All this expense would be saved by State or Municipal production for use. The New York Milk Trust, I understand, on its formation dispensed with the services of 15,000 men.
You may ask what is to become of these men, and of the immense numbers of other men, now uselessly employed, who would not be needed under Socialism.
Well! What are these men now doing? Are they adding to the wealth of the nation? No. Are they not doing work that is unnecessary to the nation? Yes. Are they not now being paid wages? Yes.
Then, since their work is useless, and since they are now being paid, is it not evident that under Socialism we could actually pay them their full wages for doing nothing, and still be as well off as we are now?
But I think under Socialism we could, and should, find a very great many of them congenial and useful work.
Under the "Trusts" they will be thrown out of work, and it will be nobody's business to see that they do not starve.
Yes: Socialism would displace labour. But does not non-Socialism displace labour?
Why was the linotype machine adopted? Because it was a saving of cost. What became of the compositors? They were thrown out of work. Did anybody help them?
Well, Socialism would save cost. If it displaces labour, as the machine does, should that prevent us from adopting Socialism?
Socialism would organise labour, and leave no man to starve.
But will the Trusts do that? No. And the Trusts are coming; the Trusts which will swallow up the small firms and destroy competition; the Trusts which will use their monopolies not to lower prices, but to make profits.
You will have your choice, then, between the grasping and grinding Trust and the beneficent Municipality.
Can any reasonable, practical, hard-headed man hesitate for one moment over his choice?
CHAPTER X FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN FOOD
We have heard a great deal lately about the danger of losing our foreign trade, and it has been very openly suggested that the only hope of keeping our foreign trade lies in reducing the wages of our British workers. Sometimes this idea is wrapped up, and called "reducing the cost of production."
Now, if we must have foreign trade, and as much of it as we have now, and if we can only keep it by competing against foreign dealers in price, then it is true that we must try to reduce the cost of production.
But as there are more ways of killing a dog besides that of choking him with butter, so there are other ways of reducing the cost of production besides that of reducing the wages of our British workers.
But on that question I will speak in the next chapter. Here I want to deal with foreign trade and foreign food.
It is very important that every worker in the kingdom should understand the relations of our foreign trade and our native agriculture.
The creed of the commercial school is that manufactures pay us better than agriculture; so that by making goods for export and buying food from abroad we are doing good business.
The idea is, that if by making cloth, cutlery, and other goods, we can buy more food than we can produce at home with the same amount of labour, it pays us to let the land go out of cultivation and make Britain the "workshop of the world."
Now, assuming that we can keep our foreign trade, and assuming that we can get more food by foreign trade than we could produce by the same amount of work, is it quite certain that we are making a good bargain when we desert our fields for our factories?
Suppose men can earn more in the big towns than they could earn in the fields, is the difference all gain?
Rents and prices are higher in the towns; the life is less healthy, less pleasant. It is a fact that the death-rates in the towns are higher, that the duration of life is shorter, and that the stamina and physique of the workers are lowered by town life and by employment in the factories.
And there is another very serious evil attached to the commercial policy of allowing our British agriculture to decay, and that is the evil of our dependence upon foreign countries for our food.
Of every 30 bushels of wheat we require in Britain, more than 23 bushels come from abroad. Of these 23 bushels 19 bushels come from America, and nearly all the rest from Russia.
You are told at intervals—when more money is wanted for battle-ships—that unless we have a strong fleet we shall, in time of war, be starved into surrender.
But the plain and terrible truth is that even if we have a perfect fleet, and keep entire control of the seas, we shall still be exposed to the risk of almost certain starvation during a European war.
Nearly four-fifths of our bread come from Russia and America. Suppose we are at war with France and Russia. What will happen? Will not the corn dealers in America put up the price? Will not the Russians stop the export of corn from their ports? Will not the French and Russian Governments try to corner the American wheat?
Then one-seventh of our wheat would be stopped at Russian ports, and the American supply, even if it could be safely guarded to our shores, would be raised to double or treble the present price.
What would our millions of poor workers do if wheat went up to 75s. or 100s. a quarter?
And every other article of food would go up in price at the same time: tea, coffee, sugar, meat, canned goods, cheese, would all double their prices.
And we must not forget that we import millions of pounds' worth of eggs, butter, and cheese from France, all of which would be stopped.
Nor is that all. Do we not pay for our imported food in exported goods? Well, besides the risk and cost of carrying raw material to this country and manufactured goods to other countries across the seas, we should lose at one blow all our French and Russian trade.
That means that with food at famine prices many of our workers would be out of work or on short time.
The result would be that in less than half a year there would be 1,000,000 unemployed, and ten times that number on the borders of starvation.
And all these horrors might come upon us without a single shot being fired by our enemies. Talk about invasion! In a big European war we should be half beaten before we could strike a blow, and even if our fleets were victorious in a dozen battles we must starve or make peace.
Or suppose such a calamity as war with America! The Americans could close their ports to food and raw material, and stop half our food and a large part of our trade at one blow. And so we should be half beaten before a sword was drawn.
All these dangers are due to the commercial plan of sacrificing agriculture to trade. All these dangers must be placed to the debit side of our foreign trade account.
But apart from the dangers of starvation in time of war, and apart from all the evils of the factory system and the bad effects of overcrowding in the towns, it has still to be said that foreign trade only beats agriculture as long as it pays so well that we can buy more food with our earnings than we could ourselves produce with the same amount of labour.
Are we quite sure that it pays us as well as that now? And if it does pay as well as that now, can we hope that it will go on paying as well for any length of time.
In the early days of our great trade the commercial school wished Britain to be the "workshop of the world"; and for a good while she was the workshop of the world.
But now a change is coming. Other nations have opened world-workshops, and we have to face competition.
France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and America are all eager to take our coveted place as general factory, and China and Japan are changing swiftly from customers into rival dealers.
Is it likely, then, that we can keep all our foreign trade, or that what we keep will be as profitable as it is at present?
During the last few years there have emanated from the Press and from Chambers of Commerce certain ominous growlings about the evils of Trade Unionism. What do these growls portend? Much the same thing as the mutterings about the need for lowering wages.
Do we not remember how, when the colliers were struggling for a "living wage," the Press scolded them for their "selfishness"? The Press declared that if the colliers persisted in having a living wage we should be beaten by foreign competitors and must lose our foreign trade.
That is what is hanging over us now. A demand for a general reduction of wages. That is the end of the fine talk about big profits, national prosperity, and the "workshop of the world." The British workers are to emulate the thrift of the Japanese, the Hindoos, and the Chinese, and learn to live on boiled rice and water. Why? So that they can accept lower wages and retain our precious foreign trade.
Yes; that is the latest idea. With brutal frankness the workers of Britain have been told again and again that "if we are to keep our foreign trade the British workers must accept the conditions of their foreign rivals."
And that is the result of our commercial glory! For that we have sacrificed our agriculture and endangered the safety of our empire.
Let us put the two statements of the commercial school side by side.
They tell us first that the workers must abandon the land and go into the factories, because there they can earn a better living.
They tell us now that the British worker must be content with the wages of a coolie, because foreign trade will pay no more.
We are to give up agriculture because we can buy more food with exported goods than we can grow; and we must learn to live on next to nothing, or lose our foreign trade.
Well, since we left the land in the hope that the factories would feed us better, why not go back to the land if the factories fail to feed us at all?
Ah! but the commercial school have another string to their bow: "You cannot go back to the land, for it will not feed you all. This country will not produce enough food for its people to live upon."
So the position in which the workers are placed, according to the commercial school, is this: You cannot produce your own food; therefore you must buy it by export trade. But you will lose your export trade unless you work for lower wages.
Well, Mr. Smith, I for one do not believe those things. I believe—
1. That we can produce most of our food.
2. That we can keep as much of our trade as we need, and
3. That we can keep the trade without reducing the wages of the workers.
In my next chapter I will deal with the question of foreign trade and the workers' wages. We will then go on to consider the question of the food supply.
For the argument as to our defencelessness in time of war through the inevitable rise in the price of corn, I am indebted to a pamphlet by Captain Stewart L. Murray of the Gordon Highlanders. I strongly recommend all working men and women to read that pamphlet. It is entitled Our Food Supply in Time of War, and can be ordered through the Clarion. The price is 6d.
CHAPTER XI HOW TO KEEP FOREIGN TRADE
The problem is how to keep our foreign export trade.
We are told that unless we can compete in price with foreign nations we must lose our foreign trade; and we are told that the only means of competing with foreign nations in price is to lower the wages of the British worker.
We will test these statements by looking into the conditions of one of our great industries, an industry upon which many other industries more or less depend: I mean the coal trade.
At the time of the great coal strike the colliers were asked to accept a reduction of wages because their employers could not get the price they were asking for coal.
The colliers refused, and demanded a "living wage." And they were severely censured by the Press for their "selfishness" in "keeping up the price of coal," and thereby preventing other trades, in which coal was largely used, from earning a living. They were reproached also with keeping the price of coal so high that the poor could not afford fires.
Now, if those other trades which used coal, as the iron and the cotton trades, could not carry on their business with coal at the price it was then at, and if those trades had no other ways and means of reducing expenses, and if the only factor in the price of coal had been the wages of the collier, there might have been some ground for the arguments of the Press against the colliers.
But in the iron trade one item of the cost of production is the royalty on the iron. Royalty is a kind of rent paid to the landlord for getting the iron from his land.
Now, I want to ask about the iron trade, Would it not be as just and as possible to reduce the royalty on iron in order to compete with foreign iron dealers as to reduce the wages of the iron-worker or the collier?
The collier and the iron-worker work, and work hard, but the royalty owner does nothing.
The twenty-five per cent. reduction in the colliers' wages demanded before the great strike would not have made a difference of sixpence a ton in the cost of coal.
Now the royalties charged upon a ton of manufactured pig iron in Cumberland at that time amounted to 6s. 3d.; whereas the royalties on a ton of manufactured pig iron in Germany were 6d., in France 8d., in Belgium 1s. 3d. Now read this—
In 1885 a firm in West Cumberland had half their furnaces idle, not because the firm had no work, but simply owing to the high royalties demanded by the landowner. This company had to import iron from Belgium to fulfil their contract with the Indian Government. With a furnace turning out about 600 tons of pig iron per week the royalties amounted to £202, while the wages to everyone, from the manager downwards, amounted to only £95. This very company is now amongst our foreign competitors.
The royalties were more than twice the amount of the wages, and yet we are to believe that we can only keep our iron trade by lowering the wages.
The fact is that in the iron trade our export goods are taxed by the idle royalty owner to an amount varying from five to twelve times that of the royalty paid by our French, German, and Belgian competitors.
Now think over the iron and cotton and other trades, and remember the analysis we made of the cost of production, and tell me why, since the rich landlord gets his rent, and since the rich capitalist gets his interest or profits out of cotton, wool, or iron, the invariable suggestion of those who would retain our foreign trade by reducing the cost of production amounts to no more nor less than a reduction of the poor workers' wages.
Let us go back to the coal trade. The collier was called selfish because his demand for a living wage kept up the price of coal. The reduction asked would not have come to 6d. a ton. Could not that sixpence have been saved from the rents, or interest, or profits, or royalties paid at the cost of the production of other goods? I think you will find that it could.
But leave that point, and let us see whether there are not other factors in the cost of coal which could more fairly be reduced than could the wages of the collier.
Coals sells at prices from 10s. to 30s. a ton. The wages of the collier do not add up to more than 2s. 6d. a ton.
In the year before the last great coal strike 300,000 miners were paid £15,000,000, and in the same time £6,000,000 were paid in royalties. Sir G. Elliot's estimate of coal owners' profits for the same year was £11,000,000. This, with the £6,000,000 paid in royalties, made £17,000,000 taken by royalty owners and mine owners out of the coal trade in one year.
So there are other items in the price of coal besides the wages of the colliers. What are they? They may be divided into nine parts, thus—
1. Rent.
2. Royalties.
3. Coal masters' profits.
4. Profits of railway companies and other carriers.
5. Wages of railway servants and other carriers' labourers.
6. Profits of merchants and other "middlemen."
7. Profits of retailers.
8. Wages of agents, travellers, and other salesmen.
9. The wages of the colliers.
The prices of coal fluctuate (vary), and the changes in the prices of coal cause now a rise and now a fall in the wages and profits of coal masters, railway shareholders, merchants, and retailers.
But the fluctuations in the prices of coal cause very little fluctuation in rent and none in royalties.
Again, no matter how low the price of coal may be, the agents, travellers, and other salesmen always get a living wage, and the coal owners, railway shareholders, merchants, landlords, and royalty owners always get a great deal more than a living wage.
But what about the colliers and the carriers' labourers, such as railway men, dischargers, and carters?
These men perform nearly all the work of production and of distribution. They get the coal, and they carry the coal.
Their wages are lower than those of any of the other seven classes engaged in the coal trade.
They work harder, they work longer hours, and they run more risk to life and limb than any other class in the trade; and yet!——
And yet the only means of reducing the price of coal is said to be a reduction in the collier's wage.
Now, I say that in reducing the price of coal the last thing we should touch is the collier's wage.
If we must reduce the price of coal, we should begin with the owners of royalties. As to the "right" of the royalty owner to exact a fine from labour, I will content myself with making two claims—
1. That even if the royalty owner has a "right" to a royalty, yet there is no reason why he, of all the nine classes engaged in the coal trade, should be the only one whose receipts from the sale of coal shall never be lessened, no matter how the price of coal may fall.
2. Since the royalty owner and the landlord are the only persons engaged in the trade who cannot make even a pretence of doing anything for their money, and since the price of coal must be lowered, they should be the first to bear a reduction in the amount they charge on the sale of it.
Next to the landlords and royalty owners I should place the railway companies. The prices charged for the carriage of coal are very high, and if the price of coal must be reduced, the profits made on the carriage should be reduced.
Third in order come the coal owners, with what they call "a fair rate of interest on invested capital."
How is it that the Press never reproaches any of those four idle and overpaid classes with selfishness in causing the poor workers of other trades to go short of fuel?
How is it that the Press never chides these men for their folly in trying to keep up profits, royalties, and interest in a "falling market"?
It looks as if the "immutable laws" of political economy resemble the laws of the land. It looks as if there is one economic law for the rich and another for the poor.
The merchants, commission agents, and other middlemen I leave out of the question. These men are worse than worthless—they are harmful. They thwart; and hinder, and disorder the trade, and live on the colliers, the coal masters, and the public. There is no excuse, economic or moral, for their existence. But there is only one cure for the evil they do, and that is to drive them right out of the trade.
I claim, then, that if the price of coal must be reduced, the sums paid to the above-named three classes should be cut down first, because they get a great deal more, and do a great deal less, than the carriers' labourers and the colliers.
First as to the coal owners and the royalty owners. We see that the whole sum of the wages of the colliers for a year was only £6,000,000, while the royalty owners and the coal owners took £17,000,000, or nearly three times as much.
And yet we were told that the miners, the men who work, were "selfish" for refusing to have their wages reduced.
Nationalise the land and the mines, and you at once save £17,000,000, and all that on the one trade.
So with the railways. Nationalise the railways, and you may reduce the cost of the carriage of coal (and of all goods and passengers) by the amount of the profits now made by the railway companies, plus a good deal of the expense of management.
For if the Municipalities can give you better trams, pay the guards and drivers better wages for shorter hours, and reduce penny fares to halfpenny fares, and still clear a big profit, is it not likely that the State could lower the freights of the railways, and so reduce the cost of carrying foods and manufactured goods and raw material?
Our foreign trade, and our home industries also, are taxed and handicapped in their competition by every shilling paid in royalties, in rents, in interest, in profits, and in dividends to persons who do no work and produce no wealth; they are handicapped further by the salaries and commissions of all the superfluous managers, canvassers, agents, travellers, clerks, merchants, small dealers, and other middlemen who now live upon the producer and consumer.
Socialism would abolish all these rents, taxes, royalties, salaries, commissions, profits, and interests, and thereby so greatly reduce the cost of production and of carriage that in the open market we should be able to offer our goods at such prices as to defy the competition of any but a Socialist State.
But there is another way in which British trade is handicapped in competition with the trade of other nations.
It is instructive to notice that our most dangerous rival is America, where wages are higher and all the conditions of the worker better than in this country.
How, then, do the Americans contrive so often to beat us?
Is it not notorious that the reason given for America's success is the superior energy and acuteness of the American over the British manager and employer? American firms are more pushing, more up-to-date. They seek new markets, and study the desires of consumers; they use more modern machinery, and they produce more new inventions. Are the paucity of our invention and the conservatism of our management due to the "invincible ignorance" or restrictive policy of the British working man? They are due to quite other causes. The conservatism and sluggishness of our firms are due to British conceit: to the belief that when "Britain first at Heaven's command arose from out the azure main" she was invested with an eternal and unquestionable charter to act henceforth and for ever as the "workshop of the world"; and say what they will in their inmost hearts, her manufacturers still have unshaken faith in their destiny, and think scorn of any foreigner who presumes to cross their path. Therefore the British manufacturer remains conservative, and gets left by more enterprising rivals.
A word as to the superior inventiveness of the Americans. There are two great reasons why America produces more new and valuable patents. The first cause is the eagerness of the American manufacturer to secure the newest and the best machinery, and the apathetic contentment of the British manufacturer with old and cheap methods of production. There is a better market in America for inventions. The second cause is the superiority of the American patent law and patent office.
In England a patentee has to pay £99 for a fourteen years' patent, and even then gets no guarantee of validity.
In America the patentee gets a seventeen years' patent for £7.
In England, out of 56,000 patents more than 54,000 were voided and less than 2000 survived.
In America there is no voiding.
One of the consequences of this is that American firms have a choice of thirty-two patents where our firms have one.
According to the American patent office report for 1897, the American patents had, in seventeen years, found employment for 1,776,152 persons, besides raising wages in many cases as much as 173 per cent.
These few figures only give a view of part of the disadvantage under which British inventors and British manufacturers suffer.
I suggest, as the lawyers say, that British commercial conservatism and the British patent law have as much to do with the success of our clever and energetic American rivals as has what the Times calls the "invincible ignorance" of the British workman who declines to sacrifice his Union to atone by longer hours and lower wages for the apathy of his employers and the folly of his laws.
I submit, then, that the remedy is not the destruction of the Trade Unions, nor the lowering of wages, nor the lengthening of hours, but the nationalisation of the land, the abolition of royalties, the restoration of agriculture, and the municipalisation or the nationalisation of the collieries, the iron mines, the steel works, and the railways.
The trade of this country is handicapped; but it is not handicapped by the poor workers, but by the rich idlers, whose enormous rents and profits make it impossible for England to retain the foremost place in the markets of the world.
So I submit to the British workman that, since the Press, with some few exceptions, finds no remedy for loss of trade but in a reduction of his wages, he would do well to look upon the Press with suspicion, and, better still, to study these questions for himself.
CHAPTER XII CAN BRITAIN FEED HERSELF?
Is it impossible for this nation to produce food for 40,000,000 of people?
We cannot produce all our food. We cannot produce our own tea, coffee, cocoa, oranges, lemons, currants, raisins, figs, dates, bananas, treacle, tobacco, sugar, and many other things not suitable to our climate. But at a pinch, as during a war, we could do without most of these.
Can we produce our own bread, meat, and vegetables? Can we produce all, or nearly all, our butter, milk, eggs, cheese, and fruit?
And will it pay to produce these things if we are able to produce them at all?
The great essential is bread. Can we grow our own wheat? On this point I do not see how there can be any doubt whatever.
In 1841 Britain grew wheat for 24,000,000 of people, and at that time not nearly all her land was in use, nor was her farming of the best.
Now we have to find food, or at any rate bread and meat and vegetables, for 40,000,000.
Wheat, then, for 40,000,000. At present we consume 29,000,000 quarters. Can we grow 29,000,000 quarters in our own country?
Certainly we can. The average yield per acre in Britain is 28 bushels, or 3½ quarters. That is the average yield on British farms. It can be increased; but let us take it first upon that basis.
At 3½ quarters to the acre, 8,000,000 acres would produce 28,000,000 quarters; 9,000,000 acres would produce 31,500,000 quarters.
Therefore we require less than 9,000,000 acres of wheat land to grow a year's supply of wheat for 40,000,000 persons.
Now we have in Great Britain and Ireland about 33,000,000 acres of cultivatable land. Deduct 9,000,000 for wheat, and we have 24,000,000 acres left for vegetables, fruit, cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry.
Can any man say, in the face of these figures, that we are incapable of growing our own wheat?
Suppose the average is put too high. Suppose we could only average a yield of 20 bushels to the acre, or 2½ quarters, we could still grow 29,000,000 quarters on less than 12,000,000 acres.
It is evident, then, that we can at anyrate grow our own wheat.
Here I shall quote from an excellent book, Fields, Factories, and Workshops, by Prince Kropotkin. Having gone very carefully into the facts, the Prince has arrived at the following conclusions:—
1. If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated only as it was thirty-five years ago, 24,000,000 people could live on home-grown food.
2. If the cultivatable soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated as the soil is cultivated on the average in Belgium, the United Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000 inhabitants.
3. If the population of this country came to be doubled, all that would be required for producing food for 80,000,000 inhabitants would be to cultivate the soil as it is now cultivated in the best farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders.
Why, indeed, should we not be able to raise 29,000,000 quarters of wheat? We have plenty of land. Other European countries can produce, and do produce, their own food.
Take the example of Belgium. In Belgium the people produce their own food. Yet their soil is no better than ours, and their country is more densely populated, the figures being: Great Britain, per square mile, 378 persons; Belgium, per square mile, 544 persons.
Does that silence the commercial school? No. They have still one argument left. They say that even if we can grow our own wheat we cannot grow it as cheaply as we can buy it.
Suppose we cannot. Suppose it will cost us 2s. a quarter more to grow it than to buy it. On the 23,000,000 quarters we now import we should be saving £2,000,000 a year.
Is that a very high price to pay for security against defeat by starvation in time of war?
A battle-ship costs £1,000,000. If we build two extra battle-ships in a year to protect our food supply we spend nearly all we gain by importing our wheat, even supposing that it costs us 2s. a quarter more to grow than to buy it.
But is it true that we cannot grow wheat as cheaply as we can buy it? If it is true, the fact may doubtless be put down to two causes. First, that we do not go to work in the best way, nor with the best machinery; second, that the farmer is handicapped by rent. Of course if we have to pay rent to private persons for the use of our own land, that adds to the cost of the rent.
One acre yields 28 bushels, or 3½ quarters of wheat in a year. If the land be rented at 21s. an acre that will add 6s. a quarter to the cost of wheat.
In the Industrial History of England I find the question of why the English farmer is undersold answered in this way—
The answer is simple. His capital has been filched from him surely, but not always slowly, by a tremendous increase in his rent. The landlords of the eighteenth century made the English farmer the foremost agriculturist in the world, but their successors of the nineteenth have ruined him by their extortions.... In 1799 we find land paying nearly 20s. an acre.... By 1850 it had risen to 38s. 6d.... £2 an acre was not an uncommon rent for land a few years ago, the average increase of English rents being no less than 26½ per cent. between 1854 and 1879.... The result has been that the average capital per acre now employed in agriculture is only about £4 or £5, instead of at least £10, as it ought to be.
If the rents were as high as £2 an acre when our poor farmers were struggling to make both ends meet, it is little wonder they failed. A rent of £2 an acre means a land tax of more than 11s. a quarter on wheat. The price of wheat in the market at present is about 25s. a quarter. A rent charge of 21s. per acre would amount to more than £10,000,000 on the 9,000,000 we should need to grow all our wheat. A rent charge of £2 an acre would amount to £18,000,000. That would be a heavy sum for our farmers to lift before they went to market.
Moreover, agriculture has been neglected because all the mechanical and chemical skill, and all the capital and energy of man, have been thrown into the struggle for trade profits and manufacturing pre-eminence. We want a few Faradays, Watts, Stephensons, and Cobdens to devote their genius and industry to the great food question. Once let the public interest and the public genius be concentrated upon the agriculture of England, and we shall soon get silenced the croakers who talk about the impossibility of the country feeding her people.
But is it true that under fair conditions wheat can be brought from the other side of the world and sold here at a price with which we cannot compete? Prince Kropotkin thinks not. He says the French can produce their food more cheaply than they can buy it; and if the French can do this, why cannot we?
But in case it should be thought that I am prejudiced in favour of Prince Kropotkin's book or against the factory system, I will here print a quotation from a criticism of the book which appeared in the Times newspaper, which paper can hardly be suspected of any leanings towards Prince Kropotkin, or of any eagerness to acknowledge that the present industrial system possesses "acknowledged evils."
Seriously, Prince Kropotkin has a great deal to say for his theories.... He has the genuine scientific temper, and nobody can say that he does not extend his observations widely enough, for he seems to have been everywhere and to have read everything.... Perhaps his chief fault is that he does not allow sufficiently for the ingrained conservatism of human nature and for the tenacity of vested interests. But that is no reason why people should not read his book, which will certainly set them thinking, and may lead a few of them to try, by practical experiments, to lessen some of the acknowledged evils of the present industrial system.
Just notice what the Tory Times says about "the tenacity of vested interests" and the "acknowledged evils of the present industrial system." It is a great deal for the Times to say.
But what about the meat?
Prince Kropotkin deals as satisfactorily with the question of meat-growing as with that of growing wheat, and his conclusion is this—
Our means of obtaining from the soil whatever we want, under any climate and upon any soil, have lately improved at such a rate that we cannot foresee yet what is the limit of productivity of a few acres of land. The limit vanishes in proportion to our better study of the subject, and every year makes it vanish farther and farther from our sight.
I have, I think, quoted enough to show that there is no natural obstacle to our production in this country of all the food our people need. Britain can feed herself, and therefore, upon the ground of her use for foreign-grown food, the factory system is not necessary.
But I hope my readers will buy this book of Prince Kropotkin, and read it. For it is a very fine book, a much better book than I can write.
It can be ordered from the Clarion Office, 72 Fleet Street, and the price is 1s. 3d. post free.
As to the vegetables and the fruit, I must refer you to the Prince's book; but I shall quote a few passages just to give an idea of what can be done, and is being done, in other countries in the way of intensive cultivation of vegetables and fruit.
Prince Kropotkin says that the question of soil is a common stumbling-block to those who write about agriculture. Soil, he says, does not matter now, nor climate very much. There is a quite new science of agriculture which makes its own soil and modifies its climate. Corn and fruit can be grown on any soil—on rock, on sand, on clay.
Man, not Nature, has given to the Belgian soil its present productivity.
And now read this—
While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a limited number of lovers of Nature, and a legion of workers whose very names will remain unknown to posterity, have created of late quite a new agriculture, as superior to modern farming as modern farming is superior to the old three-fields system of our ancestors.... Science seldom has guided them; they proceeded in the empirical way; but like the cattle-growers who opened new horizons to biology, they have opened a new field of experimental research for the physiology of plants. They have created a totally new agriculture. They smile when we boast about the rotation system having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six and nine crops from the very same plot of land during the twelve months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad soils, because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an inch every year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the acre, as we do, but from fifty to a hundred tons of vegetables on the same space; not £5 worth of hay, but £100 worth of vegetables of the plainest description—cabbage and carrots.
Look now at these figures from America—
At a recent competition, in which hundreds of farmers took part, the first ten prizes were awarded to ten farmers who had grown, on three acres each, from 262 to 346¾ bushels of Indian corn; in other words, from 87 to 115 bushels to the acre. In Minnesota the prizes were given for crops of 300 to 1120 bushels of potatoes to the acre, i.e. from 8¼ to 31 tons to the acre, while the average potato crop in Great Britain is only 6 tons.
These are facts, not theories. Here is another quotation from Prince Kropotkin's book. It also relates to America—
The crop from each acre was small, but the machinery was so perfected that in this way 300 days of one man's labour produced from 200 to 300 quarters of wheat; in other words, the areas of land being of no account, every man produced in one day his yearly bread food.
I shall only make one more quotation. It alludes to the intensive wheat-growing on Major Hallett's method in France, and is as follows:—
In fact, the 8½ bushels required for one man's annual food were actually grown at the Tomblaine station on a surface of 2250 square feet, or 47 feet square, i.e. on very nearly one-twentieth of an acre.
Now remember that our agricultural labourers crowd into the towns and compete with the town labourers for work. Remember that we have millions of acres of land lying idle, and generally from a quarter to three-quarters of a million of men unemployed. Then consider this position.
Here we have a million acres of good land producing nothing, and half a million men also producing nothing. Land and labour, the two factors of wealth production, both idle. Could we not set the men to work? Of course we could. Would it pay? To be sure it would pay.
In America, on soil no better than ours, one man can by one day's labour produce one man's year's bread. That is, 8½ bushels of wheat.
Suppose we organise our out-of-works under skilled farmers, and give them the best machinery. Suppose they only produce one-half the American product. They will still be earning more than their keep.
Or set them to work, under skilled directors, on the French or the Belgian plan, at the intensive cultivation of vegetables. Let them grow huge crops of potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, onions; and in the coal counties, where fuel is cheap, let them raise tomatoes and grapes, under glass, and they will produce wealth, and be no longer starvelings or paupers.
Another good plan would be to allow a Municipality to obtain land, under a Compulsory Purchase Act, at a fair rent and near a town, and to relet the land to gardeners and small farmers, to work on the French and Belgian systems. Let the local Corporation find the capital to make soil and lay down heating and draining pipes. Let the Corporation charge rent and interest, buy the produce from the growers and resell it to the citizens, and let the tenant gardeners be granted fixity of tenure and fair payment for improvements, and we shall increase and improve our food supply, lessen the overcrowding in our towns, and reduce the unemployed to the small number of lazy men who will not work.
It is the imperative duty of every British citizen to insist upon the Government doing everything that can be done to restore the national agriculture and to remove the dreadful danger of famine in time of war.
National granaries should be formed at once, and at least a year's supply of wheat should be kept in stock.
What are the Government doing in this way? Nothing at all.
The only remedy they have to suggest is Protection!
What is Protection? It is a tax on foreign wheat. What would be the result of Protection? The result would be that the landowner would get higher rents and the people would get dearer bread.
How true is Tolstoy's gibe, that "the rich man will do anything for the poor man—except get off his back." "Our agriculture," the Tory protectionist shrieks, "is perishing. Our farmers cannot make a living. Our landlords cannot let their farms. The remedy is Protection." A truly practical Tory suggestion. "The farmers cannot pay our rents. British agriculture is dying out. Let us put a tax upon the poor man's bread."
Yes; Protection is a remedy, but it must be the protection of the farmer against the landlord. Give our farmers fixity of tenure, compensation for improvements, and prevent the landlord from taxing the industry and brains of the farmer by increase of rent, and British agriculture will soon rear its head again.
Quite recently we have had an example of Protection. The coal owners combined and raised the price of coal some 6s. to 10s. a ton. It is said they cleared more than £60,000,000 sterling on the deal. What good did that do the workers? Did the colliers get any of the spoil in wages? No; that money is lying up ready to crush the colliers when they next strike.
It is the same story over and over again. We cannot have cheap coal because the rich owners demand big fortunes; we cannot have cheap houses or decent homes because the landlords raise the rents faster than the people can increase our trade; we cannot grow our food as cheaply as we can buy it because the rich owners of the land squeeze the farmer dry and make it impossible for him to live. And the harder the collier, the weaver, the farmer, and the mechanic work, the harder the landlord and the capitalist squeeze. The industry, skill, and perseverance of the workers avail nothing but to make a few rich and idle men richer and more idle.
As I have repeatedly pointed out before, we have by sacrificing our agriculture destroyed our insular position. As an island we may be, or should be, free from serious danger of invasion. But of what avail is our vaunted silver shield of the sea if we depend upon other nations for our food? We are helpless in case of a great war. It is not necessary to invade England in order to conquer her. Once our food supply is stopped we are shut up like a beleagured city to starve or to surrender.
Stop the import of food into England for three months, and we shall be obliged to surrender at discretion.
And our agriculture is to be ruined, and the safety and honour of the Empire are to be endangered, that a few landlords, coal owners, and money-lenders may wax fat upon the vitals of the nation.
So, I say, we do need Protection; but it is the protection of our farmers and colliers, our weavers and our mechanics, our homes, our health, our food, our cities, our children and women, yes, our national existence—against the rapacity of the rich lords, employers, and money-lenders, who impudently pose as the champions of patriotism and the expansion of the Empire.
Again, I recommend every Socialist to read the new edition of Prince Kropotkin's Fields, Factories, and Workshops.
CHAPTER XIII THE SUCCESSFUL MAN
There are many who believe that if all the workers became abstainers, worked harder, lived sparely, and saved every penny they could; and that if they avoided early marriages and large families, they would all be happy and prosperous without Socialism.
And, of course, these same persons believe that the bulk of the suffering and poverty of the poor is due to drink, to thriftlessness, and to imprudent marriages.
I know that many, very many, do believe these things, because I used to meet such persons when I went out lecturing.
Now I know that belief to be wrong. I know that if every working man and woman in England turned teetotaler to-morrow, if they all remained single, if they all worked like niggers, if they all worked for twelve hours a day, if they lived on oatmeal and water, and if they saved every farthing they could spare, they would, at the end of twenty years, be a great deal worse off than they are to-day.
Sobriety, thrift, industry, skill, self-denial, holiness, are all good things; but they would, if adopted by all the workers, simply enrich the idle and the wicked, and reduce the industrious and the righteous to slavery.
Teetotalism will not do; industry will not do; saving will not do; increased skill will not do; keeping single will not do; reducing the population will not do. Nothing will do but Socialism.
I mean to make these things plain to you if I can.
I will begin by answering a statement made by a Tory M.P. As reported in the Press, the M.P. said, "There was nothing to prevent the son of a crossing-sweeper from rising to be Lord Chancellor of England."
This, at first sight, would seem to have nothing to do with the theories regarding thrift, temperance, and prudent marriages. But we shall find that it arises from the same error.
This error has two faces. On one face it says that any man may do well if he will try, and on the other face it says that those who do not do well have no one but themselves to blame.
The error rises from a slight confusion of thought. Men know that a man may rise from the lowest place in life to almost the highest, and they suppose that because one man can do it, all men can do it; they know that if one man works hard, saves, keeps sober, and remains single, he will get more money than other men who drink and spend and take life easily, and they suppose because thrift, single life, industry, and temperance spell success to one man, they would spell success to all.
I will show you that this is a mistake, and I will show you why it is a mistake. Let us begin with the crossing-sweeper.
We are told that "there is nothing to prevent the son of a crossing-sweeper from becoming Lord Chancellor of England." But our M.P. does not mean that there is nothing to prevent the son of some one particular crossing-sweeper from becoming Chancellor; he means that there is nothing to prevent any son of any crossing-sweeper, or the son of any very poor man, from becoming rich and famous.
Now, let me show you what nonsense this is.
There are in all England, let us say, some 2,000,000 of poor and friendless and untaught boys.
And there is one Lord Chancellor. Now, it is just possible for one boy out of the 2,000,000 to become Lord Chancellor; but it is quite impossible for all the boys, or even for one boy in 1000, or for one boy in 10,000, to become Lord Chancellor.
Our M.P. means that if a boy is clever and industrious he may become Lord Chancellor.
But suppose all the boys are as clever and as industrious as he is, they cannot all become chancellors.
The one boy can only succeed because he is stronger, cleverer, more pushing, more persistent, or more lucky than any other boy.
In my story, Bob's Fairy, this very point is raised. I will quote it for you here. Bob, who is a boy, is much troubled about the poor; his father, who is a self-made man and mayor of his native town, tells Bob that the poor are suffering because of their own faults. The parson then tries to make Bob understand—
"Come, come, come," said the reverend gentleman, "you are too young for such questions. Ah—let me try to—ah—explain it to you. Here is your father. He is wealthy. He is honoured. He is mayor of his native town. Now, how did he make his way?"
Mr. Toppinroyd smiled, and poured himself out another glass of wine. His wife nodded her head approvingly at the minister.
"Your father," continued the minister, "made himself what he is by industry, thrift, and talent."
"If another man was as clever, and as industrious and thrifty as father," said Bob, "could he get on as well?"
"Of course he could," replied Mr. Toppinroyd.
"Then the poor are not like that?" asked Bob.
"I regret to say," said the parson, "that—ah—they are not."
"But if they were like father, they could do what he has done?" Bob said.
"Of course, you silly," exclaimed his mother.
Ned chuckled behind his paper. Kate turned to the piano.
Bob nodded and smiled. "How droll!" said he.
"What's droll?" his father asked sharply.
"Why," said Bob, "how funny it would be if all the people were industrious, and clever, and steady!"
"Funny?" ejaculated the parson.
"Funny?" repeated Mr. Toppinroyd.
"What do you mean, dear?" inquired Mrs. Toppinroyd mildly.
"If all the men in Loomborough were as clever and as good as father," said Bob simply, "there would be 50,000 rich mill-owners, and they would all be mayor of the same town."
Mr. Toppinroyd gave a sharp glance at his son, then leaned forward, boxed his ears, and said—
"Get to bed, you young monkey. Go!"
Do you see the idea? The poor cannot all be mayors and chancellors and millionaires, because there are too many of them and not enough high places.
But they can all be asses, and they will be asses, if they listen to such rubbish as that uttered by this Tory M.P.
You have twenty men starting for a race. You may say, "There is nothing to prevent any man from winning the race," but you mean any one man who is luckier or swifter than the rest. You would never be foolish enough to believe that all the men could win. You know that nineteen of the men must lose.
So we know that in a race for the Chancellorship only one boy can win, and the other 1,999,999 must lose.
It is the same thing with temperance, industry, and cleverness. Of 10,000 mechanics one is steadier, more industrious, and more skilful than the others. Therefore he will get work where the others cannot. But why? Because he is worth more as a workman. But don't you see that if all the others were as good as he, he would not be worth more?
Then you see that to tell 1,000,000 men that they will get more work or more wages if they are cleverer, or soberer, or more industrious, is as foolish as to tell the twenty men starting for a race that they can all win if they will all try.
If all the men were just as fast as the winner, the race would end in a dead heat.
There is a fire panic in a big hall. The hall is full of people, and there is only one door. A rush is made for that door. Some of the crowd get out, some are trampled to death, some are injured, some are burned.
Now, of that crowd of people, who are most likely to escape?
Those nearest to the door have a better chance than those farthest, have they not?
Then the strong have a better chance than the weak, have they not?
And the men have a better chance than the women, and the children the worst chance of all. Is it not so?
Then, again, which is most likely to be saved—the selfish man who fights and drags others down, who stands upon the fallen bodies of women and children, and wins his way by force; or the brave and gentle man who tries to help the women and the children, and will not trample upon the wounded?
Don't you know that the noble and brave man stands a poor chance of escape, and that the selfish, brutal man stands a good chance of escape?
Well, now, suppose a man to have got out, perhaps because he was near the door, or perhaps because he was very strong, or perhaps because he was very lucky, or perhaps because he did not stop to help the women and children, and suppose him to stand outside the door, and cry out to the struggling and dying creatures in the burning hall, "Serves you jolly well right if you do suffer. Why don't you get out? I got out. You can get out if you try. There is nothing to prevent any one of you from getting out."
Suppose a man talked like that, what would you say of him? Would you call him a sensible man? Would you call him a Christian? Would you call him a gentleman?
You will say I am severe. I am. Every time a successful man talks as this M.P. talks he inflicts a brutal insult upon the unsuccessful, many thousands of whom, both men and women, are worthier and better than himself.
But let us go back to our subject. That fire panic in the big hall is a picture of life as it is to-day.
It is a scramble of a big crowd to get through a small door. Those who get through are cheered and rewarded, and few questions are asked as to how they got through.
Now, Socialists say that there should be more doors, and no scramble.
But let me use this example of the hall and the panic more fully.
Suppose the hall to be divided into three parts. First the stalls, then the pit stalls, then the pit. Suppose the only door is the door in the stalls. Suppose the people in the pit stalls have to climb a high barrier to get to the stalls. Suppose those in the pit have to climb a high barrier to get to the pit stalls, and then the high barrier that parts the pit stalls from the stalls. Suppose there is, right at the back of the pit, a small, weak boy. Now, I ask you, as sensible men, is there "nothing to prevent" that boy from getting through that door? You know the boy has only the smallest of chances of getting out of that hall. But he has a thousand times a better chance of getting safely out of that door than the son of a crossing-sweeper has of becoming Lord Chancellor of England.
In our hall the upper classes would sit in the stalls, the middle classes in the pit stalls, and the workers in the pit. Whose son would have the best chance for the door?
I compared the race for the Chancellorship just now to a foot-race of twenty men; and I showed you that if all the runners were as fleet as greyhounds only one could win, and nineteen must lose.
But the M.P.'s crossing-sweeper's son has to enter a race where there are millions of starters, and where the race is a handicap in which he is on scratch, with thousands of men more than half the course in front of him.
For don't you see that this race which the lucky or successful men tell us we can all win is not a fair race?
The son of the crossing-sweeper has terrible odds against him. The son of the gentleman has a long start, and carries less weight.
What are the qualities needed in a race for the Chancellorship? The boy who means to win must be marvellously strong, clever, brave, and persevering.
Now, will he be likely to be strong? He may be, but the odds are against him. His father may not be strong nor his mother, for they may have worked hard, and they may not have been well fed, nor well nursed, nor well doctored. They probably live in a slum, and they cannot train, nor teach, nor feed their son in a healthy and proper way, because they are ignorant and poor. And the boy gets a few years at a board school, and then goes to work.
But the gentleman's son is well bred, well fed, well nursed, well trained, and lives in a healthy place. He goes to good schools, and from school to college.
And when he leaves college he has money to pay fees, and he has a name, and he has education; and I ask you, what are the odds against the son of a crossing-sweeper in a race like that?
Well, there is not a single case where men are striving for wealth or for place where the sons of the workers are not handicapped in the same way. Now and again a worker's son wins. He may win because he is a genius like Stephenson or Sir William Herschel; or he may win because he is cruel and unscrupulous, like Jay Gould; or he may win because he is lucky.
But it is folly to say that there is "nothing to prevent him" from winning. There is almost everything to prevent him. To begin with, his chances of dying before he's five years old are about ten times as numerous as the chances of a rich man's son.
Look at Lord Salisbury. He is Prime Minister of England. Had he been born the son of a crossing-sweeper do you think he would have been Prime Minister?
I would undertake to find a hundred better minds than Lord Salisbury's in any English town of 10,000 inhabitants. But will any one of the boys I should select become Prime Minister of England? You know they will not. But yet they ought to, if "there is nothing to prevent them."
But there is something to prevent them. There is poverty to prevent them, there is privilege to prevent them, there is snobbery to prevent them, there is class feeling to prevent them, there are hundreds of other things to prevent them, and amongst those hundreds of other things to prevent them from becoming Prime Ministers I hope that their own honesty and goodness and wisdom may be counted; for honesty and goodness and true wisdom are things which will often prevent a poor boy who is lucky enough to possess them from ever becoming what the world of politics and commerce considers a "successful man."
Do not believe the doctrine that the rich and poor, the successful and the unsuccessful, get what they deserve. If that were true we should find intelligence and virtue keeping level with income. Then the mechanic at 30s. a week would be half as good again as the labourer at 20s. a week; the small merchant, making £200 a year, would be a far better man than one mechanic; the large merchant, making £2000 a year, would be ten times as good as the small merchant; and the millionaire would be too intellectual, too noble, and too righteous for this sinful world.
But don't you know that there are stupid and drunken mechanics, and steady and intelligent labourers? And don't you know that some successful men are rascals, and that some very wealthy men are fools?
Take the story of Jacob and Esau. After Jacob cheated his hungry brother into selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, Jacob was rich and Esau poor. Did each get what he deserved? Was Jacob the better man?
Christ lived poor, a homeless wanderer, and died the death of a felon. Jay Gould made millions of money, and died one of the wealthiest men in the world. Did each get what he deserved? Did the wealth of Gould and the poverty of Christ indicate the intellectual and moral merits of those two sons of men?
Some of us would get whipped if all of us got our deserts; but who would deserve applause and wealth and a crown?
In a sporting handicap the weakest have the most start: in real life the strongest have the start and the weakest are put on scratch.
And I have heard it hinted that the man who runs the straightest does not always win.