citizen +to profess Socialism and belong to a Socialist Society without any +suspicion of lawlessness, exactly as he might profess himself a +Conservative and belong to an ordinary constitutional club. A leader +of the society, Mr Sidney Webb, married Miss Beatrice Potter, who had +made a study at first hand of working-class life and organization, +and had published a book on Co-operation. They wrote the first really +scientific history of Trade Unionism, and thereby not only made the +wage-workers conscious of the dignity of their own political history (a +very important step in the Marxian class-consciousness) but shewed the +middle-class Socialists what the public work of the wage-working world +was really like, and convinced them of the absurdity of supposing that +Socialists could loftily ignore the organization the people had already +accomplished spontaneously in their own way. Only by grafting Socialism +on this existing organization could it be made a really powerful +proletarian movement. + +The Liberals, still believing themselves to be the party of progress, +assumed that all progressive movements would be grafted on the +Liberal Party as a matter of course, to be patronized and adopted +by the Liberal leaders in Parliament as far as they approved. They +were disagreeably surprised when the first effect of the adoption of +constitutional parliamentarism by the Fabian Society was an attack on +the Liberal Government of that day, published in one of the leading +reviews, for being more reactionary and hostile to the wage-workers +than the Conservatives. The Liberals were so astonished and scandalized +that they could only suggest that the Fabian Society had been bribed +by the Conservatives to commit what seemed to all Liberals to be +an act of barefaced political treachery. They soon had their eyes +opened much more widely. The Fabian Society followed up its attack by +a proposal for the establishment of a Labor Party in Parliament to +oppose both Conservatives and Liberals impartially. A working-class +leader, Keir Hardie, formerly a miner, founded a Society called the +Independent Labor Party to put this proposal into practice. Among the +members of the Fabian Society who became a leader in this new Society +was Mr Ramsay MacDonald, who, by his education and knowledge of the +world outside the wage-working class, was better qualified than Keir +Hardie for successful leadership in Parliament. From the Independent +Labor Party sprang The Labor Party, a political federation, much more +powerful, of Trade Unions and of Socialist Societies, whose delegates +sat on its executive committee. As all the persons who were members of +Trade Unions at that time could, by subscribing a penny a week each, +have provided a political fund of over £325,000 (there are three times +as many now), this combination with the Trade Unionists was decisive. +At the election of 1906 enough Labor members were elected to form an +independent party in Parliament. By 1923 they had encroached so much +that neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives had a majority in the +House; and Mr Ramsay MacDonald was challenged to form a Government and +shew whether Labor could govern or not. He accepted the challenge, and +became British Prime Minister with a Cabinet of Socialists and Trade +Unionists. It was a more competent government than the Conservative +Government that preceded it, partly because its members, having risen +from poverty or obscurity to eminence by their personal ability, were +unhampered by nonentities, and partly because it knew what the world +is like today, and was not dreaming, as even the cleverest of the +Conservative leaders still were, of the Victorian mixture of growing +cotton lordship and decaying feudal lordship in the capitalist class, +with starved helpless ignorance and submissive servitude in the +proletariat, which had not even lasted out Queen Victoria’s lifetime. +In fact, the Labor leaders were to an extraordinary degree better +educated and more experienced than their opponents, who infatuatedly +took it for granted that rich men must be superior in education because +they graduate in the two aristocratic universities instead of in the +school of economically organic life. + +The Liberals and Conservatives, disgusted with this result, and +ruefully sorry that by derisively giving Labor a chance to prove its +relative incompetence it had proved the opposite, combined to throw +Mr MacDonald out of office in 1924. Although he had as yet no real +chance of a majority in the country, he had so scared the plutocrats in +Parliament by his comparative success as Secretary of State for Foreign +Affairs, which they had regarded as the department in which Labor was +certain to break down ridiculously, that they overdid their attack +by persuading the country that he was connected with the Communist +Government of Russia. The panic which followed, lasting until the +election was over, wiped out at the polls, not the Labor Party, which +just managed to hold its own, but the innocent Liberal Party. + +The danger of stampeding a general election is that all sorts of +political lunatics, whom no one would dream of taking seriously in +quiet times, get elected by screaming that the country is in danger, +whilst sober candidates are defeated ignominiously. In 1906, when a +general election was stampeded by an alarm of Chinese labor, third +rate Liberal candidates ousted first rate Conservative ones by the +score. In 1924 the Red Russian scare enabled third rate Conservatives +to oust first rate Liberals. In both cases the result was a grave +falling-off in the quality of the victorious party. When the Sirdar, +our representative in Egypt, was unluckily assassinated just after +the election, the Conservatives, drunk with their victory, could not +be restrained by the Prime Minister, Mr Baldwin, from hurling at the +assassins an insane threat to cut off the water supply of Egypt. This +extravagance, which startled all Europe, was felt to be just the +sort of thing that Mr MacDonald would not have done. The Government +had to climb down rather abjectly when it discovered that it could +neither carry out its threat nor expect anything but reprobation +from all sides, both at home and abroad, for having been so absurd +as to make it; for though a forceful wickedness is, I am sorry to +say, rather popular than otherwise when our Governments indulge +in it at the expense of foreigners, we expect it to be successful. +A climb-down is unpopular in proportion to the arrogance of the +climb-up. Consequently the Government lost on the Egyptian fiasco +the support won by the Russian scare; but it lost its head again at +a crazy threat of a general strike by the Trade Unions. The Russians +sent us a very handsome subscription to the strike funds; and the +Government, frightened and infuriated, and quite incapable of measuring +the danger (which need not have alarmed a mouse) brought in a futile +but provocative Bill to make Trade Unionism illegal, and broke off +diplomatic relations with Russia after raiding the offices of the +Russian Government in London. Meanwhile, Labor in Parliament, having +recovered from the shock of the election, settled into its place as the +official Opposition. + +To sum up the story to the point it has now reached (1927), the +Proletariat, having begun its defensive operations in the Class War +by organizing its battalions into Trade Unions, only to discover +that it could not retain its winnings without passing them into law, +organized itself politically as a Labor Party, and returned enough +members to Parliament to change the House of Commons from a chamber +in which two capitalist parties, calling themselves Conservative and +Liberal, contended for the spoils of office and the honor and glory of +governing, to an arena in which the Proletariat and the Proprietariat +face each other on a series of questions which are all parts of two +main questions: first, whether the national land and capital and +industry shall be held and controlled by the nation for the nation, or +left in the hands of a small body of private men to do as they please +with; second, whilst the capitalist system lasts, which shall be top +dog, the provider of capital or the provider of labor. The first is +a Socialist question, because until land and capital and the control +of industry are in the hands of the Government it cannot equalize the +distribution either of the product or of the labor of producing it. + +The second is a Trade Unionist question. The Labor Party consists not +only of Socialists aiming at equality of income, but of Trade Unionists +who have no objection to the continuance of the capitalist method in +industry provided that Labor gets the lion’s share. It should be easier +to maintain the capitalist system with the proletarians taking the +lion’s share, and the landlords, capitalists, and employers reduced to +comparative penury, than to maintain it as at present; for the laborers +and mechanics and their wives and daughters form about nine-tenths of +the nation; and on all accounts it should be safer and steadier to have +only one discontented person to every nine contented ones than nine +discontented persons to every one contented one. To put it another +way, it should be easier for a government supported by nine-tenths +of the voters to collect income tax and supertax from landlords and +capitalists until they had to sell their country houses and motor +cars to their tenants and employees, and live in the gardener’s +cottage themselves, than it is for a landlord to collect his rents or +a capitalist to find investments on which he can live in luxury. An +engineer designing a Forth Bridge, or an architect a cathedral or a +palace, can quite easily be reduced to accept less money for his work +than the riveters and fitters and masons and bricklayers and painters +who carry out the designs. It is true that labor could no more do +without them than they could do without labor; but labor would have +the advantage in bargaining, because the talented worker, sooner than +waste his talent, would rather exercise it for a low wage than fix +rivets or pile bricks for a high one. At his own job he will work on +any terms for the pleasure of working, and loathe any other job; whilst +the reluctant laborer will do nothing for nothing and very little for a +halfpenny. + +Thus a Trade Unionist Government, with the mass of the people at its +back, could, by ruthless taxation of unearned incomes, by Factory Acts, +by Wages Boards fixing wages, by Commissions fixing prices, by using +the income tax to subsidize trades in which wages were low (all of +these devices are already established in parliamentary practice) could +redistribute the national income in such a way that the present rich +would become the poor, and the laborer would be cock of the walk. What +is more, that arrangement would be much more stable than the present +state of affairs in which the many are poor and the few rich. The +only threat to its permanence would come from the owners of property +refusing to go on collecting rent and interest merely to have it nearly +all seized by the tax collector. If you have a thousand a year and a +turn for business, you must sometimes feel that you are really only +collecting money for the Government at a commission of seventy per cent +or thereabouts. Suppose the commission were reduced to twenty-five per +cent, what could you do but pay £750 out of your thousand as helplessly +as you now pay £250? Just as the owners of property, when they +controlled Parliament, used their power to extort the utmost farthing +from Labor, Labor can and probably will use its power to extort the +utmost farthing from Property unless equal distribution for all is made +a fundamental constitutional dogma. At present the propertied classes +are looking to capitalist Trade Unions to save them from Socialism. The +time is coming when they will clamor for Socialism to save them from +capitalist Trade Unionism: that is, from Capitalized Labor. Already in +America Trade Unionism is combining with Big Business to squeeze the +sleeping partner. More of that later on. + + + + +51 + +DOMESTIC CAPITAL + + +After talking so long about Capitalism in the lump, let us take a few +chapters off to examine it as it affects you personally if you happen +to be a lady with a little capital of your own: one who, after living +in the style customary in her class, still has some money to spare to +use as capital so as to increase her income. I will begin by the simple +case of a woman earning money, not as an employer, but by her own work. + +Let us assume that her work involves doing sums (she is an accountant), +or writing (she is an author or scrivener), or visiting clients instead +of waiting in an office to receive them (she is a doctor). It is +evident that if she can spare money enough to buy an adding-machine +which will enable her to do the work of three ordinary bookkeepers, or +a sewing-machine, or a typewriter, or a bicycle, or a motor car, as +the case may be, the machine will enable her to get through so much +more work every day that she will be able to earn more money with them +than without them. The machine will be carelessly called her capital +(most people muddle themselves with that mistake when they discuss +economics); but the capital was the money saved to pay for the machine, +and as it was eaten up by the workers who made the machine, it no +longer exists. What does exist is the machine, which is continually +wearing out, and can never be sold secondhand for its price when new. +Its value falls from year to year until it falls to nothing but the +value of the old iron of which it is made. + +Now suppose she marries, thus changing her profession for that of wife, +mother, housekeeper, and so forth! Or suppose that the introduction of +an electric tram service, and the appearance of plenty of taxis in the +streets, enable her to do all the travelling she wants as well and more +cheaply than her private car! What is she to do with her adding-machine +or sewing-machine, her typewriter or her car? She cannot eat them or +wear them on her back. The adding-machine will not iron shirt fronts: +the sewing-machine will not fry eggs: the typewriter will not dust the +furniture: the motor car, for all its marvels, will not wash the baby. + +If you shew what I have just written to the sort of male who calls +himself a practical business man, he will at once say that I am +childishly wrong: that you _can_ eat an adding-or sewing-machine; dust +the furniture with a typewriter; and wash a hundred babies with a motor +car. All you have to do is to sell the sewing-machine and buy food with +the price you get for it; sell the typewriter and buy a vacuum cleaner; +sell the motor car and hire a few nurses after buying a bath and soap +and towels. And he will be so far right that you certainly can do all +these things _provided too many other people are not trying to do them +at the same time_. It is because the practical business man always +forgets this proviso that he is such a hopeless idiot politically. When +you have sold the sewing-machine and bought food with the price, you +have not really turned the sewing-machine into food. The sewing-machine +remains as uneatable as ever: not even an ostrich could get a tooth +into it or digest it afterwards. What has happened is that you, +finding yourself with a sewing-machine which you no longer want, and +being in want of food, find some other woman who has some spare food +which she does not want, but who wants a sewing-machine. You have a +sewing-machine for which you have no use, and an unsatisfied appetite. +She has food for which she has no appetite, and wants a sewing-machine. +So you two make an exchange: and there you are! Nothing could be +simpler. + +But please remark that it takes two to make the bargain, and that the +two must want opposite things. If they both want the same thing, or +want to get rid of the same thing, there will be no deal. Now suppose +the Chancellor of the Exchequer took it into his head as a practical +business man to raise money by a tax on capital instead of on income. +Suppose he were to say that as thousands of women have capital in the +form of sewing-machines which they can sell for, say, £5 apiece, they +can each afford to pay a tax of £3. Suppose he actually induced the +House of Commons to impose such a tax under the title of a Capital Levy +or some such practical business nonsense, and that every woman had to +sell her sewing-machine to pay the tax! What would be the result? Each +woman trying to sell her machine would find all the other women trying +to sell their machines too, and nobody wanting to buy them. She could +sell it as old iron for a shilling perhaps, but that would not enable +her to pay the tax. The tax collector, not being paid, would distrain +on her goods: that is, he would seize the sewing-machine. But as he +also could not sell it, he would have to hand it over unsold to the +Chancellor of the Exchequer, who would find himself heaped up with +thousands of unsellable sewing-machines instead of the thousands of +pounds he was looking forward to. He would have no money; and the women +would have no sewing-machines: all because the practical business men +told him that sewing-machines could be turned into bread. + +If you consider this a little you will see that the difference between +private affairs and State affairs is that private affairs are what +people can do by themselves, one at a time and once in a way, whereas +State affairs are what we are all made to do by law at the same moment. +At home you are a private woman dealing with your own private affairs; +but if you go into Parliament and perhaps into the Cabinet, you become +a stateswoman. As a private woman all you have to consider is, “Suppose +I were to do this or that”. But as a stateswoman you must consider +“Suppose everybody had to do this or that”. This is called the Kantian +test. + +For instance, if you become Chancellor of the Exchequer, your common +sense as a private woman will save you from such a folly as supposing +that a sewing-machine in the house is the same as £5 in the house. But +that very same private common sense of yours may persuade you that an +income of £5 a year is the same as £100 ready money, because you know +that if you want £100 your stockbroker can get it for you in exchange +for £5 a year of your income. You might therefore be tempted to lay a +tax of £30 on everyone with £5 a year, and imagine that you would not +only get the £30, but that the taxpayer would have £70 left to go on +with. Let me therefore explain the nature of this business of £5 a year +being worth £100 cash to you privately, and worth just £5 a year to the +Chancellor publicly and not a rap more. + +When we were dealing with the impossibility of saving I pointed out +that there are certain everyday transactions that are like saving and +that are called saving, very much as selling a sewing-machine and +buying food with the price may be called eating the sewing-machine. +Do not bother to try to remember this now: it is easier to go over +it again. Suppose you have £100 and you wish to save it: that is, to +consume it at some future time instead of immediately! The objection is +that as the things the money represents will rot unless they are used +at once, what you want to do is impossible. But suppose there is in +the next street a woman who has been left by the death of her parents +with nothing but an income of £5 a year. Evidently she cannot live on +that. But if she had £100 in ready money she could emigrate, or set +up a typewriting office, or stock a little shop, or take lessons in +some moneymaking art, or buy some smart clothes to improve her chances +of getting respectable employment, or any of the things that poor +women imagine they could do if only they had a little ready money. Now +nothing is easier than for you to make an exchange with this woman. She +gives you her right to take £5 every year fresh-and-fresh out of each +year’s harvest as it comes; and you give her your hundred pounds to +spend at once. Your stockbroker or banker will bring you together. You +go to him and say that you want him to invest your £100 for you at five +per cent; and she goes to him and says that she wants to sell her £5 +a year for ready money. He effects the change for a small commission. +But the transaction is disguised under such fantastic names (like the +water and breadcrumb in doctors’ prescriptions) that neither you nor +the other woman understands what has really happened. You are said to +have invested £100, and to be “worth” £100, and to have added £100 to +the capital of the country: and she is said to have “realized her +capital”. But all that has actually occurred is that your £100 has +been handed over to be spent and done for by the other woman, and +that you are left with the right to take £5 out of the income of the +country without working for it year after year for ever, or until you +in your turn sell that right for £100 down if you should unhappily find +yourself in the same predicament as the other lady was in when you +bought it. + +Now suppose you brought in your tax of £30 on every £5 a year in the +country! Or suppose a Conservative Government, led by the nose by +practical business men who know by experience that people who have £5 +a year can sell it for £100 whenever they want to, were to do it! Or +suppose a Labor Government, misled by the desire to take capital out +of private hands and vest it in the State, were to do it! They would +call it a levy of thirty per cent on capital; and most of them would +vote for it without understanding what it really meant. Its opponents +would vote against it in equal ignorance of its nature; so that their +arguments would convince nobody. What would happen? Evidently no woman +could pay £30 out of £5 a year. She would have to sell the £5 a year +for £100, and then reinvest the odd £70. But she would not get the +£100 because, as the tax would not fall on her alone, but on all the +other capitalists as well, her stockbroker would find everybody asking +him to sell future incomes for ready money and nobody offering ready +money for future incomes. It would be the story of the sewing-machines +over again. She would have to tell the tax collector that she +could not pay the tax, and that he might sell her furniture and be +damned (intelligent women use recklessly strong language under such +circumstances). But the tax collector would reply that her furniture +was no good to him; for as he was selling up all the other capitalists’ +furniture at the same time, and as only those who were too poor to have +any capital to be taxed were buying it, Chippendale chairs were down to +a shilling a dozen and dining room tables to five shillings; so that +it would cost him more to take her furniture away and sell it or store +it than it would fetch. He would have to go away empty handed; and all +the Government could do would be to take her £5 a year from her for six +years and four months, the odd months being for the interest to pay for +waiting. In other words it would find that her income was real, and +her capital imaginary. + +But even this would not work if the tax were imposed every year, like +the income tax, because at the end of the six years she would owe +£180, incurring a debt of £30 every year and getting only £5 to pay +it with; so that it would be much better for her to give up her £5 a +year for ever and support herself entirely by work. And the Government +would have to admit that a tax on capital is an impossibility, for the +unanswerable reason that the capital has no existence, having been +eaten up long ago. + +There is a tax on capital actually in existence which is often referred +to as proving that such taxes are possible. When we die, taxes called +Death Duties (officially Estate Duties) are levied on the fictitious +capital value of our estates, if we leave any. The reason people manage +to pay them is that we do not all die simultaneously every year on +the 5th April and thus incur death duties payable on the following +31st December. We die seldom and slowly, less than twenty out of every +thousand of us in one year, and out of that twenty not more than two at +the outside have any capital. Their heirs, one would think, would find +it easy to sell part of their income for enough ready money to pay the +duties, the purchasers being capitalists whose fathers or uncles have +not died lately. And yet the Government has to wait for its money often +and long. The tax is a stupid one, not because it confiscates property +by making the State inherit part of it (why not?) but because it +operates cruelly and unfairly. One estate, passing by death from heir +to heir three times in a century, will hardly feel the duties. Another, +passing three times in one year (as happens easily during a war), is +wiped out by them, and the heirs reduced from affluence to destitution. +When you make your will, be careful how you leave valuable objects to +poor people. If they keep them they may have to pay more for them in +death duties than they can afford. Probably they will have to sell them +to pay the duty. + +This is so little understood, that men not otherwise mad are found +estimating the capital of the country at sums varying from ten thousand +millions before the war to thirty thousand millions after it (as if +the war had made the country richer instead of poorer), and actually +proposing in the House of Commons to tax that thirty thousand millions +as available existing wealth and to pay off the cost of the war with +it. They all know that you cannot eat your cake and have it too; yet, +because we have spent seven thousand millions on a frightful war, and, +as they calculate, twenty thousand millions more on mines and railways +and factory plant and so on, and because these sums are written down +in the books of the Bank of England and the balance sheets of the +Companies and Trusts, they think they still exist, and that we are +an enormously rich nation instead of being, as anyone can see by the +condition of nine-tenths of the population, a disgracefully poor one. + + + + +52 + +THE MONEY MARKET + + +And now, still assuming that you are a lady of some means, perhaps I +can be a little useful to you in your private affairs if I explain that +mysterious institution where your investments are made for you, called +the Money Market, with its chronic ailment of Fluctuations that may at +any moment increase your income pleasantly without any trouble to you, +or swallow it up and ruin you in ways that a man can never make a woman +understand because he does not understand them himself. + +A market for the purchase and sale of money is nonsense on the face +of it. You can say reasonably “I want five shillingsworth of salmon”; +but it is ridiculous to say “I want five shillingsworth of money”. +Five shillingsworth of money is just five shillings; and who wants to +exchange five shillings for five shillings? Nobody buys money for money +except money changers, who buy foreign coins and notes to sell to you +when you are going abroad. + +But though nobody in England wants to buy English money, we often want +to hire it, or, as we say, to borrow it. Borrow and hire, however, +do not always mean the same thing. You may borrow your neighbor’s +frying-pan, and return it to her later on with a thank you kindly. But +in the money market there is no kindness: you pay for what you get, +and charge for what you give, as a matter of business. And it is quite +understood that what you hire you do not give back: you consume it at +once. If you ask your neighbor to lend you, not a frying-pan, but a +loaf of bread and a candle, it is understood that you eat the bread and +burn the candle, and repay her later on by giving her a fresh loaf +and a new candle. Now when you borrow money you are really borrowing +what it will buy: that is, bread and candles and material things of all +sorts for immediate consumption. If you borrow a shilling you borrow it +because you want to buy a shillingsworth of something to use at once. +You cannot pay that something back: all you can do is to make something +new or do some service that you can get paid a shilling for, and pay +with that shilling. (You can, of course, borrow another shilling from +someone else, or beg it or steal it; but that would not be a ladylike +transaction.) At all events, not until you pay can the lender consume +the things that the shilling represents. If you pay her anything +additional for waiting you are really hiring the use of the money from +her. + +In that case you are under no obligation to her whatever, because you +are doing her as great a service as she is doing you. You may not see +this at first; but just consider. All money that is lent is necessarily +spare money, because people cannot afford to lend money until they have +spent enough of it to support themselves. Now this spare money is only +a sort of handy title deed to spare things, mostly food, which will rot +and perish unless they are consumed immediately. If your neighbor has +a loaf left over from her week’s household supply you are doing her a +service in eating it for her and promising to give her a fresh loaf +next week. In fact a woman who found herself with a tenpenny loaf on +her hands over and above what her family needed to eat, might, sooner +than throw the loaf into the dustbin, say to her neighbor, “You can +have this loaf if you will give me half a fresh loaf for it next week”: +that is to say, she might offer half the loaf for the service of saving +her from the total loss of it by natural decay. + +The economists call this paying negative interest. What it means is +that you pay people to keep your spare money for you until you want +it instead of making them pay you for allowing them to keep it, which +the economists call paying positive interest. One is just as natural +as the other; and the sole reason why nobody at present will pay you +to borrow from them, whereas everyone will pay you to lend to them, is +that under our system of unequal division of income there are so very +few of us with spare money to lend, and so very many with less than +they need for immediate consumption, that there are always plenty +of people offering not only to spend the spare money at once, but to +replace it later on in full with fresh goods and pay the lenders for +waiting into the bargain. The economists used to call this payment the +reward of abstinence, which was silly, as people do not need to be +rewarded for abstaining from eating a second dinner, or from wearing +six suits of clothes at a time, or living in a dozen houses: on the +contrary, they ought to be extremely obliged to anyone who will use +these superfluities for them and pay them something as well. If instead +of having a few rich amid a great many poor, we had a great many rich, +the bankers would charge you a high price for keeping your money; and +the epitaph of the dead knight in Watts’s picture, “What I saved I +lost”, would be true materially as well as spiritually. If you then had +£100 to spare, and wanted to save it until next year, and took it to +the manager of your bank to keep it for you, he would say “I am sorry, +madam; but your hundred pounds will not keep. The best I can do for +you is to promise you seventy pounds next year (or fifty, or twenty, +or five, as the case might be); and you are very fortunate to be able +to get that with so much spare money lying about. You had really much +better not save. Increase your expenditure; and enjoy your money before +what it represents goes rotten. Banking is not what it was.” + +This cannot happen under Capitalism, because Capitalism distributes +the national income in such a way that the many are poor and the few +enormously rich. Therefore for the present you may count on being able +to lend (invest) all your spare money, and on being paid so much a year +for waiting until the borrower replaces what you have lent. The payment +for waiting is called interest, or, in the Bible, usury. Interest is +the polite word. The borrower, in short, hires the use of your spare +money from you; and there is nothing dishonest nor dishonorable in the +transaction. You hand over your spare ready money (your capital) to the +borrower; and the borrower binds herself to pay you a certain yearly or +monthly or weekly income until she repays it to you in full. + +The money market is the place in the city where yearly incomes are +bought for lump sums of spare ready money. The income you can buy for +£100 (which is the measuring figure) varies from day to day, according +to the plenty or scarcity of spare money offered for hire and of +incomes offered for sale. It varies also according to the security of +the income and the chances of its fluctuating from year to year. When +you take your spare £100 to your stockbroker to invest for you (that +is, to hire out for an income in the money market) he can, at the +moment when I write these lines (1926) get you £4: 10s. a year certain, +£6 a year with the chance of its rising or falling, or £10 a year and +upwards if you will take a sporting chance of never receiving anything +at all. + +The poor do not meddle with this official money market, because the +only security they can give when borrowing ready money from anyone but +the pawnbroker is their promise to pay so much a week out of their +earnings. This being much more uncertain than a share certificate or a +lease of land, they have to pay comparatively prodigious prices. For +instance, a poor working woman can hire a shilling for a penny a week. +This is the usual rate; and it seems quite reasonable to very poor +people; but it is more than eighty-six times as much as the Government +pays for the hire of money. It means paying at the rate of £433: 10s. a +year for the use of £100, or, as we say, interest at 433½ per cent: +a rate no rich man would dream of paying. The poorer you are the more +you pay, because the risk of your failing to pay is greater. Therefore +when you see in the paper that the price of hiring money has been fixed +by the Bank of England (that is why it is called the Bank Rate) at five +per cent, or reduced to four-and-a-half per cent, or raised to six per +cent, or what not, you must not suppose that you or anyone else can +hire money at that rate: it means only that those who are practically +certain to be able to pay, like the Government or the great financiers +and business houses, can borrow from the banks at that rate. In their +case the rate changes not according to any risk of their being unable +to pay, but according to the quantity of spare money available for +lending. And no matter how low the rate falls, the charwoman still has +to pay 433½ per cent, partly because the risk of her being unable to +pay is great, partly because the expense of lending money by shillings +and collecting the interest every week is much greater than the expense +of lending it by millions and collecting the interest every six months, +and partly because the charwoman is ignorant and helpless and does not +know that the slum usurer, whom she regards as her best friend in need, +is charging her anything more than a millionaire is charged. + +The price of money varies also according to the purpose for which it is +borrowed. You are, I hope, concerned with the money market as a lender +rather than as a borrower. Do not be startled at the notion of being +a moneylender (not, I repeat, that there is anything dishonorable in +it): nobody will call your investments loans. But they are loans for +all that. Only, they are loans made, not to individuals, but to joint +stock companies on special conditions. The business people in the city +are always forming these companies and asking you to lend them money +to start some big business undertaking, which may be a shop in the +next street, or a motor bus service along it, or a tunnel through the +Andes, or a harbor in the Pacific, or a gold mine in Peru, or a rubber +plantation in Malaya, or any mortal enterprise out of which they think +they can make money. But they do not borrow on the simple condition +that they pay you for the hire of the money until they pay it back. +Their offer is that when the business is set up it shall belong to you +and to all your fellow lenders (called shareholders); so that when it +begins to make money the profits will be distributed among you all in +proportion to the amount each of you has lent. On the other hand, if it +makes no profits you lose your money. Your only consolation is that you +can lose no more. You cannot be called on to pay the Company’s debts if +it has spent more than you lent it. Your liability is limited, as they +say. + +This is a chancy business; and to encourage you if you are timid (or +shall we say cautious?) these companies may ask you to lend your spare +money to them at the fixed rate of, say, six or seven per cent, on +the understanding that this is to be paid before any of the ordinary +lenders get anything, but that you will get nothing more no matter how +big the profits may be. If you accept this offer you are said to have +debentures or preference shares in the company; and the others are said +to have ordinary shares. There are a few varieties both of preference +and ordinary shares; but they are all ways of hiring spare money: +the only difference is in the conditions on which you are invited to +provide it. + +When you have taken a share, and it is bringing you in an income, +you can at any time, if you are pressed for ready money, sell your +share for what it may be worth in the money market to somebody who has +spare money and wants to “save” it by exchanging it for an income. The +department of the money market in which shares are bought and sold in +this way is called the Stock Exchange. To sell a share you have to +employ an agent (called a stockbroker), who takes your share to the +Exchange and asks another agent (called a stockjobber) to “make him a +price”: It is the jobber’s business to know what the share is worth, +according to the prospects of the company, the quantity of spare money +being offered for incomes, and the number of income producing shares +being offered for sale. Never speak disrespectfully of stockjobbers: +they are very important people, and consider themselves greater masters +of the money business than the stockbrokers. + +The legitimate business of the Stock Exchange is this selling and +buying of shares in companies already established. It is largely +occupied also with a curious game called speculation, in which +phantom prices are offered for imaginary shares; but for the moment +let us keep to the point that the shares dealt in are practically +all in established companies, because what is nationally important +is the application of spare money, not to the purchase of shares in +old companies, but to the foundation of new ones, or at least to +the extension of the plant and operations of the old ones. Now the +business done on the Stock Exchange is no index to this, and indeed +may have nothing to do with it. Suppose, for example, that you have +£50,000 to spare, and you invest it all in railway shares! You will +not by doing so create a single yard of railway, nor cause a single +additional train to be run, nor even supply an existing train with +an extra footwarmer. Your money will have no effect whatever on the +railways. All that will happen is that your name will be substituted +for some other name or names in the list of shareholders, and that for +the future you will get the income the owners of those names would get +if they had not sold their shares to you. Also, of course, that they +will get your £50,000 to do what they like with. They may spend it on +the gambling tables at Monte Carlo, or on the British turf; or they +may present it to the funds of the Labor Party. You may disapprove +strongly of gambling; and you may have a horror of the Labor Party. +You may say “If I had thought this was going to happen to my money, I +would have bought shares privately from some persons whose principles +were well known to me and whom I could trust not to spend it foolishly +instead of from that wicked stockjobber who has no more conscience +than a cash register, and does not care what becomes of my money”. But +your protest will be vain. In practice you will find that you must buy +your shares in established companies on the Stock Exchange; that your +money will never go into the company whose shares you buy; and that its +real destination will be entirely beyond your control. A day’s work on +the Stock Exchange, nominally a most gratifying addition of hundreds +of thousands of pounds of spare money to the industrial capital of +the country, may be really a waste of them in extravagant luxury, or +ruinous vice, to say nothing of the possibility of their being sent +abroad to establish some foreign business which will capture the +business of the company whose shares you have bought, and thus reduce +you to indigence. + +And now you will say that if this is so, you will take particular care +to buy nothing but new shares in new companies, sending the money +directly to their bankers according to the form enclosed with the +prospectus, without allowing any stockbroker or stockjobber to know +anything about it, thus making sure that your money will be used to +create a new business and add it to the productive resources of your +country’s industry. My dear lady, you will lose it all unless you are +very careful, very well informed as to the risks involved, and very +intelligent in money matters. Company promotion, I am sorry to say, +is a most rascally business in its shadier corners. Act after Act of +Parliament has been passed, without much effect, to prevent swindlers +from forming companies for some excellent object, and, when they have +collected as much money as they can by selling shares in it, making no +serious attempt to carry out that object, but simply taking offices, +ordering goods, appointing themselves directors and managers and +secretaries and anything else that carries a salary, taking commissions +on all their orders, and, when they have divided all the plunder in +this way (which is perfectly legal), winding up the company as a +failure. All you can do in that case is to go to the shareholders’ +meeting and make a row, being very careful not to tell the swindlers +that they are swindlers, because if you do they will immediately take +an action against you for slander and get damages out of you. But +making a row will not save your money. The amount that is stolen from +innocent women every year in this way is appalling; and it has been +done as much by sham motor bus companies, which if genuine would have +been very sensible and publicly useful investments, as by companies to +work bogus gold mines, which are suspect on the face of them. + +Even if you escape this swindling by blackguards who know what they +are doing, and would be as much disconcerted by the success of their +companies as a burglar if he found himself politely received and +invited to dinner in a house he had broken into, you may be tempted +by the companies founded by genuine enthusiasts who believe in their +scheme, who are quite right in believing in it, who are finally +justified by its success, and who put all their own spare money and a +great deal of hard work into it. But they almost always underestimate +its cost. Because it is new, they have no experience to guide them; +and they have their own enthusiasm to mislead them. When they are half +way to success the share money is all used up; and they are forced to +sell out all they have done for an old song to a new company formed +expressly to take advantage of them. Sometimes this second company +shares the fate of the first, and is bought out by a third. The company +which finally succeeds may be built on the money and work of three +or four successive sets of pioneers who have run short of the cash +needed for completion of the plant. The experienced men of the city +know this, and lie in wait until the moment has come for the final +success. As one of them has put it “the money is made by coming in on +the third reconstruction”. For them it may be a splendid investment; +but the original shareholders, who had the intelligence to foresee the +successful future of the business, and the enterprise to start it, +are cleaned out. They see their hopes fulfilled and their judgment +justified; but as they have to look through the workhouse windows, they +are a warning rather than an example to later investors. + +You can avoid these risks by never meddling with a new company, but +calling in your stockbroker to buy shares in a well established old +one. You will not do it any good; but at all events you will know that +it is neither a bogus company nor one which has started with too little +capital and will presently have to sell out at a heavy or total loss. +Beware of enterprise: beware of public spirit: beware of conscience and +visions of the future. Play for safety. Lend to the Government or the +Municipalities if you can, though the income may be less; for there is +no investment so safe and useful as a communal investment. And when +you find journalists glorifying the Capitalist system as a splendid +stimulus to all these qualities against which I have just warned +you, restrain the unladylike impulse to imitate the sacristan in the +Ingoldsby Legends, who said no word to indicate a doubt, but put his +thumb unto his nose, and spread his fingers out. + + + + +53 + +SPECULATION + + +In the preceding chapter I have been assuming that you are a +capitalist. I am now going to assume that you are perhaps a bit of a +gambler. Even if you abhor gambling it is a necessary part of your +education in modern social conditions to know how most of it is done. +Without such knowledge you might, for instance, marry a gambler after +having taken the greatest pains to assure yourself that he had never +touched a playing card, sat at a roulette table, or backed a horse in +his life, and was engaged solely in financial operations on the Stock +Exchange. You might find him encouraging you to spend money like water +in one week, and in the next protesting that he could not possibly +afford you a new hat. In short, you might find yourself that tragic +figure, the gambler’s wife who is not by temperament a gambler. + +A page or two ago I dropped a remark about a game played on the Stock +Exchange and called Speculation, at which phantom prices are offered +for imaginary shares. I will explain this game to you, leaving it to +your taste and conscience to decide whether you will shun it or plunge +into it. It is by far the most widely practised and exciting form of +gambling produced by Capitalism. + +To understand it you must know that on the London Stock Exchange +you can buy a share and not have to pay for it, or sell a share and +not have to hand over the share certificate, until next settling +day, which may be a fortnight off. You may not see at first what +difference that makes. But a great deal may happen in a fortnight. +Just recollect what you have learnt about the continual fluctuations +in the prices of incomes and of spare subsistence in the Money Market! +Think of the hopes and fears raised by the flourishing and decaying +of the joint stock companies as their business and prospects grow or +shrink according as the harvests are good or bad: rubber harvests, oil +harvests, coal harvests, copper harvests, as well as the agricultural +harvests: all meaning that there will be more or less money to divide +among the shareholders as yearly income, and more or less spare money +available to buy shares with. The prices of shares change not only from +year to year but from day to day, from hour to hour, and, in moments of +excitement on the Stock Exchange, from minute to minute. The share that +was obtained years ago or centuries ago by giving £100 spare money to +start a new company may bring its owner £5000 a year, or it may bring +her thirty shillings, or it may bring her nothing, or it may bring her +all three in succession. Consequently that share, which cost somebody +£100 spare money when it was new, she may be able to sell for £100,000 +at one moment, for £30 at another, whilst at yet another she may be +unable to sell it at all, for love or money. As she opens her newspaper +in the morning she looks at the city page, with its list of yesterday’s +prices of stocks and shares, to see how rich she is today; and she +seldom finds that her shares are worth the same price for a week at a +time unless she has been prudent enough to lend it to the Government or +to a municipality (in which case she has communal security) instead of +to private companies. + +Now put these two things together: the continual change in the prices +of shares, and the London Stock Exchange rule that they need not be +paid for nor delivered until next settling day. Suppose you have not +a penny of spare cash in your possession, nor a share (carrying an +income) to sell! Suppose you believe for some reason or other that the +price of shares in a certain company (call it company A) is going to +rise in value within the next few days! And suppose you believe that +the price of shares in a certain other company (company B) is going +to fall. If you are right, all you have to do to make some money by +your good guessing is to buy shares in company A and sell shares in +company B. You may say “How am I to buy shares without money or sell +them without the share certificates?” It is very simple: you need not +produce either the money or the certificates until settling day. Before +settling day you sell the A shares for more than you bought them for on +credit; and you buy the B certificates for less than you pretended to +sell them for. On settling day you will get the money from the people +you sold to, and the certificates from the people you bought from; and +when you have paid for the A shares and handed over the B certificates, +you will be in pocket by the difference between their values on the +day you bought and sold them and their values on settling day. Simple +enough, is it not? + +This is the game of speculation. Nobody will blame you for engaging in +it; but on the Stock Exchange they will call you a bull for pretending +to buy the A shares, and a bear for pretending to sell the B shares. If +you pay a small sum to get shares allotted to you in a new company on +the chance of selling them at a profit before you have to pay up, they +will call you a stag. If you ask why not a cow or a hind, the reply +is that as the Stock Exchange was founded by men for men its slang is +exclusively masculine. + +But, you may say, suppose my guess was wrong! Suppose the price of +the A shares goes down instead of up, and the price of the B shares +up instead of down! Well, that often happens, either through some +unforeseen event affecting the companies, or simply because you guessed +badly. But do not be too terrified by this possibility; for all you can +lose is the difference between the prices; and as this may be only a +matter of five or ten pounds for every hundred you have been dealing +in you can pawn your clothes and furniture and try again. You can +even have your account “carried over” to next settling day by paying +“contango” if you are a bull, or “backwardation” if you are a bear, on +the chance of your luck changing in the extra fortnight. + +I must warn you, however, that if a great many other bears have guessed +just as you have, and sold imaginary shares in great numbers, you may +be “cornered”. This means that the bears have sold either more shares +than actually exist, or more than the holders will sell except at a +great advance in price. Bulls who are cunning enough to foresee this +and to buy up the shares which are being beared may make all the money +the bears lose. Cornering the bears is a recognized part of the game of +speculation. + +As the game is one of knowledge and skill and character (or no +character) as well as of chance, a good guesser, or one with private +(inside) information as to facts likely to affect share prices, can +make a living at it; and some speculators have made and lost princely +fortunes. Some women play at it just as others back horses. Sometimes +they do it intelligently through regular stockbrokers, with a clear +understanding of the game. Sometimes they are blindly tempted by +circulars sent out from Bucket Shops; so I had better enlighten you as +to what a bucket shop is. + +You will remember that a speculator does not stand to lose the whole +price she offers for a share, or the whole value of the share she +pretends to buy. If she loses she loses only the difference between +the prices she expected and the prices she has to pay. If she has +a sufficient sum in hand to meet this she escapes bankruptcy. This +sufficient sum is called “cover”. A bucket shop keeper is one who +undertakes to speculate for anyone who will send him cover. His +circulars say, in effect, “Send me ten pounds, and the worst that can +happen to you is to lose it; but I may be able to double it for you or +even double it many times over. I can refer you to clients who have +sent me £10 and got back £50 or £100.” A lady, not understanding the +business in the least, is tempted to send him £10, and very likely +loses it, in which case she usually tries to get it back by risking +another £10 note if she has one left. But she may be lucky and pocket +some winnings; for bucket shops must let their clients win sometimes or +they could hardly exist. But they can generally prevent your winning, +if they choose, by taking advantage of some specially low price of +shares to shew that your cover has disappeared, or even by selling two +or three shares themselves at a low price and quoting it against you. +Besides, if you sue them for your winnings they can escape by pleading +the Gaming Act. They cannot be mulcted or expelled by the Stock +Exchange Committee; for they are not members of the Stock Exchange, and +have given no securities. A bucket shop keeper is not necessarily a +swindler any more than a bookmaker is necessarily a welsher; but if he +fleeces you you have no remedy, whereas if a stockbroker cheats you it +may cost him his livelihood. + +If you speculate through a regular stockbroker you must bear in mind +that he is supposed to deal in genuine investments only: that is, in +the buying of shares by clients who have the money to pay for them, +and the sale of shares by those who really possess them and wish to +exchange them for a lump sum of spare money. The difference is that +if you go into a bucket shop and say frankly “Here is a five pound +note, which is all I have in the world. Will you take it as cover, and +speculate with it for me in stocks of ten times its value”, the bucket +shop will oblige you; but if you say this to a stockbroker he must have +you shewn out. You must allow him to believe, or pretend to believe, +that you really have the spare money or the shares in which you want to +deal. + +You will now understand what gambling on the London Stock Exchange +means. The game can be played with certain variations, called options +and double options and so on, which are as easily picked up as the +different hazards of the roulette table; and the foreign stock +exchanges have rules which are not so convenient for the bears as our +rules; but these differences do not change the nature of the game. +Every day speculative business is done in Capel Court in London, on +Wall Street in New York, in the Bourses on the Continent, to the tune +of millions of pounds; and it is literally only a tune: the buyers have +no money and the sellers no goods; and their countries are no richer +for it all than they are for the gaming tables at Monte Carlo or the +bookmakers’ settlements at the end of a horse race. Yet the human +energy, audacity, and cunning wasted on it would, if rightly directed, +make an end of our slums and epidemics and most of our prisons in fewer +hours than it has taken days of Capitalism to produce them. + + + + +54 + +BANKING + + +The Stock Exchange is only a department of the money market. The +commonest way of hiring money for business purposes is to keep an +account at a bank, and hire spare money there when you want it. The +bank manager will lend it to you if he feels reasonably sure that +you will be able to repay him: in fact that is his real business, as +we shall see presently. He may do it by letting you overdraw your +account. Or if somebody with whom you are doing business has given you +a written promise to pay you a sum of money at some future time (this +written promise is called a bill of exchange) and the bank manager +thinks the promise will be kept, he will give you the money at once, +only deducting enough to pay him for its hire until your customer pays +it. This is called discounting the bill. All such transactions are +forms of hiring spare money; and when you read in the city articles +in the papers that money is cheap or money is dear, it means that the +price you have to pay your banker for the hire of spare money is low or +high as the case may be. + +Sometimes you will see a fuss made because the Bank of England has +raised or lowered the Bank Rate. This means that the Bank of England is +going to charge more or less, as the case may be, for discounting bills +of exchange, because spare money has become dearer or cheaper: that is +to say, because spare subsistence has become scarcer or more plentiful. +If you are overdrawn at your bank, the announcement that the Bank Rate +is raised may bring you a letter from the manager to say that you must +not overdraw any more, and that he will be obliged to you if you will +pay off your overdraft as soon as possible. What he means is that as +spare subsistence has become scarce and dear he cannot go on supplying +you with it, and would like you to replace what he has already +supplied. This may be very inconvenient to you, and may prevent you +from extending your business. That is why there is great consternation +and lamentation among business people when the Bank Rate goes up, and +jubilation when it goes down. For when the terms on which spare money +can be hired at the Bank of England go up, they go up everywhere; +so that the Bank Rate is an index to the cost of hiring spare money +generally. + +And now comes the question, where on earth do the banks get all the +spare money they deal in? To the Intelligent Woman who is not engaged +in business, or who, if she has a bank account, never overdraws it +or brings a bill to be discounted, a bank seems only a place where +they very kindly pay her cheques and keep her money safe for her for +nothing, as if she were paying them a compliment by allowing them to do +it. They will even hire money from her when she has more than enough to +go on with, provided she will agree not to draw it out without giving +them some days’ notice (they call this placing it on deposit). She must +ask herself sometimes how they can possibly afford to keep up a big +handsomely fitted building and a staff of respectably dressed clerks +with a most polite and sympathetic manager to do a lot of her private +business for her and charge her nothing for it. + +The explanation is that people hardly ever draw as much money from the +bank as they put in; and even when they do, it remains in the bank for +some time. Suppose you lodge a hundred pounds in the bank on Monday to +keep it safe because you will have to draw a cheque for it on Saturday! +That cheque will not be presented for payment until the following +Monday. Consequently the bank has your hundred pounds in its hands +for a week, and can therefore hire it out for a week for a couple of +shillings. + +But very few bank transactions are as unprofitable as this. Most people +keep their bank accounts open all the year round; and instead of paying +in every week exactly what they want to spend and drawing it out again +by their cheques as they spend it, they keep a round sum always at +their call so as to be ready when they may happen to want it. The +poorest woman who ever dreams of keeping a bank account at all is not +often driven to draw the last half crown out: when her balance falls +as low as that, she knows it is time to put in another pound or two. +Indeed it is not every bank that will do business on so small a scale +as this: the Governor of the Bank of England would turn blue and order +the porters to remove you if you offered him an account of that sort. +Bank customers are people some of whom keep £20 continually at call, +some £100, some £1000, and some many thousands, according to the extent +of their business or the rate at which they are living. This means that +no matter how much money they may put into the bank or take out, there +always remains in the bank a balance that they never draw out; and when +all these balances are added up they come to a huge amount of spare +money in the hands of the bank. It is by hiring out this money that the +banks make their enormous profits. They can well afford to be polite to +you. + +And now the Intelligent Woman who keeps a bank account, and most +conscientiously never lets her balance fall below a certain figure, may +ask in some alarm whether her bank, instead of keeping her balance +always in the bank ready for her to draw out if she should need it, +actually lends it to other people. The reply is, Yes: that is not only +what the bank does, but what it was founded to do. But, the Intelligent +Woman will exclaim, that means that if I were to draw a cheque for +my balance there would be no money in the bank to pay it with. And +certainly that would happen if all the other customers of the bank drew +cheques for their balances on the same day. But they never do. “Still”, +you urge, “they might.” Never mind: the bank does not trouble about +what might happen. It is concerned only with what does happen; and what +does happen is that if out of every pound lodged with them the bankers +keep about three shillings in the till to pay their customers’ cheques +it will be quite sufficient. + +Only, please remember that the woman who has a bank account should +never frighten the others by letting them know this. They would all +rush to the bank and draw out their balances; and when the bankers had +paid to the first comers all the three shillingses they had kept, they +would stop payment and put up the shutters. This sometimes actually +happens when a report is spread that some particular bank is not to be +trusted. Something or somebody starts a panic; there is “a run on the +bank”; the bank is broken; and its customers are very angry with the +directors, clamoring to have them prosecuted and sent to prison, which +is unreasonable; for they ought to have known that banks, with all the +services they give for nothing, can exist only on condition that their +customers do not draw out their balances all on the same day. + +Perhaps, by the way, you know some woman who not only always draws her +full balance, but overdraws it; so that she is always in debt to the +bank. Her case is very simple. The bank lends her the other customers’ +money to go on with, and charges her for the hire of it. That sort of +business pays them very well. + +And now that you know what banking is from the inside, and how the +bankers get all the spare money they let on hire, may I remind you +again, if I am not too tiresome, that this spare money is really spare +subsistence, mainly perishable stuff that must be used at once. One of +the greatest public dangers of our day is that the bankers do not know +this, because they never handle or store the stuff themselves; and the +right to take it away and use it which they sell on the hire system +is disguised under the name of Credit. Consequently they come to think +that credit is something that can be eaten and drunk and worn and made +into houses and railways and factories and so on, whereas real credit +is only the lender’s opinion that the borrower will be able to pay him. + +Now you cannot feed workmen or build houses or butter parsnips with +opinions. When you hear of a woman living on credit or building a house +on credit or having a car on credit you may rest assured that she is +not doing anything of the kind: she is living on real victuals; having +her house built of bricks and mortar by men who are eating substantial +meals; and driving about in a steel car full of highly explosive +petrol. If she has not made them nor paid for them somebody else has; +and all that her having them on credit means is that the bank manager +believes that at some future time she will replace them with equally +substantial equivalent goods of the same value after paying the bank +for waiting meanwhile. But when she goes to the bank manager she does +not ask for food and bricks and cars: she says she wants credit. And +when the bank manager allows her to draw the money that is really an +order for so much food and so many bricks and a car, he says nothing +about these things. He says, and thinks, that he is giving her credit. +And so at last all the bankers and the practical business men come to +believe that credit is something eatable, drinkable, and substantial, +and that bank managers can increase or diminish the harvest by becoming +more credulous or more sceptical as to whether the people to whom they +lend money will pay them or not (issuing or restricting credit, as +they call it). The city articles in the papers, the addresses of bank +chairmen at the annual shareholders’ meetings, the financial debates +in Parliament, are full of nonsensical phrases about issuing credit, +destroying credit, restricting credit, as if somebody were shovelling +credit about with a spade. Clever men put forward wonderful schemes +based on the calculation that when a banker lends five thousand pounds +worth of spare subsistence he also gives the borrower credit for five +thousand pounds, the five thousand credit added to the five thousand +spare subsistence making ten thousand altogether! Instead of being +immediately rushed into the nearest lunatic asylum, these clever ones +find disciples both in Parliament and in the city. They propose to +extend our industries (that is, build ships and factories and railway +engines and the like) with credit. They believe that you can double +the quantity of goods in the country by changing the cipher 2 into the +cipher 4. Whenever a scarcity of spare subsistence forces the Bank of +England to raise the Bank Rate they accuse the directors of playing +them a dirty trick and preventing them from extending their business, +as if the Governor and Company of the Bank of England could keep the +rate down any more than the barometer can keep the mercury down in fair +weather. They think they know, because they are “practical business +men”. But for national purposes they are maniacs with dangerous +delusions; and the Governments who take their advice soon find +themselves on the rocks. + +What is it, then, that really fixes the price you have to pay if you +hire ready money from your bank, or that you receive for lending it to +the bank (on deposit), or to trading companies by buying shares, or to +the Government or the Municipalities? In other words, what fixes the +so-called price of money, meaning the cost of hiring it? And what fixes +the price of incomes when their owners sell them for ready money in the +Stock Exchange? + +Well, it depends on the proportion between the quantity of spare +subsistence (“saved” money) there may be in the market to be hired, and +how much the people who want to use it up are able and willing to pay +for the hire of it. On the one hand you have the property owners who +are living on less than their incomes and therefore want to dispose of +their spare stuff before it goes rotten. On the other are the business +men who want what the property owners have not consumed to feed the +proletarians whose labor they need to start new businesses or extend +old ones. Beside these, you have the spendthrift property owners who +have lived beyond their incomes, and must therefore sell the incomes +(or part of them) for ready money to pay their debts. Between them all, +you get a Supply and Demand according to which spare money and incomes +are cheap or dear. The price runs up when the supply runs short or the +demand becomes more pressing. It runs down when the supply increases or +the demand slackens. + +By the way, now that we are picking up the terms Supply and Demand, +remember that Demand in the money market sense does not mean want +alone: it means only the want that the wanter can afford to satisfy. +The demand of a hungry child for food is very strong and very loud; but +it does not count in business unless the mother has money to buy food +for the child. But with this rather inhuman qualification supply and +demand (called “effective demand”) settle the price of everything that +has a price. + +Banks are safe when they lend their money (or rather yours) +judiciously. If they make bad investments, or trust the wrong people, +or speculate, they may ruin themselves and their customers. This +happened occasionally when there were many banks. But now that the +big ones have swallowed up the little ones they are so few and so big +that they could not afford to let one another break, nor indeed could +the Government. So you are fairly safe in keeping your money at a big +bank, and need have no scruple about availing yourself of its readiness +to oblige you in many ways, including acting as your stockbroker, +borrowing from you at interest (on deposit account), and lending you, +though at a considerably higher rate, any ready money for the repayment +of which you can offer reasonably satisfactory security. + +As we now see why the hiring terms for money vary from time to time, +sometimes from hour to hour, let us amuse ourselves by working out what +would happen at the banks if the Government, misled by the practical +business men, or by the millennial amateurs, were to attempt to raise +say £30,000 millions by a tax on capital, and another £30,000 millions +by a tax on credit. + +The announcement of the tax on credit would make an end of that part of +the business at once by destroying all credit. The financial magnate +who the day before could raise a million at six or seven per cent by +raising his finger would not be able to borrow five shillings from his +butler unless the butler let him have it for the sake of old times +without the least hope of ever seeing it again. + +To pay the tax the capitalists would have to draw out every farthing +they had in the bank, and instruct their stockbrokers to sell out all +their shares and debentures and Government and municipal stock. There +would be such a prodigious demand for ready money that the Governor +and Company of the Bank of England would meet at eleven o’clock and +resolve, after some hesitation, to raise the Bank Rate boldly to ten +per cent. After lunch they would be summoned hurriedly to raise it +to a hundred per cent; and before they could send out this staggering +announcement they would learn that they might save themselves the +trouble, as all the banks, after paying out three shillings in the +pound, had stopped payment and stuck up a notice on their closed doors +that they hoped to be able to pay their customers the rest when they +had realized their investments: that is, called in their loans and sold +their stocks and shares. But the stockbrokers would report only one +price for all stocks, that price being no pounds, no shillings, and +no pence, not even farthings. For that is the price in a market where +there are all sellers and no buyers. + +When the tax collector called for his money, the taxpayer would have +to say “I can get no money for you; so instead of paying the tax on +my capital, here is the capital itself for you. Here is a bundle of +share certificates which you can sell to the waste paper dealer for +a halfpenny. Here is a bundle of bonds payable to bearer which you +can try your luck with, and a sheet of coupons which in a few years’ +time will be as valuable as rare and obsolete postage stamps. Here is +a transfer which will authorize the Bank of England to run its pen +through my name in the War Loan register and substitute your own. +And much good may they all do you! I must shew you out myself, as my +servants are in the streets starving because I have no money to pay +their wages: in fact, I should not have had anything to eat myself +today if I had not pawned my evening clothes; and precious little the +pawnbroker would give me on them, as he is short of money and piled up +to the ceiling with evening suits. Good morning.” + +You may ask what, after all, would that matter? As nine out of every +ten people have no capital and no credit in the financial sense (that +is to say, though a shopkeeper might trust them until the end of the +week, no banker would dream of lending them a sixpence), they could +look on and laugh, crying “Let the rich take their turn at being +penniless, as we so often are”. But what about the great numbers of +poor who live on the rich, the servants, the employers and employed +in the luxury trades, the fashionable doctors and solicitors? Even in +the productive trades what would happen with the banks all shut up and +bankrupt, the money for wages all taken by the Government, no cheque +payable and no bill of exchange discountable? Unless the Government +were ready instantly to take over and manage every business in the +country: that is, to establish complete nationalization of industry in +a thunderclap without ever having foreseen or intended such a thing, +ruin and starvation would be followed by riot and looting: riot and +looting would only make bad worse; and finally the survivors, if there +were any, would be only too glad to fall on their knees before any +Napoleon or Mussolini who would organize the violence of the mob and +re-establish the old state of things, or as much of it as could be +rescued from the chaos, by main force applied by a ruthless dictator. + + + + +55 + +MONEY + + +You now know more than most people about the money market. But it is +not enough to know what settles the value of stocks and shares in spare +money from day to day. All money is not spare money. Few of us spend +as much on shares as on food and clothes and lodging. Most of us, +having no spare money, would as soon dream of buying shooting lodges in +Scotland as of investing or speculating on the Stock Exchange; yet we +use money. Suppose there were no spare money on earth, what would fix +the value of money? What is money? + +Take a gold coin for instance. You are probably old enough to remember +such things before the war swept them away and substituted bits of +paper called Treasury notes; and you may be young enough to live until +they come back again. What is a gold coin? It is a tool for buying +things in exactly the same sense as a silver spoon is a tool for +eating an egg. Buying and selling would be impossible without such +tools. Suppose they did not exist, and you wanted to go somewhere in a +bus! Suppose the only movable property you had was twenty ducks and a +donkey! When the bus conductor came round for the fare you would offer +him the donkey and ask for the change in potatoes, or offer him a duck +and ask for the change in eggs. This would be so troublesome, and the +bargaining so prolonged, that next time you would find it cheaper to +ride the donkey instead of taking the bus: indeed there would be no +buses because there would be nobody willing to take them, unless buses +were communized and fares abolished. + +Now it is troublesome to take a donkey about, even when it takes you, +but quite easy to carry as much gold as a donkey is worth. Accordingly, +the Government cuts up gold into conveniently shaped bits weighing +a little over 123 grains of standard gold (22 carat) apiece, to be +used for buying and selling. For transactions that are too small to +be settled by a metal so costly as gold it provides bronze and silver +coins, and makes a law that so many of these coins shall pass as worth +one of the gold coins. Then buying and selling become quite easy. +Instead of offering your donkey to the bus conductor you exchange it +for its worth in coins; and with these in your pocket you can pay your +bus fare in two seconds without having any words about it. + +Thus you see that money is not only a necessary tool for buying and +selling, but also a measure of value; for when it is introduced we +stop saying that a donkey is worth so many ducks or half a horse, and +say instead that it is worth so many pounds or shillings. This enables +accounts to be kept, and makes commerce possible. + +All this is as easy as A B C. What is not so easy is the question why +the donkey should be worth, say, three-quarters of a sovereign (fifteen +bob, it would be called at this price), or, to put it the other way, +why fifteen bob should be worth a donkey. All you can say is that a +buyer at this price is a person with fifteen shillings who wants a +donkey more than she wants the fifteen shillings, and a seller at this +price a person with a donkey who would rather have fifteen shillings +than keep the donkey. The buyer, though she wants a donkey, does not +want it badly enough to give more than fifteen shillings for it; and +the seller, though she wants money, will not let the donkey go for less +than fifteen; and so they exchange. Their respective needs just balance +at that figure. + +Now a donkey represents just a donkey and nothing else; but fifteen +shillings represents fifteen shillingsworth of anything you like, +from food and drink to a cheap umbrella. Any fund of money represents +subsistence; but do not forget that though you can eat and drink and +wear subsistence, you cannot eat or drink or wear Treasury notes and +metal coins. Granted that if you have two shillings the dairyman will +give you a pound of butter for it; still, a pound of butter is no more +a round piece of metal than a cat is a flat iron; and if there were no +butter you would have to eat dry bread, even if you had millions and +millions of shillings. + +Besides, butter is not always two shillings: it is sometimes two and +twopence or even two and sixpence. There are people now living who have +bought good fresh butter for fourpence a pound, and complained of its +being dear at that. It is easy to say that butter is cheap when it is +plentiful, and dear when it is scarce; but this is only one side of +the bargain. If ten pounds of butter cost a sovereign on Monday and +a sovereign and a quarter on Saturday, is that because there is less +butter or more gold? + +Well, it may be one or the other or both combined. If the Government +were to strike off enough new sovereigns at the Mint to double the +number in circulation we should have to pay two sovereigns for ten +pounds of butter, not because butter would be scarcer but because gold +would be more plentiful. But there is no danger of this happening, +because gold is so scarce and hard to get that if the Government turned +more of it into sovereigns than were needed to conduct our buying and +selling, the superfluous ones would be melted down, and the gold used +for other purposes, in spite of the law against it; and this would go +on until sovereigns were so scarce that you could get more for gold in +the form of sovereigns than in the form of watch chains or bracelets. +For this reason people feel safe with gold money: the gold in the +sovereign keeps its value for other purposes than buying and selling; +and if the worst came to the worst, and the British Empire were annexed +by the planet Mars, and only Martian money were current, the sovereigns +would still be taken in exchange for as much butter or anything else +as before, not as money, but as so much gold; so that the British +sovereign would buy as much as a Martian gold sovereign of equal weight. + +Suppose, however, you had a dishonest Government! Suppose the country +and its Mint were ruled by a king who was a thief. Suppose he owed +large sums of money, and wished to cheat his creditors. He could do it +by paying in sovereigns which were made of lead, with just gold enough +in them to make them look genuine. Henry the Eighth did it less crudely +by giving short weight in silver coins; and he was not the only ruler +who played the same trick when pressed for money. When such frauds are +discovered prices go up and wages follow them. The only gainers were +those who, like the king, had borrowed heavy money and were paying it +in light; and what they gained the creditors lost. But it was a low +trick, damaging English as well as royal credit, as all English debtors +were inextricably and involuntarily engaged in the swindle as deeply as +the king. + +The moral is that a dishonest ruler is one of the greatest dangers a +nation has to dread. People who do not understand these things make a +great fuss because Henry married six wives and had very bad luck with +most of them, and because he allowed the nobles to plunder the Church. +But we are far more concerned today with his debasement of the coinage; +for that is a danger that is hanging over our own heads. Henry’s trick +is now played not only by kings, but by republican governments with +Socialist majorities and by the Soviets of proletarian States, with +the result that innocent women, provided comfortably for by years of +self-denial on the part of their parents in paying insurance premiums, +find themselves starving; pensions earned by lifetimes of honorable and +arduous service lose their value, leaving the pensioners to survive +their privations as castaways survive in a boat at sea; and enormous +fortunes are made without the least merit by A, B, and C, whilst X, Y, +and Z, without the least fault, go bankrupt. The matter is so serious +and so menacing that you must summon all your patience while I explain +it more particularly. + +At present (1927) we do not use sovereigns. We use bits of paper, +mostly dirty and smelly, with the words _One Pound_ printed in large +letters on them, and a picture of the Houses of Parliament on the back. +There is also a printed notice that the bit of paper is a currency +note, and that by Act of Parliament IV and V Geo. V, ch. XIV, if you +owe anyone a pound you can pay him by handing him the bit of paper, +which he must accept as a full discharge of your debt to him whether he +likes or not. + +Now there is no use pretending that this bit of paper which you can +pass as a pound is worth anything at all as paper. It is too small +and too crowded with print and pictures to be usable for any of the +uses to which paper can be put, except that of a short title deed to a +poundsworth of goods. Yet there is no law to prevent the Government, +which owes 7700 million pounds to its creditors, from printing off 7700 +millions of these one pound Treasury notes, and paying off all its home +creditors with them, even though a thousand of them would not buy a +cigarette. + +You may say that this is too monstrous to be possible. But it has +been done, and that quite recently, as I know to my cost. The German +Government did it after the war when the conquerors, with insane spite, +persisted in demanding sums of money that the Germans had not got. The +Austrian Government did it. The Russian Government did it. I was owed +by these countries sums sufficient to support me for the rest of my +days; and they paid me in paper money, four thousand million pounds +of which was worth exactly twopence halfpenny in English money. The +British Government thought it was making Germany pay for the war; +but it was really making me and all the other creditors of Germany +pay for it. Now as I was a foreigner and an alien enemy, the Germans +probably do not feel very sorry for me. But the same occurred to the +Germans who were owed German money, whether by foreigners or by other +Germans. Merchants who had obtained goods for bills payable in six +months paid those bills with paper Marks and thus got the goods for +nothing. Mortgages on land and houses, and debentures and loan stocks +of every redeemable sort, were cleared off in the same way. And one +very unexpected result of this was that German employers, relieved of +the burden of mortgages and loans such as the English employers were +bearing, were able to undersell the English even in the English market. +All sorts of extraordinary things happened. Nobody saved money, because +its value fell from hour to hour: people went into a restaurant for a +five million lunch, and when they came to pay found that the price had +gone up to seven millions whilst they were eating. The moment a woman +got a scrap of money she rushed to the shops to buy something with it; +for the thing she bought would keep its usefulness, but the money that +bought it, if she kept it until tomorrow, might not purchase half so +much, or a tenth so much, or indeed anything at all. It was better to +pay ten million marks for a frying-pan, even if you had two frying-pans +already, than to buy nothing; for the frying-pan would remain a +frying-pan and fry things (if you had anything to fry) whatever +happened; but the ten million marks might not pay a tram fare by five +o’clock the same evening. + +A still better plan in Germany then was to buy shares if you could get +them; for factories and railways will keep as well as frying-pans. +Thus, though people were in a frantic hurry to spend their money, they +were also in a frantic hurry to invest it: that is, use it as capital; +so that there was not only a delusive appearance of an increase in +the national capital produced by the simple expedient of calling a +spare loaf of bread fifty thousand pounds, but a real increase in the +proportion of their subsistence which people were willing to invest +instead of spending. But however the money was spent, the object of +everyone was to get rid of it instantly by exchanging it for something +that would not change in value. They soon began to use foreign money +(American dollars mostly); and this expedient, eked out with every +possible device for doing without money altogether by bartering, tided +them over until the Government was forced to introduce a new gold +currency and leave the old notes to be thrown into the waste paper +basket or kept to be sold fifty years hence as curiosities, like the +famous assignats of the French Revolution. + +This process of debasement of the currency by a Government in order +that it may cheat its creditors is called by the polite name, which few +understand, of Inflation; and the reversal of the process by going back +to a currency of precious metal is called Deflation. The worst of it is +that the remedy is as painful as the disease, because if Inflation, by +raising prices, enables the debtor to cheat the creditor, Deflation, by +lowering them, enables the creditor to cheat the debtor. Therefore the +most sacred economic duty of a Government is to keep the value of money +steady; and it is because Governments can play tricks with the value of +money that it is of such vital importance that they should consist of +men who are honest, and who understand money thoroughly. + +At present there is not a Government in the world that answers fully +to this description. Between our own Government, which took advantage +of the war to substitute Treasury notes for our gold currency, and +the German and Russian Governments, which issued so many notes that a +vanload of them would hardly buy a postage stamp, the difference is +only one of degree. And this degree was not in the relative honesty of +Englishmen, Russians, and Germans, but in the pressure of circumstances +on them, and consequently of temptation. Had we been defeated and +forced to pay impossible sums to our conquerors, or momentarily wrecked +as Russia was by the collapse of the Tsardom, we should not have been +any honester; for though the doubling of prices that occurred here +seems to have been caused by scarcity of goods and labor rather than by +an excessive issue of paper money, we still treat with great respect as +high financial authorities gentlemen who recommend Inflation as a means +of providing industry with additional capital. Whether these gentlemen +really believe that we could double our wealth by simply printing twice +as many Treasury notes, or whether they owe so much money that they +would be greatly relieved if only they could be let pay it in paper +pounds worth only ten shillings, is not always easy to guess. But if +you catch your Parliamentary representative advocating Inflation, and +ask him, at the risk of being told that you are no lady, whether he is +a fool or a rogue, you will give him a salutary shock, and force him +to think for a moment instead of merely grabbing at the illusion of +enriching the nation by calling a penny twopence. + +And now, if you agree with me that it is the duty of a Government to +keep the value of its money always as nearly as possible at the same +level, we are both up against the question, “What level?” Well, you +may take it as a rule of thumb that the answer always is the existing +level, unless it has been tampered with and has wobbled badly, in which +case the easiest answer is “Whatever level it had before it began to +wobble”. But if you want a real explanation and not a mere rule of +thumb, you must think of coins and notes as useful articles which you +carry about because without them you cannot take a bus or a taxi or a +train, or buy a bun. There must be enough of them to supply you and +all the other people who have purchases to make. In short, coins and +notes are like needles or shovels; and their value is settled in the +same way. If the manufacturers make ten times as many needles as anyone +wants, then their needles will fetch nothing as needles, because no +woman will pay anything for the one needle she wants if there are nine +lying about to be had for nothing. So all that can be done is to take +the nine worthless needles and use the steel in them to make something +else (say steel pens), after which there will be no longer any useless +needles, and the remaining useful ones will be worth at least what it +cost to make them, because sempstresses will want them badly enough +to be willing to pay that price. An intelligent community will try +to regulate the supply of needles so as to keep their value at that +level as nearly as possible. A Capitalist community, on the contrary, +will regulate it so as to make needles yield the utmost profit to the +capitalist. But anyhow the value will depend on the quantity available. + +Now just as a needle is for sewing, and is of no legitimate use for +anything else, so coins and notes are for enabling people to buy and +sell, and no use for anything else. And one coin will do for many +sales as it passes from hand to hand, just as one needle will do to +hem many handkerchiefs. This makes it very difficult to find out how +many needles and coins are wanted. You cannot say “There are so many +handkerchiefs in the country which must be hemmed; so we will make a +needle for every one of them”, or “There are so many loaves of bread +to be sold every morning; so we will make coins or issue notes for the +price of every one of them”. No person or Government on earth can say +beforehand how many needles or coins will be enough. You can count +the mouths you have to feed, and say how many loaves will be required +to fill them, because a slice of bread can be eaten only once, and is +destroyed by being eaten; but a needle or a sovereign or a Treasury +note can be used over and over again. One pound may be lying in an +old stocking until the landlord calls for it, whilst another may be +changing hands fifty times a day and effecting a sale every time. How +then is a Government to settle how many coins and notes it shall issue? +And how is a needle manufacturer to decide how many needles he shall +make? + +There is only one way of doing it. The needle makers just keep on +making needles at a fancy price until they find they cannot sell them +all without charging less for them; and then they go on charging less +and less, but selling more and more (because of the cheapness), until +the price is so low that they would make less profit if it went any +lower, after which they make no more needles than are necessary to +keep the supply, and consequently the price, just at that point. The +Government has to do the same with gold coins. At first, because gold +is more useful for coins than for anything else, an ounce of gold +coined into sovereigns will be worth more than an ounce of uncoined +gold (called bar or bullion). But if the Government issues more +sovereigns than are needed for our buying and selling there will be +more sovereigns than are wanted; and their value per ounce of gold will +fall below that of gold bullion. This will be shewn by all prices going +up, including that of gold in bars and ingots. The result will be that +gold merchants will find it profitable to melt down sovereigns into +bars of gold to be made into watches and bracelets and other things +than coins. But this melting down reduces the number of sovereigns, +which immediately begin to rise in value as they become scarcer until +gold in the form of sovereigns is worth as much as gold in any other +form. In this way, as long as money consists of gold, and melting down +cannot be prevented as soon as it becomes profitable, the value of the +coinage fixes and maintains itself automatically. It is against the +British law to melt down a British sovereign in the British Empire; but +as this silly law cannot restrain, say, a Dutch goldsmith in Amsterdam +from melting down as many British sovereigns as he pleases, it does not +count. + +Though this settles the value of gold money, and all prices can be +fixed in terms of gold, a penny being the two hundred and fortieth part +of a sovereign, half a crown the eighth part of a sovereign, and so on, +yet you cannot have gold pennies or even sixpences: they would be too +small to handle. Also, if you want to make or receive a payment of five +thousand pounds, you would find five thousand sovereigns more than you +would care to carry. We get out of the penny and sixpenny difficulty +by using coins of bronze and silver, making a law that bronze pennies +shall be accepted, provided not more than twelve are offered at a time, +as worth the two hundred and fortieth part of a sovereign, and that +silver coins shall pass up to £2. We get over the five thousand pound +difficulty by allowing the Bank of England to issue promissory notes, +payable at sight in gold at the Bank, for sums of five pounds, ten +pounds, a hundred pounds, and so on. People hand these notes from one +to another in buying and selling, knowing them to be “as good as gold”. +Certain Scottish and Irish banks have the same privilege on condition +that they hold sufficient gold in their cellars to redeem the notes +when presented, and, of course, that they do not pay their debts in +their own notes. + +In this way we all get used to paper money as well as to bronze and +silver coins: that is, we get used to pretending that a scrap of paper +with a water mark is worth 615 grains of gold or thereabouts; that a +bit of metal that is only half silver is worth a much larger piece of +pure silver; that 240 bits of bronze are worth a sovereign, and so on. +We find these cheap substitutes do just as well as gold coins; and we +naturally begin to ask what is the use of having any gold money at +all, seeing that we get on quite well without it. Paper is just as +effective as an instrument of exchange, and much less heavy to handle. +We measure prices in quantities of gold; but imaginary gold does for +that as well as real gold, just as you can measure fluids by pints and +quarts without having a drop of beer in the house. If only the honesty +of Governments could be depended on, the use of gold for money would +be a pure luxury, like using gold safety pins and diamond shirt studs +instead of common ones, which fasten quite as well. + +But that is a very large If. When there is a genuine gold currency, +the purchasing power of the coins does not depend on the honesty of +the Government: they are valuable as precious metal, and can be turned +to other purposes if the Government issues more of them than are +needed for buying and selling. But the Government can go on printing +and issuing paper money until it is worthless. Where should it stop +when the check of gold is removed? As we have seen, it should stop the +moment there is any sign of a general rise of prices, because the only +thing that can cause a general rise of prices is a fall in the value of +money. This or that article may become cheaper by the discovery of new +ways of making it, or dearer by a failure in the crops, or worthless +by a change of fashion; but all the articles do not move together from +these causes: some rise and others fall. When they all rise or fall +simultaneously, then it is not the articles that are changing in value +but the money. In a paper money country the Government should watch +carefully for such movements; and when prices all rise together they +should withdraw notes from circulation until prices all fall again. +When all prices fall simultaneously the Government should issue fresh +notes until they rise again. What is needed is just enough money to +do all the ready money selling and buying in the country. When less is +issued money gets a scarcity value; so that when you go into a grocer’s +shop he will give you more for your money (falling prices); and when +more is issued there is a glut of it and the grocer will give less +for it (rising prices). The business of an honest and understanding +Government is to keep it steady by adjusting the supply to the demand. +When Governments are either dishonest or ignorant, or both, there is no +safety save in a currency of precious metal. + +Remember, by the way, that modern banking makes it possible to do an +enormous quantity of business without coinage or notes or money of any +sort. Suppose Mrs John Doe and Mrs Richard Roe are both in business. +Suppose Mrs Doe sells Mrs Roe five hundred pounds’ worth of goods, +and at the same time buys goods from her to the value of five hundred +pounds and one penny. They do business to the amount of a thousand +pounds and one penny; yet all the money they need to settle their +accounts is the odd penny. If they keep their accounts at the same +bank even the penny is not necessary. The banker transfers a penny +from Mrs Doe’s account to Mrs Roe’s; and the thing is done. When you +have to pay a business debt you do not give your creditor the money: +you give him an order on your banker for it (a cheque); and he does +not go to your bank and cash the cheque: he gives it to his own banker +to collect. Thus every bank finds every day that it has to pay a heap +of money to other banks which hold cheques on it for collection, and +at the same time to receive a heap of money for the cheques it has +received for collection from the other banks. These cheques taken +together may amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds, yet the +difference between the ones to be paid and the ones to be collected +may be only a few pounds or less. So the banks began by setting up a +Clearing House, as they call it, to add up all the cheques and find +out what each bank ought to pay or receive on balance. This saved a +great deal of money handling, as the transfer of a single pound from +one bank to another would settle transactions involving huge sums. But +it presently occurred to the banks that even this pound might be saved +if they all kept an account at the same bank. So the banks themselves +opened accounts at the Bank of England; and now their accounts with +oneanother are settled by a couple of entries in the Bank of England’s +books; and trade to the amount of millions and millions is done by pure +figures without the use of coinage or notes. If we were all well enough +off to have banking accounts money might disappear altogether, except +for small transactions between strangers whose names and addresses were +unknown to oneanother: for instance, you give an order and pay by a +cheque in a shop because you can count on finding the shopkeeper in the +same place if there is anything wrong with the goods; and he can count +on finding you similarly if there is anything wrong with your cheque; +but if you take a taxi on the way home, you can hardly expect the +driver to open an account for you; so you settle with him by handing +him his fare in coin. + +This need for pocket money (change) is greatly reduced by Communism. In +the days of turnpike roads and toll bridges every traveller had to keep +a supply of money to pay tolls at every turnpike gate and bridge head. +Now that the roads and bridges are communized he can travel by road +from London to Aberdeen in his car without having to put his hand in +his pocket once to pay for the roads, because he has already paid when +taking out the communal license for his car. If he pays his hotel bills +by cheque he needs no money for his journey except for tips; and when +these fall into disuse, as the old custom of making presents to judges +has done, it is easy to conceive motoring trips, in the Communist +future, being carried out in the greatest luxury by highly prosperous +but literally penniless persons. + +In this way actual money is coming to be replaced more and more by +money of account: that is, we still count our earnings and our debts +in terms of money, and value our position in the same way, earning +hundreds of pounds, paying hundreds of pounds, owning hundreds of +poundsworth of furniture and clothes and motor cars, and yet never +having more than a few pounds and a handful of silver in our pockets +from one end of our lives to the other. The cost of providing coins and +notes for the nation to buy and sell with is dwindling continuously to +a smaller and smaller percentage of the value of the goods bought and +sold. + +It may amuse you to realize that when coinage disappears altogether it +does not matter whether we call our debts sovereigns and pennies and +shillings or millions and billions and trillions. When the Germans were +paying millions for tram fares and postage stamps, no harm was done by +the apparent magnitude of the price: poor men could still ride in trams +and send letters. If only those prices could have been depended on to +stay put, so that the poor man (or the rich one for that matter) could +have felt sure that his million mark note would buy as much tomorrow +as today, and as much next year as this year, it would not have +inconvenienced him in the least that the million mark note used to be +a bronze coin. Germany has now stabilized her currency at the old rate +of twenty marks to the English pound. Austria stabilized hers at first +at the startling rate of 300,000 tenpences to the English pound but had +to alter this to 34½ sevenpenny schillings later on. Except for the +look of the thing the change made no great difference to the marketing +housekeeper. When prices are in millions she soon gets into the habit +of dropping the six noughts in conversation across the counter. Such +prices seem silly to us because we are not accustomed to millionaire +scavengers and beef at billions a pound. We are accustomed to pounds +worth 160 ounces of butter; but pounds worth half a grain of butter +or ten tons of butter will do as long as they are stabilized at that, +and as long as the money is either money of account, existing only as +ink marks in ledgers, or paper notes of no intrinsic value. If a tram +ticket costs a million pounds it can be paid more cheaply than by a +penny, provided the million pounds be only a scrap of paper costing +less than a disk of bronze. + +To sum up, the most important thing about money is to maintain its +stability, so that a pound will buy as much a year hence or ten years +hence or fifty years hence as today, and no more. With paper money this +stability has to be maintained by the Government. With a gold currency +it tends to maintain itself even when the natural supply of gold is +increased by discoveries of new deposits, because of the curious fact +that the demand for gold in the world is practically infinite. You have +to choose (as a voter) between trusting to the natural stability of +gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the +members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I +advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold. + + + + +56 + +NATIONALIZATION OF BANKING + + +You now know enough about banking and the manufacture of money to +understand that they are necessities of civilization. They are in some +respects quite peculiar businesses. Banking heaps up huge masses of +capital in the banker’s hands for absolutely nothing but the provision +of a till to put it in, and clerks to keep an account of it. Coinage is +useless without a Government guarantee of the genuineness of the coins, +and a code of laws making it a serious crime for any private person to +make counterfeit coins, besides settling the limits within which coins +that are stamped with more than their value as metal (called token +coinage) can be used for paying debts. + +As it is impossible for any private person or company to fulfil these +coinage conditions satisfactorily, the manufacture of money is a +nationalized business, unlike the manufacture of boots. You do not +see a mint in every street as you see a bootmaker’s. All the money +is made in THE Mint, which is a Government factory of coins. If, in +your disgust at the disagreeable white metal shillings which have been +substituted since the war for the old silver ones, you were to set up a +private mint of your own, you would be sent to prison for coining, even +though you could prove that your nice shillings were worth more than +the nasty ones of the Government. Formerly, if you had a quantity of +gold, you could take it to the Mint, and have it made into sovereigns +for you at a small charge for the King’s image and guarantee called +seignorage; but you were not allowed to make the coins for yourself out +of your own gold. Today the Mint will not do that for you because it +is easier for you to give your gold to your banker, who will give you +credit for its worth in money. Thus the whole business is as strictly +nationalized as that of the Post Office. Perhaps you do not know that +you can be prosecuted for carrying a letter for hire instead of giving +it to the Postmaster-General to carry. But you can, just as you can +be prosecuted for making a coin, or for melting one down. And nobody +objects. The people who, when it is proposed to nationalize the coal +mines and the railways, shriek into your ears that nationalization is +robbery and ruin, are so perfectly satisfied with the nationalization +of the Mint that they never even notice that it is nationalized, poor +dears! + +However, private persons can issue a currency of their own, provided it +is not an imitation of the Government currency. You may write a cheque, +or a bill of exchange, and use it as paper money as often as you +please; and no policeman can lay a finger on you for it provided (_a_) +that you have enough Government money at your bank to meet the cheque +when it is presented for payment, and (_b_) that the piece of paper on +which your cheque is printed, or your bill of exchange drawn, bears +no resemblance to a Treasury note or a bank note. An enormous volume +of business is done today by these private currencies of cheques and +bills of exchange. But they are not money: they are only title deeds to +money, just as money itself is only a title deed to goods. If you owe +money to your grocer he may refuse to take a cheque in payment; but if +you offer him Treasury notes or sovereigns, he must take them whether +he likes them or not. If you are trading with a manufacturer, and offer +him a bill of exchange pledging you to pay for his goods in six months, +he may refuse it and insist on Government money down on the nail. But +he may not refuse Government money. Your offer of it is “legal tender”. + +Besides, money, as we have seen, is a measure of value; and cheques and +bills are not. The cheques and bills would have no meaning and no use +unless they were expressed in terms of money. They are all for so many +pounds, shillings, and pence; and if there were no pounds, shillings, +and pence in the background, a cheque would have to run “Pay to Emma +Wilkins or Order two pairs of secondhand stockings, slightly laddered, +my share of the family Pekingese dog, and half an egg”. No banker would +undertake to pay cheques of that sort. Both cheques and banking depend +on the existence of nationalized money. + +Banking is not yet nationalized; but it will be, because the public +gain from nationalization will lead people to vote for it when they +understand it just as they will vote for nationalization of the +coal mines. Business people need capital to start and extend their +businesses just as they need coal to warm themselves. As we have seen, +when they want hundreds of thousands they get them by paying enormous +commissions to financiers, who are so spoiled by huge profits that +they will not deign to look at what they regard as small business. +Those who want tens of thousands are not catered for: and those who +want modest hundreds are often driven to borrow from money lenders at +high rates of interest because the bank manager does not think it worth +the bank’s while to let them overdraw. If you could shew these traders +a bank working not to make profits at the expense of its customers +but to distribute capital as cheaply as possible for the good of the +country to all the businesses, large or small, which needed it, they +would rush to it and snap their fingers at the profiteering financiers. +A national or municipal bank would be just that. It would bring down +the price of capital just as nationalization of the coal mines would +bring down the price of coal, by eliminating the profiteer; and all the +profiteers except the money profiteers (financiers and bankers) will +be finally converted to it by this prospect, because, though they aim +at making as much profit as possible out of you when you go shopping, +they are determined that other people shall make as little profit as +possible out of them. + +Nationalization of Banking therefore needs no Socialist advocacy to +recommend it to the middle class. It is just as likely to be finally +achieved by a Conservative Government as by a Labor one. The proof is +that the first municipal bank has been established in Birmingham, which +returns twelve members to Parliament of whom eleven are Conservatives, +and strong ones at that. Only one is Labor. The Birmingham municipal +bank has been so easily and brilliantly successful that unless it be +deliberately sabotaged in the interests of the financiers by a press +campaign against it, which is practically impossible in a city of +manufacturers, it will lead to a development of municipal banking all +over the manufacturing districts. Already there are several others. + +Meanwhile the bankers and financiers continue to assure us that their +business is such a mysteriously difficult one that no Government or +municipal department could deal with it successfully. They are right +about the mystery, which is due to the fact that they only half +understand their own business, and their customers do not understand +it at all. By this time I hope you understand it much better than an +average banker. But the difficulty is all nonsense. Let us see again +what a bank has to do. + +By simply offering to keep people’s money safe for them, and to make +payments out of it for them to anyone they choose to name (by cheque), +and to keep a simple cash account of these payments for them, it gets +into its hands a mass of spare money which it professes to keep at +its customers’ call, but which it finds by experience it can hire +out to the extent of about sixteen shillings in the pound because +each customer keeps a balance to his credit all the time. There is +no mystery or difficulty about this. It can be done by government or +municipal banks as easily as petty banking, with its currency of postal +notes and stamps, is done by our national post offices and savings +banks. The only part of it that is not automatically successful is +the hiring out of the money when it is paid in. A bank manager whose +judgment was bad would very soon get his bank into difficulties by +hiring out the spare money to traders who are in a bad way, either +because their businesses were being superseded by new businesses, or +because they were too honest, or not honest enough, or extravagant, or +drunken, or lazy, or not good men of business, or poetically unfitted +to succeed. But a manager who was too cautious to lend any money at all +would be still more disastrous; for we must continually remember that +the things represented by the spare money in the bank will not keep, +and that if fifty billions’ worth of food were saved out of the year’s +harvest and lodged in a State bank (or any other bank) it would be a +dead loss and waste if it were not eaten pretty promptly by workers +building up facilities for producing future harvests. The bank manager +can choose the person to whom he lends the bank’s spare money; but he +cannot choose not to lend it at all; just as a baker, when he has sold +all the bread he can for ready money, must either give credit for the +rest to somebody or else throw the loaves into the dustbin. + +Only, there is this difference between the baker and the banker. The +baker can refrain from baking more loaves than he can reasonably expect +to sell; but the banker may find himself heaped up with far more spare +money than he can find safe hirers for; and then he has not only to +take chances himself, but to tempt tradesmen by low rates of hire to +take them (“the banks are granting credit freely” the city articles +in the papers will say), whereas at other times his spare money will +be so short that he will pick and choose and charge high interest +(“the bankers are restricting credit”); and this is why it takes more +knowledge and critical judgment to manage a bank than to run a baker’s +shop. + +No wonder the bankers, who make enormous profits, and consequently have +the greatest dread of having these cut off by the nationalization of +banking, declare that no Government could possibly do this difficult +work of hiring out money, and that it must be left to them, as they +alone understand it! Now, to begin with, they neither understand it nor +do it themselves. Their bad advice produced widespread ruin in Europe +after the war, simply because they did not understand the rudiments of +their business, and persisted in reasoning on the assumption that spent +capital still exists, and that credit is something solid that can be +eaten and drunk and worn and lived in. The people who do the really +successful work of hiring out the heaps of spare money in the bank for +use in business are not the bankers but the bank managers, who are only +employees. Their position as such is not more eligible either in money +or social standing than that of an upper division civil servant, and +is in many respects much less eligible. They would be only too glad +to be civil servants instead of private employees. As to the superior +direction which deals with what may be called the wholesale investment +of the banked spare money as distinguished from its retail hirings to +ordinary tradesmen and men of business, the pretence that this could +not be done by the Treasury or any modern public finance department is +a tale for the marines. The Bank of England is as glad to have a former +Treasury official on its staff as the London Midland and Scottish +Railway to have a former civil servant for its Chairman. + + + + +57 + +COMPENSATION FOR NATIONALIZATION + + +By the way, when demonstrating the need for the nationalization of +banking to you I did not forget that you may be a bank shareholder, +and that your attention may have been distracted by your wonder as to +what will become of your shares when the banks are nationalized. I have +had to consider this question rather closely myself, because, as it +happens, my wife is a bank shareholder. We might have to cut down our +household expenses if everyone went to a national or municipal bank +instead of to her bank. In fact, when banking is nationalized, private +banking will probably be made a crime, like private coining or letter +carrying. So we shall certainly insist on the Government buying her +shares when it nationalizes banking. + +The Government will buy them willingly enough, for the excellent reason +that it will get the money by taxing all capitalists’ incomes; so that +if my wife were the only capitalist in the country the transaction +would be as broad as it was long: the Government would take from her +with one hand what it gave her with the other. Fortunately for her +there are plenty of other capitalists to be taxed along with her; so +that instead of having to provide all the money to buy herself out, +she will have to provide only a little bit of it; and all the little +bits that the other capitalists will have to provide will go into her +pocket. This transaction is called Compensation. + +It is very important that you should grasp this quaint process which +seems so perfectly fair and ordinary. It explains how Governments +compensate without really compensating, and how such compensation +costs the nation nothing, being really a method of expropriation. Just +consider. If the Government purchases a piece of land or a railway or +a bank or a coal mine, and pays for it out of the taxes, it is evident +that the Government gets it for nothing: it is the taxpayers who pay. +And if the tax is a tax like the income tax, from which the bulk of +the nation is wholly or partially exempt, or the supertax and estate +duties, which fall on the capitalist classes only, then the Government +has compelled the capitalist class to buy out one of themselves and +present her property to the nation without any compensation whatever. +The so-called compensation is only an adjustment by which the loss is +shared by the whole capitalist class instead of being borne wholly by +the particular member of it whose piece of land or bank shares or other +property the Government happens to want. Even that member pays her +share of the tax without compensation. + +Some ladies may find this clearer if an imaginary case is put before +them in figures. Suppose the Government wants a piece of land of the +market value of £1000! Suppose it raises that sum, not by taxing +the nation, but by taxing the incomes of a hundred rich landlords, +including the owner of the piece of land, making each of them +contribute £10! The Government then takes the piece of land, and +solemnly hands £1000 to its former owner, telling him that he has +nothing to complain of, as he has been paid the full market value of +his land instead of having had it wrested from him violently in a +revolutionary manner, as the Bolshevists took the land from the Russian +landlords in 1917. Nothing can be more reasonable and constitutional +and customary; the most Conservative Government might do it; in fact +(except for the substitution of all the landlords for a hundred +selected ones) Conservative Governments have done it over and over +again. None the less, at the end of the transaction a piece of land +has passed from private property into national property; and a hundred +landlords have had their incomes reduced by ten shillings a year each +(the interest on £10 at 5 per cent). It is quite clear that if such a +transaction is repeated often enough the nation will have all the land, +and the incomes of the landlords will be reduced to nothing, although +every acre has been bought from its owner at full market price. The +process can be applied to bank shares or any other shares as easily as +to acres. + +Let me repeat that this is not something that may be done: it is +something that has been done and is being done. It has gone so far +already that a huge quantity of property formerly owned by private +persons is now owned by the Government and the municipalities: that +is, by the nation; whilst taxation has risen to such a point that the +rich have to remind themselves continually that their pounds are only +thirteen-and-fourpences or less, because the Government will take the +other six and eightpence or more as income tax and supertax, and that +even out of the thirteen and fourpence the municipalities of the places +where their houses are (rich men keep from two to five houses) will +take a considerable dollop in rates for pure Communism. At present +they are selling their houses in all directions to speculators and +contractors who have made large fortunes out of inflation and War; but +these New Rich will in their turn be forced to buy oneanother out just +as the Old Rich, now called the New Poor, were. + +In this way you get the constitutional rule for nationalization of +private property, which is, always to pay the full market price or +more to the proprietors for every scrap of property nationalized. Pay +for it by taxing incomes derived from property (there is, of course, no +compensation for taxation). Your own rule as a voter should be never to +vote for a candidate who advocates expropriation without compensation, +whether he calls himself a Socialist or Communist, in which case he +does not understand his own political business, or a Liberal. The +Liberal impulse is almost always to give a dog a bad name and hang him: +that is, to denounce the menaced proprietors as enemies of mankind, and +ruin them in a transport of virtuous indignation. But Liberals are not, +as such, hostile to capitalists, nor indeed to anybody but publicans +and imaginary feudal landlords. Conservatives are practically always +for compensation to property owners; and they are right; but they do +not see through the trick of it as you now do. + +Anyhow, always vote against the no-compensation candidate unless you +are opposed to nationalization, and are subtle enough to see that +the surest way to defeat it is to advocate its being carried out +vindictively without a farthing of compensation. + +There is, however, an alternative to compensated nationalization of +private industries. Why should not the Government set up for itself +in the industry it desires to nationalize, and extinguish its private +competitors just as the big multiple shops extinguish the small shops, +by underselling them, and by all the other methods of competitive +trade? The Birmingham municipality has begun the nationalization of +banking without troubling itself about the private banks: it has simply +opened its bank in the street and gone ahead. The parcel post was +established without any compensation to private carriers; and the Cash +on Delivery development of it was effected without any consideration +for the middlemen whom it superseded. Private employers have always +proceeded in this manner on competitive principles; why should not the +State, as public employer, do just the same? + +The reason is that the competitive method is an extremely wasteful one. +When two bakeries are set up in a district that could be quite well +served by one, or two milk carts ply in the same street, each trying +to snatch the other’s custom, it means that the difference between the +cost of running two and one is sheer waste. When a woman wears out her +hat, or rather when the hatmakers change the fashion so as to compel +her to buy a new hat before the one she is wearing is half worn out, +and fifty shops make new hats on the chance of selling that one to her, +there is overproduction, with its sequel of unemployment. + +Now apply this to, for example, the nationalization of railways. The +Government could, no doubt, construct a network of State railways +parallel with the existing railways; so that you could go from London +to Penzance either by the Great Western or by a new State line running +side by side with it. The State could then, by introducing the system +of Penny Transport proposed by Mr Whately Arnold on the lines of Penny +Postage, undersell the separate private companies and take all their +traffic from them. That would be the competitive method. Then there +would be two railways to Penzance and Thurso and Bristol and Cromer and +everywhere else, one of them carrying nearly all the traffic, and the +other carrying only its leavings and holiday overflows until it fell +into hopeless and dangerous decay and ruin. + +But can you imagine anything more idiotically wasteful? The cost +of making the competing State railway would be enormous, and quite +unnecessary. The ruin of the private railway would be sheer destruction +of a useful and sufficient means of communication which had itself cost +a huge sum. The land occupied by one of the railways would be wasted. +What Government in its senses would propose such a thing when it could +take over the existing railways by compensating the shareholders in +the manner I have described: that is, distributing their loss over the +propertied class without a farthing of expense to the nation as a whole? + +The same considerations must lead the State to take over the existing +banks. Municipal banks on the Birmingham model may be competing banks; +but when a national banking service comes, it will come by way of +nationalizing the existing private banks. + +There is another objection to the competitive method. If the State is +to compete with private enterprise, it must allow private enterprise to +compete with it. Now this is not practicable if the full advantage of +nationalization is to be obtained. The Post Office is able to establish +a letter service and C.O.D. parcel post in every village in the +country, and a telephone and telegraph service in most of them, with +charges reckoned in pence and halfpence, on condition that profiteers +are not allowed to come in and pick out the easy bits of the business +to exploit for themselves. The Postmaster-General does things for the +nation that no profiteer would or could do; but his rule is All or +Nothing. + +A Banker-General would have to insist on the same rule. He would +establish banks, if not literally everywhere, at least in hundreds of +places where the private banks would no more dream of opening a branch, +even on the open-once-a-week scale, than of building a Grand Opera +House. But he, too, would say “All or Nothing: I will not have any +intelligent Jewish gentleman, or rapacious Christian person trained in +the intelligent Jewish gentleman’s office, picking the plums out of my +pudding”. + +Yet do not conclude that all State activities will be State monopolies. +Indeed the nationalization of banking will certainly enlarge the +possibilities of private activity in all sorts of ways. But as the big +public services will have to be made practically ubiquitous, charging +more than they cost in one place and less in another, they must be +protected against sectional private competition. Otherwise we should +have what prevails at present in municipal building, where all the +lucrative contracts for the houses of the rich and the offices of the +capitalists and the churches and institutions and so forth go to the +private employer, whilst the municipality may build only dwellings +for the poor at a loss, which they conceal from the ratepayers by +fictitious figures as to the value of the land. Municipal building is +always insolvent. If it had a monopoly it could afford to make every +town in the land a ratepayers’ and tenants’ paradise. + +This reminds me to remind you that every nationalization of an industry +or service involves the occupation of land by the State. This land +should always be nationalized by purchase and compensation. For if it +is merely rented, as I am sorry to say it sometimes is, the charges +made to the public must be raised by the amount of the rent, thus +giving the ground landlord the money value of all the advantages of the +nationalization. + +I have said nothing about one of the cruelest effects of superseding an +industry by competition instead of buying it up. The process consists +fundamentally of the gradual impoverishment and ruin of those who +are carrying on the superseded business. Capitalism is ruthless on +this point: its principle is “Each for himself; and devil take the +hindmost!” But the State has to consider the loser as well as the +winner. It must not impoverish anybody. It must let the loser down +easily; and there is no other way of doing this except the way of +purchase and compensation. + + + + +58 + +PRELIMINARIES TO NATIONALIZATION + + +You now see that nationalization and municipalization are so desirable +as a means of cheapening the things we all need that the most violently +anti-Socialist Parliaments and municipal corporations have established +nationalized and municipalized industries in the past, and are quite +likely to do so in future under electoral pressure from Conservative +voters. You see also that the alleged enormous expense of buying out +private owners, which has been alleged by a Coal Commission as an +insuperable objection to the nationalization of our coal mines, is a +bogey, because, though the coalowners (of whom, by the way, I am one) +will be fully compensated, the proprietary class as a whole will pay +the bill out of their unearned incomes, leaving the nation richer +instead of poorer by the transaction. So far so good. Theoretically, +nationalization is perfectly sound. + +Practically, it takes, as the people very accurately put it, a lot +of doing. A mere proclamation that such and such an industry is +nationalized can do nothing but just put a stop to it. Before any +industry or service can be effectively nationalized a new department +of the Civil Service must be created to carry it on. Unless we had a +War Office we could not have an army, because no soldier could get his +pay, or his uniform, or his weapons. Without an Admiralty, no navy. +Without a General Post Office and a Postmaster-General, no letters +in the morning. Without a Royal Mint and a Master of the Mint, no +money. Without Scotland Yard in London, and Watch Committees in the +country, no police. And as in the present so in the future. Without a +great extension of the Treasury, banking cannot be nationalized, nor +coal without the creation of a Department of Mines much bigger than +our existing Department of Woods and Forests, nor railways without a +Railway Board and a Railroadmaster-General as important as the Post +Office and the Postmaster-General. + +Such institutions can be set up by stable and highly organized States +only, which means--and here is the political moral of it--that they +cannot be done by revolutions, or by improvised dictatorships, or +even by permanent States in which, as in America, where in some cases +the civil services are still regarded as the spoils of office, a new +set of officials oust the old ones whenever the Opposition ousts the +Government. What a revolution can do towards nationalization is to +destroy the political power of the class which opposes nationalization. +But such a revolution by itself cannot nationalize; and the new +Government it sets up may be unable even to carry on the nationalized +services it finds in existence, and be obliged to abandon them to +private enterprise. + +A nationalizing Government must also be financially honest, and +determined to make the nationalization a success, and neither plunder +it to eke out the general revenue, nor discredit and wreck it so to +have an excuse for giving the nationalized service back to the private +profiteers. State railways have sometimes been standing examples of +what State management can be at its worst. The Governments, instead of +keeping the railways in proper repair, grabbed all the money paid by +the public in fares and freightage; applied it to the relief of general +taxation; and let the stations and rolling stock decay until their +railways were the worst in the world, and there was a general clamor +for their denationalization. Private profiteering enterprises have gone +to pieces in the same way and worse; but, as they have been responsible +to themselves only, their failures and frauds have passed unnoted, +whilst the failures and frauds of Governments have raised great popular +agitations and even provoked revolutions. The misdeeds of Governments +are public and conspicuous: the misdeeds of private traders are +practically invisible; and thus an illusion is created that Governments +are less honest and efficient than private traders. It is only an +illusion; but all the same, honesty and good faith are as necessary in +nationalized businesses as in private ones. Our British nationalized +services are held up as models of integrity; yet the Postmaster-General +overcharges us a little for our letters, and puts the profit into the +pockets of the propertied class in the form of reduced income tax; and +the Admiralty is continually fighting against the tendency to keep down +taxation by starving the navy. These depredations do not amount to +much; but they illustrate what may be done when voters are not vigilant +and well instructed. + + + + +59 + +CONFISCATION WITHOUT COMPENSATION + + +Our study of nationalization by compensated or distributed +confiscation has no doubt relieved you from all anxiety as to the +need for nationalization without compensation. But there is always a +loud-mouthed, virtuously indignant political group, still saturated +with the revolutionary traditions of Liberalism, which opposes +compensation. If the property owner is, in effect, a thief, they say, +why should he be compensated for being compelled to cease to do evil +and learn to do well? If by taxation we can make the whole capitalist +class find the money to buy out the coalowners, and thus transfer their +property to the nation to that extent, why not take the rest of their +property simply for the sake of transferring it also to the nation? +Our joint stock companies work as well with one set of shareholders +as with another: in fact their shares change hands so continually in +the Money Market that they never have the same set of shareholders +from one working day to the next. If all the railway shares in the +country were held on Monday by the inhabitants of Park Lane, and on +Tuesday by the British Government, the railways would go on just the +same. In like case so would any other of the great industrial services +now in joint stock ownership. If a landlord had to hand over the +title-deeds of half a dozen farms and an urban street to the Exchequer, +the farmers would go on farming, and the tenants go on living in the +street, unaffected by the obligation to pay their rents in future to +an agent of the Government instead of to the agent of a duke or any +other plutocrat. The business of a bank would proceed just as smoothly +after as before the owners had handed over their claims on its profits +to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then why not at once push taxation +of capital to the point at which the capitalist taxpayer, unable to +find the money, will be forced to surrender to the Government his share +certificates, his War Loan interest, and his title-deeds? The share +certificates would not be worth a farthing on the Stock Exchange, +because there would be all sellers and no buyers there; but none the +less each certificate would, like the title-deeds to the land, carry +the right to an income out of the future harvests of the country; and +if the Government could immediately use that income for the benefit of +the nation, it would be extremely well worth its while to get hold of +it by accepting the certificates at their face value. + +It could even do so with a show of generosity; for it could say to the +capitalist, “You owe the tax collector a thousand pounds (say); but +instead of selling you up we are authorizing him to give you a clean +receipt, not for the money, but for ten paper certificates marked a +hundred pounds each, for which the cleverest stockbroker in London +could not get you twopence”. “But”, exclaims the cornered capitalist, +“what becomes of my income? What am I to do for a living?” “Work for +it, as others have to do”, is the reply. In short, from the point of +view of its Socialist advocates, taxation of capital, though absurd +as a means of raising ready money for the expenses of Government, is +a way of confiscating without compensation the title-deeds of, and +thereby nationalizing, the land and the mines and the railways and all +the other industries which the capitalists now hold as their private +property. + +The scheme is plausible enough. + + + + +60 + +REVOLT OF THE PARASITIC PROLETARIAT + + +But there is an objection to it; and that objection may be learnt from +the stupidest woman you ask in the street. She will tell you that +you must not take away the property of the rich, because “they give +employment”. Now, as we have seen, it is quite true that fundamentally +it is nonsense to say that an unproductive rich person can give +employment in any other sense than as a lunatic gives employment to +her keeper. An idle rich woman can give no productive employment: the +employment she gives is wasteful. But wasteful or not, she gives it +and pays for it. She may not have earned the money she pays with; but +it will buy as good bread and clothes for her employee as the most +honestly earned money in the kingdom. The idler is a parasite: and +the idler’s employee, however industrious, is therefore a parasite +on a parasite; but if you leave the parasite destitute you leave +the parasite’s parasites destitute; and unless you have productive +employment ready for them they will have to starve or steal or rebel; +and as they will certainly not choose to starve, their choice of the +remaining two alternatives (which they will probably combine) may upset +the Government if they are numerous enough. And they are, as a matter +of fact, very numerous, as you may see by counting the Conservative +votes that are given at every General Election by people who work for +weekly wages in wholly or partly parasitic occupations. The plunder +of the proletariat is shared handsomely by the plunderers with the +proletarians. If our capitalists could not plunder our proletarians, +our proletarians and their middle class organizers, from the Bond +Street art dealers and jewellers to the errand boys of Bournemouth, +could not live on the custom of our capitalists. That is why neither +Bond Street nor Bournemouth can be persuaded to vote for uncompensated +expropriation, and why, if it came to fighting instead of voting, they +would fight against it. + +The trouble would begin, not with the nationalized industries, but with +the others. As we have seen, the mines and banks and railways, being +already organized as going concerns, and managed by directors elected +by the votes of the shareholders, could be confiscated by taxing the +shareholders heavily enough to oblige them to transfer their shares to +the Government in payment of the tax. But the income derived from these +shares would therefore go into the pocket of the Government instead of +into the pockets of the shareholders. Thus the purchasing power of the +shareholders would pass to the Government; and every shop or factory +that depended on their custom would have to shut up and discharge all +its employees. The saving power of the shareholders, which means, as +we now understand, the power of supplying the spare money needed for +starting new industrial enterprises or extending old ones to keep pace +with civilization, would also pass to the Government. These powers, +which must be kept in action without a moment’s interruption, operate +by continual expenditure (mainly household expenditure) and continual +investment of the enormous total of all our private incomes. + +What could the Government do with that total? If it simply dropped +it into the national till, and sat on it, most of it would perish by +natural decay; and meanwhile a great many of the people would perish +too. There would be a monster epidemic of bankruptcy and unemployment. +The tide of calamity would sweep away any Government unless it +proclaimed itself a Dictatorship, and employed, say, a third of the +population to shoot down another third, whilst the remaining third +footed the bill with its labor. What could the Government do to avert +this, short of handing back the confiscated property to the owners with +apologies for having made a fool of itself? + + + + +61 + +SAFETY VALVES + + +It could distribute the money in doles; but that would only spread the +very evil the confiscation was intended to destroy: that is to say, the +evil of unearned income. A much sounder plan (and do not forget this +when next you are tempted to give a spare £5 note to a beggar instead +of putting it on deposit at your bank) would be to throw all the money +into the confiscated banks, and lend it to employers at unprecedentedly +cheap rates. Another expedient would be to raise wages handsomely in +the confiscated industries. Another, the most desperate of all, but by +no means the least probable, would be to go to war, and waste on the +soldier the incomes formerly wasted on the plutocrat. + +These expedients do not exclude oneanother. Doles, cheap capital +available in Government-owned banks, and high wages, could be resorted +to simultaneously to redistribute purchasing power and employing power. +The doles and pensions would tide over the remaining years of those +discharged servants of the ruined rich who were incapable of changing +their occupations, and of the ruined rich themselves. The cheap capital +at the banks would enable employers to start new businesses, or modify +old ones, and to cater for the increased purchasing power of the +workers whose wages had been raised, thereby giving employment to the +workers who had lost their jobs in Bournemouth or Bond Street. The art +dealers could sell pictures to the National Gallery and the provincial +municipal galleries. There would be a crisis: but what of that? +Capitalism has often enough produced displacements of purchasing power +and loss of livelihood to large bodies of citizens, and fallen back +on doles in the shape of Mansion House Funds and the like as safety +valves to ease the pressure when the unemployed began to riot and break +windows. Why should we not muddle through as we have always done? + +Well, we might. But serious as the biggest crises of Capitalism have +been, they have never been as big as the crash that would follow +confiscation by the Government of the entire property of the whole +propertied class without any preparation for the immediate productive +employment not only of the expropriated owners (who are too few to give +much trouble) but of the vast parasitic proletariat who produce their +luxuries. Would the safety valves act quickly enough and open widely +enough? We must examine them more closely before we can judge. + +A civilized country depends on the circulation of its money as much +as a living animal depends on the circulation of its blood. A general +confiscation of private property and its incomes would produce an +unprecedented congestion in London, where the national Treasury is, +of money from all over the kingdom; and it would become a matter of +life or death for the Government to pump that congested money promptly +back again to the extremities of the land. Remember that the total +sum congested would be much larger than under the capitalist system, +because, as the capitalists spend much more of their incomes than they +save, the huge amount of this expenditure would be saved and added to +the Government revenue from the confiscated property. + +Now for the safety valves. A prodigious quantity of the congested money +would come from the confiscated ground rents of our cities and towns. +The present proprietors spend these rents where they please; and they +seldom please to spend them in the places where they were produced by +the work of the inhabitants. A plutocrat does not decide to live in +Bootle when he is free to live in Biarritz. The inhabitants of Bootle +do not get the benefit of his expenditure, which goes to the west +end of London and to the pleasure resorts and sporting grounds of all +the world, though perhaps a little of it may come back if the town +manufactures first class boots and riding breeches and polo mallets. +The dwellers in the town enjoy a good deal of municipal communism; +but they have to pay for it in rates which are now oppressively heavy +everywhere. And they would be heavier still if the Government did not +make what are called Grants-in-Aid to the municipalities. + +An obvious safety valve, and a popular one with the ratepayers, would +be the payment of the rates by the Treasury through greatly increased +grants. If you are a ratepaying householder, and your landlord were +suddenly to announce that in future he would pay the rates, you +would rejoice in the prospect of having that much more money to +spend on yourself. A similar announcement by the Chancellor of the +Exchequer would be equally welcome. It would relieve the congestion +at the Treasury, and send a flood of money back from the heart to the +extremities. + +Then there is the combination of raised wages in the confiscated +industries with a flood of cheap capital pumped to all the business +centres through the confiscated banks. The raised wages would check +the flow of income to the Treasury by reducing dividends; and the +cheapening of capital would enable new businesses to be started and old +ones re-equipped to meet the demand created by the increased purchasing +power (pocket money) of the wage workers and the disburdened ratepayers. + +And there is always a good deal to be done in the way of public +expenditure on roads; on reclamations of land from the sea; on +afforestation; on building great dams across valleys and barrages +across rivers and tideways to concentrate waterflow on turbine engines; +on stations for the distribution of the power thus gained; on the +demolition of slum towns that should never have been built, and their +replacement by properly planned, healthy and handsome garden cities; +and on a hundred other things that Capitalism never dreams of doing +because it is impossible to appropriate their advantages as commercial +profit. The demand for labor created by such operations would absorb +all the employable unemployed, and leave only the superannuated and the +incurably unemployable on the dole, with, of course, the children, on +whom much more money could and should be spent than at present, with +great uncommercial profit to the next generation. + +All this sounds very reassuring, and costs little to describe on paper. +But a few minutes’ reflection will dispel all hope that it could occur +instantly and spontaneously through the uncompensated transfer of +all existing shares and title-deeds to the Government. The Ministry +of Health would have to produce a huge scheme for the grants-in-aid +to the cities; and Parliament would wrangle for months over it. As +to glutting the existing banks with spare money to lend without any +further interference with them, the results would include an orgy of +competitive enterprise, overcapitalization, overproduction, hopeless +shops and businesses started by inexperienced or silly or rash people +or people who are all three: in short, a boom followed by a slump, with +the usual unemployment, bankruptcies, and so forth. To keep that part +of the program under control, it would be necessary to set up a new +department of the Treasury to replace the present boards of predatory +company directors; to open banks wherever the post offices are doing +substantial business; and to staff the new banks with specially trained +civil servants. And all that would take longer than it takes a ruined +citizen to starve. + +As to raising industrial wages and reducing prices with the object of +eliminating profit, that is so precisely the contrary of the policy +which the existing managers of our industry have trained themselves +to pursue, and which alone they understand, that their replacement by +civil servants would be just as necessary as in the case of the banks. +Such replacements could be effected only as part of an elaborate scheme +requiring long preliminary cogitation and a practical preparation +involving the establishment of new public departments of unprecedented +magnitude. + +Public works, too, cannot be set on foot offhand in the manner of Peter +the Great, who, when asked to dictate the route to be taken by his new +road from Moscow to Petrograd, took up a ruler and drew a straight +line on the map from the word Moscow to the Neva. If Peter had had to +get a proposal for a turbine barrage through a parliament with a fiery +Welsh contingent determined that it should be across the Severn, and an +equally touchy Scots contingent bent on having it across the Kyle of +Tongue, he would have found many months slipping by him before he could +set the first gang of navvies to work. + +I need not weary you by multiplying instances. Wholesale +nationalization without compensation is catastrophic: the patient dies +before the remedy has time to operate. If you prefer a mechanical +metaphor, the boiler bursts because the safety valves jam. The +attempted nationalization would produce a revolution. You may say +“Well, why not? What I have read in this book has made me impatient for +revolution. The fact that any measure would produce a revolution is its +highest recommendation”. + +If that is yours view, your feelings do you credit: they are or have +been shared by many good citizens. But when you go thoroughly into the +matter you will realize that revolutions do not nationalize anything, +and often make it much more difficult to nationalize them than it +would have been without the revolution if only the people had had +some education in political economy. If a revolution were produced by +unskilled Socialism (all our parliamentary parties are dangerously +unskilled at present) in the teeth of a noisy and inveterate Capitalist +Opposition, it would produce reaction instead of progress, and give +Capitalism a new lease of life. The name of Socialism would stink in +the nostrils of the people for a generation. And that is just the +sort of revolution that an attempt to nationalize all property at a +blow would provoke. You must therefore rule out revolution on this +particular issue of out-and-out uncompensated and unprepared general +nationalization versus a series of carefully prepared and compensated +nationalizations of one industry after another. + +Later on, we shall expatiate a little on what revolutions can do +and what they cannot. Meanwhile, note as a canon of nationalization +(economists like to call their rules for doing anything canons) that +all nationalizations must be prepared and compensated. This will +be found an effectual safeguard against too many nationalizations +being attempted at a time. We might even say against more than one +nationalization being attempted at a time; only we must not forget +that industries are now so amalgamated before they are ripe for +nationalization that it is practically impossible to nationalize one +without nationalizing half a dozen others that are inextricably mixed +up with it. You would be surprised to learn how many other things a +railway company does besides running trains. And if you have ever gone +to sea in a big liner you have perhaps sometimes looked round you and +wondered whether the business of making it was called shipbuilding or +hotel building, to say nothing of engineering. + + + + +62 + +WHY CONFISCATION HAS SUCCEEDED HITHERTO + + +Now that I have impressed on you at such length as a canon of +nationalization that Parliament must always buy the owners out and +not simply tax them out, I am prepared to be informed that the canon +is dead against the facts, because the direct attack on property by +simple confiscation: that is, by the Government taking the money of the +capitalists away from them by main force and putting it into the public +treasury, has already, without provoking reaction or revolution, been +carried by Conservative and Liberal Governments to lengths which would +have seemed monstrous and incredible to nineteenth century statesmen +like Gladstone, proving that you can introduce almost any measure of +Socialism or Communism into England provided you call it by some other +name. Propose Socialistic confiscation of the incomes of the rich, and +the whole country will rise to repel such Russian wickedness. Call +it income tax, supertax, and estate duties, and you can lift enough +hundreds of millions from the pockets of our propertied class to turn +the Soviet of Federated Russian Republics green with envy. + +Take a case or two in figures. Gladstone thought it one of his triumphs +as Chancellor of the Exchequer to reduce the income tax to twopence in +the pound, and hoped to be able to abolish it altogether. Instead of +which it went up to six shillings in 1920, and stopped at that only +because it was supplemented by an additional income tax (Supertax or +Surtax) on the larger incomes, and a partial abolition of inheritance +which makes the nation heir to a considerable part of our property when +we die possessed of any. Just imagine the fuss there would have been +over this if it had been proposed by a Socialist Prime Minister as +Confiscation, Expropriation, and Nationalization of Inheritance on the +Communist principles of the prophet Marx! Yet we took it lying down. + +You have perhaps not noticed how this taxation is arrived at in +Parliament at present. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Minister +who has to arrange the national housekeeping for the year, and screw +out of a reluctant House of Commons its consent to tax us for the +housekeeping money; for with the negligible exception of the interest +on certain shares in the Suez Canal and in some ten companies who had +to be helped to keep going during the war the nation has no income +from property. Whom he will be allowed to tax depends on the sort of +members who have been returned to Parliament. Without their approval +his Budget, as he calls his proposals for taxation, cannot become law; +and until it becomes law nobody can be compelled to pay the taxes. +In Gladstone’s time Parliament consisted practically of landlords +and capitalists and employers, the handful of working class members +being hopelessly outvoted by the other three sections combined, or +even single. Each of these sections naturally tried to throw as much +of the burden of taxation as possible on the others; but all three +were heartily agreed in throwing on the working class as much of it +as they could without losing too many working class votes at the next +election. Therefore the very last tax they wished to sanction was +the income tax, which all of them had to pay directly, and which the +wage workers escaped, as it does not apply to small incomes. Thus the +income tax became a sort of residual tax or last resort: an evil to be +faced only when every other device for raising money had been found +insufficient. When Gladstone drove it down from sixpence to fourpence, +and from fourpence to twopence, and expressed his intention of doing +without it altogether, he was considered a very great Chancellor of the +Exchequer indeed. To do this he had to raise money by putting taxes on +food and drink and tobacco, on legal documents of different kinds, from +common receipts and cheques and contracts to bills of exchange, share +certificates, marriage settlements, leases and the like. Then there +were the customs, or duties payable on goods sent into the country +from abroad. The industrial employers, who were great importers of +raw materials, and wanted food to be cheap because cheap food meant +low wages, said “Let them come in free, and tax the landlords”. The +country gentlemen said “Tax imports, especially corn, to encourage +agriculture”. This created the great Free Trade controversy on which +the Tories fought the Liberals for so many years. But both parties +always agreed that income tax should not be imposed until every other +means of raising the money had been exhausted, and that even then it +should be kept down to the lowest possible figure. + +When Socialism became Fabianized and began to influence Parliament +through a new proletarian Labor Party, budgeting took a new turn. The +Labor Party demanded that the capitalists should be the first to pay, +and not the last, and that the taxation should be higher on unearned +than on earned incomes. This involved a denial of the need for keeping +Government expenditure and taxation down to the lowest possible figure. +When taxation consists in taking money away from people who have not +earned it and restoring it to its real earners by providing them with +schools, better houses, improved cities, and public benefits of all +sorts, then clearly the more the taxation the better for the nation. +Where Gladstone cried “I have saved the income tax payers of the +country another million. Hurrah!” a Labor Chancellor will cry “I have +wrung another million from the supertaxed idlers, and spent it on the +welfare of our people! Hooray!” + +Thus for the last fifteen years we have had a running struggle in +Parliament between the Capitalist and Labor parties: the former trying +to keep down the income tax, the supertax, the estate duties, and +public expenditure generally, and the latter trying to increase them. +The annual debates on the Budget always turn finally on this point, +though it is seldom frankly faced; and the capitalists have been losing +bit by bit until now (in the nineteen-twenties) we have advanced from +Gladstone’s income tax of 2d. in the pound to rates of from four to six +shillings, with, on incomes exceeding £2000, surtaxes that range from +eighteen pence to six shillings according to the amount of the income; +whilst on the death of a property owner his heirs have to hand over to +the Government a share of the estate ranging from one per cent of its +fictitious capital value when it is a matter of a little over £100, to +forty per cent when it exceeds a couple of millions. + +That is to say, if your uncle leaves you five guineas a year you have +to pay the Government seventy-three days income. If he leaves you a +hundred thousand a year you pay eight years income, and starve for the +eight years unless you can raise the money by mortgaging your future +income, or have provided for it by insuring your life at a heavy +premium for the nation’s benefit. + +Now suppose this income of a hundred thousand a year belongs to an +aristocratic family in which military service as an officer is a +tradition which is practically obligatory. In a war it may easily +happen, as it did sometimes during the late war, that the owner of such +a property and his two brothers next in succession are killed within +a few months. This would bring the income of £100,000 a year down to +£12,000, the difference having been confiscated by the Government. +If we were to read in The Morning Post that the Russian Soviet had +taken £78,000 a year from a private family without paying a penny of +compensation, most of us would thank heaven that we were not living in +a country where such Communistic monstrosities are possible. Yet our +British anti-Socialist Governments, both Liberal and Conservative, do +it as a matter of routine, though their Chancellors of the Exchequer +go on making speeches against Socialistic confiscation as if nobody +outside Russia ever dreamt of such a thing! + +That is just like us. All the time we are denouncing Communism as +a crime, every street lamp and pavement and water tap and police +constable is testifying that we could not exist for a week without it. +Whilst we are shouting that Socialistic confiscation of the incomes of +the rich is robbery and must end in red revolution, we are actually +carrying it so much further than any other fully settled country that +many of our capitalists have gone to live in the south of France for +seven months in the year to avoid it, though they affirm their undying +devotion to their native country by insisting that our national anthem +shall be sung every Sunday on the Riviera as part of the English divine +service, whilst the Chancellor of the Exchequer at home implores heaven +to “frustrate their knavish tricks” until he can devise some legal +means of defeating their evasions of his tax collectors. + +But startling from the Victorian point of view as are the sums taken +annually from the rich, they have not in the lump gone beyond what +the property owners can pay in cash out of their incomes, nor what +the Government is prepared to throw back into circulation again by +spending it immediately. They have transferred purchasing power from +the rich to the poor, producing minor commercial crises here and there, +and often seriously impoverishing the old rich; but they have been +accompanied by such a development of capitalism that there are more +rich, and richer rich, than ever; so that the luxury trades have had +to expand instead of contract, giving more employment instead of less. +And they have proved that you may safely confiscate income derived +from property provided you can immediately redistribute it. But you +cannot tax it to extinction at a single mortal blow. You have always +to consider most carefully how far and how fast you can go without +crashing. The rule that the Government must not tax at all until it +has an immediate use for the money it takes is fundamental: it holds +in every case. The rule that if it uses it to nationalize an already +established commercial industry or service it must have a new public +department ready to take the business over, and must compensate the +owners from whom it takes it, is also invariable. When the object is +not nationalization, but simple redistribution of income within the +capitalist system by transferring purchasing power from one set of +people to another, usually from a richer set to a poorer set, thus +changing the demand in the shops from dear luxuries to comparatively +cheap necessities, then the process must go no faster than the +capitalist shops can adapt themselves to this change. Else it may +produce enough bankruptcies to make the Government very unpopular at +the next election. + +Let us study a sensational instance in which we have incurred a heavy +additional burden of unearned income, so strongly resented by the mass +of the people that our Governments, whether Labor or Conservative, may +not long be able to resist the demand for its redistribution. + + + + +63 + +HOW THE WAR WAS PAID FOR + + +In 1914 we went to war. War is frightfully expensive and frightfully +destructive: it results in a dead loss as far as money is concerned. +And everything has to be paid for on the nail; for you cannot kill +Germans with promissory notes or mortgages or national debts: you must +have actual stores of food, clothing, weapons, munitions, fighting men, +and nursing, car driving, munition making women of military age. When +the army has worn out the clothes and eaten up the food, and fired off +the munitions, and shed its blood in rivers, there is nothing eatable, +drinkable, wearable, or livable-in left to shew for it: nothing visible +or tangible but ruin and desolation. For most of these military stores +the Government in 1914-18 went heavily into debt. It took the blood +and work of the young men as a matter of course, compelling them to +serve whether they liked it or not, and breaking up their businesses, +when they had any, without compensation of any kind. But being a +Capitalist Government it did not take all the needed ready money from +the capitalists in the same way. It took some of it by taxation. But in +the main, it borrowed it. + +Naturally the Labor Party objected very strongly to this exemption of +the money of the rich from the conscription that was applied ruthlessly +to the lives and livelihoods and limbs of the poor. Its protests were +disregarded. The spare subsistence needed to support the soldiers and +the workers who were producing food and munitions for them, instead of +being all taken without compensation by taxation, was for the most part +hired from capitalists, their price being the right to take without +working, for every hundred pounds worth of spare subsistence lent, five +pounds a year out of the future income of the country for waiting until +the hundred pounds they put down was repaid to them in full. + +Roughly, and in round figures, what happened was that the National +Debt of 660 millions owing in 1914 from former wars was increased by +the new war to over 7000 millions. Until we are able to repay this +in full we have to pay more than 350 millions a year to the lenders +for waiting; and as the current expenses of our civil services (300 +millions), with our army, our navy, our air force, and all the other +socialized national establishments, come to more than as much again, +the Chancellor of the Exchequer has now to budget for more than two +millions a day, and get that out of our pockets as best he can. And as +it is no use asking the proletarians for it at a time when perhaps a +million or so of them are unemployed, and have to be supported out of +the taxes instead of paying any, he has to make the property holders +contribute, in income tax, supertax, and estate duties, over 380 +millions a year: that is, a million and fifty thousand a day, or more +than half the total taxation. This is confiscation with a vengeance. + +Does it strike you that there is something funny about this business +of borrowing most of the 7000 millions from our own capitalists by +promising to pay them, say 325 millions a year whilst they are waiting +for repayment, and then taxing them to the tune of 382 millions a year +to pay not only their own waiting money but that of the foreign lenders +as well? They are paying over 50 millions a year more than they are +getting, and are therefore, as a class, losing by the transaction. The +Government pays them with one hand, and takes the money back again, +plus over 17 per cent interest, with the other. Why do they put up with +it so tamely? + +The explanation is easy. If the Government took back from each holder +of War Loan exactly what it had paid him plus three and sixpence in +the pound, all the holders would very promptly cry “Thank you for +worse than nothing: we will cancel the debt; and much good may it do +you”. But that is not what happens. The holders of War Loan Stock +are only a part of the general body of property owners; but all the +property owners have to pay income tax and death duties, and, when +their income exceeds £2000, supertax. Those who did not lend money to +the Government for the war get nothing from it. Those who did lend get +the 325 millions a year all to themselves; but their liability for the +taxation out of which it is paid is shared with all the other property +owners. Therefore, though the property owners as a whole lose by the +transaction, those property owners who hold War Loan Stock gain by +it at the expense of those who do not. The Government not only robs +capitalist Peter to pay capitalist Paul, but robs both of more than it +pays to Paul; yet though Peter and Paul taken together are poorer, Paul +taken by himself is richer, and therefore supports the Government in +the arrangement, whilst Peter complains that the burden of taxation is +intolerable. + +To illustrate, my wife and I are capitalists, but I hold some War Loan +stock, whilst all her money is in bank, railway, and other stocks. We +are both taxed equally to pay me the interest on my War Loan; but as +the Government pays me that interest and does not pay her anything, +I gain by the transaction at her expense; so that if we were not, as +it happens, on the communal footing of man and wife, we should never +agree about it. Most capitalists do not understand the deal, and are +in effect humbugged by it; but those who do understand it will never +be unanimous in resisting it; consequently it is voteproof at the +parliamentary elections. + +This quaint state of things enables the Labor Party to demonstrate +that it would pay the propertied class, as a whole, to cancel the +National Debt, and put an end to the absurdity of a nation complaining +that it is staggering under an intolerable burden of debt when as a +matter of fact it owes most of the money to itself. The cancellation +of the debt (except the fraction due to foreigners) would be simply +a redistribution of income between its citizens without costing the +nation, as a whole, a single farthing. + +The plan of raising public money by borrowing money from capitalists +instead of confiscating it by direct taxation is called funding; and +lending money to the Government used to be called putting it in the +Funds. And as the terms of the borrowing are that the lender is to have +an income for nothing by waiting until his money is repaid, we get +the queer phenomenon of lenders who, instead of being anxious to get +their money back, dread nothing more; so that the Government, in order +to get the loans, has actually to promise that it will not pay back +the loan before a certain date, the further off the better. According +to Capitalist morality people who live on their capital instead of +on interest (as the payment for waiting is called) are spendthrifts +and wasters. The capitalist must never consume his spare subsistence +himself even when it is of a kind that will keep until he is hungry +again. He must use it to purchase an income; and if the purchaser stops +paying the income and repays the sum lent him, the lender must not +spend that sum, but must immediately buy another income with it, or, as +we say, invest it. + +This is not merely a matter of prudence: it is a matter of necessity; +for as investing capital means lending it to be consumed before it +rots, it can never really be restored to the investor. Investing it +means, as we have seen, allowing a body of workmen to eat it up whilst +they are engaged in preparing some income producing concern like a +railway or factory; and when it is once consumed no mortal power +can bring it back into existence. If you do a man or a company or a +Government the good turn of letting them use up what you can spare this +year, he or she or they may do you the good turn of letting you have +an equivalent if they can spare it twenty years hence, and pay you for +waiting meanwhile; but they cannot restore what you actually lend them. + +The war applied our spare money, not to a producing concern but to a +destroying one. In the books of the Bank of England are written the +names of a number of persons as the owners of capital to the value +of 7000 million pounds. They are said in common speech to be “worth +7000 millions”. Now they are in fact “worth” nothing at all. Their +7000 millions have long since been eaten, drunk, worn out, or blown +to smithereens, along with much other valuable property and precious +lives, on battle-fields all over the world. We are therefore in the +ridiculous position of pretending that our country is enriched by +property to the value of 7000 millions when as a matter of fact it is +impoverished by having to find 350 fresh millions a year for people +who are not doing a stroke of work for her in return: that is, who +are consuming a huge mass of wealth without producing any. It is as +if a bankrupt, asked if he has any assets, should reply proudly, “Oh +no: I have made ducks and drakes of all my assets; but then I have a +tremendous lot of debts”. The 7000 millions of capital standing in the +names of the stockholders in the Bank of England is not wealth, it is +debt. If we flatly repudiated it, the nation would be richer not only +by 350 millions a year, but by the work the stockholders would have to +do to support themselves when their incomes were cut off. The objection +to repudiating it is not that it would make the nation poorer, but that +repudiation would seem a breach of contract after which nobody would +ever lend money to the Government again. Besides, the United States, +which lent us a thousand millions of it, might distrain on us for that +amount by force of arms. Therefore we protest that nothing would +induce us to commit such an act of cynical dishonesty. But that does +not prevent us, as far as the debt is due to our own capitalists, from +paying them honestly with one hand, and forcibly taking back the money +plus seventeen per cent interest with the other. + +By the way, lest somebody should come along and assure you that these +figures are inaccurate, and that I am not to be trusted, I had better +warn you that the figures are in round numbers; that they vary from +year to year through paying off and fluctuation of values; that the +thousand millions borrowed from America were lent by us to allies of +whom some cannot afford to pay us at all, and others, who can, are +trying how little we can be induced to take; that the rest of the money +was raised through the banks in such a way that indignant statisticians +have proved that we accepted indebtedness for nearly twice what we +actually spent; that the rise in the market price of hiring spare +money must have enriched the capitalists more than the war taxation +impoverished them: in short, that the simplicity of the case can be +addled by a hundred inessential circumstances when the object is to +addle and not to elucidate. My object being elucidatory, I have left +them all out, as I want to shew you the nest, not the hedge. + +The point is that the war has produced an enormous consumption +of capital; and instead of this consumption leaving behind it an +addition to our industrial plant and means of communication and other +contrivances for increasing our output of wealth, it has effected a +wholesale destruction of such things, leaving the world with less +income to distribute than before. The fact that it has swept away +three empires, and substituted republicanism for monarchy as the +prevalent form of government in Europe, thus bringing Europe into +line with America as a republican continent, may seem to you to be +worth the money; or, as this is not in the least what was intended by +the British or any other of the belligerent Powers, it may seem to +you a scandalous disaster. But that is a matter of sentiment, not of +economics. Whether you regard the political result with satisfaction or +dismay, the cost of the war remains the same, and so does the effect +of our way of paying it on the distribution of our national income. We +are all heavily taxed to enable that section of the capitalist class +which invested in War Loan for five per cent interest (a high rate +considering the security), to draw henceforth a million a day from the +fruits of our daily labor without contributing to them. True, we take +that much, and more, back from the whole capitalist class by taxation; +so that what really happens is a redistribution of income among the +capitalists, leaving the proletariat rather better off than worse, +though unfortunately it is not the sort of redistribution that makes +for equality of income or discredit of idleness. But it illustrates the +point of this chapter, which is that a virtual confiscation of capital +to the amount of thousands of millions proved perfectly feasible when +the Government had employment in the shape of national service, even +in work of destruction, instantly ready for an unlimited number of +proletarians, male and female. Those had been halcyon days but for the +bloodshed. + + + + +64 + +NATIONAL DEBT REDEMPTION LEVIES + + +Although the taxation of capital is nonsensical, it does not follow +that every proposal presented to you in that form must necessarily be +impracticable. It is true that the Government, if it wants ready money, +can obtain it only by confiscating income; but this does not rule out +operations for which no ready money is required, nor does it prevent +the Government from taking not only the income of a proprietor, but +the source of his income: that is, his property, as well. To take a +possibility that is quite likely to become a fact in your experience, +suppose the Government were driven to the conclusion that the National +Debt, or some part of it, must be wiped out, either because the +taxation needed to pay the interest of it is hampering capitalist +enterprise, which would be a Conservative Government’s reason, or +for the sake of redistributing income more equally, which would be a +Socialist Government’s reason! To pay off what we have borrowed from +America, or from foreigners of any nationality, would need ready money; +and therefore the simple wiping out of this part of the national debt +would be impossible except by flat repudiation, which would destroy +our credit abroad and probably involve us in a war of distraint. But +that part of the debt which we owe to ourselves could be wiped out +without a farthing of ready money by a tax presented and assessed as a +tax on capital, or rather a levy on capital (to indicate that it was +not to be an annual tax but only a once-in-a-way tax). Take the war +debt as an illustration of the possibility of a total wipe-out. Let us +suppose for the sake of simplicity that as much of the National Debt +as the Government owes to its own subjects is £100, all lent to it by +one woman (call her Mary Anne) for the war, and, of course, long since +spent and blown to bits, leaving nothing behind but the obligation of +the Government to pay Mary Anne £5 a year out of the taxes. Imagine +also that there is only one other capitalist in the country (say +Sarah Jane), whose property consists of £100 from stocks and land +yielding an income of £5 a year. That is, Sarah Jane owns the entire +industrial plant of the country; and Mary Anne is the sole domestic +(as distinguished from foreign) national creditor. The Chancellor of +the Exchequer brings in a tax of 100 per cent on capital, and demands +£100 from Sarah Jane and £100 from Mary Anne. Neither of them can pay +£100 ready money out of their £5; but Sarah Jane can hand over all her +share certificates to the Government; and the Government can transfer +Mary Anne’s War Loan of £100 to itself. Mary and Sarah, left destitute, +will have to work for their livings; and all the industrial plant of +the country will have passed into the hands of the Government; that is, +been nationalized. + +In this transaction there is no physical impossibility, no selling of +worthless shares for non-existent ready money, no rocketing of the +Bank Rate, nothing but simple expropriation. The fact that the £200 at +stake are really thousands of millions, and that there are many Marys +and many Sarahs, each with her complement of Toms and Dicks, alters the +size of the transaction, but not its balance. The thing could be done. +Further, if the disturbance created by a sudden and total expropriation +would be too great, it could be done in instalments of any desired +magnitude. The 100 per cent tax on capital could be 50 per cent or +5 per cent or 2½ per cent every ten years or what you please. If +100 per cent meant a catastrophe (as it would) and 10 per cent only a +squeeze, then the Government could content itself with the squeeze. + +By such a levy the Government could take off the taxation it had +formerly imposed to pay the home War Loan interest, and use the +dividends of the confiscated shares to pay the interest on our war debt +to America, taking off also the taxation that now pays that interest. +If it were a Conservative Government it would take it off in the form +of a reduction of income tax, supertax, excess profits tax (if any), +death duties, and other taxes on property and big business. A Labor +Government would leave these taxes untouched, and take taxes off food, +or increase its contributions to the unemployed fund, its grants-in-aid +to the municipalities for public work, or anything else that would +benefit the proletariat and make for equality of income. Thus the levy +could be manipulated to make the rich richer as easily as to raise the +general level of well-being; and this is why it is just as likely to be +done by a Capitalist as by a Labor Government until the domestic war +debt is--shall we say liquidated, as repudiated sounds so badly? + +The special objection to such practicable levies is that they are raids +on private property rather than orderly and gradual conversions of +it into public property. The objection to raids is that they destroy +the sense of security which induces the possessors of spare money to +invest it instead of spreeing it. Insecurity discourages saving among +those who can afford to save, and encourages reckless expenditure. If +you have a thousand pounds to spare, and have not the slightest doubt +that by investing it you can secure a future income of £50 a year, +subject only to income tax, you will invest it. If you are led to +think it just as likely as not that if you invest it the Government +will presently take it or some considerable part of it from you under +pretext of a Debt Redemption Levy, you will probably conclude that +you may as well spend it while you are sure of it. It would be much +better for the country and for yourself if you could feel sure that +if the Government took your property it would buy it from you at full +market price, or, if that were for any reason impracticable, compensate +you fully for it. It is true that, as we found when we went into the +question of compensation, this apparently conservative way of doing it +is really as expropriative as the direct levy, because the Government +raises the purchase money or compensation by taxing property; so that +the proprietors buy each other out and are not as a body compensated +at all; but the sense of insecurity created by the raiding method +is demoralizing, as you will understand if you read the description +by Thucydides of the plague at Athens, which applies to all plagues, +pathological or financial. Plagues destroy the sense of security of +life: people come to feel that they will probably be dead by the end of +the week, and throw their characters away for a day’s pleasure just as +capitalists throw their money away when it is no longer safe. A raid on +property, as distinguished from a regular annual income tax, is like +a plague in this respect. Also it forms a bad precedent and sets up a +raiding habit. Thus domestic debt redemption levies, though physically +practicable, are highly injudicious. + + + + +65 + +THE CONSTRUCTIVE PROBLEM SOLVED + + +You may now stop for breath, as you are at last in possession not only +of the object of Socialism, which is simply equality of income, but +of the methods by which it can be attained. You know why coal mining +and banking should be nationalized, and how the expropriation of the +coalowners and bankers can be compensated so as to avoid injustice to +individuals or any shock to the sense of security which is necessary +to prevent the continued investment of spare money as capital. Now +when you have the formula for these two nationalizations, one of a +material industry involving much heavy manual work, and the other a +service conducted by sedentary brain work, you have a formula for all +nationalizations. And when you have the formula for the constitutional +compensated expropriation of the coalowners and bankers by taxation +you have the formula for the expropriation of all proprietors. Knowing +how to nationalize industry you know how to place the Government in +control of the distribution of the income produced by industry. We +have not only found these formulas, but seen them tested in practice +in our existing institutions sufficiently to have no more doubt that +they would work than we have that next year’s budget will work. +Therefore we need no longer be worried by demands for what people call +a constructive program. There it is for them; and what will surprise +them most about it is that it does not contain a single novelty. The +difficulties and the novelty are not, as they imagine, in the practical +part of the business, which turns out to be quite plain sailing, but +in the metaphysical part: that is, in the will to equality. We know +how to take the distribution of the national income out of the hands +of the private owners of property and place it under the control of +the Government. But the Government can distribute it unequally if it +decides to do so. Instead of destroying the existing inequality it can +intensify it. It can maintain a privileged class of idlers with huge +incomes, and give them State security for the continuance of those +incomes. + +It is this possibility that may enlist and to a certain extent has +already enlisted the most determined opponents of Socialism on the side +of nationalization, expropriative taxation, and all the constructive +political machinery of Socialism, as a means of redistributing income, +the catch in it being that the redistribution at which they aim is not +an equal distribution, but a State-guaranteed unequal one. John Bunyan, +with his queer but deep insight, pointed out long ago that there is +a way to hell even from the gates of heaven; that the way to heaven +is therefore also the way to hell; and that the name of the gentleman +who goes to hell by that road is Ignorance. The way to Socialism, +ignorantly pursued, may land us in State Capitalism. Both must travel +the same road; and this is what Lenin, less inspired than Bunyan, +failed to see when he denounced the Fabian methods as State Capitalism. +What is more, State Capitalism, plus Capitalist Dictatorship (Fascism), +will compete for approval by cleaning up some of the dirtiest of our +present conditions: raising wages; reducing death rates; opening the +career to the talents; and ruthlessly cashiering inefficiency, before +in the long run succumbing to the bane of inequality, against which no +civilization can finally stand out. + +This is why, though you are now equipped with a complete answer to +those who very properly demand from Socialists constructive plans, +practical programs, a constitutional parliamentary routine, and so +forth, you are still not within eight score pages of the end of this +book. We have still to discuss not only the pseudo-Socialism against +which I have just warned you, but other things which I cannot omit +without leaving you more or less defenceless against the alarmist +who, instead of being sensibly anxious about constructive methods, +is quite convinced that the world can be turned upside down in a +day by an unwashed Russian in a red tie and an uncombed woman with +a can of petrol if only they are wicked enough. These poor scared +things will ask you what about revolution? what about marriage? what +about children? what about sex? when, as they assume, Socialism will +have upset all our institutions and substituted for our present +population of sheep a raving pack of mad dogs. No doubt you can tell +them to go away, or to talk about such matters as they are capable +of understanding; but you will find that they are only the extreme +instances of a state of mind that is very common. Not only will plenty +of your most sensible friends want to discuss these subjects in +connection with Socialism, but you yourself will be as keen about them +as they. So now that we know exactly what Socialism aims at and how it +can be done, let us leave all that as settled, and equip ourselves for +general conversation on or around the subject. + + + + +66 + +SHAM SOCIALISM + + +The example of the war shews how easy it is for a government to +confiscate the incomes of one set of citizens, and hand them over to +another without any intention of equalizing distribution or effecting +any nationalization of industries or services. If any class or trade +or clique can obtain control of Parliament, it can use its power to +plunder any other class or trade or clique, to say nothing of the +nation as a whole, for its own benefit. Such operations are of course +always disguised as reforms of one kind or another, or as political +necessities; but they are really intrigues to use the State for selfish +ends. They are not on that account to be opposed as pernicious: rogues +with axes to grind must use popular reforms as bait to catch votes for +Acts of Parliament in which they have some personal interest. Besides, +all reforms are lucrative to somebody. For instance, the landlords of +a city may be the warmest supporters of street improvements, and of +every public project for making the city more attractive to residents +and tourists, because they hope to reap the whole money value of the +improvements in raised rents. When a public park is opened, the rents +of all the houses looking on that park go up. When some would-be public +benefactor endows a great public school for the purpose of making +education cheap, he unintentionally makes all the private houses within +reach of it dear. In the long run the owners of the land take from us +as rent in one form or another everything that we can do without. But +the improvements are none the less improvements. Nobody would destroy +the famous endowed schools of Bedford because rents are higher there +than in towns which possess no such exceptional advantage. When Faust +asked Mephistopheles what he was, Mephistopheles answered that he was +part of a power that was always willing evil and always doing good; and +though our landlords and capitalists are certainly not always either +willing evil or doing good, yet Capitalism justifies itself and was +adopted as an economic principle on the express ground that it provides +selfish motives for doing good, and that human beings will do nothing +except for selfish motives. Now though the best things have to be done +for the greater glory of God, as some of us say, or for the enlargement +of life and the bettering of humanity, as others put it, yet it is +very true that if you want to get a philanthropic measure enacted by +a public body, parliamentary or municipal, you may find it shorter to +give the rogues an axe to grind than to stir up the philanthropists +to do anything except preach at the rogues. Rogues, by which perhaps +rather invidious name I designate persons who will do nothing unless +they get something out of it for themselves, are often highly effective +persons of action, whilst idealist talkers only sow the wind, leaving +the next generation of men of action to reap the whirlwind. + +It is already a well-established method of Capitalism to ask the +Government to provide for some private enterprise on the ground of its +public utility. Some good has been done in this way: for instance, +some of our modern garden cities and suburbs could not have been +built if the companies that built them had not been enabled, under +the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, to borrow a large share +of their capital from the Government on the understanding that the +shareholders were poor people holding no more than £200 capital +apiece. But this limitation is quite illusory, because, though the +companies may not issue more than £200 in shares to any individual, +they may and do borrow unlimited sums by creating what is called Loan +Stock; and the very same person who is not allowed to have more than +£200 in shares may have two hundred millions in Loan Stock if the +company can use them. Consequently these garden cities, which are most +commendable enterprises in their way, are nevertheless the property +of rich capitalists. As I hold a good deal of stock in them myself I +am tempted to claim that their owners are specially philanthropic and +public-spirited men, who have voluntarily invested their capital where +it will do the most good and not where it will make the most profit for +them; but they are not immortal; and we have no guarantee that their +heirs will inherit their disinterestedness. Meanwhile the fact remains +that they have built up their property largely with public money: that +is, by money raised by taxing the rest of the community, and that this +does not make the nation the owner of the garden city, nor even a +shareholder in it. The Government is simply a creditor who will finally +be paid off, leaving the cities in the hands of their capitalist +proprietors. The tenants, though led to expect a share in the surplus +profits of the city, find such profits practically always applied to +extending the enterprise for the benefit of fresh investors. The garden +cities and suburbs are an enormous improvement on the manufacturing +towns produced by unaided private enterprise; but as they do not pay +their proprietors any better than slum property, nor indeed as well, it +is quite possible that this consideration may induce the future owners +to abolish their open spaces and overcrowd them with houses until they +are slums. To guarantee the permanence of the improvement it would +be safer for the Government to buy out the shareholders than for the +shareholders to pay off the Government, though even that would fail if +the Government acted on Capitalist principles by selling the cities to +the highest bidders. + +A more questionable development of this exploitation of the State by +Capitalism and Trade Unionism is the subsidy of £10,000,000 paid by +the Government to the coalowners in 1925 to avoid a strike. The coal +miners said they would not work unless they got such and such wages. +The employers vowed they could not afford to keep their mines open +unless the men would accept less; and a great press campaign was set +up to persuade us that the country was on the verge of ruin through +excessive wages when as a matter of fact the country was in a condition +that at many earlier periods would have been described as cheerfully +prosperous. Finally the Government, to avert a strike which would +have paralyzed the main industries of the country, had either to make +up out of the taxes the wages offered by the employers to the wages +demanded by the men, or else nationalize the mines. Being a Capitalist +Government, pledged not to nationalize anything, it chose to make up +the wages out of the taxes. When the £10,000,000 was exhausted, the +trouble began again. The Government refused to renew the subsidy; the +employers refused to go on without it unless the miners worked eight +hours a day instead of seven; the miners refused to work more or take +less; there was a big strike, in which the workers in several other +industries at first took part “sympathetically” until they realized +that by using up the funds of the Trade Unions on strike pay they were +hindering the miners instead of helping them; and many respectable +people were, as usual on such occasions, frightened out of their wits +and into the belief that the country was on the verge of revolution. +And there was this excuse for them: that under fully-developed +Capitalism civilization is always on the verge of revolution. We live +as in a villa on Vesuvius. + +During the strike the taxpayer was no longer exploited by the owners; +but the ratepayer was exploited by the workers. A man on strike has no +right to outdoor relief; but his wife and children have. Consequently +a married miner with two children could depend on receiving a pound a +week at the expense of the ratepayers whilst he was refusing to work. +This development of parochial Communism really knocks the bottom out +of the Capitalist system, which depends on the ruthless compulsion +of the proletariat to work on pain of starvation or imprisonment +under detestable conditions in the workhouse. Thus you have had the +Government first giving outdoor relief (the ten million subsidy) to the +owners at the expense of the taxpayers, and then the local authorities +giving outdoor relief to the proletariat at the expense of the +ratepayers, the Government being manned mostly by capitalists and the +local authorities by proletarians. + +It was in the proletarian quarters of London, notably in Poplar, +that the Poor Law Guardians first claimed the right to give outdoor +relief at full subsistence rates to all unemployed persons, thereby +freeing their proletarian constituents from “the lash of starvation”, +and enabling them to hold out for the highest wages their trades could +afford. The mining districts followed suit during the coal strike +of 1926. This right was contested by the Government, which tried to +supplant the parochial authorities by the central Ministry of Health. +The Ministry, through the auditors of public accounts, surcharged the +Guardians with the part of the outdoor relief which they considered +excessive; but as the Guardians could not have paid the surcharge even +if the proceedings taken against them had not failed, the Government +took the administration of the Poor Law into its own hands, and +passed Acts to confirm its powers to do so. This was essentially an +attempt by the Capitalist central Government to recover the weapon of +starvation which the proletarian local authorities had taken out of +the owners’ hands. But the day had gone by for the ultra-capitalist +relief rules of the nineteenth century, when, as I well recollect, the +Registrar-General’s returns of the causes of the deaths during the year +always included starvation as a matter of course. The lowest scale +of relief which the Government ventured to propose would have seemed +ruinously extravagant and demoralizing to the Gradgrinds and Bounderbys +denounced by Dickens in 1854. + +As to the demoralization, they would not have been very far wrong. +If mine-owners, or any other sort of owners, find that when they get +into difficulties through being lazy, or ignorant, or too grasping, +or behind the times, or all four, they can induce the Government to +confiscate the taxpayers’ incomes for subsidies to get them out of +their difficulties, they will go from bad to worse. If miners, or any +other sort of workers, find that the local authorities will confiscate +the incomes of the ratepayers to feed them when they are idle, their +incentive to pay their way by their labor will be, to say the least, +perceptibly slackened. Yet it is no use simply refusing to make these +confiscations. If the nation will not take its industries out of the +hands of private owners it must enable them to carry them on, whether +they can make them pay or not. If the owners will not pay subsistence +wages the nation must; for it cannot afford to have its children +undernourished and its civil and military strength weakened, though it +was fool enough to think it could in Queen Victoria’s time. Subsidies +and doles are demoralizing, both for employers and proletarians; but +they stave off Socialism, which people seem to consider worse than +pauperized insolvency, Heaven knows why! + +Still, governments need not be so shamelessly unbusinesslike as +they are when subsidies are in question. The subsidizing habit was +acquired by the British Government during the war, when certain firms +had to be kept going at all costs, profit or no profit, because +their activities were indispensable. It was against all Capitalist +principles; but in war economic principles are thrown to the wind like +Christian principles; and the habits of war are not cured instantly +by armistices. In 1925, when the Government was easily blackmailed +into paying the mine-owners ten millions of the money of the general +taxpayer (your money and mine), it might at least have secured for us +an equivalent interest in the mines. It might have obliged the owners +to mortgage their property to the nation for the means to carry on, as +they would have had to do if they had raised the money in the ordinary +commercial way. As to the miners, they felt no responsibility, because, +as the owners bought labor in the market exactly as they bought +pit props, there was no more excuse for asking the miners to admit +indebtedness for the subsidy than the dealers in pit props. On every +principle of Capitalism the Government should either have refused to +interfere, and have let the comparatively barren mines which could not +afford to pay the standard wage for the standard working day go smash, +or else it should have advanced the millions by way of mortgage, not +on the worthless security of the defaulting mines, but on that of all +the coal mines, good and bad. The interest on the mortgage would in +that case have been paid to the nation by the good mines, which would +thus have been compelled to make up the deficits of the bad ones; and +if the interest had not been paid, the Government could finally have +nationalized the mines by simple foreclosure instead of by purchase. + +But capitalists are by no means in favor of having Capitalist +principles applied to themselves in their dealings with the State. +Besides, why should the fortunate owners of solvent mines subsidize the +owners of insolvent ones? If the Government chooses to subsidize bad +mines, let it be content with the security of the bad mines. It ended +in the Government making the owners a present of the ten millions. The +owners had to pass it on to the miners as wages: at least that was the +idea; and it was more or less the fact also. But whether we regard it +as a subsidy to the miners or to the owners or to both, it was none +the less confiscated from the general taxpayer and handed as alms to +favored persons. + +The people who say that such subsidies are Socialistic, whether with +the object of discrediting them or recommending them, are talking +nonsense: they might as well say that the perpetual pensions conferred +by Charles II on his illegitimate children were Socialistic. They +are frank exploitations of the taxpayer by bankrupt Capitalism and +its proletarian dependents. Socialist agitators, far from supporting +such subsidies, will shout at you that you are paying part of the +men’s wages whilst the mine-owners take all the profits; that if you +will stand that, you will stand anything; that you are paying for +nationalization and not getting it; that you are being saddled with a +gigantic system of outdoor relief for the rich in addition to their +rents, their dividends, and the doles they have left you to pay to +their discarded employees; that the capitalists, having plundered +everything else, land, capital, and labor, are now plundering the +Treasury; that, not content with overcharging you for every article you +buy, they are now taxing you through the Government collector; and that +as they will have to hand over a share of what they take from you in +this way as wages, the Trade Unions are taking good care to make the +Labor Party support the subsidies in Parliament. + +Meanwhile you hear from all quarters angry denunciations of Poplarism +as a means by which the rate collector robs you of your possibly +hardearned money, often to the tune of twentyfour shillings for every +pound of the value of your house, to keep idle ablebodied laborers +eating their heads off at a higher rate of expenditure than you, +perhaps, can afford in your own house. + +All this, with due allowance for platform rhetoric, is true. The +attempt to maintain a failing system by subsidies plus Poplarism burns +the candle at both ends, and makes straight for industrial bankruptcy. +But you will not, if you are wise, waste your forces in resentful +indignation. The capitalists are not making a conscious attempt to +rob you. They are the flies on the wheel of their own system, which +they understand as little as you did before we sat down to study it. +All they know is that Trade Unionism is playing their own game against +them with such success that more and more of the overcharges (to you) +that formerly went to profit are now going to wages. They cry to the +Government to save them, and it saves them (at your expense) partly +because it is afraid of a big strike; partly because it wants to put +off the alternative of nationalization as long as possible; partly +because it has to consider the proletarian vote at the next general +election; and mostly because it can think of nothing better to do +in the rare moments when it has time to think at all. The British +employers, the British Trade Unionists, and the British Government have +no deep designs: so far it is just hand to mouth with them; and you +need not waste any moral indignation on them. But please note the word +British, thrice repeated in the last sentence, and also the words “so +far”. The American employers and financiers are far more self-conscious +than our business men and working men are; and the Americans are +teaching our people their methods. Modern scientific discoveries have +set them dreaming of enormously increased production; and they have +found out that as the world depends on the people who work, whether +with head or hand, they can by combining prevent idle and incapable +owners of land and capital from getting too much of the increase. They +know that they can neither realize their dream nor combine properly +by using their own brains; and they are now paying large salaries to +clever persons whose sole business is to think for them. Suppose you +were the managing head of a big business, and that you were determined +not to tolerate Trade Unionism among your workpeople, and therefore +had to treat them well enough to prevent them feeling the want of a +union. In England your firm would be called “a rat house”, in America +simply a non-union house. Imagine yourself visited by a well-dressed +lady or gentleman with the pleasant nonchalance of a person of proved +and conscious ability and distinction. She (we will assume that she is +a lady) has called to suggest that you should order all your workpeople +to join the union of their trade, of which she is the pampered +representative. You gasp, and would order her out if you dared; but +how can one shew the door to a superior and perfectly self-confident +person. She proceeds to explain whilst you are staring at her. She says +it will be worth your while: that her union is prepared to put some +new capital into your business, and that it will come to a friendly +arrangement with you as to the various trade restrictions to which you +so much object. She points out that if instead of working to increase +the dividends of your idle shareholders you were just to give them +what they are accustomed to expect, and use the rest of the profit for +bettering the condition of the people who are doing the work (including +yourself), the business would receive a fresh impulse, and you and all +the really effective people in it make much more money. She suggests +ways of doing it that you have never dreamt of. Can you see any reason +except stupid conservatism for refusing such a proposal? + +This is not a fancy picture. It has actually occurred in America as +the result of the Trade Unions employing first-rate business brains +to think for them, and not grudging them salaries equal to the wages +of a dozen workmen. When English Trade Unions become Americanized as +English big business is becoming Americanized they will do the same. +Our big businesses are already picking out brainy champions from the +universities and the public services to do just such jobs for them. +Both big business and skilled labor will presently be managing their +affairs scientifically, instead of dragging heavily and unimaginatively +through the old ruts. And when this is accomplished they will enslave +the unskilled, unorganized proletariat, including, as we have seen, +the middle-class folk who have no aptitude for money making. They will +enslave the Government. And they will do it mostly by the methods of +Socialism, effecting such manifest improvements in the condition of +the masses that it will be inhuman to stop them. The organized workers +will live, not in slums, but in places like Port Sunlight, Bournville, +and the Garden Cities. Employers like Mr Ford, Lord Leverhulme and +Mr Cadbury will be the rule and not the exception; and the sense of +helpless dependence on them will grow at the expense of individual +adventurousness. The old communal cry of high rates and a healthy city +will be replaced by Mr Ford’s cry of high wages and colossal profits. + +Those profits are the snag in the stream of prosperity. If they are +unequally distributed they will wreck the system that has produced +them, and involve the nation in the catastrophe. In spite of all the +apparent triumphs of increased business efficiency the Socialists will +still have to insist on public control of distribution and equalization +of income. Without that, capitalist big business, in league with +the aristocracy of Trade Unionism, will control the Government for +its private ends; and you may find it very difficult, as a voter, +to distinguish between the genuine Socialism that changes private +into public ownership of our industries, and the sham Socialism that +confiscates the money of one set of citizens without compensation only +to hand it over to another set, not to make our incomes more equal, but +to give more to those who have already too much. + + + + +67 + +CAPITALISM IN PERPETUAL MOTION + + +And now, learned lady reader (for by this time you know much more about +the vital history and present social problems of your country and of +the world than an average Capitalist Prime Minister), do you notice +that in these ceaseless activities which keep all of us fed and clothed +and lodged, and some of us even pampered, NOTHING STAYS PUT? Human +society is like a glacier: it looks like an immovable and eternal field +of ice; but it is really flowing like a river; and the only effect of +its glassy rigidity is that its own unceasing movement splits it up +into crevasses that make it frightfully dangerous to walk on, all the +more as they are beautifully concealed by natural whitewash in the +shape of snow. Your father’s bankruptcy, your husband’s, or your own +may precipitate you at any moment into a little crevasse. A big one may +suddenly swallow a whole empire, as three of them were swallowed in +1918. If, as is most likely, you have been brought up to believe that +the world is a place of permanent governments, settled institutions, +and unchangeable creeds in which all respectable people believe, to +which they all conform, and which are unalterable because they are +founded for all eternity on Magna Carta, the Habeas Corpus Act, the +Apostles’ Creed, and the Ten Commandments, what you have gathered here +of the continual and unexpected changes and topsy-turvy developments +of our social order, the passing of power from one class to another, +the changes of opinion by which what was applauded as prosperity and +honor and piety at the beginning of the nineteenth century came to be +execrated as greedy villainy at the end of it, and what were prosecuted +as criminal conspiracies under George IV are legalized and privileged +combinations, powerful in Parliament, under George V, may have driven +you to ask, what is the use of your drudging through all these +descriptions and explanations if by the time you have reached the end +of the book everything will have changed? I can only assure you that +the way to understand the changes that are going on is to understand +the changes that have gone before, and warn you that many women have +spoilt their whole lives and misled their children disastrously by not +understanding them. + +Besides, the things I have been describing have not passed wholly +away. There are still old-fashioned noblemen who lord it over the +countryside as their ancestors have done for hundreds of years, +sometimes benevolently, sometimes driving the inhabitants out to make +room for sheep or deer at their pleasure. There are still farmers, +large and small. There are still many petty employers carrying on small +businesses singly or in firms of two or three partners. There are still +joint stock companies that have not been merged in Trusts. There are +still multitudes of employees who belong to no Trade Union, and are +as badly sweated as the woman who sat in unwomanly rags and sang the +Song of the Shirt. There are still children and young persons who are +cruelly over-worked in spite of the Acts of Parliament that reach only +the factories and workshops. The world at large, though it contains +London and Paris and New York, also contains primitive villages where +gas, electric light, tap water and main drainage are as unknown as they +were to King Alfred. Our famous universities and libraries and picture +galleries are within travelling distance of tribes of savages and +cannibals, and of barbarian empires. Thus you can see around you living +examples of all the stages of the Capitalist System I have described. +Indeed, if you come, or your parents came (like mine) from one of those +families of more than a dozen children in the genteel younger-son +class which were more common formerly than they are today, you are +certain to have found, without going further than your parents, your +brothers and sisters, your uncles and aunts, your first cousins, and +perhaps yourself, examples of every phase of the conditions produced by +Capitalism in that class during the last two centuries, to say nothing +of the earlier half medieval phases in which most women, especially +respectable women, are still belated. + +Beside the Changing and the Changed stand the Not Yet Changed; and +we have to deal with all three in our daily business. Until we know +what has happened to the Changed we shall not understand what is +going to happen to the Not Yet Changed, and may ourselves, with the +best intentions, effect mischievous changes, or oppose and wreck +beneficial ones. If we look for guidance to the articles in our party +newspapers (all living on profiteers’ advertisements) or the speeches +of party politicians, or the gossip of our politically ignorant and +class-prejudiced neighbors and relatives, which is unfortunately just +what most of us do, we are sure to be either misguided and corrupted or +exasperated. + +Take, as a warning, those adventures of Capitalism in pursuit of +profits which I sketched for you in Chapter 37 and the few following +ones. They are always described to you in books and newspapers as the +history of the British race, or (in France) the French nation, or (in +Germany or Italy) the grand old German or Latin stock, dauntlessly +exercising its splendid virtues and talents in advancing civilization +at home and establishing it among the heathen abroad. Capitalism +can be made to look very well on paper. But beware of allowing your +disillusion to disable you by plunging you into disgust and general +cynical incredulity. Our thrilling columns of national self-praise +and mutual admiration must not be dismissed as mere humbug. Without +great discoverers and inventors and explorers, great organizers and +engineers and soldiers, hardy and reckless sailors, great chemists and +mathematicians, devoted missionaries and desperate adventurers, our +capitalists would be no better off today than they would have remained +in Greenland or Thibet. But the extraordinary men whose exploits have +made the capitalists rich were not themselves capitalists. The best +of them received little or no encouragement from capitalists, because +there was seldom any prospect of immediate profit from their labors +and adventures. Many of them were and are not only poor but persecuted. +And when the time comes, mostly after their deaths, to bring their +discoveries and conquests into everyday use, the work is done by the +hungry ones: the capitalists providing only the spare food they have +neither sown nor reaped, baked nor brewed, but only collected from +the hungry as rent or interest, and appropriated under laws made by +capitalist legislators for that purpose. British brains, British +genius, British courage and resolution have made the great reputation +of Britain, as the same qualities in other nations have made the other +great national reputations; but the capitalists as such have provided +neither brains, genius, courage, nor resolution. Their contribution +has been the spare food on which the geniuses have lived; and this +the capitalists did not produce: they only intercepted it during its +transfer from the hungry ones who made it to the hungry ones who +consumed it. + +Note that I say the capitalists _as such_; for the accident of a person +being both a capitalist and a genius may happen just as easily as the +accident of being both a genius and a pauper. Nature takes no notice of +money. It is not likely that a born capitalist (that is, the inheritor +of a fortune) will be a genius, because it is not likely that anybody +will be born a genius, the phenomenon being naturally rare; but it +may happen to capitalists occasionally, just as it has happened to +princes. Queen Elizabeth was able to tell her ministers that if they +put her into the street without anything but her petticoat she could +make her living with the best of them. At the same time Queen Mary of +Scotland was proving that if she had been put into the street with a +hundred millions of money and an army of fifty thousand men she would +have made a mess of it all somehow and come to a bad end. But their +being queens had nothing to do with that: it was their personal quality +as women that made the difference. In the same way, when one born +capitalist happens to be a genius and another a waster, the capital +produces neither the ability nor the worthlessness. Take away their +capital, and they remain just the same: double it, and you double +neither their ability nor their imbecility. The stupidest person in the +country may be the richest: the cleverest and greatest may not know +where tomorrow’s dinner is to come from. I repeat, capitalists as such +need no special ability, and lose nothing by the lack of it. If they +seem able to feed Peter the Laborer it is only because they have taken +the food from Paul the Farmer; and even this they have not done with +their own hands: they have paid Matthew the Agent to do it, and had +his salary from Mark the Shopkeeper. And when Peter is a navvy, Paul +an engineer, Matthew the manager of a Trust, and Mark a banker, the +situation remains essentially unchanged. Peter and Paul, Matthew and +Mark, do all the work: the capitalist does nothing but take as much of +what they make as she can without starving them (killing the goose that +lays the golden eggs). + +Therefore you may disregard both the Capitalist papers which claim +all the glories of our history as the fruit of Capitalist virtue +and talent, and the anti-Capitalist papers which ascribe all our +history’s shames and disgraces to the greed of the capitalists. Waste +neither your admiration nor your indignation. The more you understand +the system, the better you will see that the most devout personal +righteousness cannot evade it except by political changes which will +rescue the whole nation from it. + +But though the capitalist as such does nothing but invest her money, +Capitalism does a great deal. When it has filled the home markets with +all the common goods the people can afford to pay for out of their +wages, and all the established fashionable luxuries the rich will +buy, it must apply its fresh accumulations of spare money to more +out-of-the-way and hazardous enterprises. It is then that Capitalism +becomes adventurous and experimental; listens to the schemes of hungry +men who are great inventors or chemists or engineers; and establishes +new industries and services like telephones, motor charabancs, air +services, wireless concerts, and so forth. It is then that it begins to +consider the question of harbors, which, as we saw, it would not look +at whilst there was still room for new distilleries. At the present +moment an English company has undertaken to build a harbor at a cost of +a million pounds for a Portuguese island in the Atlantic, and even to +make it a free port (that is, charge no harbor dues) if the Government +of the island lets it collect and keep the customs duties. + +The capitalists, though they are very angry when the hungry ask +for Government help of any kind, have no scruples about asking it +for themselves. The railways ask the Government to guarantee their +dividends; the air services ask for large sums from the Government to +help them to maintain their aeroplanes and make money out of them; +the coalowners and the miners between them extort subsidies from the +Government by threatening a strike if they do not get it; and the +Government, under the Trades Facilities Acts, guarantees loans to +private capitalists without securing any share in their enterprises +for the nation, which provides them with capital cheaply, but has to +pay profiteering prices for their goods and services all the same. In +the end there is hardly any conceivable enterprise that can be made +to pay dividends that Capitalism will not undertake as long as it can +find spare money; and when it cannot it is quite ready to extract money +from the Government--that is, to take it forcibly from the people by +taxes--by assuring everyone that the Government can do nothing itself +for the people, who must always come to the capitalists to get it done +for them in return for substantial profits, dividends, and rents. Its +operations are so enormous that it alters the size and meaning of what +we call our country. Trading companies of capitalists have induced +the Government to give them charters under which they have seized +large and populous islands like Borneo, whole empires like India, and +great tracts of country like Rhodesia, governing them and maintaining +armies in them for the purpose of making as much money out of them +as possible. But they have taken care to hoist the British flag, and +make use directly or indirectly, of the British army and navy at the +cost of the British taxpayers to defend these conquests of theirs; +and in the end the British Commonwealth has had to take over their +responsibilities and add the islands and countries they have seized +to what is called the British Empire, with the curious result, quite +unintended by the British people, that the centre of the British +Empire is now in the East instead of in Great Britain, and out of +every hundred of our fellow subjects only eleven are whites, or even +Christians. Thus Capitalism leads us into enterprises of all sorts, at +home and abroad, over which we have no control, and for which we have +no desire. The enterprises are not necessarily bad: some of them have +turned out well; but the point is that Capitalism does not care whether +they turn out well or ill for us provided they promise to bring in +money to the shareholders. We never know what Capitalism will be up to +next; and we never can believe a word its newspapers tell us about its +doings when the truth seems likely to be unpopular. + +It is hard to believe that you may wake up one morning, and learn from +your newspaper that the Houses of Parliament and the King have moved +to Constantinople or Baghdad or Zanzibar, and that this insignificant +island is to be retained only as a meteorological station, a bird +sanctuary, and a place of pilgrimage for American tourists. But if +that did happen, what could you do? It would be a perfectly logical +development of Capitalism. And it is no more impossible than the +transfer of the mighty Roman empire from Rome to Constantinople was +impossible. All you could do, if you wished to be in the fashion, or +if your business or that of your husband could be conducted only in +a great metropolitan centre, would be to go east after the King and +Parliament, or west to America and cease to be a Briton. + +You need not, however, pack up just yet. But what you really need do +is rid your mind of the notion that mere Conservatism, in its general +sense of a love for the old ways and institutions you were brought +up with, will be of any avail against Capitalism. Capitalism, in its +ceaseless search for investment, its absolute necessity for finding +hungry men to eat its spare bread before it goes stale, breaks through +every barrier, rushes every frontier, swallows every religion, levels +every institution that obstructs it, and sets up any code of morals +that facilitates it, as soullessly as it sets up banks and lays cables. +And you must approve and conform, or be ruined, and perhaps imprisoned +or executed. + + + + +68 + +THE RUNAWAY CAR OF CAPITALISM + + +Capitalism, then, keeps us in perpetual motion. Now motion is not a bad +thing: it is life as opposed to stagnation, paralysis, and death. It +is novelty as opposed to monotony; and novelty is so necessary to us +that if you take the best thing within your reach (say the best food, +the best music, the best book, the best state of mind, or the best +anything that remains the same always), and if you stick to it long +enough you will come to loathe it. Changeable women, for instance, are +more endurable than monotonous ones, however unpleasant some of their +changes may be: they are sometimes murdered but seldom deserted; and it +is the ups and downs of married life that make it bearable. When people +shake their heads because we are living in a restless age, ask them +how they would like to live in a stationary one and do without change. +Nobody who buys a motor car says “the slower the better”. Motion is +delightful when we can control it, guide it, and stop it when it is +taking us into danger. + +Uncontrolled motion is terrible. Fancy yourself in a car which you do +not know how to steer and cannot stop, with an inexhaustible supply of +petrol in the tank, rushing along at fifty miles an hour on an island +strewn with rocks and bounded by cliff precipices! That is what living +under Capitalism feels like when you come to understand it. Capital is +running away with us; and we know that it has always ended in the past +by taking its passengers over the brink of the precipice at the foot of +which are strewn the ruins of empires. The desperately pressing present +problem for all governments is how to get control of this motion; make +safe highways for it; and steer it along those highways. If only we +could stop it whilst we sit down and think! But no: the car will not +stop: on the contrary it goes faster and faster as capital accumulates +in greater and greater quantities, and as we multiply our numbers. One +statesman after another snatches at the wheel and tries his hand. Kings +try their hands; dictators try their hands; democratic prime ministers +try their hands; committees and Soviets try their hands; and we look +hopefully to them for a moment, imagining that they have got control +because they do it with an air of authority, and assure us that it will +be all right if only we will sit quiet. But Capital runs away with them +all; and we palpitate between relief when our ungovernable vehicle +blunders into a happy valley, and despair when we hear the growl of the +waves at the foot of the cliffs grow louder and louder instead of dying +away in the distance. Blessed then are those who do not know and cannot +think: to them life seems a joyride with a few disagreeable incidents +that must be put up with. They sometimes make the best rulers, just as +the best railway signalman is he who does not feel his responsibility +enough to be frightened out of his wits by it. But in the long run +civilization depends on our governments gaining an intelligent control +of the forces that are running away with Capitalism; and for that an +understanding of them is necessary. Mere character and energy, much +as we admire them, are positively mischievous without intellect and +knowledge. + +Our present difficulty is that nobody understands except a few students +whose books nobody else reads, or here and there a prophet crying in +the wilderness and being either ignored by the press or belittled as +a crank. Our rulers are full of the illusions of the money market, +counting £5 a year as £100. Our voters have not got even so far as +this, because nine out of ten of them, women or men, have no more +experience of capital than a sheep has of a woollen mill, though the +wool comes off its own back. + +But between the government and the governed there is a very important +difference. The governments do not know how to govern; but they know +that government is necessary, and that it must be paid for. The voters +regard government as a tyrannical interference with their personal +liberty, and taxation as the plunder of the private citizen by the +officials of a tyrannous state. Formerly this did not matter much, +because the people had no votes. Queen Elizabeth, for instance, told +the common people, and even the jurymen and the Knights of the Shires +who formed the Parliament in her time, that affairs of State were not +their business, and that it was the grossest presumption on their part +to have any opinion of their own on such matters. If they attempted +to argue with her she threw them into prison without the smallest +hesitation. Yet even she could not extract money enough from them in +taxes to follow up her political successes. She could barely hold her +own by being quite right about the incompetence of the commoners and +knights, and being herself the most competent person of her time. These +two advantages made her independent of the standing armies by which +other despots maintained themselves. She could depend on the loyalty +of her people because she was able, as we say, to deliver the goods. +When her successors attempted to be equally despotic without being able +to deliver the goods, one of them was beheaded, and the other driven +out of the country. Cromwell rivalled her in ability; but though he +was a parliament man, he was finally driven to lay violent hands on +Parliament, and rule by armed force. + +As to the common people, the view that their poverty and political +ignorance disqualified them for any share in the government of the +country was accepted until within my own lifetime. Within my father’s +lifetime the view that to give every man a vote (to say nothing of +every woman) was ridiculous and, if acted on, dangerous, seemed a +matter of course not only to Tories like the old Duke of Wellington, +but to extreme revolutionaries like the young poet Shelley. It seems +only the other day that Mr Winston Churchill declared that Labor is not +fit to govern. + +Now you probably agree with Queen Elizabeth, Cromwell, Wellington, +Shelley, and Mr Winston Churchill. At all events if you do you are +quite right. For although Mr Ramsay MacDonald easily convinced the +country that a Labor Government can govern at least as well as either +the Liberal or Conservative Governments who have had the support of +Mr Churchill, the truth is that none of them can govern: Capitalism +runs away with them all. The hopes that we founded on the extension of +the franchise, first to working men and finally to women, which means +in effect to all adults, have been disappointed as far as controlling +Capitalism is concerned, and indeed in most other respects too. The +first use the women made of their votes was to hurl Mr MacDonald out of +Parliament and vote for hanging the Kaiser and making Germany pay for +the war, both of them impossibilities which should not have imposed on +even a male voter. They got the vote mainly by the argument that they +were as competent politically as the men; and when they got it they +at once used it to prove that they were just as incompetent. The only +point they scored at the election was that the defeat of Mr MacDonald +by their vote in Leicester shewed that they were not, as the silliest +of their opponents had alleged, sure to vote for the best-looking man. + +What the extension of political power to the whole community +(Democracy, as they call it) has produced is a reinforcement of the +popular resistance to government and taxation at a moment when nothing +but a great extension of government and taxation can hope to control +the Gadarene rush of Capitalism towards the abyss. And this has +produced a tendency which is the very last that the old Suffragists +and Suffragettes dreamt of, or would have advocated if they had dreamt +of it: namely, a demand for the abandonment of parliamentary government +and the substitution of a dictatorship. In desperation at the failure +of Parliament to rescue industry from the profiteers, and currency +from the financiers (which means rescuing the livelihood of the people +from the purely predatory side of Capitalism), Europe has begun to +clamor for political disciplinarians to save her. Victorious France, +with her currency in the gutter, may be said to be advertising for a +Napoleon or a political Messiah. Italy has knocked its parliament down +and handed the whip to Signor Mussolini to thrash Italian democracy +and bureaucracy into some sort of order and efficiency. In Spain the +king and the military commander-in-chief have refused to stand any more +democratic nonsense, and taken the law into their own hands. In Russia +a minority of devoted Marxists maintain by sheer force such government +as is possible in the teeth of an intensely recalcitrant peasantry. In +England we should welcome another Cromwell but for two considerations. +First, there is no Cromwell. Second, history teaches us that if there +were one, and he again ruled us by military force after trying every +sort of parliament and finding each worse than the other, he would be +worn out or dead after a few years; and then we should return like the +sow to her wallowing in the mire and leave the restored profiteers to +wreak on the corpse of the worn-out ruler the spite they dared not +express whilst he was alive. Thus our inability to govern ourselves +lands us in such a mess that we hand the job over to any person strong +enough to undertake it; and then our unwillingness to be governed at +all makes us turn against the strong person, the Cromwell or Mussolini, +as an intolerable tyrant, and relapse into the condition of Bunyan’s +Simple, Sloth, and Presumption the moment his back is turned or his +body buried. We clamor for a despotic discipline out of the miseries of +our anarchy, and, when we get it, clamor out of the severe regulation +of our law and order for what we call liberty. At each blind rush from +one extreme to the other we empty the baby out with the bath, learning +nothing from our experience, and furnishing examples of the abuses of +power and the horrors of liberty without ascertaining the limits of +either. + +Let us see whether we cannot clear up this matter of government versus +liberty a little before we give up the human race as politically +hopeless. + + + + +69 + +THE NATURAL LIMIT TO LIBERTY + + +Once for all, we are not born free; and we never can be free. When all +the human tyrants are slain or deposed there will still be the supreme +tyrant that can never be slain or deposed, and that tyrant is Nature. +However easygoing Nature may be in the South Sea Islands, where you can +bask in the sun and have food for the trouble of picking it up, even +there you have to build yourself a hut, and, being a woman, to bear and +rear children with travail and trouble. And, as the men are handsome +and quarrelsome and jealous, and, having little else to do except make +love, combine exercise with sport by killing oneanother, you have to +defend yourself with your own hands. + +But in our latitudes Nature is a hard taskmaster. In primitive +conditions it was only by working strenuously early and late that we +could feed and clothe and shelter ourselves sufficiently to be able +to survive the rigors of our climate. We were often beaten by famine +and flood, wolves and untimely rain and storms; and at best the women +had to bear large families to make up for the deaths of children. They +had to make the clothes of the family and bake its bread as well as +cook its meals. Such leisure as a modern woman enjoys was not merely +reprehensible: it was impossible. A chief had to work hard for his +power and privileges as lawgiver, administrator, and chief of police; +and had even his most pampered wife attempted to live as idly and +wastefully as thousands of ordinary ladies now do with impunity, +he would certainly have corrected her with a stick as thick as his +thumb, and been held not only guiltless, but commendably active in the +discharge of his obvious social duty. And the women were expected to +do the like by their daughters instead of teaching them, as Victorian +ladies did, that to do anything useful is disgraceful, and that if, as +inevitably happens, something useful has to be done, you must ring for +a servant and by no means do it yourself. + +Now commercial civilization has been at root nothing more than the +invention of ways of doing Nature’s tasks with less labor. Men of +science invent because they want to discover Nature’s secrets; but such +popular inventions as the bow and spear, the spade and plough, the +wheel and arch, come from the desire to make work easier out of doors. +Indoors the spinning wheel and loom, the frying-pan and poker, the +scrubbing brush and soap, the needle and safety pin, make domestic work +easier. Some inventions make the work harder, but also much shorter +and more intelligent, or else they make operations possible that were +impossible before: for instance, the alphabet, Arabic numerals, ready +reckoners, logarithms, and algebra. When instead of putting your back +into your work you put the horse’s or ox’s back into it, and later +on set steam and explosive spirits and electricity to do the work of +the strained backs, a state of things is reached in which it becomes +possible for people to have less work than is good for them instead of +more. The needle becomes a sewing machine, the sweeping brush becomes +a vacuum cleaner, and both are driven from a switch in the wall by an +engine miles away instead of being treadled and wielded by foot and +hand. In Chapter 42 we had a glance at the way in which we lost the +old manual skill and knowledge of materials and of buying and selling, +first through division of labor (a very important invention), and +then through machinery. If you engage a servant today who has been +trained at a first-rate institution in the use of all the most modern +domestic machinery, and take her down to a country house, I will not go +quite so far yet as to warn you that though she knows how to work the +buttons on an automatic electric lift or step on and off an escalator +without falling on her nose, she cannot walk up or downstairs; but it +may come to that before long. Meanwhile you will have on your hands a +supercivilized woman whom you will be glad to replace by a girl from +the nearest primitive village, if any primitive villages are left in +your neighborhood. + +Let us, however, confine ourselves to the bearing of all this on that +pet topic of the leisured class, our personal liberty. + +What is liberty? Leisure. What is leisure? Liberty. If you can at any +moment in the day say “I can do as I please for the next hour” then for +that hour you are at liberty. If you say “I must now do such and such +things during the next hour whether I like it or not” then you are not +at liberty for that hour in spite of Magna Carta, the Declaration of +Rights (or of Independence), and all the other political title-deeds of +your so-called freedom. + +May I, without being too intrusive, follow you throughout your daily +routine? You are wakened in the morning, whether you like it or not, +either by a servant or by that nerve-shattering abomination an alarum +clock. You must get up and light the fire and wash and dress and +prepare and eat your breakfast. So far, no liberty. You simply must. +Then you have to make your bed, wash up the breakfast things, sweep +and tidy-up the place, and tidy yourself up, which means that you must +more or less wash and re-dress your person until you are presentable +enough to go out and buy fresh supplies of food and do other necessary +shopping. Every meal you take involves preparation, including cooking, +and washing up afterwards. In the course of these activities you will +have to travel from place to place, which even in the house often means +treadmill work on the stairs. You must rest a little occasionally. And +finally you must go to sleep for eight hours. + +In addition to all this you must earn the money to do your shopping +and pay your rent and rates. This you can do in two main ways. You can +work in some business for at least eight hours a day, plus the journeys +to and from the place where you work. Or you can marry, in which case +you will have to do for your husband and children all the preparation +of meals and marketing that you had to do for yourself, to wash and +dress the children until they are able to wash and dress themselves, +and to do all the other things that belong to the occupation of wife +and mother, including the administration of most of the family income. +If you add up all the hours you are forced to spend in these ways, +and subtract them from the twenty-four hours allowed you by Nature to +get through them in, the remainder will be your daily leisure: that +is, your liberty. Historians and journalists and political orators +may assure you that the defeat of the Armada, the cutting off of King +Charles’s head, the substitution of Dutch William for Scottish James +on the throne, the passing of the Married Women’s Property Acts, and +the conquest by the Suffragettes of Votes for Women, have set you free; +and in moments of enthusiasm roused by these assurances you may sing +fervently that Britons never never will be slaves. But though all +these events may have done away with certain grievances from which you +might be suffering if they had not occurred, they have added nothing to +your leisure and therefore nothing to your liberty. The only Acts of +Parliament that have really increased liberty: that is, added to the +number of minutes in which a woman’s time is her own, are the Factory +Acts which reduced her hours of industrial labor, the Sunday Observance +Acts which forbid commercial work on every seventh day, and the Bank +Holiday Acts. + +You see, then, that the common trick of speaking of liberty as if we +were all either free or slaves, is a foolish one. Nature does not allow +any of us to be wholly free. In respect of eating and drinking and +washing and dressing and sleeping and the other necessary occasions +of physical life, the most incorrigible tramp, sacrificing every +decency and honesty to freedom, is as much a slave for at least ten or +eleven hours a day as a constitutional king, who has to live an almost +entirely dictated life. An enslaved negress who has six hours a day +to herself has more liberty than a “free” white woman who has only +three. The white woman is free to go on strike, and the negress is not; +but the negress can console herself by her freedom to commit suicide +(fundamentally much the same thing), and by pitying the Englishwoman +because, having so much less liberty, she is only poor white trash. + +Now in our desire for liberty we all sympathize with the tramp. Our +difference from him, when we do differ, is that some of us want leisure +so that we may be able to work harder at the things we like than +slaves, except under the most brutal compulsion, work at the things +they must do. The tramp wastes his leisure and is miserable: we want to +employ our leisure and be happy. For leisure, remember, is not rest. +Rest, like sleep, is compulsory. Genuine leisure is freedom to do as we +please, not to do nothing. + +As I write, a fierce fight between the miners and the mine-owners has +culminated in the increase of the miners’ daily working hours from +seven to eight. It is said that the miners want a seven hours working +day. This is the wrong way to put it. What the miners want is not seven +hours mining but seventeen hours off, out of which Nature will take at +least ten for her occasions, and locomotion another. Thus the miner, +by rigidly economizing his time, cutting out all loafing, and being +fortunate in the weather and season, might conceivably manage to have +six hours of effective leisure out of the twenty-four on the basis of +seven hours earning and eleven hours for sleep, recreation, loafing +and locomotion. And it is this six hours of liberty that he wants to +increase. Even when the immediate object of his clamor for shorter +hours of work is only a mask for his real intention of working as long +as before but receiving overtime pay (half as much again) for the last +hour, his final object is to obtain more money to spend on his leisure. +The pieceworker, the moment the piecework rate enables him to earn as +much in three or four days as he has been accustomed to earn in a week, +is as likely as not to take two or three days off instead of working +as long as before for twice as much money. He wants leisure more than +money. + +But the conclusive instance is that of property. Women desire to be +women of property because property secures to them the maximum of +leisure. The woman of property need not get up at six in the morning +to light the fire. She need not prepare her husband’s breakfast nor +her own. She need not wash-up nor empty the slops nor make the beds. +She need not do the marketing, nor any shopping except the sort she +enjoys. She need not bother more about her children than she cares +to. She need not even brush her own hair; and if she must still eat +and sleep and wash and move from place to place, these operations +are made as luxurious as possible. She can count on at least twelve +hours leisure every day. She may work harder at trying on new dresses, +hunting, dancing, visiting, receiving, bridge, tennis, mountain +climbing, or any other hobby she may have, than a laborer’s wife works +at her compulsory housekeeping; but she is doing what she likes all +the time, and not what she must. And so, having her fill of liberty, +she is usually an ardent supporter of every political movement that +protects her privilege, and a strenuous and sometimes violently +abusive opponent of every political movement that threatens to curtail +her leisure or reduce the quantity of money at her disposal for its +enjoyment. She clings to her position because it gives her the utmost +possible liberty; and her grievance is that she finds it difficult to +obtain and retain domestic servants because, though she offers them +higher wages and better food and lodging and surroundings than they +can secure for themselves as industrial employees, she also offers +them less freedom. Their time, as they say, is never their own except +for occasional evenings out. Formerly women of all classes, from +governesses to scullery maids, went into domestic service because the +only alternative was rough work in unbearably coarse company, and +because, with comparatively gentle dispositions, they were for the most +part illiterate and ignorant. Nowadays, being imprisoned in schools +daily for at least nine years, they are no longer illiterate; and there +are many occupations open to them (for instance, in city offices) that +were formerly reserved for men. Even in rough employment the company +is not so rough as it used to be; besides, women of gentle nurture +are no longer physically disabled for them by the dress and habits +that made the Victorian woman half an invalid. A hundred years ago a +housemaid was so different from a herring-gutter or a ragpicker that +she was for all business purposes an animal of another species. Today +they are all “young ladies” in their leisure hours; and the single fact +that a housemaid has less leisure than an industrial employee makes it +impossible to obtain a housemaid who is not half imbecile in a factory +town, and not easy to get one in a fishing port. + +It is the same with men. But do not conclude that every woman and every +man desires freedom above all things. Some people are very much afraid +of it. They are so conscious that they cannot fend for themselves +either industrially or morally that they feel that the only safe +condition for them is one of tutelage, in which they will always have +someone to tell them not only what to do but how to behave. Women of +this kind seek domestic service, and men military service, not in spite +of the forfeiture of their freedom but because of it. Were it not for +this factor in the problem it would be harder to get domestic servants +and soldiers than it is. Yet the ideal of the servant and soldier is +not continual tutelage and service: it is tutelage relieved by an +occasional spree. They both want to be as free as they dare. Again, the +very last thing the ordinary industrial male worker wants is to have to +think about his work. That is the manager’s job. What he wants to think +about is his play. For its sake he wants his worktime to be as short, +and his playtime as long, as he can afford. Women, from domestic +necessity and habit, are more accustomed to think about their work than +men; for a housewife must both work and manage; but she also is glad +when her work is over. + +The great problem of the distribution of the national income thus +becomes also a problem of the distribution of necessary work and the +distribution of leisure or liberty. And this leisure or liberty is what +we all desire: it is the sphere of romance and infinite possibilities, +whilst worktime is the sphere of cut and dried compulsory reality. All +the inventions and expedients by which labor is made more productive +are hailed with enthusiasm, and called progress, because they make +more liberty possible for us. Unfortunately, we distribute the leisure +gained by the invention of the machines in the most absurd way that can +be conceived. Take your woman of property whom we have just discussed, +with her fifteen hours leisure out of the twenty-four. How does she +obtain that leisure? Not by inventing anything, but by owning machines +invented by somebody else and keeping the leisure they produce all +to herself, leaving those who actually work the machines with no +more leisure than they had before. Do not blame her: she cannot help +herself, poor lady! that is Capitalist law. + +Look at it in the broader case of the whole nation. Modern methods of +production enable each person in the nation to produce much more than +they need consume to keep themselves alive and reproduce themselves. +That means that modern methods produce not only a national fund of +wealth but a national fund of leisure or liberty. Now just as you can +distribute the wealth so as to make a few people monstrously rich +whilst leaving all the rest as poor as before, you can distribute the +leisure in such a way as to make a few people free for fifteen hours +a day whilst the rest remain as they were, with barely four hours to +dispose of as they please. And this is exactly what the institution of +private property has done, and why a demand for its abolition and for +the equal distribution of the national leisure or liberty among the +whole population has arisen under the banner of Socialism. + +Let us try to make a rough picture of what would happen if leisure, and +consequently productive work, were equally distributed. Let us pretend +that if we all worked four hours a day for thirtyfive years each of us +could live as well as persons with at least a thousand a year do now. +Let us assume that this state of things has been established by general +agreement, involving a compromise between the people who want to work +only two hours and live on a five-hundred-a-year scale and those who +want to work four hours and live twice as expensively! + +The difficulty then arises that some kinds of work will not fit +themselves into instalments of four hours a day. Suppose you are +married, for example. If your husband is in business there is no +trouble for him. He does every day what he now does on Saturday: that +is, begins at nine and knocks off at one. But what about your work? +The most important work in the world is that of bearing and rearing +children; for without that the human race would presently be extinct. +All women’s privileges are based on that fact. Now a woman cannot be +pregnant for four hours a day, and normal for the rest of it. Nor +can she nurse her infant for four hours and neglect it until nine +next morning. It is true that pregnancy does not involve complete and +continuous disablement from every other productive activity: indeed, no +fact is better established by experience than that any attempt to treat +it as such is morbid and dangerous. As some writers inelegantly express +it, it is not a whole time job. Nursing is much more continuously +exacting, as children in institutions who receive only what ignorant +people call necessary attention mostly die, whilst home children who +are played with and petted and coddled and tossed and sung-to survive +with a dirty rag or two for clothing, and a thatched cabin with one +room and a clay floor for habitation. + +A four hours working day, then, does not mean that everybody can begin +work at nine and leave off at one. Pregnancy and nursing are only +items in the long list of vitally important occupations that cannot be +interrupted and resumed at the sound of a hooter. It is possible in +a factory to keep a continuous process going by having six shifts of +workers to succeed oneanother during the twentyfour hours, so that each +shift works no more than four hours; but a ship, being a home as well +as a workplace, cannot accommodate six crews. Even if we built warships +big enough to hold 5000 and carry food for them, the shifts could not +retire from Jutland battles at the end of each spell of four hours. Nor +is such leisure as is possible on board ship the equivalent of shore +leisure, as the leisured passengers, with their silly deck games, and +their agonized scamperings fore and aft for exercise know only too well. + +Then there are the jobs that cannot be done in shifts because they +must be done by the same person throughout with a continuance that +stretches human endurance to the utmost limit. A chemist or physicist +watching an experiment, an astronomer watching an eclipse, a doctor or +nurse watching a difficult case, a Cabinet minister dealing with news +from the front during a war, a farmer saving his hay in the face of an +unfavorable weather forecast, or a body of scavengers clearing away a +snowfall, must go on if necessary until they drop, four hours or no +four hours. Handel’s way of composing an oratorio was to work at it +night and day until it was finished, keeping himself awake as best he +might. Explorers are lucky if they do not die of exhaustion, as many of +them have, from prolonged effort and endurance. + +A four hour working day therefore, though just as feasible as an eight +hour day is now, or the five day week which is the latest cry, is in +practice only a basis of calculation. In factory and office work, and +cognate occupations out of doors, it can be carried out literally. It +may mean short and frequent holidays or long and rare ones. I do not +know what happens to you in this respect; but in my own case, in spite +of the most fervent resolutions to order my work more sensibly, and of +the fact that an author’s work can as a rule quite well be divided into +limited daily periods, I am usually obliged to work myself to the verge +of a complete standstill and then go away for many weeks to recuperate. +Eight or nine months overwork, and three or four months change and +overleisure, is very common among professional persons. + +Then there is a vital difference between routine work and what is +called creative or original work. When you hear of a man achieving +eminence by working sixteen hours a day for thirty years, you may +admire that apparently unnatural feat; but you must not conclude that +he has any other sort of ability: in fact you may quite safely put +him down as quite incapable of doing anything that has not been done +before, and doing it in the old way. He never has to think or invent. +To him today’s work is a repetition of yesterday’s work. Compare him, +for example, with Napoleon. If you are interested in the lives of such +people you are probably tired of hearing how Napoleon could keep on +working with fierce energy long after all the members of his council +were so exhausted that they could not even pretend to keep awake. But +if you study the less often quoted memoirs of his secretary Bourrienne +you will learn that Napoleon often moodled about for a week at a time +doing nothing but play with children or read trash or waste his time +helplessly. During his enforced leisure in St Helena, which he enjoyed +so little that he probably often exclaimed, after Cowper’s Selkirk, +“Better live in the midst of alarms than dwell in this horrible place”, +he was asked how long a general lasted. He replied, “Six years”. An +American president is not expected to last more than four years. In +England, where there is no law to prevent a worn-out dotard from being +Prime Minister, even so imposing a parliamentary figure as Gladstone +had to be practically superannuated when he tried to continue into the +eighteen-nineties the commanding activities which had exhausted him +in the seventies. To descend to more commonplace instances you cannot +make an accountant work as long as a bookkeeper, nor a historian as +continuously as a scrivener or typist, though they are performing the +same arithmetical and manual operations. One will be tired out in three +hours: the other can do eight without turning a hair with the help of a +snack or a cup of tea to relieve her boredom occasionally. In the face +of such differences you cannot distribute work equally and uniformly in +quantities measured by time. What you can do is to give the workers, on +the whole, equal leisure, bearing in mind that rest and recuperation +are not leisure, and that periods of necessary recuperation in idleness +must be counted as work, and often very irksome work, to those who have +been prostrated by extraordinary efforts excessively prolonged. + +The long and short of it is that freedom with a large F, general and +complete, has no place in nature. In practice the questions that +arise in its name are, first, how much leisure can we afford to allow +ourselves? and second, how far can we be permitted to do what we like +when we are at leisure? For instance, may we hunt stags on Dartmoor? +Some of us say no; and if our opinion becomes law, the liberty of +the Dartmoor Hunt will be curtailed to that extent. May we play golf +on Sundays during church hours? Queen Elizabeth would not only have +said no, but made churchgoing compulsory, and thereby have made +Sunday a half-holiday instead of a whole one. Nowadays we enjoy the +liberty of Sunday golf. Under Charles II, on the other hand, women +were not allowed to attend Quaker meetings, and were flogged if they +did. In fact attendance at any sort of religious service except that +of the Church of England was a punishable offence; and though it was +not possible to enforce this law fully against Roman Catholics and +Jews, its penalties were ruthlessly inflicted on George Fox and John +Bunyan, though King Charles himself sympathized with them. It cost us +a revolution to establish comparative “liberty of conscience”; and +we can now build and attend handsome temples of The Church of Christ +Scientist, and form fantastic Separatist sects by the score if it +pleases us. + +On the other hand many things that we were free to do formerly we may +not do now. In England until quite lately, as in Italy to this day, +when a woman married, all her property became her husband’s; and if +she had the ill luck to marry a drunken blackguard, he could leave her +to make a home for herself and her children by her own work, and then +come back and seize everything she possessed and spend it in drink +and debauchery. He could do it again and again, and sometimes did. +Attempts to remedy this were denounced by happily married pious people +as attacks on the sanctity of the marriage tie; and women who advocated +a change were called unwomanly; but at last commonsense and decency +prevailed; and in England a married woman is now so well protected from +plunder and rapine committed by her husband that a Married Men’s Rights +agitation has begun. + +Outside the home a factory owner might and did work little children to +death with impunity, and do or leave undone anything he liked in his +factory. Today he can no more do what he likes there than you can do +what you like in Westminster Abbey. He is compelled by law to put up in +a conspicuous place a long list of the things he must do and the things +he may not do, whether he likes it or not. And when he is at leisure he +is still subject to laws that restrict his freedom and impose duties +and observances on him. He may not drive his motor car faster than +twenty miles an hour (though he always does), and must drive on the +left and pass on the right in England, and drive to the right and pass +on the left in France. In public he must wear at least some clothing, +even when he is taking a sunbath. He may not shoot wild birds or catch +fish for sport except during certain seasons of the year; and he may +not shoot children for sport at all. And the liberty of women in these +respects is limited as the liberty of men is. + +I need not bother you with more instances: you can think of dozens for +yourself. Suffice it that without leisure there is no liberty, and +without law there is no secure leisure. In an ideal free State, the +citizen at leisure would find herself headed off by a police officer +(male or female) whenever she attempted to do something that her +fellow citizens considered injurious to them, or even to herself; but +the assumption would be that she had a most sacred right to do as she +pleased, however eccentric her conduct might appear, provided it was +not mischievous. It is the contrary assumption that she must not do +anything that she is not expressly licensed to do, like a child who +must come to its mother and ask leave to do anything that is not in the +daily routine, that destroys liberty. There is in British human nature, +and I daresay in human nature in general, a very strong vein of pure +inhibitiveness. Never forget the children in Punch, who, discussing +how to amuse themselves, decided to find out what the baby was doing +and tell it it mustnt. Forbiddance is an exercise of power; and we +all have a will to personal power which conflicts with the will to +social freedom. It is right that it should be jealously resisted when +it leads to acts of irresponsible tyranny. But when all is said, the +people who shout for freedom without understanding its limitations, and +call Socialism or any other advance in civilization slavery because it +involves new laws as well as new liberties, are as obstructive to the +extension of leisure and liberty as the more numerous victims of the +Inhibition Complex who, if they could, would handcuff everybody rather +than face the risk of having their noses punched by somebody. + + + + +70 + +RENT OF ABILITY + + +Having cleared up the Liberty question by a digression (which must +have been a relief) from the contemplation of capital running away +with us, perhaps another digression on the equally confused question +of the differences in ability between one person and another may not +be out of place; for the same people who are in a continual scare +about losing the liberty which they have mostly not got are usually +much troubled about these differences. Years ago I wrote a small book +entitled Socialism and Superior Brains which I need not repeat here, +as it is still accessible. It was a reply to the late William Hurrell +Mallock, who took it as a matter of course, apparently, that the proper +use of cleverness in this world is to take advantage of stupid people +to obtain a larger share than they of the nation’s income. Rascally +as this notion is, it is too common to be ignored. The proper social +use of brains is to increase the amount of wealth to be divided, not +to grab an unfair share of it; and one of the most difficult of our +police problems is to prevent this grabbing, because it is a principle +of Capitalism that everyone shall use not only her land and capital, +but her cunning, to obtain as much money for herself as possible. +Capitalism indeed compels her to do so by making no other provision for +the clever ones than what they can make out of their cleverness. + +Let us begin by taking the examples which delight and dazzle us: that +is, the possessors of some lucrative personal talent. A lady with a +wonderful voice can hire a concert room to sing in, and admit nobody +who does not pay her. A gentleman able to paint a popular picture can +hang it in a gallery with a turnstile at the door, passable only on +payment. A surgeon who has mastered a dangerous operation can say to +his patient, in effect, “Your money or your life”. Giants, midgets, +Siamese twins, and two-headed singers exhibit themselves for money as +monsters. Attractive ladies receive presents enough to make them richer +than their plainer or more scrupulous neighbors. So do fascinating male +dancing partners. Popular actresses sometimes insist on being pampered +and allowed to commit all sorts of follies and extravagances on the +ground that they cannot keep up their peculiar charm without them; and +the public countenances their exactions fondly. + +These cases need not worry us. They are very scarce: indeed if they +became common their power to enrich would vanish. They do not confer +either industrial power or political privilege. The world is not ruled +by prima donnas and painters, two-headed nightingales and surgical +baronets, as it is by financiers and industrial organizers. Geniuses +and monsters may make a great deal of money; but they have to work +for it: I myself, through the accident of a lucrative talent, have +sometimes made more than a hundred times as much money in a year as +my father ever did; but he, as an employer, had more power over the +lives of others than I. A practical political career would stop my +professional career at once. It is true that I or any other possessor +of a lucrative talent or charm can buy land and industrial incomes with +our spare money, and thus become landlords and capitalists. But if that +resource were cut off, by Socialism or any other change in the general +constitution of society, I doubt whether anyone would grudge us our +extra spending money. An attempt by the Government to tax it so as to +reduce us to the level of ordinary mortals would probably be highly +unpopular, because the pleasure we give is delightful and widespread, +whilst the harm we do by our conceit and tantrums and jealousies and +spoiltness is narrowly limited to the unfortunate few who are in +personal contact with us. A prima donna with a rope of pearls ten feet +long and a coronet of Kohinoors does not make life any worse for the +girl with a string of beads who, by buying a five shilling ticket, +helps to pay for the pearls: she makes it better by enchanting it. + +Besides, we know by our own experience, not only of prima donnas but +of commercial millionaires, that regular daily personal expenditure +cannot be carried beyond that of the richest class to be found in +the community. Persons richer than that, like Cecil Rhodes, Andrew +Carnegie, and Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite (to name only the +dead), cannot spend their incomes, and are forced to give away money +in millions for galleries and museums which they fill with magnificent +collections and then leave to the public, or for universities, or +churches, or prizes, or scholarships, or any sort of public object that +appeals to them. If equality of income were general, a freak income +here and there would not enable its possessor to live differently from +the rest. A popular soprano might be able to fill the Albert Hall for +100 nights in succession at a guinea a head for admission; but she +could not obtain a lady’s maid unless ladies’ maids were a social +institution. Nor could she leave a farthing to her children unless +inheritance were a social institution, nor buy an unearned and as yet +unproduced income for them unless Capitalism were a social institution. +Thus, though it is always quite easy for a Government to checkmate +any attempt of an individual to become richer than her neighbors by +supertaxing her or directly prohibiting her methods, it is unlikely +that it will ever be worth while to do so where the method is the +exercise of a popular personal talent. + +But when we come to that particular talent which makes its money out +of the exercise of other people’s talents, the case becomes gravely +different. To allow Cleopatra to make money out of her charms is one +thing: to allow a trader to become enormously rich by engaging five +hundred Cleopatras at ten pounds a week or less, and hiring them +out at ten pounds a day or more, is quite another. We may forgive a +burglar in our admiration of his skill and nerve; but for the fence +who makes money by purchasing the burglar’s booty at a tenth of its +value it is impossible to feel any sympathy. When we come to reputable +women and honest men we find that they are exploited in the same way. +Civilization makes matters worse in this respect, because civilization +means division of labor. Remember the pin makers and pin machines. In a +primitive condition of society the maker of an article saves the money +to buy the materials, selects them, purchases them, and, having made +the article out of these materials, sells it to the user or consumer. +Today the raising of the money to buy the materials is a separate +business; the selection and purchasing is another separate business; +the making is divided between several workers or else done by a machine +tended by a young person; and the marketing is yet another separate +business. Indeed it is much more complicated than that, because the +separate businesses of buying materials and marketing products are +themselves divided into several separate businesses; so that between +the origin of the product in raw material from the hand of Nature +and its final sale across the counter to you there may be dozens of +middlemen, of whom you complain because they each take a toll which +raises the price to you, and it is impossible for you to find out how +many of them are really necessary agents in the process and how many +mere intercepters and parasites. + +The same complication is found in that large part of the world’s work +which consists, not in making things, but in service. The woman who +once took the wool that her husband had just shorn from their sheep, +and with her own hands transformed it into a garment and sold it to the +wearer, or clothed her family with it, is now replaced by a financier, +a shipper, a woolbroker, a weaving mill, a wholesaler, a shopkeeper, +a shop assistant, and Heaven knows how many others besides, each able +to do her own bit of the process but ignorant of the other bits, and +unable to do even her own bit until all the others are doing their bits +at the same time. Any one of them without the others would be like an +artillery man without a cannon or a shop assistant with nothing to sell. + +Now if you go through all these indispensable parties to any industry +or service, you will come on our question of exceptional ability in +its most pressing and dangerous form. You will find, for instance, +that whereas any ablebodied normal woman can be trained to become a +competent shop assistant, or a shorthand typist and operator of a +calculating machine (arithmetic is done by machines nowadays), or +a factory hand, or a teacher, hardly five out of every hundred can +manage a business or administer an estate or handle a large capital. +The number of persons who can do what they are told is always greatly +in excess of the number who can tell others what to do. If an educated +woman asks for more than four or five pounds a week in business, nobody +asks whether she is a good woman or a bad one: the question is, is +there a post for her in which she will have to make decisions, and if +so, can she be trusted to make them. If the answer is yes, she will be +paid more than a living wage: if not, no. + +Even when there is no room for original decisions, and there is nothing +to do but keep other people hard at their allotted work, and maintain +discipline generally, the ability to do this is an exceptional gift +and has a special value. It may be nothing more admirable than the +result of a combination of brute energy with an unamiable indifference +to the feelings of others; but its value is unquestionable: it makes +its possessor a forewoman or foreman in a factory, a wardress in a +prison, a matron in an institution, a sergeant in the army, a mistress +in a school, and the like. Both the managing people and the mere +disciplinarians may be, and often are, heartily detested; but they are +so necessary that any body of ordinary persons left without what they +call superiors, will immediately elect them. A crew of pirates, subject +to no laws except the laws of nature, will elect a boatswain to order +them about and a captain to lead them and navigate the ship, though +the one may be the most insufferable bully and the other the most +tyrannical scoundrel on board. In the revolutionary army of Napoleon +an expeditionary troop of dragoons, commanded by an officer who became +terrified and shammed illness, insisted on the youngest of their +number, a boy of sixteen, taking command, because he was an aristocrat, +and they were accustomed to make aristocrats think for them. He +afterwards became General Marbot: you will find the incident recorded +in his memoirs. Every woman knows that the most strongminded woman in +the house can set up a domestic tyranny which is sometimes a reign of +terror. Without directors most of us would be like riderless horses in +a crowded street. The philosopher Herbert Spencer, though a very clever +man, had the amiable trait in his character of an intense dislike to +coercion. He could not bring himself even to coerce his horse; and the +result was that he had to sell it and go on foot, because the horse, +uncoerced, could do nothing but stop and graze. Tolstoy, equally a +professed humanitarian, tamed and managed the wildest horses; but he +did it by the usual method of making things unpleasant for the horse +until it obeyed him. + +However, horses and human beings are alike in that they very seldom +object to be directed: they are usually only too glad to be saved +the trouble of thinking and planning for themselves. Ungovernable +people are the exception and not the rule. When authority is abused +and subordination made humiliating, both are resented; and anything +from a mutiny to a revolution may ensue; but there is no instance on +record of a beneficially and tactfully exercised authority provoking +any reaction. Our mental laziness is a guarantee of our docility: +the mother who says “How dare you go out without asking my leave?” +presently finds herself exclaiming “Why cant you think for yourself +instead of running to me for everything?” But she would be greatly +astonished if a rude motor car manufacturer said to her, “Why cant you +make a car for yourself instead of running to me for it?” + +I am myself by profession what is called an original thinker, my +business being to question and test all the established creeds and +codes to see how far they are still valid and how far worn out or +superseded, and even to draft new creeds and codes. But creeds and +codes are only two out of the hundreds of useful articles that make +for a good life. All the other articles I have to take as they are +offered to me on the authority of those who understand them; so that +though many people who cannot bear to have an established creed or +code questioned regard me as a dangerous revolutionary and a most +insubordinate fellow, I have to be in most matters as docile a creature +as you could desire to meet. When a railway porter directs me to +number ten platform I do not strike him to earth with a shout of “Down +with tyranny!” and rush violently to number one platform. I accept +his direction because I want to be directed, and want to get into the +right train. No doubt if the porter bullied and abused me, and I, after +submitting to this, found that my train really started from number +seven platform and that the number ten train landed me in Portsmouth +when my proper destination was Birmingham, I should rise up against +that porter and do what I could to contrive his downfall; but if he +had been reasonably civil and had directed me aright I should rally +to his defence if any attempt were made to depose him. I have to be +housekept-for, nursed, doctored, and generally treated like a child +in all sorts of situations in which I do not know what to do; and far +from resenting such tutelage I am only too glad to avail myself of it. +The first time I was ever in one of those electric lifts which the +passengers work for themselves instead of being taken up and down by a +conductor pulling at a rope, I almost cried, and was immensely relieved +when I stepped out alive. + +You may think I am wandering from our point; but I know too well by +experience that there is likely to be at the back of your mind a notion +that it is in our nature to resent authority and subordination as such, +and that only an unpopular and stern coercion can maintain them. Have +I not indeed just been impressing on you that the miseries of the +world today are due in great part to our objection, not merely to bad +government, but to being governed at all? But you must distinguish. +It is true that we dislike being interfered with, and want to do as +we like when we know what to do, or think we know. But when there is +something that obviously must be done, and only five in every hundred +of us know how to do it, then the odd ninetyfive will not merely be +led by the five: they will clamor to be led, and will, if necessary, +kill anyone who obstructs the leaders. That is why it is so easy for +ambitious humbugs to get accepted as leaders. No doubt competent +leadership may be made unpopular by bad manners and pretension to +general superiority; and subordination may be made intolerable by +humiliation. Leaders who produce these results should be ruthlessly +cashiered, no matter how competent they are in other respects, because +they destroy self-respect and happiness, and create a dangerous +resentment complex which reduces the competence and upsets the tempers +of those whom they lead. But you may take it as certain that authority +and subordination in themselves are never unpopular, and can be trusted +to re-establish themselves after the most violent social convulsion. +What is to be feared is less their overthrow than the idolization of +those who exercise authority successfully. Nelson was idolized by his +seamen; Lenin was buried as a saint by revolutionary Russia; Signor +Mussolini is adored in Italy as The Leader (Il Duce); but no anarchist +preaching resistance to authority as such has ever been popular or ever +will be. + +Now it is unfortunately one of the worst vices of the Capitalist system +that it destroys the social equality that is indispensable to natural +authority and subordination. The very word subordination, which is +properly co-ordination, betrays this perversion. Under it directing +ability is sold in the market like fish; and, like sturgeon, it is dear +because it is scarce. By paying the director more than the directee +it creates a difference of class between them; and the difference +of class immediately changes a direction or command which naturally +would not only not be resented but desired and begged for, into an +assertion of class superiority which is fiercely resented. “Who are you +that you should order me about? I am as good as you”, is an outburst +that never occurs when Colonel Smith gives an order to Lieutenant the +Duke of Tencounties. But it very often rises to the lips of Mrs Hicks +(though she may leave it unspoken out of natural politeness or fear +of consequences), who lives in a slum, when she receives from Mrs +Huntingdon Howard, who lives in a square, an order, however helpful to +her, given in a manner which emphasizes, and is meant to emphasize, the +lady’s conviction that Mrs Hicks is an inferior sort of animal. And Mrs +Howard sometimes feels, when Lady Billionham refuses to know her, that +Lord Billionham’s rank is but the guinea’s stamp: her man Huntingdon’s +the gowd for a’ that. Nothing would please her better than to take +her super-incomed neighbor down a peg. Whereas if Mrs Hicks and Mrs +Huntingdon Howard and Lady Billionham all had equal incomes, and their +children could intermarry without derogation, they would never dream +of quarrelling because they (or their husbands) could tell oneanother +what to do when they did not know themselves. To be told what to do is +to escape responsibility for its consequences; and those who fear any +dislike of such telling between equals know little of human nature. + +The worst of it is that Capitalism produces a class of persons so +degraded by their miserable circumstances that they are incapable of +responding to an order civilly given, and have to be fiercely scolded +or cursed and kicked before any work can be got out of them; and these +poor wretches in turn produce a class of slavedrivers who know no other +methods of maintaining discipline. The only remedy is not to produce +such people. They are abortions produced by poverty, and will disappear +with it. + +Reluctance to command is a more serious difficulty. When a couple of +soldiers are sent on any duty one of them must be made a corporal for +the occasion, as there must be someone to make the decisions and be +responsible for them. Usually both men object: each trying to shove the +burden on to the other. When they differ in this respect the Platonic +rule is to choose the reluctant man, as the probability is that the +ambitious one is a conceited fool who does not feel the responsibility +because he does not understand it. This kind of reluctance cannot be +overcome by extra pay. It may be overcome by simple coercion, as in +the case of common jurors. If you are a direct ratepayer you may find +yourself at any moment summoned to serve on a jury and make decisions +involving the disgrace or vindication, the imprisonment or freedom, +the life or death of your fellowcreatures, as well as to maintain the +rights of the jury against the continual tendency of the Bench to +dictate its decisions. You are not paid to do this: you are forced to +do it, just as men were formerly pressed into the navy or forced to sit +in Parliament against their will and that of their constituents. + +But though in the last resort coercion remains available as a means of +compelling citizens to undertake duties from which they shrink, it is +found in practice that fitness for special kinds of work carries with +it a desire to exercise it, even at serious material disadvantages. +Mozart could have made much more money as a valet than he did as the +greatest composer of his time, and indeed one of the greatest composers +of all time; nevertheless he chose to be a composer and not a valet. +He knew that he would be a bad valet, and believed that he could be +a good composer; and this outweighed all money considerations with +him. When Napoleon was a subaltern he was by no means a success. When +Nelson was a captain he was found so unsatisfactory that he was left +without a ship on half pay for several years. But Napoleon was a great +general and Nelson a great admiral; and I have not the smallest doubt, +nor probably have you, that if Napoleon and Nelson had been forced to +choose between being respectively a drummer boy and a cabin boy and +being a general and an admiral for the same money, they would have +chosen the job in which their genius had full scope. They would even +have accepted less money if they could have secured their proper job +in no other way. Have we not already noted, in Chapter 6, how the +capitalist system leaves men of extraordinary and beneficent talent, +poor whilst making nonentities and greedy money hunters absurdly rich? + +Let us therefore dismiss the fear that persons of exceptional ability +need special inducements to exercise that ability to the utmost. +Experience proves that even the most severe discouragements and +punishments cannot restrain them from trying to do so. Let us return to +the real social problem: that of preventing them from taking advantage +of the vital necessity and relative scarcity of certain kinds of +ability to extort excessive incomes. + +In socialized services no difficulty arises. The civil servant, the +judge, the navy captain, the field marshal, the archbishop, however +extraordinary able, gets no more than any routineer of his rank and +seniority. A real gentleman is not supposed to sell himself to the +highest bidder: he asks his country for a sufficient provision and a +dignified position in return for the best work he can do for it. A +real lady can say no less. But in capitalist commerce they are both +forced to be cads: that is, to hold up to ransom those to whom their +services are indispensable, and become rich at their expense. The mere +disciplinarian cannot extort very much because disciplinarians of one +sort or another are not very scarce. But the organizer and financier +is in a strong position. The owner of a big business, if his employees +ask for anything more than a subsistence wage as their share of its +product, can always say “Well, if you are not satisfied, take the +business and work it yourself without me”. This they are unable to do. +The Trade Union to which his employees belong may be tempted to take +him at his word; but it soon finds itself unable to carry on, that sort +of management not being its job. He says in effect, and often in so +many words, “You cannot do without me; so you must work on my terms”. +They reply with perfect truth “Neither can you do without us: let us +see you organize without any workers to organize”. But he beats them; +and the reason is not that he can do without them any more than they +can do without him (or her), but that his bargain for the use of his +ability is not really made with them but with the landlords whose land +he is using and the capitalists who have lent him the capital for his +enterprise. It is to them that he can say unanswerably “You cannot +do without me”. They may say “Yes we can. We can tell the workers +that unless they give up everything they can make out of our land +and capital to us except what is enough to keep them alive and renew +themselves from generation to generation they shall starve; because +they cannot produce without land and capital, and we own all there +is available of both”. “That is true” retorts the able organizer and +financier; “but please to remember that without an elaborate scientific +organization of their labor they can produce no more than a mob of +allotment holders, or of serfs on a tenth century manor, whereas if +I organize them for you industrially and financially I can multiply +their product a thousandfold. Even if you have to pay me a large +share of the increase due to my ability you are still far richer than +if you did without me.” And to this there is no reply. In this way +there arises under Capitalism not only a rent of land and a rent of +capital (called interest), but a rent of ability (called profit); and +just as in order to secure equality of income it becomes necessary to +nationalize land and capital, so it becomes necessary to nationalize +ability. We already do this in part by taxing profits. But we do it +completely only when, as in the public services, we give it direct +national or municipal employment. + +Note that rent of ability is a form of rent of labor. Rent is a word +that it is very necessary to understand, and that very few people +do understand: they think it is only what they have to pay to their +landlord. But technically rent is a price that arises whenever there +are differences in the yield of any particular source of wealth. When +there is a natural difference between the yield of one field and +another, or one coal-mine and another, or between the advantages of +one building site and another, people will pay more for the better +than for the worse; and that extra price is rent. Similarly, when +there is a difference between the business ability of one person and +another, the price of that difference is rent. You cannot abolish +rent, because you cannot abolish the natural difference between one +cornfield and another, one coal-field and another, or one person and +another; but you can nationalize it by nationalizing the land, the +mines, and the labor of the country either directly or by national +appropriation of their product by taxation, as to which latter method, +as we have seen, there are limits. Until this is done, rent of ability +in profiteering will make its possessors rich enough to make their +children idle landlords and capitalists and destroy economic equality. +Great astronomers, chemists, mathematicians, physicists, philosophers, +explorers, discoverers, teachers, preachers, sociologists, and saints +may be so poor that their wives are worn-out in a constant struggle +to keep up appearances and make both ends meet; but the business +organizers pile millions on millions whilst their unfortunate daughters +carry about diamonds and sables to advertize their parent’s riches, +and drink cocktails until they feel so bad inside that they pay large +sums to surgeons to cut them open and find out what is the matter with +them. If you reproach these organizers for their inordinate gains, they +tell you--or they would tell you if they understood their own position +and could express it intelligibly--that every penny they make is made +by making money for other people as well; that before they can spend +a farthing on themselves they must provide rent for the landlord, +interest for the capitalist, and wages for the proletarian on a scale +that would be impossible without them; and that England can support +five times the number of people she could a hundred years ago because +her industries are better organized and more amply financed by them +and their like. This is true; but you need not be abashed by it; for +which of us has not to provide rent for the landlord, interest for the +capitalist, and wages for the laborer before we can spend a penny on +ourselves? And why should the organizer and financier be paid more for +the exercise of his particular faculty than we who have to co-operate +with him by the exercise of our particular faculties before he can +produce a loaf of bread or a glass of milk? It is not natural necessity +but the capitalist system that enables him to snatch more than his +fellow workers from the welter of competitive commerce; and while this +lasts we shall have the financier’s daughter saying to the scavenger’s +daughter “What would your common dirty father do without my father, who +is going to be made a lord?” and the scavenger’s daughter retorting +“What would your greedy robber of a father do if my father did not keep +the streets clean for him?” Of course you have never heard a lady or +a young person talk like that. And probably you never will. They are +too polite and too thoughtless to discuss their father’s positions. +Besides, they never speak to oneanother. But if they did, and anything +upset their tempers, their last words before they came to blows would +be just those which I have imagined. If you doubt it, read what the +capitalist papers say about Trade Unionists and Socialists, and what +the proletarian papers say about landlords and capitalists and bosses. +Do you suppose that the charwoman, who has worked in her own necessary +way all her life as hard as or harder than any financier, and in the +end has nothing to leave to her daughter but her pail and scrubbing +brush, really believes, or ever will believe, that Lady Billionham, +inheriting a colossal income from her father the financier, has any +moral right to her money? Or, if your father had discovered and worked +out the theory of relativity, and was acknowledged throughout the +world to have the greatest mind since Newton’s, would you consider it +morally satisfactory to be obliged to jump at an offer of marriage from +a Chicago pork king to enable your illustrious parent to have more +than one presentable suit of clothes, knowing all the time that if +it had not been for the work of men like your father in pure science +not a wheel in the whole vast machinery of modern production would +be turning, nor a bagman be able to travel faster than Marco Polo? +Privately appropriated rent, whether of land, capital, or ability, +makes bad blood; and it is of bad blood that civilizations die. That +it is why it is our urgent business to see that Lord Billionham gets +no more than Einstein, and neither of them more than the charwoman. +You cannot equalize their abilities, but fortunately you can equalize +their incomes. Billionham’s half-crown is as good as Einstein’s +two-and-sixpence; and the charwoman’s thirty pennies will buy as much +bread as either. Equalize them in that respect, and their sons and +daughters will be intermarriageable, which will be a very good thing +for them, and lead to an enormous improvement of our human stock, the +quality of which is the most important thing in the world. + + + + +71 + +PARTY POLITICS + + +You are now in possession of enough knowledge of Socialism and +Capitalism to enable you to understand what is going on in the world +industrially and politically. I shall not advise you to discuss these +matters with your friends. They would listen in distressed silence and +then tell the neighborhood that you are what they imagine a Bolshevik +to be. + +It is possible, however, that you may be interested in current party +politics yourself, even to the extent of attending party meetings, +applauding party candidates, canvassing for party votes, and +experiencing all the emotions of party enthusiasm, party loyalty, and +party conviction that the other party and its candidate are enemies of +the human race. In that case I must give you a warning. + +Do not rush to the conclusion that Socialism will be established by +a Socialist party and opposed by an anti-Socialist party. Within my +lifetime I have seen the Conservatives, when in opposition, vehemently +opposing and denouncing a measure proposed by the Liberals, and, +when they had defeated the Liberals and come into power, pass that +very measure themselves in a rather more advanced form. And I have +seen the Liberals do the same, and this, too, not in matters of no +great consequences, but in such far-reaching social changes as Free +Trade, the enfranchisement of the working classes, the democratization +of local government, and the buying-out of the Irish landlords. +The Spanish lady in Byron’s poem, who, “swearing she would ne’er +consent, consented”, was a model of consistency compared to our party +governments. We have at present a Capitalist party opposed by a Labor +party; but it is quite possible that all the legislative steps towards +Socialism will be taken when the anti-Socialist party is in power, +and pretty certain that at least half of them will. When they are +proposed by a Capitalist Government they will be opposed by the Labor +Opposition, and when they are proposed by a Labor Government they will +be opposed by the Capitalist Opposition, because “it is the business of +an Opposition to oppose”. + +There is another possibility which may disappoint your expectation. +The Labor Party is growing rapidly. Twenty years ago it did not exist +officially in Parliament. Today it is the official Opposition. If it +continues to grow at this rate the time is not very far off when it +will take practically complete possession of the House of Commons. The +Conservatives and Liberals left will, even in coalition, be too few to +constitute an effective Opposition, much less form a Government. But +beware of assuming that the result will be a unanimous House of Commons +with an unopposed Labor Government carrying everything before it. Do +not even assume that the Labor Party will split into two parties, one +Conservative and the other Progressive. That would be the happiest of +the possibilities. The danger is that it may split into half a dozen or +more irreconcilable groups, making parliamentary government impossible. +That is what happened in the Long Parliament in the seventeenth +century, when men were just what they are now, except that they had no +telephones nor airplanes. The Long Parliament was united at first by +its opposition to the King. But when it cut off the King’s head, it +immediately became so disunited that Cromwell, like Signor Mussolini +today, had at last to suppress its dissensions by military force, and +rule more despotically than ever the King had dared. When Cromwell +died, it reassembled and split up again worse than ever, bringing about +such a hopeless deadlock in government that there was no way out of +the mess but to send for the dead King’s son and use him, under his +father’s title, as the figurehead of a plutocratic oligarchy exercising +all the old kingly powers and greatly extending them. + +If six hundred Labor members were returned at the next General +Election history might repeat itself. The Socialists, the Trade +Unionists who are not Socialists, the Communists who are not +Communists but only pseudo-Bolshevists, the Republicans, the +Constitutional-Monarchists, the old Parliamentary hands who are pure +Opportunists, and the uncompromising Idealists, to say nothing of the +Churchmen and Anti-clericals (Episcopalians and Separatists), the +Deists and Atheists, would come to loggerheads at once. As far as I +can see, nothing could avert a repetition of the seventeenth century +catastrophe, or the modern Italian and Spanish ones, except a solid +Socialist majority of members who really know what Socialism means +and are prepared to subordinate all their traditional political and +religious differences to its establishment. Unfortunately most of the +people who call themselves Socialists at present do not know what +Socialism means, and attach its name to all sorts of fads and faiths +and resentments and follies that have nothing to do with it. A Labor +electoral triumph may end either in another Cromwell or Napoleon III +or Mussolini or General Primo di Rivera if there happens to be one at +hand, or in the passing of power to any party that is solid enough to +keep together and vote together, even though its solidarity be the +solidarity of sheepish stupidity or panic-stricken retreat. Stupidity +and cowardice never lose this advantage. You must have noticed among +your acquaintances that the very conventional ones have all the +same old opinions, and are quite impervious to new ones, whilst the +unconventional ones are all over the shop with all sorts of opinions, +and disagree with and despise oneanother furiously. That is why, though +all progress depends on the unconventional people who want to change +things, they have so little influence politically. They pull hard; but +they do not pull together; and they pull in different directions. The +people whom in your moments of impatience with their dullness you call +stick-in-the-muds either pull all together and in the same direction +(generally backwards), or, more formidably still, stand together solid +and foursquare, refusing to move in any direction. Against stupidity, +said Schiller, the gods themselves fight in vain. Long before Schiller, +Solomon said “Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a +fool in his folly”. They were both right. + +Yet it is a mistake to vote for stupidity on the ground that +stupid people do not quarrel among themselves. Within the limits +of their conservatism they quarrel more irreconcilably, because +more unreasonably, than comparatively clever people. That is why we +call them pigheaded. If six hundred of them were returned at the +next General Election, so that they had no longer anything to fear +from Labor or Liberalism or any other section, it would be just as +impossible to keep them together as if they were proletarians. In 1924 +the country was stampeded by a ridiculous anti-Russian scare into +returning anti-Socialists in a majority of more than two to one. The +result was, not a very solid Government, but a very fragmentary one. It +soon split up into reckless Diehard Coercionists, timid Compromisers, +cautious Opportunists, Low Church Protestants, Anglican Catholics, +Protectionists from the Midlands, Free Traders from the ports, country +gentlemen, city bosses, Imperialists, Little Englanders, innocents +who think that Trade Unions ought to be exterminated like nests of +vipers, and practical business men who know that big business could +not be carried on without them, advocates of high expenditure on the +fighting forces as Empire Insurance, blind resisters of taxation as +such, Inflationists, Gold Bugs, High Tories who would have Government +authority and interference everywhere, Laisser-faire doctrinaires who +would suffer it as nearly as possible nowhere, and Heaven knows how +many others, all pulling the Cabinet different ways, paralyzing it and +neutralizing oneanother, whilst the runaway car of Capitalism kept +rushing them into new places and dangerous situations all the time. + +During the first half of my own lifetime: that is, during the latter +half of the nineteenth century, the Conservative and Liberal parties +were much more equally balanced than at present. The Governments were +on their good behavior because their majorities were narrow. The House +of Commons was then respected and powerful. With the South African +war a period of large majorities set in. Immediately the House of +Commons began to fall into something very like contempt in comparison +with its previous standing. The majorities were so large that every +Government felt that it could do what it liked. That quaint conscience +which was invented by English statesmen to keep themselves honest, +and called by everybody Public Opinion, was overthrown as an idol, +and the ignorance, forgetfulness, and follies of the electorate were +traded on cynically until the few thinkers who read the speeches of +the political leaders and could remember for longer than a week the +pledges and statements they contained, were amazed and scandalized +at the audacity with which the people were humbugged. The specific +preparations for war with Germany were concealed, and finally, when +suspicion became acute, denied; and when at last we floundered into +the horror of 1914-18, which left the English Church disgraced, and +the great European empires shattered into struggling Republics (the +very last thing that the contrivers of the war intended), the world +had lost faith in parliamentary government to such an extent that it +was suspended and replaced by dictatorship in Italy, Spain, and Russia +without provoking any general democratic protest beyond a weary shrug +of the shoulders. The old parliamentary democrats were accomplished and +endless talkers; but their unreal theory that nothing political must be +done until it was understood and demanded by a majority of the people +(which meant in effect that nothing political must ever be done at all) +had disabled them as men of action; and when casual bodies of impatient +and irresponsible proletarian men of action attempted to break up +Capitalism without knowing how to do it, or appreciating the nature and +necessity of government, a temper spread in which it was possible for +Signor Mussolini to be made absolute managing director (Dictator or +Duce) of the Italian nation as its savior from parliamentary impotence +and democratic indiscipline. + +Socialism, however, cannot perish in these political storms and +changes. Socialists have courted Democracy, and even called Socialism +Social-Democracy to proclaim that the two are inseparable. They might +just as plausibly argue that the two are incompatible. Socialism is +committed neither way. It faces Caesars and Soviets, Presidents and +Patriarchs, British Cabinets and Italian Dictators or Popes, patrician +oligarchs and plebeian demagogues, with its unshaken demonstration +that they cannot have a stable and prosperous State without equality +of income. They may plead that such equality is ridiculous. That will +not save them from the consequences of inequality. They must equate or +perish. The despot who values his head and the crowd that fears for its +liberty are equally concerned. I should call Socialism not Democratic +but simply Catholic if that name had not been taken in vain so often by +so many Churches that nobody would understand me. + + + + +72 + +THE PARTY SYSTEM + + +Our Party System does not mean, as many people suppose, that +differences of opinion always divide human beings into parties. Such +differences existed ages before the Party System was ever dreamt of. + +What it means is that our monarchs, instead of choosing whom they +please to advise them as Cabinet Ministers in ruling the realm (to form +a Government, as we say), must choose them all from whatever party has +a majority in the House of Commons, however much they may dislike them +or mistrust their ability, or however obvious it may be that a more +talented Cabinet could be formed by selecting the ablest men from both +parties. + +This system carries with it some quaint consequences. Not only must +the King appoint to high offices persons whom he may privately regard +as disastrous noodles, or whose political and religious principles +he may abhor: the ordinary member of Parliament and the common voter +are placed in a similar predicament, because every vote given in the +House or at a parliamentary election becomes a vote on the question +whether the Party in office is to remain there or not. For instance, +a Bill is introduced by the Government to allow women to vote at +the same age as men, or to put a tax on bachelors, or to institute +pensions for widowed mothers, or to build ten more battleships, or to +abolish or extend divorce, or to raise the age for compulsory school +attendance, or to increase or diminish taxation, or anything else you +please. Suppose this Bill is brought in by a Conservative Government, +and you are a Conservative member of Parliament! You may think it a +most detestable and mischievous Bill. But if you vote against it, and +the Bill is thrown out, the Conservative Government will no longer be +in a majority, or, as we say, it will no longer possess the confidence +of the House. Therefore it must go to the King and resign, whereupon +the King will dissolve Parliament; and there will be a General Election +at which you will have to stand again (which will cost you a good deal +of money and perhaps end in your defeat) before anything else can be +done. Now if you are a good Conservative you always feel that however +much you may dislike this Bill or that Bill, yet its passing into law +would be a less evil than an overthrow of the Conservative Government, +and the possible accession to power of the Labor Party. Therefore you +swallow the Bill with a wry face, and vote just as the Government Whips +tell you to, flatly against your convictions. + +But suppose you are a member of the Labor Party instead, and think the +Bill a good one. Then you are in the same fix: you must vote against it +and against your convictions, because however good you may think the +Bill, you think that a defeat of the Government and a chance for the +Labor Party to return to power would be still better. Besides, if the +Bill is good, the Labor Party can bring it in again and pass it when +Labor wins a majority. + +If you are only a voter you are caught in the same cleft stick. It +may be plain to you that the candidate of your Party is a political +imbecile, a pompous snob, a vulgar ranter, a conceited self-seeker, +or anything else that you dislike, and his opponent an honest, +intelligent, public-spirited person. No matter: you must vote for the +Party candidate, because, if you do not, your Party may be defeated, +and the other Party come into power. And, anyhow, however disagreeable +your candidate may be personally, when he gets into the House he will +have to vote as the Party Whips tell him to; so his personal qualities +do not matter. + +The advantage of this system is that a House of Commons consisting of +about a dozen capable ministers and their opponents: say twenty-five +effectives all told, and 590 idiots with just enough intelligence to +walk into the lobby pointed out to them by the Whips and give their +names at the door, can carry on the government of the country quite +smoothly, when 615 independents, with opinions and convictions of their +own, voting according to those opinions and convictions, would make +party government impossible. It was not, however, on this ground that +the party system was introduced, though it has a great deal to do with +its maintenance. It was introduced because our Dutch king William the +Third, of glorious, pious, and immortal memory, discovered that he +could not fight the French king, Louis XIV, _le Roi Soleil_, with a +House of Commons refusing him supplies and reducing the army just as +each member thought fit. A clever statesman of that time named Robert +Spencer, second Earl of Sunderland, pointed out to him that if he chose +his ministers always from the strongest party in the House of Commons, +which happened just then to be the Whig party, that party would have +to back him through the war and make its followers do the same, just +as I have described. King William hated the Whigs, being a strong Tory +himself; and he did not like Sunderland’s advice. But he took it, and +thereby set up the Party System under which we are ruled. + +Is there any practicable alternative to the Party System? Suppose, +for instance, that there was a general revolt against being compelled +to vote for dummies and nincompoops, and that independent candidates +became so popular that all party candidates were defeated by them, or, +if you think that is going too far, suppose independent candidates +returned in such numbers that they could defeat any Government by +casting their votes in the House against it, like the old Irish +Nationalist Party! Such a revolt already exists and always will exist. +The upshot of the General Elections is determined, not by the voters +who always vote for their party right or wrong, but by a floating +body of independent electors who vote according to their interests +and preferences, and often support one party at one election and the +opposite party at the next. It is these unattached people who win the +odd trick which decides which party shall govern. They either know +nothing about the Party System, or snap their fingers at it and vote +just as they please. It is probable that they outnumber the party +voters, and return party members to Parliament only because, as no +others are selected as candidates by the party organizations, there is +seldom any independent candidate to vote for. + +It is conceivable that the King might some day find himself confronted +by a House of Commons in which neither party had a majority, the +effective decision resting with members belonging to no party. In +that case His Majesty might appeal in vain to the party leaders to +form a Government. This situation has occurred several times of late +in France, where it has been brought about by the existence in the +French Chamber of so many parties that none of them is in a majority; +so that a leader can form a Government only by inducing several of +these parties to combine for the moment, and thus make what is called a +Block. But this is not always easy; and even when it is accomplished, +and the Blockmaker forms a Government, it is so hard to keep the Block +together that nobody expects it to last for five years, as our party +governments do: its lifetime is anything from a week to six months. +There have been moments lately in France when we did not know from one +day to another who was Prime Minister there, M. Briand, M. Herriot, M. +Painlevé, or M. Poincaré. And what has happened in France may happen +here, either through an overwhelming party majority causing the party +to split up into hostile groups and thus substitute half a dozen +parties, all in a minority, for the two parties which are necessary +to the working of the Party System, or through the return of enough +independent members to make any Party Government dependent on them. +You will therefore be justified if you ask me rather anxiously whether +Parliament can not be worked on some other than the Party System. + +As a matter of fact in this country we have, beside the House of +Commons, parliaments all over the place. We have the great city +Corporations, the County Councils, the Borough Councils, the District +Councils, and so on down to the Parish meetings in the villages; and +not one of them is worked on the Party System. They get on quite well +without it. If you mention this, you will be at once contradicted, +because on many of these bodies party feeling is intense. The members +hold party meetings. The elections are fought on party cries. Votes +are taken on party lines, and members of the party which is in the +minority are sometimes excluded from the committee chairmanships, +which are the nearest things to ministerial offices available, though +such exclusion is considered sharp practice if pushed too far. But all +this does not involve the Party System any more than a pot of jam and +a pound of flour constitute a roly-poly pudding. There is no Prime +Minister and no Cabinet. The King does not meddle in the business: +he does not send for the most prominent men and ask them to form a +Government. There is no Government in the House of Commons sense of the +word, though the city or county is nevertheless governed, and often +governed with an efficiency which puts the House of Commons to shame. +Every member can vote as he thinks best without the slightest risk of +throwing his party out of power and bringing on a General Election. +If a motion is defeated, nobody resigns: if it is carried, nobody’s +position is changed. Things are not done in that very puzzling way. + +The way they are done is simple enough. The Council is elected for +three years; and until the three years are up there can be no general +election. Its business is conducted by committees: Public Health +Committees, Electric Lighting Committees, Finance Committees, and +so forth. These committees meet separately, and set forth their +conclusions as to what the Council ought to do in their departments in +a series of resolutions. When the whole Council meets, these strings +of resolutions are brought up as the reports of the Committees, and +are confirmed or rejected or amended by the general vote. Many of our +Labor members of the House of Commons have served their parliamentary +apprenticeship on local bodies under this straightforward system. + +The two systems, though widely different today, spring from the same +root. Before Sunderland prompted William III to introduce the Party +System, the King used to appoint committees, which were then all +called cabinets, to deal with the different departments of government. +These cabinets were committees of his Council; and in this stage they +were the model of the municipal committees I have just described. The +secretaries of the cabinets, called Secretaries of States, met to +concert their activities. The activities thus concerted formed their +policy; and they themselves, being all cabinet ministers, came to be +called THE Cabinet, after which the word was no longer applied to other +bodies. In politics it now means nothing else, the old cabinets being +called Offices (Home Office, War Office, Foreign Office, etc.), Boards, +Chanceries, Treasuries, or anything except cabinets. + +The rigidity of the Party System, as we have seen, depends on the +convention that whenever the Government is defeated on a division +in the House, it must “appeal to the country”: that is, the Cabinet +Ministers must resign their offices, and the King dissolve the +Parliament and have a new one elected. But this leads to such absurd +consequences when the question at issue is unimportant and the vote +taken when many members are absent, and at all times it reduces the +rank and file of the members to such abject voting machines, that if +it were carried out to the bitter end members might as well stay at +home and vote by proxy on postcards to the Whips, as shareholders do +at company meetings. Such slavery is more than even parliamentary +flesh and blood, to say nothing of brains, can stand; consequently +Governments are forced to allow their followers some freedom by +occasionally declaring that the measure under discussion is “not a +Party Question”, and “taking off the Whips”, which means that members +may vote as they please without fear of throwing their Party out of +office and bringing on a General Election. This practice is bound to +grow as members become more independent and therefore more apt to split +up into groups. The tendency already is for Governments to resign only +when they are defeated on an explicit motion that they possess or have +forfeited the confidence of the House, except, of course, when the +division is on one of those cardinal points of policy which, if decided +against the Government, would involve an appeal to the country in any +case. No doubt the Whips will continue to threaten weak-minded members +that the slightest exercise of independence will wreck the Government; +and those whose election expenses are paid out of party funds will +find that when the Party pays the piper the Whips call the tune; +but I think you may take it (in case you should think of going into +Parliament) that the House of Commons is becoming less and less like a +stage on which an opera chorus huddles round a few haughty soloists, +never opening its hundred mouths except to echo these principals and +give them time to breathe. It is already evident that the more women +there are in the House, the more refractory it will be to the logical +extremes of party discipline, and the sooner party questions will +become the exceptions and open questions the rule. + +Here, however, I must warn you of another possibility. The two Houses +of Parliament are as much out of date as instruments for carrying +on the public business of a modern community as a pair of horses +for drawing an omnibus. In 1920 two famous Socialist professors of +political science, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, published a Constitution +for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain. In that Constitution +the notion of going on with our ancient political machinery at +Westminster is discarded as impracticable, and its present condition +described as one of creeping paralysis. Instead, it is proposed that we +should have two parliaments, one political and the other industrial, +the political one maintaining the cabinet system, and the industrial +one the municipal system. I cannot go into the details of such a change +here: you will find them in the book. I mention it just to prepare you +for such happenings. Certain it is that if our old Westminster engine +is left as it is to cope with the modern developments of Capitalism, +Capitalism will burst it; and then something more adequate must be +devised and set up, whether we like it or not. + + + + +73 + +DIVISIONS WITHIN THE LABOR PARTY + + +You now see how essential it is to the working of our parliamentary +system, under a Labor or any other Government, that the Cabinet should +have a united party behind it, large enough to outvote any other party +in the House. You see also that whereas a party only barely large +enough to do this is held together by the fear of defeat, a party +so large that the whole House belongs to it ceases to be a party at +all, and is sure to split up into groups which have to be combined +into blocks of groups before a Cabinet can be formed and government +effectively carried on. In the nineteenth century we were all sure that +this could never occur. In the twentieth it is as certain as anything +of the kind can be that the Proletariat will extend its present +invasion of Parliament until it achieves in effect complete conquest. +Therefore we had better examine a few questions on which the apparent +unanimity in the Labor Party is quite delusive. + +To interest you I am tempted to begin with the question of the virtual +exclusion of women from certain occupations. This morning I received +a letter from the Government College of Lahore in the Punjab which +contains the following words: “The number of people in India speaking +Urdu of one kind or another is about 96,000,000. Out of this number +46,000,000 are women who are mostly in purdah and do not go out.” Now I +dare not tell you, even if I knew, how many members of the Labor Party +believe that the proper place for women is in purdah. There are enough, +anyhow, to start a very pretty fight with those who would remove all +artificial distinctions between men and women. But I must pass over +this because, vital as it is, it will not split the Labor Party more +than it has split the older parties. If men were the chattel slaves +of women in law (as some of them are in fact), or women the chattel +slaves of men in fact (as married women used to be in law), that would +not affect the change from Capitalism to Socialism. Let us confine +ourselves to cases that would affect it. + +It is fundamental in Socialism that idleness shall not be tolerated +on any terms. And it is fundamental in Trade Unionism that the worker +shall have the right at any moment to down tools and refuse to do +another stroke until his demands are satisfied. It is impossible to +imagine a flatter contradiction. And the question of the right to +strike is becoming more acute every year. We have seen how the little +businesses have grown into big businesses, and the big businesses into +Trusts that control whole industries. But the Trade Unions have kept up +with this growth. The little unions have grown into big unions; and the +big unions have combined into great federations of unions; consequently +the little strikes have become terribly big strikes. A modern strike +of electricians, a railway strike, or a coal strike can bring these +industries, and dozens of others which depend on them, to a dead stop, +and cause unbearable inconvenience and distress to the whole nation. + +To make strikes more effective, a new sort of Trade Union has +developed, called an Industrial Union to distinguish it from the +old Craft Unions. The Craft Union united all the men who lived by a +particular craft or trade: the carpenters, the masons, the tanners +and so on. But there may be men of a dozen different crafts employed +in one modern industry: for instance, the building industry employs +carpenters, masons, bricklayers, joiners, plumbers, slaters, painters, +and various kinds of laborers, to say nothing of the clerical staffs; +and if these are all in separate unions a strike by one of them cannot +produce the effect that a strike of all of them would. Therefore unions +covering the whole industry without regard to craft (Industrial Unions) +have been formed. We now have such bodies as the Transport Workers’ +Union and the National Union of Railway Workers, in which workers from +dozens of different trades are combined. They can paralyze the whole +industry by a strike. In the nineteenth century very few strikes or +lock-outs were big enough to be much noticed by the general public. +In the twentieth there have already been several which were national +calamities. The Government has been forced to interfere either by +trying to buy the disputants off with subsidies, or to persuade the +employers and the strikers to come to some agreement. But as the +Government has no power either to force the men to go back to work or +the employers to grant their demands, its intervention is not very +effective, and never succeeds until a great deal of mischief has +been done. It has been driven at last to attempt a limitation of the +magnitude of strikes by an Act of 1927 forbidding “sympathetic” strikes +and lock-outs, lock-outs being included to give the Act an air of fair +play. But as this Act does not forbid the formation of industrial +unions, nor take away the right to strike or lock-out when a grievance +can be established (as of course it always can), it is only a gesture +of impotent rage, useless as a remedy, but significant of the growing +indisposition of the nation to tolerate big strikes. They are civil +wars between Capital and Labor in which the whole country suffers. + +The Socialist remedy for this dangerous nuisance is clear. Socialism +would impose compulsory social service on all serviceable citizens, +just as during the war compulsory military service was imposed on all +men of military age. When we are at war nowadays no man is allowed to +plead that he has a thousand a year of his own and need not soldier for +a living. It does not matter if he has fifty thousand: he has to “do +his bit” with the rest. In vain may he urge that he is a gentleman, +and does not want to associate with common soldiers or be classed +with them. If he is not a trained officer he has to become a private, +and possibly find that his sergeant has been his valet, and that his +lieutenant, his major, his colonel, and his brigadier are respectively +his tailor, his bootmaker, his solicitor, and the manager of his +favourite golfing hotel. The penalty of neglect to discharge his duties +precisely and punctually even at the imminent risk of being horribly +wounded or blown to bits, is death. Now the righteousness of military +service is so questionable that the man who conscientiously refuses to +perform it can justify himself by the test proposed by the philosopher +Kant: that is, he can plead that if everybody did the same the world +would be much safer, happier, and better. + +A refusal of social service has no such excuse. If everybody refused +to work, nine-tenths of the inhabitants of these islands would be dead +within a month; and the rest would be too weak to bury them before +sharing their fate. It is useless for a lady to plead that she has +enough to live on without work: if she is not producing her own food +and clothing and lodging other people must be producing them for her; +and if she does not perform some equivalent service for them she is +robbing them. It is absurd for her to pretend that she is living on the +savings of her industrious grandmother; for not only is she alleging a +natural impossibility, but there is no reason on earth why she should +be allowed to undo by idleness the good that her grandmother did by +industry. Compulsory social service is so unanswerably right that the +very first duty of a government is to see that everybody works enough +to pay her way and leave something over for the profit of the country +and the improvement of the world. Yet it is the last duty that any +government will face. What governments do at present is to reduce the +mass of the people by armed force to a condition in which they must +work for the capitalists or starve, leaving the capitalists free from +any such obligation, so that capitalists can not only be idle but +produce artificial overpopulation by withdrawing labor from productive +industry and wasting it in coddling their idleness or ministering +to their vanity. This our Capitalist Governments call protecting +property and maintaining personal liberty; but Socialists believe that +property, in that sense, is theft, and that allowable personal liberty +no more includes the right to idle than the right to murder. + +Accordingly, we may expect that when a Labor House of Commons is +compelled to deal radically with some crushing national strike, +the Socialists in the Labor Party will declare that the remedy is +Compulsory Social Service for all ablebodied persons. The remnants of +the old parties and the non-Socialist Trade Unionists in the Labor +Party will at once combine against the proposal, and clamor for a +subsidy to buy off the belligerents instead. Subsidy or no subsidy, +the Trade Unionists will refuse to give up the right to strike, even +in socialized industries. The strike is the only weapon a Trade Union +has. The employers will be equally determined to maintain their right +to lock-out. As to the landlords and capitalists, their dismay can +be imagined. They will be far more concerned than the employers and +financiers, because employers and financiers are workers: to have +to work is no hardship to them. But the real ladies and gentlemen, +who know no trade, and have been brought up to associate productive +work with social inferiority, imprisonment in offices and factories, +compulsory early rising, poverty, vulgarity, rude manners, roughness +and dirt and drudgery, would see in compulsory social service the end +of the world for them and their class, as indeed it happily will be, +in a sense. The condition of many of them would be so pitiable (or +at least they would imagine it to be so) that they would have to be +provided with medical certificates of disability until they died out; +for, after all, it is not their fault that they have been brought up to +be idle, extravagant, and useless; and when that way of life (which, +by the way, they often make surprisingly laborious) is abolished, they +may reasonably claim the same consideration as other people whose +occupation is done away with by law. We can afford to be kind to them. + +However that may be, it is certain that the useless classes will join +the Trade Unionists in frantic opposition to Compulsory Social Service. +If the Labor ministers, being, as they now mostly are, Socialists, +attempt to bring in a Compulsory Service Bill, they may be defeated +by this combination, in which case there would be a general election +on the question; and at this general election the contest would +not be between the Labor Party and the Capitalists, but between the +Conservative or Trade Unionist wing of the Labor Party, which would +be called the Right, and the Socialist wing, which would be called +the Left. So that even if the present Conservatives be wiped out of +Parliament there may still be two parties contending for power; and the +Intelligent Woman may be canvassed to vote Right or Left, or perhaps +White or Red, just as she is now canvassed to vote Conservative or +Labor. + + + + +74 + +RELIGIOUS DISSENSIONS + + +However, two parties would not hurt the House of Commons, as it is +worked by the division of the members into two sets, one carrying on +the government and the other continually criticizing it and trying to +oust it and become itself the Government. This two-division system +is not really a two-party system in the sense that the two divisions +represent different policies: they may differ about nothing but the +desire for office. From the proletarian point of view the difference +between Liberals and Conservatives since 1832 has been a difference +between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. But this did not matter, because +the essence of the arrangement is that the Government shall be +unsparingly and unceasingly criticized by a rival set of politicians +who are determined to pick every possible hole in its proceedings. +Government and Opposition might be called Performance and Criticism, +the performers and critics changing places whenever the country is +convinced that the critics are right and the performers wrong. + +The division of the House of Commons into two parties with different +policies suits this situation very well. But its division into half a +dozen parties would not suit it at all, and might, as we have seen, +deadlock parliamentary government altogether. Now there is abundant +material for a dozen parties in the British proletariat. Take the +subject of religion, inextricably bound up with the parliamentary +question of education in public elementary schools. It is unlikely that +a Proletarian House of Commons will suffer the nation’s children to go +on being taught Capitalist and Imperialist morality in the disguise of +religion; and yet, the moment the subject is touched, what a hornet’s +nest is stirred up! Parents are inveterate proselytizers: they take +it as a matter of course that they have a right to dictate their +children’s religion. This right was practically undisputed, unless +the parents were professed atheists, when all children who had any +schooling went either to Biblical private schools or to public schools +and universities where the established religion was the State religion. +Nowadays Unitarian schools, Quaker schools, Roman Catholic schools, +Methodist schools, Theosophist schools, and even Communist schools may +be chosen by parents and guardians (not by the children) to suit their +own private religious eccentricities. + +But when schooling is made a national industry, and the Government sets +up schools all over the country, and imposes daily attendance on the +huge majority of children whose parents cannot afford to send their +children to any but the State school, a conflict arises over the souls +of the children. What religion is to be taught in the State school? +The Roman Catholics try to keep their children out of the State school +(they must send them to some school or other) by subscribing money +themselves to maintain Roman Catholic schools alongside the State +schools: and the other denominations, including the Church of England, +do the same. But unless they receive State aid: that is, money provided +by taxing and rating all citizens indiscriminately, they cannot afford +to take in all the children, or to keep up to a decent standard the +schooling of those whom they do take in. And the moment it is proposed +to give them money out of the rates and taxes, the trouble begins. +Rather than pay rates to be used in making Roman Catholics or even +Anglo-Catholics of little English children, Nonconformist Protestant +ratepayers will let themselves be haled before the magistrates and +allow their furniture to be sold up. They would go to the stake if that +were the alternative to paying Peter’s Pence to the Scarlet Woman and +setting children’s feet in the way to eternal damnation. For it is not +in Ireland alone that Protestants and Roman Catholics believe each that +the other will spend eternity immersed in burning brimstone. Church of +England zealots hold that belief even more convincedly about village +Dissenters than about Roman Catholics. + +The opinions of the parties are so irreconcilable, and the passion +of their hostility so fierce, that the Government, when it is once +committed to general compulsory education, either directly in its own +schools or by subsidies to other schools, finds itself driven to devise +some sort of neutral religion that will suit everybody, or else forbid +all mention of the subject in school. An example of the first expedient +is the Cowper-Temple clause in the Education Act of 1870, which ordains +that the Bible shall be read in schools without reference to any creed +or catechism peculiar “to any one denomination”. The total prohibition +expedient is known as Secular Education, and has been tried extensively +in Australia. + +The Cowper-Temple plan does not meet the case of the Roman Catholics, +who do not permit indiscriminate access to the Bible, nor of the +Jews, who can hardly be expected to accept the reading of the New +Testament as religious instruction. Besides, if the children are to +learn anything more than the three Rs, they must be taught Copernican +astronomy, electronic physics, and evolution. Now it is not good +sense to lead a child at ten o’clock to attach religious importance +to the belief that the earth is flat and immovable, and the sky a +ceiling above it in which there is a heaven furnished like a king’s +palace, and, at eleven, that the earth is a sphere spinning on its +axis and rushing round the sun in limitless space with a multitude of +other spheres. Nor can you reasonably order that during the religious +instruction hour the children are to be informed that all forms of life +were created within six days, including the manufacture of a full-grown +woman out of a man’s rib, and, when the clock strikes, begin explaining +that epochs of millions of years were occupied in experiments in the +production of various forms of life, from prodigious monsters to +invisibly small creatures, culminating in a very complicated and by no +means finally satisfactory form called Woman, who specialized a variety +of herself, in some respects even less satisfactory, called Man. This +would not matter if the teacher might explain that as the astronomy +and biology of the Bible are out of date, and we think we know better +nowadays, they have been discarded like the barbarous morality of the +Israelitish kings and the idol to which they made human sacrifices. +But such explanations would frustrate the Cowper-Temple clause, under +which the children were to be left to make what they could of the +contradictions between their religious and secular instruction. They +usually solve it by not thinking about it at all, provided their +parents let them alone on the subject, which is not always the case. + +As to the alternative of giving no religious instruction, and confining +school teaching to what is called Secular or Matter-of-Fact Education, +it is not really a possible plan, because children must be taught +conduct as well as arithmetic, and the ultimate sanctions of conduct +are metaphysical, by which imposing phrase I mean that from the +purely matter-of-fact point of view there is no difference between a +day’s thieving and a day’s honest work, between placid ignorance and +the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, between habitual lying +and truth-telling: they are all human activities or inactivities, +to be chosen according to their respective pleasantness or material +advantages, and not to be preferred on any other grounds. When you +find your children acting, as they often do (like their elders), quite +secularly, and lying, stealing, or idling, you have to give them +either a matter-of-fact or a religious reason for ceasing to do evil +and learning to do well. The matter-of-fact reason is temptingly easy +to manufacture. You can say “If I catch you doing that again I will +clout your head, or smack your behind, or send you to bed without your +supper, or injure you in some way or other that you will not like”. +Unfortunately these secular reasons, though easy to devise and apply, +and enjoyable if you have a turn that way, always seem avoidable by +cunning concealment and a little additional lying. You know what +becomes of the pseudo-morality produced by whipping the moment your +back is turned. And what is your own life worth if it has to be spent +spying on your children with a cane in your hand? Hardly worth living, +I should say, unless you are one of the people who love caning as +others love unnatural sensualities, in which case you may fall into the +hands of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which +will make short work of your moral pretensions. In any case you will +find yourself strongly tempted to whack your children, not really to +compel them to conduct themselves for their own good, but to conduct +themselves in the manner most convenient to yourself, which is not +always nor even often the same thing. + +Finally, if you are not selfish and cruel, you will find that you +must give the children some reason for behaving well when no one is +looking, and there is no danger of being found out, or when they would +rather do the forbidden thing at the cost of a whacking than leave it +undone with impunity. You may tell them that God is always looking, +and will punish them inevitably when they die. But you will find that +posthumous penalties are not immediate enough nor real enough to deter +a bold child. In the end you must threaten it with some damage to a +part of it called its soul, of the existence of which you can give it +no physical demonstration whatever. You need not use the word soul: +you can put the child “on its honor”. But its honor also is an organ +which no anatomist has yet succeeded in dissecting out and preserving +in a bottle of spirits of wine for the instruction of infants. When it +transgresses you can resort to scolding, calling it a naughty, dirty, +greedy little thing. Or you may lecture it, telling it solemnly that +“it is a sin to steal a pin” and so forth. But if you could find such +a monster as an entirely matter-of-fact child, it might receive both +scoldings and lectures unmoved, and ask you “What then? What is a +sin? What do you mean by naughty, greedy? I understand dirty; but why +should I wash my hands if I am quite comfortable with them dirty. I +understand greedy; but if I like chocolates why should I give half of +them to Jane?” You may retort with “Have you no conscience, child?”; +but the matter-of-fact reply is “What is conscience?” Faced with this +matter-of-fact scepticism you are driven into pure metaphysics, and +must teach your child that conduct is a matter, not of fact, but of +religious duty. Good conduct is a respect which you owe to yourself in +some mystical way; and people are manageable in proportion to their +possession of this self-respect. When you remonstrate with a grown-up +person you say “Have you no self-respect?” But somehow one does not say +that to an infant. If it tells a lie, you do not say “You owe it to +yourself to speak the truth”, because the little animal does not feel +any such obligation, though it will later on. If you say “You must not +tell lies because if you do nobody will believe what you say”, you are +conscious of telling a thundering lie yourself, as you know only too +well that most lies are quite successful, and that human society would +be impossible without a great deal of goodnatured lying. If you say +“You must not tell lies because if you do you will find yourself unable +to believe anything that is told to you”, you will be much nearer the +truth; but it is a truth that a child cannot understand: you might as +well tell it the final truth of the matter, which is, that there is a +mysterious something in us called a soul, which deliberate wickedness +kills, and without which no material gain can make life bearable. How +can you expect a naughty child to take that in? If you say “You must +not tell a lie because it will grieve your dear parents”, the effect +will depend on how much the child cares whether its parents are grieved +or not. In any case to most young children their parents are as gods, +too great to be subject to grief, as long as the parents play up to +that conception of them. Also, as it is not easy to be both loved and +feared, parents who put on the majesty of gods with their children must +not allow the familiarity of affection, and are lucky if their children +do not positively hate them. It is safer and more comfortable to invent +a parent who is everybody’s Big Papa, even Papa’s papa, and introduce +it to the child as God. And it must be a god that children can imagine. +It must not be an abstraction, a principle, a vital impulse, a life +force, or the Church of England god who has neither body, parts, nor +passions. It must be, like the real papa, a grown-up person in Sunday +clothes, very very good, terribly powerful, and all-seeing: that is, +able to see what you are doing when nobody is looking. In this way the +child who is too young to have a sufficiently developed self-respect +and intelligent sense of honor: in short, a conscience, is provided +with an artificial, provisional, and to a great extent fictitious +conscience which tides it over its nonage until it is old enough to +attach a serious meaning to the idea of God. + +In this way it was discovered in the nursery, long before Voltaire said +it, that “if there were no God it would be necessary to invent Him”. +After Voltaire’s death, when the government of France fell into the +hands of a set of very high-principled professional and middle-class +gentlemen who had no experience of government, and ended by making +such a mess of it that France would have been ruined if they had not +fortunately all cut oneanother’s heads off on the highest principles, +the most high-principled of them all, an intensely respectable lawyer +named Robespierre, who had tried to govern without God because a +good many of the stories told to children about God were evidently +not strictly true, found that governments dealing with nations could +no more do without God than parents dealing with their families. He, +too, declared, echoing Voltaire, that if there were no God it would +be necessary to invent one. He had previously, by the way, tried a +goddess whom he called the Goddess of Reason; but she was no use at +all, not because she was a goddess (for Roman Catholic children have a +Big Mamma, or Mamma’s mamma, who is everybody’s mamma, and makes the +boys easier to manage, as well as a Big Papa), but because good conduct +is not dictated by reason but by a divine instinct that is beyond +reason. Reason only discovers the shortest way: it does not discover +the destination. It would be quite reasonable for you to pick your +neighbor’s pocket if you felt sure that you could make a better use of +your money than she could; but somehow it would not be honorable; and +honor is a part of divinity: it is metaphysics: it is religion. Some +day it may become scientific psychology; but psychology is as yet in +its crudest infancy; and when it grows up it will very likely be too +difficult not only for children but for many adults, like the rest of +the more abstruse sciences. + +Meanwhile we must bear in mind that our beliefs are continually passing +from the metaphysical and legendary into the scientific stage. In +China, when an eclipse of the sun occurs, all the intelligent and +energetic women rush out of doors with pokers and shovels, trays and +saucepan lids, and bang them together to frighten away the demon who is +devouring the sun; and the perfect success of this proceeding, which +has never been known to fail, proves to them that it is the right thing +to do. But you, who know all about eclipses, sit calmly looking at +them through bits of smoked glass, because your belief about them is a +scientific belief and not a metaphysical one. You probably think that +the women who are banging the saucepans in China are fools; but they +are not: you would do the same yourself if you lived in a country where +astronomy was still in the metaphysical stage. + +You must also beware of concluding, because their conduct seems to +you ridiculous, and because you know that there is no demon, that +there is no eclipse. You may say that nobody could make a mistake +like that; but I assure you that a great many people, seeing how many +childish fables and ridiculous ceremonies have been attached to the +conception of divinity, have rushed to the conclusion that no such +thing as divinity exists. When they grow out of believing that God is +an old gentleman with a white beard, they think they have got rid of +everything that the old gentleman represented to their infant minds. On +the contrary, they have come a little nearer to the truth about it. + +Now the English nation consists of many million parents and children +of whom hardly any two are in precisely the same stage of belief as to +the sanctions of good conduct. Many of the parents are still in the +nursery stage: many of the children are in the comparatively scientific +stage. Most of them do not bother much about it, and just do what their +neighbors do and say they believe what most of their neighbors say +they believe. But those who do bother about it differ very widely and +differ very fiercely. Take those who, rejecting the first article of +the Church of England, attach to the word God the conception of a Ruler +of the universe with the body, parts, and passions of man, but with +unlimited knowledge and power. Here at least, you might think, we have +agreement. But no. There are two very distinct parties to this faith. +One of them believes in a God of Wrath, imposing good conduct on us by +threats of casting us for ever into an inconceivably terrible hell. +Others believe in a God of Love, and openly declare that if they could +be brought to believe in a God capable of such cruelty as hell implies, +they would spit in his face. Others hold that conduct has nothing to do +with the matter, and that though hell exists, anyone, however wicked, +can avoid it by believing that God accepted the cruel death of his own +son as an expiation of their misdeeds, whilst nobody, however virtuous, +can avoid it if she has the slightest doubt on this point. Others +declare that neither conduct nor belief has anything to do with it, +as every person is from birth predestined to fall into hell or mount +into heaven when they die, and that nothing that they can say or do or +believe or disbelieve can help them. Voltaire described us as a people +with thirty religions and only one sauce; and though this was a great +compliment to the activity and independence of our minds, it held out +no hope of our ever agreeing about religion. + +Even if we could confine religious instruction to subjects which are +supposed to have passed from the metaphysical to the scientific stage, +which is what the advocates of secular education mean, we should be +no nearer to unanimity; for not only do our scientific bigots differ +as fiercely as those of the sects and churches, and try to obtain +powers of ruthless persecution from the Government, but their pretended +advances from the metaphysical to the scientific are often disguised +relapses into the pre-metaphysical stage of crude witchcraft, ancient +augury, and African “medicine”. + +Roughly speaking, governments in imposing education on the people +have to deal with three fanaticisms: first, that which believes in a +God of Wrath, and sees in every earthquake, every pestilence, every +war: in short, every calamity of impressive or horrifying magnitude, +a proof of God’s terrible power and a warning to sinners; second, +that which believes in a God of Love in conflict with a Power of Evil +personified as the Devil; and third, that of the magicians and their +dupes, believing neither in God nor devil, claiming that the pursuit +of knowledge is absolutely free from moral law, however atrocious +its methods, and pretending to work miracles (called “the marvels of +science”) by which they hold the keys of life and death, and can make +mankind immune from disease if they are given absolute control over our +bodies. + +A good many women are still so primitive and personal in religious +matters that their first impulse on hearing them discussed at all is +to declare that their beliefs are the only true beliefs, and must of +course be imposed on everyone, all other beliefs to be punished as +monstrous blasphemies. They do not regard Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, as +different names for God: if they call God Brahma they regard Allah and +Jehovah as abominable idols, and all Christians and Moslems as wicked +idolaters whom no respectable person would visit. Or if Jehovah, they +class Moslems and Indians as “the heathen”, and send out missionaries +to convert them. But this childish self-conceit would wreck the British +Empire if our rulers indulged it. Only about 11 per cent of British +subjects are Christians: the enormous majority of them call God Allah +or Brahma, and either do not distinguish Jesus from any other prophet +or have never even heard of him. Consequently when a woman goes into +Parliament, central or local, she should leave the sectarian part of +her religion behind her, and consider only that part of it which is +common to all the sects and Churches, however the names may differ. +Unfortunately this is about the last thing that most elected persons +ever dream of doing. They all strive to impose their local customs, +names, institutions, and even languages on the schoolchildren by main +force. + +Now there is this to be said for their efforts, that all progress +consists in imposing on children nobler beliefs and better institutions +than those at present inculcated and established. For instance, as +every Socialist believes that Communism is more nobly inspired and +better in practice than private property and competition, her object in +entering Parliament is to impose that belief on her country by having +it taught to the children in the public schools so that they may grow +up to regard it as the normal obvious truth, and to abhor Capitalism +as a disastrous idolatry. At present she finds herself opposed by +statesmen who quite lately spent a hundred millions of English public +money in subsidizing military raids on the Russian Government because +it was a Socialist Government. To such statesmen Socialist, Communist, +Bolshevist, are synonyms for Scoundrel, Thief, Assassin. In opposition +to them the Socialists compare Labor exploited by landlords and +capitalists to Christ crucified between two thieves. They both say that +we no longer persecute in the name of religion; but this means only +that they refuse to call the creeds they are persecuting religions, +whilst the beliefs they do call religions have become comparatively +indifferent to them. To put down sedition, rebellion, and attacks on +property, or, on the other hand, to make an end of the robbery of +the poor, suppress shameless idleness, and restore the land of our +country, which God made for us all, to the whole people, seems simple +enforcement of the moral law, and not persecution; therefore those who +do it are not, they think, persecutors, to prove which they point to +the fact that they allow us all to go to church or not as we please, +and to believe or disbelieve in transubstantiation according to our +fancy. Do not be deceived by modern professions of toleration. Women +are still what they were when the Tudor sisters sent Protestants to +the stake and Jesuits to the rack and gallows; when the defenders of +property and slavery in Rome set up crosses along the public roads +with the crucified followers of the revolted gladiator slave Spartacus +dying horribly upon them in thousands; and when the saintly Torquemada +burnt alive every Jew he could lay hands on as piously as he told +his beads. The difference between the Socialist versus Capitalist +controversy and the Jew versus Christian controversy or the Roman +Catholic versus Protestant controversy is not that the modern bigot is +any more tolerant or less cruel than her ancestors, nor even that the +proletarians are too numerous and the proprietors too powerful to be +persecuted. If the controversy between them could be settled by either +party exterminating the other, they would both do their worst to settle +it in that way. History leaves us no goodnatured illusions on this +point. From the wholesale butcheries which followed the suppression +of the Paris Commune of 1871 to the monstrous and quite gratuitous +persecution of Russians in the United States of America after the +war of 1914-18, in which girls were sentenced to frightful terms of +imprisonment for remarks that might have been made by any Sunday +School teacher, there is abundant evidence that modern diehards are no +better than medieval zealots, and that if they are to be restrained +from deluging the world in blood and torture in the old fashion it +will not be by any imaginary advance in toleration or in humanity. At +this moment (1927) our proprietary classes appear to have no other +conception of the Russian Soviet Government and its sympathizers than +as vermin to be ruthlessly exterminated; and when the Russian Communist +and his western imitators speak of the proprietors and their political +supporters as “bourgeois”, they make no secret of regarding them as +enemies of the human race. The spirit of the famous manifesto of 1792, +in which the Duke of Brunswick, in the name of the monarchs of Europe, +announced that he meant to exterminate the French Republican Government +and deliver up the cities which tolerated it to “military execution +and total subversion”, is reflected precisely in the speeches made +by our own statesmen in support of the projected expedition against +the Union of Soviet Republics which was countermanded a few years ago +only because the disapproval of the British proletarian voters became +so obvious that the preparations for the Capitalist Crusade had to be +hastily dropped. + +It is therefore very urgently necessary that I should explain to +you why it is that a Labor Party can neither establish Socialism by +exterminating its opponents, nor its opponents avert Socialism by +exterminating the Socialists. + + + + +75 + +REVOLUTIONS + + +You must first grasp the difference between revolutions and social +changes. A revolution transfers political power from one party to +another, or one class to another, or even one individual to another, +just as a conquest transfers it from one nation or race to another. It +can be and often is effected by violence or the threat of violence. +Of our two revolutions in the seventeenth century, by which political +power in England was transferred from the throne to the House of +Commons, the first cost a civil war; and the second was bloodless only +because the King ran away. A threat of violence was sufficient to carry +the nineteenth century revolution of 1832, by which the political +power was transferred from the great agricultural landowners to the +industrial urban employers. The South American revolutions which +substitute one party or one President for another are general elections +decided by shooting instead of by voting. + +Now the transfer of political power from our capitalists to our +proletariat, without which Socialist propaganda would be suppressed +by the Government as sedition, and Socialist legislation would be +impossible, has already taken place in form. The proletarians can +outvote the capitalists overwhelmingly whenever they choose to do so. +If on the issue of Socialism versus Capitalism all the proletarians +were for Socialism and all the capitalists for Capitalism, Capitalism +would have had to capitulate to overwhelming numbers long ago. But the +proletarians who live upon the incomes of the capitalists as their +servants, their tradesmen, their employees in the luxury trades, their +lawyers and doctors and so on, not to mention the troops raised, +equipped, and paid by them to defend their property (in America there +are private armies of this kind) are more violently Conservative than +the capitalists themselves, many of whom, like Robert Owen and William +Morris, not to mention myself, have been and are ardent Socialists. The +Countess of Warwick is a noted Socialist; so you have seen a Socialist +Countess (or at least her picture); but have you ever seen a countess’s +dressmaker who was a Socialist? If the capitalists refused to accept a +parliamentary decision against them, and took to arms, like Charles I, +they would have in many places a majority of the proletariat on their +side. + +If you are shocked by the suggestion that our capitalists would act so +unconstitutionally, consider the case of Ireland, in which after thirty +years of parliamentary action, and an apparently final settlement of +the Home Rule question by Act of Parliament, the establishment of the +Irish Free State was effected by fire and slaughter, the winning side +being that which succeeded in burning the larger number of the houses +of its opponents. + +Parliamentary constitutionalism holds good up to a certain point: the +point at which the people who are outvoted in Parliament will accept +their defeat. But on many questions people feel so strongly, or have +such big interests at stake, that they leave the decision to Parliament +only as long as they think they will win there. If Parliament decides +against them, and they see any chance of a successful resistance, they +throw Parliament over and fight it out. During the thirty years of the +parliamentary campaign for Irish Home Rule there were always Direct +Action men who said “It is useless to go to the English Parliament: +the Unionists will never give up their grip of Ireland until they are +forced to; and you may as well fight it out first as last”. And these +men, though denounced as wanton incendiaries, turned out to be right. +The French had to cut off the heads of both king and queen because the +king could not control the queen, and the queen would not accept a +constitutional revolution, nor stop trying to induce the other kings +of Europe to march their armies into France and slaughter the Liberals +for her. In England we beheaded our king because he would not keep +faith with the Liberal Parliament even after he had fought it and +lost. In Spain at this moment the King and the army have suppressed +Parliament, and are ruling by force of arms on the basis of divine +right, which is exactly what Cromwell did in England after he had cut +off King Charles’s head for trying to do the same. Signor Mussolini, +a Socialist, has overridden parliament in Italy, his followers having +established what is called a reign of terror by frank violence. + +These repudiations of constitutionalism in Spain and Italy have been +made, not to effect any definite social change, but because the Spanish +and Italian governments had become so unbearably inefficient that +the handiest way to restore public order was for some sufficiently +energetic individuals to take the law into their own hands and just +break people’s heads if they would not behave themselves. And it may +quite possibly happen that even if the most perfect set of Fabian Acts +of Parliament for the constitutional completion of Socialism in this +country be passed through Parliament by duly elected representatives of +the people; swallowed with wry faces by the House of Lords; and finally +assented to by the King and placed on the statute book, the capitalists +may, like Signor Mussolini, denounce Parliament as unpatriotic, +pernicious, and corrupt, and try to prevent by force the execution of +the Fabian Acts. We should then have a state of civil war, with, no +doubt, the Capitalist forces burning the co-operative stores, and the +proletarians burning the country houses, as in Ireland, in addition to +the usual war routine of devastation and slaughter. + +As we have seen, the capitalists would be at no loss for proletarian +troops. The war would not be as the Marxist doctrinaires of the Class +War seem to imagine. In our examination of the effect of unequal +distribution of income we found that it is not only the rich who live +on the poor, but also the servants and tradesmen who live on the money +the rich spend, and who have their own servants and tradesmen. In the +rich suburbs and fashionable central quarters of the great cities, +and all over the South of England where pleasant country houses are +dotted over the pleasantest of the English counties, it is as hard +to get a Labor candidate into Parliament as in Oxford University. If +the unearned incomes of the rich disappeared, places like Bournemouth +would either perish like the cities of Nineveh and Babylon, or else the +inhabitants would have, as they would put it, to cater for a different +class of people; and many of them would be ruined before they could +adapt themselves to the new conditions. Add to these the young men who +are out of employment, and will fight for anyone who will pay them well +for an exciting adventure, with all the people who dread change of +any sort, or who are duped by the newspapers into thinking Socialists +scoundrels, or who would be too stupid to understand such a book as +this if they could be persuaded to read anything but a cheap newspaper; +and you will see at once that the line that separates those who live on +rich customers from those who live on poor customers: in other words +which separates those interested in the maintenance of Capitalism from +those interested in its replacement by Socialism, is a line drawn +not between rich and poor, capitalist and proletarian, but right +down through the middle of the proletariat to the bottom of the very +poorest section. In a civil war for the maintenance of Capitalism the +capitalists would therefore find masses of supporters in all ranks of +the community; and it is their knowledge of this that makes the leaders +of the Labor Party so impatient with the extremists who talk of such a +war as if it would be a Class War, and echo Shelley’s very misleading +couplet “Ye are many: they are few”. And as the capitalists know it +too, being reminded of it by the huge number of votes given for them +by the poor at every election, I cannot encourage you to feel too sure +that their present denunciations of Direct Action by their opponents +mean that when their own sooner-or-later inevitable defeat by Labor in +Parliament comes, they will take it lying down. + +But no matter how the government of the country may pass from the hands +of the capitalists into those of the Socialist proletarians, whether +by peaceful parliamentary procedure or the bloodiest conceivable civil +war, at the end of it the survivors will be just where they were at +the beginning as far as practical Communism is concerned. Returning a +majority of Socialists to Parliament will not by itself reconstruct +the whole economic system of the country in such a way as to produce +equality of income. Still less will burning and destroying buildings +or killing several of the opponents of Socialism, and getting several +Socialists killed in doing so. You cannot wave a wand over the country +and say “Let there be Socialism”: at least nothing will happen if you +do. + +The case of Russia illustrates this. After the great political +revolution of 1917 in that country, the Marxist Communists were so +completely victorious that they were able to form a Government far more +powerful than the Tsar had ever really been. But as the Tsar had not +allowed Fabian Societies to be formed in Russia to reduce Socialism +to a system of law, this new Russian Government did not know what to +do, and, after trying all sorts of amateur experiments which came to +nothing more than pretending that there was Communism where there +was nothing but the wreck of Capitalism, and giving the land to the +peasants, who immediately insisted on making private property of it +over again, had to climb down hastily and leave the industry of the +country to private employers very much as the great ground landlords +of our cities leave the work of the shops to their tenants, besides +allowing the peasant farmers to hold their lands and sell their produce +just as French peasant proprietors or English farmers do. + +This does not mean that the Russian Revolution has been a failure. In +Russia it is now established that capital was made for Man, and not +Man for Capitalism. The children are taught the Christian morality of +Communism instead of the Mammonist morality of Capitalism. The palaces +and pleasure seats of the plutocrats are used for the recreation of +workers instead of for the enervation of extravagant wasters. Idle +ladies and gentlemen are treated with salutary contempt, whilst the +worker’s blouse is duly honored. The treasures of art, respected and +preserved with a cultural conscientiousness which puts to shame our +own lootings in China, and our iconoclasms and vandalisms at home, are +accessible to everyone. The Greek Church is tolerated (the Bolsheviks +forbore to cut off their Archbishop’s head as we cut off Archbishop +Laud’s); but it is not, as the Church of England is, allowed without +contradiction to tell little children lies about the Bible under +pretence of giving them religious instruction, nor to teach them to +reverence the merely rich as their betters. That sort of doctrine is +officially and very properly disavowed as Dope. + +All this seems to us too good to be true. It places the Soviet +Government in the forefront of cultural civilization as far as good +intention goes. But it is not Socialism. It still involves sufficient +inequality of income to undo in the long run enough of its achievements +to degrade the Communist Republic to the level of the old Capitalist +Republics of France and America. In short, though it has made one of +those transfers of political power which are the object of revolutions, +and are forced through by simple slaughter and terror, and though +this political transfer has increased Russian self-respect and changed +the moral attitude of the Russian State from pro-Capitalist to +anti-Capitalist, it has not yet established as much actual Communism as +we have in England, nor even raised Russian wages to the English level. + +The explanation of this is that Communism can spread only as Capitalism +spread: that is, as a development of existing economic civilization and +not by a sudden wholesale overthrow of it. What it proposes is not a +destruction of the material utilities inherited from Capitalism, but +a new way of managing them and distributing the wealth they produce. +Now this development of Capitalism into a condition of ripeness +for Socialization had not been reached in Russia; consequently the +victorious Communist Bolsheviks in 1917 found themselves without any +highly organized Capitalistic industry to build upon. They had on their +hands an enormous agricultural country with a population of uncivilized +peasants, ignorant, illiterate, superstitious, cruel, and land-hungry. +The cities, few and far between, with their relatively insignificant +industries, often managed by foreigners, and their city proletariats +living on family wages of five and threepence a week, were certainly +in revolt against the misdistribution of wealth and leisure; but they +were so far from being organized to begin Socialism that it was only +in a very limited sense that they could be said to have begun urban +civilization. There were no Port Sunlights and Bournvilles, no Ford +factories in which workmen earn £9 in a five-day week and have their +own motor cars, no industrial trusts of national dimensions, no public +libraries, no great public departments manned by picked and tested +civil servants, no crowds of men skilled in industrial management +and secretarial business looking for employment, no nationalized and +municipalized services with numerous and competent official staffs, +no national insurance, no great Trade Union organization representing +many millions of workmen and able to extort subsidies from Capitalist +governments by threatening to stop the railways and cut off the coal +supply, no fifty years of compulsory schooling supplemented by forty +years of incessant propaganda of political science by Fabian and other +lecturers, no overwhelming predominance of organized industry over +individualist agriculture, no obvious breakdown of Capitalism under +the strain of the war, no triumphant rescue by Socialism demonstrating +that even those public departments that were bywords for incompetence +and red tape were far more efficient than the commercial adventurers +who derided them. Well may Mr Trotsky say that the secret of the +completeness of the victory of the Russian Proletarian Revolution +over Russian Capitalist civilization was that there was virtually no +Capitalist civilization to triumph over, and that the Russian people +had been saved from the corruption of bourgeois ideas, not by the +famous metaphysical dialectic inherited by Marx from the philosopher +Hegel, but by the fact that they are still primitive enough to be +incapable of middle class ideas. In England, when Socialism is +consummated it will plant the red flag on the summit of an already +constructed pyramid; but the Russians have to build right up from the +sand. We must build up Capitalism before we can turn it into Socialism. +But meanwhile we must learn how to control it instead of letting it +demoralize us, slaughter us, and half ruin us, as we have hitherto done +in our ignorance. + +Thus the fact that the Soviet has had to resort to controlled +Capitalism and bourgeois enterprise, after denouncing them so +fiercely under the Tsardom in the phrases used by Marx to denounce +English Capitalism, does not mean that we shall have to recant in the +same way when we complete our transfer of political power from the +proprietary classes and their retainers to the Socialist proletariat. +The Capitalism which the Russian Government is not only tolerating but +encouraging would be for us, even now under Capitalism, an attempt to +set back the clock. We could not get back to it if we tried, except +by smashing our machinery, breaking up our industrial organization, +burning all the plans and documents from which it could be +reconstructed, and substituting an eighteenth for a twentieth century +population. + +The moral of all this is that though a political revolution may be +necessary to break the power of the opponents of Socialism if they +refuse to accept it as a Parliamentary reform, and resist it violently +either by organizing what is now called Fascism or a _coup d’état_ to +establish a Dictatorship of the Capitalists, yet neither a violent +revolution nor a peacefully accepted series of parliamentary reforms +can by themselves create Socialism, which is neither a battle cry nor +an election catchword, but an elaborate arrangement of our production +and distribution of wealth in such a manner that all our incomes +shall be equal. This is why Socialists who understand their business +are always against bloodshed. They are no milder than other people; +but they know that bloodshed cannot do what they want, and that the +indiscriminate destruction inseparable from civil war will retard +it. Mr Sidney Webb’s much quoted and in some quarters much derided +“inevitability of gradualness” is an inexorable fact. It does not, +unfortunately, imply inevitability of peacefulness. We can fight over +every step of the gradual process if we are foolish enough. We shall +come to an armed struggle for political power between the parasitic +proletariat and the Socialist proletariat if the Capitalist leaders of +the parasitic proletariat throw Parliament and the Constitution over, +and declare for a blood and iron settlement instead of a settlement by +votes. But at the end of the fighting we shall all be the poorer, none +the wiser, and some of us the deader. If the Socialists win, the road +to Socialism may be cleared; but the pavement will be torn up and the +goal as far off as ever. + +All the historical precedents illustrate this. A monarchy may be +changed into a republic, or an oligarchy into a democracy, or one +oligarchy supplanted by another, if the people who favor the change +kill enough of the people who oppose it to intimidate the rest; and +when the change is made you may have factions fighting instead of +voting for the official posts of power and honor until, as in South +America in the nineteenth century, violent revolutions become so common +that other countries hardly notice them; but no extremity of fighting +and killing can alter the distribution of wealth or the means of +producing it. The guillotining of 4000 people in eighteen months during +the French Revolution left the people poorer than before; so that when +the Public Prosecutor who had sent most of the 4000 to the guillotine +was sent there himself, and the people cursed him as he passed to his +death, he said, “Will your bread be any cheaper tomorrow, you fools?” +That did not affect the Capitalist makers of the French Revolution, +because they did not want to make the bread of the poor cheaper: they +wanted to transfer the government of France from the King and the +nobles to the middle class. But if they had been Socialists, aiming +at making everything much cheaper except human life, they would have +had to admit that the laugh was with Citizen Fouquier Tinville. And +if William Pitt and the kings of Europe had let the French Revolution +alone, and it had been as peaceful and parliamentary as our own +revolutionary Reform Bill of 1832, it would have been equally futile as +far as putting another pennorth of milk into baby’s mug was concerned. + +Whenever our city proletarians, in the days before the dole (say 1885 +for instance), were driven by unemployment to threaten to burn down +the houses of the rich, the Socialists said “No: if you are foolish +enough to suppose that burning houses will put an end to unemployment, +at least have sense enough to burn down your own houses, most of +which are unfit for human habitation. The houses of the rich are good +houses, of which we have much too few.” Capitalism has produced not +only slums but palaces and handsome villas, not only sweaters’ dens but +first-rate factories, shipyards, steamships, ocean cables, services +that are not only national but international, and what not. It has also +produced a great deal of Communism, without which it could not exist +for a single day (we need not go over all the examples already given: +the roads and bridges and so forth). What Socialist in his senses +would welcome a civil war that would destroy all or any of this, and +leave his party, even if it were victorious, a heritage of blackened +ruins and festering cemeteries? Capitalism has led up to Socialism +by changing the industries of the country from petty enterprises +conducted by petty proprietors into huge Trusts conducted by employed +proletarians directing armies of workmen, operating with millions of +capital on vast acreages of land. In short, Capitalism tends always to +develop industries until they are on the scale of public affairs and +ripe for transfer to public hands. To destroy them would be to wreck +the prospects of Socialism. Even the proprietors who think that such +a transfer would be robbery have at least the consolation of knowing +that the thief does not destroy the property of the man he intends to +rob, being as much interested in it as the person from whom he means to +steal it. As to managing persons, Socialism will need many more of them +than there are at present, and will give them much greater security in +their jobs and dignity in their social standing than most of them can +hope for under Capitalism. + +And now I think we may dismiss the question whether the return of +a decisive majority of Socialists to Parliament will pass without +an appeal to unconstitutional violence by the capitalists and their +supporters. Whether it does or not may matter a good deal to those +unlucky persons who will lose their possessions or their lives in the +struggle if there be a struggle; but when the shouting and the killing +and the house burning are over the survivors must settle down to some +stable form of government. The mess may have to be cleared up by a +dictatorship like that of Napoleon the Third, King Alfonso, Cromwell, +Napoleon, Mussolini, or Lenin; but dictatorial strong men soon die or +lose their strength, and kings, generals, and proletarian dictators +alike find that they cannot carry on for long without councils or +parliaments of some sort, and that these will not work unless they are +in some way representative of the public, because unless the citizens +co-operate with the police the strongest government breaks down, as +English government did in Ireland. + +In the long run (which nowadays is a very short run) you must have +your parliament and your settled constitution back again; and the +risings and _coups d’état_, with all their bloodshed and burnings and +executions, might as well have been cut out as far as the positive +constructive work of Socialism is concerned. So we may just as well +ignore all the battles that may or may not be fought, and go on to +consider what may happen to the present Labor Party if its present +constitutional growth be continued and consummated by the achievement +of a decisive Socialist majority in Parliament, and its resumption of +office, not, as in 1923-24, by the sufferance of the two Capitalist +parties and virtually under their control, but with full power to +carry out a proletarian policy, and, if it will, to make Socialism the +established constitutional order in Britain. + + + + +76 + +CHANGE MUST BE PARLIAMENTARY + + +Let us assume, then, that we have resigned ourselves, as we must sooner +or later, to a parliamentary settlement of the quarrels between the +Capitalists and the Socialists. Mind: I cannot, women and men being +what they are, offer you any sincere assurances that this will occur +without all the customary devilments. Every possible wrong and wicked +way may be tried before their exhaustion drives us back into the right +way. Attempts at a general strike, a form of national suicide which +sane people are bound to resist by every extremity of violent coercion, +may lead to a proclamation of martial law by the Government, whether +it be a Labor or a Capitalist Government, followed by slaughtering +of mobs, terroristic shelling of cities (as in the case of Dublin), +burning and looting of country houses, shooting of police officers at +sight as uniformed enemies of the people, and a hectic time for those +to whom hating and fighting and killing are a glorious sport that makes +life worth living and death worth dying. Or if the modern machine gun, +the bombing aeroplane, and the poison gas shell make military coercion +irresistible, or if the general strikers have sufficient sense shot +into them to see that blockade and boycott are not good tactics for +the productive proletariat because they themselves are necessarily +the first victims of it, still Parliament may be so split up into +contending groups as to become unworkable, forcing the nation to fall +back on a dictatorship. The dictator may be another Bismarck ruling in +the name of a royal personage, or a forceful individual risen from the +ranks like Mahomet or Brigham Young or Signor Mussolini, or a general +like Cæsar or Napoleon or Primo di Rivera. + +In the course of these social convulsions you and I may be outraged, +shot, gas poisoned, burnt out of house and home, financially ruined, +just as anyone else may. We must resign ourselves to such epidemics +of human pugnacity and egotism just as we have to resign ourselves to +epidemics of measles. Measles are less bitter to us because we have at +least never done anything to encourage them, whereas we have recklessly +taught our children to glorify pugnacity and to identify gentility and +honor with the keeping down of the poor and the keeping up of the +rich, thus producing an insanitary condition of public morals which +makes periodic epidemics of violence and class hatred inevitable. + +But sooner or later, the irreconcilables exterminate oneanother like +the Kilkenny cats; for when the toughest faction has exterminated all +the other factions it proceeds to exterminate itself. And the dictators +die as Cromwell died, or grow old and are sent to the dustbin by +ambitious young monarchs as Bismarck was; and dictators and ambitious +monarchs alike find that autocracy is not today a practical form of +government except in little tribes like Brigham Young’s Latter Day +Saints, nor even complete there. The nearest thing to it that will now +hold together is the presidency of the United States of America; and +the President, autocrat as he is for his four years of office, has +to work with a Cabinet, deal with a Congress and a Senate, and abide +the result of popular elections. To this parliamentary complexion we +must all come at last. Every bumptious idiot thinks himself a born +ruler of men; every snob thinks that the common people must be kept in +their present place or shot down if society is to be preserved; every +proletarian who resents his position wants to strike at something or +somebody more vulnerable than the capitalist system in the abstract; +but when they have all done their worst the dead they have slain must +be buried, the houses they have burned rebuilt, and the hundred other +messes they have left cleared up by women and men with sense enough to +take counsel together without coming to blows, and business ability +enough to organize the work of the community. These sensible ones may +not always have been sensible: some of them may have done their full +share of mischief before the necessary sanity was branded into them by +bitter experience or horrified contemplation of the results of anarchy; +but between the naturally sensible people and the chastened ones +there will finally be some sort of Parliament to conduct the nation’s +business, unless indeed civilization has been so completely wrecked in +the preliminary quarrels that there is no nation worth troubling about +left, and consequently no national business to transact. That has often +happened. + +However, let us put all disagreeable possibilities out of our heads +for the moment, and consider how Socialism is likely to advance in +a Parliament kept in working order by the establishment of two main +parties competing for office and power: one professing to resist the +advance and the other to further it, but both forced by the need for +gaining some sort of control of the runaway car of Capitalism to +take many steps when in power which they vehemently denounced when +in opposition, and in the long run both contributing about equally +(as hitherto) to the redistribution of the national income and the +substitution of public for private property in land and industrial +organization. + +Do not fear that I am about to inflict a complete program on you. Even +if I could foresee it I know better than to weary you to that extent. +All I intend is to give you a notion of the sort of legislation that +is likely to be enacted, and of the sort of opposition it is likely +to provoke; so that you may be better able to judge on which side you +should vote when an election gives you the chance, or when a seat on +some parliamentary body, local or central, calls you to more direct +action. You must understand that my designs on you do not include +making you what is called a good party woman. Rather do I seek to add +you to that floating body of openminded voters who are quite ready +to vote for this party today and for the opposite party tomorrow if +you think the balance of good sense and practical ability has changed +(possibly by the ageing of the leaders) or that your former choice +has taken a wrong turn concerning some proposed measure of cardinal +importance. Good party people think such openmindedness disloyal; but +in politics there should be no loyalty except to the public good. If, +however, you prefer to vote for the same side every time through thick +and thin, why not find some person who has made the same resolution in +support of the opposite party? Then, as they say in Parliament, you can +pair with her: that is, you can both agree never to vote at all, which +will have the same effect as if you voted opposite ways; and neither of +you need ever trouble to vote again. + +We are agreed, I take it, that practical Socialism must proceed by the +Government nationalizing our industries one at a time by a series of +properly compensated expropriations, after an elaborate preparation +for their administration by a body of civil servants, who will consist +largely of the old employees, but who will be controlled and financed +by Government departments manned by public servants very superior +in average ability, training, and social dignity to the commercial +profiteers and financial gamblers who now have all our livelihoods at +their mercy. + +Now this preparation and nationalization will hardly be possible +unless the voters have at least a rough notion of what the Government +is doing, and approve of it. They may not understand Socialism as a +whole; but they can understand nationalization of the coal mines quite +well enough to desire it and vote for its advocates, if not for the +sake of the welfare of the nation, at least for the sake of getting +their coal cheaper. Just so with the railways and transport services +generally: the most prejudiced Conservatives may vote for their +nationalization on its merits as an isolated measure, for the sake of +cheaper travelling and reasonable freights for internal produce. A few +big nationalizations effected with this sort of popular support will +make nationalization as normal a part of our social policy as old age +pensions are now, though it seems only the other day that such pensions +were denounced as rank Communism, which indeed they are. + +There is therefore no hope for Capitalism in the difficulty that +baffled the Soviet in dealing with the land: that is, that the +Russian people were not Communists, and would not work the Communist +system except under a compulsion which it was impossible to apply on +a sufficiently large scale, because if a system can be maintained +only by half the ablebodied persons in the country being paid to do +nothing but stand over the other half, rifle in hand, then it is not +a practicable system and may as well be dropped first as last. But a +series of properly prepared nationalizations may not only be understood +and voted for by people who would be quite shocked if they were called +Socialists, but would fit in perfectly with the habits of the masses +who take their bread as it comes and never think about anything of a +public nature. To them the change would be only a change of masters, +to which they are so accustomed that it would not strike them as a +change at all, whilst it would be also a change in the remuneration, +dignity, and certainty of employment, which is just what they are +always clamoring for. This overcomes the difficulty, familiar to all +reformers, that it is much easier to induce people to do things in +the way to which they are accustomed, even though it is detestably +bad for them, than to try a new system, even though it promises to be +millennially good for them. + +Socialistic legislation, then, will be no mere matter of forbidding +people to be rich, and calling a policeman when the law is broken. It +means an active interference in the production and distribution of the +nation’s income; and every step of it will require a new department +or extension of the civil service or the municipal service to execute +and manage it. If we had sense enough to make a law that every baby, +destitute or not, should have plenty of bread and milk and a good +house to shelter it, that law would remain a dead letter until all the +necessary bakeries and dairies and builders’ yards were ready. If we +made a law that every ablebodied adult should put in a day’s work for +his or her country every day, we could not carry out that law until +we had a job ready for everybody. All constructive and productive +legislation is quite different from the Ten Commandments: it means the +employment of masses of men, the establishing of offices and works, the +provision of large sums of money to start with, and the services of +persons of special ability to direct. Without these, all the Royal or +Dictatorial Proclamations, all the Commandments, and all the Communist +Manifestoes are waste paper as far as the establishment of practical +Socialism is concerned. + +You may therefore take it that the change from inequality to +equality of income, though it will be made by law and cannot be +made in any other way, will not be made by simply passing a single +Act of Parliament ordering everybody to have the same income, with +arithmetical exactness in every case. Dozens of extensions of the civil +and municipal services, dozens of successive nationalizations, dozens +of annual budgets, all warmly contested on one ground or another, will +take us nearer and nearer to Equality of Income until we are so close +that the evil of such trifling inequalities as may be left is no longer +serious enough to be worth bothering about. At present, when one baby +has a hundred thousand a year, and a hundred other babies are dying of +insufficient nourishment, equality of income is something to be fought +for and died for if necessary. But if every baby had its fill, the fact +that here and there a baby’s father or mother might get hold of an +extra five shillings or five pounds would not matter enough to induce +anyone to cross the street to prevent it. + +All social reforms stop short, not at absolute logical completeness or +arithmetical exactness, but at the point at which they have done their +work sufficiently. To a poor woman the difference between a pound a +week and a guinea a week is very serious, because a shilling is a large +sum of money to her. But a woman with twenty pounds a week would not +engage in a civil war because some other woman had twenty guineas. She +would not feel the difference. Therefore we need not imagine a state of +society in which we should call the police if somebody made a little +extra money by singing songs or selling prize chrysanthemums, though we +might come to consider such conduct so sordidly unladylike that even +the most impudent woman would not dare do it openly. As long as we were +all equally well off, so that anybody’s daughter could marry anybody +else’s son without any question of marrying above or beneath her, we +should be contented enough not to haggle over halfpence in the division +of the national income. For all that, equality of income should remain +a fundamental principle, any noticeable departure from which would be +jealously watched, and tolerated, if at all, with open eyes. There are +no limits to the possibility of its enforcement. + +This does not mean that there are no limits to any device of Socialism: +for example, to the process of nationalizing industry and turning +private employees into Government employees. We could not nationalize +everything even if we went mad on nationalization and wanted to. There +will never be a week in which the Sunday papers will report that +Socialism was established in Great Britain last Wednesday, on which +occasion the Queen wore a red silk scarf fastened on the shoulder with +a circlet of rubies consecrated and presented to her by the Third +International, and containing a portrait of Karl Marx with the famous +motto, “Proletarians of All Lands: Unite”. It is far more likely that +by the time nationalization has become the rule, and private enterprise +the exception, Socialism (which is really rather a bad name for the +business) will be spoken of, if at all, as a crazy religion held by a +fanatical sect in that darkest of dark ages, the nineteenth century. +Already, indeed, I am told that Socialism has had its day, and that the +sooner we stop talking nonsense about it and set to work, like the +practical people we are, to nationalize the coal mines and complete +a national electrification scheme, the better. And I, who said forty +years ago that we should have had Socialism already but for the +Socialists, am quite willing to drop the name if dropping it will help +me to get the thing. + +What I meant by my jibe at the Socialists of the eighteen-eighties was +that nothing is ever done, and much is prevented, by people who do not +realize that they cannot do everything at once. + + + + +77 + +SUBSIDIZED PRIVATE ENTERPRISE + + +Whilst we are nationalizing the big industries and the wholesale +businesses we may have to leave a good many unofficial retailers to +carry on the work of petty distribution much as they do at present, +except that we may control them in the matter of prices as the Trusts +do, whilst allowing them a better living than the landlords and +capitalists allow them, and relieving them from the continual fear of +bankruptcy inseparable from the present system. We shall nationalize +the mines long before we nationalize the village smithy and make +the village blacksmith a public official. We shall have national or +municipal supplies of electric power laid on from house to house +long before we meddle with the individual artists and craftsmen and +scientific workers who will use that power, to say nothing of the +housemaids who handle the vacuum cleaners. We shall nationalize land +and large-scale farming without simultaneously touching fancy fruit +farming and kitchen gardening. Long after Capitalism as we know it +shall have passed away more completely than feudalism has yet passed +away there may be more men and women working privately in businesses of +their own than there ever can be under our present slavish conditions. + +The nationalization of banking will make it quite easy for private +businesses to be carried on under Socialism to any extent that may +be found convenient, and will in fact stimulate them vigorously. The +reduction of the incomes derived from them to the common level could be +effected by taxing them if they were excessive. But the difficulty is +more likely to be the other way: that is, the people in the private +businesses might find themselves, as most of them do at present, +poorer than they would be in public employment. The immense fortunes +that are made in private businesses to-day are made by the employment +of workers who, as they cannot live without access to the products +of land and capital, must either starve or consent to work for the +landlords and capitalists for much less than their work creates. But +when everybody could get a job in one of the nationalized industries, +and receive an income which would include his or her share of the rent +of the nationalized land, and the interest on the nationalized capital, +no private employer could induce anyone to come and work for wages +unless the wages were big enough to be equivalent to the advantages +of such public employment; therefore private employment could not +create poverty, and would in fact become bankrupt unless the employers +were either clever and useful enough to induce the public to pay them +handsomely for their products or services, or else were content, for +the sake of doing things in their own way, to put up with less than +they could make in some national establishment round the corner. +To maintain their incomes at the national level some of them might +actually demand and receive subsidies from the Government. To take a +very simple instance: in an out-of-the-way village or valley, where +there was not enough business to pay a carrier, the Government or local +authority might find that the most economical and sensible plan was to +pay a local farmer or shopkeeper or innkeeper a contribution towards +the cost of keeping a motor lorry on condition that he undertook the +carrying for the district. + +In big business, as we have seen, this process has actually begun. When +Trade Unionism forced up the wages of the coal miners to a point at +which the worst coal mines could not afford to continue working, the +owners, though devout opponents of Socialism, demanded and obtained +from a Conservative Government a subsidy of £10,000,000 to enable +them to make both ends meet. But it was too ridiculous to tax the +general public to keep a few bad mines going, and incidentally to keep +up the monstrous prices charged for coal, when the mines as a whole +were perfectly well able to pay a decent living wage, which was all +the Trade Unions asked for. The subsidy was stopped; and a terrific +lock-out ensued. All this could have been prevented by nationalizing +the coal mines and thus making it possible to keep up wages and reduce +the price of coals to the public simultaneously. However, that is +not our point at present. What comes in here is that the capitalists +themselves have established the Socialistic practice of subsidizing +private businesses when they do not yield sufficient profit to support +those engaged in them, though they are too useful to be dispensed with. +The novelty, by the way, is only in subsidizing common industries. +Scientific research, education, religion, popular access to rare books +and pictures, exploration, carriage of mails oversea, and the like +are partly dependent on Government grants, which are subsidies under +another name. + +What is more, capitalists are now openly demanding subsidies to enable +them to start their private enterprises. The aeroplane lines, for +instance, boldly took it as a matter of course that the Government +should help them, just as it had helped the dye industry during the war +(and been sorry for it afterwards). I draw your attention specially to +this new capitalistic method because by it you are not only invited to +throw over the Capitalist principle of trusting to unaided competitive +private enterprise for the maintenance of our industries, but taxed to +take all the risks of it whilst the capitalists take all the profits +and keep prices as high as possible against you, thus fleecing you both +ways. They cannot consistently object (though they do object) when +workmen ask the Government to guarantee them a living wage as well as +guaranteeing profits and keeping up prices for their employers. + +When Socialism is the order of the day these capitalistic exploitations +of the taxpayer will have provided plenty of precedents for subsidizing +experimental private ventures in new industries or inventions and +new methods, or, as in the case of the village carrier, making it +worth somebody’s while to undertake some necessary service that is +not for the moment worth nationalizing. In fact this will be the most +interesting part of Socialism to clever business people. Direct and +complete nationalizations will be confined mostly to well established +routine services. + +There are doctrinaire Socialists who will be shocked at the suggestion +that a Socialist Government should not only tolerate private +enterprise, but actually finance it. But the business of Socialist +rulers is not to suppress private enterprise as such, but to attain +and maintain equality of income. The substitution of public for +private enterprise is only one of several means to that end; and if +in any particular instance the end can be best served for the moment +by private enterprise, a Socialist Government will tolerate private +enterprise, or subsidize private enterprise, or even initiate private +enterprise. Indeed Socialism will be more elastic and tolerant than +Capitalism, which would leave any district without a carrier if no +private carrier could make it pay. + +Note, however, that when a private experiment in business has been +financed by the State, and has been successful in establishing some +new industry or method or invention as part of the routine of national +production and service, it will then be nationalized, leaving private +enterprise to return to its proper business of making fresh experiments +and discovering new services, instead of, as at present, wallowing +in the profits of industries which are no longer experimental. For +example, it has for many years past been silly to leave railways +in the hands of private companies instead of nationalizing them, +especially as the most hidebound bureaucrat could not have been more +obsoletely reactionary, uninventive, and obstructive than some of our +most pretentious railway chairmen have been. Everything is known about +railway locomotion that need be known for nationalization purposes. +But the flying services are still experimenting, and may be treated as +State-aided private enterprises until their practice becomes as well +established and uniform as railway practice. + +Unfortunately this is so little understood that the capitalists, +through their agents the employers and financiers, are now persuading +our Conservative governments into financing them at the taxpayers’ +expense without retaining the taxpayers’ interest in the venture. For +instance, the £10,000,000 subsidy to the coalowners should clearly have +been given by way of mortgage on the mines. For every £100 granted to +private enterprise the Government should demand a share certificate. +Otherwise, if and when it subsequently nationalizes the enterprise, +it will be asked to compensate the proprietors for the confiscation +of its own capital; and though this, as we have seen in our study of +compensation, does not really matter, it does matter very seriously +that the State should not have at least a shareholder’s control. To +make private adventurers an unconditional present of public money is to +loot the Treasury and plunder the taxpayer. + +So, you see, the difference between Capitalist and Socialist +governments is not as to whether nationalization should be tolerated; +for neither could get on for a day without it: the difference is +as to how far it should be carried and how fast pushed. Capitalist +governments regard nationalization and municipalization as evils +to be confined to commercially unprofitable works; so as to leave +everything profitable to the profiteers. When they acquire land for +some temporary public purpose, they sell it to a private person +when they have done with it, and use the price to reduce the income +tax. Thereby a piece of land which was national property becomes +private property; and the unearned incomes of the income taxpayers +are increased by the relief from taxation. Socialist governments, +on the other hand, push the purchase of land for the nation at the +expense of the capitalists as hard and as fast as they can, and oppose +its resale to private individuals fiercely. But they are often held +back and even thrown back, just as the Russian Soviet was, by the +inexorable necessity for keeping land and capital in constant and +energetic use. If the Government takes an acre of fertile land or a +ton of spare subsistence (capital) that it is not prepared instantly +to cultivate or feed productive labor with, then, whether it likes or +not, it must sell it back again into private hands and thus retrace +the step towards Socialism which it took without being sufficiently +prepared for it. During the war, when private enterprise broke down +hopelessly, and caused an appalling slaughter of our young soldiers +in Flanders by leaving the army without shells, the munitions had to +be made in national factories. When the war was over, the Capitalist +Government of 1918 sold off these factories as fast as it possibly +could for an old song, in spite of the protests of the Labor Party. +Some of the factories were unsaleable, either because they were in +such out-of-the-way places (lest they should be bombarded) that +private enterprise thought it could do better elsewhere, or because +private enterprise was so wretchedly unenterprising. Yet when a Labor +Government took office it, too, had to try to sell these remaining war +factories because it could not organize enough new public enterprises +to employ them for peace purposes. + +This was another object-lesson in the impossibility of taking over land +from the landlords and capital from the capitalists merely because +doing so is Socialistic, without being ready to employ it productively. +If you do, you will have to give it back again, as the Moscow Soviet +had. You must take it only when you have some immediate use for it, and +are ready to start on the job next morning. If a Capitalist Government +were forced by a wave of successful Socialist propaganda to confiscate +more property than it could administer, it might quite easily be forced +to reissue it (not at all unwillingly, and with triumphant cries of “I +told you so”) to private employers on much worse terms for the nation +than those on which it is held at present. + + + + +78 + +HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE? + + +Then as to the rate at which the change can take place. If it be put +off too long, or brought about too slowly, there may be a violent +revolution which may produce a dismal equality by ruining everybody +who is not murdered. But equality produced in that way does not +last. Only in a settled and highly civilized society with a strong +Government and an elaborate code of laws can equality of income be +attained or maintained. Now a strong Government is not one with +overwhelming fighting forces in its pay: that is rather the mark of +a panicky Government. It is one that commands the moral approval of +an overwhelming majority of the people. To put it more particularly, +it is one in which the police and the other executive officers of the +Government can always count on the sympathy and, when they need it, +the co-operation of the citizens. A morally shocking Government cannot +last, and cannot carry out such changes as the change from our present +system to Socialism, which are matters of long business arrangements +and extensions of the Civil Service. They must be made thoughtfully, +bit by bit; and they must be popular enough to establish themselves too +solidly for changes of Government to shake them, like our postal system +or our Communism in roads, bridges, police, drainage, and highway +lighting. + +It is a great pity that the change cannot be made more quickly; but +we must remember that when Moses delivered the Israelites from their +bondage in Egypt, he found them so unfitted for freedom, that he had to +keep them wandering round the desert for forty years, until those who +had been in bondage in Egypt were mostly dead. The trouble was not the +distance from Egypt to the Promised Land, which was easily walkable in +forty weeks, but the change of condition, and habit, and mind, and the +reluctance of those who had been safe and well treated as slaves to +face danger and hardship as free adventurers. We should have the same +trouble if we attempted to impose Socialism all in a lump on people not +brought up to it. They would wreck it because they could not understand +it nor work its institutions; and some of them would just hate it. +The truth is, we are at present wandering in the desert between the +old Commercialism and the new Socialism. Our industries and our +characters and our laws and our religions are partly commercialized, +partly nationalized, partly municipalized, partly communized; and the +completion of the change will take place like the beginning of it: +that is, without the unintelligent woman knowing what is happening, +or noticing anything except that some ways of life are getting harder +and some easier, with the corresponding exclamations about not knowing +what the world is coming to, or that things are much better than they +used to be. Mark Twain said “It is never too late to mend: there is no +hurry”; and those who dread the change may comfort themselves by the +assurance that there is more danger of its coming too slowly than too +quickly, even though the more sloth the more suffering. It is well that +we who are hopelessly unfitted for Socialism by our bringing-up will +not live for ever. If only it were possible for us to cease corrupting +our children our political superstitions and prejudices would die +with us; and the next generation might bring down the walls of +Jericho. Fortunately, the advantages to be gained by Socialism for the +proletariat, and the fact that proletarian parents are a huge majority +of the electorate, may be depended on to bias moral education more and +more in favor of the movement towards Socialism. + +I purposely avoid anticipating any moral pressure of public opinion +against economic selfishness. No doubt that will become part of the +national conscience under Socialism, just as under Capitalism children +are educated to regard success in life as meaning more money than +anyone else and no work to do for it. But I know how hard it is for +you to believe that public opinion could change so completely. You may +have observed that at present, although people do not always choose +the occupation at which they can make the most money, and indeed will +give up lucrative jobs to starve at more congenial ones, yet, when +they have chosen their job, they will take as much as they can get +for it; and the more they can get the better they are thought of. So +I have assumed that they will continue to do so as far as they are +allowed (few of them have any real liberty of this kind now), though +I can quite conceive that in a Socialist future any attempt to obtain +an economic advantage over one’s neighbors, as distinguished from an +economic advantage for the whole community, might come to be considered +such exceedingly bad form that nobody could make it without losing her +place in society just as a detected card-sharper does at present. + + + + +79 + +SOCIALISM AND LIBERTY + + +The dread of Socialism by nervous people who do not understand it, on +the ground that there would be too much law under it, and that every +act of our lives would be regulated by the police, is more plausible +than the terrors of the ignorant people who think it would mean the +end of all law, because under Capitalism we have been forced to impose +restrictions that in a socialized nation would have no sense, in +order to save the proletariat from extermination, or at least from +extremities that would have provoked it to rebellion. Here is a little +example. A friend of mine who employed some girls in an artistic +business in which there was not competition enough to compel him to do +his worst in the way of sweating them, took a nice old riverside house, +and decorated it very prettily with Morris wall-papers, furnishing +it in such a way that the girls could have their tea comfortably in +their workrooms, which he made as homelike as possible. All went well +until one day a gentleman walked in and announced himself to my +friend as the factory inspector. He looked round him, evidently much +puzzled, and asked where the women worked. “Here” replied my friend, +with justifiable pride, confident that the inspector had never seen +anything so creditable in the way of a factory before. But what the +inspector said was “Where is the copy of the factory regulations which +you are obliged by law to post up on your walls in full view of your +employees?” “Surely you dont expect me to stick up a beastly ugly thing +like that in a room furnished like a drawing room” said my friend. +“Why, that paper on the wall is a Morris paper: I cant disfigure it by +pasting up a big placard on it.” “You are liable to severe penalties” +replied the inspector “for having not only omitted to post the +regulations, but for putting paper on your walls instead of having them +limewashed at the intervals prescribed by law.” “But hang it all!” my +friend remonstrated, “I want to make the place homely and beautiful. +You forget that the girls are not always working. They take their tea +here.” “For allowing your employees to take their meals in the room +where they work you have incurred an additional penalty” said the +inspector. “It is a gross breach of the Factory Acts.” And he walked +out, leaving my friend an abashed criminal caught redhanded. + +As it happened, the inspector was a man of sense. He did not return; +the penalties were not exacted; the Morris wall-papers remained; and +the illicit teas continued; but the incident illustrates the extent +to which individual liberty has been cut down under Capitalism for +good as well as for evil. Where women are concerned it is assumed +that they must be protected to a degree that is unnecessary for men +(as if men were any more free in a factory than women); consequently +the regulations are so much stricter that women are often kept out of +employments to which men are welcomed. Besides the factory inspector +there are the Commissioners of Inland Revenue inquiring into your +income and making you disgorge a lot of it, the school attendance +visitors taking possession of your children, the local government +inspectors making you build and drain your house not as you please +but as they order, the Poor Law officers, the unemployment insurance +officers, the vaccination officers, and others whom I cannot think of +just at present. And the tendency is to have more and more of them +as we become less tolerant of the abuses of our capitalist system. +But if you study these interferences with our liberties closely you +will find that in practice they are virtually suspended in the case +of people well enough off to be able to take care of themselves: for +instance, the school attendance officer never calls at houses valued +above a certain figure, though the education of the children in them is +often disgracefully neglected or mishandled. Poor Law officers would +not exist if there were no poor, nor unemployment insurance officers +if we all got incomes whether we were employed or not. If nobody could +make profits by sweating, nor compel us to work in uncomfortable, +unsafe, insanitary factories and workshops, a great deal of our +factory regulations would become not only superfluous but unbearably +obstructive. + +Then consider the police: the friends of the honest woman and the +enemies and hunters of thieves, tramps, swindlers, rioters, confidence +tricksters, drunkards, and prostitutes. The police officer, like the +soldier who stands behind him, is mainly occupied today in enforcing +the legalized robbery of the poor which takes place whenever the wealth +produced by the labor of a productive worker is transferred as rent +or interest to the pockets of an idler or an idler’s parasite. They +are even given powers to arrest us for “sleeping out”, which means +sleeping in the open air without paying a landlord for permission to +do so. Get rid of this part of their duties, and at the same time of +the poverty which it enforces, with the mass of corruption, thieving, +rioting, swindling, and prostitution which poverty produces as surely +as insanitary squalor produces smallpox and typhus and you get rid of +the least agreeable part of our present police activity, with all that +it involves in prisons, criminal courts, and jury duties. + +By getting rid of poverty we shall get rid of the unhappiness and +worry which it causes. To defend themselves against this, women, +like men, resort to artificial happiness, just as they resort to +artificial insensibility when they have to undergo a painful operation. +Alcohol produces artificial happiness, artificial courage, artificial +gaiety, artificial self-satisfaction, thus making life bearable for +millions who would otherwise be unable to endure their condition. To +them alcohol is a blessing. Unfortunately, as it acts by destroying +conscience, self-control, and the normal functioning of the body, +it produces crime, disease, and degradation on such a scale that its +manufacture and sale are at present prohibited by law throughout the +United States of America, and there is a strong movement to introduce +the same prohibition here. + +The ferocity of the resistance to this attempt to abolish artificial +happiness shows how indispensable it has become under Capitalism. +A famous American Prohibitionist was mobbed by medical students in +broad daylight in the streets of London, and barely escaped with the +loss of one eye, and his back all but broken. If he had been equally +famous for anything else, the United States Government would have +insisted on the most ample reparation, apology, and condign punishment +of his assailants; and if this had been withheld, or even grudged, +American hotheads would have clamored for war. But for the enemy of the +anæsthetic that makes the misery of the poor and the idleness of the +rich tolerable, turning it into a fuddled dream of enjoyment, neither +his own country nor the public conscience of ours could be moved even +to the extent of a mild censure on the police. It was evident that had +he been torn limb from limb the popular verdict would have been that it +served him jolly well right. + +Alcohol, however, is a very mild drug compared with the most +effective modern happiness producers. These give you no mere sodden +self-satisfaction and self-conceit: they give you ecstasy. It is +followed by hideous wretchedness; but then you can cure that by taking +more and more of the drug until you become a living horror to all about +you, after which you become a dead one, to their great relief. As to +these drugs, not even a mob of medical students, expressly educated +to make their living by trading in artificial health and happiness, +dares protest against strenuous prohibition, provided they may still +prescribe the drug; nevertheless the demand is so great in the classes +who have too much money and too little work that smuggling, which is +easy and very profitable, goes on in spite of the heaviest penalties. +Our efforts to suppress this trade in artificial happiness has already +landed us in such interferences with personal liberty that we are not +allowed to purchase many useful drugs for entirely innocent purposes +unless we first pay (not to say bribe) a doctor to prescribe it. + +Still, prohibition of the fiercer drugs has the support of public +opinion. It is the prohibition of alcohol that rouses such opposition +that the strongest governments shrink from it in spite of overwhelming +evidence of the increase in material well-being produced by it wherever +it has been risked. You prove to people that as teetotallers they will +dwell in their own houses instead of in a frowsy tenement, besides +keeping their own motor car, having a bank account, and living ten +years longer. They angrily deny it; but when you crush their denials +by unquestionable American statistics they tell you flatly that they +had rather be happy for thirty years in a tenement without a car or +a penny to put in the bank than be unhappy for forty years with all +these things. You find a wife distracted because her husband drinks +and is ruining her and her children; yet when you induce him to take +the pledge, you find presently that she has tempted him to drink again +because he is so morose when he is sober that she cannot endure living +with him. And to make his drunkenness bearable she takes to drink +herself, and lives happily in shameless degradation with him until they +both drink themselves dead. + +Besides, the vast majority of modern drinkers do not feel any the worse +for it, because they do not miss the extra efficiency they would enjoy +on the water waggon. Very few people are obliged by their occupations +to work up to the extreme limit of their powers. Who cares whether +a lady gardener or a bookkeeper or a typist or a shop assistant is +a teetotaller or not, provided she always stops well short of being +noticeably drunk? It is to the motorist or the aeroplane pilot that a +single glass of any intoxicant may make the difference between life and +death. What would be sobriety for a billiard marker would be ruinous +drunkenness for a professional billiard player. The glass of stimulant +that enlivens a routine job is often dropped because when the routineer +plays golf “to keep herself fit” she finds that it spoils her putting. +Thus you find that you can sometimes make a worker give up alcohol +partly or wholly by giving her more leisure. She finds that a woman who +is sober enough to do her work as well as it need be done is not sober +enough to play as well as she would like to do it. The moment people +are in a position to develop their fitness, as they call it, to the +utmost, whether at work or at play, they begin to grudge the sacrifice +of the last inch of efficiency which alcohol knocks off, and which +in all really fine work makes the difference between first rate and +second rate. If this book owed any of its quality to alcohol or to any +other drug, it might amuse you more; but it would be enormously less +conscientious intellectually, and therefore much more dangerous to your +mind. + +If you put all this together you will see that any social change +which abolishes poverty and increases the leisure of routine workers +will destroy the need for artificial happiness, and increase the +opportunities for the sort of activity that makes people very jealous +of reducing their fitness by stimulants. Even now we admit that the +champion athlete must not drink whilst training; and the nearer we get +to a world in which everyone is in training all the time the nearer we +shall get to general teetotalism, and to the possibility of discarding +all those restrictions on personal liberty which the prevalent dearth +of happiness and consequent resort to pernicious artificial substitutes +now force us to impose. + +As to such serious personal outrages as compulsory vaccination and +the monstrous series of dangerous inoculations which are forced +on soldiers, and at some frontiers on immigrants, they are only +desperate attempts to stave off the consequences of bad sanitation and +overcrowding by infecting people with disease when they are well and +strong in the hope of developing their natural resistance to it by +exercise sufficiently to prevent them from catching it when they are +ailing and weak. The poverty of our doctors forces them to support such +practices in the teeth of all experience and disinterested science; but +if we get rid of poor doctors and overcrowded and insanitary dwellings +we get rid of the diseases which terrify us into these grotesque witch +rituals; and no woman will be forced to expose her infant to the risk +of a horrible, lingering, hideously disfiguring death from generalized +vaccinia lest it should catch confluent smallpox, which, by the way, +is, on a choice between the two evils, much to be preferred. Dread +of epidemics: that is, of disease and premature death, has created a +pseudo-scientific tyranny just as the dread of hell created a priestly +tyranny in the ages of faith. Florence Nightingale, a sensible woman +whom the doctors could neither humbug nor bully, told them that what +was wrong with our soldiers was dirt, bad food, and foul water: in +short, the conditions produced by war in the field and poverty in the +slum. When we get rid of poverty the doctors will no longer be able to +frighten us into imposing on ourselves by law pathogenic inoculations +which, under healthy conditions, kill more people than the diseases +against which they pretend to protect them. And when we get rid of +Commercialism, and vaccines no longer make dividends for capitalists, +the fairy tales by which they are advertized will drop out of the +papers, and be replaced, let us hope, by disinterested attempts to +ascertain and publish the scientific truth about them, which, by the +way, promises to be much more hopeful and interesting. + +As to the mass of oppressive and unjust laws that protect property +at the expense of humanity, and enable proprietors to drive whole +populations off the land because sheep or deer are more profitable, we +have said enough about them already. Naturally we shall get rid of them +when we get rid of private property. + +Now, however, I must come to one respect in which official interference +with personal liberty would be carried under Socialism to lengths +undreamed of at present. We may be as idle as we please if only we have +money in our pockets; and the more we look as if we had never done a +day’s work in our lives and never intend to, the more we are respected +by every official we come in contact with, and the more we are envied, +courted, and deferred to by everybody. If we enter a village school the +children all rise and stand respectfully to receive us, whereas the +entrance of a plumber or carpenter leaves them unmoved. The mother who +secures a rich idler as a husband for her daughter is proud of it: the +father who makes a million uses it to make rich idlers of his children. +That work is a curse is part of our religion: that it is a disgrace is +the first article in our social code. To carry a parcel through the +streets is not only a trouble, but a derogation from one’s rank. Where +there are blacks to carry them, as in South Africa, it is virtually +impossible for a white to be seen doing such a thing. In London we +condemn these colonial extremes of snobbery; but how many ladies could +we persuade to carry a jug of milk down Bond Street on a May afternoon, +even for a bet? + +Now it is not likely, human laziness being what it is, that under +Socialism anyone will carry a parcel or a jug if she can induce +somebody else (her husband, say) to carry it for her. But nobody will +think it disgraceful to carry a parcel because carrying a parcel is +work. The idler will be treated not only as a rogue and a vagabond, but +as an embezzler of the national funds, the meanest sort of thief. The +police will not have much trouble in detecting such offenders. They +will be denounced by everybody, because there will be a very marked +jealousy of slackers who take their share without “doing their bit”. +The real lady will be the woman who does more than her bit, and thereby +leaves her country richer than she found it. Today nobody knows what a +real lady is; but the dignity is assumed most confidently by the women +who ostentatiously take as much and give as nearly nothing as they can. + +The snobbery that exists at present among workers will also disappear. +Our ridiculous social distinctions between manual labor and brain +work, between wholesale business and retail business, are really class +distinctions. If a doctor considers it beneath his dignity to carry a +scuttle of coals from one room to another, but is proud of his skill +in performing some unpleasantly messy operation, it is clearly not +because the one is any more or less manual than the other, but solely +because surgical operations are associated with descent through younger +sons from the propertied class, and carrying coals with proletarian +descent. If the petty ironmonger’s daughter is not considered eligible +for marriage with the ironmaster’s son, it is not because selling steel +by the ounce and selling it by the ton are attributes of two different +species, but because petty ironmongers have usually been poor and +ironmasters rich. When there are no rich and no poor, and descent from +the proprietary class will be described as “criminal antecedents”, +people will turn their hands to anything, and indeed rebel against +any division of labor that deprives them of physical exercise. My own +excessively sedentary occupation makes me long to be a half-time navvy. +I find myself begging my gardener, who is a glutton for work, to leave +me a few rough jobs to do when I have written myself to a standstill; +for I cannot go out and take a hand with the navvies, because I should +be taking the bread out of a poor man’s mouth; nor should we be very +comfortable company for oneanother with our different habits and speech +and bringing-up, all produced by differences in our parents’ incomes +and class. But with all these obstacles swept away by Socialism I +could lend a hand at any job within my strength and skill, and help my +mates instead of hurting them, besides being as good company for them +as I am now for professional persons or rich folk. Even as it is a good +deal of haymaking is done for fun; and I am persuaded (having some +imagination, thank Heaven!) that under Socialism open air workers would +have plenty of voluntary help, female as well as male, without the +trouble of whistling for it. Laws might have to be made to deal with +officiousness. Everything would make for activity and against idleness: +indeed it would probably be much harder to be an idler than it is now +to be a pickpocket. Anyhow, as idleness would be not only a criminal +offence, but unladylike and ungentlemanly in the lowest degree, nobody +would resent the laws against it as infringements of natural liberty. + +Lest anyone should at this point try to muddle you with the inveterate +delusion that because capital can increase wealth people can live on +capital without working, let me go back just for a moment to the way in +which capital becomes productive. + +Let us take those cases in which capital is used, not for destructive +purposes, as in war, but for increasing production: that is, saving +time and trouble in future work. When all the merchandise in a country +has to be brought from the makers to the users on packhorses or carts +over bad roads the cost in time and trouble and labor of man and beast +is so great that most things have to be made and consumed on the spot. +There may be a famine in one village and a glut in another a hundred +miles off because of the difficulty of sending food from one to the +other. Now if there is enough spare subsistence (capital) to support +gangs of navvies and engineers and other workers whilst they cover the +country with railways, canals, and metalled roads, and build engines +and trains, barges and motor cars to travel on them, to say nothing +of aeroplanes, then all sorts of goods can be sent long distances +quickly and cheaply; so that the village which formerly could not get +a cartload of bread and a few cans of milk from a hundred miles off +to save its life is able to buy quite cheaply grain grown in Russia +or America and domestic articles made in Germany or Japan. The spare +subsistence will be entirely consumed in the operation: there will +be no more left of it than of the capital lent for the war; but it +will leave behind it the roadways and waterways and machinery by which +labor can do a great deal more in a given time than it could without +them. The destruction of these aids to labor would be a very different +matter from our annual confiscations of the National Debt by taxation. +It would leave us much poorer and less civilized: in fact most of us +would starve, because big modern populations cannot support themselves +without elaborate machinery and railways and so forth. + +Still, roadways and machines can produce nothing by themselves. They +can only assist labor. And they have to be continually repaired and +renewed by labor. A country crammed with factories and machines, +traversed in all directions by roadways, tramways and railways, dotted +with aerodromes and hangars and garages, each crowded with aeroplanes +and airships and motor cars, would produce absolutely nothing at all +except ruin and rust and decay if the inhabitants ceased to work. We +should starve in the midst of all the triumphs of civilization because +we could not breakfast on the clay of the railway embankments, lunch on +boiled aeroplanes, and dine on toasted steam-hammers. Nature inexorably +denies to us the possibility of living without labor or of hoarding its +most vital products. We may be helped by past labor; but we must live +by present labor. By telling off one set of workers to produce more +than they consume, and telling off another set to live on the surplus +while the first set makes roads and machines, we may make our labor +much more productive, and take out the gain either in shorter hours of +work or bigger returns from the same number of hours of work as before; +but we cannot stop working and sit down and look on while the roads +and machines make and fetch and carry for us without anyone lifting a +finger. We may reduce our working hours to two a day, or increase our +income tenfold, or even conceivably do both at once; but by no magic +on earth can any of us honestly become an idler. When you see a person +who does no productive or serviceable work, you may conclude with +absolute certainty that she or he is spunging on the labor of other +people. It may or may not be expedient to allow certain persons this +privilege for a time: sometimes it is; and sometimes it is not. I have +already described how we offer at present, to anyone who can invent a +labor-saving machine, what is called a patent: that is, a right to +take a share of what the workers produce with the help of that machine +for fourteen years. When a man writes a book or a play, we give him, +by what is called copyright, the power to make everybody who reads the +book or sees the play performed pay him and his heirs something during +his lifetime and fifty years afterwards. This is our way of encouraging +people to invent machines and to write books and plays instead of being +content with the old handiwork, and with the Bible and Shakespear; and +as we do it with our eyes open and with a definite purpose, and the +privilege lasts no longer than enough to accomplish its purpose, there +is a good deal to be said for it. But to allow the descendants of a +man who invested a few hundred pounds in the New River Water Company +in the reign of James I to go on for ever and ever living in idleness +on the incessant daily labor of the London ratepayers is senseless and +mischievous. If they actually did the daily work of supplying London +with water, they might reasonably claim either to work for less time +or receive more for their work than a water-carrier in Elizabeth’s +time; but for doing no work at all they have not a shadow of excuse. To +consider Socialism a tyranny because it will compel everyone to share +the daily work of the world is to confess to the brain of an idiot and +the instinct of a tramp. + +Speaking generally, it is a mistake to suppose that the absence of +law means the absence of tyranny. Take, for example, the tyranny of +fashion. The only law concerned in this is the law that we must all +wear something in the presence of other people. It does not prescribe +what a woman shall wear: it only says that in public she shall be a +draped figure and not a nude one. But does this mean that a woman can +wear what she likes? Legally she can; but socially her slavery is more +complete than any sumptuary law could make it. If she is a waitress or +a parlormaid there is no question about it: she must wear a uniform +or lose her employment and starve. If she is a duchess she must dress +in the fashion or be ridiculous. In the case of the duchess nothing +worse than ridicule is the penalty of unfashionable dressing. But any +woman who has to earn her living outside her own house finds that +if she is to keep her employment she must also keep up appearances, +which means that she must dress in the fashion, even when it is not at +all becoming to her, and her wardrobe contains serviceable dresses a +couple of years out of date. And the better her class of employment +the tighter her bonds. The ragpicker has the melancholy privilege of +being less particular about her working clothes than the manageress of +a hotel; but she would be very glad to exchange that freedom for the +obligation of the manageress to be always well dressed. In fact the +most enviable women in this respect are nuns and policewomen, who, like +gentlemen at evening parties and military officers on parade, never +have to think of what they will wear, as it is all settled for them by +regulation and custom. + +This dress question is only one familiar example of the extent to which +the private employment of today imposes regulations on us which are +quite outside the law, but which are none the less enforced by private +employers on pain of destitution. The husband in public employment, the +socialized husband, is much freer than the unsocialized one in private +employment. He may travel third class, wearing a lounge suit and soft +hat, living in the suburbs, and spending his Sundays as he pleases, +whilst the others must travel first class, wear a frock coat and tall +hat, live at a fashionable address, and go to church regularly. Their +wives have to do as they do; and the single women who have escaped from +the limitations of the home into independent activity find just the +same difference between public work and private: in public employment +their livelihood is never at the mercy of a private irresponsible +person as it is in private. The lengths to which women are sometimes +forced to go to please their private employers are much more revolting +than, for instance, the petty dishonesties in which clerks are forced +to become accomplices. + +Then there are estate rules: that is to say, edicts drawn up by private +estate owners and imposed on their tenants without any legal sanction. +These often prohibit the building on the estate of any place of worship +except an Anglican church, or of any public house. They refuse houses +to practitioners of the many kinds that are now not registered by the +General Medical Council. In fact they exercise a tyranny which would +lead to a revolution if it were attempted by the King, and which +did actually provoke us to cut off a king’s head in the seventeenth +century. We have to submit to these tyrannies because the people who +can refuse us employment or the use of land have powers of life and +death over us, and can therefore make us do what they like, law or no +law. Socialism would transfer this power of life and death from private +hands to the hands of the constitutional authorities, and regulate it +by public law. The result would be a great increase of independence, +self-respect, freedom from interference with our tastes and ways of +living, and, generally, all the liberty we really care about. + +Childish people, we saw, want to have all their lives regulated for +them, with occasional holiday outbursts of naughtiness to relieve the +monotony; and we admitted that the ablebodied ones make good soldiers +and steady conventional employees. When they are left to themselves +they make laws of fashions, customs, points of etiquette, and “what +other people will say”, hardly daring to call their souls their own, +though they may be rich enough to do as they please. Money as a means +of freedom is thrown away on these people. It is funny to hear them +declaring, as they often do, that Socialism would be unendurable +because it would dictate to them what they should eat and drink and +wear, leaving them no choice in the matter, when they are cowering +under a social tyranny which regulates their meals, their clothes, +their hours, their religion and politics, so ruthlessly that they dare +no more walk down a fashionable street in an unfashionable hat, which +there is no law to prevent them doing, than to walk down it naked, +which would be stopped by the police. They regard with dread and +abhorrence the emancipated spirits who, within the limits of legality +and cleanliness and convenience, do not care what they wear, and boldly +spend their free time as their fancy dictates. + +But do not undervalue the sheepish wisdom of the conventional. Nobody +can live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people +are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality +saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one +sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure for freedom +than unconventionality does. Believe me, unless you intend to devote +your life to preaching unconventionality, and thus make it your +profession, the more conventional you are, short of being silly or +slavish or miserable, the easier life will be for you. Even as a +professional reformer you had better be content to preach one form +of unconventionality at a time. For instance, if you rebel against +high-heeled shoes, take care to do it in a very smart hat. + + + + +80 + +SOCIALISM AND MARRIAGE + + +When promising new liberties, Socialists are apt to forget that people +object even more strongly to new liberties than to new laws. If a woman +has been accustomed to go in chains all her life and to see other women +doing the same, a proposal to take her chains off will horrify her. She +will feel naked without them, and clamor to have any impudent hussy who +does not feel about them exactly as she does taken up by the police. In +China the Manchu ladies felt that way about their crippled feet. It is +easier to put chains on people than to take them off if the chains look +respectable. + +In Russia marriage under the Tsars was an unbreakable chain. There was +no divorce; but on the other hand there was, as with us, a widespread +practice of illicit polygamy. A woman could live with a man without +marrying him. A man could live with a woman without marrying her. In +fact each might have several partners. In Russia under the Communist +Soviet this state of things has been reversed. If a married couple +cannot agree, they can obtain a divorce without having to pretend to +disgrace themselves as in Protestant England. That shocks many English +ladies, married or unmarried, who take the Book of Common Prayer +literally. But the Soviet does not tolerate illicit relations. If a +man lives with a woman as husband with wife he must marry her, even if +he has to divorce another wife to do it. The woman has the right to +the status of a wife, and must claim it. This seems to many English +gentlemen an unbearable tyranny: they regard the Soviet legislators as +monsters for interfering with male liberty in this way; and they have +plenty of female sympathizers. + +In countries and sects where polygamy is legal, the laws compelling the +husband to pay equal attention to all his wives are staggering to a +British husband, who is not now, as he was formerly, legally obliged to +pay any attention to his one wife, nor she to him. + +Now marriage institutions are not a part of Socialism. Marriage, of +which we speak as if it were one and the same thing all the world over, +differs so much from sect to sect and from country to country that to +a Roman Catholic or a citizen of the State of South Carolina it means +strict monogamy without the possibility of divorce; whilst to our high +caste fellow-subjects in India it means unlimited polygamy, as it did +to the Latter Day Saints of Salt Lake City within my recollection. +Between these extremes there are many grades. There are marriages +which nothing can break except death or annulment by the Pope; and +there are divorces that can be ordered at a hotel like a bottle of +champagne or a motor car. There is English marriage, Scottish marriage, +and Irish marriage, all different. There is religious marriage and +civil marriage, civil marriage being a recent institution won from +the Churches after a fierce struggle, and still regarded as invalid +and sinful by many pious people. There is an established celibacy, +the negation of marriage, among nuns, priests, and certain Communist +sects. With all this Socialism has nothing directly to do. Equality of +income applies impartially to all the sects, all the States, and all +the communities, to monogamists, polygamists, and celibates, to infants +incapable of marriage and centenarians past it. + +Why, then, is it that there is a rooted belief that Socialism would in +some way alter marriage, if not abolish it? Why did quite respectable +English newspapers after the Russian revolution of 1917 gravely infer +that the Soviet had not only nationalized land and capital, but +proceeded, as part of the logic of Socialism, to nationalize women? +No doubt the main explanation of that extravagance is that the highly +respectable newspapers in question still regard women as property, +nationalizable like any other property, and were consequently unable +to understand that this very masculine view is inconceivable to a +Communist. But the truth under all such nonsense is that Socialism +must have a tremendous effect on marriage and the family. At present +a married woman is a female slave chained to a male one; and a girl +is a prisoner in the house and in the hands of her parents. When the +personal relation between the parties is affectionate, and their powers +not abused, the arrangement works well enough to be bearable by people +who have been brought up to regard it as a matter of course. But +when the parties are selfish, tyrannical, jealous, cruel, envious, +with different and antagonistic tastes and beliefs, incapable of +understanding oneanother: in short, antipathetic and incompatible, it +produces much untold human unhappiness. + +Why is this unhappiness endured when the door is not locked, and the +victims can walk into the street at any moment? Obviously because +starvation awaits them at the other side of the door. Vows and +inculcated duties may seem effective in keeping unhappy wives and +revolting daughters at home when they have no alternative; but there +must be an immense number of cases in which wives and husbands, girls +and boys, would walk out of the house, like Nora Helmer in Ibsen’s +famous play, if they could do so without losing a single meal, a single +night’s protection and shelter, or the least loss of social standing in +consequence. + +As Socialism would place them in this condition it would infallibly +break up unhappy marriages and families. This being obviously desirable +we need not pretend to deplore it. But we must not expect more domestic +dissolutions than are likely to happen. No parent would tyrannize as +some parents tyrannize now if they knew that the result would be the +prompt disappearance of their children, unless indeed they disliked +their children enough to desire that result, in which case so much the +better; but the normal merely hasty parent would have to recover the +fugitives by apologies, promises of amendment, or bribes, and keep them +by more stringent self-control and less stringent parental control. +Husbands and wives, if they knew that their marriage could only last on +condition of its being made reasonably happy for both of them, would +have to behave far better to oneanother than they ever seem to dream +of doing now. There would be such a prodigious improvement in domestic +manners all round that a fairly plausible case can be made out for +expecting that far fewer marriages and families will be broken up under +Socialism than at present. Still, there will be a difference, even +though the difference be greatly for the better. When once it becomes +feasible for a wife to leave her husband, not for a few days or weeks +after a tiff because they are for the moment tired of oneanother, but +without any intention of returning, there must be prompt and almost +automatic divorce, whether they like it or not. At present a deserted +wife or husband, by simply refusing to sue for divorce, can in mere +revenge or jealousy or on Church grounds, prevent the deserter from +marrying again. We should have to follow the good example of Russia +in refusing to tolerate such situations. Both parties must be either +married or unmarried. An intermediate state in which each can say to +the other “Well, if I cannot have you nobody else shall” is clearly +against public morality. + +It is on marriage that the secular State is likely to clash most +sensationally with the Churches, because the Churches claim that +marriage is a metaphysical business governed by an absolute right and +wrong which has been revealed to them by God, and which the State must +therefore enforce without regard to circumstances. But to this the +State will never assent, except in so far as clerical notions happen to +be working fairly well and to be shared by the secular rulers. Marriage +is for the State simply a licence to two citizens to beget children. +To say that the State must not concern itself with the question of +how many people the community is to consist of, and, when a change is +desired, at what rate the number should be increased or reduced, is to +treat the nation as no sane person would dream of treating a ferryman. +If the ferryman’s boat will hold only ten passengers, and you tell him +that it has been revealed to you by God that he must take all who want +to cross over, even though they number a thousand, the ferryman will +not argue with you, he will refuse to take more than ten, and will +smite you with his oar if you attempt to detain his boat and shove a +couple more passengers into it. And, obviously, the ten already aboard +will help him for their own sakes. + +When Socialism does away with the artificial overpopulation which +Capitalism, as we have seen, produces by withdrawing workers from +productive employments to wasteful ones, the State will be face to +face at last with the genuine population question: the question of how +many people it is desirable to have in the country. To get rid of the +million or so for whom our capitalists fail to find employment, the +State now depends on a high death-rate, especially for infants, on war, +and on swarming like the bees. Africa, America, and Australasia have +taken millions of our people from us in bee swarms. But in time all +places comfortable enough to tempt people to emigrate get filled up; +and their inhabitants, like the Americans and Australians today, close +their gates against further immigration. If we find our population +still increasing, we may have to discuss whether we should keep it +down, as we keep down the cat population, by putting the superfluous +babies into the bucket, which would be no wickeder than the avoidable +infant mortality and surgical abortion resorted to at present. The +alternative would be to make it a severely punishable crime for +married couples to have more than a prescribed number of children. +But punishing the parents would not dispose of the unwanted children. +The fiercest persecution of the mothers of illegitimate children has +not prevented illegitimate children from being born, though it has +made most of them additionally undesirable by afflicting them with the +vices and infirmities of disgrace and poverty. Any State limiting the +number of children permitted to a family would be compelled not only +to tolerate contraception, but to inculcate it and instruct women in +its methods. And this would immediately bring it into conflict with +the Churches. Whether under such circumstances the State would simply +ignore the Churches or pass a law under which their preachers could +be prosecuted for sedition would depend wholly on the gravity of the +emergency, and not on the principles of liberty, toleration, freedom of +conscience, and so forth which were so stirringly trumpeted in England +in the eighteenth century when the boot was on the other foot. + +In France at present the State is striving to increase the population. +It is thus in the position of the Israelites in the Promised Land, +and of Joseph Smith and his Mormons in the State of Illinois in 1843, +when only a rapid increase in their numbers could rescue them from a +condition of dangerous numerical inferiority to their enemies. Joseph +Smith did what Abraham did: he resorted to polygamy. We, not being in +any such peril ourselves, have seen nothing in this but an opportunity +for silly and indecent jocularity; but there are not many political +records more moving than Brigham Young’s description of the horror with +which he received Joseph’s revelation that it was the will of God that +they should all take as many wives as possible. He had been brought up +to regard polygamy as a mortal sin, and did sincerely so regard it. +And yet he believed that Smith’s revelations were from God. In his +perplexity, he tells us, he found himself, when a funeral passed in +the street, envying the corpse (another mortal sin); and there is not +the slightest reason to doubt that he was perfectly sincere. After all, +it is not necessary for a married man to have any moral or religious +objection to polygamy to be horrified at the prospect of having twenty +additional wives “sealed” to him. Yet Brigham Young got over his +horror, and was married more than thirty times. And the genuinely pious +Mormon women, whose prejudices were straiter than those of the men, +were as effectively and easily converted to polygamy as Brigham. + +Though this proves that western civilization is just as susceptible +to polygamy as eastern when the need arises, the French Government, +for very good reasons, has not ventured to propose it as a remedy for +underpopulation in France. The alternatives are prizes and decorations +for the parents of large families (families of fifteen have their +group portraits in the illustrated papers, and are highly complimented +on their patriotism), bounties, exemptions from taxation, vigorous +persecution of contraception as immoral, facilities for divorce +amounting to successive as distinguished from simultaneous polygamy, +all tending towards that State endowment of parentage which seems +likely to become a matter of course in all countries, with, of course, +encouragement to desirable immigrants. To these measures no Church is +likely to object, unless indeed it holds that celibacy is a condition +of salvation, a doctrine which has never yet found enough practising +converts to threaten a modern nation with sterility. Compulsory +parentage is as possible as compulsory military service; but just as +the soldier who is compelled to serve must have his expenses paid by +the State, a woman compelled to become a mother can hardly be expected +to do so at her own expense. + +But the maintenance of monogamy must always have for its basis a +practical equality in numbers between men and women. If a war reduced +the male population by, say, 70 per cent, and the female population +by only one per cent, polygamy would immediately be instituted, and +parentage made compulsory, with the hearty support of all the really +popular Churches. + +Thus, it seems, the State, Capitalist or Socialist, will finally settle +what marriage is to be, no matter what the Churches say. A Socialist +State is more likely to interfere than a Capitalist one, because +Socialism will clear the population question from the confusion into +which Capitalism has thrown it. The State will then, as I have said, be +face to face with the real population question; but nobody yet knows +what the real population question will be like, because nobody can +now settle how many persons per acre offer the highest possibilities +of living. There is the Boer ideal of living out of sight of your +neighbors’ chimneys. There is the Bass Rock ideal of crowding as many +people on the earth as it can support. There is the bungalow ideal and +the monster hotel ideal. Neither you nor I can form the least notion of +how posterity will decide between them when society is well organized +enough to make the problem practical and the issues clear. + + + + +81 + +SOCIALISM AND CHILDREN + + +In the case of young children we have gone far in our interference +with the old Roman rights of parents. For nine mortal years the child +is taken out of its parents’ hands for most of the day, and thus made +a State school child instead of a private family child. The records +of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children are still +sickening enough to shew how necessary it is to protect children +against their parents; but the bad cases are scarce, and shew that it +is now difficult for the worst sort of parent to evade for long the +school attendance officer, the teacher, and the police. Unfortunately +the proceedings lead to nothing but punishment of the parents: when +they come out of prison the children are still in their hands. When +we have beaten the cat for cruelty we give it back its mouse. We have +now, however, taken a step in the right direction by passing an Act +of Parliament by which adoptive parents have all the rights of real +parents. You can now adopt a child with complete security against the +parents coming to claim the child back again whenever it suits them. +All their rights pass to you by the adoption. Bad natural parents can +be completely superseded by adoptive ones: it remains only to make +the operation compulsory where it is imperative. Compulsory adoption +is already an old established institution in the case of our Poor Law +Guardians. Oliver Twist was a compulsory adopted child. His natural +parents were replaced by very unnatural ones. Mr Bumble is being +happily abolished; but there must still be somebody to adopt Oliver. +When equality of income makes an end of his social disadvantages there +will be no lack of childless volunteers. + +Our eyes are being opened more and more to the fact that in our school +system education is only the pretext under which parents get rid of +the trouble of their children by bundling them off into a prison or +child farm which is politely called a school. We also know, or ought to +know, that institutional treatment of children is murderous for infants +and bad for all children. Homeless infants can be saved from that by +adoption; but the elder children are forcing us to face the problem of +organizing child life as such, giving children constitutional rights +just as we have had to give them to women, and ceasing to shirk that +duty either by bundling the children off to Bastilles called schools +or by making the child the property of its father (in the case of an +illegitimate child, of its mother) as we have ceased to shirk women’s +rights by making the woman the property of her husband. The beginnings +of such organization are already visible in the Girl Guides and the +Boy Scouts. But the limits to liberty which the State has to set and +the obligations which it has to impose on adults are as imperative for +children as for adults. The Girl Guide cannot be always guiding nor +the Boy Scout always scouting. They must qualify themselves for adult +citizenship by certain acquirements whether they like it or not. That +is our excuse for school: they must be educated. + +Education is a word that in our mouths covers a good many things. +At present we are only extricating ourselves slowly and, as usual, +reluctantly and ill humoredly, from our grossest stupidities about +it. One of them is that it means learning lessons, and that learning +lessons is for children, and ceases when they come of age. I, being a +septuagenarian, can assure you confidently that we never cease learning +to the extent of our capacity for learning until our faculties fail +us. As to what we have been taught in school and college, I should say +roughly that as it takes us all our lives to find out the meaning of +the small part of it that is true and the error of the large part that +is false, it is not surprising that those who have been “educated” +least know most. It is gravely injurious both to children and adults +to be forced to study subjects for which they have no natural aptitude +even when some ulterior object which they have at heart gives them a +fictitious keenness to master it. Mental disablement caused in this way +is common in the modern examination-passing classes. Dickens’s Mr Toots +is not a mere figure of fun: he is an authentic instance of a sort +of imbecility that is dangerously prevalent in our public school and +university products. Toots is no joke. + +Even when a natural aptitude exists it may be overcome by the repulsion +created by coercive teaching. If a girl is unmusical, any attempt to +force her to learn to play Beethoven’s sonatas is torture to herself +and to her teachers, to say nothing of the agonies of her audiences +when her parents order her to display her accomplishment to visitors. +But unmusical girls are as exceptional as deaf girls. The common case +of a rooted loathing for music, and a vindictive hope that Beethoven +may be expiating a malevolent life in eternal torment, is that of the +normally musical girl who, before she had ever heard a sonata or any +other piece of music played well enough to seem beautiful to her, has +been set to practise scales in a cold room, rapped over the knuckles +when she struck a wrong note, and had the Pathetic Sonata rapped and +scolded and bullied into her bar by bar until she could finger it +out without a mistake. That is still what school-taught music means +to many unfortunate young ladies whose parents desire them to have +accomplishments, and accordingly pay somebody who has been handled in +the same way to knock this particular accomplishment into them. If +these unhappy victims thought that Socialism meant compulsory music +they would die in the last ditch fighting against it; and they would be +right. + +If I were writing a book for men I should not speak of music: I should +speak of verses written in literary Latin (meaning a sort of Latin +that nobody ever spoke), of Greek, and of algebra. Many an unhappy lad +who would have voluntarily picked up enough Latin and Greek to read +Virgil, Horace, and Homer, or to whom Descartes, Newton, and Einstein +would be heroes such as Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner are to +unspoilt musicians, loathes every printed page except in a newspaper +or detective story, and shrinks from an algebraic symbol or a diagram +of the parallelogram of forces as a criminal from a prison. This is +the result of our educational mania. When Eton was founded, the idea +was that the boys should be roused at six in the morning and kept hard +at their Latin without a moment’s play until they went to bed. And +now that the tendency is to keep them hard at play instead, without +a moment for free work, their condition is hardly more promising. +Either way an intelligent woman, remembering her own childhood, must +stand aghast at the utter disregard of the children’s ordinary human +rights, and the classing of them partly as animals to be tamed and +broken in, for which, provided the methods are not those of the trainer +of performing animals, there is something to be said, and partly as +inanimate sacks into which learning is to be poured _ad libitum_, for +which there is nothing to be said except what can be said for the water +torture of the Inquisition, in which the fluid was poured down the +victims’ throats until they were bloated to death. But there was some +method in this madness. I have already hinted to you what you must have +known very well, that children, unless they are forced into a quiet, +sedentary, silent, motionless, and totally unnatural association with +adults, are so troublesome at home that humane parents who would submit +to live in a bear-garden or a monkey-house rather than be cruelly +repressive, are only too glad to hand them over to anyone who will +profess to educate them, whilst the desperate struggle of the genteel +disendowed younger son and unmarried daughter class to find some means +of livelihood produces a number of persons who are willing to make a +profession of child farming under the same highly plausible pretext. + +Socialism would abolish this class by providing its members with less +hateful and equally respectable employment. Nobody who had not a +genuine vocation for teaching would adopt teaching as a profession. +Sadists, female and male, who now get children into their power so +as to be able to torture them with impunity, and child fanciers (who +are sometimes the same people) of the kind that now start amateur +orphanages because they have the same craze for children that some +people have for horses and dogs, although they often treat them +abominably, would be checkmated if the children had any refuge from +them except the homes from which they had been practically turned out, +and from which they would be promptly returned to their tyrants with +the assurance that if they were punished it served them right for being +naughty. Within a few days of writing this I have read as part of the +day’s news of a case in which a mother summoned a schoolmaster because +he had first caned her boy for hiccuping, which is not a voluntary +action, and then, because the boy made light of the punishment, fell +on him in a fury and thrashed him until he raised wheals on him that +were visible eight days afterwards. Magistrates are usually as lenient +in dealing with these assaults as with similar assaults by husbands +on their wives (assaults by wives are laughed out of court): indeed +they usually dismiss the case with a rebuke to the victim for being +an unmanly little coward and not taking his licking in good part; +but this time they admitted that the punishment, as they called it, +was too severe; and the schoolmaster had to pay the mother’s costs, +though nobody hinted at any unfitness on his part for the duties he had +assumed. And, in fairness, it did not follow that the man was a savage +or a Sadist, any more than it follows that married people who commit +furious assaults on one another have murderous natural dispositions. +The truth is that just as married life in a one-room tenement is +more than human nature can bear even when there are no children to +complicate it, life in the sort of prison we call a school, where +the teacher who hates her work is shut in with a crowd of unwilling, +hostile, restless children, sets up a strain and hatred that explodes +from time to time in onslaughts with the cane, not only for hiccuping, +but for talking, whispering, looking out of the window (inattention), +and even moving. Modern psychological research, even in its rather +grotesque Freudian beginnings, is forcing us to recognize how serious +is the permanent harm that comes of this atmosphere of irritation on +the one side and suppression, terror, and reactionary naughtiness +on the other. Even those who do not study psychology are beginning +to notice that chaining dogs makes them dangerous, and is a cruel +practice. They will presently have misgivings about chained children +too, and begin to wonder whether thrashing and muzzling them is the +proper remedy. + +As a general result we find that what we call education is a failure. +The poor woman’s child is imprisoned for nine years under pretext +of teaching it to read, write, and speak its own language: a year’s +work at the outside. And at the end of the nine years the prisoner +can do none of these things presentably. In 1896, after twenty-six +years of compulsory general education, the secretary of the Union of +Mathematical Instrument Makers told me that most of his members signed +with a mark. Rich male children are kept in three successive prisons, +the preparatory school, the public school (meaning a very exclusive +private school malversating public endowments), and the university, the +period of imprisonment being from twelve to fourteen years, and the +subjects taught including classical languages and higher mathematics. +Rich female children, formerly imprisoned in the family dungeon under +a wardress called a governess, are now sent out like their brothers. +The result is a slightly greater facility in reading and writing, +the habits and speech of the rich idle classes, and a moral and +intellectual imbecility which leaves them politically at the mercy of +every bumptious adventurer and fluent charlatan who has picked up their +ways and escaped their education, and morally on the level of medieval +robber barons and early capitalist buccaneers. When they are energetic +and courageous, in spite of their taming, they are public dangers: +when they are mere sheep, doing whatever their class expects them to +do, they will follow any enterprising bell-wether to the destruction +of themselves and the whole community. Fortunately humanity is so +recuperative that no system of suppression and perversion can quite +abort it; but as far as our standard lady’s and gentleman’s education +goes the very least that can be said against it is that most of its +victims would be better without it. + +It is, however, incidentally advantageous. The university student who +is determined not to study, gains from the communal life of the place +a social standing that is painfully lacking in the people who have +been brought up in a brick box in ill mannered intercourse with two +much older people and three or four younger ones, all keeping what +they call their company manners (meaning an affectation which has no +desirable quality except bare civility) for the few similarly reared +outsiders who are neither too poor to be invited in nor too rich to +condescend to enter the box. Nobody can deny that these middle class +families which cannot afford the university for their sons, and must +send them out as workers at fifteen or so, appear utterly unpresentable +vulgarians compared to our university products. The woman from the +brick box maintains her social position by being offensive to the +immense number of people whom she considers her inferiors, reserving +her civility for the very few who are clinging to her own little ledge +on the social precipice; for inequality of income takes the broad, +safe, and fertile plain of human society and stands it on edge so +that everyone has to cling desperately to her foothold and kick off +as many others as she can. She would cringe to her superiors if they +could be persuaded to give her the chance, whereas at a university +she would have to meet hundreds of other young women on equal terms, +and to be at least commonly civil to everybody. It is true that +university manners are not the best manners, and that there is plenty +of foundation for the statement that Oxford and Cambridge are hotbeds +of exclusiveness, university snobs being perhaps the most incorrigible +of all snobs. For all that, university snobbery is not so disabling as +brick box snobbery. The university woman can get on without friction or +awkwardness with all sorts of people, high or low, with whom the brick +box woman simply does not know how to associate. But the university +curriculum has nothing to do with this. On the contrary, it is the +devoted scholar who misses it, and the university butterfly, barely +squeezing through her examinations, who acquires it to perfection. +Also, it can now be acquired and greatly improved on by young people +who break loose from the brick box into the wider social life of clubs +and unofficial cultural associations of all kinds. The manners of +the garden city and the summer school are already as far superior to +the manners of the university college as these are to the manners of +the brick box. There is no word that has more sinister and terrible +connotations in our snobbish society than the word promiscuity; but +if you exclude its special and absurd use to indicate an imaginary +condition of sexual disorder in which every petticoat and every coat +and trousers fall into oneanother’s embraces at sight, you will see +that social promiscuity is the secret of good manners, and that it is +precisely because the university is more promiscuous than the brick +box, and the Theosophical or Socialist summer school more promiscuous +than the college, that it is also the better mannered. + +Socialism involves complete social promiscuity. It has already gone +very far. When the great Duke of Wellington fell ill, he said “Send +for the apothecary”, just as he would have said “Send for the barber”; +and the apothecary no doubt “your Graced” him in a very abject manner: +indeed I can myself remember famous old physicians, even titled ones, +who took your fee exactly as a butler used to take your tip. In the +seventeenth century a nobleman would sometimes admit an actor to an +intimate friendship; but when he wrote to him he began his letter, not +“My dear So and So”, but “To Betterton the player”. Nowadays a duke who +went on like that would be ridiculed as a Pooh Bah. Everybody can now +travel third class in England without being physically disgusted by +their fellow-travellers. I can remember when second class carriages, +now extinct, were middle class necessities. + +The same process that has levelled the social intercourse between +dukes and doctors or actors can level it between duchesses and +dairymaids, or, what seems far less credible, between doctors’ wives +and dairymaids. But whilst Socialism makes for this sort of promiscuity +it will also make for privacy and exclusiveness. At present the +difference between a dairymaid and any decent sort of duchess is +marked, not by a wounding difference between the duchess’s address +to the dairymaid and her address to another duchess, but by a very +marked difference between the address of a dairymaid to the duchess +and her address to another dairymaid. The decent duchess’s civility is +promiscuous; but her intimate friendship and society is not. Civility +is one thing, familiarity quite another. The duchess’s grievance at +present is that she is obliged by her social and political position +to admit to her house and table a great many people whose tastes and +intellectual interests are so different from her own that they bore her +dreadfully, whilst her income cuts her off from familiar intercourse +with many poor people whose society would be delightful to her, but +who could not afford her expensive habits. Equality would bring to +the duchess the blessing of being able to choose her familiars as far +as they were willing to respond. She would no longer have to be bored +by men who could talk about nothing but fox hunting or party politics +when she wanted to talk about science or literature, dressmaking or +gardening, or, if her tastes were more curious, the morbidities of +psycho-analysis. Socialism, by steam-rollering our class distinctions +(really income distinctions) would break us up into sets, cliques, and +solitaries. The duchess would play golf (if people could still find +no more interesting employment for their leisure) with any charwoman, +and lunch with her after; but the intimate circle of the duchess and +the charwoman would be more exclusive and highly selected than it can +possibly be now. Socialism thus offers the utmost attainable society +and the utmost attainable privacy. We should be at the same time much +less ceremonious in our public relations and much more delicate about +intruding on oneanother in our private ones. + +You may say, what has all this to do with education? Have we not +wandered pretty far from it? By no means: a great part of our education +comes from our social intercourse. We educate oneanother; and we +cannot do this if half of us consider the other half not good enough +to talk to. But enough of that side of the subject. Let us leave +the social qualifications which children, like adults, pick up from +their surroundings and from the company they keep, and return to +the acquirements which the State must impose on them compulsorily, +providing the teachers and schools and apparatus; testing the success +of the teaching; and giving qualifying certificates to those who have +passed the tests. + +It is now evident in all civilized States that there are certain things +which people must know in order to play their part as citizens. There +are technical things that must be learned, and intellectual conceptions +that must be understood. For instance, you are not fit for life in a +modern city unless you know the multiplication table, and agree that +you must not take the law into your own hands. That much technical +and liberal education is indispensable, because a woman who could +not pay fares and count change, and who flew at people with whom she +disagreed and tried to kill them or scratch their eyes out, would +be as incapable of civilized life as a wild cat. In our huge cities +reading is necessary, as people have to proceed by written directions. +In a village or a small country town you can get along by accosting +the police officer, or the railway porter or station-master, or the +post-mistress, and asking them what to do and where to go; but in +London five minutes of that would bring business and locomotion to a +standstill: the police and railway officials, hard put to it as it is +answering the questions of foreigners and visitors from the country, +would be driven mad if they had to tell everybody everything. The +newspapers, the postal and other official guides, the innumerable +notice boards and direction posts, do for the London citizen what the +police constable or the nearest shopkeeper rather enjoys doing for the +villager, as a word with a stranger seems an almost exciting event in a +place where hardly anything else happens except the motion of the earth. + +In the days when even the biggest cities were no bigger than our +country towns, and all civilized life was conducted on what we should +call village lines, “clergy”, or the ability to read and write, was +not a necessity: it was a means of extending the mental culture of the +individual for the individual’s own sake, and was quite exceptional. +This notion still sticks in our minds. When we force a girl to learn +to read, and make that an excuse for imprisoning her in a school, we +pretend that the object of it is to cultivate her as an individual, +and open to her the treasures of literature. That is why we do it so +badly and take so long over it. But our right to cultivate a girl in +any particular way against her will is not clear, even if we could +claim that sitting indoors on a hard seat and being forbidden to talk +or fidget or attend to anything but the teacher cultivated a girl +more highly than the free activities from which this process cuts her +off. The only valid reason for forcing her at all costs to acquire +the technique of reading, writing, and arithmetic enough for ordinary +buying and selling is that modern civilized life is impossible without +them. She may be said to have a natural right to be taught them just as +she has a natural right to be nursed and weaned and taught to walk. + +So far the matter is beyond argument. It is true that in teaching +her how to write you are also teaching her how to forge cheques and +write spiteful anonymous letters, and that in teaching her to read +you are opening her mind to foul and silly books, and putting into +her hands those greatest wasters of time in the world, the novels +that are not worth reading (say ninetynine out of every hundred). +All such objections go down before the inexorable necessity for the +accomplishments that make modern life possible: you might as well +object to teaching her how to use a knife to cut her food on the ground +that you are also teaching her how to cut the baby’s throat. Every +technical qualification for doing good is a technical qualification +for doing evil as well; but it is not possible to leave our citizens +without any technical qualifications for the art of modern living on +that account. + +But this does not justify us in giving our children technical education +and damning the consequences. The consequences would damn us. If we +teach a girl to shoot without teaching her also that thou shalt not +kill, she may send a bullet through us the first time she loses her +temper; and if we proceed to hang her, she may say, as so many women +now say when they are in trouble, “Why did nobody tell me?” This is why +compulsory education cannot be confined to technical education. There +are parts of liberal education which are as necessary in modern social +life as reading and writing; and it is this that makes it so difficult +to draw the line beyond which the State has no right to meddle with +the child’s mind or body without its free consent. Later on we may +make conditions: for instance, we may say that a surveyor must learn +trigonometry, a sea captain navigation, and a surgeon at least as much +dexterity in the handling of saws and knives on bones and tissues as a +butcher acquires. But that is not the same thing as forcing everybody +to be a qualified surveyor, navigator, or surgeon. What we are now +considering is how much the State must force everyone to learn as the +minimum qualification for life in a civilized city. If the Government +forces a woman to acquire the art of composing Latin verses, it is +forcing on her an accomplishment which she can never need to exercise, +and which she can acquire for herself in a few months if she should +nevertheless be cranky enough to want to exercise it. There is the same +objection to forcing her to learn the calculus. Yet somewhere between +forcing her to learn to read and put two and two together accurately, +and forcing her to write sham Horace or learn the calculus, the line +must be drawn. The question is, where to draw it. + +On the liberal side of education it is clear that a certain minimum +of law, constitutional history, and economics is indispensable as a +qualification for a voter even if ethics are left entirely to the inner +light. In the case of young children, dogmatic commandments against +murder, theft, and the more obvious possibilities of untutored social +intercourse, are imperative; and it is here that we must expect fierce +controversy. I need not repeat all that we have already been through +as to the impossibility of ignoring this part of education and calling +our neglect Secular Education. If on the ground that the subject is a +controversial one you leave a child to find out for itself whether the +earth is round or flat, it will find out that it is flat, and, after +blundering into many mistakes and superstitions, be so angry with you +for not teaching it that it is round, that when it becomes an adult +voter it will insist on its own children having uncompromising positive +guidance on the point. + +What will not work in physics will not work in metaphysics either. No +Government, Socialist or anti-Socialist or neutral, could possibly +govern and administer a highly artificial modern State unless every +citizen had a highly artificial modern conscience: that is, a creed or +body of beliefs which would never occur to a primitive woman, and a +body of disbeliefs, or negative creed, which would strike a primitive +woman as fantastic blasphemies that must bring down on her tribe the +wrath of the unseen powers. Modern governments must therefore inculcate +these beliefs and disbeliefs, or at least see that they are inculcated +somehow; or they cannot carry on. And the reason we are in such a mess +at present is that our governments are trying to carry on with a set +of beliefs and disbeliefs that belong to bygone phases of science and +extinct civilizations. Imagine going to Moses or Mahomet for a code to +regulate the modern money market! + +If we all had the same beliefs and disbeliefs, we could go smoothly +on, whether to our destruction or the millennium. But the conflicts +between contradictory beliefs, and the progressive repudiations of +beliefs which must continue as long as we have different patterns of +mankind in different phases of evolution, will necessarily produce +conflicts of opinion as to what should be taught in the public schools +under the head of religious dogma and liberal education. At the present +moment there are many people who hold that it is absolutely necessary +to a child’s salvation from an eternity of grotesque and frightful +torment in a lake of burning brimstone that it should be baptized with +water, as it is born under a divine curse and is a child of wrath and +sin, and that as it grows into a condition of responsibility it must +be impressed with this belief, with the addition that all its sins +were atoned for by the sacrifice of Christ, the Son of God, on the +cross, this atonement being effectual only for those who believe in +it. Failing such belief the efficacy of the baptism is annulled, and +the doom of eternal damnation reincurred. This is the official and +State-endowed religion in our country today; and there is still on the +statute book a law decreeing heavy punishments for anyone who denies +its validity, which no Cabinet dares repeal. + +Now it is not probable that a fully developed Socialist State will +either impress these beliefs on children or permit any private person +to do so until the child has reached what is called in another +connection the age of consent. The State has to protect the souls of +the children as well as their bodies; and modern psychology confirms +common experience in teaching that to horrify a young child with +stories of brimstone hells, and make it believe that it is a little +devil who can only escape from that hell by maintaining a sinless +virtue to which no saint or heroine has ever pretended, is to injure it +for life more cruelly than by any act of bodily violence that even the +most brutal taskmaster would dare to prescribe or justify. To put it +quite frankly and flatly, the Socialist State, as far as I can guess, +will teach the child the multiplication table, but will not only not +teach it the Church Catechism, but if the State teachers find that the +child’s parents have been teaching it the Catechism otherwise than as +a curious historical document, the parents will be warned that if they +persist the child will be taken out of their hands and handed over to +the Lord Chancellor, exactly as the children of Shelley were when their +maternal grandfather denounced his son-in-law as an atheist. + +Further, a Socialist State will not allow its children to be taught +that polygamy, slaughter of prisoners of war, and blood sacrifices, +including human sacrifices, are divinely appointed institutions; and +this means that it will not allow the Bible to be introduced in schools +otherwise than as a collection of old chronicles, poems, oracles, and +political fulminations, on the same footing as the travels of Marco +Polo, Goethe’s Faust, Carlyle’s Past and Present and Sartor Resartus, +and Ruskin’s Ethics of the Dust. Also the doctrine that our life in +this world is only a brief preliminary episode in preparation for +an all-important life to come, and that it does not matter how poor +or miserable or plague ridden we are in this world, as we shall be +gloriously compensated in the next if we suffer patiently, will be +prosecuted as seditious and blasphemous. + +Such a change would not be so great as some of us fear, though it +would be a cataclysm if our present toleration and teaching of these +doctrines were sincere. Fortunately it is not. The people who take them +seriously, or even attach any definite meaning to the words in which +they are formulated, are so exceptional that they are mostly marked +off into little sects which are popularly regarded as not quite sane. +It may be questioned whether as much as one per cent of the people +who describe themselves as members of the Church of England, sending +their children to its baptismal fonts, confirmation rite, and schools, +and regularly attending its services, either know or care what they +are committed to by its dogmas or articles, or read and believe them +as they read and believe the morning paper. Possibly the percentage +of Nonconformists who know the Westminster Confession and accept it +may be slightly larger, because Nonconformity includes the extreme +sects; but as these sects play the most fantastic variations on the +doctrine of the Catechism, Nonconformity covers views which have been +violently persecuted by the Church as blasphemous and atheistic. I am +quite sure that unless you have made a special study of the subject +you have no suspicion of the variety and incompatibility of the +British religions that come under the general heading of Christian. No +Government could possibly please them all. Queen Elizabeth, who tried +to do it by drawing up thirtynine articles alternately asserting and +denying the disputed doctrines, so that every woman could find her own +creed affirmed there and the other woman’s creed denounced, has been a +complete failure except as a means of keeping tender consciences and +scrupulous intellects out of the Church. Ordinary clergymen subscribe +them under duress because they cannot otherwise obtain ordination. +Nobody pretends that they are all credible by the same person at the +same moment; and few people even know what they are or what they mean. +They could all be dropped silently without any shock to the real +beliefs of most of us. + +A Capitalist Government must inculcate whatever doctrine is best +calculated to make the common people docile wage slaves; and a +Socialist Government must equally inculcate whatever doctrine will +make the sovereign people good Socialists. No Government, whatever +its policy may be, can be indifferent to the formation of the +inculcated common creed of the nation. Society is impossible unless +the individuals who compose it have the same beliefs as to what is +right and wrong in commonplace conduct. They must have a common creed +antecedent to the Apostles’ creed, the Nicene creed, the Athanasian +creed, and all the other religious manifestoes. Queen Mary Tudor and +Queen Elizabeth, King James the Second and King William the Third, +could not agree about the Real Presence; but they all agreed that it +was wrong to rob, murder, or set fire to the house of your neighbor. +The sentry at the gate of Buckingham Palace may disagree with the +Royal Family on many points, ranging from the imperial policy of the +Cabinet, or the revision of the Prayer Book, to which horse to back +for the Derby; but unless there were perfect harmony between them as +to the proper limits to the use of his rifle and bayonet their social +relation could not be maintained: there could be neither king nor +sentry. We all deprecate prejudice; but if all of us were not animated +sacks of prejudices, and at least nine-tenths of them were not the same +prejudices so deeply rooted that we never think of them as prejudices +but call them common sense, we could no more form a community than so +many snakes. + +This common sense is not all inborn. Some of it is: for instance, a +woman knows without being told that she must not eat her baby, and +that she must feed it and rear it at all hazards. But she has not +the same feeling about paying her rates and taxes, although this is +as necessary to the life of society as the rearing of infants to the +life of humanity. A friend of mine who was a highly educated woman, +the head of a famous college in the north of London, fiercely disputed +the right of the local authority to have the drainage of the college +examined by a public sanitary inspector. Her creed was that of a +jealously private lady brought up in a private house; and it seemed +an outrage to her that a man with whom she was not on visiting terms +should be legally privileged to walk into the most private apartments +of her college otherwise than at her invitation. Yet the health of the +community depends on a general belief that this privilege is salutary +and reasonable. The enlargement of the social creed to that extent is +the only way to get rid of cholera epidemics. But this very able and +highly instructed lady, though still in the prime of life, was too old +to learn. + +The social creed must be imposed on us when we are children; for it is +like riding, or reading music at sight: it can never become a second +nature to those who try to learn it as adults; and the social creed, to +be really effective, must be a second nature to us. It is quite easy to +give people a second nature, however unnatural, if you catch them early +enough. There is no belief, however grotesque and even villainous, that +cannot be made a part of human nature if it is inculcated in childhood +and not contradicted in the child’s hearing. Now that you are grown +up, nothing could persuade you that it is right to lame every woman +for life by binding her feet painfully in childhood on the ground that +it is not ladylike to move about freely like an animal. If you are the +wife of a general or admiral nothing could persuade you that when the +King dies you and your husband are bound in honor to commit suicide +so as to accompany your sovereign into the next world. Nothing could +persuade you that it is every widow’s duty to be cremated alive with +the dead body of her husband. But if you had been caught early enough +you could have been made to believe and do all these things exactly +as Chinese, Japanese, and Indian women have believed and done them. +You may say that these were heathen Eastern women, and that you are a +Christian Western. But I can remember when your grandmother, also a +Christian Western, believed that she would be disgraced for ever if she +let anyone see her ankles in the street, or (if she was “a real lady”) +walk there alone. The spectacle she made of herself when, as a married +woman, she put on a cap to announce to the world that she must no +longer be attractive to men, and the amazing figure she cut as a widow +in crape robes symbolic of her utter desolation and woe, would, if you +could see or even conceive them, convince you that it was purely her +luck and not any superiority of western to eastern womanhood that saved +her from the bound feet, the suttee, and the hara-kiri. If you still +doubt it, look at the way in which men go to war and commit frightful +atrocities because they believe it is their duty, and also because the +women would spit in their faces if they refused, all because this +has been inculcated upon them from their childhood, thus creating +the public opinion which enables the Government not only to raise +enthusiastic volunteer armies, but to enforce military service by heavy +penalties on the few people who, thinking for themselves, cannot accept +wholesale murder and ruin as patriotic virtues. + +It is clear that if all female children are to have their minds formed +as the mind of Queen Victoria was formed in her infancy, a Socialist +State will be impossible. Therefore it may be taken as certain that +after the conquest of Parliament by the proletariat, the formation +of a child’s mind on that model will be prevented by every means +within the power of the Government. Children will not be taught to +ask God to bless the squire and his relations and keep us in our +proper stations, nor will they be brought up in such a way that it +will seem natural to them to praise God because he makes them eat +whilst others starve, and sing while others do lament. If teachers +are caught inculcating that attitude they will be sacked: if nurses, +their certificates will be cancelled, and jobs found for them that do +not involve intercourse with young children. Victorian parents will +share the fate of Shelley. Adults must think what they please subject +to their being locked up as lunatics if they think too unsocially; but +on points that are structural in the social edifice, constitutional +points as we call them, no quarter will be given in infant schools. The +child’s up-to-date second nature will be an official second nature, +just as the obsolete second nature inculcated at our public schools and +universities is at present. + +When the child has learnt its social creed and catechism, and can read, +write, reckon, and use its hands: in short, when it is qualified to +make its way about in modern cities and do ordinary useful work, it +had better be left to find out for itself what is good for it in the +direction of higher cultivation. If it is a Newton or a Shakespear it +will learn the calculus or the art of the theatre without having them +shoved down its throat: all that is necessary is that it should have +access to books, teachers, and theatres. If its mind does not want +to be highly cultivated, its mind should be let alone on the ground +that its mind knows best what is good for it. Mentally, fallow is as +important as seedtime. Even bodies can be exhausted by overcultivation. +Trying to make people champion athletes indiscriminately is as idiotic +as trying to make them Ireland Scholars indiscriminately. There is no +reason to expect that Socialist rule will be more idiotic than the rule +which has produced Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge, and Squeers. + + + + +82 + +SOCIALISM AND THE CHURCHES + + +How far a Socialist State will tolerate a Church in our sense at all +is a pretty question. The quarrel between Church and State is an old +one. In speculating on it we must for the moment leave our personal +churchgoings and persuasions out of account, and try to look at the +question from the outside as we look at the religions of the east; +or, to put it bookishly, objectively, not subjectively. At present, +if a woman opens a consulting room in Bond Street, and sits there in +strange robes professing to foretell the future by cards or crystals +or revelations made to her by spirits, she is prosecuted as a criminal +for imposture. But if a man puts on strange robes and opens a church +in which he professes to absolve us from the guilt of our misdeeds, +to hold the keys of heaven and hell, to guarantee that what he looses +or binds on earth shall be loosed and bound in heaven, to alleviate +the lot of souls in purgatory, to speak with the voice of God, and +to dictate what is sin and what is not to all the world (pretensions +which, if you look at them objectively, are far more extravagant +and dangerous than those of the poor sorceress with her cards and +tea leaves and crystals), the police treat him with great respect; +and nobody dreams of prosecuting him as an outrageous impostor. The +objective explanation of his immunity is that a great many people do +not think him an impostor: they believe devoutly that he can do all +these things that he pretends to do; and this enables him and his +fellow priests to organize themselves into a powerful and rich body +calling itself The Church, supported by the money, the votes, and the +resolution to die in its defence, of millions of citizens. The priest +can not only defy the police as the common sorceress cannot: he has +only to convince a sufficient number of people of his divine mission +to thrust the Government aside; assume all its functions except the +dirty work that he does not care to soil his hands with and therefore +leaves to “the secular arm”; take on himself powers of life and death, +salvation and damnation; dictate what we shall all read and think; +and place in every family an officer to regulate our lives in every +particular according to his notions of right and wrong. + +This is not a fancy picture. History tells us of an emperor crawling +on his knees through the snow and lying there all night supplicating +pardon from the head of a Church, and of a king of England flogging +himself in the cathedral where a priest had been murdered at his +suggestion. Citizens have been stripped of all their possessions, +tortured, mutilated, burned alive, by priests whose wrath did not spare +even the dead in their graves, whilst the secular rulers of the land +were forced, against their own interest and better sense, to abet them +in their furious fanaticism. + +You may say that this was far off or long ago; that I am raking up old +tales of Canossa, of Canterbury in the middle ages, of Spain in the +fifteenth century, of Orange bogies like Bloody Mary and Torquemada; +that such things have not been done in England since the British +parliamentary government cut off Archbishop Laud’s head for doing them; +and that popes are now in greater danger of being imprisoned, and +priests and monks of being exiled, by emperors and republicans alike, +than statesmen of being excommunicated. You may add that the British +State burnt women alive for coining and for rebellion, and pressed +men to death under heavy weights for refusing for their wives’ and +children’s sake to plead to charges of felony, long after priests had +dropped such methods of dealing with heretics. + +But even if women were still burnt at the stake as ruthlessly as +negroes are today by lynching mobs in America, there would still be a +struggle between Church and State as to which of them had the right +and power to burn. Who is to be allowed to exercise the great powers +that the Government of a modern civilized State must possess if its +civilization is to endure? The kings have subjugated the barons; the +parliaments have subjugated the kings; democracy has been subjugated by +plutocracy; and plutocracy is blindly provoking the subjugated Demos to +set up the proletarian State and make an end of Capitalist Oligarchy. +But there is a rival power which has persisted and will persist through +all these changes; and that is Theocracy, the power of priests +(sometimes called parsons) organized into Churches professing to derive +their authority from God. Crushed in one form it arises in another. +When it was organized as the Church of Rome its abuses provoked the +Reformation in England and Northern Europe, and in France the wrath of +Voltaire and the French revolution. In both cases it was disarmed until +its power to overrule the State was broken, and it became a mere tool +of Plutocracy. + +But note what followed. The reaction against the priests went so far +in Britain, Switzerland, Holland, and America that at the cry of No +Popery every Roman Catholic trembled for his house and every priest for +his life. Yet under Laud and the Star Chamber in England, and Calvin +in Geneva, Theocracy was stronger than ever; for Calvin outpoped all +the popes, and John Knox in Scotland made her princes tremble as no +pope had ever done. But perhaps you will say again “This was long ago: +we have advanced since them”. So you have always been told; but look +at the facts within my own recollection. Among my contemporaries I can +remember Brigham Young, President Kruger, and Mrs Eddy. Joseph Smith, +Junior, was martyred only twelve years before I was born. You may never +have heard of Joseph; but I assure you his career was in many respects, +up to the date of his martyrdom, curiously like that of Mahomet, the +obscure Arab camel driver whose followers conquered half the world, +and are still making the position of the British Empire in Asia very +difficult. Joseph claimed direct revelation from God, and set up a +Theocracy which was carried on by Brigham Young, a Mormon Moses, one of +the ablest rulers on record, until the secular Government of the United +States became convinced that Mormon Theocracy was not compatible with +American Democracy, and took advantage of the popular prejudice against +its “plurality of wives” (polygamy) to smash it. It is by no means dead +yet; but for the moment its teeth, which were sharp, are drawn; and its +place in the struggle is occupied by The Church of Christ Scientist, +founded by an American lady (who might have been yourself) named Mrs +Eddy. I often pass two handsome churches of hers in London; and for all +I know there may be others that are out of my beat there. Now unless +you happen to be a Mormon or a Christian Scientist, it is probable +that you think about Mrs Eddy exactly as a Roman lady in the second +century a.d. thought about the mother of Christ, and about Joseph +Smith as an English lady in the Middle Ages thought about “the accurst +Mahound” You may be right or you may be wrong; but for all you know +Mrs Eddy a thousand years hence may be worshipped as the Divine Woman +by millions of civilized people, and Joseph Smith may be to millions +more what Mahomet now is to Islam. You never can tell. People begin by +saying “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” and end by saying “Behold the +Lamb of God!” + +The secular Governments, or States, of the future, like those of the +present and past, will find themselves repeatedly up against the +pretensions of Churches, new and old, to exercise, as Theocracies, +powers and privileges which no secular Government now claims. The +trouble becomes serious when a new Church attempts to introduce new +political or social institutions, or to revive obsolete ones. Joseph +Smith was allowed to represent himself as having been directed by +an angel to a place where a continuation of the Bible, inscribed on +gold plates, was buried in the earth, and as having direct and, if +necessary, daily revelations from God which enabled him to act as an +infallible lawgiver. When he found plenty of able business women and +men to believe him, the Government of the United States held that their +belief was their own business and within their own rights as long as +Joseph’s laws harmonized with the State laws. But when Joseph revived +Solomonic polygamy the monogamic secular Government had to cross +swords with him. Not for many years did it get the upper hand; and its +adversary is not dead yet. + +Mrs Eddy did the opposite: she did not introduce a new institution; but +she challenged one of the standing institutions of the secular State. +The secular State prescribed pathogenic inoculations as preventives of +disease, and bottles of medicine and surgical operations, administered +and performed by its registered doctors and surgeons, as cures; and +anyone who left a child or an invalid for whom she was responsible +undoctored was punished severely for criminal neglect. Some governments +refused to admit uninoculated persons into their territories. Mrs Eddy +revived the practice prescribed by St James in the New Testament, +instructing her disciples to have nothing to do with bottles and +inoculations; and immediately the secular government was at war with +Christian Science and began to persecute its healers. + +This case is interesting because it illustrates the fact that new +Churches sometimes capture the secular government by denying that +they are Churches. The conflict between Mrs Eddy and the secular +governments was really a conflict between the Church of Christ +Scientist and the new Church of Jenner and Pasteur Scientists, which +has the secular governments in its pocket exactly as the Church of +Rome had Charlemagne. It also incidentally illustrates the tendency +of all Churches to institute certain rites to signalize the reception +of children and converts into the Church. The Jews prescribe a +surgical operation, fortunately not serious nor harmful. The Christian +Churches prescribe water baptism and anointing: also quite harmless. +The babies object vociferously; but as they neither foresee the rite +nor remember it they are none the worse. But the inoculations of the +modern Churches which profess Science, with their lists of miracles, +their biographies of their saints, their ruthless persecutions, +their threats of dreadful plagues and horrible torments if they are +dis-obeyed, their claims to hold the keys of mortal life and death, +their sacrifices and divinations, their demands for exemption from all +moral law in their researches and all legal responsibility in their +clinical practice, leave the pretensions of the avowed priests and +prophets nowhere, are dangerous and sometimes deadly; and it is round +this disguised Church that the persecutions and fanaticisms of today +rage. There is very little danger of a British Parliament persecuting +in the name of Christ, and none at all of its persecuting in the name +of Mahomet in the west; but it has persecuted cruelly for a century +in the name of Jenner; and there is a very serious danger of its +persecuting the general public as it now persecutes soldiers in the +name of Pasteur, whose portrait is already on the postage stamps of the +resolutely secularist (as it imagines) French Republic. In the broadest +thoroughfare of fashionable London we have erected a startling brazen +image of the famous Pasteurite surgeon Lord Lister, who, when the +present age of faith in scientific miracles has passed, will probably +be described as a high priest who substituted carbolic acid for holy +water and consecrated oil as a magic cure for festering wounds. His +methods are no longer in fashion in the hospitals; and he has been +left far behind as a theorist; but when the centenary of his birth was +celebrated in 1927, the stories of his miracles, told with boundless +credulity and technical ignorance in all the newspapers, shewed that he +was really being worshipped as a saint. + +From this, I invite you to note how deceptive history may be. The +continual springing up of new Churches has always forced secular +governments to make and administer laws to deal with them, because, +though some of them are reasonable and respectable enough to be left +alone, and others are too strongly represented in Parliament and in +the electorate to be safely interfered with, a good many of which you +have never heard defy the laws as to personal decency and violate the +tables of consanguinity to such an extent that if the authorities did +not suppress them the people would lynch them. That is why tribunals +like the Inquisition and the Star Chamber had to be set up to bring +them to justice. But as these were not really secular tribunals, being +in fact instruments of rival Churches, their powers were abused, the +new prophets and their followers being restrained or punished, not +as offenders against the secular law, but as heretics: that is, as +dissenters from the Church which had gained control of the secular +government: the Church of Rome in the case of the Inquisition, and the +Church of England in the case of the Star Chamber. + +The difficulty, you see, is that though there is a continual rivalry +between Churches and States for the powers of government, yet the +States do not disentangle themselves from the Churches, because the +members of the secular parliaments and Cabinets are all Churchmen of +one sort or another. In England this muddle is illustrated by the +ridiculous fact that the bishops of the Church of England have seats as +such in the House of Lords whilst the clergy are excluded as such from +the House of Commons. The Parliaments are the rivals of the Churches +and yet become their instruments; so that the struggle between them +is rather as to whether the Churches shall exercise power directly, +calling in the secular arm merely to enforce their decisions without +question, or whether they shall be mere constituents of the Parliaments +like any other society of citizens, leaving the ultimate decisions to +the State. If, however, any particular Church is powerful enough to +make it a condition of admission to Parliament, or of occupation of the +throne or the judicial bench, or of employment in the public services +or the professions, that the postulant shall be one of its members, +that Church will be in practice, if not in theory, stronger than it +could be as a Theocracy ruling independently of the secular State. This +power was actually achieved by the Church of England; but it broke down +because the English people would not remain in one Church. They broke +away from the Church of England in all directions, and formed Free +Churches. One of these, called the Society of Friends (popularly called +Quakers), carried its repudiation of Church of England ecclesiasticism +to the length of denouncing priests as impostors, set prayers as an +insult to God (“addressing God in another man’s words”), and church +buildings as “steeple houses”; yet this body, by sheer force of +character, came out of a savage persecution the most respected and +politically influential of religious forces in the country. When the +Free Churches could no longer be kept out of Parliament, and the +Church of England could not be induced to grant any of them a special +privilege, there was nothing for it but to admit everybody who was a +Christian Deist of any denomination. The line was still drawn at Jews +and Atheists; but the Jews soon made their way in; and finally a famous +Atheist, Charles Bradlaugh, broke down the last barrier to the House +of Commons by forcing the House to accept, instead of the Deist oath, +a form of affirmation which relieved Atheists from the necessity of +perjuring themselves before taking their seats. We are now accustomed +to Jewish Prime Ministers; and we do not know whether our Gentile +Prime Ministers are Atheists or not, because it never occurs to us to +ask the question. The King alone remains bound by a coronation oath +which obliges him to repudiate the Church of many of his subjects, +though he has to maintain that Church and several others, some not even +Christian, in parts of the Empire where the alternative would be no +Church at all. + +When Parliament is open to all the Churches, including the Atheist +Churches (for the Positivist Societies, the Ethical Societies, the +Agnostics, the Materialists, the Darwinian Natural Selectionists, the +Creative Evolutionists, and even the Pantheists are all infidels and +Atheists from the strict Evangelical or Fundamentalist point of view), +it becomes impossible to attach religious rites to our institutions, +because none of the Churches will consent to make any rites but their +own legally obligatory. Parliament is therefore compelled to provide +purely civil formalities as substitutes for religious services in the +naming of children, in marriage, and in the disposal of the dead. Today +the civil registrar will marry you and name your children as legally as +an archbishop or a cardinal; and when there is a death in the family +you can have the body cremated either with any sort of ceremony you +please or no ceremony at all except the registration of the death after +certification of its cause by a registered doctor. + +As, in addition, you need not now pay Church rates unless you want to, +we have arrived at a point at which, from one end of our lives to the +other, we are not compelled by law to pay a penny to the priest unless +we are country landlords, nor attend a religious service, nor concern +ourselves in any way with religion in the popular sense of the word. +Compulsion by public opinion, or by our employers or landlords, is, +as we have seen, another matter; but here we are dealing only with +State compulsion. Delivered from all this, we are left face to face +with a body of beliefs calling itself Science, now more Catholic than +any of the avowed Churches ever succeeded in being (for it has gone +right round the world), demanding, and in some countries obtaining, +compulsory inoculation for children and soldiers and immigrants, +compulsory castration for dysgenic adults, compulsory segregation and +tutelage for “mental defectives”, compulsory sanitation for our houses, +and hygienic spacing and placing for our cities, with other compulsions +of which the older Churches never dreamt, at the behest of doctors and +“men of science”. In England we are still too much in the grip of the +old ways to have done either our best or our worst in this direction; +but if you care to know what Parliaments are capable of when they +have ceased to believe what oldfashioned priests tell them and lavish +all their natural childish credulity on professors of Science you +must study the statute books of the American State Legislatures, the +“crowned republics” of our own Dominions, and the new democracies of +South America and Eastern Europe. When all the States are captured by +the proletariat in the names of Freedom and Equality, the cry may arise +that the little finger of Medical Research (calling itself Science) is +thicker than the loins of Religion. + +Now what made the oldfashioned religion so powerful was that at its +best (meaning in the hands of its best believers) there was much +positive good in it, and much comfort for those who could not bear +the cruelty of nature without some explanation of life that carried +with it an assurance that righteousness and mercy will have the last +word. This is the power of Science also: it, too, at its best has done +enormous positive good; and it also at its highest flight gives a +meaning to life which is full of encouragement, exultation, and intense +interest. You may yourself be greatly concerned as to whether the old +or the new explanation is the true one; but looking at it objectively +you must put aside the question of absolute truth, and simply observe +and accept the fact that the nation is made up of a relatively small +number of religious or scientific zealots, a huge mass of people who +do not bother about the business at all, their sole notion of religion +and morality being to do as other people in their class do, and a good +many Betwixt-and-Betweens. The neutrals are in one sense the important +people, because any creed may be imposed on them by inculcation during +infancy, whereas the believers and unbelievers who think for themselves +will let themselves be burnt alive rather than conform to a creed +imposed on them by any power except their own consciences. It is over +the inculcation, involving the creation of that official second nature +which we discussed in the preceding chapter, that the State finds +itself at loggerheads with the Churches which have not captured it. + +Take a typical example or two. If any society of adults, calling itself +a Church or not, preaches the old doctrine of the resurrection of the +body at a great Last Judgment of all mankind, there is no likelihood +of the municipality of a crowded city objecting. But if a survival of +the childish idea that a body can be preserved for resurrection by +putting it into a box and burying it in the earth, whereas reducing it +to ashes in two hours in a cremation furnace renders its resurrection +impossible, leads any sect or Church or individual to preach and +practise intramural interment as a religious duty, then it is pretty +certain that the municipality will not only keep such preaching out +of its schools, but see to it that the children are taught to regard +cremation as the proper way of disposing of the dead in towns, and +forcibly prevent intramural interment whether pious parents approve of +it or not. + +If a Church, holding that animals are set apart from human beings by +having no souls, and were created for the use of mankind and not for +their own sakes, teaches that animals have no rights, and women and men +no duties to them, their teaching on that point will be excluded from +the schools and their members prosecuted for cruelty to animals by the +secular authority. + +If another Church wants to set up an abattoir in which animals will be +killed in a comparatively cruel manner instead of by a humane killer in +the municipal abattoir, it will not be allowed to do it nor to teach +children that it ought to be done, unless, indeed, it commands votes +enough to control the municipality to that extent; and if its members +refuse to eat humanely slaughtered meat they will have to advance, like +me, to vegetarianism. + +When the question is raised, as it will be sooner or later, of the +reservation of our cathedrals for the sermons of one particular +Church, it will not be settled on the assumption that any one Church +has a monopoly of religious truth. It is settled at present on the +Elizabethan assumption that the services of the Church of England ought +to please everybody; and it is quite possible that if the services +of the Church of England were purified from its grosser sectarian +superstitions, and a form of service arrived at containing nothing +offensive to anyone desiring the consolation or stimulus of a religious +ritual, the State might very well reserve the cathedrals for that form +of service exclusively, provided that, as at present, the building were +available most of the time for free private meditation and prayer. +(You may not have realized that any Jew, any Mahometan, any Agnostic, +any woman of any creed or no creed, may use our cathedrals daily to +“make her soul” between the services.) To throw open the cathedrals to +the rituals of all the Churches is a physical impossibility. To sell +them on capitalist principles to the highest bidders to do what they +like with is a moral impossibility for the State, though the Church +has sold churches often enough. To simply make of them show places +like Stonehenge, and charge for admission, as the Church of England +sometimes does in the choir, would destroy their value for those who +cannot worship without the aid of a ritual. + +There is also the Russian plan of the State taking formal possession +of the material property of the national Church, and then letting it +go on as before, with the quaint difference that the statesmen and +officials, instead of posing as devout Churchmen, sincerely or not, +as in England, solemnly warn the people that the whole business is a +superstitious mummery got up to keep them in submissive slavery by +doping them with promises of bliss after death if only they will suffer +poverty and slavery patiently before it. This, however, cannot last. It +is only the reaction of the victorious proletariat against the previous +unholy alliance of the Church with their former oppressors. It is mere +anti-clericalism; and when clericalism as we know it disappears, and +Churches can maintain themselves only as Churches of the people and not +as spiritual fortresses of Capitalism, the anti-clerical reaction will +pass away. The Russian Government knows that a purely negative attitude +towards religion is politically impossible; accordingly, it teaches the +children a new creed called Marxism, of which more presently. Even in +the first flush of the reaction the Soviet was more tolerant than we +were when our hour came to revolt. We frankly robbed the Church of all +it possessed and gave the plunder to the landlords. Long after that we +deliberately cut off our Archbishop’s head. Certainly the Soviet made +it quite clear to the Russian archbishop that if he did not make up his +mind to accept the fact of the revolution and give to the Soviet the +allegiance he had formerly given to the Tsar, he would be shot. But +when he very sensibly and properly made up his mind accordingly, he was +released, and is now presumably pontificating much more freely than the +Archbishop of Canterbury. + +So far, I have dealt with the Churches objectively and not with +religion subjectively. It is an old saying: the nearer the Church the +farther from God. But we must cross the line just for a paragraph or +two. A live religion alone can nerve women to overcome their dread of +any great social change, and to face that extraction of dead religions +and dead parts of religions which is as necessary as the extraction of +dead or decaying teeth. All courage is religious: without religion we +are cowards. Men, because they have been specialized for fighting and +hunting whilst women, as the child-bearers, have had to be protected +from such risks, have got into the way of accepting the ferocities +of war and the daring emulations of sportsmanship as substitutes for +courage; and they have imposed that fraud to some extent on women. But +women know instinctively, even when they are echoing male glory stuff, +that communities live not by slaughter and by daring death, but by +creating life and nursing it to its highest possibilities. When Ibsen +said that the hope of the world lay in the women and the workers he was +neither a sentimentalist nor a demagogue. You cannot have read this far +(unless you have skipped recklessly) without discovering that I know as +well as Ibsen did, or as you do, that women are not angels. They are as +foolish as men in many ways; but they have had to devote themselves to +life whilst men have had to devote themselves to death; and that makes +a vital difference in male and female religion. Women have been forced +to fear whilst men have been forced to dare: the heroism of a woman is +to nurse and protect life, and of a man to destroy it and court death. +But the homicidal heroes are often abject cowards in the face of new +ideas, and veritable Weary Willies when they are asked to think. Their +heroism is politically mischievous and useless. Knowing instinctively +that if they thought about what they do they might find themselves +unable to do it, they are afraid to think. That is why the heroine has +to think for them, even to the extent of often having no time left to +think for herself. She needs more and not less courage than a man; +and this she must get from a creed that will bear thinking of without +becoming incredible. + +Let me then assume that you have a religion, and that the most +important question you have to ask about Socialism is whether it +will be hostile to that religion. The reply is quite simple. If your +religion requires that incomes shall be unequal, Socialism will do +all it can to persecute it out of existence, and will treat you much +as the government of British India treated the Thugs in 1830. If your +religion is compatible with equality of income, there is no reason on +earth to fear that a Socialist Government will treat it or you any +worse than any other sort of government would; and it would certainly +save you from the private persecution, enforced by threats of loss of +employment, to which you are subject under Capitalism today, if you +are in the employment of a bigot. + +There is, however, a danger against which you should be on your guard. +Socialism may be preached, not as a far-reaching economic reform, but +as a new Church founded on a new revelation of the will of God made by +a new prophet. It actually is so preached at present. Do not be misled +by the fact that the missionaries of Church Socialism do not use the +word God, nor call their organization a Church, nor decorate their +meeting-places with steeples. They preach an inevitable, final, supreme +category in the order of the universe in which all the contradictions +of the earlier and lower categories will be reconciled. They do not +speak, except in derision, of the Holy Ghost or the Paraclete; but they +preach the Hegelian Dialectic. Their prophet is named neither Jesus nor +Mahomet nor Luther nor Augustine nor Dominic nor Joseph Smith, Junior, +nor Mary Baker Glover Eddy, but Karl Marx. They call themselves, not +the Catholic Church, but the Third International. Their metaphysical +literature begins with the German philosophers Hegel and Feuerbach, +and culminates in Das Kapital, the literary masterpiece of Marx, +described as “The Bible of the working classes”, inspired, infallible, +omniscient. Two of their tenets contradict oneanother as flatly as +the first two paragraphs of Article 27 of the Church of England. One +is that the evolution of Capitalism into Socialism is predestined, +implying that we have nothing to do but sit down and wait for it to +occur. This is their version of Salvation by Faith. The other is that +it must be effected by a revolution establishing a dictatorship of the +proletariat. This is their version of Salvation by Works. + +The success of the Russian revolution was due to its leadership by +Marxist fanatics; but its subsequent mistakes had the same cause. +Marxism is not only useless but disastrous as a guide to the practice +of government. It gets no nearer to a definition of Socialism than as +a Hegelian category in which the contradictions of Capitalism shall +be reconciled, and in which political power shall have passed to +the proletariat. Germans and Clydeside Scots find spiritual comfort +in such abstractions; but they are unintelligible and repulsive to +Englishwomen, and could not by themselves qualify anyone, English, +Scotch, or German, to manage a whelkstall for five minutes, much less +to govern a modern State, as Lenin very soon found out and very +frankly confessed. + +But Lenin and his successors were not able to extricate the new +Russian national State they had set up from this new Russian +international (Catholic) Church any more than our Henry II or the +Emperor who had come to Canossa were able to extricate the English +State and the medieval Empire from the Church of Rome. Nobody can +foresee today whether the policy of Russia in any crisis will be +determined on secular and national grounds by the Soviet or by the +Third International on Marxist grounds. We are facing the Soviet as +Queen Elizabeth faced Philip of Spain, willing enough to deal with +him as an earthly king, but not as the agent of a Catholic Theocracy. +In Russia the State will sooner or later have to break the temporal +power of the Marxist Church and take politics out of its hands, exactly +as the British and other Protestant States have broken the temporal +power of the Roman Church, and been followed much more drastically +by the French and Italian States. But until then the Church of Marx, +the Third International, will give as much trouble as the Popes did +formerly. It will give it in the name of Communism and Socialism, +and be resisted not only by Capitalists but by the Communists and +Socialists who understand that Communism and Socialism are matters for +States and not for Churches to handle. King John was no less Christian +than the Pope when he said that no Italian priest should tithe and +toll in his dominions; and our Labor leaders can remain convinced +Socialists and Communists whilst refusing to stand any foreign or +domestic interference from the Third International or to acknowledge +the divinity of Marx. + +Still, our Protestant repudiation of the authority of the new Marxist +Church should not make us forget that if the Marxist Bible cannot be +taken as a guide to parliamentary tactics, the same may be said of +those very revolutionary documents the Gospels. We do not on that +account burn the Gospels and conclude that the preacher of The Sermon +on the Mount has nothing to teach us; and neither should we burn Das +Kapital and ban Marx as a worthless author whom nobody ought to read. +Marx did not get his great reputation for nothing: he was a very great +teacher; and the people who have not yet learnt his lessons make most +dangerous stateswomen and statesmen. But those who have really learnt +from him instead of blindly worshipping him as an infallible prophet +are not Marxists any more than Marx himself was a Marxist. I myself +was converted to Socialism by Das Kapital; and though I have since had +to spend a good deal of time pointing out Marx’s mistakes in abstract +economics, his total lack of experience in the responsible management +of public affairs, and the unlikeness at close quarters of his typical +descriptions of the proletariat to any earthly working woman or of the +bourgeoisie to any real lady of property, you may confidently set down +those who speak contemptuously of Karl Marx either as pretenders who +have never read him or persons incapable of his great mental range. Do +not vote for such a person. Do not, however, vote for a Marxist fanatic +either, unless you can catch one young enough or acute enough to grow +out of Marxism after a little experience, as Lenin did. Marxism, +like Mormonism, Fascism, Imperialism, and indeed all the would-be +Catholicisms except Socialism and Capitalism, is essentially a call +to a new Theocracy. Both Socialism and Capitalism certainly do what +they can to obtain credit for representing a divinely appointed order +of the universe; but the pressure of facts is too strong for their +pretensions: they are forced to present themselves at last as purely +secular expedients for securing human welfare, the one advocating +equal distribution of income, and the other private property with free +contract, as the secret of general prosperity. + + + + +83 + +CURRENT CONFUSIONS + + +I could go on like this for years; but I think I have now told you +enough about Socialism and Capitalism to enable you to follow the +struggle between them intelligently. You will find it irritating +at first to read the newspapers and listen to the commonplaces of +conversation on the subject, knowing all the time that the writers +and talkers do not know what they are writing and talking about. The +impulse to write to the papers, or intervene in the conversation to set +matters right, may be almost irresistible. But it must be resisted, +because if you once begin there will be no end to it. You must sit +with an air of placid politeness whilst your neighbors, by way of +talking politics, denounce the people they do not like as Socialists, +Bolshevists, Syndicalists, Anarchists, and Communists on the one side, +and Capitalists, Imperialists, Fascists, Reactionaries, and Bourgeois +on the other, none of them having an idea of the meaning of these words +clear enough to be called without flattery the ghost of a notion. +A hundred years ago they would have called one another Jacobins, +Radicals, Chartists, Republicans, Infidels, and even, to express +the lowest depth of infamy, Co-operators; or, contrariwise, Tories, +Tyrants, Bloated Aristocrats, and Fundholders. None of these names hurt +now: Jacobins and Chartists are forgotten; republics are the rule and +not the exception in Europe as well as in America; Co-operators are as +respectable as Quakers; Bloated Aristocracy is the New Pauperism; and +the proletariat, with its millions invested in Savings Certificates +and Savings Bank deposits, would not at all object to being described +as having money “in the funds”, if that expression were still current. +But the names in the mouths of the factions mean nothing anyhow. They +are mere electioneering vituperation. In France at elections the +Opposition posters always exhort the electors to vote against Assassins +and Thieves (meaning the Cabinet); and the Government posters “feature” +precisely the same epithets, whilst the candidates in their own homes +call their pet dogs Bandits when pretending to scold them. It all means +nothing. They had much better call each other Asses and Bitches (they +sometimes do, by the way), because everyone knows that a man is not +an ass nor a woman a bitch, and that calling them so is only a coarse +way of insulting them; whereas most people do not know what the words +Bolshevik, Anarchist, Communist, and so forth mean, and are too easily +frightened into believing that they denote every imaginable extremity +of violence and theft, rapine and murder. The Russian word Bolshevik, +which has such a frightful sound to us, means literally nothing more +than a member of a parliamentary majority; but as an English epithet +it is only the political form of Bogey or Blackguard or the popular +Bloody, denoting simply somebody or something with whom the speaker +disagrees. + +But the names we hurl at oneanother are much less confusing than the +names we give ourselves. For instance, quite a lot of people, mostly a +very amiable mild sort of people, call themselves Communist-Anarchists, +which Conservatives interpret as Double-Dyed Scoundrels. This is very +much as if they called themselves Roman Catholic Protestants, or +Christian Jewesses, or undersized giantesses, or brunette blondes, +or married maids, or any other flat contradiction in terms; for +Anarchism preaches the obliteration of statute law and the abolition +of Governments and States, whilst Communism preaches that all the +necessary business of the country shall be done by public bodies +and regulated by public law. Nobody could logically be in favor of +both all the time. But there is a muddled commonsense in the name +for all that. What the Communist-Anarchist really means is that she +is willing to be a Communist as to the work and obedience to public +law for everybody that is necessary to keep the community healthy +and solvent, and that then she wants to be let go her own way. It is +her manner of saying that she needs leisure and freedom as well as +taskwork and responsibility: in short, as I have heard it expressed, +that she does not want to be “a blooming bee”. That is the attitude of +all capable women; but to apply the term Communist-Anarchism to it is +so confusing, and so often perversely adopted by the kind of muddler +who, being against law and public enterprise because she wants to be +free, and against freedom because freedom of contracts is a capitalist +device for exploiting the proletariat, spends her life in obstructing +both Socialism and Capitalism and never getting anywhere, that, on the +whole, I should not call myself a Communist-Anarchist if I were you. + +The truth is, we live in a Tower of Babel where a confusion of names +prevents us from finishing the social edifice. The Roman Catholic who +does not know what his Church teaches, the member of the Church of +England who would repudiate several of the Thirty-Nine Articles if +they were propounded to her without a hint of where they came from, +the Liberal who has never heard of the principles of the Manchester +School and would not have understood them if she had, and the Tory who +is completely innocent of De Quincey’s Logic of Political Economy: that +is to say, the vast majority of Catholics, Protestants, Liberals, and +Tories, have their counterparts in the Socialists, the Communists, the +Syndicalists, the Anarchists, the Laborists, who denounce Capitalism +and middle class morality, and are saturated with both all the time. +The Intelligent Woman, as she reads the newspapers, must allow for +this as best she can. She must not only remember that every professing +Socialist is not necessarily a Trade Unionist, and cannot logically +be an Anarchist, but is sometimes so little a Socialist that, when +entrusted with public business enough to bring her face to face with +the Conservative or Liberal leaders she has been denouncing, she will +be flattered to find that these eminent persons are quite of her real +way of thinking, and vote with them enthusiastically every time. + +The name Communist is at the present moment (1927) specially applied +to and adopted by those who believe that Capitalism will never be +abolished by constitutional parliamentary means in the Fabian manner, +but must be overthrown by armed revolution and supplanted by the +Muscovite Marxist Church. This is politely called the policy of Direct +Action. Conservative Diehards who advocate a forcible usurpation of +the government by the capitalists as such call it a _coup d’état_. But +a proletarian may be an advocate of Direct Action without being a bit +of a Communist. She may believe that the mines should belong to the +miners, the railways to the railwaymen, the army to the soldiers, the +churches to the clergymen, and the ships to the crews. She may even +believe that the houses should belong to the housemaids, especially if +she is a housemaid herself. Socialism will not hear of this. It insists +that industries shall be owned by the whole community, and regulated +in the interests of the consumer (or customer), who must be able to +buy at cost price without paying a profit to anybody. A shop, for +instance, must not belong to the shop assistants, nor be exploited by +them for their profit: it must be run for the benefit of the customers, +the shop assistant’s safeguard against finding herself sacrificed +to the customer being that she is herself a customer at the other +shops, and the customer herself a worker in other establishments. When +incomes are equal, and everyone is both a producer and a consumer, the +producers and consumers may be trusted to treat each other fairly from +self-love if from no more generous motive; but until then, to make any +industry the property of the workers in it would be merely to replace +the existing idle joint stock shareholders by working shareholders +profiteering on a much larger scale, as they would appropriate the +rent of their sites and make none of those contributions to a central +exchequer for the benefit of the nation that now take place under +parliamentary rule. The inequalities of income between, say, miners in +the richest mines and farmers on the poorest soils would be monstrous. +But I need not plague you with arguments: the arrangement is impossible +anyhow; only, as several of the proletarian proposals, and cries of +the day, including Trade Unionism, Producers’ Co-operation, Workers’ +Control, Peasant Proprietorship, and the cruder misunderstandings of +Syndicalism and Socialism, are either tainted or saturated with it to +such an extent that it wrecked the proletarian movement in Italy after +the war and led to the dictatorship of Signor Mussolini, and as it is +often supposed to be part of Socialism, you had better beware of it; +for it has many plausible pseudo-socialistic disguises. It is really +only Poor Man’s Capitalism, like Poor Man’s Gout. + +On their negative side the proletarian Isms are very much alike: they +all bring the same accusations against Capitalism; and Capitalism makes +no distinction between them because they agree in their hostility +to it. But there is all the difference in the world between their +positive remedies; and any woman who voted for Syndicalism or Anarchism +or Direct Action disguised as Communism indiscriminately under the +impression that she was voting for Socialism would be as mistaken as +one who voted for Conservatism or Liberalism or Imperialism or the +Union Jack or King and Country or Church and State indiscriminately +under a general impression that she was voting against Socialism. + +And so you have the curious spectacle of our Parliamentary Labor Party, +led by Socialists who are all necessarily Communists in principle, +and are advocating sweeping extensions of Communism, expelling the +so-called Communist Party from its ranks, refusing to appear on the +same platforms with its members in public, and being denounced by it +as bourgeois reactionaries. It is most confusing until you know; and +then you see that the issue just now between the rival proletarian +parties in England is not Communism against Socialism: it is +constitutional action, or Fabianism as it used to be called, against +Direct Action followed by a dictatorship. And as Diehard Capitalism is +now sorely tempted to try a British-Fascist _coup d’état_ followed +by a dictatorship, as opposed to Liberal constitutional Capitalism, +the confusion and disunion are by no means all on the Labor side. The +extremists of the Right and those of the Left are both propagandists of +impatient disgust with parliament as an institution. There is a Right +wing of the Right just as there is a Left wing of the Left; whilst the +Constitutional Centre is divided between Capitalism and Socialism. You +will need all your wits about you to find out where you are and keep +there during the coming changes. + +The proletarian party inherits from Trade Unionism the notion that the +strike is the classic weapon and the only safeguard of proletarian +labor. It is therefore dangerously susceptible to the widespread +delusion that if instead of a coal strike here and a railway strike +there, a lightning strike of waitresses in a restaurant today, and +a lightning strike of match girls in a factory tomorrow, all the +workers in all the occupations were to strike simultaneously and +sympathetically, Capitalism would be brought to its knees. This is +called The General Strike. It is as if the crew of a ship, oppressed by +its officers, were advised by a silly-clever cabin boy to sink the ship +until all the officers and their friends the passengers were drowned, +and then take victorious command of it. The objection that the crew +could not sail the ship without navigating officers is superfluous, +because there is the conclusive preliminary objection that the crew +would be drowned, cabin boy and all, as well as the officers. In a +General Strike ashore the productive proletarians would be starved +before the employers, capitalists, and parasitic proletarians, because +these would have possession of the reserves of spare food. It would be +national suicide. + +Obvious as this is, the General Strike has been attempted again and +again, notably on one occasion in Sweden, when it was very thoroughly +tried out; and though it has always necessarily collapsed, it is still +advocated by people who imagine that the remedy for Capitalism is to +treat labor as the capital of the proletariat (that is, the spare +money of those who have no money), and to hold up the Capitalists by +threat of starvation just as the Capitalists have hitherto held up the +proletariat. They forget that the capitalists have never yet been so +absurd as to attempt a general lock-out. It would be much more sensible +to support a particular strike by calling all other strikes off, thus +isolating the particular employers aimed at, and enabling all the other +workers to contribute to the strike fund. But we have already discussed +the final impossibility of tolerating even particular strikes or +lock-outs, much less general ones. They will pass away as duelling has +passed away. Meanwhile be on your guard against propagandists of the +General Strike; but bear in mind too that the term is now being used +so loosely in the daily papers that we see it applied to any strike in +which more than one trade is concerned. + +A favorite plea of the advocates of the General Strike is that it could +prevent a war. Now it may be admitted that the fear of an attempt at +it does to some extent restrain governments from declaring unpopular +wars. Unfortunately once the first fellow-countryman is killed or the +first baby bombed, no war is unpopular: on the contrary, it is as well +known to our Capitalist governments as it was to that clever lady the +Empress Catherine of Russia that when the people become rebellious +there is nothing like “a nice little war” for bringing them to heel +again in a patriotic ecstasy of loyalty to the Crown. Besides, the +fundamental objection to the general strike, that when everybody stops +working the nation promptly perishes, applies just as fatally to a +strike against war as to a strike against a reduction of wages. It is +true that if the vast majority in the belligerent nations, soldiers and +all, simultaneously became conscientious objectors, and the workers +all refused to do military service of any kind, whether in the field +or in the provisioning, munitioning, and transport of troops, no +declaration of war could be carried out. Such a conquest of the earth +by Pacifism seems millennially desirable to many of us; but the mere +statement of these conditions is sufficient to shew that they do not +constitute a general strike, and that they are so unlikely to occur +that no sane person would act on the chance of their being realized. +A single schoolboy militarist dropping a bomb from an aeroplane into +a group of children will make an end of local pacifism in an instant +until it becomes certain that the bomber and his employers will be +called to account before a competent and dreaded tribunal. Meanwhile +the fear of a so-called General Strike against war will never deter any +bellicose Government from equipping and commissioning such adventurous +young aces. But no Government dare send them if it knew that it would +be blockaded by a combination of other nations sufficiently strong to +intimidate the most bellicose single nation. + +The formation of such a combination is the professed object of the +present League of Nations; and though there is no sign so far of the +leading military Powers even consulting it, much less obeying and +supporting it, when they have any weighty military interests at stake, +still even their military interests will force them sooner or later +to take the League seriously, substitute supernational morality, +law, and action, for the present international anarchism, according +to which it is proper for nations, under certain forms, to murder +and plunder foreigners, though it is a crime for them to murder and +plunder oneanother. No other method of preventing war so far discovered +is worth your attention. It is very improbable even that our quaint +and illogical toleration of conscientious objection during the last +war will ever be repeated; and in any case the experiment proved its +futility as a preventive of war. The soldier in the trenches will +always ask why he should be shot for refusing to go “over the top” when +his brother at home is spared after refusing even to enter the trench. +The General Strike is still more futile. War cannot be stopped by the +refusal of individuals or even of whole trades to take part in it: +nothing but combinations of nations, each subordinating what they call +their sovereign rights to the world’s good, or at least to the good of +the combination, can prevail against it. + +This subordination of nationalism is called supernationalism, and might +be called catholicism if that word could be freed from misleading +historical associations. It already exists in the United States of +America, which are federated for certain purposes, including currency +and a _pax Americana_ which was established at the cost of a fierce +war. There is no reason except pure devilment why the States of Europe, +or, to begin with, a decisive number of them, should not federate to +the same extent for the same purposes. The Empires are changing into +Commonwealths, or voluntary federations, for common human purposes. +Here, and not in local antipatriotic strikes, are the real hopes of +peace. + +You will find constitutional changes specially bothersome because of +the continual clashing between the tightening-up of social discipline +demanded by Socialism and the jealousy of official power and desire to +do what we like which we call Democracy. Democracy has a very strong +hold on organized labor. In the Trade Unions every device is tried to +make the vote of the whole union supreme. When delegates vote at the +Union Congresses they are allowed a vote for every member of their +respective unions; and as far as possible the questions on which they +cast their hundreds of thousands of votes are settled beforehand in +the unions by the votes of the members; so that when the delegates go +to Congress they are not representatives but mere spokesmen handing in +the decisions of their unions. But these crude democratic precautions +defeat their own object. In practice, a Trade Union secretary is the +nearest thing on earth to an irremovable autocrat. The “card vote” is +not called for except to decide questions on which the decisions could +not be carried out unless the delegates of the Big Powers of trade +unionism (that is, the unions whose membership runs into millions) +could outvote the delegates of the Little Powers; and as in the ranks +of Labor not only is “the career open to the talents” but absolutely +closed to nonentities, the leaders are much more arbitrary than they +would be in the House of Lords, where the hereditary peers may include +persons of average or less than average ability. Even the humblest +Trade Union secretary must have exceptional business ability and power +of managing people; and if anyone but a secretary obtains a delegation +to a Congress he must have at least a talent for self-assertion. He may +be for all public purposes an idiot; but he must be a fairly blatant +idiot, and to some extent a representative one, or he could never +persuade large bodies of his equals to pick him out from the obscurity +of his lot. + +Now as this oligarchy of bureaucrats and demagogues is the result of +the most jealous democracy, the oligarchs of labor are determined to +maintain the system which has placed them in power. You must have +noticed that some of the most imperiously wilful women, unable to +bear a moment’s contradiction, and tyrannizing over their husbands, +daughters, and servants until nobody else in the house can call +her soul her own, have been the most resolute opponents of Women’s +Rights. The reason is that they know that as long as the men govern +they can govern the men. Just so a good many of the ablest and most +arbitrary of the leaders of Trade Unionism are resolutely democratic +in Labor politics because they know very well that as long as the +workers can vote they can make the workers vote as they please. They +are democrats, not because of their faith in the judgment, knowledge, +and initiative of the masses, but because of their experience of mass +ignorance, gullibility, and sheepishness. It is only the idealists of +the propertied and cultivated middle classes who believe that the voice +of the people is the voice of God: the typical proletarian leader is +a cynic in this matter, believing secretly that the working folk will +have to be born again and born differently before they can be safely +allowed to have their own silly way in public affairs: indeed it is +to make this rebirth possible that the leaders are Socialists. They +have often been strongly anti-Socialist. Thus both the cynics and the +idealists are strenuous defenders of democracy, and regard the series +of enfranchisements of the people which began with the Conservative Act +of 1867 and culminated in Votes for Women, as a glorious page in the +history of the emancipation of mankind from tyranny and oppression, +instead of a reduction to absurdity of the notion that giving slaves +votes to defend their political rights and redress their wrongs is much +wiser than giving razors to infants for the same purpose. + +The naked truth is that democracy, or government by the people through +votes for everybody, has never been a complete reality; and to the +very limited extent to which it has been a reality it has not been +a success. The extravagant hopes which have been attached to every +extension of it have been disappointed. A hundred years ago the great +Liberal Reform Bill was advocated as if its passage into law would +produce the millennium. Only the other day the admission of women +to the electorate, for which women fought and died, was expected to +raise politics to a nobler plane and purify public life. But at the +election which followed, the women voted for hanging the Kaiser; +rallied hysterically round the worst male candidates; threw out all +the women candidates of tried ability, integrity, and devotion; and +elected just one titled lady of great wealth and singular demagogic +fascination, who, though she justified their choice subsequently, was +then a beginner. In short, the notion that the female voter is more +politically intelligent or gentler than the male voter proved as great +a delusion as the earlier delusions that the business man was any wiser +politically than the country gentleman or the manual worker than the +middle class man. If there were any disfranchised class left for our +democrats to pin their repeatedly disappointed hopes on, no doubt they +would still clamor for a fresh set of votes to jump the last ditch +into their Utopia; and the vogue of democracy might last a while yet. +Possibly there may be here and there lunatics looking forward to votes +for children, or for animals, to complete the democratic structure. But +the majority shows signs of having had enough of it. Discipline for +Everybody and Votes for Nobody is the fashion in Spain and Italy; and +for some years past in Russia the proletarian Government has taken no +more notice of an adverse vote than the British Raj of an Indian jury’s +verdict, except when it turns the majority out of doors in the manner +of Bismarck or Cromwell. + +These reactions of disgust with democracy are natural enough where +Capitalism, having first produced a huge majority of proletarians with +no training in management, responsibility, or the handling of big +money, nor any notion of the existence of such a thing as political +science, gives this majority the vote for the sake of gaining party +advantages by popular support. Even in ancient Greece, where our +proletarians were represented by slaves, and only what we call the +middle and upper classes voted, there was the same reaction, which is +hardly surprising in view of the fact that one of the famous feats +of Athenian democracy was to execute Socrates for using his superior +brains to expose its follies. + +Nevertheless, I advise you to stick to your vote as hard as you can, +because though its positive effects may do you more harm than good, +its negative effect may be of great value to you. If one candidate is +a Socratic person and the other a fool who attracts you by echoing +your own follies and giving them an air of patriotism and virtuous +indignation, you may vote for the fool, that being as near as you can +get to executing Socrates; and so far your vote is all to the bad. But +the fact that your vote, though only one among many thousands, may +conceivably turn the scale at an election, secures you a consideration +in Parliament which it would be mad and cowardly for you to relinquish +as long as inequality of income prevents you from being really +represented by the members of the Government. Therefore cling to it +tooth and nail, however unqualified you may be to make a wise use of it. + +The Labor Party is in a continual dilemma on this point. At the +election of 1918 the leader of the Labor Party, a steadfast supporter +of votes for women, knew quite well that he would be defeated in his +old constituency by the vote of the suburban ladies; and he was. +The Labor Party, confronted by a scheme for making Parliament more +representative of public opinion by securing due representation for +minorities (called Proportional Representation), finds itself forced to +oppose it lest it should break Parliament up into a host of squabbling +groups and make parliamentary government impossible. All reformers who +use democracy as a stepping stone to power find it a nuisance when +they get there. The more power the people are given the more urgent +becomes the need for some rational and well-informed superpower to +dominate them and disable their inveterate admiration of international +murder and national suicide. Voltaire said that there is one person +wiser than Mrs Anybody, and that is Mrs Everybody; but Voltaire had +not seen modern democracy at work: the democracy he admired in England +was a very exclusive oligarchy; and the mixture of theocracy and +hereditary autocracy that disgusted him in France was not a fair test +of aristocracy, or government by the best qualified. We now know that +though Mrs Everybody knows where the shoe pinches and must therefore +have a say in the matter, she cannot make the shoe, and cannot tell a +good shoemaker from a bad one by his output of hot air on a platform. +Government demands ability to govern: it is neither Mrs Everybody’s +business nor Mrs Anybody’s, but Mrs Somebody’s. Mrs Somebody will +never be elected unless she is protected from the competition of Mrs +Noodle and Mrs Bounder and Mrs Noisy Nobody and Mrs King-and-Country +and Mrs Class War and Mrs Hearth-and-Home and Mrs Bountiful and Mrs +Hands-off-the-Church and Mrs Please-I-want-everybody-to-love-me. If +democracy is not to ruin us we must at all costs find some trustworthy +method of testing the qualifications of candidates before we allow +them to seek election. When we have done that we may have great +trouble in persuading the right people to come forward. We may even +be driven to compel them; for those who fully understand how heavy +are the responsibilities of government and how exhausting its labor +are the least likely to shoulder them voluntarily. As Plato said, the +ideal candidate is the reluctant one. When we discover such a test you +will still have your electoral choice between several Mrs Somebodys, +which will make them all respect you; but you will not be taken in by +Mrs Noodle and Co. because they will not be eligible for election. +Meanwhile, Heaven help us! we must do the best we can. + + + + +84 + +PERORATION + + +And now a last word as to your own spiritual centre. All through this +book we have been thinking of the public, and of our two selves as +members of the public. This is our duty as citizens; but it may drive +us mad if we begin to think of public evils as millionfold evils. They +are nothing of the kind. What you yourself can suffer is the utmost +that can be suffered on earth. If you starve to death you experience +all the starvation that ever has been or ever can be. If ten thousand +other women starve to death with you, their suffering is not increased +by a single pang: their share in your fate does not make you ten +thousand times as hungry, nor prolong your suffering ten thousand +times. Therefore do not be oppressed by “the frightful sum of human +suffering”: there is no sum: two lean women are not twice as lean as +one nor two fat women twice as fat as one. Poverty and pain are not +cumulative: you must not let your spirit be crushed by the fancy that +it is. If you can stand the suffering of one person you can fortify +yourself with the reflection that the suffering of a million is no +worse: nobody has more than one stomach to fill nor one frame to be +stretched on the rack. Do not let your mind be disabled by excessive +sympathy. What the true Socialist revolts against is not the suffering +that is not cumulative, but the waste that is. A thousand healthy, +happy, honorable women are not each a thousand times as healthy, happy, +or honorable as one; but they can co-operate to increase the health, +happiness, and honor possible for each of them. At present nobody can +be healthy, happy, or honorable: our standards are so low that when +we call ourselves so we mean only that we are not sick nor crying nor +lying nor stealing (legally or illegally) oftener than we must agree to +put up with under our Capitalist Constitution. + +We have to confess it: Capitalist mankind in the lump is detestable. +Class hatred is not a mere matter of envy on the part of the poor and +contempt and dread on the part of the rich. Both rich and poor are +really hateful in themselves. For my part I hate the poor and look +forward eagerly to their extermination. I pity the rich a little, +but am equally bent on their extermination. The working classes, the +business classes, the professional classes, the propertied classes, +the ruling classes, are each more odious than the other: they have no +right to live: I should despair if I did not know that they will all +die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be +replaced by people like themselves. I do not want any human child to +be brought up as I was brought up, nor as any child I have known was +brought up. Do you? + +And yet I am not in the least a misanthrope. I am a person of normal +affections, as you probably are; but for that very reason I hate to +be surrounded, not by people whose interests are the same as my own, +whom I cannot injure without injuring myself, and who cannot injure +me without injuring themselves, but by people whose interest it is to +get as much out of me as they possibly can, and give me as little for +it as possible (if anything). If I were poor, my relatives, now that +I am old, would have to support me to keep me out of the workhouse, +which means that they would have a strong interest in my death. As I am +rich enough to leave some property, my children, if I had any, would +be looking forward impatiently to my funeral and the reading of my +will. The whole propertied class is waiting for dead men’s shoes all +the time. If I become ill and send for a doctor I know that if he does +not prolong my illness to the utmost, and send me to expensive nursing +homes to submit to still more expensive operations, he will be taking +bread out of his children’s mouths. My lawyer is bound by all his +affections to encourage me in litigation, and to make it as protracted +and costly as he can. Even my clergyman, partly State supported as +he is, dare not if I belong to the Church of England rebuke me for +oppressing the poor any more than he dare champion me against the +oppression of the rich if I were poor. The teacher in the school where +my neighbors’ children have their morals formed would find herself +in the gutter if she taught any child that to live on what is called +an independent income without working is to live the life of a thief +without the risks and enterprise that make the pirate and the burglar +seem heroic to boys. My tradesmen’s business is to overcharge me as +much as they can without running too great a risk of being undersold +by trade rivals. My landlord’s business is to screw out of me the +uttermost extractable farthing of my earnings for his permission to +occupy a place on earth. Were I unmarried I should be pursued by hordes +of women so desperately in need of a husband’s income and position that +their utmost efforts to marry me would be no evidence of their having +the smallest personal regard for me. I cannot afford the friendship of +people much richer than myself: those much poorer cannot afford mine. +Between those who do the daily work of my house, and are therefore +necessary partners in my work, and me there is a gulf of class which +is nothing but a gulf of unequal distribution of wealth. Life is made +lonely and difficult for me in a hundred unnecessary ways; and so few +people are clever and tactful and sensible and self-controlled enough +to pick their way through the world without giving or taking offence +that the first quality of capitalistic mankind is quarrelsomeness. Our +streets are fuller of feuds than the Highlands or the Arabian desert. +The social friction set up by inequality of income is intense: society +is like a machine designed to work smoothly with the oil of equality, +into the bearings of which some malignant demon keeps pouring the +sand of inequality. If it were not for the big pools of equality that +exist at different levels, the machine would not work at all. As it +is, the seizings-up, the smashings, the stoppages, the explosions, +never cease. They vary in magnitude from a railway worker crushed in +the shunting-yard to a world war in which millions of men with the +strongest natural reasons for saving each others’ lives destroy them +instead in the cruellest manner, and from a squabble over a penny in +a one-room tenement to a lawsuit lasting twenty years and reducing +all the parties to it to destitution. And to outface this miserable +condition we bleat once a year about peace on earth and good-will to +men: that is, among persons to whom we have distributed incomes ranging +from a starvation dole to several thousands a day, piously exhorting +the recipients to love oneanother. Have you any patience with it? I +have none. + +Now you may, for all I know, be a sharp, cynical sort of person; or you +may be a nice, mushy, amiable, goodnatured one. If the latter you will +tell me that people are not governed so much by money considerations as +I make out: that your doctor hates to see you ill and does his best to +cure you; that your solicitor keeps you out of litigation when you lose +your temper and want to rush into it; that your clergyman calls himself +a Christian Socialist and leads all the popular agitations against the +oppression of the rich by the poor; that your children were heartbroken +when their father died and that you never had a cross word with him +about his property or yours; that your servants have been with you for +forty years and have brought you up from your childhood more devotedly +and affectionately than your own parents, and have remained part of +the family when your children flew away from the nest to new nests +of their own; that your tradesmen have never cheated you, and have +helped you over hard times by giving you long and forbearing credit: +in short, that in spite of all I may say, this Capitalist world is +full of kindliness and love and good-fellowship and genuine religion. +Dr Johnson, who described his life as one of wretchedness; Anatole +France, who said he had never known a moment’s happiness; Dean Swift, +who saw in himself and his fellowmen Yahoos far inferior to horses; +and Shakespear, to whom a man in authority was an angry ape, are known +to have been admired, loved, petted, entertained, even idolized, +throughout lives of honorable and congenial activity such as fall +to the lot of hardly one man in a billion; yet the obscure billions +manage to get on without unbearable discontent. William Morris, whose +abhorrence of Capitalism was far deeper than that of persons of only +ordinary mental capacity and sensibility, said, when he was told that +he was mortally ill, “Well, I cannot complain: I have had a good time”. + +To all this consolation I have been able in this book to add that +Capitalism, though it richly deserves the very worst that Karl Marx +or even John Ruskin said of it and a good deal more that they never +thought of, was yet, in its origin, thoroughly well intentioned. It was +indeed much better intentioned than early Christianity, which treated +this world as a place of punishment for original sin, of which the +end was fortunately at hand. Turgot and Adam Smith were beyond all +comparison more sincere guides to earthly prosperity than St Paul. If +they could have foreseen the history of the practical application of +their principles in the nineteenth century in England they would have +recoiled in horror, just as Karl Marx would have recoiled if he had +been foreshewn what happened in Russia from 1917 to 1921 through the +action of able and devoted men who made his writings their Bible. Good +people are the very devil sometimes, because, when their good-will +hits on a wrong way, they go much further along it and are much more +ruthless than bad people; but there is always hope in the fact that +they mean well, and that their bad deeds are their mistakes and not +their successes; whereas the evils done by bad people are not mistakes +but triumphs of wickedness. And since all moral triumphs, like +mechanical triumphs, are reached by trial and error, we can despair +of Democracy and despair of Capitalism without despairing of human +nature: indeed if we did not despair of them as we know them we should +prove ourselves so worthless that there would be nothing left for the +world but to wait for the creation of a new race of beings capable of +succeeding where we have failed. + +Nevertheless I must warn my amiable optimist and meliorist readers not +only that all the virtues that comfort them are operating in spite of +Capitalism and not as part of it, but that they are baffled by it in +ways that are hidden from people who have not examined the situation +with a good deal of technical knowledge and some subtlety. Take your +honest and kindly doctor, and your guardian angel solicitor. I quite +admit that there are plenty of them: the doctor who is a mercenary +scoundrel and the lawyer who is a mischievous and heartless rascal +is as exceptional as any other sort of criminal: I myself have never +chanced to come across one, and most likely you have not either. But +I have come across honest doctors whose treatment has been fatal, and +honest lawyers whose advice has been disastrous. So have you, perhaps. + +You know the very true saying that where there is a will there is a +way. Unfortunately the good will does not necessarily find the right +way. There are always dozens of ways, bad, good, and indifferent. +You must know some bad women who are doing the right thing from bad +motives side by side with good women who are doing the wrong thing from +the best motives in the world. For instance, the number of children, +especially first children, who are guarded and swaddled and drugged and +doctored to death by the solicitude of their ignorantly affectionate +mothers, must be greater than that of the children who die of maternal +dislike and neglect. When silly people (writers, I regret to say, some +of them) tell you that a loving heart is enough, remind them that fools +are more dangerous than rogues, and that women with loving hearts are +often pitiable fools. The finding of the right way is not sentimental +work: it is scientific work, requiring observation, reasoning, and +intellectual conscientiousness. + +It is on this point of intellectual conscientiousness that we all break +down under pecuniary temptation. We cannot help it, because we are so +constituted that we always believe finally what we wish to believe. The +moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments +for it, and become blind to the arguments against it. The moment we +want to disbelieve anything we have previously believed, we suddenly +discover not only that there is a mass of evidence against it, but that +this evidence was staring us in the face all the time. If you read the +account of the creation of the world in the book of Genesis with the +eye of faith you will not perceive a single contradiction in it. If +you read it with the eye of hostile critical science you will see that +it consists of two successive accounts, so different that they cannot +both be true. In modern books you will be equally baffled by your +bias. If you love animals and have a horror of injustice and cruelty, +you will read the books of wonderful discoveries and cures made by +vivisectors with a sickened detestation of their callous cruelty, and +with amazement that anyone could be taken in by such bad reasoning +about lies which have been reduced to absurdity by force of flat fact +every few years, only to be replaced by a fresh crop. If, however, you +have only a dread of disease for yourself or your family, and feel +that in comparison to relief from this terror the sufferings of a few +dogs and guinea-pigs are not worth bothering about, you will find in +the same books such authentic and convincing miracles, such marvellous +cures for all diseases, such gospels of hope, monuments of learning, +and infallible revelations of the deepest truths of Science, that your +indignation at the derisive scepticism of the humanitarians may develop +into an enmity (heartily reciprocated) that may end in persecutions +and wars of science like the persecutions and wars of religion that +followed the Reformation, and were not new then. + +But, you will ask, what have Socialism and Capitalism to do with the +fact that belief is mostly bias. It is very simple. If by inequality +of income you give your doctors, your lawyers, your clergymen, your +landlords, or your rulers an overwhelming economic interest in any +sort of belief or practice, they will immediately begin to see all +the evidence in favor of that sort of belief and practice, and +become blind to all the evidence against it. Every doctrine that +will enrich doctors, lawyers, landlords, clergymen, and rulers will +be embraced by them eagerly and hopefully; and every doctrine that +threatens to impoverish them will be mercilessly criticized and +rejected. There will inevitably spring up a body of biassed teaching +and practice in medicine, law, religion, and government that will +become established and standardized as scientifically, legally, +religiously, constitutionally, and morally sound, taught as such to +all young persons entering these professions, stamping those who dare +dissent as outcast quacks, heretics, sedition mongers, and traitors. +Your doctor may be the honestest, kindliest doctor on earth; your +solicitor may be a second father or mother to you; your clergyman may +be a saint; your member of Parliament another Moses or Solon. They +may be heroically willing to put your health, your prosperity, your +salvation, and your protection from injustice before their interest +in getting a few extra pounds out of you; but how far will that help +you if the theory and practice of their profession, imposed on them as +a condition of being allowed to pursue it, has been corrupted at the +root by pecuniary interest? They can proceed only as the hospitals and +medical schools teach them and order them to proceed, as the courts +proceed, as the Church proceeds, as Parliament proceeds: that is their +orthodoxy; and if the desire to make money and obtain privileges has +been operating all the time in building up that orthodoxy, their +best intentions and endeavors may result in leaving you with your +health ruined, your pocket empty, your soul damned, and your liberties +abrogated by your best friends in the name of science, law, religion, +and the British constitution. Ostensibly you are served and protected +by learned professions and political authorities whose duty it is +to save life, minimize suffering, keep the public health as tested +by vital statistics at the highest attainable pitch, instruct you +as to your legal obligations and see that your legal rights are not +infringed, give you spiritual help and disinterested guidance when your +conscience is troubled, and make and administer, without regard to +persons or classes, the laws that protect you and regulate your life. +But the moment you have direct personal occasion for these services you +discover that they are all controlled by Trade Unions in disguise, and +that the high personal honor and kindliness of their individual members +is subject to the morality of Trade Unionism, so that their loyalty +to their union, which is essentially a defensive conspiracy against +the public, comes first, and their loyalty to you as patient, client, +employer, parishioner, customer or citizen, next. The only way in which +you can set their natural virtues free from this omnipresent trade +union and governing class corruption and tyranny is to secure for them +all equal incomes which none of them can increase without increasing +the income of everybody else to exactly the same amount; so that the +more efficiently and economically they do their work the lighter their +labor will be and the higher their credit. + +Under such conditions you would find human nature good enough for all +your reasonable purposes; and when you took up such books as Gulliver’s +Travels or Candide which under Capitalism are unanswerable indictments +of mankind as the wickedest of all known species, you would see in +them only terribly vivid clinical lectures on extinct moral diseases +which were formerly produced by inequality as smallpox and typhus +were produced by dirt. Such books are never written until mankind is +horribly corrupted, not by original sin but by inequality of income. + +Then the coveted distinction of lady and gentleman, instead of being +the detestable parasitic pretension it is at present, meaning persons +who never condescend to do anything for themselves that they can +possibly put on others without rendering them equivalent service, and +who actually make their religion centre on the infamy of loading the +guilt and punishment of all their sins on an innocent victim (what +real lady would do so base a thing?), will at last take on a simple +and noble meaning, and be brought within the reach of every ablebodied +person. For then the base woman will be she who takes from her country +more than she gives to it; the common person will be she who does +no more than replace what she takes; and the lady will be she who, +generously overearning her income, leaves the nation in her debt and +the world a better world than she found it. + +By such ladies and their sons can the human race be saved, and not +otherwise. + + AYOT ST LAWRENCE, + _16th March 1927_. + + + + +APPENDIX + +INSTEAD OF A BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +This book is so long that I can hardly think that any woman will +want to read much more about Socialism and Capitalism for some time. +Besides, a bibliography is supposed to be an acknowledgment by the +author of the books from which his own book was compiled. Now this book +is not a compilation: it is all out of my own head. It was started +by a lady asking me to write her a letter explaining Socialism. I +thought of referring her to the hundreds of books which have been +written on the subject; but the difficulty was that they were nearly +all written in an academic jargon which, though easy and agreeable to +students of economics, politics, philosophy, and sociology generally, +is unbearably dry, meaning unreadable, to women not so specialized. And +then, all these books are addressed to men. You might read a score of +them without ever discovering that such a creature as a woman had ever +existed. In fairness let me add that you might read a good many of them +without discovering that such a thing as a man ever existed. So I had +to do it all over again in my own way and yours. And though there were +piles of books about Socialism, and an enormous book about Capitalism +by Karl Marx, not one of them answered the simple question, “What is +Socialism?” The other simple question, “What is Capital?” was smothered +in a mass of hopelessly wrong answers, the right one having been hit +on (as far as my reading goes) only once, and that was by the British +economist Stanley Jevons when he remarked casually that capital is +spare money. I made a note of that. + +However, as I know that women who frequent University Extension +lectures will not be satisfied until they have choked their brains by +reading a multitude of books on the subject; and as the history of +Socialist thought is instructive, I will say just a word or two in the +customary pedantic manner about the literary milestones on the road +from Capitalism to Socialism. + +The theory of Capitalism was not finally worked out until early in +the nineteenth century by Ricardo, a Jewish stockbroker. As he had a +curious trick of saying the opposite of what he meant whilst contriving +somehow to make his meaning clear, his demonstration was elegantly and +accurately paraphrased by a first rate literary artist and opium eater, +Thomas De Quincey, who could write readably and fascinatingly about +anything. + +The theory was that if private property in land and capital, and +sanctity of free contract between individuals, were enforced as +fundamental constitutional principles, the proprietors would provide +employment for the rest of the community on terms sufficient to +furnish them with at least a bare subsistence in return for continuous +industry, whilst themselves becoming rich to such excess that the +investment of their superfluous income as capital would cost them no +privation. No attempt was made to disguise the fact that the resultant +disparity between the poverty of the proletarian masses and the riches +of the proprietors would produce popular discontent, or that as wages +fell and rents rose with the increase of population, the contrast +between laborious poverty and idle luxury would provide sensational +topics for Radical agitators. Austin’s Lectures on Jurisprudence and +Macaulay’s forecasts of the future of America prove that the more +clear-headed converts of the theory of Capitalism had no millennial +illusions. + +But they could see no practicable alternative. The Socialist +alternative of State organization of industry was inconceivable, +because, as industry had not yet finished the long struggle by which +it extricated itself from the obsolete restrictions and oppressions of +medieval and feudal society, State interference, outside simple police +work, still seemed a tyranny to be broken, not a vital activity to be +extended. Thus the new Capitalist economic policy was put forward in +opposition, not to Socialism, but to Feudalism or Paternal Oligarchy. +It was dogmatically called Political Economy absolute, complete, and +inevitable; and the workers were told that they could no more escape or +modify its operation than change the orbits of the planets. + +In 1840 a French proletarian, Proudhon, published an essay with the +startling title “What is Property? Theft”. In it he demonstrated that +a _rentier_, or person living, as we now put it, by owning instead of +by working, inflicts on society precisely the same injury as a thief. +Proudhon was a poor Frenchman; but a generation later John Ruskin, +a rich Englishman of the most conservative education and culture, +declared that whoever was not a worker was either a beggar or a robber, +and published accounts of his personal activities and expenditure +to prove that he had given good value for his rents and dividends. +A generation later again Cecil Rhodes, an ultra-imperialist, made a +famous will bequeathing his large fortune for public purposes, and +attaching the condition that no idler should ever benefit by it. It +may be said that from the moment when Capitalism established itself +as a reasoned-out system to be taught at the universities as standard +political economy, it began to lose its moral plausibility, and, in +spite of its dazzling mechanical triumphs and financial miracles, +steadily progressed from inspiring the sanguine optimism of Macaulay +and his contemporaries to provoking a sentiment which became more and +more like abhorrence among the more thoughtful even of the capitalists +themselves. + +All such moral revolutions have their literary prophets and theorists; +and among them the first place was taken by Karl Marx, in the second +half of the nineteenth century, with his history of Capital, an +overwhelming exposure of the horrors of the industrial revolution +and the condition to which it had reduced the proletariat. Marx’s +contribution to the abstract economic theory of value, by which +he set much store, was a blunder which was presently corrected and +superseded by the theory of Jevons; but as Marx’s category of “surplus +value” (Mehrwerth), meaning rent, interest, and profits, represented +solid facts, his blunder in no way invalidated his indictment of +the capitalist system, nor his historical generalization as to the +evolution of society on economic lines. His so-called Historic +Materialism is easily vulnerable to criticism as a law of nature; but +his postulate that human society does in fact evolve on its belly, +as an army marches, and that its belly biases its brains, is a safe +working one. Buckle’s much less read History of Civilization, also a +work of the mind changing sort, has the same thesis but a different +moral: to wit, that progress depends on the critical people who do not +believe everything they are told: that is, on scepticism. + +Even before Karl Marx the Capitalist economists had lost their +confidence, and its ordinary exponents become disingenuously evasive. +Not so the bigger men. John Stuart Mill began as a Ricardian and ended +as an avowed Socialist. Cairnes still saw no practicable alternative to +Capitalism; but his contempt for the “drones in the hive” who live by +owning was as thorough and outspoken as Ruskin’s. Their latest academic +successor, Mr Maynard Keynes, dismisses Laisser-faire contemptuously as +an exploded fallacy. + +After Cairnes a school of British Socialist economists arose, notably +Sidney and Beatrice Webb of the Fabian Society, who substituted the +term Political Science for Political Economy. They gave historical +consciousness to the proletarian movement by writing its history +with the intimate knowledge and biographical vivacity needed to give +substance to the abstract proletariat described by Marx. The evolution +of Trade Unionism, Co-operation, and proletarian politics (Industrial +Democracy) was reasoned out and documented by them. Their histories +of English local government and of the Poor Law cover a huge part +of the general field of British constitutional and administrative +activity, past and present. They cured Fabianism of the romantic +amateurishness which had made the older Socialist agitations negligible +and ridiculous, and contributed most of the Fabian Society’s practical +proposals for the solution of pressing problems. They shattered the +old Capitalist theory of the impotence of the State for anything but +mischief in industry, and demonstrated not only that communal and +collective enterprise has already attained a development undreamt of by +Ricardo and his contemporaries, but that Capitalism itself is dependent +for its existence on State guidance, and has evolved collective +forms of its own which have taken it far beyond the control of the +individual private investor, and left it ripe for transfer to national +or municipal ownership. Their volume on the decay of Capitalism has +completed Marx’s work of driving Capitalism from its old pretension to +be normal, inevitable, and in the long run always beneficial in modern +society, to a position comparable to that of an army digging itself +into its last ditch after a long series of surrenders and retreats. +They estimate roughly that in its hundred years of supremacy Capitalism +justified its existence, _faute de mieux_, for the first fifty years, +and for the last fifty has been collapsing more and more on its crazy +foundation. + +Beatrice Webb’s curious mixture of spiritual and technical +autobiography, entitled My Apprenticeship, describes how an intelligent +girl-capitalist, with a sensitive social conscience and a will of her +own, critically impervious to mere persuasion, and impressible by +first hand evidence and personal experience only, was led to Socialism +by stubbornly investigating the facts of Capitalist civilization for +herself. The Intelligent Woman with a turn for investigation or an +interest in character study, or both, should read it. + +Between Karl Marx and the Webbs came Henry George with his Progress and +Poverty, which converted many to Land Nationalization. It was the work +of a man who had seen that the conversion of an American village to a +city of millionaires was also the conversion of a place where people +could live and let live in tolerable comfort to an inferno of seething +poverty and misery. Tolstoy was one of his notable converts. George’s +omission to consider what the State should do with the national rent +after it had taken it into the public treasury stopped him on the +threshold of Socialism; but most of the young men whom he had led up +to it went through (like myself) into the Fabian Society and other +Socialist bodies. Progress and Poverty is still Ricardian in theory: +indeed it is on its abstract side a repetition of De Quincey’s Logic +of Political Economy; but whereas De Quincey, as a true-blue British +Tory of a century ago, accepted the Capitalist unequal distribution of +income, and the consequent division of society into rich gentry and +poor proletarians, as a most natural and desirable arrangement, George, +as an equally true-blue American republican, was revolted by it. + +After Progress and Poverty the next milestone is Fabian Essays, +edited by myself, in which Sidney Webb first entered the field as a +definitely Socialist writer with Graham Wallas, whose later treatises +on constitutional problems are important, and Sydney Olivier (Lord +Olivier) whose studies of the phenomenon of the “poor white” in Africa +and America, facing the competition of the black proletariats created +by negro slavery, should be read by Colonial Ministers. In Fabian +Essays Socialism is presented for the first time as a completely +constitutional political movement, which the most respectable and +least revolutionary citizen can join as irreproachably as he might +join the nearest Conservative club. Marx is not mentioned; and his +peculiar theory of value is entirely ignored, the economic theories +relied on being Jevons’ theory of value and Ricardo’s theory of the +rent of land, the latter being developed so as to apply to industrial +capital and interests as well. In short, Socialism appears in Fabian +Essays purged of all its unorthodox views and insurrectionary Liberal +associations. This is what distinguished the volume at that time +from such works as the England For All of Henry Mayers Hyndman, the +founder of the Social-Democratic Federation, who, until 1918, when +the Russian Marxists outraged his British patriotism by the treaty +of Brest Litovsk, clung to Marx’s value theory, and to the Marxian +traditions of the barricade Liberalism of 1848, with a strong dash of +the freethinking gentlemanly cosmopolitanism of the advanced republican +_littérateurs_ of the middle of the nineteenth century. + +After Fabian Essays treatises on Socialism followed, first singly, then +in dozens, then in scores, and now in such profusion that I never read +them unless I know the writers personally, nor always, I confess, even +then. + +If you read Sociology, not for information but for entertainment (small +blame to you!), you will find that the nineteenth-century poets and +prophets who denounced the wickedness of our Capitalism exactly as +the Hebrew prophets denounced the Capitalism of their time, are much +more exciting to read than the economists and writers on political +science who worked out the economic theory and political requirements +of Socialism. Carlyle’s Past and Present and Shooting Niagara, +Ruskin’s Ethics of the Dust and Fors Clavigera, William Morris’s News +from Nowhere (the best of all the Utopias), Dickens’s Hard Times and +Little Dorrit, are notable examples: Ruskin in particular leaving +all the professed Socialists, even Karl Marx, miles behind in force +of invective. Lenin’s criticisms of modern society seem like the +platitudes of a rural dean in comparison. Lenin wisely reserved his +most blighting invectives for his own mistakes. + +But I doubt whether nineteenth-century writers can be as entertaining +to you as they are to me, who spent the first forty-four years of my +life in that benighted period. If you would appreciate the enormous +change from nineteenth-century self-satisfaction to twentieth-century +self-criticism you can read The Pickwick Papers (jolly early Dickens) +and then read Our Mutual Friend (disillusioned mature Dickens), +after which you can try Dickens’s successor H. G. Wells, who, never +having had any illusions about the nineteenth century, is utterly +impatient of its blunderings, and full of the possibilities of social +reconstruction. When you have studied nineteenth-century county +gentility in the novels of Anthony Trollope and Thackeray for the sake +of understanding your more behind-hand friends, you must study it +up-to-date in the novels of John Galsworthy. To realize how ignorant +even so great an observer as Dickens could be of English life outside +London and the main coaching routes you can compare his attempt to +describe the Potteries in Hard Times with Arnold Bennett’s native +pictures of the Five Towns; but to appreciate his much more serious and +complete ignorance of working-class history and organization in his own +day you would have to turn from fiction to the Webbs’ History of Trade +Unionism. + +The earlier nineteenth-century literature, for all its invective, +satire, derision and caricature, made amiable by its generous +indignation, was not a literature of revolt. It was pre-Marxian. +Post-Marxian literature, even in its most goodhumored pages by men who +never read Marx, is revolutionary: it does not contemplate the survival +of the present order, which Thackeray, for instance, in his bitterest +moods seems never to have doubted. + +For women the division is made by Marx’s Norwegian contemporary Ibsen +rather than by Marx. Ibsen’s women are all in revolt against Capitalist +morality; and the clever ladies who have since filled our bookshelves +with more or less autobiographical descriptions of female frustration +and slavery are all post-Ibsen. The modern literature of male +frustration, much less copious, is post-Strindberg. In neither branch +are there any happy endings. They have the Capitalist horror without +the Socialist hope. + +The post-Marxian, post-Ibsen psychology gave way in 1914-18 to the +post-war psychology. It is very curious; but it is too young, and I +too old, for more than this bare mention of its existence and its +literature. + +Finally I may mention some writings of my own, mostly in the form of +prefaces to my published plays. One of the oddities of English literary +tradition is that plays should be printed with prefaces which have +nothing to do with them, and are really essays, or manifestoes, or +pamphlets, with the plays as a bait to catch readers. I have exploited +this tradition very freely, puzzling many good people who thought the +prefaces must be part of the plays. In this guise I contended that +poverty should be neither pitied as an inevitable misfortune, nor +tolerated as a just retribution for misconduct, but resolutely stamped +out and prevented from recurring as a disease fatal to human society. +I also made it quite clear that Socialism means equality of income +or nothing, and that under Socialism you would not be allowed to be +poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed +whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not +character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might +possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted +to live you would have to live well. Also you would not be allowed to +have half a crown an hour when other women had only two shillings, or +to be content with two shillings when they had half a crown. As far as +I know I was the first Socialist writer to whom it occurred to state +this explicitly as a necessary postulate of permanent civilization; but +as nothing that is true is ever new I daresay it had been said again +and again before I was born. + +Two Fabian booklets of mine entitled Socialism and Superior Brains and +The Common Sense of Municipal Trading are still probably worth reading, +as they are written from personal experience of both. + + + + +INDEX + +BY BEATRICE WHITE, M.A. + + + Abatement, smoke, 145 + + Aberdeen, 262 + + Abernethy, John, 203 + + Ability, managerial, 67, 181; + to maintain discipline, 334, 335; + necessary to nationalize, 341 + + Abortion, 88; + surgical, 410 + + Abraham, 410 + + Access to rare books and pictures, 388 + + Accountants, 173, 176, 179, 225, 328 + + Acrobats, 205 + + Actors, 23, 169, 205, 419 + + Actresses, 22; + popular, 331 + + Acts of Parliament, 254, 299, 309, 322, 356, 371, 384, 412 + + Admiralty, the, 32, 274, 276 + + Adoption, compulsory, 413 + + Adulterators, 203 + + Adults, dysgenic, 436 + + Adventurers, 310 + + Advertisements, 135, 203, 310 + + Aerodromes, 402 + + Aeroplane lines, the, 388 + + Aeroplane pilots, 397 + + Aeroplanes, 313, 345, 402 + + Affiliation allowances, 200 + + Afforestation, 281 + + Africa, 52, 143, 150, 152, 154, 157, 409 + + African markets, 154 + + African “medicine”, 367 + + Agents, 166 + + Agitators, Socialistic, 305 + + Agnostics, 436, 438 + + Agricultural harvests, 240 + + Agricultural laborers, 204 + + Air services, 312, 313 + + Airships, 402 + + Albert Hall, the, 333 + + Alcohol, 395, 396, 397, 398 + + Alexander the Great, 54 + + Alfonso, King, 318, 371, 379 + + Alfred, King, 40, 309 + + Algeria, 152 + + Allah, 367 + + Alliances, 153 + + Allotment holders, 340 + + Almsgiving, 95 + + Ambassadors, 75 + + Ambulance porters, 52 + + America, 8, 57, 98, 120, 124, 142, 144, 154, 176, 188, 193, 194, 225, + 275, 293, 294, 296, 306, 307, 314, 370, 374, 401, 409, 430, + 431, 444, 466 + + America, United States of, 141, 369, 381, 396, 450; + anti-British feeling in, 158-159 + + American dollars, 256; + employers and financiers, methods of, 306, 307; + hotheads, 396; + plantations, 215; + presidents, 328, 381; + State Legislatures, 436; + statistics, 397; + villages, 217 + + Americans, the, 410 + + Amsterdam, 259 + + Amusements, 165 + + Ananias and Sapphira, 12 + + Anarchism, 445, 447 + + Anarchists, 94, 203, 220, 444, 446 + + Anarchy, 29-30, 381 + + Andes, the, 235 + + Anglican Churches, the, 404 + + Anglo-Catholics, 219, 346, 360 + + Anne, Queen, 139 + + Anti-clericalism, 439 + + Anti-clericals, 345 + + Anti-Russian scare, the 1924, 346 + + Anti-Socialists, 346 + + Apostles, the, 12, 13, 14, 19 + + Apostles’ creed, the, 308, 426 + + Apothecaries, 419 + + _Apprentice, The Sorcerer’s_, 157-61 + + Appropriation Act, the, 113 + + Arabian desert, the, 457 + + Arabs, the, 87 + + Archbishop Laud, 374, 430, 431, 439 + + Archbishops, 28, 93, 340, 436, 439 + + Architects, 169 + + Arcos, raid on, 223 + + Aristocracy, the landed, 214 + + Aristotle, 94 + + Armada, the, 321 + + Armaments, 144; + the race of, 154 + + Armistice, the, 156 + + Army, the, 31, 289 + + Arnold, Matthew, 98 + + Arnold, Whately, 272 + + Art, 30, 31, 39, 48, 157 + + Art of living, the, 60 + + Articles, the Thirty-nine, 425, 441, 445 + + Artificial happiness, 395, 398 + + Artificial overpopulation, 357, 409 + + Artists, 78, 81, 386 + + Asia, 89, 152; + British Empire in, 431 + + Asquith, Herbert Henry, 218 + + Assaults in school, 416 + + Assistants, shop, 78, 145, 163, 177, 334, 397, 446 + + Associated work, 73 + + Astor property, the, 8 + + Astronomer Royal, the, 3, 17 + + Astronomers, 16, 169, 327, 341 + + Astronomy, Copernican, 361 + + Asylums, lunatic, 33 + + Athanasian creed, the, 426 + + Atheists, 215, 345, 435 + + Athenian democracy, 453 + + Athens, 297 + + Athletes, champion, 398, 429 + + Atlantic, the, 106, 312 + + Attendants, picture gallery, 79 + + Augury, ancient, 367 + + Augustine, Saint, 92, 93, 441 + + Austin’s Lectures on Jurisprudence, 466 + + Australasia, 409 + + Australia, 89, 193, 194, 361; + uncles in, 67 + + Australians, the, 410 + + Austria, 263 + + Austrian Government, the, 255 + + Authority, 37-8; + and subordination, 337 + + Authors, 169, 172, 225 + + Averaging. _See_ Nationalization + + + Babies, 6, 384, 433; + superfluous, 410 + + Babylon, 372 + + Bachelors, 349 + + Baghdad, 314 + + Bagmen, 343 + + Baked-potato men, 184 + + Bakers, 9, 52, 266 + + Baldwin, Stanley, 218, 222 + + Balfour, Arthur James, 218 + + Bank of England, 167, 231, 244, 248, 249, 250, 259, 261, 292 + + Bank Holiday, 77, 81 + + Bank Holiday Acts, 322 + + Bank managers, 55, 268 + + Bank rate, the, 244, 249, 295 + + Bank transactions, 245 + + Banker-General, 273 + + Bankers, 131, 178, 181, 266, 268, 297 + + Banking, 243-51; + nationalization of, 35, 140, 181, 264-8, 386 + + Banks, 278; + Scottish and Irish, 259; + national and municipal, 140, 266 + + Baptism, 4, 424, 433 + + Barbers, 419 + + Bargemen, 21 + + Barges, 401 + + Barristers, _See_ Lawyers + + Baronets, surgical, 332 + + Bass Rock ideal, the, 412 + + Bastille, the, 413 + + Battlefields, 87, 292 + + Battleships, 349 + + Beachcombers, 151 + + Beaconsfield, Earl of, 217 + + Becket, Thomas à, 430 + + Bedford, endowed schools of, 300 + + Bees, 86, 90 + + Beethoven, 414 + + Behaviour, 172, 173 + + Belgium, 153 + + Belief, differences of, 366, 367; + mostly bias, 460, 461 + + Bell, answering the, 78 + + Bench, the, 339 + + Bennett, Arnold, 469 + + Betterton, 419 + + Biarritz, 280 + + Bible, the, 189, 203, 233, 361, 374, 403, 424, 432, 459; + astronomy and biology of, 361; + of the working classes, 441 + + Bibles, 50, 143 + + Big business, 225; + capitalist, 308 + + Billiard markers, 397 + + Birmingham, 146, 214, 266, 271, 336; + municipal bank of, 266 + + Birth control, _See_ Contraception + + Bishops, 434 + + Bismarck, 54, 165, 380, 381, 453 + + Blacklegs, 207 + + Blacksmiths, 27, 138; + village, 167, 386 + + Bloated aristocrats, 444 + + Blocks, parliamentary, 351 + + Blockmakers, parliamentary, 351 + + Boards, 353 + + Boatswains, 335 + + Boer ideal, the, 412 + + Bogey Bolshevism, 14 + + Bogies, 95 + + Bolsheviks, 65, 94, 110, 208, 270, 343, 368, 374, 444; + Communist, 375 + + Bolshevism, 113 + + Bombay Ginning Mills, 191 + + Bombing aeroplanes, 380 + + Bonar Law, Mr, 218 + + Bond Street, 278, 280, 399, 429 + + Book of Common Prayer, 406 + + Bookkeepers, 173, 225, 328, 397 + + Bookkeeping, 184 + + Bookmakers, 242 + + Bootle, 280 + + Bootlegging, 142 + + Bootmakers, 357 + + Boots, broken, 50 + + Borneo, 313 + + Borough Councils, 351 + + Borrovians, 220 + + Borrow, George, 219 + + Borrowing and hiring, 231, 232 + + Borrowing from and taxing capitalists, 290 + + Bound feet, 427 + + Bounderby, 303 + + Bountiful ladies, 65 + + Bourgeois, the, 369, 444 + + Bournemouth, 146, 278, 280, 372 + + Bourneville, 307, 375 + + Bourrienne, memoirs of, 328 + + Bourses, Continental, 243 + + Boy Scouts, 413 + + Bradlaugh, Charles, 435 + + Brahma, 367 + + Brains, proper social use of, 331 + + Bread, communization of, 15 + + Bread and circuses, 96 + + Breadwinning, 164, 197 + + Breaking a bank, 246 + + Breakwaters, 135 + + Bremerhaven, 154 + + Brewers, 177 + + Briand, Aristide, 351 + + Bricklayers, 167, 205, 208, 224, 356 + + Brickmakers, 23 + + Bridges, 391 + + Brigadiers, 357 + + Brigham Young, 380, 410, 411; + a Mormon Moses, 431 + + Bright, John, 190 + + Brighton, 134 + + Bristol, 143, 272 + + Britain, 311, 379, 431 + + British army and navy, 313; + brains, 311; + Commonwealth, 313; + courage, 311; + Empire, 253, 259, 313, 367; + in Asia, 431; + flag, 313; + genius, 311; + human nature, 330; + husbands, 406; + people, 313; + proletariat, 359; + proletarian voters, 369; + Museum, 16; + anti-Socialist governments, 287; + employers, 306; + Government, 255, 306; + race, 310; + Raj, 453; + religions, variety and incompatibility of, 425; + taxpayers, 313; + workman, 219; + turf, 236; + Socialists, 141; + Isles, 141; + Trade Unionists, 306 + + Brobdingnag, the King of, 155 + + Brummagem buttons, 214 + + Brunswick, Duke of, 369 + + Buccaneers, capitalist, 417 + + Bucket shops, 242 + + Buckingham Palace, 37, 118, 426 + + Buckle’s History of Civilization, 467 + + Budget, the, 285; + annual debates on, 286 + + Budgets, 384 + + Building societies, 129; + trades, 205 + + Bullion, 259 + + Bulls and bears, 241 + + Bumble, Mr, 413 + + Bunyan, John, 5, 298, 329; + his Simple, Sloth, and Presumption, 318 + + Bureaucracy. _See_ Civil Service Burglars, 457 + + Bus conductors, 251 + + Business, wholesale, 386; + private, 387, 388 + + Business ability, 131 + + Business man, the practical, 226, 249 + + Business men, 24, 130, 170, 171, 248 + + Business principles, 208 + + Butchers, 422 + + Butler, Samuel, 140 + + Byron, Lord, 344 + + + Cabinet, the, 353, 354 + + Cabinet Ministers, 216, 348, 353 + + Cabinets, British, 348 + + Cablegrams, 136 + + Ca’canny, 208, 211 + + Cadbury, Mr, 307 + + Cæsar, Julius, 54, 380 + + Cæsars, 348 + + Cairnes, John Elliot, 467 + + Calculus, the, 422, 428 + + Calcutta Sweep, the, 67 + + Calvin, John, 431 + + Cambridge University, 169, 418, 429 + + Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 218 + + Canada, 89 + + Canadians, French, 159 + + Canals, 401 + + Candidates, the No-Compensation, 271 + + Candide, 462 + + Canossa, 430, 442 + + Canterbury, 430 + + Capel Court, 243 + + Capital, 33, 115, 127-31, 133; + export of, 140-44, 150; + definition of, 100; + driven abroad, 34-5; + homeless and at home everywhere, 140; + party of, 218; + levy, 227, 229, 230; + investing and “realizing”, 228; + taxation of, 277, 294; + domestic, 225-31 + + Capitalism, 10, 100-104, 185, 233, 368, 378, 459; + adventurous and experimental, 312; + diehard, 447; + Liberal constitutional, 447; + limitations of, 133-7; + mammonist morality of, 374; + in perpetual motion, 308-14; + on paper, 310; + a principle of, 331; + provides selfish motives for doing good, 300; + secular, 443; + ruthless, 314; + uncontrollable, 317; + well-established method of, 300; + runaway car of, 314-19 + + Capitalist and genius, the, 311 + + Capitalist morality, 200, 291, 359, 360; + law, 325; + system, one of worst vices of, 337; + papers, 116, 342; + Government and Opposition, 344; + crusade, 369; + exploitations of the taxpayers, 388, 389; + oligarchy, 431; + mankind detestable, 456; + and Socialist Governments, difference between, 390 + + Capitalists, 444; + dictatorship of, 376 + + Captains, navy, 70; + sea, 422 + + Cardinals, 436 + + Careerists, 95 + + Careers open to women, 174 + + Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 93; + his Past and Present, 424, 469; + Sartor Resartus, 425; + Shooting Niagara, 469 + + Carnegie, Andrew, 37, 332 + + Carnegie charities, 160 + + Carpenters, 23, 69, 205, 356, 399; + village, 167 + + Carriage of mails oversea, 388 + + Carriers, village, 387, 388, 389 + + C.O.D. parcel post, 271, 272 + + Casual labor, 118-20 + + Casual people, 73 + + Cathedrals, the, 438 + + Catholic Church, the, 441 + + Catholic theoracy, 442 + + Catholicism, 185 + + Catholics, 68, 93, 445 + + Celibacy, 407 + + Chambermaids, 149 + + Chancellor of the Exchequer, 113, 121, 227, 276, 281, + 285, 287, 290, 295 + + Chanceries, 353 + + Change, continuous, 2; + constructive, must be parliamentary, 380-86 + + Changes, social, 39 + + Chaplains, 185 + + Charabancs, 164, 165, 312 + + Character, 26 + + Charity, 95, 144 + + Charlemagne, 433 + + Charles I, King, 321, 345, 371, 405 + + Charles, II, King, 305, 329, 345 + + Chartists, 444 + + Charwomen, 17, 35, 78, 79, 84, 105, 118, 119, 146, 198, 234, 342, 420 + + Chauffeurs, 75 + + Cheap and nasty, 139 + + Cheltenham, 146 + + Chemists, 310, 312, 327, 341 + + Cheques and clearing houses, 261 + + Cheques and Bills, 265 + + Chicago municipal elections, 159 + + Chicago pork kings, 343 + + Child-bearing, 74, 88, 176, 196 + + Child fanciers, 415 + + Child farming, 415 + + Child labor, 192 + + Child life, organization of, 413 + + Children, 53, 76, 360, 361, 362, 363, 392, 393, 423, 428, 436, 460; + and parents, 134, 193, 364, 366, 408; + and young persons overworked, 309; + bearing and rearing of, 74, 196, 326; + cost of, 87-8; + exposure of female, 89; + illegitimate, 200, 410; + institutional treatment of, 413; + matter-of-fact, 363; + Roman Catholic, 365; + ugly, 55 + + Children’s ordinary human rights, disregard of, 415 + + Children’s religion, dictated by parents, 360 + + Children’s wages, 196 + + China, 34, 142, 151, 194, 365, 374, 406 + + Chocolate creams, 145, 146 + + Cholera epidemics, 189, 427 + + Christ, 4, 54, 69, 94, 98, 367, 368, 424, 433, 441; + the mother of, 432 + + Christ Scientist, the Church of, 329, 431, 433 + + Christian Science, 433 + + Christian Scientists, 432 + + Christian Socialists, 458 + + Christianity, 89, 92, 143; + early, 459 + + Christians, 93, 313, 367, 369; + early, 89, 92 + + Christmas, 63; + cards, 156 + + Church, the, 32, 49, 64, 174, 254, 429, 461 + + Church Catechism, 424, 425 + + Church of England, the, 15, 17, 28, 32, 49, 215, 329, 360, 366, + 374, 425, 434, 435, 438, 439, 441, 445, 457 + + Church of Jenner and Pasteur Scientists, the new, 433 + + Church livings, 215 + + Church rates, 436 + + Church of Rome, 431, 433, 434, 442 + + Church, school and Press, 63-5 + + Church schools, 204 + + Church and State, quarrel between, 429 + + Churches, the, 218, 407, 409, 410, 412; + attitude towards marriage, 89; + dangerous pretensions of, 432 + + Churches, the Free, 176, 435 + + Churchill, Winston, 317 + + Churchmen, 54, 190, 218, 345, 434 + + Cinemas, 163, 164 + + Cinematography, 175 + + Circumcision, 4, 433 + + Citizens, 391 + + City bosses, 346 + + City corporations, 351 + + City offices, 176, 324 + + Civil servants, 170, 171, 174, 262, 282, 340, 375, 382 + + Civil Service, the, 32, 60, 97, 105, 174, 185, 274, 384, 391 + + Civilians no longer spared in war, 175 + + Civilization a disease, 127 + + Clandestine Communism and confiscation, 287 + + Clares, the Poor, 41 + + Class distinctions, 420 + + Class hatred, 456 + + Class splits in the professions, 205 + + Class struggle, the, 58, 218 + + Class war, the, 187, 218, 372, 373 + + Clearing houses, 261 + + Cleopatra, 333 + + Clergymen, 23, 27, 35, 36, 52, 63, 169, 173, 176, 185, 194, 215, 425, + 434, 446, 456, 458, 461 + + Clerical staffs, 356 + + Clerks, 75, 80, 173, 176, 182, 184, 203, 210, 245, 264, 404; + and clerking, 182 + + Clever women, 23 + + Clothes, 66, 163, 404; + Sunday, 156 + + Clubs, 418 + + Clydeside Scots, 441 + + Coal, cost under capitalism, 107-9; + how to cheapen, 109; + harvests, 240; + commission, 274; + mines, 133; + nationalization of, 266, 274, 297, 383, 386, 388; + owners, 274, 276, 297, 313, 322; + supply, 375 + + Coalmaster-General, wanted a, 109 + + Cocktails, 341 + + Coinage, debasement of, 253, 254; + value of gold coinage fixes itself, 259 + + College education, 36 + + Colonels, 37, 357 + + Colonies, British, 159 + + Colored labor, 146 + + Colored persons, 75 + + Columbus, 139 + + Combinations of workers, 204 + + Commandments, the Ten, 97, 127, 308, 384 + + Commercial civilization, 319; + profiteers, 383 + + Commercialism, 399 + + Commissioners of Inland Revenue, 394 + + Commissions fixing prices, 224 + + Common creed of the nation, formation of the, 426 + + Common people, the, 317 + + Common sense and prejudice, 426 + + Commonwealths, 158, 450 + + Communisms, 11-13, 14, 113, 117, 134, 185, 368, 445; + clandestine, 16; + reduces need for pocket money, 262; + parochial, 302; + Christian morality of, 374; + a development of existing economic civilization, 375 + + Communist, present connotation of, 446 + + Communist schools, 360 + + Communist-Anarchists, 445 + + Communistic monstrosities, our, 287 + + Communists, 94, 444, 446; + pseudo-Bolshevist, 345 + + Companies and trusts, 231 + + Companions, lady, 174 + + Company promotion, 237 + + Compensation for expropriation, 113 + + Compensation for nationalization, 268-274 + + Compensation really distributed confiscation, 270-71 + + Competitive method in industry, wasteful, 271, 272; + inadmissable in case of ubiquitous services, 273 + + Composers, 339 + + Compromisers, timid, 346 + + Compulsory schooling, 375 + + Compulsory social service, 356, 357, 358 + + Conduct, difficulty of teaching, 363 + + Confectionery, 165 + + Confidence tricksters, 395 + + Confiscated income must be immediately redistributed, 288 + + Confiscation, 113; + without compensation, 276-7; + with a vengeance, 290 + + Conscience, the national, 393 + + Conscientious objectors, 449; + objection, 450 + + Conscription, 154, 156, 289 + + Conservatism, 313, 447 + + Conservative Act of 1867, 452 + + Conservative Governments, 389 + + Conservative Party, 38, 103, 184 + + Conservatives, 93, 216, 217, 218, 220, 344 + + Consols, 177 + + Conspiracies _alias_ Trade Unions, 209 + + Constables, police, 38 + + Constantinople, 314 + + Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain, 354 + + Constitutional Monarchists, 345 + + Constructive problem solved, the, 297-9 + + Contraception, 61, 87, 88-9, 90, 91, 148, 165, 175, 410 + + Contractors, 116 + + Contracts, civil, 57 + + Convalescent homes, 33 + + Conventions, 405 + + Cooks, 24-5, 36, 145 + + Co-operative societies, 33, 129 + + Co-operators, 444 + + Copper harvests, 240 + + Copyright conventions, 157 + + Copyrights, 403 + + Cost price, 107-11. _See_ Nationalization + + Cottage handicrafts, 140; + hospitals, 65; + industry, 163 + + Cotton lords, 178; + spinners, 205 + + Country gentlemen, 75, 166, 286, 346 + + Country houses, 131 + + County Councils, 32, 351 + + County ladies, 166 + + Covetousness, human, 160 + + Cowper, William, 328 + + Cowper-Temple Clause, the, 361 + + Crabbe, George, 5 + + Craft Unions, 356 + + Craftsmen, 386 + + Creative work, 327 + + Credit, 247; + real, 247; + tax on, 249 + + Crews, 446 + + Crime, 58 + + Crimean War, 61 + + Criminal Courts, 395; + Law, 57 + + Cromer, 272 + + Cromwell, Oliver, 316, 318, 345, 371, 379, 381, 453 + + Crusoe, Robinson, 21, 85, 121 + + Culture, 30, 48; + reserves of now rather commercial than professional, 171 + + Currencies, private, 265 + + Current confusions, 433-55 + + Cynicism, not justified by the horrors of Capitalism, 155 + + + Daily routine, 321 + + Dairymaids, 419 + + Dancing partners, fascinating male, 202, 331 + + Dartmoor, 328 + + Dartmoor hunt, the, 328 + + Daughters, 174, 197; + unmarried, 176 + + Day of Judgment, 89 + + Daylight in winter, 77 + + Dealers in pit props, 304 + + Dean Swift, 62, 458 + + Death duties, 113; + stupid, 230 + + Death-rate, high, 407 + + Debasement of currency, called inflation, 256 + + Debentures, 235 + + Debt, municipal, 117 + + Debt, the National, 114, 115, 117, 289, 291, 294-7, 402 + + Debt redemption levy, 296 + + Deceased Wife’s Sister Act, 1 + + Declaration of Rights, 320 + + Decline of the employer, the, 177-82 + + Deer forests, 124 + + Deflation, 256 + + Defoe, Daniel, 182 + + Deists, 345 + + Demagogues, plebeian, 348 + + Demand, effective, 51; + money market sense of, 248-9 + + Democracy, 164, 451, 452, 453, 459; + result of, 317 + + Democratic Prime Ministers, 315 + + Dens, sweaters’, 378 + + Dentists, 194 + + Department of Mines, creation of, 274 + + Department of Woods and Forests, 274 + + Depopulation, 148 + + Deposit at elections, 57 + + De Quincey, Thomas, 445, 465, 468 + + Derby, the, 154, 426 + + Descartes, 414 + + Destitute persons, 119 + + Detective stories, 415 + + Devil, the, 199, 367 + + Diagnostic of Socialism, the, 92-5 + + Diamonds, 9, 51, 66, 341 + + Dickens, Charles, 174, 303, 414; + his Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Pickwick Papers, + Our Mutual Friend, 469 + + Dictators, 315; + Italian, 348 + + Diehard coercionists, 346 + + Diminishing Return, Law of, 91 + + Diplomacy, 60-61 + + Diplomatic service, the, 46, 60 + + Direct Action men, 371 + + Direct Action, policy of, 446, 447 + + Dirty work, 74-6 + + Disablement above and below, 164-8 + + Discoveries, 172, 310, 341 + + Disease, venereal, 43, 54, 200; + hereditary, 54 + + Disguised Church, the, 433 + + Disraeli, Benjamin, 217, 218. _See_ Beaconsfield, Earl of + + Dissenters, the, 93, 204, 215, 218, 360 + + Distilleries, 135, 137, 312 + + Distribution, traumatic, not spontaneous, 1; + anomalous, 5; + seven ways of, 19; + by class, 35-8 + + District Councils, 32, 351 + + Divide and govern, 213-25 + + Dividing-up, 6, 7, 8, 21 + + Division of labor, 24, 85, 161 + + Divisions within the Labor Party, 354-9 + + Divorce, 57, 349, 409 + + Dock companies, 119 + + Dock labor, 119 + + Dockers, 219 + + Dockyards, 105 + + Doctors, 22, 23, 35, 36, 46, 52, 105, 169, 173, 176, 194, 203, 225, + 250, 327, 370, 398, 399, 400, 419, 432, 436, 456, 458, + 459, 461 + + Doctrinaires, Marxist, 372 + + Doles, 8, 96, 119, 147, 279 + + Doles, depopulation and parasitic paradises, 145-50 + + Domestic capital, 225-31 + + Domestic debt redemption levies, objection to, 297 + + Domestic servants. _See_ Servants + + Domestic work woman’s monopoly, 176 + + Dominic, Saint, 441 + + Dominions, the, 437 + + Dope, 374 + + Downing tools, 206 + + Drainage, 137, 391 + + Drawingroom amusements, 74 + + Dress, 46, 145, 172, 173 + + Dress question, the, 404 + + Dressing, 77 + + Dressmakers, 52, 145; + jobbing, 84 + + Dressmaking, 420 + + Drink, 15, 17, 42, 83, 120, 135, 141, 203, 395 + + Drones, 58 + + Drugging, 42 + + Drugs, 396 + + Drunkards, 93, 195, 395 + + Dublin, 184, 380 + + Ducal estates, 167 + + Duchesses, 403, 419 + + Dukes, 55, 75, 419 + + Dustmen, 35, 55, 75 + + Dwarfs, 69 + + Dysgenic reactions of inequality, 54-6, 150; + adults, 436 + + + Earthquakes, 156 + + Eastern Europe, 437 + + Eastern women, 427 + + Eclipses, 365 + + Eddy, Mrs, 431, 432, 433, 441 + + Education, 27, 36, 173, 388; + college, 36; + a failure, 417; + impracticable, 362; + middle-class monopoly of, 177-82; + secular, 361, 423; + stupidities about, 413; + technical, compulsory and liberal, 422; + Socialist idea of, 428 + + Education Act of 1870, the, 361; + of 1902, 15 + + Egypt, 34, 222, 392; + self-government in, 159 + + Egyptian fiasco, the, 223 + + Eight hours day, the, 77 + + Einstein, Albert, 170, 343, 414 + + Election of 1918, the, 454 + + Electric Lighting Committees, 352 + + Electric lighting, municipal, 121, 122 + + Electric power, 76, 386 + + Electricians, 355 + + Electrocution, 57 + + Electronic physics, 361 + + Elementary schools, 169 + + Elizabeth, Queen, 44, 311, 316, 317, 329, 403, 425, 426, 442 + + Elizabeth, statute of, 44, 119, 195 + + Emigration, 144, 148, 193, 194 + + Emotional Socialism, 189 + + Empire, the medieval, 442 + + Empire insurance, 346 + + Empires, in collision, 152-7; + their origin in trade, 151; + ruins of, 146; + shifting centres of, 152 + + Employees, badly sweated, 309. _See_ Trade Union Capitalism + + Employers, 177, 187, 195; + industrial, 214; + and financiers, 358; + petty, 309; + Victorian, 199. + _See_ Trade Union Capitalism + + Employers’ Federations, 211, 212 + + Employment of first-rate business brains by Trade Unions, 307 + + Empress Catherine II of Russia, the, 449 + + Encyclopedias, 163 + + Engels, Friedrich, 185, 218 + + Engine drivers, 36, 73, 76 + + Engineers, 310, 312, 401 + + England, 124, 329, 330, 342, 371, 375, 376, 410, 430, 431, 436, 438, + 454, 459; + Protestant, 406 + + English big business, Americanized, 307 + + English Church, the, 347 + + English ladies, 95 + + English market, the, 255 + + English nation, the, 366 + + English Parliament, the, 371 + + English pound, the, 263 + + English State, the, 442 + + English statesmen, 347 + + English Trade Unions, Americanized, 307 + + Englishmen, 257 + + Enlightenment, modern, 163 + + Enough? How much is, 41-9 + + Epidemics, 189; + dread of, 398 + + Epileptics, 195 + + Episcopalians, 345 + + Equal wages for equal work, 196 + + Equality, positive reasons for, 68-70 + + Equality of income, 384, 385, 391, 407, 413; + of opportunity, 93-4 + + Erewhon, 140 + + Errand boys, 84, 219 + + Esquimaux, the, 157, 164 + + Estate rules, 404 + + Ethical societies, 435 + + Eton, 169, 415, 429 + + Eugenics, 53-6 + + Europe, 86, 126, 152, 171, 222, 268, 293, 318, 369, 444; + kings of, 371, 378; + States of, 450 + + European empires, 347 + + Evasion of income tax, 32 + + Eve, the sin of, 89 + + Evolution, 361 + + Evolutionists, creative, 436 + + Exceptional ability, question of, 334 + + Excessive incomes, extortion of, 340 + + Exchequer, the 276; + Chancellor of the, 113, 121, 227, 276, 281, 285, 287, 290, 295 + + Exclusion of women from the professions, 174 + + Executioners, 76 + + Experimenting, 39 + + Exploitation, 118; + of the State by Capitalism and Trade Unionism, 300, 301 + + Exploration, 388; + professional, 175 + + Explorers, 46, 310, 327, 341 + + Exposure of female children, 89 + + Expropriation Act, 113 + + Expropriative taxation, 298 + + Extension of franchise, 217; + disappointing, 317 + + Extremists, 373 + + + Fabian Acts of Parliament, 372 + + Fabian Essays, 468 + + Fabian lecturers, 375 + + Fabian methods, 298 + + Fabian Society, the, 94, 185, 186, 220, 221, 374, 467 + + Fabianism or constitutional action, 446-7 + + Factories, 133, 143, 150, 378, 402; + child labor in, 188; + Ford, 375; + national, 116; + munition, 390 + + Factory Acts, 143, 189-94, 192, 215, 216, 224, 322, 394 + + Factory employees, condition of, 215 + + Factory foremen, 146, 147 + + Factory girls, 78, 165, 198 + + Factory hands, 219, 334 + + Factory inspectors, 394 + + Factory legislation, 207 + + Factory regulations, 394, 395 + + Factory work, 73, 80 + + Factory working day, 213 + + Fairies, 219 + + Fanaticisms, 367 + + Farm produce, transport of, 144 + + Farmers, 9, 24, 124, 309, 327, 387, 447; + English, 374 + + Farming, 21, 24; + large-scale, 386; + fancy fruit, 386 + + Fascism (capitalist dictatorship), 298, 376, 443 + + Fascists, 444 + + Fashion, tyranny of, 403, 404 + + Fashoda, 152 + + Father, the author’s, 173, 184, 317, 332 + + Faust, 300, 424 + + Fecundity, human, 86 + + Federations, 158 + + Female virtue, 199 + + Ferryman, 409 + + Fertility, 90 + + Feudalism, 10, 166, 386 + + Feuerbach, L. A., 441 + + Field-marshals, 340 + + Film actresses, 76 + + Filmstars, 22 + + Films, 164 + + Finance committees, 352 + + Financial gamblers, 382 + + Financiers, 40, 70, 170, 265, 332, 334, 340, 342; + profiteering, 266; + and bankers are money profiteers, 266 + + First-rate work, 74, 398 + + Fishermen, 124 + + Fitters, 205, 224 + + Flag, trade following the, 144 + + Flanders, 390; + battlefields in, 87 + + Fluctuations on the Stock Exchange, 240 + + Flying Services, 389 + + Football, 82 + + Ford, Henry, 307 + + Ford factories, 375 + + Foreign markets. _See_ Markets + + Foreign Office, the, 353 + + Foreign trade, 150-52, 157 + + Foresters, 21 + + Forewomen and foremen, 335 + + Formulas, 297 + + Forth Bridge, the, 167, 224 + + Fourier, Charles, 94 + + Fox, George, 5, 54, 329 + + Foxhunting, 420 + + France, 152, 287, 310, 318, 330, 351, 364, 371, 374, 377, 410, 411, + 431, 444, 454; + decreasing population of, 88 + + France, Anatole, 458 + + Franchise, extension of, 217; + extension of, disappointing, 317 + + Francis, Saint, 54, 219 + + Franciscans, the, 41 + + Free Churches, the, 176, 435 + + Free Trade, 344 + + Free Traders, 346 + + Free Trade controversy, 286 + + Freedom, 77; + no place in nature, 328; + restricted, 329, 330 + + French, the, 371 + + French Chamber, the, 351 + + French Government, 369, 411 + + French nation, the, 310 + + French peasant proprietors, 168, 374 + + French Republic, the, 433 + + French Revolution, the, 214, 215, 256, 377, 378, 431 + + Freud, Sigmund, 416 + + Frontiers, automatic advance of, 151 + + Fundholders, 444 + + Funding, 291 + + + Galsworthy, John, 469 + + Gambling, 239 + + Game Laws, 214 + + Gamekeepers, 65 + + Gaming Act, the, 242 + + Garages, 402 + + Garden cities, 281, 307, 418; + the property of capitalists, 301 + + Gardeners, 65, 76, 219; + lady, 397 + + Gardening, 420; + kitchen, 386 + + Gas, poison, 148, 175 + + General elections, 278, 345, 346, 349, 350, 353; + stampeding, 222 + + General Medical Council, the, 404 + + General Post Office, the, 274 + + General Strike, the, 448 + + General strikes, a form of national suicide, 380 + + General teetotalism, 398 + + Generals, military, 379 + + Genesis, the book of, 460 + + Geneva, 431 + + Geniuses, 172, 332 + + Gentility without property, 36 + + Gentlemen, our sort of, 358 + + Gentry, the, 19, 30, 31, 32; + landed, 40 + + George IV, King, 309 + + George V, King, 254, 309 + + George, Henry, 217, 468 + + German employers, 255 + + German Government, the, 255, 256 + + German money, 255 + + German racial stock, 310 + + German schools and universities, 64 + + Germans, the, 257, 289, 441 + + Germany, 159, 181, 183, 255, 256, 263, 310, 317, 401; + increasing population of, 88; + war with, 347 + + Giants, 69, 331 + + Gin Lane, 141 + + Girl Guides, 413 + + Gladstone, W. E., 114, 218, 284, 285, 286, 328 + + Gleneagles hotel, 148 + + God, 76, 91, 146, 185, 190, 208, 209, 363, 365, 368, 409, 410, 411, + 424, 428, 429, 432, 435, 439, 441, 452; the + Church of England, 364; + the greater glory of, 300; + the idea of, 364; + ideas about, 366, 367; + intentions of, 144; + not patriotic, 155 + + Gold bugs, 346 + + Gold currency, natural stability of the, 263 + + Goldsmith, Oliver, 5, 162, 201 + + Golf, 82, 420; + Sunday, 329 + + Golfing hotel managers, 357 + + Gospels, the, 127, 442 + + Governesses, 36, 174, 324, 416 + + Government, the Capitalist, of 1914-1918, 289; + the most sacred economic duty of, 256; + and garden cities, 301; + and governed, 316; + and Opposition, or performance and criticism, 359; + as national landlord, financier and employer, 97 + + Government confiscation without preparation, 280 + + Government grants, 388; + in aid to municipalities, 281 + + Government intervention in strikes, 356; + intervention between Capital and Labor. _See_ Factory legislation + and Taxation + + Government subsidy to coalowners in 1925, the, 301, 302, 304, 305, + 387, 389 + + Government subsidies, 387 + + Government Whips, 349 + + Governments, failures and frauds of, 275; + Italian and Spanish, 372; + misdeeds of, 275 + + Gradgrind, 303 + + Gradual expropriation possible, 295 + + Gramophones, 18, 33 + + Gravediggers, 52 + + Great Britain, 193, 313, 385 + + Great Western Railway, the, 272 + + Greece, ancient, 453 + + Greek, 414; + the value of, 28 + + Greek Church, the, 374 + + Greenland, 310 + + Grocers, 265 + + Ground rents, 123 + + Guardians, Poor Law, 192, 195, 303, 413 + + Guards, railway, 73 + + Guides, postal and official, 421 + + Gulliver’s Travels, 155, 462 + + Gwynne, Nell, 203 + + + Habeas Corpus Act, 308 + + Hamlet, 205 + + Handel, G. F., 327, 414 + + Handicrafts, cottage, 140 + + Handloom weavers, 138 + + Hand-to-mouth, the world lives from, 6, 7 + + Hangmen, 76 + + Happiness, 42 + + Hara-kiri, 427 + + Harboro, 134, 137, 312 + + Hardie, Keir, 221 + + Harrow, 169, 429 + + Hatmakers, 272 + + Haymaking, 80, 401 + + Head waiters, 146 + + Health, Ministry of, 282 + + Hearse drivers, 52 + + Heartlessness of parents, the apparent, 193 + + Hegel, G. W. F., 376, 441 + + Hegelian dialectic, the, 441 + + Helmer, Nora, 408 + + Helplessness, of proprietary and working classes, 172; + of individuals, 162 + + Henry IV, King, 166 + + Henry VIII, King, 130, 253, 254 + + Hereditary disease, 54 + + Herring gutters, 324 + + Herriot, Édouard, 351 + + High Tories, 346 + + High wages and colossal profits, 307 + + Highland chieftains, 32 + + Highlands, the, 457 + + Highway lighting, 391 + + Highwaymen, 38 + + Hiring spare money, 244 + + Historians, 321, 328 + + Hoarding, 129-31 + + Hobbies, 77 + + Hogarth, 141 + + Hohenzollern family, the, 64 + + Holidays, 59, 79, 167 + + Holland, 431 + + Holy Ghost, the, 12, 441 + + Home, 77 + + Home Office, 353 + + Home Rule Question, the, 371 + + Homer, 414 + + Hood, Thomas, 201 + + Horace, 414, 421 + + Horses, 335; + old, 188 + + Hospitals, 434, 461; + cottage, 65 + + Hotel manageresses, 404 + + Hotels, 33, 61, 77, 145, 149, 167 + + Hours of labor, 82, 206 + + House of Commons, the, 5, 106, 285, 344, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351, + 352, 353, 354, 359, 370, 434; + Labor members of, 352; + a proletarian, 359 + + House of Lords, the, 372, 434, 451 + + Housekeepers, 74 + + Housekeeping, 24, 176, 196; + national, 49, 285 + + Housekeeping money, 211 + + Housemaids, 167, 219, 324, 386, 446 + + Houses, scarcity of, 86 + + Houses of Parliament, the, 254, 314; + out of date, 354 + + How long will it take?, 391-3 + + How much is enough?, 41-9 + + How the War was paid for, 289-94 + + How wealth accumulates and men decay, 161-4 + + Human nature, 155, 160 + + Human society like a glacier, 308 + + Human stock, improvement of, 343 + + Hungry, the, 131, 132, 133, 167, 172 + + Husbandmen, 124 + + Husbands, 25; + and wives, 408 + + Hyndman, Henry Mayers, 186, 218, 469 + + + Ibsen, Henrik, 408, 440, 470 + + Idealists, 345 + + Idiots, 172, 195 + + Idle rich, the, 59-62, 145, 399 + + Idleness, 46, 403 + + Idlers, 84, 105, 399, 400 + + Idling, 58, 399 + + Idolatry, 203 + + Ignorance, 162; + about Socialism, 345 + + Illegitimate children, 200, 410 + + Illinois, State of, 410 + + Immigrants, 398, 436 + + Immigration, restricted, 194 + + Imperialism, 152, 443, 447 + + Imperialist morality, 359, 360 + + Imperialists, 346, 444 + + Inability to govern, our, 318 + + Incentive, 72 + + Income, family, 321 + + Income tax, 114; + and super tax and estate duties other names for confiscation, 284; + and death duties and supertax, 290; + evasion of, 32; + rates a form of, 117 + + Increasing return, law of, 91 + + Independent candidates, 350 + + Independent Labor Party, foundation of the, 221 + + Independent voters, 350, 382 + + India, 152, 313, 355, 407, 440 + + Indians, the, 367 + + Industrial employees, 324 + + Industrial employers, 285 + + Industrial male workers, the ordinary, 324 + + Industrial organizers, 332 + + Industrial and Provident Societies Act, 300 + + Industrial Revolution, the, 137-40, 182 + + Industrial Unions, 355, 356 + + Industries, the big, 386; + competitive entry of the Government into, 271 + + Industry, the dye, 388 + + Inequality of income, 418 + + Inevitability of gradualness, the, 377 + + Infallibility, necessary dogma of, 3 + + Infant mortality, 45, 66, 88, 90, 410 + + Infant schools, 428 + + Infidels, 444 + + Inflation, 130, 256, 257, 270 + + Inflationists, 346 + + Ingoldsby Legends, The, 239 + + Inheritance, 165, 166 + + Inhibition complex, 330 + + Innkeepers, 387 + + Inoculations, 433; + dangerous, 398; + pathogenic, 399, 432 + + Inquisition, the, 434; + water torture of, 415 + + Insurance, National, 375 + + Insurance premiums, 254 + + Insurance stamps, 1 + + Interest, 178, 182; + positive and negative, 232; + exorbitant rates to the poor, 234 + + International, the Third, 385, 441, 442 + + International Anarchism, the present, 450 + + International institutions, 157 + + Internationalism, 140 + + Invalids, 172 + + Invention, 131; + inventions and inventors, 138; + inventions, 180; + inventors, 310, 312 + + Investing capital, 292 + + Investment and enterprise, 131-3 + + Ireland, 124, 144, 193, 194, 371, 372, 379 + + Ireland scholars, 429 + + Irish Free State, 159, 371 + + Irish Home Rule, 371 + + Irish ladies in the workhouse, 20 + + Irish Nationalist Party, the old, 350 + + Irish peers, 184 + + Ironmasters, 400 + + Ironmongers, 400 + + Islam, 432 + + Isle of Wight, 106 + + Israelites, the, 392, 410 + + Italian nation, the, 348 + + Italy, 152, 154, 310, 318, 329, 337, 347, 372, 453 + + + Jacobins, 444 + + James I, King, 403 + + James II, King, 321, 370, 426 + + James, Saint, 433 + + Japan, 194, 402 + + Jehovah, 367 + + Jenner, Edward, 433 + + Jericho, 392 + + Jesuits, the, 368 + + Jesus. _See_ Christ + + Jevons, Stanley, 465, 467, 468 + + Jews, the, 329, 361, 369, 433, 435, 438 + + Joan of Arc, 54 + + Jobbing dressmakers, 84 + + John, King, 442 + + Johnson, Samuel, 167, 458 + + Joiners, 21, 205, 356 + + Joint stock companies, 178, 180, 209, 235, 240, 276, 309 + + Joshua, 38 + + Journalists, 64, 78, 95, 203, 239, 321 + + Judas Iscariot, 203 + + Judges, 28, 29, 35, 69, 70, 340 + + Judgment, Day of, 89 + + Judgment, the Last, 437 + + Juries, trial by, 56 + + Jurors, 339 + + Jury duties, 395 + + Jurymen, 316 + + Jutland, battle of, 326 + + + Kaiser, the ex-, 64, 153, 317, 452 + + Kantian test, the, 227, 357 + + Kapital, Das, 441, 442, 443 + + Keynes, Maynard, 467 + + Kilkenny cats, 29, 381 + + King, the, 36, 37, 38, 100, 184, 314, 349, 351, 352, 353, 372, 404, + 427, 435; + his Speech, 208 + + King Alfonso, 318, 371, 379 + + King Alfred, 40, 309 + + King Charles I, 321, 345, 371, 405 + + King Charles II, 305, 329, 345 + + King George IV, 309 + + King George V, 254, 309 + + King Henry II, 430, 442 + + King Henry IV, 166 + + King Henry VIII, 130, 253, 254 + + King James I, 403 + + King James II, 321, 370, 426 + + King John, 442 + + King Lear, 47 + + King Louis XIV, 350 + + King Philip II of Spain, 442 + + King William III, 321, 350, 352, 426 + + King William IV, 215 + + Kings, 315, 379; + Israelitish, 361 + + Kingsley, Charles, 94 + + Knights of the Shires, 316 + + Knox, John, 431 + + Kruger, President, 431 + + Krupp’s, 181 + + Kyle of Tongue, the, 283 + + + Labor, capitalized, 225; + costly materials and equipment for, 87; + curse of, 80, 82; + market value of, 194; + of women and girls, 196-204, 212; + party of, 218 + + Labor Chancellor, 286 + + Labor Government, 344; + of 1923, 221 + + Labor House of Commons, 358 + + Labor leaders, 373, 442 + + Labor markets, the, 186-96, 199 + + Labor members, 217 + + Labor Opposition, 344 + + Labor Party, the, 40, 95, 103, 286, 289, 291, 305, 349, 355, 390, 454; + establishment of, 220; + a political federation of Trade Unions and Socialist Societies, 221; + rapid growth of, 344, + danger of splits in, 345; + Socialists in, 358; + the present, 379 + + Labor-saving appliances, 78 + + Labor-saving contrivances, 39, 48 + + Labor-saving machinery, 139 + + Laboratory work, 74 + + Laborers, 69, 93, 356 + + Laborists, the, 446 + + Ladies, attractive, 331; + English, 95; + our sort of, 358; + real, 400 + + Ladies’ maids, 42, 145, 146, 333 + + Lahore, Government College of, 355 + + Laisser-faire, 38-41, 103 + + Laisser-faire doctrinaires, 347 + + Lancashire, 216 + + Land, nationalization of, 112 + + Land Purchase Acts, 124 + + Land values, 123 + + Landlords, 457, 461; + and capitalists, 358; + and raised rents, 299, 300; + Irish, 344; + powers of, 38, 102, 124-5 + + Langland, 5 + + Lassalle, Ferdinand, 41 + + Latimer, Hugh, 5 + + Latin, literary, 414, 415 + + Latin stock, 310 + + Latin verses, 422 + + Latter Day Saints, the, 381, 407 + + Laud, Archbishop, 374, 430, 431, 439 + + Laundresses, 145 + + Laundries, 73 + + Law, the Courts of, 56-9, 64; + Criminal, 57; + Mosaic, 5 + + Law of Diminishing Return, the, 91 + + Law of Increasing Return, the, 91 + + Laws, oppressive and unjust, 399 + + Lawyers, 22, 23, 54, 57, 105, 124, 169, 173, 176, 194, 202, 203, 370, + 456, 459, 461 + + Laziness, mental, 335 + + League of Nations, the. _See_ Nations + + Lear, King, 47 + + Learned men, 36 + + Learning, 30, 31, 39 + + Legislation, Socialistic, 384 + + Leicester, 317 + + Leisure, 10, 77, 82, 320; + distribution of, 162, 325 + + Lenin, 298, 337, 379, 442, 443, 469 + + Letters, anonymous, 421; + snowball, 137 + + Leverhulme, Lord, 307 + + Levies on capital are raids on private property, 296 + + Lewis, George Cornewall, 81 + + Liberal impulse, the, 271 + + Liberal Party, the, 95, 184; + working class members of, 217; + wiped out, 222 + + Liberalism, 447; + revolutionary traditions of, 276 + + Liberals, the, 93, 216, 217, 218, 220, 344, 445 + + Liberty, the desire for, 322; + the fear of, 324; + unfair distribution of, 325; + natural limit to, 319-30; + and Socialism, 393-406 + + Liberty of conscience, comparative, 329 + + Libraries, 309 + + Lies, 64, 363, 364 + + Lieutenants, 357 + + Lighthouses, 105, 134, 137; + and lightships, 76 + + Limitations of Capitalism, 133-7 + + Lisbon, 192 + + Lister, Joseph, 433 + + Literary property, 104 + + Literature, 30, 48, 157, 420; + treasures of, 421 + + Little Englanders, 158, 346 + + Liveries, 75-6 + + Liverpool, 106 + + Lloyd George, David, 218 + + Loan Stock, 301 + + Local Government, 352 + + Local Government inspectors, 394 + + Lock-outs, 206, 356 + + Logic of Political Economy, DeQuincey’s, 445 + + London, 32, 58, 59, 64, 106, 123, 124, 125, 139, 152, 183, 262, + 274, 277, 280, 281, 302, 309, 399, 403, 421, 432, 433, 469; + overpopulation of, 92; + Socialist movement in, 219 + + London citizen, the, 421 + + London Midland and Scottish Railway, 268 + + Long Parliament, the, 345 + + Looting by ladies, 151 + + Low Church Protestants, 346 + + Loyalty, 159 + + Luddites (machine wreckers), 212 + + Lumbermen, 21 + + Lunatic asylums, 33 + + Luther, Martin, 441 + + Luxury trades, 288, 370 + + + Macaulay, T. B., 466 + + MacDonald, James Ramsay, 221, 222, 317 + + Machine guns, 380 + + Machinery, 138-9; + displaces labor, 192 + + Machinery wrecking, 212 + + Machines, 402 + + Madeira, 34 + + Magee, Bishop, 142 + + Magistrates, 416 + + Magna Carta, 308, 320 + + Mahomet, 89, 380, 423, 431, 432, 433, 441 + + Mahometans, 438 + + Majors, 357 + + Malaya, 235 + + Male prostitution, 203 + + Mallock, William Hurrell, 331 + + Malverns, the, 146 + + Mammon, 185, 215 + + Man, 361 + + Man Question, the, 176 + + Management, 171; + routine, 184; + scientific, 170, 191 + + Managerial ability, 67, 181 + + Managers, 176 + + Manchester, 146 + + Manchester School, the, 101, 190, 195, 445 + + Manchester and Sheffield Outrages, 207 + + Manchu ladies, 406 + + Manifestoes, Communist, 384 + + Manners, 30, 43, 145, 205, 418 + + Mansion House funds, 280 + + Manual labor, 183 + + Manufacture of pins, the, 161 + + Manufactured pleasures, 46 + + Manufacturers, 173 + + Manufacturing towns, overcrowded slums of, 215, 216 + + Marbot, General, 335 + + Marco Polo, 343; + travels of, 424 + + Markets, the struggle for, 150-53 + + Marks, paper, 255 + + Marriage, 25, 176; + English, Scottish, and Irish, 407 + + Marriage and the State, 409 + + Marriages, unsuitable, 55 + + Married Men’s Rights agitation, 329 + + Married women, 77 + + Married Women’s Property Acts, 26, 197, 210, 321 + + Mars, 253 + + Martyrs, 172 + + Marx, Karl, 94, 183, 184, 185, 189, 217, 218, 285, 376, 385, 441, + 442, 443, 459, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470 + + Marxian class-consciousness, 220 + + Marxism, 439, 441, 443 + + Marxist Bible, the, 442 + + Marxist Church, the, 442 + + Marxist Communists, 373 + + Marxist fanatics, 441, 443 + + Marxists, 318, 443 + + Marx’s slogan, 183, 184 + + Mary Queen of Scots, 311 + + Mary Tudor, Queen, 426, 430 + + Masons, 205, 224, 356 + + Master of the Mint, 274 + + Match girls, 448 + + Materialists, the, 436 + + Mathematicians, 16, 310, 341 + + Mating, 54 + + Matrons, 335 + + Maurice, Frederick Denison, 94 + + Mayfair, 83 + + Means of production, 218 + + Medieval robber barons, 417 + + Medical research, 437 + + Medical schools, 416 + + Mediterranean, annexations of the African coast, 153 + + Members of Parliament, 69, 461; + payment of, 60 + + Men of science, 320 + + Mental “defectives”, 436 + + Mental work, unremunerative, 169 + + Mephistopheles, 300 + + Merchant princes, 178 + + Merchants, 21, 173; + gold, 259; + coal, 29 + + Merit, promotion by, 70; + and money, 70-71 + + Messiah, political, 318 + + Metaphysics, 363, 423 + + Methodist schools, 360 + + Methodists, 215 + + Middle class, the, 172, 181 + + Middle class manners, 418 + + Middle station in life, the, 168-76, 182 + + Middlemen, 334 + + Midgets, 331 + + Military officers, 74 + + Military rank, 74 + + Military service, 31, 50, 166, 324, 449; + compulsory, 411, 428; + righteousness of, 357 + + Mill, John Stuart, 212, 219, 220, 467 + + Mill hands, 145 + + Millennium, the, 423 + + Millers, oldtime, 138 + + Millionaires, 37, 160, 192; + commercial, 332 + + Mines, the, 150, 231, 278, 386, 387; + nationalization of, 266, 274, 297, 383, 386, 388 + + Miners, 205, 219, 313, 446, 447; + and mine owners, 322; + grievances of, 109 + + Mining, 76 + + Ministry of Health, 282, 303 + + Mint, the, 253, 264; + nationalization of, 265; + Royal, 274 + + Misdeeds of the landed gentry, 214, 215 + + Miseries of the rich, 45 + + Missionaries, 143, 151, 310 + + Modern conscience, the, 423 + + Modern domestic machinery, 320 + + Modern examination-passing classes, 414 + + Modern garden cities and suburbs, 300 + + Modern Italian and Spanish _coups d’état_, 345 + + Modern living, the art of, 422 + + Modern psychological research, 416 + + Modern psychology, 424 + + Modern toleration a myth, 368, 369 + + Modern war, 175 + + Monarchs, 23, 35, 36 + + Money, 9, 41, 53, 130, 251-63; + congested, 280; + Martian, 253; + spare, 232, 233, 465; + measure of value, 252; + a tool for buying and selling, 252; + and merit, 70-71. + _See_ Capital, 100 + + Money lenders, 266 + + Money market, the, 231-9, 240, 276, 316; + fluctuation of, 231 + + Monogamy, 411 + + Monopoly, woman’s natural, 176 + + Monsters, 332 + + Monte Carlo, 45, 148, 236, 243 + + Morality by Act of Parliament, 191 + + Morals, 31, 39 + + Moratorium, 156 + + More, Sir Thomas, 5, 94 + + Mormon theocracy, 431 + + Mormon women, 411 + + Mormonism, 443 + + Mormons, the, 410, 432 + + Morning Post, the, 287 + + Morocco, 152 + + Morris, William, 5, 139, 162, 186, 218, 219, 371, 458; + his News from Nowhere, 469 + + Morris wallpapers, 393, 394 + + Mortality, excessive, 90; + infant, 45, 66, 88, 90, 410 + + Mosaic Law, 5 + + Moscow, 282 + + Moscow Soviet, the, 391 + + Moses, 4, 32, 392, 423, 431, 461 + + Moslems, 367 + + Mother, the author’s, 104 + + Mothers, 3; + soldiers’, 155-6; + widowed, 349; + and wives, 25, 176 + + Motion, 314; + uncontrolled, 315 + + Motor bus companies, sham, 238 + + Motor cars, 9, 33, 47, 50, 51, 75, 262, 375, 401, 402 + + Motor charabancs, 164, 165, 312 + + Motorists, 397 + + Mount, Sermon on the, 42, 93, 442 + + Mozart, W. A., 339, 414 + + Multiple shops, 175, 177 + + Multiplication table, the, 420, 424 + + Municipal banks on the Birmingham model, 272 + + Municipal building always insolvent, 273 + + Municipal committees, 352 + + Municipal debt, 117 + + Municipal electric lighting, 121 + + Municipal exploitation, 113 + + Municipal service, 384 + + Municipal trading, 106, 121 + + Municipalization, 390 + + Muscovite Marxist Church, the, 446 + + Museum, the British, 16 + + Music, school-taught, 414 + + Mussolini, Benito, 251, 318, 337, 345, 348, 371, 372, 379, 380 + + Nakedness, 95 + + Napoleon, 54, 69, 251, 318, 327, 328, 335, 339, 379, 380 + + Napoleon III, 345, 379 + + National Debt, the, 114, 115, 117, 295, 402; + cancellation of, 291; + increase of, 289 + + National Debt redemption levies, 294-7 + + National electrification scheme, 386 + + National factories, 116 + + National Gallery, the, 16, 17, 280 + + National housekeeping, 49, 285 + + National Union of Railway Workers, 356 + + Nationalists, 94 + + Nationalization, 298, 383, 384, 390; + of banking, 35, 140, 181, 264-8, 386; + must be prepared and compensated, 283; + theoretically sound, 274; + of land, 112; + examples of, 105-11 + + Nationalized banks, 271 + + Nations, League of, 156, 157; + the present, 450 + + Natural limit to liberty, 319-30 + + Natural Selectionists, Darwinian, 436 + + Nature, 3, 9, 21, 55, 59, 67, 80, 84, 90, 91, 164, 176, 311, 320, + 321, 322, 402; + cruelty of, 437; + hand of, 334; + human, 155, 160; + the supreme tyrant, 319; + tyranny of, 80-83; + voice of, 54 + + Navigators, 422 + + Navvies, 80, 87, 283, 400, 401 + + Navy captains, 70, 340 + + Need for play, the, 164 + + Needle manufacturers, 258 + + Negro slavery, 75, 188 + + Nell Gwynne, 203 + + Nelson, Horatio, 337, 339 + + Neuters, 176 + + Neva, the, 282 + + New Capitalist method, the, 388 + + New churches and secular governments, 434 + + New companies, insecurity of, 238 + + New pauperism, 444 + + New River Water Company, 403 + + New Testament, the, 28, 361, 443 + + New York, 243, 309 + + Newspaper Articles, 65 + + Newspapers, 3, 11, 14, 49, 64, 71, 100, 105, 144, 164, 203, 206, 208, + 218, 310, 316, 373, 415, 421, 443, 446; + respectable English, 407 + + Newton, Isaac, 170, 343, 414, 428 + + Nicene Creed, the, 426 + + Night cafés, 191 + + Night clubs, 50 + + Nightingale, Florence, 61, 398 + + Nightingales, two-headed, 332 + + Nineteenth century revolution of 1832, the, 370 + + Nineveh, 372 + + Nitrogen, supply of, 86 + + Nobel, Alfred, 332 + + Noblemen, old-fashioned, 309 + + Non-commissioned officers, 74 + + Nonconformist Protestant ratepayers, 360 + + Nonconformists, 425; + persecution of, 215 + + Nonconformity, 425 + + Northern Europe, 431 + + Novels, 164, 421 + + Nuns, 404, 407; + enclosed, 4 + + Nurses, 3, 74, 327, 428 + + Nursing, 74, 326 + + + Ocean cables, 378 + + Officers, 68, 357; + military, 74, 404; + non-commissioned, 74 + + Oil harvests, 240 + + Oil shops, 177 + + Old age pensions, 8, 119, 383 + + Old horses, 188 + + Old-fashioned parents, 175 + + Oligarchs, patrician, 348 + + Oligarchy, 30-35 + + Oliver Twist, 192, 413 + + Olivier, Sidney (Lord), 468 + + Opera, the, 46 + + Opera singers, 22, 35 + + Operators of calculating machines, 334 + + Opium war, the, 142 + + Opportunists, 345; + cautious, 346 + + Orators, political, 321 + + Order of production, 50 + + Organizers, 310, 337, 342 + + Outrages, Trade Union, 207 + + Overcrowding, 92, 137 + + Overpopulation, artificial, 90 + + Overwork, 83 + + Owen, Robert, 94, 370 + + Oxford University, 169, 372, 418, 429 + + + Pacific, the, 235 + + Pacifism, 449 + + Painlevé, Paul, 351 + + Painters, 169, 170, 224, 332, 356 + + Palaces, 378 + + Palm Beach, 148 + + Pampering, 52 + + _Panem et circenses_, 96 + + Pantheists, 436 + + Paper money, 130, 260 + + Papers, the, 156, 203, 267, 312, 399; + capitalist and anti-capitalist, 312; + capitalist, 116, 342; + the Sunday, 385; + the daily, 449; + illustrated, 66 + + Paraclete, the, 441 + + Parasitic paradises, 148 + + Parasitic proletariat, revolt of the, 277-9 + + Parasitism, 83, 84-5 + + Parcel Post, C.O.D. development of, 271 + + Parentage, compulsory, 411; + State endowment of, 411 + + Parents, the author’s, 309; + and children, 134, 193, 364, 366, 408; + old-fashioned, 175; + old Roman rights of, 412; + natural and adoptive, 412; + proletarian, 392 + + Paris, 309 + + Paris Commune of 1871, the, 369 + + Parish Councils, 32 + + Parish meetings, 351 + + Park Lane, 276 + + Parks, 118, 131, 148, 166, 400 + + Parliament, 49, 57, 58, 60-61, 64, 213, 214, 216, 217; + in Gladstone’s time, 285; + and the Churches, 435 + + Parliamentary Labor Party, the, 447 + + Parliamentary struggle, the, 218 + + Parlormaids, 75, 182, 403 + + Parsons, 63 + + Partnerships, 177, 178 + + Party candidates, 350 + + Party discipline, less rigorous now, 353 + + Party newspapers, 310 + + Party politics, 343-8, 420 + + Party System, the, 348-54 + + Party Whips, 349 + + Pasteur, Louis, 433 + + Patents, 403 + + Patriotism, 155 + + Paul, Saint, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 89, 459 + + Pauperization, national, 145 + + Pawnbrokers, 234, 250 + + _Pax Americana_, the, 450 + + Payment of M.P.’s, 60 + + Pearls, 51, 138, 202; + imitation, 50 + + Peasant proprietors, French, 374 + + Peasant proprietorship, 168 + + Peerages, 178 + + Peers, Irish, 184 + + Pence, Peter’s, 360 + + Penn, William, 54 + + Penny postage, 272 + + Penny transport, 272 + + Pensions, old age, 2, 8, 119, 383; + widows’, 2, 8, 201 + + Penzance, 272 + + Persecution of Russians in America, 369 + + Personal liberty, the pet topic of the leisured class, 320 + + Personal property, 102 + + Personal righteousness, 95-9 + + Personal talent, possessors of, 331 + + Peru, 235 + + Pessimism, 91; + a by-product of capitalism, 155 + + Pet dogs, 18, 51, 75 + + Peter, Saint, 12 + + Peter the Great, 282 + + Peterborough, the Bishop of, 142 + + Petrograd, 282 + + Philanthropy, 95 + + Philosophers, 81, 172, 341 + + Philosophy, 30, 48 + + Phosphorus poisoning, 199 + + Physicians, 74, 419 + + Physicists, 327, 341 + + Physics, 423 + + Pickpockets, 401 + + Picture galleries, 309 + + Picture gallery attendants, 79 + + Piece work, 79 + + Piece work wages, 211 + + Piece worker, the, 323 + + Piers, 135 + + Pin machines, 333 + + Pin makers, 333 + + Pin money, 161 + + Pin-making, 21 + + Pinero, Sir Arthur, 202 + + Pins, manufacture of, 161 + + Pirate crews, 29, 335 + + Pirates, 457 + + Pisteurs. _See_ Dancing partners + + Pitt, William, 378 + + Plagues, 42, 297 + + Plato, 94, 454 + + Platonic rule, the, 338 + + Play, need for, 164 + + Playing, 39 + + Plays, 164 + + Pleasures, manufactured, 46 + + Plumbers, 356, 399 + + Plutocracy, 166, 431 + + Poincaré, Raymond, 351 + + Poison gas, 148, 175 + + Poison gas shells, 380 + + Police, the, 57, 147, 385, 391, 393, 395, 396, 400, 405, 412, 429 + + Police constables, 38 + + Police officers, 380, 421 + + Policemen, 12, 23, 37, 69, 154, 384 + + Policewomen, 404 + + Political disciplinarians, 318 + + Political economy, 48, 63, 190; + bad, 50-51 + + Polygamy, 406, 407, 410, 411; + Solomonic, 432 + + Polytechnics, 182 + + Pooh-Bah, 419 + + Poor, legalized robbery of the, 395 + + Poor Law, the, 120; + Government administration of, 330 + + Poor Law Guardians, 32, 44, 192, 195, 303, 413 + + Poor Law officers, 394, 395 + + Poor Law relief, 195 + + Poor relations, 174 + + Poor white trash, 322 + + Pope, the, 37, 407, 442 + + Popes, 348, 431, 442 + + Poplar, 302 + + Poplarism, 305 + + Popular inventions, 320 + + Popularity of lavish expenditure, 66 + + Population, checks on, 86; + decrease in France and increase in Germany, 88; + importance of rate of increase, 88 + + Population question, the, 83-92, 410 + + Pork packers, 37 + + Port Sunlight, 307, 375 + + Porters, 21; + ambulance, 52; + railway, 219, 421 + + Portsmouth, 154, 336 + + Positive reasons for equality, 68-70 + + Positivist societies, 435 + + Post Office, the, 106-7, 121, 264, 272, 275 + + Post Office Savings Bank, 128, 129 + + Post offices and savings banks, national, 267 + + Postal conventions, 157 + + Postal system, the, 391 + + Postmasters, 70 + + Postmaster-General, the, 121, 264, 273, 274, 275 + + Postmen, 23, 69, 70, 219 + + Postmistresses, 421 + + Potter, Beatrice, 220. _See_ Webb, Beatrice + + Poverty, 42-5, 72, 395; + abolition of, 398; + as a punishment, 43; + Franciscan, 41; + infectious, 42; + and pestilence, 42; + and progress, 217 + + Powers, the leading military, 450 + + Practical business men, 346 + + Prayer Book, revision of the, 426 + + Preachers, 72, 341, 410 + + Precedence, 37 + + Pregnancy, 326 + + Prejudice and common sense, 426 + + Preliminaries to nationalization, 274-6 + + Preparatory schools, 417 + + Presence, the Real, 426 + + Presidents, American, 328 + + Presidents and patriarchs, 348 + + Press, the, 64. _See_ Newspapers + + Press, Church, and school, 63-5 + + Prices, 260 + + Prices and profits, 135 + + Priests, 407, 429, 435, 436; + power of, 430 + + Prima donnas, 332 + + Prime Minister, the average Capitalist, 308 + + Prime Ministers, 35, 328; + Jewish and Gentile, 435 + + Primo di Rivera, General, 318, 345, 380 + + Primogeniture, 31, 168 + + Prince Rupert’s Drop, 160 + + Prince of Wales, the, 118 + + Princes, merchant, 178 + + Prisons, 120, 243, 395 + + Private enterprise, 116, 131-3, 275; + proper business of, 389; + and public utility, 300 + + Private property, 100, 102 + + Privates, 357 + + Prize-fighters, 28, 29 + + Prize-fights, 28, 96 + + Proclamations, royal or dictatorial, 384 + + Professional billiard players, 397 + + Professional classes, the, 169 + + Professional fees, 68 + + Professional politicians, 203 + + Professions open to women, 174 + + Professors, university, 169 + + Profiteers, 116, 390 + + Profits, 182; + not a measure of utility, 137; + and prices, 135 + + _Progress and Poverty_, Henry George’s, 217, 468 + + Prohibition, 120, 142, 396, 397 + + Proletarian dictators, 379 + + Proletarian leader, the typical, 452 + + Proletarian papers, the, 342 + + Proletarian parents, 392 + + Proletarian resistance to Capitalism, 204 + + Proletarian voters, 217 + + Proletarianism, 100 + + Proletarians, 205, 248, 290, 294, 302, 370 + + Proletariat, the, 183-6, 223, 294, 296, 302, 307, 355, 359, 441, + 443, 445, 448; + parasitic and Socialist, 377; + plunder of, 278; + and proprietariat, 223 + + Promiscuity, social, 418, 419 + + Promised Land, the, 392, 410 + + Promoters, 179 + + Promotion, 74 + + Property, literary, 104; + personal, 102; + private, 100; + real, 102; + secures maximum of leisure to owners, 323 + + Property owners, 163, 248 + + Proportional Representation, 454 + + Proprietary Trade Unionism, 447 + + Prostitutes, 195, 395 + + Prostitution, 22, 43, 199; + male, 203 + + Protection, 150 + + Protectionists from the Midlands, 346 + + Protestants, 68, 93, 360, 368, 369, 445 + + Proudhon, Joseph, 466 + + Pseudo-Socialism, 298 + + Psycho-analysis, the morbidities of, 420 + + Psychology, 365 + + Public departments, 376 + + Public Health Committees, 352 + + Public houses, 177 + + Public libraries, 375 + + Public opinion, 65, 347 + + Public schools, 144, 169, 368, 417, 423, 428 + + Public trustee, 88 + + Public works, 145, 281, 282 + + _Punch_, 330 + + Punjab, the, 355 + + Purchasing power, transfer of from the rich to the Government, 278 + + Purdah, women in, 355 + + “Pussyfoot” Johnson, 396 + + + Quack cures, 63; + remedies, 171 + + Quaker meetings, 329; + schools, 360 + + Quakers, the, 190, 435, 444 + + Quarrelling, domestic, 77, 82 + + Quartermaster-sergeants, 74 + + Queen, the, 385 + + + Racehorse trainers, 146 + + Racing stables, 138 + + Radicals, 94, 444 + + Radio, 33 + + Radium, the cost of, 87 + + Ragpickers, 35, 76, 324, 404 + + Raid on Russian Arcos Officers, the, 223 + + Railroadmaster-General, wanted a, 275 + + Railway, the Great Western, 272 + + Railway, the London, Midland and Scottish, 268 + + Railway accidents, 65 + + Railway Board, wanted a, 275 + + Railway chairmen, 389 + + Railway guards, 73 + + Railway porters, 219, 421 + + Railway signalmen, 315 + + Railway travelling, 65 + + Railway workers, 457 + + Railwaymen, 446 + + Railways, 33, 133, 150, 231, 278, 313, 375, 383, 389, 401, 402; + State, 275 + + Rank, military, 74 + + “Rat-houses” (non-union), 306 + + Rate collectors, 14 + + Ratepayers, 303; + exploited by workers, 302 + + Rates, 117-22; + and taxes, 17, 111 + + Reactionaries, 444 + + Real property, 102 + + Reason, goddess of, 365 + + Recognition of Trade Unions, 210 + + Red Cross, the, 156 + + Red flag, the, 140, 376 + + Red Indian morals, 62 + + Red Russian scare, the, 222 + + Redistribution of income, 114 + + Reform Bill of 1832, the, 214, 215, 216, 378, 452 + + Reformation, the, 431, 461 + + Reforms, disguised, 299; + popular, 299 + + Registrar, the civil, 436 + + Registrar-General, the, 303 + + Relations, poor, 174 + + Religion, 30, 48, 388; + male and female, 440 + + Religious dissensions, 359-70 + + Religious instruction hour, 361 + + Rent, 111, 122-6, 178, 182; + the meaning of, 341 + + Rent of ability, 331-43; + called profit, 341 + + Republic, the Communist, 374 + + Republican Governments, 254 + + Republicans, 75, 345, 444 + + Research, scientific, 388 + + Rest cures, 59 + + Restaurants, 202 + + Resting, 77, 82 + + Restricting output, 208 + + Resumption of land by the Crown, 102, 123 + + Retail trade less respectable than wholesale, 184 + + Retail traders, 37 + + Retail trades, 177 + + Revolt of the parasitic proletariat, 277-9 + + Revolution, 283; + the industrial, 137-40, 182; + the Russian, 35, 374, 376, 407, 441 + + Revolutionists, 147 + + Revolutions, 63, 134, 370-79 + + Rhodes, Cecil, 332, 446 + + Rhodesia, 313 + + Ricardo, David, 465, 467, 468 + + Rich, the idle, 59-62, 145, 399; + miseries of the, 45; + the new, 270; + the old, now called the New Poor, 270 + + Rich women, 56, 95 + + Righteousness, personal, 95 + + Rioters, 395 + + Riveters, 224 + + Riviera, the, 202, 287 + + Roads, 391; + metalled, 401 + + Roadways, 402 + + Roaming, 39 + + Roberts of Kandahar, 144 + + Robespierre, Maximilien, 365 + + Robinson Crusoe, 21, 85, 182 + + Rockefeller, John Davidson, 36 + + Rockefeller charities, 160 + + Rogues, 300 + + Roi Soleil, le, 350 + + Roman Catholic schools, 360 + + Roman Catholicism, 15 + + Roman Catholics, 329, 360, 361, 369, 407, 431, 445 + + Roman Empire, 148, 314 + + Rome, 314, 368; + ancient, 96, 147, 148; + Church of, 431, 433, 434, 442 + + Roulette table, the, 239, 243 + + Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 170 + + Routine, 181 + + Routine management, 184 + + Routine work, 327 + + Royal Academy of Arts, the, 170 + + Royal Family, the, 68, 426 + + Rubber harvests, 240 + + Ruined shopkeepers, 177 + + Ruins of empires, 146 + + Runaway car of Capitalism, the, 314-19 + + Ruskin, John, 5, 61, 162, 459, 466, 467; + his Ethics of the Dust, 425, 469; + Fors Clavigera, 469 + + Russia, 34, 35, 66, 153, 287, 318, 373, 374, 375, 401, 406, 409, + 439, 442, 453, 459; + dictatorship in, 347 + + Russian Archbishop, the, 439 + + Russian Capitalist civilization, 376 + + Russian Communist, the, 369 + + Russian Government, the, 255, 256, 368, 369, 376, 439 + + Russian International Church, the, 442 + + Russian landlords, 270 + + Russian peasants, 374, 375; + people, 376, 383 + + Russian Revolution, the, 35, 374, 376, 407, 441 + + Russian Revolutionaries, 14 + + Russian Soviet, the, 284, 287, 376, 383, 390, 406, 407, 439, 442 + + Russian State, the, 375 + + Russian subscription to Strike funds, 223 + + Russian word Bolshevik, the, 444 + + Russians, the, 100, 257 + + + Sables, 341 + + Sadists, 415, 416 + + Safety valves, 279-84 + + Sailors, 21, 68, 77, 310 + + Saint Augustine, 92, 93, 441 + + Saint Francis, 54, 219 + + Saint Helena, the island of, 328 + + Saint Joan, 54 + + Saint Paul, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 89, 459 + + Saint Peter, 12 + + Saint Simon, the speculations of, 94 + + Saints, 172, 341 + + Salt Lake City, the Latter Day Saints of, 407 + + Samaritans, Good, 96 + + San Francisco, 106 + + Sanitary inspectors, public, 426 + + Sapphira, 12 + + Saving, the fallacy of, 6-7, 129 + + Savings banks, 128, 267, 444 + + Savings certificates, 128, 129, 444 + + Savior, the, 5, 463 + + Saviors, 96 + + Sawgrinders, 207 + + Sawyers, 21 + + Scabs, 207 + + Scarecrows, boy, 23 + + Scavengers, 35, 327, 342 + + Scent, 50 + + _Schadenfreude_, 66 + + Schiller, 346 + + Scholarships, 67, 173, 182 + + School, Church, and Press, 63-5 + + School attendance, compulsory, 349 + + School attendance visitors, 394, 395, 412 + + School teaching, 65 + + Schoolchildren, 368 + + Schoolmasters, 63, 169 + + Schoolmistresses, 3, 27, 36, 129, 335 + + Schools, 31, 33, 49, 63, 64, 145, 173, 324, 420; + like Bastilles, 413; + like prisons or child-farms, 413; + public, 144, 169, 368, 417, 423, 428; + village, 63, 399; + secondary, 166, 169; + State, 360; + elementary, 169, 182; + preparatory, 417; + infant, 428 + + Science, 30, 31, 39, 48, 157, 420, 461; + and State compulsion, 436; + power of, 437; + professors of, 436 + + Scientific management, 170, 191 + + Scotland, 32, 51, 124, 144, 159, 431; + shooting lodges in, 251 + + Scotland Yard, 274 + + Scriveners, 225, 328 + + Sculleries, 76 + + Scullerymaids, 35, 324 + + Sculptors, 169 + + Sea captains, 422 + + Second-rate work, 73, 398 + + Secondary schools, 166, 169 + + Secretaries of State, 352 + + Self-government in Egypt, 159 + + Selfridge’s, 177 + + Selkirk, Alexander, 328 + + Sempstresses, 22, 258 + + Sending capital out of the country, 140-44 + + Sentries, 426 + + Separatist sects, 329, 345 + + Serajevo murder, the, 160 + + Serbia, 153, 160 + + Serfdom, 10 + + Serfs, 341 + + Sergeants, 335, 357 + + Sermon on the Mount, the, 42, 93, 442 + + Servants, 23, 42, 47, 48, 118-19, 149, 204, 210, 370, 372, 458; + domestic, 65, 73, 75, 78, 83-4, 95, 323, 324 + + Service, domestic, 24, 73, 175, 215, 324 + + Service, military, 31, 50, 166, 324, 449; + compulsory, 411, 428; + righteousness of, 357 + + Service flats, 61 + + Services, international and national, 378 + + Seven ways of distribution, 19 + + Seventeenth-century revolutions, 370 + + Severn, the, 282 + + Sewermen, 76 + + Sex, 89 + + Sextons, 93 + + Shaftesbury, Lord, 189, 190, 215 + + Shakespear, William, 42, 403, 428, 458 + + Sham Socialism, 299-308 + + Shareholders, 235 + + Shares, buying and selling, 240, 241; + imaginary, 241; + preference and ordinary, 235 + + Shaw, Bernard, 97, 470 + + Sheep runs, 124 + + Sheffield, 146, 207 + + Sheffield sawgrinders, 207 + + Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 5, 317, 373, 424, 428 + + Shifting centres of empires, 152 + + Ship captains, 37 + + Shipyards, 378 + + Shoes, high-heeled, 50, 406 + + Shooting boxes, 51 + + Shop assistants, 78, 145, 163, 177, 334, 397, 446 + + Shop Hours Act, 191 + + Shopkeepers, 29, 176, 334, 387, 421 + + Shopkeeping, 175 + + Shopmen, 203 + + Shopping, 105-11, 175 + + Shops, bucket, 242; + multiple, 175, 177 + + Shorthand typists, 334 + + Showrooms, 202 + + Siamese twins, 331 + + Silk stockings, 18, 99 + + Simple, Sloth, and Presumption, Bunyan’s, 318 + + Singers, two-headed, 331 + + Single taxers, 126, 127 + + Sirdar, the, 222 + + Sisters, the Tudor, 368 + + Skyscrapers, 139 + + Slaters, 356 + + Slave trade, the, 143 + + Slavedrivers, 338 + + Slavery, 10, 64 + + Slogan, Marx’s, 183, 184 + + Sloggers, 208 + + Slumps, 206, 282 + + Slum towns, demolition of, 281 + + Slum userers, 135 + + Slums, 34, 118, 126, 137, 145, 148, 149, 215, 243, 281, 301, 307, + 378, 399 + + Smallpox epidemics, 189 + + Smith, Adam, 161, 162, 459 + + Smith, Joseph, 410, 411, 431, 432, 441 + + Smithies, village, 386 + + Smoke, 76 + + Smoke abatement, 145 + + Smuggling, 142; + of drugs, 396 + + Snobbery, 47, 175, 184 + + Snowball letters, 137 + + Soap kings, 170 + + Social changes, 39 + + Social creed, the, 427 + + Socialism, 10; + alarmist idea of, 299; + and children, 412-29; + and liberty, 393-406; + and marriage, 406-12; + and superior brains, 331; + and the Churches, 429-43; + as a religion, 441 + books on, 1; + Catholic rather than democratic, 348; + constitutional, 94 + constructive political machinery of, 298; + diagnostic of, 92-4; + dread of, 393; + emotional, 189; + establishment of, 344; + fancy, 94; + first and last commandment of, 97; + genuine and sham, 308; + idealist, 219; + matter of law, not personal righteousness, 98; + new, 392; + not charity, 95-6; + object of, 297; + secular, 443; + series of Parliamentary measures, 220; + unskilled, 283; + utopian and theocratic, 94 + + Socialist societies, 186, 217, 218 + + Socialist State and the child, the, 424 + + Socialists, 220, 444, 446; + a mixed lot, 93; + and Trade Unionists, Cabinet of, 221; + deprecate bloodshed, 377; + joining the, 92; + who are not Socialists, 345 + + Society of Friends, the, 435 + + S.P.C.C., the, 362; + records of, 412 + + Sociologists, 341 + + Socrates, 54, 453 + + Soldiering, not advisable for women, 175 + + Soldiers, 23, 68, 69, 74, 88, 116, 203, 289, 310, 324, 338, 357, + 390, 395, 398, 399, 405, 411, 433, 436, 446, 449, 450; + demobilized, 147 + + Soldiers’ mothers, 155, 156 + + Soldiers’ wives, 156 + + Solent, the, 106 + + Solicitors, 46, 131, 166, 179, 250, 357, 458, 459, 461 + + Solomon, 346 + + Solomonic polygamy, 432 + + Solon, 461 + + _Sonata, the Pathetic_, 414 + + _Song of the Shirt_, 201, 309 + + Soot, 76 + + _Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The_, 157-61 + + Sorceresses, 429 + + Soul, the, 363, 364 + + South Africa, 399 + + South African War, the, 347 + + South America, 34, 144, 377, 437 + + South American Revolutions, 370 + + South Carolina, the State of, 189, 407 + + South of England, the, 372 + + South Sea Islands, 9, 319 + + Southampton, 106 + + Soviet, the Russian, 284, 287, 376, 383, 390, 406, 407, 439, 442 + + Soviet legislators, the, 406 + + Soviets, 254, 315, 348 + + Spain, 149, 152, 318, 371, 372, 430, 453; + dictatorship in, 347 + + Spare food, 131, 132, 133 + + Spare money. _See_ Capital, and Capitalism + + Spartacus, 369 + + Spartan routine of the old rich, 60 + + Speculation, 236, 239-43 + + Speech, 172, 173 + + Spencer, Herbert, 83, 335 + + Spencer, Robert, 350. _See_ Sunderland, Earl of + + Spinoza, 169 + + Sport, 31, 82 + + Sports, 59, 77 + + Squeers, Mr, 429 + + Stage, the, 202, 205 + + Standard wages, 68 + + Star Chamber, the, 431, 434 + + Stars and Stripes, the, 159 + + Starvation wages, 198 + + State Capitalism, 298 + + State interference, 103; + with Church teaching, 437, 438 + + State railways, 275 + + State schools, 360 + + Statesmen, 190 + + Stationmasters, 421 + + Steamships, 133, 378 + + Steel smelters, 79, 146, 205 + + Stenographers. _See_ Typists + + Stewardesses, 145 + + Stock Exchange, the, 236, 237, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 248, 251, 277 + + Stockbreeding, 53 + + Stockbrokers, 46, 55, 131, 236, 237, 250 + + Stockjobbers, 236, 237 + + Stonehenge, 439 + + Strawberries, January, 50 + + Strike, the General, 448, 449, 450 + + Strikes, 68, 206, 302, 303, 355, 356; + Socialist remedies for, 356 + + Strindberg, August, 470 + + Struggle between Capitalist and Labor Parties in Parliament, 286 + + Stupid women, 23 + + Subalterns, 37 + + Subsidies, exploitations of the taxpayer by bankrupt Capitalism, 305 + + Subsidies and doles demoralizing, 303, 304 + + Subsidized private enterprise, 386-91 + + Subsistence wage, 195 + + Sudan, the, 152 + + Suez Canal, the, 152, 153, 285 + + Suffragettes, 318, 321 + + Suffragists, 318 + + Summer schools, 419 + + Sunday clothes, 156 + + Sunday golf, 329 + + Sunday Observance Acts, 322 + + Sunday school teachers, 369 + + Sunderland, the Earl of, 350, 352 + + Supernationalism, 450 + + Supertax, 114, 284 + + Supply and demand, 248 + + Surgeons, 22, 48, 74, 170, 342, 422, 432 + + Surgical baronets, 332 + + Surveyors, 422 + + Suttee, 427 + + Sweating, 190 + + Sweating of one industry by another, 197 + + Sweden, 448 + + Swift, Dean, 62, 458 + + Swindlers, 395 + + Switzerland, 431 + + Syndicalism, 447 + + Syndicalists, 94, 444 + + + Tailors, 357 + + Talent, exploitation of, 333 + + Tanners, 356 + + Tax collectors, 224, 227, 229, 250, 277 + + Tax on credit, resultant chaos from, 250 + + Taxation, 134; + of unearned incomes, 112; + of capital as a means of nationalizing without compensating, 277 + + Taxes, 111-17 + + Tea, 157 + + Teachers, 35, 36, 72, 334, 341, 361, 412, 416, 420, 421, 428, 457; + State, 424 + + Teaching, 415, 424; + coercive, 414; + corrupt, 64 + + Teetotallers, 15, 68, 93, 397 + + Telegrams, 136 + + Telegraph rates, 136 + + Telephone messages, 136 + + Telephone operators, 76 + + Telephone and telegraph services, III, 121 + + Telephones, 33, 47, 105, 121, 312, 345 + + Telephoning, 175 + + Ten Commandments, the, 97, 308, 384 + + Tenements, 397 + + Thackeray, William Makepeace, 469 + + Theatre, the art of the, 428 + + Theatres, 428 + + Theocracy, 431, 435, 443 + + Theosophist schools, 360 + + Thibet, 310 + + Thieves, 395 + + Third-class travel, 419 + + Thirty-nine Articles, the, 425, 441, 445 + + Thompson, Big Bill, 159 + + Three R’s, the, 361, 421 + + Thrift, 128 + + Thucydides, 297 + + Thugs, the, 440 + + Thurso, 272 + + Tides, the, 76 + + Tied houses, 177 + + Time wages, 22, 211 + + Tinville, Fouquier, 378 + + Titles, 74 + + Toasters, electric, 139 + + Tobacconists, 177 + + Tokio, 156 + + Toll bridges, 262 + + Tolstoy, Leo, 335, 468 + + Tono-Bungay, 171 + + Toots, Mr, 414 + + Tories, 103, 350, 444, 446; + and Whigs, 218 + + Torquemada, Thomas de, 369, 430 + + Tourists, American, 314 + + Tower of Babel, the, 445 + + Trade, the. _See_ Drink + + Trade Union Capitalism, 204-13 + + Trade Union secretaries, 451 + + Trade Unionism, 186, 387, 448, 462; + weakness of, 213; + aristocracy of, 308; + first really scientific history of, 220; + a contradiction of Socialism, 355 + + Trade Unionist Government, 224 + + Trade Unionists, 446; + number of, 209; + and Socialists, Cabinet of, 221 + + Trade Unions, 40, 204, 223, 305, 346, 355, 358, 375, 387, 462; + Capitalist, 225 + + Trades Facilities Acts, 313 + + Tradesmen, 46, 70, 370, 372, 457, 458 + + Trading stations, 151 + + Trains, 401 + + Tramps, 44, 48, 98, 195, 219, 322, 395 + + Tramways, 402; + horse, 188 + + Transport services, 383 + + Transport Workers’ Union, 356 + + Trappists, 62 + + Treasuries, 353 + + Treasury, the, 274, 280, 281, 282, 305, 390 + + Treasury notes, 251, 252, 254, 256, 257, 258, 265 + + Treaties, 157 + + Tripoli, 152 + + Trollope, Anthony, 469 + + Troops, 370 + + Trotsky, Leo, 376 + + Trustee, the Public, 88 + + Trusts, 109, 178, 179, 209, 386 + + Tsar, the, 373, 374, 439 + + Tsardom, the, 376; + collapse of, 257 + + Tsars, marriage under the, 406 + + Tunisia, 152 + + Turgot, 459 + + Turkey, 154 + + Turnpike roads, 131-2, 262 + + Turnpikes, 14 + + Twain, Mark, 392 + + Twist, Oliver, 192, 413 + + Two-headed nightingales, 332 + + Typhus epidemics, 189 + + Typists, 74, 176, 182, 328, 397 + + Tyranny, of nature, 80-83; + pseudo-scientific, 398; + social, 405 + + Tyrants, 444 + + + Ugly children, 55 + + Ulster, 159 + + Uncles in Australia, 67 + + Undertakers, 52 + + Unearned incomes, 112 + + Unemployment, 97, 144, 195 + + Unemployment insurance, 205 + + Unemployment insurance officers, 394 395 + + Unhappiness incurable by money, 41 + + Union Congresses, the, 451 + + Union Jack, the, 140, 159, 447 + + Union of Mathematical Instrument Makers, 417 + + Union of Soviet Republics, 369 + + Unionists, the, 371 + + Unitarian schools, 360 + + United States, the, 292, 431, 432. _See_ America + + United States Government, the, 396 + + Universities, the, 31, 145, 174, 182, 309, 417, + 428. _See_ Oxford and Cambridge + + University extension lectures, 456 + + University professors, 169; + manners, 418; + snobs, 418; + students, 417 + + Unladylike activities, 174 + + Unmarried daughter and younger son class, the genteel disendowed, 415 + + Unmarried daughters, 176 + + Unpaid magistrates, 166 + + Unproductive labor, 85 + + Unsuitable marriages, 55 + + Unwillingness to be governed, our, 318 + + Upholsterers, 21 + + Urdu, 355 + + Utopias, 140, 453 + + + Vaccination, compulsory, 398 + + Vaccination officers, 394 + + Vaccinia, generalized, 398 + + Vacuum cleaners, 39, 386 + + Valets, 339, 357 + + Value of Greek, 28; + of men and women, 194; + of souls, 29 + + Vegetarianism, 438 + + Venereal disease, 43, 54, 200 + + Vermin, 75 + + Vesuvius, 302 + + Victoria, Queen, 2, 47, 71, 180, 215, 221, 304, 428 + + Victorian employers, 199; + ladies, 319; + parents, 428; + point of view, 287; + women, 324 + + Village blacksmiths, 168; + carpenters, 167; + schools, 63, 399 + + Villagers, 421 + + Villages, 167; + American, 217 + + Virgil, 414 + + Virtue, female, 199 + + Vivisectors, 460 + + Voice of Nature, the, 54 + + Voluntary work, 82 + + Volunteer armies, 428 + + Voltaire, 364, 365, 366, 431, 454 + + Voter, the female, 453 + + Votes for everybody, 164 + + Votes for women, 321, 452, 454 + + + Wage workers, 163, 209, 213, 219, 220, 221, 281, 285 + + Wages, 178, 182; + standard, 68; + of sin, 200; + wives’, 197; + time and piecework, 211 + + Wages Boards, 224 + + Wagner, Richard, 414 + + Waiters, 149 + + Waitresses, 145, 403, 448 + + Wall Street, 243 + + Wallas, Graham, 468 + + War, 270, 289; + modern, 175; + the late (1914-1918), 147, 153, 160, 230, 251, 268, 287, 293, + 304, 347, 369, 376, 388, 390, 402, 450; + the South African, 347; + General Strike against, 449, 450 + + War Debt, 295; + to America, 296; + domestic, 296 + + War Loan, 117, 290, 291, 294, 295 + + War Loan interest, 277, 296 + + War Loan register, 250 + + War Loan Stock, 290, 291 + + War Office, the, 32, 274, 353 + + War taxation, 114-15 + + Wardresses, 335 + + Warehousemen, 210 + + Warwick, Countess of, 371 + + Washerwomen, 27 + + Washing, 77 + + Washington, George, 54 + + Waste of time, 81 + + Watch committees, 274 + + Water power, wasted, 144 + + Water wagon, the, 397 + + Watts, G. F., 233 + + Weary Willies, 72, 440 + + Weavers, 52, 138, 212 + + Weaving mills, 334 + + Weaving sheds, 80, 165 + + Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, 94, 354, 467, 468, 469; + Sidney, 220, 377; + Beatrice, 467 + + Wedding presents, 18 + + Weeding the world, 82 + + Week ends, 77 + + Wellington, the Duke of, 317, 419; + his horse, 188 + + Wells, H. G., 171, 469 + + Wembley, 28 + + Wesley, John, 54 + + Western women, extravagances of, 427 + + West Indian plantations, 215 + + Westminster, 219, 354 + + Westminster Abbey, 329 + + Westminster Confession, the, 425 + + What we should buy first, 49-52, 137, 141 + + Whigs, the, 350; + and Tories, 218 + + Whips, the, 350, 353 + + Whist drives, 165 + + Whiteley’s, 177 + + Wholesale trade formerly more respectable than retail, 37, 184 + + Wholesalers, 334 + + Why confiscation has succeeded hitherto, 284-8 + + Widows’ pensions, 2, 8, 201 + + Wife and mother, the occupation of, 321 + + Wight, Isle of, 106 + + William the Conqueror, 124 + + William III, King, 321, 350, 352, 426 + + William IV, King, 215 + + Windfalls, 67 + + Wireless concerts, 165, 312 + + Wireless sets, 39 + + Witchcraft, 367 + + Wives and mothers, 25, 176, 321 + + Wives’ wages, 197 + + Woman, 361; + The Scarlet, 360 + + Woman question, the, 176 + + Woman’s natural monopoly, 176 + + Women, changeable, 315; + clever, 23; + stupid, 23; + married, 77; + rich, 56, 95; + in the labor market, 196-204 + + Woodcutters, 87 + + Woodman, 21, 65 + + Woolbrokers, 334 + + Woolwich Arsenal, 116 + + Work, an author’s, 327; + craze for, 83; + creative, 327; + routine, 327; + first-rate, 74, 398; + second-rate, 73, 398 + + Workers, 289, 387; + equal leisure for, 328; + open-air, 401; + scientific, 386; + snobbery among, 400 + + Workhouse, the, 44, 119, 456; + the general, 195 + + Workmen, 388 + + World War, 457 + + Wrecking, 151 + + + Yahoos, 458 + + Younger son and unmarried daughter class, 415 + + + Zanzibar, 314 + + + + + Transcriber's Notes: + + Italics are shown thus: _sloping_. + + Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained. + + Perceived typographical errors have been changed. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75859 *** |